Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 314: A Wise and Counterintuitive Way to Meditate in a Crisis | Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

If you’re either seething or scared — or both — in the aftermath of the attack on the US Capitol, this one’s for you. In times of national and international strife, we’ve made it a habit of turning to Lama Rod Owens. Rod was officially recognized as a lama by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism after doing a three-year retreat. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard. And he has written several books, including his newest, which is called Love and Rage. In this conversation, which we recorded just yesterday, we talk about how to work with the anger and fear many of us are feeling right now. We also talk about how to communicate with people with whom we disagree; how to strategically divest from people and technologies that are depleting us (rather than self-medicating with distraction); and why the most important way to play a constructive role right now — although this may be counterintuitive for some people — is to start with yourself. Where to find Lama Rod Owens online:  Website: https://www.lamarod.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/LamaRod1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lamarod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamarodowens/ Book Mentioned: Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens https://bookshop.org/books/love-and-rage-the-path-of-liberation-through-anger-9781623174095/9781623174095 Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/lama-rod-314 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. Hey guys, if you're either seething or scared or both in the aftermath of the attack on the US Capitol, this one's for you. In times of national or international strife, we've made it a habit here on the show,

a good habit, I think, of turning to Lama Rod Owens. Rod was officially recognized as a Lama, which basically means teacher by the Kagu school of Tibetan Buddhism after doing a three-year retreat. He has a master of divinity degree from Harvard and he has written several books, including his newest, which is appropriately entitled Love and Rage.

In this conversation, which we recorded just yesterday, we talk about how to work with the anger and fear many of us are feeling right now. We also talk about how to communicate with people with whom we disagree, how to strategically divest from people and technologies that are depleting us rather than self-medicating with distraction, which is a reflex for many of us myself included. And we talk about why the most important way to play a constructive role right now on

any level, and this may be counterintuitive for some people is to start with yourself. One quick technical note before we dive in, you may notice that the audio you will hear from me in the interview will sound just a little bit different from the audio you're hearing from me right now. That's because we had a technical issue during the recording but I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. Just wanted to give you a heads up in advance. All of that said, let's dive in now with Lama Rod Ohens. Lama Rod greetings. Hi, how are you?

I'm doing okay. I'm doing better now that I see you. I feel like my, my, my blood pressure is going down. Lama Rods in the house. Oh, I wish I could build for that. I get that a lot. I show up and people say, oh my God, I'm healthier. And here's a bill. Why not?

Well, I'm curious to go inside of your mind for a second. So you're, and we're now a couple days out. We're recording this on a Sunday, people will listen to it on a Monday, but take us inside your mind on Wednesday when you're absorbing the horror show on Capitol Hill. If you were feeling in any way, dysregulated the way many of us were,

if that was happening for you, what do you do to stay somewhat even in those moments? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think sometimes I fall into this belief that at this point in my practice, I shouldn't be dysregulated, that when something arises, like what are rose on Wednesday, I sometimes I believe, well, I should be better than what I'm

experiencing now, like the anger, the fear, the terror, the shutting down, the numbness. And I'm able to notice that in the moment and come back to doing the work of showing up to what's arising. So for me, on Wednesday watching everything, yes, it was this incredible overwhelming sense of disbelief. And that created this kind of experience of numbness, of deep despair, sorrow, but it was even much deeper to that because watching those images on TV, really a group of, from me, white people creating violence and harm for people of color, black people. It evoked images of the clan, invading homes of black people, and these are the stories and experiences I grew up with in the South.

So I was just, it re-avoked all of that. Those experiences, those narratives, that trauma and it was quite overwhelming for me. But at the same time, I reflected on how, yeah, but this is America. I think that for me, I never disbelieved that this was possible, like this was always a potential, because this has always been a part of my cultural narrative as a black American. You know that groups of white people have the authority to take away something from me and my community. Our lives, our property, our freedom. And it was happening again. And to look at the ways in which they were allowed to do what they did. To come into the space and to, in a way, be celebrated and to create this narrative of this moral integrity that this is what needs to happen. This is

what being a patriot is. For me, that language that rhetoric really covers up racism and white supremacy and white dominance and white rage and white violence against marginalized communities. So that's what I was sitting with and working with. And I had to connect with a friend of mine. And we just sat in, we checked in with each other. You know, we sat and asked each other how we were feeling, where we felt things coming up in our bodies and reminded each other to do basic self-care, you know, like having water and having food, taking a break, resting, getting off of social media and the news in order to have the space to care for

ourselves. So all of that was happening on Wednesday for me. It's interesting. Well, first of all, it's very interesting for me to hear the first thing you said that I've had this thought too and I don't have nearly as much practice under my belt as you do. But how can this be happening to me? How can I be so upset? I'm Mr. Meditation Guy. That's also interesting for me to hear that in that moment, it's not like you were doing some special tantric practice.

