Modern Wisdom - #413 - Cory Allen - How To Use Mindfulness In Daily Life

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Cory Allen is an audio engineer, meditation coach and author. Mindfulness meditation is great. But it is supposed to be in service of a mindful life, rather than simply a way to spend 15 minutes of your day. I wanted to ask Cory about how he advises people to take their practise off the meditation cushion and into their daily life. Expect to learn how to use touch to bring yourself back to the present moment, Cory's favourite cues for reinforcing daily mindfulness, why the clothes you're wearing offer endlessly interesting sensations to meditate on, how to recognise when you've become lost in thought, how to reframe unwanted emotions and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get perfect teeth 70% cheaper than other invisible aligners from DW Aligners at http://dwaligners.co.uk/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Follow Cory on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/heycoryallen/ Check out Cory's Website - http://www.cory-allen.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back to the show, my guest today is Corey Allen, he's an audio engineer, meditation coach and an author. Mindfulness meditation is great, but it's supposed to be in service of a mindful life rather than simply being away to spend 15 minutes of your day. I wanted to ask Corey about how he advises people to take their practice off the meditation cushion and into their daily life. I expect to learn how to use touch to bring yourself back to the present moment, Corey's favourite cues for reinforcing daily mindfulness, why the clothes that you're wearing offer endlessly interesting sensations to meditate on, how to recognize when you've become lost in thought,

how to reframe unwanted emotions, and much more. Some very exciting news is that the modern wisdom annual review template is now live and it's free and you can go and get it. Chris will X.com slash review. That's Chris will X.com slash review. If you have been thinking that you want to do an end of your recap to learn the lessons that you've taken away from 2021 and to put a plan in place for how you can structure 2022. This is the exact process that I use.

It's taken the best of every person, people like Chris Sparks, James Clear, David Perrell, I've stolen tons of bits from all of their workflows and just put them into what I do. So this isn't an original piece of work, but it's some sort of love child of all of the best productivity guys that I follow, all put into one place, you can copy it into your notes, direct from the PDF, and then just fill it in. It'll take probably two sessions of three hours, I think, it's about six hours in total,

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ChrisWillX.com slash review. But now it is time for the Wizen Wonderful, Corey Allen. Alright, Corrie Allen, welcome. Yes sir, thank you. Thank you for having me in your city. It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming to the city. I know man, it's been very good. It's been a shame that we haven't got to see each other until now for professional purposes, but we've made it work.

We've spoken previously a lot about mindfulness. You've got still my favourite ever guided meditation course. And I wanted to try and have a discussion today where we can help people who are into mindfulness, who practice it when they can, or practice it regularly, to try and take their theory and the work that they do during their mindfulness practice off the cushion, so to speak, into the real world, try and get some practices, some triggers, some examples of how people can stay mindful and create the mindfulness gap in their everyday lives,

whether that be with family, when emotions arise, during situations, to help them feel more present and mindful and live a life which is richer and also to be able to distance themselves from their emotions to stop themselves from identifying with things so Why would you start? Let's say someone comes to you and says Corey I want to try and take my practice off the cushion Where would someone even begin? Yeah, well, I think that the first place someone would start would just be focusing on their actions, like their physical actions, more, with more intention, right?

So just hang a bit more attention to as you're going throughout the day, like not just letting your hand do something, sort of buy it, so on, but actually, as you're going to pick up your coffee mug or whatever, just notice the fact that it's happening. Just notice it happening, and notice the feel of the cup and tap more into the sensory experience of your experience more often. And by doing that, even, of course,

doing that with your own breath during throughout the day, but even whenever you're walking, just note the fact in your mind, I'm walking. I'm walking. There's a foot, you know, planting, planting, planting, interesting. You can, and wherever you start, by doing that, what you're doing is basically tuning yourself in to the sensations within your sense doors, you know, all your five senses, and then the plus one, which is the consciousness. You know, all your five senses, and then the plus one, which is the consciousness. You know, Buddhism, there's, they add that as a sixth sense, as mental formations,

and for a good reason, which I can share later. But essentially, getting tuned into how you're just being in a body in the world, and being aware of what you're experiencing, when you're experiencing it. That would be step number one, Because even focusing on that alone, that simple thing, like, take, make it completely secular, take away all of the, all of the other stuff that meditation and mindfulness may have to offer. And even take away all the insights, pluck some random person off the street and they, hey, try this as an experiment, pay a little bit more attention to your sensory navigation of your day and just see what happens.

What happens is that a person can't help but not, you know, the mind begins to try and begins to focus more on that, as opposed to being caught in this, this, what most people are caught in, that live a non-examined life, are this automatic, causal type of repercussion momentum of life, to where they have all their, you know, their programming, the chance of their life, the, the happen sense of where they were born, who their parents are, the experiences that they've had, and so forth and so forth.

And what happens is that in all of that conditioning, the conditioning of what you should think, who you should be, how you should, whatever, you just go along kind of reacting to everything that you experience. And in that, people spend a lot of time unfocused in their mental area, just their general conceptual view and connection with their the present moment of experience and

Because of that because there's no focus on this. It's all kind of this drifting sort of mental kind of junkyard of stuff that's happening up there just lack of focus Yeah, one thing that I find quite interesting and it's nice that you touched on touch as the first one. You know one of those days where you notice yourself being lost in your unthought, it's almost like you're walking through your own dream in a weird way and you're very much just on automatic mode. One of the things that I do, it happens sometimes when I'm driving in the car, is trying grip the steering wheel and feel it's got little perforations on the leather steering wheel and just really, really try and get very, very clear about how that

feels underneath my hands. It's so strange that that seems to pull me out of it, but John the Vakey guy, Canadian psychologist guy has some really nice experiments that you can do around this. So everybody, most people that are listening are wearing clothes, right? But you don't feel the sensation of the clothes on your skin unless you focus on them. Let's say that you've got a pair of shoes on, you don't feel the pressure of the shoe around your foot. You don't feel the seat underneath your bum, you don't feel the ground underneath your feet, you don't feel the wind on your skin, you don't feel the ground underneath your feet, you don't feel the wind on your skin, you don't feel the breath in your lungs. All of these sensations are there at the forefront of consciousness, ready for you to tap into,

