Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 145: Light Watkins, 'Simplify the Approach'

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

"There was more snowstorms than meditators in Alabama when I was growing up," said Light Watkins, who started a career as a working model before switching gears to become a yoga teacher and then dove into the world of Vedic meditation. With his newest book, "Bliss More, How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying," Watkins, who is now a meditation teacher and lives as a nomad, said his mission is to "simplify the approach" to meditation "and help people start something that they can get excited about." 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.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I'm Dan Harris. Great guests today. I often get asked about the difference between mindfulness meditation and TM or transcendental meditation. This week we're talking with teacher named Light Walkins who teaches in the Vedic tradition,

which is the tradition out of which transcendental meditation emerges. And he's been doing it since the late 90s. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about him because he's so damn good looking that it's annoying, but other than that, he's fantastic. And I think you'll love his story and what he has to say about what meditation's done for him and for many of the people he's worked with.

So, we'll get to light in a second. Also, you'll find out how he ended up taking the name light. We'll get to him in a second. Let's do your voicemails first, and per usual, the caveat, I'm not a mental health expert or a meditation teacher, and I haven't heard these calls in advance. I just do my best to answer them from the standpoint of a writer and reporter, and practitioner. Here we go, call number one. Hey, Dan, I'm 17 years in the same job,

looking to get out, make a change, but really don't know how to proceed. How do you think meditation can help me in this effort, appreciate it, thanks. That's interesting. It ain't gonna fix all your problems. I've said that a million times. It's not like you start meditating and the solution will become radiantly clear. Maybe that will happen, but I certainly wouldn't guarantee it. What I do think is that helps you, I do think in my personal experience, that it's helped me make better decisions when it comes to my career

because I can have a better sense of what's ego noise and what's actually true. And don't get me wrong, I can still fall victim to the ego noise because it's pretty prominent at least in my case. But it just gives me a leg up. I think it gives me an advantage. And it makes me a little less, it makes me better at hearing, you know, I seek and I hope he'd other people's advice. And so I'm a little bit better at just seeing when I'm getting defensive, when I've, when I'm not getting the answer I want and things like that. So this is the, I've been in the same job for 18 years.

So I get it and making a change like that is really scary. And, but I do think having something that is, that can boost your overall sense of calm, can boost your focus, can help you be less yanked around by all of the powerful emotions that come into play when you're talking about career career because it goes right to identity and it goes right to finances. It's a sensitive issue. So I do think meditation is a really useful way to kind of surf all of this stuff rather

than get engulfed by it. But again, it's not, you know, as regular listeners will know, I'm very skeptical of talk of some sort of miracle cure. So good luck. It's a big thing you're trying to do, and I do think meditation will help, but many other things will help too, like finding people you trust to give you good advice. All right, call number two. Hey Dan, it's Kathy. I love everything you do with meditation and TV. Thank you so much for all your work. I have a question concerning a comparison between meditation by focusing on the breath and

transcendental meditation. Would the benefits be greater through one or the other or not? I guess that's really what I want to know. I know that there's various types and these are two of them. So I'd be interested in hearing your opinion. Thanks, bye. So this is proof, by the way, that I definitely don't hear these calls in advance, but my very smart producers know how to pick the calls to line up well with the guest.

What, which is better for you, trans-adrenal meditation or mindfulness meditation? I, you know, I don't think there's really an answer to that. There's been a significant amount of science on both. From my point of view, there's been a little bit more scientific research done on the mindfulness side, but I don't think that means mindfulness is better. I just think that it's just that practice scientists have gravitated toward more probably because it's more secular. But I really do think it's worth if you're kind of Heming and Haing. I think it's worth perhaps trying both,

but I would give each a real shot first, because I don't think it's the type of thing you can do two days one, two days the other, and you have a sense of which one is doing more for you. I would give, you know, I would spend a couple months if not a year on each one and then make a decision. I am personally, well, I've never actually been trained in trans-dental meditation. I understand what it is.

It uses a mantra, which is a word you repeat yourself silently as a way to blot out discursive random ego-chatter, as a way to to blot out discursive, random, ego-chatter, whereas in mindfulness meditation generally, at the beginning, what you're doing is focusing on the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, and then when you get distracted, you start again. So there's really overlap in the vent diagram between these two, so there are similarities. But what I like about mindfulness is that the fruit of the practice really is this thing called mindfulness, which is the kind of self-awareness, the familiarity with the workings of your own mind that enables you not to be yanked around by your mind. So if you're able to see anger at the beginning rather than by the time it's become a tornado, you're less likely to spend hours and hours

acting in a blind rage. You might say one sharp thing, but then catch yourself, apologize, and let the anger pass. So, some of that, you will get some of that benefit in my understanding and experience of talking to other practitioners, and so forgive me, TM devotees, if I've got this wrong, I think you'll get some of that

benefit from TM, but it's not really the focus in the same way that mindfulness training is. I think in my understanding, TM has a different set of benefits that, again, also show up in mindfulness, but are a little less emphasized, which are around the sort of calming, focusing of the mind that a lot of people feel really I've heard it described as doing 20 minutes of TM a day feels like they got two hours extra hours of sleep or that they're accessing levels of creativity they haven't been able to access before. So I think there are compelling

cases for both of these and I don't think it makes a lot of sense to be overly sectarian about these issues. I mean, I just try to be clear about where I am, but I don't. We've had lots of DM folks on this podcast and I'm down with it. Speaking of TM, so as I mentioned at the top, TM emerges out of a Vedic tradition, which is another way of saying the Hindu tradition, whereas mindfulness emerges out of the Buddhist tradition. And so TM is literally a trademarked kind of Vedic meditation. There are these teachers, some of whom actually started out in the TM world, who went off to teach sort of a non-TM Vedic meditation TM. They do give away a lot of trainings, but most people have to pay, and it's a, I think

maybe a thousand dollars or something like that. And so Vedic, these Vedic practitioners who aren't within the TM world have more leeway to not charge that, so there's some folks who are drawn to that for that reason. Anyway, there are some pretty prominent teachers in the Vedic tradition, including our guest this week, Light Walkins, who's been, as his bio says, active in this space since 1998. He's also a yoga teacher and a former model, which we'll try not to hold against him. He's written a book called Bliss More, which is out right now, and he teaches all over

the place. He's also a nomad, or at least he is for now. He's just trying it out. You'll hear what that is when he starts talking. Speaking of letting him start to talk, let me do that. I'm going to shut up and give you Lightwack. Here we go. Well, nice to meet you. Yeah, you too. Thanks for coming on. Let me do that. I'm going to shut up and give you light walk and here we go. Well, nice to meet you. Yeah, you too. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. That's an honor. Well, and a privilege. Right back at you. Yeah, you have such a big megaphone in the meditation world.

