Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 197: Escape from Zombieland, Koshin Paley Ellison

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Human beings are wired for social connection. Sadly, thanks in large part to the internet, mobile phones and social media, we are seeing an increase in social isolation. Zen teacher and psychotherapist Koshin Paley Ellison refers to this diminishing of social interaction and intimacy with other individuals as Zombieland. In our conversation, and in his book "Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up," he hopes to help others rediscover their values and discover a way to truly live life to the fullest. Plug Zone Web: https://zencare.org/ Books: Wholehearted: https://www.amazon.com/Wholehearted-Slow-Down-Help-Wake/dp/1614295255/ref=sr_1_1?crid=KDFHIQH761J0&keywords=wholehearted+slow+down%2C+help+out%2C+wake+up+by+koshin+paley+ellison&qid=1563975290&s=gateway&sprefix=wholehearted%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-1 Awake at the Bedside: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1614291195/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 Zencare Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zencare-podcasts/id369948549 Instagram: @koshinpaleyellison Twitter: @koshinpaley Facebook: @koshinpaley ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby this is kiki Palmer on amazon music or wherever you get your podcast from abc this is the 10% happier podcast i'm dan heros my friend kosian payley elison has this thing where he talked about how we all live in in zombie land yeah humans are i should say wired for self-centered disselloppism or as as the the writer David Fuster while us once put it We we live all of us in these skull-sized kingdoms but Cotions point is that in this era of

mobile phones and social media it puts these you these ancient self-centered impulses on steroids. We're all kind of just walking around in our own little worlds. And his answer is, and we've done plenty of podcasts on, you know, how to manage your relationship with tech, but his answer is a much more holistic, which is this word intimacy. That is a tricky word. It's encrusted with all sorts of cultural clichés, but Cotion really defines it as in a very simple way, which is, and I'm using, I think these are exact words here, completely allowing yourself to be wherever you are in a spontaneous way.

So this can be with your romantic partner, your colleagues, the barista at Starbucks, it doesn't really matter. And Cotion's goal is to do for intimacy what's already been done for mindfulness. In other words, to make it a widely aspirational skill. He is the co-founder of the New York Center, Zen Center for Contemplative Care. One of the many things they do at the Zen Center

is train people to volunteer in hospices. You may have heard me talk in the past about how my wife and I went through their training and as a result became really good friends with Cotion and his husband Chodo who's also who's the other co-founder of the center. Chodo and Cotion were on the show together back in episode 17, but I wanted to bring him back for this episode because Cotion has this new book. It's called Whole Hearted. Subtitle is slow down, help out, wake up. I should say a lot of people come on here who are friends, but Cotion's a, and especially close one.

He and Coto were at our house for dinner on Sunday. I was sweating next to him on a bike in, in a spin class last night. And this interview is, I think, as a consequence of our friendship, really candid and really revealing. We talk about concepts I've already mentioned, like zombie land, intimacy, spontaneity, also something called healthy embarrassment.

And he opens up in some ways that I find quite brave and admirable about horrible things that he endured when he was a kid, and how he recently had a super aggressive troll who was recently arrested. A quick note before we roll here, Cotion has some talks up in the 10% happier app that are worth checking out, and they relate to stuff that we talk about on the show today. If you've missed relate to stuff that we talk about on the show today. If you've missed the Talks section on the app, go check it out. It's a new feature.

It's basically these short talks for five, 10 minute zaps of wisdom. And yeah, you can go check them out in the app. Anyway, enough yammering for me. Let's listen now to Cotion Paley, Ellison. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Congratulations on your new book.

Thank you. What is Zombieland? Zombieland, for me, is the way that we are just like moving around in our life. You see bodies moving, like I just came from 23rd Street and you see people, they see the bodies walking on the street, but they're engrossed in distraction. And they're just like hungry. And if you look at their people's eyes

when they're looking into their phone, as they're walking, and just like, you can almost feel like the zombie quality of it. It's like they're going to like, what they need to eat, the brain that they need to eat is inside the phone. And it's heartbreaking and amazing. And I saw this person this morning coming out of Starbucks on their phone with their latte or whatever it was, like, ah, and so they bumped into someone walking down this street and they were like,

you know, you know without even turning away for one second. And it was my demise as well. Just like, Yeah, and it's just how it can be. Why was this so important for you to invoke Zambi Land right at the front of your book? That was so important for you to invoke Zombie Land right at the front of your book. Well, for me, it's one of the things that I'm most concerned about, and I feel

that in my practice as a Zen teacher and as a psychotherapist and as a contemplative care person, I feel that see it all the time that this, the blinders feel thicker than ever, where people don't want to see really what they see. And it's almost like that the shield, it's like a shield over people's eyes and it just feels heartbreaking and yet there's this incredible hunger.

And I feel like it's actually one of the reasons I would inspired me that kind of zombie-like quality that is taking over. And that's why, like in the book, I talk about, you know, the how pervasive social isolation is and how people are so fragmented and not actually connecting with the people who they really care about. And it's one of the pandemics of our time. And I think that there's no mistake that, you know, all of these zombie TV shows and movies are constantly in people's minds. And zombies actually come from one of the origins of the term come from actually come from one of the origins of the term come from orphan children, where they're just like starving for father and mother, for warmth and care. And I feel like actually knowing kind of the archaic where it comes from is it makes it even more interesting.

Is that we're like a society becoming a society of orphans. Where we don't even know how to connect to our partners and to our friends and it's so sad. And we see social isolation, you know, the cost of it, it's leading to, you to, I don't know exactly the causal link here, but we see social isolation at the same time as we see rising anxiety, depression, suicide rates, especially among young people. Something's going on here.

And obviously, a lot of it can be linked to the phone and the social media apps on the phone. But it's also just the social media apps on the phone. But it's also just the way we live now, too. You know, bowling alone, that great book by the Harvard researcher came out before the phone. As far as I can remember, the whole idea that we now, this was a famous book about how we used to have bowling leagues, now we bowl alone.

And so this is this trans, this trans been going on for a long time So what do you think we can as an individual? Somebody listening to this what what can they do about it for themselves? Well, it's a great question and to me the key is to Really learn how to first address it and notice how our behaviors, the historical Buddha talked about that our actions are our true belongings. They're like, how are we actually functioning?

And to me, be able to feel embarrassed and have a kind of a healthy embarrassment about how we're functioning. And to just appreciate how much of it is covering our own vulnerability and how we hide because we're scared. And that is nothing new. And the what's happened is that we don't have the connections that we used to have.

So we used to be, you know, maybe 40,000 years ago, you know, in the cave with our folks, and of course, people are afraid. But now we're afraid and feel vulnerable, and yet we don't have anyone to turn to. And I hear this more and more, I was thinking about my friend, Tarona, and in her Tarona low dog she's this incredible physician midwife karate person she's incredible she didn't expect karate to like it in there okay she's incredible she's a martial artist and an herbalist she's like this incredible being and she was talking about when people come into her practice for primary care that she asked them

when the first things she asked is, so who are your five? Who are the five people who right now we could call and no matter what they would be here? And what she's been seeing since the 80s is maybe this is near the time when this really began to tilt is that she experiences many people now saying, well, my sister, and then they reflect on it and say, mm, well, she's really busy. And she said, and then the silence after that is always what moves her.

