Finding Peace; A Meditation Masterclass

I don't think I could have survived these last few years with all the meditation. The meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there. I think we just underestimate the power of the mind, the body and mind aren't separate. We let go. We put down our baggage from the past. We let go of our expectations for the future and

in that moment we're free. And while the benefits of meditation are vast and varied, the most fundamental is its ability to better understand the nature of mind, the nature of consciousness, and cultivate within us a sense of peace, clarity, and focus. All of the various forms of meditation from breath awareness and body scanning to mindfulness, lightness, and consciousness. We're loving kindness, vipassana, transcendental, and many other

guided and unguided variations are all engineered to help us achieve a release and a reprieve from the complexities of our mind and our world. In the fast paced, hyper connected world that we live in, people often struggle to find the time or the motivation to meditate. And it does require investment. Meditation is not a quick fix. It's a simple, or a magic pill, but meditation also

should not be a burden. It can be a way of life that seamlessly integrates into our daily routine. In a world where we are inundated with ceaseless distractions and an endless flow of information, meditation serves as a powerful antidote, a tool to reconnect with our true selves and unlock our greatest potential. That's why I'm excited to bring you this compilation featuring some of the most inspiring

and enlightening discussions we've had with experts in the field of meditation. From learning how to cultivate a daily practice, to exploring the neuroscience behind the benefits of meditation, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by AG1 by Athletic Greens, a long time and loyal supporter of the

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one-year supply of vitamin D and 10 free travel packs with your first purchase at Athletic Greens.com slash Rich Roll. I love their travel packs. They're super convenient. I keep them stashed everywhere at the studio in my car. And they're offered ends in March. So, act now, Athletic Greens.com slash Rich Roll. So, whether you're an experienced meditator or someone who has never even considered the practice before,

I think I'll find something of value in the discussions to come. Starting with a clip from my conversation with Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval is a prodigious intellect. He's truly one of the great thinkers of our time. And the author of the landmark book Sapiens, which is the utterly fascinating narrative of humanity's origins and evolution. It is an absolute must read. In addition, Yuval is a professor,

a coveted speaker, a lecturer, and the author of two other seminal works, Homodeus and 21 lessons for the 21st century. In this clip, Yuval explains how meditation has been crucial to his work, how it has helped him cultivate a deep understanding of the human mind and behavior, and how to one degree or another, we are slaves to our mind and the narratives that often loop incessantly.

Our external and internal worlds often collide in ways that distort reality. Our perception is often ping-ponging between fantasy and actuality. We are not as in control of our hyperactive mind as we think we are. We are in a far-ranging conversation with Yuval, in episode 392, one in which I encourage all of you to hear the entirety of. Yuval presents meditation as not only a way of

recognizing that truth, but also as the best tool for correcting it. So, sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and join us on this journey of self-discovery and inner exploration as we begin this masterclass on meditation with Yuval Noah Harari. I don't think I could have survived these last few years without the meditation. You know, all the publication of the book and all the attention and

traveling around the world, without the peace of mind that the meditation brings, I could not have done it. I couldn't have written the book in the first place without the meditation, because as you said, it brings a kind of clarity and focus, especially if you try to condense the entire history of the world. It gives you this incredible objectivity, though, to see everything from 10,000 feet.

But you need to be able to focus, because there are so many details that can take you here and there, and then you end up writing 4,000 pages, and not 400 pages. But really, for me, the most important contribution of meditation is to see the world. To really be able to see reality as it is, and to tell the difference between what is really happening, and

what is just stories generated by the mind. The human mind... But you can pull your smartphone out, and the algorithm will tell you. This is the one thing that's so far algorithm is on the other side, given a close to telling you. The human mind is a factory for generating fictional stories. It's about myself, about my family, about my country, about the world. And it's so

difficult to tell the difference between the stories we invent and objective reality. And when I came to my first meditation, which we passed on, which we read 18 years ago, I was doing a PhD in Oxford, and I thought was a very smart person, and that I know myself very well, and I'm in control of my life. And the teacher gave us the first few days,

the practice is very, very simple, in a way. Just observe your breath. Just observe when the breath is coming in, be aware. When it's coming in, you know it's coming in. When it's going out, you just know it's going out. You don't need to do anything. Not a breathing exercise, you don't need to control the breath. You just know it's coming in. It sounds like the

simplest thing in the world. And I was absolutely shocked that I couldn't do it for more than 10 seconds. Like I would try to just know it's coming in or out. And within like five seconds, the mind would run away to some memory, some fantasy. Oh, I forgot. I needed to do this. I needed to do that and whatever. And it was the most shocking realization

of my life. And also the transformative. Yeah, very, very transformative. And from then on, both in my private life and also in my work, I try to just stick with this very simple exercise. Just try to see what is really happening right now. One of the fundamental things that I wanted to do was to try to see what is really happening right now. One of the

fundamental truths that meditation forces us to grapple with is that we are literally of two minds, a thinking mind and in observing or witnessing mind. So imagine a literal split between one part of ourselves that is constantly thinking and acting in a certain way. And another part of the mind in which we are simply observing ourselves thinking and acting. And it's this very active observation that

when engaged, allows us to benefit from a non-judgmental aspect of our own mind, rewarding us with clarity over condemnation, objectivity over obfuscation, and witnessing over withholding. But we live in the thinking mind more often than not. We are neurologically set by default to a constant stream of automatic reactions based on prior experiences. This thinking mind is constantly analyzing things, trying to make sense of the world

around us. And to some extent, it needs to do that for our survival. But when it overrides the witnessing mind, it can cause us to drift into completely fabricated versions of what is happening within us, or to us propelling us into anxiety, stress, and even depression. All of this is brought to light in our next clip by Charlie Knowles, a visionary, Vedic meditation master and highly

regarded teacher of meditation. Charlie has developed a unique expertise in distilling seemingly elusive and arcane Vedic traditions down to their essence, expressing some of the deepest concepts from spirituality and science in simple, practical steps that are effective aids in finding inner peace and happiness. This excerpt of my conversation with Charlie is from a very early recording in the history of this podcast, episode 43. And my

wife, Julie, makes an appearance. You'll hear her share her perspective. Julie was then and is today a much more advanced practitioner of meditation than I am. And the conversation is all the better for having her experience. Enjoy. There's an interesting thing that, you know, when I teach people to meditate, you know, that the stages people go through. Usually, for most people, they don't get it the

first time, you know, that it takes a few days for them to really kind of sink into the experience and find the joy of the world. And it's a joy in it. But once they do, it's revelatory to it. I mean, they have this moment where they begin to go beyond the more surface level of their mind, the quieter levels of consciousness. They find their thoughts

begin to get quiet and disappear. And they experience a more expansive aspect of their own consciousness. And almost every time that happens, people will say, you know, what I have experienced this before. I had this one I was a little kid. It's always when they're a little kid to it. Like when I was 10 or when I was 12, I just had this spontaneously happened to

me where I felt like I was really connected to nature. And my mind was really open. I felt this waves of bliss and joy, coursing through my body. And I didn't really know what was happening. I just kind of went with it and felt really like my mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And it just happened by itself. And what that's convinced me

is that the meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there. And that's the key for me. The role that I play is reminding people, you know what there actually is a technique or a set of techniques that you can use to just turn that switch in your brain and make that thing happen. That thing that should be spontaneous,

that perhaps once was spontaneous for you to experience. One of the things that I've talked about before in the podcast that I'd love to hear you kind of expound on a little bit more is this idea that we all walk around thinking that we are our mind and we are our thoughts and not really kind of understanding or really embracing this idea that our thinking mind

and our higher state of consciousness are two different things. And it seems weird and like hard to wrap your brain around that. But a perfect example is and I'm sure everybody has had this where you observe yourself doing something or thinking a certain thing and you have kind of an outsider's perspective on it. Why am I saying this to this person and feeling this right now?

So there's this divide, right? This dichotomy between one part of you that is acting and thinking a certain way and another part of you that is observing that or placing a judgment on that or entertaining a different way of handling something. Yeah. And a lot of meditation traditions that's referred to as the silent witness or witnessing experience where you can sort of stand back and observe

your life going on and not feel as overwhelmed by all of the conditions that normally suck you into it. The unfortunate thing is that they're going to learn, oh, that's not who you are actually. That deeper level of you is not who you are. You're actually now you're going to go to a school and you're a person who went to this school and you're going to

get a job and you're going to be a person who does this job. And you identify yourself over time more and more with, you know, if you ask someone who are you? Oh, you know, I came from Pensacola and I'm a plumber and you know, I went to this university and you know, this is who I'm married to and so on. And there's a deeper level

of yourself. Well, that stuff's fine by those not like any of that's bad. It's just that there's a deeper level of you that people are, I don't really know how to explore that or really know what that deeper aspect of themselves is beyond all of those surface levels of identity. And that's really what meditation is. It's learning to discover this sort of more boundless aspect of

your consciousness and your identity where you can, you can just feel and you can rather than saying, you know, I am, you know, this job and this place and this school and so on. Just I am, you know, I'm here. Right. I'm, I'm present and it's a perfect. It's perfect stillness and perfect dynamism at the same time. The lovely experience is difficult to put into words

actually because it's one of those things that kind of goes beyond the language a little bit, but everyone who's had it can, you know, they can also, oh yeah, I am. Yeah, that thing. Yeah, I got that completely much easier to teach someone to how to actually do it than to explain it. Right. That's also another one of the big myths about meditation is that when

