Meditation For Skeptics: On A Different Way Of Being

This is a podcast about training how you want to exist in the world. Your training how to do this everyday. If you're existing in a consistently negative state - angry, fearful, stressful - that's the habit you're unconsciously training. My guest on this podcast says a (meditation) practice "is an opportunity to train something different, to explore a different way of being

Transcript

I'm Larry Weeks and this is Bounce.

Anyone who says they're interested in consciousness and the mind,

What you ultimately realize is that they're interested in kind of knowing who they are.

One of the things it does,

Particularly insight or mindfulness meditation,

Is it helps you sort of see the way your mind works.

You know,

What are the patterns it gets into,

What are the kind of regular gambits that it's always pulling on you and the various tricks and quirks.

I guess you could say there's a more spiritual answer,

Starting to understand who you are in the place of things.

And we think that's a philosophical question that we can't find an answer to,

Or we can just arbitrarily come to an answer,

But you can come to different intellectual answers.

But meditation shows us that you can actually come to an experiential answer that is satisfying.

Basically,

Meditation fundamentally is training how you want to exist.

You're just sitting here existing and you're existing in a particular way.

It's concentrated or it's not concentrated.

It's friendly or it's not friendly.

It's open or it's not open.

It's clear or it's not clear.

Whatever habit you're in is the habit that you're unconsciously training.

So a practice is an opportunity to train something different,

To explore a different way of being.

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another episode of the Bounce Podcast.

Today on the podcast,

We are going to talk about meditation.

My guest on the show is Jeff Warren.

Jeff is an author,

A meditation teacher,

And he's often referred to as the meditation MacGyver.

So perfect for me,

He is the author of Head Trip,

Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness,

And the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club.

In 2004,

ABC News anchor Dan Harris had a panic attack on live TV in front of 5 million people.

This is after years of stress on the job and using drugs to cope,

And it led to that humiliation.

This put him on a journey that eventually led him to taking up meditation.

Dan then wrote a book called 10% Happier,

Which tells that story and then his journey into meditation.

Good book by the way,

I highly recommend it.

But Dan has a follow up book to that that Jeff collaborated on called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics,

A 10% Happier How-To Guide.

And the book explores why even as meditation is moving from the fringe maybe to mainstream,

That most people still don't meditate.

So Jeff and Dan did research for the book by doing a cross country meditation tour on a bus.

They crossed 18 states in about 11 days,

And they met with a mix of people from line cooks in New Orleans to members of Congress and neuroscientists,

Military cadets,

To better understand the obstacles people have around meditation.

And Jeff was the meditation teacher,

And he offered science based life hacks,

If you will,

Designed to teach basic meditation.

And so that's why I have Jeff on the podcast.

On my journey,

I've incorporated meditation and it's absolutely been helpful when I do it.

But it's been a struggle for me and still is a struggle.

And as I talk to Jeff,

That's kind of the point and we'll get into that.

But some days I can string 10 days in a row together and then all of a sudden I just kind of drop off and it's hard to get back into.

So I wanted to explore the topic further with Jeff and a teacher like him.

And I've had some questions and probably you do around how to use meditation,

How to do it,

The varieties of meditation.

And Jeff is great.

I really think if you have any kind of interest at all in personal growth,

Enhance meditation,

You're really going to like this podcast.

It's a fairly short one for me since these are long form and usually an hour.

But what I want to do in introducing Jeff to you is read a quote Jeff has about himself and meditation or parts of quotes about meditation and who he is because it feels true for me and why maybe you want to consider meditation and why you should listen to this particular podcast.

So Jeff says in his words,

Meditation did not come easily for me.

I was and am a distractible,

Impulsive,

Overthinking teeth gnashing warrior.

I am the anti Buddha.

I am meditation's hardest test case.

And yet not only have these practices helped me,

I now teach them to others.

So I'm a good person to talk to you about what mindfulness and meditation can and cannot do.

End quote.

With that,

Let's talk to Jeff.

Jeff,

Welcome to the show.

Thank you,

Larry.

Good to be on.

I'm very excited to talk about meditation and all things mindfulness.

Give us your background a little bit.

Tell us about where you came from,

How you got here and sure.

Well,

I started out as a journalist,

Actually.

I wrote a book about consciousness called the head trip,

Which is sort of about waking,

Sleeping and dreaming.

It was about the science of these different states and also the inner experience of them and why they were important.

And over the course of writing that book,

I felt like I need to have a chapter on meditation because,

You know,

I was writing all about consciousness basically.

And of course,

The Buddhists and various Eastern experts have always been,

At least we,

In our culture,

There's a kind of sense in which they had the real expertise when it comes to inner experience.

So I've been reading a lot of books on it.

I finally needed to go to retreat.

This was back in 2003 or four.

And that was really my introduction to meditation.

Was there a catalyst?

What was the,

Were you just curious about it?