You called a friend. Yes. Absolutely. The basics. This is the basics of what we have to do when we're filling alienated and alone and disconnected, we reach out, we ask for help. You know, I didn't necessarily do a chant or a prayer or go through a complex ritual. In that moment, what I needed to feel what's connected and not isolate it because it does it feels extremely isolating

When the thought arises that the country is being taken over that this is a coup and that I have to like fight, you know, and I have to all these responses come up really sharply and And you know, and I have to, all these responses come up really sharply. And for me, the quickest way to find the ground is to reach out and ask for help. And a way energetically reaching out and grabbing the hand of a friend and saying, let's hold on to each other right now as we move through this. Because if we don't, then the narrative spins out of control.

You know, that, oh, this is the end of America, that this is a coordinated attack and is happening all at once all over the country. And not that this isn't very close related to the plot of Handmaste Hill. So it doesn't help that a popular TV show is already embodying this narrative, but all of that starts, oh my god, this is happening. Like all of that stuff is true.

Then we're out of control. And for me, when I say out of control, it means that like, I lose this experience of feeling grounded and feeling connected to what's happening in my mind and my body. I get disconnected, I get disembodied, and then I just start spinning out of control because the thoughts can cycle into a lot of really intense places if we allow them to, particularly when we get

really fixated and attach to them. The mind can go all over the place. They can go well into the future. While the body is in the present moment, so when we're disconnecting from the body is really hard for us to have a grounding in the present moment. And to be physically situated in the physical world, on the ground, you know, in a home wherever it may be for us. I noticed that it wasn't just that you called a friend. As you told it, you were asking As you told it, you were asking one another key mindfulness-based questions about where is whatever you're feeling showing up in your body, which of course, as you've just described,

brings you south of the swirling stories and into something that is right now. Yeah. And these are the questions we were asking ourselves are really basic. And those questions were, how are we physically? How are we emotionally? How are we intellectually? How are we spiritually? And that invites us to return back and just say, okay, where am I at? Where am I feeling? How's my body feeling? Where's the fear at? Where's the anger? Where's the sorrow? Where's the rage?

But again, I think as I've often said, many of us, we don't have a practice in the moment of crisis. I was also reflecting on Wednesday, I think this is a quote from Bruce Lee where he says that in crisis, I'm paraphrasing, I think, but in crisis, we don't rise to our expectations, but we fall to our training. I don't think that's precisely the quote, but that's the gist that in a crisis, we are only embodying our training. I think sometimes we sit and say, okay, well, in a crisis, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z,

I'm going to be really clear and I'm going to know exactly what to do. But when a crisis happens, actually what happens is I just fall into my practice. Whatever my practice was before the crisis, that's where I'm at. So if I don't have a practice, and it's very difficult, but if I do have a practice, and I just fall right back into the practice, and this is why everything that I did on Wednesday was just really quite simply an expression of what my practice is. Like checking in, tuning in, holding space, taking breaks, taking care of myself, noticing where the energy is or rising, and being attentive to that, noticing where the energies are rising, right, and being attentive to that,

disrupting the ways in which I may overreact to experiences that are rising. And when I disrupt that reactivity, then I can turn back into the spaciousness, right, into the space that's naturally rising around everything in my experience. And that space also helps me to practice clarity, so I can get clear. Right? So, and coming back to that space also means coming back to the sense of groundedness. I often say in my work, touching the earth. For me me touching the earth means just touching my experience, even touching the physical earth, you know as well, I need to touch something solid and tangible

to use as an anchor. So I can actually come out of the swirling mental narratives about how the world is ending. And coming back to the ground, I can say, okay, now, what do I need to do? Like, how can I help? Right? How can I support my loved ones? How can I support friends? How can I be a positive influence on my platform? A crisis isn't necessarily the best time to start a practice, but if you're thinking about practice, starting a practice in a crisis, please do so. Start whenever you can, but really, when I was training, my teacher always said, you know, it's really important to practice during the good times. Practice really hard during the good times, during the times where it's not a crisis,

where you're not overwhelmed. Really take advantage of those times because when something really happens, then sometimes we don't have the space to consciously say, okay, I'm going to pay attention to my thoughts. I'm going to create spaciousness and all of that. Sometimes we just don't think about it. We get swept up you know in the reactivity and the fear and the trauma responses as well. I think many of us were on Wednesday and continue to be so. and continue to be so. Can I get you to unpack a little bit that touching the earth just so I understand it

and by extension everybody listening does. So you're in the middle of a day like Wednesday or in the middle of as we all are in the middle of the aftershocks and you're feeling overwhelmed. I imagine, but you'll correct me that there are a couple ways to operationalize what you're talking about. One is to take yourself out of the traffic, sit or lie down. I imagine, but you'll correct me that there are a couple of ways to operationalize what you're talking about. One is to take yourself out of the traffic, sit or lie down and have the support of, you know, gravity and what it's tugging you toward.

