Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 358: Buddhist Lessons on Anxiety | Leslie Booker

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Taming Anxiety Series - Episode 4: Welcome to the final episode in our Taming Anxiety Series! Today's guest, Leslie Booker – who goes by "Booker" – is one of America’s leading dharma teachers. She began sharing the practice with vulnerable populations back in 2005 and is a graduate of three different training programs at Spirit Rock, including their four-year Retreat Teacher Training Program. In this conversation, Booker will make the case that one of the most important, even life-saving, tools when it comes to dealing with anxiety is our ability to connect with our communities. She also brings our attention to yet another Buddhist list – the “three characteristics.” And she explains how bringing awareness to our bodies can help settle us in our most anxious moments. This, I should say, is something she’s worked on with me personally. If you’d like to see that, you can actually do so, because we filmed it as part of our new Taming Anxiety Challenge, a ten-day meditation challenge which begins today over in the Ten Percent Happier app.  Booker is one of the core teachers in the Taming Anxiety Challenge, which features short videos and guided meditations about how to live with anxiety more intentionally. In the app, you’ll see her share strategies with me – and you – for putting into practice everything we talk about on the podcast today — including ways to normalize the experience of anxiety in your community. In fact, by joining the Taming Anxiety Challenge, you'll be part of a community of thousands of meditators learning to cope with anxiety. You can even invite your friends or family to join you in the Challenge – for free! You'll get a notification each time they meditate, so you can be accountable to and supportive of each other.  You can join the Taming Anxiety Challenge by downloading the Ten Percent Happier app: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install. You should be prompted to join the Challenge after registering your account. If you've already downloaded the app, just open it up or visit this link to join: https://10percenthappier.app.link/TamingAnxietyChallenge. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/leslie-booker-358 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 team, happy Monday. Welcome to the final episode in our teaming anxiety series. So far, we've talked about the experience of anxiety from the inside with the inimitable Sarah Barellis, who shared a really personal story We've talked about the experience of anxiety from the inside with the inimitable Sarah Barellis, who shared a really personal story. We talked about the science of anxiety with Dr. Luana Marquez and the thorny challenge of social anxiety with Dr. Ellen Hendrixen. Today, to wrap things up, we're going to take a look at anxiety from a Dharma perspective, from a Buddhist

meditative perspective. Leslie Booker, who by the way prefers to go simply by the name Booker, is one of America's leading Dharma teachers. She really got started by teaching meditation to vulnerable populations back in 2005. She's worked with incarcerated and vulnerable youth. She's done mindfulness and cognitive-based therapy work on Rutgers Island, and she's written about best practices for teaching yoga in criminal justice settings. She is a graduate of three different training programs at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, including their four-year retreat teacher training program.

And in this conversation, Booker will make the case that one of the most important, even life-saving tools when it comes to dealing with anxiety, is other people, which is interesting because other people can also be the source of so much anxiety. In this conversation, she also brings our attention to yet another Buddhist list. I know you guys love the Buddha's various lists.

The list in question here is the three characteristics. So it's a short list. Basically, you're gonna hear Booker argue that anxiety is the three characteristics. So it's a short list. Basically, you're going to hear a book or argue that anxiety is like everything else. It is susceptible to what the Buddha called the three characteristics, the three marks of existence, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, or suffering, and impersonality and selflessness, the fact that you can't find any you at the core of your experience, you can't claim your anxiety as yours. Anyway, she will do a much better job of explaining this.

But the bottom line is understanding these fundamental truths. She says, can help you deal with your anxiety in a much more skillful way. She also explains why bringing awareness to your body can help you settle when you're anxious. And this, I should say, is something that she has worked on with me personally, this idea of getting in touch with your body. It was a little rocky when she taught me how to do it. And if you actually like to see video of her teaching me something called somatic experiencing, you can do so because we filmed that part of the exchange as part of our new taming anxiety

challenge. as we filmed that part of the exchange as part of our new Taming Anxiety Challenge. That's a 10-day meditation challenge which starts today over in the 10% happier app. So we're on day four now of our special Taming Anxiety series here on the podcast and day one of the Taming Anxiety Challenge in the app. Booker is the core meditation teacher in the challenge and basically the way it works,

and I'm sure you've heard me explain this before, but I'll do it quickly again. The way it works is that every day you get a little video, which features me talking to Booker or talking to our anxiety expert, Dr. Luana Marquez, and then it slides directly into a guided audio meditation from Booker to help you kind of, as I like to say, integrate everything.

We're going to teach you about anxiety into your neurons via meditation. By joining the Taming Anxiety Challenge, you're going to be part of a community of tens of thousands of people learning to deal with anxiety. You can invite your friends or family to join you in the challenge. It's free. You'll get a notification every time they meditate so you guys can hold each other accountable. You can even gloat about how much more meditation time you've put in than they have.

If you think that's a healthy way to do it, I do. I like to gloat. Anyway, to join the challenge, just download the 10% happier app today, wherever you get your apps, or by visiting 10% calm, that's all one word spelled out. If you already have the app,

just open it up and follow the instructions to join. One technical note here, you might hear some outdoor sounds during this recording, some sirens, some birds and motorbikes. That's just the reality of taping podcasts during a pandemic. Okay, here we go with Booker. Booker, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Great to see you again, Dan.

How you doing? I'm doing great. Better now than I'm seeing you. That's the right answer. I know. I know how to do that. You just invite people to skills. That's the end of it.

