Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 199: Patrick Dempsey, Meditation: The Secret to His Success

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

Patrick Dempsey is not just a pretty face. Sure he's widely known for playing McDreamy, aka Dr. Derek Shepherd, on ABC’s Grey's Anatomy, but that hardly scratches the surface. A meditator since the 1980's, he's used the practice to find the right state of mind for both his acting and professional race car driving. He's even traveled to India to further his practice. His mental training proved valuable during his mother’s battle with ovarian cancer, and he has since been inspired to start the Dempsey Center, which "makes life better for people managing the impact of cancer." In this enlightening conversation, he explains how mindfulness is a driving force in every aspect of his life. Plug Zone The Dempsey Center: https://www.dempseycenter.org/ The Dempsey Challenge: https://www.dempseycenter.org/dempsey-challenge/ ***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. 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 Harris. We've got a fun one for you this week. I thought it's serious but it's also pretty fun. McDreamy's on the show. He is Patrick Dempsey, the actor who played McDreamy on the hit ABC Primetime show, Grey's Anatomy for many, many years. I first encountered him back in the 1980s when he was in movies like Camp I Me Love and and Lever Boy.

For those of you who are a tad younger, you might have first encountered him when he was in Sweet Home Alabama back in 2002. Anyways, a big actor and turns out he's been meditating for a while and he's used it in some pretty interesting contexts such as acting, auto-racing, juggling, and also in some very deep and painful personal stuff, including his mother's struggles with cancer. She had ovarian cancer and she survived for quite a while, but ultimately passed away a few years ago. And in recent years, a post-Grey's anatomy Patrick's life has shifted in some interesting ways, and a lot of his attention now is on a place called the Dempsey Center, which is a free care center focused on cancer patients and their families. care center focused on cancer patients and their families. They've got two outposts up in Maine, and he developed this as a consequence of his mother's struggles.

And so he's leaned in pretty hard on that. So in this episode, we talk about his experiences at the Dempsey Center, which by the way does provide meditation for both patients and families. We also talk about how he's used it in his life to deal with a number of issues including the aforementioned acting, racing, and juggling, and not for nothing, also just dealing with being in the public eye. I know I know, you know, fame is a pretty high-class problem, but nonetheless it does come with some interesting complications so we get into that. He's coming up, I just want to say one quick thing

before we dive in, which is that next week we have a very special episode. Next week is our episode number 200. That's a big landmark for us, a milestone, and we've brought in a special guest, Sharon Salzburg, the legendary meditation teacher. Nobody's been on the show as many times as Sharon, and there's a reason for that because she is just a font of wisdom. And specifically this time I wanted to have her on because she recently went through very recently, went through a really serious health crisis. We talked about it here on the show when it happened. And she agreed quite bravely, I thought, to really talk about what's it like in the mind when you're a meditation master looking at a

potentially lethal health crisis and so that's fascinating and I urge you to download it and listen in the meantime though we got Patrick Dempsey so here we go with Mr. McDreamy great to meet you thank you for having me on the show fellow New Englander yes I remember watching you watching you on movies in the 80s, I think. Yeah, I think my first, I think my first, Heaven Help Us was probably in the 85, 86. My first big job in front of the camera. What else were you in back then?

I got my break. It was Torch Song Trilogy. I came to New York and I think 83 auditioned on Broadway, Helen Hayes Theater. I was 17 and I got the part and went to San Francisco. But Harvey Fierce gave me my first big job, my first break from Maine. We'll get into that later, but let me start where I always start,

which is how did you get interested in meditation? Oh, it started really early on. Gosh, probably around the late 80s, started getting into meditation. Mindfulness, it helped with relaxation before you know, you would do acting classes, things like that, to get in tune with your body, to calm your mind. And then that sort of leads you on your life's journey. Well, why we're here, you know, where I think we're here to improve and there's lessons that we have in this life. In this incarnation, I would say much more of a Buddhist than I would be anything else. That's a philosophy, it's not a religion.

And then it accelerated through the racing, my car racing, myfulness is very important there in meditation, visualization, key. But once in India, studied in India, I went to an ashram there for a while and I'm continue you know trying to improve my meditation Where did you study that we'll tell me about the ashram? It was guru Maya there. She you know, there was a she the hugging No, okay, and it was Well outside Bombay of Ganesha. So that must have been over 20, 30 years ago now.

And now it's more remembered to breathe. If I can remember to breathe, that's half of the battle right there. Do you have a, how do you have a consistent, I know a lot of people who kind of do it once in a while and then there are people who are like me or a little kind of militant about doing it every day, where are you on that spectrum? Well, do something every day. I don't sit down in the same spot and do it that way. It's more as you're moving along trying to be mindful of where you are in that present moment. And if you get off track, then you go back to your breath. And the breath is what centers you. Keeps you focused. And in the moment, how is it useful for you as an actor back in the 80s when you, I recall you said you

started in the late 80s? To calm the mind, I think you know the fear, the anxiety when you go into an audition or anytime you're in front of a live audience is to really remember to be present. It's when you start to think about the past or the future, that's when you start to get uneasy and that's where it started i'd look to your i am deep b page as i was taking the elevator down here to so it looks like you have a few you were still acting and have a few projects coming up oh yeah i've finished the documentary about hurley haywood which is out now

in itunes art of racing the rain which is a lot about mindfulness and reincarnation based on the book by garrison that's coming out august six i believe that's a document through that's a out August 6, I believe. That's a documentary. That's a film. It's a cult, yeah. The art of racing in the rain, based on the book by Garstein.

That took 10 years to get done. That's finally coming out. So it's a producer. Devils, which is a 10-part series that I did in Rome last year that will probably come out in 2020. And then of course the center work, I have three children, keep them busy. The reason why I asked about the acting is, do you still get nervous? Is it still useful to eat for my mindfulness now?

Nerves never go away. I don't think they ever go. You learn how to manage them. And you learn how to breathe breathing is the key. I mean, that's meditation anyways, really. Focusing on your breath and watching my thoughts come and go. Is that something I want to go down that road? Or just watch that go by? I have no skills in actor, but I took an acting class in high school.

And I was experiencing a lot of nerves. And I remember the teacher she said to me, you can actually use that nervousness to your advantage. Yes, if you channel the energy, right. That's the key. I noticed it, especially when I was racing, you know, a lot of visibility, a lot of people watching you, pressure is very high. And if I could pressure is very high and if I could visualization before I got in the car and calm my breath, I could get that energy focused. How does the visualization work in that context? A driver change. So when you're getting in the car, in Jordan's racing you usually

share the car with three or four other drivers depending on what's your as you're racing in. And there's always so much going on, the noise, the sounds, people, cameras. And you can make a mistake if you're not concentrating on that task in front of you. And the driver change is critical. It's when you're in a driver change. One driver's getting out of a car, another driver's getting in the car. It's usually an endurance race up to 24 hours.

