Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 121: Susan Kaiser Greenland and Annaka Harris, Teaching Mindfulness to Kids

Episode Date: February 7, 2018

Susan Kaiser Greenland, an author and former corporate attorney, and Annaka Harris, an author and editor, work together to teach mindfulness meditation to children and their families through Greenland's Inner Kids Foundation. They offer advice for parents on introducing meditation to their kids and starting group sessions with other families, but they also share their views on the controversial topic of teaching meditation in schools and how they tackle concerns many parents have about teaching kids a practice that evolved from Eastern spiritual traditions. 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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A lot of you have asked me over the years to dive more deeply into mindfulness for children, meditation for children, and I have been very slow to do so, but we have two of the best people to talk about it on the podcast this week. Susan Kaiser Greenland has been writing about this issue for years and has been teaching meditation to children

for many, many years and is really well regarded in this field and her co-author, Anika Harris, has been doing the same for many years as well. They've written a book called Mindful Games and it really goes right to this issue of how to teach meditation to children and they have a lot to say that will be useful for many, many parents and myself included. Anika, just you'll hear this referenced is perhaps to be married to a former podcast guest, Sam Harris,

who is a great friend of mine and as is Onica. So you'll hear that familiarity in our discussion. I've never met Susan Kaiser Greenland. We did this interview remotely. They were not in town, so we did the interview remotely, which we usually don't do, but in this case, we made an exception because it's such an important topic. So here we go, Susan Kaiser Greenland and Anika Harris.

From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I'm very happy to have you. Thank you both for doing this. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Susan, let me start with you. How did you get into meditation?

I knew you used to be a, used to be an ABC lawyer. Yeah, ABC and then CBS. So it's kind of fun to be back here for, for today. How did I get into meditation? My husband made me do it, to be honest with you. We were facing a family crisis at the time, a health crisis. I was pregnant with my second child. I was working part time as a lawyer for the ABC

owned and operated stations at the time. And he had a pretty lousy health prognosis. So I started doing my research. And believe it or not, I came upon food as being a real problem that we needed to deal with. So one day I was up there on a stool in a small New York kitchen Pretty pregnant pulling out of the cupboard absolutely every bit of processed ingredients sugar white flour you name it and throwing it into a big black garbage bag.

My husband walks in and says, honey, I've got a baby so tonight because remember we're about two and a half year old. We're going to go learn to meditate. We're going to the Zen Center. I said, I can't, I got to deal with this food. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to go. I stopped. I realized he's working with this health problem.

He probably really wants to learn to meditate and so I'm going to go with him. So I tell him that he's no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to learn to meditate because you're driving me crazy. And that's the origin story. The rest of it is I get to the same thing. So did he learn how to do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he, he meditates pretty regularly regularly now although he went through a period of not Meditating but he's doing it again, and by the way is his health okay. Oh, yeah, this was Gosh, this was 30 almost 30 years ago. So but thank you for asking So we get to the Zen Center. We sit down. We take a little class. We sit down and center. We sit down, we take a little class, we sit down, and I lasted about two minutes on the cushion before I went running out into the street. I just couldn't tolerate the anxiety. And my husband stayed there the rest of the time and then came out, and that was the beginning. How did you come back to it? I started listening to tapes. We ended up moving out of the city. I took a leave of absence from my job,

and we went out to Garrison and Cold Spring, New York, ate a lot of rice and beans and organic food, and my husband got better. And I listened to tapes. I had two young kids by then, because I had had my son. I couldn't go to IMS, or even though it was pretty close by. Let me just explain what that is. IMS is inight Meditation Center in Massachusetts, where people go on retreat, but you couldn't go there. So you were... So I listened to their tapes. I listened to Jack and Joseph and Sharon's tapes

over and over again, and that's how I got started. And how did you make it your... What I understand to be basically your full-time job? How did we get to this point? My husband got better. He is a writer and most of his work was out here in LA. So we moved to LA. I started studying with a teacher in the Tibetan tradition

out here, Ken McLeod. It really was helpful to me for the stress. I took the bar exam out here. I became a star working CBS out here, lots of stress, young kids. So it was helping me with stress. And I thought, wow, if it can help me, maybe it can help my kids.

And this was long before mindfulness and kids was a thing. John and Myla hadn't even written their book every day, Blessings and then. That's John Kabatzen and his wife Myla, who wrote a book every day, Blessings. He has about meditation for kids. So I started practicing with my own kids and and pretty soon after that, I met Anika and then Anika and I were started doing volunteer teaching out in the Tulika Lake Elementary

School out here in the valley, which brings us to Anika. Anika, I can't I'm not going to pretend I haven't known you for a while. So, but having said that for the rest of the, for everybody else is listening, how did you get into meditation? I actually originally got into it because I was training as a dancer. A few careers ago was a professional dancer and I had an injury. I was actually in yoga class that I discovered meditation. And then I shortly after that met my husband, Sam Harris, who had been studying it for many years. And I met some great meditation teachers through him, including Joseph Goldstein, and just found it to be such a transformative

practice and experience that it just became part of my life pretty quickly. And pretty early on, it was at the first retreat that I sat, I started thinking about how helpful this could have been for me to learn as a child and all of the struggles that I dealt with as a child and thinking about the fact that we teach physical education to children in schools across the country and we value that and that it would be, it kind of became this incredible, ridiculous dream of mine that one day we could teach this skill to children as well. I actually remember the first time you and I had dinner, I think.

