Tara Brach - A Mindful Nation

Episode Date: April 11, 2012

2012-04-14 - A Mindful Nation - One of the great sources of hope is the "quiet revolution" of mindfulness that is appearing in schools, hospitals, prisons, the military, corporate settings and the lives of millions of people around the world. In this talk, US Congressman Tim Ryan points to highlights of this revolution--which are reviewed in his compelling new book, A Mindful Nation. He shares about his own personal experience with mindfulness practice and his commitment to seeing the mindfulness and compassion at the center of our work for a better future. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations make a difference!

It's my honor. I get to introduce to you, Congressman Tim Ryan, who's a representative from Ohio, 10 years in Congress, U.S. representative. And I just want to share with you. We initially met a couple of weeks ago, and my first impression was that he was very big compared to me and, you know, ex-quarterback and all. My second impression was, wow, great smile, you know. That was my survival brain computing large but not dangerous. But then, you know, more. There was so much more. It was just such a delight to see how he really embodied a mindful awareness, a person with such brightness and clarity and open-heartedness.

and a real delight. And I think that you probably feel the same way. So many of us dream of having skilled politicians, people who can make a difference in the world who are guided by kindness and wisdom. I mean, that's the archetype of a hero, and we need them. And I think you're going to find, as you listen to Tim, and especially, and I have this book

and I really want to pump you up on it if you haven't gotten it already. This is a mindful nation, Tim's new book. What you're going to find is Tim he wants a nation where people are flourishing, where there's real health, where people help each other out, and totally understands

that the consciousness that's needed for that comes when we train in mindful awareness. And he gets that. So it's exciting to have this book out. I feel like, is there a way, can we get this first on the New York Times bestsellers list gang? Can we do it? Like if all of us did all of our email list, something like that. Anyway, so I'm hoping we'll go for it in that way.

But mostly I want to say that when there is a sense of the hopefulness that comes, when you see somebody like Tim and the work he's doing, and the vision he has, it really does give a sense of what's possible for the future of our country and for the healing of our world. So enough words for me. I want to just invite you to join me in welcoming Congressman Tim Ryan. Thank you. It's kind of as we were sitting there thinking,

I wish my town hall meeting started like this, you know? How much different they would be. Thank you very much. I want to thank Tara. for having me. I know and have heard about this evening for such a long time, and it's good to be part of it, and just share a little bit about kind of how the book started and where I came from. You know, it was funny. We had an event in New York City about three months ago, maybe more, and it was called Creating a Mindful Society, and it was sponsored by a couple of magazines,

one of them, mindful.org, which is a great new magazine that's coming out. and I was one of the speakers on the second night. And on the first night, I had met a woman who works in Madison, Wisconsin, and she brought her sister there. And her sister was kind of new to the scene. And so we were talking a little bit early in the day. And later in the day, we were walking to all go meet for dinner afterwards. And it was raining. So we got out of the building.

We were going down to the corner. and it really started the poor, so we were just ducking in wherever we could to get out of the rain. And this conversation happens between the two sisters, and the one sister who was new to the scene said, that guy was talking to, he's a congressman? And the sister said, yeah. He practices mindfulness? Yeah.

He wrote a book about mindfulness? Yeah. She said, is he going to be a congressman once the book comes out? Yes, I'm going to be a congressman once the book comes out. And we're going to change things. And that, you know, when you really stop and you think about what we're doing here is we're asking people to slow down a little bit in a day and an age where we're going too fast on the treadmill, a treadmill that's getting steeper and steeper.

You look at the issues of economic inequality. You look at the issues of people trying to manage a broken health care system. You look at the issues that our veterans are facing when they come back to our country after serving us and that their families are facing. This is what we need right now in the country. And I'm not saying that this is a silver bullet because I know in Washington there's a lot of policy initiatives that need to take place in order to help create the kind of world that we all want. want, but to me, teaching people the basic skills that they need to live in this world where the average teenager is sending out 3,000 text messages a month, where technology is doubling every 18 months, where most of the country is sleep deprived, where people are working harder

and longer and making as much or if not less than they were making just a few years ago, to me this seems like the proper thing for us to do. And I kind of got started. I grew up Catholic, went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School, and John F. Kennedy Catholic High School. And my grandparents, my Italian grandparents, prayed the rosary. My mother prayed the rosary. And there were rosaries hanging everywhere in the house on every chair.

