The Joe Rogan Experience - #1062 - Dan Harris & Jeff Warren

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

Dan Harris is a correspondent for ABC News, an anchor for Nightline and co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America. With Jeff Warren, writer & meditator, he has written a new book "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book" -- http://www.10percenthappier.com/

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dan Harris and Jeff Warren. I don't know why I started off that way. It just felt weird. It's always weird to start. Starting these things is always very odd. Welcome. Welcome, Jeff. Very nice to meet you.

Thank you, man. And Dan, first tank experience. We didn't talk too much about it. No. You just got out. Yeah. You dragooned me into your tank. I don't even know if that's a word.

Dragooned? It is a word. You know, we should tell people how you did it. Okay. You basically taunted me on text, which was awesome. Well, it wasn't quite a taunt. But you were saying that you were scared of being in there. I'm like, how can you be scared?

There's nothing to be scared of. It's just water. Yeah, but it's not just water because you're in this enclosed space. You can't see anything or hear anything. All danger is in your mind, though. Well, that is absolutely correct. I just happen to have a mind that is really good at panicking. I mean, I've demonstrated that time and again to myself and others.

So I was a little wary. Then you called me a chicken, and I was like, well, fuck, time and again to myself and others. So I was a little wary. Then you called me a chicken, and I was like, well, fuck, now I have to do this thing. So I did it, not without trepidation, but it was really interesting, really interesting. I know you spend so much time exploring your consciousness and meditating and just being in your head that I felt like this is something that you really should be exposed to. You're absolutely right. And I appreciate it. I really do. What I realized is I think I need to do more of it.

Yeah. Because the brief discussion we had, I know we wanted to not fully explore it until we got on the pod. The brief discussion we had afterwards, one of the things you said is that it's good to kind of explore your boundaries when it comes to fear. This is something actually that my meditation teacher has said to me before. And it made me realize I think I need to get in there and start pushing it a little bit in the tank because it will help me in lots of areas of my life. Because when you don't test those boundaries, your life becomes smaller and smaller. Yeah. And that happens to people with panic.

I think, well, it happens just people in general. And I think it's one of the reasons why people fall into panic is because they don't have enough experience with stressful situations to the point where they could just relax and just let it happen. And that's one of the things that I, one of the reasons why I think martial arts training is very good for people, not just for the self-defense aspect of it, but for the aspect of just dealing with stressful situations on a regular basis to the point where you're very comfortable with them. And then you realize that the consequences of this is – it's not really as bad as you think it is. Like most people are terrified of physical confrontation, but when you have physical confrontation on a regular basis, especially through my favorite, which is jujitsu training, because there's no striking, so you don't get hit in the head. You're not worried about brain damage or any of that stuff. It's just basically grappling, but that through the continual

process of testing yourself and stress and regular life stresses sort of become diminished. I think it's really important. You know, I do some of this in my life. I mean, live news presentation is stressful and I do that a lot. I've covered many war zones, which is much more stressful, very stressful. But I think there are areas in my life where I've closed off because of claustrophobia in particular. I need MRIs for sure. I've jacked up both of my shoulders and my knee, and I haven't been able to deal with them because I just won't get in a scanner.

Jeff and I were down at actually at Vanderbilt where they wanted to take a look at my brain in a scanner while I meditated. I couldn't do it. That was a great opportunity. It's really expensive to get a neuroscientist to look at my brain in a scanner while I meditated. I couldn't do it. That was a great opportunity. It's really expensive to get a neuroscientist to look at your brain while you meditate. And I wasn't able to do it because I'm afraid. And so I think. What are you afraid of? It seems like there's no physical fear, right?

It's not like there's a dog in the room that's going to bite you, right? So why not just force yourself to go through it? Well, have you ever had a panic attack no so it panic attack is you know we evolved for this fight or flight instinct where your brain you know when you're faced with a saber-toothed tiger or whatever the brain floods with adrenaline and uh it is overwhelming i, it overwhelms all reason. And you either fight or flight. In this case, it's flight, flee. And you can't control your body in many ways. And because I've had so many panic attacks, primarily the ones that people know about,

the one in particular was on television on Good Morning America in 2004. When your brain learns how to do this, it gets really good at it. And you can't hurl yourself into the, at least I can't hurl myself into the lotus position and meditate it away. It is overwhelming. And so I can't tell myself a story about hey i'm not in physical danger because the bot the brain is just what you're saying is very interesting about getting really good at it there's a term in archery called target panic and it happens to people it happens to target archers

it happens to bow hunters and there's a thing that happens where you literally can't keep the pin on the target your your brain won't let you and no one understand like the people that are having it like while it's happening they don't understand it like i can't believe i can't do this but your brain gets so used to freaking out in this moment that literally you no longer have control and you just you're trying to make the shot go off as quick as you can you'll miss by feet and you just you can't understand it like i practice every day like how is this happening but there's this weird overwhelming sensation of adrenaline and fear and nerves and the the chaos of the moment and you just slam the trigger and the arrow goes flying nowhere near the target.

And it's really, really common to the point where people seek psychologists and sports trainers, and there's all these different methods that they use to try to keep in a controlled loop system of thought process to try to handle this. It's probably like you said, athletic trainers. Probably the fighting it and the getting in your head about it is probably the same as when you get in a slump in baseball. You're just locked up in yourself and it takes a long time to get over it.

In the tank, I was thinking a lot about how that has been just a huge recurring theme in my life where the ego steps in, the thinking mind, the mind that won't surrender to what is actually happening right now comes in, I get locked up and can't do what I want to do. One of the things Jeff and I have talked a lot about in our time together is dancing as an and I can't do it. I mean, can't

do it isn't the right way to say it. But I've struggled for a long time with dropping my self-consciousness enough so that i can dance in a way that you know i have a three-year-old around the house and we like to dance and even around him i get a little in my own head about it and i think all these things are related they must yeah they have to be it completely makes sense but it doesn't make sense to me that you can't get your brain examined when you spend so much time examining your brain yeah so i think what's different is is this is an interesting time to talk about like the difference between the brain and the mind right so i'm looking at my mind um and uh you know the the idea of first of all all, just because I've spent the last nine years looking closely at my mind doesn't mean that I've conquered all of my neuroses. And I don't know that that's on offer. I think it's a gradual process.

You pointed to something important about testing those limits. And I think meditation can be really helpful in testing those limits. And I was meditating most of the time that I was in the tank. in testing those limits. And I was meditating most of the time that I was in the tank. And that allowed me, bringing that kind of focused attention to what was happening,

allowed me not to get carried away with the waves of fear that came in. And I was able to let them pass without hopping out and embarrassing myself. But I don't know that I can magically, I think it's going to be a process before I can get in an MRI, is what I'm trying to say in a long way.

Well, if you have damaged shoulders, man, you kind of have to. I do. I do. But you don't even know what's wrong with them. I think it's bursitis, but I need to get a diagnosis before I can figure out whether I've got to get surgery or cortisone shot or whatever it is. Do you have full range of motion? Can you put your arms over your head? Yeah. You should try hanging.

Have you ever looked into hanging? Is this something else crazy you're trying to get me into? No, just hanging from your shoulders. This is a dangerous dude to hang out with. Grabbing onto a bar and hanging your weight. Yes. It's really important for the shoulder joint. And it's something that very few people do on a regular basis.

I don't do it on a regular basis. Yeah, most people don't. And even people that work out don't. And you're constantly compressing your shoulder. Yeah. Compressing it with poor posture, compressing it with stress, exercise. And your shoulder needs to expand. And it also needs this sensation of hanging your body weight from your hands.

It's, like, tremendous for your shoulder. Yeah, no, I like that. Releasing impingements. And there's some doctors, there's one doctor in particular that explored this. See if you can find that guy's name, who stopped doing most shoulder surgeries and started putting people on hanging therapy,

where he just tells them, you know, at the beginning, just have a bar that's not quite above your head so that you could just sort of relax your knees. And if you can't carry all of your weight in your hands, just carry a good percentage of your weight in your hands and try to relax your shoulders. And it releases impingements. It stretches that joint out. The idea is that we came from tree-swinging primates.

And then as tree-swinging primates, we're constantly doing that. And that's what the shoulder joint is meant to do it's meant to articulate in that way we grab something and swing and and then not having this full range of motion and not using it on a regular basis here's this guy's book um dr john kirsch john m kirsch and um he came up with this many years ago when he realized that one of the things that was messing people up was just they just their joints weren't being put through the full range of motion. And that by hanging, you could release a tremendous amount of the pain and discomfort that a lot of people are facing. That makes a ton of sense. So it seems to me that you guys are actually saying, talking about the same thing.

When you're talking about the mind and you're talking about the body and talking about impingements and you're talking about where your mind is limited, I think it's the same exact dynamic, actually, of what's going on. How would you define what an impingement is in the body? A blockade. I would say lack of range of motion, poor exercise habits. There's a variety of factors, ignoring potential injuries, and then restricting your motion to the point where everything sort of tightens up.

Muscle tissue in particular, joint tissue, like around the shoulders, and any time where you're dealing with range of motion issues, you have to stretch. And most people very rarely stretch their shoulders. It's just something that we don't do. And also, most people very rarely strengthen their shoulders. And I think it's a very complex joint. I mean, you look at the way that your shoulders articulate, there's not anything in your body

that can do this sort of things in the range of motion that your shoulders exhibit while carrying weight. So you think about all the different things, carrying your kid, picking up her briefcase, you're doing a lot of weird motions with your shoulders and occasionally develop little tears. Those tears, they start out superficial, they get larger, you injure them more, you're playing, you don't warm up something pops you ignore it it hurts you for years there's a lot of things that we do to our bodies that we're just it just compiles and you never handle it you never deal with it you don't get that MRI you don't get therapy and it just gets worse and worse

to the point where see a lot of people get shoulder replacements yeah so the exact same thing is true everything you just said is true for the mind. It's exactly the same. It's conditioning. It's repeating the same pattern over and over, having some kind of involuntary response that gets a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper each time. And it's like your,

your mind is a mental body and it, it has habits and it develops bad habits and it develops limited range of motions, what it can do. And so we end up in this really narrow situation, inevitably, because we end up with a particular set of conditioning and it starts to limit us. So you use practices just like you use physical practices to open up your range of motion, to work through impingements, to have more flexibility. You do the same with meditation or with other

kind of mental practices. I think it's literally the same thing. And you, and that there's just this sort of a isometric nature between the mind and body. It's the same kind of stuff. It completely makes sense. And that was what we were talking about before the podcast, when we were in the hallway about just dealing with stressful situations and the tank like if there's a weird freak out that happens like how do you handle it like what what do you do and i was saying that the more stressful situations that i experience the more i understand what they are and the more i can relax but it's also like the matter of constantly being exposed to these stressful situations where there's not a long break in between doing stand-up or a long break in between martial arts training to the point where anxiety can build up. And then once you get into it, it's almost an unusual situation instead of a usual one.

That's probably why I probably need to get in the tank reasonably soon. Yeah. But say more. This is but say more, if you don't, this is your show, but if you don't mind, would you say more about that? Like, because you're able to get in the tank not only regularly, but you'll dose yourself with

some stuff before you get in the tank. Yeah. Well, the thing about stressful situations is you're always trying to, once you get comfortable, you're always trying to push them and make them more stressful. And the most stressful way to experience the tank is either edibles or mushrooms. Those are the two for me. Mushrooms.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's basically mushrooms without any of the distractions of your body. Right. So it's distilled. It's a pure without any of the distractions of your body. Right. So it's distilled. It's a pure culture. Yeah.

