Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 470: An Episode About Anger | Jacoby Ballard

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

In this episode, the social justice educator and activist Jacoby Ballard talks about a universal, or near universal, issue: anger. And, he offers us two mental skills that can help channel anger into something even more powerful and effective. Those skills are forgiveness and equanimity. Ballard is a meditation and yoga teacher and the author of a new book called, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for LiberationContent Warnings: There are some brief references to sensitive topics, including trauma and suicide. In this episode we talk about: How he went from an activist largely fueled by anger to a dharma teacher with a very different approachThe sometimes useful role of anger in activism and the danger of being stuck in anger modeThe subtle but powerful move of getting in touch with what is beneath our angerUsing annoyance as a jumping off point for inner investigationWays to work with anger and learning to discharge the energy in our body Forgiveness, including forgiving ourselvesGetting over our need to be rightEquanimity, or as Jacoby calls it, his “tussle with equanimity”Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jacoby-ballard-470See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, okay. Today we're going to talk about what I suspect is a universal or at least near universal issue. Anger. Speaking personally, this is one of my most prominent inner struggles. Anger can be clarifying and motivating, but it can also make me extremely

stupid. Most of the apologies I've had to issue in my life are the result of my having been carried away by rage. Today, though, we're going to talk not just about anger, but also about two mental skills that can help us channel our anger into something even more powerful and effective. And those skills are forgiveness and equanimity. My guest is Jacobi Ballard, who's a meditation and yoga teacher. We talked about how he went from an activist who was largely fueled by anger to a Dharma teacher who has a very different but no less committed approach. We talked about this sometimes useful role of anger in activism and other aspects of life, but the danger of being stuck in anger mode, we talked about the

subtle but powerful move of getting in touch with what is beneath our anger, using annoyance as a jumping off point for inner investigation, specific ways to work with anger, including investigation specific ways to work with anger, including sitting for tea with it, which I changed to having a beer with it and also learning to discharge the energy that anger builds up in the body. Then we move on to forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves and Jacoby has a particularly moving story about this. We also talk about getting over the need to be right and finally we talk about equanimity or as Jacoby it, his tussle with equanimity. A little bit more about Jacobi. He's a social justice educator and yoga teacher

who identifies as trans. And he's the author of a new book called, A Queer Dharma, Yoga and Meditations for Liberation. Heads up, there are some brief mentions of trauma and suicide here. 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 Kelli 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 Hey y'all is your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my new podcast Baby this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends family and experts the questions that are in my head

Like it's only fans only bad where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Jacobi Ballard, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks so much, Dan. Thank you. I was very intrigued and I found it very relatable that one of the big topics you tackle in your book is anger. And so I thought maybe you would be worth starting with the role of anger in your life. Yeah, I think a lot of my activism started there.

A lot of other people's activism starts with anger because it's easier sometimes to tap into the grief, but usually the heartbreak motivates our activism. Some kind of harm is happening, some kind of devastation, violence is happening, and we're moved to put a stop to it. And anger plays this great role in that it ignites our adrenaline, right, and it allows us to act. I think within my own activist training, various social justice movements,

anger is really stoked because it is so powerful and potent and it can stop people in their tracks and shift directions for a policy or a campaign or a way of life. And so I really cultivated my anger over about the course of a decade. And in terms of my activism, I think it made it powerful. It made my voice land in a more profound way. And it also, because I was kind of like stuck in

anger mode, it also freed a lot of my relationships. How so? When I had turned on that critical eye, I couldn't just look at some things critically and not others. And so I started calling out my friends pretty constantly for putting aluminum can in the trash instead of a recycling bin or for buying a pair of Nike's instead of getting something at the thrift store. Or I think I had some purity politics, which I think is found within activism that it's so easy to see all of the things that are wrong. So then there's this inclination to make my own words on actions, every one of them on the side of justice. But it's not possible, right?

We can't be perfect in any realm, including in our activation of justice. And so I wasn't very pleasant to be around to my friends stopped wanting to hang out with me or had some really hard conversations of telling me you're being extra critical. And I'm actually someone that's on your side. Like I love you. I'm behind you. I'm in the movement that you're in. And I think over the course of the last decade, I've shifted course to take that anger and get in touch with a grief that's beneath that. And if I can get in touch with a grief, I can touch into my heart and what I care about and what is most important to me. And then if I'm in touch with that, then I can act from a place of love.

And consider what is going to draw people together, what is going to create connection, what is going to draw people in to say racial justice work or climate change work rather than pointing the finger and getting mad at them. I've learned through studying the carceral system, the punishment, judgment, isolation doesn't work to transform behavior. And so if we're wanting to create a better world, we need more people to be creating that better world. And so we need to be drawing the flyers with honey as the old adage says. I was having dinner with the staff that works incredibly hard on this show. And they started making fun of me because I say the same kind of these verbal ticks,

these things that I say, and Millie and one of them is, yes, just found myself to have to say it. So I'm gonna just say it, but I'm gonna call out that I say it all the time and now people are making fun of me for it. That you've brought me to this point that I love, which is that I have a million questions based on everything you've just said. So one of the things I wanna talk about,

but I'm gonna put a pin in it, but I wanna signal to the audience and I wanna talk about it is is you've answered this whole question, or pretty much most of this question through the lens of activism, and not everybody listening to this show will be involved in activism. So I want to signal to people that we're going to venture beyond that at some point, but saying with activism for a second, you throw out some terms of art from the meditation world that some folks who are not steeped in it might find gauzy or incomprehensible or whatever.

You talked about being in touch with your heart and coming out of love, all of which is great. I co-sign on it. But can you put it in plainer language for people who might not be able to access what you're pointing to? Yeah, I guess to put it simply instead of considering what are you against? What are you for? What do you stand for? What is most important to you? What moves you? What touches you? What allows you to put down your head at night and fall soundly asleep?

Or what wakes you up in the middle of the night because you care about it? What helps you get out of bed in the morning? That's love to me. So love, it doesn't have to be white light, string music. It's just whatever you care about. Yeah, exactly. Whatever moves you in. What's beautiful is that all of us are moved by something different. And that's so important, right? And a household, and a family,

and an organization, and a business, that's an asset because collectively, we have so many different lenses that we're looking out through. And so then collectively we care and love about a lot more than just any kind of individual. It's tricky though, because I know you were in that period of time where you sounded like you were a barrel of laughs calling people out on their sneakers and their recycling practices.