And I've been in this world for about 20 years. So it's nice to see someone like you out here really popularizing it and making it accessible for people. Thank you for that. It's even I just for people listening because they can't see you. You've saved in this for 20 years, you look like you're in your late 20s. You know you're like my age. I started in the spirit world and it was incarnated. No, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, these things, is it causation, is it correlation? I don't know, but for whatever reason, I have been doing it for quite a while. You have a twin brother? I don't.

Well, that'd be the only way to really tell, right? It's the only control. And what's ironic about that is that I'm from the South and from Alabama, and I have a pretty big family, six of us, total, in my immediate family, then I have a half sister. Nobody meditates. I'm the only a half sister, nobody meditates. I'm the only one in my family that meditates.

So, how do they look? I'm often confused for the younger brother. I would imagine. And I'm technically the second in line. So, there we go. So how did you get into the meditation racket? I started in the Riverside church up on the Upper West Side. I was living in New York. I was working in fashion. I was modeling at the time. This is back in the mid 90s.

And I got, I was getting into yoga. And this is back, you know, when there were only two equinoxes, one on 19th Street and one up on an Amsterdam. Now the health club is like Starbucks. but I was going to the one on Amsterdam and I was lifting weights because that's what you do when you model. That's part of your job. Not a problem I've had. Yeah. And I noticed that these really attractive women were going into this group exercise room with no shoes on and these little rolled up things.

And so my curiosity got the best of me one night and I went in there and that's how I got introduced to yoga. And then, you know, back then, they didn't have these kind of, you know, weekend or whatever month long teacher trainings. They were actually pretty legit teachers teaching in the gyms because that's really the only place that they could teach. There weren't a ton of yoga studios. So I got introduced to meditation through yoga. And I would do all these different experiences, go to these yoga teachers houses and sit down and then eventually found the village voice classified acts. There was the meditation group. I think it was a Zen group

that I was going to up in the Riverside Church. So I started doing that and that was my first sort of formal introduction to meditation, but I never really felt like anything was happening. And, but for whatever reason, I kept going back because I just felt like it was a really interesting and odd thing to do. And you read all the, you know, the spiritual books, everybody talks about it. So you figure there's got to be something to it, but I just found a bunch of frustration. And then eventually I relocated to... frustration because you... Because nothing was happening. So I'm thinking, is it a situation where I'm having to

use my imagination or is there some threshold you have to arrive at? I mean, I'm asking all these questions because there's no Dan Harris out there to remind me of... Is there a teacher at the Riverside. There was, but it's she was more like a facilitator. I. And we were doing this thing where we would listen to music and we were supposed to feel the energy in air quotes, energy moving around the body. And I just never really felt like I was doing anything other than sitting there listening

to some opera sounding music. So anyway, long story short, I relocated to Los Angeles a few years later I started getting into the yoga scene there I became a yoga teacher and then I became the person leading meditations at the end of the yoga classes but at the same time I wasn't I'd never been trained to be a meditation teacher and that's one of the big misconceptions is that people think that just because you go through a yoga teacher training that you're also a meditation expert, but I got no it's like. It's like physicians don't get any dietary training yoga teachers don't usually get any meditation training, but everybody And everybody projects onto them, that person is a meditation expert.

So I'm leading meditations now, basically parodying what I've heard my teachers say, and feeling like a sham. Because again, I don't know if this is what's supposed to be happening or what the deal is. It's like the Emperor's new clothes. Everybody's talking about this thing. I'm on the procession as well, talking about it,

but I'm not having any kind of experiences. So eventually, I start practicing Vedic meditation. I got introduced to Tom Knowles, the Vedic meditation teacher who's been out between LA and New York, and I learned to meditate with him. Can you, can you, yeah. So Vedic meditation, which is basically

a generic form of transcendental meditation. So Tom was a TM teacher for about 30 years. A lot of those guys apparently went independent in the 1980s and they started teaching, but then TM said, look, whatever you can do whatever you want, you just can't call it transcendental meditation. So he was teaching under the moniker Vedic meditation, which means ancient Indian. Which means a meditation that comes from the Vedas,, which means ancient Indian, which means a meditation that comes from the Vedas, which is the ancient Indian body of knowledge from which we get yoga

and r u veda and and Vedic astrology and all of those different systems from. And so the basic premise of that system is that everything is connected, right? And that you can go beyond your surface mind and into that sort of oneness aspect of yourself within yourself, right? So again, sounds kind of flu flu, okay, yeah, whatever, oneness and you start going through the actual process. And it was the first time that I felt like I actually had a tangible experience of something other than staring at the back of my eyelids and I was hooked and became really enthusiastic about it started. Wait wait wait two per question. One, what are you doing in your mind and Vedic meditation? Right. What and what was the experience that you referenced? So here are the big differences in what I experienced with that versus what I was experiencing

before. Before, most of the instruction was really centered around body position, sitting comfortable, or sitting with your back straight, you know, and then some level of focusing your mind on a point or, you know, different verbal prompts. You know, let go of this, now visualize that, et cetera. Notice this, witness that. And with the Vedic meditation approach, the whole system is based around sitting comfortably.