It's pure culture mushrooms. But edibles can be just as potent in there. Edible marijuana is – do you know the difference? Most people aren't aware that it's a completely different psychoactive substance when you eat it because it's processed by your liver and your body produces something called 11-hydroxymetabolite that's four to five times more psychoactive than THC. And it's not psychoactive in the smoking version. It's very different. That's why a lot of people, when they eat brownies-

Yeah, they eat so strong. Yeah, I'm sure there's a famous 9-11 case where there's an audio recording of these cops that took some pot from some kids and made pot brownies of it and then ate it and then called the police and called 911 on themselves because they thought they were dying. But it is one of the greatest audio recordings of all time. The guy is a cop. He's like, I think I'm dying. I think time is moving really slow. Please send help. Oh my God, that's awesome.

So what do you do in those moments? Like, do you have, because I'm just interested because you've had, from what I can tell, quite a bit of experience with psychedelics and also isolation tanks.

What's the right term for it? Yeah. Sensory deprivation tanks. Sensory deprivation tanks. So what do you do when the little imp in your head starts telling you like the world's ending or you're just passing slow just let it go you have to just relax i mean i've been there a hundred times more you know many more than a hundred times really but were you really nervous and really scared but what compounds

it is trying to control it what compounds it is trying to wrestle the moment away from this experience and just taking control of it and try to sober yourself up. No, fuck this. I'm going to – I've got to get in control of the situation. And that freak out is really what compounds it. That's where the – that's the root of all, air quotes, bad trips come from is this desire to control failure to surrender yeah you got to surrender you got to relax and it's resistance yeah nothing's going to happen to you you're going to be fine you're it's going to feel really crazy and you're going to that it brings up memories from years ago from weird conversations you might have had where you acted

poorly or weird choices that you might have made decades ago or, you know, things that crossed your mind a couple of days ago that you're embarrassed about. There's all these different things that will come out that will just, your brain, your mind, your consciousness wants to explore these because it feels that you neglected them or that you put them on the back burner or that you didn't give them enough attention. You didn't give them the attention that they deserve. So they're festering and bouncing around the inside of your mind. And I find that edibles in particular, it's a very self-exploratory experience.

And your brain desperately wants to point out all these areas that it feels that you might have neglected. And that's terrifying for people. And you just start really freaking out, not to mention the concepts of mortality. You start thinking about your children's life and your life, and you get freaked out in there. Why would you want to do that? Because I think exploring those things makes regular life more, it makes it more palatable. It makes it more relaxed.

It makes me, it gives me a perspective. It's almost like having a near-death experience on a regular basis. Well, you get out of a near-death experience, and one of the things that people say is even if it's a near-death experience, like from a severe illness or an injury, you have a perspective enhancement from that, and you come out of it feeling like, well, I kind of have a new version of life now. I understand life now because I understand the full spectrum. Before I was operating in this very comfortable spectrum of everything being safe, and now I realize, like, no, it doesn't have to be safe. There can be terrible things where

everything can go wrong so appreciate this with much more zeal like much more lust for life sounds like what we do in meditation oh my god I was just thinking it sounds like a meditation retreat I think they're all connected yeah they are there's no question yeah you're not even you don't you don't need to ingest anything for all that stuff to start coming up. Sure. In fact, there's a kind of classic progression in a retreat. And even in a sit, you could say there's sort of these terrains you move through where first you're just trying to get going. And then you're kind of having all these breakthroughs and insights. And then you can get into this really challenging stage where it's like you can't meditate. All your dark stuff is coming up.

Sometimes I think of it as like you're exfoliating the brain you know you just exfoliate exfoliate and all of a sudden you hit an air pocket of some old school shit like your old shame and your rage and your childish petulance and yeah and it all comes bubbling up and you're inside this atmosphere and then from inside that atmosphere you're seeing everything through that filter you're now seeing how everything sucks and your life's a catastrophe or whatever. And just like you were saying about the body and about the psychedelics and about the tank, you've got to learn to be okay with your own uncomfortableness. You've got to learn to be okay to sit inside this discomfort and say – actually to welcome it. To say, well, this is just part of what's going on with me right now. And if you can do that without resistance, like you were saying, without fighting with it,

then it can actually work its way out. And then you can get into this really beautiful stage of a practice where it's, you know, the equanimity stage, they call it, where it's just, you're really open and available to things. You're super present. It's not exotic. You're not in some peak experience, like where you're, you know, melting in oneness and having energy shooting up your spine. But neither are you in one of these, you know, low experiences. You're just in the, it's like the beautiful ordinary, you know, and those, those, and you go around and around in those cycles. And then from actually that beautiful, ordinary place that you can have these breakthroughs. That's the kind of

classic place where people have these shifts, you know, they have like a no self experience, or it's pretty interesting. And the phenomenology of it is really cool. Like there's, you know, people describe very specific kinds of things happening that drop them into this next level of kind or next progression of insight, you could say. I don't want to overstate my meditative capacities, but I had, I would say, probably like a JV version of what you're describing. Last month, just a few weeks ago, I was on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. And I could see, as you describe this progression, I could see in hindsight that that was what I went through. So as your mind starts to settle and you get more concentrated, there are fireworks, you know, you get a lot of sensations in your body that feel really good. You're seeing things

behind your eyes. Just the mind releases a lot of dopamine in and serotonin in response to the reduced chatter that can happen when you're more focused on what's happening right now as opposed to caught up being caught up in the in you know our egoic chatter um and i at one point though uh i i hit a stage that's sometimes referred to as life review where i i just all the things i'm most ashamed of just started coming up. I couldn't avoid them. I couldn't sleep. And it was all just right there. I was just thinking about them. And then I started questioning the whole practice and what am I doing here?

Is this a waste of time? And I had a conversation with my teacher, who is a brilliant individual. I mean, you could argue, some have argued, and I would agree, one of the greatest living meditation teachers, his name is Joseph Goldstein, and he doesn't walk around in robes or anything like that. He's a Jewish guy from the Catskills, and he's in his 70s. And I was staying in a cabin, and he would pop in and see me in his cabin every once in a while because it was right near his house.

And one day I was kind of complaining a lot about the futility of my practice. And he said, surrender. He said, you got to surrender. You got to just stop, you know, just stop getting in your head about, are you doing it right? And all that stuff. Just let the practice do its thing as jeff sometimes talks about it it's like let time and nature do its work just trust that the practice is we've been doing this for millennia human beings there's a reason for that just do the practice stop worrying about it and the next sit i had was this kind of equanimity thing that you're talking about where I could see it was two hours long. I could see everything coming up, all of my urges, desires, thoughts, physical sensations, things I was hearing, things I was seeing. I was very focused at this point.

It's all just coming at me and I'm not reaching for it and I'm not pushing it away. The unpleasant stuff, I'm not trying to push it away. I'm not trying to grasp onto the pleasant and it's just... And it's like this incredible video game, right? Where you can't... I sometimes describe meditation as

like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. It's the anti-video game. And once you stop wanting, once you just surrender into this thing where you're just non-judgmentally observing whatever comes up in your mind, whether it's fear, whether it's

planning lunch, whatever it is, you just start to move forward. And then the ego comes in and tells you, you are the best meditator ever, dude. And then you fall for that for a minute, but then you stop falling for that. Anyway, at the end of it, I looked down at my watch and two hours had passed. And, but then

I was fully in this zone of like, oh, this is the end of my next book. I, this is, I'm enlightened. This is the best thing ever. And I, I then a couple of hours later start to realize that I had been telling myself a story about how amazing I was and how they should put a plaque up in that room. This is where the best meditation sit ever happened. And the next meditation I went to, the next time I tried to meditate, it was as if I had never meditated before. And I didn't know what I was doing anymore, and it all collapsed. Wow. There's so much there um there's an experience that you have in

the tank where you you try to let go and you let go and relax and then you realize no you just there's one layer of relaxation totally but they're stacked on top of each other there's infinite layers and as you get deeper and deeper into these layers of relaxation you hit another layer and you go okay now this is relaxing and then you know no there's way more than this there's way more to this and the more you think about the fact that oh now i'm on a new level relaxation well now you're not now you're probably two or three levels above where you were before you addressed it that's the exfoliation you were talking about. It's almost like the layers of the onion,

and you have to peel those layers. Dude, you're blowing my mind. This is all the shit that I always talk about. It's exactly, you're describing exactly, it's the layers of the onion. It's like you're holding this fist, and you don't even realize you're holding this fist. You're walking around going, yeah, everything's fine,

but you're holding this fist, and then you realize you're holding on so tight, and then first you don't even know how to open the fist. It's been closed the whole time. At some point, the way you open it is not trying to open it. You have to just be so okay with the fact that you've got this tight fist here that eventually it just opens of itself. And then you think you're free.

And I think I describe it as like walking the onion. You know, it's like you're walking on top of the onion. And it's imagine the planet is an onion. You're walking and you're turning the onion as you walk. And you've got the huge open air all around you. You've walking the onion. You know, it's like you're walking on top of the onion and it's imagine the planet is an onion. You're walking and you're turning the onion as you walk and you got the huge open air all around you. You got the universe. You feel like you're free. But very slowly you're sinking into the onion. This layer of tension is kind of appearing or coagulation that starts to kind of coagulate in your experience. And eventually you realize that there's this layer of tension here and you're not free. You're inside this thing. And then you have

to figure out how to exfoliate that or let that go. And it just keeps going on because it's turtles all the way down. It's like it's onion layer after onion layer. And every time you get into a new place of freedom, the fact and the act of living is creating more coagulation. It's creating more just natural frictions and things that are coming up. So it's not just that you're going through. So the progress of insight, the progress of what they call purification in Buddhism is a process

of kind of working through your conditioning, but also simultaneously learning to work through the new conditioning that's accreting by virtue of just being a human being. And that's the game. And that's why a lot of people say there is no end to it. You don't get to some final liberation because just the act of living is creating its own blind spots. So you've got different people in different camps who argue different things about what real freedom looks like

but that to me seems the most realistic. At least it's the one that fits with my experience and it describes exactly how you describe it. The two, they really line up. I think most of us are operating on momentum, and I think you learn things as a child, and those become whatever your personality is, whatever thought process you sort of have carved into your mind,

like the grooves and patterns that you normally find yourself thinking in. And I equate it to a lot to martial arts training. Like I used to teach martial arts for a living. One of the things that I found incredibly difficult was to reteach people. It was way easier to teach a person with no training than it was to reteach someone with poor training. with no training than it was to reteach someone with poor training. So when someone has poor training, they have these paths carved in their movements and their thought process. And when they're in a situation, they fall back on those patterns.

And it's extremely difficult to get people out of that and learn to do things correctly. But if you can teach them how to do things correctly from the beginning, then they naturally like, this is the stressful situation. Here comes the problem. Here's the issue. What's the technique? Now you know it. And it's locked into your brain.

