Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Escape From Zombieland | Koshin Paley Ellison

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Modern life has turned many of us into zombies. We walk around with our noses in our phones, constantly on the hunt. We’re not looking to eat people’s brains, per se, but we are looking for mindless hits of dopamine -- from the latest headline, email, text, or “like” on our Instagram post. This has profound consequences, for us as individuals and for the society as a whole.  Our guest in this episode argues that we need to wake up to this, and learn how to create human connection. Koshin Paley Ellison is an author, Zen priest, and Jungian psychotherapist. He co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and is the author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up. Ellison dives into his attempts to rescue the cliche of intimacy, how to build meaningful relationships, and what it means to “Find Your Five.” He also discusses how experimenting with what he calls "healthy embarrassment" (or allowing yourself to feel exposed) makes for better relationships. In fact, he’ll model some of that for us, quite bravely.  Just a note: This is a re-run from a few years back. We’re re-running a few episodes this summer to give our staff a break, and also to get some of our favorite older episodes into the ears of our many new listeners. Also: This conversation includes references to sensitive topics, including lived experiences of hatred and abuse. That said, it happens in the context of discussions about vulnerability and healing. Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/koshin-paley-ellison-repost See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, modern life has turned many of us into zombies. We walk around with our noses and our phones constantly on the hunt. We're not looking to eat people's brains per se,

but we are, many of us at least, looking for mindless hits of dopamine from the latest headline, email, text, or like on your Instagram post. This has profound consequences for us as individuals and for the society as a whole. Even before the COVID pandemic, we were in the midst of a loneliness pandemic.

My guest today argues we need to wake up to this and learn how to create human connection. If this sounds gauzy or saccharine to you, consider how many scientists have come on the show and argued that perhaps the greatest contributor to human flourishing is the quality of our relationships. So, if you feel your relationships are subpar, don't worry, these are actually skills that can be developed. My guest today has spent much of his life doing just that.

His name is Koshin Paley Ellison, he's an author, Zen priest, and Jungian psychotherapist. He co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which does a whole bunch of stuff, including teaching people like me to become hospice volunteers. Cotion is the author of a book called Whole Hearted. Slow down, help out, wake up, which is the subject of most of this rather extraordinary interview you are about to hear. In it, we talk about Cotion's attempts to rescue the cliche of intimacy, how to build meaningful relationships and community, and what it means to, quote unquote, find your five, and how experimenting

with what he calls healthy embarrassment or allowing yourself to feel exposed makes for better relationships. In fact, he's going to model some of that quite bravely. Just to say, this is a rerun, this episode from a few years back, we're rerunning a few of our favorite episodes of the summer to give our staff a break and also to get some of the oldies, but goodies into the ears of our many new listeners. Before we dive in, just one item of business,

we've got some exciting news here. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably heard me talk about our companion meditation app, which is also called 10% happier. The app is a place you can go to practice, all the things we talk about here on the podcast, and you could do so with meditations that are led by some of our most popular podcast guests. It's sort of like science class and college. The podcast is the lecture, the app is the lab. So whether you're interested in treating yourself with a little bit more compassion, having hard conversations without hurting your relationships,

or pausing and taking a breath instead of snapping at your kids or anybody else, you can learn the skills here on the podcast and then practice them over on the app. But just like the college lab section motivating yourself to actually put in the practice time is hard. Those few milliseconds between closing the podcast app and firing up the meditation app, a rife with possibilities for distraction, you know, a new email, a breaking news alert, the temptation to scroll on social media, it's pretty easy to get derailed. That's why we're now trying something new. This show, the 10% happier podcast will now be available inside our companion app so that you can seamlessly toggle between the show

and practicing the things we talk about on the show. Learning to doing no friction between. To get started, download the 10% happier app in the Apple App Store, then tap on the podcast tab at the bottom of the screen. One final note before we dive into this conversation with the male friend, Cotian Paley Ellison. This conversation does include some references to sensitive topics, including the lived experiences of both hatred and abuse.

That said, it all comes within the context of discussions about healing and vulnerability. So here we go now with Cotion Pale Allison. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Congratulations on your new book. Thank you. Thank you. What is zombie land?

Zombie land for me is the way that we are just like moving around in our life. If you see bodies moving like I just came from 23rd Street and you see people, they see the bodies walking on the street but they're engrossed in distraction and they're just like hungry and they're, if you look at their people's eyes when they're looking into their phone as they're walking and just like, you can almost feel like the zombie quality of it. It's as if they're going to like, what they need to eat, the brain that they need to eat is inside the phone. And it's heartbreaking and amazing.

And I saw this person this morning coming out of Starbucks on their phone with their latte or whatever it was like, and so they bumped into someone walking down this street this morning coming out of Starbucks on their phone with their latte or whatever it was like and so they bumped into someone walking down this street and they were like you without even turning away for one second. It's my demise as well, just like yeah and it's just how it can be. Why was it so important for you to invoke Zambieland right at the front of your book? Well, for me, it's one of the things that I'm most concerned about, and I feel that in my practice as a Zen teacher and as a psychotherapist and as a contemplative care person, I feel that see it all the time that this,

the blinders feels thicker than ever where people don't wanna see really what they see. And it's almost like that, the shield, it's like a shield over people's eyes and it just feels heartbreaking and yet there's this incredible hunger. And I feel like it's actually one of the reasons that it would inspired me that kind of zombie like quality that is taking over.

And that's why, like in the book, I talk about, you know, the how pervasive social isolation is and how people are so fragmented and not actually connecting with the people who they really care about and It's one of the pandemics of our time and I think that there's no mistake that you know all of these zombie TV shows and Movies are constantly in people's minds and zombies actually come from one of the origins of the term come from orphan children where they're just like starving for father and mother for warmth and care and I feel like actually knowing kind of our care where it comes from is it makes it even more interesting.