I told you it was this crazy fantasy and you were the first person to say, you know, I actually think this might be coming. You knew more about all the work that was going on across the country than I did at that point. Yeah, but you should never listen to me. You were right. Well, but you should never listen to me. You were right. Well, we'll see. I think it's so cool the way you put it though, we teach kids physical education.

We need to, this is an entirely different kind of education that is equally if not more useful. But when you say, just at least the kind of you for a second, when you say it had this big effect on you meditation, what do you mean by that specifically? Well, I think in general I find there are two effects when you develop a meditation practice, but one is really just the psychological effect of, I mean, I hate to reduce it to a coping mechanism, but it's a coping mechanism and it teaches you about your own psychology, it teaches you about how you react to certain things and it gives you a broader range of

choices. It empowers you really to make different choices both in how you experience your life, how you view your life, how you frame certain situations, and there's a relief that comes with getting a break from your mind, as you know now that you practice more than I do. Yeah, well, I need it more than you do. I need to give you credit because you played a huge role in the development of my practice. When I met you for the first time, it was maybe the second or third time I was meeting Sam, we were back, I told the story in played a huge role in the development of my practice. When I met you for the first time, it was maybe the second or third time I was meeting Sam, we're backstay, I told the story in 10% happier,

we're backstage at a debate that I was moderating for nightline with your husband head-to-head with Deepak Chopra and there were a few other people on the stage as well. And the video of that is awesome. If anybody wants to go look it up on YouTube. Anyway, more consequently for me backstage, you and Sam were like, you should go on a meditation retreat.

And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. That sounds horrible. And you really, you guys, in a way that, because you both had so much credibility in my eyes, that I was like, oh, these people are not that weird. So maybe I should do it. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's that happens a lot in my life. And I don't know if you've had that experience now that you know what it's like and you know the benefits it can bring. I think it was because of our commonalities, you know, the things I could I heard you talking about struggling with. I just knew how much of an antidote to all of that that was for me. And yeah, I've met many people. I think do you know what I'm doing? I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able about struggling with, I just knew how much of an antidote to all of that that was for me. And yeah, many people, I think, do their first retreat, be it their drag, they're kicking and screaming by their, by their well-intentioned friends.

Yeah, well, you guys changed my life. So big thank you. Well, so Susan, let me get back to you and we'll get down to the nub here on kids. So how did you go from teaching this to your kids to what you're doing now, which is on a much grander scale? And how did those initial four-rays go with your kids? How old were they at the time? How did they react to it? Well, I was practicing for a while before I started practicing with my kids.

And basically, how practicing with my kids started is, I was going through a serious type of training that required a lot of practice time. And remember I had a lot of practice at the same time. So I was getting up at 5, 30 in the morning and practicing and then getting the kids up and getting everybody ready for the sport. Wow, you were going for it. Yeah I was going for it and I'm glad I did it. And I had just a intuition at one moment to just open the door because I was always going into

this bedroom next to where both kids were pretty young at that time where they were sleeping. And I just had this intuition why why am I closing the door, just open the door, and sure enough, that first day, my son, who was like a three-ish at the time, tottled in, and sat down next to me. And I didn't know much at that time about mindfulness or kids or child development. So I just assumed he was a yogi, ai, you know a natural yogi and that he was meditating.

You couldn't go and buy a cushion or something. So I got a rubber duck and I got a pillow and it became a regular ritual. He would just come in every morning and sit there for a little bit and stare at the rubber duck and then kind of fall over and have his head on my lap while I'm meditated. At the time, I was absolutely convinced that the guy was meditating and later I learned more about attachment theory and child development and realized he probably just wanted to be with his mom in some alone time. But that's how it got started. I'm impressed by the kid nonetheless because of my son who's almost three walking in the

room while I while meditating. He would not sit quietly and stare at a rubber duck if I happen to have one. He would smack me in the face or ask me for an iPad or his bottle. Well, it was pretty early in the morning. So I don't know that he ever really woke up. It was almost like he just kind of came in half asleep in and he was still in the kind of sleepy state. But I got to tell you, he's 24 now and he's meditating every day.