You know the right pathway. Whether it's like, don't go to the technique you've been using all your life. Now use a new technique and remember to manage that situation under pressure. I think that's how most of us are handling our lives. We're handling our lives with poor techniques and poor management skills and these paths that are carved in, that are infantile and that are essentially like the remnants and the echoes of when you were a teenager or even younger than that. And then maybe your parents and the learned behavior that you see watching them, and maybe they weren't so good at managing life either, but these patterns are carved into your brain,

and you find comfort in them because you know where they're going, and so you slide right into them. And then as an adult, you start trying to remap your consciousness and remap those patterns. And in doing that, it's very difficult to sort of rethink how you think. I mean, I think what you're pointing to here is close to what has become for me the animating insight of my whole side hustle as a meditation proponent, which is that the mind is trainable. Now, you describe, I think, very accurately the ruts in which many of us find ourselves or don't even know we're in. But the good news is

that there are ways to retrain the mind. And I didn't know that until my late 30s when I started reading books about Buddhism. And all the things we want the most, calm, patience, compassion, generosity, happiness, whatever that means. These aren't factory settings, non-negotiable factory settings. These are skills that can be trained, that you can take responsibility for, just the way you take responsibility for your body in the gym. And there are lots of ways to train them. We know Jeff and I obviously talk a lot about meditation, but you've talked about other ways to do it as well from martial arts to,

and there's now been a lot of, there's a growing body of research about psychedelics as well. It was obvious to me from being in the isolation, from the sensory deprivation tank, that that is a training too. There are lots of ways to get at it, but the fundamental good news is you aren't stuck with the patterns that are making you

miserable. Yeah, you're definitely not stuck. And I think that all these things are related. And I think that even running, even exercise, yoga, I think in particular, all these things that are difficult, when you do these difficult things, you're stressing your mind or exercising your mind and exercising your body's ability to manage intense situations. Like yoga poses are very intense, especially hot yoga. It's hard. It's very difficult.

It's very testing. And in doing so, you lessen the stress of regular life. You're tied up in a reef knot. And if you can be equanimous with this ridiculous pose where you're shaking with exertion, then how much more equanimous can you be? How much more present and open can you be in your life? It's the same thing. Do you think most people know how to translate what they're learning in something like – because for me, what broke through about meditation was it was so obvious how to translate what I've dealt with for a long time, and making me feel just generally fit. I don't know that I was explicitly taking the lessons of running or any of the other things that many people do that they sometimes refer to as their quote-unquote meditation and applying it to my life the way meditation was, again, so obvious.

Well, it seemed like the obvious aspects of meditation are conscious, like you're looking for these solutions, whereas with running, you might be getting them without being conscious of them, or at least getting some of the benefits of it without being conscious, but those benefits would certainly be enhanced with a different perspective going into the running, like going into the running with the thought process of testing your consciousness to endure this very difficult thing in front of you, like hill running in particular. There's something about anything that's like very uniquely physically stressful like that, which requires the mind to stay the course.

And in doing so, especially in the other end, once you come out of it, there's this great feeling of euphoria and peace. And it's not just a physical release of energy, but it's also an understanding that the brain has exercised the demons that are responsible for the anxiety while you're overcoming this stressful. And the limits you told yourself were there. Yeah. It's funny. You know, my wife and I have been doing a lot of SoulCycle, which I know. My wife does it, too.

Okay. But you don't do it with her. I have other shit to do. Because I'm a better husband than Joe Rogan. So although she's out in the green room right now raging against me because she's angry that I'm not – That soul cycle right now? No, that I haven't said what I'm about to say, which is that I'm the one who got her into it. So in her defense.

her into it. So in her defense. But they are often giving these, the teachers are often giving these really sort of affirmations from the front of the room. And my traditional approach to those is to completely ignore them as incredibly and irretrievably annoying. And however, what they're saying is what you're saying what they're saying is pedal through your resistance you're telling yourself a story that you can't turn the knob up to the right right now the resistance knob up to the right right now and stay on the beat and sprint and do all the you're telling

yourself a story you can't do it but you actually can do it try it try it get good over the limiting stories you're telling yourself and in fact yesterday morning when we did SoulCycle, the guy at the end said something I normally would have ignored, which was, next time somebody proposes something to you that you tell yourself you don't want to do, do it. Hence, the sensory deprivation tank. Direct link to what he said to my being willing to do it. So there's some there there.

Yeah. There's something about things like soul cycle. Like even if they're right, even if the, the motivational speech rings true, you want to like, fuck this. Absolutely.

I think it's a problem. It's the problem with spiritual teachers, right? It's a problem with somebody who's, or anybody who walks around that has the answer. And that's, and it's, and,

and often the answer can be this sort of Pollyanna-ish Disney Channel thing that maybe it probably is true in some way, but it's just the delivery of that kind of certainty that's so annoying. Yeah, I always say that my, you know, there are millions of meditation books. The only thing new about the books that I write is that I add the word fuck a lot. And that is just a new way to talk about this stuff because our tendency, or at least guys like us, I think, or people like us, men and women like us, is to some people, when you hear this kind of affirmation uttered, you reflexively reject it, which is, again, normal. But if you can just say it to people in fresh language, it's the reason why these things are cliched is because they're true. And they become cliche through sort of mindless repetition.

But if you can find new ways to articulate them, they can land. I think also, whether it's your book on meditation or anybody's just life experiences that they're writing down, we gather information from other people's life experiences in a very unique way. And it's one of the reasons why people really enjoy autobiographies. It's one of the reasons why people really enjoy truly reflective, introspective thinking, because we can pick out little gems in ourself so even though you might be talking in your meditation book about things that other people have talked about in meditation books you're talking about it from your unique personal experience right and when someone reads that or hears you say it you get something intangible out of that. Well, we talk a lot about, so my favorite comedian of all time, other than Joe Rogan, is Dave Chappelle.

And you came on my radar screen because you were on his show, the Chappelle show back in the end, the Fear Factor bit he did years and years ago, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And Chappelle, in one of the seasons, Jeff and I were talking about this last night, as a matter of fact, talked about how he was doing one of these outtake episodes. I can't remember which season it was in

because I only did two and a half. He was doing an outtake episode, and at the beginning he did a riff about how back in the day, African-American communities never got the good part of the pig to eat. The white people got the good parts of the pig. So the African-Americans had to figure out how to make good food out of snout. And that's, he said, what this episode is going to be.

We're going to take the snout and we're going to make good stuff out of it. And my approach to writing books about meditation is the snout is the good stuff. The embarrassing shit that happens to you when you're meditating is the good stuff. It is what will allow people to see what the practice does for you. So I take the worst, most embarrassing stuff that happens and talk about it because that gives you a front row seat at what training the mind actually looks like. And if you can't have a sense of humor about how crazy you are, you are truly fucked. I agree. No shit. I agree.

Well said. Well said. I think that those uncomfortable moments are so important for other people to hear about, too. Yes. Absolutely. We need to know we're not alone in all our madness. What was it like on the set when you were working with Dave Chappelle?

It was great. Well, I've known Dave for a long time. I was actually on the very first episode. By chance, I was walking through New York, and I saw Dave. And this was before the show had even been – I didn't even know it existed. But I ran into Bobcat Goldthwait, who's there. And I'm like, what's up, man? What are you guys doing?

He's like – he goes, oh, hey, Joe. We're doing a TV sketch, man. You want to be in on it? And I go, I only have like 20 minutes. I'm on my way to a meeting. He goes, here. He goes, we're handing out ribbons for New York boobs and he had a box so it's me and him walking through Manhattan and

he's got this crazy fake mustache on he's like you've got the best New York boobs and he would give someone like a ribbon for having New York boobs and it was really silly but fun and so I was like wow Dave's got a show and then you, turns out it's the greatest sketch show in the history of the world. And a year later, he calls me up again and asked me to do this thing for – they wanted to do a Fear Factor sketch with Tyrone Biggums. Yeah, so that's me and him, a fresh-faced Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle. Look at you. Yeah. Well, this is like – what year is this?

That's 2003, 4? Yeah. I think it's before that. Is it? I think it's before that. I want to say it's you. Yeah. Well, this is like, what year is this? That's 2003, four? Yeah. I think it's before that. Is it? I think it's before that. I want to say it's two, 2002. Maybe, yeah. Because I wasn't even doing the man show back then, and I was doing that in 2003.

So I think it's 2002. The Fear Factor bit is one of my favorite. That's in season two, if I recall. I think so, yeah. And is really one of the funniest. One of the funniest bits in a show that is, I would argue, perhaps the greatest television show of all time. I think it's the greatest sketch comedy show of all time. Yeah, I'm saying something bigger.

It's hard to say that, though, because if you boil down a lot of the all-time great shows, like In Living Color or some of the other ones. They had so many seasons. If you boiled them down to two seasons, maybe there would be some... But he's got some sketches that were just groundbreaking, like the black white supremacist who was blind. What about...

I was watching last night because Jeff and I were talking about Chappelle last night, so on the car ride home from this event we did together, I was watching Black Bush, which was another, I think, unbelievably brilliant. Which one was that? Season two, where he plays George W. Bush, his version of George W. Bush, and all the

rationales for going into the war in Iraq. And it's unbelievably funny. Yeah, he's a genius. He's a real comedy genius. But also a guy who's, you wouldn't get it if you just sort of see him do stand-up, but he's deeply introspective, like very intensely well thought out. He's not a surface guy by any stretch of the imagination. I love him.

I really do. Yeah, I love him too. I love him. I keep thinking that show's going to come back at some point. I'm happy with the Netflix. Nah, fuck that show. His Netflix specials are better. I just like seeing him unfucked with.

Unless Netflix let him do a Chappelle show where they just left him alone. Then it would be genius. So do you think that was the problem in season three? 100%. I know it was. They were telling him what to say. They were telling him there was so much money involved that they were trying to get him to slightly water down his content in order to make it more palatable for advertisers. They were asking him, does not say the N-word.

There was a lot of behind-the-scenes nonsense that I dealt with the exact same administration at Comedy Central, so I'm well aware of how silly they were about certain things. They had these corporate ideas. And this was also right around the same time Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during the Super Bowl, which fucking, oddly enough, changed everything. People started freaking out about content because of a nipple. It was a very weird time for television. And in their defense, what they do is they're producers. They're not creative people.

They're executives. And they didn't know how to handle, how to keep it funny and keep it free and loose, but also figure out a way to make it fit into what their corporate structure is of what's acceptable and not acceptable for advertising so it was just a clusterfuck of control and neediness and too many cooks in the kitchen and and people's ego but there's a lot of people that just wanted to affect the show just so that they could put their greasy fingerprints on it and that's a really common thing with television that that ego aspect of you know these different people who are high up on the food chain in the you know executive world wanting to put their stamp on a show and then talking openly about putting their stamp well that was my idea i thought it was really important we

get dave out there like that and like and it for him he was like fuck this i'm going to africa for a couple months and i'm just gonna come back and quit and everybody's like whoa but that's who dave is i mean that's that's there's not a lot of people that walk away from 50 million dollars but he's one of them he's just like i don't need to do this i could i could do something else i'll just do stand-up and he in fact we even weirder he didn't do stand-up for a long time and when he did it he did it for free He would just show up places like he would show up places with a speaker And plug it into a microphone in a park in Seattle and just start doing stand-up There was a lot of stories of that people just gather around hundreds of people and he would just be doing stand-up for these random People and they were like what's going on? How does a guy get to be like that? Just be yourself

That's who he is. But was that, do you think, is that something, I mean, because that sounds to me like somebody who had a practice or something or like, or an inner compass that was. Smoked a lot of weed. Maybe that was it. That's a big part of it. He smokes weed all day. I mean, if you watch his new Netflix special, he's smoking a vape pen through the entire

special to the point where I watched it and like 40 minutes into the special, I started getting anxiety. I'm like, how high are you right now, man? Were you high in your Netflix special? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because you said at the beginning you were baked, and I was like, is that a bit?

