The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Steve Lawrence, Director of The One-Pointed Mind

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

Steve Lawrence, Director of The One-Pointed Mind Theonepointedmind.net

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

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Hit the bell notification button, as always. Go to Goodreads.com, 4ChessChrisVoss. See everything we're doing, reading, and reviewing over there. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's the founder and director of The One Pointed Mind, and he's going to be talking to us about some of his cool stuff that he's into and what he does. Stephen Lawrence. Anyway, Stephen, for the past 12 years, has been a teacher and therapist in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and China.

Steve acquired a bachelor in social studies education and eventually a master's in technology integration in education. Prior to becoming a teacher, Steve owned and operated a contracting company in New York. He is currently completing the clinical psychology PhD program at Saybrook University and with a focus on transpersonalism and meditative practices as treatment. Welcome to the show, Steve. How are you? I'm well, Chris. Thank you. Good, good. Did I get your university correct? Saybrook University? Yeah. There's a few locations. There's a couple California locations, Chicago school.

There you go. Do they have a football team? No. No. I don't think they have a very good football team. Saybrook Seagulls maybe. I don't know. Saybrook psychologists.

They'd get beat. There you go. So welcome to the show, Steve. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah. So we're the onepointedmind.net is the course landing page, the course site. We're on Instagram, onepointedmind, Twitter, YouTube, onepointedmind. On YouTube, we've got a few nice guided meditations, classroom program, classroom videos that the

teachers can use with their students. That's about it so far. And you've traveled all around the world and done so many different things. So what would you say the arc of the work that you do and the coursework that you do and stuff, what's on the website? Right now we have, it's a six-week training program on the site itself. So in essence, the One Pointed Mind focuses on the development of meditative psychology and meditative practices within education for the teachers and the students. There's these ideas of meditation and mindfulness is very popular in academia and education particularly. But as I was working before I became a teacher, I was already engaged in meditation practices myself. And what I had noticed, first of all, I started to teach

grade seven students at the age of, I was 31. And I saw, like you said, I had noticed, first of all, I started to teach grade seven students at the age of, I was 31. And I, so I, like you said, I had a contracting company and I came into education a little bit later as a second career. And as I started to work with these kids, I started to realize how desperately they were for being able to just pay attention. They, they literally didn't have the ability to focus. And I realized that if a kid can't pay attention, there's not a whole lot that I can do as a teacher. You're just, you're useless, essentially. You're just an obstacle. That was my problem in school with ADHD.

I think a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people face that challenge and I actually faced it as well. And it wasn't until I got later in my life that I began to make the connections that it wasn't because I was unintelligent that I was failing and not successful in school. It was just, it was boring and it sucked and it didn't keep my interest. So I think anybody remotely intelligent that has some sort of issues with attention there,

it's going to be very difficult because it's not as if you're not a thinker. It's just that you, you can't, you can't reason this stuff out. And there's the recent documentary I had seen in the, the new release that they had get back or something like that. And when you watch like McCartney and Lennon and those guys like just riff, it reminded me of students that I had had where they just go off into this netherworld. And it wasn't a surprise that they weren't able to focus in the classroom. These guys were out of their minds all the time with genius, with genius ideas. And it was just,

it was completely going. And if it's unharnessed, then you have that issue. So what I had discovered, I didn't discover, but it was a discovery for me and my own journey was if I could take the meditation practices that I was used to using outside of school that helped me get grounded,

it helped me get grounded. It helped me get through my mind of anxieties and fears and resentments and whatever those issues may have been. And the challenge with meditation is being able to bring your focus back and back and back and over. And that's the practice of meditation. And in the teachings of the ancient, many ancient sages, they would just discuss this idea of one pointed focus. That is a meditative state. So anytime we're focusing on one thing, you're entering a different state of consciousness than if you are in a dream daydream like state on the typical day to day. And if you bring your awareness to the breath, your awareness to the body, there's neurological shifts, there's

biological shifts, there's cognitive shifts, emotional shifts. And by able to explore those areas and categorize it, understand it. And now what we're trying to do with the program is we've compartmentalized it into a six week program where the first three weeks helps the teacher understand fundamentally what's going on neurologically, you know, ultimately biologically and cognitively within themselves, but also within the students in the classroom and what are they experiencing? And then what are the different practices you can engage in to activate one-pointed focus? And when you're activating one-pointed focus, you're bringing about what could be analogous

to a meditative state. Wow. Benefated in creating the benefits of the neurological development, which meditation is shown to prove the development of amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal lobe, areas responsible for learning, responsible for emotional wellbeing. So it's a really interesting connection. It's a very powerful opportunity. That's pretty cool because I talked about this in my book. I had what they call the CEO's disease, the ADHD, the ADHD. I had the ADHD opposed to the COVID, but so there's still time

on that one. The, and so in high school I would drum on my desk and I go into my own private Idaho and I would draw, I start drumming on my desk and it would turn into, I don't know, a Neil Peart drum solo from Rush or something. And then I had some sort of way, I guess I still do, but back then I really had it. And there was some sort of way, I guess I still do, but back then I really had it. And there was some sort of way where I could arc my foot on the floor and bounce the nerve. And so my leg would just bounce. It just banging the nerve somehow. It wouldn't hurt. It was just, but my leg would bounce and then I'd be tapping on the table. And I usually start out pretty quiet. And then you'd be deeper again in my own private idaho the more like i would

