Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Feel Calmer, Less Stressed & More Present with Henry Shukman #632

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

In a world of constant noise, stimulation and busyness, meditation is often framed as another self-improvement tool – something to calm us down, make us more productive or fix what feels broken. But this week’s returning guest believes that this way of thinking completely misses the point. Henry Shukman is an authorised Zen Master and Director of the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the years, Henry has taught meditation at organisations including Google, Harvard Business School and the Esalen Institute, and is the co-founder of ‘The Way’ meditation app. Henry and I had the most beautiful conversation when he first appeared on my podcast on Episode 590 and his app ‘The Way’ has had such a profound impact on me, that I wanted to have a second conversation with him to explore deeper the benefits and misconceptions about meditation and the powerful role it can play in our busy, 21st century lives. I have also partnered with The Way for a free March meditation challenges - you can see all details at thewayapp.com/livemore Henry sees meditation not as a technique for becoming a better version of ourselves, but as a way of reconnecting with something far more fundamental. Beneath all the striving, planning and doing, he says, there is already a deep sense of aliveness and meaning. Meditation simply helps us notice it again. In our conversation, we explore:  Why having a busy, restless mind does not mean you’re “bad” at meditation – and why that restlessness is actually the very reason the practice exists How modern life keeps our attention relentlessly outward, and why daily stillness can help us reconnect with our inner world Why meditation works best when it’s not treated as another task on the to-do list, but as a place of rest from constant doing Why five minutes a day is often more powerful than occasional long meditation sessions How meditation can subtly change our experience of time, helping life feel richer and fuller Simple, practical guidance on when to meditate, how often - and why comfort matters far more than posture or “doing it right” What stayed with me most from this conversation is Henry’s reminder of how rarely we’re encouraged to turn inward. In a world that constantly pulls our attention outside ourselves, meditation becomes a way of rebuilding that inner relationship – one that many of us didn’t realise we’d lost.  Just a few minutes, practised regularly, can change how we relate to our thoughts, our time and our lives.   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   Thanks to our sponsors: https://onepeloton.co.uk https://heights.com/livemore https://drinkage.com/livemore   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/632   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Meditation gives us this incredible opportunity to be aware that there is actually a contentment, a peace, a fulfillment, a quiet joy even that's actually already hidden in us potentially waiting to be discovered. It's a homecoming. It's you coming home to your true place in the universe. And, I mean, in a way, what could be more important? Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you having a good week so far.

My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. In a world of constant noise, stimulation and busyness, meditation is often framed as another self-improvement tool, something to calm us down, make us more productive, or fix what feels broken. But this week's returning guest believes that this way of thinking

completely misses the point. Henry Shookman is an authorised Zen Master and director of the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the years, Henry has taught meditation at organizations including Google, Harvard Business School and the SELIN Institute, and he's also the co-founder of the Way Meditation app. Henry first appeared on my podcast a few months ago on episode 590 when we had the most beautiful and uplifting conversation that I would highly encourage you to listen to if you have not done so already. His app, The Way, has had such a profound impact on me and many people in my life that I wanted to have a second conversation with him to explore deeper the benefits and misconceptions about meditation and the powerful role it can play

in our busy 21st century lives. Now, if you heard the short meditation that Henry recorded exclusively for my podcast community a few days ago, on episode 631, you will know that this March, I have partnered up with The Way to try and inspire more people to meditate. If you want to take part in this free 30-day challenge, all you have to do is go to the wayapp.com forward slash living. more. Henry sees meditation not as a technique for becoming a better version of ourselves,

but as a way of reconnecting with something far more fundamental. Beneath all the striving, planning and doing, he says there is already a deep sense of aliveness and meaning, which meditation simply helps us notice. In our conversation, we explore why having a busy, restless, mind does not mean you're bad at meditation. How modern life keeps our attention relentlessly outward? Why meditation works best when it's not treated as another task on the to-do list, but as a place of rest from constant doing?

Why five minutes a day is often more powerful than occasional long meditation sessions, how meditation can subtly change our experience of time, helping life feel richer and fuller. And throughout the conversation, Henry shares plenty of practical guidance, including when to meditate, how often, and why comfort matters far more than posture or doing it right. What stayed with me most from this conversation is Henry's reminder of how rarely we're encouraged to turn inward. In a world that constantly pulls our attention outside ourselves, meditation because

comes a way of rebuilding that inner relationship. Just a few minutes, practice regularly, can change how we relate to our thoughts, our time, and our lives. I wanted today to really try and have a practical guide to meditation for people. And so I thought I'd start off by asking you, what is the actual point of meditation? Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a beautiful question. I mean, honestly, I think it's almost the same as a question as, you know, what is the point of having this life? I would say it's as deep as that, because meditation is this incredible opportunity. It gives us the opportunity to know, to be aware that we're actually alive. That, to me, is the deepest point of meditation is to let us recognize that most simple fact

that we just hardly ever really take in. The blessing, I mean, of course there's all kinds of problems we can have and there's all kinds of challenges and troubles that humanity faces and individual faces. But the fact of being alive, conscious, aware, knowing that we're alive, that actually, at the deepest level, it's an incalculable blessing

to be having this experience called life. There's tons of answers that have been given to that question. What's the point of it? But I think fundamentally it's to actually recognize the gift that we've been given in being alive. Why is it, do you think that people need a practice like meditation to be aware of this amazing gift? And I guess the follow-up to that is,

is there something unique about the world today? Meditation has been around for thousands of years at the very least, probably longer. But the world seems to be very different today. There's a lot of conflict. There's political instability. A lot of people feel that the world is out of control, and therefore they feel out of control. So does meditation perhaps have a unique role in the current state of the world? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great question. I feel that there have been comparable times before, not globally, but nationally. China, for example, went through a terrible civil war in the 8th and 9th centuries, 750s, so the 8th century, when many, many, some reckoning say 2 thirds of the population died in that civil war, through war, through drought, through famine, through sickness, you know. So it's not like humanity hasn't had extremely turbulent, chaotic, you know, catastrophic times before. I think actually it's more in our evolutionary wiring that we've inherited,

that we find it hard to settle. It's very easy for our nervous systems to get on overdrive. and we feel sort of driven to keep locked into activity. And even when we're not engaged in outward activity, the activity of our minds continues. So there's a lot of evolutionary sort of pressure behind a sort of constant engagement with activity when we're awake.

And whatever the causes of that are, the sources of that are, the fact is we apparently have, evolved in such a way that we do need some kind of intervention to just disengage. And so I think we get, sometimes I feel it's like we, you know, we experience the world as sort of being in front of us and we just automatically get involved with it. You know, the moment we open our eyes, we're kind of interacting with the world. I mean, it's very natural in a way that we would do that.

But because we're doing that, it's hard for us to recognize that, you know, we're already here before we're doing anything, before we're engaged with the world, we're already existing. So we jump out of our core existence into activity very, very easily. And like I said, the moment we stop doing stuff, we tend to just perpetuate it through our mental activity. Yeah. It's interesting hearing you talk about the turmoil that has been there in the past. I think in many ways, it's very reassuring to hear that. It's not, of course, great to hear about how many people died in the Chinese Civil War. But what is reassuring is this idea that humanity has been here before.