Yeah,

So there's a,

It's a long story,

You know,

Like all these things there's a,

But I guess I would say there's,

There was sort of two different streams.

There was my own personal nerdy interest in just understanding the mind and how it worked.

But then there was also my own challenges,

My own challenges with regulating my mind.

I was super ADD and still am a mood regulation challenges.

You know,

I just,

A lot of inner turmoil and angst and sort of suffering that didn't seem to have any kind of external reasons for it,

You know,

Just had been like that since I was a kid.

And so,

You know,

Later on,

You realize that those two things are actually related.

You know,

You have an intellectual,

Anyone who says they're interested in consciousness in the mind,

They're also,

What you ultimately realize is that they're interested in kind of knowing who they are,

That there's almost,

You call it a spiritual dimension or an existential or philosophical dimension to that inquiry is almost always there.

And certainly that turned out to be the case for me.

And there's often a sort of,

There's some,

There can be a sense of dissatisfaction or something missing or something about our life that we're just not getting or we want to know more fully.

And it often ends up leading people onto this sort of quest into different practices and to understanding who they are and how they are.

So even when people are talking about personal growth and all these things,

I always in my mind,

What I'm really hearing,

I feel like is often people interested in kind of knowing who they are at a deeper level,

You could say,

Knowing how to manage themselves.

So that,

So I was kind of,

I had no vocabulary for spirituality or for meditation at that time.

I was a science writer.

I grew up in a secular household and I was actually quite a heavy duty,

Reactive,

Skeptic,

Materialist,

Fundamentalist when I was younger.

You know,

I was an atheist.

But so my way into it is just being interested,

Okay,

I'm interested in the science,

You know,

What's the neurobiology here?

And wrote a book about that and the book did well.

But that book had a chapter on meditation that got me into practicing.

And as I started to practice,

Then I started to see deeper dimensions to my experience.

I started to understand my mind from not just a theoretical perspective,

But more from being in the experience of it.

Because that's what meditation does.

One of the things it does,

Particularly insight or mindfulness meditation,

Is it helps you sort of see the way your mind works.

You know,

What are the patterns it gets into?

What are the kind of,

What are the regular gambits that it's always pulling on you and the various tricks and quirks and all that?

So how did you meet Dan Harris?

Now just for the audience,

Maybe you could give us a little background on Dan and the mainstreaming of 10% Happier.

Sure.

So I'll just update that story.

So that was 2003,

Before the book came out in 2007.

At that point,

I was a really serious meditator.

Now I've been,

Like I was just sort of went full on to it for about,

For all through the 2000s really into early,

I mean right through into now,

But basically going to tons of retreats,

Studying with lots of teachers,

Really trying to understand it.

And I finally found my teacher in a guy named Shinzen Young,

Who's a superb teacher,

Highly recommended for folks,

You can find him online.

So I started going to retreats with him,

Really started getting it.

I'd have tons of conversations with him about it.

In fact,

I just call him up out of the blue and just record hundreds of hours of interviews actually of how the mind worked.

He's a really interesting character because he's very rigorous and has a way of talking about experience that I just very appealed to my kind of sciencey,

Nerdy brain.

So did that,

He eventually really encouraged me to start teaching.

I hadn't really ever thought about it,

But he just said,

Look,

You know,

You're really interested in the mind and it's helped you and why don't you consider teaching?

So I did,

I started a group in Toronto called the Consciousness Explorers Club.

That group started getting popular.

I wrote a piece in the New York Times about meditation and that's where Dan Harris found me.

I guess he read it.

He started subscribing to the Consciousness Explorers Club newsletter.

He would get our regular missives.

He liked the way I wrote.

He just sort of reached out.

We became friends.

He was a sincere practitioner and interested in all this stuff.

So we'd have these nerdy talks about it.

He said he was writing a book about meditation himself that was called 10% Happier.

And he did and the book ended up being a real success for him.

He's an ABC News guy who had a panic attack on air and wrote a book about his experience.

And that was a really popular book and it was funny and well written.

And what was great about it is it would just,

It sort of demystified meditation a little bit.

It sort of had a very practical skeptics take on it.

He didn't make any grandiose claims.

He just said,

Yeah,

You know,

It seems to make me happier in a 10% kind of a way,

Which is a kind of reasonable,

I think,

Response that,

And I think very realistic.

And that book,

He decided he wanted to write a sequel and he basically asked me if I wanted to be his partner in crime because he liked the way I taught meditation.

So we did this road trip together.

It was all very quick.

It happened very quick.

You got on a bus,

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the offer to do this with him was life changing in the sense that I was,

You know,

I'm sort of a small,

I'm Canadian.

I live in Toronto.

I've never been particularly ambitious when it came to trying to get a big audience or get myself out there.

And he really kind of invited me into this big media enterprise,

This sort of circus.

And it's,

It's been really great for me to kind of up my game and to kind of come out more as a teacher.

And what we did was we rented this bus,

A big giant tour bus.

