Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 7: George Mumford

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

George Mumford has taught mindfulness and meditation to some of the greatest athletes of all time: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, among others. In partnership with the legendary coach Phil Jackson, Mumford taught meditation to the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, and now works with the New York Knicks. He’s also the author of "The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. Dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey and welcome to 10% happier. I'm Dan Harris. I have never met George Muffered until today. I'm very happy to meet you,

but I've been following his work for a long time and he is an impressive dude. He has taught mindfulness and meditation to some of the greatest athletes of all time. People with names like Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, and partnership with the legendary coach Phil Jackson. George taught meditation to the bulls and the lakers and their prime. He's now working with the New York Knicks, a little bit of a trickier story there. We'll get into that. His backstory about how he came to the practice is quite moving, which we will talk about in full.

And I should also say, by way of introduction, George has written a book called The Mindful Athlete. Thank you for coming on. You're welcome. It's a great to be here. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Same here. I've been following you for a long time.

So let me ask you the question that I ask everybody to start with, which is how did you get into this thing? How did you get into meditation? I got into meditation because I was experiencing a lot of chronic pain when I got in recovery. Chronic physical pain? Physical pain. Migraine headaches specifically in lower back pain. I've had back issues.

Probably I've had back issues probably I've been going to chiropractice since 1975. So I had a lot of back pain and migraine headaches and once I stopped using drugs in alcohol, it was there. And I had to figure out a way of dealing with it without the use of narcotics or, you know, I would use some medication if I had to, but I wanted to learn how to manage the pain. And so I got into, I was in HMO and they had this new program that was cutting edge when they were getting into the mind body process in John Borersinkel, who at the time was one of three psychoneural immunologists had this program called stress

management. And the whole basis of the program is educating people around the mind body process and also introducing modalities like stress reduction, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, but mainly this reading and educating ourselves about how the mind body process works, you know, like the autonomic nervous system, how that works. And the idea that some of these parts of our experience, like heart rate and all of those and respiratory rate and stuff like that, which were considered involuntary could be controlled by just doing things.

So involuntary aspects of our nervous system and brain can be controlled by doing something as simple as being still and just watching your breath or focusing on one thing at a time. So it's an indirect way of controlling these processes that we thought for a long time were uncontrollable. Let me just back up first thing. The pain was the result of what was it in athletic injury or just... Well, I think yes. I feel like injury, but my brain is stress-related. Right. What were you in a stressful job?

stress related. Right. What were you were you in a stressful job? No, I think it was I think interestingly enough I've always been under some kind of influence and I think the stress was just life, you know, life on life's terms, but also probably being in a job where it wasn't really me, really not knowing, not knowing who I was, kind of being a pseudo-self doing what I was supposed to be doing, working in a certain place. And when I got clean, I felt like I woke up. And all of a sudden I realized I've been living in France, he most of my life.

What kind of work were you doing? I was a financial analyst working in the defense industry, and I was really good at it, but it wasn't who I was. And how bad did the self-medication become? Well, I was addicted to heroin and alcohol for a lot of years. You were addicted to heroin and yet fully functioning? Yeah, I was what they call functional addict, alcoholic. Not only just an alcoholic, but also an heroin addict. Yeah, I was what they call functional addict alcoholic. Not only just

an alcoholic, but also an heroin addict. Yeah, so that's pretty hardcore. Hardcore and that is a real, it's a very serious pair of addictions, but also to be functioning as a financial analyst. Yeah, well, I could be, you know, let's just say I was barely functioning at that point because it breaks down so you start losing things. But I was very, I was very functional. I knew that I wanted to work and I would, I don't know how I did it, it's amazing how I did it, but I did it. I was working and still active.

And then once I got clean, then I could start to turn my life around it and do things. But I was fortunate. I was one of these because I guess there's some advantages to being a reprofectionist. And that's one of them. I'm a recovering perfectionist now. But back then, I don't know how I did it, but I did it. Did what? Get clean.

Well, now I get clean, but I was active and working. Keep it a job. How and why did get get clean? Well now I get clean, but I was active and working How and why did you get clean? Well, what happens eventually is you get really really You reach a bottom. I call it the elevator strategy some people You know you can get off on a four four floor to fifth floor some people have to go all the way down to the sub basement And I saw that I was going, I had an, actually, as I reflect on it, because I haven't talked about it, I've been, I'll be clean, I've been clean for 31 and a half years.

Congratulations, I'd say that is no small achievement. Yeah, thank you. So I had to reflect back on what it was like. But mostly I had, I had a spiritual bottom. I just wasn't happy. And you get to a point where you can't get high and you can't not get high. So it's where we call bottom. And so on April, Fools, day 1984,

a friend of mine came by who I used to get high with and he was clean. He took me to a meeting and I totally changed everything. I realized, oh, I don't have to do this. And so then that's what happened, but I was really sick. I actually had, I was walking around with a strap infection for about, I don't know how many days, but I had a hundred and three degree temperature. Went to the hospital and they, you know, they took care of the infection I had, but it really started hitting me that, you know, I'm going to die if I keep doing this. And so I got to a point where I saw it was a way out.

And then that motivated me. And then I started going to those meetings, even though I was continuing to drink and get high a little bit. But at some point, I couldn't do it anymore. It was like, okay, so I went into a detox for 21 days, and when I came out, you know, the George did, went in, was no longer the George I was. I had to come out of different George. I knew that. If the same George that went in came out, then things wouldn't change. But I changed and saw my street for the first time, I said, wow, so I was really seeing clearly

after the treatment and realizing that it's possible for me to have a full life without the use of drugs and alcohol, which I never, that never occurred to me before. And people may surmise this from your accent, but this was all playing out in the Boston area. In the Boston area? Yes, Boston. Yes, this is accurate.

Yes. But in defense of Boston, that is my hometown. Yes. You actually live in Newton, Massachusetts, which is where I grew up. You live less than a mile away from my parents house. So back to your story of after you got clean, you ended up in this program, which where you were introduced to meditation. I was introduced to meditation and it was interesting because after the first time we tried it, I'm

looking around saying, I don't understand what happened. I don't get what people were talking about. But me being a perfectionist, I kept at it and I read every book she had on the syllabus and that's how I started getting and then I look at a reader book and then look at the back of the book and it would say other books suggested readings and I would read those and I just read as much as I could about you know the mind-body process but also I was very interested in non-verbal communication how do I know sometimes I would

say one thing and do something else. I really wanted to start to understand what motivates us and how we express ourselves. So how do I know, and I did therapy, I became a therapist for a little bit, and how do I know when I'm working with somebody, especially recovering people, they're really good at telling you what you want to hear. But then their behavior is totally different. So I got very interested in knowing how do I know which way do I go? Do I go with the verbs or the voice or the words, or do I go with the behavior? And I learned how to say to watch what they do and not listen to much to what they say, because me being who I was, I was able to live a double life and say things and do other things.