It's been a while since he went a long time without meditating, but I think he does have a natural talent for it. But how do you do this? So your kids, when you first started formally introducing it to them, how do you do it in a way that's not so annoying that they rebel against you and reject it permanently? For example, when I was a kid my parents used to take me camping. I hated it. They were hippie recovering hippies I hated camping and I still hate camping and I will not do it unless I have to do it

Yeah, well, yeah, you're pointing to something when my With the first book I wrote the mindful child out, my son was in middle school or high school at the time, and one of the teachers asked him, hey, did you practice mindfulness as a kid? He said, no, absolutely not. And she said, well, did you stop at the door and take a couple of deep breaths before leaving? And he said, yeah, and did you do this and did you do that?

And he came home and he said, mom, I had no idea that that stuff was mindfulness. And I think we don't really need to use the word mindfulness and meditation. Modeling is a better way to go. And, you know, the more I asked my kids to do this, the more resistance I got. I was telling Onika a story on the way over about when Seth and I took our kids to the Zen Center and one of them said, how long do I have to pretend that somebody stole my brain? And the other one said, I think I have to have to hawk on the holy plants. And my son looked up at me and said, you know, I'm sorry, my

husband looked up at me and said, sorry, you know, we're out of here. And that was our, our experience with a family tree. So the lesson there is what? Just teach practices that you're not, you're not, don't try to get your kid folded into a pretzel on a cushion, give them everyday tools that, that, that will allow them to do sort of free range mindfulness. I think the lesson is to practice yourself, Learn the practice yourself, embody it, then start to try to understand the concepts, the universal themes that we're teaching, and then find ways to just drop them into what you're already doing as opposed to bring this in as an outside thing. I would also add, we talked about

this conversation came up on the way here, Susan said also because I had asked Joseph Goldstein this question after we had our first daughter. With the same fears you just mentioned in mind, how do I teach this to my children without it becoming a power struggle? And I think we all understand that fear of the very thing we want to teach our child is the thing they're going to resist learning the most. His advice was so wonderful and it's really helped and it's basically, it's so beautifully told in Susan's story of opening the door which is Joseph explained to me that most of the parents he knows with practices who have children who also practice didn't actually try to teach them they just modeled it for them.

So he recommended things that I've done with my children like practicing in front of them. We have a little area in our house where there's a mat and the kids play there and I actually added a couple of cushions there and I almost never do it but Occasionally I'll just decide to practice for two minutes in front of them and it's it's a practice for me It's a pretty interesting challenge to sit and meditate in the midst of family life and kids Right and not knowing whether they're putting their fingers in the socket But then they see you and they understand there it brings up interesting questions They've asked a lot what are you doing? Why are you closing your eyes and the older they get the more interesting those Those conversations are and without telling them they have to do anything

They just see that this is something mom is doing and that it's important to me and that I find it useful and They see it and then they there are also just these inevitable conversations that come up because it's there and that's not to say that many of those times they're just yelling at me to stop meditating. But it's the whole range, you know, sometimes as Susan said, they'll come sit down with me and I don't know what they're doing, but they're interested because they see me doing it and I think that's right. And I can't stress enough the point Susan made, which I think the most important thing we can do for our children

is have a practice ourselves. So that's actually what I tell parents all the time because people ask me when I go out and give speeches. But I have a comment in a question. The comment is completely random and useless, but on this issue of kids and rebellion and rejecting everything their parents like, I just reminds me of how my kid was born. I just, I for years I gave this edg, you know, musical education. I played them all as like the Beatles and the Stones and Credence, and his favorite song is,

and his favorite song is I got to move it by Madagascar 3. So, yeah, I figured that's a harbinger of things to come. My question is, are you guys saying that you shouldn't teach kids formal meditation? That all we have to do is parents just model it ourselves and we're good to go? Susan's pointing at me. I would say the short answer is no. She might have a different answer, actually. I think my intuition is that it might not be the best role for parents to have, but I think I mean, I think. Oh, she'll be talking school. Yes, no, I think we should be teaching children and I think it's more that we have to be careful about what we do with our children.

And it's definitely something you don't want to force. You don't want to tell them they have to do it. If they don't want to do it, I think it's about developing their interests so that, I mean, I think the ultimate goal is yes, so that you can teach them so that they become interested enough that you can. So maybe the recipe is practice at home in a way that you're open with them about it, but not preachy and then make sure they get into

situations in school at the right age where somebody else who's not as annoying as you as teaching it. Yes, although the other thing is Susan has developed this brilliant curriculum and one of the wonderful things about it is a lot of it is not just you know traditional seated meditation practice. She has all these wonderful games which Most kids enjoy doing and parents can incorporate all of these things into their daily life such a good sales person So let's talk about that season. So you've got a new you you both have a new book and then a kind of a set a companion piece Both of them under the title of mindful games. So can you just walk me through what those are? Can I go back and just fill in a little bit about the last question first?

