Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #115 Meditation and Mindfulness Made Easy: The Very Best Tips

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

There’s so much craziness going on in the world right now and it can often be hard to know what to feel, or even what to do. In times like these, a practice of mindfulness or meditation becomes even more important. It can help improve sleep, reduce levels of stress and anxiety and so much more. But for me, the most important benefit is that it allows you to check in with who you are. Many of us live life at 100 miles an hour – bombarded with emails, texts messages and news – we are constantly consuming information from the outside and we rarely have time to go to the inside and check in on how we are feeling. Today’s episode is a special compilation episode all about mindfulness and meditation – what are the common misconceptions, and what are the actual benefits? In this episode, I have put together the very best clips from previous conversations on the podcast, to help answer these questions. Many of us have tried before to start a daily practice but have soon found ourselves giving up, despite our best intentions. This special episode will show you why this need not be the case. It is packed with simple, easy and practical tips, that I am sure will inspire you to get started and start reaping the benefits today! Show notes are available via https://drchatterjee.com/115 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When people are meditating, they get really annoyed with themselves when their mind suddenly chases off, they suddenly start thinking. And actually, that's a moment of mindfulness. When you realise your mind has wandered, that is a moment of mindfulness. So in the midst of that apparent failure is actually your success. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. This is episode 115. So I thought I'd just take a moment at the start of this podcast to check in with you all and see how you're doing because I found things really difficult this week. Everything that's going on in the world,

it really has affected me and stirred a lot of emotions deep inside me. I know for many of you, you will feel the same. There's so much craziness and stress happening at the moment, whether it be the pandemic, the tragic death of George Floyd, the subsequent protests, or simply the realization that we are living in an unjust and unfair world. And it can often be hard to know what to feel or even what to do. And I really feel that in times like these, a practice of mindfulness and meditation in times like these, a practice of mindfulness and meditation becomes so, so important. It can help improve your sleep, reduce levels of stress, improve focus, concentration. It can reduce anxiety, feelings of depression, and so much more. But for me, the most important benefit is that it allows you to check in with who you are. You see, many of us live life at 100

miles an hour. We get up, we jump on our phones, we read emails, we read social media posts, we watch news. In effect, we're constantly consuming information from the outside. We rarely have time to go inside and check in with how we're feeling. But something like meditation helps you observe what is actually going on in your mind. It helps to put distance between you and your thoughts. And whether you want any of the benefits I've already mentioned, or whether you want to help with something seemingly unrelated, like losing excess weight, having a few minutes each day to yourself is critical. If we talk about trying to lose weight, having a few minutes each day to yourself is critical. If we talk about trying to lose weight, for example, mindfulness and meditation is really important. Much of what drives our

eating behavior is actually emotional. So if you don't take time to get in touch with your emotions, it can be really hard to change the behavior. Now look, I get it. It can be difficult. We hear all the benefits. We say, yes, I'm going to do this. And then we might try one or two times, but then life gets in the way. It's easier to actually do something like a workout or go for a walk than it is to sit there in silence. And I get it, but there really is something unique and powerful about practices like these. For me, it's taken a long time of trying, giving up, restarting, experimenting with different methods until I've got to say, I'm pretty close now to having a regular daily practice. But actually, that experimentation process has been a huge opportunity for me to learn about myself and what the obstacles really

are to me actually engaging in mindfulness and meditation. So today's episode is a very special compilation episode. I tried this with sleep a few weeks back and the feedback has been fantastic. Many of you were able to improve your sleep immediately by applying some of the strategies in the podcast. But what was even more interesting to me was that many of you already knew some of the advice that you heard, but the episode still helped you because it was a useful reminder, a gentle nudge, if you will, about some of those lifestyle practices that you used to adopt, if you will, about some of those lifestyle practices that you used to adopt, but then for some reason had fallen by the wayside. Today's episode is here to help simplify mindfulness and meditation and make the daily practice of it feel easy and far less daunting.