No, I was high, but I didn't keep getting high through the special. Like, Dave keeps hitting that vape pen, and I don't know how strong that vape pen is, but he's like 7, 8, 9, 10 hits deep in 40 minutes in. I'm like, yo, this could get super slippery. Yeah, he just kept pulling out this vape pen. Yeah, I mean, it was literally with him through the entire set in his hand. That's increasing the degree of difficulty to levels that i would not want to explore that's that's testing the mind about an isolation tank yeah exactly that's uh but it also it's freeing

in a way because you're so comfortable that experience of like giving in to the to the marijuana like giving in to the the the thc where you just sort of like float away on it and don't question it yeah but as you were high backstage getting ready to do your netflix special and I would imagine that's a pretty stressful environment because they're taping this thing. It's going to be your special. It's a big deal. Did you not have a moment of like, holy shit, I shouldn't have smoked that. No. No.

No, it's fun. It's just like this is like an incredibly privileged position I find myself in. This whole thing is amazing. It's a crazy wild ride. So I'm about to do the wildest part of the wild ride, film a Netflix special. And it's just joy. It's just taking it all in and going, this is so – like all the hard work is done. The material is in place.

The writing has been done. The rehearsal has been done. The rehearsal's been done. There's been hundreds and hundreds of sets. Everything's tightened up and all the notes are in place. And I've run it a hundred times. And by the time you saw the film, the Netflix special, it was mostly the fourth show of four tapings. So I've already taped three tapings. So I've already got it in the can.

So most of the pressure's off. So it's just like a regular show almost. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So it's just happiness. Just let it happen. You seem happy while watching it. It was fun.

Yeah. It's a good time. But it's one of those weird things where live stand-up is weird itself because you're dealing with all these factors, the people's consciousness. You're trying to manage your material as well as bring them in and make sure your timing is right and everything is smooth. And then on top of that, there's the filming aspect of it. Like this will be locked in and recorded forever. Like this is going to go online and then people will have copies of it.

And then it will be – this is your material. This is your thought process. Do you have this ironed down? Do you have this edited and parsed and sectioned? And have you thoroughly examined it? Have you used the correct economy of words? Have you boiled it down into the best possible version of itself? It's so funny with stand-up, though, because you watch it as a – because I've never done stand-up, but you watch it as a consumer.

It looks casual. It looks off the cuff. It has to be cuff it has an enormous amount of work that goes into it but it's both casual and off the cuff and incredibly well thought out and rehearsed and it has to be both of those things but don't you have to so you prepare like crazy so you know you got that but then when you're actually there isn't there a certain amount of just having to let go and try and be actually responsive to what's happening in the audience? I mean, that must be the skill.

It's like you do the preparation so you can almost let go of it. Yeah, there's both. You know, like you have to be prepared, but you also have to be loose. And you have to be completely engrossed in what you're talking about, but also in the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's tricky. But the bottom line is when it's done, it's worth it. Like all the weirdness of it, like when you get it done or something like triggered when it was done, I finished it. I was like, I did it. Like, this is what I wanted to do. Like I wanted to, I wanted to accurately represent a real live standup comedy set that feels like any other set that you could catch me in san francisco on a saturday night and so it was that so it's all worth it yeah it felt like

that yeah so then i wait about a year and then i start doing it again and now i'm in the process a couple more months i'll do it again now it sounds a lot like actually the experience of teaching uh like you're teaching meditation. Because you've got to be... You have to have experience and know your stuff, but on the other hand, you've actually got to be super open to exactly what's coming up and what someone's describing or what's

happening. If you try to bear down too hard on that, then you're just going to be repeating your own shit back again. Can you have that total openness to actually see what it is that someone's saying and not have you put your projections on it? But you have to have also done your homework in a way. And it's just having that balance.

And then there's that really this beautiful thing where you get into flow, when you're kind of in the zone. And it's like the words are coming out or response is happening and it's not, it's not remotely deliberated at all, but it's the right thing in that moment or the right thing that someone needed to hear or you needed to hear. And it feels incredible. It feels like it feels effortless,

but it's the effortlessness that comes out of preparedness. Yeah. Previous effort. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have both. You can't just wing it, right?

You have to be prepared, but you also have to be able to just be flexible in the moment and to be able to ride the wave. It comes back to the word that we started with is surrender. Yeah. And I noticed this a lot because I do a lot of traveling around and giving speeches and always about meditation. And I have my little shtick that I do, but then we open it up for questions. my little shtick that I do, but then we open it up for questions and actually the same thing is true

for when I'm live on Good Morning America, you know, where I have to, if I'm in my head, if I'm thinking about what I should say or how things should go, I make the worst mistakes. If I can get myself to surrender and just

be there, I've been playing with that a little bit even in the course of this discussion. This is a big podcast. Don't screw it up. Don't say the dumb thing, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Actually, if I can just let all that chatter go away, play itself out, then you have a better conversation. Then you say the thing that you couldn't have planned.

Yeah, that is the art of the podcast. It's the art of conversation in general, is to get out of your own way and to be able to also at the same time find the right words, articulate the right thoughts, figure out the right way to piece the sentences together so it's both entertaining and engaging, but also rings true and there's not an air of bullshit to it or ego to it.

There's a unique thing about a conversation, especially with people interacting with each other, that people, they tune in and I tune into it. If I listen to certain conversations with people that i find awkward and i'm like well what is uncomfortable about this what is this weird and see it a lot of the times it boils down to like one person trying to be too much in control absolutely yeah or yeah one person yeah i'm usually that person yeah everybody is and you can tell when you're hanging out with that person because it's like there's this grippiness or or when i have that it's like you're slightly fearful you're slightly when you're hanging out with that person because it's like there's this grippiness or when I have that, you're slightly fearful, you're slightly worried, you're trying to a little bit hold on to the narrative and it just creates this unnaturalness.

And then everyone's got a little bit, feels a little bit weird and then someone's trying to overcompensate for someone over here and it just wrecks the whole flow of it. You know, when I first started reading a little bit about Zen Buddhism, which is one of the flavors, they talk a lot about spontaneity. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't quite... The Zen bounce. Yeah, I didn't quite get that. But this is what we're talking about, actually. They also use this word, freshness.

That if you can get rid of the stale, planned, canned stuff and just touch in on what's happening right now which is fresh uh then the spontaneity arises actually can i there's a um uh so i got a teacher this guy shinzen young who i think is the the fucking bomb you've got to get him on this he's amazing he's incredible he is truly amazing he's a super nerd of consciousness um and he is really articulate about the dynamics and he's trained a lot within the zen tradition but also in kind of old school Theravada, like the more strict. How do I say his name? Shinzen, S-H-I-Z-E-N. Zed, Canadian, sorry.

Z-E-N, Shinzen Young. And he actually likes mixed martial arts, and he guides people while watching mixed martial arts in his undershirt. And he's the wicked dude. I can fully second that. Yeah. So he, but he talks a lot about something called the Zen bounce. Cause he's, he's interested in how, like how, you know, how do these different practices from different traditions work?

Like how do they, what is the way in which they free you or they reduce your suffering? And cause they can look so different on paper or actually inexperienced. So you might have one kind of meditation tradition. It's all about just sitting with your eyes closed, not moving all about that kind of stoicism. And then you, when you do move, it's very slow and deliberate and you got to be mindful and all that stuff. But then you have other traditions like within a certain kinds of Zen schools where you're actually, if you, it's frenetic, it's like, go, go, go all the time. You're moving faster. You're like unwrapping your shit and you're putting your shit back together and you're eating your food in a particular kind of way.

And you got to get to this thing over here and you got to get this thing over here. And then you got to sit and you just stop at a dime. And what they're doing is they're deliberately shaking things up. They're deliberately creating all this agitated energy to teach you how to ride the energy, to teach you how to be calm enough in the center that you can, that that energy turns into spontaneity, turns into creativity, turns into genuine being available in the momentness as opposed to being stuck in some way. That's what's getting trained.

And when you see these guys from those monasteries or from those traditions who are really, who practice a lot, they've got this bouncy available, turn on a dime, do this. You know, it's like they're just available to what's going on because they've trained that quality in their experience.

They've gotten out of their own way. They've gotten out of their own way. I mean, Shenzhen, when you talk to how he is, he, you know, I've had like hundreds of hours of discussions where I'll call him up. I'll be like, and the best thing about him is he'll answer the phone. If he's ready to talk, he's ready to serve, you know, whatever you got going on. I'll be like, I'll call him in the morning. Shenzhen, so what's going on right now? What's your experience of consciousness?

And he basically describes, you know, it's like he's just there and it's like he's sort of part of this upwelling of the world. And it's all kind of vibrating up through him. He has no center. You know, you ask him where his center, he experiences the center of himself. Sometimes it's over here. Sometimes it's over on the right. And he's just like, yeah, it's just, it's all reality. Just kind of this free flow of reality that he's just responding to now. And then, and then he'll tell me, this is the shit that would blow my mind. Cause you're like, okay, that sounds awesome. But he's like, no, there's challenges for him. The challenges is

taking conditions seriously, Taking conditions seriously. He has to convince himself that the stakes are enough that he should work on this thing, or that, yeah, I guess I should get out of the way of that bus. I mean, and he will, because his instincts kick in, but he's so in the uncondition that his danger is just becoming one of those dudes sitting on a mountain not doing anything. But the world is fucked, and it needs people like him who can help us out. So he and he's very inspired to try to do his best to be a great meditation teacher.

But that's his battle. He's no longer. So most practitioners, their battle is trying to get to taste that more unconditioned quality, that spontaneous, that free, that yourself as just a process. His is the other direction. He's gone so far into that. Now he's trying to remember what it was like to be a human being. He's more like a cosmic rock, like just vibrating into infinity all the time, which is great for stress, but not so great for maybe other things. Very interesting.

Yeah. So he's just been doing this for so long that he's achieved this very high level of... He's another Jewish guy from, in this case, from Los Angeles. He was born in the 40s, or in the 50s, Eisenhower America, and he basically was way into Japan, Japanese culture, learned

Japanese as a teenager, went to Japanese school, and then went to Japan when he was like 19 or 20, and decided he wanted to study these study some of these Zen practitioners. Eventually got in with what's called the Japanese Vajrayana School, so it's sort of a particular school of Buddhism. Started training with them, and then that was never finished. He was getting a PhD program.

Well, they do hardcore stuff, like they have you on ice baths and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so it's all what we're talking about, building up resilience, building up equanimity. Can you sit in these seriously? I mean, they do the, in Japan, they do the thing called, he'll talk about this, the marathon monks, uh, where basically these guys sit for like no joke for days on end, days, not going to the bathroom, not moving, not eating, not drinking water. I mean, it's hard to imagine how it would even be possible but apparently it's a televised event on in japan like they do these long walks and then

they do these sits and these guys it's all about what shenzhen would say it's about recycling the reaction so it's all about you have these responses in your body you're feeling uncomfortable you're feeling you know hungry you're feeling this stuff but if you can bring enough equanimity and you're feeling hungry, you're feeling this stuff, but if you can bring enough equanimity and openness to those sensations, then they just, and I had this happen to me thousands of times meditating, where the sensation just boils off. It goes from being pain in your knee to just vibrating,

feels like maggots squirming, and then it just, and it's all about how completely present can you be. You can metabolize anything stuck. And guess what? You can metabolize stuck physical stuff too. So if you put your attention on a knot in the back of your shoulder or something, I've had the experience in meditation where I'm just feeling this tension in my body. And I just hold my attention there long enough in this open way, not trying to make a change, just curious about it, looking looking at it i've had the experience of knots like dissolving where like

an actual impingement or a physical thing seems to change now that's really weird because then you realize wow like the mind the mind and body it's all part of one process you know and a part of what was keeping that tension there wasn't just the problem in the muscle there was some part of me that was keeping it there there was some way in which i was holding on to it a little bit like holding my breath a bit you know or like when you said about releasing layers of tension you sit down on a meditation cushion and you think you're relaxed and you realize you're actually kind of uptight and you're like and you let go of that and then you and you set a little bit more and then you realize there's another layer of tension and you can just let go and let go and let go. And it just seems to go on and on and on. And it's like, that can

be, I mean, there's some, I know another teacher, all he teaches is lying down. He teaches people, Reggie Ray, go to his meditation or sits, you just, you're laying on the ground, you're not doing anything. You can fall asleep, doesn't matter. For a month, you're just laying on the ground. You're not doing anything. You could fall asleep. It doesn't matter. For a month, you're just laying on the ground. And he's teaching you how to actually land on the ground. You could spend a week, two weeks, learning how to actually lay on the ground. You think you're laying on the ground, but you're still a little bit tense. You're still a little bit holding yourself up in some way. And it's like you're just letting go of those layers and letting go of those layers until you're just like a pool. It's funny because everyone, we all know that we need conscious awareness.