And yet, I mean, you weren't wrong. So how do you navigate that where anger sees clearly, right? Not always, but it can see clearly and be, as you said, quite a motivator. And so how do you know when to dial up the clarity lens or dial it down without being a sellout? Yeah, I try to have the same conversations, but through a lens of connection, so considering what my friend who wears some Nike sneakers or drives a fancy car or whatever the thing is that irks me or feels like it's part of systems of oppression and systems of injustice, I try to consider like, what does this person care about? Are they an art therapist?

And so how can I go through kind of that doorway? Are they a writer? Are they a landscape architect? How can I read what they love and try to gear the conversation through that doorway rather than just like pointing the finger and putting up a, I don't know, red flag right away, where their nervous system is automatically,

I know from studying the nervous system through mindfulness and through yoga that we shut down through someone's tone of voice, through their body language, much before we actually hear what they're saying. So I try to make sure that when I'm having hard conversations that I'm in a grounded place, and if through my mindfulness practice,

if I'm not in a grounded place, then I try to not have the conversation. I try to say, Dan, let's come back to this in 15 minutes. I need to step outside. I need to pet my dog, whatever I need to, like calm down. Because I think otherwise we do the anger to service. There's such wisdom and clarity there. As you said, but if I allow the ferocity of anger to scare someone away, then I don't actually get a connect with that person. I don't, there's no change that happens. The wisdom of the anger doesn't land anywhere. I'm just going to stay with the Nike's in the fancy car just for a second because I felt myself reacting personally to that. I wear a lot of Nike sneakers personally,

and we only have one car because I'm too cheap to have us get a second car even though we need it. But the car we have is pretty nice and I don't know. I went to the following little diatribe in my mind listening to which was I'm good on a bunch of issues, right? I feel like I'm good on a bunch of issues. I don't eat meat and blah, blah, blah. So let me have my night keys. Instead of hitting me with the systems of oppression, I suspect I am articulating the inner dialogues of people listening, some people listening, not all.

How do you deal with obnoxious people like me? I mean, I first honor all the things that you are doing to stand on the side of justice and do the right thing and have some sort of moral code that's so important. And because we're imperfect beings, all of us as humans, there's always going to be more to do. And that's part of being in relationship with each other is shining a light on what more there is to do qualities to cultivate in ourselves, whether that's generosity or honesty. I would say to consider everything that goes into a pair of sneakers, right? Like the rubber trees or the leather or the synthetic products that instead of using leather or where do those come from? What communities does that come from? Who makes it? Is the process of

production dangerous to certain communities? To kind of look at the different aspects that brings the pair of mykeys to your feet, right? And consider, is that really worth it for me to like endanger all these different people's lives? Because I want something fly, I'm not feet. I mean, I bought my first pair of mykeys in like 20 years, a couple of weeks ago, and I was like,

Whoa, can I do this? And that's your business. I can ask the questions, but it's any of us, it's our own karma to deal with. What bargains am I willing to make and what am I willing to like take a stand on? How did you end up buying Nike's? I just need to go through some advertising manipulation The algorithms figured out the colors I like and the tones and I don't know Yeah, and I guess I just kind of like you

I know that there's some things that I really take a stand on and that sometimes I need to not be pure and allow that to be too. And I think that allows me a sense of connection with other folks who can't always be pure, which is all of us, right? I think it's important for us to allow ourselves a little bit of room. And for me, to depart from any kind of purity, politic. So if I could be that myself, then I can interface with anyone who also is making some negotiations and perhaps throwing some people under the bus and perhaps taking a stand and being in solidarity with others. Dali Chug is a researcher in bias and diversity related stuff at NYU. I'm handling her area of specialty. So sorry, Dali, for listening. And she has a concept

sort of word that she made up and uttered here on the show and has written about in a book she wrote that I have grabbed onto in a huge way. And it's the concept of good-ish. And I think it's really helpful in this zone. I think she specifically referring to it as if you carry this concept that you're a good person, well, then somebody, when they point out that you've made a mistake, well, then you freak out because you go into an identity crisis. But if you carry the view of I'm good-ish, well then that's a growth mindset all the time. And I think you can kind of tweak that concept a little bit to apply it to what you're talking about with purity politics. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We can then see a conversation like this is helping each other become

even better humans on the planet instead of me having any kind of a version to someone not doing X, Y, or Z that I've been doing for a decade to benefit the environment or to benefit in par with people on the other side of the globe. And we can find a sense of connection and know that we're growing together. And that's going to benefit any kind of relationship, whether it's colleagues or even an interaction with a stranger in a grocery store, right? So just to close out, the activism portion, we'll come back to activism throughout, but before we move into a little bit more of an interpersonal zone, would it be safe to sum up by saying anger can be clarifying and motivating, but if that's the only fuel you're running on, it's likely to be problematic.

Yeah, it's going to burn something. It has this fiery energy that if you just stay with anger for too long, it's going to destroy. You've been talking about anger in your life within the context mostly of your activism, but what about in your personal life beyond policing people's footwork? Yeah, I mean, it arises for me in any kind of space that I'm in. I mean, because there's troubling dynamics in most spaces, whether it's a restaurant and who are the dishwasherers and who are the cooks and who is the owner of the business and who are the dishwasherers and who are the cooks and who is the owner of the business and who are the patrons. I can't having been groomed as a social justice educator for a long time now. I can't walk into any space and not see those dynamics. And I think I feel comforted or less

on edge, less critical, certainly when people involved are also aware and trying to change something, but when it's some sort of institution that maybe even as aware of those dynamics, it has no interest in changing because it benefits profit as the bottom line. That is a major source of anger for me. In terms of friendships, I'm a survivor of various kinds of trauma. And so when there's dishonesty or a lack of transparency, I think first I experienced doubt in the person and in the relationship, and then it might boil up into anger. There's certain things that we could do to respect any kind of relationship and honesty

as one of them. And I want that in my personal lives. And I think I feel deep grief if someone isn't interacting with consistent honesty. And so on top of that is the protective anger that arises for me. So you suffered some pretty serious wounds earlier in your life and they can resurface these traumas in moments when you feel like you're not getting when you need an current relationship with a friend or a family member or whoever.

Yeah. I think so many traumas continue. even the same traumas continue to be perpetuated because of a lack of transparency and honesty. And so I see honesty is a real sad to trauma survivors and to preventing the same harms from happening. And so my nervous system feels unsafe if there's not honesty, clarity, transparency. You've referenced a couple of times that there's anger, but often something beneath it, you've talked about grief, Mudita Nisker, who's a teacher with whom I've worked for a couple of years. Once I was complaining about something in my anger and she said that she thinks of anger as a secondary emotion.