And then me and my brother got our first car, which was an 81 Oldsmobile. There was a rosary hanging from the mirror. And we both played football and we're both quarterback. So there was, you know, metals taped to the inside of our thigh pads and shoulder pads and scapulars on. And we were armed and ready to go. And so we grew up in an environment where taking time to center yourself, to ground yourself, to say your prayers was a major component of our lives. And later I had a priest, Catholic priest, Father Crumley, teach me. centering prayer, which is kind of how I started, an old Christian meditation. And it was just

wonderful. And I knew when I did it, and then on and off flirt with a variety of other kinds of meditation, but when I did it, I knew I could concentrate better. I knew I could focus better. I knew I was more relaxed. And later got into politics from Ohio, we have a lot of very competitive races presidential and statewide. It's a swing state. So I've been very involved in my career helping at that point the Democrats take back the House in 2006, was in House leadership, then 2007, 2008, the big presidential election really involved traveling the state and really got to the point the middle of that summer where I was thinking I'm going to be burnout by the time I'm 40. You know, I got in when I was 29 and said I got to, I know when I

practice that I'm better. I know that I'm less stressed out. And so I just need to jumpstart my practice. Rewind a few years, John Cabot-Zinn had sent his book coming to our senses to every member of Congress. Yeah, there is one that read it. That's me. And I tease John about that all the time. I said, well, one guy read it. You know, it wasn't all waste. But there, I'm sure there are other But I specifically read the area section about the body politic and how the practice of being aware and compassionate one way or the other affects our politics. And so as I was looking for a retreat to do after the election, where I found one, it was two days after the 08 election at Menla in New York. And John was teaching and it was called the Power Mindfulness Retreat. And it was primarily for leaders.

So there were people there from nonprofits and whatnot. And there was a five-day retreat that just kind of slowly walked you into silence, more and more and more silence. And then in the middle, there was a 36-hour period of silence. So I checked my two blackberries at the door. Yeah, there's a whole story behind the two blackberry thing. Check the two blackberries at the door. No reading, no writing, no phone calls, no text, no emails. and in the middle of that 36-hour period in the middle of the retreat,

I really started to recognize the level of thoughts that I had, and it was like the same, almost the same 10 thoughts over and over. It's like, God, you know, you shut up in there? You know, you're driving me crazy now that I'm actually listening to you. And really at one moment found a deep relaxation, a deep focus, that I had only really remembered experiencing when I played sports. I played a lot of football and a lot of basketball growing up. And we call it in sports being in the zone, being in flow, where you're relaxed,

but there's action going on as well. You're coming out of a quietness. And I remember that feeling. Those were the feelings as an athlete you tried to hold on to. And I remember that having a similar feeling at Menla and thought to myself, man, you can actually train your mind to be in the present moment. It's a mental discipline of training your mind and how profound it would be. And I was having that experience.

And then, as you know, immediately your mind starts running again. I was like, oh, my God, we've got to get this in the schools. Oh, my God, this needs to be in the health care system. You know, let me write the 10. Someone give me a pen, please, so I can write the 10-point policy plan we need. I just really felt like this was an essential skill that many of us were missing because society has gotten so quickly so fast. And I remember my grandparents, you know, my grand, they have much different lives than we have now. And much seems in many ways much more fulfilling to where, and again, there's policy issues here, but my grandfather got home at 3 o'clock in the afternoon after work.

worked in the steel mill for 40-some years. And then he would go to the garden. He'd work in the garden for a couple hours. And then he'd have a happy hour with my grandmother's brothers. And then they would have a family dinner together. And, you know, rinse and repeat tomorrow. And then on a weekend they would go to a park in Niles, Waddell Park. And they would have, in the summer, they'd have family picnics.

And you'd throw the football and you'd play botchy and you'd cook. and, you know, it was just, it was a much different time, but there was that connection that they had. And they would pray the rosary. I'd just ride down. I'd ride down on the bike as a kid. They lived a couple blocks away. I'd ride down, and I'd surprise them,

and they were prayed in the rosary. It wasn't like it was a show they were putting on. This is how they took care of themselves. And so after the retreat, I went up to John, and he looked at me with the smirk, and he says, you've been outed. And I said, yes, I have. And I said, we've got to get this in the schools and we've got to study this and we've got to get it in the health care system.

And he said, I can't believe you're here. And I want to introduce you to everybody who is doing work in the field of mindfulness. You need to go meet Richie Davidson, who's doing the science. One of the best neuroscientists on the planet is doing this in Wisconsin. You need to go meet Linda Lantieri, who's working with Castle, which is the collaborative. Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning in Chicago, a wonderful group that's now doing work in our area. You know, you've got to go meet this person and that person who are actually doing mindfulness work that's happening in pockets and how do we continue to ramp it up.

And it was that journey that John sent me on that led to the book, A Mindful Nation. And a mindful nation is a book about highlighting and illustrating the work that's going on in the country right now in the field of mindfulness. And I had a great opportunity to meet some of you that are here that are doing this work in prisons and schools and how you're going to ramp it up in the mindful school program here. And I just, you know, I didn't know I was going to write a book when I started meeting these people, but they were. so inspiring to me that I thought this has got to be a book and this has got to get out into our country. We've got to do it. I mean, we're talking about not yelling at a kid to pay attention, but actually teaching a kid how to pay attention, how to pay attention. You know, we talk a lot about health care prevention and the screenings and the blood pressure, which are still too far

downstream for actual prevention. The prevention is what's causing your high blood pressure. And chances are it's stress. And when you see what's happening in some of these areas, it's just fascinating to think about what's happening and how stress affects your body. And I'd say, you know, if the Center for Disease Control was worried about stress like they are, you know, other issues, there would be people in yellow suits in every institution across the United States of America right now in our schools, in our hospitals, in our businesses, and our corporations on Wall Street. I mean, everybody's just feeling it, and it's making us sicker and sicker. And one of the studies in the book we talk about is the issue of psoriasis. So when you have psoriasis, one of the

treatments is you go into a light box. And so John Cabot-Zinn and a couple others did a study where they had a group go into the light box with and just get their treatment. And another group practicing mindfulness while they were in the light box. And the group that practiced mindfulness while they were in the light box healed four times quicker than the group that didn't. Basically suggesting that when you reduce your stress, your body will do what it naturally wants to do, and that's heal itself. And they thought the study was so magnificent that there must have been a problem,

so they did it again, and it came back the same result, four times quicker. and when you see the cost as a policymaker of the cost of stress and how that's leading to increased costs in our health care system and doctors not having enough time to actually spend time with their patients and how that can affect the issues of heart disease, high blood pressure, ulcers, type 2 diabetes, and a lot of other things, if we can prevent it upstream by taking some time and actually figuring out what causes your stress, I think we'll be in a much, much better position.

In education, again, these kids are bombarded with technology. And a lot of schools are doing really well, but there are some that aren't, and there are some kids that aren't. And a lot of those kids are dealing with issues of living in neighborhoods that are violent, living in families that are abusive, physical, mental, emotional. That's their life. And what I found out writing this book was that the older part of your brain, your amygdala gets very, very activated when you're under stress.

And that's where you deal with your fight or flight. And so these kids are basically dealing with low levels of PTSD, some very high levels of PTSD. We know kids in my own community that have had parents killed the week of exams, the week of the state tests, you know, have brothers and sisters. and your amygdala gets so ramped up that information does not pass through your amygdala to go to your prefrontal cortex

where you deal with all your high-order thinking skills, your working memory, your ability to concentrate and pay attention and a variety of other skills are up in your prefrontal cortex. But when your amygdala is activated, you're in fight or flight, and all the information is just processed in your amygdala. So when you teach a kid how to breathe, and what they do in the program, belly breathing. There's different programs. Goldie Hahn has great program too and her foundation,

the Hahn Foundation called Mind Up. But when you do the belly breath, these kids relax, they calm their amygdala down, they calm their nervous system down, and their brain works more efficiently. So I'm a policymaker who's trying to fix the education system and improve the education system and get kids to pay attention and figure out how their mind works. so that they could not only pay attention, but be connected to other kids in their class and begin to build some connection with them and some bond, and you stumble upon how mindfulness works

and how you actually have the brain science behind it. I mean, I would almost challenge anybody to come up with another program that has this level of science telling you exactly why this kid can't pay attention, why this kid can't learn, and what's going on in their brain, It's a great illustration of what's happening. And so we can actually empower these children. And it's working.

Talk to teachers in Warren, Ohio, or Youngstown, Ohio that are doing this or any other classroom. It's working. They see these kids behaving better. I'll tell you one quick story. I don't know how long, how much time we have here, Tara. Just give me the hook. That's what they do at the town hall meetings. They're like, just get him out of here right now.

We were at a school that Goldie Hawn runs in Virginia. And we walked in, and they teach the kids about how their brain function. So you're walking down the hall, and, you know, we all went to elementary school. There's pictures on the side of the hallway made up of construction paper and yarn and just the kind of normal things you would see. And I was walking down the hall. And it's your amygdala. I'm like, okay.

And I had to like pretend I remembered what my amygdala was. This was like, you know, however many years ago. It's okay, amygdala, okay, yeah, I think I, okay, whatever. And then the kids were telling me what it was. But they would have, okay, here's your amygdala when it's calm. Here's your amygdala when it's activated. And I think the activated amygdala had like red yarn because it was really, you know, activated. But you begin to teach these kids.

So we went to a classroom and the teacher said, okay, you know, stand up, somebody stand up and tell us what your amygdala looks like when it's activated and some kid would get up and shake, you know, and ham it up and we would laugh. And the next person, show us, you know, what the migdala looks like when you're, you know, you're calm and they take a deep breath. You're actually teaching these kids. But what was significant when we went to the next class, teacher rang the bell. And there's about, the class got quiet, which amazed me. And then we all had to go around the room and say, what was on your?

your mind. It was only a minute or two. What was on your mind? One kid said, well, you know, recesses next. Another kid said, I got a test or something. And then there was another kid who just put his head down, who was the next kid to talk. And it got real quiet. We're all staring at this kid. She said, you know, said his name. You know, what was on your mind? Nothing. She said, come on, tell us what was it. And he said, I'm worried my brother didn't come home last night. It's a school district with a lot of gangs and a lot of issues.

And this poor kid was worried his brother didn't come home last night. And you get this and you reflect on stories like that and think, how is this kid possibly going to learn when they're dealing with that level of intense kind of social situation? that they're living in. Now, the upside is this kid recognized what he was thinking and feeling, and he said it, because there was space in that classroom for this to be dealt with, and his friends now knew, and the teacher knew, and they took him, and they said, well, let's go call home and see maybe

he's home now, you know, that kind of thing, but there was just an awareness that this kid's emotional state was linked to how he's. he was going to do in school. And I just think that's just so very important. They have a peace corner in the school, where if you have problems, you go to the peace corner and you write, you color, you do whatever, and then you come back to the classroom.

And the teachers love it. The teachers love it. I was telling the story earlier. When they came in, Linda Lanteri comes in, the Castle program and Inter-Resilience. They come in and they do a heavy teacher training. And about the fourth day of the five, day training, I went in just to see how things were going. And these stories, a lot of them are in

the book. I went to see how things were going. And they took about five minutes, I think, in the morning, every morning and rang the bell and just did some mindful breathing. And again in the afternoon, I went on the fourth day of this conference. It was quiet. It was like, this isn't like a normal conference that I go to for, you know, teacher training. Usually there's a lot of chatter and people were in the hallway talking and whatnot. I was really kind of calm. And I went in and Linda has this big stuffed earth and she would throw it to different teachers

and say, okay, tell the congressman, tell us what you learned this week. And it was unbelievable. These teachers were like, I remember why I got into teaching in the first place. You know, one teacher stood up and said, I feel like I'm born again. Like I'm ready to go back in the classroom.

One woman said, one teacher said, I'm treating my own kids differently now. I'm thinking it was just five minutes. This wasn't a week-long retreat. This is like taking a, and we're going so fast that just a little bit of time has a tremendous effect on how we feel. And how these teachers are going to be aware of their own emotions

and how they go into the classroom and how they deal with what the kids are going through and be more aware and identify with what they're going through. and then they threw the ball to the earth to some guy in the back. And I thought, you know, there's about 60 people in the room, and there was like four guys in the room. I was one, and my staffer was the other. I was like, okay, here we go.

And it was amazing. He was a young guy, and he said, last night, I went to my daughter's soccer game, and I was actually at. my daughter's soccer game. He said, I was looking at her run, and I thought, you know, she's not going to be this old for very long.

And he said, I just caught myself really paying attention to her. The sky was blue and the grass was green. It's like, this is like a movie. This is what you make up, you know, but I'm here. And it was just really sweet how that's what we want. That's what we want. And mindfulness can give that to us. You know, it can give us these basic things,

that we've all been looking for because they're right in front of us. They're not on the Blackberry. They're not in the next meeting. They're not in the last meeting. They're right now. And to think of the work that you guys are doing here is just really, really inspiring. Let me just say, lastly, and then I'd love to chat with you and take questions. One of the issues that really touches me is the veterans that are coming back to our country.

And, you know, we've been to a lot of funerals in Ohio, of young men and women who have been killed in 18, 20, 22, however young kids, most of them. And the ones coming back, too, are just in many ways in really, really bad shape. You know, they're coming back after three or four or five tours of duty, doing what their country asks them to do, and they are coming back with post-traumatic stress, some TBI and a lot of traumatic brain issues and a lot of issues.

And I feel like mindfulness and some other programs that are out there like they're running out of Wisconsin, which are helping our vets, one of them has a real deep breathing component and helps rebalance, recalibrate your nervous system. Your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system get out of whack because you've been running cortisol through your body for 15 months at a time and you don't come home for long enough, and then you're back and you do that two, three, four times in a very stressful situation.

You're damaging your nervous system. And this program, and the studies will be published soon, but some of the stories that we're hearing coming out are men in this particular program who have gone completely off their medication and who are now sleeping through the night and haven't slept through the night in years. used to sleep on the couch so they wouldn't keep their spouse up. You're talking about changing people's lives at such a fundamental level. And we have the brain science. We know what the nervous system does now.

We know what it takes to rehabilitate it. We know what it takes. We have the science. And people say, well, you're a congressman, you know, whatever. I'm like, I've got a responsibility when I find out about this stuff. It'd be a dereliction in my duty. as a congressman who swears, you know, every two years to uphold the Constitution and do what's in the best interest of my constituents.

You get paid to lead. That's what we do. So we're supposed to do. And I don't care if no one knows about it. My job is to make sure they find out about it. And when you have Harvard and Stanford and Emory and Michigan and University of Massachusetts Medical Center and UCLA, you know, and University of Wisconsin at Madison, I'm not exactly out on a limb here. You know?

I mean, I make a lot of other arguments that don't have that level of support, you know? My staff cringed at that one. Sorry, guys. My communications director is like, which one? We'll back it up. No. But honestly, and you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who have a personal experience.

on what it does. Stories of schools and prisons and health care workers. And Susan Bauer-Woo, who teaches the guided meditation at the end of the book with family caregivers and cancer patients. You know, and this is about us caring about each other. You know, this is about it being okay for us to care about each other.

And I'm not ashamed to admit it. And I'll tell you what, I've played on enough sports teams in my life to know that when you have a group of people who care very much about it, each other, who would put themselves in front of a bus before letting one of their teammates go in front of that bus, who cry and blood, sweat, and tears, and the workouts and the early mornings, and you just, I know what it means to care about somebody, and I know as a quarterback

and as an athlete that it makes all the difference. And so I think if we just start caring about each other again as a country, that it really does matter what my neighbor's lot in life is, that matters to me. It's my grandparents thought, you know. The police, the fire, the teachers, the nurses, the people that when you flush the toilet, they make sure the sewer's working. Those people are important to how our society functions.

And in Ohio, they get demeaned in many instances. And I think it's important that we get past all this and we just start figuring out it's okay for us to care about each other. And I just want to end with a short quote. maybe it's not quite a short but you're gonna you're gonna hear it anyway you're not going anywhere just sit there and be patient like you're taught because I'm about a quarter away through my speech too so this is a the bobby kennedy quote from his very brief short very passionate campaign in 1968 and I just want to end with this and I'm happy to take questions too much and for too long

we seem to have surrendered excellence, personal excellence, and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over $800 billion a year. But that gross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder and chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and specks knife and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion,

nor our devotion to country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America, except why we are proud that we are Americans. Thank you. He's from a fellow Buckeye. All right. Where are you from? Born in Oxford.

Oh, wow. Miami. My name is parents met there. In the post world of Citizens United, Pardon me for sounding cynical. Everything you said is brilliant. And I can just see, as soon as you start to move the needle on those drugs not being sold, big pharma completely legally giving millions of dollars to Carl Rove with a request to squish you like a buck.

That's not very nice. No, it's not. I'm just kidding. I can handle it. It's not. I'm kidding. Well, so I guess there was a, this. American Life last weekend, I talked about members of Congress spending three or four hours a day fundraising in order to protect themselves against such a thing.

I'm sure you're aware of that, but we're all for you. How do you stand up to that potential onslaught, which is unprecedented in our history? It's not what the founding founders envisioned. Yeah, no, I think you're right. And one of the issues about slowing down and getting a country to maybe slow down just a little bit, there's a great quote by John Wooden, who was a great basketball coach at UCLA,

winning his basketball coach of all time. He said, be quick, but don't hurry. And I think that's good advice for Americans. Like, we can still do our thing, but now we're just running. We're just hurrying. We're no mission in life. And I think the money in the politics is a big part of that,

but I think people are really, really tired of it. I don't know how you feel. I mean, I'm certainly tired of it. And I get the sense that my constituents are really tired of the phone calls and the TV ads and the negativity. And I think we're ready for a shift in the kind of politics that we have. And I think, you know, when I first ran, and I know it's harder, the bigger the higher up you get.

But when I first ran, I had very little money. I'd stand on street corners holding signs and knock on doors and, you know, just kind of the grassroots thing. And I think if you take all of the people that are interested in this, and everyone gives a little bit of money, not everyone has to cut checks for thousands of dollars, but if everybody gives a little bit of money, if everybody takes a small portion of their time

to say, hey, it's great to sit on that cushion. It's nice. Be nice to stay there. Be nice to pull the covers over your head and pretend like there's no other problems out there and you're just going to sit on your cushion and find peace. To me, growing up Catholic, it was always about the social gospel. It was about going out and doing it. And I think if we can mobilize this community to get off the mat, off the cushion,

It could be a very, very powerful, powerful movement in the United States. And I think it could combat a lot of those issues of money because it is grassroots. I'd like to just take a poll here. We won't, but I'd like to take a poll here of like where everyone works here. What's your little circle of influence is here? What soccer games you go to? What little leagues? What bowling at, you know, alleys you play bowling in and whatever, you know,

bull in. This is a network that I've discovered as I went around the country to write the book. It's incredible. It's incredible. You know, like Dr. Richie Davidson in Wisconsin at UMass, or University of Wisconsin-Madison, the big referendum in Wisconsin, he's in the state house. You know, he's engaged. His family was engaged in that. This is about us getting engaged. And I think, yeah, there's a lot of money, but I think people are sick of it. And I think of enough people knock on their door that are really concerned citizens that live in their neighborhood, it changes everything. And that changes everything. Yes.

Well, let me just, for the record, you know, I have been unmindful in my job. Okay? I am not a teacher. I am, you know, I'm just someone who has felt this is a really important thing that I have in my life now, as my grandparents felt praying the rosary was their way of doing it. And so I have my moments where I, you know, pop off and probably wouldn't be a good example. You'd look at the clip, you know. In fact, I was on a radio show in Columbus the other day, and a guy played a clip of a floor speech that I gave.

You know, I was mixing it up. And he's like, so we're here with the mindful congressman. Bet I'm going to hear that clip once or twice through the book. tour. But I feel like, you know, clearly now I am more considerate of my colleagues. I am more inclined to look to find something that we can work on together and maybe focus more time on that while the swirl of the national debate is going on. And I have a very dear friend of mine, John Sullivan, who was in the post article that was

last week. He's a Republican from Oklahoma. We work on the House Addiction and Recovery Caucus together. So that's like, okay, we can agree on this. He's getting more and more and more in the mindfulness piece, and a lot of people in that caucus from the outside or more and more aware of what mindfulness is doing. So to me, it's more about being strategic with my own personal energy as far as like where can I place it, that it's going to have the most benefit. And I think that does come from practicing. You like, you know, you realize where you're wasting energy, like a good, athlete. You're like, okay, you know, I can't, I'm going to save it for, you know, when it's really

needed. And I think that has really helped me. And just being calmer and listening more and paying more attention and, you know, realizing that there's a father and a, you know, grandfather, someone, that that person I'm talking to, that, you know, it's not so hostile. You know, everybody's doing the best they can. And I think some of the policy issues, though, are really bad, like the money where this outside influence comes in, and another one's redistricting. Like I hope that when we slow down, we see those are really two structural problems.

You've got really, really red districts or really, really blue districts, and then they come down to D.C., and there's no room for anybody to compromise. And then you throw the money on top of that, you know, it gets really poisonous, which is where we're at now. Hi.

Hi. My question is, how do you engage besides your book in this kind of conversation with people because I have to say in most of the crowds I normally run and I don't know how I would necessarily engage in that. I'm curious how you've been doing that and how you are doing that now. One of the things I learned very early

is that this is not necessarily something you can push on to somebody and they've got to be open to looking for some way to handle their stress or if they've got issues with kids and schools not paying attention or whatever. You find the opening. And you say, well, you know, here's, I just saw this study about X, Y, or Z,

and it can be, you know, very helpful as opposed to saying, you know, this is the silver bullet for American society. And, you know, let me bang over the head with it. Turns out that doesn't work very well. But just, I think, finding the opening, you know. And I think a lot of it is how you are, you know, and how you present yourself, how you are, you know, what you're like. And then you'll know what to do, you know.

It's just not, I don't think it's not pushing it on somebody, and it's just waiting for that opportunity, and then actually giving them what they're really looking for, which is what I talked about. Thank you. Hi. Hi. I want to remark on the word courage, because it means with heart.

One of the things that I've come to know over the last few years is that it's really all about love. You've probably heard of the Institute of Heart Math. It talks about how. the heart has its own nervous system. And so we're teaching adults and kids that when we can still the nervous system in our heart, we actually send the neurotransmitters that go to our brain actually settle down. And one of the quick ways to get there is to go to appreciation. Peel appreciation and there's really not room for some of the

other more destructive feelings. So I am writing a book. And It's how to help Congress. I want to read it when you're done. So I'd like to get your opinion on this. I'm using Congress as the, you know, how to organize themselves in a way to work productively together, you know, key together. I'm part of the no labels movement too, so they have some of the things that are more tactical. But for me, it is more about.

How people work together. Compromise, not a bad word. It's also about ground rules and shared purpose. The third message for me is really this feeling of oneness. That it's not that you're my brother and you're my sister. It's that we are one. My success is your success and your failure is my failure. And once we come to that place,

which I think is tough to be accessible to people. What I'm doing is writing it for the citizens that are feeling dispirited with Congress and how we can be the role models for Congress. Because we look to Congress, there are people just like us. You're, you know, we're made of the same thing. So if we are able to live by those rules,

perhaps that will influence and support Congress people to say this is how we want to live because it's easy for us to say, hey, compromise, and we go home and we do the opposite. Right? Well, let me thank you. I think this is not necessarily going to be a top-down process. You know, there's not going to be a Secretary of Mindfulness. break it to everybody here. Okay? But what we want to do, I think, is infuse this into current programs that are already

happening and redirecting money that's already being spent on programs that aren't happening, which I think leaves a lot of common ground for right and left, the right and left dichotomy that we're dealing with now, is to say, well, okay, let's figure out how we spend the money better and we know this stuff works and here's the science and let's move in that direction. I think there's a lot of room for that. I don't think it's going to be necessarily top-down, so I think you're exactly right, that we need

to be role models, and I think we've got to get away from this politics where if you don't agree with me 100% of the time, I don't like you anymore. I mean, I'm not going to vote for you. I don't like you. And I'm going to scream at you at a town hall meeting, how you're not

with us, or you're with the other side, you're with the enemy, or whatever the rhetoric is. And so I think it is important that we have mindful constituents and a mindful electorate that recognizes the delicacy of getting legislation passed and has a little more awareness of what it takes to get something passed. And one of the things I think is important as we make this argument is that we talk about who's doing this right now. The United States Marine Corps is doing a mindfulness-based mental fitness training. and they're studying it and working on ramping it up and figuring out how to implement it.

Liz Stanley at Georgetown is running the program. And the early, you know, analysis is phenomenal about what it's doing. And it's building up a mental resiliency in the soldiers so that maybe they'll deal with the situations, the horrific situations that they have to deal with, a little bit better so that they can recover faster when they come home.

And this isn't about making better killers. This is about giving our brothers and sisters who happen to serve in the military the tools that they need. And so, you know, the United States Marine Corps, Google, Procter & Gamble, Target, General Mills, major corporations in our country are doing this. The Marine Corps is doing this. Phil Jackson, the greatest coach in the National Basketball Association history, most championships, did it with the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers. Like I said, you throw that in with Harvard and everything. everyone else was doing. It's like talk about a case to be made to the American people about why we need to move in this direction. And so yes, I think telling them that it's okay and that these people are doing it and it's a performance enhancing or stress reducer and helps your kids pay attention. This is a compelling argument. I mean, the one word, I've had not to talk too much about the book, but the one word I've heard about the book, and as I said, I'm just highlighting the work that's going on. But the one word that keeps coming back from the book is, it is compelling. It is compelling.

You cannot hear these stories. You cannot see the science and not think, man, we need to give this a shot. And I do think it has to come from people, voters, obviously learning about it. And we wanted the book to be a handbook. And at the end of every chapter, is what you can do with your local medical school,

does your state legislator know about the mindfulness schools program or Castle in Chicago and how to get social and emotional learning implemented. If not, go to their website in the back of the book, learn about it, and go to the school board or go to your state rep. You need to be an active participant in getting this out there. It's essential.

It's so important. I mean, many of you are already doing this. So in many instances, preaching to the choir. I am at a church, so I guess that makes it okay. But it's really important for us to do that and to figure out what one area you can go in and really push and make that little bit of a difference. And if we all do it, you know, we're going to be in good shape.

Thank you, Congressman. I think it's very inspiring. I wish they were 50 dozens of you in Congress. You talked about the amygdala. I'm an integrated art therapist, and I use the body and the neuroscience, and I think it's very helpful. I'm just curious what your experience has been, because what I feel is there's so much fear-mongering in our society,

not just in politics, but in general. And actually I think there's a fear.org website that explains what's going on. How have you found that just the word mindfulness may in a lot of people and gender is sort of, oh, but this is so foreign. This is kind of we don't do mindfulness. This is what they do back in those countries or those people. Have you encountered that or has the neuroscience? really been able to trump that fear of otherness, which is so rampant in our country right now.

I think it has. I think, as I said, the Marine Corps doing it, Google, doing it, big brand names in America have been very, very helpful. And the studies are coming out almost weekly about how it changes your brain, moving it in the direction of empathy and kindness and increasing your attention span, teaching how to cultivate your attention span. So I think the case is slowly, being built and I try to talk about it in a way that is not like gives them that impression you know talk about being in the zone I mean I have a lot of guys that are like oh yeah I know what that is so well you can train your mind and do that why wouldn't you want to be in the zone a little bit more not that you're always like I said mindful nation you forget your keys you stub your

toe you call people by the wrong name it doesn't make it perfect but it does it does lessen the opportunity one of the stories I tell as you can tell John I like John wouldn't a lot on the coach. But I think he was a very, very mindful, aware, alert coach. And the first practice every year, this is UCLA in the 70s, right? First practice was not about offense. It was not about some particular X, Y, or Z, or X's and O's. It was about how to put on your socks. He would, and it's great to hear Bill Walton, some of these guys tell the story, but he would teach them, sit them all down. Imagine this. sitting all these big athletes down teach them how to put their socks on.

They're like, I got a scholarship. I pick to come to this school, and this guy's going to teach me how to put my socks on. But he'd put his socks and you'd roll your sock so you don't have a wrinkle. And you put your other sock on. You've got to really roll it so there's not a wrinkle. And you put your shoe on, and you lace it up, and here's how you do it. And the reason is that if you don't put your sock on properly and you have a wrinkle in your sock, you get a blister.

and if you get a blister, you can't perform. And if you can't perform, you're not very good for the team if you're not able to perform at your peak. So that's mindfulness. That is mindfulness. When you're putting on your sock, you are putting on your sock.

You know? That's a yogi Berraism right there. And I think when you explain it that way, that people get it. It's just you're doing what you're doing. have an intention and you have an awareness. And when you put your intention where your mind is, it becomes a very powerful thing, even if you're putting your socks on. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Just a quick question. What would it be like if at your next town hall meeting,

you took five minutes and had everybody be quiet and breathed for just a little bit, just to set the tone? I don't know if it would work or not. But it's a thought. You know, I don't know. We'll have to find out. But I think it would be very beneficial for us to just take a minute. I've done it in schools that I go to when I talk at a school. Let's sit here for a minute, two minutes.

You may need to explain a little bit about why you're doing it, much like you're saying here. But I think that if you can get a little bit of buy-in, For a couple of minutes, it might change the tenor of the meeting. Agreed. Thank you. Tim, I think that we've had as many questions as we can have. Great. So I want to invite us all to thank Congressman Ryan for being with us and say that.

Thank you. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.