So, and what that really means is just sitting with back support, sitting like you would sit if you were gonna watch television. And then you close your eyes, and the reason behind sitting comfortably is so that your body is not a distraction to the settling of the mind. And so when your eyes are closed, you're at the surface awareness, which is where everybody usually starts and that's where

the mind is really, really busy and racing and then you use a sound, which is collectively known as a mantra. It's a sound you were making in your mind silently. You're thinking it's not just silently, but also passively, passively. And this is a very, very important point, because if you go back and you read, say, Dr. Herbert Benson's book, Relaxation Response, which is the sort of groundbreaking research on that specific form of meditation, where he says you have a completely different nervous system and physiological state, it can get very rested and all of that. He uses the word focus, but he got that from

a transcendental meditation instruction. And in that body of teaching, they don't really use the word focus because focus is a different style of handling the mind and handling the mantra. So, but you can forgive him because he's not a teacher, he's a doctor, right? And that's what happens. So you use this mantra in a very, very passive way. And what that means is the technique is not centered around focusing on the mantra. It's about using the mantra to initiate a settling effect. So what does that mean?

It means you start off at the busy surface and then you introduce this sound passively. So basically instead of trying to stop other thoughts or exclude other experiences, you're experiencing that sound, and you're also aware of other things that are happening around you. And then eventually, without looking for this to happen, the mantra will cause the mind to start settling, which means in a real-world way, it feels like you're meandering away from your surface.

And you start having more thoughts which may feel like you're thinking about your to-do list or conversations or you start to feel like you're having dreams or you start to feel like you're falling asleep and eventually you can reach a state where really nothing is happening and I mean that literally you're not having any thoughts there's no mantra you're just in this kind of void feeling. Now you don't know you're there while you're there. So it's not until after the fact where you start to regain awareness and you think you've been sitting there for five

minutes and you look at the clock and you see that actually 15 or 20 minutes have passed. And you also feel this, this sense of energy or, you know, like you are being cradled or something like that. And it's a very, very different experience from what I had the three or four years prior to that when I was going around, you know, trying to focus my mind. And it's not to say that that's an incorrect approach. It's just that it didn't feel as tangible as the one I was having with the Vedic meditation approach. So I had my first tangible experience of something other than just sitting there, waiting for the time

to finish. And it just really blew my mind because like you, I consider myself to be a healthy skeptic. And I don't buy into things that are requiring me to believe in them or use my imagination. And so I realized that there was something to this approach. And so I did it again and hit that state again and I did it again. approach. And so I did it again and hit that state again and I did it again. And I literally went from being a reluctant meditator, you know, knowing I should do it because it's good for me to be coming an enthusiastic meditator. And I started shadowing my teacher around and apprenticing him. And I didn't even really, I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that I

wanted to be around when he was teaching other people because I wanted to see if other people were having the same kind of experience. And then a few years of that quickly passed. And then I had an opportunity to go to India with him and some of his other proto-jays and learn how to teach this stuff to other people. And I did that. I was away for about three or four months. Came back to my one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood and started teaching all my friends and my yoga students and everybody else was having that same experience. And I thought this is amazing.

And this is more about what the experience is. Yeah, it's just again allowing your mind to settle away from the busy monkey surface that people typically complain about and getting into this other state of being. This relaxation, what is it? It's a sense of oneness. It's a sense of nothingness. You're not really thinking anything. You literally are experiencing gaps in your thinking process. One minute, you're aware that you're rehearsing some conversation.

The next minute, you're still rehearsing the conversation, but then there was a gap in there that you don't know. The closest thing I can describe, I can use to describe it, is when you're sitting in your bed at night reading a book and you get to that one line in the book, time goes by and and you get to that one line in the book. Time goes by and you're still on the same line in the book, except now you can't really remember what you read before. That's happened to me on Ambien. Right. Exactly. So it's like a nature's sort of Ambien type of feeling, but it doesn't have side effects of taking pharmaceuticals or using other stimulants or relaxation things. You just feel good. It just feels really good.

And of course, when you go back and you look at the research and you see, oh, I'm getting serotonin or dopamine or whatever, all these different bliss chemicals, it kind of makes sense that that's kind of what I'm feeling. And so I started teaching this stuff, and I started doing that 12 years ago. I've probably taught 3,000 people now personally. And one of the things with Vedic meditation or TM is that once you teach somebody,

you keep in touch with those people and you can see them change over time. So you have a real world sense of the progression of what happens in addition to your own changes as a practitioner. And you see these amazing things, you hear these amazing stories, you see people from all walks of life who are having these very profound experiences. And so you know it's possible. And now I got to the point where it's just, you know, it's almost, it's obvious. It's expected that that's gonna happen at some point. If someone gets a chance to sit in a room with me.

And so a few years ago, I got approached by a random house and they said, can you put this into a book and I ended up writing that book, Blissmore how to succeed in meditation without really trying because that's essentially what you're doing is you're not you're not witnessing anything you're not focusing on anything you're not trying to do anything it's just literally you sitting there I use this generic sort of mantra which I refer to as a settling sound in the technique in the book what is the mantra ahum ah. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. Ahum. So, you'll find that in yoga circles,