And we basically,

So the idea of the book is,

Yeah,

A lot of people now know that meditation makes sense,

That there's good research behind it showing a lot of the benefits for a lot of folks.

And a lot of people think,

Well,

Okay,

This is a good idea.

I want to do it,

But they're not doing it.

And why are they not doing it for lots of reasons?

So we discovered there was a whole pile of reasons and we wanted to sort of write a book that would address each of those reasons that kind of would take them seriously and say,

Okay,

We understand that it's a legitimate concern that you're worried you might lose your edge or you actually think that you're congenially unable to do it.

Or you don't have the time to do it or you're worried about opening up Pandora's box of terrifying emotional material.

These are all good,

Legitimate reasons.

So we decided to write a book that would kind of be three things.

It would be an attempt to address each of those reasons,

For one.

Two is it would be a road trip.

So it actually,

It's a trip from where we take this tour bus from New York and Boston all the way down to the south,

Ended up in New Orleans and we're in Tennessee,

New Orleans,

New Mexico,

And eventually in California.

So there's this sort of road trip where we're meeting real people who are trying to deal with real challenges in their lives,

Each of those challenges that we talk about.

And then finally to create a teaching curriculum out of the book.

So can we actually teach meditation as we go?

And that was more my responsibility.

So Dan wrote the narrative.

I went with him.

We met tons of interesting people and then I wrote this teaching curriculum and that's meditation for phygian skeptics.

So just to back up,

Just a step,

How would you define meditation?

Well,

I mean,

There's a lot of different kinds of meditation techniques and meditation styles.

When most people talk about meditation,

They're talking about concentration.

They're talking about a practice where you focus on your breath,

For example,

To use a classic one or a mantra and you just let yourself get as absorbed as possible in the breath.

Really,

Your attention wanders,

You bring it back.

And as you get more focused on this one thing,

The mind sort of unifies into focusing on that one thing and all those background rumination programs start to kind of close down a little bit and things get a little bit quieter.

So the thought track settles and that can be very settling and peaceful.

And that's generally,

People kind of get into an absorbed trance state.

That's generally in the mainstream what people think of as meditation.

Now just to say that's actually only one kind of meditation.

There are meditations that are more on an insider mindfulness spectrum.

You can integrate mindfulness and concentration practices together.

But that pure mindfulness practice is you're less interested in just getting totally peaceful and simple inside your mind.

You're more interested in noticing what's going on in your mind.

You're more interested in understanding how it works.

So you're kind of instead of merging with the breath and everything gets very simple,

It's more like you're getting space around the breath.

But you're noticing how the breath changes.

You may be noticing what thoughts come up and what emotions and how to let those go.

So there's that.

And then there are practices that are about generating loving kindness.

And then there are practices that are just about doing nothing.

That are about surrendering and not having any kind of agenda when you sit.

So all those are kinds of meditations.

What would you say is the purpose of meditation?

And I ask that in the sense of maybe it's use.

I should probably say what are the uses of meditation?

But I'll ask it from a standpoint of purpose.

So there's lots of ways to answer that.

I can give you a,

You know,

To be honest,

There's sort of like absolute purpose and then there's more relative purpose.

The more relative purposes,

The kind of everyday purposes are to manage stress,

To help regulate reactivity and emotionality so you're not winging off like a lunatic all the time or freaking out anytime somebody says something that doesn't agree with your worldview.

To help you feel more balanced,

To help you create more of a sense of intimacy and closeness to people around you so you're not locked up only in your own preoccupations.

There's a lot of reasons and in terms of the science,

A lot of the benefits are about showing how it really helps us kind of regulate our nervous systems a little bit.

It helps,

It can boost immune response,

It can help regulate stress,

It can help us with attention and focus and be more concentrated so we can pay attention to what's important in our life.

So those are all good reasons but when I said at the beginning,

There's also kind of an ultimate reason which is the reason it's practiced in,

Certainly in Eastern traditions and even in some Western traditions and that's to kind of understand yourself at a deeper level and to really not just understand your own mind and how it works but kind of,

I guess you could say there's a more spiritual answer,

Starting to understand who you are in the place of things.

And we think that's a philosophical question that there is no,

That we can't find an answer to or we can just arbitrarily come to an answer but you can come to different intellectual answers.

But meditation shows us that you can actually come to an experiential answer that is satisfying,

That sort of,

That in a sense resolves some of those deep existential questions by allowing you to be okay in a state of not needing to know the answer,

If that is a bit of a paradox.

But to accept and know who you are at a deeper level and there's a sort of peace,

A deep peace and centeredness that can emerge from that.

And you know what I just said,

People say it in very different ways.

That's just the way I chose to talk about it now.

And I don't know,

Would you say the adoption more recently or the popularity of meditation is in a sense of a pragmatic reduced stress or dealing with pain and the science is empirical,

Right?

That it helps with those things.

Right.

So I just think of it as like,

I love that because it's sort of like the gateway drug.