disrupt the classroom and then i could be getting yelled at by teachers and i had you in the classroom yeah and my my psychiatry teacher man he laid into me one day he'd had enough of it and i just was bored out of my freaking mind and and he and i went up to him after and i go doc is there something wrong with me man am i broken and he goes no he goes you have ad and and he and i went up to him after and i go doc is there something wrong with me man am i broken and he goes no he goes you have adhd and he goes you go out you're just bored he goes you're actually probably in a fairly good intelligence i'm not going to claim to be highly intelligent if you see me but he goes you you have a problem you have this thing and whatever but a lot of kids nowadays they anesthetize them with drugs and

they just basically give them a drug lobotomy and turn them into zombies. And so I imagine meditation is probably a more healthy way to deal with their issues. Yeah. It's one of those, it's an interesting thing. My dissertation, I think I'm pretty, I'm leaning in the direction of using meditation as prescription, understanding personality types, I think, I'm leaning in the direction of using meditation as prescription. Understanding personality types, dispositions, understanding disorders, diseases, the durations of the diseases, comorbidities. There's a lot going on there. Trauma. Trauma.

It's one of those things. It's similar, I think, in a roundabout way. But the thought just came to mind was this idea. I was speaking with my stepfather the other day, and I was one of the rare teachers. We were talking about this idea. I was a rare teacher that would tell the parents of the students, because they would often ask for advice on any number of things. Like I can't get my kid to do anything or whatever. Or they would ask university after high school advice. Cause I ended up spending many years teaching high school, grade 12. And I said, my suggestion really is just take a year off.

Get out. Get away from 13. Don't go to 13th grade. Take a year, man. Do some service to people. Work and get engaged. And the best case scenario, of course, is to be able to travel or live on your own, but be of service in some way. That's for some kids.

University is for some. In treatment and psychological disorders and diseases and things in the world of psychopharmacology, there is for some, it's a conversation. But yes, 100%, it's a real conversation that what you mentioned, Chris, and it's a serious issue. Now, the reason that I became long winded there in this full circle thing is that is ultimately to say that meditation isn't for everybody either. And that's something that I'm learning to come to terms with. And there are reasons why some people are maybe more successful with it than others. Like I could sit with certain people and all of a sudden they're going to go into a certain place and I could sit with someone else and they're like, nah, man, there's something

about this that just doesn't, I'm not, it's not working. You know what I mean? And that's fine. It's cool. So it's not this panacea of this blanket thing. But what we can say is that we do see trends with, for instance, adolescent development, not just with giving them the medication to treat their inability to stay focused or the difficulty, their difficulty in staying focused because they can develop the ability. But it might not be a prescription pill, but it's an app. It's a tablet. It's something. So those issues, the fourth week, I think it's week four, we have in our modules, we call it striking the balance. And now you mentioned my background in technology integration and education. What I had learned through that discovery in relation to developing the One Pointed Mind workshops and giving those throughout the world for a number of years while teaching internationally,

there's a lot of evidence that technology integration or the use of technology or particular uses of technology are also inhibiting the neural centers responsible for attention and learning. So now it's called the Google effect where we don't remember what it is, but we remember how to find it. So the neural processing within the memory centers in the brain are shown to be different by people who use Internet, any Internet savvy users, they say, right? The information processing is different. So you don't necessarily recall the information. You recall where to get it.

And also what we're dealing with is also in those areas of the brain responsible for attention. Internet savvy users are very used to quick responses, quick. And then you sit down i i did it happen a lot to me last night i've been traveling for the last few days and family and things so i've been on the go a lot and i laid down and when i was laying in bed i was gonna i'm trying to finish moby dick and i so i got two pages in and i'm like i i can't i i i just

my my everything was just too frantic so the reading at that time wasn't going to happen for me as an academic as someone who knows this is that time wasn't going to happen for me. As an academic, as someone who knows this is where I'm going to be self aware with a mindset, it wasn't going to work for me, I wasn't going to be able to read. But if you take that and you put a 12 year old in front of that book, who's used to gaming nonstop, the chances are almost impossible that he's actually going to be able to read that or she's gonna be able to read that and understand. So we're also looking at what are we doing with technology use coaching teachers and coaching parents how do we develop a healthy relationship with this because there's a very important neurological implications for those

uses and emotional then that's not even talking about the sociological impacts of those interpersonal relationships and etc etc which are also related to cetera, which are also related to brain centers, which are also related to meditation. It's, and there's some things that are going on in our school systems. And like I said, this lobotomyization of stuff where they almost try to beat the boys out of the boys, the masculinity of the boys and boys are active. We're rambunctious. We're, we're trouble, especially when we're young. We go out in the dirt and we play we explore

and a lot of a lot of sometimes what i've seen is people are like drug the kid and anesthetize his brain because he's he's acting out and you're like no that's just uh what boys do they're trying to they're trying to almost feminize these boys where they don't so they're just being boys but there seems to be this curve where it's just give them drugs turn them into zombies and that seems like a really unhealthy thing to do considering that it's proclivity this is a proclivity of their nature you think at this point now i just retired from the classroom right so i can focus on on on opm and and the phd full-time and projects, which we can talk about more within OPM, not just the six-week program, but you'd think that the trends in education as a teacher,

more and more people are aware of that. We see it. We know. Same in psychology, or at least in my school, it's very clear that, okay, we got to balance this prescription medication, man, because it's gotten out of hand. However, what's also interesting is while that's known, there's still the trends that are the trends. Similarly with the COVID and everything that's going on now with the vaccinations and the use of medication, on one mind, you're like, yeah, maybe we should sort of go slow with this and not give the pharmaceutical companies complete free reign and creating whatever they want to create. And then how long is this going to go? Like in the back of the mind, at least from my point of view, I, which I think should be a very fundamental question. Who are these people who's paying for this? Who's getting