Deepak Chopra uses it and it's 21-day challenge. But it's a primordial sound, which is what a lot of those mantras come from, is primordial sounds from the Sanskrit language. And meaning it does not arbitrarily assign to a meaning or like we have in the English language, like the word red doesn't necessarily mean anything primordially as this color that we now associate with red, but apparently in that ancient Vedic or Indian tradition,

all the sounds that were discovered through people meditating and whatnot have a sort of primordial essence, which means that they contain the vibration of that sound and nature. So a hum, or I should say the most common one is Ome. They say Ome is the sound of the universe, but what that really means is that it contains the vibration of the universe. Now, can you study this in science? Can you measure it? I don't know, probably not. I've never

seen any studies that say this, but that's where the whole system is based on. So if we're going to agree that anything in that system is true for us, then we have to at least be open to the possibility that it could exist, right? Even though technically we can't see it or smell it or taste it or feel it. But from my own direct experiences with using my mantra, which I can't really talk about because it's my own personal mantra that I got from my teacher, but it's there's a there's definitely an effect and and and and. And it's a beautiful thing. So just get back to the technique for a second. It sounds like at least at first there would be some effort because you have to have the

wherewithal to repeat the mantra to yourself. And then when you get distracted, which you will, I would imagine, you need to have the effort to go back to the mantra, right? So isn't there some effort there? Yes, that's absolutely right. There's some there's minimal effort, right? So it's not that you're doing absolutely nothing, but what happens is over time you become less mantra dependent because when you have the first few settling experiences, your mind,

as it does, because it's very plastic, it starts to recognize the patterns, and it starts to go there on its own with less and less effort. And so, after a while, you may find yourself having complete 20-minute meditations, which is the longest you ever want to do it anyway, where you don't even have a mantra. It's just that you sat down with the intention to meditate. And this is said to be close to the experience of, you know, how do you get a child to go to sleep at night? Maybe you sing them lullabies, maybe you, you know, read a story and things like that. And that's kind of like what the mantra is used for to induce a shift in the state of consciousness.

Why is 20 minutes the longest you'd want to do it? Well, Herbert Benson, back in the 1970s, what he said was that your body can only sustain that relaxation response for about 20 minutes. Now technically you can meditate as long as you want, but apparently when you go beyond 20 or 30 minutes, your body starts to revert back to your waking state of consciousness. So that was documented. I don't, I definitely like the fact that there are meditation studies out there that can verify a lot of things, but I think that a lot of these studies, you know, can be a little bit ambiguous as well because there's meditations of generic terms.

So when you talk about meditation, when I talk about meditation, when someone else who does crocheting meditation, talks about meditation, they can be all different things with different applications and different methodologies and different time lengths. But to the pedestrian observer, they think we're all doing basically the same thing. So, if you look at the fine print of the studies, Richie Davidson is doing a study on something.

He's probably studying something related to mindfulness. And if they're doing a study at the mind body, Benson Institute up in Cambridge, they're probably doing something based more on his technique of the relaxation response. And those are two different ways of meditating. And so one thing works in one way. I don't think it necessarily means it's kind of working the other way in the same way that, you know, if you're playing ping pong and I'm playing basketball, they're both sports,

but they don't have the same effect. This Vedic technique that you're describing, the TM folks, they say you can't, the only way you can learn is face to face with a teacher, but you wrote a book, so I would imagine you're saying you can learn Vedic meditation through the book. You know what's interesting about that is, again, there's a lot of sort of politics in the meditation world and If you really wanted like look at it objectively and and this is what I really appreciated about Herbert Benson's research a lot of people Don't realize this but Herbert Benson wasn't a meditator He studied meditation for 30 or 40 years which to say he was a Harvard

He's a hard card, a cardiologist. A cardiologist who wrote this seven research or he referenced it earlier. Yeah, it sold four million copies. Yeah, this is in the 70s and the early 70s. Early in the early 70s. Yeah, and you can find it like CVS to this day. That's right.

And it was, he basically did, he was looking at TM meditators and he basically gives you in the book, I remember it was one of the first meditation books I ever read. He gives you, he's like, just it was one of the first meditation books I ever read, he gives you, he's like, just say the word piece or one in your head as your mantra. He discovered that you don't need a TM mantra

in order to elicit the relaxation response, but all of TM's research is based on Herbert Benson's research. And he, for him, the relaxation response was a phrase he coined as the opposite of the... Of the stress response. a phrase he coined as the opposite of the stress response. Yes. That's right.

So, he saw that the stress response was the most excited the nervous system can become, and the relaxation response was the most rested the nervous system can become. And so, if you can elicit that through TM, he said, well, what else can you, the stress response can be initiated through many, many things. What else can initiate the relaxation response? So he started exploring, you know, can you say a prayer? If you're sitting comfortably and being passive in the meditation, can you do this? Can you do that? And he saw that the only things

that were required was comfortable seating position, being passive in the mind, and having some sort of point that initiated the, I told you earlier, he called it a point of focus, but in TM doctrine, they would never use that word focus. Because it implies effort. It implies effort. There is some effort. There is some minimal effort. Yeah, so what they say is they use least effort. I had a little bit of a There is some minimal effort. Yeah. So what they say is they use least effort. I had a little bit of a Friendly beef with this or misunderstanding over this word focus or concentration with Bob Roth I heard the interview. Yeah, so Bob Roth is the The main sort of TM teacher. He's out there. He teaches all the celebrities and meditation Bob

That's what Letterman calls him and I was saying wellically, you would consider a mantra, a concentration technique. And he got, he resisted that. I still stand by actually, for my understanding, it is a concentration technique in that it's not a mindfulness technique. You know, you are picking one thing, bringing your mind, you're centering your mind on that. And then when you distract it, start again, whereas mindfulness is much more open to whatever is arising. But anyway, we couldn't come to an agreement, and maybe you and I won't either. But I should know, I think that's the great thing about, you know, the fact that I'm not

associated with an organization, so to speak, is I can really talk about this very objectively. And if there's anything out there that proves whatever I'm saying to be inaccurate or that someone can have a better, and when I say that word, I'm implying a more enjoyable meditation experience. I'd be the first one to try it and then to incorporate it into my teaching. So far, I haven't really found anything that creates a more enjoyable experience than what I've been practicing and teaching. But that's not to say that this is the only way to do it, or this is the right way to do it. What I find, and what you've already kind of highlighted in your work,

is that people are struggling. People are out there really, really struggling to meditate. A lot of people don't really know what to do. There's a lot of a big PR problem, as you've said in the past, around meditation. And my whole mission has just really become to simplify the approach and to help people start something that they can get excited about because the only way they're going to do it on a regular enough basis to get the benefits from it is if they, on some level, feel

some tangible benefit from the beginning, which means it kind of has to be enjoyable to some extent, whether they're getting dates because they're meditating or there's some sort of kitchen table problem that's being solved in the meditation. And I don't have that much discipline to force myself every day into this thing, but just from my own direct experience, what I found is that when I started enjoying meditation, I became an enthusiastic meditator, and I'm not special. There's nothing special about me.