That's the end of it. We're talking about an anxiety. I'm just curious. You've been meditating for a long time. Do you still get anxious and if so, how do you deal with it? Absolutely. You know, my anxiety is pretty situational. I know exactly when I'm going to get anxious. And so I can sometimes meet it before it gets there by going for a walk, going for a bike ride,

doing something that's very somatic to kind of move that energy through. And if it's happening in the moment, and I don't catch it in time, I take a moment and kind of feel into the experience of it. So I noticed what's happening to the breath, to the body. And then I wait a moment and I see where I am then. And so I can watch it sort of move and flow

and to watch it shape shift and eventually just sort of dissipate. So two strategies there. One is movement. As you can tell, for me, my movement is lifting a lot of weights. I'm so ripped. So movement can, or as you said, you sound like somatic to get the energy going. And the other is the opposite of movement, kind of sitting still and watching anxiety do its thing. And somehow seeing that it's changing all the time that it comes and goes Can be liberating. So is that a reasonable recap? Yeah, that's a reasonable recap and you know from myself again If I can catch it before I can do something about it

But if it happens in sort of real time and I wasn't expecting it then it gives me the opportunity to pause and to see what's needing to be known in that experience. And sometimes the anxiety, the nervousness comes from wanting to do things really right, to say the right things, to have the right message. And so when that arises, I really let the ego take a back seat, because that's ego speaking to me. That's my ego kind of jumping ahead of what I'm offering. And so I especially when I'm teaching, I just remember that I'm sharing practice and doesn't have

to be perfect or flawless. It just needs to be expressed in any way that works for me. We're shooting the anxiety course, ironically, shooting an anxiety course made you a little bit anxious. It did. Yeah. It did. There's something about working with a script that is not my normal way that I move through

the world. And so again, wanting to make sure that we hit all the points and do it right and make sure that everyone's going to get what they need. It brought up a lot of anxiety in my body. And I hadn't experienced anxiety like that in quite a long time. So thank you, anxiety chorus, forgive me, something to work with. You know, and it was a joy to realize that a lot of my anxiety comes from, you know, things that mean a lot to me, things that I really want to do well with. And so it was good to understand that, to realize that, to recognize it.

When you talk about working with a script, when we do these courses, it's not like we're telling you book or any other teacher what to say. It's that we interview you in advance. We know what your views are on various things. And then we kind of try to hit those points. So it's not like free flowing. We've interviewed you. We know what you have to say that we want to use in the course and we're designing the interview around getting you to re-hit those points. But even that is different from just to kind of an extemporaneous conversation. And so that puts you in a situation where you're, if I'm hearing you correctly, where you

want to do a good job, give us what we need. And my friend, Jerry Kallona once said, stress is caused by giving a f. I would have to say that is correct in my experience. Absolutely, absolutely. And of course, like this was a big thing. People are coming to this anxiety course because they're living with something in their bodies that's kind of blocking them from living their fullest life. And so I also want to make sure that we're offering the very,

very best that we can so that folks can be friend and become a little bit braver with their experience, with working with anxiety. So the first thing you talked about when we were discussing anxiety mitigation strategies, one of them was movement and the other was kind of the opposite of movement stopping pausing and you used a, seeing what's needing to be known. Yeah. What did you mean by that? Everything that we need to know can be found in the body and the breath. And a lot of times we sort of bypass over that very loud message that's coming from us, but when we pause for a moment and check in

to the felt sense in the body, to the expression of the breath, and that can be a holding of the breath or a lot of deep breathing, it gives us information as to what's happening inside of us. And so when anxiety arises in my body, it's not typically anxiety for anxiety's sake. There's something that needs to be known there. Sometimes as you had too much caffeine today, I'm like, note to self, that's where the anxiety's coming from.

Or you really should have gone for a walk in and moved some energy through. Or yeah, you had a really rough night, sleep last night. So let's try and get better sleep tonight. Or this thing really means a lot to you. So this is what's showing up. And so my body and my breath gives me this information. And it allows me to course correct, either in real time or the next day,

to make sure that there's some regulation in my body to give me that starting point that ground for a mood to move from. Because anxiety comes in a lot of different flavors and sizes, right? So some of it is debilitating these big giant monsters that we can sort of hold in the palm of our hand and we can see it right side. And from there, we have a little bit more autonomy with our anxiety. What are your thoughts about anxiety right now? Because we continue to be in this weird, liminal space between full-on, five alarm, fire around the pandemic and somewhere in the United States, at least toward, you know, moving out of it, of course, in other parts of the world. It's a fully involved fire. Nonetheless, we're kind of either fully in the emergency or kind of tentatively moving

out and being in an emergency is anxiety provoking, but also moving out can be anxiety provoking. So where are you with your anxiety around this? What are you hearing from your friends and students and your overall observations around this moment? We just got our second vaccination shot last Friday and so we'll be in a week's time, we'll be able to do whatever we want in theory, you know, without mask on. And, you know, there's a lot of trust that's being asked of us right now around this. Trusting that people are doing the right thing, that they're unmasked because they are vaccinated as opposed to being unmasked because they're anti-maskers. Am I beginning a little judgmental here? But in this time, I can't imagine not having

a sense of anxiety in our bodies. I feel like every day I watch the news and I'm still a little confused. Like, wait, can I wait? Should I wear a mask? Should I not wear a mask? There's a lot of navigating, negotiating. I know and exactly knows the

right thing to do right now. And I think that not having a really clear concrete answer to this is the right thing to do can give most people a sense of anxiety right now. And so there's a lot of communication, which I think is really great with our family, our friends, how we want to be together when we do begin to hang out again, how we want to show up with each other. And especially our friends who have newborn babies or small children who are not being vaccinated,

what does that look like and how are we caring for their young children who are still building up their immune system? It's a really good time right now because everyone's openly talking about their anxieties. You know, we're openly talking about it. We're negotiating, we're navigating. We're really talking it through as to what's going to make us feel the most rested in our bodies

when we hang out with our friends and family. I want to pick up what you just said because in the anxiety challenge, one of the things that you and I talk about on camera is this kind of paradox that on the one hand, other people can be the source of our anxiety, but they are also often the way out. And I just want to play a little clip where the other person who's teaching in the challenge is Dr. Luana Marquez, who's a great anxiety expert at Harvard, and she talks a little bit about what, and this is the kind of clinical term of

art here, but the value of social support. So let's listen to that. Social support is known to be the strongest buffer against any mentor when it's including anxiety. We know, for example, in every semi-hat analysis that individuals who actually had larger social support leave the longer, 50% survival rate increase just to have a social support. So social support is biologically wired. We all have been wired to belong together

to support each other and it certainly can help tame anxiety. I wonder where you're taking on this is book or I know from heavy spoken to you before that you kind of have a little bit of a squad that you'll call if you've got something on your mind. So many squads. Yeah. Squads plural.