Six hours. Between six and 24 hours. And you're changing drivers. Do you sleep at any point in that? No, you go into like, I'd say more of a meditative state where you're awake, but yet you're relaxed enough where you're recovering. Why would you want to do this?

Because it's mindful. It's the challenge is about how far you can go into your own fears, how far you can push yourself. And my dream in life really was to be an Olympic skier. I never wanted to be an actor. It happened accidentally. And sports, cycling, ski racing, car racing, those are my passions. Same more about this.

So you're in this state of both higher rousal and I would imagine bodily fatigue. Yes. And the stakes are incredibly high, like truly life and death. Yes. And at a minimum public embarrassment. Yes. And this is, you feel mentally healthy. I think you feel the most alive because that's the way you should be living, right?

Where you're completely committed to that moment that you're in. You don't think about the past or the present. You're in the now. Um, and everything is happening, right? Then in your, you, um, every selling your body is awake and focused. Just situational awareness is keen. Uh, it's the place to be. No question about it.

I think that's why people like those types of sports. Yeah, I think that's the right answer. It's a religious experience. It's the way we should live life, to be honest with you. We could be that present in everything we do. We'd be a much better society, I think. I've heard tight-rope walkers talk about the same thing. Right.

Anything where it takes focus and it's listening, active, listening, same thing. Acting, same thing. Right. Anything where it takes focus and it's listening, active, listening, same thing, acting, same thing. What's the what's the person doing across from me? What's that moment about? And tell me about the movie about the art of driving. So art of racing in the rain is a fictional story. It's told from the point of view of a dog. And the dog is in believes that it's in this incarnation. It's come to this world as a dog and it will learn and will come back as a human being. And through his master's owner, he's learning what it means to be a man and to overcome life's challenges and not giving up on your dream. And you're the owner?

No, I'm not. I'm just the producer. Mylo Ventimilius is the star in it. Kevin Costner is the voice of the owner. No, I'm not, I'm just the producer. Milo Ventimilius is the star in it. Kevin Costner is the voice of the dog. And it's a very well-known book by Garstent, the art of racing in the range. And you said before that it has a big mindfulness component. Yeah, it talks a lot about, you know, reincarnation, meditation, mindfulness.

Anton Zena was a race car driver. And he talks to the documentary. Oh, yes and he talks a lot. So the documentary, Senna, I think, is one of the best documentaries. Not only about motorsport, but just life in general, he talks about the transcendent moments in sport where you lose yourself and you become fully immersed in that moment. And his big was the monocle grump for him because it's so challenging, mentally and physically and emotionally. I think it's something really powerful about losing yourself.

I mean, even, and it's such a theme in art and sport. I've just, I just have this random memory right now of, did you watch Game of Thrones? Yes. The poor, the young man who kills a white walker early on and he talks about killing the white walker and in that moment, there was no him. And so you just, it's such a potent theme

that comes up again and again. And it is, as you said before, you said it's the place to be. That is, I think what many of us are looking for, that feeling of being quite literally blown away. We're not there anymore. Well, I think it's much harder now. I think there's so much stimulation going on that takes you out of the moment, you know, phones.

Yes, your phone just... Yeah, you know, you need to get rid of it. Instagram, posting, you know, every way the world is set up right now, it's taking you out of the moment and putting you on the emphasis on something else. And I think that's the challenge right now. How do you engage? How do you stay calm? And how do you be loving, right? If you can come from that place, life is much easier.

New York is the biggest test for that because everybody's battling for their space, they're overwhelmed, it's a combative environment to begin with. And if you can work through that, you know, things are a lot easier. But what about in your life? I mean, you're, as we discussed before, we came on, you're not doing an interview for entertainment tonight here. But so, I'm not particularly interested in asking lots of questions about

that TMZ might ask, but as a celebrity, I'm just curious about the interiority of that. You just talked about how easy it is to be pulled out of the moment. I just have to imagine, from decades, you've been living in the center of a hurricane in terms of public attention, competition for roles, who's saying, what about you in the press at any given moment? How do you not lose yourself in the bad way in that context? Well, that's the challenge. I mean, some days you're better than other days where you can stay on top of it.

You can get perspective. And then some days you get caught up in it and you have to work hard at coming out of it, you can get perspective. And then some days you get caught up in it and you have to work hard at coming out of it. That's why if you are consistent with your practices and however you go about doing that, it's much easier to bounce back, you know. That's the biggest challenge because you have to learn how to be private in a public arena and be okay with that. And for me, the racing, there was always fans from the show that I would come to the races. And I made it a point, as soon as I left the trailer to get to the car, to get to the track, I would make sure I had contact with everybody who came up to me. So if someone wanted a picture, someone to say, I would say hello and engage with them.

Because it forced me. That was the ritual of getting to the car to be in the moment. So anytime I would ignore somebody, I would, that would stay with me. And I felt bad because I know that's not how I want to be treated, right? So that would help me become in the moment and also get me prepared for the psychological aspect of the race and also the situational awareness. How in tune am I around people? And the same can be said, I think, when you're in front of the camera. You have to be aware that the camera is over here.

You have to be aware of what the size of the frame is, how to play it, and then what the actor across from you is doing, but also what's going on in the room, what's the energy in the room, and allowing that to fuel you. And if you're in tune, most of the time the universe is giving you what you need. If you're out of tune, it's giving you what you don't need, but what you need to confront and overcome. And you just find inspiration, you know, in either books or, you know, Pinterest quotes, things that are, things that just help you kind of ground yourself. I was really struck by what you said about,

I'm not a celebrity, but I certainly, I walked through the day with people asking for my attention, even if it's as small as, this isn't necessarily small, but I actually think this is a poignant and pointed example. In New York City where I live, my walk to work, I pass a lot of homeless people. Right. And it's very easy to ignore them. But that feels bad, just like it would feel bad for you

to ignore somebody who wants a selfie on your way from your trailer to the car. And to me, that is the most down-to-earth understanding of karma. I don't know that if I say something means you right now, I will be reborn as a gila monster. I don't know if karma works like that mean to you right now, I will be reborn as a Gila monster. I don't know if karma works like that. I think it's much more immediate.

That's right. It feels bad to be a jerk. Yes. And it stays with you in a way that can mess up your performance. Absolutely. It takes you out of the moment. And then you're perpetuating that vibration out into the world. Like anytime I've been, you know, you act inappropriately,

you said the wrong thing, you've lost your temper, it's you at the end of the day who suffers. The other person is upset and hurt for a moment, but then they're thinking about you and how bad you are. But it's you when you create those acts, when you do something that's not a positive act, it always comes back immediately and affects you. That's the hardest thing. That is the hardest thing to stay on top of. I keep learning that lesson.

