Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 522: What Science and Buddhism Say About How to Regulate Your Own Nervous System | Deb Dana & Kaira Jewel Lingo

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Is it possible to learn to spot which state your nervous system is in and move from suboptimal states to much better ones? The subject of how to work with your own nervous system is called Polyvagal Theory and today’s guests Deb Dana & Kaira Jewel Lingo will give us a primer on what that exactly means. They will also talk about how our nervous systems are connected to the nervous systems of other people, and how we can learn to co-regulate our systems for the betterment of others. Deb Dana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who is a clinician, consultant and author specializing in complex trauma.  Her work is focused on using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma, and creating ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. She has written several books, including Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.  Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in spirituality and social justice. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, with a focus on activists, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, artists, educators, families, and youth. She is author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption.  This is the third installment of our series called, The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Together. In each episode we bring together a meditative adept or Buddhist scholar and a respected scientist. The idea is to give you the best of both worlds to arm you with both modern and ancient tools for regulating your emotions.In this episode we talk about:The basics of Polyvagal TheoryA fascinating and easily graspable concept from Buddhist psychology called, “store consciousness”The interconnectedness of our nervous systems and the responsibility that creates for all of usHow to handle being annoyedWhat happens when we beat ourselves up with “shoulds,” and how to stop doing thatThe value of simply knowing, in the moments when you’re stuck, that those moments are impermanentHow to allow your suffering to inform your lifeThe value of “micro-moments”Two ways of caring for painful states without suppressing themAnd the power of action and service in overcoming anxietyFull Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/deb-dana-kaira-jewel-lingo-522See 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. Hey, everybody. It is such a compelling idea that you can become an active operator of your own nervous system that you can learn to spot which state your nervous system is in and then move from suboptimal states to much better ones. We did an episode on this very subject, which is technically called polyvagal theory

a few months ago, and it got quite a positive response. So now we're bringing back the guest we interviewed for that episode, and we are pairing her with a Buddhist practitioner, a former nun, in fact, to see what a meditation adept has to say about this theory and what a mindfulness practice can do to put the whole process on steroids in a good way. Just to say you do not have to have listened to that previous episode in order to understand this conversation,

although we will put the older episode in the show notes if you're curious. In this episode, you're gonna get a primer on Polyvagal Theory or how to work with your own nervous system. And then we're gonna expand to talk about how your nervous system is connected to the nervous systems of other people and how we can co-regulate, which is a really powerful idea that you can have an impact in, say, a contentious meeting,

for example, just by keeping your shit together. Speaking of, this is the third installment of our series called The Art and Science of Keeping Your Shit Together. In each episode, we bring together an eminent scientist with a meditative adapt or Buddhist scholar, and the idea is to give you the best of both worlds to arm you with both the modern and ancient tools for regulating your emotions. My guests today are Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker who's a clinician consultant and author

specializing in complex trauma. She's written several books including, anchored, how to befriend your nervous system using polyvagal theory. My other guest is Kyra Jule Lingo, who you may remember she's been on the show before. She's a former nun in the lineage established by the recently deceased Zen master Tick-Not-Hon. After 15 years, as an nun, she disrobed and she now teaches all over the world in the Zen lineage and Vipassana tradition. She also teaches secular mindfulness, and she has authored a book called We Were Made for These Times Ten Lessons in Moving Through Change,

Loss, and Disruption. In this conversation, we talked about the basics of polyvagal theory, a fascinating and easily graspable concept from Buddhist psychology called Store Consciousness, the interconnectedness of our nervous systems, and the responsibility that really creates for all of us. How to handle being annoyed, what happens when we beat ourselves up with shudds and how to stop doing that? The value of simply knowing in moments when you're stuck or caught up in an emotion that those moments are impermanent.

How to allow your suffering to inform your life, the value of micro moments, two ways of caring for painful states without suppressing them, and the power of action and service in overcoming anxiety. We'll get started with Deb Dana and Kyra Julelingo right after this. 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. Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Kyra Jewelingo and Deb Dana, welcome back to the show, both of you. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you. Fun to be here. So let's just start with you, Deb, and maybe give us a quick primer. I never know how to pronounce that word primer primer whatever on polyvagal theory. People who have who might have heard you on the show the last time will maybe remember it, but just in case can you just run us through polyvagal theory and then I want to start a dialogue between you and chirodual about the overlap between the way you view the nervous system

and the way the Buddha might. Yeah, sure. So, polyvago theory developed by my dear friend and colleagues, Stephen Purchase, is a theory of the autonomic nervous system. So, it's a theory of how we are human, how our biology takes us into protection and connection, allows us to engage with others, protects us by taking us into fight and flight or into collapse and shutdown. And it uses three basic organizing principles, neuroception, hierarchy and co-regulation. Neuroception being the way the nervous system takes in information. It does that without benefit of the thinking parts of our brain because it is a system that begins in our brain stem. So without our direct awareness and without our bringing

perception to the experience, our nervous system through neuroception, through three pathways, inside our bodies, in the environment around us, and in the space between us and other people, is listening, and it's trying to answer the question in this moment, is it safe? So that's neuroception, and then hierarchy are the three states that we move in and out of in a predictable order. The ventral state of safety connection regulation, which is where we hope to be anchored today, because it allows us to connect and communicate and be in conversation with each other. When we leave that place because the world feels too much for us, we first go to sympathetic fight and flight, and I think most of us recognize

that fight and flight place, the twin pathways of anger and anxiety. And if that doesn't help us resolve the problem, we then can be pulled down to the last state of the hierarchy, the dorsal vagal state, which is a state of disconnection collapsed shutdown. So that's the hierarchy. the dorsal vagal state, which is a state of disconnection, collapse, shut down. So that's the hierarchy. The lovely thing about the hierarchy is we move through it in a predictable way. So we are in ventral. When we leave ventral, we go to fight and flight. When we leave fight and flight, if we don't come back to ventral, we go down to collapse and disconnect. And then in order to get back to ventral from collapse, disconnect, we have to come through some mobilizing energy of sympathetic. And then the third principle, which is, you know,

when we're bringing to life today is co-regulation. So the three of us are nervous systems are finding connection, right? The co-regulation is a biological imperative, meaning it's something we have to have to survive in the beginning, and we have to have life long in order to feel fully present and well. And co-regulation, in the way we're thinking about it through polyvagal theory, is a biological experience of our nervous systems. Our nervous systems feel safe. We get a neuroseption of safety. I move to ventral and I come into connection with each of you and feel I can co-regulate. I can show up,

be present to be with you. So that's the basic primer. I'll call it a primer, a basic primer of polyvagal theory. How did that land for you? It lands really well. I mean, and we had gone through this in our previous interaction, but to sum it up, hopefully not too reductively. What you're saying is that the brain is always on the lookout for one primary question, which is always safe. And as a consequence, we are constantly moving among these three modes. Ventral is the best. And that's where you're sort of calm and feeling connected. Sympathetic is where we're either in fight or flight, and dorsal is where we're fetal.