Just a podcast. There's no rules. You can do it if you want. Okay. So I think there's something in between parents teaching kids and parents not teaching kids. And I think that's parents really taking the time to learn and practice and develop a feel for it themselves. And once they have a feel for it, once they have a visceral experiential sense of what practice is and what the benefits are and how it's

actually helped them, then they're gonna intuitively be able to be better present with their kids and be responsive to the signals that they're getting from their kids. So if a child is open and receptive and wants a little bit of instruction, that's fantastic, especially if it's coming from a place where you personal experience with that. If a child is starting to roll their eyes and push away,

then to just be able to let it go without holding onto it or having any hope for expectation, that's something we learn from the practice. It helps us with our practice to do that over and over again with our kids. And we're modeling for our kids a different way of being. So if you think of the meditation as a way of creating a different way of being in the world, a way of training to be and to respond to situations differently than people who haven't had this experience. Then we will trust our intuition more and be able to kind of go with the flow with our

kids and then all day long as a learning experience where we're giving them direct instruction. If that happens, fantastic. If we're not, we're teaching them by modeling. So that's what I would say about the parents teaching kids, because it's great when kids are getting this kind of input and this kind of modeling from all different elements of their system, the kids and the schools and the community. So just to be super practical about it, I get that if you're a parent and you don't want to be overly pushy, but if you're a parent you really do care that your kid learns these skills,

how do you make that happen without being too pushy, how do you get them in a situation where they're learning it perhaps from others in a way that it's likely to stick. And what is the right age to even start? Well, you can start from the very, very beginning. You can start when you have a newborn and when you're walking and when you're carrying him or her. But, and you can start early on as toddlers, just by doing things like, when you're feeling upset, grab the snow globe on the counter,

if you've got one, or grab a glitter ball, or something, and say, hey, mommy's mind feels like this right now. See, all this glitter, mommy's mind is a little bit busy, and I can't really think clearly. Can you stay with me, and can we feel our breathing, and watch this glitter settle? And then together, you co-regulate, you help each other and you're modeling for your

kids how to regulate. And then you know, Monica's done a brilliant job with us with her kids as far as trying to set up small groups of local parents or just a couple of other families where you all get together and do this as a monthly potlock or morning activity or something like that so that you're not relying on a school if the school isn't offering the type of instruction you want or the type of modeling that you want, but it's not just you so it becomes more of a community endeavor rather than just a single family or parent trying to tell the kids to do something. Great. And so now this is an equally good segue to get to the book and the

accompanying games. Can you tell us about all that? We're pointing at each other. I'm pointing at you Susan, but I will make sure that Anika gets gets or say the book and the cards well the How they're just a games, you know It's a way of trying to make these practices fun in ways that you know You don't need to even say the word mindfulness and in ways that teach the type of self-regulatory skills that people are often drawn to with mindfulness as far as stress reduction and executive functioning, without losing the universal themes that really give the, in my mind,

the essence secularizing the core of the Buddhist practice. And I understand this is a secular broadcast and our program is a secular program, but it is secularizing a practice that has a values component in addition to a executive function and self-regulation component. So in these games, we're weaving through not only the self-regulatory skills like stopping, focusing, and that sort of thing, but we're also weaving in values-based components like caring and connecting and that sort of thing, but we're also weaving in values-based components like caring and connecting and that sort of thing. Just as an aside, I wouldn't describe this podcast as a secular. I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Buddhist atheist. So I mean, I think I trust my listeners to be smart enough to

suss out what's useful to them and what they agree with and what they disagree with. So you don't have to worry about any of that stuff here. But back to the book and the games, give me some examples. Like what kind of games would I be playing with my kid? And again, what are the age ranges where we could start doing this? Well, you can start with toddlers with simple things like stopping and feeling you breathing. There's a cute little song that a lot of toddlers like. And they sing it and then that helps them understand

that if they stop and feel their breathing, they'll feel a little bit more settled and relaxed. You could play games like the Snow Globe game that I was mentioning with the glitter ball. You could play games like rolling balls back and forth, quickly describing what's going on in your mind, what's going on in your body, that's for a little bit older kids,

counting breaths, some really classical meditation practices that are boiled down into simple, developmentally appropriate, and hopefully fun activities. Hey, I'm Arisha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wunderies 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 newer 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 Rue off course. In our series, Rue Paul born naked. We'll show you how Rue Paul 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. Ateca, you were deeply involved in this project. Any other aspects of it you want to highlight? I was going to mention one of my, I think one of everyone's favorite games and it may be that most people know about it already but the breathing with the monkeys, the rockabye, so we call it rockabye now, where the

children lie on their backs and the very young children can have a small stuffed animal resting on their belly and you can do this with older children and adults too with a pillow or a bean bag or something like that. I think it's really a wonderful way for children to just get the visceral experience of noticing their in-breath and their out-breath, both feeling the experience of how that settles them and also just having the physical experience that really gets them so quickly into the present moment they can feel this stuff animal going up and down. And it also is just such a naturally, I think fun and pleasing experience for a child. We often explain to them that the game is that

the monkeys are very tired and need to take a nap and the thing that helps them fall asleep is your breath rocking them very gently up and down. So there's, it's appealing to children and what they naturally want to do with play and also connecting it to the present moment and and their ability to start paying attention to what's happening in their bodies. You know, I know I know there are challenges in teaching the stuff to kids, but in some ways that do you think they're naturals?