We need to be here and present. But also that thinking of conscious awareness and the control that we try to enact on our environment and all the different ways that the ego forces us to think and pushes us and nudges us, it really is about getting out of your own way in a lot of ways. It's a paradox, too, because the only way to truly surrender to reality is to not fucking care. It's absolutely true.

And that's what's going to free you up to be the most effective in your caring. You cannot get around that head fuck because it is absolutely true. So, I mean, this is the thing that people really struggle with because a lot of people will hear everything you just said

and, you know, and all this stuff about shins and, you know, not caring and think, okay, if I meditate, well, I'm going to be ineffective. I'm not going to be able to do anything. But that's what I'm saying is the paradox. It's like the person who's most effective is the person who gives up needing to be effective. It's like you, because that's how you free up all the energy. It's like, if you're trying to control everything all the time, you're going to be really limited in what you can actually do. If you just let go and let things be as they are,

you're kind of like, it's like you're conserving all this deep, deep well of energy that's there. And then when you really do need to make a move, because it does fucking matter, then you've got the energy to act and you act in a way that's probably more effective because it's less distorted.

So it's just skillful use of energy. And that's actually, that's what I've learned from practice or even from getting older, because I'm 46 now and I don't have the energy I used to have. It's like choosing your battles and seeing like now I'm like, that seems really tiring. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to actually just sit here and chill and relax. So I'll have the energy to do what I need to do when I need to do it. That's kind of that maturity is sort of, I think a big part of the,

the, the meditative, like learning. Well learning. It's so interesting what you're talking about as it relates to how when you're on Good Morning America, sort of figuring out a way to just be in the moment and guide the conversation but don't think too much about what you're saying, but say the

right things and have poignant things and good questions and being able to engage, but not being too conscious of how it sounds or what you're trying to achieve by your words or the image that you're trying to portray. There's so many parallels that would exist in stand-up comedy, that exist in podcasting, that exist in martial arts. Like when you're doing martial arts, that's a big part of being able to train effectively is to focus almost entirely on the movements themselves to have them trained into a way where they're a pathway that you can almost observe.

Like you're an observer and a passenger as much as you're the driver of the experience. And it's all just sort of taking place. And when you start tweaking and freaking out about it, that's when everything tightens up. And that's when you start to run into all these like real issues with training. Well, that's why I find basic, you know, we've talked a lot about, Jeff has talked as he always does very beautifully about deep end of the pool, you know, mysticism and, you know, highly attained meditators. But the nuts and bolts basic application of beginner's mindfulness meditation, which Jeff and I talk about, is what allows you to get out of your own way.

Because saying to people, hey, get out of your own way, get out of your head, is a very frustrating thing to hear because you're like, how the hell do I do that? But the basic move of beginner meditation, which is to sit with your eyes closed, bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, and then as soon as you try to do this, your mind's going to go bonkers. You're going to start thinking about, you know, what's for lunch? Do I need a haircut?

Where do gerbils run wild? Blah, blah, blah. And the whole game is just to notice when you've become distracted in a nonjudgmental, friendly way. Oh, yeah, that's anger. That's random thoughts, whatever. Let it go.

Go back to the breath. Over and over and over. Ad infinitum. And that basic bicep curl for your brain allows you to have a less hostile relationship to your inner chaos. It allows you to see it clearly. And that is the mechanism by which all of, for me at least, by which all of the things we're talking about here, you know, not freaking out on live television, being able to survive in a sensory deprivation tank when you think Joe Rogan might judge you for freaking out and jumping out. All that stuff allows you to see the chatter arise.

This basic move that we're doing in meditation, which is just sitting back and allowing all this stuff to come up without trying to grab it or push it away, can help you in the things that we're talking about here. Martial arts, stand-up comedy, all of the things. So can I just say something about where it turned a corner for me when I was practicing because I was a terrible meditator? It was understanding the actual skills that we're building. And that's the thing I think that links all of what we're talking about here. When you talk about martial arts, when you talk about being a broadcaster, when you talk about comedy,

talk about practice, it's like there are particular kinds of mind-body skills that we're training. And those skills are actually, they have names. There's a feeling of what that's happening that you can experience when you're training that muscle group.

And that was, you know, when I started understanding things that way, because of Shinzen, because he talks about it that way, but Buddhism talks about it that way. They talk about the factors of awakening, that you're building up concentration, which is your capacity just to pay attention to what you want to pay attention to. It's like a commitment. Your mind wanders, you bring it back.

That's one skill. You're building up clarity, which is your ability to be clear and make discernments about what's happening in your experience, what's happening in a social experience. Is this the right time to say this thing? What's happening inside me? Like, what am I really feeling versus how am I acting? You know, like, so dialing up that resolution dial and building up equanimity, which is just the, can I actually not fight with my experience as it's unfolding?

Can I have this centeredness in the middle of what's going on, whether I'm doing martial arts, whether I'm doing comedy, whether I'm doing martial arts, whether I'm doing comedy, whether I'm doing meditation. The beauty of a meditation practice is it makes explicit what those skills are. In a simple situation with your eyes closed, you can notice when you're being concentrated, when you're being clear, when you're being a conist, when you're being friendly, which is another good skill. You notice when that's happening. And because you notice when it's happening, you can start to notice how to apply it in every other area of your life. So that's all it is. All practice is is about being explicit and deliberate about what qualities of existence, of being, that you want to train in your life.

And then you just try to apply it everywhere. And so that's why you can get people who are, I see them as basically meditation masters on a comedy stage. Or people who are basically meditation masters in the sports arena or in a cage match or whatever it is. They're applying the same principles. So all these are paths that can bring you into more of a more presence in your life. And the problem comes when people start saying, no, but my path is a good path. Oh, yeah, but I teach meditation. That's more fundamental.

Or no, no, no, no. But I do a body practice. This is more fundamental. Or no, no, no, no, but I do a body practice. This is more fundamental. It's about the skills. Those are what's fundamental. Yeah, and the more you can concentrate on that, the more you'll enjoy this weird experience. The mystery of this weird experience.

Yeah, this weird experience that doesn't have an owner's manual. Yes, yes, dude. That's one of the things that's always freaked me out about the mind and the body. It's like you have this incredible vehicle and this amazing resource that's sort of operating this vehicle and no one gets a manual and you're taught how to handle it by people that don't know what the fuck they're doing. Exactly. Whether it's teachers in school or whether it's the kids that you grow up with or maybe even perhaps your parents or sports coaches.

You get shitty operating advice. They're grinding the gears and banging into trees and no one knows how to handle this thing correctly. Particularly in our culture. You know, I mean, one of the points that Sam Harris, mutual friend of ours, great podcaster, great writer, has made in his book waking up which was one of his many books but i think my favorite is that you know in the west we've developed an intellectual and scientific culture that is really robust and has changed the world

and is in unquestionably valuable but in the, they actually were working on the owner's manual for the mind for millennia. You know, you've got two Buddha statues in here. 2,600 years ago, this guy, if he even existed or what, we don't know. But this culture of Buddhism and before that, the Hindus were working on how do you operate this mind? What is this mind? on how do you operate this mind? What is this mind?

And I think the beautiful thing we're watching now globally, this trend, is the meeting of these two things. And Jeff is one of the people who's most excited about this. It's partly why we're such good friends. The meeting of this Western scientific rational culture and this Eastern exploration of the mind. But, bro, I want to just call you on something. this Eastern exploration of the mind. But, bro, I want to just call you on something.

Like, I think that's absolutely true, but I also think this understanding, this way of thinking about it, is there in the West as well. That it's like the East has made it explicit in very particular ways, but even within humanistic traditions, if you look at like some of the Greek philosophers who a lot of them were really mystics, if you look within the Abrahamistic traditions, if you look at like some of the Greek philosophers who are a lot of them are really mystics.

If you look within the Abrahamic traditions, there are these understandings are there as well. And they're describing it in similar ways. And like you hang out with some badass Catholic priest who spent his entire life like in poor neighborhoods, helping people out and like totally being present and working on service. totally being present and working on service and like the way in which that human being like has learned how to survive and has learned how to flourish and has learned how to be present for his community or her community it's a lot of the same skills and did not there's obviously shadowy aspects everywhere too but you know these are human universals that's right and there's a book there's a just speaking of badass priests there's a book there's just speaking of badass priests, there's a book called Tattoos on the Heart, which was written by the guy who ran Homeboy Industries here in L.A. And he, as far as I know, doesn't have any meditation practice, but he talks about this is a bit of a sappy word, but compassion, you know, actually giving a shit about other human beings about whom very few other people give a shit.

a shit about other human beings about whom very few other people give a shit. And his whole life is the organizing principle is taking care of these gang members who've had who've been discarded by their families, grown up with parents who were in prostitution or drugs or whatever and had no shot. And this guy, his whole life has given them a shot. And if that's not living this stuff out, then I don't know what it is. So why do we think compassion is a sappy word? I'm just wondering, because I know that it's so common to have those responses. Like, what is that? Do you think it's the same problem that we're talking about with SoulCycle before, you know, when they, it's the presentation, you know,

when you, it's through repetition, it loses its meaning. And then sometimes you get the sense, I get the sense, at least that with the people who are saying this to me have no idea what it is they're saying or why. Yeah, they've co-opted the words. That's right. They get clunky. Yeah, they're just signaling their tribal allegiance to unicorns or something by just repeating these phrases without really embodying what they mean or something. Right, like the people that say that I'm not religious but I'm spiritual. Yeah. Right? When they say that, that I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. Yeah.

Right? When they say that, you're like, oh, Christ. Yeah. But on the other hand, I hear that. I just hear somebody who's trying to connect these principles and doesn't want to necessarily identify with some of these structured forms of religion that are all these fucking problems. Yeah. Sometimes it's that.

And sometimes it's just weird people that are just making noises with their face because they want you to think a certain way about them. Making noises with your face by Joe Rogan. You know that thing that people do where they're just really just saying noises that they hear other people say and they're not connected to them and you feel they're not connected to them. So you're just kind of waiting it out. So it's hypocrisy. So it's the hypocrisy that makes you want to puke because it's a a disconnect between what's real, because you know what's real because you can feel their body language, and then what they're saying, which is the opposite.

But even when it's real, I mean, this was my problem when I first started getting into meditation. Even when it's real, there's an earnestness. There's a lack of sense of humor. There's a sappiness, a saccharine-ness about the presentation of these really fresh, amazing, invigorating ideas

that I... This is why I wanted to write a book with you, because you talk about these things in ways that get me interested, as opposed to sometimes. The preciousness. It's like the preciousness. I have this beautiful little box that I'm going to unfold for you, and it's like, and it's so holy and perfect, and it's just like, the whole thing around it just makes you want to fucking vomit as soon as you get anywhere near it.