My team and I have taken some of the best and most practical clips from previous podcasts which have covered this topic. We aim to break down misconceptions and talk about how to overcome some of the most common obstacles. The guests who have featured today are absolutely fantastic, whether it be Light Watkins, Michael Acton-Smith, Danny Penman, or Sanjay Rawal. And a lot of these conversations are actually from the early days of this podcast. So many of you, I imagine, will be unfamiliar with these guests and their brilliant conversations with me. I've actually just been for a walk and listened to the full episode and it is really, really good. The clips are fantastic. And to be honest, it has served as really timely inspiration for me

to continue with my own meditation practice. I'm pretty sure that at the end of today's show, you are going to feel inspired to get going too. Now, before we get started, I just need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential in order for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. Athletic Greens have always been a big supporter of my show and this is a company that I really like. They make one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I have ever come across and I myself take it regularly. This podcast is all about empowering you to become the architects of your own health and of course nutrition is one of the most important pillars of health. Now ideally

everyone would get all of their nutrition from real whole foods but the reality is that many of us struggle to do that consistently and that is why I do like high quality whole food supplements like Athletic Greens. Many of you had fed back to me that since starting each day with your Athletic Greens, you have improved many different aspects of your health, such as energy levels, sleep quality, and your concentration and focus. It does contain vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. And I am a big fan of their travel packs, which often accompany me when I'm on the roads or on the move. So if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy

to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of the show, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Zendium Toothp toothpaste are also sponsoring this week's show. When we think about our immune systems, we often don't think about our mouths, but we should because inside them we have one of our body's most amazing natural defences, the oral microbiome. Zendium is the very first toothpaste

brands that I have come across that aims to support the health of the oral microbiome. Since last year, I have been using Zendium toothpaste and I really like using it. As more and more research comes out on the oral microbiome, I think it's going to become really clear that just like the gut microbiome, it's an important part of our immune system. Now we're normally used to toothpastes promising to kill the bacteria in our mouths but Zendium is actually a little bit different. It protects your mouth in a kinder way and it contains natural enzymes and proteins that aim to increase the numbers of good bacteria which protect your mouth naturally and reduce bad bacteria to protect it against dental problems. The very best way to try out Zendium is to go to Amazon

and order. That is the online store Amazon, where you can go and order Zendium toothpaste today. Now, on to today's very special episode, and we begin with Dr. Danny Penman, award-winning author and expert in mindfulness and meditation. In episode 30 of the podcast, he told me the incredible story of how in the aftermath of a paragliding accident, a meditative breathing practice he learned at school potentially saved his life. One day I was flying over the edge of the Cotswolds and my canopy collapsed and I plunged head over heels into the hillside below. And luckily I landed on my feet, but unluckily the lower half of my right leg was driven through the knee and into the thigh. This was a really horrific injury.

I was lying there on the hillside, completely stunned. I mean, I was totally unable to breathe. For a moment, I thought, well, you know, is this it? And I was hit with the most unimaginable pain. I was hit with the most unimaginable pain. I mean, it was absolutely horrific. Obviously, I had no painkillers with me at all. And I suddenly remembered a very, very simple breathing meditation I'd learned in sixth form. And we were taught lots of techniques for stress relief. And one of these things was this very simple breathing meditation. So in absolute desperation, I decided to use this.

I'd heard that meditation could be a way of controlling and coping with pain. So I just put it into practice. with pain. So I just put it into practice. I just began to focus on the sensations of breathing as the air flowed in and out of my body. And much to my surprise, it began to work. It was almost as if there was like a thin sheet of glass or mist between me and the pain. I spent a month in hospital whilst they reconstructed my leg. I had what's known as a tailor spatial frame fitted to the leg. I had this device on my leg for five months and I began to use this meditation more and more for just coping with the, you know, the immense stress I was under, the anxiety, the, you know, considerable unhappiness I was feeling. And I found it was remarkably effective for all of those things, you know, and I could feel myself

healing on a day to day basis, I could cope with the amount of pain. You know, I, I reduced my painkiller intake by two thirds. But you attribute that to your breathing meditation. Yeah, I do. There was several other people who were at various stages of going through this process of having their limbs reconstructed in the hospital I was in. And, you know, I was healing at a remarkable rate and I put it almost exclusively down to the meditation. of excruciating pain and probably anxiety and your body being in fight or flight yeah you used a breathing meditation what was the meditation that you did in that emergency situation it is the most simple of all mindfulness meditations which is where you close your eyes, you focus on the sensations of breathing. So as the air flows into your lungs and then out, and you are feeling the way your shoulders rise and fall, the way your chest rises and falls, the way your stomach moves in and out. So you're really getting in touch with your body and the

sensations of breathing. And that is incredibly powerful, especially for stress relief and anxiety relief, because it has a direct influence on the body's parasympathetic nervous system. That's the calming aspect of the nervous system. So just breathing deep in and out, gradually slowing down, has this tremendously soothing effect on the body. You know, breathing is really information, isn't it? It's information for your brain that everything is okay. Yeah. Yes. So in some ways, our brain, if we're feeling stressed, can send messages to our body that we're under attack and that we're stressed. But we can also almost, we can hack it by focusing on our breathing and breathing deeply and slowly.