And so those are three key words to remember as we go through this conversation. Ventral is optimal. Sympathetic, which sounds like it would be good. Actually means your sympathetic nervous system is activated and you're in fight or flight and dorsal vagal is you are curled up into a ball and have given up. So would that be a serviceable rapid restatement?

Serviceable rapid, yes. The only thing I would like to say is it's our nervous system. It's that body experience that is taking in the information and then feeding that information to the brain. And then the brain makes a story to make sense of what's happening in the body. So we want to remember it begins in our body and then moves to our brain. I'm really glad you clarified that. Thank you. So one of the most attractive parts of your argument, your worldview, Deb, is not only that you describe how

our nervous system is working moment to moment, but that we can, as you'd like to say, become an active operator of it. So before I bring in Kyra Jewel, what are the basics on how we can learn how to vector to the best of our ability toward ventral, which again is the optimal state, most of the time. Right. And I do, you know, love, I love your language, vector toward ventral. I might use that. That's beautiful, right?

Because we are always attempting to, and I call it anchor and ventral, I might use that, that's beautiful, right? Because we are always attempting to, and I call it anchor and ventral, you know, have enough ventral circulating so that we can feel safe enough to engage, organized enough to be present. And there are many, many ways to do that, movement, breath, mindfulness, music, you know, there's any number of ways to do that. And each of us finds our own pathway. And I think that's the beauty of understanding the nervous system is that, you know, your nervous system, carajoules nervous system, and my nervous system may choose different ways. There may be different pathways that work better for me than you, or you know, you then chirochule, and our work as humans, I think, is to go on that explorative journey to see what is it.

Are you a mover? Does movement help you? Are you a meditator? Does that help? Are you a music person? Music is a way. Are you an artist creating art? So learning about our nervous system,

learning what it feels like to be anchored in ventral. Then I know when I'm not there, and I can take some actions to get back there, and the more that I take those actions, the more I travel those pathways back to ventral, the easier it becomes and the richer those pathways are. Okay, we've had you in the hot seat for a hot minute. So let's bring in chirogeal. From a Buddhist perspective, does any of this make sense? Totally. Yes, I think what is really resonating in the training I've had in Buddhist psychology is that there are psychology is that there are parts of our consciousness that are operating at different times in different ways. So we have the store consciousness, which is

the container of all these different potentialities, seeds of things that can arise in our mind consciousness. And whatever we water in terms of a seed will grow. So every time a seed arises in mind consciousness, it gets airtime, so it gets strengthened down at the root. So what you just said Deb, about, you know, anytime we come back to ventral, that pathway is strengthened.

So you could say that seed in the store consciousness of whether it's peace or calm or stillness or connectedness. Every time we bring that up in our daily awareness, another wonderful way to think of this is the basement and the living room. So every time a guest is invited into the living room, it's root down in the basement gets stronger, more accessible, it gets easier to bring it up. And the other piece with what you were saying about co-regulation is that the store consciousness is so powerful. It can do so much that our mind consciousness can't do, and it's much more efficient in terms of how it uses energy.

So we could do so many things just using our store consciousness, right? Like all the things we do on automatic pilot, like driving from one place to the other, and we don't know how we got there, but we've been there so many times. That was store consciousness that got us from home to the other and we don't know how we got there. But we've been there so many times that was store consciousness that got us from home to the grocery store. We weren't thinking about, oh, here I have to turn left, here I have to turn right, right. So there's all these things that store consciousness does that we don't have to use our energy to do. Like if we had to use our mind consciousness to walk, we would never make it. If we had to think about every single muscle and movement that had to move to walk,

but store consciousness, you know, easy. So this understanding that there are these different parts of our mind and that, when we go into a habitual response, that's this deeper part of our mind taking over. And what's powerful about mind consciousness is that it can be a gardener, a cultivator of store consciousness. So it can use the vast power of store consciousness for the good rather than in the service of all the things that we may not want to nourish in ourselves. And the last thing I'll say is that the power of this store consciousness is that it can access to a collective consciousness as well.

So it's the storehouse not only of our own individual experiences, but our ancestors' experiences. It's why a child just born knows to be afraid of snakes. They never had any experience with a snake, but that's encoded in the store consciousness, which is part of the collective consciousness. So what you were talking about, co-regulating, all of the things that we experience

that come up into mind consciousness, they're contagious. So our peace is contagious, our stress is contagious, because our store consciousness, they're contagious. You know, so our peace is contagious, our stress is contagious because our store consciousness, we all have the same seeds. So one of us connecting with the seed can touch off that same seed in someone else because we have these mirror neurons. I love what you said about store consciousness and thinking, you know, we don't have to think about walking in the way, you know, we just walk. And the same with the autonomic nervous system, it's automatic, right? If we had to think about every breath or heart rate, we couldn't

do anything else. So I love that it just does it and we can also bring what you would call mind consciousness to it so that we can shape it differently. That's really beautiful. And then the collective is so wonderful as well, because I often say we are inextricably linked to one nervous system or to another across the world. And we come together in that way and impact each other through a neuroseption. I'm sending out a welcome, hopefully, to your nervous system

and you're feeling it and we're coming into connection. That happens all the time without us paying attention, right? Yeah. So paying attention, which you bring. So beautifully is where we need to go. Thank you for naming that also because there's messages we can be sending out, not knowing, right? Like, we want to be open, but if we are afraid, and then that's the message that

we're sending out, but we aren't aware. That's that amazing, neuroceptive capacity to send warnings or welcomes whenever we're just moving through the world without intending. You know, again, it's that I love, you know, coming back to your awareness and mindfulness and it's a heavy responsibility, I think, right? When we move through the world to be mindful of what we're putting out there. So at some point, I do want to talk about how can get out

of the fetal position or out of fight or flight. But since we're talking about co-regulation right now, what can we do? You said it's a heavy responsibility, Deb, to be aware of what we're putting out there? How can we actively manage our presentation in a way that other people's neuroception reacts in a positive manner? So whatever state we're in is then sending signals out into the world.