And we will no doubt be here again. And if necessity is the mother of all invention, it kind of stands to. a reason that there would have been a reason why humans came up with this concept of meditation. Yes. The practice of meditation. Exactly. And yeah, we can maybe think, well, they didn't have smartphones and they didn't have all the things that we have today, but they had other things and they still found that

meditation was useful. So perhaps for all of our modern technological advancements, maybe there's something fundamental to the human experience that meditation allows us to experience that was just as relevant 5,000 years ago as it is today. I think that's exactly right. Otherwise,

they wouldn't have been doing it. So the first fairly concrete proof of meditation is actually about 3,500 years ago in the Indus Valley's civilization of northern India where they found

carvings that look like people meditating from about 1500 BCE. But presumably it far predates that. So yeah, whatever the conditions were back then, they still needed something to allow them. It wasn't like they could just automatically sort of sit still and be content. And that's one of the great things about it is to find that there is actually a contentment, a peace, a fulfillment.

an okayness, more than okayness, a quiet joy even that's actually already hidden in us potentially waiting to be discovered. And I think it must be the way human societies evolved and cultures evolved that really took us away from that. And so there had to be some sort of track of training to help us just rediscover what's already. here about our own nature, about our own makeup. Do you think meditation is for everyone?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, what I was taught by some of my teachers was that if you look at it from a mental health lens, if it's really, if there are serious mental, really severe mental health challenges, you know, schizophrenia and psychopathy and so on, it may not be the right prescription. But for more common mental health challenges, like anxiety, mild to moderate depression. I think there's so much research into it now. The benefits of mindfulness often being added to some kind of therapeutic methodology as well,

like mindfulness-based cognitive behavior therapy, for example. It's got a great track record, you know, of really boosting the therapy. I mean, some people will say, though, Henry, that meditation is not for them. They'll say, well, I tried it, you know, but it's not for me running is my meditation, walking is my meditation or some version of that. Yes.

When you hear people say that, what's your perspective? Yeah. Look, I don't feel I have to tell everybody you've got to do this. I can just share my own story and the stories of many people that I've worked with and trained, you know, helped with their meditation practice. I think honestly anything that somebody is finding they can do that helps them feel more alive, more centered in their own being, fantastic.

And those are, I would call those sort of meditative qualities that you definitely people get. I remember working with a massage therapist, and she was like every time I'm doing a massage, it's like a meditation. That's great. You know, runners, long-distance runner, ultra-runners, they're definitely getting into a meditative. state. Yet there's something particular about not doing anything. Yeah. Being truly still and quiet.

There is something, I think, a little bit special about that. Now, on that side of like people saying, I'm not built for it when I try to do it, I just thinking all the time. Well, that's exactly, that's exactly why we have a practice like meditation is because all our minds naturally do that. You know, this is, this was established actually in 1924 by a German psychologist that came up with this term default mode. He invented the EKG where you can scan the brain for electrical impulses. And he was expecting that if people just sat down, not engaged in an activity, it would all go quiet.

And it didn't. It was all, the brain was very active. And he called it the default mode that when people aren't engaged in an outward task, their brains become active with thinking and usually it's thinking about the past and the future it could be some trace of anxiety

about the future some trace of regret about the past the mind is really good at time travelling you know and and so but that's actually true for all of us and in a way that's that's the reason to meditate it's not it's not to discover that your mind does that doesn't mean you can't do it

it's actually the reason to do it and actually good good on you for realizing that because that's sort of the, that's the first threshold is recognizing what my mind is actually doing. And rather than just being blindly sort of led by my mind, just going where it goes and not even realizing it. I mean, we all know that experience. We, we've been, you know, we've been, you know, sitting on a train or something or sitting on a bench or whatever, suddenly realizing, oh my gosh, the last 15 minutes, or listen, five minutes, three minutes, I've just been on this great train of thought.

Totally, that's totally natural and it's okay. But we can learn to be still and quiet and recognize that process and not be swept away by it all the time. Yeah. So I suppose I'm just saying that that that kind of idea, I can't meditate, my mind's too busy. That is exactly why we meditate. Yeah.

Makes a lot of sense. I mean, I am a huge fan. a meditation. And I know for me, I've tried to practice regularly at various points in my life with greater degrees of success sometimes compared to other times. But I would say, and you know this because I share this with you regularly, but I, you know, ever since using the Way app, your meditation app, I found it transformative. You know, I start every day with that app. And I think it's absolutely fantastic and I feel my internal sense of calm has got greater since I've been meditating regularly. I feel that I'm just much more in tune with my internal world. And I guess that can

sound quite fuzzy if someone doesn't really know what I'm talking about. But I think one of the biggest problems I see with people these days is that they are just not able to pay attention to what's going on inside. Everything's outward. It's emails and social media and news headlines and what are people around me saying? It's always consuming stuff from the outside so there's never any time to listen to what's going on on the inside. And as you already mentioned, suddenly if we stop that consumption of things from the outside, we're not used to being, all of the noise on the inside. And so we shy away from it, go,

oh, this is too uncomfortable. Like, let me get me back on Instagram or get me another podcast, get me something else to distract myself from the internal chatter. But I think there's something incredibly liberating when you know you can just be present with your own thoughts and you don't need anything to be distracted from. There's a real power to that.

These days I know, because friends tell me, you know, if they're ever on a train and suddenly that their headphones are at a battery, they're so stressed. But it's like, oh, no, I was going to watch this on Netflix, I was going to listen to that podcast, or, oh, my God, what am I going to do now? But I can't access all of this information.

That is what I call a toxic reliance. You know, if nothing wrong with enjoying Netflix it's while you're on a train or listening to a podcast. That's all great. And we should be able to do those journeys without anything as well. Yes, yes. And if you can't, there's a real opportunity for growth there, isn't that? Yeah, there totally is.

It's beautifully put wrong. Man, you're such a great speaker. Because he said that's exactly the other point. I was about to say something about it. It's not just about the thinking. It's also about the emotional life we're having. to somehow meditation it's like a path back to a slightly deeper version of who we really are slightly deeper self and to get down to that we usually have to go through a little bit of a

sort of barrier of discomfort and it's emotional discomfort exactly as you say like often people reach for the phone or some reach for the fridge you know you know because Because there's inner discomfort. And I mean, I'm very sympathetic to that. I've done it a lot myself. I used to have this really difficult skin condition, all my early life that itched like mad, it was painful. And I wanted anything that would distract me from it.

And there was a lot of emotional distress around it as well. Again, I used to listen to music. I just put on headphones and get lost in music that I loved, because it was so uncomfortable just to be me. But actually, if we learn to let ourselves be as we are, if we learn to not be saying, I shouldn't feel this way, but instead approach our emotional challenges with tenderness, basically become more vulnerable,

that we don't have to be feeling great all the time. Actually, it's part of the human experience to have difficult feelings. It's not a, it shouldn't really be a, rare or, you know, problematic thing. And we're so conditioned. You know, no doubt social media has amplified this. But I think throughout our history probably, we've been very conditioned that it's bad, for example, to feel sad.

But sometimes it's totally appropriate to feel sad. And beautiful. And beautiful, exactly. There can be a real pleasure in that sort of deep sense of sadness. Exactly. It makes us more tender. And our hearts start to open and our lives get richer. And they also get more kind of authentic. If we're sort of committed to thinking we're trying to live up to some standard

that is the acknowledged way we're supposed to be. I suffered from this a lot myself of the young man. I was so ashamed of not feeling good. And then I'd feel ashamed of feeling ashamed. And actually, what a blessing it was. It was really when I started meditating in my early to mid-20s, I gradually sort of softened and learned to be with my own difficult emotions a bit more. And that naturally brings up more compassion for oneself and for others.

It tenderizes us in a way that's beautiful. Yeah. And I think it's beautiful in itself, but it's also beautiful because it's more real. We're actually becoming more real about our life and who we are. Not less real. You know, not a life on show for others. But actually, something that can be really helpful for others to witness this person's being authentic. They're not pretending that they always feel great.

And, you know, and that actually is a, I think that's a gift for others. Because it helps them soften and be more vulnerable, be more honest with themselves. And I mean, I believe there's probably many paths to that. But meditation is a big one and a good one. And it's, you know, it's cheap. You know, all you have to do is sit still. Exactly. The beauty and sadness, I think, is really obvious for people

if they think about some of their favorite songs, right? Because some of the most awesome, deeply resonant songs of all time come from abject pain. People's hearts have literally broken open. They don't know what to do. They pour themselves into their music and the words and the lyrics and that we listen. And we feel connected to humanity.