I do. I always say that. Susan's nodding her head. I wasn't sure if she would agree, but yes, go ahead. Yeah, they have a lot less baggage than we do often, and so we don't have to kind of light through that baggage to get down to the experience. Yeah, that was one of the things that really surprised me and kind of blew my mind really when I started working with kids. With Susan was noticing that they were asking a lot of the same questions that adults ask. And I would say even overall sooner in their practice than most adults. So they

advance, I think, overall in general more quickly. And they just get it. They're able to access the experience. And I think Susan's right that they're just less obstacles to being in the present moment to actually just doing the work of meditation when you're doing a formal meditation practice and to just receiving the benefits of it that much more quickly. What's the most surprising question you've gotten from a kiss? A second grader, I don't know the exact phrasing of it, but a second grader was clearly having a very interesting and concentrated experience in a very basic counting breaths meditation practice and they were actually this

class had gotten pretty advanced and they were doing about 10 minutes or more where I would guide them and talk them through, but they were sitting in a 10 minute meditation. And at the end, we were discussing what we experienced. And she said, she was very interested in what the present moment is. And she kept saying, the present moment is always here, but it's always disappearing. And she wanted to just understand that better. And she was asking questions like, how long is a moment? And what is, she really said, what is the present moment?

Like, the closer she got to it, the more she understood how hard it was actually to get our minds around what our experience is. And she was really getting at something deep, like what consciousness is. And I think of those types of questions lead to questions about neuroscience and physics. And it's just, it's a fascinating area. But I guess I don't know. I can't give you

the exact question, but it was. I'm dying to hear how you answered it. That's a good question. I don't remember that as well as I remember her asking. Did you season anything about you? Yeah. Yeah, what's great about that story that Anika is telling is I think it really dovetails well with your other question about kids and whether it's easier with kids. And I think part of the reason it's easier with kids is that they're just so more keyed into the experience and they have so much less of an idea of where meditation is supposed to take them, what meditation is supposed to be like, or the need to kind of ruminate around it over and over again.

So the type of responses we get from kids are really far more direct reporting back of actual experiences that are often truly meditative experiences, the types of things that sometimes takes adults a long time to kind of settle down below the rumination to actually experience themselves. I do remember now generally how I responded and I think it was how I respond to most of their comments, which is just more of an encouraging response that how fascinating it was. And basically, yes, this is what happens when you pay closer and closer attention and how interesting and also

Just saying simply I don't know I I have these questions too and where I think it also those types of things really are great moments for helping connect Human beings with each other with each other children with each other because they realize we're all when we get down to it We're all having this experience and we don't know exactly what it is and we have all these questions and it's interesting to think about and contemplate and so I think I probably just did my usual encouraging talk of yes that's it and this is what's so wonderful about the practice of mindfulness meditation and I love hearing about this and I wonder if other people have helped this way And I think we probably did we often will check in with other students in the classroom to see if other people

Know what what the one student who's speaking up is talking about and I would say Almost always if not always there are other children in the room who are having the same experience whether they're Grappling with a difficult emotion whether they're having a hard time sitting still, or whether they're getting at the beauty of the mystery of the present moment. They all can share in their experiences. Side note, many plug. Anika has a great children's book called I Wonder in which you talk about how parents can help kids embrace the various mysteries of the universe.

It seems to fit nicely with what you just said. Susan, what is inner kids? Oh, wow. Inner kids was a foundation that my husband and I created in the early 2000s that we closed down after about 10 years. At the time, I had a law practice and I was going into schools, volunteering, and Anika came in and volunteered to, along with some other people who were some really strong meditation teachers like Jean Loshnak, Daniel Davis, and there were costs associated that we all worked on a volunteer basis, but there were costs associated with that like cushions cushions and mats and insurance and that sort of thing. So we had a small foundation that raised money every year to cover the cost so that nobody was actually out of pocket,

but everybody was volunteering. And then around after about 10 years, the need for that foundation eased. And so the name, inner kids, we kept because we liked it. And it's become the name for the model that we use for this program, which really is teaching whole families about mindfulness and meditation as a full picture with attention, balance and compassion. And so what are the current activities in which you're involved? Right now, I do teachers' trainings. I've written a few books.