Is that people don't even often have one in a person who they feel even if they're married or live with children and they don't know who would really, when the chips are down, who would really show up. And so she writes on a prescription pad, you know, find her five. And so to me, that's one of the aspects also in the book that I talk about is how do you find your community and really work with your community. So if you're feeling that kind of isolation, how do you, you know, just feel your breath and really feel like what's happening in your

life and feel your isolation and realize how much connection and care and love is important to you and how do you widen out? By the way, this is not some foofy, woo-woo, foofy, woo-woo thing here. I mean, the, the, we're wired for social connection. This comes to us, we come by it honestly through something called evolution. And, you know, there's an expression,

and I, I, and sort of evolutionary studies, like a lonely monkey is a dead monkey. In other words, if you were lonely, kicked out of the tribe as an early human, you died. There's a reason why our bodies react very negatively to isolation because we are not wired for this. And yet, modern culture has designed us, has designed in such a way that social connections

have become weaker and weaker and more afraid and more afraid. There's so much in what you just said that I wanted to react to. One is I'm just thinking like who's my five. I mean, obviously my wife, you know when you're quite close with because she's now involved in the Zen Center and my brother. But it gets a little tougher after that. I mean, I do have a lot of close friends, and I'm just thinking like, who, which one of them would show up no matter what?

And for a stained period of time? And that's a, it's, you're getting as a dicer territory, and that says a lot about how we live now. And I'm lucky. I have two, I can say, for sure, we'll show up now and forever. My mom, okay, and I would say my dad,

but he's got some health problems. So that's three, okay, that's, but that's probably, I'm probably way ahead of the game and I'm having to think about it. So there were two things I wanted to ask you based on the four going. One is, if you could dig in on healthy healthy embarrassment because we've talked a lot on this show about the dis-utility of shame, but healthy embarrassment is interesting and it seems like a subtle,

subtle distinction that may be very rich. And then also I want to ask I just want to push you further on what we can, if somebody is listening to this and thinking, okay, wow, I can't, I can maybe come up with one, but I can't get to five, or I can't even get to one, well, how does one go about creating these relationships? So I've thrown two questions that you take and whatever word you want. Well, there are great questions. So healthy embarrassment for me is so important.

And one of the things that I just, you know, as I was just telling you that I finished doing the audio version on the book. And so reading a lot of these stories that I was sharing, I felt so exposed and a little embarrassed. Like I said that, I wrote that, and just to feel what that feels like. Like, wow. Whoa. And I felt so, yeah, like the exposure and it felt when I really allowed the feeling to actually feel in my body, I felt that, wow, I can feel that. And it didn't feel overwhelming, but at first it felt like, uh oh. But then the more I got curious about the feeling, I felt like, well, it's like kind of like

a little embarrassing moment. Wow. And to allow that, so I think that for me, that is actually maybe one of the, it goes into your second question about allowing ourselves to be exposed. It's like that beautiful SAU wrote, actually, for me about your body. And- So just to fill that in, I had until recently

a column in men's health. I made a pressing pause in that because partly I had of sort of a self-compassionate impulse that I have too much of my plate. But for most of this year, I've had a column in men's health and I wrote something in there about based on a lot of the work that I've done with you about coming closer to our mortality, knowing that we're going to die. We're going to get into that in this talk in this discussion. But I wrote a column

talking about how I notice a lot that I have this running dialogue around. Wow, I have way too much fat around my belly. And I was just in Miami with my family. I was like, you know, you were at the beach. It's crazy how much time, every time I walk past a reflective surface and I'm wearing just a bathing suit, that guy fall back into this dialogue of quite venomous self-reproach.

And then paired with that is, I'm nudging toward 50 as are you and Every time I look in the mirror. I'm like I can't believe how old I've gotten and one of the this is a multi-front battle but one of the antidotes Maybe antidote is too strong because that implies some sort of silver book here But one of the ways in which I've worked with this is to remember, okay, I'm going to die. We're all going to die. Maybe that will put things in perspective here. How much time do I want to spend worrying about my belly or my increasingly pointy face? Anyway, so that's, I just want to fill in the gaps there. Yeah, but to me, I, I So appreciate when you do that or others do that and then I feel that I can do that to me

It's like you know allowing ourselves to share Even where we have gone from shame to kind of reflection or shame to kind of a healthy embarrassment like oh there I go again like with my venomous creature inside that says all these nasty things. And to me, this is also where relationship is so important because if I'm willing to do that and you're willing to do that, then there's a possibility and a willingness to actually have a much more rich and what I think of as a loving relationship that we can love and appreciate one another in a different way and that we're not used to. And yet, as you were saying, we hunger for. We want to feel

seen and heard and experienced. And to me, it's like where I love, you know love what we can do and you're asking about, well, what can someone do listening is really pay attention to who in your life do you want to know you and make, have some experiments. So see if those relationships and make time for them. You know, many people, we also live in this culture where people hear all the time, especially in the lobby of our sins and our building, how are you doing while they're on their phones? How are you doing? How are you doing?

And they say, oh, crazy, how about you? Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, and they're flipping, flipping, swiping away. And it's just like that becomes instead of saying, well, it reminds me of the story of my dad that actually I'd talk about in the book about where they're in the grocery store by the tomatoes. And this guy says, oh, hey, Richard, how are you? And he said, good, how are you? And they said, and normally they've been seeing each other for, I don't know, 10 years. People in the grocery store that you see. And they always had the same exchange.

How are you? Good. How are you? Good. And this one day, he said, well, Richard, do you really want to know? Somebody, your dad's Richard here. Yeah. Yeah.

And my dad thought for a moment and said, yes, I do. And then he began to share this story about his wife's illness and the struggles with one of their kids and actually what was happening, all happening in the grocery aisle by the tomatoes. It was so amazing. And they both embraced at the end of it. These people who seemingly were strangers. And yet because they were both willing to show up, they were never the same again. And it's such a beautiful example or thinking about the coffee place I like to go to in

the baristas, like, I love learning about what their deal is and their lives and their kids and school and all of the different things that are happening in their lives, what's happening for the summer or whether they're gonna get to the beach or not. And it's about having curiosity about the people that are actually in your life. And people often find it so unusual.

I had to say I'm visiting us on the southwest side where we live and they were walking down the street and I was not going very far and people were like, oh, hey, caution, caution, caution. And, no, no, no, no, no, again, I was having all these interactions on the way to the next corner. And they're like, how do you know all these people? Well, they're like people and our neighbors.

Like to me, it felt completely ordinary. It's not like we were stopping and having deep soul searching conversations, but we were just recognizing each other and kind of like neighbor. Right. Did you stand out? You wear robes. No, you have to tell people.

