Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 120: Tim Ferriss, Host of 'The Tim Ferriss Show,' Author

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

Tim Ferriss, the host of "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast and the author of several best-selling books, including "The 4-Hour Workweek" and "Tribe of Mentors," has built an entire empire around offering life-hacking advice, but when someone suggested he try meditation, he resisted for a while. He tried various forms, then eventually dove head first into doing a 10-day silent retreat, where he came face-to-face with a long-buried childhood trauma that made him re-evaluate how he cared for himself. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

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I'm Dan Harris. Hey people, we have a very, very interesting and for me at least quite surprising and moving episode this week, my guest is Tim Ferris. I suspect pretty much everybody knows who Tim is, but just in case the man has published five number one best sellers, including the four-hour work week, the four-hour body, the four-hour chef, tools of Titans, and his new one tribe of mentors. He's also got a huge podcast, the Tim Ferriss show, and a blog, and lots of other stuff. On this podcast, though, we're primarily talking about his, we will talk a little bit about his new book, The Tribe of Mentors, but primarily talking about his reasonably new, let's just say newly

his reasonably new, let's just say newly intensified meditation habit, and I would say radically intensified, and it's brought up some really powerful, important, painful stuff for him. And so I feel like we're sort of, you're going to hear a pretty significant public figure at a very interesting point in his life and personal development. And he holds very little if anything back in this interview, which I think is a credit to him because I think it's going to be useful to a lot of people. So a big thanks to Tim in advance and thanks to you for listening. Here we go, Tim Paris. Nice to finally meet you, man. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

I haven't been following your work for a long time. Likewise. Empire you've built. Continue to build. It's very, very impressive. Thank you. This accidental career of mine, yes. Accident, you really feel like you just kind of backed into it?

I do. I do. I never had any plans to write at all. Certainly, that's what acted as a springboard for the podcast and everything else. The promise I made to myself when I graduated from college was that I would never write anything longer than an email ever again after my senior thesis almost killed me.

The size of your recent books would have surprised the owner you. Yes, would be a nod to the complete abject failure of that promise to myself so I've been hearing stories of late and I know you've talked about it publicly about your sort of experiences with meditation so I want to talk about your new book for sure and actually some of the other ones as well but if it's okay with you I'd love to start with your meditation paragrenations what's going onitation Paragrenations. What's going on? Oh? Paragrenations. I know. I know. I'm not related to a Paragren Falcon. I think it may be actually. That sounds great

Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I just look I saw it in the store us and used it We don't have to talk about my new book and all by the way. We can just talk about whatever is most interesting Okay, cool. So I still want to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind mentioning it I've been beating that drum for a while to talk about whatever's most interesting. Okay, cool. So I still want to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind mentioning it. I've been beating that drum for a while. Tribe of men. Okay, I'll put everywhere. Bookshare shop.

Yes. Meditation, something I was very resistant to in some respects for a long time. I feared that A, it would be two new age hippy-dippy and un-riggers, if that makes sense. I appreciate the scientific method and all the things that has brought us. I appreciate the extent that humans can be objective, the ability to objectively assess data and evidence and living in the Bay Area for 17 years. I've since moved, but I was exposed to a lot of people who were anything but any of those things who very often at the same time were

proselytizers for any number of things. Did you do fire sticks? Dream catchers. Dream catchers. Meditation. Right, right. And I often say meditation has been the victim of the worst marketing campaign for ever. Terrible, terrible, terrible. So now when I'm trying to explain why I meditate to someone who is equally unimpressed by the branding heritage of this word in English, I might say something like a mind. It's a bath, it's a warm bath for your mind. But at the time, for many, many years, I had attempted meditation because I'd lived in Japan for a year, when I was 15, it's an exchange student, which totally changed my life. And there was forced meditation, although of course in Japanese, they don't call it exactly that at the beginning and end of judo practice. And I saw how that impacted my performance, but it served more so as a visualization practice

for me. And I was always very fascinated by sports performance and competed for a long time myself. And I would read the abstracts and studies related to the transfer of say visualization to sports performance, free throws and basketball, skiing, you name it. When meditation was then pitched to me much later as a means of decreasing anxiety, the format took, which was following the breath or visualizing a candle or film the blank. There are many different types that I attempted.

Did not seem to be my sport. Can I just jump in for what's next? You can jump in all you want. You had anxiety. I did. I've always... Because you don't project as somebody who has anxiety. By the way, I mean, me too,

I've had a lot of anxiety and depression my whole life, so no judgment, but you present as like a baller, somebody who's super confident. I've done, well, you can be confident in things, anxious, that's true, yes. I've done a lot of work in the last few years, the last five years in particular, including tools outside of, but related to meditation. So I do not feel anxious right five years in particular, including tools outside of but related to meditation.

So I do not feel anxious right now in general, not just this moment, but there was a point and I'll just I'll jump to the the movie trailer scene that might open this, you know, this trailer has been approved for all audiences. And then we have Tim Ferriss writing with great difficulty, The For Our Chef, which was the first major acquisition by Amazon Publishing, which Amazon announced in the New York Times with the acquisition of this title, For Our Chef. And for those who aren't familiar,

Amazon was going to effectively compete head to head against publishers for the recruitment of talent, i.e. authors, advances, and so on. And this created quite a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, in the publishing world, which had a number of effects on my experience. I was willing to take that risk, I like being the first person to

try things. Sometimes that works out and sometimes you just end up charging over the hill and catching all the arrows. So it was the latter in this case, mostly. And I don't regret making the decision based on the information I had at the time. I think it was red decision. But the book, even as I was writing it, I knew that it was not only going to be boycotted by Barnes Noble and some of the almost all of the book retailers, but also the big box, Costco, Target, and so on, which I hadn't foreseen. Some writing of book, which is always difficult for me, of infinitely greater complexity than any of my previous books.