I'm from Alabama. There's more snowstorms and meditators in Alabama when I was growing up, and I was working out in the gym. I didn't have some long yoga history. My parents weren't yogis. I never heard about any form of meditation before I met my teacher. I just had an experience and I really enjoyed it.

And it was able to be replicated through other people from my teaching. And that was one life got really, really exciting for me. I have more questions about your life, but I just want to, I'll cut you off before you could fully answer the question about whether somebody can learn the Vedic technique without... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's people I've been getting reports. I kind of, I kind of bought into the same indoctrination of, oh, this can't be taught through a book. And the truth of the matter is, no one who is teaching meditation, including yourself, has mastered it through a book or an app, you know, everybody has a teacher. And of the, of whatever their teacher, if you're a teacher, you have a teacher. If you're a teacher, you typically have a teacher, right? So it just depends on what people want to experience. If you really want to understand the nuances of the technique, then you probably want to find a teacher.

But I don't think that means that you shouldn't have any exposure at all. And that's why I wrote the book that I wrote. And I've been seeing, I've been pleasantly surprised by seeing a lot of evidence that people are having these experiences. There was one woman on Amazon who said, this is my first review, I had to write a review because I just came out of this meditation and I went to this place I've never been before and she started describing it and it was exactly the same experience that

I had and I thought this is fantastic. So that means that now people don't have to be in a room with me in order to have an experience if they're willing to go through, you know, with reading a book about it or what have you. And that makes it more that that democratizes this technique that a lot of people think, well, I have to go to this thing and pay all this money and blah, blah, blah. Why do you want to make it to Alabama? Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, it's been all over the world so far and it's not a best seller yet, but it's getting a lot of traction and people who experience it are either super fans or, you know, they just they just don't know about it yet.

But that's what I've been saying. So I'm really excited about it. And I'm really, again, I'm honored to be here talking about it because I do appreciate the platform that you have and the perspective that you have on meditation. And I thought that could be a really interesting conversation from your experiences. Yeah. For sure. Listening to this experience. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think there's such an interesting discussion between the Buddhist

slash mindfulness world and the Hindu slash TM slash Vedic world. And yeah, I'm also of the view that you can do both, but I'm really of the view that a friend of mine, a former Fred and my former colleague who wrote a book about working out and losing weight was called Thin Spired. Her name is Mara Skava Kampo and just a great person and I was talking to her about working out and I was asking her some questions about a certain kind of workout and I wasn't sure if it was hard enough and she said, look, the best kind of workout you do is that is the one you actually do. Right. And so that's my view on meditation.

Yeah. There are lots of ways to train the mind, the fall under meditation, as long as you're not hurting yourself or others, the one that calls you, the one I think you should do. Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end on page six or do moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle,

and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to

fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App.

Tell me about you, like because you were a model and then you just got into yoga and then all of a sudden you jumped on the meditation train pretty aggressively. So what did the practice do to your life? How did it change you? What were you like back when you were a Mr. Lifting Wates model guy? How would you be different from the person sitting in front of me right now? You know what's funny is you hear a lot of really amazing stories about how people to transform such as your story, you know, having a panic attack on air and then getting into meditation, etc.

And you're very open about how you still have, you know, you still grapple with things like that anxiety and whatnot. I have to say that I haven't really had a whole lot of that in my life for whatever reason. I don't really understand why. But at least it's like six, five and a really good life. I don't know. But I used to feel shameful about it, believe it or not. That your life was so. That I haven't had more drama and darkness and all of that.

Happy family. Happy family. Yeah. And everyone's very supportive. But at the same time, you know, obviously if you're in planet earth, you're still grappling with with something. And I do have my, you know, battles that I fight and all that. But it's not that I'm coming from some stressed out place and now meditation has made it all better. What I would attribute meditation to doing is to

enhancing the what they call the still small voice, the voice of intuition and making it really loud and unambiguous so that I can take risks or what other people would perceive as risks. What I would perceive is me listening to my heart or following my inner guidance. And so I've been able to do things like, you know, graduate myself from the modeling or, you know, take the leap of faith and becoming a meditation teacher back in 2002 when really nobody was talking about meditation. That's early. My own family was, you know, embarrassed to introduce me as a meditation teacher. Really?

Yeah, of course. They would say, this is former, he's a former model, you know, embarrassed to introduce me as a meditation teacher. Really? Yeah, of course. They would say, this is a former, he's a former model, you know? They kept saying that for 10 years. He's a former model until people like you made meditation more popular. And now that they see it on morning talk shows and on the news and read it in Newsweek, then now everyone's excited about it and have a book out. Now that, oh, he's an author. But, you know, in places like- Was it light you're giving a name, or do you have a different name growing up?

So I had a different name growing up, and light became my name in 14 years ago. I can't remember the year, but the irony about that is that it wasn't associated with my work. It was literally born out of a conversation. I mean, I really identify with your whole attitude and perspective about these spiritual things because I kind of, I'm in this, I'm cut from the same cloth and, and I was having a conversation with a friend of mine one day in the farmer's market in Los Angeles. And we were talking about names and, you know, how in L.A. people tend to take on these new identities. And I

had met, I had met a few guys recently in the yoga scene who had changed their names. There was a guy named Mother, there was a guy named Truth, there was a guy named Pineapple Head. And it was really Pineapple Head that inspired the conversation because when he introduced himself, he had such confidence in his Pineapple Head. And that's just how L.A. is. People really own their stuff. And I was telling my friend this and I posed the question, you know, if you could change your name to something, some word like pineapple head, what would you say you had to do this? You had to change your name.

What would you change it to? And he said, ocean. And he said, what would you change your name to? And I thought about it and I go, I can't think of anything. I don't know if I would do something like that. And he said, well, just was the first thing that comes to mind.