We feel that someone else has expressed in words a feeling that we may have had. Yes. And so there is something really beautiful about that. I do think that there's something, though, about meditation. that seems to confuse people, Henry, right? I'm on board, right? You obviously are. You're a Zen master. You teach meditation. You've done this for many, many years. You've created the Way app. You know the benefits. You've experienced the benefits. But when I go and talk to people and I talk to the public, there is this

perception that, yeah, but it's, it's not for me. You know, I've tried it. I think I'm doing it wrong. And so I kind of feel there's a real misunderstanding about what meditation is. And I was thinking this morning, Henry, whether there's something here to do with a Western perspective versus a more recent perspective. I don't know. Perhaps you could elaborate. But for example, a more Western perspective would say, hey, Henry, what are the benefit? What are the proven benefits of meditation? What has the science shown? Oh, right. So it helps to grow this part of the brain. It helps you concentrate more,

helps you focus more. Okay, great. Now I get why I should be doing it. Nothing wrong with that. It's just one way of looking at it. Whereas I guess because I grew up in an Indian family, I don't feel that we would need proof of the benefits of meditation. We're born almost knowing that meditation is really, really good for us. I remember seeing my granddad, my mum's father, He would meditate 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening. Always, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It wasn't something he did because he'd seen the later scientific study. He knew that my experience of life is much more real and connected

when I'm doing my 40 minutes of meditation a day. So do you see what I'm getting at? So I kind of feel in the West you might need the proof before you invest in the practice. whereas I think some Eastern traditions just understands that this is a really good thing today. Yeah, I totally think you're onto something there.

It's like basically, yeah, the Western idea is like it's a technique that I can use. It's a tool I get to use. Whereas the deeper view, and this might be more Eastern, but I think it's coming into the West as well, is that it's actually not that. is a pathway to a truer life, to a true, fuller discovery of who and what we really are,

that is automatically connected with, in the end, everything. That's the deeper view of it. And I totally understand this. There's a lot these days about mindfulness as another element in someone's optimization regime. I'm sympathetic to that. I totally, I think, you know, there's nothing actually wrong with that. It's just that it's very incomplete.

You know, and if you have that mindset, you're all the more likely to get frustrated with it. Because like, well, in order to get these benefits that I'm expecting, I wanted to work right away. You know, and I want to, I want to be able to do it so that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do. having the given results that I'm expecting that I'm supposed to have, and the medium-term results as well as a result of that. In other words, I'm going to sit down, know precisely what to do, do it, immediately get benefits, and perhaps there's some longer-term benefits as well.

But actually, it's almost back to front. There's something about this process of releasing a hold on the particular benefits we want, actually letting go with that. I mean, it's paradoxical. But we're going to get the benefits we want in meditation by actually relinquishing some of the hold, the gripping after reaching for the benefits that we want.

It's like, I don't know if I'm explaining this. No, no, I love this. It's like because it teaches us a certain kind of patience, because it helps patients grow in us, because it helps a kind of self-kindness grow in us. Actually, that helps us not to grasp for the benefits so immediately and tightly, and therefore they come. It's like it's to do with backing off a bit and not having this rigid regime in my life

of how I'm going to get to be the way I want to be. Yeah. Actually, yeah, it's true. There are benefits. No question from having quiet time with yourself each day meditating. But Henry, you know, there's so many interesting points there for me, right? This idea that there are benefits. Today's episode is sponsored by Peloton.

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There's so many interesting points there for me, right? This idea that there are benefits. Yes, and I've covered on this podcast in the past, some of the neuroscience of meditation and what benefits have been shown. And the other big question I was thinking about this morning was, can you really be taught the benefits? Like, you can hear about the potential benefits,

but in so many ways that can make you frustrated because you've heard the scientific benefits of meditation. Therefore, I should do it so that I can achieve that thing that I've been told I will get if I do it regularly. But the most powerful way of experiencing those things is to do it regularly and naturally experience those benefits. Rather than be told the benefits. Yes.

I think this applies to many things beyond meditation. But I truly think the most important things in life, can't really be taught from the outside. They have to be experienced. Yes, they sort of grow from within. They ripen. It's much more like, tend the new sapling that you've planted.

Don't force it to grow. Tend it, and it will grow. Give it the right nutrients, give it the right moisture, and it will grow. Yeah. And it's interesting what you said about the sort of optimization culture

in which we live. Like if, for example, you have 10 things that you could do, where you could do your strength training, your cardio, your cold plunge, your sauna, your whatever, right? Some of those things you can experience immediate benefit from, right? So if cold plunge is your thing, and it's not everyone's thing, but let's say it is, you're going to feel completely different. Every single time you go in the cold water, you're going to experience a change afterwards.

Yes. So therefore, if you have a list of five or six things to do, in meditation as one of them, because you may not get that obvious benefit every time you meditate, the tendency might be to go, no, I'm going to leave that one because I know I'm going to feel different

if I go in the cold bath for 60 seconds. Yes. So I think that's one potential issue. I think the other issue is that we're used to doing, right? We're a do, do, do culture. And whilst on one level, meditation is doing something, you know, I'm doing my meditation.

In another way, it's not doing anything at all, right? And so it's kind of funny that people say they don't have time because the people who say they don't have time, which is a lot of people, they'll also tell you that they're too busy and they have too many things to do. But meditation is not another thing to do. Meditation actually gives you more time. Do you know what I mean? It's a rest.

It's a rest from all the things that you have to do. That's exactly right. It isn't another thing that you do in order to get the result that you're going to get from that thing. You put it so well that you'll get the immediate benefits of the cold plunge, for example, or the sawn or whatever. This, no, it's actually letting go of that kind of pursuit. It's really paradoxical. It's counterintuitive. It's coming back to, I think one way to...

think of it is it's in time it lets us just drop down to a deeper life that's already here it's like coming back to your own true existence it's like if you thought to you know you may not want to but think to your deathbed you know when you you will be facing that ultimate frontier where whatever comes next it won't be this you know you'll be you'll be relinquishing this kind of living you know well, what about that? What if you could do every day some little thing that it isn't exactly doing that acknowledged the fact that your life is finite

in this way, this kind of life is finite? What if you're actually allowing yourself to recognize mortality a little bit every day and tasting the fact that right now you're alive? rather than I'm doing X to accomplish Y. And then I'm going to do this thing and this thing and this thing to accomplish these things.

This is almost like letting go of accomplishing. It's like I'm actually going to, what am I before I've even thought about accomplishing anything? What am I that doesn't actually need to do anything? I'm so habituated at doing. But that doesn't mean that I've lost. something in who I really am that doesn't need to do anything. Yeah, you could say, well, it needs to breathe,

it needs to consume, and needs to have water. True, but the actual very bare sort of bones of your being before you're doing, that is available. It's always available. So I think we sort of almost have to start meditating with some idea that we're doing it. idea that we're doing it to do it, and we're doing it because it has benefits that we, one way or another, through science or through word and mouth, we trust that they will bring benefits.

There's a little bit of trust. Maybe there has to be a little bit, or at least curiosity, I'm going to give it a try. But, you know, if we're convinced enough to give it a try, you know, you then need to give it, say, a month of doing it nearly every day. You can't do a test on one only. Yeah, that's useful. So if someone does want to experiment with bringing meditation into their life, you would say you've got to make that sort of commitment to yourself

that you're going to sit down and meditate daily. Before you start assessing, is this for me? Is it any good? What benefits am I getting from it or not? Unless you've done it for 30 to 40 days, don't even consider that, basically. Because I think somebody will go, well, I'll try it for a few days and see. Yeah. But you're sort of saying, well, probably not.