So if I'm anchored at ventral, or at least have enough ventral circulating so that I'm safe enough as I move through the world, I am sending that message to every nervous system around me, whether I'm in direct contact with that or not. So I can move through the world from a place of feeling okay enough. I think when we talked before, Dan, we came up with ventral okness. If I'm

moving through the world in that place of ventral okness, I'm sending those cues of safety out to the world around me. Alternatively, if I'm moving through the world and I'm anxious or boy, it's been a tough morning and I'm really angry about things. I am sending a warning out to the nervous systems around me, you know, stay away. This person's not safe. And if I'm moving through the world in that place of door, so I'm collapsed, but I'm going through the motions of being in the world, but I'm not really present doing it, that is very confusing for the people around me. Their nervous systems feel That is very confusing for the people around me. Their nervous systems feel confused about what is happening there, and it may not even rise to the level of conscious awareness.

I may just wander by you, and you may have a sort of a sense of who something is not right, but I don't know what. And that's because my nervous system is putting those signals out into the world. So I think as we become aware of how our states impact the world around us, we then carry the responsibility for when we are in ventral to really send that out there. When I'm in ventral, I smile at people. I say hello. I try to do an extra thing that's kind because I'm in that place. If I move through the world, disregulated, I can't go back and make a man's or repair with all the nervous systems I met, but I can make an intention that the

next time I go out and ventrally, again, offer these kindnesses to the people around me. Kyra, just on a practical tip here, let me just run through something that happened to me today and you can talk to me about how maybe I could have handled it better. And again, it's not so much that I'm looking for selfish advice. I'm just going to use this as an example that maybe anybody could draw upon. So I'm in Los Angeles as a recording this. I'm here with my seven-year-old son. I had to get to a studio to record this and I entered the address into Uber,

and Uber took us to the place where the studio existed four years ago. It took me a while to figure that out. And then I had to call another Uber and it's really hot. And I had to get to this place. Finally, I got to this place and I've got my seven year old son and toe and he's being great. But it's sort of a lot. And I walk in and meet these wonderful people who work here, including David, who's the engineer. And I'm pretty sure I'm not like totally dysregulated at all. But you know, I'm in a rush.

I'm worried that we're running late and I have another interview after this. And where am I going to get my son settled? So in a moment like that, how can I carry this responsibility of being aware of other people's nervous systems while getting the shit done that I need to get done? Well, I think you just tracked of all the things that were happening for you is the most important thing because what often would happen if you didn't have a practice, all of that would get externalized onto other people and other people would become

the problem. But you are just tracking, okay, this has happened, this has happened, this is frustrating. So there's always the opportunity for compassion to come up and be like, this sucks, you know, this is really tough. This wasn't planned. Now I'm in stress. And just honoring that that's how you're feeling. This didn't go the way you planned and can that just be that way, rather than have to be some other way. So when we soften into a situation that we don't like, when we just accept, okay, this is, well, here it is, I'm late, and I can't do anything about it.

That is a message to the nervous systems of your son and to the engineer. It's like, okay, I did my best. I tried to get here in time. Life had other plans. So it's not this collapse, right? That you spoke of, Deb, but it's really an acceptance. It's like, what can I do?

I can either fight the situation, which will just amp up the nervous systems, my own and others, or I can accept that it's like this. And I think tracking, especially what's happening in the body, like I wonder if you noticed what was happening in your body when you realized you were at the wrong address. Like, did you notice anything in your body? Sure. Yeah, although I was mostly in the prefrontal cortex thinking planning, like, I got to get this next car tracking where the car is texting everybody to say, I'm late. This is an interesting case because it wasn't that bad, right? So I get it,

if something really bad has happened to you, then you don't have to carry this responsibility of regulating your nervous system. I think you're a little bit off the hook in terms of being in control and making everybody around you feel safe. It's when things are mildly annoying, which is I think a state most of us live in most of the time, because life is pretty annoying a lot of the time, that I would love to have entered this room, this studio with a rainbow-buffing unicorn or pixie dust coming out of my butt or whatever it is. But I didn't because I was really focused on just getting everything really focused on just like getting everything going. And so what really I'm reacting to here is Debs invocation of the responsibility we carry to recognize that we are a vector of contagion of either calm or harriedness or whatever.

And so how do we carry that responsibility given that from a moment to moment basis on a humdrum mundane level? Life is filled with petty annoyances and we're not always feeling like we're superventual and hoping that we can make everybody around us feel good. So can I jump in and just say superventual is not necessary? Right. And, and. Maybe not even a thing. Yeah, I mean, in moments, I might have a superventual, but, you know, I call it a critical mass of ventral.

That's all you need, a critical mass of ventral. And you had that because your prefrontal was working well. And if you lose your anchor in ventral, your prefrontal goes into hypoeactive mode. It doesn't come with you to sympathetic or dorsal survival states. So you were anchored eventually. You know, maybe a dip to toe and had a toe hold, you had enough ventral.

So that you were organized and you were planning and you were giving a message to your son, I'm sure, you know, I'm safe enough, you're safe. What will figure it out. You entered into the space and you met the other people and you were met with what? With anger or kindness? With anger or... Everybody was very nice, but it wasn't the first impression that I like to make.