And then notice the reality of whatever you're feeling right now, how that's showing up in your body. Exactly. You can do that or you can do it on the fly in some way. So do you want to say more about the actual practice? Yeah, absolutely. I think that what you just shared is very much, what I mean, I mean, first and foremost, touching the earth is literally touching their earth

like I want to go lie down on the floor or if I can go outside I want to lie down on the earth like I want my physical body to touch this foundation, this solid anchor. And so I think that many of us feel lightness. There's an airiness because we get disconnected from the body, we get swept up into the narrative and to the mental experiences. And so connecting to the earth in a really physical, literal way actually reminds us that we are a physical being, right? And we're moving on a physical plane, the physicality, the tangibility, the solidness of things can actually feel really grounding and really holding for us. You know, now the earth, yes, touching the earth literally can mean touching the earth,

but also I mean touching into the moment, touching into what's arising right now in this moment, right? So I don't have to necessarily always go lie down on the ground, but for me, it's sometimes touching my body because my body is an extension of the earth. So sometimes I hold my hands that helps me to feel like I'm holding on to something solid, something tangible. Sometimes it's connecting to the sensation of the seat. You know, that I'm resting on or sitting on.

That sensation of my body meeting the seat is a groundedness, as an anchor. That can feel really grounding for me in that moment. The breath for some of us can be really grounding. You know, the breath is an extension of the body as well. The breath can also be really, you know, quite triggering for us for some of us as well. But the breath, again, can be something that can

be really grounding for us in the moment. If that's accessible for us as well, you know, just stopping, right? And for me, it takes a stopping and disrupting everything in the moment. So it's stopping and saying, okay, whoa, what's going on? Like I'm really absorbed. What's happening? I see myself sometimes really falling deeply into something that's coming up, you know, and then I have to stop and say, okay, whoa, okay, let's disrupt this, let's disconnect from this moment and let's go find the earth. Let's go find my breath. Let's go find my body. I want to feel heavy.

I want to feel solid. I want to feel grounded and connected to something bigger than me in the moment. And I think that's also for some of us an experience of being cared for. You know, so that kind of touching the earth practice feels like being tended to, being cared for. You know, so that kind of touching the earth practice feels like being tended to, being cared for, particularly for those of us who were alone, like myself, who I was in a physical space by myself. I had to use the earth, I had to call a friend, like I had to reconnect to the sense of being connected to the earth and connected to people while

being alone and isolated in that moment. And of course, we're still in the pandemic as well. Now looking at that footage on Wednesday, it didn't really seem like that. No mask. No mask at all, but many of us are still isolating and quarantining. And so on top of that, in that isolation, we start to feel that the world, our country, is being disrupted. So we can only, I think for some of those who are listening

right now, I think that we really went through something really terrifying, particularly if we're still quarantining and self-isolating right now because of the pandemic. To not feel as if we had the resources in the moment because of having to protect ourselves from COVID. COVID. The isolation and loneliness is not a new observation. Drives up anxiety and there's evolutionary reasons for this because they've lonely human back on the savannah and the evolution days was probably a dead human. Yes, right. And so if we're alone or if we feel alone, you can be with a bunch of other people and still feel alone. You're going to be more susceptible to fear.

You're also going to be more susceptible to propaganda that may be a rough-fect similarity of community, but is actually noxious. And so the pandemic puts all of this on steroids and not in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. Of course, you know, that's coupled with living in a country in the United States where mainstream media can actually spend anything in a piece of news in any way, you know, so the media can actually intensify these feelings of anxiety and fear. I think many people were experiencing that as well. And this is why I often advise, okay, we actually need to disconnect for a moment from the news of the social media piece in general is that, yeah, I mean,

this is an open forum for a lot of people to express their anxiety as well. So like you go on to social media and you have a tendency to encounter people who are just as afraid and anxious and terrified as you are, and you're just emoting all of that into the space. So of course, you're going to absorb that. Of course, you're going to react to that. And this is why having boundaries around social media is really important. I have to do this every single day these days that I say, okay, I can't be on social media for this period of time because there are a lot of folks who don't have a practice who are not taking

responsibility for or containing what's arising for them. And the algorithms, as I understand it, reward the more inflammatory content. Yeah, absolutely. So we have to be smart about self-care in terms of our exposures and media and social media. There's so much vicarious trauma in the world right now and this is trauma that's radiating from the experiences of a lot of folks who don't have a practice and who actually don't know how to be with whatever is arising for them. And so all this energy is out in the space and we have to really protect ourselves. I often say we have to protect our energy and And that's really crucial right now to do that. It's interesting to talk about protecting your energy.

The old me would be like, this is the premeditation me would have been like protecting your energy. We know what is this, this is a new age thing. But I now I think I understand what you're talking about, especially as I get older and don't have as much sort of boundless energy as I used to, that just thinking about how I'm going to operate during the course of any given day, never mind when there's a crisis. We have a finite amount of physical and psychic energy to do what we have decided we need to do. By the way, our decision about what we think we need to do can have a direct impact on the amount of energy we have because sometimes we decide we need to do more than we actually

can do. But that phrase with the more evolved version of me does now really land. We do need to protect, yeah, the battery life. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that you really articulate the experiences of a lot of folks when they hear a phrase like that, like, oh, this new age, our spiritual stuff. Protect, what does that mean? I completely agree with you. You know, as I get older, I just don't have this wellspring of energy.