the information and, and, and, and, and to what extent are we just dismissing and just going with it? Not trying to create a conspiracy, just asking questions. So it's the same thing with, with the use of the drugs for attention deficit disorders and whatever it may be within the kids. Boston just passed a rule like kids, anyone over the age of five years old by May of next year has to have the vaccine. So while we have questions about medication and the use of medication in children, while we know rules, we still don't necessarily, it doesn't hit the road the right way sometimes. So a lot of people within academia and within

education know that these drugs are the issue, are an A issue for some. The language is important. I want to try to toe that line as much as possible because it's messy, man. And if nothing else, it's messy and it deserves to be part of a conversation. So to your point is what other methods could be used? My point is what are we doing within education that's actually enticing this, that could be sparking these things with the boys or the girls who want to just get up and do their thing? Okay. But what are we – sometimes actually with those types of kids, there's just too much crap happening in the classroom at one time there's just too much stimulation yeah so using a one concept and one pointed uh philosophy it's like where can we get these kids to focus as much as possible and it brings it down and it could be a five second breath practice like

actually the the design of your unit that does the design of your lesson the the design of your unit, the design of your lesson, the design of your space. It invokes a meditative state as often as we can, which then regulates neural centers, which then interdynamically then relate again to their ability to pay attention, manage their emotions, manage to learn. Then that compounds onto then, and it's an interdynamic relationship. Yeah. And hanging out with your friends the ceo disease and i and i studied this talked about my book a lot of ceos have adhd we're driven we're mad we're insane sometimes but it's there's a reason a lot of ceos have this disease it's a functional format that if we've learned to use it and sometimes it's

destructive nature of our behaviors, our chasing is like a landslide sometimes when we're in the ultimate creative mode. But yeah, our ability to process is really fast. And if you give us data like really slow and you have to do that for the other slow people in the room, which I get, it's maddening for us because we're just tuning out.

And I think that's what was going on with me and this stuff. So I think this is really great. Let's talk some more about what your courses do, how they, what they can do for people and what people can get from them. We start off in the, ultimately, like I said, it's a six week program. And in terms of the content itself, we first and foremost, we're trying to work with the teachers themselves to develop their own practice, their own one, their own relationship with a one pointed mind. Within the first couple of weeks, we go through a number of different particular practices, meditative practices, and we put the person in a state of, in some cases, it could be discomfort. It could be discomforting, discomforting. And that

you're maybe it's your first time ever going through a meditative practice or meditative experience. It's just a two minute practice. But what you end up doing is, is going into, you, you essentially see your mind directly. You feel the body directly. And we try to develop a different vantage point. And then we've developed that vantage point through a system. Certainly, these meditation practices pop up more and more throughout, and we build on these different meditation practices.

But really, when it comes down to the actual learning, so we're developing the practice for the teachers, which they'll eventually be able to integrate some of these concepts and ideas organically into their own classroom, depending on who they are, where they teach, their demographics. A grade 12 teacher is not going to teach the same way or have the same practice or conversation with a second grade teacher. It's a different environment. It's a different nature, and it should be. But then we get directly into the neurological processes, the brain centers that are being developed within education, the brain centers responsible are being developed within education, the brain centers responsible for attention, emotion, regulation, memory, which is essentially, or if I were to say

learning, it would be encoding and recalling information. Encoding information goes into the stores to recall it out and to share it. That's your evidence that you've learned it because you've applied it, which means you need to encode it and you need to recall it. Neural centers are responsible for that process. So if you take something like the hippocampus, which means you need to encode it and you need to recall it. Neural centers are responsible for that process. So if you take something like the hippocampus, which is shown to change shape with seasoned meditators, the hippocampus, which is responsible for emotion regulation along with memory, the prefrontal lobe, which is responsible largely for higher order thinking and reasoning, but also is responsible in part to sustained attention. That is denser in seasoned meditators, people who have experience in medicine. There's more neural connections. There's more gray matter. So therefore, that area of the brain in turn functions more optimally. It does what it does better, which is pays attention, stays focused.

If it's emotion regulation with the hippocampus, I'm sorry sorry with the amygdala or hippocampus but with the amygdala particularly if it's optimized and it it functions more optimally because of these different types of practices then your emotion regulation and your emotional responses is going to be more tamed it's going to be less impulsive with the hippocampus if there's a there's this interesting case of a man his name is clive wearing caring, C-L-I-V-E Wearing. And he had a disease. He can YouTube it. It's an interesting story. He had a disease where his hippocampus, both of them, they became neurofluid.

Essentially, they just disintegrated into neurofluid. He was a fully functioning adult. I shouldn't say fully functioning. He was a functioning adult, but he could no longer establish anything beyond what we would refer to as like a short-term memory, two to three minutes. If his wife leaves the room, two minutes later, she comes back again. He acts as if he hasn't seen her since the disease, which I've made. Are you sure he wasn't doing that on purpose? No, I'm just kidding.

Convenient. Yeah. I know a few husbands that do that. Yeah, totally. I don't want to get that. Don't get me going. I'll just, yeah, do that. Yeah, totally. I don't want to get that. Don't get me going. I'll just, yeah, just let me roll with the jokes. I'll get all the hate mail.

