The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Calm Your Mind

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Levels. What matters most in life is the quality of our experiences and the ability to be awake to what is real and true in our lives for both the difficult and the happy times. But that is harder than it sounds. More and more, we struggle with attention and focus. In today’s episode of my series I’m calling Health Bites, I discuss why we are so easily distracted, my own journey into meditation, and the incredible health benefits of a regular meditation practice. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Levels. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests from over 35 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. Levels provides real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Right now, Levels is offering an additional two free months of their annual membership. Learn more at levels.link/HYMAN. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Why are attention and focus so hard to come by? (4:35 / 2:20)  Training the mind (7:15 / 4:55)  Why I studied Buddhism in college (8:20 / 6:24)  My experience doing a silent meditation retreat (13:13 / 11:00)  The point of meditation and the benefits it offers (14:58 / 12:42) How to do a simple mindfulness meditation (17:51 / 15:15)  Mentioned in this episode Ziva Meditation

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. It helps you sleep better. It boosts serotonin, the happy mood chemical. Increase your creativity. Helps you fix your brain waves, calms them down. Helps you learn, focus, pay attention. Increases your productivity, enhances your memory, and so much more.

I find it's a superpower. If I'm having a little lull or something and my brain is gonna shut down, I do a 20-minute meditation and I feel like I had a three-hour nap. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. Now, I know a lot of you out there are healthcare practitioners like me, helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as the framework for getting the root cause of the issues. Now, in my

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And if you ever felt like you can't focus or pay attention or stressed out, you want to pay attention to this podcast because we're going to talk about how to reset your nervous system and how to use ancient practices like meditation to reset your biology and your life and it is no small feat to change the things we're going to be talking about changing but it is so well proven through the science and research on meditation and there's a great book i did a podcast with the author daniel goldman called altered traits a study, many, many highly experienced meditators. Guys have been meditating 40,000 hours, like Tibetans who've lived in a cave for nine years, that kind of guy. And they found some remarkable things that happen to the brain. And the good news is the changes happen even with very little meditation.

You don't have to be in a cave for 40 years, basically. We'll talk about how that works. So today I'm doing this in the form of one of our health bites, which are little bites of information to improve your health because taking small steps daily can lead to significant changes over time. Now, if there was something you could do every day to boost your focus, your productivity, to feel energized, to reduce stress, to sleep better, to maintain a positive outlook, to support your whole body health,

wouldn't you do it? Well, it's for all those reasons and more that I consider meditation a foundational pillar of good health. I used to think I didn't have time for meditation. Now I know I don't have time not to do it because it's become that important in helping me manage all my other responsibilities and passions. So today we're going to be talking about why we're so easily distracted, my own journey with meditation, and the incredible health benefits of a regular meditation practice. So why is it so hard to focus, pay attention? Well, Starbucks built a $13 billion business because we need out paying attention. Psychiatrists often diagnose adult attention deficit disorder.

I think one in 10 kids is on some type of attention medicine like Ritalin. And they are now prescribing Ritalin for grownups who can't focus or pay attention. I mean, I'm not sure coffee or prescription speed, which is essentially what Ritalin is, is the answer to our modern problems and distraction. We're distracted by email, by iPhones, by the ping of a new text message, by bad news on television, by social media, by the stresses of work and relationships, family. It's easy to be overwhelmed and to be stressed and to miss this incredible gift of being alive. The problem is our bodies break down over this chronic onslaught of stress. We get insomnia, anxiety, depression, and by the way, all chronic diseases,

heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, obesity, all are worsened by stress or maybe caused even by stress. So what matters most in life is the quality of our life, the quality of our experience, our ability to be awake, to pay attention, to be present to what's real and true in our lives for both the good times and the bad times, the happy times, the sad times, to be awake to everybody we touch, to our own experience, to the moment we're in, because that's all there is to the simple, sweet and simple gifts of just a smile or a touch or a kind deed or breeze on our skin or a firefly flickering in the early summer night. All these things are the magic of being alive.

And we kind of miss them when we go through life at 100 miles an hour and are constantly stressed. But doing that, appreciating life, being grateful, which, by the way, is a very powerful medicine. And you should try it. Gratitude practices are very powerful. There's actually a lot of science behind it. Doing that, it's kind of hard in the sounds.

Our monkey mind gets in the way. Our crazy thoughts and just distractions are always interfering with our ability to be present. So in order to pay attention, we need to be quiet. We need to be able to practice this. We need to know the habits of our mind. We need to be skilled at working with them to not be controlled or dominated by our thoughts and our mind. We need to learn the practice of witnessing our thoughts and feelings without having them overwhelm us, dominate us, or control our lives, or being driven by them. I mean, think about it. If you want to go and do 100 push-ups,

you just can't go and do 100 push-ups. You got to work up to it. You need to exercise the muscles that allow you to do that. The same thing with the mind. You know, we talk about exercise to train the body, but what do we do to train the mind? We don't do anything. We just kind of bops around in the world and has no guidance or practices that allows you to actually do what we call inner size to exercise your mind to become a master of your mind and when you master your mind you master your life it's that simple and not be controlled or at the effect of everything that's going on all the time around you and being caught off balance so um actually how i got into this all into medicine by the way, was maybe you may or may not know, is I was at Cornell and I studied Buddhism.