It's usually covering up for something beneath it. You've talked about grief. In my case, I think it's often fear. But does that land that idea of the secondary emotion? Is that land for you? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a protective device that our bodies go through because grief or fear is there's such a vulnerability there, right?

And sometimes we're not safe enough to feel the full extent of our vulnerability. And so anger with all of it's adrenaline and it's fire protects us and protects that vulnerability. What about when things are just straight up annoying? Well, that's the opportunity to look at what is annoying about it. Am I trying to control the situation and it's out of my control? That's annoying. Yeah, it's something not going my way.

Our thing's not moving on a timeline that I'm expected or that the culture supports. And that's annoying to me. I think it's an opportunity to look at what is annoying about. Can I get in touch with that as an inquiry and use the mindfulness practice to kind of dig a little bit deeper? Because there's something there that annoyance is very surface. There's something deeper down, again, that it's either like alerting you to or kind of protecting and burying.

That's so interesting you said this because I can understand, you're just interpolating back into my own life. I can understand me getting angry in the face of something that I'm sad about and I don't wanna deal with a sadness. I definitely understand fear and protecting myself with anger, but then there are like, I was flashing back to the last night.

I was, we had an incredible day. I have a seven year old son and my wife and my son and I, we had a bunch of families over at the house. We're in the sun all day, we're a bunch of kids, and at around seven o'clock at night, we're all incredibly tired, which is amazing how tired you can get doing absolutely nothing all day,

but we're really, really tired, and my son melted down over not being able to find his blanket. I wasn't even in the, my wife, bless her, was dealing with it, but I could just see this incredible rage coming up, and I was trying to figure out, what is that? And I think there's a bunch of things, but you just named one thing, which is part of it was, I couldn't control it.

Like, there was no stopping this. And my way of dealing with it would have been to make it worse. Yes. You just made a squashing movement with your hand. Yes, and that would have been a disaster. I should start prepaying his therapy bills now if I had engaged in that way. But I think you're right. Another source of anger is, and we call it annoying or I called it annoying, but it can just be not getting what you want. Things aren't going your way.

Yeah, and parenting is such a great insight into that, right? Because there's this little being that you're responsible for. And they have their own sets of needs and wants and understandings of the universe and their own timelines that are largely not about productivity or efficiency. And that can be annoying. All right. So let's get practical now now because you certainly do in your book. What are some ways we can work with anger, whatever the source? I think it's really important to discharge it, to recognize the energy is there. For me, it's usually a heat, usually in my gut or in my throat.

And I feel like I stand up a little bit taller. My eyes are a little bit brighter. My whole nervous system has activated. I'm paying attention in a really focused way. And I'm a yoga teacher, right? And so I work with the body a lot and have studied trauma and the nervous system for a long time. And I know that that energy of anger needs to move through us. So we can work with that through screaming, through singing, through stomping, through any most kinds of sports allow us to channel that energy, Ager, and that way it can be

really useful for athletes because it activates the body, dancing, drumming. There's so many things that are a natural part of so many cultures that are about conducting the energy through our bodies so that then we can settle and have a more intentional conversation with one another. The wisdom of my anger or the wisdom of your anger can land because the energy of it has moved through us. So people listening to the show might be tempted to do any number of things in the face of anger, but one of them might be to hurl themselves into the lotus position and meditate it away. But it sounds like in your view, step number one is let it move through you, discharge it.

Yeah, absolutely. I think when we go to this place of prayer or compassion or meditation right away, then it stifles the anger and stifles the rage. And as one of my students said, then that rage is gonna go somewhere and it might end up coming out the side of your neck. Which is not gonna be useful to anyone. Think of your, the seven year old child having a meltdown, right?

Like he needs to move his body as part of that meltdown. The energy needs to move through him. If you were to pin him down, right? Which hopefully we're not doing, but his whole system is gonna go into shutdown. And at some later point, whether it's like later that evening

or a decade later or 50 years later, that energy is going to have to come out. And if we don't allow space for that energy to come out, then it just foments inside of us, inside of our individual bodies, inside of our communities, our households, and that's dangerous. It needs to be expressed. Okay, so I think that you made that point really well.

What about once that's done, how to work with it in a meditation? Yeah, to get really curious about it, to think about sitting for tea with your anger, considering what would my anger have to say to me, what wisdom would it impart to me right now if we could just have a really calm cup of tea across the table where there's no threat, right? Because usually there's something really profound, there's something that like really touches my heart. Maybe that's something is under threat or being dismissed or disregarded or has been disregarded for centuries or generations.

Right? Sitting in meditation, just listening, tell me, anger, what do you have to tell me? And to just continue asking that question or the question in your own mind of listening to it. asking that question or the question in your own mind of listening to it. That's really interesting because I think a lot of listeners will think of meditation as, okay, follow your breath. Try not to think, but it sounds like you are saying, this is allowing the discursive mind to interplay with the raw data of physical sensations. Yeah, I mean, it's holding that, it's a contemplation rather than meditation,

it's an inquiry that holding in the space of meditation and the space of your practice that maybe you're new to practice or maybe you've been practicing for a long time, just holding the question in the practice, it might not be the insight that you want, it might not be on the timeline that you want, but I think holding the question is really important

for the truth to come forth, to feel safe enough to land somewhere. So you're the meditation teacher, I'll defer to you, but I could imagine this practice working, for example, by sitting for a few minutes in the traditional way, letting the mindset all focusing on one thing like the breath or the feeling of the whole body

sitting or even the traditional loving kindness phrases or doing something to settle the mind for a few minutes and then opening up to, okay, anger, what do you have to say? Let's have a beer together. Oh, you prefer tea. So we're having a beverage with our rage and maybe that's easier to do once the mind has calmed a little bit. Does that description sound on to you? Yeah, exactly. So you let the energy move through you, stop mixing, dancing, going for run as my favorite way, and then sitting quietly. I usually do a little bit of breathwork because I've studied breathwork for a long time and I know the breaths to settle the nervous system.

And then yeah, just asking the question. And then I think it's also helpful to work with a teacher who's going to help you ask the question and hold whatever arises for you without judgment, without any kind of expectation of what the answers or insights should be and help you get even more curious about it as kind of like an external listener. I want to get back to breathwork in a second because you mentioned it and some people might want to know what does that exactly mean.