No, but you're absolutely right. And I mean, I feel some maybe healthy embarrassment, maybe something border on the shame that, that, you know, I walked through my neighborhood. I don't know that many people, you know, and it's my neighborhood. And it doesn't take that much. No, it's so ordinary. Hello. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. And it changes the, it changes the moment to moment character of your life. Totally. It's like the people who ride in our elevator at the where the center is or in our house. You know, it's like, wow, like I've gotten to know so many people. You know, and to me, it's just fascinating to learn about who actually, they actually are part of your life. And it's so interesting with like kind of the screens is just

to me a metaphor and it could be a it's a symptom, but it's also an image of like we're just like looking somewhere else when we're actually where we are. Yeah. You know, I've really tried to train maybe this is because I've gone through your, you know, so the first time you came on the podcast, I didn't know you at all or your husband. I mean, it was the first time we met, I think. I think, yeah. And then we became friends, like pretty much immediately. And my wife too. And then my wife and I took your nine month training course

to become a hospice volunteer. I had a big effect on both of us in many ways. And we have continued to be friends. And I think it's multi-fectora, but part because I've taken this course, and I continue to volunteer in a hospice that I'm trying to do better as a frosty New Englander who is obsessed with this phone to actually look up and have relationships. Even if it's just a hello, goodbye type thing with folks in my elevator and my building or folks in the elevator here at ABC News where we're recording this right now.

And it just kind of changes the character of your day. Totally. To me, that's like, you know, why the subtitle for the bug is like, slow down, help out, and wake up. It's just about like so simple. In a way, it's about, oh, you're a person, hello. And that is helpful. Yeah, I think it's, I always like to appeal to the pleasure centers of the brain. And, you know, and I think the Buddha did this quite well. And, and having positive interactions throughout your day feels good.

I use this example all the time. What does it feel like when you hold the door open for somebody if you're paying attention? It feels good. So how scalable is that answer infinitely? And I mentioned before that my wife and I were on vacation in Miami not long ago. And the way it is when you have vacation with a kid, I didn't know this now, our kids

four and I am okay putting them on a plane, he's not like that annoying to the people around us. And so, we take them on a plane, we go to Miami and if you're going to go on vacation with a kid, you're going to sit in the pool all day. Turns out, and by the way, you're not going to have your phone on you because most phones are not waterproof that I know of. So, you're going to sit in the pool doing incredibly boring stuff with your son, and here's the thing. A million other people are gonna be doing the same thing, and you're gonna be, unless you

really are determined not to be social, you're just gonna be talking to a bunch of people you don't know all day long, every day, with their kids. As it turns out, and I say this, as again, as an avowately anti-social frosty new englander who doesn't like say a load of strangers I found it to be immensely pleasurable to sit there all day long in a pool trying to make sure my kid didn't die and looking at all these other cute little kids and just talking to parents who I had never met before and every day the new people. Yeah, so I mean, I think there's a lot to this. But that is, you know, you once told me that you were hoping with this book and with your career generally to do, and I hope I'm gonna say this correctly, to do for intimacy

what has been done for mindfulness. You know, and I get in that right? Well, it's the most important thing. Right. But we've been having, we've been having, there are all these books mine included that are trying to scale up mindfulness, get the idea out there, but there aren't many books about intimacy. And so you're, that's what, that's the, if I understand it, that's really your push. But this daily stuff is different from generating your five.

And so I guess I'm trying to get back to, and you talk a little bit about this, but how we can make sure we have a five, how we can make sure we have a five. How we can make sure we have really, truly, what I would think of as intimate relationships. Well, my hunch is that, and you know, I'm not a scientist, but that if we can actually change our everyday interactions, there's more likelihood that we're going to have richer relationships and have a base of support for when we need to really cultivate deeper relationships like the five that we're talking about.

And to me, the people who are so tight in their bodies and so tight, they're not even intimate with themselves. They're not even kind of relaxed in who they are. And the other day, I was teaching a group of 90 physicians and they're in this wonderful training program and we're doing this exercise that this experience where people are crossing the line for different reasons. Oh, can you just describe what crossing the line is?

Yes. So crossing the line is a way of understanding who you're with. And so, for example, the whole group will stand on one side of a room. And there will be a line, a literal line or not a literal line. And so someone will say, please cross the line if you identify as a physician, for example, and they'll cross the line, and then look back. And so the people get an experience of looking at each other in their difference. And, you know, please cross the line, if you have a meditation practice, and so some people cross the line or prayer practice,

are different things. And so we were just exploring. I did this exercise with you once on a retreat as part of the hospice training program, and it was really intense, like, cross the line if you've lost a child, cross the line if you've ever been homeless. And people stepping across the line

why just never would have imagined. Right. Yeah, it's very intimate. So it's like I create a, you know, I think if it's held well, it really shows our vulnerability. And so it requires a lot of trust and a lot of work. I of course have this, like the whole time I was in the training, I love the training in many levels, but of course I had this constant dialogue of rebellion and complaint about being forced to do these

group exercises just to be on the record about that. But anyway, carry on famously so. Yes, Yes. And, but it was what was so interesting is that these physicians had the last question. I said, you know, who please cross the line if you feel that you do not have a life that's integrated. And it was so, I mean, even now it's so moving. and everyone across the line. What are you, everybody's making, defining for themselves what they mean, but what you mean by integrated. They define for themselves.

And so many people lapped. It was that one. And so we talked about it afterwards, and one of the things that we explored was that how it meant so many different things to most people, but most people felt like that they didn't, it had to do with relationships and they felt like that they did not, they were not living a life that had really anything to do with what was most important to them. I took it to mean like you're not showing up as the same person at home as you are at work, as you are at your volunteer work, etc.

Well people talked about things like that as well as they didn't feel like they were treating their partners, how that what with the values that they feel like are most important, they didn't feel like that they were treating or actually living a livelihood that actually was imbued with those qualities that actually they feel like are most important and they're like put like the gauntlet down for it. And it was so moving. And so to me is kind of And it was so moving. And so to me, it was kind of, so we're talking about intimacy. So I feel like intimacy, in other word, we could call it, is integration. And so that kind of will, willingness to really appreciate our diversity in ourselves. And that we have parts of ourselves that we want to hide, parts of ourselves that we

want to never see the light of day. And we also have all of these things that we really care about. And how often are we actually living those things? And I feel like that more and more, and I think that that's I feel like that more and more, and I think that that's... What's so missing for so many people? But am I supposed to go around telling everybody my deepest darkest secrets all of them? That would be insane, right? No, but the willingness to have certain relationships

where you feel like that you could. And, okay. But again, that goes back to sort of developing your five or your 20 right below the five or whatever where you can be honest, open. Yeah. And I think that the more we can be a little more transparent, it doesn't mean we have to like share everything with everybody that would be totally unhelpful.

But learning that we have the capacity and can share what we want to share when we want to share it, and that we have the capacity and willingness to do it. And to me, it's just an ongoing investigation. And to me, it's one of the things that makes life so dynamic and that we can practice being curious about what's actually happening and how we're relating to it. How do you define intimacy? I know this is such an important concept for you.

