Latest / The Virtual Couch / What You Don't Know You Don't Know About Meditation (Hint: You Can’t Stop Thoughts or Clear Your Mind!)

Transcript

What You Don't Know You Don't Know About Meditation (Hint: You Can’t Stop Thoughts or Clear Your Mind!) · The Virtual Couch

• 0:00
  So it's been a little over a year since my spinal fusion surgery,
• 0:04
  ACDF, two-level spinal fusion.
• 0:08
  From time to time, I still dig up the pictures on my phone of x-rays post-surgery,
• 0:13
  and it's mind-blowing to me to think that I have that hardware in my neck,
• 0:17
  screws and a plate and these little cages that help the bone grow.
• 0:22
  And it's equally wild to think I feel amazing.
• 0:26
  To go from the type of acute pain that I was in to where I am now is really
• 0:30
  easy to take for granted how much I was struggling prior to surgery,
• 0:34
  especially those last couple of months leading up to surgery.
• 0:37
  One of the things that I know that I was the most worried about wasn't even
• 0:41
  the surgery itself. It was the recovery.
• 0:45
  Because what if I'm not able to do so many of the things that I like doing?
• 0:48
  I had this amazing surgeon, Dr. Kalsa, who I've interviewed,
• 0:52
  and I've got an episode that I'm going to share at some point down the road
• 0:56
  on a lot of additional details around the fear going in the whole recovery process.
• 1:02
  But he basically implored me to trust the process. He knew what he was doing
• 1:07
  and to really dive into physical therapy.
• 1:10
  That's what I realized I was more worried about because my initial thought was
• 1:14
  that physical therapy doesn't work. Now, why?
• 1:17
  Because one time, literally decades before, I had a severely pulled groin muscle
• 1:23
  and a doctor sent me to a physical therapist. And I did go one time and I did
• 1:28
  the stretches while I was there.
• 1:29
  And then I never did them again. and I did not go back and I realized I've created
• 1:34
  an entire story in my head that, well, it didn't really work for me.
• 1:38
  And then I had to step back and say, okay, one of my best friends,
• 1:41
  Chris Perlow, a guy who I have paced and he has paced me through the dead of
• 1:45
  night and through sunshine and rain on the Western States 100 mile endurance
• 1:50
  run, the Super Bowl of 100 milers.
• 1:52
  This guy who has spent hours and hours with me every year that I ran around
• 1:55
  a high school track for 24 hours, raising money for charity,
• 1:58
  this guy who's been my go-to when I've had aches and pains and pulls and tears,
• 2:02
  is a physical therapist.
• 2:04
  But apparently I am very special in my mind. And well, that doesn't work for
• 2:08
  me, which is fascinating when you think about it, because what I really should
• 2:11
  have said with the groin injury was I never actually gave it a chance being physical therapy.
• 2:17
  And even this time recovering from spinal fusion surgery as a 55 year old human at the time, now 56,
• 2:24
  there were so many moments where the physical therapist, somebody who I was
• 2:27
  literally paying for help, somebody who clearly knew more about recovery than
• 2:31
  I did, would tell me to do some exercise or movement that felt weird or pointless
• 2:35
  or too small to matter to me.
• 2:37
  And every part of my brain wanted to say, now, I don't know if this is the thing
• 2:42
  that's really going to work.
• 2:43
  But thank goodness, I kept doing it anyway. I graduated from physical therapy.
• 2:47
  I went and I even still do some of the exercises now. I carry a little resistance
• 2:52
  band in my bag and I take it with me everywhere. And sometimes I use it.
• 2:56
  Because now, over a year later, I honestly have to assume that my recovery is
• 3:01
  as good as it is precisely because I leaned into the process instead of trusting
• 3:05
  every thought that my brain threw at me in any moment.
• 3:08
  And I've noticed the exact same thing recently doing what I jokingly referred
• 3:13
  to as, we'll call it woo-woo work with a therapist here in Arizona,
• 3:18
  which if I'm being completely honest, was probably just my clever way of avoiding
• 3:23
  calling it what it actually was, the woo-woo,
• 3:26
  which a big part of that is learning how to sit with my feelings and emotions
• 3:30
  instead of constantly trying to intellectualize them or trying to be the therapist
• 3:35
  who is going to be able to understand them.
• 3:37
  But still not necessarily need to truly feel them because I don't even know
• 3:41
  what to do with them and I don't even know what they are.
• 3:44
  And I can't tell you how many times she suggested something where my immediate
• 3:47
  internal response was, yeah, I don't know, that doesn't make sense.
• 3:52
  Again, person that I'm going to that has expertise in this area and I'm now,
• 3:57
  wanting to tell myself, I don't know if you know what you're talking about because
• 4:00
  it doesn't make sense to me, this thing that I don't know anything about.
• 4:04
  So it didn't make sense until eventually it did. And oh, my goodness,
• 4:07
  has it made all the sense and more on that in future episodes as well,
• 4:12
  which has made me realize something really important about today's topic,
• 4:16
  mindfulness and meditation.
• 4:18
  Even when I just said those two words, I wonder what your first thoughts were.
• 4:22
  Hard pass or, oh yeah, I know, just breathe or let's start loading up the yeah
• 4:27
  buts. Well, yeah, but I've tried it and it doesn't work. Or yeah,
• 4:30
  but I can't stop my thoughts or a dozen other yeah buts.
• 4:33
  Because most people reject it for the exact same reason that I almost rejected
• 4:37
  physical therapy this time.
• 4:39
  Or why I wanted to reject the things about emotions that I was going to someone
• 4:43
  who specializes in the concept of emotions was trying to help me understand.
• 4:48
  And they assume that because something feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable,
• 4:52
  slow, too difficult to understand, that it probably isn't working and that it's not worth my time.
• 4:59
  But sometimes the work that changes you the most is the work that does not feel
• 5:03
  impressive while you're doing it.
• 5:05
  I remember sitting with a client years ago. They had already been to several
• 5:08
  therapists trying to stop turning to a particularly unhealthy coping mechanism.
• 5:13
  And I was talking with him about mindfulness and shame and getting rid of the
• 5:16
  shame and self-awareness and all
• 5:18
  the things that I absolutely believe are foundational parts of recovery.
• 5:22
  And I could feel him. I could watch him start to mentally check out.
• 5:26
  So I paused and I checked in with him and asked him, okay, what's coming up
• 5:31
  with you right now? I'm noticing that you're starting to tune out.
• 5:33
  And thankfully, he was honest.
• 5:35
  And we eventually landed on the fact that he had heard versions of all these
• 5:38
  things that I'm saying before.
• 5:40
  And he also admitted that he was a guru shopper looking for somebody who would
• 5:46
  finally tell him something different, some guru that had the magic pill,
• 5:49
  the magic bullet, something faster, something more exciting.
• 5:52
  And I remember joking with him a little bit and saying, ah, so you want me to
• 5:55
  deliver you a magic bean that you can take and it will immediately change your life.
• 6:00
  And to his credit, he laughed and basically said, yeah, I guess I kind of do.
• 6:04
  And I shared with him at that point, I can absolutely tell you what you want
• 6:06
  to hear, But that would honestly be doing him a disservice because what I was
• 6:10
  actually asking him to do was trust the process.
• 6:15
  And this part of the story, I wasn't even sure if I would tell because it's
• 6:18
  just so fascinating, but it's the way that life works that I would love to tell
• 6:22
  you. And he trusted every word I said, and he did amazing work.
• 6:26
  And within a matter of weeks or maybe a couple of months, everything was fixed
• 6:30
  and he lived happily ever after.
• 6:32
  But the true part of the story is we worked together really well for quite a while.
• 6:36
  And he was making progress from the seat of the professional,
• 6:41
  me playing the role of professional. But to him, it was slow.
• 6:45
  And he still desperately wanted it to go quicker and he wanted to do it perfectly.
• 6:50
  So eventually, therapeutically speaking, he broke up with me.
• 6:53
  And honestly, he fell in love with the sales page.
• 6:57
  One that basically said something like, are you tired of countless therapy sessions
• 7:00
  without getting the results you want?
• 7:01
  Are people telling you recovery is a process and it takes as long as it takes?
• 7:05
  Well, what if I told you that if you follow my system or whatever,
• 7:08
  my three-step system or my acronym, whatever it is, that in less than three
• 7:11
  months, you can finally have the life that you know is out there waiting for you.
• 7:14
  A life where you no longer struggle with, name it, pornography,
• 7:17
  gambling, food, video games, or whatever has been the unhealthy coping mechanism
• 7:22
  that has been holding you back from the life that you deserve.
• 7:24
  A life where your spouse respects you again, where your dog is not just excited
• 7:29
  to see you, but brings your slippers to you, where you walk with confidence,
• 7:32
  where you finally become the person you were meant to be.
• 7:36
  And honestly, I could go on and on because that kind of messaging is one of
• 7:40
  my biggest frustrations.
• 7:42
  And this concept of how people sell the destination.
• 7:44
  Do you want to be with your family on the beach in Hawaii?
• 7:48
  And then all of a sudden you have a name of an airline come up as the ads.
• 7:50
  They're selling you the destination. He was being sold this destination of,
• 7:53
  do you want these things?
• 7:55
  And I realized when I was trying to understand that concept,
• 7:58
  what I'm doing is trying to sell the plane or not even just the plane.
• 8:02
  I'm telling you that I have amazing nuts and bolts that hold the plane together.
• 8:06
  So I'm trying to help him build the vehicle that actually gets you to the destination.
• 8:10
  And what was he willing to pay for that promise from the sales page?
• 8:14
  Honestly, in this scenario, I think it was about five grand.
• 8:18
  And I remember when he left, I genuinely told him that I am here for you if you ever need me.
• 8:25
  And I also remember that he was trying to console me saying,
• 8:28
  hey, you did a great job. We had a good run, but I think it's time for me to,
• 8:32
  get these things from the sales page.
• 8:35
  And I just shared that I would always be there for him. And a little over a
• 8:38
  year later, he did come back.
• 8:40
  And now it's been years since then. Is he perfect? No. But now he's done the
• 8:43
  real work, the work that has led him to feel better about himself.
• 8:47
  And he's in an amazing place now. Is he perfect? No, but he is on the path of
• 8:52
  healing and growth, which honestly just reinforces the entire point of today's episode.
• 8:57
  Growth usually looks a whole lot less dramatic than we want it to.
• 9:00
  Definitely not as cool as it looks on social media and definitely not as cool
• 9:04
  as you need it to look in order to sell courses or books or those sorts of things.
• 9:08
  Because most meaningful change isn't found in some magical breakthrough aha moment.
• 9:13
  While those are amazing and wonderful and they feel good in the moment,
• 9:16
  we typically turn eventually back to our home base.
• 9:20
  And we really need to start slowly changing what that home base looks like.
• 9:24
  Because real change is usually found in the quiet, repetitive,
• 9:28
  often unremarkable process,
• 9:30
  of learning how to stay present long enough to stop running away from yourself
• 9:35
  and your thoughts and then going back to whatever it was that is starting to make sense or to click.
• 9:41
  What if I were to tell you that there really aren't shortcuts to the things
• 9:45
  in life that create meaningful, lasting change?
• 9:48
  And the sooner I think that one can recognize that and begin to accept it,
• 9:52
  the sooner the journey actually begins.
• 9:55
  And I realize this is a lengthy and maybe a little heavy introduction to a podcast
• 10:00
  episode about mindfulness and meditation.
• 10:03
  But I have wanted to do this episode for a very, very long time.
• 10:07
  And I continue to write notes and rewrite and change because I genuinely believe
• 10:12
  this is one of the most important tools that you can develop for every aspect of your life.
• 10:17
  Mindfulness changes your relationship with your thoughts.
• 10:20
  It helps you build this pause that right now you may not even realize is missing,
• 10:25
  or you may recognize that you are so reactive in so many moments that I don't
• 10:30
  even know how on earth to begin to find that pause.
• 10:35
  Because in that pause is where so much of life actually happens,
• 10:38
  especially the meaningful pieces of change.
• 10:41
  There's a quote from Viktor Frankl from his book, Man's Search for Meaning.
• 10:44
  Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
• 10:47
  And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.
• 10:51
  And in our response lies our growth and our happiness. There's so much wisdom
• 10:55
  packed into that idea because so much of our life is lived in reaction.
• 11:00
  Reaction to stress, reaction to discomfort, reaction to fear and opportunity
• 11:04
  and conflict and shame and insecurity and loneliness and the uncertainty of all of it.
• 11:09
  And when you begin to build even the smallest pause between what happens and
• 11:13
  how you respond, now all of a sudden, the game looks different. Now you do have a choice.
• 11:19
  Now, what you often discover pretty quickly, which is so fascinating,
• 11:23
  but I know it's the path of awakening or growth or healing, is that having the
• 11:27
  opportunity to choose and And then actually knowing what to choose are very, very different things.
• 11:33
  And you can't even get to that point if you are still living in this place of
• 11:38
  reaction and then beating yourself up and shame.
• 11:42
  Having that pause and then having this opportunity now to choose,
• 11:46
  now you get to figure out what matters to you, what are your values,
• 11:49
  and then consistently making those choices.
• 11:53
  That's work that's a little bit more downstream.
• 11:56
  Because first, we have to learn how to get to that space in the first place.
• 12:00
  I believe there is nothing quite like the individual hero's journey that begins
• 12:04
  when you truly start leaning into this concept.
• 12:06
  So there's one of my big goals of this episode today.
• 12:10
  This episode is going to be a little longer. And I hope you'll stay with me through it.
• 12:14
  I also welcome every one of your yeah buts. I want feedback.
• 12:17
  I want questions through my website or contact at TonyOverbay.com or through social media.
• 12:24
  Because I want to know what comes up for you. I want to know where your brain
• 12:27
  pushes back, where it gets uncomfortable, where it says, okay, Tony, all right.
• 12:32
  Because this really could become one of the most transformative episodes that
• 12:35
  I think you'll listen to if you allow yourself not just to hear it,
• 12:39
  but to actually experience it. What does it bring up with you?
• 12:42
  What are the challenges that you are going to anticipate? I would encourage
• 12:46
  you to notice what comes up and stay curious about it instead of immediately
• 12:49
  trying to solve whatever it is that comes up or escape or run away from it.