So, even though I ended up teaching other people, it was more about me understanding who I was and why I did things and how I got clean and say, okay, so how do other people get motivated? What motivates people to do something that they've been trying to do for a long time and aren't able to do to at some point get to a point where they can do it. And so I became very interested in learning about people because the more I learned about people the more I learned about myself. So was your interest in meditation primarily motivation to help other people get clean or was it because you saw something in the course of personally meditating that struck you as intriguing? Yes, it was initially it was for me to deal with the pain, but then it went way beyond

that. And I realized that I feel, you know, it's being connected to something greater than yourself, being able to know the truth and let the truth set you free, that it was the ultimate stress reducer as really understanding how this mind-body process works and how the universe works. And if there are natural laws, then it makes sense if I live in the court

with those natural laws, I'm gonna be happy and I'm gonna live life more fully. And so it felt good, basically. Okay. You said several things in there that I want to dive in on. I don't want to forget any of them. So I'm just doing an inventory in my head. But let me start with how did meditation help you with pain, physical pain?

Yes. Yes. Well, how did it help me with pain? Because one of the things that would happen is, I'll say, I had a, well, the way it helped me with the migraine was I got to the point where I can observe the migraine coming on. And when it gets a certain point, I don't

get what kind of medication they gave me or whatever. I was hurting for certain. But if I, and I started to see how it arose, then I could nip it in a butt. I could say, okay, usually when I have migraine headache, I'm trying too hard and I'm doing too many things. So I would just go lay down and just breathe and then I would visualize my whole body breathing.

And what happens with a mig brain is you get you get You know you know get enough oxygen and muscle spasm and they press against the nerves So I started understanding that and I could nip it in a bud and if I could catch it before it got to a full blown I could actually manage it So it was just this awareness and seeing okay. I'm trying to hard back off Stop you know calm down. You're doing too many things just Create some space time out put it aside and then go breathe and relax go lay down and just chill and By doing that I realized that most of the time I could I could actually it was telling me something So I started to realize that the body tells me things

if I can just be still and know, be still and listen and really listen to the body. And that's what I got into. And it not only did it get me beyond the pain, but it started, I started noticing that I was getting clarity about certain things. Like, I had pain and then I was someone asked me how am I doing? I said I was in pain all day. Well, I wasn't in pain all day. It was a little bit of pain,

but that's all I remembered. And I focus on that and that's what I got. But if I realize, okay, I have pain, but it actually moves around. It might go up and then it'll go down and it might go up. But if I just watch it creating space and just observe it as sensations arise and pass it away, that I wasn't identified with it and I was trying to push it away subtly or identifying with it. So I started to see that I could observe it without being identified with it. I was going to drill down a little bit because I think a lot of our listeners may not have ever meditated.

So if you're sitting in a minute, well, you can meditate anywhere or anyway, but just say you're sitting in formal meditation, your eyes are closed, you're noticing the pain. In this pain that you tell a whole story around, which is, I've got this migraine, migraines that you're never going to go away, what's the matter with is, I've got this migraine, my brain, that you're never gonna go away.

What's the matter with me that I've got this migraine? All this terrible stuff always happens to me. This migraine is so solid and is my pain and belongs to me. But instead, with meditation, you're allowed to, you kind of step out of the traffic and you view it as, oh, this is this changing set of sensations that sometimes fade, sometimes get worse. If I don't have to, if I don't try of sensations that sometimes fade, sometimes get worse.

Right. If I don't have to, if I don't try to control them, they don't control me. Yes. It's what Victor Franco talked about. We train, stream, stream stimulus and response. There is a space where we have the power to choose and to transform. So what I'm creating is a space between stimulus and response. So instead of stimulus response being together, by being able to step back and relax, alert receptivity, I can just observe things so that I create space. And then that space I can choose how I'm going to react, which is knee jerk, with means no, no, you know, no intention, other than a reactivity mindlessly, mindlessly, or I can choose my response saying,

I'll get you given this. What's the best way to respond to this? And then even in that responding, if I don't get it right, I still can learn from that. But there's a space where I'm actually pausing and thinking about, what am I going to do? And is it skillful? Is it unskillful? Is it helpful? Is it not helpful?

Is it taking me where I want to go? Or is it not taking me where I want to go? And there's a lot of power in this ability. And my book I referred to it as the eye of the hurricane. You know, an eye of the hurricane is just blue sky and it's quiet and still. And even though there's this turmoil and all of the whirlwinds and all the chaos around that we have that inside of us. That's still small voice. They talk about Joseph Campbell and Paul Smith talked about the quiet place that when an athlete acts out of that quiet place or a dancer that

is a totally different experience then then not acting out of that space and being hung up and Dealing with stress and anxiety and all of those other emotions fear mostly Because you are identified with what's happening instead of realizing that what happens to you is not you You know, whatever you observe is not you is just what you're observing But we identify we got like sticky mine, we just get this bottle as me. This pain is me. This pain is me. Even calling it pain is a problem because there's a natural reaction to that.

So you just, just mental so you can just see the sensation and identify what it feels like. Is it pulling twisting or that sort of thing. So you start to use language in a way where it's allowing it to be there without all of these preconceived, associative thinking and abstract thinking that's involved with the word usage, like pain, to see in the pain.

And I did an experiment when I went to the dentist. And- Don't tell me you said no Nova can. No, no, I didn't say no Nova came but when I was getting a feeling When I heard the sound of the drill there's a I could There's a whole memory that goes with that and I'm crunching up and doing all this even though that's not what's happening now So mindfulness creates space where you say okay, that was then this is now you just be present to what is? I know it was just a little pressure, but at the whole time, my body was reacting, but by me, just continuing to breathe and not get into the story about it, I started to see, oh, okay, it's not even though sometimes they

hit the nerve and you jump every time you hear the sound, it's not mean that you're going to hear that have the nerve pain with it, but that's how chronic pain gets established, because we're relying on memory more than we're relying on what's actually happening now. And the brain doesn't know the difference between what we think about and what we experience. So we're re-running these old tapes. You're running these old tapes. So the memory of it is what's really present, not the actual activity that's happening in the moment.

So you mentioned your book, as I said before, it's called The Mindful Athlete, and I want to talk about your work with athletes. Right. But I have not forgotten that you said a bunch of stuff earlier that I wanted to drill down on. And one of the things you said was something about, and don't know if I'm gonna get this exactly correct, but something about starting to meditate, put you in touch with the laws of the universe. What did you mean by that? What I mean by that is, this is what Einstein said is the most significant question

we have to ask in answer is whether the universe is friendly or unfriendly. And so for me and my upbringing, everything the universe or unfriendly. And so for me, in my upbringing, everything the universe was unfriendly. And when it's unfriendly, you are gonna use all of your resources to either destroy, remove, or deny experience. But when you see the universe as friendly,

then you will use all your resources to align yourself with the way things are, the way the laws of the universe, like this gravity. It's not personal. It's just a law. And if you live according to gravity, you're probably going to be okay. And as a law about what you what you think you become. So if you're formalizing, then that's going to be your experience. Authorizing. Authorizing. So everything is awesome. So if you're focused on, and we don't just think about something that happens, we think about it,

and then there's an image with it, and then there's a story going on that what we call inner talk or self-talk that's going on, and it's a scenario being thought out. This is what we do, but we can do the same thing with something positive. We can experience ourselves as being open and being loving and we can play that scenario. Yeah, that's something that occurs to me this possible. So unless you have trusted in universe, trusting yourself, trusting the system, then you're always going to be looking for why it's not going to work. What about your upbringing, tell you that the universe is an unfriendly place? you're always gonna be looking for why it's not gonna work.