Is that we're like a society becoming a society of orphans. Where we don't even know how to connect to our partners and to our friends. And it's so sad. And we see social isolation, you isolation, the cost of it, it's leading to, I don't know exactly the causal link here, but we see social isolation at the same time as we see rising anxiety, depression, suicide rates,

especially among young people, something's going on here. And obviously, a lot of it can be linked to the phone and the social media apps on the phone. But it's also just the way we live now too. You know, bowling alone, that great book by the Harvard researcher came out before the phone. As far as I can remember, the whole idea that we now,

this was a famous book about how we used to have bowling leagues, now we bowl alone. So this is this trans, this trans been going on for a long time. So what do you think we can, as an individual, somebody listening to this, what can they do about it for themselves? Well, it's a great question. And to me, the key is to really learn how to first address it and notice how our behaviors, you know, the historical Buddha talked about that our actions are our true belongings. They're like, how are we actually functioning?

And to me, be able to feel embarrassed and have a kind of a healthy embarrassment about how we're functioning. And to just appreciate how much of it is covering our own vulnerability and how we hide because we're scared. And that is nothing new. And the what's happened is that we don't have the connections that we used to have.

So we used to be, you know, maybe 40,000 years ago, you know, in the cave with our folks. And of course, people are afraid. But now we're afraid and feel vulnerable. And yet we don't have anyone to turn to. And I hear this more and more. I was thinking about my friend, Tarono. And in her, Tarono low dog, she's this incredible. Physician midwife karate person.

She's incredible. I didn't expect karate to like it in there. She's incredible. She's a martial artist and an herbalist. She's like. She didn't expect karate to land in there. Okay. She's incredible. She's a martial artist and an herbalist She's like this incredible being and she was talking about when people come into her Practice for primary care that she asked them when the first things she asked is you know, so who are your five? Who are the five people who right now we could call and no matter what they would be here. And what she's been seeing since the 80s is maybe this is near the time when this really

began to tilt is that she experiences many people now saying, well, my sister, and then they reflect on it and say, well, she's really busy. And she said, and then the silence after that is always what moves her, is that people don't even often have one person who they feel, even if they're married or live with children and they don't know who would really when the chips are down, who would really show up. And so she writes on a prescription pad, you know, find her five. And so to me, that's one of the aspects also in the book that I talk about is, how do you find your community and really work with your community?

So if you're feeling that kind of isolation, how do you, you know, just feel your breath and really feel like what's happening in your life and feel your isolation and realize how much connection and care and love is important to you, and how do you widen out? By the way, this is not some foofy thing here. I mean, the we're wired for social connection. We come by it honestly through something called evolution, and there's an expression, and I'm sort of evolutionary studies, like a lonely monkey is a dead monkey.

In other words, if you were lonely, kicked out of the tribe as an early human, you died. There's a reason why our bodies react very negatively to isolation, because we are not wired for this. And yet, modern culture has designed us, has designed in such a way that social connections have become weaker and weaker and more afraid and more afraid. There's so much in what you just said that I wanted to react to.

One is I'm just thinking like who's my five. I mean, obviously my wife, you know when you're quite close with because she's now involved in the Zen Center and my brother. But it gets a little tougher after that. I mean, I do have a lot of close friends and I'm just thinking like who, which one of them would show up no matter what? And for a stained period of time.

You're getting into the Dice Year territory and that says a lot about how we live now. And I'm lucky. I have two I can say, for sure, we'll show up now and forever. My mom, okay, and I would say my dad, but he's got some health problems. So that's three, okay, that's, but that's probably, I'm probably way ahead of the game,

and I'm having to think about it. So there were two things I wanted to ask you based on the four going. One is, if you could dig in on healthy embarrassment, because we've talked a lot on this show about the dis-utility of shame, but healthy embarrassment is interesting and it seems like a subtle distinction

that may be very rich. And then also, I wanna ask, I just wanna push you further on what we can, if somebody is listening to this and thinking, okay, wow, I can't, I can maybe come up with one, but I can't get to five, or I can't even get to one, well, how does one go about creating these relationships? So I throw in two questions that you take them

in whatever word you want. Well, there are great questions. one. Well, there are great questions. So healthy embarrassment for me is so important. And one of the things that I just, you know, as I was just telling you that I finished doing the audio version of the book. And so reading a lot of these stories that I was sharing, these stories that I was sharing, I felt so exposed and a little embarrassed. Like I said that, I wrote that and just to feel what that feels like, like, wow. And I felt so, yeah, like the exposure and it felt when I really allowed the feeling to actually feel it in my body, I felt that, wow, I can feel that. And it didn't feel overwhelming, but at first it felt like, oh, but then the more I got curious about the feeling, I felt like, well, it's kind of like a little embarrassing moment.

Wow. And to allow that, so I think that for me, that is actually maybe one of the, it goes into your second question about allowing ourselves to be exposed. It's like that beautiful essay you wrote actually for me about your body. So just to fill that in, I had until recently a column in men's health. We're going to get into that in this talk in this discussion. But I wrote a column talking about how I noticed a lot that I have this running dialogue around. Wow, I have way too much fat around my belly. And I was just

in Miami with my family. I was like, you know, you were at the beach. It's crazy how much time, every time I walk past a reflective surface, and I'm wearing just a bathing suit, that guy fall back into this dialogue of quite venomous self-reproach. And then paired with that is, again, I'm nudging toward 50 as are you. And every time I look in the mirror, I'm like, I can't believe how old I've gotten. And one of the, this is a multi-front battle, but one of the antidotes, maybe antidote is too strong because that implies some sort of silverbook here. But one of the ways in which I've worked with this is to remember, okay, I'm going to

die. We're all going to die. Maybe that will put things in perspective here. How much time do I want to spend worrying about my belly or my increasingly pointy face? Anyway, so that's, I just want to fill in the gaps there. Yeah, but I to me I So appreciate when you do that or others do that and then I feel that I can do that to me It's like you know allowing ourselves to share

Even where we have gone from shame to kind of reflection or shame to kind of a healthy embarrassment like oh there I go again like with my shame to kind of a healthy embarrassment. Like, oh, there I go again, like with my venomous creature inside that says all these nasty things. And to me, this is also where relationship is so important. Because if I'm willing to do that and you're willing to do that, then there's a possibility and a willingness to actually have a much more rich and what I think of as a loving relationship that we can love and appreciate one another in a different way and that we're not used to.

And yet, as you were saying, we hunger for. We want to feel seen and heard and experienced. And to me, it's like where I love what we can do and you're asking about, well, what can someone do listening is really pay attention to who in your life do you want to know you and have some experiments. So see if those relationships and make time for them.