You know,

It's like science gives it a certain amount of legitimacy right now when it talks about its effectiveness of dealing with certain,

Those conditions you just described.

Although it's not like it's going to work perfectly for everybody at all.

I mean,

You kind of have to do the practice to see how it works for you.

I mean,

It's a fallacy to say that anything is going to work perfectly for everyone.

That's just not true.

But would you say meditation can benefit everyone regardless of personality type?

Yeah,

I would actually not say that.

I would say practice can benefit everybody.

Some kind of practice,

Some way in which you're shaping your commitments,

Some deliberate way in which you're building up whatever quality of mind and heart that you want more of in your life,

Whether it's concentration,

Clarity,

Openness,

Friendliness,

Empathy,

A practice that helps us be deliberate about whether or not we're doing those things is a great thing for everybody,

Whether that means everyone will be doing an eyes closed sitting meditation.

I don't think so.

I mean,

I think some people can do can cultivate those qualities in a movement practice,

You know,

Or through exercise or other things.

Although I what I will say is,

Meditation,

A sitting practice is unique and incredibly powerful,

Because it's all about making explicit what you need to do moment to moment in your experience.

And it provides a very simple kind of a pure culture where you can do that,

Where there are relatively few distractions.

You know,

And if you can't just sit and be okay with yourself in a seated practice,

Then it's telling you something that is not okay in your life,

You know,

So it's a wonderful feedback tool.

So I do encourage everyone to try it.

But I would never,

I don't for a moment think that everyone in the world needs to meditate.

I do think everyone needs to try to be more aware of how they are and find a practice that works for them.

For those undergoing intense stress,

Let's say whether it be a failure of a business or a job loss or breakup or what have you,

It would seem hard to settle to be quiet.

You know,

You're it seems to be you,

You almost want to do the opposite.

You want to seek some kind of outside stimulus or distraction or something.

But in those moments,

Would you then recommend meditation or do you have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to benefit from it?

I hope my question makes sense.

Yeah,

That's a good,

It's a great question and one that I hear all the time and I think about a lot and I wish I could say there's a monolithic answer that I could give you.

I think in those situations sometimes a quiet seated practice is going to be absolutely the most perfect thing and it'll be even though you may feel agitated and bereft,

Just sitting with yourself especially if you sit with a lot of self-compassion and just having that intention to sit with yourself can just,

It could create a really beautiful shift that can bring you a lot of insight and peace and comfort.

Absolutely for some people that will do that.

For other people,

They're going to feel too agitated for that and if you're super,

Super agitated like you got too much going on,

I wouldn't,

Sometimes the sitting helps.

You got to kind of try for yourself but for other people,

You need to get the energy out,

Hit a punching bag.

So Jeff,

I've never heard this before,

There is a timing aspect to it.

For some people.

So I'm not going to generalize about how it has to go down because everyone's different.

There are people who might feel incredibly agitated and the last thing they feel like doing is sitting down and meditate.

They sit down and meditate and guess what?

It works like a charm.

They open to that quality of agitation,

They accept that it's there and the thing just works through.

It's just called,

In meditation,

Called purification.

The whole pattern of it just kind of feels like it empties out.

It's like when you give someone,

You finally tell someone a piece of your mind and you feel this big weight lift off your shoulders.

Just sitting down to confront your discomfort can really transform it.

On the other hand,

For other kinds of people,

Like for me,

For me most of the time when I'm feeling like that,

Sometimes meditation helps.

Other times I need to go and hit a punching bag.

So for you in those cases,

It is a timing because I felt like that too.

Like I,

You know,

I'll try meditating.

It's just not,

I'm wound up or what have you.

But I struggle with myself in those instances,

Jeff,

Because I feel like,

No,

No,

I'm supposed to wrestle the elephant or tame the elephant.

Just stay here.

But you're saying,

No,

Not necessarily.

Yeah,

Exactly.

I'm,

You know,

I'm saying that everyone has to work it out for themselves and that you need to do the experiment.

And I think maybe something that might be helpful for your listeners is don't think about,

We get so hung up on the optics.

We're thinking about the technique.

We're sitting in with my eyes closed,

Not moving or over here going to a yoga class or over here going and running on the beach or doing this.

Forget about the form of the practice.

Forget about what it looks like in terms of the mechanics.

What you should be focusing on,

Everyone,

Is what are the qualities of mind and heart that we build up in any practice?

Because every,

Because basically meditation fundamentally is training how you want to exist.

You're just sitting here existing and you're existing in a particular way.

It's concentrated or it's not concentrated.

It's friendly or it's not friendly.

It's open or it's not open.

It's clear or it's not clear.

Whatever habit you're in is the habit that you're unconsciously training.

So a practice is an opportunity to train something different,

To explore a different way of being.

So the question is,

How do you want to be?

If you want to be friendlier,

Then do a practice where you're practicing friendliness.

Go for a run and as you're running,

Feel as though that every time your foot hits the ground it's like kissing the ground.