That's good. I like that. I know. I know. Yeah. plural. That's good. I like that. I know, I know. Yeah. You know, we can feel so alone and so isolated in this world, especially if there's something that we think that we should know, but we don't know. There is a fear that we're having that we need to process with someone. And I find that whenever there are big things happening in my life that I'm trying to navigate

and I try to work them out within my own system, I tend to get very confused and disoriented and frazzled and I kind of just sit in this soup of chaos, which does not serve me, and I can sit there for weeks at a time. And I also know that I can quickly pick up a phone and call someone or get on a text thread with some folks and just name it. And immediately it almost just vanishes. You know, there's that great quote, the only thing to fear is fear itself. And I feel that a lot in my own experience is that when I'm just sitting in it, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and something that just I'm unable to hold anymore. But when I share it with other people, we typically find a lot of humor in it, or we can break it down and see was underneath it

because sometimes it's not the thing itself, but it's about two or three layers underneath. And it can be a core wound, something that is a recurring theme in our lives. And when I can see that, I'm like, oh, there it is, got it. I know how to work with that, but I'm not able to see that on my own.

I really need the perspective and the view of my song of my friends to be able to show that to me. This notion of social support is so true as to be a trueism, but it's often overlooked in a Western individualistic atomized society where we don't really emphasize it enough. I, in my opinion, I believe there's a study that had study, participants look at a mountain, engage the height, and then look at it with somebody standing next to you, engage the height, and the mountain or hill or whatever it was,

seemed more manageable when you had somebody by your side. And we all know that teamwork makes the dream work, et cetera, et cetera. But because it's been relegated to cheesy slogans like that, we don't operationalize it. We don't have many of us or me. I'll just speak for myself. I often sort of overlook just like you, I'll sit in the soup for a while before I do the obvious thing of just talking to somebody about it. Yeah. And, you know, like Luana said, you know, we are wired, not only for survival, but we're wired to be together. We are

collective beings. We are not meant to live in isolation, we are meant to lean on and get the support of and to care for other people. And when we don't have that opportunity, it leads to illness, at least to disease. She mentioned at least to an earlier death rate. And so this is our biology. This is what screaming at us to be in relationship with others. And as I said earlier, it's a paradox. It's ironic in that other people or the larger culture can be the source of anxiety.

Even though other people can often alleviate our anxiety, they can also be the source of anxiety. And while shooting the anxiety challenge, you and I talked about this notion of external pressure, and I really was kind of blown away by how open and raw you were about a period of your life where you kind of succumbed a little bit to external pressures. And if you're okay with it, I just want to play a clip because it was quite moving. Sure, go ahead. You've had experiences even in your meditative career of feeling the pressure to meet external

standards. This happened so many years ago when it's still so tender to remember the time in my life and I was a little bit more concerned about the concerns of the external standards. This happened so many years ago it is still so tender to remember. At the time in my life where I was not listening to my body

when I wasn't paying attention even though this is what I was out there teaching. I couldn't turn in words and take care of my own body, my own I was on the road for three months straight. Leading a bunch of retreats, I just kept pushing, kept pushing, kept pushing. And by time I got back home to New York, my legs had began to swell and I was in excruciating pain. I was no longer able to walk. All because you were chasing what you thought you were supposed to do.

Yep. I have a hard time imagining anybody who doesn't relate to that. And just in my own life, I've just seen so many times that I've just pushed myself so hard that I'm, I run my own health down. I'm a jerk to other people. And it's because I'm chasing some ideal.

Yeah, it takes a lot of courage to talk about that. It sounds like that incident for you, bookers still pretty raw. Absolutely. You know, I lived with illness in my body for over a decade, which led to me having a radical history wrecked to me 22 months ago. And so it was a really, really long journey to get there. And hearing that clip again, I can't help but hear still the amount of blame in my voice. Like I wasn't paying attention to my body.

I should have known, I teach this, I should have. And it's funny, like, this is still something that I'm in process with. I'm still working with this. And I think a lot of that comes from, you know, we don't see people who are suffering out on social media. We don't hear a lot of teachers talking about there's struggles with things we kind of talk about and now look at me everything is great. A lot of that comes from the fact that we want to teach

from the scar and not from the wound and they're not wanting our students to then feel like they have to take care of us. But there's a fine line between that and naming what is true, that there is this constant exploration of our experience. This constant judging mind doesn't go away. It's softens with our practice, but it doesn't necessarily go away. And there's so much conditioning around blaming ourselves for illness, blaming ourselves for our depression, blaming ourselves for the inability to get pregnant, the inability to stay pregnant. There's so much blaming, blaming, blaming. And I think that's because there is this desire to show this like perfectly polished life.