Yeah, but that's why we're here, right? I mean, we were not enlightening beings, but that's our goal is to try to get as close as possible in this life form. Yeah, I've got quite a distance. Yeah, me too. So tell me about your work. We've talked about the racing and the acting, but you also have this mission with the Dempsey Center. Can you just describe how that came about? Right. We don't treat the disease.

It's for anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer. How do we make their life better? How do they manage that experience a little bit better? How do we empower that person? And all of our services are free. So whether it be acupuncture, raky, group support, yoga, mindfulness, nutrition, children's program, if it's the patient themselves or the caregiver

or family member, we try to compliment traditional medicine with whatever it is that they need from us. We have two centers in Maine, Lewis and Auburn, and then one in South Portland. Your hometown, Lewis and Auburn, and then one in South Portland. You're hometown, Lewis and Auburn. Well, I grew up in Turner, which is about 15 minutes outside the big city. And that was in Milltown. The Bashy was there, Bates colleges in that community. And of course, during the 60s and the 70s, all those businesses left, and there was nothing left. What line of work were your folks and my dad was an insurance

salesman and my mom was a secretary and then my father got into redemption uh... he was a reddit like if you had a bottle you'd have to return the bottle and he would give you the five cents and a little bit more than we would sort it and then give it to the distributor like polka pola pet you who are it would be and so your mom is what she is what provoked your work now with the Dempsey Center. Correct.

Tell me what that's about. She was diagnosed, I believe, in 98, 97 with ovarian cancer, had a long battle with it. And that's what really, it was a first encounter in my family with cancer and the devastation of what that is. And you know, through fighting it, through diagnosis, through fighting it, through death, and it still affects the dynamic of the family without question. How many kids in the family?

Two sisters, two older sisters. What was it like for you as it sounds like you're the baby of the family to watch your mother go through this? My mother was always very strong, never was sick, and it was really hard to see her week. And you feel helpless. It's like, what can you bring to help support? And you're overwhelmed with so many choices

and not knowing what to do. What's the best treatment? Where do you go? Who's the best doctor? All of you go? Who's the best doctor? All of those things. That's how it affected me. My sister, Mary, worked in the hospital, so she could navigate a lot of things for us

that we couldn't normally get the information. If you didn't have someone who's working in the hospital, and that's kind of how it started. And around this time, I think she vatled it for quite a few years until the show came on. And then when Grey's Anatomy came on, people were like, well, what's your charity? What do you stand for? And I never had been asked that question before. And I was working with Amgen, in the Amgen Tour de California, with the break away from cancer initiative. And that's when the nature of, like like sort of a wellness center or a complimentary therapy came up.

And that's when I was thinking, well, this would be perfect in our community. Is there anything there? And that's how it came about. She was around when the Dempsey Center started. Yes, it started in 2008. We've been in a little over 10 years. It'd be our 11th year.

And she passed in? Three, four little over 10 years, it'll be our 11th year. And she passed in... Three, four years ago now, 2014. I am not an expert in ovarian cancer, but... She survived much longer than anticipated. Yeah. She had a slow growing cancer that came back almost every two years, and she fought it for a very long time. And how was her quality of life in that period?

Good, she stayed active, kept her outside, kept her moving, and her quality of life up into the very end was very good, very productive. How did it go for you when she passed? It was, I had my final conversation with her where I put everything on the table and we had a great heart to heart She was being treated in Boston and One of the final operations she had the doctors. She probably will not survive this surgery now's the time to have that discussion and We had a great discussion and talked about everything and I was

Good when I wouldn't you never really good. It's always very Disruptive to say the least you know when you never really good. It's always very disruptive to say the least, you know, when you lose a family member. I lost my father very early on. And, but I felt good at least I had cleared the air. I had talked about everything I wanted to talk about. For my sister's not so much. I think it was much harder for them. But for me, I had closure before she passed.

Did the mindfulness practices help in any way in terms of that period of time for you? Yes. I think so. I mean, also, how you look at the world and how you look at life and our time here, you know, and what your philosophy is. Everybody approaches it differently. And, you know, I've been around enough people who have been through this and who didn't survive and you get a different perspective.

So I was okay. I was okay. I had more time with her than I anticipated and I made the most of it. You said your father passed when you were young? My father was much older than my mother. He passed when you were young. My father was much older than my mother. He passed When I was 17. I just left Maine and he had passed that first year. I was here in New York in 83 That was the toughest I think because I didn't say because right around that time as a man You're looking at your father differently. I'd been out on my own

There are a lot of things I wanted to ask him that I didn't get a chance to do. I regret not having more time with him as an adult male. He was always around for me as a kid. It was a great mentor for me. But now with my own kids, I think about that. What can I do to make sure that the time I have with them is impactful and present. I'm interested in the more recent passing of your mother. I think about my parents are getting older and there's some health issues there.

Watching that is obviously sad and frustrating and lots of emotions. But it also, from a selfish standpoint, is a very potent reminder of my own mortality and the fact that I'm getting older. Right. Did that come up for you in this process? Yes, a lot of things, a lot of priorities changed.

After she passed things changed profoundly for me and how I looked at the world and what my priorities were. Things that were important prior to that were no longer at the forefront of the things I thought were important to me anymore. Did you make changes in your life as a consequence? Profound changes, absolutely. Such as... I just focused on the racing.

She liked that more than any of my acting. She was hurtling around a lot. She did not like the show ever, but she loved the car racing. She loved theater. She would have preferred a had-eye in new york and was on stage more uh... and she was really proud of uh... all the stuff i did on the track much more so than anything else i did

you may not want to answer this question but i have to ask them curious why did you like to show and she didn't like the medical side of it she didn't like anything it was too cori uh... i see i see it didn't freak out seeing you hurling around a track at high speeds and she love that because we I see, I see. Didn't freak out seeing you hurtling around the track at high speeds and we'll take care of that. Because my whole life as a kid was ski racing.

In March, Denmark was my hero. And in March, Denmark, at the time in the 70s was the greatest skier of all time. And that's what I wanted to do. And every weekend we would go to Sugar Loaf or Sunday River or other places in Maine to ski race. And that's what kept, that was how we were pretty close as a family, my mother and my father at the time.

My sisters had since left the house at that point. But so it was always part of our family DNA, really. It was motor sport, racing and sports. The theater was just a mistake, which was funny, because I picked up the unicycle, because of Enmar Stanmark, ABC, a close-in person, remember when they did Wide World of Sports, they had done an interview with him on his dry land training. And he was riding the unicycle. And I ordered one from Sears in Robuck.