Feel as though your heart is sending out,

Hey world,

What's up?

I love you or whatever.

I mean,

That sounds nauseating to you.

Instead train your concentration.

So when you go for a run,

Focus on the feeling of the sensations and when your mind wanders,

Come back to it.

Or if you're working on clarity,

Focus on the clarity of the sensations.

Do you see what I mean?

Those qualities can be trained in any situation.

So choose the situation that you like to do that plays to your strengths,

That plays to the weird configuration of your nervous system.

So this is great.

So then to boil down meditation into its essence,

For lack of a better phrase,

I apologize to everybody here.

I'm kind of stumbling through this because you were talking about concentration and mindfulness.

Something is meditation or can be deemed meditation when you're focused or concentrated or present.

Yeah,

No,

You're on the right track and I appreciate you trying to articulate it.

So this is where my teacher was really helpful for me,

Shinzen Young.

So he defines mindfulness,

Which is a kind of meditation,

As a three-part attentional skill set.

It's the skill of concentration,

The skill of clarity and the skill of equanimity.

So he would say those are the fundamental skills that are being trained in a mindfulness practice and by that he means mindfulness meditation practice.

So I would say that's a good useful definition if people want to know what meditation is built.

You could say it's those things.

Different people have different criteria.

The Buddhists talked about the seven factors of awakening.

There are seven qualities or muscle groups that are activated in their idea of ideal meditation.

So it includes all the ones I just said,

But it also includes joy,

Friendliness,

Energy,

Different kinds of things.

I like talking about friendliness.

So I would say just so different people are going to break it up in a different way,

But I would say basically the way I would define meditation,

It's something you do where you're working on being concentrated,

Where you're looking on being clear about what you're concentrating on,

That is the sensations or whatever is happening,

And that you're working on being a quantumist,

Which is to say you're not fighting with your experience.

You're just open and relaxed through the core of your body.

So maybe you're meditating in a place where that's really loud and it's annoying to you.

Instead of being annoyed,

Just let go and let all the surrounding ambient sounds be there.

Let your thoughts be there.

Let your all sensations be there.

That quality of openness I actually think is the most important quality that's being trained in the meditation.

Is that helpful?

This is helpful because now you're giving me something that's portable.

So I don't have to be just be sitting here in silent,

Concentrating on my breath or something else.

I could go for a walk and if I incorporate one of those three things or all three of them or what have you,

If I concentrate or if I'm mindful as I walk,

If I'm absorbed,

Am I right?

Then I can meditate doing that.

So meditation is designed to be,

You're only doing it on the cushion so you can bring it into the world.

That's the whole point.

Ultimately the world becomes,

Your life becomes the place where you're practicing.

But I don't want to underplay the value of a seated practice because a seated practice is an unparalleled opportunity to see if you're fooling yourself.

It is a place where you can.

.

.

What does that mean?

See if you're fooling yourself.

So you can go for a walk and say,

Hey,

I'm going to turn my walk into a mindfulness meditation and I'm going to be concentrated on my feet and I'm going to be trying to clear about the sensations and I'm going to try to be a quantumist.

But there's a lot going on when you're walking.

It's very easy to get distracted.

It's very easy to kind of lose the plot of it,

Even more so than when you're just seated.

Whereas when you're seated and it's quiet,

There's much less going on.

It's easier to tell when you become distracted.

It's easier to tell when you're being concentrated,

Clear and a quantumist because it's just a simpler environment.

And so that's why I recommend having a seated practice.

It's sort of like do 10 minutes a day where you at least get to see,

Okay,

What does it feel like to be a bit concentrated and what does it feel like to be a bit open or a quantumist or a bit clear?

Now you have something you could be,

You kind of a standard or a litmus you can kind of compare yourself against.

A benchmark.

Yeah,

A benchmark.

Then you can bring it into your day.

But you don't have to.

You can go straight to bring it into your day.

I'm just saying.

That's probably the difficulty,

I guess,

In teaching meditation is it can go here,

It can go there.

So let's talk about a seated practice since that's a starting point or a launch it better or what have you.

Give us a basic meditation practice that somebody can start if they're a beginner or if they're trying to get back to it.

Okay.

So sit down somewhere.

If you're tired,

You can stand,

But just sit somewhere in a chair,

You know,

Couch somewhere that's comfortable.

Do I have to put one foot across?

Just sit in an easy chair if you want.

Although to be honest,

The more straight your spine is,

The easier it'll be to stay awake rather because if you're super comfy and slouched,

You might just start nodding off.

So but if you want to use a cushion,

You can do that too,

But I would just sit in a chair,

Close your eyes or keep them open.

Again kind of up to you,

But closing your eyes is the way a lot of people do it.

And then bring your attention to some sensation in your experience.

So the feeling of breathing is a good one.

Just the feeling of a tickle in your nose or in your belly.

But if you don't like working with the breath,

Maybe the feeling of the warmth in your hands,

Do that.