When I hear the word intimacy, I think of romantic intimacy. Yeah, I think it's known for that. But for me, it's about completely allowing yourself to be where you are. And spontaneous. And it's a practice to me. And to me, when I've, you know, when I met this one teacher I was studied with in Japan, you know, one of the things that I felt so intimate with him, I didn't speak Japanese and I was living with him in this kind of remote temple and the outskirts of Hiroshima. And we never spoke the same language. And yet I felt completely intimate with him because we were completely in the experience

together. And we spent weeks and weeks together. And I would go with him no matter where he went, I would just follow him around. Why were you doing this? For Zen training, just to learn more deeply about Zen. And so he was this incredible teacher. And so I was just following him. So we wake up really early in the morning and then we would you know sweep all the temple grounds and then we would, the five o'clock we would be sitting meditation and then we would do a chanting thing and then we'd have breakfast and then the next thing. And so some days we'd go out for a boy scouts. He was a boy scout leader as I surmised later on. And so sometimes we would be building forts and things like

that. And other days we would be going intending to someone who was very sick and just sitting with them. Or we'd be doing a funeral or all kinds of different things or just, you or just visiting another temple. And to me, what I learned from him was that he was completely himself everywhere and felt so available, no matter where he was, and whether he was doing, you know, basically doing the dishes or cooking eggs, or building forts or sitting on our sweeping or whatever it was, he was completely there and spontaneous and available and interested. And so to me in many ways that you know he was a beautiful image for me of what intimate life can look like.

It felt like he was intimate, like when we would go for these long walks, intimate with that. You know, just wherever he was, he was completely there. You use the word, and it's a word that I don't think a lot of people would put, would pair with intimacy, use the word spontaneity or spontaneous. Is I understand it? That's a pretty important word in the Zen tradition. Can you hold forth on that for a minute? Yes, spontaneity is a hard word to say.

It's just the willingness to be like, what's near, what's next, what's now, what's now, what's now. And so the idea is that we're not living in the life of just our brain and just learning how to be completely wide in our experience, so that we're connected to the vast experiments of life. So if I'm just looking at you and just kind of, what is he gonna ask next and how am I doing and how do I sound or whatever,

which actually I'm not thinking, but I could think. But to realize like, well, we're in this like really strange while the room right now with like a fish bowl But to realize like wow we're in this like really strange Wild room right now with we're like a fish bowl and we're maybe they're doing experiments You know in the next room and what are they doing and who is that person actually? That's Ford are in turn who's recording us for Ford But it's so looking at us through a glass wall, we're in a studio with like padded walls to make it the sound good. And we've got all these weird microphones set up.

Yeah, it's a strange looking room. I'm so used to it, but yes. But just to like kind of widen out. And so to me, this spontaneous thing is also just like being where you are, then you're like, wow, check everything out. Wow. And suddenly, it's a different world.

And so then what I do and how I am feels totally different. I remember during the course of the, and I've invoked this a lot, and I probably will continue to the nine month, it's called Foundations, that's the training you do in order to learn how to be a volunteer in a hospice. And in the course of the foundations training,

you talked about Spontanati a lot. And it's actually quite important for me as a morning television anchor, right? I need to be there at a wake, at a quick situations, and have a quip ready, or in a lighter situation, or in a lighter situation or in a heavier situation, be aware if I'm doing a live interview of somebody saying something I need to be able to get them to clarify that if it hasn't been clear, I'm keeping the audience in mind, same with a podcast.

It's really about, I often don't plan, I have nothing, no notes in front of me right now. Sometimes I do, but since I know you so well, I don't have notes in front of me right now. So I'm really trying to be spontaneous you so well, I don't have notes in front of me right now. So I'm really trying to be spontaneous in the opposite of that, and this is something that I've been guilty of and continue to be guilty of a lot. It's being so stuck in my head, planning my next thing, or thinking about something totally unrelated, or thinking about, wow, my pants are tight. I can't believe I ate so much Mexican food last night or whatever.

You know, some of that's gonna come, but like how stuck in that are you really? And how quickly can you make yourself available again? This spontaneity is actually really important. It's not just like how good are you at improv comedy on Friday nights. It's really like how good are you at life? And to me, it's actually related to life itself. It's just like I think about we both have a love of cats. And just like

the cats are very spontaneous. Like they're just like kind of are always actually in the present. I feel like my cat has some malice of four thoughts and real pre-planning before he drinks out of the toilet. has some malice of four thoughts, some real pre-planning before he drinks out of the toilet. I don't know how spontaneous that cat is. You met Toby, he's not smart. But anyway, carry on. Yes, I take your point, General. He's a special cat.

He's a special cat. I think Bianca thinks he's literally, she's a physician, so she actually thinks, and she may be right that he's not getting enough oxygen to drink. That's definitely possible. No, I've lost my thought. Right, that was two spontaneous there. Yeah, it's how, you were talking about cats.

Look at them. They are generally speaking quite spontaneous. They're not doing a lot of of like, ruling the past. But I think actually even like saying, like I lost my thought is that kind of spontaneous to me, like I don't feel ashamed of it or like, oh, wow, I lost my dream of thought there. And so just being willing to actually share what's happening

with yourself first, at least, to know how, like I have no idea what I'm gonna say next. And now I have no idea what I'm going to say next. And now I have no idea where I'm going. And yet, I'm totally willing to show up in it with you, in this case, and Ford and Ford. It's massively important in a hospice context and frame. Yes. I was so unaware in training with you to show up at the bedside of total strangers who are dying and their family members are sometimes in the room too. So you're interacting with them too. How this idea of spontaneity and how you are going to be confronted with your own stuff in such a big way. In my case, my need to be liked. I'm always doing the special dance to be liked. Or whatever it is comes up right in your face in these moments. And so the spontaneity as a skill

which, again, is part of intimacy as a scale that you can build, and again, I'm going to say this, is not just something you should do because it'll be better for the world, is something you should do because your life will improve back to my invocation of the pleasure center always. This is really important. Yes, and I think that, you know, it's like our secret mission of the foundations and good-tumblet of care training is to get people to be with sick people and dying people. So that actually they can face what they're afraid of in relationship so that they can be

spontaneous and intimate with the people in their neighborhood so that they can actually realize, oh, like all the things I was afraid about, maybe are completely controlling me. And my normal interactions in the elevator, even in the deli or the grocery store or like my dad by the tomatoes, you know, it's like all of these places in our life where actually our life happens. You know, the other day, there was a woman who came to meet with us and she was talking about missing her mother who had just died. And she was saying it was it was the silly text messages that her mom would send. And it was the way that her mother, what she missed most was actually when she

would go over and spend time with her mother, it was the annoying way that she would take a really long time to decide what to order on the menu. And she said, I just wish that I could have that time back because I miss her having so a struggle because actually she just enjoyed so many things in the menu, she couldn't decide. And for all those years, I was just irritated and I miss it. And it's just so interesting to think about how the things that were irritated by or that we invest so much energy into not being with people. Are oftentimes the things that actually are places where we can actually get to know someone. One of the things you do in this foundation training had a very positive impact on my marriage because my wife and I did it together and you know I think for me I have a lot of