I was selling seeds and had enough money, and I bought my unicycle through my seed money and ordered it and then picked up the unicycle. That somehow leaked to the theater? Yeah, I was in this town called Buckfield Main and Buckfield leather and leather this sort of traveling variety show of oddville troupe And I got hooked up with them and that was my that was my way out of Maine. I Read something about you that i had i have more questions about your mom in the center so but but but now that we're on this aggression

i read something about you that i did not know you're also get deep into juggling yeah was second the international juggler's competition junior division in cleaver no high on eighty two eighty three not a lot of people can say that uh... antinigato who was younger than i was was the he won and he's gone on to be one of the great chugglers in the world and it's funny i watch the i g i which is the international judges association they have some stuff on instagram

in the technique in this the the jugulars today the stuff that they're doing is pretty pretty amazing now i i bring this up because a friend of mine who's been profoundly influential on me is a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein who has written a series of beautiful books about the overlap between Buddhism and psychology. He's a shrink here in New York City. And he talks, and the book that I,

the first book I read by him is called Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart. And he talks about juggling, being formative for him as a young Harvard undergrad who was interested in meditation, but was too uptight to quote unquote get it right because he was trying so hard to get it right, which is the enemy of a lot of type A meditators. And somebody in his orbit taught him how to juggle. Right. And that allowed him to go to pieces in a, in to let go in a really healthy way. Right. Does any of that resonate with you as a juggler?

Well, yeah, because you're gonna drop, in order to learn, you have to drop the ball or the club or whatever, and you have to, you're constantly dealing with failure, but never becomes failure at the end, because you're perfecting the technique and you're perfecting that particular trick. You're also in your present.

Yes, well, you can't juggle. I know I've been in the past. You can't think about anything other than the ball that's in the air where your hand plays tennis. Yes, yes. I know how to girlfriend of mine in the 90s gave me a little book on how to juggle. And so I've learned the basics of it,

which impresses my son who's four. It will stop impressing him in probably three or four months when he gets old enough to figure out that I'm not that good at it. But there is, as doing it as a meditator, you realize you have to get out of the way. Yes. Yes. You have to see everything. You have to see the whole, the cat, what's called a cascade, right? Three-ball ball cascade so it's basically a crossing pattern and you have to keep your eyes focused on everything it's very much like racing or skiing or cycling or any type of sport you you have to be

focused on one thing at a time we hear a real through line in our discussion here juggling racing acting all require a dropping of the self so that you can be in the moment. Right. The unhealthy self, like the ego, when you talk about self, you can talk about the ego. Yes.

When you need a healthy one, but yeah, it's when you have to not worry about what other people think and what you think, which is the hardest thing to remember. Right? is the hardest thing to remember, right? Because if it's just when you worry about how you look or how you present yourself, that's you're never going to be satisfied in that. You just not, no matter what anybody says to you at the end of the day is still going to leave you empty. So the process, someone once said this to me very early on, the process is the product and I was like, what does that mean? But the doing is the real joy, not the end result.

It's not what it's going to be. For me, it's not the satisfying thing. But I think you have real standing. What you just said about how, you know, no matter what nice things people say to you or whatever, it's not going to do it for you in the end. It's the type of thing that I think a lot of us have heard before, but coming from you, you've had a lot of people say a lot of nice things about you. Yes, and a lot of the time you can't take it seriously because they're project,

like with a show like Grey's Anatomy and a character like the McDreamy character. That's an archetype that people are projecting onto you. That's not you. You're falling into an archetype that people want to believe is real. And it then becomes mythology. And you at the end of the day, you have to separate yourself from that and not believe that's who you are. And it isn't. It's a part of you. It's something that's aspirational. You want to become that. You want to become a better person and all of what that is But it's not who you are at the end of the day. Did that f you're over the role messy up in any way or was it all awesome? Well, in hindsight, it's all awesome

I think because it was it's been the greatest lesson in my life without question and has given me a platform To do the things that I want to do and and certainly the center is what life is about in many ways because altruism giving back to your community and doing something not for yourself but for your fellow man or woman or just that's what life is about. That's true satisfaction. Everything else is a distraction from that. And just to be clear, when you say you reorganize your life to a certain extent, where you prioritize your life in 2014? 2014, 2015. Certainly the passing of my mother changed how I looked at the world. And it was a lot of turmoil. And I noticed this happens a lot to families at the center when someone

has passed, it disrupts the family dynamic profoundly. It changes everything. Some people accept it, some people go into an aisle, some breaks up the family, and it changes things profoundly. I realized life was too short and was time to get on with challenging myself and doing different things. Was that around the time that you left the show? Yes. And what I've... When I'd gone as far as I had

creatively on that show. What I was going to get to is when I was saying just to be clear before, this isn't like something you slapped your name on. You are at the centers. I try to get back once a month for a week. I work closely with the board. We now have our own 501C3, which took us a bit of time in the last few years.

We were at the seven year mark when we needed direction, we needed focus. We're reaching about 2,500 people a year. There's about 8,000 people every year being diagnosed. Recently diagnosed, we want to reach every one of those people. And you have to focus on that. And through the racing, and certainly working with Porsche, and at that level, I now realize that you have to focus one thing at a time and do it 100%. And that was my goal. So diving into this work, diving into that work, diving into my family and diving into my

opportunity to go after my goal, which was to race and win and get on the podium at Lomo and do a full season in the WEC, which is the World Endurance Championship. Did that happen? It did. Did you get Did that happen? It did. Did you get on the podium? I did. I achieved all the goals that I set out to achieve. Wow.

But then in itself, then I had to figure out what to do next, because I had my identity changed, because I stopped racing, because I couldn't justify the time away from my family, and I had finished the show. So what I had perceived as my identity was no longer there. And I've been talking to a lot of people had perceived as my identity was no longer there.

And I've been talking to a lot of people who have in-sports who have retired, I was talking to some other people who are very successful athletes who are now on the other side of it. I'm like, how is that transition for you? And it takes a while to go, okay, that's now who am I? What am I now? The label of this person on this show, or you're a race car driver, or you're this, you take that away and then you have to kind of come back and go, okay, let me reassess. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way.

I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way. I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way.

I'm not sure why I'm not in the same way it's not, you don't end up in the papers in the same way you did other papers anymore. You don't end up on the websites and on the ET and the way you used to it. Is that, I'm sure there's positive parts of that, but is it a transition and a adjustment? Oh yeah, absolutely. But I had enough success later in life.

So I've been around, you know, been doing this since I was 17, I'm 53 now. So I've had enough ups and downs in my career to understand everything, ebbs and flows. And it's still like, okay, what do I, I need to sit down and I need to take a moment and figure out what the next step is going to be.

Do you have a sense of what that's gonna be for you? Well, producing, you know, the documentary, Hurley, is a great story about a race car driver who comes out about his sexuality and talks about his partnership. And I think that's really important message right now that took us four years to make. Derek Dodge, the director, is a guy from Maine who I met at Le Mans, he wanted to tell this story and I got behind it and took us four years to do. a little bit and then focusing on the center and my family. And yeah, you know, just keep asking the question, you know, what's the next thing? Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Celebrity feuds, we're going to be doing this.

We're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing this. We're going to tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai.