Just and your attitude is welcome to the party,

Meaning no distractions are annoying to you.

So just you kind of sit down,

Try to notice the feeling of the breath,

Mind wanders bring it back.

If there's talking in the background,

If there's thoughts that are bugging you and just be like,

Yeah,

No problem.

There are no enemies,

Welcome to the party and then go back to feeling it.

That's all you need to do.

And do it for 10 minutes and try it for a week and then look at your life.

Do you actually feel a little bit better because you did that?

Do you feel a little bit less like a reactive asshole?

Are you a little bit more chilled out?

Are you a little bit less stressed?

If you are,

Then it's working or maybe you're not.

So maybe you need to up the dosage a little bit.

So do it for 15 minutes a day.

I would recommend doing it in the morning when you wake up or at lunch or it could be before bed.

It's sort of individual preference.

There's no run right time,

But make it easy.

Close your eyes,

Notice your breath and try to have an attitude of not being uptight about all the distractions that are going to be there.

Give yourself a break.

That is meditation in a nutshell.

That's the best instruction that I've heard on meditation.

So let me make sure I get this.

Sitting down,

Quiet place.

So what happens if I hear a lawnmower outside?

Just keep going,

Right?

It doesn't have to be quiet or does it?

I mean,

It's nice for it to be quiet because when there are distractions,

They create thoughts like you're going,

Oh shit,

What does that sound of the lawnmower?

Maybe I need to cut my lawn actually and you're off lost in thought.

So that's why ideally we look for quiet-ish situations.

It's the morning too,

Right?

So yeah,

But those are ideals.

The reality is the world's going to interfere and it's way more important to learn how to not get uptight about interruptions than it is to find a perfect environment.

So because think about what you're cultivating.

You don't want to cultivate the quality of like needing to control every little variable in your life because your life's going to just run you over.

There's just no freaking way you can do that.

You got to learn how to be a little bit more relaxed and easy going about how things unfold.

Otherwise you get hammered.

It's acceptance to some degree,

Right?

It's acceptance.

It's mature acceptance.

I mean,

Look at smart old people.

What are they doing?

I mean,

I'm talking about smart old people versus dumb old people or people who didn't get wise.

They're kicking back.

They're not freaking out about little things,

Storms and teacups.

They're just sort of watching the kids play and the kids are wiping out and they get up and they've got perspective.

They've got that kind of sort of existential easygoingness.

All meditation does is it accelerates the aging gracefully gradient.

It allows you to be more of a chilled out old person in the middle of your life.

So you still got the vitality of your youth and your drive and your desire to make a change,

But you're holding it in a container of more easygoingness,

More affable grandma vibes.

You know?

I love it.

I love it.

That's what I want to be.

I want to be a chilled old man right now.

Although my left knee makes me feel like an old man already.

I read in the late 90s a book called The Relaxation Response.

Have you heard of this book?

Dr.

Herbert Benson,

He was a cardiologist.

I think he was the founder of Harvard's Mind Body Medical Institute,

But that was kind of one of the mainstream books that I had ever read about.

It was about meditation,

But it came from it from a medical stress relief.

And it used a,

It was a mantra or it was a keyword that I focused on one.

I would just say in my mind silently to myself,

One,

One,

One,

You know,

With breathing.

And man,

Back in the,

In the 90s,

You know,

20 minutes a day,

Every day,

I was,

It really got me into it.

It was fantastic.

And somehow,

Jeff,

I went off the rails,

Lost it,

Just stopped doing it.

And one of the things that I'm starting to realize is I,

I let my thoughts bully me out of the,

The sitting.

I'll sit and the thoughts will just make me think I'm not accomplishing anything.

I'm not doing anything.

I'm not meditating.

So I stop.

And I've really started,

And maybe this is part of growth or something,

But I started to be aware of how automatic and crazy,

You know,

It's like someone tossed firecrackers into a zoo inside my head.

You know,

It's like,

I was,

I was playing tennis.

I was playing tennis one day and everything's going great.

It's a good day.

Nothing,

Nothing was going on.

I was playing okay.

And I sat down just resting in between these sets.

And the craziest thoughts came into my head.

I mean,

Negative,

Bad,

Stressful.

And it was,

It was not,

I could not control these thoughts.

And it was,

It was,

It was kind of discouraging.

I thought,

Wow,

I thought I was making progress,

You know,

And,

And these thoughts.

So but I guess that's the point,

Right?

Meditating is becoming aware of this and seeing these thoughts and not letting them bully you,

Bully you out of the state or the sit.

Is that right?

Yeah,

But do you got to read meditation for phygeosceptics because it's like,

That's the main thing we talk about is how to,

Is about our relationship to our thoughts.

And you know,

The main thing people find when they start meditating,

The first thing that happens is they notice how crazy they are.

I mean,

The waterfall of just endless neurotic thoughts going around and around,

Including thoughts that are like saying that you can't do this,

That you'll never do this,

That you suck this,

That and the other.