Look how happy I am. Look at this great thing I've done. Look at, you know, and when we talked about our social media, you said that you wanted to have an Instagram of just your kids screaming in your cats. And I feel like... cats feel king. And I feel that people show like this is actually the reality of my life as opposed to these five minutes when everything looks perfect, we would have a more realistic view of what life actually looks like. The people are suffering

and it doesn't destroy them. You know, you can still have suffering, you can still have fear, you can still have pain and you can still survive and thrive. It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other we can live with both. This clip will show up in the channel itself. I was joking about how I want to start a Instagram feed dedicated only to like embarrassing mundane stuff, you know, of my kid having a tantrum or me and my wife arguing or the cats scooting on the rug or whatever. Yeah, I do think we are presented with, this is not an original observation, but you

know, where are as you indicated, you know, presented with these kind of curated Photoshopped, touched up versions of everybody else's lives and we can't help but compare ourselves to it. So do you have thoughts about like, what do you recommend? Given that this is our reality, most people aren't gonna, you know, turn off social media forever, or even if social media wasn't around, you'd still be looking at some sort of media or just the people right around you. What are your thoughts on how to manage the comparing mind and external pressures? Is that remembering that we also might look flawless and perfect on the outside, but we understand what's happening on the inside?

I must say, and that we're constantly in this torment at state. But it's important to remember that just like me, these folks that I'm looking at on magazine covers or on a subway platform or walking down the street, they probably also just came from having a fight with their partner. You know? Or they also might be living with some sort of invisible illness or some sort of invisible ailments of their bodies or disabilities.

And so it's important for us to remember that being born into this precious human form means that we get all the 10,000 joys and all of the 10,000 sorrows. And to let go of this delusion that anything or anybody is perfect, is impossible for anything to be perfect. That little phrase you use just like me, that's actually something meditation teachers will recommend as a kind of little mantra for people. You'll look around and just recall just like me, that person has to go to the bathroom, that person, if they don't get enough sleep,

will be miserable. That person may have trouble in their relationships, that person may have been raised by suboptimal parents. They are still subjected non-negotiable laws of the universe around aging, illness and death, and that can just put things in perspective. Absolutely. And also for me, it is led me into compassion as well, because not only does this person with this external, perfect life, not only might there be suffering inside

their bodies, but also it really supports me at looking at people who are really heinous in the world, who are creating a lot of harm and devastation. So when I remember that phrase of just like me, I can note that, yeah, maybe they weren't loved as a child, maybe they weren't cared for. Maybe they don't have dear friends that are nearby that they can really turn to to see how they're actually showing up in life. And so my heart begins to crack a little bit open when I'm seeing the other side of that.

I can just tell you from my very privileged life and having had the chance to meet a lot of famous and wealthy people, they don't appear to be perennially blissed out from what I can tell. Just one man's opinion. I want to go back to your story of having, you know, you were on this very busy teaching jag and you just kind of ran yourself into the ground where you, you know, couldn't walk because that obviously is related to external pressures around what the society expects from us. And, but it's also, it's a burnout issue.

And I think a lot of us are dealing with that where in some ways we're working harder in the pandemic because home and office are the same thing now. And if you've kids, it's become so much more complicated. And now some of us are being asked to go back to the office and upend our lives again. And maybe the schools aren't open. And so the burnout issues here, the driving ourselves, and sometimes not listening as what happened with you, not kind of listening to the signals our best friend, this body that most of us, you know, I've heard this expression that we're most of us are like, Macy's Day parade

floats. So all head floating through the world, disconnected from our bodies. But the body's trying to send you messages, and it's easy to ignore them when you're in this kind of 24, seven culture. So any thoughts on managing that? Yeah, this last year and a half in the pandemic, it's, you know, usually, you know, as a retreat teacher, you have nine months to a year and a half to know that you've got a retreat coming up because they need to plan and schedule and, you know, do all these arrangements.

But I realized that working on Zoom it was like hey do you want to do a treat next week? And I was like sure there's like there's no space in between there was no lag time and so for some of us you know and I just want to say no it's also a blessing to be able to have an abundance of work during this time to be able to have an abundance of work during this time. And also a really huge lesson for me to continue to check in and to say, I can, but should I? It's like according to my calendar, of course. You know, I have a day off before and a day off after, of course, I can do it, but is there enough space and capacity for there to be a refueling, a re-nourishing of

this body, especially for those of us who are, do things in direct service when we're constantly giving, giving, giving, and I think of social workers and educators, front-line workers? There's this constant giving of ourselves. And it's so important that we pause and drink as we pour to make sure that we have enough to give. And then this, you know, last year and a half of living in a pandemic,

it's sort of like people forgot about the space in between. They forgot about that space to rest, to replenish, to begin again. We forgot about office hours in this pandemic, you know. What are your go-to's for rest? That can mean, you know, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, but it also can mean sort of active rest, like exercise or meditation or whatever. So what do you go to rest strategies? A big go to rest strategy for me is laughing. A few years ago, I, there was like a year period where I want to stand up comedy every single day. Sometimes I would wake up and turn on stand up just to get that to be like

the foundation of my day just to get me going. And it just again, I think there's a somatic energy like you're literally like kind of shaking and moving that energy out of your body as you're laughing. So to me, it's very somatic. I love writing my bike and I love to cook. So those are kind of three of my big outlets to nourish and to replenish my body. One of the big through lines, just to pick up on the last word you said there, body. One of the big through lines in your teaching is the body or the, again, to use the term of art here, embodiment. And this is another one of these concepts that can sound cliché, the body knows. But blazingly true, just really true. And when we were shooting the anxiety challenge,

you had me do something called somatic experiencing, which I, given my, you know, incorrigible skepticism struggled with a little bit, but can you describe what that is and what you made me do? I was very proud of you, Dan. You did it. You stuck with it for a moment. So what I had you do was to put a hand on the forehead and a hand on the back of your neck. And just to apply just the slightest pressure of both the hand on the forehead and the hand on the back of the neck. And it brings a sense of containment to the body. This sense of holding. And I know for me sometimes when my anxiety arises,