And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wunderys new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build up, 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 form 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 Britney. Follow Dysentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. We talked a lot about dropping the ego in order to stay in the moment and to figure out what's important to you. How do you pass this on? You've got kids three, one of whom's looking at schools.

How do you inculcate this into your kids or do you have to just let them learn it on their own? Yeah, it's hard not to hover and be the helicopter pet. You gotta let them fail because through the failures, when you learn, we're actually just having this discussion about everybody gets a ribbon now for competing. It's a sport you should lose. You can't win. You need to lose and you need to learn how to lose gracefully

and you need to learn how to lose gracefully and you need to learn how to win gracefully and I think that's what it is giving the kids enough space to learn and be there for them and be able to discuss it Whether it's a positive outcome or a negative outcome, but I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that one out Any of your kids want to go into the acting game one of them One of them is that how do you handle that? I think, game. One of them. One of them is that how do you handle that? Ah, it's, you know, it's their passion.

It's what they want to do. Certain, they need to work at it. They need to be disciplined. They need to approach it professionally, but I think bit too young for me right now to get into it, but I'm supporting them. We'll see, tough profession. I don't recommend it.

But if you're gonna do it, you need to learn how to write. You need to learn how to produce, and you have to be in control of your own destiny. Just to wait for the phone to ring and just be a gun for hire, I don't think it's satisfying. So I try to get them to read and write and express themselves through all those things. Right, so because if you're sitting around just waiting for roles,

your self-esteem is going to bounce all over the place if you're not getting a role, whereas if you're controlling the means of production to be Marxian, you can... Then you're a creator. Yes. You're not just waiting for the phone to ring and you're not just a gun for hire. And I think that's why there's so much mental illness in the profession, because it's just really hard. It's really hard to keep your confidence up in your identity, saying, because you're waiting for someone else to give you validation.

Do you see a lot of mental illness in the business? I think it's really hard. I think it's a tough business. And anything, whether it's the news business or anything like that, it's really hard to stay on your game and focus and not let it affect you. When you're in the public eye. Yes. Is there anything I should have asked you, but didn't, do we say enough about the center? For me, the mission is, I think the work that's being done

at the center should go hand in hand everywhere in the world. That is our goal. Can you guys scale to be? Well, that's what we're working on. We're working on getting a foundation in place to be able to scale out, to be able to do that. And if we can't do that, what I do encourage people to do, if you're listening to this,

is reach out to the center. Other like-minded centers like ours, we wanna unite everybody, get everybody working together for best practice, and to share what it is that we're giving the clients. And hopefully we can expand this and have a nationwide worldwide network. So even if I'm not in central or southern Maine,

and I'm not in the... Doesn't matter where you're getting treated. You can call. You can call. And hopefully, you know, our goal is to have enough of a network to say where are you from? Okay, there's a center that is located in this town close to you. Go check that out. If you don't then it's tough with the state lines. There's some things we can't do and some things we can't do. But I would love to be able to do something on a national level at some point. But our goal right now is to take care of everybody in the state of Maine and to provide those services for free.

And these are, it's not residential. People are coming in and getting classes. Doesn't matter where you're from. You can come in. Doesn't matter what state you're from. If you're being treated in Luce and Auburn, great. If not, it doesn't matter where you're being treated. And do people come from other places?

People come from New Hampshire. It's really hard. The fascinating thing is when I go up there and I meet people, they get off the elevator, they come up the stairs and they're very nervous and they don't know what to expect. And first they hear that it's free. And the toughest thing is to get them to step through the door. Because then they have to admit to themselves that they actually have cancer. They go from, and I've seen this happen time and time again now. It's like, how do we just get people in the door? Once they're in the door, I know we're okay. It's just getting the people

to understand what it is that we're doing and that we're there for them. How do you make their life better? How do you make it manageable? How do you empower that person in the family? We talked about reprioritization before, but I just imagine being in the center is a constant drip of perspective for you. Oh yes, absolutely. With the kids, with the older people, with the young people, with anybody, you are engaged with that person immediately.

All the other BS goes out the window. Right. It is real. It's open. People are open and they're communicating with you and they're looking you right in the eye and they're looking for help, looking for answers. They're looking to be empowered. The thing you, you asked me a question earlier, it's like, I felt useless to my mother because I didn't have the information. I didn't know where to turn. You know. And then she sometimes, survivorship, I think, is another thing that we need to talk

about is sometimes people come through that and they're like, why am I surviving? And all the people that I went through treatment with are no longer with me, no longer here. What am I doing here? And getting people to understand that, you know, there's still, giving back as a survivor is, I think I've seen it with my, I saw it with my mother and I see it with other people. It's a profound thing for them. Because if you've had that experience

and someone's just recently diagnosed and you get them together a partnership and mentor a program, that's profound to them. And that's what we need to be thinking about. Because more and more people are getting diagnosed earlier, they're surviving, but then we have to focus on survivorship as well. I think I've seen data that suggests, and I don't want to pretend that I have it at the ready, but people who in this can be alcoholics and it can also be people with chronic or

terminal illness, those who volunteer tend to extend either their recovery or their survival rates. Yes. Yes But that's also with age two there's a great thing on NPR a few weeks like a week ago We're talking about stages of life and you get to a certain point and getting older. It's like you don't have The inside or you don't have that sort of ability to Reinvent the wheel but it's important that your wisdom be handed down So that mentorship is important and that part of your life and it gives you motivation in the morning to get up and to do something.

I'm glad you were motivated this morning to come here and talk to me because this has been fantastic. Now can I ask you a question? Yes, of course. Unless I'm this up. No, we've got plenty of time. How did you get into it? I know, and then you also have a history in your family with cancer as well, so I

My the history in my family for my so two that's two questions So the first one is the meditation mindfulness and then the second part is The history of cancer is actually that my parents are both cancer doctors My dad was until recently a breast cancer doctor and my mother until recently also was a pathologist. I grew up in Boston. They worked at Harvard teaching hospitals and so that was a kind of environment in which I grew up. How I got into meditation was that I had a panic attack on live television

on Good Morning America in 2004 because I was abusing drugs because I had spent a lot of time in war zones and gotten messed up. And that sent me on a in the late 80s, way before it was cool. So kudos to you. I really needed to see that there was scientific evidence in order to open my mind and to see what I could do and to see what I could do. And I was like, I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it.

I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I was like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I. So kudos to you. I really needed to see that there was scientific evidence in order to open my mind. And once I saw that that evidence was there, I decided two things. One, I'm gonna do this. And two, I realized that there were no books about meditation that talked about it

in a way that I didn't find pretty annoying. And so I decided to write a book about it, called 10% Happier. That included a lot of, you know, F-bombs and embarrassing stories. And my idea was I'm going to try to make this accessible to other skeptics. Right. And it's had a big effect on me. Really big effect. I mean, now a big, at least 50% of my working life. Just think if we could do that as a society. It should be taught in school. Increasingly it is, but it should be taught everywhere. Right. Do you think that's a lot of our problem right now in the world? Yes. There are three skills that are talked about in Buddhism. So I would call myself a Buddhist.