you do it, you're going to become this, you know, sort of, you're going to lose yourself. But I've never seen that people who meditate all the time, they become more of who they are. You know, you lose that layer of anxiety and stress. People identify with their stress, you know, especially in New York speaking, New York people give people all the time or say, you know,

there's like, I'm an anxious New Yorker. And I was like, God, that's a strange self identity to have. You know, people get people identify like I'm an angry person, you know, I'm an anxious person. I can't sleep at night. And they have all these ideas about who they are. Once you lose all of that, you find out who you really are. You know, and it's some

it's a lot more liberating to have have have your sense of self based on inner happiness and bliss. And you know, when I speak about these kind of more far out, experiences that will happen every now and then. You know, it's not something that like happens every time I meditate or in time someone meditates, but every now and again, they'll happen. And that should be normal

as well. We should be able to talk about that and be able to say, you know, that there's, there's a way that you can understand these things. If there's one sort of consistent theme with this podcast, it's really about bringing a diversity of people to the listener to empower them to create greater self empowerment over your life. Right. And there really isn't anything more powerful than

developing a mastery over your conscious self. If you can master that or at least take steps towards that mastery, then the kingdom is yours. I mean, really. And if you're, you know, if you're stuck in life, if you don't like your job, if you're not sure, you know, who you are, how you want to express yourself. If you, you know, are feeling aimless or misguided or,

you know, unanchored. Honestly, like, you know, the greatest gift you could give to your self is to begin some form of meditation practice with a technique that resonates with you. Exactly. And you will develop a greater connection with who you are, who you're meant to be. At a very minimum, you'll, you'll be more expressive in your creativity. You'll feel more grounded in who you are, more

comfortable in yourself, more self assured. I mean, there's really no limit. Yeah, that's absolutely true. There's a lot of books and starting a self help books that'll tell you things like that. Like get beyond your story. I could read about it. It's not going to work. Okay. Um, how, you know, and, and, you know, or, you know, they'll say things like, you know, experience yourself as

being universal. It's like, well, I'm here in a room. I'm going to be eating a sandwich. So how, you know, and, and that's really what the meditative process is, is, is direct experience rather than philosophy. Like I don't. I've spent very little time when I'm teaching, trying to convince people that, oh, yeah, this is what you're going to have. In fact, I prefer. To give them

this technique and not say too much about it, let them come back to me and say, wow, I just kind of have this moment where I went beyond everything. Like, yep, that's an expected result, you know, and, and, and have them be the one that tells me about it. And then confirm because it's, it's, it's really cool to see that spontaneously happen in every kind of

person to people come with all these different things and say, you know, I, every single person who comes when they come to like an introductory talk or something like that. Like, I, I can't do this. There's no way that I, I'm unique. I'm the one person who's too stressed, who's too type A, who's too, you know, to, to, to my mind is too busy. I won't

be able to do it. Everyone else can. And then recovery, they call that terminally, terminally exceptional. Right. That's a good job. And, you know, it's just like every single, and then the next person comes and says the exact same story. You know, it's, it's like, no, you're just a human being. Yeah, you're a human being. You're plumbing is pretty much the same. We've all got the

same stuff inside our heads, you know, and so we're all raised in a similar culture too. You know, it's, we all have the same background assumptions. And so it's really fun to say like this, these techniques that just work. Right. You know. The lineage of meditation teachings is ancient. This is wisdom that has been passed down over generations from teacher to student. The lineage of meditation

masters is long. It's illustrious. And the ancient wisdom of the practice finds relevance in today's world. As much as it did in times of distant past. That relevance is broken down in our next clip with Andy Puttacone, a former Buddhist monk and co-founder of the wildly successful meditation app, Headspace. And one of the objectives that Andy and his co-founder, Rich Pearson, set out to achieve with

Headspace was how to make meditation more accessible to the general public. In our culture, meditation has a reputation for being mystical and esoteric. But what if modern presenters could shift the narrative away from the mystical and toward the practical? What if there is an unequivocal neurological benefit achieved with meditation that has been extensively studied and vastly reported on over the past several decades? And what if

those benefits weren't for the few, but for the masses? What meditation does for the brain is better understood today than it ever was. And those benefits are numerous. Specifically, the science of neuroplasticity, which has exploded over the last two decades. This idea that we can literally rewire new synaptic connections, create expanded pathways, and grow our brains has emerged as a scientific and cultural focal point. And

meditation in particular has been definitively shown to be a highly effective tool in reshaping the brain. We now have significant evidence of the efficacy of meditation as both treatment and preventative care across a broad spectrum of maladies. For more on this, here is the uniquely authoritative Andy Puttacone. The first thing I'd say is authenticity. I'm a big believer in lineage and tradition. It doesn't matter whether

it's meditation or if it's in learnings play the piano or surfing, whatever it is. If something gets passed down in a very personal way over nevermind decades, but if we start to talk about hundreds of years or even millennia, something really is like a refinement and development that takes place, which is really powerful, I think. So I learned from my teacher, who learned from their teacher,

and that goes back a long, long way. And I think a big part of this is a very kind of gradual approach. When you come to the come to the app, you learn a day and you come back the next day and you're building on the day before. So it's this step by step learning kind of process. I think that something that I've learned from the

past, I think, is really powerful. Something very valuable in that. In the past, back in the 80s, you buy a meditation CD or something, and you just sit there and listen to the same thing every day. So there's no real kind of development of the practice. It's quite kind of static, in a way. So I think that's one thing. I think what rich, the co-founder and

my very good friend has bought to this project is a degree of creativity, which has never really existed. If you look back at meditation, it's fine for people who are interested in that kind of thing. It's not mind images of lotus leaves and people sitting cross-legged under a waterfall with a sunset in the background. But for most people, that's not really kind of their thing. And

it's another barrier. Rich has this ability to create a whole kind of world, a visual world, which is immediately engaging, which is non-threatening, and which is very approachable. So I think those things, authenticity, creativity, and I'm going to add in a third one, which is science, have all helped. So I think it's a very approach that gap. So if you look at the science in the

last 20 years, around meditation and mindfulness, it's astonishing. In the past, there was simply no way of knowing what was happening to the brain. So now we're not only talking about what happens to the mind, but we're talking about the physiological impact on the brain itself. And seeing the parts of the brain actually change, not only in the amount of blood flow they get, but they

change in shape, and size, and strength, depending on our meditation. That's an amazing thing. It's a really compelling, again, invitation to practice, I think. Right. I mean, it's really having a moment right now. There is a zeitgeist moment happening. I mean, you've devoted your life to this. This is a long time coming, but it's really a convergence of popular culture with your interest in your expertise

and your authenticity to get to this place where now science is interested. And we're looking at neuroplasticity. And I think I'd read or heard you say that mentioned that there's maybe three to 5,000 peer reviewed studies, so 5,000 impact of meditation. Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. It's huge that many studies out there. It's happened so quickly. Now, I mean, the early studies kind of go back

maybe 35 years, but really sort of the ones involving FMRI machines where they can actually see what's going on in the brain during meditation. It's only in the last 12, 15 years. So it's really kind of recent. But I do think that that's sped up kind of this acceptance of it. Yeah, well, it makes it palatable. Like, oh, well, if that guy says so or, you

know, or, you know, and even in the corporate partnerships that you guys are, you know, have done with version Atlantic, it sort of gives it this imprimatur of acceptability with the mainstream that allows people to, you know, sort of embrace it a little more readily, I think. I think it just gives you that stamp of approval and people trust big brands like Virgin and they get

on the plane and Virgin is saying it's okay. I'll give it a go. Right. Right. Right. Well, let's talk about the science and the benefits. Right. Let's talk about neuroplasticity. Let's talk about focus. All of these things. I mean, let's, let's assume that that, you know, I'm a listener. I'm listening to this. This is my first introduction to meditate. I mean, of course, I've heard of

meditation, but, you know, I'm not convinced that this is something that I really need to spend any time on. Yeah. So, number one, I would say I never tell anyone they should meditate. I would just say from a scientific point of view. Look, there are these research studies that have been done. And in these research studies, there have been many, many benefits that have been discovered.

I would, I would recommend that you have a look at those. If you're inspired to try, give it a go. Like, base it on, don't do it because someone else tells you, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. It tells you to do it. Do it because you feel motivated to do it and then continue to do it because you recognize the

benefit yourself. In terms of the medicine internally, they're not obviously with us in the recording studio today. I would always defer. We have a chief medical officer, Dr David Cox, and we also have a neuroscientist Claudia. And both of them are far more adept in talking about this stuff. But as you mentioned earlier, there are over 5,000 papers peer reviewed published studies. Showing that meditation, mindfulness

can help us with everything from reducing anxiety, reducing depression and the relapse of depression, decreasing the incidence of insomnia, improving heart health, decreasing our cholesterol levels. All the way through to, I mean, this sort of stuff, chronic pain, there's increasing levels of empathy. And sometimes you look at like the spread of this. And it's like, you know, how is this even possible? How can one thing

like have this impact on so many different things? And I think we just underestimate the power of the mind, the body and mind aren't separate. We know when we get stressed in the mind that we feel it, we experience it in the body. We know when we're really relaxed and happy, we feel that in the body. So it's maybe not such a surprise that we see

these kind of benefits arising. Well, look at the amount of time, energy and money spent on sort of taking care of the body. We know we're not taking care of other things that are less important. Whether it's like shampoo for your hair, brushing your teeth, pay for yourself. Yeah. Right. Right. You know, what do we do to tend to our mental health? Well, we, oh, I