I feel a sense of like I'm floating out of my body. Like I have no autonomy. I have no say in how I'm feeling or how I'm experiencing that moment. And so holding on to myself gives me a moment of just containment of stillness, of holding. And I remember when we did this during the challenge, you had your eyes wide open, and sort of looking around like, what's it supposed to do? Sounds like me. It sounds like you're yep. And so and I invited you back

to words your body. I invited you to rust the eyes and to actually feel in to the thoughts sense of the body. And I found that for a lot of students, friends, you know, people that I work with, when I asked them to drop into their bodies, it asked what the body is saying to them, what are they feeling in the bodies? They will tend to look up as if they're looking

into the brain for the answer. And that's what I saw you doing. And so there's something about resting the eyes, about taking away external information that's coming in through this sensed door of the eyes. And when we rest the eyes, whether that's, you know, looking down to a spot on the floor, closing the eyes all together, it allows our body to wake up as another sense gate. So just as we use our eyes to see our ears to hear, our ears to hear, our nose to smell, our fingers to touch, our

tongues to taste. We can also drop in and feel our gut, our intuition that that primordial wisdom to come forth and to be where we're getting information from. It's not up in our brains, it's typically right in our guts. You know, I know that I sometimes masquerade as a skeptic when I'm really not. I mean, I don't actually do that that much, but I sometimes play up my skeptical tendencies. That's my more accurate way to describe it. But I'm not very, I am squeamish about, but not skeptical of this notion of touch as a form

of relief. I've seen some of the evidence around touch even when it's touching your own body. This sounds a little inappropriate, but I don't mean that I would. That's right. Exactly. That it can be useful. And for example, I, you know, I, my anxiety really shows up right in my chest. And often it's what I'm writing, writing for me is the hardest thing I do. And unfortunately for me, I have to do a lot of it. And sometimes I'll just, and I've mentioned this before in the show, but I'm going to mention it again just because if anybody listening truly is skeptical, I have found that

just stepping away from the computer a little bit and putting my hand on my chest, even kind of like rubbing it the way I might, you know, I have a particularly rembunctious cat Toby who likes to have his haunches kind of smacked a little bit. No, just do a little bit of like, it's alright. And I'll just talk to myself. It's like, alright, you're good. You're good. You know, I know you might think your voice in your head might be telling you that what

you're writing right now is flaming heap of garbage. But it's, and that's fine, but you can still edit it. You've got people who help you edit it. You're good. You are making progress. Just giving myself a little pep talk and I and it's embarrassing for me to talk about it in some way, but I found it to be incredibly helpful and the touch is a big part of it.

Yeah, and also you're saying it's embarrassing to talk about it and you just spoke the words of so many people. You don't have the audacity to say that in public. So that's huge to name that. And it's important for us to name these things out loud, especially those of us who have a public platform, to normalize fear, anxiety. This is, formalize fear anxiety. This is just such a normal experience and these bodies. And I think that people feel like something's broken because they don't hear people talking about it so much. So in these feelings come up, they're like, oh, like something must be terribly wrong

with me because no one else is talking about it. And I don't see that as a failing of the individual, but actually a failing of the collective, of the community, for us hiding the reality of what it looks like to be a human. And I want to speak to the tapping as well. You're like, you know, the touching of the chest or the rubbing of the chest or the tapping in the center of the chest. And I think a lot of us feel that tightness that gripping as an expression of our anxiety. And so bringing our attention towards that part of our body and just holding it, acknowledging

it, turning towards it as opposed to turning away from it, it allows it to be seen, to be recognized. And then to hold it, you know, there is placing a hand on the heart or I do a lot of tapping in the center of my chest and that kind of begins to almost break it up. So it's not this big mass in the center of my chest. When I tap, it breaks apart and I can feel all the individual pieces of it. Like, oh, my childhood stutter is coming back. Oh, my desire to do it right. Oh, my, this feels like my one chance to say this really, really important thing. Oh, I need to speak this because as a black woman, as a black queer woman, I need

to represent my people, right? And so when I tap and I break that apart, I can feel all of those pieces. And I'm like, oh, that's what's going on there. Okay. And it helps me to work with them one at a time, as opposed to all of them in one chunk of a time. So it makes my anxiety so much more accessible to get to and to understand and to work with them as these little pieces. Much more of my conversation with Booker right after this. We'll be answering your voicemails. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean?

How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? and what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others, and that's why in each episode I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers.

We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music

or Wondering App. We've got a bunch of voicemail questions here. And this one is actually right on point because we've been talking about embodiment and this is a question along those lines. So here it is. Hey, so thanks for all that you guys do. I can't even forget to mention how helpful learning is to instead of the last four years of my life, a meditation singular. My question has to do with physical test stations of anxiety.

Primarily grieving. I know a lot of the focus and most medications that focus on stress. And I do that, but I also have a very physical job where I work hard all day. And I've noticed, a time when my brain kind of gets anxious about what's the best I'm feeling in my body right now. I'm a Georgia Brett, am I a Georgia Brett? Because I have a hard job and I'm working hard. And I'm a Georgia Brett because I'm a great sauté.

So my question is, what are some skillful ways of working with your breath and not letting different breathing patterns under you. So yeah, say it again, probably you guys do. That's a great question, and I'm glad somebody with way more expertise than me is here to answer it. Let's say you. Yeah, breath is a huge thing. You know, the first foundation of mindfulness is working with body and breath. And as I mentioned earlier, everything that needs to be known can be found through the felt sense of the body and the quality of the breath.