We can send our brain messages that everything's okay. There are many misconceptions about meditation and mindfulness out there. And these misconceptions can often become obstacles to getting started. My next guest is Michael Acton-Smith, co-founder of the meditation and mental fitness app, Calm. Way back in episode two of this podcast, he admits that he wasn't initially convinced about trying meditation until he researched the science. What he read dramatically changed the trajectory of his personal and professional life. I was super stressed. I wasn't eating well. I was sleeping really badly. I had

headaches all the time, was just exhausted. And a friend took me aside and said, why don't you try meditation? And I wasn't in the right mindset. I was like, go away. That sounds ridiculous. I had these preconceived ideas that meditation was religious or woo-woo or a little bit weird. I'd have to get dressed up in weird outfits and whatnot. But I did something I'd never done before. I took myself off on a solo holiday and I started to research meditation. I read the science behind it. I read some amazing books and a light bulb went on and I realized that there was incredible neuroscience behind meditation. This wasn't woo-woo. This was real. This could really rewire your brain in many ways. So that was the moment when

I realized, wow, I want to devote the next many, many years of my life to helping spread this incredibly simple but valuable skill. I think you've really touched on something very important, which is one of the obstacles I see with my patients to doing meditation, which I'm a huge fan of, is the preconceptions that it might be religious. They might have to sit cross-legged somewhere. They might have to say a mantra over and over again. And I think it can be a bit off-putting for people. You know, the term meditation or even mindfulness often gets used interchangeably these days. And for me, it's really

a practice of stillness. And I think in our modern busy world, it's never been more important than having that pause button. What did you find yourself when you first started meditating that convinced you of the benefits? I found it really difficult. I'll be honest. I think a lot of people do. The mind does not like to switch off. It's constantly whirring and swirling away. So even sitting down just for a few moments, my mind would just fill with all sorts of thoughts and ideas. And one of the triggers that helped me reframe it and think about it in a new way was that meditation is like going to the gym. You know, we lift weights to strengthen our muscles. And by meditating, we're strengthening the attention muscle in our mind.

We sit, and it's not about clearing the mind and zenning out. I think that's a misconception. Whenever thoughts come, which they will, we acknowledge them, and we gently move them away and go back to focus on a constant, such as our breath. And then new thoughts will flood in, and we'll do the same thing, and again, and again. And that repeated practice, that's what it is, a practice, helps strengthen that attention muscle and brings so many different benefits to our everyday life when we're not meditating. So that was key for me, thinking of it more as almost mental fitness and been hugely valuable for many different areas of my life. You have to go slowly at first. You know, you wouldn't, if you're trying to run a marathon, you don't start by running 10

or 20 miles training. You get off the sofa and maybe you walk around the block. And I think the same is true of meditation. Even just breathing consciously and being aware of your breath for a few seconds is a good place to start. In the Calm app, we encourage 10 minutes every morning, but even that can take a little bit of time for people to work up to. So for me, it was just very gently beginning with a few minutes and then lengthening from there. I love your marathon analogy because that's the exact analogy I use with my patients in my practice every single day, because many people come back to me and say, you know, doctor, I don't think meditation's for me.

You know, I can't do, I can't switch my mind off. And the first thing I say to them is if I said to you, you had to run the London marathon next year, you wouldn't go on one or two jogs and try and do 26 miles and then come back and say, hey doc, I can't do it. I think you would naturally understand that, you know, you have to train yourself to be able to get to that level. And if we've spent our whole lives busy with, you know, information overload, and we never actually had to pause and think about our mind and our breath, it's really unrealistic to think we're going to be able to do it straight away. So I think lots of people

are finding that and I think reframing it as, you know, mind fitness is absolutely fantastic. Light Watkins is a meditation teacher, international speaker and author of the brilliant book Bliss More. In episode 23, I spoke to Light about the health benefits associated with a consistent practice of meditation and why meditation can help in so many other areas of life. You'll also hear again from Danny and Michael who shared their experiences of how a regular practice can impact depression, stress, anxiety and shape how we make our daily decisions. If we can remove the obstacles that people feel when they think about meditation, we're going to get more people meditating.