guess when we get home, we pour ourselves a cocktail and we watch dancing with the stars. And that's our way of relaxing. Yeah. Watch a football game or something like that. And that's not tending to, you know, that's not doing sort of mental push-ups. Not at all. And this is, you know, there's different ways. Some people, it's interesting when I look at, you know, we work

with professional sports people and sports teams and corporations. And for them, it's more about focus productivity. And for them, it is about, it's like training the mind. Don't you say it's almost mental push-ups for a very specific purpose. Exactly. Right. And then I think for, I actually believe for a bigger demographic, it's more like, you know, how can I sleep better at night? How can I

feel a little less stressed? How can I have better relationships with those around me? And those things, they're huge. Make even a small shift in one of those areas in life. And that is a life that's transformed right away. Mm-hmm. I would love to see a shift. I'd love to see a shift in terms of prevention. So I think far too often in our society, we

wait until something happens until trying to kind of fix it. And that's what the medication kind of thing is, you know, there's already a problem. And I think that's what the medication is. If we can get into a pattern in society, whether it's ourselves, the next generation, preferably both, where we're taking preventative care of the mind, where we're actually carving out prioritizing, where it's 10, 15

minutes in a day, whatever it might be, to look after, to clean the mind each day, we don't even need to get to the point where we have to decide whether to medicate or not. Like, that's, I think, the potential. Mm-hmm. That's beautifully put. And to me, that's the future of medicine, you know, medicine, preventive medicine, you know, in the physical realm as well. And it's

no coincidence, you know, we have, we have 54 research studies on the table right now, 34-year-old emotion. And these are all reverse engineered. So these are hospitals, clinics, universities coming to us and saying, we believe that mindfulness or meditation can be a meaningful intervention with these types of symptoms. Can we test it? And we're seeing time and time again. It makes a difference. And the more

the medical community embraced that, the more I think we'll see it move from. Right now, it's being seen more of a treatment, management treatment. But I think over time it will move from treatment to management to prevention. Mm-hmm. You know, so often words, like, freedom and liberation are used around meditation. I, I, I, sometimes, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, and I and I that we, that

we and I don't know what you could see. But when you feel a sense of freedom, it's called rebirth, it's called rebirth, it's called rebirth, it's called rebirth, it as a reward for comfort from taking aunqueke eat and dying- arrives. I didn't know what it looks like, there's no need for better sure what it looks like. We could get rid of all of it if it

had nothing to do with when we eat it with just roots. But there's no need for any when we discover that sense of freedom, I just think, yeah, life is life is changed. There is an opportunity for transformation right there because there is nobody who cannot meditate. And what excites me about it is that person hasn't yet found or hasn't yet been shown the way to

approach it in such a way that they get to experience what they think it might be. And so it's it's helping them find that approach, you know, because thoughts and thoughts, you know, that underlying sense of stillness and calm is always with us. It's not unique to one individual. Some people find it easier to let go of thoughts and experience that calm. But everybody has the

potential to do it. Some people experience it the moment they first sit down. For others, it can take a number of days, for others, it can take a number of weeks. But helping people understand that it's not about switching off thoughts. It's not about clearing the mind. If that's the way you approach meditation, then of course you're going to feel terrible about it, because it is

the nature of the mind to think. So if we can kind of flip down its head and say, okay, instead meditation is actually about how can we learn to step back out of the out of the traffic, out of the stream of thought and simply be present. Then it doesn't matter actually if we can really feel confident and comfortable that doesn't matter. If the mind is

busy, whether it's quiet, so you have the busiest mind in the world, and you're okay with it. My teacher kind of used to sum up like this. He used to say there is no such thing as good or bad meditation. There is only awareness or non-awareness. And that's it. You can't fail. I love that. We're brought to you today by Inside Tracker. No two bodies are

the same. Well, general principles can guide all of us on some level. I think it's fair to say we're all kind of n of one experiments. There is no one size fits all plan when it comes to optimizing your unique biology. We all have our own unique needs, our own unique challenges, which is why the value proposition of inside tracker is so unique and so compelling.

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from your body to deliver through this highly intuitive interface ultra personalized guidance with actionable recommendations. Basically a custom wellness plan to help you get a better life. I hope you live healthier longer. And right now for a limited time, all you guys, my listeners, can get 20% off the entire Inside Tracker store when you sign up at InsideTracker.com slash Rich Roll. You'll get a personalized health

analysis and a custom plan to improve your health spend, build strength, speed recovery, and optimize your health for the long haul. Grab your discount at InsideTracker.com slash Rich Roll. That's InsideTracker.com. slash Rich Roll. As we've discussed, the surface of the mind is a chaotic rhapsody of ceaseless thoughts. It's perpetual nature has us often looping, unhelpful, or even hurtful thinking that distracts us from the present and

creates an alternate reality for us to engage in. But beneath the turbulent surface is a transcendent stillness of the mind that is, a wellspring of peacefulness and once accessed, it recalibrates us to a more effulgent center of our being. This is the foundation for the practice of TM or transcendental meditation, which recognizes a vertical dimension to our mind and looks to give us access to the

more deeply felt and understood nature within us that is beyond thinking or focus. TM's original teacher was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And his core fidelity is the chanting of a mantra, the repetition of a single word or simple phrase. Maharishi was originally a physicist who, well, still young, shifted his professional focus from science to that of serving his spiritual masters. After years of dedicated study, Maharishi perfected

his meditation methodology and announced to the world that he would teach and help popularize a type of meditation that could benefit every one. Over the preceding decades, TM has become a globally popular style of meditation. And in my next excerpt, you will hear me speak with one of TM's most popular Western teachers, Bob Roth. Roth is the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation and a director

for the Center of Leadership Performance. Over the past 50 years, Roth has been dedicated to teaching a wide spectrum of students from disadvantaged inner city kids to military veterans to trauma victims. A transcendental meditation practice consisting of two 20-minute sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, orientates us toward an inward direction without the application of effort. It is essentially an intervention

oriented around the implementation of self-care to expound further here is Bob Roth. So perhaps this would be a good moment to just define transcendental meditation in the context of that and what it is about that practice that allows you to enter that self-transcendent state. So I like to use an example of an ocean where you're stuck, you're on a little boat and you're stuck on the

middle of the Pacific Ocean and you get these humongous waves, 30, 40-foot high waves and you could think the whole ocean is enough people. But if you could do a cross section of the ocean out there, you'd realize you got these little 80-bit-e-30-foot waves. But that's not what I'm talking about. The ocean in reality is over a mile deep. And while the surface of the ocean

may be turbulent, the depth of the ocean is by its nature silent. And that's analogous to the mind. So the surface of the mind is this active thinking mind, got it, got it, got a monkey mind, all that. And every human being thinks that sometimes I like to have some inner calm, some inner quiet, some inner ease, some inner silence, some inner focus, and the operative

word there is inner. And the question is, is there such a thing as an inner and if so, how do you get there? So when we talk about transcendental meditation, as I said a moment ago, we hypothesize, because there's no belief, there's no philosophy here, the deep within you and your wife and every other person you know in everyone in the world, right now there's a

level of the mind deep within a transcendent level of the mind that is already calm, quiet, peaceful, and yet the source of our creativity, intelligence, happiness. And transcendental meditation gives effortless access to that. How should I answer that? Yeah, how? Because I'm thinking when you're describing the other, the other methodology of kind of noticing your thoughts and being the dispassionate neutral observer of the meanderings of

the mind, that probably best describes my experience. So what are we doing? So in that, in that it's a cognitive process. It's it's attending and adjusting to you could say the waves. So the focus detention is stop the wave. The ideas that thoughts are on the surface, you're on the surface. And the same with this, when you're stepping back and observing the thoughts or you're still

on the surface. In transcendental meditation, we recognize or we identify that there's a vertical dimension to the mind that we feel things deeply. You love your wife deeply. You don't want to do something profoundly. There's that there's that feeling of of a sign in athlete. You're an athlete. There must be moments of this zone that goes way beyond what's up here. And there's just this pervasive

silence. And so that quiet calm that we access in during meditation, transcendental meditation. And I'll tell you how we do that effort. Please do. So other approaches to meditation. See thoughts or the wandering mind as not the enemy, but sort of the the obstacle to a calm mind. So if you could control the mind. So it's a monkey mind. It's just wanders and you've got to

reign it in or you've got to give more space between thoughts or and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was a physicist, who became a great meditation teacher. His insight was the mind is not wandering aimlessly. Your mind is not just a monkey mind. Your mind is in search of something more satisfying. You sit in a room and you listen to some wretched music. And some beautiful music

comes on in the other room. Your attention is drawn to that music. You bring two books on vacation and one book is terrible and you can't read it. Another book is great, absorbed in it for hours. It is not. People say, well, it's an acquired skill to meditate to do this mindfulness. It's not an acquired skill to listen to the most beautiful music you've heard in

your life. It's not an acquired skill to see the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen in your life. You're drawn to that. And the idea or the hypothesis again, I use that term. Is it? The insight of everyone in that transcendent level of the mind is a field of satisfaction, quiet, bliss, peace, happiness. All the people have talked about it forever. In transcendental meditation, you learn

how to give the attention. I know this is abstract, but you learn how to give the attention of the mind in inward direction. Like you want to teach a child how to dive. You say, honey, stand like this, bend over like that. Rest is automatic. There's no forcing gravity takes over. So when you learn TM from a teacher, you learn how to just allow the attention