And so what I have to do now is ask myself, what should I be investing in? What should I be focusing on? What should I be doing right now? What's important for me? You know, what are the relationships that should be focusing on? What are the practices that I need to be doing?

Is the work that I'm doing to support myself? Is that something that should continue to engage in? These are the things that we have to become really sensitive to because I want to have the energy for the things that are really important. And I think sometimes we feel depleted when it comes to sustaining really important things like our relationships, our personal intimate relationships, sometimes we give our energy away to all these other things in our lives when it comes to these kinds of relationships we don't have anything to give. These are the questions I think should be a part of a daily practice. No, every day I kind of wake up and I go, okay, what am I focusing on today? What are the things that I can actually divest from for today?

To give up, because maybe it's not really a part of me feeling, I don't know, restored or cared for, are replenished. I'm particularly interested in investing in things, or people that are also offering something back to me, offering energy back. So particularly in personal relationships, I'm really interested in personal relationships where we're both offering each other support, where it's not

just me giving something and feeling depleted and overwhelmed or the other person giving me something that I'm not returning that back. I think we have to look at those relationships and make some hard choices right now. And it's okay to say, you know what, we have to look at those relationships and make some hard choices right now. And it's okay to say, you know what, I have to step back from this relationship because it's actually causing a lot for me. I'm really investing a lot of energy in this. I'm not sure if this is something that I can sustain. Given the fact there are other relationships and situations that I need to be attentive

to. I love the idea of strategic divestment. Of course, you know, just to call myself out here a little bit. Of course, that's more comfortable for me than protecting your energy, because it sounds much more sort of neoliberal capitalist corporate. But anyway, I'm not a Luddite. I'm not anti-social media, but we can recognize that mindlessly doom-scrolling can be just a huge suck on your energy. So strategic divestment might not mean you never look at it, but it might mean when you

notice your zombie arm reaching toward the phone to scroll just because you're bored or lonely or whatever, that you maybe do something more constructive or nourishing. And then same with personal relationships, I don't know if you've seen that sitcom on Hulu, what we do in the shadows, it's about a bunch of vampires who live on Staten Island. And they all live in a house together, but one of the vampires isn't a classical suck your blood vampire. He's an energy draining vampire.

He's very, very boring. He seals their energy that way and leaves them lethargic. And that, you know, we all have people like that in our lives. And one doesn't want to be cruel to them, but you want to be strategic about how you can invest with people who aren't, you know, feeding you back. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

I've had to really create a lot of boundaries around relationships like that, you know? And I have gotten a lot better over the past several months, actually the past year, really communicating to folks that I'm not always available. Yeah, I'm not always accessible by text or email that I have to work at my own pace right now. And I think that's a really legitimate way of reclaiming agency over the energy. And I try to communicate really effectively. I have different systems set up now,

where I let people know that, yeah, I'm moving at a certain pace now, because my energy is going towards larger things right now that I feel are really important for sustaining folks right now. And there are certain things that you're asking me to do that I have to deprioritize this moment. And it's not personal. You know, it's not about you being a bad person, it's really about where we find ourselves right now in this historical time, where there's this level of distraction and trauma and suffering and

anxiety, you know, and I'm always surprised. I have found myself experiencing a lot of frustration lately of how people tend to get busier during crisis, you know, People tend to use distraction to keep them ahead of the discomfort that arises during really difficult times. And I noticed on Thursday, how people were complaining about having to go back to work or school and people really questioning, wait, our country just went through this really massive

traumatic event on Wednesday, and then Thursday, its business is usual. Why are we having to endure this? I think that was the most important question on Thursday. Is why are we going back to normal when we've just experienced this extremely traumatic event? Don't we get time and space to process this? And no, because we actually don't have collective methods of collective mourning. We don't have, we're not a trauma-informed society. You know, I know this is an international audience, but I'm speaking particularly about the

United States that the United States isn't trauma-informed. Our systems aren't trauma-informed. Our schools, our businesses, our social spaces aren't necessarily trauma-informed, so we actually don't have a language to talk about. What's happening, I think this is why this conversation is important right now and all the work that many people are in our field are doing right now to create on what we would say in the field, like psych education.

And so much of my work is helping people to begin to develop a language to talk about the suffering, you know, the suffering, the mental suffering, how the mental suffering impacts the physical suffering or discomfort, and giving us the tools and the space to work through this for ourselves and also collaboration with communities and collectives that we're a part of. So I worry about our state of being trauma informed right now. I think that we don't have the tools, the methods, or the language right now. And I think as we know, trauma is something that can develop in our experience. And we can definitely push it to the side. We can push into a shadow.