And so it's really great that the person who called in was paying attention. He was noticing that his breath was changing. He was noticing that there was shortness of breath. And I think that gives you really, really good information. And so, you know, maybe there is shortness of breath because it is a stressful job, because it is dream-uous. And when you're thinking about, is it part of my job or if this is happening in a regular basis, you know, definitely get it checked out because it could be something else going on. So there could be a medical condition that's happening. But if you're noticing these patterns, you know, that, hmm, shortness of breath happens when I'm at this part of my job or shortness of breath happens when

I'm in this conversation, it could or short as the breath happens when I'm in this conversation. It could be definitely connected to, you know, the emotional body and the emotional life. And so a way that I found to be really skillful and working with breath is to drop the breath down a little bit lower in the body. A lot of people, when they begin to meditate, they really want to focus in what we call the anapana satispot, the between the tip of the nose and the top of the lip. And what happens if we are bringing our attention to that part of where the breath is without having a lot of experience or on that particular breathing technique,

that it can actually bring a lot of anxiety to our bodies. It shortens the space in which we have to breathe. And so for one who is typically already experiencing symptoms of anxiety, it can actually exacerbate it. And so when I'm teaching mindfulness of breath, I tend to have people start with the breath very low in their belly. And so bringing their hands through that space just below the belly button and feeling

the belly expand like a balloon as you breathe in and feel the breath deflate like a balloon as you breathe out. And so placing the hands over the belly and just feeling that rising and the falling of the breath can allow us to have a sense of connection to the breath in the body. And also gives us enough space for the breath to move through. So it can really support the nervous system to settle down. I also will sometimes see if I can breathe through the bottoms of my feet, through the palms of my hand, or just to see if I can feel the breath move through my entire body. So that'll take the tightness and the restriction of noticing the breath just at the nostrils. And my mentor for many years, Philip Moffett would always say, this breath is like this.

And this breath is just like this. And I was always like, it's like, what? Just finish your sentence. But, you know, what I understood he was saying was, eat breath changes. So yeah, this breath felt like that. But it curious about this next breath. Noticing the beginning, the middle, the end of that breath.

And how at the top of that breath, it might kind of pause and swirl and then turn back into an out breath with the beginning, a middle and an end of that breath. And so the breath can become a very embodied experience as we feel the expansion and the contraction, the rising and the falling, we can again to flow into a sense of rhythm with the breath in the body, which can again create a little bit more space and capacity for us to be with. What is arising at that moment? The caller talked about having an active job and then noticing at times he was feeling

short of breath and not being able to figure out is this because of stress or because of the activity. I'm wondering what you think about deep breathing, deliberate deep breathing. In what way? Deep breathing for the, tell me more about that. Yeah, just to, sometimes I'll notice if I'm clenched up, hunched over my computer,

trying to figure something out on some irrational deadline, that if I just take a break and take a few deep breaths, that I feel better. Absolutely. And a lot of that comes from when we are really tensing and tightening. A lot of times we're not breathing our full breath, we're in this constriction and tightness in the body. Of course, there's gonna be constriction and tightness in the breath. And so taking a pause to notice that, and then allowing the full breath to be known in the body

can also kind of reset us and allow that breath to have more rhythm, to have more flow, to a tab more continuity to it. And yeah, I was curious about the strenuous job because that can also be a sign that maybe this isn't the right job for your health. If the breath is always tight or constricted, or if there's always a sense of shortness of breath at work, like let's investigate what's happening at the job and what maybe can move or shift or be transformed so that there is more spaciousness in the breath. Again, the breath gives us so much information even if we cognitively aren't wrapping our head

around it. There's a lot that can be known through the telling of the breath. Speaking of work stress, this next voice mail comes from Holly, and she wants to talk about anxiety as a consequence of workplace stressors. Here's Holly. Hi, my name's Holly, and I do have a question about anxiety. I'm a registered nurse. I used to work in a very high pressure area of nursing,

often being involved in life-reduced decisions with patients. And it obviously was very stressful. And my question is, I'm just more looking for suggestions for types of coping mechanisms that people have for anxiety that is, someone might have general anxiety and you know have somatic symptoms when they're off of work but their symptoms are triggered or exacerbated by the high stress nature of their work.

I ended up leaving the bedside partly due to the high stress of it and feeling like it was causing burnout and I'm sure that in some ways my anxiety contributed to that. And so if I were to go back to a high stress part of nursing, I would be curious about having more coping mechanisms for that. And then also just maybe knowing when it's time to admit that your anxiety limits the type of work you can do, whether that is a thing, obviously, a very personal decision. Anyway, a discussion about that would be great because I do know a lot of people who work in high stress professions such as health care, high functioning anxiety, and I'm sure they'll be very interested in hearing more about

have high functioning anxiety. And I'm sure they'll be very interested in hearing more about how other people deal with that, how they're able to continue working in that high stress environment for years and years without their anxiety limiting them. So thank you. I hear a lot in that question. One is the notion of high functioning anxiety.

I like that phraseology. Okay, I hear a lot of myself in that high-functioning anxiety. So how can you roll with that coping mechanisms, I believe that was another phrase you used for that. And then the other is, when do you know when actually the amount of anxiety is not tolerable, it's not for you, You need to make a change. And is that you being limited or is that you just being sane? Again, very fine line, right? As you know, I worked with highly vulnerable populations for about 12 years in New York City. I worked with young folks who were incarcerated.

in New York City, I worked with young folks who were incarcerated. Some of them are at the beginning of their life sentences at 13, 14 years old. I shared practices of yoga and meditation with folks who were experiencing homelessness, living with addiction, transgender sex workers who were living with HIV and AIDS. So for, you know, a big chunk of my life, it was a pretty stressful job. Even though I was teaching yoga and mindfulness, there is something about going into a gel and hearing the gates lock behind you. Even though I knew in an hour, two hours, I could leave

that still really impacts the nervous system. And so for me, it was so integral to take care of myself twice as much as I would going into a regular, I don't know what a regular low stress job is, but you know, enter whatever that could be for you. But I realized how important how integral it was for me to really, really, really care for myself. To mentally, emotionally prepare myself to walk into those spaces and to kind of ritualize letting that go, shedding that off of me once I left those spaces.