of your mind to be drawn inward. And without any effort, as a matter of fact, any effort stops the process. Without any effort, your mind is just gently settles down. And when that happens, then you have alpha-1 brain waves completely different than mindfulness. And I want to talk a little bit more of that, some of the other brain research. Your body gains a steep state of

rest. Cortisol levels are reduced and you feel rejuvenated. Do I think that there's a role for other, do I think TM is the only way? Of course not. As somebody whose life has been transformed by the 12 steps of which meditation is one, my perspective as a member of that community is that that step, which involves meditation, kind of gets the, it kind of doesn't get

the attention that it deserves. It's part of it, but the meditation, there isn't really any kind of focus on what to do. Yeah, exactly. So they do it for 60 seconds. No one tells them how to do it. And so it doesn't really stick. And so it doesn't really become an integral practice in that recovery equation for most people. You wouldn't just, if you had a

hippy, hippy stuff. There's some cheap stuff, but there's also some substantive stuff. And learn from a teacher who knows what she or he is doing. You know, you have a certified teacher, one of the big problems that I have a lot of friends in the mindfulness field and Sharon Salzburg was telling me that she said, problem with mindfulness. Now they lost their brand. Anybody can say

they're doing whatever. And so science doesn't know what it is. If you do a mindfulness program in a school and spoke hand, what is it? What are you doing in St. Petersburg? Yeah, there's no control. Whereas with TM, it's specific. It's absolutely precise. And the training program is high level of certification. Right. And it involves doing 20 minutes of this practice twice a day. Yes. Actually,

once in the morning for 20 minutes, you get up 20 minutes earlier. People say, I'm not going to give up my time, my sleep. You say, no, no, it's better than sleep. It's deeper than sleep. And then sometime in the afternoon or early evening before dinner. So the morning, is like rejuvenating. And you have a high level of energy that takes you sustained. So you don't

need multiple cups of coffee and that sort of thing. And makes you more resilient. And then you do it at the end of the day to sort of wash off the stresses of the day, whatever you've picked up. And be more present with your partner with what you're doing in the evening and sleep much better at night. So traditionally, for thousands of years, used to be

done at dawn and dust, but it was first thing morning and afternoon. Do you ever miss? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, I try not to. I don't know. So you're human. Most people say, I don't have time or I don't know how I'm going to make the time, but like myself, like a good alcoholic, I'm like, well, more must be better. Right. When I was

talking to Dan Harris, he told me that he's experimenting right now with meditating two hours a day. Yeah. Because he wants to just see, you know, like he wants to like, he wants to teach him to you. Yeah, I would imagine that he would just to see like what that, what would happen if he does that. It must be interesting for his wife. Yeah. I was

actually talking to this business man in New York who was with his 12 year old son. And they were sent by his wife was meditating. And I think who wife took this son alongside and gave him some tips on what to say. So all, the husband was saying, you know, I like to learn how to do it. I don't think I can do it because my

mind is so busy, but I don't have the time. I just don't have the time, 20 minutes called. I said I don't know the time. So the kid said, dad, there's 12,000 of 440 minutes in a day. You don't have 40 minutes. And then this is where the mom came in for self care. So, and the fact is, it has to be a priority. The trajectory

that we are all on as a society, as a culture, as individuals, is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. We're falling apart. And so this is an intervention. This is my own intervention. I'm going to take 20 minutes from my morning, find it, get up earlier. I'm going to take 20 minutes in the afternoon for myself. And then the rest of the world will adjust. And

the nice thing about this is so many people who come say, I could never close my eyes for two minutes, much less 20. And because this meditation is so enjoyable, the experience is so satisfying. 20 minutes flies by. Just flies by. And if people say, well, I do mindfulness or I do Vipassana, I say, we have to stop siloing. Oh, I do this. And therefore I

don't do that. There's many tools in a toolbox. And these three different approaches, focused attention, open monitoring, mindfulness, and transcending. They have different outcomes. They have different purposes. You don't say, well, I'm, I eat protein, so I don't eat leafy greens. Right. It's like, you as a balanced life. Liberation from the thoughts and feelings that perpetually infiltrate our mind requires us to deal with them directly.

Failing to do so will most likely lead to anger, to anxiety, to frustration. And while we may not always be responsible for the feelings that well up within us, we can certainly hold ourselves accountable for how we deal with those negative emotions. To help illustrate the effectiveness of that accountability, I turn to the New York Times bestselling author, Dan Harris. Dan is a former award-winning television

journalist for ABC News, a nightline host, and a former co-host of the Weekend Edition of Good Morning. He is also the author of the book, 10% Happier, and host of the podcast of the same name. With over 20 years of experience in the field, Dan has reported on some of the most significant events of our time from wars and conflicts to presidential elections and natural disasters.

But despite his professional success, Dan has suffered from chronic anxiety and panic attacks which led him to explore the world of meditation and mindfulness. He is now a dedicated practitioner and advocate for the mental and physical benefits of mindfulness, including how it allows us to delve more deeply into the fundamental mystery of our own existence. In episodes 97 and 346, I sat with Dan to capture

the essence of the beginner's mind, the simplicity of starting and the cultivation of a practice that deflects all excuses. Dan disabuses the mind. He tells us of the notion that meditation is an elitist skill and shares his insights into the relationship between meditation and happiness. These excerpts reinforce the concept that the ability to meditate is common and the rewards extremely valuable, making us healthier and happier,

even if only by 10%. I've heard Sam Harris, your friend, talk about the kind of half-life of negative emotions. Sam is a valued friend of mine and he has said many brilliant things that I steal. That is one of them. He talks about one of the benefits of meditation, having to do with the half-life of anger, that we still are going to experience difficult emotions, unless

you're enlightened. If you even believe in that, I don't know if I believe in it. I don't know. You've got to write this other book. Yeah, I'm going to write this other book. The pursuit of enlightenment. Yes. We are still going to experience negative emotions. The mystery of consciousness is we don't know where our thoughts and feelings come from. They come out of a void. You

can't, which is liberating to know, because there's no point holding yourself responsible. We have a feeling in patients with our child, in patients with our spouse, whatever. And we tend to get into these knots of self-laceration around. I'm this kind of person as a consequence of having just had this feeling. We didn't invite the feeling. We came out of a void. We don't know where it

came from. You can't hold yourself responsible for what you feel, but you can hold yourself responsible for how you deal with it. And so when anger ambushes you, for me, I deal with a lot of anger. If I can see it, if I have an intermedeorologist that can tell me when the storm is growing, is about to hit landfall, make landfall, then I may either let

it pass and not be taken over by it, or I may get a few miles down the road with it. I've been doing a couple of minutes of doing something stupid, but then I catch myself. The amount of damage, as Sam says, that you can do in two minutes of anger, as opposed to an hour of anger, is incalculable. And that is the fruit of meditation.

To me, it's like interrogating the mystery a little bit. If you can do this little exercise, which is a Buddhist exercise, that's about an exercise. Close your eyes and hear whatever sounds were there. My voice, maybe a little tape hiss, whatever. And then ask yourself, what is hearing this? And you won't find it. But in the not finding, as the Buddhists say, there is this kind

of liberation. Because you're seeing the mystery, the fundamental mystery of your own identity and of our existence. And that can disidentify, disentangle you from all of the world. All the suffering that we're creating of just being so entangled with our thoughts and our stories and all that stuff. It's not magic and it's not permanent, unless again, you're enlightened. But it can in just moment after moment,

there's this theory and meditation circles of short moments many times. That if you just kind of are touching this mystery over and over and over again, it has the net effect of making you lighter. And pushing you closer toward enlightenment, whether you believe that's a thing or not. As beautiful as that sentiment is, the prospect of really confronting that in yourself is terrifying. Because we're sort

of raised and taught to identify with these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are. I am this, I am Dan. I am a journalist. I am Rich. I am whatever. Right. And we craft these narratives around identity that we dilute ourselves are real. And so to kind of engage with what you were just talking about is to kind of dismantle that. Yeah, but in

a certain way. Yeah, that's right. But there are two way, the Buddhists talk about this in a way that actually is comforting, which is to, there are kind of two levels to life, two levels to reality. There's the relative truth. You know, you still are rich. You know, on the day to day basis, you know, even if rich doesn't exist on some deep level, you still

use left with your pants on in the morning. And you still need your podcast equipment, if you want to do a podcast. And that is just the truth on a sort of relative on one on the on the level in which most of us operate on which most of us operate most of the time. But there is a deeper truth, which they often call ultimate truth,

which is kind of, it can be roughly, um, analogized to quantum physics. So like this table that you and I are doing an interview on is a table. But at the deepest level, it's a much of spinning atoms and empty space. And so the same is true with the self. And so you don't need to get, you know, maybe get too wrapped up in this. It's

just, it's a, it's a useful thing to think of in so much as it can help you not get so wrapped up in your own. So what was it that, I mean, you, so you're reading Epstein, you're reading about the Buddhism and the Buddha. But what was that first experience of saying, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to try that. Like walk me

through like day one. Okay. So it was kind of a cumulative thing where I realized, okay, one meditation does not require lighting incense sitting in a funny position. Chanting things in Sanskrit or Georgia. So I'm going to try that. Okay. So it was kind of a cumulative thing where I realized, okay, one meditation does not require lighting incense sitting in a funny position. Chanting things in