First four color book, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to learn photography by taking a third of the photographs myself. And we're talking about 1,000 plus photographs in this book. That was like classic Tim Ferriss. Classic. Like, yeah, let me, oh, I'm choking on this cookie. Let me try to stuff five more in my mouth.

And I was excited by the learning prospect of doing these many new things. I underestimated just how hard they were. And so in the production process, I began to resort to an old friend slash faux friend of mine, which is stimulants. So I think we all have our molecules. Yeah. And my molecule was never alcohol thank god because I have alcoholism in my family. And that's really destroyed lives that I've seen firsthand. I can drink. It doesn't, it doesn't pull me to the precipice. Very fortunately, not all stimulants, so things like cocaine on appeal. But in high school, through wrestling, actually, I was introduced by an older student to something called the ECA stack, which was a fedron caffeine and aspirin.

Wow. And... Yeah. And... So, that's the diet was often used as a diet drug? Often used as a diet drug, but it's, when you combine ECA, and I'm not recommending this, I'm actually advising against this, it's very much a one plus one plus one equals 12.

They have a number of overlapping biochemical effects that are very, very powerful. And it had such a profound effect on my endurance that I started using it as this other student did every day. And then I got to twice a day. And then I got to three times a day, which some bodybuilders and other athletes were doing for fat loss. Flash forward to for our chef, I've tried very hard to weed myself off of that dependence because it had had some very myself off of that dependence because it had had some very pronounced negative side effects. But I'm burning the cantaloupe of ends.

The deadline is highly compressed. I usually take three years per book, although recently that has changed. But for my first several books, it was three years of book, basically. And I decided to do this one any year and a half. So you have increased complexity, decreased timeline, and then knowing to do this one any year and a half. So you have increased complexity, decreased timeline, and then knowing that when this boulder is pushed up the hill, if it gets pushed up the hill, that it's mostly crickets from a retail standpoint is gonna greet it and psychologically,

that really f**ked me up. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to curse on this show. You can, we may believe it, but you can, I'm not allowed to. All right. I'll curse for both of us. Please. I love curse. I'm cursing for two. I'll play me on Long Island, but so I started taking what two friends, well, two friends and I affectionately referred to as little reds, which were over the counter pre-workout stimulants. And that certainly dramatically magnifies my perceived productivity,

not necessarily productivity, but perceived productivity. It also equally magnifies any type of anxiety. Of course. And the voice in your head just gets speedier. Yeah, I get speedier. And you're sleeping less. Right. Doesn't help matters. So everything works. So I really completely burned myself out, but I pushed through it. I didn't stop and finished everything there was to finish. The book came out.

The book, well, we don't have to name names, but a lot of the bestseller lists that people are familiar with are surprisingly, if they were to look under the hood even a little bit subjective, they're not pure tallies of numbers from Nielsen books again. And it did not do as well. So it would have liked, I was very proud of the book. I'm still very proud of the book, but fell into depression after that. And I read it. Yeah. And throughout all of this, and I've

battled with bipolar depression my entire life, as have many, many males, and both sides of my family. And during this period, two people at different points, friends of mine, suggested something I'd given up on many times already, which was meditation. And my response was always effectively been there done that, tried it didn't work. It's not for referring to Japan or you just try it. I had tried some of the past meditation. I had read books by John Cavitzon. I had read many multiple books because I, the allure of the supposed benefits that I saw friends experiencing

With something I wanted nonetheless the locked and seemed to fit the key that I had What was the problem in your mind, I don't think that most of the books I read Not specifically John Cavitz and I read that when I was about 16 after I came back from Japan, so I don't think I was even ready for the subject at the time. They were too much woo, too little prescription for me. And it was like, okay, just follow your breath. And to me, that's not specific.

What does that mean? Exactly, right? It would be as if the doctor said, take some medicine. It's like, well, all right, we're missing a few details. And I found most of the books very much, very high on Dharma talk, very high on scripture and Buddha references very low on what I would consider a pragmatic specific recipe

that is not prone to misinterpretation. Well, you needed was a meditation book written by you Yeah, well, all of the things I write. That's quite a porcupigot. I just did them All the books I write are books. I can't find for myself. Right. Right. That's why I said that. Yeah. And also you get pretty damn specific. I get super specific. And then what ended up happening is not meditation per se as the broad term, but very specifically, and what I'm about to say provokes different responses in different people.

That's OK. TM, Translator Meditation, was recommended to me very specifically by Rick Rubin, a very impressive music producer. People can check out his discography. It's crazy. Unbelieveable. Beyond, beyond, beyond.

So he recommended to me on several times, but Rick doesn't really recommend, he's very soft, at least in this area, and he said, have you ever thought of trying transdental meditation? And he was very, very gentle with it. In fact, it was, no, I hadn't, but since it's Rick Rubin. You know, all right. Rick has done a lot. The other fear, I think, that it helped me back from fully embracing meditation is the people I met who

gave me the most frequent sales pitches. We're not hard driving type A personalities. To put it mildly, right? More the dope smoking it's for in the afternoon and I should grab breakfast because I'm hungry set. And I didn't find that example compelling. But your friends with Sam Harris. I am friends with Sam Harris.

So Sam, I don't wanna speak for Sam, but Sam doesn't always, his go-to tool would not be TM. No, not TM, but it would be. It would be meditation. Yeah, because he was at Sam Harris for the uninitiated is an amazing writer and philosopher, a podcaster and mutual friend of ours, who he got me on my first meditation retreat.

Yeah, yeah, so. Who this meditation not TM? and mutual friend of ours who he got me on my first meditation retreat. Yeah, yeah. So, who does meditation not TM? Yeah, so Sam has had a very significant impact on me, but that was after I took the red pill. And I took the red pill specifically. Okay, these are not little reds you were referring to. Sorry, this is the Morpheus red pill. Okay, Matrix.