I was my major. I was very interested in the mind and the nature of our consciousness and the ways that our thoughts and perceptions control our lives, how to work with them in a juicy way that brings more love and kindness and compassion and insight into every moment rather than just darkness and suffering and struggle and pain which most of us go through life with so it's a very amazing practice for understanding how to master our minds and that is a key to good healthy life because if you are in control of your mind you're in control of your life now pain is inevitable loss is inevitable death war, disaster always have been going on for thousands of years.

And they'll always be part of the human condition. But within it, I wondered as a young man, I thought, is there a way to understand suffering in a different way, in a different light to break the cycle of suffering? And that's when I really got into studying Buddhism, which is basically a method. It's not really a religion. It's a method of practice and thinking that allows you to actually break the cycle of constant suffering. And I realized back then that there was a way to be more awake, to see things as they truly are, unfiltered by my conditioning, my beliefs, to notice it and to savor it and to love it and to wake up with gratitude and lightness and celebration of the magic of life.

It's always there. We just miss it. We just miss it. And so we don't notice it. And that's why often our lives feel so hard. But in order to notice it, you have to be present. And to be present, you need to have a little bit of a quiet mind. And it's not so easy to do that for most of us.

Being awake takes a lot of practice. Each of us has to find our own path to awakening. But many of these ancient traditions provide a pathway. You don't have to believe in a particular religion or philosophy or anything. Being present isn't necessarily a religious practice. Meditation is not a religious practice. We've done that throughout the millennia as human beings. We've danced.

We've prayed. We've sung. We've chanted. We've meditated. We've done all sorts of practices to help us to focus our mind. So it's really important to just have a simple desire to be able to show up and be present in your life. And pay attention to what's going on without any judgment, without any criticism, without any self-hate. And just to notice the ebb and flow of our breath and our thoughts.

That's what meditation is. You're sitting there. You're laying down, sitting up. And you just watch your thoughts. Almost like, you know, clouds going across the sky. They're not good or bad. They're not things that you can control or hold on to. Or like, you know, ripples in the sky. They're not good or bad. They're not things that you can control or hold on to, or like, you know, ripples in the ocean. You just kind of let them come like a thought is a ripple

and it comes and you watch it and you let it go. You don't grab onto it. And that really is a powerful practice. And that's like doing pushups for your brain, right? It's like, how do you do bicep curls for your brain, right right you need to do some kind of practice and meditation is one of those powerful practices and it doesn't mean you have no thoughts like people i can't meditate i i can't shut my brain off well you're not going to be able to i don't think even maybe an enlightened master maybe they can do that for a few minutes here and there but it's really tough so the key is really to sit with your mind and to not grasp onto the thoughts and not actually have them control you or guide you. You know, Victor Frankl, who was a psychiatrist who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp,

wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning about his experience. And he realized he had a choice when he was there. He was in the most awful conditions a human being could ever experience he was constantly at the effect of his nazi guards um behavior and at their mercy they could do anything to him and they did and he had the idea the notion that um it's really up to us how we respond to our situation people People say, oh, I have this horrible situation. I can't do this and that. But he said, between your thought and your action, there's a pause. And in that pause lies a choice. And that choice lies your freedom. And's a very buddhist idea right you basically

don't have to believe the thoughts you have and you also don't have to um hang on to the beliefs that are common in your society or that you're conditioned with as a child you can actually learn to slow down the process of some input, right? Somebody says something, somebody tries to hurt you, whatever, you're stressed by an event, whatever that is. And then there's your reaction to it. And in there, in that space, there's this pause.

It just, it's just for most of us, it's collapsed into one second or millisecond. But the key to meditation is it helps you practice the muscle of just paying attention. It's kind of hard. It's not easy, but we have to learn how to be patient with ourselves, to love ourselves, and just kind of not pay attention and get stuck on those thoughts that may not be so great. So it basically helps us create calm in the chaos. And Ram Dass talked about loving,-judgmental self-awareness most of us have no clue how to do this but it's actually really possible when i was 20 years old

i i decided to do a 10-day meditation retreat a silent meditation retreat basically was just was meditating 12 hours a day eating in silence and, and sleeping. And that was it. And it was really wild. I mean, it was the most extraordinary experience to do as a young man. And it took me a little bit to settle in. But as I began to settle in each day, I felt more and more awake, more alive, happier than I'd ever been. And it wasn't connected to something outside of me. It was an inner happiness, something I'd really never had before. It wasn't because somebody did something or me. It was an inner happiness, something I'd really never had before.