And benefiting from meditation. You're not going to benefit from doing it once a week in your group. You're going to benefit from doing it at home every day when you wake up in the morning because you like to do it. So what are those benefits? Well, the classic benefits are number one, you sleep better. You know, your meditation is a rest experience and it has the ability to rest the body deeper than sleep. Your metabolism can drop two to five times lower. So your body systems can rest two to five times deeper in the meditation than they've been shown to be able to rest when you sleep at night. Your body is not able to rest deeply because it's the stress chemistry is keeping it revved up even when you're lying horizontal. So meditation is one of the few interventions that have been shown to break through that and allow the body to get into a deep state of rest. At which point

once you start resting as we know i mean we don't know a whole lot about the brain and about sleep but what we do know is that it's when the body does most of its rehabilitation so there's anything in balance inside of the body whether it's your digestive system whether it's your reproduction system whether it's your immune system the endocr system, those long-term survival systems, that means we need those systems in order to thrive, right? Those start to come back online. And that's why you'll have people with gastrointestinal problems. You'll have people with heart disease and all other kinds of lifestyle illnesses. They'll start to experience remission after meditating for three months or six months. Or they may start to come off of their medications after meditating for three months or six months, or they may start to come off of their medications after meditating in this way. It is a key habit for all the other

things that we want to do. If you want to exercise every day, great. Meditation every day is going to make you actually want to exercise. If you want to eat better every day, fantastic. Meditation is not only going to make you crave higher quality foods, it's going to allow your body to metabolize and digest those nutrients and minerals a lot more efficiently, right? So all the things that we naturally just want to do lifestyle-wise in order to feel healthier, meditation, when you have less stress in the body, you have more rest, you have more happiness, you have a greater sense of inner fulfillment, it's going to make you want to do those things as opposed to craving foods that are bad for you or relationships that are not sustainable, which ultimately leads to the poor health and lifestyle illnesses

and diseases that we suffer from as a society. It's the stress that's causing all those things. So when you reduce the stress, naturally things tend to get better. Mindfulness, especially one of the structured programs like mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, has been proven in numerous clinical trials now to be at least as good as medication for depression. In fact, it's actually slightly better than antidepressants for the worst forms of depression. What else can it help with? The whole range of mental health problems that is afflicting society, really. Anxiety,

stress, depression, insomnia, all know all the maladies of all the mental health maladies of modern life yeah i would probably say that as well as those yeah because stress um impacts every single organ in our body whether it's our brain so our memory our emotional brain our amygdala so anxiety anxiety. It can even increase the risk of getting type 2 diabetes. A lot of people don't think of stress reduction when they think of type 2 diabetes. They think about diet and exercise, but chronically elevated stress levels raises your cortisol, which raises your blood sugar, which is a cause of type 2 diabetes. Gut problems like irritable bowel syndrome which are so prevalent now we know that

stress plays a big role so i bet you your your practices will also benefit these other conditions as well when you meditate the decisions you make in life are responses instead of reactions. You're not going from the oldest part of the brain, the amygdala, just reacting instinctively to things. You're thinking, you have that fraction of a second longer to make conscious choices, and that changes everything. It really does. And when you find that new level of awareness, and this is what I've found, I look back on the way I used to behave in certain situations. I think, wow, I was just reacting. Now I hope I've sort of can make better choices because I'm a little bit more aware. A lot of people think that they need to clear their mind

of all thoughts when they meditate. And in this next clip, Light explains why this isn't true. Then you'll hear once again from Danny who believes that we need to put perfectionism to one side when starting our practice. Your mind is not the enemy of the meditation. Almost everybody, Mind is not the enemy of the meditation. Almost everybody, without exception, treats their mind like the enemy of meditation. I need to somehow get beyond this burdensome mind so that I can enjoy the inner peace or stillness or whatever that I've read about or that I've heard is in there somewhere. And instead of looking at the mind as the enemy, we want to start to see the mind as our ally. And it's not about noticing this and focusing on that

and being aware of this. It's not about that. That's not what I'm asking people to do because that requires mental activity, which keeps the mind pinned to the surface awareness. What I'm asking people to do is to treat every single thought that they have as legitimate. And when you can have that attitude about your mind that this is all okay, and this means that I'm actually doing it, not just acceptably, but I'm doing it perfectly. You having a thought about making, you know, shepherd's pie, you having a thought about how you may have to have dental surgery whatever the thought is rehearsing conversations i'm falling asleep all of these quote-unquote

normal thoughts are a part of the experience oh this this is incredible light because so many people think that they are doing it wrong when they have what they consider to be a monkey mind right and what i'm saying is that you need the monkey mind in order to do it correctly. You need to go through the monkey mind phase. That is very, very different from what I think a lot of people are familiar with. But I also think that's what makes your approach so fantastically unique and successful is that in some ways it's taking the pressure off people. It's lowering the bar to entry. It's saying, hey, you know what, those thoughts that are coming in and out,