But you just said the thing about the teacher and I just flash back to a conversation I was having with my teacher, Joseph Goldstein, recently where I was, I know that he's told me and I've also just seen it since I've known him for so long. And I've seen him, my own behavior and I've seen it with other people. People tend to act, be on their best behavior around him

because they're around the guru, whatever. So I try to be as ugly as possible around him, just to counteract that and show it all and let him, you know, react to it. And the hallmark of his reactions, and I think this is true for people who have done a lot of practice, is an utter lack of judgmentalism.

I mean, he just, I think, once you've looked at your own mind enough, you realize that you're capable of anything. And so you're way less judgmental. And to me, that's the value of interacting with the teacher around this stuff. Does that sound right to you? Yeah, absolutely. It's a product of looking at your own mind and also just years of practice, right? That he's probably been judgmental in the past and seen how that went with a student, right? And it probably didn't go so well. And so then out of his mindfulness practice, he probably learned something from it. I know that part of mindfulness is not to never make

mistakes, but when we do make a mistake, it's in our awareness such that we can be present enough to not make that same mistake again. So he's been practicing that for a long time and then he greets you with all of your messiness showing up and he is prepared. He's encountered that within himself. He's been in this role as teacher. There's a level of experience and skillfulness there. What if you don't have a teacher? And I think most of us don't. I mean, anyone on any of the meditation apps

that you might listen to, a lot of teachers have skill. I think it is important to be in some kind of a relationship with a guide because it's people that are further down the path than you that have been practicing for a longer time that have probably encountered some of the difficulties within their being that you encounter within yours and have probably found and honed some tools along the way and can kind of help you from going off on various detours to keep guiding you down the path towards clarity, towards

truthfulness, towards a greater level of kindness. And right now there's so many teachers that are available in this post-pandemic or coming out of the pandemic moment. So many of us are available online to people all over the world, right? Many people work with marginalized communities and just have a sliding scale fee, don't have a fee necessarily, although they accept donations. And so there's really, there's not too many reasons to not work with a teacher right now,

although I will say that it is important to do your homework and know who you're gonna choose for your teacher, to know some of the things that they've gone through in their life. The mindfulness industry is huge and is multi-billion-dollar industry now. And so like any other industry, there are bad products or unpracticed teachers. So if you just pursue any teacher, that could work out well. And it might not. It's useful. It's important to do a little bit of homework.

I should say that we at 10% have you happier actually working on a product that will allow people to access teachers individually or as part of a group, which will be rolling out for the next year or two. But what you're recommending is, and I think I would co-sign on this, is meditation teachers who hear on the show or teach on your favorite app or may go by the name, Jacoby Ballard, you look up their websites and reach out to them and see if they're accepting students. Yeah, exactly. Coming up, Jacoby Ballard on using breath work to calm yourself, working with difficult people, and the danger of harboring resentment. Something I know a little bit about personally. That's coming up right after this.

Hey, I'm Eresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance, but the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to

via Ru off course. In our series RuPaul Born Naked, we'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Breathwork. Would you mind saying a few words about that because meditation practice, mindfulness meditation, as we often discuss it on the show, is not a breathing exercise. It is following the breath as it naturally occurs. However, a ton of data to suggest that manipulating the breath in specific ways can, as you said, calm the nervous system.

So, drop some knowledge if you don't mind. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different breaths that activate the nervous system, which is really useful if you're going into some kind of event where you need to be fully present and more focused. And there's a whole other bunch of breaths that help ground the nervous system. And in general, we want our nervous systems to be grounded most of the time and able to activate when needed, but then go back to a settled place as quickly as possible. So as a yoga teacher, there's various breaths that I teach to both activate and ground, given that most people are more anxious. The not, I tend to teach a lot more grounding

breaths, especially working with different targeted populations. Our nervous systems are under attack, our beings are under attack, and so our nervous systems could be hyper-vigilant and in this anxious way. And so doing more grounding breaths for marginalized populations is important. Some of the tools are just simply breathing through your nose

rather than breathing through your mouth, can help ground, because when we're trying to run away from something, we need as much oxygen, getting to every cell in our body as soon as possible. And so the quickest route is through our mouths. It's slower to breathe through the nose, and we breathe through our nose when we're grounded. So if we understand that,

then we can preemptively try to breathe through our nose instead of our mouth to ground the nervous system. Another tool is just the length of the inhale, the length of the exhale. The inhale tends to be activating and the exhale tends to be grounding. So, if you make the inhale longer and the exhale shorter, kind of like a breath of like hyperventilation, right, then you're activating the nervous system. If you make the inhale shorter and the exhale longer, like a yawn or a sigh, then you're settling the nervous

system. Our nervous systems do this. Our breath does this just kind of naturally. I watch my three year old, he'll go through a temperate tantrum. And when he's settled down, he'll be in our laps usually. And at some point, he'll like take a deep usually. And at some point, he'll take a deep breath. And at that point, we know like, okay, now you're back. You're fully back now. You're done with the tantrum. The monster has released you from its talons. Yes, that was very helpful. I appreciate that.

In your book, I believe you also recommend as a meditative tool for working with anger. A Tibetan practice called Tong Leng. Could you describe that? Yes. What's beautiful about Tong Leng, it's different than a lot of other styles of meditation, is that you are working with the breath. You're not trying to control the breath, but there's an awareness of the breath and you're tying it to certain phrases. So I started the Talan meditation with breathing in love and breathing out love. Word like love doesn't work for you. Then substitute any other word that does. That's just kind of that initial set of phrases is again to settle the nervous system, allow you to feel

taking care of, supported, and a place that you can give out love as well, the exhaling love. And then breathing and suffering and exhaling love is the work of compassion. And there's something about breathing and suffering, breathing it into our very lungs is really intimate and intense. And in some ways can get to the heart of compassion a little bit quicker than some of the more traditional Karuna compassion meditation phrases. That said, as certain points like right after a crisis or a tragedy has happened, Toglan is not appropriate for that reason because it's two intense, we're already in a heightened moment, right? So using togglen with that kind of lens of like being trauma-informed

to allow some days, some weeks for whatever it is to pass or to just intentionally be breathing in. A different kind of suffering, I always tell my students that if you're feeling ungrounded or not so resource on a given day, to breathe in something like irritation that like your neighbors mowing the lawn and an opportune moment for you, is a little bit easier than like breathe in the latest gun violence tragedy and then breathe out love, right? If it's like the days afterwards. And then the next step of Tonglin is to breathe in love and to breathe out suffering, which is the work of letting go, the work of forgiveness to other chapters in my book,