You know, many people, we also live in this culture where people are here all the time, especially in the lobby of our sins and our building. How are you doing? While they're on their phones. How are you doing? How are you doing? And they're saying, oh, busy, crazy, busy. How about you? Crazy, busy, crazy, busy? And they're flipping, flipping, swiping away. And it's just like that becomes instead of saying, or reminds me of the story of my dad that actually I talked about in the book about where they're in the grocery store

by the tomatoes. And this guy says, oh, hey Richard, how are you? And he said, good, how are you? And they said, and normally they've been seeing each other for, I don't know, 10 years. People in the grocery store that you see. And they always had the same exchange. How are you?

Good, how are you? Good. And this one day, he said, well, Richard, do you really want to know? Somebody, these are your dad's, Richard here. Yeah, yeah. And my dad thought for a moment and said, yes, I do. And then he began to share this story about his wife's illness and the struggles with

one of their kids and actually what was happening all happening in the grocery aisle by the tomatoes. It was so amazing. And they both embraced at the end of it. These people who seemingly were strangers. And yet because they were both willing to show up, they were never the same again. And it's such a beautiful know, thinking about the coffee place I like to go to and the baristas, like, I love learning about what their deal is and their lives and their kids and school and all of the different things that are happening in their lives, what's happening for the summer, whether they're going to get to the beach or not. And it's about having curiosity about the people that are actually in your life. And people often find it so unusual. I had to go on visiting us on the bros side where we live. And they, you know, we were walking

down the street and I was, going pretty far and people were like, oh, hey, coach, coach, and coach, and I was having all these interactions on the way to the next corner. And they're like, how do you know all these people? Well, they're like people and are neighbor. Like to me, it felt completely ordinary. It's not like we were stopping and having deep soul searching conversations, but we were just recognizing each other and kind of like neighbor.

Right, did you stand out? You wear robes. No, you have to tell people. No, but you're absolutely right. And I mean, I feel some maybe healthy embarrassment, maybe something border on the shame that I walk through my neighborhood. I don't know that many people, you know? And it's my neighborhood. And it doesn't take that much.

No, it's so ordinary. Hello. Yeah. Hey. Yeah, and it changes the moment toto-moment character of your life totally. It's like the people who ride in our elevator at the where the center is or in our house. You know, it's like, wow, like I've gotten to know so many people, you know. And to me, it's just fascinating to learn about who actually they actually are part of your life

And it's so interesting with like kind of the screens. It's just to me a metaphor and it could be a it's a symptom But it's also an image of like we're just like looking somewhere else when we're actually where we are. Yeah You know, I've really tried to train maybe this is because I've gone through your, you know, so the first time you came on this podcast, I didn't know you at all or your husband. I mean, it was the first time we met, I think, you know, I think, yeah. And then we became friends like pretty much immediately. And my wife too, uh, uh, and then my wife and I took your, uh, nine month training course to become hospice volunteers and had a big effect on both of us in many ways and we have continued to be friends and I think in part, I think it's multi-fectorable part because I've taken this course and I continue to volunteer in a hospice that that I'm trying to do better as a frosty New Englander who is obsessed with his phone to actually look up and have relationships. Even if it's just hello, goodbye type thing with folks in my elevator in my building or folks in the elevator here

at ABC News where we're recording this right now. And it just kind of changes the character of your day. Totally. You know, to me, that's like, you know, why the subtitle for the book is like, slow down, help out, and wake up. It's just about like, so simple. In a way, it's about, oh, you're a person. Hello. And I think that is helpful. Yeah.

I think it's, I always like to appeal to the pleasure centers of the brain. And you know, and I think the Buddha did this quite well. And, and having positive interactions throughout your day feels good. I use this example all the time. What does it feel like when you hold the door open for somebody if you're paying attention? It feels good. So how scalable is that answer infinitely? And, mentioned before that my wife and I were on vacation in Miami not long ago. And the way it is when you go on vacation with a kid, I didn't know this now, our kids four,

and I'm okay putting them on a plane. He's not like that annoying to the people around us. And so we take them on a plane, we go to Miami, and if you're gonna go on vacation with a kid, you're gonna sit in the pool all day. Turns out, and by the way, you're not gonna have your phone on you, because most phones are not waterproof that I know of.

So you're gonna sit in the pool, doing incredibly boring stuff with your son, and here's the thing. A million other people are gonna be doing the same thing, and you're gonna be, unless you really are determined not to be social, you're just gonna be talking to a bunch of people you don't know all day long, everyday, with their kids. As it turns out, and I say this as again,

as an avowedly anti-social frosty New Englander who doesn't like say a load of strangers, I found it to be immensely pleasurable to sit there all day long in a pool, trying to make sure my kid didn't die and looking at all these other cute little kids and just talking to parents who I had never met before. And every day the new people.

Yeah, so I mean, I think there's a lot to this. But that is, you know, you once told me that you were hoping with this book and with your career generally to do, and I hope I'm gonna say this correctly, to do for intimacy what has been done for mindfulness. You know, I get in that right? Well, it's the most important thing. Right. But we've been having, we've been having, there are all these books mine included that are trying to scale up mindfulness, get

the idea out there, but there aren't many books about intimacy. And so that's the, if I understand it, that's really your push. But this daily stuff is different from generating your five. And so I guess I'm trying to get back to, and you talked a little bit about this, but how we can make sure we have a five. We can make sure we have really, truly what I would think of as intimate relationships. Well, my hunch is that, and I'm not a scientist, but that if we can actually change our everyday interactions, there's more likelihood that we're going to have richer relationships and have a base of support for when we need to really cultivate deeper relationships like the five that we're talking about.

And to me, the people who are so tight in their bodies and so tight with, they're not even intimate with themselves. They're not even kind of relaxed in who they are. And the other day I was teaching a group of a group of 90 physicians. They're in this wonderful training program, and we're doing this exercise that, this experience where people are crossing the line for different reasons. Can you just describe what crossing the line is? Yes, crossing the line is a way of understanding

who you're with. And so, for example, the whole group will stand on one side of a room, and there'll be a line, a literal line or not a literal line. And so someone will say, please cross the line if you identify as a physician, for example, and they'll cross the line, and then look back.