And I do a lot of volunteer work going in and working with individual families, mentoring people. That sort of thing. I've got a couple of projects coming up that will be more, again, like oriented toward parents. I do what shows up in front of me at any given time, and I'm going to tell you my schedule is really, really busy, but I'm out of the building mode right now. I'm out of building a foundation. I'm out of building a career. I'm out of building pretty much anything and I'm much more into the trying to be responsive to what the needs are And what's drawing me in my passion. It's really interesting actually to hear as somebody who's firmly in the building mode and

Exhausted. I'm a little older than you. I'm not that I'm 60 and so I'm in a position now We're in believe me. I I pushed and I built for a long time, but I think it does happen with practice for those who really want a little encouragement on that front. The practice does take you to a place where you do start to see things a little bit differently and look at things a little differently and priorities begin to shift. It doesn't mean I'm any less busy and I could show you my email box and I could show you my call list and tell you the projects that I've got lined up, but the weight of them

in my mind and in my priorities changes. It's just a relief, I gotta tell you. No, I can't. My uncle, when he turned 60, somebody asked him how he felt and he said off the hook. That's great. That's great. Yeah. So let me ask a few more kids questions about the teaching of kids meditation, teaching meditation to kids in schools, because this has at times been a controversial idea. I think it's been a controversial idea. People are worried about it being sort of sneakily sectarian

in some way. What are your views on this? Well, I'm glad people are taking it seriously and I'm glad people haven't completely drunk the Kool-Aid because I think that this is extremely important. I think it is one of the most important things out there right now facing this country, just how we work with education, with the limited time, and other resources, including money in the schools.

And having been doing this largely on a volunteer basis and working way harder than made sense. I mean, I believe one of the reasons the movement has galloped forward so quickly beyond any of our expectations is because there's a whole world of people out there working for less money and spending more time on something out of passion that it's the movement has gone very, very far. But we have to be careful. We're at a point that we have to be very, very careful as far as making sure that the people who are teaching are well-trained, our actual practitioners themselves,

understand the theory behind the practice. I mean, that was when the shift came for this last book, Mindful Games, that probably wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been out in the field training teachers and supervising teachers and going into schools and observing. And I had this moment where I was like, oh wow, you know, people have figured out what these activities are.

And they're ringing a bell and having people raise their hand. But if you ask the teacher, what's your teaching objective? What is it you're trying to train? What does that practice do? And how do you deal with the problems that arise? They say, oh, geez, I don't know if I ring the bell and kids raise their hand, they calm down. It's really nice and creates a calmer classroom. And usually it does, but that teaching and mindfulness did not have the same rigor as a teaching of science or math. People didn't have teaching objectives People didn't have training. They didn't understand the theory behind the practice and that is problematic

So we have to without damping down the enthusiasm we have to you know bolster up our Basically continuing education training There's something that Susan was talking about the other day, which I'm actually going to put to both of you if this is a place you want to go. But I thought it was interesting. Susan was just traveling recently with her husband. And she was talking about being around monks, teachers.

She was talking about the difference between kind of the traditional experience of having a career that supports your practice. So that you know, you maybe start your job later in the morning, which enables you to have your meditation practice in the morning and the difference between practice being primary and then your work, supporting that versus what, you know, the Western culture is different and it's understandable that this is what's happening here, but there's,, I mean Susan can say all this better than I and maybe you don't want to go there.

No, no, no, I'm happy, I'm happy to say that I might ruffle a couple of failures but I have a feeling that's worth saying. We just, my husband and I, because of our kids are now grown and out of college, we're able to do this. Our husband, my husband and I take a month, as often as we can, once a year, if we can. Sometimes it's every couple years in travel in a place that is a little bit challenging to travel.

In this year, we took a month and we went through Indonesia and Cambodia and Vietnam and spent a lot of time with Buddhists, practicing Buddhists. And although it was not the intention, I came back really quite struck by being around people who were helping tourists like my husband and I, who had chosen careers that were tailored so that they had enough time to practice. And so their practice was driving their career choice. And their career choice wasn't teaching mindfulness, teaching meditation,

or building meditation centers. Their careers were working in the tourist industry, but they were set up so that they get up at 5.30 in the morning, do an hour and a half of chanting, which was the type of practice that most of them were doing. Go to work, come back, and have their practice again was the type of practice that most of them were doing. Go to work, come back, and have their practice again in the evening. One, I was really struck in that one person took us very early on to sit outside a monastery where the monks were doing their morning chanting,

and when he came to pick us up, complete volunteer basis, He came with this tiny tiny little car and he said that 18 of his fellow students of their meditation teacher had come together and bought this car so that they could travel back and forth to meet this teacher. So they chose careers that allowed them to practice more. And the reason I was so struck by this is because I feel that in the US right now, in one of the problems we're having in this movement is it's becoming a little careerist and people's practice is fueling their career and they want to be teaching mindfulness or they want to be reading mindfulness groups or they want to be building mindfulness apps or they want to be building mindful products.

And so they practice in a way to fuel that career as opposed to the other way around, which is whatever they do to work is to fuel the opportunity to practice. And that's different in the last 20 years since I started working and Practice started my own meditation practice something has flipped and and it's it lies someplace in there I think it's interesting because I might be on the wrong side of that line Well, no, I think I think the the I realized that I was about to say this is not an attack on you I don't take it that way. I think it's a really interesting thing to do.