What about your upbringing, tell you that the universe is an unfriendly place? Well, growing up in an alcoholic household, my father's the alcoholic, growing up being black and Boston. Yes, it puts a lot of pressure. And you used to be- You used to been around during the busing crisis? I was before the busing, but yeah,

but I'd been around where if I saw a police officer and I got friends and family members of police officers back in that day when you saw them, they weren't there to really serve you. They were there to control you. And so it was a different relationship with police, not all, but some of them because I had neighborhood police officer. He was cool, but usually being black, you know, it's, you know, they wouldn't hesitate to shoot at you or do a lot of this stuff that's not allowed now. So because it was just that was still happening. It's still happening. Right. So, so just a household and, you know, the fighting and all the stuff that goes on living in the city and seeing all the poverty and the hostility or the violence, you know, you'd be standing

in the wrong place at the wrong time or somebody's going to come by. And so I just had a lot of experiences where it wasn't a friendly universe for me. And I think all the people, all you need is one experience at a certain age or with a certain intensity, by a certain authority figure that imprints that on your memory. So I got to the point where I was to be seen, not heard, because if I spoke up, I got beat down.

That's the kind of universe I lived in. I think you drew the logical conclusions given the circumstances presented to you. Right. And I think it's incredible that after growing up in that atmosphere, dealing with the addictions that you had that you are sitting here now with me having achieved the level of success you've achieved and having achieved the amount of inner stability you must have achieved given given your status in the meditation world. I think achieved the amount of inner stability you must have achieved given your status in the meditation world.

I think that is incredible. I really do. Yes. Well, it's interesting because, you know, I just see this, you know, this other thing that I like to talk about is I have this philosophy that we all, let me put to you this way. Michelangelo was asked back in the day, how does he create these masterpieces out of these blocks of marble? And he said, all I do is chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already there.

That's what I feel. I have a masterpiece and I've been chipping away at it through this process and it's reflecting itself. It's expressing itself. We all have that masterpiece and, you know, depending on where you go, I grew up, uh, Baptist. So, be still in know is kind of the mantra that I learned when I was growing up. I didn't understand it.

But now I understand it is when you can go inside, I mean, you can turn within and you start to listen to that still small voice, it's like a consciousness that knows there's a masterpiece there. When we access it, it's really powerful. We can see that the Idaho Hurricane, you know, if we know that that's there, how do we access it? What we access it by being in a moment, by allowing things to speak to us, rather than interpret them all the time. That's how we create space. That's by saying, well, what is this? And I have some

curiosity, some interest to see, oh, what is this? Oh, this is interesting. It changes it. So if I turn my pain and or my sensations of pain into interest, well, what is this? This is telling me something. There's something for me to get here. That totally changed my relationship to it. In order to do that, you need to learn to develop the lens of mindfulness. You need to train the mind to see what is happening. To be in the moment and to see what's happening and open it. So what am I asking? What did I ask myself to do? To be willing to see or to hear or feel or experience the present moment as it unfolds not knowing what is going to be. So I'm asking them, basically I know, without knowing each moment is different, each moment is changing all the

times. So can I be present for it and see it and when I can be still and know when I can be the eye and hurricane, I'm more able to create space to just see what's happened, even if it's unpleasant. Or, you know, I have some memories about how awful it could be. If I can just see it and arise, the seeing to be in present to it just transforms. And then I see, oh, it's just this because once you understand something, it's not a mystery. Although there are some mysteries we can say, okay, it's a mystery. It's okay for it to be a mystery because it's beyond description. We can't write about it.

We can point at it, but we really can't express it. It's like learning how to write a bike is implicit learning. You can't explain it, but you can do it. When you first started walking into locker rooms, we guys like Michael Jordan and talking about this stuff. How did that go down? Went down well because I talked about being in the zone, of being in flow. They all know that. They don't understand it, but they know what it's like when, if you're basketball player, the hoop is large and you just know what's happening before and you're a step faster. And you've got this flow and rhythm. And you can do, you know, just as sweet as really,

it's like things that just flow and it's almost like if you're driving down 7th Avenue and there's all these traffic lights and you're driving and you get a green light all the way, all the way through. It's like, oh, this is sweet, you know, it's just happening. But you happen to be in the moment and flowing with it because you're accepting things as they are. And simultaneously, you're just rolling with it. It's like being in a current. You're just going with the current, do you get the way you want to go and you ease off this effort

list, you're allowing things to happen, but the challenge is if you try to get in flow, you won't get there. Well, that was what I was going to ask you because how do you get into flamen? I mean I'm in by trying not to get in flow by just being present and and there's there's some loss to that the loss are that you have to be challenged a little bit beyond your comfort level so you got to get comfortable being uncomfortable so as you push yourself you challenges are high it skills are high that's when you get in a high state of arousal which can be perceived by the novice as I made the wrong choice for this is too much. And so you lower your your challenges or you withdraw your energy rather than saying, oh, I'm in high state of arousal that if I just can have this relaxed receptivity and state

present to it, then I'll be in flow. See, because we spend most of our time between anxiety and boredom. Anxiety is when challenges are high and skills are low. boredom is when the skills are high and challenges are low. So we control that. We can say, okay, if I'm not out of my comfort zone,'m not growing and how do I do that and can you do it in a skillful way where you're pushing a little bit where it's and this is consistent with the brain science if you think about there's a program called brain fitness and they talk about four four tips for optimum brain growth or neuroplasticity. First one is you have to have an oxygen level

that's high enough because that's how it generates the new cells. Second thing it has to be done in increments, so easy does it. Third thing is it's got to be doable, but hard to do. Means you have to be out of your comfort zone. And the fourth thing is if you bring interest, if you're interested in it, then you actually stimulate the motivational circuits and you bring.

But if the key to being in flow or in the zone is not trying, how do you teach elite athletes to get into the zone by not trying? What do you actually do? Mindfulness, the process of the power of mindfulness is that talk about my book is a way of making yourself flow ready. Flow ready. Flow ready. So it's not about, and you don't know when it's going to happen. That's what makes it exciting or some low, you don't know.

But if you create the conditions, create conditions and be mindful, and it's not just mindfulness in sport, it's the continuity of mindfulness throughout. So we have to expand that. So it's really more about for a moment to moment, can I be present and be aware of what's going on? And in that awareness, there's also this knowing or this intelligence that tells us, okay, what we're looking for. And when we see it, what are we getting? So that this like awareness and knowing together, or what we would call mindfulness and wisdom. And wisdom could be information, it could be intelligence, you know, wise reflection, reflecting on, okay, so one plus one equals two, okay, I know that.

Then there's the other third one, which is what you really want to get is with all of these practices, you want to have the experience of what the teaching is or what the law is. So that's what we call intuition or direct experience. So that's what we're trying to do. So all of these teachings, whatever I say, it's not to believe it, it's to see if it's true and you own experience. And then when you see it's true then that becomes a direct

experience. It becomes a you know that's the highest form of wisdom is knowing because you see it and you know what it means. Before we go further on on the topic of you teaching athletes just fill in a little bit of the chronology here. So you learn to meditate as a way after you got clean as a way to handle your physical pain. And then how far did you go? You became a your therapist for a while, but then you became a meditation teacher. Yes. Well, after I left my my job as a financial analyst, I was living in a meditation center and I lived in a meditation center. center and I lived in a meditation center. Yeah, yeah, I lived in a meditation center. Which one?