social awkwardness or at least I feel. I don't know if that's the way it comes across. And I think it was showing up at points in, I was bringing that into the, into the marriage and still do. So it's not like we took this course and everything was, you know, like a weird living in Brigaduin all of a sudden. But it helps. And one of the exercises you do is truly awful. It's called a dyad. And I'll put the emphasis on dy because I often wanted to die while doing this, but it is also really revelatory as well, which is you have two people, usually it's two people,

sit across from each other quite close. You're in chairs, your knees are almost touching and you are not supposed to break eye contact. And this is like incredibly challenging. You're doing pretty good right now. Well, I think actually it got me on my game. I don't want to, as my friend Sam Harris jokes about this eye contact thing and that he,

when he first started getting into meditation, he really held people's gaze as a, I don't know, anyway, I'll let him tell his why he does that. But he would talk about how occasionally he would meet somebody who was also in that game and that it felt like they were in, they were playing War of the Warlocks. And so yeah, he can get pretty intense and you could take it too far or whatever. But holding people's gaze is quite important And I traditionally wasn't that great at it and still I'm not, you know, I try not to be maniacal about it

Anyway, why do you do this? What's the importance of this exercise? Very often when people are Say that they're thinking about something, they look away. So, like, they're sitting there with you and you ask them a question, and then they look off, usually off to the left, top left, or top right, or bottom left, or bottom right from where you are. And I've always found that so fascinating. Like, what is that about? right from where you are. And I've always found that so fascinating. Like, what is that about?

And when I've asked a lot of people what that's about is that it's usually that they feel exposed because they don't know what they're gonna say next. And so it's the vulnerability of actually, I have no idea what I'm going to say next. And so we have to look away to protect. So it's actually some kind of archaic defense mechanism to not be exposed or not be intimate actually. Like, wow.

And like we were just talking about, like, I have no idea what I'm gonna say next and Let me think out loud with you And what I've learned from the bedside and being You know what I call awake of the bedside is really learning how name of another book you wrote slash edited. Yeah, very good book. Thanks. But to me, it's about really learning how to show up with our fear and just to learn how to feel whatever we're feeling without becoming what we're feeling.

And it's easy to do that by yourself. Or I'm going to do a meditation about it. I'm going to think about being with my death or I'm going to have a thing about being with my fear and working with those feelings. And it's a totally different challenge and to do that in relationship, to actually practice. Whoa. And there's a reason why the Buddha, in all his teachings, he never said, go off by yourself forever and do that. So he was always talking about the three aspects of,

I talk about them and the book about, awakeness, receptivity, and community. So how do you like really allow community and receptivity in it? And so we do these diet experiences to actually help each other remember, actually kind of going back to what you were saying earlier, that actually it feels good. It's difficult and might be women also not like it at the same time, but there's something about,

wow, just sitting with someone, not really doing anything, but just being together. Oh, I was freaking out at first, though, I was able to do it. And then I'd be looking at somebody who was also kind of freaking out their faces, like breaking out in like involuntary ticks.

You know, it's really a strange thing. You would never let me do it with Bianca. You didn't want us to sit next to each other or do these exercises together. But I did find, or I remember my son was really young at the time and I would sometimes do, I would curl up with him in his crib and just stare and see how long The staring contest could go. He was really good at it I don't know if I haven't tried it with him recently, but I did find that in my conversations with Bianca I was we were more looking at each other. She actually doesn't have real

Real I was the one with a more blocked real, I was the one with more blocked on the intimacy level than her. But I did find that that was creating greater connection as much as I actively hated the exercise while doing it. And over time, I relaxed into it. It's the first couple of times you do it. It's tough. Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownauer, we will be your resident not-so-expert-experts.

Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to I love my kid but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon

Music or Wondery app. We've talked about meditation a little bit. Let me raise it in this context. One of the things I thought I heard you say, as we've gone here, is that one of the steps toward having greater intimacy in your life, in other words, greater connection with other human beings, which are we are wired to need, is to be okay with yourself. And so in that context, is meditation really important? Can we do what you're talking about

without meditation, where is meditation really helpful? I don't know if you can do it without meditation. Yeah, so I'm not totally clear, but for me meditation is this amazing way to really learn how to be in your experience. I don't know another way that has taught me how to stay and widen out into my experience and soften into it, even what I thought I couldn't bear and To me, that's one of the key parts of meditation practice. It's actually learning how to bear what I think I

Can't bear so like for example and I talk a lot about this and the book about, you know, these moments of like incredible sadness and sorrow that I ran from for a long time, and that I needed to turn towards it. I had to turn the light towards where it isn't, as my friend Marie would say in her wonderful poems. Marie would say in her, whatever poems, Marie, how? Yeah. Yeah. You know, turning the light to worth isn't, is like to me what meditation practice is in some ways.

It's like that's part of it. So it's about allowing whatever's arising. So great sadness, great fear, and learning how to feel it and returning to the breath. It's incredible. I feel like in many ways I was talking with a student the other day about it feels like a superpower training and to actually learn how to feel whatever you're feeling and come back to the softness in your belly, two inches below your belly button. To me is like one of the most powerful ways to learn confidence that you can be with

whatever is arising and just come back. You're talking about two inches below your belly button. That's called the hara, is that right? If I recall from training. I don't think that's invoked in a lot of the meditation techniques that are my listeners may have heard before. So can you hold forth on that a little bit? Yeah, so the hara is a place of focus and then meditation. It's a place where they're very rooted in our body. And so it's almost thought to be the center of the body. And what I experience is that it allows my experience

of meditation to be fully embodied. So I feel like I'm really deep in my own body, where we actually happen to have this vessel for a time and allows me to have the experience of the breath in the body, deep in the body. And there's something very different that happens. I always encourage people when physicians are different folks that I have the honor to teach, that just if you've never done before, just put your hand there and just see what happens to the quality of your mind when you focus your attention to that place we call your horror, two inches below your belly button,

and just see what happens. So it's a kind of amazing thing. And for many years, I thought I was like really good at meditation, actually. And I felt like I was, I had sat many longer treats and I was kind of pretty full of it for a while. This is an example of healthy embarrassment.

It was, yeah, I thought I was like a, I was a really helpful person and really, you know, there to help other people. And it was actually through starting to do contemplative care that I started to realize what a jerk I was and what I actually would walk down the halls of the hospital where I was entering and feeling like, wow, you know, how secretly lucky I felt those people were that I was coming down the hall. Like it was almost like a nightmare. And the healthy embarrassment of just realizing, oh, I was trying to be rainbow bright or hello kitty with riding on top of my little pony into the rooms and bringing all this

good stuff. To me, it's about, I was not in my horror. I was like all of these ideas about my practice, about my meditation practice. I realized that I was after like 10 years of long retreats, and I was not even in relationship to where I was. I was not even in relationship to where I was. And I was being a total jerk. Look, I was not even realizing it. And it wasn't until, you know, going into my first room when I realized, you know, what, what an awful I was. when I realized, you know, what?