your to-do list, what you've got to do at work, you're saying that that is part of a good quality meditation. Absolutely. The mind just wants to be happy and it's looking for different thoughts in order to find that happiness. I guess in some ways when we are living these busy modern lives and we're go, go, go and we're constantly connected and we wake up and we look at our phones and we've just got incoming noise continuously from the minute we wake up for many of us to often until the minute just before we drop off to sleep in our bed as well, we're still looking at emails and Facebook posts and Instagram and all this kind of stuff. I guess if you look at it from a different perspective, it's completely unrealistic to go from that, which may have been going on for years and years, to suddenly sitting there for 10 minutes, whether straight back or not, and suddenly your mind's going to go into this beautiful, still state where nothing's there. The problem that we want to ideally avoid is not giving ourselves an outlet for all the pressure and the demands that we experience on a daily basis, right? That's what can become very, very detrimental to our, not only physical health,

but also our mental health. So many people who are suffering stress and anxiety are perfectionists, and actually they bring that perfectionism to mindfulness. And actually you don't need to, you know, you find what you find. And it's as simple and as beautiful as that. Yeah, that's a key message, isn't it? I can really echo with that. It's, I guess, in some ways it's don't let perfection be an obstacle to the actual action of doing it. Just do it.

Basically, just do it and you'll get the benefits. Yeah, exactly. It's like when people are meditating, they get really annoyed with themselves when their mind suddenly chases off, they suddenly start thinking. And actually, that's a moment of mindfulness. When you realise your mind has wandered, that is a moment of mindfulness. So in the midst of that apparent failure is actually your success. moment of mindfulness. So in the midst of that apparent failure is actually your success. Really hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. Just taking a very quick break to give a shout out to the sponsors who are essential for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, are sponsoring today's show. Now I love Vivo Barefoot shoes. I've been wearing them for

years now, as have my entire family. And honestly, to say that they have transformed my life is no exaggeration. They make brilliant minimalist shoes that are really comfortable. Now I've been recommending them for years to my friends, to family members, but also to patients. And honestly, I never get tired of hearing the positive feedback, whether it be an improvement in hip pain, back pain, knee pain, or just general mobility. Now, today's conversation is about mindfulness. And for me, since I started wearing Vivos, I am naturally more mindful when I take a walk. I am naturally more mindful when I take a walk. Being in minimalist shoes results in you feeling much more connected to the ground. You can feel everything, which by default makes you more mindful. I wear Viva Barefoot shoes for everything. Walking, running, playing with my kids. Basically,

whenever I have shoes on, I have got a Aviva Barefoot shoes on and many people who start wearing them do get hooked they no longer want to go back to cushion footwear and this is exactly what happened to me if you have never tried them before I would highly encourage you to give them a go it is completely risk-free to do so they offer a 100 day trial for new customers so if you are not happy, you can simply send them back for a full refund. The listeners of my show, they offer their fabulous discounts.

If you go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code for all of my podcast listeners in the UK, USA, and Australia. You can get your 20% off code by going to vivobarethought.com forward slash live more. My guest for episode 79 on this show was the amazing Sanjay Rawal, a documentary maker who directed the brilliant film

3100 Run and Become. And in that film, he covers a grueling 3,100 mile race where runners complete 5,649 laps off one city block in New York. And in this conversation, Sandy describes what we can all gain from a mindful approach to movement. It's tension in our bodies, whether physical tension, emotional tension, psychological tension. This is ultimately where that dis-ease within us comes from. You just made the best argument for a practice of meditation. If you start a run and you're incredibly tight mentally, if you're incredibly tight emotionally, you're not going to have a good experience. And for both of these, for the extreme races like the 3100, all the way down to a simple two to three mile jog.

What you said holds true, that before starting these activities, if you're mentally loose, you're going to have a better experience in the physical. And that's a corollary to life. If you're mentally loose in any part of your day-to-day activities, you're going to have a less stressful experience. And so it comes down to the idea of centering oneself first thing in the morning before the stresses and the cavalcade of responsibilities descend on our shoulders. It might come across that like I've believed or practiced this stuff since I was six months old, but I didn't. I ran competitively in high school, a little bit in college and thereafter, but it wasn't until I started making this movie and went for a run with our Navajo character, Sean Martin, that I realized like I was missing something from running. Even though