to draw on all the resources around you, whether that's the love and care of your loved ones, or whether that's a sense of being safe in that, the house that you're in in or the building that you're staying in and given that set of conditions of being safe to be willing to set down some of your own an armor, any limiting beliefs, anything that's held you back from being your best self, the kind of self that shows up in front of Joseph Goldstein, right, to let that go. And then always at the end of Thailand, you return to the original phrases

of breathing and love and breathing out love. And at that point, at the end of Thailand, I think of breathing and love as the practice of gratitude to really intentionally put yourself in contact with the beauty and brilliance of this world to know that it's necessary to have that awareness every day in order to be with the suffering, that there's a balancing effect. So breathing and love and then breathing out love is the work of generosity of being willing to share the resources, the tools, the skills, the network, the relationships that you have for the goodness of all. And you probably already said this and I apologize if I missed it, but just to be super, super, super clear, you're not manipulating the breath here.

You're using these phrases as the breath naturally occurs. It is important to watch the breath like if someone's really activated, they're probably is going to be a longer inhale and a shorter exhale. And if I'm in the role of teacher with someone who, and I'm leading a ton of meditation, I see that happening. If I'm in some of the harder phrases of breathing and suffering and breathing out love or breathing in love and breathing out suffering, then I go back to usually just watching your breath to just like deactivate and then like come back in when we're able to. So you're not intentionally manipulating the breath, but

for every emotional state, there's a corresponding state as the breath. And so we can be aware of that as we meditate with any kind of meditation and notice for ourselves, like, oh, a lot is coming up for me right now. Maybe I need to like set this aside and go for a walk or just watch the breath or do a simpler practice that's not so activating. Just quick note to skeptics here, or anybody who's just new to this, I don't, and Jikobie may know, but I don't know what the science is around tongue-less,

but the science around it's kind of related practice of meta or loving kindness is quite strong in that loving kindness is not related to the breath as much you're just imagining people and sending phrases like, maybe happy, maybe safe, healthy, live with these. Jacobi mentioned earlier, a variant of that is called Caruno or compassion practice where you're specifically imagining people are suffering and sending phrases like, maybe free from suffering.

These practices, there's quite a bit of data to suggest they have physiological, psychological, and even behavioral impacts. And the bottom line from all of that is that love broadly understood, as we discussed earlier, is not a factory setting. It's a skill. And that is incredibly important and powerful and empowering news. I don't know if you want to add to that in any way, Jacobi, to put you on the spot. I don't know if you know what the data that in any way, Jacobi, to put you on the spot. I don't know if you know what the data is around Tonglin, but maybe just to agree that it's good news because I saw you nodding. Yeah, I do think it is good news.

I don't know specific data on Tonglin off the top of my head, but I do know that when we practice living kindness or Karuna or Tonglin that our relationships get better. And that for me is like all the evidence that I need and motivating enough, I know for myself as a social justice activist that these practices have shifted my lens and my strategy from being like forceful and shaming and judging people

into better behavior, to slowing down, getting curious about like what are the underlying conditions that leads someone to act in such a way that might be harming a specific community that's adjacent to their own or on the other side of the world. How is it that they're able to engage in that given that I believe in their basic goodness? And I have come to believe more and more, and people's basic goodness through practicing loving kindness, right? And cultivating the sense of connection with a variety of other beings that have different lived experience from me. Two questions that arise based on the paragraphs you just uttered there. One of them is, can you say more about how you came to believe

in our basic goodness through these practices? Like, I would love to hear some more detail about that. And then the other question is, is shame never an appropriate tool when you're trying to bring about change? Yeah, so one of the categories of meta is working with difficult people. And so for me, some of the difficult people are those who hold the most power on the planet or the most wealth. And as I've come to work on loving them too, it's allowed me to humanize them and see them not just as people that are enacting privilege or that are inherently violent. But it's reminded me that these are also human beings who also have families who also were once children who also are going to be elders if they live long enough. And then I guess also I've been helped through relationships

within yoga and mindfulness. I think of this man, Rob Schwar, who runs the Give Back Yoga Foundation, and he used to be a World Bank executive. And once we were having dinner in a crowded dining hall, and there was nowhere else to sit, except for this with this like 50-year-old man. And so I went to sit and learned that this was Rob, and we got to talking, and I learned that he was a former World Big Executive and was at the very meeting that I was protesting

in 2000 in Washington, DC. And we just had a good chuckle about that. Like how interesting that here the practice of yoga is bringing us together to sit at the very same table and have a conversation like this, allowing us to connect. And a lot of his work is also working with marginalized populations, working with survivors of trauma vets, children in schools, an addiction and recovery. And so these are, you know, all groups of people that we both care about

and we came from very different places to arrive there. But I think my practice of loving kindness allowed me to be open to the possibility of connection with this person that as a young activist, I was looking for the faces that were standing in the windows of the buildings that we were like surrounding and preventing anyone else from entering into. And part of that tactic was to shame

and humiliate people into better practice. And I learned through this friendship with Rob that we're gonna get a lot further if we sit down at the same table and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and connect with one another and get curious about what moves one another, what do you really care about?

This is what I really care about to use the listening skills that our mindfulness practices had cultivated over years. He, in the year 2000, he probably wouldn't have been able to sit at the in the year 2000, he probably wouldn't have been able to sit at the table with me. And I probably wouldn't have been able to sit at the table with him. But 12 short years later, we both were practicing in very different spaces and then come to be in the same place. I think that's for me, that's the hope of

mindfulness practice and why I really believe in it as a tool for social change. So what about shame? Do you think we should keep it on the it as a tool for social change. So what about shame? Do you think we should keep it on the table as a viable tool sometimes? I think it's an emergency break if nothing else is working. There's a big conversation within social justice movements and that also the right has taken up about calling out people and a lot of that is using public shaming to direct someone into better behavior.

That is most dangerous when there haven't been any other attempts, any other tactics used to shift someone's behavior, whether that's interpersonal harm, something like sexual violence or whether that's more institutional harm. So I think we can get a lot further if we try to connect and build relationship. But if the most we can do with a given condition of harm is to stop harm, then a public shaming might be the thing that's going to stop harm when nothing else has worked.