Well, I think it's just something we need to pay attention to and grapple with, because I think it's inevitable. And, you know, Susan and I are both, we have to think about this also, and when you're writing books, and you know, that just is the culture we're in, and that is, it's a natural manifestation of it here, but I think it is something we have to really keep an eye on. Yeah, and I got to say, I don't know you Dan, but I have listened to a bunch of your podcasts and read your books, and I doubt that you're on the wrong side of that line. I don't think it's a line in the sand. I think it's about not a line, but an awareness of the problem. And that's what I see missing with a lot of this is that this is attention.

And the attention is doubly caused by the changes in the publishing industry and the fact that the secularization of Buddhism, in that we're all supposed to be out there promoting our books. We're out there supposed to be promoting our Facebook page. We're out there, unless if we boost our Facebook post, they're not going to be seen. So it's about being aware that we have to balance this. I mean, if you have something to say that is, that came out of a practice experience you have,

which I believe you did because I read you book, then it's important you say that because it's coming from your practice experience and if the only way to get that heard means you've got to do some self-promotion and you've got to buy a couple Facebook ads to boost your post otherwise nobody's going to see it. That's all completely consistent in my mind with the practice, it's all comes down to motivation. But if you're not aware of this tightrope we're all walking to this battle balancing app, then it's kind of hard to sort it, right? You know, I've actually discussed this with the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein who, as a result of Anika and Sam is now my teacher.

And, you know, we talk about motivation, specifically, as running along a continuum. You know, I think about, for me, you know, the motivation behind my, you know, meditation, evangelical side hustle, is, you know know runs the gamut from Really craft stuff around oh well, wow, I wrote a book and people bought it and maybe I can do more and that's you know I get attention and it can it can be somewhat remunerative and it's exciting and there's lots of ego You know and dopamine in there to The sort of more altruistic and which is that, it's made a big difference in my life, and I think it's the next big public health revolution. I think I can do a little bit to catalyze it, and I love talking to people about meditation and seeing the lights go on, and knowing that actually,

this is, they can relate to their mind differently, and that's an extremely gratifying thing. And I explained that once to Joseph, because we were talking about why would I have written my book and he's like, no, I think that's fine. It's just to know that that's all there. Yeah. Well, and also you're doing the thing that I think sometimes Susan and I worry about when we don't see, which is you have developed a very strong practice yourself. You're doing the work.

You know the experience and you're not just talking about something you've read about. You're experiencing it. And I think that's one of the key pieces of something important that we need to keep in place. Yeah, well, I think it's a really useful point. I'm glad you brought it up. Just before we close, look back to kids for a second. Susan identified one of the issues with the sort of scaling up of meditation pedagogy and educational institutions, which is that there aren't a lot of qualified teachers. And we need to get more rigorous around that. But the other issue that sometimes gets brought up, and I mentioned it earlier, is that some parents worry that this is some sort of creeping Eastern spirituality into their children's minds and

lives and they want the kids to be Christian or Jewish or Muslim or whatever it is they're raising them. Is that a concern that parents should have or is it unjustified? I definitely don't think it's a concern parents should have, but it's something that we've encountered a lot, and I actually think Susan should probably answer this because she's spent so much more time in schools. But no, we actually didn't use the word meditation in the very beginning because of this concern.

Why don't I feel like you would do a better job of explaining why we don't think it is a concern? Yeah, I think I think it doesn't need to be a concern. And I think it goes back to this issue of teacher training and really making sure that the people who are delivering the practices are well-trained just as we would want them to be well-trained if they're teaching math or science or history. And I think that the problems we run into are the same problems that you have if a teacher is not well-trained in mindfulness and meditation that you have if somebody is not trained well in PE or math or science or history.

And so I think if we just think of teaching this work in schools as we would teach any other subject and if there's any question about does this belong in school, does this make sense to teach it in this way? Just take out the word mindfulness and throw in the word math. Does it make sense to teach math in this way? And if it doesn't then go back and take a look at it. But I think we are still in the evolving, very early on stages of how to bring secular mindfulness into the world and out into the world and the researchers young and the programs are still pretty young and teasing apart what are the act of elements that are working? Is it the community aspect of it?