That's right, the Matrix reference. And in fact, at that time, this would have been 2009, 2010, I don't know if Sam and I had met yet. I see. Okay. We might have. This is around the time when you're rejecting meditation, 2009, 2010. That's right. Yeah. For the umpteenth time.

Yes. And then Rick, I had lunch with Rick, and he recommended that, and then for me, density of repetition tends to persuade me. If something comes up a lot in a short period of time, and then I would say three or four days later, very close friend of mine, I just saw him last night. In fact, Chase Jarvis, who's one of the most successful commercial photographers, period out there, worked with a lot of incredible brands. The wonderful craftsman really knows his work also the CEO of a company called

Creative Live, which is equally impressive, gets a lot done. He was on the Olympic development team for soccer prior to all that, really gets a lot done. And he said, have you ever thought of doing TM? I was like, okay, this is the second time I've heard this, give me your pitch. What's your pitch? And ultimately he gave the pitch. And then I found out that it was at the time, whatever it was, $1,500 to have someone give you a mantra. And I was just like, if I want to go see David Kuresh, I really have to pay $1500.

Does it want to give me like a two-cylbal nonsense word? So it sounded, it sounded culty. It sounded off and he expected me to say that, I think. And he said, look, you seem really anxious. You seem very much at the edge. And I was and I said, yes, that's all true. And he said, what do you have to lose? You have $59. Spend the money. You can leave after the first day.

If it really wrangles you and pushes you in a direction you don't want to go, and that was ultimately the pitch that got it. It was, look, there is some potential upside, I believe, and as someone who's done this for several years, I can tell you, it's helped me. And the downsides are really limited. So what do you have to lose? You're clearly a f***ing mess right now. And so I did it. And I was very fortunate to get a teacher who matched me.

And I think I was partially because I presented my biases and feelings right up front in the first meeting I had with the orientation TM person in San Francisco said, look, just so you know what you're dealing with here. So you don't get frustrated. I told them all the baggage that I was bringing in. And they introduced me to a teacher named Lawrence, who was a former competitive athlete.

And he presented it in a very, once you get past the initial offering of fruit and flowers and a number of languages I don't speak, and then the mantra, once you get past that, which was a lot for me to just swallow or bite my tongue over, it didn't last very long. It was really just a portion of the first meeting. Once you get past that, it's actually,

the delivery is very secular, very, very secular. And now I don't wanna lose the thread, but now I'm less sensitive to all of the, what I would have, yeah, I'm less sensitive to what I would have perceived as the handway we got, Dharma stuff. But at the time, I was so repelled for a lot of reasons that we don't need to get into. Religion just did not sit well with me, even if it was a pseudo-religion. Meditation was then delivered to me in a very pragmatic step-by-step. All you have to do is repeat this mantra. I suggest you take 30 seconds to get settled.

Here are a few tips for how to sit and here are a number of options depending on what's most comfortable. And the specificity, really, and the specificity and simplicity really appealed to me. And I did my four afternoons or four lunch breaks in practice, and then I stuck with it. And I have since that time experimented with other types of meditation and incorporated other aspects of different perhaps schools of meditation if you want to phrase it that way. That did a silent 10-day Vipassana retreat at Spirroch not too long ago.

Just again for folks who don't know the term that Vipassana would be sort of old school Buddhist meditation which is quite different in technique from from transcendental meditation, no mantra. Much, much, much for me, much, much more difficult. And Sam Harris coming back to Sam, then who wrote a tremendous book waking up, also has a hilarious, Sam's a funny guy, people don't, I shouldn't say people, but most folks who think of Sam don't have exposure just how funny he is.

Also, what is great is to have dinner with Sam and his wife and watch his wife think fun of him. Oh, yeah. That is awesome. Oh, yeah. She's amazing. So, Sam then, once I got to know him, or I may have even known him at the time, but when it became clear that this is a subject we could talk about together, I didn't know Sam for that. This was before he had written much about it. Then had also an impact and informed some of the decisions I made about, for instance, the cellar tree. I mean, the first person I called as soon as I had received news that I would be attending this retreat because it's very much coveted each spot and you have to enter a lottery and that's very involved. Sam was the first person I called because Tamperson's not going to necessarily have the

toolkit or the experience to advise on such an experience, but Sam did. Well, Tm people, how would they even feel about you going on a Vipassana retreat? They were supportive. I mean, by the way, I really mean Lauren. He's the only one of two people I have regular contact with, somewhat regular contact with within the world of TM. Primarily, when I feel like I need a brush up or I've fallen off the wagon and would like to get back on with some social accountability, then there are one or two people, Bob Roth being the other? Who's actually gonna be a guest on his podcast?

Oh, great. He's got a new book coming out. Let me just stop here for one second in the thread here because between, so you started TM, but then there were several years that passed before you decided to go on this silent if it passed in a retreat. I guess, that was a few months ago.

Okay, so I really wanna hear about that. But I first would like to know what, you were anxious and depressed. You started doing TM, did it help? It did help, it did help. I wouldn't say that it by itself was enough, I mean, to get me to where I am right now, which is not perfect, which is not flawless,

but my God, in the last year, I mean, I'm a different person, completely, very much a different person. And however, what it demonstrated for me was a proof of concept, and this was really important, importance and understatement. And that was, I'm sure I haven't made up this example.