It might bring it to a screeching halt. It might get someone out of office because the truth about their behavior and relationships with their staff has come out. But I think all that's going to do is stop things, stop harm from happening in the moment. It's not actually going to clear the way to change being made. To me, that all, and I'm not an expert in this

by any stretch, but that all just intuitively sounds right. And another thing I've heard people wise people on the left say is that if you're stuck in the finger pointing mode, often you're not taking a look at your own stuff. Yeah. And again, that's such a gift of mindfulness practice. If yoga practice is to really sit with yourself and an activist, Julia Butterfly Hill, that I really studied when I was in college. She always said that when you're pointing the finger out, there's always three fingers pointing back at yourself, right? And so of course, it's important

to like look at what angers you, what brings you grief in the world, but also that's probably because there's something personal for you. For so many of us, what brings us into the work we do is our own personal history, right? I wouldn't have necessarily been six years old and been like, I'm going to be a meditation teacher when I grow up. But conditions aligned such that became the best path forward for me. Looking at ourselves, studying ourselves is such a part of most spiritual practices, most world religions, at least in the mystical aspects of world religions.

I think it's so important to cultivating a better way forward. So they're rather than pointing the finger out, we can like study ourselves and then like hold hands and move together. Well, that leads us nicely to a word or a subject that you invoke briefly a few minutes ago. And you do dedicate a lot of time to it in your book, which is forgiveness. You talk a lot about how to practice it

and I wanna get detailed there. But let's just our high level, what is forgiveness and what is it not? It's not condoning harm. It's not saying that whatever happened is okay. It's not accepting it, but it's reckoning with the fact that it did happen and trying to move forward in the least harmful

in the most skillful way. A prerequisite for forgiveness is to process rage and grief because that's inevitably there when harm has gone down. We've already talked a lot about that, but then to be able to forgive, again, recognizes that the way forward is through connection. As Bartlett Luther King said, darkness does not, just all darkness only light can do that. Whereas the Buddha said, hatred does not cease by hatred only, only love alone.

So forgiveness allows us to lean into that, given that like something small or something profound went down between two individuals, two communities, the world, many different interest groups, to do the personal work in our heart, to release resentment. And sometimes it's not even about relationship, but it's about your own well-being.

There have been studies on resentment that show that harboring resentment literally makes us sick, that it elevates cholesterol levels, elevates the risk of heart disease, elevates stress hormones in the body. And so for any doubters of forgiveness, I usually lead with that that forgiveness is really about you and your own well-being and your own freedom. Letting go of the burden of resentment, letting go of the story, letting go of needing to be right even, but doing the work to kind of shed the weight so that you can move forward with the lessons of

whatever happened, the wisdom that you've gained, but not the energy of resentment or rage. Well said. And in fact, you talk about practices for forgiveness. And in your view, the best place to start is forgiving yourself. And you tell a story, a very personal story about forgiving yourself for something you didn't high school. Yeah, I believe you're talking about my relationship with a man who committed suicide. And he did that right after a date that we were on. We were, I grew up close to Aspen and we were skiing together. And I had realized in the week before that that I didn't have romantic or sexual feelings for this person, but I really cared about him and I wanted him in my life. And so I told him that

on the ski lift, just like knowing I have to be honest with this person. That is a kind thing to do rather than lead someone forward with something that doesn't feel right for me. And so I did, and he's skiing to his car, went home and hung himself. And I was a junior in high school. He went to another high school nearby, and the story at his school nearby. And the story at his school became that someone broke his heart. And so he took his life. Would I came to understand through his friends and other students at his school was that he had a really difficult home life. And I had known from Mike directly that he was afraid of his dad anytime that like after we were out together, he cleaned up his car in the parking lot of the bowling alley or the milkshake shop so

that it would be sparkling clean by the time he drove it home because his dad would investigate it. And if it wasn't clean, he was going to get beaten, right? And so that was built up over many years of living with his dad. And also being separated from his mother, which is the parent that he would have preferred to live with. And so that ate him from the inside. In terms of my work with it, I have had to forgive myself for being the last straw. I've had to forgive myself for not knowing

his incredible vulnerability in that moment. I've had to forgive myself for what his family might think of me and the story that they might have of me. I think I've also had to forgive myself for telling the truth and not leading to someone's death. I know that it wasn't my fault. There was a whole slew of conditions, but it wasn't until many years later, and after many years of therapy and being in a new, loving relationship that I was able to like process and realize, wow, I, since that event in high school,

I didn't break up with anyone for the next 15 years because I was terrified. And that often made me stay in relationships that were not right for me for much longer than I should have. So there's this like, I learned this negotiation of like clarity and honesty within ourselves, but also kindness towards another thinking right now of some of the invitations of the practice of right speech. And the first is kindness. And then the second one is truthfulness. Is it necessary now? Yeah, so then, you know, there are layers of forgiveness that have rippled outwards, lived like forgiving myself for not being totally authentic

and a whole bunch of relationships over the next many years after Mike took his life. And then I think forgiving myself for how my truth might land for someone else. It's my truth and it might break someone's heart. It might break trust. It might disappoint someone. But I know that truth builds trust ultimately in a relationship in a community.

And it's part of how I take care of relationships to be honest and transparent. But I've kind of had to practice my way back into that because I would err on the side of kindness rather than truthfulness for years. I'm really sorry this happened to you. I can only imagine through an empathetic leap what a weight that would be to carry.

I'm wondering from a contemplative practice perspective, because I think we're all carrying a shame for past misdeeds. Nobody's blameless here. So how would you recommend we work with you mentioned therapy? And I would endorse that heartily, but from a meditation practice perspective, how would you recommend we work with that? There's phrases of forgiveness that you can direct towards yourself. One of the most gentle that I use is, may I allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes, which admits that all of us are students of life and that no one is perfect.

And so for me, it just allows myself to reckon with mistakes that I've made without that layer of shame. And I think having a teacher or a Sanka spiritual community that you can be transparent with and honest about what you're working through, others who can hold the gravity of what you're working with with you. can hold the gravity of what you're working with with you. So that it's not the harm that you caused a decade ago isn't just yours to hold,

but it's held within your relationship with your teacher or your relationship with your your Sangha or your friend group, whoever knows the intimate details of your life. When we try to bottle something up and just hold it ourselves, there is this constriction that happens in our bodies and in our breath and in our nervous systems, whereas if we can allow it to be held collectively, whether that collective is two people or two thousand people, the weight is less, right? If you put a teaspoon of salt into a glass of water, it's really, really salty. But if you put a teaspoon of salt into a lake, you can barely taste the salt at all.