Now, what was interesting about Clive was that he retained all of the information and memory from before the disease. So he was a conductor of Tchaikovsky or some, he was a like a prolific orchestra director musician like running the show kind of brilliance in music he had the disease now if you put him in front of a piano he goes into a like a fit like a shaking fit almost like a an epileptic fit but then he'll start playing the piano and guide everybody and then when he stops playing he goes back into an epileptic fit and then back into his sunken state. And then you leave, he's not going to even remember

the fact that even happened. Holy crap. Sounds like Alzheimer's maybe, I don't know. It doesn't even exist, man. It's not even, yeah, it's, yeah. So he's a classic case of writing diaries over and over again, trying to maintain. So what that discovery showed

was that information travels through the hippocampus into long-term memory stores. But if the hippocampus is stressed, anxious, or if there's anxiety and stress and worry and fear and anger, the hippocampus is not going to operate as optimally as it would be if those emotional states are regulated. And if it was enhanced by developing a meditative practice and optimizing its functionality. So the point is ultimately learning is enhanced. When you're distracted, man, there's too much shit going on. You're not going to recall everything that's happening. It's just normal. It just makes sense. So the question is how do we integrate this into our life and then how do we integrate this seamlessly into education so it's not this big everyone's meditating meditating or everyone's mind. Like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Mindfulness is secondary to the meditative state. The meditative state is first. The one-pointed state is first. That's interesting. I know that I learned it with my ADHD because it reached a point where I was having really bad panic attacks, anxiety attacks every day, and I finally went and saw a psychiatrist. And he went, you're insane. And I learned that.

FYI. Huh? FYI. Yeah. And I learned that what my problem was, my frontal lobe was overloaded. And there's so much activity going on that was cramming up. And so I can see why what you're talking about with, and that's basically what the medication did was help regulate it

and, like, calm stuff down so what the medication did was help regulate it and like calm stuff down so that the data or whatever, however it works or flow. And so that's interesting what you're telling me about the one state of the meditation that can help regulate that and make it perform better. That's probably what I needed more than maybe drugs. Perhaps. But if it's someone who is being called to use medication for anxiety or whatever it may end up being, then if that's where they're at, then okay. I've been there. A lot of people have been there. You got to do this little something. I don't know what's going on. Years ago, I went to a psychiatrist and I had just finished a trial. Usually, when you're looking at these anxieties, depressions, it's okay. What's your diet?

You're eating healthy, get the right foods, reduce sugars, exercise. Are you exercising? Are you doing fitness? Are you burning the extra energy that compounds into anxieties? And, right, we call it anxiety, but really it's just extra energy because you're sitting in your ass all day. And we're people who should be working. We should be using energy up, burning these extra stores. That changes neural processing. How are your relationships?

You look at relationships and those sorts of things, right? Your career, career is a big one. Is your career in order? Do you feel like you get meaning out of your work? So I was going through all this list and I was like, yeah, man, but in my gut, I still have this rock of anxiety, right in the soloplexes. And now with the doctor, like, listen, I just did a triathlon. I did it as a vegan. I have a great wife. My life's happy i'm teaching international i think it's the best job in the world i'm developing i i i i have nothing to complain about but nonetheless it's still there he was a traditional chinese medicine doctor and what he said was listen this is an option for you this is during my phd studies as well so i'm like

i'm not just going to jump on some medication man and i'm not against it it's just i i have no other notions i have no i'm at a loss. It's just I have no other notions. I have no, I'm at a loss because it's been with me for 10 years. I went six months up on what I took and then came back down again. But his idea was it's traditional Chinese medicine. They say it's we use words to try to encapsulate what you're experiencing within the mind. We use codes. Depression is a code. Anxiety We use codes. Depression is a code. Anxiety is a code.

ADHD is a code. So with the Western world, we're trying to code behavior into categorizations, and it doesn't always fit. It could be one of three different things. And even if you get into the DSMs and you're looking at all these, it's this could mean this,

and then that could mean that. And you could have any one of these things, but you also have many of these. It's just, they're trying their best for him. It was like, we just see it as blocked energy. It's just block G. So if we could work on this, we'll loosen it up. And then we can do different practices to help you work your way out of it. And it just, within a few weeks, I was just like, oh, that feeling is gone. And I went through my process and I came out the other side for me in that case, it was, but what you're saying with the prefrontal lobe and that processing, people could examine their day-to-day and they can reduce distractions as much as they can within

their day-to-day experience to try. And now it may be difficult, probably will be difficult to an extent. For instance, turn the radio off or don't listen to anything while you're driving your car. That's a one-pointed mind. In in that state you'll notice the mind wanders the mind drifts you may end up actually where you've done this before you just end up at home or wherever you're at i have no idea what the hell just happened but i just drove for 35 minutes and i don't remember barely even a minute of it yeah mine was replaying the same anxieties and worries like every day at the same time and when the guy sold that to me i was like you're full of crap and he goes right i bet you are i'm son of a bitch at 10 a.m i was on program

one whatever anxiety worry i worried about 10 a.m and then 11 a.m this is the next thing and it was the same crap like every day let's talk about some more in depth about your guys your things your modules here and some of the weeks that you go through with the course to help people. I noticed one thing that's interesting. You go into some deeper knowledge about how meditative practices impact your own areas of interest, autism, spectrum disorders, learning disorders, literacy, math, performance, anxiety, discussion, general health, well-being, and leadership.