There are many different ways you can phrase it, but the ability, if you're inside the washing machine, to become an observer and to step six inches to the other side of the glass so that you're not only looking into the washing machine to observe what is moving around, but also the fact that you can observe into the washing machine to observe what is moving around, but also the fact that you can observe this conceptual washing machine to begin with. Another way to put it would be learning that there is a teachable, learnable skill that allows you to go from being in the movie of your thoughts, whatever that movie is, could be horror, could be Mike Myers chasing you around,

could be Cliff Hanger, could be Disney movie, whatever it might be, you have the ability to not just be a character in the movie swept up in some plot line that you have likely invented, but also to step back and sit in the audience and observe the story that you've created. It's mindfulness. Right. So what TM did for me was demonstrate A, that was possible, that was possible, be that I didn't have to control my thoughts. Now that I do think that is, and we could delve into it, but controlling or molding your thoughts, I do think can be a very powerful skill, but when I had attempted to meditate previously, I viewed thinking as a failure within meditation. Right. Me too. That is the primordial misunderstanding. Right. And then when I began to view it as practice stepping outside the

washing machine, yeah, that's it. Like the practice, the repetition of each, let's just say bicep, curl, and meditation is not the absence of thought. It is each time you recognize, oh, I'm in the washing machine. Let me try to step out and watch the washing machine. That was a very profound, and I don't use this word very much, but paradigm shift for me. It's like, oh, wow. The reason I've been, quote unquote, failing all along is because I misunderstood the whole thing. You're playing the wrong game.

I'm playing the wrong game. I was like trying to play checkers on a chess board. It's like, oh, I wonder this is so hard. Actually, it's the other way around. You were trying to play chess on a checker board. Yes, that's making it so much harder than it needs to be. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's actually exactly right.

I've never used that knowledge. So thank you for correcting it. Yeah. No, you're using analogy correctly. It's just that it's you you describe a process that I've gone through that I continue to go through pretty much every time I meditate, which is realizing I'm just being such a jerk to myself. And this thing is so much easier than we make it. So just to stay with the chronology, those are you, you, TM didn't solve everything for you, but it really helped you notice anxiety and depression,

rearing its ugly head. I still use, I still use TM as a tool. It's just not as a tool. It's just not the only tool. So what got you to the point where you wanted to do the silent meditation retreat? That's a big leap. It is a big leap. I...

Part of me is not sure. But I would say Sam had an influence, certainly. A number of folks I met in Silicon Valley, some close friends of mine who had this entire side of their lives dedicated to my fullest practice I was not aware of peak my curiosity and it's like oh wait a second so the people who've been so loudmouthed and brash about like bashing me over the head with Ganesh or whatever actually aren't the people who have in my experience a deepest practice. And the people right around me who had the deepest practice had never talked to me about the fact that they do three silent retreats a year. I was like, wow, what does that mean? Huh. And there were

including some people who are so to my mind, the most frenetic scatterbrained ADHD, like Adderall, chomping people I've ever met. And yet they did these silent retreats and they credit those silent retreats with tremendously helping them to function. And so I then started to wonder what would they be like without that. And what am I right now that I can't see how might the silent retreat affect me? I don't know. And I was curious, very curious. And Jack Cornfield also, who was very, those people who don't know, incredibly well respected for the sake of simplicity, Buddhist meditation teacher,

who is one of perhaps, say, five or six people, largely credited with bringing those practices to the West. I asked him at one point, I was like, why are you guys all Jewish? It's like, I know, it sounds like a love firm. He's like, I don't know when we talked about it. So that's all separate conversation. But Jack, I had a poll to Jack.

I don't know why. Exactly. I'd never met him. I'd read some of his work and ended up that he was close friends with a close friend of mine, Adam Gazali, who is one of the foremost neuroscience researchers in the world. He has the Gazali lab at UCSF, which I've supported at different points and been involved with, both as a subject and as an experimenter really being hand held through the process.

Adam's work has been on the cover of Nature, which is like winning the Tribal Crown as far as science is concerned. And he is very close to Jack, which I found incredibly interesting, because Adam is by training by necessity one of the most skeptical numbers driven by training, by necessity, one of the most skeptical numbers driven objective minds I've ever met. And Jack was going to be leading, co-leading this retreat at Spirit Rock, and he is advancing in years, supposedly one of his last, maybe his last. And I thought to myself, you know what? This has been on my mind for a long time. Let me see if, you know, I can roll snake eyes and actually get into this and it took me a few years actually to finally get a spot. And I did get a spot and it was really to see what would happen and what happened is not what I expected. What happened now you have me, man.

Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love

and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Ru off course. In our series RuPaul Born Naked, we'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon music or the Wondery app. So we should just say spirit rock is a meditation retreat center in marine northern California.

Where I did my first retreat. I can't get out. Yeah, what a beautiful beautiful. It's where I did my first retreat. Yeah, would it? Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful location. And so what happened?

All right, so what happened was, at a tough time, at a really tough time. And not in common. I was meditating twice a day leading up to it. So TM, up to that point for me, had been predominantly morning practice. I had not was meditating twice a day leading up to it. So TM up to that point for me had been predominantly morning practice I had not done it twice a day. I had and still find the 3 or 4 p.m. Afternoon practice to be very Challenging like once I'm up and going and like running full tilt on the treadmill. It's very difficult and

Usually unappealing for me to hit pause and do that in the late afternoon. But I did do that for several weeks of leading up to Spirit Rock and I also added a layer on top of it which to their credit was advised against but I have a lot of experience with fasting. So I layered fasting on top. So I fasted for two days prior to their treat and then the first five days. So I fasted for seven days. Whoa. And then decided, I'm just chronologically jumping

around a little bit, but I decided to break my fast when I was sitting in the meditation hall, which you know very intimately, I'm sure, and did about three hours straight of primarily sitting meditation and the only thoughts that came to mind were Kalamari, Fried Chicken. Kalamari, Fried Chicken. Kalamari, Fried Chicken. Kalamari, Fried Chicken.