Coming up, Jacobi talks about letting go of shame, his personal tussle with equanimity, I like that phrase, and the importance of joy and play after this. Okay, after this. Going back to the meditation practice, and you'll notice this is something I harp on a lot just because I want people to walk away with things they can do. Just take us back into, you don't have to guide us in meditation, but just practically recommend we practice with the stuff that's bothering us about ourselves. So through different practices of cultivating focus, holding a specific instance of harm or

a specific relationship in your awareness, and then not even really going into the story of what happened, but offering the phrases such as, may I forgive myself for any harm that I've caused knowingly or unknowingly and thought, word, or action, may I forgive myself and allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes. And if I cannot forgive myself in this moment, may I be able to forgive myself in the future? There's something about the repetition of phrases, right, that often initially there's doubt or even disdain for these phrases, or yes. You're like, what?

How can I say this about this situation? This is ridiculous. But being harsh and forceful with ourselves is not going to lead us into better behavior. It rarely works. But if we could be gentle and allow ourselves to be guided and held by others through this, keep doing it again and again. Some of the things that I've worked to forgive myself for at first, I cringe.

And now it's just like, oh, I did that. And I can talk about it publicly. I can talk about it with people that I'm meeting for the first time. I don't have that layer of shame about it. And I think that that's letting go of the shame really allows us to get to what originally happened and reckon with the fields of feelings of grief or disappointment in ourselves. And from that place, it allows us to commit to a different way of showing up in relationship

with our colleagues, with our family members, with our beloveds. Now that we're on a practical tip here, let me just stay with this for a second. Do you recommend that while we're doing this practice, we hold in our mind an image of ourselves or maybe tune into the sensations of the body sitting in a chair so that we have a kind of target

for these phrases? Well, similar to meta, just saying the phrases allows, is that something for your attention to land on? But I also often say that it's important to have a trauma-informed practice. So if you get overwhelmed at any point working with forgiveness specifically because we're going right into harm with forgiveness practice, right? To at any moment allow yourself to drop the phrases and just pay attention to the breath

or to allow your eyes to open and look around your space and notice three unique things about this space. There's something about the movement of the skull on the top vertebra that allows your nervous system to ground and steady again and allows you to feel safe. And then from Resma Medicom, who I know has worked with your staff to even look behind you and to know like there's nothing behind me that's going to get me in this moment. And that can allow you to settle or some other strategies are to rub your thighs or squeeze your shoulders or massage your hands. Something about embodiment and coming back to sensation allows you to be in this moment doing the forgiveness practice, not in the moment that happened however long ago of harm.

So I'm working with really difficult things. Well, first of all, it's important to build up the capacity. We start with what's annoying and irritating and then build up towards the greatest harms that we've ever done. The greatest harms ever done to us, the greatest harms on the planet affecting the most people or beings or ecosystems, but it's like a muscle and you can't just rush into it, right? I don't put up my running shoes and I'll start to just run a marathon out of nowhere. I start to run little bits and pieces and build up capacity.

Same thing with forgiveness. And if you don't do that, you're going to be overwhelmed. You're kind of setting yourself up for either being like triggering trauma from the past or giving up on the practice of forgiveness altogether, which is part of why it's important to be guided by a teacher who can kind of signal that for you if you're not able to catch it. And just somewhat quickly because I want to move to the third stage of the Archi Trace in your

book, which is equanimity, you described the meditation practice as it pertains to forgiving ourselves. How would you tweak it for forgiving other people? Using really, really similar phrases, may I forgive you for the harm that if you have caused me knowingly or unknowingly and thoughtward or deed. May I see your humanity and the midst of my pain, may my forgiveness soften any difficulties between us? May I allow you to be a student of life and to make mistakes? And if I'm not able to forgive you in this moment, may I be able to forgive you in the future?

That last line is really important, right? Because sometimes we're not ready to forgive a certain person or a certain set of circumstances, but it reminds us that that's where we want to head, that we want to forgive everyone, forgive all of the harm, not that we're saying that it's okay to have happened in the first place, but in order to move forward with spaciousness and vision and imagination and creativity, we can't be carrying the weight of the past. We could certainly be carrying the wisdom learned from the lessons of the past we should, but the weight, the energy of it, the burden of it is not going to serve us to creating something

different. You use an interesting phrase in the book, a tussle with equanimity. What do you mean by that? in the book, a tussle with equanimity. What do you mean by that? Equanimity has been the most difficult practice for me again, because of my training and social justice that of not accepting the given reality and understanding that another world is possible, right? So I've asked every teacher that I've ever sat with about equanimity practice, how can I accept this moment if it's full of racism and white supremacy? How can I accept this moment when it's full of distrust and tension? And the best answer I received came from Larry Yang, one of the founders of the Uspay

Meditation Center who said the scriptures say nothing about the next moment. It's all about what's already happened and this moment. That's all you have to accept. And then that gives you the space to move forward again with vision of imagination and creativity. But if you're fighting what's happened in the past? Why did this happen? This shouldn't have happened to me. This shouldn't have happened to this really good person that resistance is taking up energy that could otherwise be happened to this really good person, that resistance is taking up energy that could otherwise be used to creating a better way forward.

Which is not to say, to go the route of a spiritual bypass and to say that everything is fine. A lot of things in our world are far from fine, but it's more about allowing your mind, your heart, your nervous system to be in a place of steadiness, to move forward effectively and skillfully. What are some practices you recommend for developing this quality of balance or equanimity or acceptance?

One practice that encourages it is to consider if I keep fighting or if I continue my anger or continue to resist say the presence of alcoholism in my family, right? Then that's that's going to be where all my attention goes. And to consider like what's going to happen if I just stay in this constricted place about that pattern in my family, what's going to happen in a year? Where am I going to be at? Where's my family going to be at? What's going to happen in five years? What's going to happen in a year? Where am I going to be at? Where's my family going to be at? What's going to happen in five years? What's going to happen in 10 years? And then to do the opposite, to consider, if I come to a place of peacefulness with this,

I have a family of a lot of alcoholics. Wow. Where is that going to allow me to go in the next year? Where's that going to allow me to go with my family? And the next five years, 10 years, for me, it's just, it's really encouraging. It's very clear. Like, yes, I would choose the, the route of equanimity. And then again, like all of the other Brahma Vahara's, loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity is often taught as a set of phrases to repeat inside yourself. And it's just using this mechanism of our thought that whatever we practice grows stronger. And so if we're practicing these phrases of equanimity, then we're going to become steadier and more economists over time. It's not going to happen

tomorrow. You know, you're not going to like sit down, do an equanimity meditation, and then like everything's fine from here on out, right? But it's building the capacity for it's steadiness over time. And again, I think that the greatest measure is our relationships. People around you are going to notice and reflect that back to you. I'm like, wow, you're so much less reactive than you once were, or you have so much greater understanding, or you're really patient, right?