Is it the self-regulation aspect? Is it the themes of learning to be less attached to outcome, of learning to be a little bit more open-minded? What are the things that are actually working and how are the best way to present those? That's going to take a really careful, close collaboration between scientists and program developers. But we don't want to wait. We don't want to wait till that collaboration is complete before giving these children the things that we have seen really good early results on. So we just have to be careful and responsible

and really up on the training, up the training. But if I'm a Christian parent, am I unjustified and saying, hey, this is, guys it's it's it's obvious and you admit that these practices evolved from Eastern spiritual traditions specifically in this case Buddhism. No no I mean yes is the parent fair in saying that absolutely and is the parent right in saying that yes because we have not myself myself included, done a good enough job of really crafting the programs and crafting the message to really hone in on what

mindfulness is, which is and how it is really woven through many different types of things, religion, yes, but also through psychology and through good solid education, other ways of education, modusory, wall, floor, all of these great educational processes, if you look at them, they have elements of what we're calling mindfulness. So we have to do better job on language, but yeah, I mean, any parent is totally fair to voice these questions and what we need to make sure is that the people in the schools delivering mindfulness can answer them. I would actually add to that just from my personal experience, I learned

mindfulness meditation in a completely secular context and I was actually just surprised to hear you call yourself a Buddhist Dan because I've never considered myself a Buddhist. I actually don't even know that much about Buddhism. I probably know more than the average person. But to me, what resonates with me about mindfulness meditation and just meditation in general is, and the reason I thought it was something we should be teaching children is because it seems like such a natural human state. And all of the things that we are teaching have really nothing to do with religion or religious point of view. There's nothing otherworldly about it at all. Everything that we're teaching is about the human mind and how to experience the human mind, how to understand it better. It is, to me, I really just see it as a human,

as a pretty natural human experience. Yeah, I mean, I fully agree with that. I mean, it may have been described well by the Buddhists, but it is nonetheless an innate human capacity, a birthright for homo sapiens. And just because I believe it's the case that the Muslims in Baghdad just came up with algebra, but that doesn't mean it's, yeah, but that's still a fundamental mathematical reality.

So yeah, I mean, I obviously agree with you guys, but I'm just playing devil's advocate. What was I going to say before? Oh, just to answer the implied question around me and Buddhism, some of my listeners will have heard me give this stick before, so I'll keep it short. But I mean, I consider myself a Buddhist along the lines of the way Stephen Bachelor, one of my favorite writers who sadly has not been on this

podcast, describes Buddhism which is it's not something to believe in. It's something to do. And you know I do Buddhism. Just the same way I do journalism And I think the practices are immensely useful to me personally and the intellectual infrastructure of the thing the philosophy is also really interesting and does not require me to believe in anything I can't prove and Which I'm constitutionally unable to do and the Buddha I did espouse some metaphysical stuff around karma and Rebirth and enlightenment and but he specifically said to people, hey, you don't take it or leave it try it up for yourself and and so To me, it's a quote unquote religion that skeptics can and easily join and interestingly also a religion where the more Fundamentalist you get the more fundamental you get about what the Buddha said, the more

secular it becomes. Yes, absolutely. And I would also add that just to be clear in Susan's program and our curriculum and everything that we teach children, there's nothing metaphysical at every point, everything that you're pointing to in Buddhism that you were saying you could take or leave. None of that would ever be included or has ever been included. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And I think just to try to bring it back to kids and bring it back to parents and bring it back to schools, I think it's really important to remember that the issues facing schools are somewhat different than the issues facing

parents on their own. Because it's a school, we have to pay a lot more attention to how these programs are being disseminated, how they're being brought out. Can we actually research them? The research is really, really new. And so we can't overstate the value of the research or the state of the research, even though we're very enthusiastic and excited. And so the school is something that takes great care and we want to take great care of it. With parents, parents can go with their field and what is really pulling them in and what's drawing them and experiment with it and keep it fun because one thing that I want to make sure we end with is that this isn't all just sitting on a cushion looking at your looking at your neighbor. I mean one of my favorite stories about working with

kids are many of them have to do with the community and the different activities that are active and playful and singing and letting ladybugs go outside and then what happens when that ladybug goes or those grasshoppers go and a little lizard comes out and needs one and then how do you deal with that in the moment and those are making flags and singing songs and those are the kinds of things that we do in addition to the quiet sedentary practices that make this fun for everybody and have a lot of space and have a lot of enjoyment. And hopefully we just can have fun with it and it'll be a benefit. It's a nice closing note, Susan. Thank you. Thank you to both of you guys, really appreciate it. If people want to learn more about each of you individually, this is what we call the

Plug Zone. Can you just guys go into Plug Mode and give me everything you got in terms of where people can go to learn more about you, what the products you've come up with, including books that you think people should reach out for, et cetera, et cetera, Susan, you can start. Okay, so my website is my name. It's Susan Kaiser Greenland.com, or else you can get to it through innerkids.com. And there's a couple of books out there.

There's The Mindful Child, there's The Mindful Games, and then there's these very cool activity cards that have the games on it. My website is also my name. It's just onikaheras.com. And I have a page there with a mindfulness for children page that has some guided meditations and my book, my children's book, I Wonder and Mindful Games is, can

be read about on Susan's website. We went in so many directions, I wouldn't have foreseen but that is the benefit of mindful conversation. Keep up the good work and thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier 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 Efron, Josh Cohen, 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 ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey. and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com-survey.