Again, I don't want to focus too much on this example. No, I get it. But it's interesting. It's a great example because it is those small moments that we have over and over during our day. And so it's a beautiful example of it regulated enough. That's all we need. Regulated enough. And you entered into a space where people met you and then the reciprocity happened. Nervous systems started working, and everything was fine. And that I think is such a beautiful example of, you know, enough. I love your, whatever they were,

barfing unicorns or whatever. It's like, you know, we don't get those very often. Those are moments to cherish those moments of awe or moments of, you know, serenity or whatever we want to call it, we get the moments you have every day, many, many times a day, as we're challenged to meet the moment from a place of feeling enough regulations so that we meet the moment successfully. So I think it was beautiful. And that's an example, too, to your son of how to deal with disappointment and frustration. It's like, okay, we do the best we can. We keep going.

You didn't explode. You didn't melt down, but you took care of the issue. And that's a big teaching to the nervous systems around you. I think the best stories I've heard of spiritual teachers are their students observing them in precisely these moments. So, breakdown of disappointment of when things fall apart and you just see how someone who doesn't take it personally and doesn't lash out, but just, okay, let's see how to work with this. And some days those sort of normal moments overwhelm us. All right, there are those times when it is too much for us. And I do fall into anger, anxiety, or I disconnect and have to find my way back even in the small things, like leaving my bag at the checkout counter.

And some days it's like, oh, that was fun. Let's go back and get it. And other days, it's like, I just can't do this. It's the last straw. So on those days, when it is the last straw, some small thing in our resilience, just is not there. You know, we find our way back to regulation. And then we figure out, what do I have to do to make any repairs that are needed with others and have some self-compassion, right? Which Kiver Julekin talk about because, you know, self-compassion is a stretch for many of us. We can be curious.

That's the first sort of thing that comes. I can be curious. I can even have some compassion. But self-compassion's tough, right? Maybe you could talk about that, Kaira Jule, because there are many, many moments when I am pulled out of regulation into survival over little things that when I look back on,

I think, well, why would I do that? How could I do that? The self-critical, self-shaming language it comes until I find my way back to regulation. Well, I just loved in your book how you said that anytime we used should, we're going into, did you say dorsal or sympathetic? Yeah, I was like, oh, that's so good. Can I just tell a story about this? I'm a bubbly of, you know, easily, I can, I can overwhelm people.

And I love by my excitement for things. So this was bleeding up to Christmas. And I had some idea and it was like, first thing in the morning, my partner has a kind of slow start to the morning, I'm an early riser. Anyway, with all my good intentions, I was so excited and saying, oh, let's, this, this is this is,

and it just led to total shutdown on his part. Yeah, and it was so not the response I was expecting and I felt so terrible for creating that overwhelming experience for him. And so I went right into the sympathetic. And I was like, I should have known. I'm a spiritual teacher. I've been practicing all these years.

I can't believe I did that. And it was so unskilful. And I could completely see when he had that reaction, how unrealistic all these, you know, ideas and this energy was in that moment. And so I felt really bad. And then soon after I was meditating, I was with a client and we started with meditation. And it just, those few minutes of silence, I was with a client and we started with meditation. And it just, those few minutes of silence, I saw the pattern of me beating myself up.

And I was like, wait a minute, I shouldn't have known. How could I have known? If I would have known, I wouldn't have done that. And right away all that self-blame recrimination just stopped. And I was flooded with a sense of, I'm doing my best. And it was really okay to just have made that mistake. And I was like, okay, I'll learn, I'll be gentler in the future. I know this now. I can moderate my energy better. But all of the beliefs telling me I should have known this, I saw how unkind and unrealistic

that was to myself. And I was like, no. And so that was just in that moment of stillness, a really wonderful experience of going from sympathetic back into ventral. And my whole body relax because you know in your judging yourself, it's this heavy thing you're feeling in you It's very unpleasant and suddenly just to feel dropping that and then a lot of ease came into the body It's really beautiful. It's a lovely return to ventral You know and those any kind of simple self-compassion

Practice will get us there, right? Yeah, even just stopping to notice, well, that you did notice your sheds is a beginning return. The mistakes we make, they are there so that we can learn from them. It's not that we shouldn't have ever made them because how would we grow? Right? And I love that because I often say that our goal is not to be anchored in ventral all the time.

That's unrealistic as well. We're going to move in and out of ventral and in and out of sympathetic and dorsal. And that is again how we grow just like you're saying. Our nervous system is reshaped every time we return. And it doesn't mean I'm ever going to stay anchored and ventral, right? And the same in the teachings on why we practice, how we practice, it's not about transcending all difficult states, painful emotions that you just won't have them. What really is the purpose of practice is to get more and more skillful when these difficult states arise. To know, I don't have to

freak out because I feel guilt or shame or anger or despair. I actually know that these emotions are part of being human and I have resources for how to meet them and they won't go away necessarily resources for how to meet them and they won't go away necessarily right away or even they may stay for months, but the practice is how to be with them, how to not see them as a problem, but as part of the path. So you're saying that when shitty things happen, it's an opportunity? Yeah. Yeah. Because they're going to happen on a nervous system level.

They're going to happen. You're going to just regulate in small ways many times a day, in big ways off and on. We have the ordinary challenges of the day that we have to meet and then we have the extraordinary ones. And I love what you were saying, Kairajul, about practice. As you practice, you're building those pathways and you're building the knowing that I won't be stuck here forever. And especially when we get pulled and hijacked by one of our survival states, we feel

that we're going to be here forever. I'll never find my way out. So every time I find my way back, I'm reminded, oh, there is a pathway. And part of the cultivation too is not creating unnecessary suffering, right? Like there is just suffering that's unavoidable, like life happens, we can't avoid pain, but we also can learn to not create extra suffering. Right. So if I've skilled with anchoring and ventral, I can not create the pain. Yeah. This is in Buddhism referred to as second arrow.

And just to restate this for those who are new to this, this story, and I'm going to mangle the story. But basically some guys walking through the forest 2600 years ago He gets hit by an arrow and then he probably goes into sympathetic fighter flight and his brain starts offering up all these stories Like why are you always the guy who gets hit by an arrow? You're right now you're not going to have dinner tonight These dinner plans you made are going to be useless because you're going to have a you know a festering wound or whatever it is And that that is the second arrow that is injected voluntarily.

You're adding suffering on top of pain. I love that. And I love the concept of equanimity, which I am not in your tradition. So you can speak to it from yours. I just love the sense of standing in the storm, which is what Ventral allows me to do. So I don't create that second arrow as Dan was talking about. I can stand there and be with.