Mindfulness, which is basically just waking up to the fact that you have these inner processes that if you don't see them, own you, emotions, urges, random thoughts. So that's one skill that's often talked about. The second one is compassion, which is that actually, and the Buddha didn't talk about it in a finger waggy way, like you should be good because otherwise you're going to be punished by a sky god. He talked about it more like it feels good to be compassionate, so therefore you should do it.

And by the way, if you're less of a jerk, your meditation practice will be better because you're not going to be spending so much time ruined your past decisions and actions. And the third is wisdom, which has been an undercurrent in this discussion, which is understanding that we live in a universe that's impermanent, everything's changing all the time, and to cling on to things that won't last will be the source of suffering. I think these three skills would be transformative if they were had a deeper embedding into our society. Without question.

That's my job on the planet is to try to do a little bit to make that happen. Well, I think with the technology that we have, the way we can reach people, if you can do it in a way that we're all in this together. Not by no means am I a realized being. This is, every morning you wake up, okay, how can I be a better person? And have I learned a little bit more today or from yesterday, you know, and to continue doing that? And I think to be able to tell stories or to be on the air and putting those messages out there,

not just the negative ones that are so easy to do. And certainly with news right now, it's not that it's false news. They're just focusing on specific angles. Why not use it to do something that's positive? Show the positive stories there. But will people listen? Will people want to hear them? My experience is that people will listen if it's made very clear what the benefit is to them. We are, in many ways, selfish.

I don't think we're thoroughly selfish, but we are wired by evolution to look out for ourselves on some levels. We're also wired for compassion. But if we can present these stories with the angle of, hey, this will make your life better. It's not just a creamy, insincere positivity for the sake of positivity. It's more like, hey, look, you can train your mind to be a happier person. Then I'm my experience, those stories land. Yes. And they're much more foreign to tell than I've spent a lot

of time in war zones and that's thrilling too, but this work for me is much more meaningful. Well, you're seeing, and I've never been to a war zone nor do I ever want to go to one, but you're seeing the end result of all that hatred and that anger, right? Where it is, it's final. And if you can turn that, put that energy into something positive and loving, then the world will be transformed. To your point about this being taught in schools, Tim Ryan, who's running for president right now, I don't have a dog in the fight in the president of the race because I'm still a journalist. But Tim and I, our friends that we go back for a while

and he's a he's a congressman from a house of a long time proponent of meditation and he says the fact that this isn't top this is mostly ghettoized for two two upper west side wealthy uh... soul cycle going whole food trapping people is a social justice issue. You know, we should be taking these skills

out of the sort of 1% and giving it to everybody. And as he says, you know, kids in my district should be getting this stuff. And I pretty strongly agree with that. I think that when we start every board meeting, if we can, with a meditation of like, just remember to breathe focus and I mean if you started if you just create that in your work environment or just as you're

going to if you're driving or on listen to something to allow you to have that moment then I think we would see a different world. Well, hopefully that will happen. If you think about it you again are really early adopter of meditation in the late 80s, right? So, you know, no way, if somebody proposed that to me in the late 80s, I would have punched them in the nose. Not really, I was a small guy, so I wouldn't have gotten away with that. But anyway, I would have rejected it out of hand, for sure.

Now, in Maine, you guys are doing board meetings and it's okay to meditate at the beginning. I mean, that's a huge problem. Yeah, because you have someone who's gone who has studied Mary Doyle, who does that. And everybody benefits. Everybody's looking forward to it because they need to slow down and focus and be present.

You know, it should be a part of every business, I think. I can't believe I didn't bring this up until now. But you are also, you brought it up, but I didn't dive in on it. This is something you're offering to your, to the folks are coming through your centers. Right. What kind of impact you see on them? And I imagine a lot of these folks are uninitiated, maybe even borderline hostile to the, to the,

to the idea of meditation, maybe in some cases, what kind of impact you see on them? You're seeing a lot through the rakey, through the acupuncture and through the yoga, makes a huge difference. So once people try it, then they get it. There's the aha mom, they're like, why didn't I do this? I should have been doing this all the time. So it's not until you're sort of faced with a life

or death situation, you look at things differently. But also the caregivers too, it's really important for them because they need time to recover. They need time to listen to themselves and to nurture themselves because they're spending all that time with a person who's been diagnosed and they need to remember to take care of themselves as well. And it's hard.

I mean, with three kids and my wife is professional. I mean, everybody's going, it's really hard on a daily basis to get yourself It's like wait, I got to click back in. I'm losing it. I'm not focused anymore. I got to you know, I need to get centered somehow And the world is moving so quickly You know it is and I look at my son how easily he understands how to navigate and I pad and I Yes, I want for him the ability not to be able to, as you said, click in. Right. Well, you go back and you look at the Transcendentalists and what they were talking about at that

time, and this is probably around the 1830s, 1840s, they were talking about mindfulness then, and they were saying, look, we need to take care of nature. And this is right before the Gilded Age explodes and where we end up in the world and we're paying the price of capitalism on a mug. They were seeing it then. So I think it's just the nature of being on this planet at this time. Yeah. And the advantage we have over the transit analysis, we have technology to get friends to work. You can go to the iPhone, you can start to talk about it. So one last thing before we go here,

can you just, I use this word plug, but often that's used in the majority, I mean in the most positive sense of the word, can you just plug the center again? And also I know you've got a challenge coming up, can you just give us all the information on that? Yes, if anybody's been diagnosed in your family, go to the DempseyCenter.org, go to the website, check it out. Hopefully, we can help you. If you need to pick up the phone, give us a call,

and hopefully, we can direct you to the people in your area that can support you. The challenge, the Dempsey Challenge is a bike event. It's not a race. We do a bike event. is a bike event. It's not a race. We do a bike event. This is October 28th and 29th this year. September. September, September, October of the snowing. September, the Demsy Challenge is September 28th and 29th.

We do a ride, a walk, and a run. And that's a big fundraiser for us to make it possible for these services to be free for anybody who comes through the door. Awesome. So please come up and support us. Just a minute, huge pleasure. It's been great. I'm glad this worked out.

I've been watching you since the 80s to sit across from you. It's very cool. Great fact, I'm here all the time. No, it's very nice. It's nice to be able to be here to talk to you about this. Okay, again, big thanks to Patrick Dempsey, really enjoyed sitting and talking with Patrick. Let's do your voice mouse. Here's number one.