And that becomes really damaging and really tough to deal with We can definitely push it to the side. We can push it into a shadow. And that becomes really damaging and really tough to deal with as we grow and develop and so forth. Much more of my conversation with Lama Rod right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's 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 Brown-Oller, 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. As you know, we got a lot of questions submitted to us by members of the audience who knew that we were going to be doing programming around this. The first one that jumps to mind here is about, so this kind of healthy self-protection you're talking about. So let me play this one. It's from Chris, who's in Pennsylvania, and then we'll talk on the other side of it. Hi, Dan. My name is Chris. I live in South Central, Pennsylvania. I think in light of everything that's gone on in the past four years, culminating in what took place yesterday, the pandemic,

and the fact that I'm a nurse working with very ill patients. I am just struggling to protect my soul and my mind and my heart and just want to know how I can continue to live in a predominantly conservative area that supports our current president. How can I protect those things? I just feel like I need some kind of armor or safety net that needs to allude me right now. So any thoughts on that would be so helpful. Happy new year to you. Bye-bye. Thank you Chris. And just to say, Lamaride, before you jump in here, whatever your political persuasion you're welcome on this show. So if you're, you can reverse what

Chris said. If you're a conservative living amongst a bunch of liberals, it's also fine. We want you listening, we want everybody listening. But the point remains, which is we may be surrounded by people whose views are anathema to ours. And even if we're not physically surrounded by them, we may be surrounded by them, you know, psychically because we're not physically surrounded by them, we'd be surrounded by them, you know, psychically, because we're seeing them on TV or on our Facebook feed. How do we protect ourselves in the face of that? Yeah. Absolutely. And so it doesn't matter, you know, who we are, what our beliefs are, political, spiritual beliefs. It doesn't matter because for me, I always have to start with caring for myself.

In this particular situation, I'm talking about offering compassion for myself and for the ways in which I'm struggling in the moment. and for the ways in which I'm struggling in the moment. And I think that often we're trying to figure out how to deal with the external world, how to deal with people, how to deal with being in places and spaces and communities that don't reflect us are where we're having to do a lot of emotional labor for folks.

So regardless of that, for me, I always have to start with identifying where I'm at, right? My own discomfort, my own struggle. And I need to do self-care. You know, self-care in this situation means that I am doing something to restore a sense of balance of groundedness. It doesn't mean that I'm trying to erase or bypass this comfort. I'm actually doing something to offer space to the discomfort to allow the discomfort to be there, to give myself a sense of openness around the discomfort that's arising. That self-impathy, you know, and when I'm taking care of the discomfort, it becomes an expression of compassion.

So when I'm doing that for myself, where I'm saying, okay, I am experiencing a lot of discomfort, I feel that I'm being with it, then I can bring in other practices to help me to manage the discomfort, be in meditation, be it some type of movement practice, be it whatever kind of modality, killing modality that's appropriate for me. I'm bringing all of that in. So when I'm doing that, I can take a step further and say, you know what, I think that so many other people around me are experiencing the same thing. You thing. I think a lot of people are experiencing a lot of discomfort and they're doing the best that they can with what they know and understand. So I want to bring that kind of consideration, that kind of reflection to the experiences of people. So maybe I'm living in a community where people do not reflect my political views. Okay. But I want to reflect on that they too are uncomfortable.

They're trying to make sense of being in the world right now with the tools and the resources and the conditioning that they have. I don't want to see them as evil. I don't want to see people as ignorant. I don't want to see people as, you know, it's not being capable of change. I want to see people as being exactly like me as people who are experiencing this comfort, trying to make sense of that discomfort and then making choices based upon that labor that they're trying to do. And maybe I don't agree with it and that's fine. You know, we can't fix everything.

You know, we can't practice this comfort away. For me, my goal is to simply allow the space for this discomfort to be there. My experience to understand that others are also struggling with discomfort. And that's going to keep really in a very basic way of my heart open. It's going to keep me open and sensitive to what people are going through, to what I'm going through. But having said all of that, I also part of self-compassion and compassion for others means

that I also have to set boundaries. I also have a right in those boundaries to articulate how other people's beliefs impact me. You know, and to be clear about that. It's not about judging people, it's about understanding other people's beliefs and how they intersect with your wellness. And I think that's the conversation that we're not having.

You know, it's like, okay, you believe in this, I believe in this, this other thing, okay, well, let's talk about how our beliefs impact each other. And let's have a really clear conversation about that. Let's just be really clear about that. You believe in this thing, okay, let me tell you how that belief impacts me. It's more than how your belief makes me uncomfortable, it's about how your beliefs are creating a reality

that makes it hard for me to be well. That's where we need to be talking and articulating around. And we're not there yet. You've brought me very gracefully to the subject of our next call which is about how to communicate anger. And it's from Janie. So here's Janey. Hi, Dan. This is Janey and I know when things happen, like what happened at the capital, it's really, really hard to contain anger.

the last four years pushing that down with our loved ones and trying to maintain a little head and not respond the way we might want to whether it be in person or on social media or by text or in any venue that we might be conversing but I just wonder what is the appropriate platform? Because I feel like we're just standing silently by and letting this happen. And I have to feel like there's a way and a place and a time to communicate that. And I know it's not social media, and I know it's not Thanksgiving dinner. So what would that look like? Thanks so much. Take care. Happy New Year. Bye. Thank you, Janie. Appreciate that. What do you think of the foregoing? Yes, I, this is I think a really, really common experience

that many people are having. Like, what is the platform? How do you express anger? I think there's a lot, a lot that we have to unpack with that. And I think this kind of relates to something I said earlier, where it's sometimes in the moment of crisis isn't the best time to start a practice. Even if you can't start a practice in a crisis, it's going to be really difficult.