Yeah, it's like certain yoga teachers can say the exact same thing. Yeah, exactly. And it's calming. And when they say namaste, you say it back and you mean it. Exactly. And then other ones say it. And you're like, will you please shut the fuck up, buddy? So I have a trainer that I work with.

This is a badass woman named Jade. Jade Alexis. That's fine. Shout out to Jade Alexis. Jade Alexis, former Golden Gloves boxer. And she's just, I would take spin classes from her, not soul slug, just straight up spin classes. She would just get, scream in your face, turn up your resistance dial for you while you're in the middle of a sprint. Just a total badass.

And so I started working with her one-on-one. She is the first person who got me to do yoga. Because when she says namaste, I'll say it right back to her. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I used to take yoga from this guy from South Africa. He was amazing. And he would say all the things that you would hate most coming out of insincere people.

But you knew he really believed it. And he also was one of the rare guys. And I've ran into a few people that do this that run a donation only yoga class, which was fascinating for me because I would watch these people pull in in a Mercedes and not donate and take class for free and leave. And I'm like, this is amazing. It's amazing to watch like how many people take advantage of that. And it's amazing that the concept of it is the purest Expression of yoga you can get like give what you can I'm not gonna charge you anything I'm not that's not what this is about. This is about the yoga itself and if people contribute enough

I can continue to do this and we could pay the rent and He managed to keep the place open that way because he was so good and it was so real. Many meditation teachers operate this way. Many of them. That's how the CEC operates. Donation owning? Yes. Yeah.

It's great if it can work, right? That's how kind of it should be. Yeah. I have a group in Toronto called the Consciousness Explorers Club that my friend James and I started like eight years ago or something. And we try to do that principle. And the idea is that every week we get together and we explore different practices. And we explore. Then we do a part two, which is like a social practice or interactive or body practice.

And the whole thinking is basically like we want it to be kind of one-stop shopping. That whoever you are, whatever your background, however much money you have, you can come once a week to this place. And it will cost you nothing if you have no money. It'll cost you the sliding scale is 10 to 20. If you have money, you'll get the absolute best of what we can do with guest teachers. You know, every Monday is a different set of programming. And that's and that's what we'll do.

And we'll do that as much as we can for you. And it's like then you can go home and do go back to your life. And if you need referrals for more help, they're potentially there. But this idea that once a week, anywhere in any community in the world, you could just go to a place where you could get the best and it's affordable. There's no reason that can't happen. Because there are so many skilled practitioners out there and teachers and facilitators and different modalities. And it's just exploding across the board. Like psychotherapy is exploding. Meditation is exploding. Like body-based therapies are exploding. Like insights about how sports work, how the mind-body works, exploding.

So there's all this diet stuff, movement stuff, all this expertise out there. And it just needs to – it's like we wanted to create a framework where we could start to channel some of that expertise, you know, get together, have an adventure, explore what this particular modality has to say, and then do it all in community so you get that community support. Yeah. Well, I think that's good with everything. I think having these shared experiences and sort of relating what are the hiccups that you found along the way, what are the pitfalls, how have you those there's there's a great value to that whether it's in meditation or we we use that in comedy a lot there's a lot of like one of the

great things about communities like the comedy store is that we get together and talk about the pitfalls like yeah i'm in the middle of the set and all something in my own head and then i'm realizing this bit's kind of clunky and i'm trying to get out of it, and I'm like, oh, what do you do? So it's like a group therapy for a few days? Yeah, for sure, yeah. There's a lot of that. One of the things that's really interesting about stand-up in general today as opposed to in the past is that the consciousness of it has sort of shifted.

In the past, it used to be a very solitary pursuit, and everybody was sort of fighting in a scarcity mindset like there was a famine thinking mindset there's only a certain amount of slots on sitcoms there's a certain amount of host jobs for late night talk shows and there's only a certain amount of jobs for comics certain amount of clubs to work at well now there's so many clubs to work at there's so many theaters on top of the clubs. There's all these Internet places where you can do podcasts. And there's so many different avenues that comics don't feel this famine mindset anymore.

And it's much more of an open and supportive community. Do you think that in part is driven by the fact that there are more women in comedy as well? And they can sometimes bring a more civilized approach? No. I think that's true that they do do that in a lot of ways, but no, that's not what it is. I think it's a lack of scarcity. It's really structural. And it's also more

people who have meditated, who have explored their consciousness, who are aware of the pitfalls of the ego entering into comedy, and then more people sort of fostering that idea of community through comedy. I'm surprised. I know a reasonable amount of comedians, and some of them have come on my podcast to talk about how meditation helps them in what they do.

Yeah. John Mulaney in particular. He's great. Really good. Very funny and very nice guy too. You kind of realize that the comic is kind of like the canary in the coal mine. Because comedians are really sensitive, right? I mean, that's kind of part of what it means to be a comedian is to be sensitive to noticing

cues and subtleties and things in the culture that other people overlook. So it's not surprising. Because what I hear you saying is it's almost like some of the most, like I hate this word, but evolved or mature people out there, professionals in the world or creative people in the world are people in that comedy community because they have that sensitivity and they've had to learn how to work together in some way. I mean, it's just interesting.

Maybe there's something we could learn from that population. If we look around and say, who can we learn from? Is there something in comedians and the way they're doing things that other people can learn from? And what is it? Can we distill those lessons? Well, I think in a lot of ways it's an exploration of the mind. And I think comedy is an exploration of the mind, not just in your own mind, but also in how do you relay those thoughts to other people in the most efficient way possible.

And a lot of that has to do with how much have you managed your own mind and your own ability to communicate. And meditation can greatly assist you in that regard. Do you? Do you do any meditation? Yeah, I meditate. What's your practice like? Well, I do a bunch of different things.

Like one, I do a lot of yoga breathing exercises and I do them by myself where essentially just completely concentrating on the breath, just breathing in and breathing out and forcing out all the thoughts and allowing them to come in and allowing them to leave. And I like to do that also inside the tank. Like one of the things that I really like to do is get myself into a position where I've settled in the tank and then just completely concentrate on my breath and just concentrate entirely on the breathing in and the breathing out and get it into this almost like hypnotic cycle of breathing in and breathing out. And it's the same thing. There's going to be all these different thoughts like, oh, you know, I'm itchy. I should scratch and like uh maybe i should uh cut this down to an hour instead of two hours like i

planned or you know i really need to go running instead of going to yoga tomorrow maybe i should and you got to let those go they come in they come out and just the the breathing being this consistent thing that i can always go back to concentrating on. Yeah, I mean, that's it. You just described what we teach. I do a practice almost exactly like that. Yeah. The tank enhances it. Well, it's interesting.

I was just going to say that I was trying to figure out what, when I was noticing my breath, like what am I noticing here? Am I actually feeling the breath or am I just hearing the breath come through the nose? And just identifying that was actually a little bit interesting. It actually boosted my level of attention to the breath when I decided to go in that direction. Yeah, it's, excuse me, it's both. I mean, you're hearing it, you're feeling it, but it's just the act of it, you know, the thing, the doing it, the doing it, and like this sort of like hypnotic in and out thing that happens when you have no sensory input whatsoever.

You're not feeling your feet on the ground. You feel weightless. You're not hearing anything. You're not seeing anything. It's just a particularly effective environment for exploring your thoughts. There's an expression sometimes that's feeling or an experience of being breathed. So it's like you're no longer doing the breathing. The breathing is just happening. It's like you're being breathed. So it's like you're not, you're no longer doing the breathing. The breathing is just happening.

It's like you're being breathed by a giant cosmic lung. And it's like that, you know that feeling, that letting go? Yeah. Try to do that in the tank. And it's just like you, you just let go of any sense of that.

There's a doer. And it's just that you just start to taste yourself as this process, this thing that's just happening, you start to taste yourself as this process, this thing that's just happening, you know, and a bird is passing outside and the clouds are passing and someone's walking across the street talking on their phone and you're being breathed. That's all just one system that's just happening. It's also interesting too, when I'm in the tank, I lose the sense of what is up and what's down.

too when i'm in the tank i i lose the sense of what is up and what's down like you lose like what when you're lying there and you're floating you kind of lose this everything seems like all over the place but in the thought of relaxing and letting go it's always going down it's always like a deeper thing it's always like settling in more settling in more it always seems to go towards your back like you're just sinking in deeper and deeper and deeper it's always like settling in more settling in more it always seems to go towards your back like you're just sinking in deeper and deeper and deeper it's one of the only times we have a sensation of a very particular direction that you're going in i found the directionlessness of it that initially was quite scary for me that i was you know where am i moving or is this inner ear stuff you know like it was just that. You feel like you're flying.

Yeah. But I didn't experience that as a soaring. I experienced it as more terrifying. Falling. Do we have footage of Dan clawing the inside of the isolation tank? It's a practice, man. I see the value. I mean, another thing that actually kind of reminds me of my last meditation retreat where we're talking about physical discomfort, my teacher and I, and because I was experiencing a lot of physical pain from long sitting for a long time, pain comes up.

And I was asking, you know, is it okay for me to quit at some point because this pain is too intense? And he, Joseph, was arguing, you know, I think you want to test your limits on this. Obviously, at some point, you're going to get up. But you want to – we're gradually increasing the amount that we can stand. And that, to me, seems very similar to the value that I can perceive of getting back in the sensory deprivation tank of being able to be with that fear a little bit more, test the limit a little bit more consistently so that my world isn't getting smaller. People echo that same sentiment when it comes to psychedelics. I was about to think about that. I was thinking that's the next test for Dan. I've long been very interested.

There's a lot of, as you know, there's been a growing body of research into the salutary effects of psychedelics. A lot of it's being done at NYU on cancer patients who have anxiety, but there's also some specific work being done at Johns Hopkins on meditators and psilocybin. What kind of effect does psilocybin have on meditators? And can it, in a way, show them directionally where you want to be moving in your meditative practice? And I've had a longstanding desire to get into this study. My shrink and my wife strongly argue that I shouldn't. Somebody with my kind of brain chemistry who has to go on and perform under pressure when the red light's on on TV, probably not a great idea to dose myself with psychedelics,

but this is something I've been wrestling with a lot. What are you worried about? Psychedelics? Yeah, what do you think is going to happen? It's right back to my worries in the tank. To me, I was thinking a lot about psychedelics, and I've had, you know, when I was a kid and would smoke weed, I would have panic

attacks. And I think it's about the desire for control, the ego, the thinking mind moves in. And it's like a vampire confronted with garlic. You know, it's just my ego is recoiling and can't handle the lack of control. And it's not just the energy of those experiences that's so intense where you just have no control over it. But it's also, it just blows apart your worldview. Like you had this idea, you think, oh, you think you know what's really going on.

And then you have one of those experiences and it just shows you that you don't know anything. Well, and you think you are there you think you are you that there's some solid you there and that is called into question fundamentally yeah but it's humbling to be shown that all your ideas about how you think things are are just that you know that it's just like

that you don't know fuck all and that has been that's my experience from doing that stuff it's like it just shows me that I'm just you know what just sit back to sit back and and let nature do what nature is gonna do it so how can you say sit back dude when there's no dude there when that's what you're starting to see and and you get exploded so you basically you're gonna it's a win-win situation either you win because you're able to stay super Aquinas with the greater and greater intensity of what you're experiencing under a trip,

or you win because you don't stay equanimous, you fight with it, and you get ripped to shreds. And in that humbling moment, that in itself is deeply consoling and healing. I think it's like both sides of that are positive. It's like a net positive gain on both sides of that. That's how I legitimate it when I'm getting ripped apart. Getting ripped apart. Yeah, it does. Do you see what I'm worried about?