That autism thing is pretty interesting to me because I've got a lot of friends that have autism and suffer from it and then depression and a few other things. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Yeah, I think one of the, as I had mentioned earlier, we have this, we have these situations where all the teachers teach their own thing, right? You teach in a different area of the world. And I really wanted to make sure that this program was geared not only in a general sense to what we, everyone could benefit from, but really making sure that it's personalized to each participant. Even if we were to come into your school, which we have, like, for instance, we have a six-hour training program, which will come in and push into a school. Or even if the school was to implement this themselves,

take this program with a handful or a group of teachers, we want to make sure that you can get where you want to get. So in week five, we have the personal readings and reflections. So now that you've got these ideas grounded and you've been working for five weeks on these different practices, working into week five, we've got scholarly research on the impacts that meditation has on, like you say, autism spectrum and depression.

And the teachers and the administrators or meditation has on, like you say, autism spectrum and depression and the teachers and the administrators, or even the parents, they can go and follow this track and dig deeper into these particular areas of interest for you. It would be autism spectrum or depression. And like I said, just like, all right. So if you were to take a cycle, we mentioned psychopharmacology earlier for the treatment of depression depression it's all but equal placebo and antidepressant medication and its efficacy in curing quote-unquote curing depression placebo and antidepressants have the same efficacy they're equal okay so that means that placebo doesn't work for everybody but it works for many people as much actually than if you actually to give them the same percentage of people would benefit from taking the psychopharmacology. Like I have mentioned this before with working with things like disorders with autism spectrum or depression, it's not as if people couldn't benefit.

The question is, to what extent is it actually, quote unquote, curing or being or does it hold a statistically significant impact on that particular behavior? So I am just trying to preface this as much as I can to help, you know, encourage people to, you know, do their research, find out what it's showing, because it's nowhere is going to say 100 percent of kids who have autism when they do this practice are there. So I'm trying to be very respectful to the complications of these types of research. But when you're looking at someone with autism spectrum, you're dealing with interpersonal relationships, you're dealing with emotional regulation, you're dealing with different behavior dispositions. It's just what they're essentially saying is depending upon the certain type of practices in the studies that they were doing, the symptoms, symptomology of autism spectrum was reduced in a sense that it was reduced to a point where it maybe in some way

became more manageable with states of depression or even states of anxiety. The situation you were dealing with mindfulness-based stress reduction is commonly used, MBSR. It's commonly used mbsr it's it's commonly used for treatments of ptsd uh depression states anxiety because even the treatments of people suffering from chronic pain or chronic fatigue if you're dealing with chronic chronic pain some degenerative disorder your chronic pain is what it is it's not going away so the psychological response is actually where the treatment lies. So it's working with the psychology of the individual. How are they relating to this? What are they seeing in the mind in the relationship to the response? I take a cold shower every day. There's a one-pointed focus. You get in quick and all of a sudden that water's cold and I don't want to get in it because

I just got out of a warm bed in upstate New York in the middle of winter. But it's an opportunity to be one pointed and you come under the response to the cold into a zone space and the inner world. And it's an instant. It's an instant meditation. There's benefits to the body, of course, for de-inflammation and the cryotherapy. But it's a rabbit hole of a conversation. Yeah. I saw recently there were some studies that were done or some examples of some people that marijuana had helped them. It didn't resolve their autism, but it helped them.

It was like a night and day difference between the two of them. Yeah. Hopefully, there's some more development. I go into a meditative state if I drop an apple. Yeah. What's interesting about that is I was having this conversation with some people over this past weekend and they were saying ultimately they go with like alcohol they're like oh i get that when i drink and it's a lot of people they alcohol is where they turn for that

and what it ultimately does is it grounds you and it brings you into a state of presence from my experience and this isn't to say that i didn't enjoy the alcohol while i was having this conversation with those people you know i mean but what's ultimately happening is through different practices if you understand like the practice of breath you can activate breathing And if you activate breathing to a certain degree, you can activate physiology of the brain and physiology of the body where the body actually becomes more tangible. If you will, you feel the body you're in the body. And as you come into the body through breathing practices, it activates the feeling of the chest, the feeling

of the belly, the shoulders, the arms, and the hands that's grounding. And it's, you become present with that. Use the sense of presence. The problem is that then the mind, I can do that for a second, but then the mind, I'm sucked back into the thinking again, out of the body, out of the state of presence. That's why we love sports. That's why I like a roller coaster. That's why we like getting into the new car when we first get it. But eventually the new car wears off because it doesn't grab us like it used to. It's about the presence of mind, the state of presence, the one point of focus, which is what we're craving. Ultimately, the question is what barriers and boundaries get in the way of being able to experience that

as often as possible. Yeah, I'm not suggesting I say this often as possible, because I'm like, I'm just a bloke, dude. I'm just a dude that's got a mind. It gets anxieties and fear. And sure, it's I'm not floating about everybody levitating it's but nonetheless it's still something that that can be very impactful on your life so right now the habit is to turn to the alcohol yeah or to turn to whatever it may end up being it could be turning to the gaming it could be turning to the porn it could be turning to whatever the it could be turning to the hot dog to the food to the whatever it may be people turn to food a lot yeah yeah so that's where the that's where the mind goes so the question is what what else can i do as often as possible which and it may not be enough to do it then but if you do

it regularly when it's time to have self-will control then the self-will control is perhaps more likely to be there because you've been practicing a more meditative one-pointed state at work in the car wherever else you may have been and then it's like reserves in the bank your willpower is increased i had that problem for about 20 years i used alcohol to probably regulate my state and be calmer and take things down a bit and then just reach the point where my body's we're not doing this with you anymore we're just we're done we're done yeah you want a drink we're gonna make your liver hurt really bad that's how i was gonna say meditation