Coming up, Deb Dana and Kyra Jule Lingo talk about how to suffer better, how to become better gardeners of the seeds in your store consciousness, the Buddha's instructions on right effort, the value of micro moments, and how not to be owned by painful emotions while also not suppressing them. After this. Like this 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. So Kyra just to restate, I don't wanna restate this, just for folks who are hearing a lot of this lingo and may need a reminder, Ventral is calm and connected, sympathetic,

which again might sound good, but isn't, that's our fight or flight mode, and Dorsal Vagal is when we're drained of energy, disconnected, lost hope, fetal position. When we first had Deb on the show, that episode did really well with this notion of becoming an active operator of your nervous system. So you can move through these three states, hopefully spending more time in ventral. I'm curious to hear from you, given that you've now co-signed on this system, it makes sense to you, given your Buddhist training. What do you recommend to get us into ventral more often than not?

Well, let me just go back to the mind and store consciousness framework and say, what's so powerful about the mind consciousness is it can function as a gardener. So you can have selective watering of the seeds in store consciousness. So mind consciousness has this particular function of tracking what's arising in the mind, particularly if we train our minds to pay attention to what's arising. arising. So we can actually learn to choose, okay, even if a lot of things around us are calling up seeds that are difficult or that lead to suffering, we can bring up mindfulness. Whenever a seed is arising, that's painful, that's difficult. and say, I see you, I can be with you, I'm going to hold you.

That already brings so much more balance into the system. So one thing I think that's important to note is, well being isn't no suffering. You can be practicing well-being. You can be, I would say, Deb, in Ventral and be experiencing difficulty, but it's your relationship to it that matters. So, you know, a lot of people are in grief, right? After COVID, lost loved ones or friendships, you know, so many things have been taken from us or changed in these last few years. You can be with that grief, with kindness, with care. It's still painful.

It's still aching your heart. Still has this suffering, but if you're aware of it, if you're mindful of it, that's the mind consciousness choosing how to relate to things that you can't control, right? So back to the equanimity you mentioned. So mind consciousness can function as a gardener. There are certain things that are going to be watered in us. I am sprouted up. We don't get to choose. Right? They're watered by our environment. They're watered by our deep habitual tendencies. But we still have a choice once they arise. And as mind consciousness, we can recognize, oh, there's a visitor in the

living room that's going to cause some, you know, it's going to be difficult. Why don't I bring up mindfulness, which is always available, always there. Everyone has the seed of mindfulness. And every time we do any kind of mindful practice, whether it's mindful eating, mindful walking, any kind of mindful practice, whether it's mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful breathing, that is making that seed of mindfulness bigger and store consciousness quicker to arise in mind consciousness and it will last longer. Every time we nourish the seed of mindfulness, so when a difficulty arises, we can train ourselves to bring up mindfulness and say, let me be with this painful experience. Let me hold it.

So, I think it's important not to think of ventral or mindfulness as the absence of all suffering, that it's actually possible to be with pain, with difficult states. Yeah, I love how you say that when I work with clients, I say, you know, if we can anchor in ventral, we can be informed by your traumatic moments, by your experiences, we can learn from, we can make a story in a different way, but it doesn't take it away, right? And I think that's what you're saying. Suffering will continue, but if we're anchored in regulation, we can be informed by it. You know, I have a practice. I invite people to notice and name what state they're in

and then turn toward it and listen to it for a moment, right? Because it has information for us. And we can only do that if we have ventral for in the mind consciousness place. So this being an active, what did you call it? An active operator. An active operator of the nervous system. To me, the parallel and Buddhism might be mind-consciousness being a gardener of choosing

what seeds, because the other pieces we want to nourish the wholesome seeds. Every day we can do things to strengthen our capacity to be inventual, right? We can bring up gratitude, we can bring up generosity, we can make an intention at the start of each day. You know, I'm gonna water this wholesome seed in myself today. I'm gonna use kind speech today, or I'm not gonna water the seed of complaining, for instance, right?

And then that's a way of selectively watering the seed. Those seeds have a total strong influence on our body and mind. If a seed of generosity comes up, our whole chemical reality in our body starts to change. So that we can day by day deeply influence the state of the seeds down at the base of our consciousness so that it's much more likely for us to fall into ventral than out of ventral. For people listening who think this is a real stretch for them, that they haven't found ventral in a long time. And I love to say, as you said, we all, in my language, we all have a ventral vagal system

in our being. And it is waiting for us to tap in. And it can be a micro moment. It doesn't have to be a big, long practice. And I think you do this well in your writings. You have people do small things over and over because that's how we come more to find the pathway home to ventral. You brought me just where I was hoping to go, Deb. Kyra Jewel, can you get pretty granular and practical about these small things we can

do over and over to be better gardeners to use your analogy? Sure, sure. So one thing is to just know that there are, in according to Buddhist psychology, 51 or 52, depending on the school of Buddhist psychology, 51 types of seeds in store consciousness. There are wholesome ones, there are unwholesome ones, there are indeterminate that depend on the circumstance, whether they're wholesome or unholesome. So just reflecting on every one of us has the seed of generosity, of love, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of friendship. Right? Just that is turning the mind towards, okay, these things exist in me.

I actually can choose to bring them up because we live in a culture in a time where there's so much self-hatred, self-criticism It's an easy to not know that these beautiful qualities exist in us especially if we've been given messages by the world around us That you know we're lacking in all these different ways. So just knowing that these things are there. And then, well, let me just say there are four ways of practicing. This is a teaching from the Buddha about wise diligence, about wise effort. There are four things that we want to be doing.

One is bringing up the wholesome seeds, so all these different qualities in us. First of all, we should learn about them and then figure out what can we do to bring them up. And so we can just think back on our life and think, well, you know, I was really happy when I went fishing or I was relaxed when I took a bath. So those are things we know to do already that we can bring up wholesome seeds. So that's the first one to bring them up. The second one is keep them in our mind as long as possible because that's part of the training of the mind is the duration piece. So if we have a good idea, let's say to offer someone a gift, do it.