It wasn't because somebody did something or I got something good in my life. It was just this pure joy of being alive and being able to notice what was around me, the magic of the forest and the birds and nature, how sparkly and beautiful people were, everything. It was just like everything looked like I was sort of looking through brand new glasses where I could see everything clearly. And that was a profound experience for me. And I've done those retreats over the course of my life. And I find they're profound. A friend of mine just did what we call a dark retreat, which is going in a cave, pitch black for a week, which I think is a little scary. But he said he found in that week, he got the most profound sense of safety and happiness and joy just being with himself. And most of us don't quiet down enough to actually be with ourselves or know ourselves, but it's pretty important. Now, sometimes I've gone far away from it, crazy, raising kids and building a career. But whenever I go back there, I just feel at home.

And there's a thousand ways to meditate, right? You can do mindfulness meditation, breath meditation, mantra meditation, you can do dancing meditation, walking meditation, breathing meditation, prayer, yoga, all these things are powerful, powerful techniques that allow you to reach that state. So what's the point of it anyway? What's the point of meditation? It's not to get better at at meditation it's to get better at life right so it's it's uh it's not just a and in itself it's essentially a way to calm your mind to see how things really are to reduce the impact of suffering in your life and your beliefs and your thoughts and increase your own sense of love and kindness compassion compassion, your fearlessness, your wisdom, sympathy, empathy, all these things start to come up when you start to come this crazy inner,

I call it the inner, it's just constantly yattering, nattering in your head. And when you're still like that, your life becomes richer, your actions are more clear, your words are more powerful and direct. Your ability to see things is improved. Your capacity to be engaged in life is enhanced. It's not a a retreat from life it's a way to go fully into life and to cultivate your own power and happiness so what what are the benefits though from a medical perspective because those are all life benefits right there's a lot of scientific benefits it reduces chronic pain it lowers blood pressure reduces headaches anxiety depression helps you lose weight balances your cholesterol improves your sports performance you know uh chic Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan and Phil,

what's his name, Phil, whatever it was, Phil Jackson, who was the coach, he was really getting old hippie from the 60s and really into meditation. And he taught the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan how to meditate. And that meditation was a key to their success. Seattle football team also did meditation as part of their practices to improve their sports performance. Meditation also improves

your immune function. It helps you sleep better. It boosts serotonin, the happy mood chemical, increase your creativity, helps you fix your brainwaves, calms them down, helps you learn, focus, pay attention, increase your productivity, enhances your memory, and so much more. I actually, I find it's a superpower. If I'm like having a little lull or something and my brain is going to shut down i do a 20 minute meditation i feel like i had a three hour nap uh it's super powerful so um i don't meditate for both reasons i mean it's those are nice and their side effects um and and yoga after me i was also a yoga teacher before i was a doctor and i for practice a form of yoga that we called meditation in motion which was very

mindful uh meditation uh based yoga using the breath and awareness to actually um guide your body through different postures but it's really the reason i do it is to be more awake to life to myself to to cultivate my own sense of peace and loving kindness and compassion for me and others. The good news is you don't need that much time. You can do 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a place to sit. You don't even need something quiet. I meditate on planes, on trains, on buses. And you just kind of go in.

I go in and I'm like, I have my little noise headphones I use sometimes. But you really don't have to be anywhere in particular. I mean, it's obviously better if it's super quiet and it's helpful, but you don't have to be. So just going through meditation, what is it? How do you do it? It's pretty easy. You can sit in a comfortable position.

You could sit without back support or not a back support. You should relax your shoulders. You should just put your neck and your head straight, your chin down a little bit, face relaxed, and then just start breathing relax your shoulders. You should, uh, you know, just put your neck, you know, head straight, your chin down a little bit, face relaxed, and then just start breathing through your nose, uh, and just feeling your belly rise and fall, your ribs expand and your collarbones and shoulders move as you breathe. And just notice your breath. Uh, one of the forms of meditation is simply noticing the breath, exiting the nose and

entering the nose, exiting the nose, entering the nose. And when you lose track and you start thinking and drifting off or thinking about what you got to do tomorrow, just come back to the breath. It's really simple. So just watch that simple breath. And that's a very powerful way. Also, you know, when your mind kind of jiggers off, you just keep coming back every time. There's not your failure meditation. There's no judgment here.

It's really just practice. And maybe, you know, when you first start doing it, it'll be like three seconds before your mind takes off somewhere else. Like you can only do one push-up. But after practicing a while, you'll be able to do like 10 push-ups or 100 push-ups, which may be like really safe focus for a long time. So just start with five minutes. Start with 10 minutes until you can sit for 20 or 30 minutes i actually recommend a form that people are not used to it that they can try it's called ziva meditation you can go to ziva meditation.com it's an online course easy to do super simple

super portable i do it everywhere i go planes trains automobiles everywhere uh and i find it it's such a life hack i don't know how i'd live without it now i used to think i didn't have time to meditate now i have don't have time not to meditate. So I encourage you to check it out and learn more about how to bring this into your life as a key life skill for many, many aspects of your health and your life and your well-being. That's it for today's Health Byte. Share it with your friends and family. We'd love to have them know about it. Leave a comment.

Have you use meditation or various mindfulness practices to help you improve your life. We'd love to hear how that went. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know

and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays, nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter. And I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better

and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed

healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.