is not going to give you a liver disease there you go there's the endorsement right here's the thing the reason now when i actually had the two things first of all i had to change it i had to use the idea of the one pointed mind because when I was teaching, my first teaching spot was in Kuwait, then to Saudi Arabia, then Qatar. And I started to teach. And like I had mentioned, I saw the benefits that the kids can have from meditation. And then I created the workshop to share with teachers that were in my school. Actually, the school hosted a conference where the many teachers were coming from international schools around kuwait so they came to our school

and you can put up a workshop or whatever one hour workshop so i had the idea to do this i put the the idea forward but i couldn't use the word meditation because i was in a muslim school do they have something like that they pray five times a day. And in conversations with Muslims, my conclusion is ultimately they're going into a meditative state through prayer five times a day. That's interesting. Maybe that's why prayer is so appealing to some people. It's very powerful. There's also the sacred element, like giving yourself your burden, your worries before the feet of something else. And I can let this go. And but yes, for sure, the state of presence that you get from that meta from that prayer is very ritualistic, very repetitive, which is a lot of power and not just like ritual to a higher God,

but just the ritual of repetition, the ritual of practice, one of the things that I suffer from, you know, I came back from China a few months ago from Shanghai, where we live in now into the entrepreneurial world. Not only do I have the CEO disease, but I don't have a routine. When I was a teacher for 12 years at eight Oh six, everybody knew what they were doing at 10 23. Everybody knew what they were doing. And now it's, you have, it's completely unhinged. Um, but ultimately I'm digressing, but I, I had, I had to use the ideas of the one pointed mind. Cause because, like I said, I couldn't use the ideas of meditation. I took it from that workshop, and then I was given an opportunity.

They said, this is really good. You can share it here in another place in a couple of months. And I was like, all right, that's pretty sweet. And I did that, and then right in the front row were three covered Muslim women. I'm talking fully covered. And I was like, okay, this is where the rubber meets the road. Whether or not these practices, I've developed them enough. I understand Islam enough where I can share these ideas and they're going to get it and not dismiss it because it's Vedic or it's yogic or it's Hindu or it's Buddhist or it's whatever else.

Because a lot of this is rooted in the word meditation is rooted in those traditions. So I changed the word deliberately and ended up with, with looking with the one point in mind. And I'm so grateful that I did because it actually involves way more than just because we hear meditation. Like I got to sit for 20 minutes a day. I got to do this, or I got to do that. And if I don't do this, right. I it's, it's not about that, man. It's about a state of being, which is, which is aware of the processes that's going on inside the mind i i see the anxiety okay i'm not in the anxiety i'm observing it because i'm used to being in a one-pointed state and if i'm not in that one point to state i'm pulled into something

and that becomes foreign not stillness stillness is foreign with the average person now meditation that meditative state is foreign yeah we're never we're always getting bings and the more you practice that's right notifications and and if you're not getting that you're looking for the next one you're looking for it on the right you're doing anything you can to get out of the mind to get out of you don't know where to go so let me go to something that takes my attention. What if you redirected it into a different place, not just your phone, but to that state and you start to play in that world a little bit. So you've got the courses on your website. Who are the people who are your best clients? If someone's out there, how do they know that there's someone who can benefit from your course and stuff like that. Who are your clients? I had this conversation with one of my,

my member of the team and we got, say you give me 10,000 people. Would you rather have, would you rather send email to 10,000 people who already registered mindful schools, practitioners and participants, or would you rather email 10,000 people that had no clue what the hell was going on?

And I was like, my impulse was to go with the people who had no experience. I feel like, right? Not to suggest that anybody who's trained, there's people who are trained in mindful schools. It's a program. Bringing those types of people, actually, some of our coaches are actually trained mindful schools through mindful, the program mindful schools. Teachers would know what this means. It's mindful schools. It's like a, it's a program. They do a lot of really great work. Some of, like I said, so I have a coach, maybe two coaches we have are from mindful schools background and they're educators, counselors. They went through that program. They see this program and they say this program is a good program. It'll work. So anybody who's curious about it, the six week program right now that we have is for educators, administrators, the heads of department, really teachers run the school.

So I actually often don't reach out to principals or the directors or superintendents. I'd rather reach out to the teachers because they're the teachers. We run the school and you can do this on your own. Oftentimes professional development stipends for schools will pay for professional development that's why we geared this towards the development of learning but over the last week we're starting to work with another group but it's actually a corporate group and that turned into a three-week program a three one-hour program for understanding this in relationship to just just these guys they was working in an assembly line factory they're steel steel pumpers. They're, they're blacksmiths, something at the greatest. I got a tour, man. It was like modern marvels. Like I went into the warehouse that they're into their plant

as this past week and they're creating something crazy, big, huge steel. Like these are like propellers for ships, Navy ships, rods for Navy ships, and just super impressive. So the question is, how does that help those people? Not ironically, or it was, it's actually quite a sad story, but he's okay now. But while we were having lunch the other day with the vice president of the company, he said, somebody just went into the ambulance from the company. They had an anxiety attack. Literally. I didn't want to say it, you know, because i don't know that this would have helped necessarily if he did this program a while back but how would have maybe he would have i don't know but you know what i'm saying but it's just like is it necessary for people working in in factories yeah it is it is and these guys are they're central pennsylvania western pennsylvania

outside erie they're they're Steelers fans. It's a tough winter. There's some tough folks out there, man. Talk about tough dudes and gals. They're going through their thing also. They're struggling and suffering. And it's not about, again, you tell these people, let's sit and meditate. They're like, yeah, why don't you go suck on an egg?