What an awful lot was really, you know, I was just, I was, but using it with this like shiny exterior as if I wasn't an and, you know, it was like going into this room and I couldn't see the woman. And I'd hear from behind me, hello, sexy. This is a story you tell in the books, actually. Let me just set this up. You had spent many years training as a Zen priest, and then you decided, really as a consequence of your grandmother's Mimi's death, which again, you talk with the tell the story in the book

about Mimi and you cared for her. You decided quite bravely, I thought, to care for her in her final days. You had a very close relationship with her. And she encouraged you and showed your boyfriend at the time now husband to really formalize this work of what you call contemplative care. And so you started working in hospitals, and now you're about to tell the story of the first room, you were one of the first rooms you walked into.

One, okay. Yeah, so... Yes, I walk in, and I'm there, I'm Rainbow Bright, and... ...it's... ...the healthy embarrassment. Yeah. And I hear from behind me, hello, sexy, and I felt mortified.

I couldn't believe like she could not be talking to me. And I turned around and she's like, come over here. She's like patting the bed. She's like, come closer, Boppy. And I was like patting the bed. She's like come closer, boppy, and I was like, oh my god. It's almost like that, like the whole veneer of the whole situation had cracked. And I remember like the pit in my chest. I feel like I can't believe this is happening. in my chest. I feel like I can't believe this is happening. Who was she? She was a patient in this hospital. And I sat down eventually and she was like, oh, you know, you're sexy and handsome. And this and that, I just, you know, I just felt if I could have put my

head in my hands and cried, I probably would have. But somehow I was able just to stay with her. And then I just, something shifted. Something shifted in me where, and I felt like actually I came back to my breath in my heart. Yeah, well. And the training kicked in. Yeah.

And I remember actually putting my hand there. And I looked at her and she's and I was saying so flirting huh? We're gonna go there and she's like absolutely. And so we she started I said so tell me about the first time you flirted. And she started telling me the story about growing up in Puerto Rico and being at the beach and feeling sexy in her bikini and how all these guys were really into her and how great that was and how And as she was telling the story, she totally came alive. She totally came alive. And how important that was for her. And she said there was always, I don't know if I wrote about this in the book, but she would talk about that.

She felt beautiful like the Virgin Mary, that she was like adored. And how important that was for her and how that actual, her sexuality was connected to her spirituality. And it was while she was saying that, saying this, I realized and looked at her and that her body stopped rust below her hips. And that the reason she was in the hospital was that she had both legs amputated due to diabetes. And I remember feeling the humility and maybe moving from shame to help the embarrassment to just realize like, wow, when I was so caught up in my rainbow brightness, which looks good. I didn't even notice who this woman is. And what she clearly is experiencing, and what I'm experiencing. You know, I have two things I wanted to say based on

that story. One is, um, it's really helpful for people to hear that you can do a significant amount of meditation and still be an idiot. And I mean, I see this every day in my own life. I'm not talking about other people here, talking about myself. And this is not a panacea, right? And many ways that's why I'm Mr. 10% and stuck with math jokes the rest of my life. But you know, that's, that really gets at what I was trying to get at with that title. And I think it's a really useful thing to hear, especially from a guy wearing ropes. The other thing is this whole idea of soft belly. So I don't meditate in the same style that you do.

I don't, the horror is not a big part of my daily formal practice, but you talked in the, in the foundations course about having a soft belly. And I noticed that I come back to that a lot, especially if I'm in a difficult conversation. So it gets me grounded in the situation in a way that takes me out of the racing mind and puts me right there. So I just wanted to make those two comments before I move on to a question I've been meaning to ask you since the beginning, which is you mentioned or since close to the beginning. You mentioned that you had some time recently where you were reading the audio version of your book, Whole Hearted, and there were a

few moments where you were thinking, oh, my, I can't believe I admitted that. What was the most shocking thing to you upon rereading or reading aloud your book that you admitted? Because you do talk about some very personal things. Yeah, so I think that for me it was a few things. And one was talking about the difficulties and that I grew up with, you know, experiencing and witnessing, you know, various levels of abuse, sexual abuse and physical abuse and

verbal abuse. And I witnessed that as a young person. And somehow just saying that is witness the right word? Some of it I witnessed and some of it I experienced. Yeah. Yeah, both happened. And there was something about just that sentence and saying it out loud. Something that I had never said before was incredibly powerful to me.

And there was just something about it. And I remember my friend, Matthias, who's the sound guy in the sound engineer, the producer of the audiobook, was also looking through the window where Ford is, and with a tear in his eye. It was just like, there was just something about, sometimes just saying what happened, without even needing to get into the detail of it is so poignant. And, and so powerful. And I feel that many of us live in shame around things that we've experienced and especially in particular men, I think that a friend of mine is on the

board of our organization called one in six about men who have experienced sexual violence, and that one in six men have experienced that. And so there's this, and there's so much shame around it. And to me, just saying it was really important and healing and the beginning of something new. And I've never, you know, I've given talks about it and I've done other work around it clearly. And there was something about it being written in a book that's out in the world that felt like an undoing spell. And I felt like that somehow, I think Kafka talks about it, that's like the axe that breaks the frozen ocean. And I felt like that. And I'm so glad. Yeah.

Another thing you talk about in the book is that you have, you had a troll. Tell me more. Yeah, for 18 months, I had a troll. And so someone who is, you know, for those who don't know how to troll is, it's someone who anonymously uses the internet to abuse people basically. So this person for 18 months was writing to me initially and then to many people that I know and then also masking themselves as very people who are important to me in different ways

and using their names. And basically sending tons of very anti-Semitic homophobic and hateful things. You know, really we had three buckets of hate, which were, you know, anti-Semitism, homophobia and that I'm not a real Zen teacher. And it went on for a really long time and I made police reports. And but really during that whole time when the most challenging parts about it was I felt like, wow, like my practice, my meditation practice felt immensely challenged.

practice, my meditation practice felt immensely challenged. And the place that I felt like I'd gotten to, if there was ever a getting to, it was just showed me I was in another idea of my practice about how I was doing. And I really believe that there's no arrival. But I really keep seeing these different places, these little stations that I find part of my mind parking in. Because there are so many times that we're so difficult where sometimes this person would be sending these horrific messages. So I'd open the messages because they were like from you or they are from judo or like from all these people that I know and relate to and would get emails from. And and then you'd open it and it'd be like this horrific thing.

And there were so many times where it was just so wearing and so exhausting. It felt like the onslaught of the hatred just felt so depleting. And it was really, talk about soft belly practice. It just felt like that was the time where I really had to really dig into getting real about my practice, about really what does it mean to be to actually practice compassion? What does it really mean when someone hates you? And you know, I'm working with my teacher, which I'm so grateful for and and shoot your teacher, Diane Friedman. So she's this amazing woman and she's a Dharma successor of the writer Peter Matheson, an amazing woman in her.