And so the people get an experience of looking at each other in their difference. And you know, please cross the line if you have a meditation practice. And so some people cross the line or prayer practice are different things. And so we were just exploring. I did this exercise with you once on a retreat as part of the hospice training program. And it was really intense. Like cross the line if you've lost a child. Cross the line if you've ever been homeless.

Right. And people stepping across the line, why just never would have imagined. Right. Yeah, it's very intimate. So it's like I create a, you know, I think if it's held well, it really shows our vulnerability. And so it requires a lot of trust and a lot of work.

I of course have this, like the whole time I was in the training. I love the training in many levels, but of course I had this constant dialogue of rebellion and complaint about being forced to do these group exercises just to be on the record about that. But anyway, carry on. Famously so. Yes. Yes.

And, uh, but it was what was so interesting is that these physicians had the last question. I said, you know, who please cross the line if you feel that you do not have a life that's integrated. And it was so, I mean, even now it's so moving, and everyone crossed the line. What are you, everybody's making defining for themselves what they mean, but what you mean by integrated. They define for themselves.

And so many people wept. It was that one. And so we talked about it afterwards and one of the things that we explored was how it meant so many different things to most people, but most people felt like that they didn't had to do with relationships and they felt like that they did not. They were not living a life that had really anything to do with what was most important to them. I took it to mean like you're not showing up as the same person at home as you are at work, as you are at your volunteer work, etc. Well, people talked about things like that as well as they didn't feel like they were treating their partners, how that what with the values that they feel like are most important, they didn't feel like that they were treating or

actually living a livelihood that actually was imbued with those qualities that actually they feel like are most important and they're like put like the gauntlet down for it. And it was so moving. And so to me, as a kind of, so we're talking about intimacy. So I feel like intimacy, in other word, we could call it is integration. And so that kind of will, willingness to really appreciate our diversity in ourselves. And that we have parts of ourselves that we want to hide, parts of ourselves that we want to never see the light of day. And we also have all of these things that we really care about. And how often are we actually living those things? And I feel like that more and more,

and I think that that's, hmm, what's so missing for so many people? But am I supposed to go around telling everybody my deepest darkest secrets all of them? That would be insane, right? No, but the willingness to have certain relationships where you feel like that, you could. And okay.

But again, that goes back to sort of developing your five or your 20 right below the five or whatever, where you can be honest, open. Yeah. And I think that the more we can be a little more transparent, it doesn't mean we have to like share everything with everybody that would be totally unhelpful. But learning that we have the capacity and can share

what we wanna share when we wanna share it, and that we have the capacity and willingness to do it. And to me, it's just an ongoing investigation. And to me, it's one of the things that makes life so dynamic, and that we can practice being curious about what's actually happening and how we're relating to it. How do you define intimacy? I know this is such an important concept for you. When I hear the word intimacy, I think of romantic intimacy. Yeah, I think it's known for that. But for me, it's about For me, it's about completely allowing yourself to be where you are. And spontaneous. And it's a practice to me.

And to me, when I've met this one teacher I was studied with in Japan, you know, one of the things that I felt so intimate with him. I didn't speak Japanese and I was living with him in this kind of remote temple and the outskirts of Hiroshima. And we never spoke the same language. And yet I felt completely intimate with him because we were completely in the experience together. And we spent weeks and weeks together. And I would go with him no matter where he went, I would just follow him around. Why were you doing this? For Zen training, just to like learn more deeply about Zen. And so he was this incredible teacher. And so I was just following him. So we wake up really early in the morning and then we would sweep all the temple grounds and then we

would, the five o'clock, we would be sitting meditation and then we would do a chanting thing and then we'd have breakfast and then the next thing. And so some days we'd go out for a boy scouts. He was a boy scout leader as I surmised, leader on. And so sometimes we would be building forts and things like that. And other days we would be going intending to someone who was very sick and just sitting with them. Or we would be doing a funeral or all kinds of different things, or just, you know, visiting another temple, or, and to me,

what I learned from him was that he was completely himself everywhere and felt so available, no matter where he was. And whether he was doing, you know, basically doing the dishes or cooking eggs or building forts or sitting on his ass on our sweeping or whatever it was, he was completely there and spontaneous and available and interested. And so to me in many ways that you know he was a Beautiful image for me of what intimate life can look like I felt like he was intimate like when we would go for these long walks

Into it with that you know just wherever he was he was completely there You use the word and it's a word that I don't think a lot of people would put, would pair with intimacy, use the word spontaneity or spontaneous. Is I understand it? That's a pretty important word in the Zen tradition. Can you hold forth on that for a minute? Natanadi is a hard word to say. It's just the willingness to be like, what's near, what's next, what's now, what's now, what's now. And so the idea is that we're not living in the life of just our brain and just learning how to be completely wide in our experience, so that we're connected to the vast experiments of life. So if I'm just looking at you and just kind of,

what is he going to ask next and how am I doing and how do I sound or whatever, you know, which actually I'm not thinking, but I could think. But to realize like, well, we're in this really strange wild room right now with, we're like a fishbowl and maybe they're doing experiments, you know, in the next room and what are they doing? And who is that person actually? That's Ford, our intern who's recording us,

we're in Ford. But it's so- Just looking at us through a glass wall, we're in a studio with like padded walls to make it the sound good. And we've got all these weird microphones set up. Yeah, it's strange looking room. I'm so used to it, but yes. But just to like kind of widen out. And so to me, this spontaneous thing is also just like being where you are, then you're like, well, check everything out. Wow. And suddenly, it's a different world. And so then what I do and how I am feels totally different. I remember during the course of the, and I've invoked this a lot, and I probably will continue

to the nine month, it's called Foundations, that's the training you do in order to learn how to be a volunteer in a hospice. And in the course of the Foundations training, you talked about Spontanade a lot, and it's actually quite important for me as a morning television anchor, right? I need to be there at a wake, at a quick situations and have a quip ready or in a lighter situation or in a heavier

situation. Be aware if I'm doing a live interview if somebody's saying something I need to be able to get them to clarify that. If it hasn't been clear I'm keeping the audience in mind. Same with a podcast. It's really about I often don't plan it. I have nothing no notes in front of me right now Sometimes I do but since I know you so well I don't have notes in front of me right now So I'm really trying to be spontaneous in the opposite of that and this is something that I've been guilty of and continue to be guilty of a lot is being so stuck in my head planning my next thing or

Thinking about something totally unrelated or thinking about, wow, my pants are tight, I can't believe I ate so much Mexican food last night or whatever. You know, some of that's going to come, but like how stuck in that are you really? And how quickly can you make yourself available again? This spontaneity is actually really important. It's not just like how good are you at improv comedy on Friday nights. It's really like how good are you at life? And to me, it's actually related to life itself. I think about we both have a love of cats and just like the cats are very spontaneous. They just are always actually in the present.