Sanskrit or Georgia. So it's not only learning a group or paying fees that it's actually very, you know, it's a simple thing to do. You know, the mindfulness meditation, the kind of meditation that's really been studied the most in labs basically involves trying to watch the feeling of your breath coming in and going out and every time your mind wanders, which it will a million times,

you just forgive yourself and return your attention to your breath. So it's very, very simple. So when I learned that it was, that was one piece of the buy when I learned that there was a science that showed that it can help with everything from blood pressure to your immune system. So I'm going to do re-wiring key parts of your brain that have to do with

compassion and well-being and happiness and stress. That was another thing. Well, let's just leave it there. When I learned those two things, I, I, over time my resistance broke down. And I was on vacation in the summer of 2009 right after I got married as a matter of fact. And I was reading a book by the pool at a house that we were renting with some

friends. Like, fuck it. Let's just do it. I can't say fuck. You say whatever you want. So I, I put the book down and I went to our room, I sneaked off to our, my room, that I share my wife and locked the door and just did it. Did it for five minutes. I sat in alarm on my blackberry and did it for five minutes. And

it sucked. You know, it was like, it's really hard. But I realized in that moment that he was kind of a ballerass activity. Like it's really hard to wrestle your mind to the ground. And just like you find running triathlons to be a huge challenge that requires grit to be compelling because the challenge in and of itself is interesting. And it pushes you further than you

beyond your comfort zone and tests you and also has beneficial effects. I realized this is the same thing. This is the same thing. And it actually has potentially the effects are potentially even much more preferable. So I just decided, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go for it. And I'm going to do it five minutes a day in perpetuity. See what

happens. And you weren't other than the two principles that you related. There was no dogma around this or kind of super complicated strategy of how you're doing it. Because I think people get really caught up. And well, I don't know how to do it. You know, it's like, I don't understand how this works. And I think that that acts as a barrier or an impediment to

just, you know, beginning. Yes. So my whole life is this whole game now is I'm trying to remove every single excuse you have. So the one excuse is that people say, I don't know how to do it, which is actually the worst lamest excuse because you can Google how to meditate. And it's like, I can, I explained it once to the tech reporter from the New

York Times in fewer characters than it takes to send a tweet. So it's really simple. Like step one, sit down, close your eyes, keep your spine straight. So you don't fall asleep. Step two, try to feel where your breath is coming in. Usually it's really easy. So I'm going to say, I'm going to go for it. A million times. A million times you just catch your

mind wandering and start again, and start again. And don't get pissed at yourself because that's happening. You may not be able to help it. You may actually get pissed at yourself, but just notice. I'm getting pissed at myself and then start again. And that's cool. And over time what you learn is these waves of anger or self-judgment or an itch on your knee or pain on

your back or whatever. These are actually just passing phenomena that you can view non-judgmentally and dispassionally and objectively. Kind of like journalists are supposed to view the news. And that is the aforementioned superpower, which is that in the rest of your life, quote unquote, off the cushion when you're not meditating and you're overtaken by anger or annoyance or impatience. Some percentage of the time you'll be

able to resist. You'll be able to say, oh, I see what's going on here. I'm starting to get angry, but I don't need to take the bait. And the bait is when we do the things that we regret most in our life when we eat when we're not hungry, when we lose our temper with our loved ones, when we ignore our kids. When they're trying to

talk to us because we're checking our blackberry, all the shit that where we are most ashamed of is because we're getting yanked around by this voice in the head. This is the kryptonite. And I'm sorry. I go. It's a massive pain. Yes. I'm not going to lie to you. So I'm not saying like you're going to, A, I'm not saying you're going to sit down and

meditate. And it's going to be super sweet and fun. B, I'm not saying that it's going to turn your life into a non-stop parade of rainbows and unicorns. This is why I called the book 10% happier. It's a hard thing to do and it will have benefits in your life, but it's not going to solve all of your problems. In acknowledgment that existence includes an element

of suffering is a well-renowned tenant of the teachings of the Buddha. And an outgrowth of those teachings is the Pasuna method of meditation. A practice of observing your thoughts and emotions as they are without judging or dwelling on them. The form of insight meditation aims to penetrate through the illusions that we have constructed around ourselves because behind those illusions is pure consciousness. Light, brilliant, and true.

In unadulterated awareness that when achieved is a form of enlightenment. This next excerpt features Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg. Sharon is a world-renowned meditation teacher and New York Times bestselling author who has played a crucial role in bringing meditation and my film as practices to mainstream Western culture since 1974. Salzburg is the author of 11 books including Loving Kindness, Real Change, and Real Love, the Art of

Mindful Connection, which was the focus of this conversation recorded in the spring of 2017. Sharon is also a regular columnist for on being, a contributor to the Huffington Post, and the host of her own podcast The Metta Hour. Salzburg has taught and mentored thousands of people worldwide and is revered for her expertise in Loving Kindness Meditation, a practice that cultivates compassion and empathy. Here Salzburg unpacks

the essence of Loving Kindness Meditation and how it can help us develop a deeper sense of connection with ourselves and with others. She delves into the fundamentals of this practice, highlighting the importance of setting an intention and developing a mindset of warmth and openness. I'll let her explain from our talk from episode 298. The experience that a lot of people have when they begin kind of

an intensive meditation practice for the first time, they think they're all good. And then suddenly they're crying uncontrollably and they have all this rage or whatever. And they're like, I thought this was supposed to make me, I thought I was happy. This is a gimp. You're saying, no, you're exactly where you need to be because you're actually confronting your suffering for the very first time. And

that's part of this process of, you know, acknowledgement and ultimately working through it. I mean, this is a little bit, my story's a little bit in this book. It's much more sensibly in this book faith and many, many people come up to me and say, I had a child to just like yours. I really understand. So it's hardly rare. In the component on Buddhism, which was

most of it, when I heard the Buddhists say they're suffering in Loving Kindness Meditation, it's not just the spiritual life, but this is a natural part of life. It was the most probably the most liberating thing I'd ever heard. Right. To be born as to suffer. To be born as to suffer. And it was finally the thought it's not just me. Because I've been so different

from everybody else all those years. Like, what do you say in French class when you're supposed to say what your father does for a living in French. It's like, I don't know how to say this. And suddenly there was no sense of being excluded. You know, it's not the same thing. I was like, I can't tell you what I said. And then I was like, what

do you say in French class when you were supposed to say what your father does for a living in French? I don't know how to say this. We're all suffering. This is not always, you know, not that life is horrible, but there's always suffering in someone's life somewhere along the line. And that's the truth. And I felt incredibly free just by that statement. And then I

heard about these practices called meditation where you could actually do something about your mind to be happier. And it was like, I looked around Bufle in New York. And at that time, I didn't find anywhere. You know, might have been there. But now it's probably everywhere. But. I just didn't see it. So the school had an independent study program where if you created a project that

they liked, you could go anywhere for a year, theoretically, and then come back. So I created a project. I went to India. Right. So you have this initial meditation retreats. And this is your introduction. I mean, that began as a Vipassana retreat. And it kind of ended with you being introduced to Metta. So maybe describe the difference between those two traditions. Okay. So Vipassana is. It's

just a word in Pali, which is the language of the original Buddhist text. And just means insight to meditation. So. That one particular style of doing meditation has come to be associated with the word. Vipassana, the teacher was S.N. Goenka. And. It was just a kind of mostly mindfulness of the body and body sensations and experiencing everything like emotions and thoughts through those sensations. And that

he, the retreat began with just. Kind of awareness of the breath, which is the practice most people get familiar with first, just resting your attention on the feeling of the breath and bring your attention back when it wanders, which is continuous. And then this awareness of the body. So right at the end, going. A lead metta, M E T T A retreat meditation. And that was

almost like a ceremonial wave of ending the retreat. Metta means loving kindness in Pali. So. That was. And then the moment I heard, oh, there's another style. There's another way of practicing. And that's kind of interesting. It's all about love. It's about filling your being with the sense of love. That's how you start and extending it to all others. And I longed for that. Certainly. And

I looked for that for. And that became your sweet spot. Yeah. Right. And did you were you aware of that at that moment? Like this is going to be my thing. No, I'm because I was so naive or so young. And I didn't know how. I mean, I knew that there was a way of doing it intensively with structure and separate. I didn't know what it

was. And just so we're clear. Like so the Vipassana, you're, you're, it's really focused on the breath. But the actual practice of metta is repetition of a mantra, but not a mantra in the traditional sense. It's sort of like these sayings, right? Where you're admitting loving kindness into the world. Yeah. We consider it like a practice of generosity. So it's offering. You know, instead of. Looking

through you, I look at you and think maybe happy, maybe peaceful or whatever the particular thing is. And the process of really engaging that comes back again to honing your attention. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you kind of lay it out in a book in this four step process that you call rain. Right. Can you walk me through that? So a rain is something that is often

used, especially when a difficult emotion comes up. But you can use it many, many. Ways. So let's say anger comes up in your experience rather than dismissing it or explaining it or hating yourself for it or plotting revenge. You want to just look at the feeling. And this is something that's rare with strong emotion. Usually we get so captivated by the object. Like if you really,

really want something. You think about the thing like I just bought a new car. You know, so it's like what color? You know what? What thing what feature? We very rarely kind of pivot our attention. To look at the feeling itself like, where's it feel like to want something so much? Or where does it feel like to be so angry? Or so frightened? So that first,

that's the first step. It's kind of pivoting. And then we apply this acronym rain. The first is recognize what's happening. Like a zanger. The second is acknowledge it or accept it. You know, don't add on to it. The shame and the distress and the fear and all of that. Just be with it as it is. The third is eyes investigate. You know, look into it. Not

why is it here and what am I going to do about it. But if we really look at a state of anger, we will likely see fear. We will see sadness. We see grief. We likely see helplessness. And we have a much clearer sense of what is actually cooking, you know, below the surface. And we also see it's constantly changing. Look at that. You know, it