I want to apply the same wisdom to anger. It's like, we want to start working with anger all of a sudden when we actually don't have a practice. We haven't developed a method of working with anger in general in our lives. Of course, this is what Love and rage is really about my current book. It's like, how do we start actually tuning into and connecting to the energy of anger and start really working with it? You know, because my work isn't to contain anger, it's to offer anger a lot of space to be present in my experience. That thing we get into trouble when we're like, oh, I have to

contain my anger. No, let's give it space. The container is pointless. It's our reactivity that we should be focusing on. You know, I want to fill my anger. I want to experience my anger and I don't have to react to it. And when I'm not reacting to my anger, then I get all this data, this wisdom about how to channel that energy. And I think when we look at systems and history, I think it's important for us to understand that the things that we're outraged about are things that have been in play for a long time, I would argue centuries. And what we're outraged about are things that are much more deeper than just creating policies are electing, you know, senators are taking over the branches of government.

It's much deeper, you know, than that. You know, and for me, it's about first starting with the personal and saying, okay, what is my relationship to anger? How am I working with this? How am I allowing myself to touch into the woundedness, the hurt beneath the anger? How am I working with heartbreak and trauma for myself? And then how am I teaching others around me to do the same? The things that we're seeing now, the shifts in society and politics, and we've

seen accelerated over the past four years, we have to understand, again, that this is the culmination of many, many, many decades centuries, you know, of a particular kind of American politics. And so we have to think generational about this. And so what this basically means is that, yeah, I may not be able to impact the politics and the policies in this very moment, but maybe I can start working with younger generations with children to start influencing them to think and behave in certain ways that can eventually over the next few decades start building a more equitable society. You know, I was saying early, building a society that's trauma-informed, that's connected, that's about the collective, that's compassionate, that's loving. We do that not often, not so much with adults, but we do it with the kids, with the children. And you know, I see that with friends of mine who are having kids who are really

instilling these values, you know, who are really quite conscious, making really distinct choices about how they're communicating to their kids, about what's rights, you know, what's ethical, what's healthy. And so I just encourage folks like if you really care about the direction of the country, I want you to start really working with people around you, especially the young folks around you and saying, you know what, right now, like things are really hard, but you have this incredible opportunity to build a future, right? And maybe older folks right now is really hard for us, but you have this tremendous opportunity.

And what can I do to support you? You know, we have lots of racist, homophobic folks coming up, and they're teaching their young people how to be racist, homophobic, you know, and whatever, right? And so we have to do the same if we want to support values that are much more equitable and just as oriented and so forth. But, you know, just briefly, you know, wrapping up, you know, the heart of this question that was just offered to us, we have to take care of the anger for ourselves and our own experience, again, by offering space to that anger, and then looking at how really to create change by working with young people, and just by working with other folks around us, our loved ones, and just saying, let's talk about this stuff.

Let's stop assuming that my partners on the same page or that my cousin or my sibling were all on the same page politically. Let's talk about this. We were going to be really surprised at the conversations that we have about beliefs of those closest to us. But this is how change happens, quite honestly. And again, I think we all have different responsibilities,

depending on our different identity locations, people who identify as white and who are red as white in the world have a different kind of responsibility than I do as a black person. But we have to, you know, Dan and I have talked about this, you know, before in our podcast, right? Is that life folks have a different kind of responsibility to disrupt the reality of white supremacy. And that means that we have to start educating yourself, you have to start doing the readings and having the conversations and doing what you can to divest from the system that grants automatic privilege, right? And again, looking at everything on Wednesday, there should be no question that white supremacy is a thing. You know, particularly looking at

the work that many news outlets have been doing to compare what happened on Wednesday to the Black Lives Matter protests, the kind of severe brutality that Black Lives protests experience compared to what happened on Wednesday when the group of white folks just kind of walked into the Capitol and started trashing it. And how officers and police authorities were taking selfies, you know, not all of them, you know, again, but there was a kind of welcoming of that presence in the capital, which is really scary. And again, I'm situated also at my outrage, you know, but I have learned to take care of

my anger and to channel it into doing things like this, into educating, and to offering practices and spaces for people to fill as if they have agency with and over their anger so they can start making different decisions to create change, lasting change, systematic change. That's what we have to start thinking about and the road is long, but we have to start somewhere and you're going to be very surprised at how much of this work is really just about you doing work for yourself in order to influence others around you. Just to say about the specifics of what happened on Wednesday, I don't think any of us has a panoramic view at this point.