He wrote the snow leopard. Yeah. And really working with her very closely about, you know, how do I work with this, you know, receiving this hatred? And how do I not let it overcome me? And, wow, I talk about like getting into like a low, I needed to get into a low gear, you know, a thing about a shift car, you know, like a,

and learning how just to like really take it moment by moment and really getting curious about that, because many times it felt like an infection and that was coming in and how do I really work with that infection. And that was their goal, was to create havoc and hatred. And so to me, it really was probably one of the most strangely important times of my practice

and where really getting clear about what compassion is. And if the compassion doesn't include for this person who I didn't know at the time, who it was, then I wasn't, in my my view actually practicing. It was limited compassion. It was like some idea. This person we should say has been caught

and you're not being trolled as we speak. Yes, so the person. So, yes, I still, you know, part of the practice do is responsibility and accountability for myself and other people, which I believe in. And so, yes, the person was arrested and taken out of their home and handcuffs and was charged with the criminal charge. And so that did happen. And you're not saying your compassion for this person doesn't indicate that there should be no accountability.

Exactly. You can do both at the same time. Exactly. It feels really important, but to hate this person to me is not where I want to go. Well, I was really interested because you talk about a bunch of things that would be sensitive for anybody to talk about experiencing sexual abuse, having a troll, experiencing venomous anti-semitism as a child where you grew up for a while, you were living in a place where there was a lot

of anti-semitism. And then you actually go one level deeper which is to talk about how you have a victim mentality and that that has shown up in difficult ways in your interpersonal, intimate relationships now. Yes. Yeah, to me that was the ongoing power of the practice to me, is to really look at myself really honestly,

and to look at that my, and I feel like actually in some ways it's my own and part of it's inherited this kind of victim mentality where I would isolate myself because I felt like I would never be really understood or you know, as being picked on. But actually as a young gay kid and a young Jewish kid that was the case. So it's also, to me, the moving from kind of the feelings of shame, right, to feeling like there's something wrong with me, as opposed to like, wow, I can sometimes use this victim identity as a way to separate myself and actually not practice compassion. And it was a really interesting and important and it keeps showing up, you know, this turn of seeing that, being

willing to like, you know, turn the light to where it isn't, to like, okay, am I using this experience of the troll to say, like, oh, you see, you know, I'm being victimized again, you know, and but actually there was something about really feeling and learning about compassion in myself at the same time as using the police and having amazing relationship with the assistant disc attorney and who actually taught me a lot about compassion and an incredible person. And so I think it was both feeling what I was experiencing from the troll and what I was experiencing towards the troll, as well as engaging what is correct, what I deemed as correct, what chose pursuing justice, criminal justice. And I think it was that experience that actually shifted that whole victim stance in my life,

which I didn't actually realize until this moment. And what does that mean to you to have that shifted? That there is actually that I'm not helpless. And that it feels like an aspect of my personality that comes out and that part has felt helpless and was in many moments in fact helpless, and in fact no one would at times believe that person or I didn't have the resources to combat the situation or deal with it in a different way. And I think this experience was so important with this tool is that I did every source of it. And it was not the only story. And I feel like it's also because it's my own... I think it's my own understanding of what it means to kind of grow up.

You know, the wonderful teacher, friend, Norman Fisher talks about, you know, it's about learning how to grow up and learning to take care of that little guy. And we all have some kind of little person with us who carries a very old story. We all have one. In the tenderness and learning to feel love for that aspect, so as part of our whole, as part of our, it can go back to those doctors that integrate, we have to include him and it has to include the troll and it has to include everybody. I mean, to me that's the shift that is possible. And to experience that, even like right now, here with you, it's just so tender and so important. And to me, that's actually what also what intimacy is,

like in some ways, like you're doing your job, but also like we care for each other. And in learning to ask questions that also are not, you know, easy to ask and be willing to answer them. To me is also, it's kind of like I, when I was in high school, I was walking down the street, nose and college. So I know the street with my friend Liz, and she just turned to me and said, you know, who gets to know all of your sadness? And I remember feeling

I was like another one of these moments where I felt like, who asked that kind of wise question in college? My friends were like, who's paying for the cake to know? We had very different friends. She's an amazing woman. And, uh, yeah, I remember feeling completely dumb struck by that moment too. And so appreciative. And it was like the beginning of me doing a lot of work and actually going deeper both in my own meditation practice as well as Going to psychotherapy like I felt like wow like I don't have the skills deep in

Know how to answer that question with the dignity of it Like the question was like, and it's such, to me, like the bravery of asking real questions is an act of intimacy and love. And it came clearly from a very loving place. She was really curious to bring this full circle back just to go back to the we were saying that we all have this little version of ourselves that's got these stories. You've used the term, you used the term during the foundation's course of we have this black bag that we're carrying with us and all of this pretty dark stuff is in there, whether we know it or not. And if you don't know it, it's going to just show it's bleeding all over the place into

your behavior and showing up all the time. And so for you, victim mentality was in your black bag. And it sounds like being victimized as a grown up who had the resources to stop the victimization, shifted that and probably will have knock-on benefits for your marriage, for how you are with your friends, for how you are in your work with this center, this center in New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and all of the endeavors they're in, that's a big deal.

I mean, it goes right at your core thesis of intimacy. And that you can't really be intimate if you're not looking in a black bag. You have to look at your ****. Yeah. And to me, it's like, and you never arrive. That's own. Thanks for my teacher always says, and I said, no arrival. So you can't walk around be like, all right, well, that box is checked. Done. No, because that just creates like a bigger bag. Right.

Because then you're just basically putting it back in the bag. But to me, that's why I love the word, all-hearted, where the book comes from, but it's like comes from Dogen from an old Zen guy, who just felt like that's the life of like, when you allow the 10,000 things to flow. And so you're not, he didn't say, well, the way to practice is to control everything and to know everything, but he was allowing, you know, 10,000 is like the Zen thing for a lot or or infinite. Just to allow things to flow, to be in life or kind of goes back to the whole idea and

experience of spontaneity and intimacy. It's so, to me, the possibility is incredible liveliness in the face of horror and joy. I think I heard my teacher, Joseph Goldstein, recently when I was quizzing him about enlightenment, saying that there's an element to it of lightening up. It's like you're just, if you're not gripping so hard and you're letting all of the, you made this reference to the 10,000 things,

that's a reference to the fact that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows that happen in any given life. I remember who said it. But if you're letting them all come and go with some ease, lightness, well, that's one way to define enlightenment. Let's just close by being a little crass, which is that I always like to give people an opportunity at the end of the podcast to plug everything.

So this isn't you trying to be self-promotional. This is me pushing you to be self-promotional. We call it the plug zone. So can you just plug the book, plug the book before it, plug where you are in social media, plug the New York Zen Center for Contappative Care, just give us everything. Okay, so the new book is called Wholehearted.