I feel like my cat has some malice of four thoughts, some real pre-planning before he drinks out of the toilet. I don't know how spontaneous that cat is. You met Toby, he's not smart. But anyway, carry on. Yes, I take your point, General. He's a special cat. He's a special cat.

I think Bianca thinks he's literally, she's a a physician so she actually thinks and I she may be right that he's not getting enough oxygen Just brain That's definitely possible. Mm-hmm No, I've lost my thought Right, that was two spontaneous there. Yeah, it's how it's how you were talking about cats look at them They are generally speaking quite spontaneous They're not doing a lot of like ruling the past But I think actually even like saying like I lost my thought is that it kind of spontaneous to me like I don't feel ashamed of it

Or like oh, I lost my drain of thought there and so just being willing to actually Share what's happening with yourself first, at least, to know how, like, I have no idea what I'm going to say next. And now I have no idea where I'm going. And yet, I'm totally willing to show up in it with you, in this case, and Ford, and Ford. It's massively important in a hospice context, and freeing. Yes. I was so unaware in training with you to show up at the bedside of total strangers who are dying, and their family members are sometimes in the room too, so you're interacting with them to how this idea of spontaneity and how you are going to be confronted with your own

stuff in such a big way. In my case, like my need to be liked. I'm always doing like the special dance to be liked. Or whatever it is comes up right in your face in these moments. And so the spontaneity as a skill, which again, is part of intimacy, as a skill that you can build, which, and again, I'm gonna say this, is not just something you should do because it'll be better for the world, it's something you should do

because your life will improve back to my invocation of the pleasure center always. This is really important. Yes, and I think that, you know, it's like our secret mission of the foundations and good tub of care training is to get people to be with sick people and dying people. So that actually they can face what they're afraid of in relationship, so that they can be spontaneous and intimate with the people in their neighborhood, so that they can actually realize,

oh, like all the things I was afraid about, maybe are completely controlling me, and my normal interactions in the elevator, and even in the deli, or the grocery store, or like my dad by the tomatoes. It's like all of these places in our life where actually our life happens. The other day, there was a woman who came to meet with us, and she was talking about missing her mother who had just died.

And she was saying it was the silly text messages that her mom would send. And it was the way that her mother, what she missed most, was actually when she would go over and spend time with her mother, it was the annoying way that she would take a really long time to decide what to order on the menu. She said, I just wish that I could have that time back because I miss her having so a struggle, because actually she just enjoyed so many things in the menu she couldn't decide. And for all those years I was just irritated and I miss it. And it's just so interesting to think about how the things that were irritated by or that we invest so much energy into not being with people are

oftentimes the things that actually are places where we can actually get to know someone. One of the things you do in this training, this foundation training had a very positive impact on my marriage. Because my wife and I did it together and you know I think for me I have a lot of social awkwardness or at least I feel it I don't know if that's the way it comes across and I think it was showing up at points in I was bringing that into the into the marriage and still do so it's not like we took this course and everything was you know it's like a weird living in Brigadoun all of a sudden, but it helps. And one of the exercises you do is truly awful. It's called a dyad.

And I'll put the emphasis on dy because I often wanted to die while doing this, but it is also really revelatory as well, which is you have two people, usually it's two people, sit across from each other quite close. You're in chairs, your knees are almost touching and you are not supposed to break eye contact. And this is like incredibly challenging. You're doing pretty good right now. I think actually that it got me on my game. I don't want to, as my friend Sam Harris jokes about this eye contact thing and that he would when he first started getting into meditation he really held people's

gaze as a I don't know anyway I'll let him tell his why he does that but he would talk about how occasionally he would meet somebody who was also in that game and that it felt like they were in they were playing War of the Warlocks. And so yeah, you can get pretty intense, and you can take it too far or whatever. But holding people's gaze is quite important. And I traditionally wasn't that great at it, and still I'm not, you know, I try not to be maniacal about it. Anyway, why do you do this?

What's the importance of this exercise. Very often when people are say that they're thinking about something, they look away. So they're sitting there with you and you ask them a question and then they look off, usually off to the left, top left or top top right, or bottom left, or bottom right, from where you are. And I've always found that so fascinating. Like, what is that about? And when I've asked a lot of people what that's about is that it's usually that they feel exposed because they don't know what they're gonna say next.

And so it's the vulnerability of actually, because they don't know what they're going to say next. And so it's the vulnerability of actually, I have no idea what I'm going to say next. And so we have to look away to protect. So it's actually some kind of archaic defense mechanism to not be exposed or not be intimate actually, like, wow. And like we were just talking about, like, I have no idea what I'm going to say next. And let me think out loud with you. And what I've learned from the bedside and being, you know, what I call awake of the bedside is really learning how to name of another book you wrote slash edited.

Yeah, very good book. Thanks. And, uh, but to me, it's about really learning how to show up with our fear and just to learn how to feel whatever we're feeling without becoming what we're feeling. And it's easy to do that by yourself. Or I'm going to do a meditation about it. I'm going to think about being with my death or I'm going to think about being with my fear and working with those feelings.