has just kind of this nature of arising and passing away. And then we have a lot of anger. And not identification is, you know, you don't have to fall into it. I'm such an angry person. I will be forever. This itself is a passing state. And it's a very different way of being with those kinds of emotions. Do you have like a, a loving kindness practice

that you could kind of share somebody could somebody could walk away from this and start to do sure. I mean, the simplest one is probably choose like two or three phrases. So it's just that or the gift you would like to give to yourself, like, may it be peaceful? May I calm down? Or, but they need to be big enough so you can then use the

same pretty much the same phrases for others. So that's why people use things like maybe happy, maybe peaceful. And just sit quietly for a few moments and make that offering to yourself. And just keep repeating the phrases, your mind will wander everywhere. Don't worry about that. You can let go of the distractions. One by one. It's okay. And just go. And just go back to the

phrases. Don't like count on some, you know, tremendous feeling coming up. And just do it a little bit. Then think of somebody you really care about. Usually someone has helped you. Even if you've never met them, they've inspired you. And offer the phrases to them. Even if the words don't seem perfect, they're like a conduit for that way of connecting. And then just for fun. Have

that person offer the phrases back to you. So that you're in the position of the recipient. Yeah, that's a weird. Weird feeling. That brings up all kinds of weird emotions. It's interesting when you do that. Yeah, so I just gave you a very provocative exercise. That's good. What about like, sometimes I'll develop a resentment against somebody else. And it will monopolize my thinking. And it really

undermines the quality of my day or my week. Right? So, you know, in recovery, they say like pray for that person. Like wish them well. So, I'm sure there's a loving kind as a version of that where you're like wishing well on that person. Because you're the one who's suffering as a result of that resentment, right? And the path to freedom is by, you know, decoupling

yourself from that emotion. Exactly. And I wouldn't neglect, in that case, loving kindness for yourself. I would intermingle it. I just start with yourself and move to that person or do yourself together. May we be happy? May we be peaceful? Because you're right. You know, of course, resentment is such a courage. It's so aggressive, relentless feeling. And it's so obsessive. It's like the amount of time

any of us can spend going through the list of someone's faults. And then we go through it again. And again, and again, and again. And you know, it's very tiring. So what does your practice look like? I practice every day. Different lengths. My goal is to try to do like 40 minutes a day. If not all at once, then in chunks. You know, I try to

practice. And it's not a good thing. In formal times, like walking down the streets of, especially with loving kindness, walking down the streets of New York City, you're sitting on an airplane, silently repeating, maybe happy or male beings be happy, which is quite fun. It's all the way up in New York. And I try to do retreats at least periodically. But it's the, I think it's

the everydayness of it that really saves me. Right. So there's the formal part of the practice. And then there's carrying that into your interactions in the world. Which is a form of practicing of itself, right? Yeah. In any kind of practice, there are pitfalls that can derail the practitioner. And meditation is not immune from these types of stops and starts. One stumbling block can easily erase

early enthusiasm for meditation before it can be helpful. That's why having a meditation teacher can be so vitally important. Just like in sports, there are fundamental mechanics to meditation that can be conveyed from a teacher to student to ensure a successful practice. To educate us further on this teacher student relationship and to share his easy EASY meditation technique is the very popular author and meditation teacher,

Lightwackens. Light is the author of the books Blissmore and Knowing Where to Look, as well as a prolific public speaker and the founder of The Shine, a self-realization event series that was quite active prior to the pandemic. Here is Lightwackens. And that kind of tracks back to, I mean, the root of that really is that these traditions, if you want to differentiate them, are really rooted

in the importance of the teacher student relationship, which I think really distinguishes this tradition or these traditions from, other forms of meditation that are a little bit looser about that restriction or that requirement. It's like this, this reverence for how important that is. And in your own experience, clearly this was an important thing. Like you'd been exposed to meditation, you know, for a number of years

until you actually had formal instruction with the teacher. And that was really the defining thing that changed your life experience. Yeah, that's right. I think one of the ways that we talk about it is that, you know, there are obviously going to be some obstacles and some pitfalls in anyone's meditation trajectory. And being a teacher and having been through that path, you kind of know where

those pitfalls are going to be, what the phases are, what the cycles are. And you can help help someone maintain a level of self-sufficiency in their own practice. So that it can continue to be mobile and accessible, no matter where someone is, no matter what's around them. They can still sit down and drop into this, this meditative state as often as they choose to. So having

a teacher is really one of the more invaluable aspects of this particular approach to meditation. But like I said, it's, you know, it's just one approach. All the approaches of meditation are definitely taking the practitioner in the same direction, which is towards accessing their true self. And if you have a teacher, what I've experienced is that the road tends to be a little bit easier. Right.

Right. But my colleagues would also argue that you can't learn how to meditate from a book. You can't get what you get from a teacher in a book. So it was an interesting opportunity for me in writing a book and presenting some of these mechanics and principles in such a way that someone who doesn't necessarily have contact with the teachers directly can still glean some insight

and hopefully improve their experiences through what they read in that book. Well, there's no barrier to entry. Right. You know, it's like for teaching or practicing. I mean, you can't, you can't teach Vedic or TM without being certified in a very specific manner. But anybody can call themselves a meditation teacher. That's right. Just get up and pontificate. So when somebody, when you over here, somebody saying,

there's no wrong way to meditate. Right. Like what is your, your like actually, there is. Well, it's like saying there's no wrong way to swim. Yeah. You know, you sure you can get in there and just kind of mess around. But if you want to be able to, you know, if you're not drowning, you're, I guess you're swimming. If you want to glide back and forth

and do kick turns and their practice, their mechanics, that everyone who's, and you use that, you use that analogy in the book, which I love because as a swimmer myself, like I know very well, the difference between somebody who really understands how to swim. Yeah. And somebody who to the untrained eye kind of looks like they're swimming. But when I look at them, I'm like, you're

fighting the water. Right. The whole principle was swimming is trying to make the water work for you. Right. And the way you can use it. Yeah. Exactly. It's like this beautiful symphony where all the movements that you're making with your body are in concert to make you go forward. And you have to like leverage the principles of fluid dynamics to propel yourself forward. And you draw

in that analogy to like, look, this is the same way it works with meditation rather than fighting the mind. It's about the opposite of that. Yeah. And it's, you know, and you're not just because you know that doesn't mean it is going to happen the first few times is like swimming. You know, you have to practice it and keep integrating those mechanics over and over. And

then you end up being able to do less and accomplish more, do least an accomplished most and ultimately do nothing. Where it feels like I'm in complete flow right now. And you can swim for however long you swim. And it doesn't feel like this big effort where it's wearing you out. You're going to drown. And. And so then someone like you can look at a pool

or a lake or an ocean. And you just see joy. Where as someone like me when I was in my early 30s and I couldn't swim, I would look at the same body of water and just be completely terrified. And wondering how deep is it and how cold is it and how rough is it. And, you know, because I knew that once I got in. If

I didn't have an exit strategy, then there was going to be problems. Right. That's how people feel about meditation. In the context of meditation rather than like I got to get my 20 minutes in twice a day if you're doing it wrong. Like, okay, let's step back and like, I'm going to do it. Let me explain to you actually how to do this properly so that

you can leverage the most out of it for your experience. So this is something that you you walk through in the course of this book. You have this easy technique that you talk about. So maybe we can kind of dive into that. Yeah. The easy technique. So. There's this idea that. In order for meditation to be most effective. You have to sit up straight and you

have to cross your legs. That hasn't been my experience. You know, I was taught the first day I met my teacher. You should actually sit like you're watching television. And that frees up your mind to get lost in an experience. Right. And the way you interact with your mind, you know, you're focused on this focus on that visualize this. That was a my experience. I was

taught you let your mind roam free. And that's getting back to the easy approach. Easy as an acronym for how you handle your your mental and sensational experiences. E stands for embrace a stands for accept S for surrender. Why? And yield to so what are you embracing accepting surrendering to and yielding to all of your mental emotional, even physical experiences during the meditation. So if you

have an itch, you scratch it. If you get uncomfortable, you switch your position so that you remain comfortable. If you have thoughts about work. That's amazing. It's not just I'm just going to accept it. No, no, you look at it. You celebrate it. This is amazing. I can't. It's the best thing that could be happening right now is me thinking about this work problem. Or me

thinking about how I don't like myself. Right. That goes back to that overcoming this urge or this idea that you have to combat the monkey mind. Right. You stop looking at it as a monkey mind. You start looking at it as a noble mind. The mind is it's like taking it. It's like if your radio station was tuned into a music you don't like. You take

the speaker and you throw it against the wall because you don't like it's not the speaker. The speaker is just projecting what's coming out of the channel. And the mind is just projecting what's coming out of the body. It's not a bad mind. It's just showing you what's leaving the body. So it requires a complete reframing of the experience, which over time is going to allow

the practitioner to start to have a completely different relationship with their mind. And then that's going to create a little bit of space in the meditation, which allows you to sit there and enjoy it more and more. And then the irony of all of this is that when you are seeing your mind as an ally and not the enemy of the practice, that place you want

to go to the place where everybody wants to go to. The calmness, the quietness, the deepness, that's where you go. It's literally how long is it going to take? I've seen people get there and literally within an hour of practicing. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is I want to make a disclaimer. This is working with me one on one. And that's what I'm suggesting anyone needs