It was chaotic and for many parts of it, you know, there couldn't be media observers because it wasn't safe, and so we're sort of piecing it together, and hopefully we'll be systematic investigations. But I think what we do know now that we didn't know Wednesday, Thursday, maybe even Friday was that while obviously something was rotten, something was incredibly wrong with the security situation. There were people in the Capitol Police who were behaving quite heroically to fight off the insurrectionists, the rioters, and one guy died. And there's another video of capital police officer alone in a swarm of rioters howling in pain as he's being pinned up against wall. So, and then

you have that moment that again is not fully explained, but the selfie moment that is, you know, hard to watch. And I don't know if that was a moment of camaraderie or a moment of like I'm trying to survive while I'm surrounded But clearly something was wrong, but I also want to be fair and you were too about you know not all of the capital Police behaves in a dignious fashion. I just want to make sure I'm fair as again. I appreciate you were too You know on the issue of anger. I found that you know taking care of it Which you've described as a way to work with it, to be immensely helpful.

And another sort of deeper thing that I'm only sort of episodically able to apply or to even understand is to see the anger as not mine. That on some really important level, anger is an impersonal force. And when you can depersonalize it, not to pretend it doesn't exist. This isn't a numbing out or a running away, but to see in a very intimate way, once you've taken care of it, that if you investigate the anger, it is an impersonal force that's moving through you and that can be liberating. Does that make sense when I'm saying? moving through and that can be liberating.

Does that make sense when I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That does make sense. You know, and I would add also another aspect to that, that claiming that anger can also be liberating as well. I think both can be true. I think there is, you know's obviously there's this ultimate truth to the way we're working with our minds. But when we put that into conversation

with the relative truth of things, they have to work in concert and collaboration. So for me, if people read my work in love and rage, in my meditation method, I have an owning stage where I ask people to actually self-identify with anger or with any emotion, really. But definitely with anger to say, yo, this is happening in my experience because for me growing up in a black body in this country, one of the traumas that I work with is this

belief that my body doesn't belong to me. Well, actually, nothing belongs to me. That's trans-dislocal trauma that's passed through my family, you know, that began with my enslaved ancestors who were owned, body, mind, and spirit, you know. And so I have had my practice to go through a process of reclaiming everything. And saying, oh, this is mine. Like this anger has to be mine because I have to claim that I need to have agency over something. You know, and once I have that sense of agency, once I've claimed it, then really I have this incredible agency to also let it go. Once I have it I can let it go and that moves me into the ultimate understanding of the teaching that you just shared as well. It's

like yeah it can become impersonal only after I see it as mine first to let go of a movie. Like from a informed Buddhism. I think actually Buddhism is quite trauma-informed, but I think we have to do a little work to pull out that wisdom for us, but yeah, I think absolutely, the language of trauma and being trauma-informed is new. I think it's still relatively new, particularly in contemporary, you know, space is contemporary mindfulness in particular. I know people are doing really great work with

that, but we have a lot of work to go. And so that's my work falls into that intersection, you know, of meditation and trauma, also identity and depression fit into that as well for me. So it makes it all quite complex and nuanced. But this is the work when I talk about becoming trauma informed, this is the work and that work is really just again basically examining our experience. You know, I'm just saying, okay, what is this for me? What's happening for me? Like what what what's the language? What's the methodology that's helping me to feel spacious and open? And and feelings if I have agency, what's working for me to experience that? You know, because it's all just about getting free. right? It's all about spaciousness, openness,

you know, having the space to not react. That's why I understand freedom to be. And so whatever gets me there, gets me there. Sometimes we have to tweak the things, the tweak, the common wisdom to get us there, but you know, as long as we get there, that's the point. We've talked a lot about anger. I've sometimes heard anger described as a secondary emotion that usually there's something beneath it. In my case, if I look closely, it's often fear. So we've got one last voicemail I want to play for you.

That is about fear. And here it is. Hi. I have a concern that I'm appalled by what happened at the Capitol and I feel a sense of fear about it just for the safety of our country. I don't know. This just feels like a scary, dark reality. And my biggest challenge is my youngest son supports this activity and this movement and I love him dearly and we're very close and I am struggling to know how to navigate

this precious relationship with an adult son, he's 22, has a fiancee and a two-year-old that I adore, and I'm very close with them, so I don't want this to come between us, but I'm just feeling really uncomfortable about this situation that took place yesterday and the fact that he supports it. So if there's any way that you get a dress that or give me some advice, I would so appreciate it. Thank you Dan and your whole team. Well, it seems like there are two big things in there. There's the fear, you know, how do we work with fear? But I think our more acute issue is how does she talk to this son that strikes me as not easy. It's not easy.

Working with fear and having these really tough relationships, none of this is easy and it's really quite complex. And I think relating to complexity is exhausting. I think relating to complexity is exhausting. And I know that not all of us have the mental energetic capacity to show up to this level of complexity in a way that can create some change. So I completely, I can completely relate to everything that this mother has shared.