And it's a totally different challenge and to do that in relationship, to actually practice, well, and there's a reason why the Buddha and all his teachings, he never said go off by yourself forever and do that. So he was always talking about the three aspects of, you know, I talk about them and the book about, you know, awakeness, receptivity, and community. So how do you like really allow community and receptivity in it? And so we do these diet experiences to actually help each other remember actually kind of going back to what you were saying earlier that actually it feels good. It's difficult and might be women also not like it

at the same time, but there's something about wow just sitting with someone not really doing anything, but just being together. Oh I was freaking out the first couple of times I had to do it. And then I'd be looking at somebody who was also kind of freaking out their faces, like, breaking out in, like, involuntary ticks. You know, it's really a strange thing. You would never let me do it with Bianca. You didn't want us to sit next to each other or do these exercises together. But I did find, or I remember my son was really young at the time and I would sometimes

do, I would curl up with him in his crib and just stare and see how long the staring contest could go. He was really good at it. I don't know if I haven't tried it with him recently. But I did find that in my conversations with Bianca, we were more looking at each other. She actually doesn't have real, real, I was the one who was more blocked on the intimacy level than her. But I did find that that was creating greater connection

as much as I actively hated the exercise while doing it. And over time, I relaxed into it. It's the first couple of times you do it. It's tough. Much more of my conversation with Cotian Paleoelicin right after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of

Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship. Jamie Lynn's lack of public support. It angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling

parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. We've talked about meditation a little bit. Let me raise it in this context. One of the things I thought I heard you say, as we've gone here, is that one of the steps

toward having greater intimacy in your life, in other words, greater connection with other human beings, which we are wired to need, is to be okay with yourself. And so in that context, is meditation really important? Can we do what you're talking about without meditation, or is meditation really helpful. I don't know if you can do it without meditation. Yeah, so I'm not totally clear but for me meditation is this amazing way to really learn how to be in your experience. I don't know another way that has taught me how to stay and widen out into my experience and soften into it, even what I thought I couldn't bear. And to me, that's one of the key parts of meditation practice is actually learning how to bear what I think I can't bear.

So like for example, and I talk a lot about this in the book about, you know, these moments of like incredible sadness and sorrow that I ran from for a long time. And that I needed to turn towards it. I had to turn the light towards where it isn't, as my friend Marie would say in her whatever poems. Marie, how? Yeah. Yeah. You know, turning the light to where it isn't is like to me what meditation practice is in some ways. It's like that's part of it. So it's about allowing whatever's arising. So great sadness, great fear, and learning how to feel it and returning to the breath. It's incredible.

I feel like in many ways I was talking with a student the other day about, it feels like a superpower training and to actually learn how to feel whatever you're feeling and come back to the softness in your belly two inches below your belly button to me is like one of the most powerful ways to learn confidence that you can be with whatever is arising and just come back. You're talking about two inches below your belly button. That's called the Hara, is that right? If I recall from training.

I don't think that's invoked in a lot of the meditation techniques that are my listeners may have heard before. So can you hold forth on that a little bit? Yeah, so the Hara is a place of focus and then meditation. And so it's a place where they're very rooted in our body. And so it's almost thought to be the center of the body. And what I experience is that it allows my experience

of meditation to be fully embodied. So I feel like I'm really deep in my own body, where we actually happen to have this vessel for a time and allows me to have the experience of the breath in the body, deep in the body, deep in the body. And there's something very different that happens. I always encourage people when physicians are different folks that I have the honor to teach, that, you know, just if you've never done before,

just put your hand there and to see what happens to the quality of your mind. When you focus your attention to that place, we call your horror to just below your belly button and just see what happens. So it's a kind of amazing thing. And for many years, I thought I was like really good at meditation actually. And I felt like I was, I had sat many longer treats and I was kind of pretty full of it for a while. This is an example of healthy embarrassment. It was, yeah, I thought I was like a, I was a really helpful person and really you know there to help other people and it was actually through Starting to do contemplative care that I started to realize that what a jerk I was and what I I actually would walk down the halls of the hospital where I was

Internet feeling like, wow, how secretly lucky I felt those people were that I was coming down the hall to me. But it was almost like a nightmare. And the healthy embarrassment of just realizing, oh, I was trying to be rainbow bright, or hello kitty with riding on top of my little pony into the rooms and bringing all this good stuff. And to me, it's about, I was not

in my horror. I was like, all in these ideas about my practice, about my meditation practice. I realized that I was after like 10 years of long retreats, and I was not even in relationship to where I was. And I was being a total jerk, look, I was not even realizing it. And it wasn't until, you know, going into my first room when I realized, you know, what, what an awful lot was. Really, you know, I was just, I was, but using it with this like shiny exterior as if I wasn't in it. And, you know, it was like going into this room and I couldn't see the woman. And I'd hear from behind me, hello, sexy.

This is a story you tell in the books, actually. Let me just set this up. You had spent many years training as a Zen priest and then you decided, really is a consequence of your grandmother's Mimi's death, which again, you talk with the tell the story in the book about Mimi, and you cared for her. You decided quite bravely, I thought,

to care for her in her final days, you had a very close relationship with her. And she encouraged you and Chodo, your boyfriend at the time now husband to really formalize this work of what you call contemplative care. And so you started working in hospitals and now you're about to tell the story of the first room you wore, one of the first rooms you walked into. Okay. Yeah.

So, yes, I walk in and I'm there. I'm rainbow bright and it's a healthy embarrassment. Yeah, and I hear from behind me, hello, sexy, and I felt mortified. I couldn't believe like she could not be talking to me. And I turned around and she's like, come over here, she's like patting the bed. She's like, come closer, Boppy. And I was like, oh my God. It's almost like that, like the whole veneer

of the whole situation had cracked. like the whole veneer of the whole situation had cracked. And I remember like the pit in my chest, feel like I can't believe this is happening. Who was she? She was a patient in this hospital. And I sat down eventually and she's like, oh, you know, you're sexy and handsome and this and that. I just felt if I could have put my head in my hands and cried, I probably would have.

But somehow I was able just to stay with her. And then I just something shifted. Something shifted in me and I felt like actually I came back to my breath in my heart. Yeah, well, and the training kicked in. Yeah. And I remember actually putting my hand there. And I looked at her and she's and I was saying, so, flirting, huh? Flirting, huh? We're gonna go there and she's like absolutely And so we she started I said so tell me about the first time you flirted and She started telling me the story about growing up in Puerto Rico and being at the beach and feeling sexy in her bikini and how

All these guys were really into her and how great that was and how and as she was telling a story, she totally came alive. And how important that was for her. And she said there was always, I don't know if I wrote about this in the book, but she would talk about like that. She felt beautiful like the Virgin Mary that she was like a dork. And how important that was for her. And how that actual, her sexuality was connected to her spirituality. And it was while she was saying that, saying that, I realized and looked at her, and that her body stopped, rust below her hips.