It's not going to happen. It's so hard to put your brain around. You're not used to it. It's a skill you put your brain around. You're not used to it. It's a skill you've got to learn and acquire. I like the PTSD thing. I've known people that suffer from that, that they went and were involved in war and saw some things that really damaged them. And so that can be really helpful. After COVID and everything we've gone through the past two years,

I tell the joke, and it's a bit tongue-in-cheek because there's some truth to it, but I'm almost like, we almost need a national mental health budget just so we can all go see a psychiatrist after these last two years. We've really gone through some things. I mean, some people have gone through incredible losses of family and loved ones. Some, just the isolation alone has been depressing, especially older folks. My sister, we weren't able to see her for a year. We were able to go to her window and wave at her at the care center. She has MS and dementia. And we couldn't, my mom couldn't hug her or be near her for a year, which is really hard because my mom spends almost daily activating, not activating, advocating for her and going to the care center and making sure she's taken care of.

And she couldn't do that for a year and a half, maybe, I think. I can't remember exactly now because clearly I'm going to have some damage from it. But it was really hard on a lot of people mentally. And I think some of us, maybe all of us, really need some help. Yeah. I told you at the start of this, west my my wife just tested positive for covid this morning wow so it's like there goes christmas and i just came back from china i haven't had christmas here in many and i was like ah i'll be back for christmas now it's back for thanksgiving

it was amazing man i had been back for 12 years i had thanksgiving in 12 years because i was living international now i got it and it just was amazing now now we lost christmas and uh it's not easy bro it sucks man it's very difficult a lot of It sucks, man. It's very difficult. A lot of, but yeah. So the question is what, what can we do? And sometimes those self-help books there, they just don't work. I'm not going to read a book like another thing. And here's the thing. We also know some of the rules, but some of the rules, we don't let things go. You can do the power to change what you can and the knowledge and know what you can't change and all that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. It's useful. It helps.

But what do I do? What can I actually do? And there's a number of practices. It's just, if people don't want to get hung up on the concept of meditation per se, then think about it like a one-pointed focus. What can I do to get myself in a creative flow? And with that, from my experience,

particularly working with students, and I like to write music. I'm a songwriter. So my experience is that working with students and I like to write music. I'm a songwriter. So my experience is that when I'm, when I hear music and I hear lyrics, I become aware of them and then I write them down. So there's an awareness that they're coming from someplace. It's not, I could possess it and say, I'm thinking this. Okay. I'm thinking it, but I just easily can say, yeah, I have no idea where the hell it's just, I just, I'm aware of the words. So in those moments of stillness is where the genius, it becomes apparent. It appears in that realm. And if you can put yourself in a creative state, my mother and I, we just did some coloring books together, paint by number, coloring book, color by number. And we just spent an hour and we had our own thing. And it was just a meditative experience. And I could notice that we'd get pulled out and back again. You want to make sure you're right in the night, the right colors on the, those are awesome

opportunities and don't necessarily underestimate them because what it's doing is it's bringing you to a state of focus and presence. And in that state, there's not anxiety. There may be a feeling of anxiety, but, but, but but but fear is less likely to be prevalent fear is i might not i might lose what i have or might not get what i want it's projection into the future which is in thought it doesn't exist in the present anger is a thwarted desire i wanted something i didn't get it so sitting in a perpetual state of anger is when you're in perpetual thought process about what has already occurred. It's finished. It doesn't exist anywhere except for in the mind. So when we pull ourselves out of that state into the state of presence, you're out of the thinking world and you're into the

feeling world and to the presence world. And it's simply a different state of experience. And we know it, we feel it when you're with kids, you're with a baby, bang, you're in that state. But we're just typically not in that state. That's the normal human condition. It's very normal. One of the things that we want to touch on and tell people before we go out to get them activated on your- If many people might not be teachers. So if you know a teacher that might benefit from it or a group or whoever, the one one pointed mind.net is the program itself steven.lawrence the one pointed mind oh i'm sorry steven.lawrence at one pointed ed.net is the site but i'm sure you'd provide these in the links ahead we're developing the

corporate program that'll we'll roll that something like that out probably in reality come february or so that's where that's at i just retired from teaching last year, this past June. So I've been back in the States for five months and this is people are into startups and trying to help people that are trying to make the world better than this is where your group. So that's where we're at.

We got a good team of people together and the site's active. We're taking people in and it's shareable. Just spread the word. Honestly, and we're unapologetic about this. We're trying to transform human consciousness. We're trying to revolutionize education. It has to change. And most people in education know. There's a lot of lip service to this in teaching and education. We got to do change. We got to do something different. We got to target this.

The question is, how do you actually do it? And this is an option. This is an option for people that could be drawn to it. Well, there you go you go there you go so we've got your plugs uh the plugs will be on the chris fosh show so people can click on them anything more you want to touch on before we go out no that's good man awesome very grateful thank you very much this is uh this is something i wish i could go back to when i was had really bad hd and maybe approach things a whole lot different but could you imagine if your teachers knew this? Exactly. That would have been really good.

I'll never forget. I was in my 20s, and my brains was cramping. My brains was cramping? What? I'm learning. Maybe I do. That's the problem. My chest would lock up, and I'd have anxiety attacks, almost like a heart attack.