I came with just type meditation center. Yeah, CIMC, yeah. CIMC, yeah. You lived there. You lived there. You lived there for six years. But studying or? Studying, you know, going to,

teaching, you know, having interviews with teachers and everything. I, you know, we covered perfectionist. I don't do anything halfway. So you became a Buddhist? No, I, I, I, This is't do anything halfway. So you became a Buddhist? No. This is a Buddhist meditation center. Yeah, but the Buddha never used a word Buddhist.

Well, that's true. What does that come from? That is true. It's not about being a Buddhist or being a recovery. I mean, the first thing I had to learn when I was a recovery was to identify with being a recovery was problematic. So I'm not recovering addict or hog. I'm just a person that

doesn't drink and doesn't use alcohol. Now some people think that we're scary, but whatever you identify with that becomes your limitation. So to me, it's more about I was there to learn and teach and to learn myself about the teachings, but I don't stay in a box. I still read a lot of psychology, philosophy, neuroscience. I just read about everything. And it's not about being in a box. It's like I was there to learn, and I learned, and I taught retreats, sat retreats,

a lot of them three months silent retreat, stuff like that. I taught people from Yale, the jail, locker room, boardrooms, doesn't matter. I just go, we get requests. I go out and wherever people live and I teach them how to be present. Now I had to get skillful about that,

not using the Buddhist language and not doing anything, but being able to meet people where they are and then talk to them about being present for life. So how did you end up hooking up with Phil Jackson? That's a very interesting story. So being in the Cambridge Center, and when I quit my job, I didn't work for two years. So I just meditated and read and done a bunch

of different things. And in that time, my mentor Larry Rosenberg introduced me to John Capitzen and so I went to John to his clinic and then I did an internship there and then I just explained who those guys are. So Larry Rosenberg is an eminent Buddhist teacher studies and I believe for many many years he now runs Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. John Capitzen is a former microbiologist from MIT who really invented what's known as mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is a secularized version of Buddhist meditation, which has in many ways allowed for this huge explosion of scientific research around

meditation. And John worked at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, the medical school, and so that's where you must have been. Yeah, and I worked there for five years. Got you. I worked there as a prison project director where we taught meditation over 5,000 inmates and correction, you know, including the commission and everybody else would go through the program. So you were teaching meditation in some inhospitable environments. Exactly. And I was in the hell realm from a lot to say that. In the hell realm.

Yes. You were allowed to say that. Yes. That's a Buddhist term. Yes. Yes. So when I met him and I did internship, we hit it off and then we actually opened in a city clinic and warstered. This is you and John Cabot's in it. John, yeah. Right. And so we made, we wanted to have people from the lower social economic part of our culture

to have access to some of these teachings because the main clinic, if you really look at it just like if you go to most Buddhist centers, it's very homogeneous. You know, it's white, fluent, that type of thing. Whole food shoppers and NPR listens. Yes, exactly. So, that that was back in the day. So we wanted to make it accessible to people still true Yes, still true and so we set up a clinic We're not to get into it, but we actually provided childcare. It was free and you know We transportation and we did that and then I was working on my own going in a couple of prisons and teaching yoga and meditation. And so when I did the three months,

this is really interesting. When I did the three month course, I was living at the center. So I left and when I came back from the three month course, I went at IMS. At CIMC. I did the IMS, right. So inside meditation society.

Let me just explain it again just for me. So the three, Inside Meditation Society is related to the CIMC in Cambridge. Inside Meditation Society was founded by my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, and also Sharon Salzburg, who's a virtual friend of ours. And Jack Cornfield, three eminent meditation teachers. It's up in the Boondocks in Barry, Massachusetts.

And every year they do this incredible thing, which is where people go there for three months in the middle of this society in which we live, which is so fast-paced, people go there for three months, no talking, except for every other day to their meditation teacher and they're meditating all day long every day. So you did that. I did that. Yes. I did a lot of sitting in those two years, you know, living at the center and doing a lot of retreats

10 days or whatever and but anyway, so When I came back from the three months retreat, there was a request for Proposal or RFP Where the Department of Corrections Massachusetts Department of Corrections wanted somebody to go in and teach meditation and yoga and a couple of the Department of Corrections, one is somebody to go in and teach meditation in yoga and a couple of the prisons and so I bid on it and I won and so I started doing a couple programs for them and then we partnered with John and then we expanded it to make it bigger and then that's when I started, you know, that I was already working in the inner city part of it and then we had the prison project as well and then that's where I train teachers and we went in to, I think we had like seven different sites and we had over 5,000 inmates

go through it in a five-year period but what happened was I don't have to talk about it but Governor Weld at the time went to get tough on crime so he got rid of the program as well as Art programs and running programs which were all shown the reduced recidivism, but it was a Climate here where it was politically Politically motivated to act tough on my name Of course, 90% of them get out at some point, so rehabilitation wasn't a priority. That's how I got involved. I worked at the Center for Mindfulness in those two programs, mostly the prison project for five years.

And then how did Phil Jackson enter the picture? Yeah. So, working at the Medical Center, John Capizen, Saki Santarelli, they do these programs off site for clinicians, so they were doing a mind from this based stress reduction training at Omega Institute, which is in New York. And during that time Phil used to have a program called,

you know, Beyond Basketball. And it was a fundraiser for one of his ex-teamates, Eddie Mass, that he would do every summer. So while they were doing it, they were there together and they started talking Phil's wife, June. Phil's wife at the time, June was attending it and they were showing pictures of the work that the senate was doing and they showed me and then they talked about me working with inmates. In fact, I went with Dr. J in college, so I've been around.

He moved with Dr. J in college. Yes, he was my roommate in college. Which college? You mass, Emerson. So that's how I really got into it. I used to play basketball, but I got injured. That was a whole other thing. And that's where some of the pain came from.

But I struggled. That's how I got into it. Because I got the pain medication. That's how I got addicted. It was another way I got into because I got the pain medication. That's how I got addicted was another way I got addicted because I was in crutches all the time. I was injury prone. I said, whole other thing.

But anyway, Phil had this, well, he still does. He's really focused on the whole person as basketball player and helping them give them resources so they can live. And they had just won their third NBA championship. This was 1993. This is the Bulls, then? The Bulls. Yeah. and I'm resources so they can live and they had just won their third MBA championship. There was a 1993. This is the Bulls, then? The Bulls, yeah.

And so he invited me to training camp in 1993, October 1993. And Michael Jordan, by that time his father got murdered and he had resigned from basketball. So he wasn't playing. So when I got there, they were in full-blown crisis. And so I had to go in and not only teach them because I was going in to teach them about the stress of success because when you went through championship, you got everybody coming at you. It's a lot of stress they want you to do these endorsements. And he knew that they needed somebody to teach them how to deal with that. And that's why he had hired me.

But then it expanded to more than that when the crisis arose. Michael was my brother. Michael, when he left because he was, you know, that was pretty much, you know, they were kind of known as Michael Jordan and the Jordan Air. They weren't really, didn't have an identity. So they got better. He came back a year and a half later and and then when he came back to the next full season, that was 1996, which is pertinent to what's going on now, because that team won 72 games

in last 10, and of course you know that Golden State Warriors are in pursuit of breaking that record, which is interesting because one of the players on that team, 1916, is Steve Kerr, who is a coach at a Warriors, and Luke Walton, who is his top assistant, who actually played with film one championships in L.A. So that's how I got involved with Phil, and then that was 22 years ago, and we're still working together and creating things. I understand the Golden State Warriors are meditating, right? Yes, yes, yes. Actually,

they're, they are four core values are joy, mindfulness, compassion, and competition. If you watch them play, you'll see those qualities, those values being expressed. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking

water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. So I just need to know more about when you walked into the Bulls locker room at that moment of crisis and you started suggesting something like meditation. How did that go down?