And the reason she was in the hospital was that she had both legs amputated due to diabetes. And I remember feeling the humility and maybe moving from shame to help the embarrassment to just realize like, wow, when I was so caught up in my rainbow brightness, which looks good, I didn't even notice who this woman is, and what she clearly is experiencing and what I'm experiencing. You know, I have two things I wanted to say based on that story. One is, it is really helpful for people to hear that you can do a significant amount of meditation

and still be an idiot. And I mean, I see this every day in my own life. I'm not talking about other people here, I'm talking about myself. And this is not a panacea, right? And many ways that's why I'm Mr. 10% and stuck with math jokes the rest of my life. But that really gets at what I was trying to get at with that title and I think it's a really useful thing

to hear, especially if it's a guy wearing ropes. The other thing is this whole idea of soft belly. So I don't meditate in the same style that you do. I don't, the horror is not a big part of my daily formal practice, but you talked in the foundation's course about having a soft belly. And I noticed that I come back to that a lot, especially if I'm in a difficult conversation. So, it gets me grounded in the situation in a way that takes me out of the racing mind and puts me right there. So I just wanted to make those two comments before I move on to a question I've been

meaning to ask you since the beginning, which is you mentioned or since close to the beginning. You mentioned that you had some time recently where you were reading the audio version of your book, wholehearted, and there were a few moments where you were thinking, oh my, I can't believe I admitted that. What was the most shocking thing to you upon rereading or reading aloud your book that you admitted. Because you do talk about some very personal things. Yeah, so I think that for me, it was a few things. And one was talking about the difficulties and that I grew up with, you know,

experiencing and witnessing, you know witnessing various levels of abuse, sexual abuse, and physical abuse, and verbal abuse. And I witnessed that as a young person. And somehow just saying that is witness the right word? Some of it I witnessed and some of it I experienced. Yeah. And yeah, both happened. And there was something about just that sentence and saying it out loud. Something that I had never said before was incredibly powerful to me.

And there was just something about it. And I remember my friend, Matthias, who is the sound guy in the sound engineer, the producer of the audiobook, was also looking through the window where Ford is and with the tear in his eye. There was just something about, sometimes just saying what happened without even needing to get into the detail of it is so poignant and so powerful. And I feel that many of us live in shame around things that we've experienced. And especially in particular men, I think that a friend of mine is on the board of our organization called One in Six about men who have experienced sexual violence and that one in six men have experienced that. And so there's this, and there's so much shame around it.

And to me, just saying it was really important and healing, and the beginning of something new. And I never, you know, I've given talks about it, and I've done other work around it clearly. And there was something about it being written in a book that's out in the world that felt like an undoing spell. And I felt like an undoing spell. And I felt like that somehow, like I think Kafka talks about it,

it's like the ax that breaks the frozen ocean. And I felt like that. And I'm so glad. Yeah. Another thing you talk about in the book is that you have you had a troll. Tell me more. Yeah, for 18 months I had a troll and so someone who is, you know, for those who don't know how to troll is, it's someone who anonymously uses the internet to abuse people, basically. And so this person, for 18 months, was writing to me initially and then to many people that I know and then also masking themselves as very

people who are important to me in different ways and using their names and basically sending tons of very anti-Semitic homophobic and hateful things. You know, really we had three buckets of hate, which were, you know, antisemitism, homophobia, and that I'm not a real Zen teacher. And it went on for a really long time. And I made police reports, and but really during that whole time, one of the most challenging parts about it was I felt like, wow, my practice, my meditation practice felt immensely challenged. And the place that I felt like I had gotten to, if there was ever a getting to, it was just showed me I was in another idea of my practice about how I was doing. And I really believe that there's no arrival. But I really keep seeing these different places, these little stations that I find part of my mind parking in. And

I'm part of my mind parking. And because there are so many times that we're so difficult where sometimes this person would be sending these horrific messages. So I'd open the messages because they were like from you or they are from Jodo or like from all these people that I know and relate to and would get emails from. And then you'd open it and it'd be like this horrific thing. And there were so many times where it was just, you know, just so wearing and so exhausting. It felt like the onslaught of the hatred or just felt so depleting. And it was really,

talk about soft belly practice. It just felt like that was the time where I really had to really dig into getting real about my practice, about really what does it mean to be to actually practice compassion? What does it really mean when someone hates you? And you know, I'm working with my teacher, which I'm so grateful for, and she, your teacher, Diane Friedman. So she's this amazing woman, and she's a Dharma successor of the writer, Peter Mathison, and an amazing woman in her.

He wrote the snow leopard. Yeah. And really working with her very closely about, you know, how do I work with this, you know, receiving this hatred? And how do I not let it overcome me? And, whoa, I talk about like getting into like a low, I needed to get into a low gear, you know, thinking about a shift car, you know, like a,

and learning how just to like really take it moment by moment, You know, a thing about a shift car, you know, like a... And learning how just to like really take it moment by moment and really getting curious about that, because many times it felt like an infection and that was coming in and how do I really work with that infection? And you know, that was their goal was to, you know, create havoc and hatred. And so, to me, it really was probably one of the most strangely important times of my practice and where really getting clear about what compassion is. And if the compassion doesn't include for this person who I didn't know at the time who it was, then I wasn't in my view actually practicing. It was limited, it was limited

compassion. It was like some idea. This person we should say has been caught and you're not being curled as we speak. Yes. The person, so yes, I still, you know, part of the practice do is responsibility and accountability for myself and other people, which I believe in. And so yes, the person was arrested and taken out of their home and handcuffs and was charged with the criminal charge. And so that did happen. And you're not saying your compassion for this person doesn't indicate that there should be no accountability.