And I said, nothing. And he started counting down, five, four, three, two, one. And I just blurted out light. And again, it was another situation. It started percolating. And it was that very familiar feeling, the same feeling I had when I quit my first job, the same feeling I had when I bought that one way ticket to pairs when I was, you know, starting out as a model, the same feeling I had when I moved

to LA from New York. And I recognized it as that, oh, you, this is some sort of inner guidance situation. I don't really understand it, but I know that when I followed it in the past, things just tend to work out for the best. So I just decided right then and there, I was going to do it. Somebody had told the pre-yoga bench pressing. Not in a million years. No. What was your name back then? I don't like saying it on the air. Okay. I tell you off the air. Okay. Fair, fair. Just because I just don't, I don't really, honestly, I don't care, but I just don't know if it's really all that important.

That's fine. And people sometimes ask me in conversation. because I just don't, I don't really, honestly, I don't care, but I just don't know if it's really all that important. That's fine. And people sometimes ask me in conversation and let's say it's John, right? Okay, so, but here's what you can understand. It's that I liked my name. It's a very unique, no, I had never met anyone else with my name and I really, really liked it.

So it wasn't an easy thing, an easy decision to make. And you know, no, they were the first ones to jump on board and was really great. Everybody calls you light. Everybody calls me light. Yeah, especially now And you know, no, they were the first ones to jump on board. It was really great. Everybody calls you light. Everybody calls me light. Yeah, especially now, you know, because it actually coincided with the emergence of Facebook. So I was able to change it on Facebook and everybody was on Facebook at the time. So people could just see, oh, like Watkins, like Watkins, like Watkins, and people just

started calling me that. So, but what was interesting is the first day I announced it, I was teaching yoga that morning, and I thought this will be a great time to make the big announcement. It was my birthday, I had a big yoga class, I was teaching, and so I taught the class, and at the end of the class, I said, okay, now from now on,

I'm gonna be introducing myself as light. You can still call me the other name, but I'm gonna be calling myself light because that was the advice I got from, you know, one of those guys who changed their mind. Yeah, just start calling yourself whatever you want. What do pineapple had think of light? Oh, no, no, I mean, he's into it.

He's into it. You still know? Ah, no, we're not like homies, you know? I don't, he's not on my text thread, but, you know, I know, I know, I know where I can find him. Okay, so he's still going by pineapple. Yeah, Absolutely. That's his name. That's his name. Okay. But in that class, this woman comes up to me at the end of the class and she says, Oh my God. Early this morning, my son, my five year old son Tristan came into my bedroom and said,

Mommy, I had a dream. I'm going to change my name. She said, what do you want to change your name to, honey? This is that morning. I want to change my name to light. The kid had a dream that he wanted to change his name to light. This woman who had only been in my class two or three times in the span of like four months happened to be there that day. And she told me that story. So again, stuff like that doesn't happen to me very often. But when it does happen, it's like, oh, well, maybe that's what I was supposed to do. I don't know, but it's pretty obvious. So you told me before we started recording that you told me something about your personal life now

that I'm intrigued because it seems like another example of you following exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Which is you, you've decided to become a nomad. Exactly. Yeah.

I just, I just turned 45 on May 30th. You're a youngster. On May 31st. Happy birthday. Thank you. On April, April 30th, I turned in my, I gave my 30 days notice to my, I had this beautiful two-bedroom apartment right in like the Venice, Santa Monica area of Los Angeles, I gave my 30-day notice, which meant I had 30 days to get rid of everything that didn't fit in a carry-on bag in my backpack. And so I started going through all my stuff, selling whatever I could sell, giving everything else away.

I challenged myself, no storage, no letters, no pictures, nothing, no certificates, nothing. And finally, my little carry on bag got out of there on May 31st. And now I have about a week's worth of clothes. And my meditation, little meditation teaching kit, which is just to tray in some incense and things like that. And in my laptop. And why? Why did you do this? I don't know.

It just came through and I just decided to go with it. And you know, a lot of things I've been dragging around for a long time and I started to get the feeling that my home wasn't really my home. It was just a place where I was staying. There was that combined with the fact that we now live in this shared economy. You don't really need to own anything or have anything. I'm not married. I don't have kids yet. So I admit that it would be a lot more challenging. Yeah. If that was the situation. Yes, kids are not minimalist. Right. At all. And so, you know, and I wanted to just, and also my book just came out,

Blissmore just came out. So I've been doing a lot of speaking engagements and I do a lot of retreats around the world. So I just figure, why not just try this out? And I mean, when else am I going to do it? You know, life is short. So all those reasons, I just said, let's do it. Let's at least try it out.

I can always rebuild. And if I have only lasts for a few months, I'll just get a place and start over. Where do you go? Like where are you sleeping tonight? How do you do up what's the plan? I stay in Airbnb's. I stay at friends places.

You know, it's only I've only been doing it for about a month. So so far I've been staying at friends and people with extra bedrooms and places. And I just pay people. It's not I've only been doing it for about a month. So so far I've been staying at friends and people with extra bedrooms and places. And I just, you know, pay people. It's not about saving money. It's just about really just being more in community and just being more available to opportunities to help people and teach people and whatnot. How far do you have this mapped out?