So you need to,

Meditation,

Particularly a mindfulness based practice is about getting space around those thoughts and noticing them.

So you mentioned Herbert Benson.

So that's a famous book.

Benson basically taught a simple concentration practice.

Concentration practices are about just getting a little bit more relaxed,

A little bit more still.

They're wonderful.

They're one of the kinds of meditation I talked about.

They're an absolute,

You know,

Kind of like a key practice to kind of have in your toolkit.

But there's another kind of meditation called mindfulness meditation,

Which is,

Which has that concentration as its basis,

But it's curious about those thoughts.

It's curious about why you get distracted and when you get distracted.

And instead of struggling to stay with like your mantra or your breath,

Occasionally in a mindfulness practice,

You go,

Oh,

Yeah,

Okay,

I noticed that there's thinking happening.

You know,

You can actually conduct a meditation on thinking like you just kind of go,

Oh,

Yeah,

There's thinking.

So instead of letting it bully you just go,

Oh,

Man,

Yeah,

Here it goes again,

My crazy thinking patterns.

Can you first of all have a sense of humor about it?

Because it's hilarious.

So you laugh and smile at the thoughts.

You treat them not as an enemy,

But as an old friend who after all,

And it's this friend in their neurotic way is trying to help you.

So you just sort of like you recognize the thoughts are happening.

You smile,

Say,

Hey,

Man,

I got it.

But I don't really need to listen to you right now.

I'm trying to meditate.

And you have this affable friendly attitude,

The welcome to the party attitude,

And you go back to your breath,

And you stay with that.

And then you get distracted again by thoughts,

You have the same attitude,

You go back.

It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

If you like,

Once you're into it a little bit,

You can actually go into the thoughts themselves.

I don't want to get overwhelmed with too complexity,

But you can kind of notice,

Okay,

When I have this thought,

Are there images?

Are there certain talk that I'm used to hearing?

Is there a feeling in my body that always happens when I have this,

Say,

Judgmental thought?

I guarantee there probably is.

And so you can actually make those sensations,

Make the images,

Make the talk itself a meditation object.

You can go there and watch it,

Curious about how it's all unfolding.

And the act of doing that,

By the way,

Can actually sometimes completely cool out your thinking.

So just to say,

To make this more concrete for people,

If you're interested,

I have a bunch of free meditations on my website that anybody can use.

And one of them is called What is a Thought?

And it teaches you how to work with your thinking as part of a meditation.

It also has other simple ones like a concentration practice.

We don't have to worry about that stuff if you don't want to,

But it's very helpful to start to understand how your thoughts just run your life.

I mean,

That is the basics of a mindfulness practice.

What do you think of cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation?

What do you think of the idea of disputing a thought,

Working against the thought in that way?

Is that counter to what meditation is trying to do by just letting them be or can they work together?

I think they can work together.

I'm not an expert on CBT,

But there's lots of different kinds of mental health techniques that can be helpful to us.

I think that CBT has got some really good evidence behind it that it shows that works well.

You could basically create a meditation practice that is almost very similar to CBT.

Most meditation works in a slightly different way.

It's not trying to deliberately counteract the thought.

It's trying to be so creative,

Such a culture of openness and clarity that the thought just works itself out and it doesn't need to be fed.

It's a different sort of strategy,

But there are practices that are around,

For example,

Deliberately trying to be more kind and friendly.

You're kind of repeating phrases of self-compassion or phrases of compassion for others.

That can often counter negative thought patterns.

Those practices actually kind of work in a similar-ish way.

It's all different.

Just explore all the different practices and see how they work for you.

Some people,

CBT might be just the thing.

For others,

The meditative approach might be more fitting.

So Jeff,

This has been great.

What is the minimum effective dose of meditation?

You said 10 minutes.

Is there a minimum effective?

If you just do five,

Is that not good?

Is 20 the optimum?

Dosages,

Again,

I keep saying this,

It's so much dependent on the individual.

I think a good place to start is sort of 10 or 15 minutes a day just to kind of see if you can just do that and kind of notice what the effect has been in your life.

A lot of people meditate for a lot more.

Typical meditation practice is often kind of half an hour or something,

But 15 minutes is totally legit.

The thing is,

One minute counts too.

I mean,

Again,

It's what I'm saying.

If you can learn to understand the skills that you're building in meditation,

Then the real trick is to just kind of notice when you're actually applying those skills in the rest of your life.

If you only do that as your practice,

That is a deep and powerful practice that will absolutely transform your life.

And so you can just do a thing where like for one minute,

Whenever you remember it,

For a minute here,

A minute there,

You're deliberately trying to be concentrated on listening or deliberately trying to be concentrated on seeing or on feeling,

Deliberately trying to be clear about what you're feeling,

Deliberately trying to be open and have that welcome to the party attitude to your life.

If you do that for a minute here,

A minute there throughout your day,

That will start to make your day better.