Exactly. You could do both at the same time. Exactly. It feels really important. But to hate this person to me is not where I want to go. I was really interested because you talk about a bunch of things that would be hate this person to me is not where I want to go. I was really interested because you talk about a bunch of things that would be sensitive for anybody to talk about experiencing sexual abuse, having a troll, experiencing venomous

anti-semitism as a child where you grew up and for a while you were living in a place where there was a lot of anti-Semitism. And then you actually go one level deeper, which is to talk about how you have a victim mentality. And that that has shown up in difficult ways in your interpersonal intimate relationships now. Yes. Yeah. To me, that was the ongoing power of the practice to me is to really look at myself really honestly and to look at that my, and I feel like actually in some ways it's my own and part of it's inherited this kind of victim mentality where I would isolate myself because I felt like I would never be really understood or, you know, as being picked on, but actually as a young gay kid and a young Jewish kid that

was the case. So it's also, to me, the moving from kind of the feelings of shame, right, to feeling like there's something wrong with me, as opposed to like, wow, I can sometimes use this victim identity as a way to separate myself and actually not practice compassion. And it was a really interesting and important and it keeps showing up, you know, this turn of seeing that, being willing to like, you know, turn the light to where it isn't, to like, okay, am I using this experience of the troll to say, like, oh, you see, you know, I'm being victimized again, you know, and actually, there was something about really feeling and learning about compassion

in myself at the same time as using the police and having amazing relationship with the assistant disc attorney and who actually taught me a lot about compassion, and it's an incredible person. And so I think it was both feeling what I was experiencing from the troll and what I was experiencing towards the troll, as well as engaging what is correct, what I deemed as correct, which was pursuing justice, criminal justice.

And I think it was that experience that actually shifted that whole victim stance in my life, which I didn't actually realize until this moment. And what does that mean to you to have that shifted? Well, that there is actually that I'm not helpless. And that it feels like an aspect of my personality that comes out and that part has felt helpless and was in many moments in fact helpless. And in fact, no one would at times believe that person or I didn't have the resources to combat the situation or deal with it in a different way. And I think this experience was so important with this troll is that I did every sources,

and it was not the only story. And I feel like it's also because it's my own... I think it's my own understanding of what it means to kind of grow up. You know, the wonderful teacher, friend Norman Fisher, talks about, you know, it's about learning how to grow up and learning to take care of that little guy. And we all have some kind of little person with us who carries a very old story. We all have one. And the tenderness and learning to feel love for that aspect, so as part of our whole, it's part of our, it can go back to those doctors that integrate.

We have to include him and it has to include the troll and it has to include everybody. I mean, to me, that's the shift that is possible. And to experience that, even like right now, here with you, it's just so tender and so important. And to me, that's actually what also what intimacy is, like in some ways, like you're doing your job, but also like we care for each other. And in learning to ask the questions that also are not easy to ask and be willing to answer them.

To me is also, it's kind of like I, when I was in high school, I was walking down the street, no, it was in college. I was walking down the street, nose and college. I saw a guy with my friend Liz, and she just turned to me and said, you know, who gets to know all of your sadness? And I remember feeling I was like another one of these moments where I felt like, who asked that kind of wise question in college?

She said, my friends were like, who's paying for the cake tonight? But what? We had very different friends. Ha, ha, ha. She's an amazing woman. And, uh, yeah, I remember feeling completely dumb struck by that moment too, and so appreciative.

And it was like the beginning of me doing a lot of work and actually going deeper both in my own meditation practice as well as going to psychotherapy. Like I felt like, wow, I don't have the skills, Stephen, know how to answer that question with the dignity of it. Like the question was like, and it's such, to me, like the bravery of asking real questions is an act of intimacy and love. And it came clearly from a very loving place. She was really curious to bring this full circle back. Just to go back to the... We were saying that we all have this little version of ourselves that's got these stories. You've used the term, you use the term during the

foundation's course of, we have this black bag that we're carrying with us and all of this pretty dark stuff is in there, whether we know it or not. And if you don't know it, it's gonna just show, it's bleeding all over the place, into your behavior and showing up all the time. And so for you, victim mentality was in your black bag. And it sounds like being victimized as a grown-up

who had the resources to stop the victimization, shifted that and probably will have knock-on benefits for your marriage, for how you are with your friends, for how you are in your work with this center, this center in New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and all of the endeavors they're in. That's a big deal. I mean, it goes right at your core thesis of intimacy. And that you can't really be intimate if you're not looking in a black bag. You have to look at your ****. Yeah. And to me, it's like, and you never arrive.

That's own. The things my teacher always says. And I said, no arrival. So you can't walk around and be like, all right, well, that box is checked. Done. No, because that just creates like a bigger bag. Right. Because then you're just basically putting it back in the bag.

But to me, that's why I love the word, all-hearted, where the book comes from. But it comes from Dogen, from an old Zen guy who just felt like that's the life of when you allow the 10,000 things to flow. And so you're not, he didn't say, well, the way to practice is to control everything and to know everything, but he was allowing, you know, 10,000 is like the zen thing for a lot or infinite. Just to allow things to flow, do like, be in life or kind of goes back to the whole idea and experience of spontaneity and intimacy. And it's just, it's so, to me, the possibility of incredible liveliness

in the face of horror and joy. I think I heard my teacher, Joseph Goldstein, recently when I was quizzing him about enlightenment, saying that there's an element to it of lightening up. Yeah, it's like you're just, if you're not gripping so hard and you're letting all of the, you made this reference to the 10,000 things, that's a reference to the fact that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows that happen in any given life. I can't remember who said it.

But if you're letting them all come and go with some ease, lightness, well, that's one way to define enlightenment. Let's just close by being a little crass, which is that I always like to give people an opportunity at the end of the podcast to plug everything. So this isn't you trying to be self-promotional. This is me pushing you to be self-promotional. We call it the plug everything. So this isn't you trying to be self-promotional. This is me pushing you to be self-promotional. We call it the plug zone.

So can you just plug the book, plug the book before it, plug where you are in social media, plug the New York Zen Center for Contemporary of Care, just give us everything. Okay, so the new book is called Wholehearted. So, I didn't know, I never liked doing this. So, then you do it for you. So, the new book is called a wholehearted slow down, help out, and wake up. And it's available now. And as well as the first book I edited, which is called, Awake the Bedside Contemplative Teachings,

Some Pailative and End of Life Care, which is a book of wonderful writings by many doctors and Buddhist teachers about how to be intimate at the bedside. And I'm on social media from Twitter to Instagram and Facebook and what else at Cotian Kaleos and New York Dance Center for Contemplative Care, what I co-founder with my husband. And the address is zencare.org and we actually have our own podcast, which is Zencare podcast

and I'm delighted to be here. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again to Cotion. Always great to see him. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant with Audio Engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. We also get special help on this episode from Palace Shaw. Thank you, Palace.

As always, a hearty salute in closing to my ABC News colleagues, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. 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

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