And so one thing that I do that I have done and I will do again once I start teaching in real life again is to resource to the room that I'm in whenever I'm walking into a new environment. That means to go in and to pause, to feel my feet rooting on the earth, and to feel how my body is responding. Belly, tightening, heart flipping, breath tightening, or no staccato breath. And then I do a resourcing practice. And this means to turn the head from side to side. And this is something that you see animals do in nature when they come out of the cave and they sort of pause.

This will also be what your cats do as well. They kind of walk into a room and they pause and they look around to see what's going on. Who's cats next? Exactly. Who's going to scratch my hunches? Yeah. So animals walk into his space and they're activating that limbic brain, their animal brain.

And so as they're looking around, they're activating that part of their brain that's right above their spine. And they're noticing where there is danger, where there is shelter, where there is food, where there is danger, or there is shelter, or there is food, or there is water. And so as humans who share that part of the brain with animals, we can do that same thing with resourcing. So as I'm turning my head from side to side, I'm keeping my eyes wide open.

And I'm noticing different colors that are in the environment. I'm noticing shapes. I'm noticing textures. I'm noticing elements of nature. And when I can resource and kind of get my bearings and to understand where my body is in space, to understand that I'm okay in that moment that I'm safe, that I have what I need to feel protected, that it allows my nervous system space to rest and then I could go in and do my work from a regulated space.

And for a lot of us, especially when you're working as a nurse or a social worker, and that's your job to get in there and do it, but we forget that we're not machines, we're not robots, we're human beings with nervous systems that need to be regulated. So in those five or ten seconds that it takes to do that practice, my nervous system can regulate. And then when I'm in direct relationship with those I'm in service to, they're able to attune to my nervous system that I've cared for. And for a lot of people, they'll say, I don't have time. It's emergency.

I have to rush in there. What would it be like to take five seconds, just five seconds to feel your feet rooting on the ground, to bring a hand to the belly and to feel your breath breathing itself in and breathing itself out to look around for a moment and get your bearings. And then to move in, it's completely transformed how you interact and how you can do your work. And I also really appreciate it, the question about, is the time to not do that kind of work anymore. And for a lot of folks doing work at that level,

at that speed, at that intensity, it has a shelf life. And my career in working in direct service with vulnerable populations also had a shelf life. And, you know, my career in working in direct service with vulnerable populations also had a shelf life. And I could feel it coming on, but I also took a lot of intentional time to reflect upon, you know, how much of my ego was saying, but this is who you are. This is what you do. Of course, you just suck it up. You just do that work. is who you are. This is what you do. Of course, you just suck it up. You just do that work. And how much of it was my body saying, I think we can do something else. You know? And we get so fixed and rigid about who we think that we are, that we don't give ourselves the space to grow and to transform and to move into a new way of doing our work.

And so I appreciate that question is even on the table for Holly that she's considering, huh, maybe this isn't the right thing. And you know, also we don't want something that's just a coping mechanism. We don't want to just have this technique, this tool that we do just so we can cope, just so we can get through the day. We really want something that becomes who we are and what we do in part of our rhythm

of preparing to move into work. So just as we get up, we can brush our teeth and take a shower or have breakfast and go to work to incorporate things like resourcing, especially in these high stress jobs, just to make that a part of our everyday experience. And then we'll know, you know, again, the body will give us information. Is this enough? Or is this not the right fit for me anymore? And to honor and respect that we move through different seasons and our lives, and we do something for certain periods, and maybe this time that we've grown out of

that, or we need to transform and do our work from a different location. Yeah, I've had a lot of these troubles around TV news. And is it like, oh, I'm an acroman, I can never stop doing that. And yes, that is a conversation I have with myself quite a bit. I think I'm on like my fourth career, you know, but I kept saying like, it's just the way that I want to feel every day, you know? And sometimes I'm like, this isn the way that I want to feel every day, you know? And sometimes I'm like, this isn't the way I want to feel every day, but I really love the way I feel when I'm doing this thing. And so how do I bring more of that thing that I really love? How can I bring that more into the work that I'm doing? And sometimes it looks just slightly shifting what you're doing within the context of the job that you already have. And sometimes it means leaving all together.

But it sounds like Holly was really listening to her body and understanding that there was a limitation that she was kind of bumping up against. So to explore what that limitation is. One last voicemail here, Parker, this one's about anxiety as it pertains to issues around race. Let's take a listen.

Hi, Dan. My name is Judith Bill. And I really appreciate the work that you and your team do, and bringing us really great content from the public. So I am a black woman and have struggled with social anxiety as well as the times generalized anxiety. And I think you have been having picked me to the some time during the period of unrest after George Floyd

near the last year, that actually, I think that my social and generalized anxiety is deeply linked to expansive racism. And I guess I was just wondering if that is something that your guests might be able to answer. Specifically that relationship between anxiety and sort of structural and systemic racism, as well as interpersonal racism and the fact that it is a kind of experience that can really caused significant trauma, but it's hard to see the color from the pictures. The fact that it can happen repeatedly and in many instances, happens without

anticipation, you know, in a situation where you were just having a wonderful day to walk you down the street on the summer's day and some of your life is, in some instances, very really and materially, at risk, physically at risk. And so I guess I'm wondering if that's something that they could be to and speak to, how that is something that one can navigate, both from the perspective of the science behind it,

as well as just practical tools around meditation and such. Thank you very much again for all that you do. Appreciate the work that comes with it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And that sounds really true and really hard. And I know Booker you specifically didn't want to get to this voice mail.