You know, just beginning with fear itself, I think fear is another experience that we bring the same practice to, the same practice we use for anger. We bring it to work with fear. For me, fear, there are all kinds of fears, but often in my practice, I understand fear as anxiety about the future. You know, it's a worry about something that we don't understand and it's hard for us to have a sense of groundedness and clarity, you know, about what's happening. And so I want to bring the same level of spaciousness. I want to bring

the same level of disrupting reactivity. I want to experience the fear. I want to know what the fear feels like in my mind and my body. I want to take care of the fear in all these exact same ways. the fear and all these exact same ways. And then the space is there and I'm able to have more clarity and more wisdom. And I think one of the things that spaciousness around fear helps me to work with is that maybe things aren't going to turn out in the way that I want them to turn out. You know, that there is a level of holding space for the reality of things, you know, that there are things that will happen regardless of what I do or not do. And that takes me even deeper into the work of mourning, right, touching into the grief and allowing that sadness, that sorrow to be there in my experience. And to

more and everything that I want to be different, but I know won't be different, you know, regardless of how much I work for, for that change. We're talking about working, doing the same work in relationships, we bring the same practice, right? And I think for me, having had a lot of these experiences of trying to change people, you know, and trying to these experiences of seeing people make choices that I feel like are really harmful, and having gone through this experience of trying to disrupt those choices, I know now that so much of the work for me is about regardless trying to show up in a really loving, clear, direct way with everyone. And that somehow this embodiment of clarity and love

And that somehow this embodiment of clarity and love is somehow helping. You know, so it doesn't mean that like I'm showing up condoning or enabling people. It means that like I'm not avoiding what's happening in the relationship. I'm not avoiding the choices that someone I love is making. And maybe practicing the wisdom of not being aggressive and how I'm wanting things to change. Because I think that aggressiveness can create more defensiveness and they can push people away even further. And I think that kind of practice also helps us to have

the space and the clarity to connect to the woundedness. The hurt that other people experiencing. So in this question, I just feel like, yeah, yeah, the sun is experiencing a lot of hurts. You know, I would also assume that that hurt is being uncair for. Right. And so there are choices they're being made by the sun to kind of get wrapped up in supporting this kind of movement right now, thinking that that's somehow addressing the herd when it really isn't. And I just feel like so much of this liberation, this freedom, are changed that we're trying to bring about is really about encouraging people to be with the

hurt that they're experiencing. I think that's one of the best things that we can do right now. You know, of course, I would say sometimes, oh, you know, this person, the sun just needs to go to an anti-racism workshop or they need to read this book about white supremacy, or they need to watch this documentary. You know, or they need to go to, you know, to do this workshop, whatever. I think that's over simplistic. You know, I think that people need to be invited to really experience their hurt and to be cared for as they experience their hurt.

You know, to experience their hurt in order to disrupt the reactivity to the anger and to the frustration and the disappointments as well. We're not, you know, again, we're not trauma-informed, you know, and that even, you know, suggests that we are also lacking the methods to really take care of our broken heartedness as well. There's a lot of sadness, there's a lot of sorrow right now, but there's not a lot of people offering really transformative, authentic ways of taking care of that sorrow. The broken heartedness, as I call it in my work. And again, you know, just

re-inphasizing that I don't think everyone's going to be saved. I think there are people who have walked down a path of beliefs, you know, and attitudes that they won't be able, or they don't have the capacity of the resources to return from. I don't think everyone can be changed. I don't think everyone can be rehabilitated in a way that we think. Again, a lot of us won't have the capacity to do the work to change. And I have to accept that. But I can still show up as compassionate as possible, but also knowing that I may have to set boundaries

to protect myself as I'm trying to offer this compassion to others. So yeah, I know people, I've been in a relationship with folks like this, you know, and yes, I completely disagree. Yeah, it's completely like out there for me, you know, to sit and listen to people, to share views about how, you know, these communities of color are lazy or that they complain or they're trying to take over. America, I've heard people say that to me.

And to hold that with compassion means that I'm holding myself first and foremost with compassion. You know, and also realizing that, yeah, maybe this person isn't going to change, you know, and no matter what I do, no matter what I say, it may not have an impact. Um, and that has to be okay. It has to be okay. Some people will change. Absolutely. Some people won't. And that's the reality. But regardless, I continue to take care of myself and I continue to show up as much as possible

to be a benefit. But after that, whatever happens happens. Incredibly useful advice. Both practical and profound. I think listeners will understand why we turned to Lamarad in moments of national and international peril on the regular. Lama Rod, thank you very much for doing this and everybody should check out his book, Love and Rage. Thank you again. Thanks again to Lama Rod. Always grateful

to Rod for making himself available on short notice often. And again, don't forget his most recent book Love and Rage subtitle, The Path of Liberation Through Anger. Before I go, I just want to say two things. One is that on Wednesday, we're going to have a special episode with Jack Cornfield, who we also asked to come on the show on short notice to talk about everything that's going on in the world and how he's coping with it and how he thinks we can too. So that's coming up on Wednesday. Second thing I want to say is thank you to all of you for listening and to everybody

who works so hard to make this show a reality, including a lot of people who worked hard on a Sunday to make this particular episode a reality. Samuel Johns is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our producer, Jules Dodson, is our AP, our sound designer is Matt Boynton from Ultraviolet Audio, Maria Wartel, is our production coordinator, we get an enormous amount of help and wisdom and guidance from our TPH colleagues, including Jen Poient,

Nate Toby, Ben Rubin, and Liz Levin. Also of course, big thank you to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Wednesday with that special episode with Jack Cornfield. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free

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