Yeah. That's what I'm worried about. Yeah. I think if you just relax, you'll be fine. Yeah, I know. But that's one of those things like when people say relax or get out of your own way, for somebody as tightly wound as me, it's a frustrating thing to hear because it's hard for me to operationalize.

You've just got to resist that clench. Resist the clench. Just let it go. But sometimes you do get ripped apart. Yeah, most of the time if you do it right. You do that hero's dose. That's part of the thing about it, though, is you're supposed to. Is that a thing?

Hero's dose? Yeah. Terrence McKenna. Yeah. Five dried grams. Heroic dose. I thought it was seven. I don't know if you can go to seven if you're interested, but five dried grams is the recommended

threshold. Yeah. That's a different kind of mushroom experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's one of those things where if you test yourself slowly but surely in those waters, you'll get more and more accustomed to the feeling of relaxation and letting go and that treat it like it's a shamanic experience. Like it's a very deep, intensive search to the very meaning of your existence. And don't think of it as like, oh, my God, I'm about to do drugs. Right.

But they're not dissimilar in the way that when you don't know up from down, when you have no sensation of your body anymore, that is exposing the fundamental fact that, as Jeff has used as this description over and over, I think quite beautifully throughout this discussion, which is that we aren't as solid as we think. We are, in fact, a process. And the dude that you're trying to console, the dude, it's okay. That dude or dudette, there's no there there. And that, I could see myself going in that direction in the tank. That's inexorably where it takes you.

And that is where psychedelics take you. And again, I'm in this weird position because I'm deeply interested in that experience. And I've tasted it in my own meditation for sure. But I'm also scared. Yeah. I mean, this is where meditation goes. But what's the fear? Seeing that you, that you've been defending and protecting since sentience actually doesn't

exist is, I think, ultimately very liberating. It really is the true liberation. But seeing it initially as a newbie is it tears apart, as Jeff says, your worldview. Our worldview is based on us at the center. It's a death experience. Yes, exactly. So it seems to me it's like you want to learn how to swim, but you're really only interested in calf-high water. Because if you really want to learn how to swim,

what happens is they take you out on a jet ski out into the middle of the ocean, and they go, jump off, dude. You're now in the center of the ocean. And that's the psychedelic trip. The psychedelic trip is you are fucking swimming. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. You must keep going or you're going to drown. I think there are different approaches based on different people because I think you're exactly right that I want to swim, but my tendency is to stick to the calf high water. But you're, from what I know about you and having spent a little bit of time with you and just following you, you're kind of a baller.

Like you're ready to go out on the jet ski and jump in or do all this crazy stuff that traditionally I, I mean, I have done some crazy things that we've discussed, but traditionally I'm more cautious. And I think for somebody with my kind of brain chemistry, somebody whose brain is very good at panicking, I think there's a more stepwise approach, which is what I'm intrigued by, which is what we keep discussing, which is test those limits time and again, keep testing them. Don't let up. For example, for example, my shrink, the one who got me to stop doing drugs after I had a panic attack on television and helped me kind of straighten myself out.

I had a panic attack or the beginnings of a panic attack on a subway about five years ago. And it was, for me, it was devastating, because I was like, this is such a setback. I'm right back at stage one, and my world's going to get smaller again. So I went to go see him kind of on an emergent basis. And he laid out a plan, which is not his original idea. This is actually the way you treat these things, called exposure therapy, where he said, okay, here for the next 10 days, I want you to go stand on the subway platform every day, just for a couple minutes.

And then for the 10 days after that, I want you to get on a subway, a car, and then get off before the door closes. Five to 10 days. And then after that, I want you to get on and go one stop. And basically, he got me back on the subway because I was able to gradually get through. I'm not Joe Rogan.

I would never be able to host a show called Fear Factor the way you did unless it was a completely different show where you're not getting in a tank full of tarantulas on the first day. I have to do it in a stepwise progression because that's the way my brain is wired. That's legit to me. That's legit that there's going to be different ways for different folks to do it. There definitely is. Did you, were you exposed to a lot of difficulty when you were young? Did you have to overcome physical adversity? Did you participate in any one-on-one sports or anything like that?

I think the problem was just the opposite. That I had two incredibly loving former hippie parents. I was a bit of a spoiled kid. And Jeff and I have talked about this, that to the extent that I experience anger or frustration, sorry, it's because I'm not getting what I want. Yeah. But I did do some competitive sports.

I just wasn't very good at it. So have you guys heard of somatic experiencing? No. Somatic experiencing. It's this super interesting way of addressing trauma that is starting to get really influential in the body work community and psychotherapists and psychiatrists and psychologists are starting to look at it. And there's been a bunch of good papers out about it.

But basically the thesis, it comes from being really a guy namedeter levine who spent a lot of time looking at animal behavior and what he noticed is that when animal goes into a fight or flight situation um they so you're a gazelle and all of a sudden there's the tiger and then you go you just explode into action so there's this explosive release of energy running or fighting, whatever it is. Afterwards, they'll often go into this shaking effect where they'll start trembling unconsciously or they can't control it. It's like, and what they think is that it's like discharging all the excess energy. And then they go back to homeostasis. And so his theory is that what happens with human beings is because we have these giant frontal lobes that we get shocks to our nervous system. And we can't discharge the energy. We can't fucking punch our boss in the face or we

can't run or whatever. And this is the same as when we're kids. We just swallow it up. We swallow it up. And that trapped energy in the nervous system starts to become our neurotic habits. It becomes chronic anxiety. It becomes panic attacks. It becomes chronic aggression or irritability. Also chronic freeze responses get stuck in there too, which is sort of like chronic not there-ness or someone who's sort of a little bit dreamy. And so somatic experiencing is a whole way of working with it where basically it's sort of like exposure therapy, but it wouldn't, it's not, it's not the same. It's like, it's all in the – it's very meditative. It's like you're working with somebody and they go, okay, why are you – come into the room. Where do you feel comfortable sitting?

It's like, oh, I feel comfortable sitting over here. Why did you sit there? Well, I kind of like have my back to the wall. Well, what is it about having your back to the wall that makes you feel more comfortable? I just feel this. And it's like, well, then what's the opposite? What's the discomfortable thing? And then you notice what it would feel like to be uncomfortable there and you basically find a spot

in your experience in your consciousness which is very centered and comfortable and then you find the the problem and you try to simultaneously notice both at the same time and basically all the trapped energy of the neurotic place starts to drain out is that making sense i'm trying to make it vivid or visual, but that's how you work with this stuff. So you can start to drain out these patterns of like chronic fear, these patterns of chronic fight. You do it by noticing how that pattern is in your body, connecting to it, and then it can kind of empty out. It's so interesting because it also just, it blows the lid off trauma. It says trauma is going to be different for every person.

All trauma is just shock to the nervous system. It's not just about, you know, surviving a terrorist attack or, you know, all this horrible stuff. It's like someone might do something to Dan in the smallest way when he's a two-year-old. That wasn't any big deal, but it completely freaked him out. It basically shocked his nervous system so intensely that now there's that pattern of shock that's in there that still lives in there. And what happens neck and busted shoulder and different things from just being a jackass. But one time I got hit by this truck. I was on my bike, and it blew up my shoulder. It hit the ground, and then the back of the truck hit me in the ass, sent me spinning.

And so one time I was in there working with a somatic experiencing lady. And she's like, what direction do you want to look in? I'm like, I kind of feel like looking this way. You don't you don't feel like looking that way. And I'm like, not doesn't really, I don't really want to turn my head this way. I don't really want and I realized that that's always there. I kind of don't want to look this way. And she's like, well, what what happens when you look this way? And I was like, I started looking this way. And it was harder to do. And suddenly, I remember the fucking impact of this truck from when I was 17 years old on this side of my body. And I could feel that the impact was still in my body.

And she got me to work to turn my head. And, like, she got me to connect to that. So I'm thinking of that memory and I'm feeling that memory in my body. And she gets me to work through that turning my head and the act of doing that was like all of a sudden oh I felt all this new freedom in this pattern I've now not had that issue as much and that's just to give you an example of how you would work in that mode isn't that isn't that cool I mean I find that unbelievable I do too that is interesting listening to your story about your life, about the lack of difficulty, it sort of reinforces my ideas about martial arts.

In that it's not about learning how to be a great fighter or learning how to beat people up. It's learning how to battle your own internal demons and confront insecurities and fears. your own internal demons and confront insecurities and fears. And to do it on a regular basis frees up a lot of the mental landscape. It allows you to just be more relaxed about a lot of different approaches to life. And this tension and control that we have is a lot of times just pointless. And that's highlighted by martial arts training. Yeah. I think it's almost always pointless.

Yeah. Although, you know, the thing is, if you look at a good fighter, just like if you look at a good dancer, there's definitely a sense in which they're just flowing and they're responding. But then when they need to be tense, boom, they got it. It's like they got that power behind them. It's like if you were dancing, for example, and all you did was just flabby flow, there would be no form to it. It's like you need the pulling in.

You need that. So it's about the intelligent use of tension, you know, knowing when to be soft and then when to be, you know, having those two sides. Yeah. What I'm talking about, though, is the management of stressful, physically difficult things on a regular basis frees the mind. It's just the getting comfortable with conflict. And when in the absence of conflict, then you look to try to restrict and control everything. And then every little affront to that, any little questioning and challenging of your control over things can cause anxiety because you're uncomfortable with this idea of surrender, of relaxing.

Totally. Totally. Whether it's in psychedelics or whether it's meditation or all these things, there's Relationship. Yeah. And stand-up comedy, communicating, podcasts, hosting Good Morning America. I mean, there's so many parallels because a lot of it is in managing the mind and just being able to, again, get out of your own way. I agree. I definitely agree.

Oh, we got that shit sorted out. For now. Tomorrow it'll pop up again. Exactly. You'll be in your car. That's why you gotta keep doing it. It's like, hey, these books are all saying the same thing again and again and again, but you still need to read it because you forget. Yeah, and it gets a little bit easier all the time. Managing the mind gets a little easier, and part of it you can chalk up to maturity and life experience,

but it's also just this continual practice of paying attention to what's going on inside your head. Exactly right. I mean, Jeff doesn't like my analogy that I'm about to use because he thinks it's slightly aggressive, and he's right, but it's mostly meant for comic effect but it's like when you have a dog who takes a shit on the rug you kind of sometimes you got to put their snout in the shit and that is what we're doing in meditation and in all of these practices seeing over and over again how crazy we are yeah how the fear arises how the anger arises how the the discontent with whatever's happening right now arises, and not getting owned by it. And that's why these practices are so useful and why you've got to stick with them.

You don't get just fixed. It doesn't work that way. There's nothing like that. There are a lot of people out there selling them. Yeah, they are, right? But they're not selling you something real. What's the most annoying aspect of that to you guys please the power of positive thinking oh you know we were talking about that yesterday where people were talking about president oprah

and i reminded everyone about oprah and the secret yes i'm like do you know how many fucking people ruin their lives because they thought all they had to do was have a vision board and think positive and this is going to be the key to happiness. Yeah, I think it's one of the most pernicious ideas that's ever been sort of released into our culture. And it even predates The Secret because there's a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. There's another book called Think and Grow Rich. to go buy these books because I don't think you should. The idea that you can solve all of your problems through the power of positive thinking is so easily disproved. Just engage in the following thought experiment.

Anybody who's born right now in a refugee camp, were they thinking incorrectly in utero? In 2010, when the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was everybody in town thinking incorrectly? Did they bring that upon themselves? Of course not. Of course not. And yet, we're telling all these people that if you make a good vision board, you can cure your cancer. Or you don't have to go to the doctor. It is demonstrably false and recklessly dangerous.