Hey, Dan. This is Kate from Boston Calling. I wanted to thank you for everything that you do. I know everyone says that, but sincerely, it is such a game changer for me and I really appreciate it. My question is, I've been working on advertising for about 10 years and really like just random feelings of anxiety during a meeting or you know just a little bit of like that stage right like about to speak. So I've been practicing meditation and just really working on myself

all these years and I started a new job the other day and the was feeling started to creep back up again. And I did take a beat, I went outside, I went for a years and I started a new job the other day and the was feeling started to creep back up again and I did take a beat I went outside I went for a walk I did a five minute meditation I did feel better but I wanted to know you had any tricks of the trade ways to quickly reset and you know without getting like a tattoo but a quick reminder I do think daily affirmations are so important but something just a little reminder, I do think daily affirmations are so important, but something just a little deeper that I can practice on a more immediate basis when needed. So just curious, and I'm sure I'll be calling back to more questions because I just love

your podcast. So think a lot, have a good day. You can call back as much as you want. Appreciate the question and the kind words and the shout out from Boston, my hometown, when I want to amuse my wife, I do a Boston accent, Boston. Anyway, I won't, I won't inflict that upon you now. I have a lot to say about the question here.

First of all, I would say just for myself, I deal less with kind of garden variety jitters and more with like full on panic. And my approach to that is more preventative than it is a thing to do in the moment because in my experience, just speaking for myself here, panic is so strong that it's best just

to be entirely avoidative possible. Nonetheless, I think I will ultimately be able to say a few things that will directly address the specific question you're asking. But let me just say a little bit about preventative measures that can work with panic, and I think would definitely apply to what you refer to as a little bit of stage fright or feelings of anxiety. First of all, the basic message is all the stuff your parents probably told you to do

About taking care of yourself Annoyingly is true and useful getting enough sleep exercising have a health having a healthy diet Meditation all the things that are gonna just kind of keep you at a baseline level of health or what will be good for preventing panic panic as it's been explained to me by my doctor, is feeds upon fatigue or being run down and not being at your best. And so you're less likely to experience it if you're not working so hard that you aren't getting enough sleep

or you're partying too much, et cetera, et cetera. So I think best to avoid those things, and I find that my life has gotten quite boring as a way to prevent panic in that. Like I'm, you know, exercise quite a bit and get enough sleep, and I'm not staying out until three in the morning at the bar. So there are some drawbacks here,

but I do find that I panic less. Another thing, another two things to keep in mind is, I really, really, really avoid caffeine. And so if you've got a big meeting and you're worried about feeling a little jittery, do not drink caffeine. Some people will hate to hear that, but caffeine makes jittery or makes me jittery, at the very least.

And so avoiding that seems like a big, a big thing to strive for. And also, you know, chocolate has a lot of caffeine in it. So if you're chowin' a, you know, a Snickers bar before a meeting, bear in mind that that's going to amp you up as well. And then another thing is beta blockers. So this is a non-narcotic prescription drug that a lot of people who have to perform use. So surgeons who don't want to have their hands jittery, opera singers, athletes, musicians, public speakers, news anchors. If your doctor recommends that you have to do this in consultation with your doctor

so go ask her or him if it's okay for you giving your whatever other medications you're on, make sure there's no contraindications. If your doctor thinks it's okay, in my experience, beta blockers are the closest thing in the world to a silver bullet. As I said, it's a pill mostly given to people with, I believe, heart issues, because what it does is it kind of puts a ceiling on how fast your heart can beat. The impact for those of us with anxiety or panic is that you can start to feel psychologically nervous

in any given situation, but the mutiny that your body can sometimes mount in the face of psychological stress can't happen. So your heart can't race. And so that is incredibly useful. So if I go into a public speaking situation where I think I might be nervous and I've taken a beta blocker, first of all, it's not like taking a volume or anything like that. It's not going to make you high. All it does is in my experience, and I'm not a doctor. So I, again, I would urge you to talk to your doctor about this,

but all it does as far as I know is block your heart from racing, and so I can go on stage knowing that while I might be nervous in my mind, my body's not going to start freaking out, I'll be able to breathe, et cetera, et cetera. That has been enormously helpful for me. Again, I really do want to stress, I'm not a physician, and you should talk to your physician before you take a beta blocker, but it might be worth looking into. But in terms of the sort of less, you know, sort of the level below panic,

which is, you know, feelings of anxiety or a little bit of stage fright while you're in a meeting, for me, well, that's a little less common because it can escalate to panic pretty quickly, but for me, if I feel that, I mean, this is where the practice of meditation is really useful. You described Kate walking out and taking a break and going for a walk and doing a five-minute

meditation. All of that sounds brilliant, perfect, gold star for you. But if you don't have the luxury of taking a break and walking outside and you really need to power through, this is where the practice and meditation really kicks in because you're kind of just trained to then tune in the feelings of your body in particular, I find just tuning into the feeling of my belly and noticing if it's tight, just kind of deliberately softening it or just feeling the raw data of the physical sensations of me sitting in whatever chair I'm sitting in, it could kind of take me out of my head and whatever racing and spinning maybe happening there

and return me to something a little bit more concrete. You know, it's not magic, but it does sometimes stop the momentum of fear. Because I sometimes don't have full faith in myself to provide the most comprehensive answer, we did reach out to one of the geniuses on the 10% happier staff, Ray Hausman, who runs our coaching. She's a long, long, long time meditator and a teacher and she runs our coaches on the 10% happier app, those are the real human beings who you can ask questions of any time if you're a subscriber. Just go to your profile page and hit up your coach if you want to ask questions. Anyway, Ray weighed in with the following that actually kind of amplifies what I

was just saying about tuning into your body. Let me just read from it. She just sent me a paragraph. I'm going to read it verbatim. One of the things we know, this is her talking, one of the things we know about states like anxiety, nervousness or fear is that when they arise, they can easily take over the capacities of the mind and co-opt all of our attention. When anxiety is the frame for our perception, we tend to look for what's wrong

or what might potentially go wrong and we can easily find evidence to reinforce the need for concern and worry. Interrupting the self-reinforcing tendency of the mind and intentionally directing the attention toward some aspect of our experience that is more at ease is key here. Because of the gravity of anxiety, it takes some effort to make this shift in our attention. If there is an area of the body that has a felt sense of ease or flow, it can be really supportive in settling the mind to direct the attention there.

Take a moment to allow yourself to really feel the sensations of this area. If there is a sense of flow, maybe related to breath going in and out, and if the body isn't feeling like a good resting place for the attention, then it can be helpful to direct the attention out to somewhere else. I would imagine that is maybe a calming view out the window. All right, thank you, Kate, for that question. And as I said, feel free to call back with many more. Let's go to voice mail number two.

Hey, then. I just graduated high school at my summer right now, where I got to college and decided to take my first meditation course. I just got out of a 10-day of a聘ah course. It was really amazing. It was definitely challenging, but I just want to thank you for kind of pushing me to further my practice and pursue this path. So thank you so much.