So, I mean, I never liked doing this, you know? So, then you do it for you? So the new book is called Wholehearted,ed slow down help out and wake up and It's available now and as well as the first book I edited which is called awake at the bedside Contemplative teaching some palliative and end of life care, which is a book of wonderful writings by many Doctors and Buddhist teachers about how to be intimate at the bedside. And I'm on social media from Twitter to Instagram and Facebook and what else? At Cotian Paleo, and New York Dance Center for Contemplative Care, what I co-founded with my husband. And the address is ZenCare.org. And we actually have our own podcast, which is ZenCare podcast. And I'm delighted to be here. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. As I said, really candid and brave stuff

from Cotion. Big thank you to him for coming on the show. Let's do some voicemails. Here's number one. Hi Dan. I'm a big fan of your show and I'm a physician myself and listen to the recent episode by Daniel Hinger. I found it very interesting. My question is about when he describes for people that are very busy and can't leave their families for weeks at a time on retreats and have tremendous amount of professional responsibilities that in their own daily life, he said they can watch the light and listen to the sounds, watch the rising and passing away,

feel their feet on the ground. And it strikes me that this could be a very almost ironically distracted this way of going through life if you're constantly paying attention to every up, up, up, up, up, up, and he says, and I'm not sure how to reconcile that type of existence with quote-unquote living in the active busy modern world. So I'd love to hear your thoughts next again. It's such a good question. And I'm really glad that we reached out to somebody smarter than me to help me answer that question because as I was reading,

they sent Samuel, one of our producers, sends me the questions in advance and I was reading, he sent me a transcript of that question and I was reading it and I was thinking, I know what this person is talking about, but I can't really articulate it. Well, we reached out to Ray Hausman who's the head of coaching on the 10% happier app and his, she is an extremely experienced meditator and also really funny, by the way, I was having drinks with her recently.

I wasn't drinking, but we're at a social event for 10% happier folks, and she was making my wife and I laugh hysterically. Anyway, I'm digressing here, but Ray weighed in with some extremely useful advice for this caller, and it really has to do with not overdoing it. Yes, Daniel's point is taken very well by me and I think by pretty much anybody is interested in meditation. We should use our mindfulness as much as possible. And you really can take it all in as you're walking around. You can feel your feet hitting the floor. You can feel your muscles moving. You can notice what you're seeing and hearing and all that stuff. But there's a, you can go too hard at this, which would create this, as the caller said, almost ironically distracted way of going through life. So here's a quote from Ray. Quote, we can use a light touch with our attention when we place it on our sensory experience as we go

through our daily life. The quality of attention we're aiming for here is a bit like the quality of feeling we may have if we were to hold something delicate in our hands. Bringing a light awareness to various aspects of our sensory experience can help drop the mind out of its tendencies to proliferate in the realm of thought and support us in relating to our life experiences

in a more embodied here and now way. And she goes on to say, it's possible to have a light awareness of, for example, the body sitting in a chair, while also being aware of the fact that we may be in dialogue with someone. Continuing to quote here, and I'm almost done, just move, I've got several pages here,

I just wanna move to the second page. We aren't trying to pay attention to everything she says, that would just develop a quality of hypervigilance in the mind and ultimately exhaust the mind in the body. And then she actually follows up with one last little thing here which is a way to kind of explore this for yourself. You can explore this on your own and get a feel for the type of awareness you want to have on your sensory experience by touching your thumb to your forefinger and lightly rubbing them together.

Can you do that and feel it and be aware of what you are seeing as you look around your environment? Thank you to Ray. Let's do Voice Mail, number two. Hi, I was calling about 60-minute meditation routines. I know you said that's typically what you do. I was wondering if that included mindful eating time or mindful walking meditation, or if that is just your sitting time.

I'm currently trying to fill the one mindful meal into my day and one mindful walk into my day. And I didn't know if that would reduce my 60-minute time or if you would do that on top of your 60-minute. I know there's no ironment for 60 minutes, but I just wanted to get you up in. Thank you so much. Love it. Call from another hard-driving type A. Going to win at meditation type of person. I love it.

We're kindred spirits. So this is clearly somebody who wants to get up to 60 minutes a day at meditation. I remember, I'm so glad this question is coming in now because I'm at an interesting stage in my own practice, these are these sort of time goals. I remember when I was when I first decided I wanted to do 120 minutes, two hours a day and I asked Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher, the exact same question you just asked me, which is, well, if I eat mindfully or from specifically actually, what I asked him was, does my walking commute back and forth to the office count?

Because I could use that to be super mindful. And he said, no, it doesn't count. You should be mindful anyway, but it doesn't count as formal seated practice time. So, look, there's no hard and fast rule here. I, I, I, there's no, you know, IRS that's going to come in and do an audit on how you're accounting for your meditation time. So you, you should do whatever you feel is right for you, but for what it's worth what Joseph said was that incorporating daily life activities into your formal meditation time in his view didn't quite count. He was, by the way, his tongue was slightly in cheek

when he was saying this to me. But I kind of agree with him. You know, as meditators, I think it's great to aspire to be as mindful as possible all the time. So that's a little, in a little bit of a different category than formal seated meditation time. But I will say that I did two hours a day for years and then I had, as I've discussed

many, many times on the show, this 360 review where I got a lot of tough feedback about how I was kind of disengaged and stressed and impatient with people. And I really started to realize that trying to fit in two hours with my mix of responsibilities, essentially two jobs. One here at ABC News, the other at 10% happier at the app, and then also a dad and a husband and a friend and all that stuff. It wasn't reasonable for where I am in my life right now.

I did it for three years, and I think I got a lot out of it. But then I cut down to an hour and I noticed that that was just much more manageable. And then I was recently having a conversation with Narayan Liebenzen who was on the show a couple weeks ago. And I can't remember if this was part of what we recorded or if it was part of our discussion afterwards, but I told her that I aim to do 60 minutes every day

and she said something like, you know what? I think you should actually drop. You're at the point now where you can drop the counting of the minutes and instead just try to meditate as much as you want. And I don't know how I feel about that. I'm basically, I stopped counting every single minute. I do now do sort of a rough count of where I'm at by the end of the day and aim to roughly be at around an hour. So this question comes in at a very interesting

time for me. I think there's an interesting balance and it kind of depends on your personality and where you are in your practice. How much meditation time are you going to aspire to do and is it really working for you? In other words, what are the results in your practice, but also what are the ramifications in your life? Is it messing things up in your life? Is it making you unhappy and more stressed in some way? I don't have a silver bullet simple answer about how you set this. I think it's something you have to play with individually, and that's what I've been

doing in my own practice with the help of some really smart people. So I would say good on you for Amy for 60 minutes, give yourself a break and try to work with this creatively and also good on you for eating mindfully and living your life as mindfully as possible. That you're an example for the rest of us. Thanks for both of those voicemails this week. I reminder we're always looking for new vo of us. Thanks for both of those voicemails this week. I reminder we're always looking for new voicemails,

so call us up anytime. I want to thank before we go, very quickly, all the producers who work so hard on the show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, our podcast Insiders Group, who give us feedback every week that is phenomenal, useful, and to all of you who listen, we'll be back next Wednesday with something new.

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-replus 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.