And I was like, you know, neither of which are available. Neither of which are available. And I'm no professional meditator, but I concluded that was probably unproductive. Yeah. And broke the fast. But I up to day five, I would say I tracked along with most of the group. And we say silent retreat, but it's important to note that each night, at least when I was there, there was a scheduled Dharma talk. And coming into it, I didn't know what Dharma was, I didn't know what I thought blanking

on the word for a group that meditates. Sanga. There we go. Sanga. So someone said, oh, well, on my Sanga, and I was like, what? And they're like, you don't know what a Sanga is? And I'm like, no. They're like, how many are treats of you, Donald?

This is my first. They're like, oh, my God. You're going to have an interesting time the first day. Even though it's the first time we're meeting, I mean, I know enough about you to know that adding this fasting on top of it sounds again like classic Tim Ferris. I'm gonna tweak and hack my way to like, yeah, whatever it is I want Yeah, well, I recognize that this is a problem Maybe the first and last time that I will do a salad treat almost certainly the first and last time that I'll have the opportunity to do a jack so

If it's necessary as it is for instance, and I do not recommend this, I'm not a doctor, I'm not playing on the internet, but as it is with certain psychedelic practices to reach escape velocity, I don't want to be sub-orbital for the experience. If this is my one shot to get on the playing field, so I wanted to use fasting as one tool to intensify the practice and to be in deep ketosis at the time, which I was, which is a fasting, physiological state, where your body ceases to use largely glucose and instead uses something called ketone bodies. And up to day five, I was tracking with pretty much everyone else. And I say that because, of course, I'm not talking at all with one or two exceptions,

because you meet, say, every other day for 10 or 15 minutes with one of the teachers to, my word's not there as, but ensure you're not having a complete psychotic break. And then there are these Dharma talks for, let's say, 45 minutes to an hour and a half each evening, where one of the teachers leading the retreat will talk about some aspect of the practice. And that is sometimes scripture, Buddha-related, very often is, sometimes technical, which is what I was really hungry for, pun intended. But up to day five, and they would say things like, oh, it's so nice to see day three is the hardest.

Day two is the hardest, and everyone, you'd hear this sigh of relief, like, oh, I'm not alone. And then as I moved on, I'd be like, in our meetings with all of you, it's so nice to see all of you trapping into a peaceful state and really quieting down. And about 90% of the audience would have a cypher leaf and 10% would be like, what the f*** are they talking about? And then day six, I had this very profound blissful experience where I left the meditation

all I was getting claustrophobic, not under the medical definition of claustrophobia, but I just had to get out of that room. I was just, it was too much. I was like, I cannot stare at this person's ex and frame me for another two seconds. I just have to get out of that room. I was just, it was too much. I was like, God, I cannot stare at this person's ex in front of me for another two seconds. I just have to get out of this room. And like, listen to that woman over there who will not stop clearing her throat or whatever.

I was just like, I need to get outside. So I went outside, which Jack had recommended actually. And I went on this beautiful hike up to this vista overlooking some of the surrounding mountains. I mean, it's such a stellar environment. It really looks for people who want to envision it. It looks like a mountain top Japanese monastery. It's exquisite.

And this was about 3.34 o'clock. And it's starting to, the sunlight's starting dim into dusk. And you can hear the animal noises change and I'm sitting on this bench, which I later found out. I think it's pronounced anicha an ICCA, which means impermanence, which in retrospect is kind of hilarious. But I'm sitting there and I just dropped into this very profound blissful state where the back pain, the hip pain, things that have been killing me because for those people listening keep in mind I'd gone from meditating 20 minutes a day

to what is it 10 yeah 12 out of a day. It's a lot of sit some of it is walking some of it's walking but nonetheless nonetheless a lot of sitting yes and the physical pain melted away. I'm sitting on a hard bench. I'm not using any cushions completely and I'm sitting on a hard bench and I'm using any cushions completely. And at the risk of making my younger self puke all over himself, I will say, I felt this melting away of armor and this opening in my chest. I very commonly, or historically I should say, have felt a tightening in my chest, specifically right to the left of my sternum whenever I felt anger or frustration or impatience coming on. And Vipassana and the teachers' recommendations and the techniques that they discussed were very helpful for paying attention to the bodily sensations, which I hadn't really focused on before. And I found that open up

and melt in such a way that it literally felt like I had cold water poured on my chest and my back. It felt like my shirt was soaking wet. It was very odd sensation. I may or may not have been using adjunct therapies at this time. What? What? Wait, so you would, you would, you would stop fasting. I'd stopped fast. This is the day after the fast. But what were the adjunct therapies?

I had a few days into it, been supplementing with cell seven or ground mushrooms in this case. Well, while on a meditation retreat. Yeah. Which I found out later, because I was reading why why'd you do that? Once again, I did not want to risk the possibility I decided I would rather overshoot than stay suborbital. If it was necessary to if the benefits were to be had on the other side of that atmospheric barrier.

And we should also check on statute limitations because I don't want to get myself necessarily monkey behind bars, but hypothetically, if I were to use these things, what might happen. I found that later after reading some additional literature because I do support scientific research at Johns Hopkins and other places. Yes, where they're studying at Johns Hopkins. That's right. Literally studying what psilocybin does to meditators. That's right.

So I'm supporting that study as well as a few other related to end of life anxiety, internal cancer patients, and a few other population studies. Now, Roland and no way would have suggested that I do what I did rolling Griffiths is the professor at the scientist at Johns Hopkins yeah so he had no hand in this this was this was all Tim Ferris and but I found out I realized later when I was doing a post-game analysis of what transpired which I'll get to in a moment that it's very common under certain circumstances that people will really live childhood trauma. So you lay on top of that fasting.