I'd shut down. I would be jacked up so much I'd shut down and have to take a nap and then i wake up and i have peace for about i don't know a minute and then all the you know the thoughts that kick in i'd be like it was like a cycle man and i thought i had cancer or something in the brain and so i finally just i reached a breaking point i just went into um and i wanted to start keeping a gun in the car because I was getting in road rage issues. And I knew that that was not going to be a good step that was going to end up well. And I was like, I need to go get help. I have a problem and it's out of control.

And so at least I had the foresight of mind to, even though I was deep in the pool, I could go, I'm drowning. And so I went into the Instacare. I think I got cancer of the brain or frontal lobe. I don't know what's going on, but my brain hurts, my body hurts, and I keep going through these attacks. And I never even heard of pain attacks. And the guy goes, you have anxiety. And I'm like, yeah, and I also have fear and loathing

and a bunch of other emotions. Thanks, thanks, but whatever. Here's your sticker. Yeah, here's your emotions. Thanks. Thanks. But whatever. Here's your sticker. Yeah, here's your sticker. No, anxiety. And I'm like, yeah, I'm really going to choke you out right now if you tell me I have another emotion. Because I do. I am a human being.

And she's like, no, anxiety is like a thing. And she explained to me. And I was like, oh. And I just never heard of it. But, yeah, it would have really helped me out if somebody. Yeah. And most of the time, those, those experiences, or at least my experience with working with that, it's a multi-layered issue. If we're speaking particularly about anxiety, working in the realms of therapy that I'm working with, there's a lot of, we carry what we can

consider anxiety within the, within the solar plexus, through the vagus nerve, the esophagus and everything runs through, there's a herniated, there's an, there's a diaphragm area. It's the name's escaping me, but it oftentimes becomes herniated. And it's one of the leading causes of illness within the human, human in general. So many things are related to that because we carry stress and anxiety. So what happens is the endocrine system is slowly dripping the stress hormones, cortisol and all these other things. So adrenaline is being dripped because the mind is seeing something or projecting something into the future, which creates a physiological response, which then releases the stress

hormones, which then bottle up inside the guts because we're not burning it up. So then that compounds into the belly and into the guts, into the intestines, into the esophagus. And they all start to lock because the energy can't go anywhere. The chemicals are all screwed up. So then it translates into a physiological response, which then compounds the anxiety, which we define as anxiety. Everything gets locked up into those areas. Things can't move around. Then the chest locks up the feeling inside the chest. We see it as something that we feel it now, but that's all very often. It's something that's been compounded over many years of a certain neurological process. And if you're not aware of the neurological process, you can't really do much to fix it. You're just a victim of it. But just real quick, I know we got what we want to wrap up here. But the one of the things we talk about in the program are the functions of mind. There's four functions of mind that are happening. There's an ego structure, which identifies that the element of the mind that identifies that I am something separate from everything else.

It's a function inside the mind. There's the senses. You're driven by the senses and sense pleasures. You also have unconscious habit patterns, conditioning, evolutionary conditioning. These things just happen, you know? And then there's what we call higher order consciousness or higher order reason, which says something's not right here.

I shouldn't be doing this. I might be driven by the senses to eat a donut, but I should only have one donut. Yeah. Okay. If we're shutting that down and we're not adhering to it, which we often do, we have the voice in the head.

For me, it takes the shape of my wife. She's my conscience. And she's typically right. But that's the voice that I see. That's how it personifies. If you play with that, it's very interesting. She's actually right. She's right. I that I see. That's how it personifies. If you play with that, it's very interesting. She's actually right. She's right. I shouldn't do it. So don't do it.

If you can balance that out. So what we do is we go through those functions of mind. And if we understand to examine which functions happening, we could listen to it or not listen to it. We don't, it's just a suggestion. You don't have to do it. And if you could change the attention, the focus from one type of thought to another type of thought, instead of taking that drink or instead of doing whatever, instead of take a breath or to do something, fidget, move your foot and make your knee pop, like whatever it is that you need to do to bring it down. So that whole conversation is a long conversation of detail and analysis, which we try to do over a number of weeks and integration into the daily life of the person.

That's awesome. I'm glad there's these resources out here for people. So it's been wonderful to have you on the show and go through all the data here that you've shared and give people resources. I think I drove, my teachers probably could use it because I think I drove a lot of them to drink as well. You weren't the only one.

You weren't the only one. There you go. I should have gotten some affiliate sales for all the bottles that they bought, the Jack Daniels. The course was in the room again. I'm blown away. Teachers today, when I was a kid, man, teachers, they'd be up outside smoking. I graduated in 96.

I was getting spanked. We'd get spanked in school. Oh, yeah. Times have changed, man. Yeah, they definitely have changed. Maybe we need to bring that back. Anyway, Steve, it's been wonderful having you on the show. Very insightful.

And we give people some great resources. There will be links on our website. Give us the website one more time as we go on. TheOnePointedEd.net. There you go, Chris. Sorry, there's two. My bad. TheOnePointedMind.net.

The One Pointed Mind. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Steve. We certainly appreciate it. It was a pleasure, Chris. Thank you. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Steve. We certainly appreciate it. It was a pleasure, Chris. Thank you. There you go.

And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chats, Chris Voss, see everything we're reading and reviewing over there. All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere those crazy kids are. I think there's even a TikTok account. Also, go to YouTube.com. You can see all the wonderful videos we're reviewing. And we're reviewing a lot of great products, too, for Christmas on the tech side, the review side of the Chris Voss Show. We just got some really nice SVS speakers that we're going to be reviewing and a lot of cool things that you can decide if you want to buy them for Christmas or gifts or figure out if you want to return them.

Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Have a happy holidays, and we'll see you guys next time.