Yeah. I mean, like with some supplements or something, you're not going to know in a couple of days if they're really what you need. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's various other health comparisons we can make. That it's not an instant thing. This is a bit like that. But, you know, the reality is that the part of you that is the non-doer,

you know, that doesn't need to. to do this already okay. That part, this is a weird way to say it, but that part recognizes the value of meditation already. We just, it's slightly under the surface and it emerges more over time. Yeah. And I guess a question to have for you is having come across in person, probably tens of thousands of meditates now over the course of your career, would you say there's pattern in terms of what you've seen? Because I guess some people will come to meditation because they're really struggling. They're depressed. They don't like the way that they feel, so they're looking for something to, in inverted commas, fix them. Right? Whereas you could also use it if,

you know, like I've chosen to meditate not to get me away from something I don't like, but to experience life more fully. So are people, who meditate regularly, do you find that they tend to be calmer, less reactive, have a greater sense of inner peace, or does it sort of depend on why you started to engage with meditation in the first place? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, let's say, I would say that overall, yes, everybody is moving towards a calmer, less reactive, more appreciative way of being, more alive. I would say meditation actually increases. our capacity for life.

I mean, live more. It's actually a very appropriate slogan, really, or one catch word for it. It actually gives you more life. Partly because you're just not lost in the impetus, the momentum of, you know, the daily grind of what I've got to do. You're starting to actually experience your life

as you're doing things. People obviously come into it for different reasons. whole range of reasons. Broadly speaking, it's somewhere between, you know, I'm having a miserable time. I want to be less miserable. And my life's great and I'm curious. Yeah. I've heard that you can explore life itself through meditating. So I'd say that, for example, and, you know, when I'm leading a retreat like I'll be doing tomorrow, it's going to be the full range. There'll be people who have just had a catastrophic loss. There are people who might have had a catastrophic diagnosis.

There'll be people who are just in the fullness of life having a great time riding. Their projects are all flourishing. And they've got this little acre of curiosity. And they really want to explore. Actually, what is this thing being alive? And am I fully sort of connected with who I most deeply am? Can I explore who I am? I've assumed I know who I am all these years.

What if I can actually explore more deeply? What is this thing being Henry? You know, what is that? What's actually happening? And who really am I? That those things, meditation is actually great for all of them. You know, it really can meet each of us where we need to be met. And I think, well, how is that possible?

And one of the things that people will hear about meditation that may even put them off is like, It's about being in the present moment. Well, of course I'm in the present moment. You know, I'm in the present moment all through the day. Actually, you know, in a way not really. It's the difference between, yeah, you know, knowing I want to order that coffee, I'm walking through the station, I'm going into the meeting, I'm doing the sales call or whatever, knowing that I'm doing those things.

Versus actually doing all the same things, but richly present for them. really experiencing it. And it's very different. And when we're really, really present, time it changes. It does. It's not this ticker tape clock time. It's the richness of being. And that is really where we find this fuller life.

That's where we find the more life. Because there's a tyranny of time, of the clock. I think it's such something really important there. A lot of people, as you said, they might get put off saying, it really helps you be present. Well, what does that mean? Why do I need to be present? But presence is literally all that you have.

Right? If you're not present, you're not actually experiencing life. You're just trying to plan for the future or you're ruminating on the past, but you're not actually living. Yes, yes. You know, as you say, you're operating at the level of time traveling. your minds. Yes. But everything is always happening only in the present moment. Even your recollection of the past is happening now. Exactly. Right? Exactly. So what's what happened in the past

isn't actually happening anymore. No. But you constantly thinking about it is dragging the past into your presence. Yes. So I don't think there's anything greater than actually being able to be in the present moment and experience it. If I'll say one of the things that I have really got from using the way, and we'll get to this at some point in this conversation about the hindrances, you write about the five hindrances and original love, and you know how much I love that book. But one thing I got from you meditation,

that I also remember speaking to Geelong Thubton about, he's a monk from a different tradition. And one of the things I think when Tubton came on this show, he was talking to me about, you know, if you're experiencing pain, if you can actually sit with that pain, the pain starts to change. So it's not about saying, oh my God, I'm in pain, I don't want to be in pain. It's like, I'm in pain.

Now let me really experience that pain and be present with that pain and being okay with that pain. And by doing so, the nature of that pain starts to change. Absolutely. Which is so profound when you're not used to thinking like that. Yes, because you automatically think I want to get rid of it. Exactly. Either distract myself from it or just get rid of it.

But the pain is there for a reason. Why not try and make friends with the pain? Exactly. And then see what happens. Exactly. And this applies to emotional pain. If we can learn to experience the sensory side of an emotion, that's to say the feeling.

physical side of it, that are feeling in the body. It's usually chest area or diaphragm area, so somewhere in the upper torso usually. There's some research that says it's usually 94% in the chest. But depending on the emotion, actually, with anxiety, 94% of people, this is some research. They tend to experience it in the chest if they look for it. And the other 6% is a little bit lower.

But be that as it may, if we learn to experience our emotions as body sensations, rather than we stop being so caught up in the stories, you know, that are going on in our minds. And why is that helpful? Why, for example, is it important if you struggle with anxiety

to be able to locate where that is in your body? Yeah. What's the problem with going, I'm anxious, I don't want to feel anxious, let me distract myself on Instagram. Yeah. Well, if you distract yourself from it, you haven't really advanced in any way.

You're still, you know, The distraction will end and you'll be back and it'll be back. It may not be back immediately, but it'll just come back. If we can learn to be with difficult emotions, and they're called difficult because they are difficult to be with, but if we can learn to be with them, then we have a chance to grow our capacity basically as human beings. We're sort of growing because we can hold what we previously couldn't hold.

we can learn to host a difficult feeling, to actually let it be part of our experience. And once we can hold it and not try to push it away and not try to distract from it, it has a chance to change. And so this actually, it all interrelates. The mind, as we're talking about,

is like a time traveler. It'll go to future scenarios and past scenarios. Simulations, almost, in the mind. You know, the body can't do that. The body doesn't do it. time travel. So once we get out of the stories we're telling ourselves about an emotion, for example, anxiety or restlessness, if we just stay in the thought loops around it, nothing's going to happen, we're just going to stay in the thought loops. If we get down to the sensation

of it in the body, now we're actually in the present moment because the body can't do time travel. So if we, so this is as a double benefit. One, we start to be present. Secondly, we've got the chance to develop the capacity to be with what we find difficult emotionally rather than push it away. In other words, we move from resistance pushing away. I don't want this to letting it be. And exactly as your friend Tipton was saying, once we can do that, it can start to change. It can't do it when we're resisting it

It tends to actually Even sometimes get stronger Yeah, what you resist persists, right? Exactly But once we can Once we, and it's again, it's about that sort of vulnerability, that tenderness, that softening

And, you know, this is how we work with our inner life It's not with the same kind of You know, I'm going to conquer it Or whatever our mindset might be about the outer life It doesn't work with the inner life You know, and if we tried to make it work, we'd end up, well, we do end up having a shallower life, a brittle life. And, you know, and we may probably have to keep compensating with alcohol or something to get through it.

But actually, to tenderize ourselves and let ourselves have the emotions we have. This is how we work with the hindrances that you mentioned earlier. It's through learning to be with them, not resist them, not push them, not. push them away, be with them. And actually, you know, we, that's a great path of growth. We're learning, we're developing as emotional creatures. Our hearts are growing. We're getting more into sort of living from the heart, not just the mind, the heart too. And that makes life so much richer. And, you know, I think if we don't have time in our day when we're still on a regular basis, I don't know how easy it is to do that. Exactly.