So I had fasted and then I had this incredible opening. We could call it on day six and then... On the bench. On the bench. And then day seven. So this is a 10 day experience on day seven, all hellburgles. And from that moment on, from that moment until the end of the meditation retreat, I felt like I was going completely insane. Any past trauma, any severe wounds psychologically or otherwise that I had received, say, in childhood, were being replayed from a 24-7 in high depth to the extent that I would lay in bed. In the schedule, typically involves going to bed around 9.30, 10 o'clock, and then waking up at 5am. I would get in bed at 10 and I would sweat through my sheets. It was cold at night. Sweat through my sheets from 10 to

1 or 2 in the morning, and then wake up at 5. At this point where you're continuing with the psilocybin? Let me think about that for a second. I stopped on day 8. So I stopped on day, I stopped at the beginning of day 8. But the trauma loops were playing even after you started. I'd already hit play. Right. And there was no stop button. So the and what I don't want to get overly personal. I mean, although we do that a lot on this podcast, but only say what you want to say. But can you give us a sense of what the movies were showing?

Sure. I'll give one example. I may regret it, but I'll give it anyway. One example was, I had a babysitter at one point whose boyfriend was an alcoholic and construction worker, big fan of three stuages and professional wrestling, and his sport was to come home, get blitzed, and then choke me to near unconsciousness a few times a week. That would be one example. I hadn't thought of that in a very long time. I'd compartmentalized it very neatly and had assumed it one and done, locked away, never to interfere with my life again.

Not the way the mind works. Not the way the mind works. And so imagine that if you will, decades later, laying in bed, sweating through your sheets, having that replayed as if you are experiencing it again. And I was very fortunate that Jack was there and told him, I put my cards on the table at that point. told him, I put my cards on the table at that point. And he is almost without a doubt the most purely compassionate human being I've ever met. It's remarkable.

It's something I noticed before I went to the tree, something I noticed during, and certainly something I've noticed after. But if he had not been there, I think that I would have come out of that retreat much worse off than when I went in. And it turns out that my understanding is, let's just call it 10 to 15% of people who go to retreats like this, have the experience that I had. And you just, beforehand when I filled out

the, I suppose you would'd call it admission form, they ask you a lot of questions about past trauma and so on. And I was like, no, fine. Yeah, no, absolutely fine. Nope, never had that experience. Did I, I didn't know I was in the 10 to 15%. That's the scary part to me. Is that there is 10 to 15%,

but in my case, now I would imagine in other cases, you just don't know if you're in that 10 to 15 percent, but in my case, I would imagine in other cases, you just don't know if you're in that 10 to 15 percent. And it ended up being a real gift, although very, very painful gift. And for that reason, let me take a back step. Jack was important, not just because he's compassionate. He was important because he is personally, he is personally interacted with 100,000 retreatants. He also has a PhD in clinical psychology, so he's dealt with veterans who have limbs blown off and have phantom limbs syndrome. He is dealt with gang members, gang members, adolescents who are cutters.

He's dealt with that. He has a very, very well-honed toolkit. He's a giant. Yeah, he's just a tremendously gifted human being, and not to see the other teachers aren't, but they don't have that breadth of experience. So if Jack had not been there, I think it would have been a train wreck.

And for that reason, when people say, oh, how was your, first of all, how was your silent retreat? The hard dance are quickly, right? I usually just say, difficult, I'm glad I did it. Thank God for Jack. That's my short answer. But when people ask me, should I do a silent treat?

My first answer is no. I say no because I don't know if you're in the 15% and if you are and you don't have a jack there, you're just, you're on the auto bond without Without an airbag without without a seat belt on well, what I always will say is that the places like spirit rock and Insight meditation society where Which is the sister organization in Massachusetts? Yeah in Massachusetts They do actually have pretty really good protocols in place for dealing with this stuff.

That being said, Jack is uniquely skilled, but they see these people coming through all the time. Sure. Yeah, no, and for what it's worth, I mean, I don't know what the experiences were of the other treatments by virtue of it being a solar tree. It didn't seem, I mean, I spoke to a few people at a very tough time and I certainly didn't share what down the details of my inner experience. I just thought it was very hard. Maybe they were doing the same thing but I

don't mean to imply that Jack is a non-recurring phenomenon and that the others of the other teachers are incapable at any of these retreat centers But I do certainly mean to convey that He was I trusted Jack. I didn't know the other teachers So I would I would not have even though they might have been perfectly capable of helping and qualified I would not have felt confident Or comfortable opening up to them. What did he, how did he help?

Because you came to him with a real, real need. You know, I don't want to, it was within the confidence of our session, so I don't want to give too much. And I don't think I could actually even replicate, simulate what he did, but he jack listens. He doesn't just hear you and then respond with one of six stock answers. And I did experience that a little bit elsewhere where it's like, oh, well, have you heard of the four feathers of the four arrows of suffering or something like that, right? Whatever it might be and I'm like no and I see that you've pulled out one of your

six, you know, if if patients says this then I say that cards He would listen and he listened so intently That and this is true over the last five years also of doing a lot of deliberate inner work to Heels and really old stuff especially in the last year I've realized that like there's there's hearing There's listening and then there's listening right and There's watching and there's listening, and then there's listening, right? And there's watching, and there's seeing, and then there's seeing where someone doesn't look at you, they look into you, and they see things that you might be

trying to say, but you can't even express. Jack has that ability on a very, very deep level. And so you feel at least I felt, and this is, I know it's not unique to me, with him, that I also had a very deep connection to a woman named Spring Washam there. I'm laughing because Spring, who also has been on this podcast, was the person who gave me the advice on my first retreat that led to one of the most profound moments in my entire life. The spring is amazing.

She was very gifted. Yes, she is. And I had a very deep connection with her, but she needed to travel and couldn't stay for the entire trip. So I only had one meeting with her. But I knew from the very first moment I interacted with her very briefly for a host of reasons. Actually, I didn't know the reasons that point. I just felt like she and I had things to talk about. She's also done a lot of work with psychedelics.