What are your thoughts on it? You know, as folks who have historically been marginalized, whether you are folks whose ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved, or if your ancestors were rounded up and put into internment camps, we have social and collective and historical traumas that live in our bodies. And so these social traumas are caused by experiences of prejudice and discrimination that we feel on a personal level related to our gender, our race, our sexual orientation, our disabilities. And when those things are threatened, it really impacts our nervous system because it is a direct attack on our right to be here, on our right to

live and to be free. And then there's collective and historical traumas that are caused by events that are targeted to a group of people. And they impact us for generations. So these are things like the American Indian genocide and again enslavement, the Holocaust. These are things that are passed down through generations. That's in our DNA. And so folks who have historically been marginalized, we're already living with this trauma in our bodies. We are already living in communities that are heavily policed. We are already witnessing our brothers and sisters being murdered and beaten up on the daily evening news. And so it makes sense that with that being our history and then you put on top of

that a global pandemic that our anxiety is at an unbelievable level. And also because we are wired together, we belong to each other. And so even if it's not happening to us directly, we can feel the impact of our community. We feel that pain, that suffering, that fear in our bodies. And so, I don't want us to downplay and say, but that was my ancestors, I shouldn't impact me. It's really important that we acknowledge that we name it,

that we talk about it, that we never forget the harm that's happened to folks of color in this country, and that we continue to lean on and to care for each other, and to never stop talking about it because that's where healing comes from. Well said, I do want to go back to the anxiety challenge in our interview from the challenge because there's something you said that I think is it's worth bringing up here that in Buddhism, you can get a little critical if you want a Buddhist for being a little dark with our emphasis on things like impermanence, nothing lasts. But, you know, there's a pleasant side of impermanence too, which is nothing lasts,

including anxiety. So I just want to tee up something you said about that from the anxiety challenge. Take a listen. We don't fall off the sun for setting at night. We don't fall off the sun for setting at night, we don't fault the clouds for raining. This is just what happens in nature. And so just inside our own bodies, things arise and they pass away. We have these anxieties and then these fears. And then they pass just like this wind is passing through right now. So take us home here. The floor is yours. Just riff in any way you want on those notions. When you're speaking about impermanence, impermanence is one of the three characteristics, the three markers of existence. And they are, the polywords are Anitah, Dukha, and Anata. Anitah, Duka, and Anata. Anitah is impermanence. Duka is just feeling of just not being satisfied. And then Anata is the sense of no self. So, letting go of this

notion that we are inherently these unique beings. We're actually a collective of all these different things. There isn't anything that says, you are a booker, you are a Dan, we are just a collective of arms and legs and flesh and blood and mucus and all that good stuff. And so our friend Ruth King says it in a really pithy way that it's not permanent, it's not perfect, and it's not personal. And I love that. It's been so helpful, not only in teaching, but especially in my everyday life. It's so important to remember that if I'm super uncomfortable, if I hate this experience,

or if I'm riddled with stress, that it only lasts a certain amount of time. And there's something so liberating about knowing that it's not going to last forever. There is something so joyous in remembering that these unpleasant feelings don't last forever, that they're going to move and shift and change form. That we're going to turn towards it and get curious and it's going to dissipate and show us all of the different pieces that it's made of. And so even our anxiety itself is not this solid fixed matter. It's made up of all these different things that are constantly changing. And sometimes when it feels like, that's not true. My anxiety is always the same all the time. I always have it. I invite people to bring a hand to their belly and to feel their breath breathing in and to feel their breath breathing out.

And then to notice, did you have anxiety, that gripping, that tightening in the chest? Did you have that experience in that moment? And it's important to remember that even if we feel like these things are always happening, there's always space in between. There's always that space in between where there is alleviation from it, where there is a pause from it. And it's actually impossible for things to stay the same because we are a microcosm of the natural world. And what happens in the natural world is that

things are constantly changing. And then my office is slated afternoon. I've noticed the light shifting. They're all this time that we've spoken with each other. I've noticed a really annoying motorcycles on the street and I find my body kinda tensing up. And then about two seconds later, it's gone. It's moved on.

I wake up with the sun each morning and I love sunrise. And there hasn't been one single day where I'm like, oh, why did that sunrise go away? Like the nature of the sun is too rise. It's at that moment where the sun is so vibrant and so bright and so so alive. And then that brightness of that morning sun, it fades. And then that brightness of that morning sun, it fades. And I've never held on wanting that sun rise to last forever. But I sit and I relish and I watch that experience as it rises and as it turns into the morning sun.

And so a lot of our suffering comes from believing that things are permanent, that they're going to be this way forever. Our suffering comes from believing that things are supposed to be perfect, that we're never supposed to get sick or get old, that we're never supposed to have a bad day. And our suffering comes from believing that we are alone in this world, that other people don't have these same experiences. It comes from forgetting that we belong to each other.

So yeah, I think that's what I have to say about the three characteristics. I like it. Well, some parts of it, I don't like not your comments, but the inherent dissatisfaction. Yeah, sometimes that's no fun, but it also is the way it is and better to see it clearly and be aligned with it than to fight it all the time. Absolutely. I was watching the videos from the anxiety challenge the other day. You did a great job in those videos, even though I know it was a little stressful.

And you did a great job in this interview, which I also know is a tiny bit stressful. So thank you very much for doing. And I want to remind everybody they can check Booker out in the anxiety challenge and then the anxiety course, which we'll live on in the app. If people want to learn more about you beyond the challenger, the course, or the app, where can they find you?

They can find me at LeslieBooker.com and I am newly on the gram. So you can find me at the real Booker project with all of my imperfections. It'll be there. Awesome. Great job. Thank you again, really appreciate it. My pleasure Dan, thanks. Big thanks to Booker and remember to put everything we just talked about in to practice, in your mind. You can join us for the Taming Anxiety Challenge. Over on the 10% happier app, that challenge starts today June 21st, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps to join the challenge. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere,

Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Poient with Audio Engineering by Ultraviolet. Audio, as always, a big shout out to my ABC News comrades Ryan Kessler and Josh co-hand will see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode on relationships and meditation with the great teacher Susan Piver. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Com slash survey.