I'd studied with Sri Chinmoy who recommended this type of running, it's like, I just never sunk in. So, what we threw that, you went out for a run. Yeah. So, we're leaving his front doorstep. And first of all, he tells me like, we start running in the morning towards the east to greet the rising sun. And I was like, I've never started a run with that type of intention or that type of relationship with nature. Even when I run at the Grand Canyon, it's like, how fast can I get to the bottom and come back up? It's like, no, it's like we start running to the east to greet the rising sun. I was waiting for my GPS watch to go. And I realized like this guy who's like a top ranked ultra marathoner doesn't even have a watch on. And so I take off after him. And I realized as he's running and as he's breathing, he's

got a different look in his eyes. And I realized afterwards what that look was, that he understood that this particular run could be transformative. Not like the heavens would open up and like all the angels would come down. Not like the heavens would open up and like all the angels would come down. But like if you go into a morning meditation thinking that it's a good thing and that if you achieve a small sense or small moment of silence, your day is going to be better. You open yourself up to having that small moment of silence. If in a morning contemplative practice, like you're literally just like thinking about

breakfast, you know that nothing's going to happen and that it's not going to be a transformative experience. So it's like he started this run with a loose and soft mind. And it was evident in the way he was, he was moving. He wasn't worried about time. He wasn't worried about distance. He was just worried about his breath. And he later told me there are three reasons why Navajo run. Number one, running is a celebration of life. It's kind of easy to feel when you're running in a canyon. Maybe not so easy when you're running on a street, but point taken. Like you said, like if you have a hard time, if you're going through a really difficult patch, we all know that if you've got the inspiration to go for a walk or go for a run, the problem doesn't necessarily get solved, but it becomes less intense. There's no reason to analyze why, but it just does. Go for a long walk, go for a long run.

You're going to feel better about what's going on in your life. But number three, he said running is a prayer. When you run, your feet are praying to Mother Earth. You're breathing in Father Sky. You're not only asking them for their blessings, you're showing them that you're willing to work for those blessings. And that's running as aspiration. That's running as a cry saying that I'm an insignificant human being.

And I understand that there's greater forces around me that can feed me in my journey to achieve something beyond me, something deeper, something more significant than what I can conjure on my own. And I saw that with Sean when he ran. And when he finished, it wasn't like he was stopping his GPS watch, looking through his stats, unplugging his iPod or iPhone. He had a sense of calm that I never really achieved in running. And it wasn't like he started with that calm, but I could see that he achieved something through that run. And I was step for step with him. I didn't have a phone.

My GPS watch wasn't working. But after the run, I realized he got more out of that than I did. Like why? We ran the same pathway. It was maybe even more exotic for me because it was the first time running in the sacred canyon. I should be feeling better than him. I should just be totally blown away. Like what did I not do? And then afterwards, when he was explaining to me the Navajo philosophy of running, I realized it was simple. I didn't recognize that this run could change my perception of myself. I just didn't know. No harm, no foul, but I just didn't know. And now I know that if I want running to make me a better person and not just a faster person,

it can do that because it always has. Much of our lives are spent thinking negative thoughts, reenacting unhelpful habits, and effectively going through life on autopilot. Simply choosing to sit in a different seat than usual when we eat dinner can change our thoughts and perspective. Mindfulness and meditation can help us to connect with life and be more present as danny explains human beings are fantastic habit machines what it means in practice is you can also automate the way you think about 50 to 80 percent of all of our thoughts and behaviors are just habits that are being triggered over and over and over again. Crucially, it means that,

you know, we often automate negative states of mind and negative thoughts, and we can end up in these tremendous downward spirals that, you know, really is the root cause of depression and anxiety and stress. Everybody thinks of mindfulness as a form of meditation. Well, meditation is just one form of practicing mindfulness, you know. What it really is, is being connected to whatever is going on around you. That's where its benefits come from. It's not sitting in the lotus position and, you know, focusing on your breath. The benefits of mindfulness come from just being connected with life. What I really notice is not so much before I begin to meditate, but when I open my eyes, I suddenly realize I am so much calmer.

And I feel as if my consciousness is an awful lot broader. So when I walk out the house, I walk across the park, I notice all the leaves on the trees, the colour of the bark, the smell of the park, the grass or the moisture in the air. So I'm really connected and really alive. So in many ways, the daily practice that you're recommending, it's not really about that. That's almost tuning you into it so that

for the other hours of the day, you are hopefully more mindful, more attentive, more present because of the practice. Yeah, absolutely. And you think, if you extrapolate that, if you're spending, like most people do, 60 or 80% of your time going through an unconscious habit, you're actually only alive for a few hours each day. Now, if you practice meditation for, say, 20 minutes a day, and you then become conscious of your life for another hour or two each day, you're actually effectively adding a few decades to your life, you know, because you are living life on a daily basis rather than being unconscious. Since the advent of smartphones, apps have really taken off and are a popular way to start a daily meditation practice.