Solitude, I think, is so essential these days, as the world is getting noisier and noisier, I think you need respite from that, not just once a week every single day. And of course, meditation is one way in which you can do that. Henry, if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, okay, all right, I've heard enough. I need to, or I want to give this meditation thing a go, right? Earlier on, you said that, look, before you judge whether it's working for you or not, whatever that means, you know, give it at least 30 days, maybe even 40 days, right? And in original love, which is, I think, your most recent book,

I know there's a section where you actually write about, you know, at the start, you really want to focus on consistency, right? Instead of just doing one 20-minute session once a week, you're much better off, doing five minutes a day. Yeah. And even those five minutes, they will start to give you benefits. Yeah. Right. So let's imagine we're talking to that beginner, someone who's never done it before. And we could talk about it through the lens of your app if you want, because you guys, you know, you're very kindly given my audience 30 days of free meditations to try, right? So people can actually see if it's their thing or not. So let's say someone wants to do that. I don't know,

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Yeah, great. So I would say here's the ideal, and then there's modifications from it. The absolute ideal is to do it as early as possible in the day. The reason it's easiest then is that we just haven't yet got caught up in the current of the day. There's once we, you know, once we've reached for the phone or once we've started making breakfast of the kids or something. It's game over. But for me. Yeah, I'm with you and I feel that is that definitely that's the the best way to do it if we can, but some people just can't. Yeah. So then what I recommend is try to do it right before a meal. So let's say you've got a lunch break. Don't just immediately open the Tupperware and start eating. Do it right before you start eating. It's quite nice to do it

before a meal because you've got the meal to look forward to, but you've deferred the meal, and there's a pleasure just in deferring it. Because if just that little bit of sort of honey, we're going to just wait a moment, that kind of just little bit of self-discipline, I use the word cautiously, but little bit of self-discipline. I'm not going to eat right just now.

10 minutes, I'm just going to do my meditation first. You enjoy the meal all the more, and you'll have done your meditation. So if you can't do it first thing, try to do it maybe before lunch. if you can't do it then and the moment you come home from work you're just caught up in kids, stuff or whatever

just do it before the end of the day some people do it as a wind down before they go to sleep that's also okay it actually I mean it's far more important to do it during the day at some point than to do it early in the day if you can't do it at the perfect time of day don't worry about it

but if you want to commit to this practice just make sure you do it at some points. Yeah, like I will not put my head on a pillow until I've done it. Yeah. And actually, I mean, I know people who, that's all they've ever done. It's always been lasting at night. And they have huge benefits from the practice, you know, because they've just locked it in. So the second thing I'd say is make the decision upstream. I've decided I'm going to try meditating for 30 days. So you don't have to keep revisiting that decision every time you're about to do it. see what I mean. You don't say, today, shall I do it or not? No, you've already made the decision. I'm

going to give it a 30-day trial. And so therefore, you don't have to make the decision many times you made it once. That makes it a lot easier. How to hold yourself to it? Well, again, you just say, I'm not going to go to bed without doing it. Maybe I'm ready for bed. I'm going to sit on the edge of the bed and do it, and then I'm going to lie down. A worst-case scenario, I'm actually going to lie down and do it lying down. That's okay. It's better than just going to sleep without having done it. So we've got to be pragmatic about fitting it into our day

with morning, early, being optimal. But all of it's okay. So that's a couple of things. For beginners, it's actually better not to do it right after a meal. It's just a little bit easier if your stomach isn't full. that's the wisdom of the ages they always say that about it at a certain point it won't make much difference

but early on it does okay that's interesting so that's something sometimes people stack it with exercise you know and probably you do it after after exercise you know the way at the end of a yoga class

there's often a little bit of meditation so when you've been working out with your body you're a little bit more in your body it can make it a bit of easier to get into meditation. So you can tack it onto something you're doing anyway. And what about for people who like to start, you know, their day with a cup of tea or coffee? Yes. Is it better or advisable to meditate before that? Or can you have that caffeinated drink first before you meditate or does it not make any difference? You totally can have it before. I have to admit,

I often do that myself actually. And tea has a long relationship with meditation. Of course. Yeah. It's caffeinated. So I would say this. If you really want a coffee or tea, make it and immediately bring it to where you're going to meditate and sort of sip it right where you are. And if it's really hot, you know, have a little bit of it and just let it sit there, do your 10 minutes, and then finish it. So don't have the tea. I mean, we're getting really precise now.

But if you have the tea sort of separately from your place of meditation, you might get caught up in other stuff and not get to the place of meditation. If that makes sense. Okay, and you mentioned 10 minutes there. And again, just to make sure this is practical for people, I know in page 56, I think, of original love, you have this sort of guide, you know, practice it, how long and what time of day.

And, you know, a target level of duration ultimately might be 20. minutes, but it's way better to do five minutes every day than 20 minutes twice a week. You say that when you're starting, don't do it for too long. Five minutes is a perfectly fine starting dose. I think that's so helpful, right? Because if you're not used to sitting in silence with your internal world, 20 minutes can be a long time, initially, right? Yes. Five minutes can seem a long time, but five minutes feels very achievable to people.

Yes. And so I would say to anyone listening, if you've ever thought about meditation and, you know, it's piqued your interest, why couldn't you commit to doing five minutes a day for the next 30 days? Yes, yes. You could do. You could. Yeah. You know, and if you say you can't, you know, there will be a reason that you'll be an obstacle you're putting in the way of doing it because there's no reason any one of us can't do something for five minutes a day for 30

days. Exactly. And I bet many, many people have spent at least five minutes a day mindlessly on the front. Yeah. For sure. But they'll say they don't have time for meditation, but they've got the time to scroll for that long. And I'm not having to go with people. I'm saying there's a perception of it feels different. You know, it feels for some people than to be harder. Yeah. Because it's, I think there's a perception that I'm going to do it wrong or I don't know how to do it. I kind of feel that people think meditation is something that it isn't. Yeah, exactly. I think that this is, I'm very, I really understand this. I had it myself. I thought when I started that meditation meant what I now know means an experienced meditator experiences. I thought it had to be this sort of very peaceful,

serene, happy, clear, no thoughts arising, blist out, or something like that. I thought it had to mean that. It doesn't at all. It's warts and all. It's a total acceptance of how we are. So just sitting down and being with ourselves as we are, that is it. And so having a little bit of guidance also is a really helpful thing. I actually didn't have that myself. when I started. I was just on my own doing it. I did the deep end, 20 minutes, twice a day, actually. You went all in. Because that's how I was taught. And I'm very grateful that I was. But I now know that that is by no means the only way to do it. So I'd say with the way, we've got a bit of a halfway house. Our sits are basically 10 minutes. You can increase the length

if you want. But because it's quite closely guided, I think actually everybody can follow the way from the start. And before you know it, the 10 minutes is up. Right. Before you know it, oh, you know, Henry's asking me to open my eyes now and get ready to get back into the world. So it feels very, very doable.

One of the things I love about the way the most is the fact that there's no choice. Okay? Because most of these apps, of course, there were lots of very good apps out there, right? But a lot of them, you go on and you have to choose what you're going to do from this vast library of content.

And every time you have to make a decision, you know, you're using up some of your cognitive reserve. It can be stressful sometimes. You know, which one of these wonderful meditation shall I do? I think, literally, I think one of the best things about the way is that there isn't a choice. You go on and you do the next meditation. And, you know, fans of this podcast,

that people who've read my book on happiness will know that chapter two is called Eliminate Choice. And I talk about the problems of too much choice in our lives and why eliminating choice where we can in our life can simplify life massively. And then when I downloaded the way many, many months ago, I was like, oh my God, I love it. There is no choice. But that's liberating.

It's actually, you know, because why do you need to choose each day what kind of meditation am I up for doing? It's hard enough for people to actually get going with a meditation practice, let alone choose the flavor and type of meditation they want. So was that quite an intentional choice when you were sort of putting together the app? Totally. I would almost say that was the reason we created the app. Really?

It was that it should be a single pathway without any choice. And the challenge was how to create a pathway that's a path of training takes you deeper, gently, gradually, exploring different aspects of meditation in a way that really made sense. That was the challenge. And that was the joy for me to be able to actually have this way of sharing

with thankfully, I mean, amazingly, many people already, sharing what I've learned. You know, through hard one and harder and sort of, you know, a lot of work on the meditation cushion over the decades. I sort of learned that, yeah, there are these different dimensions of the practice, different aspects of the practice, and they kind of work somewhat in a sequence.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you keep going and then a lesson that perhaps you didn't fully get first time round, you revisit a few weeks later. Yeah. And because you've done other elements of practice in those weeks in between, sometimes it just lands differently. You're like, oh, I get it now. Oh, you know, I didn't get it first time around,

but now I get what he means when he's saying that. But I think what you need, which is what you've been talking about during this podcast so far and reassess, you need to trust the process. That's right. You need to make the commitment to yourself that I'm going to show up and sit on the meditation cushion, the metaphorical cushion, if you don't use a cushion,

every day, and trust that over time, those benefits will start to infiltrate my life. Exactly. It's really, I feel sometimes that it's just, it's like a person putting ourselves in the way of something larger than us. You know, that we're opening up just a little tiny bit, the door to sort of not having the full picture. Maybe I don't know everything about what my life really is.

and I'm just going to follow this path and let myself follow it and trust that the process is going to take care of itself. In other words, there's some sort of wisdom that has been handed down over the thousands of years. And it's, of course, in many, many different traditions, many, many ways about our human nature that can gradually grow in us. It's not we're being sort of given something. we're just being helped to discover something

about who we actually already are. And it just takes time. And so if we have a path that we can follow, we just trust the path. Do you find, you know, being someone who's meditated for so long, you're at the moment in the UK. You live in New Mexico in America,

and you're in the UK and you're traveling around, okay? So you've been in Scotland, you just come down to my studio today, then you're going to London. when the inevitabilities of life kick in, travel delays, right? You're taking the British Rail Service at the moment, and, you know, it's been cold recently, and, you know, when it gets to about two degrees,

things stop working as efficiently as they might do, right? Would you say that, I know it's been years since you've started meditating, so I don't know if you can, whether compare before and after, but would you say you're just generally more patient or when a train is delayed or let's say you miss your connection

do you find that you're less likely to get stressed out by these things because of your practice on the meditation cushion? Yeah, I can honestly say that I do get less stressed less stressed out, I do. It's not that I sort of never ever would but I generally don't. I'd get more bothered by,

people I love going through a hard time. That's what would engage more, you know, more of a reaction in me is when I'm really, somebody I really care about is having a hard time. That's, that can be very hard. But here's the thing is like, what it really comes down to is that the sense of, I don't know if this is going to sound too strange, but of a kind of goodness in in life itself, a goodness in awareness itself, a goodness in being present itself. I sense that very easily. And so very often when I'm, if I've been going through, it's kind of turbulent time and, you know, and I've got a little off track, I sit and I just, sooner or later,

I'm just going to find there's this goodness. It's just present. and it doesn't feel like it's conditional. It doesn't feel like this goodness is dependent on the right conditions. It feels like it's always been here. And this life is floating on it. So it's like then the train is late. I mean, it doesn't compare with it.

Yeah, it just doesn't compare. Because this goodness is so good. And I'm a, I have to say, you know, just I'm not a sort of faith-based thing. I'm non-religious, basically. And I probably pushed, I'd actually, I'd say I'm kind of an atheist or at least an agnostic, but I totally feel that there's something in the very fabric of our being and of our consciousness. That's so universal.

That's unconditionally good. And I can't explain it, but I'm convinced that it's real. And I don't think of it as a theological thing at all. No, I think it is who we all are. I don't think this division that we perceive these days is real in the sense that it is real, but it's a downstream consequence. I think ultimately who we are at our core is good, is compassionate, it's kind. Yes.

I remember when you first came on the podcast, Henry, a few months ago, I think I started up by asking you what you thought of the Dalai Lama quotes. I think he said if every eight-year-old was taught how to meditate, we'd solve all human suffering within a generation or something like that. And I think when you meditate regularly, I think you do access this kindness and you want to be good to yourself and to the world around you. On page 211 of Original Love, I underlined a paragraph that I think speaks to this idea.

In the end, the thing that matters is our heart and how much it breaks open. It wouldn't be wrong to view the entirety of a life of growth through meditation practice as an ever more breaking heart, a heart that can handle ever more heartbreak and still be at peace and no love. I mean, that's just so beautiful, Henry. And I would say one of my intentions going to 2026 is to try to the best of my ability to live each and every single day with an open heart.

I think that's the most important thing I can do in life is live with an open heart. And notice if there's ever a tendency for your heart to close. Right? Yes. And I think these days I can notice it early. Go, oh, there it is, hold on. Okay, that you don't need to close your heart.

You know, can you be compassionate? Can you love people? Can you want the best for people? Can you do stuff for others without any expectation of them doing anything in return for you? These are things that I have been thinking a lot about over the past few years. and I find that when I can live with an open heart, when I want to do the right thing, not so that people will say I did the right thing,

or so that I can gain thanks for doing the right thing, just because I know it's the right thing to do and it feels good for me, that's when I'm living my best life. And I feel meditation helps me access that state more often. I fully agree. I really think in the end, that's its true purpose, is to help our human hearts be fully open.

And I also actually feel that the more open our hearts are, the more intrinsic connection we discover. There's something about the fully open heart that just ends separation. It really, an ultimate level, I think, there's a way that our heart, hearts actually bring us to some kind of ground of being that all things are part of. Yeah.

And that we really can. Again, it's not, this isn't found through dogma or doctrine or any real belief system, actually. It's found through our own experience. And that's what I love most about meditation, that it's so shockingly simple. It's just being here And in just being here We could find this boundest love I don't understand it

But I know it's real And it connects us with everything One of the things I Think about when I think about meditation Is that even the word meditation In some ways I won't say it's misleading But there's a perception

If we hear the word meditation that it's one thing, right? Oh, you're meditating. You're either meditating or you're not meditating. But it feels like meditation is almost the umbrella term for us to start examining our internal worlds. And there are so many different ways to meditate. You know, very, very simply,

you've got focused attention v. Open Awareness, right? They're both meditation practices, but they're a different way, experiencing meditation. So perhaps you could explain what is the difference and when might we want focus attention versus when might we want open awareness. Yeah, that's right. And I mean there are probably thousands of forms of meditation. That's two big families, focused attention, open awareness. And actually in the way we weave between the two, we use both. But focused attention would be the classic kind of thing that people think of meditation as being is following.

the breath. I've got to stay aware of my breath as it comes and goes. And that's great. That's fine. Open awareness is more like I don't have a particular thing I'm going to be aware of, but I'm going to be aware of whatever arises in experience. So I might find I'm feeling the seat beneath my buttocks. Fine. I'm aware of light on my eyelids or even my eyes might be open. I'm aware of colors and shapes. And now I'm aware of sound and so on. So open awareness is wide open to whatever arises and focused attention. It could be trained on anything. We do both in the app.

But we're sort of building up a picture gradually over time that we're recognizing, oh yeah, that's sound, I'm hearing. Oh, yeah, that's seeing. I'm seeing. Oh, yeah, this is sensing, the body sensation. This is emotion sensation. These are thoughts I'm hearing in my mind or images I'm seeing in my mind. So we're gradually getting a fuller, full of picture of all the dimensions of our experience.

Yeah, your experience is so much deeper and more enhanced. That's honestly the thing I said before about what I've, one of the big benefits I have experienced since using the way is I feel that you know, if my experience before was two-dimensional, it now feels like it's nine-dimensional, right? I'm just so much more aware of everything. Like it's richer. Yeah.

So it's easier to be in silence because there is so much richness in the silence. And I feel you've done a great job on the app of actually helping us experiencing all these different things. I'm happy to hear it, of course. But that is exactly the point. We've been given such a rich experience. But we haven't really been helped to recognize that.

You know, usually from a young age, we've been drilled in learning stuff and absorbing knowledge and information rather than how to live, how to experience the richness. I wish kids were all taught to meditate at school, at primary school. Yeah.

You know, many are. We used to have a program actually helping teachers in public schools in our region in the US just do little hits of meditation in the classroom. Wow. And I think there's quite a few programs like that now. May there be more, you know? Yeah.

Before you mentioned that when you host retreats like you are tomorrow, people come for all kinds of different reasons. Some people may have experienced great loss, right? And when you said that, I thought, how does meditation help someone, or how might it help someone? someone deal with grief?

Yeah. I feel we've all got deep wisdom in us. And there's something about this practice that helps us access that. And that wisdom is large enough to understand loss and grief, to be with loss and grief. And even if that doesn't come up immediately, the practice doesn't shut down grief. It doesn't shut it down.

It provides a space in which somebody can be with their grief. Because grief is a human experience. It's a beautiful, deep part of how we cope with very difficult things. And it's not something we need to shut down, actually. But, of course, we live in a grief-avoidant culture, a culture that really, on the whole, doesn't like grief, doesn't believe in it. But it's the most natural thing.

So meditation gives us a space in which we can know our grief and feel it and be with it. And basically it teaches us to be, to let a broken heart become an open heart. You know, rather than thinking a heartbreak is something I've got a fix. No, it's going to teach me something. It's going to teach me how to live with an open heart. You know, so that's, meditation is providing a context. It's giving space and time for that to develop. You know, so that's at the simplest level.

It's just space and time to be with what we're going through. What about trauma? A lot of people struggle with trauma. How can meditation help people process their trauma? Yeah. I mean, I feel with trauma comes in many forms and it has many causes. complex trauma and childhood trauma and immediate kind of catastrophic event trauma, they're all a little different, although of course there's common threads.

I think on the whole meditation, I think of it as a part of a support for someone dealing with trauma and how to process it. They may also need some other kinds of help and support with therapeutic or whatever, other kinds of help. There's a lot of research now, I think, on actually the body. is a way to work with trauma. Bessel van der Kolk's amazing book, The Body Keeps the Score. He talks about that, you know, dance and sport and things,

let those be part of the trauma release process. Yeah. I think when I say she can also help us be happier. Happiness doesn't mean just having a smile on our face the whole time, but there is this deep sense of happiness that I think we all do want and we can all access. And, you know, there are so many bits of writing in original love that I just love.

But I just want to read you this section from page 87, which I think really speaks to another one of the benefits of meditation that I think many people want even if they don't know they want it, right? All the way through the different possible levels of meditation practice, we're learning to be happier, with less. We're becoming less focused on what we want and learning to mind less

when what we don't want is showing up. I love that, learning to mind less when what we don't want is showing up. We're discovering an intrinsic happiness within and so our concern without a circumstances is gently tempered and lessened. We're developing a sense. stability of character, we could say, independent of condition. I just love that so much.

It so speaks to my soul, this idea that actually we can learn to be happier with less. I feel that's been one of the big changes with me, Henry, over the last decade or so. I really feel I just don't want much stuff these days. I'm happy with me and where I'm at in life and what I do and who I am. It's funny, a lot of people get seduced by advertising, don't they? But I think you can only get seduced by advertising when there's something lacking within you. Yes.

And see how, like, just the way you describe that, I could totally feel it as well, that the peace and the freedom when you're already okay. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and it's available to all of us. That's the thing I also always really want to convey with meditation. It's not something special in the sense that everybody has access to it.

And the fruits of it, that being at home in your own being is totally available to everyone. Yeah, there could be exceptional circumstances where circumstances that are so horrific that they're really pressing in and they need to be addressed before we can be thinking about this. But outside of that, basically, You don't have to be remarkable in any way. You know, it's just absolutely ordinary, but we're not used to looking for it or finding it. So it seems not ordinary, but it is ordinary. Everybody's got it.

And so I'm really hoping that, you know, that we can be part of making it better recognized, better known, that there's this totally ordinary thing that's so good that everybody has. And when we find it, when we're at home, like that in ourselves, we just automatically don't want to create so much harm. Yeah.

And we feel less aggression and hate. And we don't want to be, we're less prone to being kind of riled up. Yeah. And that's honestly how I believe we change the world. It's one person at a time. I think the change that we all want in the world doesn't actually come from the outside in. It comes from the inside out.

If I'm able to change my internal experience of life and I always show up with an open heart, then that permeates to everyone I interact with. My family, the supermarket attendants, the barista who makes me cover, whatever. You know, that permeates that. set and then they're more likely to do that in their life, right? I think too often we're waiting for the outside world to change. And when the outside world changes, we'll change. I'm not sure I think that's the best way to really create this big seismic shift across

the world. I think literally it happens one person at a time and meditation can help us live in a much more kind and considerate way. and if we all start doing that, hence the Dalai Lama quote, right? Exactly. The world will change. Yes, yes, yes. But the responsibility is on all of us, I think, on an individual level,

that if we can sit with the reality of life and commit to something like meditation, we will change. And therefore, the people around you will change also. Exactly. You can imagine if that's on a mass scale, well, that's how you create a new world. Exactly. Beautiful.

Exactly, because we really are already so interconnected anyway. Exactly. And, you know, it is exactly that ripple that just compounds and compounds as it goes. One of the things I meant to talk to you about in our first conversation, which you didn't get to, and I'd love to talk about it today, is Cohen's. Okay? Now, until I came across your work and read Original Love, I had never heard of a Cohen. Yeah. Right? So your, I guess, tradition of meditation is the Zen tradition, right?

I'd say I've been trained deeply in that and it's broader. I've done various kinds of training, but that's my deepest training. Yeah. Okay. And I guess maybe for people like me who don't fully understand the meaning of Zen, you know, first of what's a gorgeous word, but what does it actually mean? Yeah, Zen is a form of Buddhism, basically, that evolved in China. And, you know, they claim that it really started in India. Perhaps there's some truth to that. And then it came to China and then it spread throughout East Asia and became Zen as we know it is largely a Japanese version of what was developed in China, somewhat anyway.

Essentially, it's a very stripped-down, sparse, spare form of Buddhism. So there's really, it's mostly about just the meditation. and it's usually very simple meditation, follow the breath, or don't even do that, just be with whatever arises. So that's sort of at its heart is approximately that. But one of the things that it has done is pay special attention sometimes

to what we might call experiences of awakening. That's to say, sudden shifts when we just feel the world and ourselves in a totally different way, when we really get a sudden hit that there's no gap between me and everything. Or I hardly exist. I'm just everything else. You know, and I see that my sense of self has been in some ways an invention or an imagined, constructed thing.

So you've going to have these very strong revelatory moments when we experience ourselves in a different way. They're beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing, usually very meaningful for somebody and can really change how we feel about life. So Zen acknowledges that, and it has provided these little phrases have come out of the tradition of awakened Zen masters over the centuries, over the millennia, that are really strange, but that the idea is that they can help precipitate that kind of shift in how we experience things. You know, the famous one would be, you know the sound of two hands clapping, but what is the sound of one hand? That's a famous one. What is the sound of one hand? Can I just ask, right?

Is there a right answer to all of these coens, or is the interpretation personal and individual? Yes, definitely personal. There isn't a right answer. There's simply little goads or, you know, catalysts that sometimes can provoke a really different way of experiencing the world. Yeah. But, you know, they're very beautiful and remarkable, but they're not...

That's quite advanced practice, isn't it? I think so. That's not, you know, if you're someone who's about to embark on this, five minutes a day for 30 days as a way of trying to get into meditation, you wouldn't necessarily recommend. No. You deal with Cohen's just yet. Exactly. You don't worry about them at all.

That's when we've really embedded in practice, we've got a deep practice growing, and if we're curious. The one I really like, I can't remember now, but my recollection of this one, and please correct me if I've got any part of this, incorrect, but it's the one where the man walks into the butcher shop and asks the butcher, which is the best piece of meat? The butcher says every piece is the best piece.

Yes, yes. Now, I think the reason I really like that is because I felt immediately, intuitively, that I understood it. Yeah. Or at least whether I understood it, the way it was designed to be understood, that I can't say. But I at least heard it, and I thought, I think I get that.

So what I get from that Cohen is a couple of things. You know, which piece of meat is the best piece, the butcher says every piece is the best piece. The first thing I get from that is this idea that every moment is unique. Every single moment has its own essence and can't be compared to any other moments

because that moment has a separate essence. So therefore every single piece of meat that I might want to buy from this butcher is perfect in its own right. That's one thing that I take from that. The other elements that I take when I hear that, Cohen, is life is just perspective. Who says what is the best piece?

Best piece compared to what? Can you experience every moment knowing this to be the perfect moment for you? every piece of meat in the shop, I could buy it, cook it, can you savor every single one in the same way? Knowing that they're all going to taste different, but you saying that that tastes better than that one is a judgment, it's a perception that I'm putting onto that moment.

The moment is simply me experiencing the piece of meat that I bought. if I start to judge one piece as better than another, that judgment is where a lot of problems start to come in other aspects of our life. So, that's, anyway, please, feel free to comment, but that's where I get to when I think about that, Cohen. Fantastic, fantastic. Two out of five.

No, no, no, no, no. You nailed it. Beautiful. I mean, imagine, like... Is that what you think they meant? I'm not going to say definitively. I don't want to say definitively. Because one of the things about them is that they're open-ended. They're not closing the book.

Here's the right answer. No. What does it provoke in somebody who hears it? What does it fertilize in somebody who hears it? But staying with that one, I mean, this very moment now, you know, for anybody listening, just this very moment, what if this is? is the best moment. No matter what we might be going through.

This very moment, I mean, you said it very well wrong, and like, actually, this is truly the only moment. This right now is what is, just this. Right now, this is what is. And that's true for every single one of us. So can we, you know, just sort of by doing the judging thing, we lose that. As long as we're judging, comparing, we actually, we can't recognize this very moment now as the only thing there is. There's a great saying from a Zen master called Tikna Khan.

He said, all there is is this moment and everything is here. Everything is here. So that is, I mean, that is a marvellous fact. It's a marvellous thing that always we're right in the middle of everything. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I think Coens are something that I'm going to spend some time with

because I am curious. And the reason that one came up, the funny thing is I brought that up with my kids over dinner a couple of days ago. We, you know, and I don't know if that's not the done thing or whether you have to meditate for a series of years first before you access this. But I had a love to chat with my kids about this kind of stuff. And it was just interesting to hear what they were saying about it when they heard it. Because I think some size kids, actually, what I found,

sometimes kids can almost get the depth behind these things better than adults because they haven't quite been schooled enough yet out of their essence. Exactly. Their minds are still open. Yeah, so they get it. Yeah, I think that's true. Whereas if you've been around the block a few times and you've grown cynical and skeptical about the world,

you're often closed-minded when you hear these things. That's right. I mean, there's other comments out there that, frankly, I don't have a clue what they mean. What are some of the other ones? Is it something about Mount Etna? Oh, make Mount Fuji take three steps. That's another one.

Yeah, I'm not ready for that one yet. Another anymore that you want to share with people? There's one where, I really like this one, where there's one where a student asks, what is the essence of awakening? What is a true reality of awakening? And the master says, pass me the water jug. Pass me the water jug.

So the student moves the water jug, passes it to the master. And the master, she says, did you understand? And of course, the student says, I didn't understand anything. And she says, put the water jug back. and so he puts the jug back

and then she says, now did you understand? I said, I didn't understand it. I love that one because she's actually saying you know, this very cup in my hand, what if this is

the totality of reality? So, well, it obviously isn't there's just a little cup, but what if somehow everything is really right here? So as I move the water jug, is anything absent? Is anything lacking? Is there actually any deficiency anywhere? Just by, in the act of moving

that jug, what if that itself is a kind of miracle? Yeah. I mean, I guess in so many different ways throughout this conversation, Henry, we're talking about the ability to fully inhabit the moment. Yeah. Fully. Yeah. That the moment has multiple dimensions. to it and so often we think we're in the moment, but we're not. Yes, we could be, you know, going through mental time travel, but we could also just be seeing an experience of the moment in just one or two dimensions rather than all the dimensions that do exist.

And I think that's the gift that meditation can give us if we can set the intention and make the time each day, which is not very much, to actually commit to the practice. practice. Exactly. Just a little bit each day and it just grows by itself. Is there something that you think is important for people to know about meditation that we haven't covered yet in today's conversation, Henry? I could just say it gives so much meaning to life. I mean, it's a homecoming. You know, it's you coming home to your true place. in the universe.

You know, and I mean, in a way, what could be more important? What can be more important? I completely agree. Well, Henry, listen, I love talking to you. I would highly, highly encourage people check out original love and your memoir, One Blade of Grass. But also, don't just think about meditation. Don't just think, well, at some point in the future,

when I've got time, I'll bring it into my life. get going today, right? Set the intention. If it speaks to you, you know, download the way and do those 30 free meditations and see how you go, you know. Well, then we didn't mention before, I just want to quickly ask you,

some people get confused with things like posture when they're meditating. So do you need a cushion, you know, a meditation cushion? is it okay if you slump against a wall or do you need a straight back? Should it be on the floor or on a chair? If you could just quickly touch off those basics for people because I know they're going to ask me on Instagram otherwise

what they're meant to do. Could you just sort of walk us through how important those things are? Yeah. With posture, the most important thing actually is to be comfortable. Traditionally, meditation is done sitting and that's what I usually recommend unless there's some reason

that that's uncomfortable for you. So just sitting in a chair is totally fine. If you want to, you can sit with a free back where you're not reclining against a back, you're sitting with your spine upright. And then it's really important that it be balanced. So you want to make sure that your ears are over your shoulders and your shoulders are over your hips

and that you're balanced so you can be relaxed. But that's not that important. The number one thing is comfort and any kind of chair will do. If you want to sit on a cushion, design for meditation, a course, feel free to. If you want to sit on a couch, if you want to sit on the edge of your bed, whatever works for you most readily is the best place to be. So it's not terribly important. That's interesting because I think sometimes if you're trying to think about your posture

and that straight back whilst trying to meditate, I think for some people it makes some meditation even harder because you're not actually thinking about the meditation, you're thinking about all my back hurts, you know, am I doing it right? Yeah, and you might keep adjusting. Like, I'm a really balanced... It doesn't matter that much, you know.

But we get deeper in it, actually, usually the more still we are. Yeah. So whatever helps us be still is better. I personally like to keep practice as simple as, possible with everything. I don't like loads of equipment that I need. Having said that with meditation, I did buy a cushion. And I think what's really helped for me is that it's a cushion and a color that I really like. And so it's helped me almost make the intention that this is an important practice for me in my life. And that when I sit on the cushion, it signals to me and my brain

that actually you're now about to meditate. I don't think you're not. need it, but I personally have found that quite helpful. Yeah, that's lovely. So making it work for you is the big thing. Personalize it so that you feel good about it. You know, feel comfortable in your body, comfortable with the fact that you're doing it for whatever that period of time is that you've selected,

30 days, 40 days, whatever it is. So let it be the, let yourself have the setup that you want to have. You know, so whether it's a nice cushion that you feel good with, a chair you like, a corner of the room that you like, do it the way that feels good for you. Yeah. Well, Henry, I'm a huge fan of what you're doing. I think the Way app is absolutely brilliant,

and I think it's going to get so many people into meditation, and beyond that, I think it's going to help create a kind and more compassionate world. So thank you for all that you do in the world. Thank you for making the science comes to the studio again. And thank you for another wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real deep honour and pleasure. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation.

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