ready for you to feel present. Look at how many layers there are, and I've just named some clothes that people wear, some items that are attached to their body. You can feel the sensation of a t-shirt that's just pushing on the front and on the back of your body. It's there all day. How is it that you don't notice it? What's because you're not paying attention? Now, would it do for you to spend your entire day lost in the world of your t-shirts, pressure on your skin, might be a suboptimal way to live your life? However, it shows that that is there for you at all times, and that's such

a cool practice. I need to do that more. Yeah, absolutely. And really, we're kind of jumping out a little bit, but the focal point that one wants to get to after a period of mindfulness and meditation training is finding this buoyancy between the macro view of self, just kind of the overhead view of like,

oh, I'm a person that's existing in a body. And the highly focused view, like as you mentioned, of like, oh, what's the sensational IT shirt only? The real sweet spot is in between those things and continued practice makes it to where the transition between those two states is extremely not only natural and fluid, but instinctual as well. So if you read the actual original mechanical commentaries on, you know, mindfulness training, which is a very small

part of a huge, you know, dialogue, a way to describe it is if you're looking at a tree in the distance, you want to be as focused on the tree as you are in the field as well, the equal balance on the big picture and the individual thing. And that as it's a truism, but it's also as an analogy to, as you're going throughout the day, you always want to try and be focused on the big picture to a degree and then an equal balance with a focused, precise point of attention and focus, but allowing having the relationship between those two things be such that it shifts instinctually based upon

what your response is into your current moment experience. How can someone bring more of that into their life? Yeah, well meditation certainly is a key way, because first, most people are stuck in focus mind, but it has no aim. So there's sort of zeroing in on one little tidbit and another tidbit and another tidbit and that sort of people feel like whatever someone says, oh, well my mind is crazy. I have too many thoughts going on.

I can't focus on anything. I'm thinking I'm ADD or whatever someone might say. That's just because they're leaned way into this ultimately what it is, is it's a panic state? That's where most people are, is because if no one, if a person doesn't train themselves in whatever modality that they have, to move the body over to a parasympathetic nervous system state, then they spend all their time in the kind of

amygdala-y fight, fight or flight adjacent state. And that's where most people are, because being, as I was saying earlier, being in the state of conditioned awareness and conditioned mind of what you should experience, what you should think, how you should act to X, Y, Z, or what someone says, that also goes to just the contents of life as well.

So people are continuously just reacting to everything all the time instead of engaging with a sense of self awareness. And ultimately, whenever you are in this panic state because there's so much stuff, especially now with social media and just all the technology stuff, the Sony thing is too focused on is if people are just going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing. And what happens is that's really just juicing the amygdala brain or part of the brain like an orange. And so you're in this panic reactive state all the time.

And that's like people that say, oh well, I'm an achiever. I'm crushing it all the time. I'm working like 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. I have 9,000 meetings and all the stuff. I'm doing all these things. I'm really feeling good and doing it. It's like, no, you're caught in a panic state because you're going from one thing to mixing and mixing, but you're mistaking the seroton release of constant low-level craving, like basically taking a bunch of like a thousand little tiny hits of a drug over and over,

but you're not actually feeling, you know, really good. You're just kind of scrapped like a rat hitting a feeder bar in a lab experiment, right? We spoke about this earlier, we were talking about the fact that now, the most important skill that you can have in the 21st century is to be able to filter information. You don't need to be able to scavenge for more.

There is more information than we need. The smartest people on the planet are the ones who are actually able to effectively discern noise and signal the spread does apart. That's what people need to be able to do. And I suppose that on a personal level as well, you need to work out, okay, what are the stimuli that I want to have in my life?

What are the things that I want to continue to allow in? What are the ones that I want to get off? life, what are the things that I want to continue to allow in, what are the ones that I want to get off. So we've got a somatic practice or a focus on the body. What is it that I'm sensing, doing that, connecting with that, I'm picking up this glass, how does the food taste, how does the fork taste and feel in my mouth, et cetera, et cetera. What would be the next step?

Yeah, so then actually moving to some type of like sitting practice, I think is really valuable. And I know you mentioned taking it off the mat, but in terms of what we're talking about here, this is someone who has no mat at all, right? So let's say even if someone doesn't want to say, well, I want to start meditating. As you mentioned, just let's parse out some of the noise, right? So having a moment of time in your day that's scheduled in if you have to, where you're shutting down

the phone, you're shutting down the computer, you know, in turning things off, just having a space of quiet and stillness that you can exist in for, you know, however long you can. What would you prescribe for someone that is keen to do this? The people that are listening will be familiar with mindfulness practices. Some people will have a semi-regular one that they wish was probably a bit more regular. I would imagine that that's a big chunk of the audience. What would you say is your prescription to try and aim for how long, how frequent? Yeah, I mean, if you can't at least half an hour, I mean, that's what, because you think

about like, people think that sounds like a lie. I would say, it sounds half an hour. I mean, that's what, because you think about like people think that sounds like a lie. I would say it sounds like half an hour. But you know, someone will sit down and watch a half hour episode of something on Netflix or whatever, and that's a half hour, you know. It's not that long and there's time that fits into the day. It's just about dedicating that time to that.

Or you think about before bed, or after like, I know some people, a lot of people that they wake up the first half hour of their day is just reading or you know and so you can plug these things into life and really just having that time in there what it does is it just starts to desaturate the senses you know but in it stops it takes away some of the kind of the chewing gum that the intellect has or it's always trying to focus and having something, because if you're always engaged with a phone or a social situation or some type of entertainment, then what you're doing is you're really ignoring your inner self, right?

Because you're always just externally involved with something else, it's a form of distraction. And that's that people stay so intensely plugged into those things is because they're staying intentionally distracted oftentimes from something that they don't want to acknowledge or they don't want to feel. So it's cool, if I go, if I go out six nights a week, I never have to think about why I feel whatever, whatever way they're like. I'll never forget. I was in a relationship with a girl while I was at uni and we were breaking up.

It was my choice and she was upset and she said something to the effect of I don't want to go back to having to go out all the time. And that blew me away because implicit in that is if I'm not with someone I can't bear to not go out all the time. And that's scared me. And that really made me think, I mean one thing said was, fuck this was the right decision because if this person has, if they struggle so much with being on their own, with not having a sense of validation personally that they then need to go and get it sort of publicly. That's a pretty malignant part of their life. But it stuck with me, man.

That was fucking 12, 13 years ago. Just some random tiny little line. I don't want to have to go back to going out all the time. It's so crazy how stuff like that sticks with you. You know, I always think about this. Think about all of the stuff, all the interactions that you've had with people on your podcast, meditation sessions, when you've met somebody of the stuff, all the interactions that you've had with people on your podcast, meditation sessions, when you've met somebody in the street, and some throw away fucking line that you just decide to say someone could keep with them

for 60 years, but no reason. It might not be profound. That one was like a profound insight, but it could just be a thing, the funny way that you said fortune or whatever, you know, like just some random shit. It's so mad how that happens. We don't know the legacy that our interactions carry with you. Yeah. Another reason why mindfulness is important because you're more aware of what you're saying when you're saying it. And so you're not.

The chance of saying one of those things with a positive effect is much higher because you have this intentionality about what you're saying. As opposed to just talking shit freely, and maybe you give someone the wrong idea based off of just something that you're carelessly saying. And then they take that as a script to move forward. I was just recently reflecting on this isn't really connected to anything other than how those little kind of earworms get into your brain and just I was recently thinking about one of those So probably like almost 20 years ago at this point. I was working in a bookstore and

To find a see if this bookstore had a particular book you find you look it up in one system And it was like a 10 digit number and they typed that into another system that would show you if you had it Not so there's the older gentleman that was in there and I was like a 10 digit number and they typed that into another system that would show you if you had or not. So there was an older gentleman that was in there and I was like 19 or 20 or something and he said, you have this, I went out and looked and I got a pen and paper because I found that number I wanted to do it right down and he goes, he's like, hold on a second, I said, well I got it right to the down second and put it in there. And he's like, no, no, no, you can do that. Like let's think for a second. Like it's 10 numbers or whatever.

Like, look at them, what are they? Like, remember them, you've got, you know, five, seven, nine, whatever. And he's like, you can totally do this. And I was like, okay, and I remember, I did it. And then I remember them, repeated them on my mind and then typed them in and like, boom, got it right. And for whatever reason, that just stuck with me.

Where I was like, a while a second., like I shouldn't default to just not engaging with my intellect and my brain in moments because I either think it's not possible or you're just, oh, we should grab a pen and paper. What? It's one of those conditioning things. It's like because as a group in society, it's something that people default to saying you should grow a piece of edit paper instead of just, you know, kind of leveling up a little bit and engaging and saying, actually, I'm going to, I'm going to apply my mind to this. Life needs to be lived by design, not default, because so many of the default settings that we've got are horseshit, they're so bad. And I don't know whether you do that. I imagine that you probably do. Did you ever as a kid make little games for yourself about how quick you could get up

the stairs? Oh, if I can get up the stairs this quickly, or maybe if I can jump over, if I can go up in twos or whatever it might be. Oh, yeah. Well, my, well, go ahead. Just those, those little things, kind of like that. I do that as well. I try and come up with dumb, dumb little tests for something. I've got to remember a string of numbers for somebody's phone number and I'll go out of my way to make it not a big deal, but kind of like a little a little challenge for myself. But that's the same compulsion that I had as a kid while I was saying, well, if I throw this basketball in on the next three goals, then I'm gonna become a millionaire. Whatever it might be, you know, that sort of dumb stuff.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I used to, this sounds weird saying it out loud, but that's why I'm sharing it. So, Marazalookid, you know, you play with your toys and the bath tub, perhaps, if you're lucky enough to have such thing. And as a lookid, I would get, like, ziplock bags, you know, like, this plastic bags, and I would get like a toy, and I would get like Ziploc bags, you know, like this plastic bags, and I would

get like a toy, and I would put it in there, and I would put food coloring in there, and I would get packaging tape and a swiss army knife, and I would place surgery. So if I could cut the bag open and extract the toy, was like not leaking a certain amount of red colored, you know, water and then tape it close all underwater, then I was like a successful surgeon. And look at you now. A successful surgeon. Successful surgeon. Yeah.

If you have anything you need, take care of them. All that preparation is really doing well. All right. So we've got the somatic practice. We've got making sure that we've got intentionality, when we're doing things, when we're actually engaging with our mind. We've got a seated practice, which you've said,

for about half an hour, I think, personally for me, half an hour really pushes the limit. I think that I worked up from 10 to 15, and then 15 to 20, and as I start to go over 20, I'm like, wow, that goes from it being something that my compliance is high to something that my compliance is low. But that's even just like sitting, like laying in bed

without anything happening. Yeah, I'm not a formal pride in it today. Yeah, just, just, yeah, just stillness, just quiet, like shutting out the noise, because that's for someone that doesn't want to try and meditate, just like turn off the static for a while every day, you know? That's really cleansing to the mind and that will actually draw your awareness

inward because this is one of the big things is that like, when if you're always engaged with like content or data or some type of distraction, you can't hear your own voice because you're always thinking in relation to whatever the other thing is. And so shut all that out and think, well, what am I thinking right now? Not what am I reacting or whatever to? Because you're co-regulating your consciousness by constantly being engaged with external material.

Yes, yes. Dude, here's an awesome hack for that. Just drive in the car without any music on. And without anything in your ears. This was something that I started doing when I went to, I would drive to the office for about 15 minutes and it was so good. I'm already driving. I'm doing something which is sufficiently system one that I don't really need to think

about it, right? You're not thinking about driving when you're driving unless you're really bad driver and there are some awful drivers in Austin. I'm going to segue. Austin has the most barbell strategy of drivers I've ever met in my life. Everybody is either an X rally car driver or a danger on the roads that shouldn't have a license.

There is no one in between. There are people that are amazing and people that are terrible. But driving to work with silence is so good. And you're doing the drive anyway. And it's sufficiently passive that it's probably not going to matter That's a great way to do it. I think yeah No, that's that is a good way to do it and so the point of doing all of that would be to start to withdraw somewhat from the continuous kind of panic mode of always dealing with something and give yourself a chance to slip into that

dealing with something and give yourself a chance to slip into that parasympathetic mode. So by doing that, you then, that's the rest and digest zone where you become less frantically focused on things, less kind of anxiety, driven and reactive, and more calm, full, more serotonin is releasing, more stuff where beat slows down, breath becomes more shallow. And in that state, you're, of course, feeling good. That's where most people would like to be. And that's ultimately after you meditate for 10 minutes or whatever, that's where you, what you'll typically switch over to. But doing that, getting into that state consciously through even just shutting out the noise

or some type of formal meditation practice, even just the easy breathing practice, that will begin to bring balance. Because if you're always in that fighter flight mode all the time, messing with a bunch of noise, it's just going to introduce a counterbalance to that state and draw that on back a little bit. And the more that you practice those and the more time you spend in that state of stillness and mindful awareness, the more balanced it does, the more into balance it does, the two things you want to become. How happy would you be with someone doing this alongside a fairly menial job? So let's say

driving a car, doing the washing up, mowing the lawn. Are you happy with somebody utilizing that time or is there too much stimulus going on if they're doing a task? As long as they're focused on the task, and that could, that's definitely a mindfulness practice. Yeah, you can put it in. Yeah, but apply suggestion number one that we add to that moment. So getting into the awareness of your actual experience as you're experiencing it and being aware of the sensations and the sense stories and so forth,

while having that, you know, just something to focus on is a good way to do that as well. Thinking about how overloaded I sometimes am, but also some of my friends are ridiculous at this. They'll be listening to a book on three times speed whilst the rumble automated schedule is going around and hoovering up the house and they'll be cleaning things up but they'll have the laptop open because they've got some notes for an exam that they've got coming up a little bit later on. I'm like the threshold the waterline for acceptable stimulus has just shot through the roof. You're already listening to something at a million times speed. You've got this schedule thing going on. You know you've got to call in five minutes, but you're going to fit this in because yeah, the um, I don't know where that compulsion comes from. I think it's partly productivity more done in less time stuff, but I also think that you're right that

there is an anxiety beyond I should be doing more with my time. There is simply an anxiety with just sitting with an assurance. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's because if you haven't done it before, then all the stuff that you haven't seen, you kind of start reacting to because you feel like, well, now you become aware of your internal dialogue and what you're actually sensing. It's just overwhelming because you're used to numbing it by being distracted away from it. What's next? Well, from there, I'm going to go to

just something a bit more fun. And it's a bit more more deep but it's a fun thing that people can do to really begin to get to the root of something that'll be very helpful. So along with the sensory input of just experiencing what you're experiencing in a physical way with more awareness, start paying attention throughout the day to your movements and what kind of what you choose to move, how you move your hand, what you're actually doing. And again, just note those things in your mind as you're doing them. So you're sort of like, oh, again, I'm lifting the cup, you know, I'm setting the cup down,

I'm walking, I'm talking right now. And you can do this as detailed as you want. This is actually a part of the fundamental training of mindfulness as far as it's actually written, is to do this, but a monk would do this 24, seven for however long, for weeks, years, months, whatever. It's very, very detailed, and that's all you're doing is noting. But the point is, is that the more that you start doing that

and you focus on just kind of noting your own awareness, being aware of your own experience, then something interesting starts happening, is that the time it takes, because you'll stop doing that, and then at one point later in the day, you'll then go, you'll kind of catch it again and remember and see like, oh yeah, yeah, I was noting things. So now I'm getting some food or whatever it is. Right. Famously, Uzbinski, I believe it was, Gurgis disciple went out to,

he was doing what he called self-remembering. Same concept, just different school of thought. I was walking and he was self-membring and things were going good. And then a few weeks went by. He went to get a package of cigarettes and a few weeks went by and he's oh, yeah I was so for remembering and telling went to go get that pack of cigarettes

You know, so even someone who's doing it in this train that you could you could start it and you'd be doing it And then something will kind of sweep you into this long chain of thought so much that a lot of time We've got by but eventually you'll remember it and you'll go all right I'm gonna do that thing and you start doing it again And then the more that you focus on that, just the more curious it becomes, how you're not really as in control of yourself as you think you are. We're very much these autonomous kind of beings that are on autopilot in a lot of ways in our lives.

You think of the amount of times that you shift your feet around while you're sitting in a chair or you scratch your arm or you go to have a sip of water or you lift your arm up or you kind of move a thumb across a fingernail or something like that or you blink. Whatever it is, there's all these things that we do constantly that we're not even aware of. We're just engaged with whatever kind of our focus mental mind is on at that moment. When you start doing this practice more, you'll start noticing how much that you're actually doing without realizing it.

You'll notice how you're shifting in your chair. You'll notice all those little movements and stuff like that. And what gets really trippy is that then you start to notice like something, for example, like, oh, if your arm is itching, if you were completely unexamined, you'd be sitting there at your office or arm, your arm would itch, you would scratch it and you wouldn't even think about it. It would happen way, way in the background. If you're noting your present experience, you'll notice, oh, I just scratched my arm.

That's interesting. Cool. And then, as you continue practicing this, as time goes on, then you'll get that I just scratch my arm. That's interesting. Cool. And then as you continue practicing this, as time goes on, then you'll get to a place where you can, if you so desire, to go deep into it, of, oh, my arm is itching. I want to scratch my arm now. And so just going, oh, I just scratch my arm. You go, oh, there's an itch there. Interesting. Now we get to a deeper level of it, which is the arising array of impulses that we have. Because our impulses are really the root of all of our behavior. And whether you note your physical movements enough, you then can go backwards one step or deeper one step and realize

realizing desire and impulse to do things as opposed to just the fact that you're doing them. What that does is gives you one level deeper of control and awareness of your actions and how you're existing in the present moment. In all of this really boils down to being able to navigate, put a sailup on the boat of your life and navigate your existence with more intentionality and more self-awareness. And what's interesting is if you watch this example,

say you have the itch and you notice the impulse to scratch, then you realize you have agency within that. You go, hold on, I don't have to lift my hand up to scratch you right now I can choose to respond to that or to not and I can actually just kind of focus my attention on that itch feeling like What is that really just an odd little sensation? It's really not unpleasant. It's just there But I'm so conditioned to mechanically, automatically, and engage with it that I've always done it. But if you just watch it, and you keep watching it, and then it just kind of goes away. And the more you start getting into that level, then you realize

that that awareness of the impulse to do things, not just as you're doing them, you become more in control of everything in life, like eating per se. You're not stuffing your face. You're actually aware of what you're eating. You're aware of, well, this arising impulse to just crush whoever's on your plate or go like, you know, I'm actually going to, I'm already getting full. I'm going to stop now because I'm full. I don't want to feel sick later. If you're

talking, speaking with someone and you have these words arising in the directions that you want to change or move the conversation or the interaction with, normally a person who is unexamined is just kind of, you know, they're going, it's all unraveling against their will. It's just kind of, just happening to them almost, the person. And that's why people say things that they regret. They say harmful things. They say kind of unskillful things as one would say, or just stupid things. But with that deeper level of mindful awareness, you then like the same awareness of the impulse

to do a physical action, as opposed to just doing it, you become aware of the arising dialogue in your mind and what you're going to say. And if you should say it or not, and that's really where that mindfulness gap appears that you mentioned earlier, because then say that you have a reaction to an experience, someone says something that triggers you

and you get irritated and you feel normally you would react and say something cutting or mean or like resentful to them. With that level of clarity and self-awareness and intentionality, you can then feel that feeling arising and then actually examine and know what you're going to say more skillfully if anything at all and like what the moment actually calls for as opposed to being drawn into a further detachment and distraction of that panic anxiety state. Yeah, man. I think about an example Sam Harris uses a lot while he was sat at a meditation retreat,

and if you have tight hips like almost everybody, and you sit on a meditation cushion, your knees can hurt, affect it, good bit of force going through them. And he said that he focused on the pain in his knee for so long until it broke apart and it became sort of pure bless. And I've been going to a place called Kuyya, which I need to force you to come with you at some point. Hot and cold therapy, sauna gets up to 250 degrees, which is a hot puppy. And then they've got 34 degrees Fahrenheit, cold plunge, straight outside, you go and you lower yourself in and there's a little clock on the wall. And very quickly, after starting to do that, I noticed that if I focus on the sensation of what cold feels like, not on being cold,

not on the narrative around the fact that this is cold and this sucks and I've just come out of 250 degrees and now I'm into 32 degrees, if I focus on the sensation, everything completely changes. It's a fascinating experience that kind of feels like tiny little needles, tiny little pinpricks and then it feels like a vice and now it feels like warmth and now it feels like tiny little needles, tiny little pinpricks, and then it feels like a vice, and now it feels like warmth, and now it feels like something else, but it doesn't feel like cold. Cold is the narrative name that we've given to that particular combination of sensations. If you actually get into the sensation itself, it breaks apart into components that like a meal, right? You eat a meal, if you're not focusing on the meal,

you're just eating the aggregated macro flavor overall. But if you really, really pay attention, you go, well, that's the chicken, that's the oregano, that's the pesto, that's the spice, that's the part, that da da da da da da da da. And you can break it apart in that way. And the richness and the level of depth, I mean, you can see how much I'm desperately

trying to stay in for three minutes that I'm going into some black hole of mindfulness just to try to stay about for 180 seconds. But it's awesome. For cold therapy has been, you know, those whatever, I've done maybe 30, between 20 and 30, three minute blocks since I've been here in that cold plunge. And every single time it's fascinating. Yeah, I'd like to do the cold plunge in the sauna. Are you thinking that? No. Yeah, I know that that type of stuff is, that's almost like a manufactured external intervention. You know, where you're shocking the system

into forcing your attention onto something, which for someone is useful for anyone, it's useful, useful experience, but also for someone who just feels like they can't break all out of it. And it's like, well, they're away. Oh, man. Put yourself in that cold plunge

and think about something that isn't what you're doing. Yeah. So Paul Blooms, most recent book, The Sweet Spot, is great. And he interviewed a dominatrix for it. He was trying to work out why it is that some people suffering is part of a good life and pain contributes to our sense of enjoyment. This Dominatrix said nothing captures attention like a whip. What she means is that if someone slaps you in the face, for the next three to five seconds, you're not thinking about anything other than the fact that you've just been slapped in the face. And it's not that people want peace of mind,

it's that they want peace from mind. Can I enter into a state, it's one of the reasons that I think people love extreme sports that have a very, very high chance of death. You know, based on jumping, wingsuit, downhill, mountain bikes, snowboard, ski, all this stuff, it forces your attention into such a narrow chasm because you know that the problem and the issue of you string from that is so grave that you may die. And that's peace from mind, not peace of mind. Right.

Exactly. And it's kind of fascinating that there are so much easier ways to get to that place than getting the squirrels out of here. Yeah. Wings out and jumping off seven mountain. But two weeks to run. Yeah. I think going a little deeper and moving into a real useful

aspect of what we're getting to here with this being more aware of what's going on in the mind, what's going on, starting with the body, being aware of the senses, and then starting to move into the mechanism of the mind, if you keep following that, you get to one of the places you mentioned, where like, well, these are rising things, these impulses, these are just fabricated concepts that don't really mean anything. I'm just like resonating like a wine glass, you know, with someone singing, but there's not really that material, the conscious material that's arising, that's not me.

Those are just mental formations. So even whenever you want to see, I need to go check my email real quick. Like that impulse you see it arise that the feeling to go into motion and check the email, it's like, well, that's just a complete passing cloud of nothingness. And being able to distinguish that those are really coming

from nowhere and going to nowhere Will show you that your thoughts are really not you, right? You are the awareness is observing the passing of the thoughts the witness to the content of mind Not the mind itself and understanding that is so valuable because one of the things that people do is Mistakes are thoughts for who they are. And that leads to an extensive amount of self-criticism, of self-down, self-hatred, all sorts of things. And really just a true confusion about the nature of self and reality. An example that I have been enjoying using lately to describe that is, imagine if you are there and you have a nice orange, nice tasty orange, you open

it up, you smell the orange, right? You smell it for a moment, and while you're eating it or whatever, and you carry on about your day. For hours later, you never mistake that you were the smell of the orange. You're well aware that you smelled an orange. That was the smell. You moved on. It moved on. And it's not there anymore, right? But with thoughts, what happens is that a thought arises, someone looks at that and they go, oh, that's who I am, or that is some type of truth. And then, because it's internal, instead of external, they're then able to grab onto that and then relate to it, their identity to that thought, of that sensation.

And that's much more insidious and long-lasting because it's internally resonant, as opposed to externally informed. So with the smell of the orange, we're aware that that is outside of our skin, there is a tactile world, and in that there is stuff happening, and our senses take in the information from that world, and we recognize that there's a relationship between our experience and that external object, and there's no real confusion there, in general, right? But the issue is, the're getting the reason why that's so clear is because we're getting constant feedback from the external object, right? Like you always know your arms are

on a table because the table is always pushing on your arm. There's no mistake. I'm becoming the table. Like it's there, it's there. I'm here, right? And so with the mind, since those things are generated internally, whenever a thought goes by, there's no resonance, there's no reference point, there's no constant feedback, it can just hang in the space of the mind's eye, right? And so then, because often our thoughts have to do with us, because we're thinking about our own narrative and kind of creating our story of whatever's happening in the moment, we begin to mistake that mental material for truth and for reality and for what we are. So if someone has this thought, you know, some type of like, ah, I'm a piece of shit, like I shouldn't have done this.

I'm a, you know, and I'm failing it like this thing or whatever. That thought arises and then you can grasp onto it because it's kind of suspended in space in your mind. And then you, like an endless orange. Yeah, the endless orange of self hatred and self doubt. And then you, that gets kind of grafted onto the lens of your experience. And then the longer you stay with that, that begins to then inform your decision making and life because your temperament has changed. You know, your outlook on

the self has changed. So therefore, your confidence and your general navigation of your own life changes. And it also just becomes the snowball of suffering because the longer you stay thinking that that is real and true, the more real it will seem because the mind is always naturally looking for ways to reinforce whatever it's currently thinking at the moment or whatever it's experiencing. Trying to build a case or our consciousness is always like litigating reality at all points, right? And so in 12, a jury of 12 of your peers who were all other aspects and layers of the self are all, you know, voting to convict constantly. And so by recognizing that the conscious material that's arising in

the mind is simply just disconnected, having stanced, truly, just transient sort of data, you can then step back and observe that and not get caught up mistaking what you think for who you are. Yeah, man. Thoughts not being things is, it's so easy to forget. Do you have any more stories or examples that you like to use with the people that you teach about how to remind themselves that thoughts aren't things? Oh, well, I mean, that's, that was a pretty good one I just shared, but yeah. I'm just trying to think if we've got the orange, we've got that idea, we've got, I'm just wondering if there's another way that you like to frame that.

Yeah, so you could think about something more simply, because I know that was complicated and exhaustive. Something more simply, you think about like how, say you wake up in your bed one morning, and you feel great. You didn't have any drinks at the prior night. You ate well, you slept well, you feel good. The sun is shining in the window, it smells good and fresh in there. Beautiful crisp day.

It's a little out outside your window, looking in at you. He's happy, belly full of mouse. Everything is good in the world, right? You get up, you feel good. All right, I'm going to go this beautiful day. I'm going to go out. I can't wait, etc., etc. You go on. Now say that the next that night, because you were having such a good night, you decided to celebrate, right? Now you're going out with, you know, with your friends, you're having 30 drinks or whatever it is, you're eating cheeseburgers at 4 a.m.

And then a pizza, you get into a fight of some kind, you know, if someone glasses you in the head with a bottle, you know, whatever. Then you decide to have a glass of sand and sit at a glass of water before getting in bed. We've all been there. So you get in, you wake up the next morning, headache, shattering, pounding, splitting headache,

eyes are blurry, that sunlight now is like giving you this crazy headache. It's contributing, oh God, pulls the curtains closed. Now the smell in the room, you're now smelling sour too, because now everything has got this kind of pungent, repulsive smell. Everything makes you all nauseous. The colors in the room now hurt your eyes as well and seem distasteful and this organized you have no energy for the day.

You don't want to get moving, none of that stuff. You just want to land your sweaty bed and just lay there and just rot, right, with this setting. I've been the bed feels lumpy or you can't get comfortable, you know, all this stuff. Now think about the fact that that room didn't change. The room, a person you had those two distinct experiences and was the same. Same room. What was different was your mind. And what was different was your

frame of consciousness, your state of mind, in the way that you're perceiving it, because of what was going on in your body at that point in time. Now, that's an extreme example. And what I'm doing here is peeling apart the subject and object relationship of mind. So what we experience and what we think about experience is we receive all based upon where our mind is at that point in time and how we're thinking and how we're feeling, right? And so as far as the thoughts are not things go, if you a good practice to notice, you know, kind of the true nature of that is to pay attention to think that you're experiencing whatever you're feeling good and how you project your feeling onto that situation

versus an experience of your feeling bad and how you project your feeling onto that situation as well with a negative light, a disruptive light versus a positive or an optimistic light. And then as you start realizing that you're really kind of projecting the story of how you're feeling onto your experience, then try to separate that. It's easier to do when you're in a good mood. Realizing, oh, I'm feeling good. This room is great. Blubblubla.

These people are nice. And just stop for a second. I'm like, well, am I enjoying this so much? Or am I just in a good mood? You know, mood? Is this really the best wine I've ever had? Or am I just looking forward to? And you can start to just notice how the difference between the way that you're thinking versus what really is. Would you say, I think if you run that forward, the stoic, stoicism's prescription would be something along the lines of the external environment should never impact

your internal state. Now to me, given the fact that most people are trying to find a root to happiness and joy and flourishing in life, that feels a little bit like you wake up on the great day and the hours fall and everything's going fine. But the stoic would remind himself, this is no materially no different to the day when I woke up with

a hangover. That feels a little bit like constantly trying to build up a fire, someone coming and throwing kerosene on it. And you say, no, no, no, no, I don't want that. How do you factor in the ability to be sufficiently robust is to be able to deal with bad situations, but also absorbent enough that when you have a good time that you utilize that as a catalyst. Do you get the tension that I'm talking about? Sure, sure. That's why I think stoicism is, as a lot of incredible beneficial qualities to it, but at the end of the day, it's quite repressive.

but at the end of the day, it's quite repressive. Because the reality is that no matter who you are, you're always gonna be affected by your external environment. It's just the fact of that. We're, we're, how is little monkey creatures? You know, like we are in nature and we're a part of nature. So we give them, I mean, the idea of saying,

well, I'm not gonna respond to my environment. Like you are the environment. You know, that the way of saying, you know, well, I'm not gonna respond to my environment. Like, you are the environment. You know, that the way of looking at reality is as if you can just create this wall between reacting completely to what's happening out there. It's like, you're out there too. You know, it's like someone that's in traffic and that guy, hate all this traffic.

It's like, you're traffic, you're the one. You're the one. Yeah, you are too. And so that way of thinking to me is unrealistic and doesn't really, you know, Followed through all the way and so it's realizing, you know, in those moments the fact that you always are gonna be flowing with what is But it's just about and this really is the crux of all the stuff we've been talking about putting enough effort into being more self-aware of all the stuff we've been talking about, putting enough effort into being more self-aware,

being aware of what you're thinking in the moment that you're thinking it, being more aware in the present about your actions and the choices that you're making, and using your intentionality to then make choices towards the direction of who you want to be or what you want your life to be like. And in that comes interfacing with the truth of whatever your environmental circumstances are at that moment.

And using the information there along with your self-awareness to then continue to make intentional choices. What about emotions? Because that's like a not a particular thought, not a narrative, a felt sense, a phenomenon that arises. How would someone utilize taking mindfulness off the mat to be able to give them that mindfulness gap when an emotion arises? Yeah, I mean, that's a really viable one, because emotions are like the ultimate, you know, no logic a lot. You know, if you can't, it's tough to be very emotional, very logical at the same time. So people tend to do things very, you know,

brashly, whatever they're getting really emotionally, or getting really emotional, rather. And so mindfulness is super valuable because it takes some of the heat and the impact off of negative emotions and allows you to then react or respond to them and so just be bold over and controlled by them. So even if you say, you know, something happens

and you get like furious at someone, normally without, you know, being unexamined, you would just jump into whatever it is yelling at them or I don't know what people do whenever they get furious, but with being more tuned into a mindful way of living, that would arise, and then you really get to address the root of that fury and that anger in the first place. It's important distinction to make because obviously it's not useful to just respond emotionally, be crazy not to control and see red and do whatever.

It's also not useful to completely play and this gets into an interestingly nuanced area of what, you know, of mindfulness with someone who says spirituality. To not look at that situation wherever you get frustrated and full on, like, okay, I notice the arising feeling of frustration, I'm not going to respond to it. I'm going to, you know, exhale, breathe calmly, and allow it to move on, and just let that move, and then later, I'll engage with whoever the person was, you know, if it's still an issue, and discuss,

you know, constructively what the problem might be. That also, if not done well, can be you have a danger of again, passivity and compartmentalization. And so, if you want to get to the root of the matter, when it arises, you can use mindfulness to not react to it, but then to pause and actually really examine the impulses, what am I thinking, why did I get so reactive? Is this something of mind being triggered? Is something I need to work on? Is it something that I need to create a boundary that someone has done something to me that

I need to address and helps you actually get out why you had that reaction in the first place. So just getting swept up in the drama of the emotion. Bring that back for me. someone has an emotion arise. What are some of the cues or the triggers or the practices that they can use to just build that mindfulness gap in before the downstream how to deal with it? What's the first step in that?

Yeah, the first one again, I think that the noting thing is really valuable. So you start getting mad, just recognize like, okay, hold on, I'm getting really pissed off here. Let me just pause. You notice it in pause. Don't go straight into action. And this is the same for a self talk about being sad or anxious or depressed or whatever. Exactly. Just notice it's there and then pause. And you can take a breath, create a little bit of space, give yourself time to actually catch up to the flurry of what's happened. And then you can start the self inquiry process and realize, you know, what intentional choice you need to make. What I was going to get into earlier is an interesting, pretty tricky

part of the ever-evolving story of someone living mindfully or more, you know, a quote unquote, spiritual identity, which I don't, I'm not really into that word or those words, but it's in terms of what people think about it as, is that you can do all these practices. Let's look at the maximum optimal person who is doing, you know, they're completely non-reactive, they're tranquil, they're peaceful, you know, they're doing all this 24-7, never disrupted, always is super easy going What can happen there interestingly is that you can begin to feel like you You get stiff in this way where you can start out of the service of trying to do these things so much and trying to almost play the character

of this person as you try and do this stuff more, you can run the danger of actually becoming self-righteous in this way, right? So, whoever you don't want to break the character and acknowledge that you are actually a human being. And then you're actually feeling some of these things. You're just living this calcified form of mindful zombie and not allowing yourself to acknowledge the truth of what's going on deep inside of you. And that is the trap that people can fall into. And you start the self-righteousness is that then you wear that character of being the completely calm, tepid person at all times around others and even with yourself.

And that way, you're like, oh, yeah, no, I'm completely unaffected by all of you and all of this. Become a prisoner of your own mind for me. Exactly. Exactly. And so wherever you do feel those things, it says, it answers its question within itself, is whenever you feel the anger or whatever, oh no, I'm just gonna let that pass, and I'm not gonna, well, that's great. And you should not react to it. But if you aren't engaged in it,

then you're messing up, because you want to engage in, well, why did I, what happened there? Like, why did I feel that? Like, what's going on? What do I need to understand more clearly about the situation of myself, or what should I be saying, or doing in this moment,

as opposed to just always, like, you're shutting it off, right? Because that's one of the miscommunications that people get, is they think, well, that leads to a lot of resentment of other people. And as I said, self-righteousness, because I've got so many messages from people who are like, hey, so I've gotten really good at disarming my reactive anger towards my life and kids or whatever one of them are being crazy. And I want to yell at them, I've got that now. But now I feel resentful that I'm

always the one that's having to set aside my feelings and they're just totally unexamined, running wild, and I'm just dealing with it all. And so now I'm starting to feel irritated at them. And that's where, you know, as I said, self-righteous, because now you're like, well, now I'm the victim, kind of the one having to bear all of this. And these people are in fear animals. And now I'm sorry to disliked them because I'm always having to offload the stuff. And that's because step one is stopping the reactions and all that. But step two is actually examining, understanding why you're feeling that, why that button's being pushed, and then engaging and communicating with the person or the people clearly about what you're experiencing, right? So

if you're, you know, if the kids are running around screaming and breaking stuff and you're feeling irritated and you go, okay, let that go, just be cool, move on, go to another room. Yeah, you do that, but then you also go, hey, by the way, you all need to calm down and chill out and be whatever. You know, tell, give them, I'm not a parent. Give them, whatever you feedback, you give the kids, I don't know. But that's the point. And if you move that into all the areas of your life and that way, it keeps you from

getting that resentment or that weirdness or the righteousness. And actually, again, it's, you know, engagement is so important, you know, in this stuff, one of the big misnomers that's out there is that people mistake being more tranquil and self-aware with passivity, you know, because for a lot of various reasons. But they think that's almost this kind of like disengagement with like, no, I'm just going to like let things kind of flow by. It's not that at all, you know, it's it's actually kind of the opposite of that in a lot of ways. Is it stepping out of the the causal kind of flow of reactivity but then stepping into actually being present and engaged with you know intentionality?

Triggers, final bits, anything that you think that we haven't got in order to bring that mindfulness gap into the, into daily life, any habits, any routines, any triggers, any cues that people should remember to use if they want to try and really instantiate this. Yeah, I think a useful one is looking for like little bits of time in the day because you can practice even just kind of like checking in with your breathing, just calming it down, checking your shoulders. That's really all so much tension and the anxiety

and worry and all that stuff that people have, is just through being unaware of their own tension and grasping. So you kind of get tense, you start thinking your shoulders get tight, your brow gets tight, your heart starts racing. If you take a moment to just like, go a whole lot of second, let me change my posture, relax the shoulders, relax the face, and take some breaths, kind of just calm things down a little bit. Like that will do so much for people. It's, it's crazy, but it's just having never thought to do that is

why no one hasn't done it before. But if you do think to do that, it's on the menu for you, then you just find these little spaces in your life, whether you're standing in line, you're waiting for something, you're waiting for someone to show up, you're meeting them, you have five minutes or whatever, even 30 seconds, you can realign the posture, relax the shoulders and the face, and then focus on just taking a couple of relaxing breaths and just tuning back in again. And if you do that consistently when you find these little empty spaces in your day, then what happens is that actually just becomes a train behavior over time. So like, I do that without, well, I'm aware I'm doing it, but I don't have to stop and

go, okay, I should do it now. I just do it. And I'm like, oh, cool. Just going to reset real quick and then move on. Man, if people spent six months working on one habit, one mental queue, trigger occurs, I understand the response. You can move that from the very deliberate system to the automated system one. And I've done this with a bunch of different things.

So the stoic fork was one that I did it with for a while where like do I have control over this or not? And that now for me is mostly automatic. It just arises. Look, I don't have control over it. So fuck, like it's a traffic jam. I didn't know that this was going to, it's raining. I didn't know that this was going to occur. The power's gone off. Today I was supposed to have a podcast and the wife I went off in my Airbnb. All right, I can't fix it. I message the person that took the Airbnb. I'm going to go to the gym instead. And that's now automated. The number of times, and I think that six months is a slow enough period for you to have, okay, I have one goal. I have one behavioral goal that I want to try and move from system two to system one. And if you can do that in five

years time, you are unrecognizable. You've just accumulated and maybe after whatever a couple of years, you need to go back and do a little stints of some of the first ones you did. But man, there's so much here. And, you know, from the first episode that we ever did, I think you're episode number nine or twelve or something. And this will be four hundred 410. But the mindfulness gap, which was the term that I got from you, that now is still today one of the things that I try and focus on. Something arises inside of me, and there is a beat, just a half second pause

between stimulus and response. And that's power. But I've said this over and over. If the only thing that I get out of meditation is the ability to have that beat, I'll consider it a win. Maybe some greater levels of flourishing and meditative bliss would be nice, but that's enough of a win to make it worthwhile, to make the practice worthwhile. I think that trying to make it practical, trying to take it off the mat, trying to go from

when you're doing your sits to, okay, now how does this apply? How does this make my daily experience more effective? I think there's some awesome stuff in there for people. So if people want to check out what you do, get the guided meditations, do your other stuff, where should they go? Yeah, they go to quarry-down.com and then Haley Corrie Allen is all my social handles. Amazing. And the Astral Hustle. That's the podcast.

The Astral Hustle. Yeah brother thank you thank you. you