My question was, just I've been talking to a lot of people after the course and they say that they're in a great mindset after the course and everything and it really is inspiring but after a while a lot of people kind of lose that to the normal routines of daily life, especially after like meditating for eight, nine hours every day for 10 days. It's definitely going to be hard to kind of transition back to normal life. So my question is, how would you say to kind of translate the things you learned during retreat or long-time meditation and how to continue those until your next one and how to continue that mindset as best as possible. Not sure if there's an answer, but if there is, that'd be awesome.

Thank you so much. See you up by... Thanks, man. Well, first of all, proud of you. That's amazing that you went on a meditation retreat. That's a big deal, a big commitment, and yeah, good on you. A second, just to clarify some terms here for people who are maybe slightly confused, he referred to going out of a pass and a retreat. I think by the pass and a retreat,

he's referring to the retreat centers set up by the now deceased legendary meditation teacher by the name of SN Goenka, an Indian gentleman who learned who was a businessman who ended up in Burma where he learned meditation and then started the secular meditation retreat centers all over the world. They have a bunch of them in the United States. I don't know exactly where. He was teaching a kind of meditation called Vipassana, which is taught in many contexts, but somehow his retreats have become to be known, and have come to be known as Vipassana retreats, but just technically Vipassana is also called

insight meditation is taught in lots of retreat centers. And anyway, great job. Those retreats are challenging, and but I think, you know, I haven't done a go-enka retreat, but I've done many hypocin, or insight, meditation retreats for nine or 10 days, and it's my experience very much worth it. So your question is, how do you sort of take what you've learned into your daily life? In a minute, we're going to hear from Ray, the aforementioned Ray Hausman, and then also another great meditation teacher who's on our staff at 10% Susa Talon because they have much more wisdom to drop here than I do because they've been on many more retreats.

But I guess my answer, and maybe it'll be contradicted when we read Susa and Ray's, but my answer really here is that you can't, in part, the way, maybe this is a mistake in my thinking, but I've never really, to me, the just daily life and retreats seem just so different that, you know, I don't expect to be able to bring the full momentum of concentration and mindfulness into my daily life because you just, I've never been able to replicate the sheer volume of sitting that you do in a retreat where you don't have to worry about You know your meals are all taken care of free of you the schedule is set your whole job is to sit and meditate or in some cases walk and meditate and So daily life and retreat seem like two very different things and so holding on to

The pleasure you may derive from having greater concentration of mindfulness seems in my experience has been you know that holding on to the pleasure you made to arrive from having greater concentration and mindfulness seems, in my experience, that holding on has not led to a lot of happiness. Of course, what you're also really getting at here is how to take what you've learned and integrate that into daily life. And I'll just give you one example from my life. I remember being on a retreat a couple of years ago and it became clear to me that if I was suffering, it meant there was something I was not being mindful of.

Anytime that I was in my daily life, if I can remember this, if there's something that's bothering me, if I just drop back into mindful awareness of it, it's no longer a problem for the nanoseconds during which I am mindfully aware of it. So if I'm uncomfortable in a middle seat in a plane, if I just close my eyes and I'm mindful of the raw data of the, you know, aversion that I'm feeling

or the sensations in my cramping legs, et cetera, et cetera. In those moments when I'm mindful, I'm not suffering. It's when I'm mindless, and then my mind is racing with, whoa, is me, why is it always me? Thoughts, that's when the suffering comes in. So there are these little moments that I found on retreat, where you have a real insight that does inform the rest of your life.

Just a few others. One is just after my first retreat where I had sort of a, this happens for some people, not for everybody, and it's not a big deal either way really, but I had to kind of a dramatic moment where my first retreat where the normal day-to-day churning of the mind really slowed down in a way I'd never experienced before. And that was accompanied with a lot of, accompanied by a lot of, their happiness and joy. And that just gave me a lot of, even though I, I'm not able to really touch that place too much in daily life, that gave me a lot of faith or confidence that this practice

is worth doing. And that has provided fuel for my daily practice. By the way, just getting back to how to keep the lessons of retreat alive in your daily life. Of course, daily practice, daily sitting is a huge way to do that. Again, you're not going to be able to sit eight or nine hours, but you're going to be able to bring back some of that. And now there may be a my experience there, times when it's a little frustrating when you sit for 30 minutes, you know, after you've come home from retreat because you realize your,

your attention span has now gone back to what it normally is and with like a, you know, a chipmunk, but you know, it's better to do that than not to do it, but you're, you're going to hold on to more. And let me go to what Ray and Susah had to offer, because I guarantee you it's gonna be more cogent than what I just said. So here's Ray. She sent two small paragraphs, so I'm gonna read them. The transferable skill we practice on retreat is awareness. Awareness of the breath, of the body, of sounds, it can feel easy, especially after a vipocent retreat to think that the objects we pay attention to are important with so

much emphasis on the breath, for example. But really, it's the awareness that matters, which is great news for daily practice. So in any given moment, at any time of day, we want to try paying more attention to the awareness than whatever is arising or happening. Some questions to drop in to your practice here might be, am I aware? Do I know that I'm aware? What am I aware of?

This helps the muscle of awareness get stronger. Another way to approach this is that everything that happens in our experience is always only ever arising at one of the five senses and in the mind. We can know everything here and we know all of it because of awareness. So in this way awareness itself can be the object that we can pay attention to and it's available any time. It doesn't care what we know or at what speed we're knowing it. With awareness we can be with anything and everything. Hope this is helpful. I think so. And here's Susan. Retreats offer us the

opportunity to get a window into the potentials of the mind. It's very common to want to hold on to the mindset that can develop on retreat. However, we aren't trying to maintain a particular mindset. Rather, we're aiming to develop our capacity to recognize and be with whatever it is that's happening in our moment-to-moment experience with greater awareness and increasing equanimity. The guidance that is offered to people leaving 10-day Vipassana retreats is to use the sensations of the body as a support for developing a continuity of mindfulness and daily life. With practice, we gradually develop our capacity to have a light awareness on the sensations

of the body as we navigate our lives. If you're in a conversation or if you're reaching into the fridge, for something to eat, take a moment to feel the body and allow the sensations to be known. This practice alone can be so wonderful in slowing down compulsive tendencies of the mind, and it can support us in developing a more embodied mindfulness practice. It's important to remember that we call it practice for a reason. We're practicing the art of being present. We aren't aiming for perfection. Being present is a natural capacity of the mind. It just

takes continued practice to develop this capacity. Our practice develops and evolves as we continue to explore it, relaxing and simply noticing what's happening in the moment is always an option that brings us into the present moment. All right, big thanks to Susa and Ray for adding some genuine wisdom into this discussion. Big thanks to all of you who listened to this show, really appreciate that. Don't forget to tune in next week for episode 200. Before we go, big thanks as always to our podcast Insiders, hundreds of you who give us feedback on a weekly basis, enormously helpful. Answer the producers of the show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, and Mike D,

who's another ABC News employee, who's operating the control room here at ABC News Radio while I record this. Really appreciate it. We'll see 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

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