Michael explains how we can get the best out of technology when we use it consciously. When I posted about meditation via apps before on social media, some people have said, you don't need an app to meditate. That's part of the problem. And look, I think you've got to meet people where they're at. The device and the technology is not the problem. That's merely a tool. It's how we use it that matters. And by learning to meditate, by being more mindful, we can use our phones and our devices the way we want. Rather than being yanked around on autopilot, we become masters of our devices rather than slaves to them.

The average person checks their phone over a hundred times a day. Now, I guarantee most of those times will be on autopilot. Far better to do it consciously when we want, how we want, where we want. And again, when you have that control over your device, it improves your life in traumatic ways. I used to go to bed every night doing emails and then would check social media and like an owl would fly by. And I'd find it tricky to switch my mind off unsurprisingly. My dreams would be filled with tweets and Instagram posts. And I'd find it tricky to switch my mind off, unsurprisingly. My dreams would be filled with tweets and Instagram posts. And so now I never use my phone in bed. And when I wake up in the morning, it's hard to do, but I make sure I don't check Twitter or WhatsApp or emails until I've

left the house. And it's incredible the difference it makes going into the shower, not thinking about, you know, why my last Instagram post only got four likes or what Donald Trump's been up to lately. Again, just daydreaming, thinking, just starting the day in a much lighter way is really powerful. So what are the longer term benefits of a consistent meditation practice. In this next clip, Light explains how the experience of a continued daily practice can extend beyond the meditation itself into daily life, increasing our awareness and reducing stress responses. The meditation practice uniquely has a carryover effect. In other words, that present moment awareness can stabilize beyond the seated, eyes closed experience.

So the more you do it, the more your body gets used to it. And what's been shown scientifically is that there is a day coming when you've been practicing it consistently enough. typically is that there is a day coming when you've been practicing it consistently enough, you'll come out of meditation one day and your body will still behave as though you're meditating. In other words, you'll maintain that deeper state of rest, that heightened level of awareness in your mind with your eyes open, but it won't last that long because you'll go to work or you get into an argument with your spouse or something will happen and it'll just fade away. But then you keep going and keep going and keep going. And then eventually it can stabilize through heavier demands and eventually through the bigger pressures. And then eventually it's just there all the time. And that's really

where you start to get the gold from the experience, right? It's never about what's going on in the meditation. It never about what's going on in the meditation. It's about what's happening once you open your eyes and how you're experiencing those other 23 hours and 20 minutes of the day. You know, something you just said there reminded me of, it was when my son was, I don't know, he was maybe a couple of years old, wasn't sleeping that well. And I'd get up early every morning and I'd go downstairs. And even if I was exhausted, I would sit there for five minutes, sometimes, sometimes 10, but often it was just five minutes actually. And I tried to, you know, in inverted commas, meditate.

Sometimes I felt as though all I was doing was going through my to-do list. Other days I felt that, yeah, I kind of felt pretty calm while I was doing that. But irrespective of that, I found that when I committed to make this a daily practice, within days to weeks, I had more energy in the day. I also noticed I was less reactive so if someone had cut me up on the road in the car I just wasn't reacting as much I wouldn't let things bother me as much just from that practice in the morning now look I'm not at all trying to say that that was a proper meditation practice or what you would you would consider meditation but I really resonate with what you would consider meditation. But I really resonate with what you said, which is even a small thing when it's done regularly,

your body really starts to reap those benefits. Now, as you may well have heard me talk about before on the podcast or in my books, I really would encourage you to make mindfulness and meditation a daily practice if you can. There are so many benefits to be gained, but how do you make it a habit? Danny, Michael and Light give us their best tips. What are some of the common problems that people have and are there some simple solutions? Yeah. The problems have existed for thousands of years and the biggest problem of all is doing it.

Okay. You know, people will often do mindfulness just once or twice and then for whatever reason life gets in the way and they just stop doing it. So the most important thing is to try and build it into your life. You know, 10 minutes a day, four, five, six days a week is infinitely better than just one marathon session a month. You know, it's the daily ordinariness of it that's crucial. That's crucial. For all the goodwill, for all our intention, if we don't put a routine around it and try and schedule it, it's very hard to kind of slip into the rest of the day. So we encourage people.