Like I said, like for first of all I approached it two ways. One way was I talked about being a spiritual warrior, being a warrior, like a samurai. You're going in that way, but also about the zone. They know what the zone is. They know what being in flow is. So when I talk about that, to all ears. And did you actually have them sit and do full meditation? Yeah. And then they were cool with that. Yeah.

And what was the practice? Walk me through on a granular level. It's the same drill I was doing, anybody else? Get them to sit down and Become aware of their body and breathing and talk about what we're doing and how it could be helpful in terms of being able to Get flow ready or zone ready whatever you want to call it But there's really more about you got a crisis. How are you gonna deal with this? You have to be able to create space so you can choose your response and not be reacting or not feel like everything is out of control.

You have to collect yourself. And then, so we came up with this concept of one breath, one mind. Phil talked about it in his book, 11 Rings, but that's what it was. It's getting everybody to conspire together, which is breathing together. It's not in a negative sense, but to become one and to work together. So that's what we did. So I'd read sit, but I'd have talk about certain concepts. Like, you know, one of the things I feel like to use is the jungle book. The strength of the wolf is in the pack and the strength of the pack is in the wolf.

That's it. So you start talking to them about how to mind body interacts. You know, you start talking about how you can, you know, slow time down when you, when you create space between a stimulus and response, three seconds is an eternity. How, how do you actually do that? When you talk about slowing down time, and I know you're being metaphorical here, but what, when you talk about slowing down time and I know you're being metaphorical here, but when you talk about slowing down time and creating a buffer between stimulus and response, how do you do it? About a practice by being able to create and connect with the eye of the hurricane and

see that by observing things, what we call bear wind as or bear attention. So you're just noticing things and the bear thing. Because what happened in a perceptual process when we perceive things, there's a very short period of time where we're just perceiving what's there. It's very short. And then right on to that, there's there's this idea of there's a perception of what it is. Like say, there's a sound, so it could be a fire engine. I say fire engine goes by. So there's a way that the sound of the fire engine comes in and you're trying to meditate.

You say, oh, why is that there? It shouldn't be there and you make it noise. There's a way that you can just notice that the sound is happening. So you can create it, you create more space within the perceptual process. So you can see more of what's there before the influx of associated thinking, self-reference, abstract thinking, what it means for the future. Or I remember this happened in the past. And then the whole idea of if it's pleasant unpleasant and neutral and what that

involves. If it's pleasant you're going to move towards it. If it's neutral, I mean if it's unpleasant you're going to move away. If it's neutral you're going to space out. So the idea is to be present so you can see the whole thing and the analogy I like to use you going up in Massachusetts you understand it. So you go to one station where I take the bus there and then or you take the train like say the far sales and then you got to run downstairs to get a bus and you run downstairs and in those days there was nothing on the side of the bus the where you were going was on the front of the bus. So you run it to the front of the bus and you look and you see the letter BR you know

BR then you get on the bus then you get the way you're going and you look and you see the letter BR, you know, BR. Then you get on the bus. Then you get the way you're going and you're saying, oh, I ended up in Bridgewater, I wanted to go to Brockton. So what you want to do in the perceptual process is to go one more letter. So you see the BR, but instead of being a hurry in this, you go to BR, there's I or O, a C, you know, if it's O, C, K, you get what I'm saying.

So that's what we're doing. And this is what we're doing for moment to moment. Can we see things as they are rather than based on what happened in the past. And we're living to a default future based on what we already know. So it's like when you learn something, there has to be this willingness to just let things speak

to you without the interpretation, without the abstract thinking, without the associative thinking and self-interest or self-reference. That's the biggest one. What does this mean for me? How does this, what am I going to get out of this? And can you just see it clearly? So you want to create space so that's how it can be helpful that you start to see. Okay, when I'm shooting a free throw,

my elbow goes out, the ball goes a different thing. If I keep my elbow in, what are the two or three things I need to do? And it's like, okay, I missed that shot. So next time you use your legs. So it's more monitoring aspect without self-reference. Without, I got to make this shot, other than not just shoot.

So you get it in front of people. It's how MJ can be at the free throw line, shooting a free throw with 15,000 flashes going off at the instant he's letting the ball go. Well, walk me through again. How can he do that? Cause I've always wondered. Because he is in the moment.

He's just in his body. He can, he doesn't see that. He can let it be there without making it a distraction. But if he was trueling the moment. He's just in his body. He doesn't see that. He can let it be there without making it a distraction. But if he was truly in the moment, he would notice all the flesh. No, being in the moment and being mindful in a moment, it couldn't, it might not be the, if when you're in the moment and you just know it,

you're just in your body and you're just shooting, just like you're at practices, there's nobody there. You've trained your nervous system to do it. So now in your conscious thinking needs to be quiet and let your body do what it does. So you're in the moment and he's focused. Yeah, not a wide open panoramic way. No, no, it's more on what he's doing. Everybody else doesn't exist. Nothing exists but this moment and what you're doing. So the actual practice you're teaching in a locker room is it just the basic mindfulness practice of

notice the feeling of your breath coming in and going out and every time you get lost, start again. Is that the basic teaching? Yeah, that's basic, but here's the interesting thing. So you become mindful, then what? You gotta be mindful, then that mindfulness has to be aware. So you gotta be mindful what your intention is, what you're doing, whether it's working or not.

And mindful what works, what doesn't work. That's what it's really about. Be mindful of developing that ability to be contemplative or to really, and to contemplate is to look closely or to look repeatedly at something. So you're looking at it with fresh eyes, you're letting it speak to you. And then with the mindfulness and then the clearly knowing or the understanding develops. It's like the analogy I'll use is doing a jigsaw puzzle.

So you're putting pieces together and then some of them don't work and you put them back. Then you come to a plate piece and you say, oh, I remember that. That's here. And then you put it there. Then you keep doing it with the mindfulness and the understanding or just knowing or getting data or getting information. And then you get enough of it, then you see the full picture. Then you put that aside, you get something else. So it's all about wisdom, it's all about understanding how things work.

But a meditation unit of itself is not going to make you faster or jump higher or have a better golf swing, right? No, but when you come from that quiet place, you know what you need to do to get it based on who you are. So, quickness is the issue, maybe the issue is being where the ball is going to be rather than having to react to it. Right. But actually, because you see people when they when they played outfitted or whatever if

They're just fully in their body and just fully present their body knows where to go So it's like in in the book they in a game of tennis He talks about self-want and self-too self-want is the conscious self. It's the words of the song self-too is the melody self-want is it's Self-2 is the melody. Self-1 is dominating everything, and you got to be still and know acquired it down so that your natural intuition, your natural knowing, is able to. But how do you, how do you acquire it down? Because I hear this all the time from you. Yeah.

People say to me, Dan, I get it. You're out there evangelizing for meditation. The science suggests it's good, but you don't understand. In fact, I had a guest on recently, Amy Cutty, who's a social psychologist at Harvard Business School, who is obviously an incredibly smart woman who doesn't meditate why because she says, I can't turn my mind off. Yeah, but that's the crux of the problem. You're not trying to turn your mind off.