Don't get busy and not do it. Do it. Rejoice in it. Feel the goodness in your body. Like let it be in your consciousness as long as possible. So these mind states are extremely healing and strengthening of our nervous system, of our mind heart, our whole body. So when a whole some seed comes up, whether you bring it up or life brings it up, keep

it in your mind as long as you can. And then the other two aspects of wise effort are the mirror opposite. So don't touch off on whole some seeds. So we need to look at our lives and think about, okay, well, if I go to this place or if I do this thing or I'm around these people, these unholsome seeds tend to arise. So let me not do that. And maybe I need a support system to help me. So how do I avoid nourishing the seeds of suffering?

And then finally, if seeds of suffering arise, which they will, let me not keep them in my mind for any second longer than they need to be. So that's again, the duration piece when suffering arises, take care of it so that it doesn't have an unnecessary impact on because the other thing to say is, you know, these seeds in sore consciousness are organic and they touch each other off. They touch other seeds. So in a wholesome seed arises and it gets nourished in mind consciousness down at the root, it pulls up other wholesome seeds. So when you touch joy, often generosity will get touched, gratitude will get touched, health, all the experiences of health.

And when we nourish a seed of hatred, it touches shame, it touches maybe a seed of violence, it touches right, seed of guilt, all these other unwholesome seeds. So we don't want to be entertaining a guest like that in the living room. It doesn't mean we suppress. It just means we recognize as soon as the seed of suffering has arisen and we take care of it. We be with it with mindfulness. We don't let it be alone, no adult supervision in the living room. We want mindfulness to be there because mindfulness will know how to take care of that seed.

And then it can go back down into store consciousness. And actually every time an unwholesome seed has been embraced by mindfulness, it grows smaller at the root. So it's less likely to arise. It will arise slower and it won't last as long the next time because at the root it has been weakened by this process of mindful compassion and embracing and caring. And let me just turn it to you, Deb, to say, I so appreciated in your book that you talked about your ventral system embracing the sympathetic or the dorsal. And I was like, oh man,

that's just exactly how we talk about what we need to do. Yeah, the similarities are so lovely in the science of the way I work and the way that you bring it to life. In my work, we talk frequency, intensity, and duration, which is just what you're talking about. And as that changes our experience changes so as we can anchor more in ventral and spend more time there and have a more intense experience,

the other states are held under that or in that embrace. And they are quiet just doing what they should be doing in the background, bringing our biology, what it needs in the background. And that's only when they're in the embrace of ventral which I like. The other thing I wanted to just add that those moments, those seeds that can come up that the wholesome seeds, as you call them, are all around us.

They're waiting for us to notice them. I call them glimmers in my work. You know, and those glimmers are just, you know, if we set an intention to find one or be on the lookout or just notice when one happens, then we're bringing awareness to that wholesome seed and we're helping it grow because I find for some people thinking that these things are in my life is challenging because life is really challenging right now for so many people.

We're here talking about ventral and people are thinking, I haven't seen ventral in two and a half years. And what we're really saying is there are micro moments of ventral all around. And if we just look for the micro moment, it doesn't take away the suffering. It doesn't negate the suffering. But it reminds us that both can be present at the same time. So, so important. I just want to say, Dan, in terms of your question of what can we do,

just looking for these little things around us that can be nourishing, whether it's the smile of someone, a child or a beautiful song, or even just my heart is still beating. There's so many things that are actually happening in every moment, and we can dip into those and find some, even if it's a tiny moment of peace, of gratitude, of just finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. I actually have a story along those lines. I'm gonna tell it, but I do just want to plant a flag now to say that there's something you said a little while ago,

carajoule that I suspect a lot of people are going to have questions about. So I want to plant a flag that we need to come back to the difference between suppressing and unwholesome state and being with it mindfully. I think we're going to need you to get pretty practical and granular on how we can do that. But since we're talking about these glimmers to use DEB's term, I'm just gonna tell a story and I'm gonna let you react to it and maybe you can just tell me it was a stupid story. But I've been having a huge and really inconvenient

resurgence of claustrophobia of late. And I think it's multifactorial. One part of it is that for so long, I wasn't getting onto airplanes and I wasn't really getting into elevators because we moved to the suburbs during the pandemic. And so I actually a couple of weeks ago, I was on a plane and I was recovering from COVID and I was wearing a KN95 feeling terrible and I had to travel to give a speech and I could feel the panic coming up as they were about to close the door for the plane. And I actually got off the plane,

which I have never in my life done. And so I had to take another flight the next week and my wife came with me just to be of support. And there was an interesting moment where we were, I think we had just taken off, and I was a little bit closer to ventral at this point. And there was an elderly gentleman sitting across the aisle, whose wife was trying to help him to the bathroom.

And my wife nudged me and had me get up and helped this elderly gentleman to the bathroom. And it was sort of touching for me because he was an old Jewish guy and my dad's an old Jewish guy who I also have to help to the bathroom, not infrequently. And just doing that got me firmly in ventral and I was no longer worried about my claustrophobia anymore. I was just really, you know, helping this guy go pee,

which is not glamorous or anything like that, but it was super useful. And that glimmer of my own capacity to be useful kind of got me out of my sympathetic fear state. Okay, so I just kind of wanted to throw that story out there to see if it rhymes with what you guys were talking about right beforehand. I love, I'll just say that you got off the plane because that to me says you've listened to your nervous system and your nervous system

was clearly saying this is not gonna work. Your brain had a totally different story, but your nervous system said, this is not going to work. And you honored what it was telling you when you got off the plane. And then you created the conditions that made it safe enough for you to get on a plane the following week, which to me is what I'd like all of our listeners to take in. You honor it when your nervous system says, emphatically know, and then you create the condition

so that you can move forward with whatever it is to return to that again. And then when you, you know, you had your wife with you as a co-regulator, it's beautiful. And you were in service to another helping the old gentleman make it to the bathroom. And so that was again another beautiful, co-regulating, you know, an offer

from your place of feeling anchored so that he could accept the offer, right? That's a beautiful story about all sorts of nervous systems. I love that story. How about you, Kyra Jewel. Also, it really made me smile. And what you were doing was calling up another seed besides claustrophobia into your mind by helping him.