to do. But I did the very best I could to put those principles in this book so that you know, if you are take it seriously enough and you follow the instructions as written, then you're going to have that experience pretty quickly. Our human frailties are ever present. They tend to propel us in directions that we know our counterproductive. And meditation is a way to constructively

recognize them. When we sit in stillness with our demons and choose not to react to them, simple acknowledgement becomes a power for us to be powerful and to do to harmful emotions and actions. But the act of cultivating a meditation practice can also help us create other helpful habits in our lives. If we can start the habit of meditating, the mental and emotional benefits will show

us that we are also capable of so much more. This is the perspective of my next guest, Leo the Bada. Leo is a renowned author, speaker and productivity expert who has made a name for me. He is an expert in meditation. He offers valuable insights into the art of mindfulness. Leo's work focuses on how meditation can be used as a tool to cultivate a sense of

presence, to reduce stress and increase productivity. A husband and father of six, Leo is the creator of Zen Habits, one of the largest single author blogs in the world with a fanatic global fanbase in the millions. Named one of Time Magazine's top 10 blogs, Leo was indisputably one of the first prominent voices on the internet advocating the power and beauty of embracing simplicity and mindfulness to

transcend the chaos of our daily existence. His words are a testament to the transformative power of meditation. And serve as a reminder of the benefit that can be gained from even the smallest moments of introspection. From episode 284, this is me and Leo Bada. What do I do? My daily practice is I meditate and it's nothing, not an amazing advanced meditation. I meditate on the breath

mostly. Right. So there's no specific, approach or generally follow the Zen Buddhist style of a Zazen and the, like the just sitting kind of thing. But lately I've been returning to the basic practice of just counting the breath, which is something that I started with. And then thought I was like moving on and beyond that. And I realized that I've, if there's actually a lot of

profundity in that. And so I'm rediscovering just counting breath. And that's like something that when you start out and you probably have had this experience, like, okay, when do I move beyond counting breaths? You know, I need to get, you know, behind the velvet rope into the next V.I.E. room of meditation. Yeah. So like, what's the next level? And so you're always looking for that. And

that's actually really good to see that tendency in your mind to want to go beyond that, which is again, that greed coming into play. But so if you return to that, which is such a basic practice. And it's like so boring, right? At least that's how our minds usually read it. But actually you're just, it's a practice of just fully being there, fully embodied with each

breath. And realizing that that is all there is. And it's like that breath is unique and not like the next breath. And it's never going to come again. And that's exactly what we want to do. It's just an each experience each moment to see that that's, that's unique. And it will never have this moment back. This one that we're having between me and you right now.

We're never going to have it again. And if we can just fully be here in this moment, as we are looking into each other's masculine eyes. We like, this is an amazing experience for me. And if I'm not fully here with it, I'm looking to the next thing. Okay. What's the next level thing that I can be doing? I'm going to be missing out on this

amazing experience. And there's nothing more profound than anchoring yourself completely in the present moment. It's right. Right. So the idea, I think our minds are always looking for the advanced program. Or am I progressing with respect to meditation? And ultimately, it's so simple. Yeah. So there's so hard. Within that simplicity, I suppose. But there's no, you could plumb the depths of it for the rest of

your life. Yeah. I mean, and anyone who's practice breath counting knows that it's a simple practice. Like the instructions, you can take in one minute. But actually doing it is, is pretty tough because of our minds. Like, you know, wanting to get away from this moment. Like, this is boring. Why am I counting my breaths? So you want to like, and you start to think about

what else you have to do for today. And that conversation that you had yesterday that's still sticking with you and all of these, you know, ego driven things. But if we can just let go of that ego and just stay with the breath. And it's transformative. But like I said, it's pretty hard because of our minds tendencies. Yeah. And it's fleeting. Yeah. Right. All right. So

how long do you do that for? It varies lately. It's like when I feel rushed, I should be doing it longer. But I actually do it shorter. I was like, okay, I don't have time because I have so much to do. And so when I notice myself just doing it for like 10 minutes a day, I realize like, my mind is is doing that like wanting

to like just get through the meditation and just check it off the list, which is not really fully being there with it. So that lately, it has been that which is a public confession really. Yeah. My mind is definitely rushing off to the next thing. And especially when I travel, it's like, I have so much that I want to do. Again, it's that greed tendency. Like

I want to do all of this stuff here in L.A. And meet all these amazing people. I'm not doing that. But it's that's my mind's tendency. So it's like, okay, I only can do 10 minutes of meditation. But I, you know, ideally, and I don't really hold to the ideals, but you know, 20 to 30 minutes would be amazing. Okay. Yeah. So that's right. When you

that's upon waking ideally. Yeah. I basically told everybody. I knew that I'm quitting smoking because before that, I would just say, okay, I'm going to quit today to myself because I didn't want people to know. And so you always have an out. Yep. And then later that day, I took a puff and then was smoking by the end of the day. So it wasn't a big

thing. It was like a minor commitment in my mind. So I had to make it. This is something I'm committing to. And I made it publicly. I asked for support. I found a support community, which was accountability. But also like when I'm when I need support, I'm going to reach out to you. Before I smoke and ask for your help. And these are people who are

going through it with me. So that support and accountability and community was really important. And then that's when I discovered meditation actually was when the urge to smoke was arising. And I was very uncomfortable. And I would normally not even notice it. I started to just sit with it. Yeah. So some concrete first steps. The thing that we did with you were you're feeling that energy

and sitting with it. I think that's the most important thing that they can do. And yet that can be a difficult thing. So having some kind of practice container for that, whether it's sitting for five, 10 minutes of meditation. And actually, I recommend people as a habit building thing start with two minutes of meditation. And I know you used to use, I don't know if you

still do the head space app. That's a great one. There's I use insight timer. Another great meditation app. There's some good ones. Function to get city tile to your children's toe, our community tiles is the magnetizing point, and lets you know that in the next video, you will find that if you are not broken real quick, there. If they advantage you know, what they. It's so

famous, isooh. Go on or do it. And that was incredible. Just this is a presentation. It's fun. It's the best performance games you can do for those people. And I feel like there's a lot of programs on that systematically and it's just awesome. And it's just like watching your patterns. And the way that I, you can set up doing meditation if you want to work on

procrastination, it's the same exact thing. But say, okay, before I check my phone, before I check email or Facebook on my computer, all I'm going to do is set aside five minutes, maybe 10 minutes a day, depending on where you are. If you're super procrastinator, do five minutes. So five minutes a day before I check anything. And I'm going to set myself a task. One little

task that will take like five minutes of writing my chapter, right? So right, five minutes of this chapter. And I'm going to set a timer. And I'm going to set an intention to stay with my discomfort. And you set that timer and you stay with it. And you're going to watch yourself want to run. Like, I'll start the timer in a minute because I'm going to

go do my dishes or whatever. And you want to stay there. So you're, you're, you have two choices. Sit there and do your task or just sit there. And you can't let yourself run. And this is a intentional, like kind of corralling yourself in and just watching that urge. And then practice with that urge. So just sit there and watch the discomfort. Where is it located

in your body? Not your, your thinking, like, oh, you know, there's always stories that are going on. Like, am I going to fail? Like are people going to judge me? All these stories. But what you want to do is go into that body feeling that we, we talked about. Where is it located? What does it feel like? Like describe the energy, the physical energy in your

body and then stay with that. And then when you feel like that's, you know, gone to a point where it's not that not overwhelming. Go back to the writing your chapter. I'm going to try that. All right. Sounds good. And if you are a, a master at this already, do 10 minutes. And if you're even better than that, do 15 minutes. And if you want, if

you get to that level where you can do 15 minutes straight, take a break, have some tea as rich likes to do. And do another 15 minutes after that. So it's like interval training. And you don't have to do like, you know, 20 intervals. You can just do two or three. But build up to that. Start with the five minutes. Right. It's like a workout. It's

like a workout for your brain, for your consciousness. It's training and staying with uncertainty and discomfort. And because you want to your rebuilding those, you're rebuilding those pathways and then trying to reinforce them. Yeah. And the side benefit is you'll do your taxes. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Unless you want to be that the guy who just sits there does nothing. Hey, that's a practice too. Right. I

guess. All right. Hopefully by now, you can see the vast benefits of meditation and even have some practical ideas on how to begin. But there is still one pesky subject left to address time, fitting meditation into our everyday schedule. And for this topic, I can think of no one better than Jason Garner. Scraping his way from a weekend job at a flea market to owning his

own concert company, by the time he was 37, Jason Garner had become CEO of global music at Live Nation Entertainment. The world's largest concert promotion company. And arguably the most important corporate entity in the entire music industry. Garner, an incredibly successful entrepreneur and author decided to leave his lucrative and might I add time consuming corporate gig to make it his mission to help others find inner

peace and purpose. Today, Jason's expertise and mindfulness and meditation has been sought after by Fortune 500 companies, top athletes, and high performing executives. And this final clip, Jason shares his insights on how we can carve out the time to meditate, even in the midst of our busy schedules. In a world that glorifies the hustle and grind, it can be easy to neglect our own well-being. However,

as Jason reminds us, taking a few minutes to pause and to connect with our inner selves can actually make us more productive and more focused in the long run. His tips on creating a personalized meditation practice that suits our individual needs and goals are truly invaluable. So here is Jason Garner. And so I would say, you know, I just think we can start with simple things.