We think the morning is a great time to try and meditate. And there's a principle called anchoring where you try and do a healthy habit next to something you do instinctively. So we all brush our teeth in the morning. And you could say you will meditate after doing those activities and before leaving the house. That's one way to do it. Or some people will do it at their lunch break and they'll know before they go and eat, they'll find a quiet place to meditate for 10 minutes. So establishing that routine every day makes it much, much easier to groove and turn it into a healthy habit. It becomes a daily habit

because you so thoroughly enjoy the experience, either during or immediately after the experience, where you think to yourself, wow, this is amazing, and my life is getting so much better as a result of it. We finish off this special compilation episode with some great tips from Danny, Sanjay and Light. Whether you're starting out with meditation, you just want to feel less stressed and anxious, or you simply want to incorporate more mindfulness into your everyday lives if you are feeling stressed maybe you're sitting in in

your office or you know you're just life is getting beginning to overwhelm you and you need a break right now just literally go outside look at look at the sky, look at the horizon, look down the street, just broaden your awareness. That is incredibly simple thing to do. And it's very, very effective. Your next tea or coffee break, you know, just close your eyes, pay attention to all of the flavours and the smells of the tea or coffee. So really savour it. Yeah, just really. Because, you know, life is for living. And we miss so, so much because we're just driven by these habits.

We think we know what a cup of coffee or tea is going to taste like. So we never actually taste it. The most beautiful song that we can have vibrating through our body is kind of a conscious awareness of our breath. So whether you're walking, whether you're running, whether you're swimming or cycling, unplug from distractions and focus on your breath. You'll see that the breath itself can bring you energy, both a peaceful energy, both a dynamic energy. Try to imagine when you're breathing that you are not just breathing in air, but you're breathing in peace. And that peace is filling your being. And you can do this in moments of exertion.

You can do this in moments of stress. It's like that conscious connection from our breath to our body to our psychic consciousness, you know, can give you a deeper sense of calm and a deeper sense of power. Two things that you can do to start implementing into your practice today, sit comfortably, sit like you're watching television, all right, back supported. You can even have your feet up on an ottoman or something like that. You don't have to have your legs crossed. You suddenly

shatter all these images of sitting, cross legs with a straight back and on the floor in a beautiful beach somewhere. You know, it's reality. Yeah. And then the other thing is just celebrate your mind. If you're thinking a lot and you're sitting in meditation, you're doing it perfectly. You're not doing anything wrong. And if you can shift your attitude around that, then you're going to find that that exponentially enhances your experiences. You'll be able to get to a still place a lot easier. Don't look for it to happen. Just allow that to happen as a side effect of you celebrating your mind. of you celebrating your mind. That concludes today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed it. These compilation episodes do take a lot of time and energy to put together.

So please do take a moment to feed back to me on social media. So I know whether to continue making more like these or not. I hope what you heard today has shed some light on some of the popular misconceptions about meditation and mindfulness and has inspired you to think about adopting a daily practice in your own life. Some people like to start with apps like Calm or Headspace, others use YouTube videos or online classes. It really doesn't matter where you start but starting is what's important

one tip i would give is to really think about where you can fit this into your daily routine if you've read my last book feel better in five you will know about the key main rules of human behavior. Now, one of those rules is to stick on your new desired behavior onto an existing habit that you are already doing without thinking about it. So for me, if I don't meditate first thing in the morning, it often does not happen. Many of us think, oh, I'll do it when I have time. But you know what? Life is so busy that often we convince ourselves that we don't have time for just five minutes of meditation. I do the same thing. If I've not done it in the morning, I keep saying, oh, I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'll do it later. And before you know it, the day's gone and I've been too busy to spend just five minutes working on myself. So for me,

the mornings are the best time. But for you, it may be something else. It may be before bed. It may be before your evening meal or at lunchtime. But really do experiment about the best time in your day to fit it in so that it does become a regular practice. That really isn't that complicated. Now, if you do have my last book, Feel Better in 5, I'd encourage you to dip into it now. There are two really simple breathing practices in there that you can do each day. And I know from feedback that people have found those practices transformative. I particularly like the breath counting exercise. But honestly, you can choose whatever method works for you. And even if tomorrow,

all you do is drink your morning coffee without an app open, without scrolling Twitter, without doing something else, but simply paying attention to every sip, I promise you that even that will make a big difference. The clips you heard today have inspired you and you want to go back and listen to the full conversations i had with those individual guests you can see all the links to those original conversations in the show notes page of this episode which is drchastity.com forward slash 115 guys i would highly recommend that you do so. A lot of the conversations that I shared today were from the early days of this podcast and many of you may never have come across either the conversations or these guests.

I would also highly recommend the books by my guests, which you can see links to in the show notes page. As usual, please do share the podcast with friends and family who you feel it will help and please do consider leaving a review as this does help to raise visibility of the podcast which means that this information can get out there to more people a big thank you to vidar to chastity and sarah swanston for producing this week's podcast and to richard hughes for audio engineering that is it for today i hope you have a fabulous week.

Make sure you hit press subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live live more I'll see you next time