So that's the power of the fact that we have all these seeds at our fingertips, so to speak. Fear can be up in the mind, but it doesn't mean that we can't call up generosity, care. And then that fear already can't take us over because this other seed is there, and it actually starts to really work very powerfully on the seat of fear, right? That you said at that point you weren't worried about yourself. You were caring about this other person. So maybe I could share here that there are two ways we can take care of painful states.

One is something the Buddha taught, which is changing the peg. So like you did, there was fear and then you said, you know what? I'm going to go help him. And so you change the peg. So like you did, there was fear, and then you said, you know what, I'm gonna go help him. And so you change the channel. So when mine states are sort of more workable and like you had your wife there, your wife nudged you so you had that encouragement to shift out of this state of fear. So there are times when it's quite possible

to simply change the channel. We're feeling grumpy and maybe we say, you know what, I'm going to go for a walk. We all know how to shift a mind state. That's not suppression, right? It's just saying, just like if you're a child, a very small baby toddler was picking up something dangerous, you just give them another toy. They're just as happy with that other toy and then they won't hurt themselves with that thing they shouldn't play with. But then there are times where that doesn't work, where it is suppression if you just try to bring up something else, right?

Like that's why I think Deb said so beautifully. It was so good that you got off of that plane because you would have been in suppression mode if you hadn't gotten off, right? You would have just been like gripping the seat to manage that flight, which wouldn't have probably been so good for you in the long run. So there are times when a state is so difficult that we shouldn't try to change the peg. And what we really need to do is just give it space to be there. And there's a whole process I describe in my book on the chapter on dealing with strong emotions, but reign the acronym for recognizing,

allowing, investigating, nurturing, that's another, it's very similar process. But when something is at a place where either it's such a strong state or it's been with us in such a way that the only way out is to go into it. And so there you need a practice where you can honor that it's here and be with it in mindfulness. Feel it in your body. Not push it away, but say, boy, this thing is here.

Let me really accept that it's here because it's really, you know, the image of a crying baby is so helpful for people. It's like a crying baby that just needs to be held, right? A crying baby does not need to be put in the closet and locked away. It needs to be held, and as soon as it's held, it starts to relax. Something starts to open. So when these very painful states arise, and we can say, I see you, I'm here for you, I'm going to hold you, I'm going to be with you.

The whole system starts to shift because we're not at war with ourselves. And then as that emotion is feeling accepted and embraced, we can start to understand it better. Where does it come from? How does it come to be? It's not analysis. It's just a gentle, kind, friendly, you know, it's like the motion just starts to reveal itself to us. So somewhere between that first flight and that second flight, there was the opening of that emotion to, you know what? I probably can do this. I would just be easier if I had some support. Right? That was the the emotion teaching you, perhaps. Right? That was the emotion teaching you, perhaps. Maybe this is a way to deal with this. It was not that you didn't have the fear, but that it was more workable, right? It was starting to talk. And then there's this, when we look deeply and we can see where our emotions come from, there is a deeper transformation where we get an insight, or there's a transformation where that habitual energy isn't, doesn't hook us quite as much.

So we talk about that seed in store consciousness getting smaller, right? So that block of suffering, that place where we get really triggered, it just reduces a little bit. So we're a bit less reactive, we're a bit less caught in that habit pattern. So that's how we don't suppress a difficulty motion when it arises, but we also don't let it take us over and hijack us either. So there's this middle way of just being with caring for honoring, learning from, I mean, all these difficulty motions, they have a role. None of them are wrong. None of them are defective or dysfunctional. We have these emotions because we're humans, and they can all be seen to their root and transformed.

And it's said in Buddhism, like, the main difficulty emotions, they all transform into the main wholesome emotions. So anger transforms into compassion, greed transforms into generosity, ignorance transforms into wisdom. So they are compost, you know, they are things that can be broken down and changed into something else. And if we push them away, we won't benefit from their role as compost, as this food for awakening, for enlightenment. After the break, Deb and Kyra Jewel talk about the power of action and service in overcoming

anxiety, and the best antidote when you find yourself in that bottomed out dorsal state. We'll be right back. So when you describe this process of being with a powerful emotion, I think a lot of listeners will know exactly what you're talking about because a lot of people listening to the show practice mindfulness. Can you do that, though, if you don't have a meditation practice, because just learning how to be with, that is not something I understood how to do before I started meditating 13 years ago. Yeah, you know, you have to meet the strong emotion

with another energy. So mindfulness is an energy that can hold, that can be with the energy of whatever it is, stress or fear. And you definitely, everyone has that mindfulness energy, but you do need to cultivate it. You need to just like a muscle. And sometimes our mindfulness might not be strong enough.

Like you probably even a week later, you were uncomfortable flying alone, but you had your wife, her mindfulness, right, was supporting your mindfulness. Her strength was supporting your strength. So that's another thing. We can use other people's nervous systems to support our own if we don't have the capacity. I mean, that's why therapeutic and healing relationships exist because people go to other people to borrow the strength of their mindfulness, of their resilience, of their nervous system, to help them train,

till their nervous system is strong enough to do that and maybe do it for other people too. So we're all helping each other in different ways, and I'll help someone, but then someone will help me in a way that I'm not very strong. That's why practicing in groups is so healing and that's, I'm sure when you talk about this co-regulation, that's why any group that's practicing this is so powerful because we can all support that growth. I'm curious what you would say about this Deb, that there is actually way more that we can cultivate is a collective in terms of regulating our nervous systems than we can do individually. Yeah, I do think when we are with others

who are also anchored and ventral, that there's a power there, it multiplies. Right, it doesn't just add one to the next, it accumulates and multiplies. And, you know, we see the same in dysregulation, don't we? When we dysregulate, it gets very strong in groups. So the power of anchoring in ventral and, you know, all of the emergent properties

you talk about of gratitude and joy and kindness. And they just emerge when we're with others in that state of ventral regulation and what you would call mindfulness. And it's interesting as I do think your mindfulness practices are such lovely pathways to ventral and strength and ventral and strengthen those mind seeds.

And even if we don't call it mindfulness, there are other ways that we are aware or intending to come to ventral. So, you know, not true mindfulness practices, but practices of being mindful, I guess, right? Which for many of my clients in the beginning is where we start. Mindfulness can feel very challenging for a nervous system that has spent most of its life in a survival response. Because mindfulness means I have to slow down, be present, be here, and that's dangerous. And so, you know, these drops of awareness are really where we begin to give the nervous system a taste of what it's like to feel that and be safe in that mind consciousness, right?