You're trying to create space and let your mind be. It's like in Zen mind, begin mind begins mind the best way to control calls Is to give them more space? So when you're trying to do something meditation is not trying to go anywhere do anything my meditation of being present It's just seeing what's there and letting it speak to you So the feeling of your breath the noise is going through the room Yeah, it could be anything just sitting there and just letting to know but if you're saying okay My she's got the wrong idea my My, the idea of meditation is, is to stop thinking or to close

your mind now. And that's not what the thing is. The, the goal is to be present to what is. So if you got all these thoughts that are negative or negative self talk, can you create space where you can observe it? Let it speak to you without being identified with it. But now I got to ask you a question, which is selfish it, let it speak to you without being identified with it? But now I got to ask you a question, because it's a selfish question, because I've been meditating for nearly seven years,

which isn't a long time, but it's not nothing. And I'm getting better at doing what you're describing when I'm actually meditating. In other words, when I'm actually meditating, I do a reasonably good job of letting whatever comes up, you know, my feelings, my sensations, whatever the noise is, just letting it be there without reacting to it.

However, I am not a clutch player. And when I'm under pressure, when I'm under pressure a lot, because I'm on live television or I get up at specific people, the voice in my head ramps up. You know, did you comb your hair? You know, are you prepared for this?

You're gonna sound like an idiot. Whatever it is. It's all, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you control that. I don't feel like I control it. Yeah, because you let it do what it does. Well, and it's based on your belief system. It's based on how you're seeing things

or how you're expecting things. It's just playing out the scenario based on your beliefs. What do I do about that? Change your beliefs. So just tell my Stuart Smalley like, look in the mirror and tell myself I'm on the other side. So just like you tell yourself, you're not gonna do a good job.

You can tell yourself it's gonna be great. It's gonna be awesome. And remember, when you did it the last time and you worried about it, I said, don't worry till you have to. We worry before and we don't just worry we play out the scenarios of what the worry consequences of the bad of the way things are going to go. We play that out. Yeah, but I believe that my internal anguish is what allows me to be successful. Well, good luck with that one. You know because it raises edge because

what it does it gives you energy but you can get energy from love and joy and compassion. How do you talk about love and joy and compassion in a locker room full of don't be hating. Don't be hating. Don't be hating. That's just you gotta talk to who you're talking to. They understand that. Don't be hating. And does it work? Yeah, it works. Because these guys, they have to do some, I don't know if hating is the right word, but they're certainly gonna feel

not necessarily love and compassion and joy for their opponents. But see, here's the key. They're not competing against them, they're competing against themselves. So when you're focused on being better than you were, of being better today than you were yesterday, the enemy is within, it's not out there.

Because if you're feeling good about yourself and you know you're doing the best you can, what's happening out there has nothing to do with you. It's not your business how, like, how Dan feels. I might be concerned about it, but I can't control that. What I can control is me and allowing Dan to be any way he needs to be,

because he's making a choice on some level, even if it's unconscious, even if it's involuntary. So this is what it's about, it's about starting to see how we're thinking and that end of voice that's really important. Can we, the inner talk, can we change it that so it's consistent with our goal? Oh, this is going to be great. This is going to be, you know, and even if I make a mistake, it's like if you're playing a guitar and you hit the wrong note,

if you keep playing, no one will notice. And then you say, okay, you did mentally know it, okay, that was wrong note. Then you go out and you practice so that you get that part because it's the same you need to practice that you need to get that more you know you just need more skill development in that area so if we approach it that way it's not a problem in my I'll tell you I take all my talks and everything at first I hate the sound of my voice and I have all of these self-talk and then at some point because I was doing this stuff and I stopped paying attention and I realized, man, that's pretty good. We're that going for. So, but I have that space just observing it as an observer.

Not as my voice. Oh, that's me, but can I just listen to it like I would listen to anybody else and not judge. But just then that's what mindfulness is. It's not judging. It's just noticing what's going on and learning from it, letting it speak to you. So we're interpreting things all the time.

We're not really hearing what's there. We're interpreting it based on what we already know. And so part of this is to have the vulnerability to not know and to just see what is. So these legends that you taught, guys like Shaq and Kobe and Michael Jordan, are they still meditating? Some of them, I don't know, I know Kobe is, I don't know about the others because I didn't ask them,

but Kobe volunteered that, I don't really get into that. But mindfulness is not just, see, Dr. Dre has a definition for meditation. I have my mind on money, money on my mind. So whatever is on your mind is what your meditation is. That's what it is, what we call it, right? Thinking. So if you have thoughts of compassion,

thoughts of seeking wisdom, thoughts of love, thoughts of curiosity, then that, so your intention follows, your attention follows intention. You don't have to believe me, just check it out. Sometimes we're looking at things and we don't know what our intention is, but if we say, okay, I'm looking at this, therefore my intention is X. Oh, if I change my intention, then what I'm observing is going to change. So we, and James talked about this hundreds of years ago, about the, self-will or this idea of free will is choosing what we're going to hold

in mind. Because this thing's going through, but we can choose to hold something in mind longer than it would ordinarily stay by the act that will. And it's a practice. That's why we call it a practice. So we want to go from the cushion off the cushion. So you can always be in your body if you're walking, if you're standing, you're sitting, you can feel what your body feels like. You can breathe a little bit and just pay attention what you're doing. If I read for the water, just feeling that, not thinking about it. But if I just think water, the hand goes. If I think about my right palm, where's your tension go? Left palm,

left foot bottom. So, but we don't train that. We don't recognize that we have that power to choose and there's certain themes that are conducive to whosomeness, like loving kindness, compassion, some progetics, some pathetic joy, like okay, so compassion, some progetics, some pathetic joy, like, okay, so the posing team wins. So you hate them and all that, that's jealousy. But what if you say, okay, they earn that. Good for them. Now, or you're not a true fan. No, you're a human being. That's what it is because what if your son was on that team? Would you want people to hate them because he's on our posing team? What would you want them to appreciate that he earned that victory or he earned what he got? That we all are air to what we get. So our intentions, you know, we're creating things, but we don't have that

understanding that we create the world. The world out here is just a reflection of our inner life. So as you're playing the inner game, then what you express is going to be, it can be in line with that. So if you want to be compassionate and you're talking to somebody in the inner dialogue, you said, what a jerk. Or, you know, I don't, you know, you know, I don't like him or her. You got to change that and say, okay, that's just mental. Are they a human being just like me? That we're connected, even though I have this illusion of separateness, we're the same.

We're human beings, and we're trying, we all want to be happy. We all want to be successful. We all want to experience grace and ease. But because ignorance, we don't know how to do it, and then when we don't do it, we want to play the blame game, some person place a thing with an actuality we're making choices. Then if we can understand the choices we're making, then we can change it and I'll give you this little formula that Gandhi expressed.

Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny. So you can go in and change any of those things. So, and we don't even know we have belief systems. So sometimes we gotta work backwards

based on what I'm thinking, this must be the paradigm from which I'm operating from. And so what we wanna do is, and then we have paradigm blindness, because we have a paradigm, and we don't even know it's there. It's like glasses. We get on a heat glasses, and we don't even know we have one glasses. But we can take them off, put on the love glasses. So this is what it's all about transforming the mind, making the mind our friends, but also making the mind based on this idea that we're all connected

and that, you know, we all want peace. And so can we have the mind see clearly when we're causing suffering for ourselves, when we're causing suffering for others. So by knowing that, then we can reverse and say, okay, I want to create happiness. So then I create happiness for others. And you know, Sean, a co-host showing a course book to happiness advantage in his work. Ninety percent of long term happiness is predicated on how to brain and purpose our experience. Ninety percent. So if you interpreted based on goodness based on wisdom, the opposite of greed is generosity, you know, hatred or ill will, love and kindness, good will, confusion, clarity, wisdom. And we're cultivating it. We have those qualities of mind. If we have

those attitudes, then what we see, what we do, what we feel is going to be very different. You had a lot of luck teaching the lakers and the bulls to put the love glasses on and they did really well. You're now working with the Knicks. You came in with Phil Jackson took over the Knicks as GM at a time when the Knicks they weren't performing that well. And so you guys are working with an in a tough situation. How is that going? It's going the way it's going. My job is the same. Whether they win or not, help them be present and make wise choices. And so there's a lot of teams I work with that honest successful as the ones you know about. But the idea is it takes as long as it takes to transform

or to create a foundation and a structure. So here's what I said last year, and I think it's the same this year. My experience of going to the next is that, you know, we go in and it's like buying a house, you're going in, there's a crack in the ceiling or a crack in the wall, and you're repairing the cracks and the, and you keep getting them. It's then you realize, okay, so let's go see what's in the wall and you're repairing the cracks and you keep getting them and then you realize, okay, so let's go see what's in the basement. You're going to basement and you realize the foundation is off. So you're working on the foundation and people go by and say, well,

there's still a crack here. There's still this there. Well, that's because the foundation is still being settled. Unless you fix the foundation, you're just addressing symptoms and not the costs. And so sometimes when you have to redo the foundation, it takes longer. It takes as long as it takes. And so you have the right effort, which is a continuous application of poised energy. And so we're working at it,

and we're continuing to move forward. And sometimes it doesn't feel like anything's being done, but it's being done, it's just that it has its own rhythm and pace and so the question is are the fans in New York going to be willing to have patience and trust that it's going to get there but it's going to take time and so when people say oh you must be having a difficult time without I said no it's all good if it's know, if they're winning or not, it's the same joke. Can you be present? And can you create space so that you're making more informed decisions in your living in a way according to how things are? And that's where, you

know, the truth shall set you free or, you know, so you get that. But being present in the moment, whether it's painful or unpaying or or helpful, if it's pain for pain less, it's still the same drill. Be present for it and learn from it and then understand that that's ultimately what we're here to do is how can we alleviate suffering? How can we use what's here because reality is not everybody's going to win a championship. It's not going to happen.

But if you can walk off the court and say you gave everything you gave And you were fully present you did the best you can that's a winner Not in the eyes of the fans who well, that's that's fine But at the same time when you see a team playing hard and given all they got because I had this experience with a BC basketball team we lose by 40, but You can't be mad at them because they gave you everything they had Yeah, and so what you're asking of of your team now the next is just to give everything you have in a present-minded way. Yeah, I had this and of course you being from Massachusetts

You'll get this I was teaching I was given a talk at the Cambridge Center. This was probably 2000. And it was a fan that said, how am I gonna deal with being a Red Sox fan? We haven't won a champion, you know. World Series and I'm teaming me in years and this and that. I said, why don't you just focus on being a good fan?

Just focus on what it means to be a fan and to support your team and accept them. Because this is what we do, we have conditional love. You know, we love you only if you do what I want. Instead of saying no, love is unconditional. Just be a fan, just enjoy the game and just support them and hope that they get better. Well, year later or two day wanna championship,

we probably think some of genius. But I didn't know that. I just know that being present and being in the moment, everything's gonna turn out okay. You're gonna be okay or you'll have peace with what turns out. But we have this idea that it's conditional. If I do this only if that happens, instead of saying no, I don't know what's gonna happen.

Let's just be present and do the best I can. Do what I know to do today. Man is this moment and then that will affect the next moment. Man is just day, it'll affect the next day. And so that's, I mean, a lot of people want to hear a formula, but it's really that simple. It's just letting things speak to you, learn from them and keep learning, keep getting, you keep putting that puzzle together. I want to go back to something we're discussing before, and I was talking about how remarkable it is that you ended up in the mindfulness world given everything that had come before for you.

I mean, it's not so surprising that I ended up in mindfulness. I was born on third base. I, my parents listen to NPR, their doctors, so I always say they send me to yoga class when I was five. So, no big deal that I ended up in meditation. But we are in this situation where in my analysis at least the mindfulness and meditation world, despite some very well

intentioned effort by high ranking people in the field, is mostly white and mostly upper middle class. How do we change that? That's something that people ask me all the time and that's one of my goals is just to make it available to everybody, not just in the inner city, but in the rural areas, in the Indian reservations, all the other countries on this planet. It's just doing what we need to do and this educating put in a word out, there's a way of being. And I think sports is a way of enhancing it

because people love sports. And I think it's one of the things where we have to sit and talk about how we're gonna do that. How we're gonna have an impact on more people. I mean, one of the things I'm doing is working with this company to develop a app for 14 to 18 year old basketball players. And then writing a book about Mindful athletes for teens,

just some of the ways I'm thinking about doing it. But we got to, it's like the gospel is spreading the good news. We have to give people a vision of possibility. Yeah, you can be a little bit more awake. Just be mindful unless you see what happens. Let's just trust being present and that if we can allow everybody released the divine spark or the masterpiece within them, I think that's the biggest thing is to give people

to recognize that they have that and that we need to develop that and and we need to not just what who's in the meditation halls, but there's a lot of people who are who are live and who are present that don't meditate because their nature they're so focused on what they're doing. That's what we need to be, be, expand what it means to mindfulness, what it means, what it means like that. Yeah, what it means to be. What it means. It means. Yeah, what it means to be fully present. When you see people doing what they're really good at, they're usually really focused and concentrated, but they don't know how to take that love for that.

And I talk about it sometimes. Take the love of the game to what you're doing because the love of the game isn't the game. It's coming from you. So if you access that love, you can take that to wherever you go. So it's more about the answer question. I don't have an answer, but to ask the question is kind of to know the answer because now you start thinking about, okay, we need to do that.

Let's think about it, let's reflect on it. And then the answer will come and some people will do it in their own way. And at some point, hopefully it'll get generated critical mass. That's why mindfulness is exploding now. So it's happening. It's not as fast as we would like, but we can accelerate it by being embodied

by modeling what an awake person or what it means to be awake in a sense, not fully awake where you're awakened to divana or to, you know, divine or whatever, but I mean, just being a little bit more awake, like you talk about your book, 10%, 10% happier. That's significant. Me, yeah, I think it's a pretty good value. Yeah, yeah, even 2%, that makes a big difference.

So it's like that old Hoki Kamaiko song, slow motion gets you there quicker or faster. That's what it is. If we just have to do the day-to-day, planning the seas, like Johnny Apocity, to thom around and they're gonna take root where there's sunlight and soil is good and there's moisture.

And we just gotta trust that that's enough for now. And we just got to trust it. That's enough for now. And then if we can focus on certain things, like I think we need to get our youth before ISIS gets them. So we have to have them understand that they have to menace resources and how do we get them so they can say no to that, because they see that that's against their values.

We have to talk more about values. We have to talk more about what it means to be a human being and and people who are unaffected or marginalized because they look at their different skin color or they have a different religion. We have to start realizing what the consequences of that discrimination, how it affects people and people isolated and they're feeling separate. We got to create more of a holistic or more of a communal feel to what we're doing. Before we close, I want to get a sense of what is your daily practice? When do you do it? What are you doing? How are you sitting? Yes, that's a very good question. 24-7. It's my daily practice. So when I wake up in the morning, I'm in my body, I'm filling my body, I'm breathing,

I'm recognizing, okay, with my energy level, like, oh, I could sleep a little bit more, or I'm just jumping up because I'm excited to do something, and then just really understanding what lens am I observing my experience with moment to moment? I can be aware of how I'm seeing things what I'm thinking about. So it's just inner journey of just checking in, what I'm feeling, what's with myself talk, how am I seeing things?

So it's really about being able to sit in the read literature or to remind myself about what this practice is about, what mindfulness is. So I study a lot. I read books, but mostly it's just reflecting on, you know, what if I become a channel of love? What if I can just meditate on love and let love flow through me.

And when the thought of Dan, or someone comes to me, I can send them love. Or if it's somebody who is challenging, I can send them love, or if it's somebody who is challenging, I can send them forgiveness, or may they be happy. So there's a lot of things we can do, but it's really from day to day, moment to moment, reminded myself that whatever posture I'm in, I can feel my body and I can feel my breath. Do you have a formal practice that you do?

Yeah, I do formal in and formal, but I don't separate them. How long is your formal practice every day? Depending on which time I have, I might be able to sit for half an hour if I'm lucky 45 minutes, but sometimes 10 minutes here, then 10 minutes there. So it's sometimes it's doing my cheek on, when my Tai Chi or sometimes it's just doing my stretching, sometimes it's doing my walk, and a lot of times it just you know, maybe writing my journal and just reading about the practice We reading things that talk about being present or talks about

How this mind-body process works, you know, so reading about like the neuroscience Understanding how we can retrain the brain how we create and do neural nets, but my practice is so brain, the brain how we create and do neural nets. But my practice is so formally it's not a lot of time. If I could squeeze in an hour a day, that would be great in terms of sitting, but in terms of moving and just being, you know, like being able to change my mind from like anger or frustration to, you know, what we call right mindfulness, just altering the mind, is really more about me getting clear about my attitudes, what's my perspective on my seeing things, and why am I seeing things a different way. So sometimes it's not just being a silent, it's trying to get some information about how I'm seeing things, or why I'm seeing things a certain way or the fact that my

mind is distracted. That's all proud of the practice. It's distracted to keep thinking about this one theme, what's up with that? And then maybe the turn towards that and why am I so upset or so concerned about this issue and then go deeper and think about what it's just about. And so there's a lot of ways of doing it, but it's really as simple as just really, you know, if I just measure, you know, how much faith do I have when I was writing my book? It's like I never had faith.

Faith in what? Exactly. Why do you want my book? There's all these books out there. I can't write a book, who am I? They're awful-izing, you know, the judge, you know, the critic. And then I said, okay, well, what Einstein said, he said, you know, is this a friendly universe? I'm friendly. That's always friendly. And well, okay, so what are the laws that the laws are? If I focus on

what I want and what I want to create. I want to serve. I can't hold that thought in mind and the same thought that, you know, I can't do this. It's too hard. It hurts. It's unpleasant. So I focus on what I can control. What I can do. And that is my attitude to my effort.

I can always control those. Are you trying in your practice to become enlightened and what do you think that even means? It's interesting. It's kind of like, here's how I see it. That's my ultimate goal, but it's like everything else. When you set a goal, either being enlightened or to do a math or on or whatever, you set the goal, but then you focus on the journey. So it's like you can be zone ready, you can be enlightenment ready. That's what I'm talking about.

So yes, so yeah, that's the ultimate is I wanna go, I wanna be fearless. What do you think about enlightenment means? Enlightenment, enlightenment, or I like the word awakening means that I'm fully awake and I can see things and I can experience things without the greed, hatred, delusion that I could just see things as they are and have that equanimity and compassion and love. So it's like being fully present with no, just being okay with things as they are, not

needing them to change, even seeing suffering and realizing, I can have compassion for the person suffering, but also knowing that life is suffering. And to you, is this just an ideal or have you ever actually met anybody who meets these criteria? I've seen some people, I've read about people

who are obviously more advanced, and I met the Dalai Lama Obviously and some other folks and they have an energy. They have a spirit and I read about them I you know, I have photographs of Mendiken's or monks that that are in deep concentration and and I study I Read about the Buddha and stuff like that and I reflect on the quality. So it's more about identifying with the qualities than the person themselves but because they are like us, we have Buddha nature, we have the, we're wide for enlightenment.

So whether it happens or not, it's another thing. But the more I try to be enlightened, the less I'll be enlightened. I learned that just like writing a book once I stopped trying to write a book, it wrote itself. So there's something about forming the intention and then allowing it to happen. The Dalai Lama was our first guest on this podcast and he told me he thought my meditation practice was still in its very early stages.

So I got that going for me. Okay, yeah, well that's, yeah, well, you know, he has, but that he has a format in his tradition, what it means, but ultimately, I think, you know, there's a book is called, Charles Wooden-Carrie Ward, before enlightenment, we Charles Wooden-Carrie Warder, after enlightenment, we Charles Wooden-Carrie Warder, but they're not identified with this sense of self or experiencing fear and that sort of thing. So I have moments where there's faillessness,

but I'd say I'm just trying to deal with the moment and the teachings about the factors and enlightenment. I try to study that and do that stuff, but I don't really see it like I have to do that or my life is going to be ruined. It's more like, yeah, I'm on the path. I'm learning how to be more mindful, how to gather more intelligence or more wisdom

as I go along. And right now, you know, that's enough. You know, when I go on retreat and I reflect on things, I think about enlightenment and stuff like that, but I don't, it's a goal, but it's not something I'm focused on. Because if I'm focused on that, I'm not here. Like I tell people all the time, if you're focused on how you're doing,

you're not focused on what you're doing. And to me, what you're doing, but it's okay to have it out there. Just like I feel like I may be different because I feel like I have to measure my practice. I have to monitor it. Am I getting better or am I not? So the five spiritual powers are one way to measure your practice. Do I have more trust? Do I have more wisdom? Am I making the right effort with the poised, you know, with a set it this, it might be more mindful. How can I develop more mindfulness?

How can I, because the secret is the continuity for a moment to moment. And I'm not able to do that 24-7, but that's the intention. And if I'm mindful for 24-7, I'll be enlightened. George Muffin. Pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you.

Really appreciate it. The book is called The Mindful Athlete After having followed your work for so many years, it's just very gratifying to finally meet you. So thank you for my All right, there's another edition of the 10% happier podcast if you like it I'm gonna hit you up for a favor Please subscribe to it review it and rate it I want to also thank the people who produced this podcast I'm gonna hit you up for a favor. Please subscribe to it, review it, and rate it. I wanna also thank the people who produced this podcast. Josh Cohan, Lauren Efron, Sarah Amos,

and the head of ABC News Digital, Dan Silver. And hit me up at Twitter, Dan B. Harris. See you next time. 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.