I think we can start with simple things. We can start with deep breath, you know, we can, in fact, you know, we can start with some meditation and we can start with some nutrition and we can start with yoga. And they would say to me, and these are like, you know, 18-year-old young people, well, I don't have time for that. And I would say, you know,

just right here, I just, the question you got to ask yourself is, what am I building? You're fucking 18 and you don't have time to breathe. And I'll just tell you, I'm double your age now, you know, or more. And it doesn't get easier. It's not like after university then incomes that breathing space that we've always wanted. It's like, we have to carve that into our,

you know, what I call daily practice. And in between, you know, getting up and checking your Facebook and running off to class and doing, doing the homework and running the football game and doing all these things that we do, we've got to build in some time for ourselves and some breathing room. And one of the beautiful things that I found in my life is that it's

not a time allocation issue. So it's not like work life balance is like, well, I went four hours at work. Now I got to do four hours of meditation. It's like, we've so neglected ourselves. That's really similar to any relationship that we've neglected. You know, if you don't talk to your wife for a week, the first time you walk into the room and say, honey, I'm

sorry, I love you. That has a huge value. Like that counts for a whole bunch of talking that you didn't do. And so that first time that we've walked in and sit down on meditation cushion and take a deep breath and connect with our heart. And maybe that last one minute, right? But that minute's worth a whole, whole bunch. And so for me, that's really what

I've learned is like, we're just creatures of habit. And before I used to have a habit called work myself to death. And now I have a habit called just love myself to life, right? And this is, you know, I was like, that's, and in there, it kind of becomes. And consequential what you do with the rest of the time. So okay, then you go to work

or you flip the guy off on the road, you know, all this stuff that happens in our life keeps happening. But we have these moments where we can come back to our heart. And we can remember that we're human beings and not robots, you know. Right, right, right. Like I get it. I understand it. I know that I need this. I'm happier when I'm doing it.

But they're holding on to that identity. And they're still like, yes, but, you know, I still need to be successful. And I want this. And I'm afraid of going into deep, of taking as deep a left turn as you did, because, you know, I don't want to be, you know, I don't know that I want to be like you and running off to China. I still

want to be CEO of my company or whatnot. So it's about like carrying these practices in the world. I mean, how do you kind of communicate with people that are coming from that perspective? I think one of the things is that we tend to be so extremist in the way that we view things. So the first thing that I like to say is like, there's a

long way from here to there. Like you can't breathe. And you're worried that someday you might turn into a hippie like Jason who goes off to China. So it's like, you know, let's just start with step one, you know, and let's just take a deep breath. And, and, and just, you know, sometimes it's like, it's not so much about transformation, but it's like, we're gripping so

hard on to this reality that we, that we perceive to be us, right. And so, you know, if fear comes from if like you could just picture like if you're just gripping on to, you know, you're in the water, right. And you're gripping onto a life raft. And the fear comes for if I say, I'm tick, let go of the life raft right now. That's like

too big of a step, I think, you know, it's like, that's, that's really hard for us as human beings. But if we said, hey, from here to three years or from here to five years, we're going to just slowly let go. And so today, today's part of that plan is just to loosen our grip a little bit. And then we don't have to think so far,

you know, down, it's like, you know, in, in health, it's like most, a lot of us who are taking care of ourselves have a idea that we'd like to have a long life. We'd like to live, you know, I always say I want to lose to be 140 years old. And I have friends who go like, that's crazy. And I said, but understand that my body

rebuilds it sells every seven years. So I don't have a 140 year plan. I have a seven year plan. Uh-huh. And I think the same thing can be true in caring for ourselves and in, and in kind of like refiguring our lives a little bit is we don't have to have the what am I going to do in 10 year plan. We can just have right

now. I'm just going to loosen up a little bit and see how that feels. And or I'm going to sit and breathe for a little bit and see how that feels right. And then don't jump 12 steps down the road because the whole point of mindfulness is being here and being mindful. So we're just, we're here. There's a lot of stress. Let's let go of whatever

piece of it we can. And you, you're welcome to cling to all the parts that you don't want to let go. But is there just like one or two things that we can let go of right now? And I think. I think we can make sure to learn tools. And then I build a toolbox. And I think, you know, if we use that analogy, we're going

through life with a hammer. And we're trying to build the whole house with the hammer. You know, it's like, we have our job and that's it. You know, and then the problem comes when you got to put a window in. You know, and you start breaking shit with the hammer. And so what I've realized is I want to have a really full toolbox. And when something's

not working for me, I want to have a day. And I want to have a different tool. The hammer is not the right one. I was screw driver. I want to have a wrench or in the case of meditation. I want to have a few different techniques. You know, hey, that one's not working very well right now. Great. I'll try this. You know, and so that's

kind of been my impetus for. You know, continuing to seek out new teachers because I find each one has a special little gem. If you can just kind of get the intimate moment where you can spend some real time, you get a little gem. You know, you get, you get another tool. You get a tool that you then throw in the toolbox because they're human beings

who have lived their own version of what we're living. And they had to figure out how to make it work for them. And they figured out little tricks, you know, tools along the way. And I think you said it when you said they're human beings because that's what they are. And I think, you know, when you kind of enter into this world of new age spirituality,

you see a lot of, we see a lot of things. A lot of interesting things, you know. There's a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of bullshit. And there's a lot of, I've joked about this before, but like kind of, you know, staring a little bit too long into the other person's eyes and holding the hug a little bit, a beat too long for comfort, you

know, and that kind of thing. And a lot of guru chasing, right? And then, and then sort of propping up a guru. And then when that quote unquote guru shows some level of humanity and a flaw that it's tearing that person down and saying, well, they have nothing of value because they demonstrated that they're a human being through some foieball. But in reality, they all have

little truths that you can extract and, and you know, kind of weave your own tapestry of what resonates for you and what works for you. I really feel that. And I think there's a lot of fantastic stories out there. And I actually tend to believe a lot of them. You know, I just, I tend to believe that, you know, a lot of these masters, teachers who

were living in a different time and place and who had a lot of fun. A lot of time to focus on their consciousness and focus on their own awakening and weren't distracted by honking cars in New York City. That they, that they very well may have achieved some things that we would look at today and go like, oh, that's bullshit. Yeah. But meaning like the, like

the guys that go into the caves and don't eat for years and stuff like that. Yeah. People, their bodies don't decompose and, yeah. Or, you know, they see things or they know things that are coming or they can look at you. And tell you something and then it's actually happening in your life. And, but I never wanted my practice to be dependent on that. So I

made a conscious decision that I was looking for real life teachers. You know, one of my teachers says, get a piece of chocolate and put the chocolate on your tongue. And just stay present as you savor the taste of the chocolate. You know, it's like, wow, that's like, yeah, there is. There's always a lot of things that I can do. And then I think that I'm

going to be able to do a little bit of happiness. There's always a little bit of joy that we can find. But it takes really coming back and being present. And then I think the second piece is that we just have to give ourselves enough space to move around. To go. Hey, I'm 40 years old. I'm 50 years old. It took me 50 years to get

here. Now I want to make some changes. So first, I honor where I'm at. And then second, I need to be realistic about, I'm going to sit there. And then I'm going to sit down and meditate today. And probably nothing's going to happen. Probably not going to feel any different. In fact, I'm going to feel more frustrated because I don't quite know how to do this

thing called meditation. Right. And it's like, we go. So let's think a year down the road. I'm going to give five minutes a day to meditation for a year. And I think we start to open up the timeline a little bit. It takes off some of that urgency. And in the, and in the crisis of the moment, what we have is the burden of the breath.

And what we have is the ability to find little ways that we can show ourselves that we're loved in little ways that we can care for ourselves. And then we just do the best we can. If you could go back to yourself as a 20 year old, with the knowledge that you have now and the experience that you have now, I mean, what do you think

your life would have looked like? I think, you know, I can't imagine a life much better than this. You know, it's like, I think I think, as you said, you know, through all the pain, you just, you find the beauty, right? It's like, there's just the beautiful moments that happen. And life, I have a 17 year old son who I, you know, I realized the other

day, like if I've done nothing over the last five years, I spent every day with my son. You know, and it's like, I talk to him a lot about these things. And I think his life will be different. But I learned through him that even though he possesses all the tools and meets with all the same teachers, he's still a lot of people who have to

go through the growth process of going, of being him in life, right? So I think, I think we can't go back. And I think we're all just living this life that we're living and we get the tools when we get them. And I think the beautiful part is just learning to be at peace and to be loving with ourselves no matter where we find ourselves on

that path, you know? Beautiful, Matt. This episode was brought to you by Inside Tracker. Learn how to live healthier, longer by visiting InsideTracker.com slash Rich Roll and use code Rich Roll. A check out to save 20% off the entire store. Meditation has been a lifeline for me. It's been a tool for cleaning invaluable insights into my own mind. And for awakening a more compassionate way of

life. I'm a compassionate view of myself and those around me. I'm the benefactor of a practice that, well, not always consistent, consistently rewards me when applied. For each of us to minimize our own suffering and to contribute to minimizing the suffering of others, meditation is a useful, practical, easier than it seems, application. And my hope is that you can use this compilation episode as an inspiration

and as a jumping off point. For further self-inquiry and hopefully an ever-deepening practice. If the voices you've heard here have spoken to you, please consider going back to the original episodes to gain further insights from these amazing teachers. Many of the guests speaking about meditation here have written valuable books that amplify their perspective and philosophy and are surely worth checking out. In a world that is

increasingly more and more complex, I'd love for this show and for my guests to be a lighthouse for you, guiding you to safe harbors on the premise that we each have more to offer to the world and most importantly to ourselves. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you found it valuable. I appreciate the love. I love all the support and I will see

you back here soon. Peace. Plants. I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay.