Good Life Project - Roundtable: Tara Mohr and Erin Moon – Session 2

Episode Date: February 24, 2016

Today's episode is part 2 of our latest experiment, a new show format we're calling Good Life Project Roundtable™.What is it? A new weekly show that won't replace, but will be added to our long-form conversations and short riffs. Two "guests-in-residence" and I will be hanging out for the better part of a month, usually 3 or 4 weeks. This really lets you get to know them and benefit from their deep interests and lens on life.In each Roundtable, we'll go deep into three specific topics. And, the thing is, nobody knows what the other person's topics will be until they hit the conversation.My guests-in-residence for today's episode of Good Life Project Roundtable™ (and next week as well) are Playing Big author, Tara Mohr and yoga-educator, Erin Moon.Our three topics in this episode:The three manifestations of God.The Hero's Journey, through a feminine lens.Can video games help ease pain?It's fast-paced, fun, utterly unscripted and at times a bit raw, but always good-natured and very real. Enjoy! And let us know if you like this format, over on social media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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So if you've never heard of that before, if you're a longtime listener but you missed last week, we're experimenting with adding a third weekly episode. It'll go for about a half an hour or so. And there are three of us sitting around a table in our studio in New York City. And my guests will be, quote, in residence for the better part of a month. So we'll be jamming each on some different topics for the better part of the month. It's an amazing way to really go deep with a few incredible people for a bit of a longer period of time. My guests today are Erin Moon, who is a yoga teacher, voice artist, philanthropist, and world traveler. She's doing some incredible work in the world. And along with her, Tara Moore, who's the author of Playing Big and does a lot of

work around women's empowerment and also just really getting out of your own way. Really excited to dive into three powerful topics. These will range from the manifestations of God to the hero's journey, especially through a feminine lens, and the truth of pain in our lives. And can video games actually make a difference with that? So really excited to share these conversations and our guests and residents with you in today's episode. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. So why don't we come around to your second topic, Tara? It's great how these are playing together. My next topic is a sort of connected to Eastern religion topic. I read Rick Hansen's blog. Awesome, Rick Hansen. For those who don't know him, look him up.

He was mentioning that there are three primary manifestations in the Hindu concept of God, and they are the destroyer, the creator, and the preserver. And I don't know a whole lot about more about the context there. But for me, it provoked this light bulb moment where I realized that I completely wait, like prioritize or my concept of the sacred is about the creator side and creativity. And that I would never think of destroyer energy as connected to anything sacred and a preserver energy is really boring. I'm an entrepreneur type.

Oh God, flatline, right? Can someone else just preserve things? The God of moving sideways in life. I'm just, you know, like keeping the gross fridge stocked with groceries and, you know, like restocking the dish soap. The Sanskrit name for that guy, by the way, is the cubicle guy. It was a big, oh, like, hmm, you know, what would it look like to treat all three of those energies as sacred?

And even if I'm not balanced around them in my own life, you know, is my team within my business balanced around them? And I was thinking about some of the destroyers. Like, one of the things to me really that I connected with the destroyer energy is, like, the person who, when you're out at night, will be like, I have to go to bed now. And, like, kind of break up the party, which is never me. Like, I'm like, oh, okay, I guess we do. Like I have been really tired for the past two hours, but I would never say that. And thinking like I'm always really grateful when those people say that

because we do all need to go to bed at some point. So I'm curious, you know, which you identify with and what you honor in those three or not honor in your life or your work. So. Go, go. You would have thought no you saw my because you're gonna take it because i i know go where you need to go i'm gonna take a different approach here okay i love that idea and i what i find really fascinating is that we again what western society because we're not faced with as much destruction in our daily lives as other parts of the world, like from my experience of being in rural Ecuador and doing volunteer work there, and I did some volunteer work in Kenya as well. And a lot of the time you're faced with like, why are you here?

Just this kind of, you know, it's's there it's latent and behind and then when women when we would get talking get to know each other more working on the farm or working with kids or whatever and then find out a little bit about me I was made immediately like oh you you've been through something like you understand what destruction what destruction is I didn't know that you guys ever had to deal with that. And what's been interesting to me is I realize, especially being the age that I am, we don't, not everybody in our Western society has to deal with much destruction in their life, especially in the early part of their life, like the first 40 to 50 years. You know, there's some big stuff, but not everybody.

And certainly more people suffer than others. But because of that that we don't embrace that destructor and it's like it's not that you have to love it or seek it and that everything is born from it but in a way there is this deconstruction that we have to have so that the other two can happen. Like you have to go, you have to go to bed. And so I feel like I'm trying to actually explore the destruction a little bit more, or at least be okay with it with where I'm like, oh, okay, so I'm going to put myself in this situation, and it's probably going to blow up in my face. And I'm going to look at that and go okay so now what now I've learned something or now this new opportunity is open to me so I'm finding because it happened to me now I'm looking at it as a just as viable or or valid a potential

at any moment and because of of that, I suffer less because I see it as a real possibility in little tiny ways, doesn't have to be in the huge ways, right? And that really great creation comes out of it. Yeah. I'll take in a little bit of it. I mean, so, you know, we're both trained.

So like, you know, there are these three elements of like the Hindu gods. And I think it's fascinating to actually elevate those three qualities to the status of deity. It's like each one is actually worthy of your attention and your worship, and there's a certain energy that they exert over the way that you participate in your life and in the world. Whether you want to just say that those are three distinct energies that are out there, or they're like the three aspects of God. You're taught as a yoga teacher and a yoga student that the word Aum is the sound of the universe, but actually it's often spelled A-U-M instead of O-M. Each letter representing one of those, you know, like the three different aspects or the three different deities. What's funny is, is immediately I was thinking in terms of like the way I build businesses

and the way that I create ideas and take ideas from my head and into life. And if you ask my team, like which one of those three I would be, they might tell you I am the destroyer. Interesting. Because constantly there'll be things where like I can create. I'm nonstop creating. They'll also tell you I'm an idea terrorist. I'm dropping bombs nonstop, constantly, all day, every day. Let's do this.

What about this? What about this? What about this? But the flip side is that I'm also unusually comfortable with the destruction side. Because I'll look at something. I'll be like, we built it. It's working. It's serving people.

It's making money. It's cool. It's generating respect. It satisfies my ego, my bank account, my desire for impact and service. Let's blow it up. And let's just start. And so I'm constantly doing that to the point where, you know, like now that's kind of like, you know, our team kind of knows that about me and they're prepped at any given moment.

We need to start a Slack channel called like he's blowing it up again. Hashtag. It's the feed on your newsreel. Yeah, because I see that as like, so like, I'm most alive when I'm creating. And I can't be creating if I'm in sustaining mode. So I'm least uncomfortable when I'm sustaining. I'll preferably find other people and bring other people in to build all the sustaining part of it, the systems, the processes, and run it if that's where it needs to be.

But I'm out. And then I love the, I'm like, let's destroy in the name of getting me back to the creative side of it as fast as we possibly can, even if it's working. And people look at me, they're like, why are you, like, you're good. You're like, what you've built is just leave it, man. And it's not

about that. You know, it's like, because in my mind, I know we can create something better. And maybe that's a bit of a curse at the same time. You know, it's, it's like, there's a constant yearning, there's a constant discontent. But I don't think it's a curse if that's bundled with also a practice of awareness and gratitude. So it's not that I'm not grateful for what I have and where I am. I am. And I try and express it. I try and honor that and own it and sit in it every day and express it to those who've helped me get this thing to where it is. But simultaneously, I think it's okay to yearn to create something different or better or bigger. And to continue sort of like, to me, I'm not, I'm, if I'm not growing, I'm not happy. And that necessarily involves creation, you know, like sustaining and destruction. Have you always felt at home with that? Or did you struggle with, like, I should scale this thing to the moon? No, I'm constantly struggling with that. Constantly struggling with that or did you struggle with i should like i should scale this thing to the moon no i'm constantly struggling with that yeah constantly struggling with that and until probably the last

five years there was a massive amount of blood in the water every time i went through the process because i didn't have the skill set to handle the uncertainty that goes along with it um i've i've my my personal practices have gotten me to a place where I still feel it a lot, but I don't suffer the way that I used to. And I've also been through the cycle enough times now that I know that I'm going to figure out a way through. And I think that just becomes evidence to make it easier each time you move through it. Right. And I would say, you know, now in hindsight, looking back at the many chapters of your career, you can really see the divinity of that destroyer energy

because of what it created room to birth, right? Yeah. If that hadn't been allowed. I mean, we're here right now having this, like, beautiful conversation with two amazing people and, like, building this incredible community and all this stuff because I blew a lot of stuff up along the way and I will I mean say both of you same thing yeah there's it's been a lot of creation and a lot of destruction to get you where you are right now and I love uh I think it's our friend Jeffrey Davis who uses the term

business artist yeah you know which when I think about this, it also brings up for me. To me, there's always I always think of it as this spectrum where it's pure business, like what I was trained in in my MBA. Like we're just creating as many widgets as we can with the best margin we can. You know, that's the business side of the spectrum. And then the artist side is I'm creating for creation's sake. And the artist, I think, is not really interested that much in preserving or scaling what they build because they just want to go make the next painting, the next work, which I hear so much in what you're saying. And so now what I think all three of us are doing and so many creative entrepreneurs are doing, it's that blend.

It's the business artist. And so there is this tricky territory of where we lean when it comes time where we feel like maybe the creative arc is complete. Yeah, something is thriving from a business perspective in the world. To kind of let it go, to let it have its wings, to trust, like kind of going back to what you were saying much earlier in our conversation, to trust that when you put it out into the world that it's going to fly in whatever direction it's going to fly. It's going to be embraced in whatever way it's going to be embraced. But inevitably, it's in a way that's almost the destruction part of it. It's almost like saying, here, and now we come back. So what do we have? Where are we starting from after we've let it go?

And I think also sometimes you destroy it in the context of your life without destroying it. So the way I've done that is by selling companies. Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, here are the keys. And it's funny. It's like, I've done that, you know, a couple of times now, and the companies were based around these beautiful communities. And people are like, how could you just hand over the keys and walk away and be totally good? And I'm like, because I'm done. And it was never, I never defined, you know, like I never defined myself through that thing. And it would live on,

but in the context of my life and where I want to go next, like I had to kind of destroy my relationship with it to create the space to sort of like move into the next cycle even though it survived you know and um continues on and it survived in you like it has been also it's not like it goes away so there's this idea in tantra yoga where it's like you put something into the fire of the karmic fire the fire of destruction is just you know analogy and story around an idea and you put that thing into the fire. And you have to, when you hand over the keys, you have to be so willing to see no part of it, to have nothing to do with it ever again.

And what the beauty of that is, when you actually fully let go of it, it goes through the karmic fire and comes out clean. Like that's the catch. That's the end game. If I told you what the result of throwing it into the fire completely, completely without attachment, that it would come out clean, that you'd actually still have a piece of it, you'd be like, yay, throwing things into the fire all the time, right? But the truth of it is when you actually shed it entirely and you hand over those keys, that it does come back to you as a cleaner piece. And I would posit to say that of my knowledge of you and just how our relationship started and where you were in these build, destroy, build, destroy, is that each time you have handed over the keys, you have a piece of that thing that you created cleanly within

that has helped you build the next thing. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Like it's not gone. I mean, you look even just of some of the people that you work with for Good Life. I mean, there's some of the like old yogi pals. Yeah, we bring some of the good along. It is interesting to see who's kind of like just keeps coming along for the journey, but we journey together differently. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So let's roll over to Erin. Top number two. Okay. So I want to talk about Star Wars. But it's actually kind of riffing off of where we've been, just slowly building. So spoiler alert, just in case we talk about anything to do with Star Wars and you haven't seen the movie yet. I haven't seen it.

Oh, shoot. I haven't either, but that's okay. I'm still going to be doing it. So you know what? Let's talk about the old movies. So why I'm bringing it up is because the old movies, and particularly the first movie. So George Lucas and Joseph Campbell had a friendship, right? And so it's George Lucas' riff on the hero's journey, right?

So my question is, because it's been coming up a lot, I've recorded some books about it, and it just is kind of a through line that keeps coming up is, do you think that it is the truth and the center of our development as a person? Is it a necessary journey? And because I think that destruction manifests differently for everybody, I'm also seeing it, this hero's journey, and when this, the big moment of everything kind of falling apart happens, I'm also noticing because I'm at a point in my life where a lot of my friends are cusping around the 40 mark. And so they're having their midlife crises. And it's really fascinating for me and also because people are having kids later.

So they're facing, they're coming to this wall. They're running, running, running towards that little hole in the wall that they made of their goal and their thing that they thought their lives were going to be when they were 20. And they're running towards that little hole, and then they hit that little – they realize as they're getting closer, oh, no, the hole, it's so small. It's not actually body size. I'm going to lose an arm. It looks really tiny in the distance. Oh, it is really tiny.

Yeah. And then they hit the wall. They've got a circle on their cheek cheek and they fall back, you know. And so in that, like, I don't know, just kind of riffing on that idea of hitting who you thought you were going to be for the first 30 years of your life. And then you start to kind of live your life in your 30s. And then you, you know, shit happens or life just it's you have to reconcile who you actually are now versus who you planned to be and yeah just the hero's journey in general and star wars i mean the hero didn't have a baby

like it's an interesting question you know is the protagonist in these stories always male because we're talking about a masculine journey or is it always male because we live in a culture where only men get to be protagonists for the most part you know our boys and you know when you really start to think about how many went from harry potter to star wars how much of our central cultural mythology is about a father-son relationship it's kind of staggering i'm sure you think about this with your daughter like what where what movie do you take her to it is really mind-boggling to me when you when we you know think about it's like the whole idea of a journey where individuation, but that that's not the only journey we take in our lives. And there's also, that's a journey

outward and there's a journey that's also about rootedness and going down and inward. And yeah, so that's, I think where I fall in it right now. It's like it's a journey, but it's not the journey. And it just happens to be the one destruction that is innate in human development, that what draws us towards the liking of things like Star Wars? And by the way, the new one has a female protagonist what um which is nice yeah finally although i think there's going to be some daddy issues but you know um as opposed to mummy issues which would be more interesting but um but that what draws us towards the book the movie, the story is that it is our story. Yes. Yes. And like I certainly, you know, like when I'm working with women around what are our callings, we look at the hero's journey.

And like first we hear the call. Then we resist the call. We say not me to the call. You know, then we finally have to surrender to the call even though we don't feel ready and drawing on all of those traditional stories it's just that i also feel that that that blueprint made sense for this in the phase of my life and now even for the section of my life that's about my expression in the world you know and that that there's something totally else going on, not just if you have children, but around relationship and negotiating your needs and others' needs, you know, that's as fundamental a human journey that just isn't represented yet as much. Yeah. So I look at, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert, You Pray Love, Shell Strayed.

Wow. The classic hero's journey, but told very much through the lens of women. You know, so I think there are like really big public representations of women going out there and taking those journeys and telling those stories. Certainly far fewer than being told than men. But, you know, like when like those books were hit, I mean, massive, massive sellers. And I would venture to guess that the majority of the audience were women, not men. So the question in my mind, is it a yearning to go through a similar journey or is it a yearning to arrive at the same awakening? The challenge with the hero's journey that a lot of people don't want to hear whether you're a male or female is that's freaking brutal i mean it's horrendous it's gutting it's

destructive it's like them you know that the whole you know you meet the ordeal and you know you enter the darkest cave of your life you know and you essentially your your soul becomes obliterated your your being and your life as you know, becomes destroyed to create space for the new you and the elixir to arise from those ashes. So I think a lot of us look at the hero's journey and we're like, we want what the person's coming home with. And we think we see it in little ways in our life, like, oh, I had a really bad year. Right. It was tough. And I think, you know, part of the question for me has always been i think it's kind of like

tying in with those is do you have to go through that like all 12 steps at that level to get to the point where you find the elixir and you come home or is there a gentle pass through the heroes or the heroine's journey that can take you to that same place without such unrelenting violence yeah along the way i don't i don't know the answer to that like is it because you know so joseph campbell was a dude who basically like put together you know the idea of the hero's journey slash monomyth but he studied it he didn't create it it was the amalgam of studying thousands of years of cultural representations of this and i i don't know tara i'm maybe you know better than me whether a lot of the things that he looked at were based on male protagonists

as he went through the mythology i'm guessing it probably was yeah you know so it's like what if what if the the story were told through the eyes of a heroine? Right. Like a new mom. Like I've seen two in their late 30s, early 40s having their first baby. And I feel like what they describe to me is the hero's journey. Like I have one friend who said to me, she's like, my child had to break my will for us to both to survive.

My child had to break my will. She's like to survive my child had to break my will she's like it's not that way for everybody my will was strong but i was the wild horse that he had to break or neither one of us was going to survive the ordeal of his cholera you know like like his him having digestive issues or like just all of a sudden my life is no longer my own solely after spending so much more of our life as our own. And so I find and I'm really interested about what you have to say about this because of your community and your own journey. What that aspect of having things like having a child late or getting to this point in our life and we're, you know, completely like in GLP, there's tons of people who come to camp who are at a come to Jesus moment in their life or have had, whether it's trauma, new motherhood, whatever it is that's brought them to this point or just like been at the same job their whole life and realize I'm

dissatisfied and I have X amount of my life potentially left, you know, at these moments. And maybe it is the lighter version sometimes of that hero's journey. But is it like a, yeah. Well, yeah. And I'm thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert has recently been talking about when she was speaking about her book, this experience where a woman came to her and described that since she, I think she had read Eat, Pray, Love, and she was wanting to go on her own journey, but she had caregiving responsibilities and she couldn't. And so she had this coffee can and she was saving up for,

you know, this time when she was going to go on her journey and she'd been saving for 20 years. And Elizabeth Gilbert was really moved by that and was telling the story about it. And I thought that was really interesting that both that woman and Liz were saying, yeah, that's good. Your plan, you know, Liz was saying, have a plan and wait, which was really different than saying,

try to do it while you have your caregiving responsibilities. And, you know, so I still, you know, even knowing, yes, Eat, Pray, Love resonated, Wild resonated, but I wonder if it's resonating because so many women can't figure out a way to live that adventure, you know, while they are also feeling tied to home. And there has been work looking at what's the heroine's journey. There's Maureen Murdoch's book on the heroine's journey. You know, there's a few. I think that we're still looking for that.

And I don't think it's a different journey for women, but that there's feminine and masculine energies in our life. And the archetypal hero's journey is more coming from that yang part of us. Yeah. I mean, it would be nice if there was a more feminine interpretation of that story. And maybe I'm making this up to the more feminine interpretation of the story. It might actually be more accommodating to the realities of the human condition and more humane. So maybe that's valid.

Maybe it's not. So I apologize if it's not. But yeah, and that has been an enduring question for me is do we actually have to go to that place to get to the place that we so desperately, the outcome we so desperately want to go to? Well, and are we going to that place or is that our egos going to that place?

Yeah. I think what gets beat up is just our egos, which ultimately is probably a good thing. I think sometimes for beat up is just our egos, which, you know, ultimately is probably a good thing. I think sometimes for sure. Yeah. But I think also like depending on what's the cause of the break, I think sometimes because if it's a traumatic event that it's like you didn't ask for, essentially ask for, you know. Yeah. You get thrust into it.

Exactly. It gets thrust upon you. Yeah. thrust into it exactly it gets thrust upon you yeah yeah and i don't mean our egos like our confidence but our our ego sense of ourself of ourself is what gets challenged that level of our identity yeah yeah and that's why i'm interested about this young mom idea because i've had so many friends now yeah and i have one friend who recently said i feel like i'm mourning my old life my old who was, my old life. Even after this one couple, they were in Thailand for two months with their three-year-old and their brand new baby.

Like, I love people who do stuff like that. And she came back and they're having a normal life. And she just posted, she was like, I feel like I'm mourning my old self. And to me, it's got whisperings of the hero's journey in it, this level and this destruction sustaining in birth, right? I think after, we should map it out. I'm fascinated by this idea. We're going to take the 12 steps and see if it works. I'm seeing like a book arising out of this conversation.

It's like the new improved hero slash heroine's journey by Tara, Erin, and Jonathan. By our new publishing arm. Go on the Slack channel right now. Tell your team. I'll tell one second. They hate me again. on the Slack channel right now. Tell your team. Right. I'll tell one second. They hate me again. So I guess we'll zoom around.

So really interesting article that I was reading on the science of healing and placebos and stuff like that. And I've been kind of fascinated these days about, not just these days, but probably for years, kind of around the truth of pain

in our lives and how much of it is actually, like how much of pain is in your brain's interpretation of whatever signal is coming into it and how much of it is a matter of like, whatever the circumstances that's causing it. And there was a line in this article that I was reading. There's a little section that kind of like really grabbed me about kind of a fascinating thing so i'm going to read it to you um they were asking about uh you were there and they were talking to um blanking on this right now she's right here um science journalist uh joe marshes and um there was a moment because and this really tied into something i've been exploring lately where they asked about burn victims who were being treated with virtual reality. And they asked her to explain it.

She said, this is another therapy I got to try. Researchers in Seattle have developed a virtual reality landscape called Snow World. You fly around inside an ice canyon and fire snowballs at characters inside the game, such as penguins and snowmen. It's meant to work as a painkiller. The idea is that the brain has a limited capacity for attention. So if the ice canyon commands that attention, there's less capacity left over for experiencing pain. And she writes, when I tried Snow World, the researchers used a heated box to simulate a burn to my foot.

It was quite painful outside the game, but once immersed, I had so much fun I barely noticed it. And I found this to be true in my own life, too. So I'm somebody who unfortunately has dealt with headaches for almost the entirety of my life. And what I noticed is that, and I noticed this teaching yoga years ago, this was probably the thing that where it became most apparent to me, I'd wake up, I'd have a screaming headache. And I knew at like at noon, there would be 40 people waiting on mats for me to actually be present and to be upbeat and to give them everything I had for 90 minutes. And the thought of walking into that room for me was just horrendous. All I wanted to do was curl

up in a ball and hide in a corner with the lights off. But this was my obligation. This is my job. I also came to know that when I would step into the room, within about a minute, there was no headache. And it wasn't because there was nothing that changed in my brain. There was nothing that changed in the state of inflammation in my body or the actual circumstance that was causing it. But I had the ability to just really drop into the present. I was there to teach. And the way I taught also, I think, really tied into it, which is that I didn't ever map or script anything

as a yoga teacher, as Erin knows very well. And I would wing, 90 minutes if you stopped me at any given moment in time and asked me what's coming next, what are you going to say, what pose is coming next? I'd be like, whatever tumbles out of my mouth is exactly what's coming next what are you going to say what pose coming next i'd be like whatever

comes tumbles out of my mouth is exactly what's coming next um which which like and that demand it's such hyper focus in the moment for me to not you know to actually deliver something valid that my awareness had to be utterly there and for that moment in time for those 90 minutes i ceased to have a headache and then like within five minutes or so after, once I kind of dropped out of that place, it would come zooming back. Sometimes not as fiercely, but oftentimes just as fiercely. And then it really started to make me really question. There's a lot of pain that comes from all parts of life. And we tend to think, this is broken, this is disease, this is the condition that I have, therefore I am going to suffer X amount. It just is what it is. That's the way that pain works, stimulus response.

And my experience teaching with headaches and also then sort of stumbling upon this really fascinating experience with virtual reality and people who are, you know, burn patients. It really, it just kind of opened this question again of how much of the suffering and the pain that excites me absolutely the most about yoga and about therapeutics is this idea that nociception, so nociception, you have like these little cells that say, oh, I'm in pain, right? So I cut my finger, my nociception cells tell my brain I have cut my finger out. Does not, so nociception does not predicate pain all the time. It's an electrical impulse. That is something that is, but you can have pain with no nociception cells saying, I have pain. This is a phantom limb thing, right?

Right. So when you put the mirror down so that somebody who has lost a limb can look at, they put their hand on one side and then they put their hand that is still there on one side of the mirror and it looks like they have two hands and they're moving it. And somebody who suffered the lost limb pain for a long time, all of a sudden, gone. Right? So these ideas, the virtual reality snow idea is and mindfulness practices uh breath so a lot of the breath practices that we're going to be teaching that the soon to be new teachers and the clinic and um in botswana um the whole point to them is how am i distracting how am i concentrating and distracting my mind on top of calming my coming back to my parasympathetic nervous system, my my chill pill? How am I

coming back to stasis on just a nervous system level? And the two, they sometimes they can go together and that it's about stress that's creating a really kind of a blocking of the natural opiates inside of your brain that are actually able to say you're okay, you're not in pain. Sometimes it the distraction technique, this, this, and there's a one of the sutras talks about it too, in yoga, and this idea of if I'm putting my thumb on one side of my nose and breathing in through one side of my nose and putting my finger on the other side of my nose, breathing out and doing this little thing that that in and of itself, just that action, that real deep concentrations that's necessary to go. What nostril am I breathing in and out of with what finger is a thing that can reduce pain.

By the way, I was never able to keep track. When we were doing the manual, we were like, should we really? I mean, counting three in, holding two, four out. And I was like, yep, because that it's hard is the thing that will make it work. That it's something you have to concentrate on will be the potential for pain relief. And not to say that there aren't other things and anti-inflammatories and blah, blah, blah. But this idea of how am I the distraction or the re-concentration of your brain's energy being the thing that alleviates pain, to me, it's been a reality in a lot of these practices for thousands of years. And we're just – science is catching up. We're just finding our research that says, yeah, it works.

It works. It's that. It can be on some level that simple. I love it. Any thoughts on this or experiences? Yeah, certainly distraction. You know, for me, and I was very, very ill for like the first four months of my pregnancy and just around the clock. And so I really got to see,

you know, how helpful distraction was. And I remember like at one point I was talking to a very like crunchy hippie friend and I was like, I'm watching like, you know, 12 hours of TV a day. And she was like, Tara, do you think there's something that you could do that would be more like mindful where, you know, you're not connected? And and i was like you have no idea what it's like to be in this body right now like no i cannot survive i have the 40 year old virgin on reruns it's not even it's one movie non-stop i actually i watched all of felicity and as i was getting to the end, I cried. Like I was crying because I was also so hormonal. I was crying to my husband, like, how am I going to make Felicity last until this morning sickness goes away? But I really saw distraction work. And then I also would be amazed how, you know, I could be so, so sick. And it was when I was in conversation with different publishers about

the book too. And so I'd have to get on these conference calls and pitch the book and somehow I would. And I think it's very interesting, the point you're making about concentration, because I would be able to do that. But then when I would say like, I can go on a walk today, I can, and I would invite a friend over and be like, well, with a visit and a walk, you know, I literally wouldn't be able to, I would fall asleep in the middle of a conversation with them. I wouldn't, you know, be able to stand up. So that sense of, and with your yoga class, like mission and work and concentration is really interesting. Yeah.

That like super, super focus that's necessary to play a game well. Or because when you're walking with a friend, you're kind of like, oh, bird and this and blah, or whatever it is that's getting to you. Yeah. And I think it's funny because some, some people, you know, might say, well, but that's, you know, but that's not really, you know, that's not, you know, like if you take a pill, you know, that, that really is going to get rid of your headache because, you know, it changes your, you know, like whatever it is in your brain, even though most people have no idea how most pills really work.

The real cure is the procedure or the pill. What you're doing is just diluting yourself into thinking that you're not in pain when you really are. And what's wrong with that again? Right. And that's my whole thing. It doesn't matter. It's free. Right.

Who cares? If the end state is the end state, okay. Sign me up. Well, and because we don't know what is or is not causing pain. Like, is, you know, we talk about, we're talking about pain and it's like, okay, but are we talking about an actual physical something that is causing that? We know, we have diagnosed there is a pinched nerve in the blah, blah, blah of this joint and this is what's happening. So, okay, we know that there is pain because we've known from research that that nerve is being hurt but a lot of people suffer different sorts of pain that are trapped in like trauma fear or

early childhood trauma that is actually manifesting physically in their body in some way or an old pain that has made a signal. There's a feedback loop happening. There's actually nothing wrong with that thing that's hurt, you know, or broken anymore, but the feedback loop has gotten stuck. And so how do we kind of get in there with the feedback loop? We can with medicine sometimes, but we also have these potential other techniques.

Like, because the burn victims, they are in pain. They have every scientific reason to feel nociception-driven pain. But it works even in that circumstance, which is even more fascinating. Yeah. It's like if a tree falls inside your head and there's no way to get inside your head to get hit by it. And pain is pain well and it's it's interesting that we also get out of emotional pain when we're concentrating on our work um and again going the whole idea of the self and like if you're defining yourself as not as your body

but as your consciousness, your consciousness can become one with what you're doing or one with the television show you're watching and then become less connected to the circumstances that might be going on in your body. Yeah, like that. And that was our second ever Good Life Project roundtable. I hope you're enjoying this format and the wisdom, the incredible kindness and generosity and lens of our guests in residence this week. Erin Moon and Tara Moore will be back next week with the final installment with these guests in residence before we move into our second round of guests. If you like this format, let us know.

Let me know on whatever social platform feels right to you. And go ahead and find a way to share the show. If it feels great, then leave a rating over on iTunes for us. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming,

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