I mean, do you know what we're going to be next week? I don't. I don't. That's the plan. That's not freaking you out. The plan is not to have a plan. Well, you know, you said something. I remember this interview you had with the Dalai Lama, where you asked, you said, your wife is got upset with you because you were, you were telling her,

you were reminding her that, that the impermanence of life and now she can't be happy because she knows it's not going to last. And that really stuck with me. And, you know, there's all kinds of uncertainty that comes from not knowing what's going to happen next. And I think that's probably the biggest one that affects most of us, if not all of us, on some level. And I think if you can find comfort within that, the real comfort is inside, right? External circumstances change. And, and So if you can find that comfort and tap into it and expand it and grow it then I think you can be anywhere and you can be Completely fine, and I think that's the real superpowers So I have to attribute you know meditation with kind of at least giving me a foundation to take that kind of leap because I don't know if I would have done that otherwise

I think I probably would have succumbed to pressure from other people saying, are you crazy? That's not, you know, you haven't really thought this through all the way. Have people said that to you? No, man, actually, opposite. I think people are, people are, it kind of highlights how much people are kind of attached to their external circumstances for their happiness. It's funny. I don't find it attractive at all. Yeah. I, I, I, I can imagine you said before, when else am I going to do this? Right. I heard people, I hear people saying things like,

uh, about, you know, like that about, you know, running a triathlon or jumping out of a plane or whatever that I kind of get. But yeah, I, well but I was in Southern France, which is a high class problem with my wife recently, and I'm so happy to be home. Couldn't get the food I want. Couldn't stay on my routine the way I like to stay on my routine. So being nomadic strikes me as, maybe I'm just a terrible meditator, but I would have been

a good woman. Don't get it twisted. I love having a place to come back to. I love comfort and convenience and so that's part of the practice though, you know, is just taking it on the road. Can it survive on the road? You know, I might like Buddha with my family. Absolutely not. You know, I was talking to the your producer Lauren about this. You know, she was telling me about her relationship with her family and I was saying, you know, if you can have that spaciousness that we get from meditation when you're

talking to your mom, now you know, you've truly, truly arrived. And I'm not there yet. So your mom can still start you out. I love my mom. Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, no disrespect your mom. Yeah, no, no, that's just what they do. That's their job.

Their job is to worry about everything and to give you unsolicited advice. She mad that you're not married. She's not mad. I think she wants me to have kids, but she's not mad that I'm not married, because she's not married anymore. So I think she gets that. But, and I'm working on all that.

But that sounds like a good thing. That's like the one thing you can't really control though. Dan, that's what I've realized in my 45 years is, I can express interest and attraction for someone, but I can't force them to reciprocate that interest. I can't imagine that's been a problem for you. It's not, but you know, I have the luxury of choice. I have the luxury being pickier than I probably should be.

You think that's maybe a part of the problem? I'm being honest with myself, absolutely, yeah. And then you know, this lifestyle that I've chosen, you know, you're the meditation teacher, you're now nomadic. I mean, that's not really the grounds for the stable relationship. No, it is not. Yeah. So she's not going to go back and brag to her father, oh, guess what?

He's nomadic now. He can be anywhere at any time. He doesn't like to make plans. But you said before about how your life has been pretty calm. But I mean, the fact that you, it sounds like your mom and dad might have gotten divorced. Yeah, they got divorced. That's some turbulence. Yeah, but I recognize it at the time,

they got divorced really late. They've been married for 32 years and they probably should have gotten divorced 15 years before they actually ended up getting divorced. But you didn't sense that unhappiness when you were a kid. Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably one of the reasons if I'm probably in my therapy sessions, that stuff comes up and it's- This is on licensed therapy just so you know.

But for instance, on licensed therapy, the best kind. Yeah, it's come up. And that's something to take a look at as well. And that's the great thing about operating at this level of, you know, in the sort of meditation community, is you see that just because people meditate, even if they're like decades-long meditators, they don't have it all figured out. Their life is not perfect. And I know people who meditate, who are sex addicts, who are still smoking and drinking and doing all kinds of things. But that's not to say that that's who they are. But that's an aspect of them that is still for whatever reason playing itself out. And we're all just getting a little bit better. And so what did I get from meditation? I got the awareness that this is not a game of perfection

and it's cool. It's cool to have a therapist. It's cool to work on relationships and you know, try to figure all that stuff out and not put that kind of pressure on yourself because I think that's another problem that a lot of people face is on top of not having a level of inner comfort in their external

circumstances good or bad. We also compare ourselves to other people. People may look at you or look at me and think, well, these guys, they've had this meditation practice for however long, they've got it all figured out. I'm happy to tell people I don't have it all figured out. Well, I think that's good. I see that as a strength on your part because when I'm sitting to tell people I don't have it all figured out. Well, I think that's good. I see that as a strength on your part, because when I'm sitting with meditation teachers,

I don't usually bring people like that on the show, but when I hear from meditation teachers or spiritual leaders that they never get into a bad mood or that they're not subject to the vexations of exogenous factors that that to me Life will still happen to you. We're all dying right. Yeah, we're all on a mission to not being here And and I think that the more real we are about that the more accessible the practices will be and The more will inspire other people and I tell people all the time when I'm teaching them I

Say that you know, you're you're you work at to bank your, uh, comedian, your, um, grandmother, you're, you're gonna have a bigger effect on getting other people to meditate than I am, because people look at me and they have all these assumptions. They hear the name, they see the profession, they see all he's a nomad. Of course he meditates. Of course, this is easy for him, right? They don't see all those's a nomad, of course he meditates. Of course this is easy for him, right? They don't see all those decades of preparation leading up to these choices, but if someone is a grandmother or they work at a bank and they happen to set aside some time every

data meditate, that's a lot more interesting to their friend group, their circle of influence, because their friends understand their priorities. And they know that this person is a lot like me. And I know that they like watching the voice, or they like watching the game, or they like going to their children's play. And yet, they also spend time meditating. And I think that's amazing. And maybe that's something I should try. So again, that's why I think it's really important for people like you to continue doing the work that you're doing, because you're not getting paid for the 10% happier podcast. I mean, you couldn't probably sustain your lifestyle just on this podcast

or on your books, but you do it because you understand the importance of it. And the effect that someone like you has who's really open about your skepticism and about your internal experiences. And I think just more people need to hear that. Thank you. A couple more questions before I let you go. Can you say more about the book? Because I feel like I didn't give you enough of a chance to talk about it. Yeah, so the book, the book, Blissmore, is basically the book I wish I had after those couple of years of struggling to feel anything in meditation. And it really is a nuts and bolts meditation. And it really is a nuts and bolts manual for taking someone who doesn't know anything about anything or if someone has been practicing for a little while and they still feel as confused