And those emergent properties of a ventral place of feeling some of those connections with others. And, you know, I'm going back to Dan's airplane, right? You know, your ventral energy was going to have a really hard time holding you in a place where you could successfully move through that. You were physically ill. You were, you know, talk about claustrophobic behind it in 95 and then in an airplane and that makes perfect sense. And I love to say that to people. It makes perfect sense when you listen to your nervous system that that was not a situation that was going to go well.

Right. And so instead of powering through it, which would have had physical and psychological consequences, you did something different, right? I think that's what we want people to understand that sometimes we just have to listen and do something different at that moment. Could I also offer something to just the power in this story of how helping another shifts us out of our own difficulty? Angelus Arian, a storyteller and teacher, said that action absorbs anxiety. And so as we look at our world where there's so much anxiety around the climate, around COVID, I mean, so much amazing action came out of the pandemic of helping other people,

rather than, you know, staying stuck in paralysis in our homes. People got together in community, mutual aid. There was incredible blossoming of these ways of action that I'm sure helped people so much to deal with their own difficulty. And when we look at what's happening all over our planet today instead of just feeling despair, which is very human and very important to feel the despair, to challenge ourselves to see what actions might I take in service of the well-being of the human and the more than human world right now can really shift us into a place of health, into a mental versus fight flight or dorsal?

Yeah, and you know, we talk about that act of kindness. I'm glad you brought us back there because I wanted to say two things. One, I wanted to speak for what might have been the experience of the older gentleman that you helped, Dan, because, you know, my husband is a stroke survivor and needs help. And when someone shows up just out of kindness in that way to help and treats him

like a regular human being who's just in need of some help. It is a powerful moment for him. So I am sure your act was a powerful moment for that other man. And then we have this experience that is called elevation, which is this seeing someone do a good deed then inspires us to want to do a good deed. So it's that sense of you offered something from a place of regulation of kindness to another. And everyone else on that plane who saw that felt a biological urge to do something kind for someone else. Yeah, I love that elevation concept. I'd also just to hopefully take any edge off of the potential for that story coming off is self-serving. I often think about

something Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, says that there is no hierarchy of compassionate action. You know, You can have grand compassionate moves that may be accompanied by string music or whatever, but like helping some guy pee is not, that's not a big deal. And it doesn't have to be a big deal. It's not lower on the hierarchy. And so we don't have to make these into some ego-inflating

moments, it's just there's no small amount of enlightened self-interest in being useful in those moments. And so I'm not trying to present myself as some sort of hero here. I'm just more that these opportunities arise for us all the time that are completely not glamorous but are deeply useful in many, many ways. And change the nervous system states of the people around. And I think that's so important to remember. And yours. And yours, yeah, absolutely.

I know we're almost out of time here. Do either of you feel like you came into this conversation hoping to make a point that I have failed to allow you to make? No, I came into this conversation having met Kyra Jewel just a few days ago. We had a brief time together and thought, oh, here is a kindred spirit. And we are going to have a really lovely conversation and wherever it goes is just right.

So thank you for helping that happen. Thank you, Deb. I'm so curious to learn more. And I still have a question for you, Deb. I don't know if we could indulge here. But I'm really curious about the dorsal state, the shutdown. That feels like the one that's most taboo socially. It's the place probably we want to be the least, right?

And what you described as like when someone's in that state, even other people get sort of dysregulated by it, even if they don't know. I'm just so curious about like, how do you suggest people practice with that state? Yeah, you know, that state is the most challenging for our human biology and our human psychology because we are so far away, we're untethered floating alone in the world. That's the sense when we're there.

And our body goes into conservation mode. Everything starts to shut down. And so it's a terrifying place in the way we feel it, the stories that we make up, our stories of despair. And then I think in the beginning, as we discover that place place for ourselves and some of us go there often, some of us don't visit there very often, but when we go there, we really need a regulated human to help us. Right, we need someone around us who is not trying to tell us what to do, not trying to fix us in any way, but is willing to simply

be with us, sick with us. Because the antidote to doorsal is knowing I'm not alone, I'm not lost, I'm seen. And so for you, to come and just let me know, I'm here with you. Nothing needs to happen. I just wanted you know I'm here. That's what I would want, right? That's the doersel need to know I'm not alone. And I would tell my clients I'm here with you and nothing needs to happen.

We can stay here as long as your nervous system needs, right? And that invitation to stay then as you probably recognize begins things moving, right? Because there's no demand there. We can stay here. And when I know I can stay, I also know, oh, maybe I can begin to move, right? So it really requires that beautifully attentive, mindful, caring kind, you know, ventral, anchored person to offer that energy to me. And sometimes it is just energy. Sometimes it's not words, it's not actions, but I can feel the energy of that being around me. And that is reassuring. And then once, you know, I've been, I've been doing this of 69, I've been doing this most of my life. It's a place I go fairly regularly.

I've been doing this most of my life. It's a place I go fairly regularly. And so once you've been doing it a long time for not the things that are so intense, you can find your way back by yourself because you notice, oh, I'm indoors, I need to bring a little movement in, a gentle movement or turn on some music so I don't feel so alone, right, or even send text to a friend, right? So you begin to just gently bring back some energy, but still in the extreme moments, I had a moment last winter when I was in the ICU for a medical issue and I was deeply dorsal and there was absolutely no way I was going to recover from that without some trusted people around me and you know, thank goodness,

my daughter, the nurses were kind and lovely. They were not what my nervous system needed. My daughter was there. That's what my nervous system needed. Even for someone who's been practicing a long, long time, there are moments when you can't do it by yourself, which I'm sure you would understand. That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad you asked that question. And I hope we end this. I hope all three of us in everybody listening ends this conversation in ventral. Maybe even super ventral.

Thank you both really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks again to Deb Dana and Kyra Juel Lingo. Thanks as well to everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by DJ Kashmir, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy and Lauren Smith. Our senior producer is Marissa Schneiderman. Kimi Regler is our managing producer and our executive producer is Jen Poient, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure

of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with 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. you