Yes. And I feel like I have a bit of a radar for that now. Yeah. Yeah. And so spring's been, oh, let me tell you another like crazy, just to get really woo woo and hand wavy. So before I had gone on my retreat, I have this newsletter that goes out every Friday called Five Bull of Friday that I it's just cool stuff that I found or things I'm thinking about whatever it might be and It's something fun for me. It's almost like a diary and Because I'll never actually sit down and do a deer diary entry and one of the entries is quote, I'm pondering. When I find quotes I like, I put them into this.

And I had selected a quote about three months before the retreat by spring, not knowing anything about her. Scheduled it, it came out the week after the retreat. And then I put the pieces together. Oh my god. It's the same spring That's crazy but but it she also and I'm sure many people do but but jacks ability to see beyond seeing and listen beyond listening is Very well developed. Yeah, it's say trained. It's absolutely trained. I mean, I think he has that super barassant, so ridiculous.

He has that faculty. He has a highly developed capacity for that. Just like you might look at someone with certain certain points in their Achilles tendon, you're like, all right, that person can jump really high. I know already just by looking at the anatomy of their calves, they can jump a lot higher than I can. I think Jack is predisposed to having a very high capacity, but then he developed it. Right. So you refer to it as a gift earlier, the difficulty of the, in what way?

Where is it left you? Yeah, it's been, it's very clear. What I realized is that the, let's just say 27 or 47 or 64, whatever number of issues I might have that I'm consciously aware of, things that have sabotage relationships, things that have led me to be brutal with myself, things that have stymied me or confused me in somewhere, behaviors that have been inexplicable to me,

right? Like self-defeating behaviors that I know are self-defeating and yet they persist. Why? And what I realized, which in a way is is was very reassuring or uplifting in another way, is very intimidating is that they all, they were all the same thing. They all tracked back to that unresolved childhood trauma or a lot of the trauma. And, and you, are you referring to one thing from your childhood or just generalized trauma like the gestalt of all that stuff that I had locked in a box and buried a hundred feet

on the ground, expecting it never to surface again. So then the question was, I was like, well, okay, now what, what do you do with that? It's one thing to be aware of a problem. It's quite another to have a plan or confidence that you can or solve the problem. Jack was very, very helpful once again in making a number of recommendations. I'm not going to repeat them here because we're getting into some very serious stuff. And I think people should seek professional help if they feel like this resonates and they have some deep, deep painful experiences that haven't been resolved, but he recommended a number of

trauma specialists for me to look into. And I began to think more about how I might also do more about how I might also do not detective work, but what other modalities might also be worth testing to help with this now that I felt I had identified the target, right? And as soon as I got out of the retreat, fortunately, I'm very good at making plans and scheduling things and getting things done. And so it's like, all right, well, this, this is the work, like all the business stuff that I was thinking about, all the near-to-resolutions, all second place, not second place, like 97 place, and everything in between from one to 96 is this work. So between the silent tree, which was in October and now, that's all I've been focused on.

Good for you. And, yeah, I feel through a lot at it, you know, everything in the kitchen sink. And including more medit- I would assume a certain amount of therapy, but also meditation. Yep. With very, very, very qualified supervision. And it's been the most powerful, I would say, transformative three months of my life, almost certainly. You're going to write about it?

Without question, I'm hedging. Yeah, without question. You're going to write about it? I would like to. I would like to, I feel conflicted about it because when you have, with great audience comes great responsibility. And what I've realized particularly with, particularly with an audience that is, let's just say, roughly 70% 20 to 40-year-old

Heart-charging type-A-mails Who don't always have the best instincts when it comes to self-preservation if you have millions of those Statistically, let's just pretend it's a city think some percentage of those people are gonna kill themselves some percentage of those people are gonna do bad things other people some percentage don those people are going to do bad things to other people. Some percentage don't follow the directions. And it's not any fault in the audience. It's just a game of numbers. And what I realized is, for instance, there's a chapter in the For Our Body on my second book on breath holding. That was David Blaine, the illusionist and endurance artist taught me how to hold my breath and go from 45 seconds to almost four minutes. And he's at one point, helped number of worlds,

records related to that. Chapter full of warnings. I mean, all caps, all bold warnings throughout the entire chapter, and nonetheless, there were a number, I remember at one point, one reader left the blog post and was like, yeah, I went and I tried, I said never tried never tried this in water over and over again and then there was a blog post or blog comment

that I saw which said I went to the public pool and I tried this and I passed out and then the Lifeguard pulled me out and I dislocated my shoulder. He's like, what should I how should I train this properly? And I was just like, oh my God, this is, this is, there's so little upside here and so massive of downside that I took it out of the book. So chapter came out. And with this type of work, particularly if, if I were to write about this, there is, if I were to be truthful, there's no way that I could omit Plant medicine There's there's no way plant medicine meaning like I wasca

Silasiven there many there are people talking about this in responsible ways spring who's been on the show has talked about it Michael pollen has a book coming out. I'm sure you know that you know about about plant medicine So you could do it. I could, I could. I just recognize that as powerful as these tools are, the power that they have to heal is equal in their power to destabilize. Sure. I mean, as Sam has described that you're getting on a rocket and you don't know where the rocket's going. Right. And as Sam has also said, you will develop if you go deep enough a profound

empathy for people with mental illness because you'll walk down the street and you will have experienced in some capacity what those people are experiencing. Right. And not, and I should say, you know, not everyone comes out. And this is, this is on, this is an unpopular thing to say. But with these compounds, particularly if people have a history of schizophrenia, which they may not even be aware of, right, if they've not had a thorough family medical history in some way explain to them by their parents or grandparents and aunts and uncles who may also not have ever labeled it as such, you can go off the rails and not come back. So I feel a tremendous responsibility to think through the ramifications

before getting into it. But there if I've been keeping notes for five years on all this, I have the raw material for a book. And it's just a question of when, when and if I will feel that the calculus makes sense if I'm the mayor of the city. Yeah, the greatest good for the greatest number of people. I get it, I get I understand your reticence. I have a comment and then a last question.