There's just no doubt about it.

So I mean,

I think personally having those kinds of pepper in that through your day and then having a 10 or 15 minute sitting practice is a good way to go.

And people can fit that in.

I mean,

I know we're busy,

But you can fit 10 minutes in.

Do you have any tips on the first starting?

I think that's where I kind of get hung up.

I just,

I sit down and I start,

But that's the hardest part for me.

Once I'm in there,

I tend to roll on,

Right?

I would say make it like,

You got to try to make it a habit.

Roll out of bed,

Sit.

Don't even,

Before you get out of your mind is a,

Start getting into making excuses.

Like literally you wake up,

You get out of bed,

You sit.

Do 10 minutes that way or make it a habit like brushing your teeth.

Because that is the hardest part.

You know,

People,

It's all about habit forming.

Actually the book has a ton of tips from the kind of behavioral science and all the stuff around habit formation.

That was one of the cool things about writing this book is Dan and I are both interested in looking at the science of how we create new habits.

So there's helpful tips in there.

But I think for me the way it's worked is I just had to make it,

I just have to not think about it.

It's got to become a thing I just automatically do.

So when would be a time where you could bootstrap to your being strategic about your schedule?

Maybe you get to work,

You drive to work in your car and maybe you can do a five minute meditation where you're sitting in your car before you get out and go into your office.

That's a perfect place.

Like you get your little sealed container or maybe there's like a,

You know,

There's a,

You know,

You go and you get your lunch and you bring it back and you always have this 10 minutes where you're eating your lunch at your desk or there's 20 minutes.

So maybe there's like a 10 minutes there you can turn into a practice.

But you know what I mean?

Or,

Or before bed,

Like you look at existing spots where,

Hey,

There's a little,

There's a,

Where's a little protected space where you can sneak in a little gorilla meditation.

And yeah,

That's a good strategy actually.

And there are apps.

I think there's the 10% there's a 10% happier app.

There's headspace.

There are other apps that can help people if they're just starting with guided meditation,

Right?

The it's been like a whole app revolution.

You know,

I mean there,

There's a lot of really good apps out there.

I like 10% happier is the one that I'm on and Dan is on,

But there's other ones too.

There's a cool one called bright mind that my friends do.

That's based on my teacher Shenzhen stuff.

Uh,

Of course there's headspace,

Which is,

You know,

Okay,

But there's better.

There's lots of good ones.

Um,

I would suggest bright mind or 10% happier.

Those are my two favorites,

But I'm totally biased.

So you have to kind of check out for yourself and you,

You,

You're doing some guided meditations in a,

The happier app.

10%?

Oh yeah.

I'm all over that thing,

Man.

I got all kinds of courses and video and what's cool about them.

The reason I like 10% happier app is they,

If you get the subscription,

You get access to all of these live teachers.

It's like meditation teachers on headsets hanging out in some office with like Zen wind chimes answering your questions in real time,

Which is mind blowing.

Like to me,

That's the future teaching and to have some kind of structure like that is really,

I think that's really cool.

So that's why I like them.

But also I like them cause they pay me.

Jeff,

This has been great.

Um,

I,

I,

What do you recommend?

Because I,

I,

I,

I want to explore insight meditation.

Um,

Are there resources you recommend for me to,

To,

To,

To explore that further?

Uh,

Well,

I mean,

I guess I would recommend the book I wrote about it,

Which is meditation for fidgety skeptics cause it's all about mindfulness,

Breaking it down,

Super easy practices.

Um,

You know,

That's a good place to start.

Uh,

You know,

You can go to the insight meditation society.

They do retreats there.

They have resources on their website.

Just Google mindfulness or insight.

You could find free guided practices.

Like I mentioned,

I have free guided practices on my website.

The 10% happier app gives you some free ones.

Um,

Insight or mindfulness is everywhere now.

There's so many resources and a lot of them are free,

So there's no reason to not do it anymore because of lack of resources.

In fact,

The problem is knowing which resources to trust and um,

And that's just,

You know,

It's just experience like who you vibe with.

And those,

Those things I told you are all fairly trustworthy.

Super.

And so the book is meditation for fidgety skeptics and your,

Your website is what?

Jeff Warren.

Org J E F F W A R R E N.

Org.

Jeff,

Thank you so much for coming on.

This has been great,

Very helpful to me and I'm sure many others.

I appreciate it.

No problem,

Larry.

It's a pleasure.

Well,

That is all the time we have today.

Please spread the word.

If you enjoyed the episode,

Leave us a review on iTunes and share it with your friends on your favorite social platforms.

Big thank you to Sam Williams,

My audio guy.

Make sure you visit larryweaks.

Com for all my content and we will talk again soon.

Reviews

Thanks Larry. Was able to enjoy that over a bike ride. ✌️😎

Fantastic discussion. I learned a so much. I'm inspired to up my commitment.

What an inspiring talk 😃 Thank you💕