• 12:52
  So with that said, I'll see you right after the theme song. And then let's get to it.
• 13:17
  Welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay.
• 13:21
  I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. Follow me at virtual.couch on
• 13:25
  Instagram or on TikTok at virtual couch or Facebook, Tony Overbay LMFT and on
• 13:30
  Substack, where I'm putting out more and more writing content,
• 13:34
  thevirtualcouch.substack.com.
• 13:37
  And you can reach out to me with any questions, thoughts, suggestions, ideas.
• 13:41
  I'm doing a fair amount of keynote speaking through this upcoming summer.
• 13:44
  So if you are interested in having me come speak to your organization,
• 13:47
  let me know. I would love to hear from you. And you can do that through the
• 13:49
  website, TonyOverbay.com or email me at contact at TonyOverbay.com.
• 13:54
  And I forgot to mention in the opening to stay tuned after the episode.
• 13:58
  And I am also including a short, I think it's maybe seven or eight minute mindfulness
• 14:04
  exercise because I recognize it may be the first one that you've ever done, or maybe you're a pro.
• 14:09
  Regardless though, I hope you'll stick around for it.
• 14:12
  Okay. Story time. you're walking through the woods.
• 14:16
  It's not a hard hike. It's just a walk. And the trail is clear.
• 14:20
  The light is shining through the trees. It's nice.
• 14:22
  Nothing out of the ordinary, but it's just a beautiful day. Before you know
• 14:26
  it, you're a few miles in and your mind is somewhere else.
• 14:29
  Maybe replaying a conversation from the day before, or maybe thinking about
• 14:32
  what's for dinner. You're just being and doing and the world is safe.
• 14:37
  But then there's a loud sound off in the distance and you have no idea what
• 14:41
  it is, a branch, an animal, a person,
• 14:44
  before you've even finished the thought, your head whips around,
• 14:47
  your breath catches and you let out a little scream because there on the ground,
• 14:50
  half hidden in the brush, is a snake.
• 14:53
  It's a long, curved, dark snake.
• 14:57
  And a half second later, your eyes focus and your brain catches up and you realize it's just a stick.
• 15:02
  It's a long, curvy, snake-shaped stick.
• 15:06
  But you feel your heart up in your throat and you kind of laugh at yourself
• 15:10
  a little bit and you shake it off and you keep walking.
• 15:13
  That tiny moment between the scream and the laugh is one of the most studied
• 15:18
  things in modern neuroscience.
• 15:20
  And this, my friends, is where the fun really begins.
• 15:23
  So your brain has two different ways of processing what your senses pick up.
• 15:28
  The first one, it is fast. It is no nonsense. It's crude.
• 15:32
  Information from your eyeballs hits a little relay station deep in your brain called the thalamus.
• 15:37
  And from there, it gets shot directly to the amygdala, the small almond-shaped
• 15:42
  structure that handles threat detection.
• 15:44
  The amygdala does not care about the details. It just needs to know whether
• 15:48
  we need to fire up the fight-or-flight system.
• 15:51
  This whole route from eyeball through thalamus, amygdala to internal alarm takes,
• 15:57
  some believe, about 12 milliseconds.
• 16:01
  That's the route that made you scream.
• 16:03
  There's a second route. The second route takes longer. Same starting point,
• 16:06
  eyeballs, maybe your ear holes, but the information goes up to your visual cortex
• 16:12
  first. We need to get eyes on this, where your brain assembles a very detailed
• 16:16
  picture of what you're actually looking at.
• 16:18
  And then that detailed picture gets sent down to the amygdala,
• 16:21
  where the first signal at this point kind of does that thing where maybe you've
• 16:26
  done this. You realize that you and your wife had to drive separately back home
• 16:29
  from the kid's school after an open house.
• 16:32
  And you both pull up to the stoplight and you are going to take a right and
• 16:35
  she's going to go straight.
• 16:36
  So you text her, hey, I'm not racing, but oh, you are racing.
• 16:40
  You drive like you're being chased by the cops. And by the time that you get
• 16:44
  into your neighborhood, you time it just right. So the garage door opens,
• 16:47
  you pull the car in, you shut the garage door and you pretend to be asleep on
• 16:50
  the couch. When she walks in, you beat her that bad.
• 16:53
  That's what this first route does with the amount of time that it was there
• 16:56
  first. By the time the second route driver arrives, the amygdala, it has the full story.
• 17:02
  It's saying, we know it's a stick. You know, sure, go ahead and tell your more detailed story.
• 17:07
  But the second responder, we took care of it. Crisis averted,
• 17:10
  not a big deal. A stick, not a snake. False alarm.
• 17:14
  That route, that second route takes up to 200 milliseconds, which is still insanely fast in human terms.
• 17:19
  But that unconscious route is about 10 times faster.
• 17:24
  And your brain maybe then thinks, you know, if you guys could get more on the
• 17:28
  same page, that would be great for everybody.
• 17:31
  And then the first route looks over at the brain and says, what's the big deal? Crisis averted.
• 17:36
  Then everybody then turns to the signals for the bladder and the bowels,
• 17:40
  who both look incredibly embarrassed.
• 17:43
  And the first route says, hey, it was a little bit of pee.
• 17:46
  And honestly, if this human meat suit that we're trapped in would try eating
• 17:49
  a salad every now and again, I don't think we would even need a new pair of
• 17:52
  underwear every time we get spooked.
• 17:54
  Bottom line, you screamed first, maybe sold yourself just a tiny amount,
• 17:58
  and then figured everything out second. But your emotional brain got the news
• 18:01
  well before your thinking brain even finished reading the email.
• 18:05
  A guy named Joseph Ledoux is a neuroscientist at NYU, and he mapped this out
• 18:09
  in the 1990s, and he called those two routes the low road and the high road.
• 18:13
  Now, enter the book Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy for Dummies,
• 18:17
  which is a really good couples therapy book.
• 18:20
  And it summarizes this whole process by saying, you actually feel before you think.
• 18:25
  Now, modern neurosciences charted the brain's response to these situations and
• 18:28
  found that emotions fire two and a half times more rapidly in the brain than the thoughts do.
• 18:33
  And what we just laid out in that intro is, or it's even faster than that.
• 18:38
  And they're not saying that emotions are more important than thoughts.
• 18:41
  In fact, feeling and thinking are actually supposed to team up and work together
• 18:45
  to make you that much more aware and prepared and capable
• 18:49
  of making the best decisions and responding in the most helpful way as possible.
• 18:54
  But understanding that concept was one of the things that personally helped
• 18:58
  me begin to understand why building more of this pause matters so much.
• 19:03
  Or finding a way when possible to respond to a moment rather than to simply react to it.
• 19:09
  A simple, simple example. After I finished dinner, I want dessert.
• 19:13
  That became hardwired. I didn't even think about it. It just happened.
• 19:16
  And as mundane as this may sound, being able to notice that I already have the
• 19:20
  top of an Oreo twisted off perfectly, not just from one double stuff,
• 19:24
  but from two in order to make,
• 19:26
  the underappreciated artery stopping roof of your mouth coating quadruple stuff,
• 19:31
  being able to notice it is actually progress because typically I'm not even thinking about it.
• 19:35
  It just happens. And it's not until later in the evening when I'm complaining
• 19:37
  about stomach aches that I might pause for just a moment and think,
• 19:42
  could it have been the half a dozen Oreos?
• 19:45
  No, it's easier to just say life's not fair. Got these stomach issues.
• 19:51
  And naturally now I'm going to make sure everybody else in the family knows about it, too.
• 19:54
  My stomach issues. And they don't want to say, hey, is it the sleeve of Oreos
• 19:58
  that you eat on a regular basis?
• 20:00
  And honestly, I think that's part of what mindfulness begins to reveal because
• 20:04
  so much of our life is happening automatically.
• 20:06
  Patterns, reactions, habits, emotional responses, defensiveness,
• 20:11
  cravings, impulses, most of them are firing long before we consciously think
• 20:16
  that we've made a decision.
• 20:17
  Now, mindfulness doesn't magically stop those impulses from showing up,
• 20:21
  but it does help you notice them sooner.
• 20:24
  It helps us catch ourselves reaching for the second Oreo before the fourth one
• 20:28
  is already be assembled in our hand.
• 20:31
  And once you start noticing that, you begin realizing that this applies to far more than just dessert.
• 20:37
  Go back to the concept of unconscious incompetence. At first,
• 20:40
  we have no idea. We are unconscious about our incompetence, that there are things that we could do.
• 20:46
  And you start finding out the information, and now we're consciously incompetent.
• 20:49
  I'm aware, but man, I'm still grabbing the Oreo.
• 20:51
  And we'll eventually move into conscious competence. I'm aware,
• 20:54
  and I'm not grabbing the Oreo.
• 20:56
  And then eventually, I just am. I'm not even thinking about that.
• 21:01
  Now, I have gone down the rabbit hole of research that can eventually lead you
• 21:04
  to concepts like the idea that we react to most everything in our lives first,
• 21:08
  and then we think about why we react in an effort to believe we're actually
• 21:12
  more in control of our impulses than we really are.
• 21:14
  Or you'll find authors who take a much more, we'll call it deterministic view,
• 21:18
  and would argue that whatever you're reacting to right now was actually set
• 21:22
  in motion way longer before you even think it was.
• 21:25
  Maybe it was because I was denied Oreos as a kid that now as a 50 plus year
• 21:29
  old, they are just there. They are impulsive and I get to have them because
• 21:33
  I never had them as a child.
• 21:34
  There's a lot of different theories on why we react the way that we do.
• 21:39
  But I think the data is pretty clear that this ability to build the pause becomes
• 21:43
  incredibly important because in that pause is where you begin to make choices.
• 21:48
  And I know I mentioned earlier that maybe a little pro tip is when you now build
• 21:53
  the pause in, you often still don't know what choice to make.
• 21:56
  What I neglected to say was that I will almost guarantee that by the time you
• 22:01
  truly reach that point where you're aware of the pause, I think you'll essentially
• 22:05
  be bought in to the journey.
• 22:07
  You'll be in on the path of realizing, oh, I did not know what I didn't know.
• 22:12
  And now, what do I do? What else don't I know? Which is really just a version
• 22:17
  of this concept called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
• 22:20
  It's the idea that when we know very little about something,
• 22:23
  we often don't yet know enough to realize how much we don't know.
• 22:27
  And honestly, I think this is part of why hearing certain leaders,
• 22:32
  politicians, influencers, therapists, content creators, or any type of authority
• 22:37
  figure constantly tell us,
• 22:39
  that they're the smartest person in the room, the best at everything,
• 22:43
  never wrong, always right,
• 22:45
  that it can start to feel almost disorienting to some people.
• 22:48
  I mean, I know it does for me because emotional maturity actually tends to move
• 22:52
  in the opposite direction.
• 22:54
  Emotional maturity says things like, oh, I did not know that.
• 22:57
  Or, okay, what else don't I know?
• 22:59
  Or I've changed my mind. Or, you know, I did say that before,
• 23:03
  but I said it before I had all the information I do now. And I can own that.
• 23:07
  That's, to me, that's confidence rooted in security, not being performative,
• 23:11
  not confidence rooted in performance.
• 23:14
  But emotional immaturity, which is often deeply rooted in insecurity,
• 23:19
  cannot tolerate being wrong, being questioned, corrected, or challenged.
• 23:24
  But you have to, if you are in this emotionally immature position,
• 23:28
  you have to be in the one-up position at all costs.
• 23:31
  And what's fascinating is that groups often end up emotionally organizing themselves
• 23:35
  around, I want to say, the most emotionally immature, insecure person in the room.
• 23:41
  Almost the lowest common denominator of sorts because that person demands certainty.
• 23:47
  They demand loyalty and agreement. They surround themselves with yes people.
• 23:51
  And those yes people are often projecting their own fantasies of wanting to
• 23:54
  be the one who's always right, always powerful, always certain.
• 23:58
  Healthy leadership looks very different. Healthy leaders tend to be calm,
• 24:02
  curious, grounded, and remarkably comfortable saying, I don't know.
• 24:06
  Because real competence doesn't need to perform certainty in every second.
• 24:11
  In fact, I think truly capable people usually want other capable people around
• 24:15
  them because they understand they grow by learning from those who know more than they do.
• 24:21
  Otherwise, misinformation, projection, confabulation, and certainty without
• 24:25
  accountability just starts to feed itself and feed each other until eventually
• 24:30
  whatever the story is becomes more important than reality itself.
• 24:35
  And then something shifts. You begin to realize, of course, I didn't understand
• 24:39
  the things that I've never actually done with any consistency.
• 24:42
  And I think that realization can become strangely exciting because then the
• 24:46
  question becomes, wait a second, what else don't I know that I don't know?
• 24:52
  And this is exactly why mindfulness becomes so important in the first place,
• 24:55
  because mindfulness is one of those practices that helps us become aware of
• 24:59
  the stories that our mind automatically creates,
• 25:02
  especially the ones built around certainty, defensiveness, ego, fear, or identity.
• 25:08
  Because without mindfulness, we tend to simply react. We're reacting to life.
• 25:13
  We're not responding. We hear something uncomfortable and immediately either
• 25:16
  defend it, attack it, dismiss it, double down or search for evidence that keeps
• 25:20
  our current worldview intact.
• 25:23
  But mindfulness helps us create a pause where we can notice,
• 25:27
  oh wow, my brain right now,
• 25:29
  really wants to protect me or oh, I can notice how badly I wanna be right in
• 25:34
  this moment or even I am realizing that my discomfort is trying to rush me towards
• 25:38
  certainty and that I am about to act like a big old jerk to get my way.
• 25:43
  And that's why mindfulness is not about clearing your mind. It's about becoming aware of your mind.
• 25:49
  It's about learning to observe thoughts instead of immediately obeying them.
• 25:53
  Because once you can step back and notice your thoughts, instead of fusing with
• 25:56
  the stories that you make of them, you become far more capable of being genuinely
• 26:02
  curious. Curious about your own experience, but definitely curious about others.
• 26:06
  Allows you this opportunity to act with more humility and grace and accountability
• 26:11
  and growth, which are all components of emotional maturity and emotional intelligence.
• 26:16
  You become far more capable of saying, you know, maybe I don't know everything,
• 26:20
  which turns out to be one of the healthiest and most psychologically flexible
• 26:24
  things that a person can say.
• 26:26
  And ironically, that's often the moment real learning finally begins.
• 26:30
  Okay, back to the data on our emotions traveling faster than our logical brain.
• 26:34
  The actual research suggests that that gap can be anywhere from,
• 26:37
  again, twice as fast to 10 times as fast, depending on what study you look at.
• 26:40
  And while that number is debated, the phenomenon is not. Your emotions get there
• 26:44
  first. Now, imagine the same scene, but with a different person walking the trail.
• 26:49
  This person has been meditating regularly for, we'll just say, close to 10,000 hours.
• 26:53
  And that number, if it sounds familiar, it's borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell's
• 26:58
  book, Outliers, which has put forth that popular idea that 10,000 hours of practice
• 27:02
  is what separates true mastery from everything else.
• 27:05
  And fun fact, the 10,000 hour rule is actually disputed if you really look at
• 27:09
  the academic research, but it's stuck in the zeitgeist or the culture as a marker
• 27:13
  for somebody who's truly devoted themselves to a thing.
• 27:15
  And it certainly isn't going to hurt if someone has done a thing for 10,000 hours.
• 27:20
  My point is, I just want you to know, this person is a full Zen and mindfulness
• 27:25
  guru, a meditation master, if you will.
• 27:29
  Here's what's fascinating. The snake-shaped stick is still there.
• 27:34
  The loud sound to the right is still loud. And that low road still fires.
• 27:40
  That's a hardwired survival circuit.
• 27:43
  And I just want you to know that no amount of meditation removes that survival
• 27:49
  instinct. this person still startles and they still might even scream and maybe pee just a little bit.
• 27:55
  But what happens after is what's different. In their brain, the connection between
• 27:59
  that amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, the regulating part of the brain,
• 28:03
  has now been wired stronger and faster by years of practice.
• 28:08
  Years of practice, a meditation, a mindfulness practice.
• 28:11
  So this regulator that disseminates the information doesn't have to be consciously
• 28:16
  summoned. It's already online.
• 28:18
  The weight that's just a stick arrives almost on top of the scream and a little bit of the pee.
• 28:24
  The whole nervous system settles back to baseline, I want to say,
• 28:27
  in even faster milliseconds instead of longer milliseconds.
• 28:31
  And for somebody with this much practice, the research suggests that regulation has become automatic.
• 28:37
  It doesn't require conscious effort. It becomes part of the baseline.
• 28:41
  And so that's not voodoo or woo-woo or magic. It's your neural wiring,
• 28:46
  and it's the reason why I am doing this episode today. Now, I am not claiming
• 28:50
  to be that person. Not yet.
• 28:52
  I would like to be closer to that and I'm on my way.
• 28:56
  I've recommended a mindfulness practice to just about every client who sat across
• 28:59
  from me for the past decade or more. And I've thought a lot about how people
• 29:02
  respond to that recommendation.
• 29:04
  And I started to think the responses break down into roughly three groups.
• 29:10
  About 25% of people aren't going to contemplate it at all.
• 29:13
  And I understand that. The word meditation comes out of my mouth and they're
• 29:16
  already mentally checked out. And we'll maybe talk a little bit later about why.
• 29:20
  It might just sound like hocus pocus or witchcraft, I really appreciate the
• 29:24
  honesty that I have a client currently that had said, hey, I just want you to
• 29:27
  know there's a little bit of, are you trying to lead me astray?
• 29:29
  A little false prophet vibe here.
• 29:31
  And I said, thank you so much. If only I was that powerful. I didn't say that
• 29:35
  part, but the joke brain has to get that out there.
• 29:39
  But some people will just say, oh, no, that doesn't, I don't,
• 29:41
  I will never be doing that. Now, about 50% will do a couple of breathing exercises,
• 29:45
  maybe download an app or two, run a guided meditation here and there,
• 29:47
  and convince themselves with
• 29:49
  the best of intentions that they are well on their way to enlightenment.
• 29:52
  And that is where they will stay. And I was there for a long time.
• 29:57
  About 25% will start an actual practice of daily meditation,
• 30:02
  stick with it, and then the work that I'm doing with them together moves at
• 30:07
  a noticeably different pace.
• 30:09
  So if I could hand you a pill, and I want to be really clear that pill doesn't exist,
• 30:13
  that would show you what your mind could look like a few months or a few years
• 30:17
  into a consistent meditation practice, I really am convinced that people would
• 30:22
  walk out of my office and meditate in the waiting room that day.
• 30:26
  And then they wouldn't stop because you wouldn't want to go back to the relationship
• 30:30
  with your thoughts that you had before.
• 30:32
  For almost a decade, most of my career as a therapist, I was firmly,
• 30:35
  confidently, completely in that middle 50%.
• 30:38
  And I want to tell you about that because I think it matters that I'm not just
• 30:41
  telling the story from the outside. I was in it. You can go back and listen
• 30:45
  to podcast episodes where I would talk about meditating so often.
• 30:49
  And the origin story is that during my intern years, a group of us were challenged
• 30:52
  to do a 30-day mindfulness practice with an app called Headspace, which I loved.
• 30:56
  And I took it on with the kind of enthusiasm that made me sound impressive when
• 31:00
  I talked about it. Downloaded the app.
• 31:01
  I quickly realized that I would set my phone for 13 minutes,
• 31:04
  10 for the meditation, and three for the extra sleep that I would get when I
• 31:09
  would fall asleep during the intro.
• 31:12
  The soothing voice would start. Andy, it's amazing. I would take a couple of
• 31:17
  in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth breaths. We'll get to that a little
• 31:19
  bit later as well around the science behind the meditation practices.
• 31:23
  And I would be unconscious within just a couple of minutes.
• 31:27
  But I realized on podcasts, I talked about it like I was this meditation master.
• 31:31
  I had the vocabulary. I had the references. I didn't know what I didn't know.
• 31:33
  And I actually thought that, oh, this is life-changing.
• 31:36
  After all, I'd done a 30-day challenge. I was approaching guru status.
• 31:40
  I did that for years. And then about four years ago, I got invited to the Amen
• 31:43
  Clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area where they do brain scans with around a
• 31:47
  dozen other therapists and psychologists for a day of training.
• 31:50
  And the facilitator opened the session with a guided meditation.
• 31:54
  And something about that particular meditation was different.
• 31:58
  And I got caught up in it in a way that I had not experienced before.
• 32:02
  When she eventually went around the room and asked each person what their experience
• 32:06
  was, I could not find my voice.
• 32:09
  I don't even know what was happening, which honestly, for me,
• 32:13
  is a relatively rare event.
• 32:15
  She eventually came back to me and I told the room, hey, I'm having a hard time
• 32:19
  finding the words. And then she asked me, well, hey, what hurts do you usually meditate to?
• 32:23
  And I think I was a little bit immature, a little bit, a lot,
• 32:27
  or insecure because I had no idea what she was talking about.
• 32:32
  And like the rental car hurts. And I think I said as much.
• 32:36
  And then she rephrased it something about what frequency or what sound profile
• 32:40
  I used in my meditation practice. And I think I'm still giving her a blank stare.
• 32:44
  So then she gave me an example and I don't remember the exact,
• 32:47
  I just know the joke that I told after, but let's just say that she said,
• 32:50
  okay, what do you do? Like 47 Hertz.
• 32:53
  And at this point I did what I do when I absolutely have no idea what's going
• 32:56
  on in a room full of professionals. I reached for a joke.
• 32:59
  And for anybody who hasn't seen the 1983 Michael Keaton vehicle called Mr. Mom.
• 33:05
  There's a scene where Keaton's character, Jack, has just been laid off and his
• 33:08
  wife has gone back to work as the primary breadwinner. And her boss,
• 33:11
  Ron, shows up at the door, I believe, to pick up his wife. And Jack is desperate
• 33:15
  to project competence and masculinity.
• 33:17
  So he greets Ron. Ron's holding a chainsaw and has these safety goggles on.
• 33:21
  And he starts bragging about how he's using his time off to add a whole new
• 33:24
  wing to the house and completely rewire the walls himself.
• 33:27
  Now, Ron, the boss, who actually knows what he's talking about,
• 33:29
  casually asks Jack, you know, wire it for 220, which I had to Google,
• 33:35
  of course, standard high voltage power for heavy appliances.
• 33:37
  And Jack, who knows nothing about any of this, looks at him dead in the eye
• 33:40
  and says, yeah, 220, 221, whatever it takes.
• 33:43
  I think about that line often. It makes me laugh every time.
• 33:45
  So when the facilitator said 47 Hertz, I am afraid to say that I believe I responded
• 33:49
  with, yeah, you know, 47, 48, whatever it takes. Looking around, anybody?
• 33:55
  Oh man, tough crowd. But what I learned that day was very real.
• 33:59
  And she walked me through a concept called binaural beats, soundscapes,
• 34:04
  frequencies, and a half a dozen other concepts I had never come across in the
• 34:07
  years that I had been pretending to be a meditation guru.
• 34:10
  So I went home and I started actually exploring and Googling and experimenting.
• 34:14
  And I found a couple of apps that I genuinely connected with.
• 34:17
  And what started that week has now turned into roughly four plus years of a
• 34:20
  daily meditation practice to the point where now I can say it just is.
• 34:25
  It's part of who I am. And I know I'm not a guru status. I'm nowhere near it.
• 34:29
  But I know that now in a way that I didn't know it then.
• 34:33
  But I know that I'm also on a path I genuinely love. And the deeper I go,
• 34:36
  the more I want to learn and the more I recognize the impact that the mindfulness
• 34:40
  practice has made in my life.
• 34:42
  And I will own my projection that I want that for all of you as well,
• 34:45
  because it's a game changer.
• 34:46
  So let's get a couple of definitions out of the way first, because I think this
• 34:49
  is going to clear up a lot of confusion right from the start.
• 34:51
  And I'm guessing that I've already used the terms meditation and mindfulness
• 34:56
  somewhat interchangeably.
• 34:58
  So meditation and mindfulness are actually not the same thing,
• 35:01
  even though most people do use the words interchangeably, as I have been doing.
• 35:06
  Ironically, or honestly, once you understand the difference,
• 35:09
  then the whole topic starts to make a lot more sense. Meditation is the bigger umbrella term.
• 35:15
  Meditation is the name for all kinds of practices that people have been doing
• 35:19
  for thousands of years to become more aware, more grounded, more present,
• 35:24
  more connected, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, all of it.
• 35:28
  And just because I have a strong value of curiosity, I will share a little bit
• 35:33
  of what I found about history.
• 35:36
  Because you can trace meditation practices back to Buddhist traditions around
• 35:40
  the 5th and 6th centuries BCE.
• 35:43
  And then there was a type of meditation that developed in China around the same time.
• 35:46
  And I also want to spend a minute on the fact that a lot of people genuinely
• 35:50
  don't realize this, but that Christianity has a very deep contemplative and
• 35:54
  meditative tradition too.
• 35:56
  Because a lot of people hear the word meditation and then they immediately think,
• 35:59
  okay, that's Eastern religion. That's not me. And they will put up a wall.
• 36:04
  But if you look at it from a sense of silent contemplative practices,
• 36:10
  those have existed inside Christianity for centuries.
• 36:14
  If you look back in the third through the fifth centuries, there were these
• 36:17
  people called the Desert Fathers, and they literally went out into the deserts
• 36:21
  of Egypt and Syria and spent hours and hours in silence and prayer.
• 36:26
  And in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's a practice that I won't butcher
• 36:30
  the name, where people repeat the Lord's Prayer over and over,
• 36:34
  often timed with their breathing, which functions real similarly to a mantra meditation practice.
• 36:41
  So, it's more about these moments where people describe feeling deeply present,
• 36:46
  connected, peace, aware, humbled, grounded,
• 36:49
  or even just temporarily less consumed by their own constant stream of thoughts
• 36:54
  and being aware that they are going to step outside of their ego.
• 36:58
  Moments where they feel more connected to God or to humanity or to nature or
• 37:02
  just to something bigger than themselves.
• 37:04
  Somebody might spend time in silent prayer or meditation and then suddenly realize
• 37:09
  that they aren't as trapped in anxiety or resentment as they normally were,
• 37:12
  or they may feel an overwhelming sense of compassion or clarity or gratitude or awe or acceptance.
• 37:20
  And that doesn't come when you are constantly occupied, especially if your mind
• 37:24
  is racing with the what's wrong with me, I'm broken, I can't believe people did that to me.
• 37:30
  So sometimes just being able to come back to the present, breathing,
• 37:34
  we'll talk about this more, allows you to then make a pivot to gratitude.
• 37:40
  And sometimes people describe it as feeling fully present for the first time
• 37:43
  in their lives instead of constantly replaying the past or worrying about the future.
• 37:48
  It's more about this idea of slowing down, becoming aware, sitting with yourself,
• 37:53
  observing your thoughts, noticing your reactions. That's not new.
• 37:57
  And I think that humans have actually been trying to figure out how to do this
• 38:00
  for a very, very long time.
• 38:02
  I cut my teeth in counseling in the Christian community. My internship was for
• 38:07
  a church organization for several years.
• 38:10
  I became very aware early on of the skepticism, or a lot of times it was outright
• 38:15
  negativity around meditation and mindfulness from maybe we'll call them more
• 38:19
  staunch conservative Christian clients. And then I've heard feedback from my
• 38:23
  more conservative Christian listeners.
• 38:25
  And I think if I'm being really honest, there was a time that I was also in
• 38:29
  that camp a little bit myself.
• 38:30
  I already had kind of prejudged anything that came from the East,
• 38:34
  which now feels a little funny to admit out loud, because at this point in my
• 38:37
  life, I'm pretty convinced that humans have all been trying to figure out the
• 38:40
  exact same thing pretty much since the dawn of time.
• 38:42
  We're all trying to make sense of suffering and discomfort and fear and uncertainty
• 38:47
  and relationships and purpose.
• 38:48
  And why am I here? And where am I going? All of it, because we're wired to try
• 38:52
  and alleviate discomfort and we desperately seek certainty.
• 38:55
  And sometimes it feels a whole lot easier, I think, for people to go and try
• 39:00
  and find a guru, a leader, a pastor, a system, a certainty dealer of some sort
• 39:06
  and say, okay, just tell me what to do.
• 39:08
  Because then if things don't work out, we can shrug our shoulders and say,
• 39:12
  well, I guess happiness and success just weren't in the cards because that can
• 39:15
  feel a lot safer than taking absolute ownership of your own growth and your life and realizing,
• 39:22
  that maybe you actually are capable of far more than you've been led to believe,
• 39:26
  because I genuinely believe that people are good from the factory.
• 39:29
  That's their factory setting.
• 39:31
  And I think that you already have within you so much of what you need.
• 39:35
  And then your hero's journey is to go and do and explore, but also fail and
• 39:40
  learn and experience and connect and struggle and grow and slowly figure out who you actually are.
• 39:46
  But I will be the first to admit that I have spent a lot of emotional calories
• 39:50
  over the years, operating from this place when I'm trying to talk about these
• 39:54
  concepts with a lot of clients where I'm putting off this, hey,
• 39:57
  I come in peace energy, where.
• 39:59
  I felt like I needed to first explain Christian roots of mindfulness and meditation
• 40:03
  before some people would even consider trying it.
• 40:06
  Otherwise, there was this risk of immediately getting written off as some kind
• 40:08
  of new age hippie, which honestly, I'm beginning to realize might not be the
• 40:13
  worst thing in the world to be called.
• 40:14
  That label may vibe with me more than I've historically been willing to acknowledge.
• 40:18
  So back to this. Under this big meditation umbrella, there are all kinds of different practices.
• 40:24
  Some are focused on calming the mind. Some on absolute awareness. Some on compassion.
• 40:29
  Some on connection. Some are about learning how to stay in the present moment
• 40:33
  for eight seconds at a time.
• 40:35
  You've got concentration meditation where you practice keeping your attention
• 40:38
  on one thing like you're breathing or a candle or a sound. And every time your
• 40:43
  mind wanders, which it absolutely will, you gently bring it back.
• 40:46
  And then there are mantra-based practices like transcendental meditation where
• 40:49
  you silently repeat a word or a phrase over and over to help settle the mind
• 40:53
  and quiet some of the mental noise.
• 40:54
  That's where you see the stereotypical person chanting OM and you can find your
• 40:58
  own mantra and it can be anything. It can be a word, a sound, a phrase.
• 41:04
  And then there's one called Metta, which is loving kindness meditation,
• 41:07
  which honestly sounds a little bit cheesy until you try it. It's one of my favorite
• 41:10
  kinds where you are intentionally practicing feelings of compassion and goodwill
• 41:14
  first toward yourself and then others.
• 41:17
  And you're repeating phrases like, may I be safe? May I be healthy?
• 41:21
  May I be at peace? And then extending those same wishes toward other people.
• 41:25
  There are visualization practices where you picture calming scenes,
• 41:28
  meaningful experiences.
• 41:30
  I've done a little bit of sports therapy. I won't say sports psychology.
• 41:33
  I'm not a psychologist. I'm a therapist.
• 41:35
  Where you are, though, picturing what is going to happen, shooting a free throw,
• 41:40
  making a putt, practicing these meaningful experiences, or even mentally rehearsing
• 41:44
  becoming the kind of person that you want to be.
• 41:46
  And you've got movement-based meditations, which are things I want to get more
• 41:50
  into, like Tai Chi or things like yoga, where the goal is to stay fully present
• 41:54
  while moving slowly and intentionally through different movements and different breathing patterns.
• 41:58
  And then there's contemplative prayer, where instead of talking at God or trying
• 42:03
  to perform spiritually, people sit quietly and they listen and they reflect
• 42:07
  and they breathe and they try to become more aware and connected in order to
• 42:11
  hopefully receive guidance from the divine.
• 42:14
  And even though all these practices look different on the surface,
• 42:17
  they share one really important thing in common. They're all training attention.
• 42:22
  They're helping people become more aware of where their mind goes and what pulls
• 42:25
  them away from the present moment and then how to gently come back.
• 42:29
  Even though they share that mechanism, they're often aiming at very different
• 42:31
  experiences and even different outcomes.
• 42:34
  I think one of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness is that the goal
• 42:39
  is to stop thinking altogether and somehow completely clear your mind.
• 42:45
  I don't believe that is actually the goal or that it's even possible.
• 42:50
  But I can remember one of my favorite podcast hosts, and someone was talking
• 42:54
  about a mindfulness practice meditation.
• 42:57
  And I remember that was the first thing that he said, and he has such a large following.
• 43:00
  And he said, I've tried it a couple And there's no way I can clear my mind.
• 43:04
  I can't just stop all my thinking.
• 43:06
  And then the person on the interview with him said, exactly.
• 43:09
  That's why I just think that stuff is basically a bunch of hot air.
• 43:12
  And I thought, oh, man, the scope, the reach that this podcast host has that
• 43:16
  unfortunately so many people and he trends toward a younger audience.
• 43:20
  And I thought so many people just heard that and said, you're right.
• 43:22
  I'm out. I don't need to worry about that.
• 43:25
  It is not the goal. You can't just stop thinking. Your brain thinks. It's what brains do.
• 43:31
  So the goal is not to eliminate thought. The goal is to change your relationship with your thoughts.
• 43:37
  Because if you are sitting there paying attention to your breathing,
• 43:40
  noticing the sensation of the air coming in through your nose,
• 43:44
  feeling your chest expand, noticing the coolness of your breath,
• 43:47
  feeling your belly rise and fall, and then slowly breathing back out.
• 43:51
  In that moment, You aren't simultaneously spiraling into the what is wrong with
• 43:56
  me or why did I say that embarrassing thing years ago or what if everybody secretly hates me?
• 44:02
  And granted, there is a huge possibility that the second you stop paying attention
• 44:07
  to your breathing, your brain may immediately wander right back to those thoughts.
• 44:11
  And so I can understand because I was there for so long of why someone will
• 44:16
  think, what's the point?
• 44:18
  But that is the point and it is such a trusting the practice of meditation or
• 44:23
  trusting the mindfulness practice,
• 44:25
  because you're slowly but surely realizing that when you notice that you are spiraling,
• 44:32
  that you can catch that process and come back to the present moment before you've
• 44:37
  already catastrophized everything and before your heart rate is elevated and
• 44:42
  before you're losing access to your prefrontal cortex.
• 44:45
  But I could go on that rant for a little bit here. So it's normal to then go
• 44:50
  back to the thoughts that are unproductive.
• 44:54
  That is the practice of coming back to the present moment, kind of over and over again.
• 44:59
  And I sometimes think of it as this catch and release.
• 45:03
  You catch yourself getting hooked by a thought, a worry, a memory, a judgment, or a story.
• 45:07
  And then instead of wrestling with it, trying to fix it or become it,
• 45:10
  you simply notice it and it's as if you are releasing it. Then you gently bring
• 45:15
  your attention back to the present moment over and over again. And that repetition is.
• 45:20
  Is the practice. And we'll get into a whole lot more as we go through this episode.
• 45:25
  And I'm noticing that I am hoping that made you potentially,
• 45:29
  yeah, but that all a bit, I would love to know what it is that seems difficult,
• 45:34
  challenging, off-putting, or if you lost focus right now and you're not paying attention,
• 45:40
  then come on back to the present and shoot me an email, contact at TonyOverbay.com and let me know.
• 45:46
  So back to mindfulness. So mindfulness then is one specific practice under that
• 45:50
  umbrella of meditation.
• 45:51
  But it's also a quality of awareness that can show up outside of a formal meditative
• 45:56
  practice because you can eat mindfully, walk mindfully, wash dishes mindfully,
• 46:00
  workout mindfully, run ultramarathons mindfully.
• 46:03
  And I have stories for so many of these that eating mindfully,
• 46:05
  this wasn't my experience, but I was working with a couple of therapists at
• 46:09
  one point in a group practice and they went and did a training.
• 46:13
  One of them described to me a guy that came in and was talking about ways to be present.
• 46:18
  And if I remember the story correctly, she said that he talked for about 15
• 46:21
  minutes about eating a blueberry.
• 46:24
  And at first I wanted to make fun of it, but she described that he showed you
• 46:29
  how you can be so present and just appreciate everything from the smell of the
• 46:34
  blueberry, the skin of the blueberry, the color of the blueberry.
• 46:37
  What does it remind you of when you taste it? You can be so in the moment present
• 46:41
  and appreciate the taste and feel it go over your taste buds and make this an
• 46:45
  incredibly present experience.
• 46:48
  And when I was really getting into mindfulness and it was starting to click.
• 46:52
  I would notice that even as I would do a push-up, because I really enjoy push-ups,
• 46:56
  a mindful push-up is you are feeling every bit of the sensation of your muscles
• 47:01
  contracting and expanding.
• 47:02
  And where I'm going with this is you find that you can usually do a few more
• 47:07
  push-ups when you are looking at it as I am so present in this moment,
• 47:10
  noticing the way that my body is showing up and reacting, that it also made
• 47:15
  my workout seem a bit better.
• 47:16
  And one of the first times that I ran the Tahoe ultra marathon.
• 47:21
  It's a hundred mile race around Lake Tahoe and then some of the trails there
• 47:26
  and the elevation is high. And if you don't go acclimate to the elevation.
• 47:31
  For, I think, a couple of weeks at least, which I didn't have the opportunity
• 47:35
  to do, your heart is going to feel like it's beating out of your ears.
• 47:40
  And there were certain climbs where I would notice that my heart rate was very
• 47:44
  elevated and my breathing would become labored.
• 47:47
  And in those moments, I would focus on the feeling in my legs every moment.
• 47:51
  And it wasn't the feeling of euphoria in my legs. Sometimes it was a feeling
• 47:54
  of pain in my legs, but it was an embracing of that pain.
• 47:57
  And you may be wondering at this point, why the ultramarathons?
• 48:01
  But that is a podcast for another day as I'm learning more and more about my
• 48:05
  emotions and where they come from, from childhood. What was I running from?
• 48:09
  But then when my legs would burn, then I would focus on my breathing.
• 48:12
  And I did that back and forth for quite a while whenever I would,
• 48:16
  when I would get to a challenging place in the ultramarathon.
• 48:20
  You can have a very mindful conversation and be so in the moment and notice
• 48:24
  that I'm wanting to cue up a response versus be back in the present moment and be curious.
• 48:29
  Term mindfulness was actually coined back in 1881 by a scholar named T.W.
• 48:33
  Rhys Davids while translating an old Buddhist word sati.
• 48:36
  Sati roughly meant to remember, specifically to remember, to bring your attention
• 48:41
  back to what's actually happening right now.
• 48:43
  And the modern clinical version, I think that most people know today,
• 48:46
  comes from a guy named Jon Kabat-Zinn.
• 48:48
  He's a fascinating person. He was a molecular biologist and a longtime meditator
• 48:53
  who then in 1979 founded a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,
• 48:58
  or MBSR, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
• 49:01
  So his goal was pretty straightforward. He wanted to take practices that had
• 49:05
  helped him personally and then offer them to people struggling with chronic
• 49:08
  pain and stress in a way that didn't require anybody to adopt a religion or convert to anything.
• 49:14
  So when I go a little bit overboard in this episode and try to make sense of
• 49:17
  the fact that as working in a faith community as a therapist for so long and
• 49:21
  working with primarily people that are of the Christian faith,
• 49:24
  when they would see mindfulness or meditation as something that is so.
• 49:30
  Unfamiliar or foreign that they would often view it as bad, I get the sense
• 49:34
  that here's Jon Kabat-Zinn saying, this thing that has helped me so much,
• 49:37
  I want to get it to people, but I don't want them to think that it's crazy.
• 49:41
  He essentially then stripped away any kind of religious vibe or framing and
• 49:45
  then kept the practices and built a basically a standard clinical program around it.
• 49:50
  The core practices include things like body scans, where you slowly move your
• 49:53
  awareness through different parts of your body, sitting meditation focused on
• 49:57
  your breathing, mindful movement that looks a lot like kind of a gentle yoga.
• 50:01
  And then he is also a big fan of walking meditation. So that is a fun thing as well.
• 50:06
  You don't actually have your music or audio book on and you are just being so
• 50:11
  present in moment and noticing things like the sound of the birds and just the
• 50:14
  sounds around you and the smells and I love a walking meditation as well.
• 50:19
  Now, at this point, there are literally thousands of studies looking at mindfulness-based
• 50:22
  interventions for things like chronic pain and anxiety, depression,
• 50:25
  sleep, stress, even immune functioning.
• 50:27
  And I know that there is some research out around how meditation or mindfulness
• 50:32
  practice is also a huge component in helping people overcome unhealthy coping
• 50:37
  mechanisms, even addictions like coronography.
• 50:41
  So when you hear people say things like mindfulness has been shown to reduce
• 50:43
  anxiety or people are trying to make it more clinical, they're usually talking
• 50:47
  about the research that has been done around mindfulness-based stress reduction
• 50:52
  or one of the offshoots. There's one called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
• 50:56
  I would say the cleanest way to think about all this is all mindfulness meditation
• 51:00
  is meditation, but not all meditation is mindfulness.
• 51:04
  But for the rest of the episode, I'm primarily going to focus on mindfulness
• 51:07
  because that's a practice that I've personally been doing for.
• 51:11
  I think in a serious way for four or five years now.
• 51:14
  And then it's where a lot of the clinical research lives.
• 51:18
  I'm a big fan of explaining things as what they are, but also what they aren't.
• 51:21
  So let's talk about that. Mindfulness is paying attention to what's happening right now.
• 51:25
  Your breath, your body, sounds, sensations, thoughts, without trying to change it or judge it.
• 51:32
  That's the whole thing. And I think it's one of the most beautiful things where
• 51:34
  there isn't necessarily a wrong way to do mindfulness.
• 51:39
  And often the guided meditations that I like, when I first started doing them,
• 51:43
  I would lay down and I would often think, man, is that okay?
• 51:47
  Because they would typically say, Hey, sit somewhere and your spine's long and
• 51:51
  pull your shoulders back.
• 51:52
  But then I would recognize that the more that I'm doing them,
• 51:55
  the more different people that are guiding the meditations would say,
• 51:58
  or, or whatever, If you're laying down, that's great, but it's really just showing up.
• 52:03
  And Jon Kabat-Zinn's working definition is paying attention on purpose in the
• 52:07
  present moment, non-judgmentally.
• 52:10
  So a quick list of what mindfulness is not, because the misconceptions I think
• 52:14
  are the reasons that most people quit before they get anywhere.
• 52:16
  Again, not about stopping thoughts.
• 52:18
  Your brain produces thoughts the same way your ears produce hearing.
• 52:21
  They're going to pick up sound whether you want them to or not.
• 52:23
  The part that you have some sort of control over though is what you do with
• 52:27
  what shows up or what you notice or what you focus on or what you cling to or
• 52:32
  what you ignore, what you make meaning out of.
• 52:34
  Thoughts work the same way. They arrive. The practice is what do you do with
• 52:38
  them once they're there?
• 52:40
  So not about emptying your mind. Same reason, it's not about feeling calm.
• 52:44
  Some sessions you feel calm.
• 52:46
  And I got stuck on this for a while is I would think that it was a good meditation
• 52:50
  or mindfulness session if my heart rate was below a certain,
• 52:54
  it was like I was gamifying mindfulness.
• 52:57
  But then one of the most powerful meditations that I had was one where I think a client had canceled.
• 53:04
  And I just thought, okay, I haven't meditated today. So, I put my headphones
• 53:08
  in, I fire up a meditation, and I'm a couple of minutes into it.
• 53:12
  And then I think, you know what, I should take more advantage of this hour because
• 53:15
  I have plenty of things to do.
• 53:16
  And I'm good. I don't need to meditate right now. And that particular meditation,
• 53:20
  the person guiding it said, and whatever your thought is right now,
• 53:26
  thank it, and then come back to the present.
• 53:28
  And my thought was, I think I don't need to do this right now.
• 53:31
  And then the The person was saying, okay, so now notice that thought and thank
• 53:36
  your brain for giving you the thought and then come back and let's do a quick body scan.
• 53:39
  And I just remember thinking, oh, this, this is a challenge.
• 53:42
  So it was actually making me feel a little bit more.
• 53:45
  It wasn't this getting into this calm state and hitting this Hertz particular
• 53:50
  brain wave electrical Hertz, where I just felt so in the vibe.
• 53:54
  Oh no, that was a tricky meditation session.
• 53:58
  Yet I remember it to this day of how powerful it was.
• 54:01
  So some sessions you will potentially feel agitated, restless,
• 54:05
  bored, sad, or kind of wired up.
• 54:07
  None of that's a failure. The skill that you're building is the noticing,
• 54:11
  and it's the practice of, not the feeling.
• 54:14
  And it isn't religious. The roots are Buddhist, but the secular clinical version
• 54:18
  has been studied in thousands of trials and works regardless of what you believe.
• 54:21
  What's fascinating is it isn't always an escape. It's actually showing up for
• 54:26
  you. It's a huge form of self-care.
• 54:28
  And that's one of the things that has really changed my relationship with a
• 54:33
  mindfulness practice with meditation is when I say that one of the.
• 54:39
  One of the things that we need to do more of is self-care. Self-care is not
• 54:42
  selfish. It's showing up for yourself. And so therefore, a practice of meditation
• 54:47
  every day, regardless of how long it is, is a form of self-care.
• 54:51
  It's something that is going to pay off, even though it doesn't feel like it
• 54:54
  will at first. It's showing up for yourself.
• 54:57
  And it isn't a state that you achieve once and own forever. You don't all of
• 55:00
  a sudden become Zen and it is locked in.
• 55:03
  It's a practice. And the minute you stop practicing, the muscle will start to fade.
• 55:07
  There have been times before this current run of a few years where I would start
• 55:12
  to gain some ground on changing that relationship with my thoughts to the point
• 55:16
  of where then I thought I was pretty good at it.
• 55:18
  So then I would lay off the gas of doing the practice and how quickly your mind
• 55:23
  can go back to this home base. Now, I would like to say that I've done it long
• 55:26
  enough now that my home base is more from this place of noticing and building in that pause.
• 55:33
  So now let's get into the good stuff. these binaural beats and brainwaves and
• 55:37
  some of the, let's even go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole,
• 55:40
  because this is the fun part. This is one of the reasons why I know that this
• 55:43
  episode is going to go long, because I just think this stuff's fascinating.
• 55:47
  So your brain runs on electricity. The cells in your brain, the neurons,
• 55:50
  they fire in these rhythmic patterns, and those rhythms get measured in cycles
• 55:54
  per second. And the unit for that is hertz, abbreviated HC.
• 55:59
  20 cycles per second would be 20 hertz. And over time, researchers have found
• 56:03
  that different mental states tend to line up with different dominant brainwave patterns.
• 56:07
  So as I mentioned in the opening, when the person at the Amen Clinic was asking
• 56:11
  me, what hertz do you typically try and meditate to?
• 56:14
  This is what I learned in starting to look at what that even means. Here's a quick roadmap.
• 56:21
  Delta waves are around 0.5 to 4 hertz. And those are what are typically showing
• 56:26
  up during deep dreamless sleep.
• 56:29
  Theta waves, 4 to 8 hertz, tend to show up in deep meditation,
• 56:33
  kind of when you're feeling drowsy or those moments right before you drift off to sleep.
• 56:39
  Alpha waves are around 8 to 13 hertz, and that's when it's a more relaxed alertness.
• 56:43
  That's a pretty fun vibe to be in.
• 56:46
  You're awake, you're calm, you're present, you're maybe sitting quietly at the
• 56:50
  end of a long day, finally letting your body exhale a little bit.
• 56:53
  That is an area that I really enjoy that I will sometimes try to find myself in a meditative state.
• 56:59
  Beta waves, 13 to roughly 30 hertz are active thinking, problem solving,
• 57:04
  conversations, emails, decision making, mentally juggling life.
• 57:08
  And then you've got these gamma waves that are above 30 Hertz.
• 57:10
  And those are typically associated with really high level processing.
• 57:13
  And interestingly, some long-term meditators show unusually strong gamma activity,
• 57:18
  during deep meditation practice, which can seem like a paradox.
• 57:23
  But I think it's one of the deepest concepts of life where two things can happen at once.
• 57:28
  One way that I like to think about this is like an old school radio dial.
• 57:31
  So different radio stations carry different kinds of experiences.
• 57:35
  There's the loud, fast-paced, urgent talk radio station where everybody's debating
• 57:39
  and solving problems theoretically and reacting and arguing and analyzing,
• 57:43
  but essentially trying to win.
• 57:45
  That's a lot like the beta waves. Then there's a calmer station,
• 57:48
  maybe late night smooth jazz or acoustic music where your body starts to settle
• 57:53
  in a little bit. That's more like alpha wave territory.
• 57:56
  Then theta is this dreamy, floaty sensation you drift into right before sleep.
• 58:02
  And then delta waves are basically when the radio station fades into a deep,
• 58:06
  steady nighttime hum. Maybe it's
• 58:08
  just the record playing over and over and over and the DJ fell asleep.
• 58:13
  But the point isn't that one station is good and another is bad because you
• 58:17
  actually need basically all of them.
• 58:19
  The problem is that many people are essentially living their entire lives mentally
• 58:22
  tuned into urgent daytime talk radio.
• 58:25
  And then wondering why on earth does my nervous system feel completely exhausted all the time.
• 58:29
  So mindfulness, meditation, they don't magically erase your thoughts.
• 58:33
  They help you learn how to change the channel a little bit.
• 58:36
  Or maybe more accurately, they help you realize that you are allowed to change
• 58:40
  the channel. Or you might even recognize that, oh, I am on a particular channel.
• 58:44
  That would make sense why I feel a certain way.
• 58:47
  And, and I want to talk about this thing called entrainment,
• 58:49
  and then we'll go a little bit more into the binaural beats.
• 58:51
  Entrainment is basically what happens when two things that move in rhythm start
• 58:55
  syncing up with each other.
• 58:56
  And one of the earliest examples of this was back in the 1600s.
• 58:59
  And there was this Dutch scientist named Christian Huggins. He had these two
• 59:02
  pendulum clocks and they were hanging on the same wall. And he noticed that
• 59:05
  even if he started them swinging at completely different times,
• 59:07
  after a while, they would slowly fall into sync with each other.
• 59:10
  It was like the tiny vibrations moving through the wall were enough to pull
• 59:13
  them into the same rhythm.
• 59:14
  And honestly, once you know about entrainment, you start to see it everywhere.
• 59:19
  I was on a run last week and I had written some of this part of the podcast,
• 59:24
  the outline, and there were two people that were skating on this trail.
• 59:29
  I lived by this trail by a wash in Arizona.
• 59:32
  And there were two people coming at me and they were roller skating.
• 59:35
  And it was wild because I saw them coming from so far away and they both,
• 59:38
  the arms were in rhythm, the feet were It was so fascinating.
• 59:41
  And then I think I yelled something to that effect when I passed by and they
• 59:44
  probably thought, what are you saying, old man?
• 59:46
  But you see it when people start unconsciously matching each other's walking
• 59:50
  pace or when a crowd at a concert claps in rhythm or when drummers naturally
• 59:53
  lock into the same tempo without talking about it.
• 59:56
  And the more you look at the research around entrainment, there was a pretty
• 59:59
  funny article I read about fireflies that fireflies are lightning bugs, as some call them.
• 1:00:04
  In some parts of the world will literally flash and sink across an entire field.
• 1:00:08
  And even babies tend to gradually sink their breathing and heart rate with the
• 1:00:11
  parents holding them. This concept of co-regulation that I'm fascinated by,
• 1:00:15
  because it's as if humans are rhythm matching creatures.
• 1:00:18
  Brainwave entrainment is basically the same idea applied to the brain.
• 1:00:22
  The theory is that if your brain is exposed to a steady rhythm,
• 1:00:25
  like a sound, or a beat, or even flashing lights, that your brain may begin
• 1:00:28
  to sync some of its own electrical activity to that rhythm.
• 1:00:32
  And the most common example that people talk about today is this thing called binaural beats.
• 1:00:37
  Simple version of how they work. And I did not understand this at all at first.
• 1:00:40
  And I thought that binaural beats were essentially why we like to hear the ocean
• 1:00:45
  or a babbling brook, but we'll talk about that.
• 1:00:47
  But let's say that you put your headphones on and your left ear,
• 1:00:50
  here's a tone at 200 cycles per second. And your right ear, here's a slightly
• 1:00:54
  different tone at 210 cycles per second.
• 1:00:56
  Your brain essentially, as I understand it, splits the difference and then perceives
• 1:00:59
  a third rhythmic pulse at 10 cycles per second or 10 Hertz, which happens to
• 1:01:03
  land right in that relaxed alpha wave range that I mentioned earlier.
• 1:01:07
  So the theory is that by listening to these tones, that it might gently nudge
• 1:01:12
  the brain toward a calmer, more relaxed state.
• 1:01:15
  And here's the part where I think it is, I will own the fact that we're going
• 1:01:18
  to separate interesting from a proven miracle, because.
• 1:01:21
  If you search the topic of binaural beats online for more than about three or
• 1:01:26
  four minutes, you'll quickly find people claiming that they can unlock super
• 1:01:29
  human focus, astral projection, manifest abundance, basically become some sort
• 1:01:33
  of wizard through specific sound frequencies.
• 1:01:36
  Now, the science appears to be a little more grounded in that the research does
• 1:01:40
  not necessarily suggest that that is the case.
• 1:01:44
  But here's where we get into things like, I don't know what I don't know,
• 1:01:47
  the placebo effect. And if something is working for someone,
• 1:01:50
  who on earth am I to say, yeah, that's ridiculous. That doesn't make sense.
• 1:01:54
  Because I found a fair amount of research that suggests things like binaural
• 1:01:57
  beats may help with things like anxiety reduction, relaxation, pain management.
• 1:02:02
  If it gets into that alpha wave range, some studies involving surgical patients
• 1:02:07
  found lower anxiety levels compared to if they just had silence or even just regular music.
• 1:02:12
  And there's also some early evidence around stress reduction and relaxation.
• 1:02:16
  But when it comes to bigger claims, like you can dial in any mental state on
• 1:02:19
  demand or while you sleep or permanently alter consciousness through the frequencies
• 1:02:24
  alone, the evidence, I'll just say, gets much weaker and there's a lot less consistency.
• 1:02:29
  My honest takeaway is probably this. There does appear to be something real
• 1:02:33
  happening, but it's smaller, maybe less dramatic and far less magical than the
• 1:02:38
  marketing or sales pages often make it sound. Wow. Isn't that shocking?
• 1:02:42
  Which I think feels like a pretty common theme throughout today's episode.
• 1:02:45
  Things that genuinely help us are often less flashy than we want them to be.
• 1:02:49
  And they typically take longer than we would like for them to take.
• 1:02:52
  Back to these natural sounds. Sounds like ocean waves and rain and wind through
• 1:02:56
  the trees or a babbling stream.
• 1:02:58
  Those things seem to work through a slightly different mechanism.
• 1:03:01
  And I think this is one of those cool places where I want to be careful not
• 1:03:03
  to overstate things or drift into bro science or magical thinking.
• 1:03:08
  But here's the basic idea.
• 1:03:10
  Steady natural sounds actually are often the sound signature of a stable environment.
• 1:03:16
  If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, birds chirping,
• 1:03:19
  leaves rustling, water flowing are actually all signs that nothing disruptive
• 1:03:23
  or dangerous has interrupted the environment.
• 1:03:26
  Your nervous system isn't necessarily calming down because water sounds are
• 1:03:29
  magical, which is part of what I used to think.
• 1:03:32
  It's calming down because the environment feels predictable and continuous.
• 1:03:36
  The real alarm signal in nature usually isn't the sound itself.
• 1:03:40
  It's the sudden change in the sound.
• 1:03:42
  So if you're walking through the woods and you hear birds chirping and the wind
• 1:03:44
  moving and leaves rustling, your brain gradually settles in and says,
• 1:03:48
  OK, things seem pretty normal. And it's happening maybe in the subconscious.
• 1:03:52
  But then if all the birds suddenly stop or there's an unexpected crack of a
• 1:03:56
  branch or complete silence where there should be sound, your nervous system
• 1:04:00
  immediately perks up because sudden changes in predictable patterns often signal potential danger.
• 1:04:06
  And we go back to that's the mechanism of the low road of your brain immediately
• 1:04:11
  saying, heads up, for anyone that's a little bit older, if you ever watched
• 1:04:14
  the show called MASH, which was a comedy, but it was based in,
• 1:04:18
  I think, the Vietnam War era.
• 1:04:20
  There was a guy named radar radar could hear the helicopters off in the distance
• 1:04:24
  and so he would always know oh choppers and so they were a medical unit and
• 1:04:28
  they would get ready but every now and again in every few episodes there would be a wait do you hear that,
• 1:04:34
  and then people would say i don't hear anything oh that's the point and so it's
• 1:04:38
  speaking to this or i think there's a scene in one or two of the jurassic park
• 1:04:42
  movies where it was the calm right before then the t-rex lost his mind.
• 1:04:47
  Because I would imagine every animal that now realizes that the T-Rex is stomping
• 1:04:51
  through the forest just went quiet because they know if they make noise,
• 1:04:54
  then they're going to get eaten.
• 1:04:55
  So why rain sounds, ocean waves, or streams feel calming is because they're
• 1:05:00
  broad and they're repetitive and they're predictable enough that your brain
• 1:05:02
  eventually stops scanning them for new information. Your nervous system gets a break.
• 1:05:08
  Now that mechanism is actually different from another concept that I thought
• 1:05:12
  was more similar. And I've talked about it on previous episodes. It's called apophenia.
• 1:05:16
  Apophenia is the brain's tendency to create meaning or patterns out of random information.
• 1:05:22
  And it came from a German psychiatrist named Kloss Conrad back in the 1950s.
• 1:05:26
  So apophenia is when the grass moves and your brain immediately thinks snake.
• 1:05:31
  Or when three unrelated things happen in the same week and suddenly you're convinced
• 1:05:35
  that the universe is trying to send you a message. And maybe it is,
• 1:05:37
  but the pattern is fascinating.
• 1:05:39
  Or if you see faces in clouds or in electrical outlets or burnt toast or on
• 1:05:44
  the surface of Mars, but that visual version even has its own name, which is pareidolia.
• 1:05:49
  And what's really interesting is that the two mechanisms that work here where
• 1:05:53
  hearing sounds to make your nervous system feel okay, and then seeing patterns
• 1:05:58
  that make your nervous system on high alert are opposites.
• 1:06:03
  With calming natural sounds, your nervous system is accurately recognizing stability
• 1:06:08
  and relaxing because of it. But with apophenia, your nervous system's actively
• 1:06:11
  trying to detect patterns out of uncertainty or randomness as a form of threat detection.
• 1:06:17
  Because from an evolutionary standpoint, it was so much safer for your brain
• 1:06:21
  to occasionally overreact and think there might be a snake in the grass than
• 1:06:24
  to miss the one time that there really was a very dangerous snake in the grass.
• 1:06:28
  So when a babbling brook calms you, that's your nervous system responding to
• 1:06:31
  continuity and predictability.
• 1:06:34
  When you suddenly think you're seeing your ex's car everywhere after a breakup,
• 1:06:37
  that's apophenia. Same nervous system, very different mechanisms.
• 1:06:41
  And let me spend a couple minutes too on why we aren't big fans of silence.
• 1:06:45
  Then it can even explain more of why the goal is not to clear your mind.
• 1:06:50
  Because this also goes back to evolutionary perspective and a survival instinct.
• 1:06:55
  Because the data here sits at this pretty cool intersection of neuroscience
• 1:07:00
  and evolution and psychology and
• 1:07:01
  learning theory and attachment and modern technology. even on the whole.
• 1:07:05
  Because what are we supposed to do? Not listen to a bunch of things when we
• 1:07:09
  have so many things that we can listen to so easily and with such amazing quality.
• 1:07:13
  But the important thing is not to frame this as people are weak because they can't sit quietly.
• 1:07:17
  Our brains were never really designed for the modern level of stimulation that we now live with.
• 1:07:22
  Your brain is basically a prediction engine, a survival machine.
• 1:07:26
  It's constantly scanning for problems, threats, opportunities,
• 1:07:30
  social standing, uncertainty, discomfort, unfinished business.
• 1:07:34
  And when the external stimulation goes quiet, internal stimulation tends to
• 1:07:39
  get louder, which means silence often doesn't feel very peaceful,
• 1:07:42
  especially at first. It starts to feel more revealing.
• 1:07:46
  And there's research showing that many people genuinely dislike being alone with their thoughts.
• 1:07:50
  One of the most famous studies out of the University of Virginia found that
• 1:07:53
  when people were left alone in a room with no phones,
• 1:07:57
  no distractions, and nothing to do for about 15 minutes, many of the participants
• 1:08:01
  found the experience so unpleasant that they choose to give themselves a mild
• 1:08:06
  electric shock rather than sit quietly with their thoughts.
• 1:08:09
  And honestly, that's kind of funny, kind of disturbing, but really human.
• 1:08:13
  From an evolutionary perspective, a constantly scanning brain made sense because
• 1:08:19
  our ancestors benefited from hypervigilance.
• 1:08:21
  The people who occasionally overreacted to possible danger were more likely
• 1:08:24
  to survive than the people who said, you know, that rustling in the bush, probably not a.
• 1:08:30
  So our nervous systems became so
• 1:08:31
  good at monitoring for uncertainty and discomfort and is this safe or not.
• 1:08:37
  So now layer modern life on top of all that music, podcasts,
• 1:08:41
  scrolling, YouTube, social media, TikTok, Instagram, text, notifications,
• 1:08:47
  streaming, constant background noise.
• 1:08:50
  All of these things provide what neuroscientists sometimes call attentional capture.
• 1:08:54
  They occupy mental bandwidth, which means they can temporarily reduce awareness
• 1:08:58
  of uncomfortable internal experiences like anxiety, loneliness,
• 1:09:02
  shame, boredom, grief, insecurity, or existential uncertainty.
• 1:09:06
  I think you often hear adults, the older ones like myself, say the kids these
• 1:09:12
  days, they need to learn how to be bored.
• 1:09:14
  But then when they come to a parent and say, I'm bored, then that makes the
• 1:09:18
  parent feel anxious. And to get rid of the parent's anxiety,
• 1:09:20
  they often then need, they try to figure out a way to entertain the kid.
• 1:09:24
  And now you're developing this interesting, I was going to say unhealthy,
• 1:09:27
  but an interesting co-regulation dynamic. That's the normal.
• 1:09:30
  That becomes the familiar.
• 1:09:32
  But back to the silence piece, it's not inherently, I'm not going to say it's
• 1:09:36
  bad that we want to listen to things all the time because podcasts and music
• 1:09:39
  and audio books, those things can absolutely enrich your life.
• 1:09:43
  And I am literally building a career around hopefully meaningful content that
• 1:09:48
  helps people regulate and grow and feel less alone. The issue isn't necessarily
• 1:09:52
  the stimulation itself.
• 1:09:54
  But I think the issue is whether we still know how to be with ourselves when
• 1:09:58
  the stimulation stops. And I think that requires stopping the stimulation on a regular basis.
• 1:10:04
  Because if every quiet moment immediately gets filled, your brain never really
• 1:10:08
  learns that it can safely exist without constant external input.
• 1:10:12
  And over time, what we're doing, I think, is unintentionally training ourselves
• 1:10:17
  to avoid stillness because then stillness becomes associated with discomfort.
• 1:10:21
  And I think there's also a dopamine component to all of this.
• 1:10:25
  Novelty, unpredictability, and stimulation activate these reward pathways in the brain.
• 1:10:30
  A new song, notification, new clip, headline, or new episode gives the nervous
• 1:10:35
  system a little orienting response of, okay, something new.
• 1:10:39
  Modern technology has become this infinite buffet of novelty,
• 1:10:43
  new, and our brains are highly responsive to the new.
• 1:10:47
  And there's a thing that I think is even deeper. For a lot of people,
• 1:10:50
  constant stimulation is actually emotional avoidance, but it's dressed up as
• 1:10:55
  productivity or just self-care or entertainment.
• 1:10:58
  Because the second things get quiet, thoughts show up. Am I okay?
• 1:11:02
  Do people actually like me? What if I'm failing? What do I really fear?
• 1:11:06
  Did I say the wrong thing? What if I'm unhappy?
• 1:11:08
  What if I don't know who I am without all this noise?
• 1:11:11
  Mindfulness starts teaching something radically different.
• 1:11:14
  It teaches that thoughts and feelings can be noticed without immediately escaping
• 1:11:19
  them, solving them, suppressing them, or distracting from them,
• 1:11:23
  which is why mindfulness can initially feel uncomfortable before it starts to
• 1:11:27
  become somewhat calming.
• 1:11:29
  You're never failing in meditation when your thoughts get loud.
• 1:11:33
  It's actually this avoidance of if somebody is so worried about the fact that
• 1:11:37
  they won't be able to stop thinking.
• 1:11:39
  You're finally hearing what was
• 1:11:41
  always there and learning that you still survive, and this too shall pass.
• 1:11:46
  Back to binaural beats, just for a beat, pun intended.
• 1:11:52
  Now's the time where I want to do a little conspiratorial work because one of
• 1:11:55
  the apps that I do use for meditation, and I've used a lot, so I've enjoyed
• 1:11:59
  Headspace. I've used Calm.
• 1:12:01
  Currently, I really, if you're a Peloton user, first find me on the Peloton app.
• 1:12:06
  It would be great to be friends. I like the meditation section of the Peloton app.
• 1:12:11
  Some of the instructors are so good and calming and present.
• 1:12:16
  I think they're very intentional about the music that they put in the background.
• 1:12:19
  One of the apps I also use for meditation is one called Expand.
• 1:12:22
  And it's by the Monroe Institute.
• 1:12:24
  I like Bookspan because of their sound technology. The founder,
• 1:12:27
  Robert Monroe, was originally a radio executive back in the 1950s and 60s,
• 1:12:31
  and he became fascinated with altered states of consciousness,
• 1:12:34
  initially because of his own reported out-of-body experiences,
• 1:12:37
  which depending on your personality type either sounds incredibly fascinating,
• 1:12:40
  or immediately makes you want to slowly back away from this conversation and
• 1:12:44
  say that, okay, maybe Tony is kind of crazy.
• 1:12:46
  But Monroe eventually founded this institute named after him in Virginia in the late 1970s.
• 1:12:52
  And he developed something called HemiSync Technology, which is short for hemispheric
• 1:12:56
  synchronization, which honestly sounds like super intimidating or scientific
• 1:13:01
  more so than I think it is.
• 1:13:03
  The basic idea was that certain sound patterns and binaural beats might help
• 1:13:07
  synchronize activity between the two hemispheres of the brain and then guide
• 1:13:11
  people into deeper states of relaxation or meditation or awareness.
• 1:13:14
  And I have found, I call it, it's swishy sounds.
• 1:13:18
  And I do, I can just put the swishy sounds on and without anything else,
• 1:13:22
  and that's not even a guided meditation.
• 1:13:24
  And I can find myself entering a pretty nice state of awareness or consciousness.
• 1:13:29
  And then the Monroe Institute developed these different focus levels,
• 1:13:32
  like focus 10, focus 12, focus 15. And I've done a couple of online trainings, done some of these.
• 1:13:37
  And it's fascinating because some of it seems, and to me, it can feel or seem
• 1:13:41
  a little hokey, but boy, it really does get me into this state.
• 1:13:45
  And each of these, Focus 10, 12, 15, supposedly represent progressively deeper
• 1:13:49
  mental states or expanded awareness.
• 1:13:51
  So here's where the story gets interesting enough that the internet absolutely
• 1:13:54
  goes wild with it. And who's to know what is true?
• 1:13:58
  The U.S. Army and the intelligence communities actually did study some of this stuff during the 1980s.
• 1:14:02
  And there's even a now declassified Army report called the Gateway Process that
• 1:14:06
  explored the Monroe Institute's methods and whether altered states of consciousness
• 1:14:11
  could potentially have military and intelligence applications.
• 1:14:14
  And I would imagine for many, because I think I'm there at times as well,
• 1:14:18
  the second that we hear CIA gateway process and altered states of consciousness.
• 1:14:22
  Now it's like, wait, are we going down the conspiracy theory route here together?
• 1:14:26
  And the answer is, I don't, maybe, probably not though.
• 1:14:30
  Because while the military apparently found it interesting enough to investigate,
• 1:14:33
  the later reviews basically concluded that the effects were too inconsistent
• 1:14:37
  to be reliably useful operationally, which is a very government way of saying
• 1:14:42
  interesting, but probably not psychic superpowers.
• 1:14:44
  But then when I chased this rabbit down its hole a little further,
• 1:14:48
  then you immediately run into the, oh, that means it worked because of course
• 1:14:52
  the government doesn't say, nope, nothing to see here. Just ignore it.
• 1:14:55
  And meanwhile, we got people astral projecting behind enemy lines and then doing
• 1:14:59
  all kinds of crazy things.
• 1:15:01
  So I do think it's important to separate maybe the more grounded claims from
• 1:15:04
  the more sensational ones. The really big claims, things like unlocking hidden
• 1:15:07
  consciousness states or remote viewing or instantly rewiring your brain or getting
• 1:15:10
  10 years of therapy in one session.
• 1:15:12
  Those ideas are people's ideas
• 1:15:15
  and they may not be supported by mainstream neuroscience and that's okay.
• 1:15:20
  But the more modest claims, those have some science behind them.
• 1:15:25
  They may be a lot more reasonable. Can binaural beats help some people relax more deeply? Probably.
• 1:15:30
  Can they help people settle into meditation and stay focused for longer? It appears so.
• 1:15:34
  Can they encourage calmer brainwave states associated with relaxation?
• 1:15:37
  There's some pretty cool evidence pointing in that direction.
• 1:15:40
  And I'm good with all of that. Can they allow me to lucid dream and control
• 1:15:45
  my dreams? Because there's a section of that in the Moreau Institute,
• 1:15:48
  in the Expand app that I have used many times. And I've had some very fascinating
• 1:15:52
  experiences with it and some not.
• 1:15:55
  But if something helps you sit still long enough to become more aware of yourself,
• 1:15:58
  your thoughts, your nervous system, your reactions, your breathing,
• 1:16:01
  your emotions, then I think it has value.
• 1:16:04
  It's a mechanism itself doesn't have to be magical for the practice to be really
• 1:16:07
  meaningful. Okay, just breathe.
• 1:16:11
  That is either one of the most calming and relaxing phrases or one of the most
• 1:16:16
  annoying if the people around you are telling you, just take a breath, just breathe.
• 1:16:21
  But this is the part with the most solid science. breath is the one input to
• 1:16:26
  your nervous system that you do for the most part, unless something is really happening for you.
• 1:16:33
  You have direct voluntary control over.
• 1:16:37
  You can't actually decide to lower your heart rate or open up your blood vessels,
• 1:16:41
  but you can decide how to breathe.
• 1:16:44
  And it turns out that decision cascades into everything else because two systems
• 1:16:50
  are running in the background of your body at all times.
• 1:16:53
  There's the sympathetic nervous system, and that's like the gas pedal.
• 1:16:56
  Fight, flight, mobilize, keep you alert.
• 1:17:00
  It makes your heart rate rise, your pupils dilate, your digestion slows down, your muscles tense.
• 1:17:06
  So this is what kicks in when somebody cuts you off in traffic.
• 1:17:10
  Then there's the parasympathetic nervous system. And that's more like the break.
• 1:17:15
  Rest, digest, recover, repair.
• 1:17:18
  Your heart rate is down. Your blood vessels relax. Your digestion is going well.
• 1:17:24
  It runs. Your immune system starts to work.
• 1:17:27
  This is what kicks in after a good meal when you feel like you could take a nap.
• 1:17:32
  And you want both. And you want
• 1:17:34
  them both in balance, responding to what's actually happening around you.
• 1:17:38
  And you may have also heard of this thing called the vagus nerve,
• 1:17:41
  not like Viva Las Vegas, but Vegas V-A-G-U-S.
• 1:17:45
  Think of it like the main highway of the parasympathetic nervous system.
• 1:17:49
  It's the break side. It runs from your brainstem down through your neck.
• 1:17:54
  It branches out through your heart and your lungs and your gut.
• 1:17:56
  And it apparently connects to roughly 75% of all of the parasympathetic signaling.
• 1:18:02
  So when the vagus nerve is firing, your body shifts toward recovery.
• 1:18:07
  And then the strength of that signaling, which is significant,
• 1:18:10
  is called the vagal tone. So you can think of it like the strength of the brake pedal in your car.
• 1:18:15
  A car with really good brakes stops smoothly and quickly when you need it to.
• 1:18:19
  But if you have a car with weak brakes, it takes forever to slow down and the ride is kind of jerky.
• 1:18:24
  If you have a strong vagal tone, it means that your nervous system can shift
• 1:18:27
  out of stress and then into recovery quickly and smoothly.
• 1:18:31
  And you can measure your vagal tone indirectly through something called heart
• 1:18:35
  rate variability or HRV.
• 1:18:37
  And I think I'm starting to see more HRV numbers on different fitness apps, what that is.
• 1:18:43
  So your heart isn't actually beating like a metronome.
• 1:18:46
  Even at rest, the time between each beat is slightly different.
• 1:18:50
  And sometimes it's just a fraction of a second longer, sometimes a fraction of a second shorter.
• 1:18:55
  But that tiny variation, that's the heart rate variability.
• 1:18:59
  And then here's the, I would call it the counterintuitive part.
• 1:19:02
  More variation is a good thing, which is wild because it seems like one would
• 1:19:07
  want their heart rate to be dialed in in this rhythmic flow.
• 1:19:13
  It turns out more variation is good. It means your nervous system is flexible and responsive.
• 1:19:18
  So a heart that would beat like a perfect metronome is actually a sign of a stuck nervous system.
• 1:19:24
  And the higher your heart rate variability, that generally means you have better
• 1:19:27
  vagal tone, which means better recovery and better emotional regulation and
• 1:19:31
  better cardiovascular health. Back to the breathing.
• 1:19:34
  Nasal breathing in. And I learned a little bit more about this even just doing
• 1:19:39
  the research for this episode.
• 1:19:40
  Your nose isn't just an air intake. It actually filters dust and particles and
• 1:19:45
  it warms and it humidifies the air before it actually hits your lungs.
• 1:19:48
  And I think this is the part that is the science-y part that I think most people
• 1:19:51
  don't know, is it produces a chemical called nitric oxide. And nitric oxide
• 1:19:56
  gets made in the sinus spaces around your nose and it gets released into your
• 1:20:00
  nasal passages when you breathe in.
• 1:20:02
  So it kills off germs and it opens up your blood vessels, which then improves
• 1:20:06
  how well oxygen gets delivered to your tissues.
• 1:20:09
  Now, when you breathe through your mouth, you skip all of that.
• 1:20:12
  And I will admit, insert joke here, I'm a bit of a mouth breather.
• 1:20:17
  But research has also shown that nasal breathing creates a small amount of resistance
• 1:20:21
  during the breath out, which helps keep your lung volume up and it supports
• 1:20:26
  oxygen levels in your blood.
• 1:20:28
  Mouth breathing reduces lung volume and reduces how efficiently oxygen gets
• 1:20:32
  from your lungs and your bloodstream.
• 1:20:34
  Nasal breathing also tends to slow your overall breathing rate,
• 1:20:37
  which on its own then activates that parasympathetic system or the break.
• 1:20:42
  Now, exhale. Exhale through your mouth.
• 1:20:46
  Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Out through your mouth
• 1:20:49
  is more of a practice technique than necessarily a real strict requirement.
• 1:20:52
  There's structured breathing exercises. They have number four,
• 1:20:55
  seven, an eight breathing or box breathing, breathing in for four seconds,
• 1:21:00
  holding for seven seconds, out for eight seconds, rinse and repeat.
• 1:21:03
  Or I know there have been a couple of meditations where then it's been stress
• 1:21:07
  that I exhale through kind of pursed lips that slows the out breath,
• 1:21:13
  that slows the breathing out and it makes it audible so you can pace it.
• 1:21:17
  And it creates just a small amount of resistance that may even engage your diaphragm more fully.
• 1:21:22
  Now for everyday breathing in through the nose and out through the nose is fine.
• 1:21:26
  But if you're doing an active practice in through the nose and out through the
• 1:21:30
  mouth can be a pretty useful tool as well.
• 1:21:33
  And we want to exhale longer than you inhale. When you breathe in,
• 1:21:37
  your heart rate naturally speeds up a little bit. When you breathe out, it slows down.
• 1:21:42
  That's a built-in connection between
• 1:21:43
  your breath and your heartbeat that's controlled by the vagus nerve.
• 1:21:47
  So if you make your exhale longer than your inhale, something like,
• 1:21:50
  let's say, four seconds in and six seconds out, or five in and seven out,
• 1:21:55
  you're spending more time in the slowing down phase of each breath cycle.
• 1:22:00
  Over a few minutes, this measurably increases your parasympathetic activity
• 1:22:04
  and it decreases anxiety.
• 1:22:06
  There was a 2021 study in scientific reports that found that just five minutes
• 1:22:10
  of deep, slow breathing with the exhale longer than the inhale increased parasympathetic
• 1:22:16
  activity and then it decreased anxiety in both young and older adults.
• 1:22:20
  And I have also heard often about belly breathing.
• 1:22:25
  Expand your belly, not your chest. It's also called diaphragmatic breathing.
• 1:22:30
  And it's what happens when you let your diaphragm do the work instead of your upper chest.
• 1:22:35
  Because the diaphragm is a really big dome-shaped muscle that sits under your
• 1:22:38
  lungs, kind of like an upside-down bowl.
• 1:22:40
  And so when it contracts, it flattens downward, and then it pulls air into the
• 1:22:45
  lower part of your lungs, which then pushes your belly outward.
• 1:22:48
  And then when it relaxes, it domes back up, and it pushes air out.
• 1:22:52
  And so most adults under chronic stress have learned to breathe shallowly into their upper chest.
• 1:22:58
  They do these quick, small breaths that kind of keep the sympathetic system
• 1:23:01
  or the gas pedal mildly activated all day long.
• 1:23:04
  Belly breathing will reverse that. Diaphragmatic breathing directly stimulates that vagus nerve.
• 1:23:10
  And so then it increases the parasympathetic activity. So when you breathe deeply,
• 1:23:15
  the diaphragm moves downward, your lungs expand fully, and your heart rate slows.
• 1:23:19
  And this also triggers a built-in reflex that helps regulate your blood pressure.
• 1:23:24
  And a way to feel the difference is you can put one hand on your chest right
• 1:23:27
  now, one hand on your belly and breathe normally and notice which hand moves.
• 1:23:32
  If it's the chest hand, then you're more of a chest breather.
• 1:23:34
  If it's the belly hand, you're already doing it well.
• 1:23:37
  The goal in practice is the belly hand moving and the chest hand staying still.
• 1:23:43
  And I want to get into what a consistent practice would look like or what benefits
• 1:23:48
  it could have. And I start here with a quote, the neurons that fire together, wire together.
• 1:23:54
  The basic idea is that when two neurons keep firing at the same time,
• 1:23:57
  then the connection between them gets stronger.
• 1:24:00
  The belief is that there are actual physical changes that happen in the cells,
• 1:24:04
  making it easier for them to trigger each other in the future.
• 1:24:07
  The principle is called heavy in learning or Hebb's rule. I really think the
• 1:24:11
  neurons that fire together wire together connects with meditation because every
• 1:24:14
  time that you sit down to practice noticing your breath, you're firing a specific
• 1:24:18
  set of neurons in a specific pattern.
• 1:24:21
  Every time you bring your attention back from the wander, you're firing the
• 1:24:24
  notice and return circuit.
• 1:24:26
  So if you repeat that for days, months, years, then your wiring gets stronger.
• 1:24:31
  You get better at noticing. You get better at returning. And the skill becomes more automatic.
• 1:24:36
  The same principle then in reverse applies to anxious thought patterns.
• 1:24:40
  Every time you rehearse the catastrophic story that you are a horrible person
• 1:24:45
  or the problem, you wire that deeper as well.
• 1:24:47
  Every time that you replay resentment, you carve that groove a little more.
• 1:24:51
  And that's why years of a consistent regular practice is not the same as off
• 1:24:56
  and on occasional sessions of meditation because that wiring is built by repetition.
• 1:25:01
  I'm acknowledging that I've been meditating regularly for going on four years.
• 1:25:07
  And I've paid attention to the things that I'm supposed to pay attention to
• 1:25:10
  as well, or at least I'm on that journey. Sleep, hydration, stress load.
• 1:25:14
  So by any reasonable measure, I should be a calm and grounded person, and most of the time I am.
• 1:25:20
  But I have also noticed my startle response is just right there on the edge.
• 1:25:26
  Loud noises, balloons popping, jump scares in movies.
• 1:25:30
  I can be sitting on a couch, perfectly relaxed, and then a door slams,
• 1:25:33
  and I will notice that I am jumpy.
• 1:25:36
  And so I started really wondering if my fight or flight response isn't actually
• 1:25:40
  that far below the surface.
• 1:25:42
  Like the startle is just the visible spike of a system that's primed and ready to go.
• 1:25:47
  And it's just waiting for the slightest trigger.
• 1:25:50
  And I have had the thought that I needed to lengthen my runway.
• 1:25:53
  The idea being that if my resting heart rate is high, then I have less buffer
• 1:25:57
  between baseline and full activation, a startle, a stressor, a loud noise.
• 1:26:01
  And then I'm airborne before I even know what happened. I began to wonder if
• 1:26:04
  I could bring my resting heart rate down overall, then I have more runway or
• 1:26:08
  more room to notice what's happening before my nervous system commits to fight or flight.
• 1:26:13
  So admittedly, that's been the model that I've been working with.
• 1:26:15
  So I decided to try and do as much research as I could to see if that's actually true.
• 1:26:21
  What I discovered is that intuition that I think that that might be what's happening,
• 1:26:27
  is actually more on target than what I would have guessed.
• 1:26:31
  That resting heart rate is one piece of the picture. But the more important
• 1:26:34
  measure that I mentioned earlier is that heart rate variability,
• 1:26:38
  that beat-to-beat variation.
• 1:26:40
  Higher heart rate variability means your nervous system is flexible and can
• 1:26:43
  quickly shift between the gas pedal and the brake, depending on what the situation calls for.
• 1:26:47
  And that lower HRV means the system is stuck and usually stuck slightly on the
• 1:26:50
  gas with less capacity to shift back down.
• 1:26:53
  So there was a study published in 2014 that found that people with low resting
• 1:26:57
  heart rate variability showed exaggerated startle responses,
• 1:27:00
  even in neutral, harmless stimuli, meaning that their startle system was firing
• 1:27:04
  in situations where there really wasn't anything that was very threatening.
• 1:27:07
  And then people with high heart rate variability showed a more appropriate startle response.
• 1:27:12
  I mean, they reacted strongly to genuinely threatening things,
• 1:27:15
  and they didn't overreact to neutral ones like a balloon popping.
• 1:27:19
  You could actually take them to a child's birthday party and they wouldn't be
• 1:27:21
  wincing every time a kid was just hanging onto a balloon.
• 1:27:24
  The researchers concluded that higher heart rate variability may allow people
• 1:27:28
  to more efficiently process emotional information and then better recognize
• 1:27:31
  the difference between threat and safety.
• 1:27:35
  The runway theory, I think, has a little bit of data behind it.
• 1:27:38
  People with better vagal tone measured through this HRV, then it sounds like
• 1:27:44
  they do have a bigger gap between baseline and this full activation.
• 1:27:47
  So they startle less to harmless things and they recover faster from real threats.
• 1:27:51
  So that runway concept, I think, is real.
• 1:27:54
  So then what lengthens the runway? Sleep. Sleep deprivation reliably reduces
• 1:28:00
  HRV and it really tips your nervous system toward that gas pedal.
• 1:28:04
  And what I was not happy to find is that even one really bad night of sleep
• 1:28:08
  can measurably shrink your buffer.
• 1:28:10
  And if you have a chronic sleep problem, then that trains your system to live
• 1:28:15
  in sort of a state of a low-grade alarm, exactly the state where the startle
• 1:28:19
  response sits just a millimeter below the surface.
• 1:28:22
  And then I've always known that hydration was important because even mild dehydration
• 1:28:27
  increases your resting heart rate, it increases stress hormones,
• 1:28:30
  and it decreases heart rate variability.
• 1:28:33
  And the reason is actually pretty simple. Less fluid in your system means your
• 1:28:35
  heart has to work harder to push blood around, and then your nervous system
• 1:28:39
  compensates by ramping up the gas pedal.
• 1:28:41
  And then good old stress, chronic psychological stress keeps stress hormones
• 1:28:45
  elevated, which keeps the gas pedal lightly pressed, which keeps HRV depressed.
• 1:28:50
  And this isn't about an acute stressor, something that comes on and it lasts
• 1:28:55
  an hour or so. This is more of
• 1:28:56
  about a cumulative load that sits in the background for weeks or months.
• 1:29:00
  And then meditation itself helps, particularly the slow breathing practice that we just talked about.
• 1:29:06
  There was a clinical trial of slow-paced breathing training,
• 1:29:09
  and it showed that five weeks of practice increased the connection between two
• 1:29:14
  specific brain regions, the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex,
• 1:29:18
  as well as the overall connectivity within the brain networks involved in things like emotion.
• 1:29:24
  And remembering that the amygdala is where that startle and the fight or flight signals originate.
• 1:29:30
  The medial prefrontal cortex is that regulator. So stronger wiring between them
• 1:29:34
  means the regulator gets to weigh in faster before the startle commits.
• 1:29:39
  And I tried to come up with a relatable example. So think of the amygdala more like a smoke alarm.
• 1:29:45
  Its job is not to calmly assess whether there's actually a fire.
• 1:29:48
  Its job is to go off fast and loud and immediately, which honestly makes more
• 1:29:55
  sense from an evolutionary standpoint because if our ancestors paused too long
• 1:29:59
  to thoughtfully consider whether the rustling in the bushes was the tiger,
• 1:30:02
  then they would probably not be our ancestors.
• 1:30:05
  And then that medial prefrontal cortex is more like the old experienced fire
• 1:30:10
  chief arriving on the scene saying, okay, everybody calm down.
• 1:30:14
  Let's assess what's actually happening here. So then what mindfulness and slow
• 1:30:17
  breathing appear to do is strengthen the connection between the alarm and the fire chief.
• 1:30:23
  So that the fire chief can weigh in sooner and the amygdala will listen to the
• 1:30:26
  fire chief before the entire nervous system has already flipped all the tables
• 1:30:30
  over and set the building on fire itself.
• 1:30:33
  So if you are even remotely new to the virtual couch, one of my favorite segments
• 1:30:38
  that I am somewhat inconsistent with is what have we learned today?
• 1:30:42
  And it harkens back to watching cartoons as a kid. And I swear on a Saturday
• 1:30:46
  morning cartoon, there was almost always a, what did we learn today?
• 1:30:50
  We learned that kids can get along well, or that we shouldn't treat people unfairly,
• 1:30:55
  or it's always good to apologize for something that you've done wrong.
• 1:30:59
  All those kind of life lessons. For that portion today, what did we learn today?
• 1:31:04
  I think we've learned that mindfulness is the deliberate, repeatable practice
• 1:31:07
  of paying attention to what's happening right now without trying to change it.
• 1:31:12
  You're not trying to stop thought. You are beginning to notice.
• 1:31:16
  You're continuing to notice. And it just is. It's unfolding.
• 1:31:19
  It's okay to have a mind that is going a million miles an hour and then bring
• 1:31:24
  it back to some breathing, even if it's just for a millisecond or two.
• 1:31:28
  And the science supporting it for anxiety, for emotional regulation,
• 1:31:32
  even physiological recovery is solid.
• 1:31:35
  The science supporting the more exotic claims, these perfect brain states from
• 1:31:41
  binaural beats or hemispheric synchronization, doing this so that it will cause
• 1:31:46
  an instant transformation.
• 1:31:48
  Maybe there's not as much science there and you don't actually need those exotic
• 1:31:53
  claims to start a mindfulness practice.
• 1:31:56
  And if it's the placebo effect and you really do think that you've changed your
• 1:32:01
  life within two or three sessions, then who am I to say that there is anything,
• 1:32:06
  wrong with that or that just because the data doesn't back that up,
• 1:32:10
  that it isn't your experience?
• 1:32:13
  And the basic mechanisms are enough. If you want to start, start with the breath
• 1:32:17
  in through the nose and then out a little longer through the mouth than you breathed in.
• 1:32:22
  Into the belly, ideally, versus the chest.
• 1:32:26
  But I would rather have you breathe into your chest than not even try to do this at all.
• 1:32:31
  You can do it today. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it the day after.
• 1:32:35
  You can do it for several days, forget about it completely, and come back to it.
• 1:32:40
  But if you are able to do it regularly, check that runway, check that startle response.
• 1:32:46
  And before we close out today, I want to give you something that you can truly take with you.
• 1:32:52
  Not a, here's the things to do moving forward, kind of a checklist,
• 1:32:56
  but just a few minutes of practice.
• 1:32:58
  Now, if you are driving, you can keep your eyes open and you can let this be
• 1:33:02
  a different kind of listening.
• 1:33:03
  But if you're somewhere where you can settle in, I would love to encourage you
• 1:33:07
  to try potentially your first mindfulness meditation practice.
• 1:33:12
  So there really isn't a way to do it wrong.
• 1:33:15
  If you happen to be in a position where you can sit up straight with your shoulders
• 1:33:20
  back, your spine is reasonably tall, and your shoulders can actually drop a
• 1:33:25
  little bit, that would be ideal.
• 1:33:27
  But if you are just sitting anywhere, you're laying down, whatever it is,
• 1:33:33
  it's the right thing to do.
• 1:33:35
  And you don't have to sit cross-legged. Just try being where you are.
• 1:33:40
  And if you feel safe enough, you can let your eyes close if that feels okay.
• 1:33:46
  And I'll try to move away from all of the jokes, but if you're driving,
• 1:33:49
  I would not recommend that.
• 1:33:53
  If you're in a position or a place where you can, soften your eyes,
• 1:33:57
  maybe even let your gaze rest on something neutral, just a little bit off into
• 1:34:01
  the distance, or close your eyes.
• 1:34:05
  And so let's begin where one always begins, with the breath.
• 1:34:12
  So I'd love for you to take a deep breath and breathe in through your nose.
• 1:34:21
  And then let it out slowly through your mouth.
• 1:34:27
  Let's try one more of those. In through the nose. And if you can, feel your belly expand.
• 1:34:37
  And then out through the mouth. A little bit longer than you breathed in.
• 1:34:44
  And you don't even have to do it in the cadence that I'm suggesting.
• 1:34:48
  But I'll give you time to do one more.
• 1:34:51
  Slowly inhale. And see if you can get that breath to go into your belly.
• 1:34:57
  And if you want to hold it a little bit at the top of that before you let it go, now give that a try.
• 1:35:04
  And now a long, soft exhale.
• 1:35:08
  And that was perfect. Now you can return back to your regular breathing.
• 1:35:15
  And I want to talk to you for just a minute about why you're here.
• 1:35:20
  Because if you've made it this far, I would imagine some part of you is curious.
• 1:35:27
  Some part of you wonders if maybe, maybe this could work for you.
• 1:35:32
  And maybe there's even another part of you that's already coming up with reasons why it won't work.
• 1:35:38
  And those can be all the reasons. I don't have the time. I can't sit still.
• 1:35:45
  I don't like the way this feels. I'm not the meditation type.
• 1:35:50
  And I've heard every one of them. And I've said those myself to myself.
• 1:35:58
  And here's what I've learned. Those thoughts aren't actually proof that meditation isn't for you.
• 1:36:05
  They're actually proof that you're a human being whose nervous system has probably
• 1:36:09
  been running fast for a long time.
• 1:36:13
  And the discomfort that you feel when you try to sit still is the same discomfort,
• 1:36:20
  that this practice is designed to meet.
• 1:36:27
  Growth doesn't happen in comfort. Growth happens right there at the edge of comfort.
• 1:36:34
  You know, your brain is actually going to do what brains do.
• 1:36:38
  It's going to generate thoughts and it's going to generate restlessness.
• 1:36:42
  It's going to generate stories about why you should get up right now.
• 1:36:47
  There's nothing wrong with that at all. It's not failure. That is the practice.
• 1:36:51
  The noticing is the practice.
• 1:36:55
  This is actually something that you're never going to be bad at.
• 1:36:59
  Now you might be new at it. There are going to be times where you're going to
• 1:37:03
  find this to be a really peaceful experience.
• 1:37:06
  And there are going to be times where it won't.
• 1:37:10
  And that's perfectly okay.
• 1:37:15
  Now let's do a little check-in right now and breathe in through your nose.
• 1:37:22
  And then out. slowly through your mouth.
• 1:37:28
  And just to give you a little preview of coming attractions,
• 1:37:31
  if you decide to try any kind of a body scan, I would love for you to right now,
• 1:37:40
  just relax the muscles in your face. See if right now you can let go of the
• 1:37:48
  muscles that are holding your jaw a little tighter.
• 1:37:53
  You might want to slightly open your mouth and let your eyes feel like they're
• 1:37:58
  just sinking back into their eye sockets just a little bit more.
• 1:38:04
  And right now, breathe in again and through the nose.
• 1:38:09
  And only this time when you exhale, see if you can let go of any tension that's in your shoulders.
• 1:38:19
  And now I want you to think about something. Whatever it is that you're carrying
• 1:38:24
  today, whatever feeling is sitting in your chest or in your stomach, maybe in your throat,
• 1:38:33
  whatever situation is taking up some space in your head, I want you to know something about that.
• 1:38:41
  It too will pass. Not because it doesn't matter, because it does.
• 1:38:46
  It matters to you right now.
• 1:38:49
  But because that is what feelings do.
• 1:38:53
  That is what storms do. Underneath every storm that I've ever walked through,
• 1:39:00
  and I've walked through a few, there was eventually a horizon again.
• 1:39:06
  There was eventually a rainbow.
• 1:39:08
  And the earth kept spinning, and the sun would set and rise again, and I kept breathing.
• 1:39:18
  This too shall pass. That phrase alone is older than any of us.
• 1:39:24
  The most intense emotion that you've ever felt has passed.
• 1:39:29
  The most overwhelming situation that you've ever been in has passed.
• 1:39:34
  And you're still here. And the earth is still spinning.
• 1:39:38
  And you have that opportunity right now to keep breathing.
• 1:39:44
  In through the nose.
• 1:39:47
  Belly fills. and then out through the mouth.
• 1:39:54
  So stay with me just another minute or two, because I really want to tell you
• 1:39:58
  something that I don't think that you hear enough.
• 1:40:01
  You are the only you on the face of the earth.
• 1:40:06
  There has never been another one, and there will never be another one.
• 1:40:10
  The way that you see the world, the way that things land in your body,
• 1:40:15
  the way joy and fear and love show up for you, that is unique to you.
• 1:40:22
  Nobody else has the inside view that you do.
• 1:40:27
  And I promise you, it's okay.
• 1:40:31
  I promise you that you were born with all the tools that you needed,
• 1:40:36
  to be here and to go and experience life and unlock that inherent eternal goodness that is inside of you,
• 1:40:47
  whether or not anyone else has seen that, whether or not you have acknowledged that or trust it,
• 1:40:55
  nobody else knows what it feels like to be you.
• 1:40:59
  So you're not doing it wrong.
• 1:41:01
  You think and feel the way you do because you're you.
• 1:41:05
  And you're this amazing, magical combination of your nature,
• 1:41:10
  your nurture, your birth order,
• 1:41:13
  your DNA, your abandonment, your fears, your rejections, your hopes,
• 1:41:18
  your dreams, the friends you've met and lost, the pets that you've experienced
• 1:41:24
  that have been there and that they too have passed.
• 1:41:27
  You're a unique combination of every single thing that makes you you.
• 1:41:33
  And that's why you think and feel the way that you do. It's not wrong.
• 1:41:37
  You're not broken. You're a human.
• 1:41:41
  And if you are thinking what you're thinking and feeling what you're feeling
• 1:41:44
  right now, it's because that's what you're thinking. And that's how you're feeling.
• 1:41:50
  And you wouldn't be you if you weren't.
• 1:41:54
  Your thoughts aren't an inconvenience to be solved. You deserve to be heard and understood.
• 1:42:01
  Your thoughts, they're the texture of being you on this particular day.
• 1:42:08
  No one else knows what it feels like to be you. And they can't.
• 1:42:12
  They have their own inside view. They have their own weather system going on inside of them.
• 1:42:20
  And when anybody tells you how you're supposed to think or how you're supposed
• 1:42:25
  to feel or what you should be over by now, bless their pink,
• 1:42:32
  squishy hearts. Seriously.
• 1:42:36
  They mean well. They're working from inside of their own emotional weather system with their own view,
• 1:42:45
  They're not necessarily bad, but they're not you Only you get to decide what
• 1:42:50
  it means to be you Let's take another breath in through the nose,
• 1:42:58
  And a long exhale out.
• 1:43:03
  So here's what I want you to take with you. The practice will be uncomfortable
• 1:43:09
  sometimes. It's not a sign to quit.
• 1:43:12
  That's a sign that you're right there at the edge, the edge of growth.
• 1:43:17
  The feelings will be intense sometimes, but then they'll pass. They always do.
• 1:43:23
  And other people don't know what it feels like to live in your skin.
• 1:43:26
  And bless them when they try to tell you.
• 1:43:29
  But every situation like that is a chance eventually for you to come back home to your own breath.
• 1:43:40
  Give me one more deep in through the nose.
• 1:43:44
  And then out slowly through the mouth. And give me a little pause.
• 1:43:52
  And you did great. You really did.
• 1:43:56
  When you're ready, soften your gaze or just start to open your eyes and thank
• 1:44:05
  yourself for taking time for yourself to do this practice.
• 1:44:11
  You didn't even need to nail the practice today. You did it perfectly.
• 1:44:17
  But just come back tomorrow and try again.
• 1:44:21
  Thank you for joining me today. I would love your feedback and I'll talk to
• 1:44:25
  you next time on the virtual couch.