The comment is the word that comes to mind for me is bravery. It requires a lot of bravery for you to discuss this publicly. A, and beat to do the work. So I commend you for that and I wish you the best of luck as you continue to do the work because it will last the rest of your life. You know, working on your own well-being and that is the work of a lifetime. So I have a lot of respect for what you're working on.

Thank you. The final question I have before I let you go is tools of Titans. No, no, no. Try of a mentor. It's confusing. It's confusing they both start with T. Yeah. Tools of Titans is the penultimate book, the ultimate

well, it's not going to be your last book, but the second most recent book is Tools of Titan. This one is called Tribe of Mentors. Can you just give it, tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, yeah, I'll say a little bit about it. And then I'd love to make a closing comment that's related, but not entirely related to book. Mike, yours.

Yeah, Tribe of Mentors, very simple is I'd have, well, we've talked about it. I good yours. Yeah, tribe of mentors, very simple, is I'd have, well, if we've talked about it, I've had a very, very tough last two years. A lot of beauty, but also some real cracks in the cosmic egg and some extreme emotional pain beyond anything I've experienced in decades. On top of that, a number of close friends passed away, including one of the mentors and tribal mentors, Terry Lawklin, very unexpected

the man who taught me at a swim when I was in my 30s, believe it or not. And I had a lot of questions come up as I turned 40 about a year ago. And turning 40 doesn't scare me. That didn't throw me off-kilter. I take take care of myself. I feel very good about it. But it was a milestone that led me to revisit a lot of my priorities, my life, my friends, my goals, how my behaviors had led me or misled me in different ways up to this point. I had a lot of questions and I decided to take this question

after I boiled it down to about 11 questions and ask for help, which is something I'm not historically good at. So I, like, rather than just trying to figure it out on paper, which is not always sell them the best approach for me. I decided to take those 11 questions and send them to about 130 people who were some of the most impressive minds and hearts I could track down. So people involved meditation like Sharon Salzburg people involved with say addiction research and medicine as well as plant medicine like

Gabor Mate, Dr. Gabor Mate also including icons of safe sport like Kelly Slater most decorated surfer of all time, or Maria Sharpova, you name it, right? We've got the authors of all different types, Sam Harris is in there, and to try to borrow from their answers, to learn from their answers, and the book is a collection of short profiles, including their answers. So they're 130, they range, I would say, in length from two to 10 pages, you've all harari of sapiens, closes out the book, you would like his, I think you'd like his profile. I want him on the show.

He is so, he is. He is listening. He might be on a two-month meditation retreat. He's a serious meditator. A serious meditator. And actually, I want him to thank you. So his profile was the final nudge that got me to press go and do the solar

tree because he talked about how his first solar treat fundamentally changed this entire life and how none of his books would have happened had enough and for that and the subsequent meditative practice I could say the same thing for myself yeah so that's that and then subsequent meditative practice. I could say the same thing for myself. Yeah. So that's that. And then in terms of closing comments, I'd just like to say to people, and if anything I've said has resonated in terms of if we zoom out the fact that I have spent my entire life minus the most recent six months, let's say it, at best tolerating

myself, typically loathing myself and being extremely brutal. Brutal. I didn't view myself as worthy of love, certainly not self love, it seems self indulgent. And I had focused on just becoming an instrument of competition. And that I could help other people experience joy, but that my function was to be an instrument of high pain tolerance and competition. And that was my function. That was just it. Like frogs or frogs, horses or horses, Tim is a instrument of competition with high pain tolerance. And I just want to say to anyone who feels like they merely tolerate themselves, that you A, you cannot love other people fully if you merely tolerate yourself. And actually read a quote from Gertrude Stein recently of all people and I'm going to

paraphrase it, but it was, and we must remember that the golden rule goes in both directions. So people are familiar with the do unto others as you do unto yourself. I have them do unto you, but you also need to do unto yourself as you do unto others. And developing your relationship with yourself as a friend, I found loving kindness, metameditation very helpful for this. Another gift that Jack and very helpful for this. Another gift that Jack and I think her name was Kanda, a meditation teacher at Spirit Rock. And I remember sitting down and telling them that I'd found the meta, METTA, Jack signs all of his emails, much meta, which is love and kindness, meditation where you project kindness, meditation where you project goodwill and love and well wishes and lack of pain and suffering to people. And I had done this for mentors and teachers and friends and loved ones. And right before I was about to leave this other meditation teacher, I want to say it was Kanda, I apologize to her

if it's not the right name, but I'm getting close, said, just a quick question. Have you done any loving kindness projected at yourself? All right, younger versions of yourself or versions of yourself that were afraid or hurt? I said, no, didn't even occur to me. And she was like, yeah, I think you should try that. And that was a huge, huge game changer. And I would just say not to be too long-winded about it, that if you feel like you have been or are in a place like I've described for myself, for my entire life, I would underscore that you don't have to choose that path. There are other

paths you can choose. You can choose a path of light and Love and forgiveness towards yourself and if you told me this a year ago that that could be developed. I would have I Would not have believed it But I sit here right now today feeling like living proof that it is possible You do have to do the work. You are gonna have to face a lot of pain But if you put in the work and you focus and you dedicate yourself to that as your top priority, that it can be done. I'm incredibly glad and grateful that you said that. It is not long-winded.

There are fewer more important things. Sentiments, I think, that can be imparted, could be boiled down to what I view as the animating inside of my whole meditation evangelical side hustle, which is the mind is trainable. You know, we're not stuck with all of the psychological and stuff that you don't like. And you are living proof of that. So, yeah, the mind is trainable and the heart is openable. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. Happy your podcast if you liked it please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B Harris. Importantly I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren F. Ron, Josh Tohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music.

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