as they felt on day one, taking them from that place to a point where they really feel like they understand meditation in a comprehensive way. So we talk about every single angle of the practice. Nothing is arbitrary, right? The way you sit, the times of day you do it, the types of thoughts you have, how you handle certain thoughts, none of the thoughts, how you handle things like sleeping, looking at the time, or monitoring the time. All of these things can have an effect on your internal experience. And most of the, of the sort of conventional approaches to the meditation, I teach the opposite. So I tell them not to judge anything that they've experienced up until this point as being a credit or discredit to their ability to meditate and just to go into it with an open

mind, have the experience and see what happens, engage everything on your own direct experience. Don't even take my own work for it. Just follow the instructions, split test it, test it against what you've been doing and try what I'm asking you to do. And you'll see it for yourself if it works or not. And then if it does keep doing it and if it doesn't, try whatever else you're doing. Let's do what I call the plug zone. And then if it does keep doing it and if it doesn't try whatever else you're doing. Let's do what I call the plug zone.

Let's just tell us about both your books. Because I knew you had a self-published one earlier and where we can find you in social media. I know we can't tell us where we're going to find you in the world five minutes from now, but where virtually we could find you. So you can track me at my, mostly on Instagram, Light Watkins, L-I-G-H-T, Watkins W-A-T, K-I-N-S. You'll find me online, LightWatkins.com.

The book is, is Blissmore, How to Succeed in Meditation without really trying. That's the most recent book, and that's all about meditation. I've been saying it's like the four-hour work week for meditation, so helping you optimize your practice. Dimperous has been on the show. That's right.

And the other book that I wrote, the first book, is called The Inner Gym, a 30-day program for strengthening your happiness. And the premise of that book is that unlike what a lot of people say in the yoga community, I don't believe that happiness is a choice. I think that happiness is like a muscle that you have to cultivate and strengthen. And that is if you want to be able to tap into that in a real way, at times where, you know, the circumstances may not be favorable. So those two books are both available on Amazon. And yeah, and I'm now touring around giving talks which I call meditation for non-meditators and so maybe I'll be in a city near you on one of my talks. I like it. You talked about yoga. I'm still in the beginning stages of my yoga practice.

I'm struggling with Bukkasa and a crow pose. Yeah. Where are you doing your yoga with at a studio or are you someone coming to you? I have, there's this amazing, she deserves a plug, she just gave her brother a kidney, so she definitely does. Oh wow. Jade Alexis, you can find her on social media if you look for her, she's got a great Instagram account. Anyway, I was going to the Equinox across the street here years ago and she was teaching spin classes

and I thought she was really mean because she was screaming at us and my wife at the time I thought needed a trainer so I asked her if she would work my wife and then I realized that she was like really sweet and so I started working with her too once a week she'll come kick the crap out of both me and my wife. And she's a former Golden Gloves boxer. She was teaching me boxing and strength training and cardio. And then she asked if I wanted to start doing yoga. And I've always been against yoga, but because I really like Jade and she's cool, I thought

if she's doing it, maybe I will do it. And why were you against yoga? Because I don't know, because I'm an idiot. I don't know, because I'm an idiot. I don't know. I see all the all the stuff around yoga. I think is part why. And now so I don't I do a good of classes once in a while, but most of what I do is with her and, um, yeah, I really, it's helped me a lot with flexibility and and posture and because of my posture is terrible. But I've still, you know, when people say to me I'm bad at meditation, I kind of disregard that because everybody's bad at meditation. It's about at least myfulness meditation is about just getting distracted a million times.

But you can be bad at yoga and I am definitely bad at yoga. But I'm really bad at yoga. Well, you know, I think I don't know if there's Denzel Washington, some movie he was in, the woman was like, oh, I'm bad at yoga. Well, you know, I think I don't know if it's Denzel Washington, some movie he was in, the woman was like, oh, I'm bad at swimming. He says, you're either trained or you're untrained. And I think it's just the process of becoming more and more trained. I have one question for you. What have you now gleaned about meditation from having facilitated all of these interviews with all of these experts, combined with your own direct experiences. Has it changed much at all?

Or do you, how do you feel about the practice now? I mean, the core insight for me that I definitely retain the one that got me interested in the first place nine years ago and that I talk about it incessantly and it comes up on the show over and over again is something that is inherent in the titles of both of your books. The Intergem and Blissmore, which is that the mind is trainable. Yes.

And I just think that is, that's the gospel. I think the gospel literally means good news. Right. That's the good news. And some of my good news, it's not revealed with me there. It's just the truth about the nature of our brains and minds. And just going around telling people that it's loudly and in as many formats and in many ways possible is that's my job on the planet. I think that and being a daddy. Are you going to go ahead

and become a meditation teacher? Like do one of these trainings anywhere? So there are levels of being a teacher, right? So specifically, I can only speak with some authority about the school in which I've been trained, which is kind of old school Buddhism, teravada Buddhism. That training process is really intense. Really, really intense.

I mean, and you know, guys and women who are, you know, the senior teachers in that tradition have done years of silent meditation retreat. Right. I've done a reasonable amount of silent meditation retreat and I can give instructions to beginners. But, you know, in this tradition, you know, I'm married to a physician. My wife has so many years of, she not only did pre-med school, but then med school, and

then I think five years of post-med school training and residency and fellowship. The meditation teachers in the Teravada school, they have comparable levels of rigorous training. So I'm not, I don't think given that I'm almost 47 years old that I'm going to have the time to do that. But I think on some level I'm a teacher in that I can speak up on. On people too. Yeah, I'm a gateway drug.

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And I think that it is important to have people like that out there who are just kind of shepherding people into the door and reminding people that it can be cool or it can be accessible or useful for them. And they're real world ways. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. Keep up the good work. Thank you, too. accessible or useful for them in their real world ways. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. Keep up the good work. Thank you, you too.

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.

tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.