So then that to really be present to that feedback from community and take that in and remind myself, like, oh, that's because of my practice. That's not just like habit stance. It's what I've been cultivating for a long time. What are the phrases you recommend for equanimity? Yeah, except reality as it is, rather than how I would like it to be. May I learn to be present with the coming and goings of life?

And this is what is happening. Whatever this is, this is what is happening. It's pouring all day when I wanted to go hiking. This is what's happening. My kid is tantrumming when he needs to go go hiking. This is what's happening. My kid is tantruming when he needs to go to bed. This is what's happening. Reminds me to be with the moment as it is rather than fighting it. That's a really good one. This is what's happening. I should have used that last night.

And said I self-medicated with Netflix. Two other practices you recommend in the final chunk of the book are gratitude and generosity. Perhaps in our remaining moments, you can say a little bit about both and how they can help us go on this arc from anger to forgiveness to equanimity. Yeah, gratitude is, yeah, there's so many studies done about gratitude practices as well remembering the good things about each day is so important to create more of those good moments from day to day, or if it's just a hard period in your life to know that it's not all a wash, like there's still flowers that are blooming, or there's still, you know, my neighbors singing really sweet melodies. So in that way, I think of gratitude as a practice

of resilience to not allow the sorrows of this world to overwhelm you or mow you over, but to continue to be committed to noticing all of the brilliant things that humanity has done, all of the beautiful ecosystems on the planet. I think of it as a practice of present moment awareness because if you're not really present thing, you're not going to notice. So it also helps you be here day to day. One of the practices for gratitude that I recommend is a gratitude journal, which is just to write down one or two or three things at the end of your day, every day for a set period of time,

usually a month or more is a good amount of time, a little shorter than that, it doesn't always have the impact. And then after your set period that you've committed to writing in your gratitude journal to go back and read it, and then to read it as a regular practice to remind yourself of the goodness

and to remind yourself of to not miss the little things that make life so wonderful. And then the practice of generosity is a way to share the goodness with more people. I know one of my commitments around generosity is giving away 10% of my income to community-ren organizations, a lot of whom that I choose to give to are led by Black Indigenous and people of color. And one of the kind of unforeseen results of this commitment has been that every year when I do my taxes, I get to relive all of the ways

that so many organizations have shown up for people on the planet. And it has made doing my taxes like not as, not as fermentables, sometimes fun, even, which I think that's part of what generosity can do and kind of bleed into different areas of our life, is that like something that was like totally mundane

or just like required adds a little joy to it. Is there something I should have asked that I didn't? I thought you were gonna ask more about joy as like a main area to explore together. Well, let's do that then. Ha ha ha ha. I mean, you kinda let there with generosity and gratitude. The joy chapter that I wrote,

it started as a love letter to queer and trans people. Some people described my book as unapologetically queer, which I think is as important in this moment, given the so many local legislators passing laws against queer and trans youth and also given history of queer folks to be fully ourselves is a practice of joy. And I think it's also not always what's represented about any marginalized group of people, right? I think it's really important to notice black people loving themselves,

trans people loving ourselves, disabled people loving themselves, trans people, loving ourselves, disabled people, loving themselves as disabled people, not despite any of these conditions, but inherently drawn out of these conditions. So that's part of where my chapter on joy came from, but then IOS also have been practicing the heart teachings. So in a earlier draft of my book, I had a small chapter on joy, and then a large chapter as a love letter to queer people. And my editor was like, I think there needs to be more queerness in your joy chapter.

And your love letter to queer folks is great, but kind of out of nowhere. There's, it doesn't really fit. And so I put them together. And yeah, I think being unapologetically queer comes out of queer joy and honoring and celebrating one another and uplifting one another as a practice and our resilience as a targeted people.

And I think it also has allowed me to connect to the joy and resilience of other targeted communities as well and to support their joys, whether that's like supporting native folks reclaiming traditional foods that have been taken from them or supporting them. ancestors made but haven't been made in their homes for generations because I'm in a practice of joy. I am more compelled to support the joy of other people. Practice of joy. How can all of us queer or otherwise practice joy? I think to have it as an objective for your day, every day, to have play and joy on the to-do list. I'm recording this interview in my friend's house and I love writing my bike and so one of my practices of joy was to ride my bike over here instead of driving my car. It can be just little things like that. I'm just like remembering what do I love, what fills me up and doing that deliberately, love, what fills me up and doing that deliberately daily, knowing that we have to do so many things that do not fill us with joy every day as well. So there's a balancing aspect to that. And

then other practices of joy are taking in the goodness to like pause to sniff the flower, to not just pass it by our children are so wonderful at noticing joy, whether it's like a swarm of ants that are like just appeared on the sidewalk and it's fascinating, or whether it's something that like their vision develops and they can see further, like I don't remember when my child when he was younger, he could see mountains for the first time. We live in Salt Lake City, there's mountains all around us. And he was like, there's a mountain, and there's a mountain. And he got so excited, right? There's this childlike sense of wonder

that all of us can cultivate. And it just comes from noticing what's around us. In closing here, can you please, and a lot of people get chebysh about this, plug your book and any other resources you've put out into the world that people might want to access after having spent some time with you. Sure. My book is a career Dharma Yoga and Meditations for Liberation.

And I'll offer a whole bunch of virtual and live workshops through my website, jokobiballard.net. I also teach weekly yoga classes and a weekly meditation sangha that you can sign up for. If you wanna be live with me, there's also recordings of my meditations and yoga classes on my site. And you can find me on Instagram just by my name. Thank you very much for coming out.

Really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks again to JacobiBallard. Don't forget to check out his book, A Queer Dharma. I also want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justin Davy, Lauren Smith, Maria Wertel, Samuel John's, and Jen Poient. We also get our audio engineering from the good folks over at Ultraviolet Audio.

We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus meditation. 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 1-3 plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.