It is demonstrably false and recklessly dangerous. And most of the people that have had success with the power of positive thinking, they attribute it to that. But you're not talking to any of the people that thought the exact same way and failed. You're only talking to the successful people. The sampling is so biased. The only people who have had all their problems solved through the power of positive thinking are the people writing those fucking books and selling all the copies. And by the way, if it was that easy, they're only one book.

They keep writing books. They keep saying, come back to this next seminar in this freezing cold room with your credit card. The one part of it, the idea that you can have an intention, that to have a clear intention of something, of how you want to be or something you want to have happen, that that can be helpful. I think that's common sense.

There's a difference between having a positive attitude. Yeah. Which is absolutely beneficial. Yes, absolutely. Do you guys, have you heard, you know, William James, the great kind of psychologist, mystic, he was a mystic. He had this really cool, he talked about, I think it was called firstborn versus twice born or once born, once born and twice born. And it was a fundamental

way in which he distinguished people who had, who had maybe had a spiritual outlook in life. And he said the once born people were people who were just naturally, they were the kind of the positive thinkers, the kind of like, everything is perfect. Everything is awesome. This like rose colored view of reality and really not able to kind of see everything is perfect, everything is awesome, this like rose-colored view of reality and really not able to kind of see suffering and everything, that kind of a thing. And we all kind of know people like that, like kind of the classic naive spiritual person. But he was really interested in what he called the twice-born, and that's what he was, and I feel like that's certainly how I identify, which is somebody who can come into a kind of perspective like a mystical or spiritual perspective, but has to but only did it via having to look hard at the reality of suffering at the reality of evil of fucked up you had to come to that.

You had to come to your view through a honest reckoning with the crappy stuff about being a human being and the crappy stuff that's out there and that you couldn't not look at it. And if you could do that, like Tolstoy was the famous example, then you kind of could be reborn into a perspective that was wide enough to include the full bittersweet. And that and so I think that's what I think think to the twice-born, the first-born outlook is kind of repellent because it seems like it's not looking at the truth of all the very real challenges that are going out there. It's like you could just go to your yoga class and eat your perfect raw food and be

in your perfect bubble. But meanwhile, the world is just contracted in pain. And to really be a kind of true expansive humanist is to kind of look at all that and to still find your way into thinking that life is worth living. You know, there's a mystery there. I guess you have to recognize that there are these horrible things in the world, but concentrating on them fully and only is not going to benefit you in any way, shape, or form. That's also true.

It's like there are amazing things to this life, and the more you concentrate on them, the more you'll recognize them, the more you'll sort of bask in the amazing experience that we're all going through right now. And so what you're describing is elements of positive thinking. Sure. That's the good side. That's totally legitimate. It's positivity or positive attitude as opposed to positive thinking, which is loaded up with this idea of like sort of mental control of the external world. And that I think is what's dangerous. What I think Joe's describing is gratitude.

Yes. Gratitude is giant. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's so important. What I think Joe's describing is gratitude. Yes, gratitude is giant. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's so important. But it's important to parse this out. What part of this is healthy and good and what part of this is destructive. Yes.

That's what we're trying to do. Yes, I agree. Right. And what part of it you could parse out from what you would call the law of attraction, which is not a law. No, it is not. I mean, that's another part of the problem, too. Like, the woo is written in the title.

Yeah. Like, it's not a law. It's just that's another part of the problem, too. Like, the woo is written in the title. Yeah. Like, it's not a law. It's just that's not what it is. So you calling it the law of attraction lets me know you're full of shit. That was law made by Zeus, dude. Did you see that episode of Hercules? There's something that's undeniably important about positive thinking, having a positive attitude, positive thinking, having a positive attitude and being enthusiastic and having energy and focusing on the good and focusing on your goals and focus on what you're trying to achieve.

But the idea that that in and of itself is all you need, that it's uniquely powerful and that it can literally bring you your future. And then all these people that say that, that this is what they use. You might have been successful, and that might be your underlying thought process. But there's a wide series of factors. There's a big spectrum of things that had to happen for you to be successful, including luck, including the great fortune of being born in America. Privilege. Yeah. There's so many different places you could be,

so many different life experiences you could have had, horrific parental situations and household situations you could have been born into. You're extremely lucky. No question. Look at the case of James Arthur Ray. I covered it extensively for ABC News, that he was one of the gurus in The Secret,

in the DVD of The Secret. He was one of the guys talking about The Secret, in the DVD of The Secret. He was one of the guys talking about how the universe is like Aladdin's lamp. And he held a sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Arizona, in which several people died, and he went to prison. So how well was the law of attraction working for him? Yeah. Maybe it did work. Yeah, maybe. He put in a bunch of bullshit and got some bullshit back.

Yeah, they also found in his hotel room a lot of HGH and testosterone and stuff like that. So he definitely wasn't as buff just through the power of positive thinking. And he was trying to do what with the sweat lodge? What was the idea? Look, the sweat lodge is a beautiful ceremony for Native Americans. Did he get people too hot or something? He got them too hot and they overheated and their electrolyte balance got crazy or something.

And how many, two people died or something like that? You know, it was a while ago so I can't remember, but I think it was two people. The problem with a lot of those people too is that what they do is they put together like some sort of a program maybe it's a book, maybe

it's a guideline that you're supposed to follow then they start teaching seminars in it and they start putting it into practice and leading all these people with this stuff and then it becomes who they are like who they are is like a guru who they are is like this spiritual person and people come to them that's the dynamic they have people come to them them, what should I do? And they, the universe provides bounty. Oh, and everybody claps and goes along with it.

And they live in this sort of bubble. Yeah, it's just, it gets really odd with those folks. Yeah, I mean,

that was why, I mean, I was, I had been assigned years and years ago to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News, even though I'm an agnostic.

And I ended up covering a lot of these new age gurus. And that was why I ended up my the first book I wrote is called 10% Happier. Because I was trying to counter program against the howling sea of bullshit. Yeah. That is America's $11 billion a year self-help industry. Because I was watching what this was doing to people's lives. It's so fast.

I mean, we've been talking about that a lot lately. There's so many people that are trying to get in this on sort of the open mic level when you see it on Instagram. Like there's a lot of people like promoting these inspirational little posts and, you know, they'll have these little inspirational videos like, you know, what you got to do today is go out there and embrace life and just go after your goals. And like, and there's so many people that are trying to give people this fuel and give people this info and they might not necessarily really even be in practice with that themselves. Yeah. It's a, I like the open.

I like your analogy about the open mic. That is what it's like. It's like they're trying it out. They're learning how to be an Anthony Robbins or a Tony Robbins. It's funny. I had a friend who was living in France and he came back to Canada and he'd been in Paris, living there for like 10 years or something. And so he's walking around the streets of Toronto and he said it was the same when he

was anywhere in North America. And he kept feeling like there was something wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. It was like, what is wrong? Something wrong. And then he realized that everyone was actually having the same conversation all the time over and over again, which was everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right. It was just this constant peppy cheerleading from everywhere.

Whereas in France, it's just like things are fucked. That is fucked. No, you are shit. And that's what it's like being in France. It's like at least they're honest well that has its downsides of course it has a downside but I mean there's also

a realism where people are just gonna like call it out as it is where here there's such a there's a tendency to just to kind of there can be this kind of Pollyanna-ish

everything is fine everything is fine because people don't really want to lurk at what's under what's lurking underneath you know well everything's fine

right now in this moment right most of the time no doubt bro most of the time and underneath, you know. Well, everything's fine right now in this moment, right? Most of the time. No doubt, bro. Most of the time. But also not. Can we talk about the mystical, mystery, underbelly weirdness stuff?

This idea that everything is fine in the moment, this exact moment right now. So in practice, this is something Shinzen taught me, that the more you, it's almost like the present moment is on a continuum. And that doesn't sound make any sense, but it's like you can be present and you can be more present and more and more. And you can start to get a feeling for that, for practice of just the absolute now. It's like you're getting closer and closer to the absolute now with ever actually getting there, which I know just sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook. But the feeling on the inside is just this – everything is – it's like this silence, this presence. It's like this sacredness, you know, the no bullshit kind of sacredness. That – what is that?

You know, that to me is like – I wrote about consciousness for a long time before I started realizing that there's this thing here. And how do you talk about it? How do you write about it in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous? And yet it is the most important thing. It's the most – it orients you to be able to come into that understanding. How do we talk about it? The mystics have always said you can't talk about it. It's ineffable.

But it's true as an experience. But where is it being talked about intelligently? Where are you going to read about that in the New Yorker magazine or whatever? You know, it's like it's either talked about in this Disneyland way or it's not talked about at all. It's like we got to try to talk about it. We got to try to at least maybe not talk about it, come into fine practices, you know, but honor that it's real. And, you know, that's something I'm really interested in. And I'm trying to learn how to do it.

Now, let me ask you this as an outsider. If someone is coming to this with zero meditation experience, no thought whatsoever about pursuing this, and they're listening to you say these things like, okay, what's in it for me? What do I get out of that? What do I get if I can get to this? What do I get? What's in there? Yeah. if I can get to this? What do I get? What's in there?

It seems like you're just alive. It doesn't seem like anything changes. Well, I think that is what you get. You get your life. You get your life back. Most of the time, you're not in your life. You're freaking out about your life. You're in your head thinking about this, this, or that happening,

or you're responding to situations. What you get is the capacity to be sitting here in the middle of all this and appreciate the richness and the fullness of it. Because that's the thing. It has a quality of fulfillment in it. It has a quality of like nothing needs to be any different. So there's a peacefulness and a beauty or something. Even when things are objectively shitty.

Even when things are objectively shitty. There's bitter sweetness. So, you know, this poignancy to things. It's like you get exactly your life, just more of it. And that's why, you know, Shinzen used to say it's like you get to live ten times deeper or one time or two times deeper or three times or four times the more you practice. It's like it's the same surface, but it's the depth dimension that's getting like richer and fuller and broader. And so then it gives you the capacity to also to appreciate more and more what's going on. Because most of the time we walk around like,

this is the stuff I like looking at, but I don't like this stuff over here. I don't want to feel these things or I don't want to see these things. So we're like, we're kind of, you know, it's like we live, the analogy I use is like we're born into a mansion, but room by room we're like, no, can't go in there. Can't go in there. That's my ex-girlfriend or that's my relationship with my parents or that's this limitation or this limitation. At some point we're just sitting there under the stairs.

Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Yeah, I'm really enjoying my life. We're hiding in the dark under the stairs. So you want to – it's about reclaiming the mansion. It's like can you be – like you said, exactly. So you want to, it's about reclaiming the mansion. You know, it's like, can you be, like you said, exactly.

Can you be free in more and more situations? And can you begin to appreciate the beauty of even these difficult situations? And that way your whole life just kind of can open up to you. That's what the practice is about. Another way of thinking about it is, and this is a bit of a new age trope, so it's a little annoying, but it's like what I said before that cliches become cliches for a reason. And the reason is they're true, generally. All you get, ever, is right now. Everything you've experienced in your whole life happened to you right now, and everything you ever will experience will always happen to you right now. Non-negotiable. We live most of our lives, however, in a autopilot of, in a fog of rumination and projection.

And we're not paying any attention to the only thing we ever get. Meditation, digging more deeply into the present moment is giving you your life back. Now, how do you address because what we're talking about is managing the mind and increasing happiness by 10% or more, hopefully. How do you address psych meds? Because a lot of people that are going down this road have already gone down the pharmaceutical road and might be inexorably connected to it in some sort of a way. They might be on anti-anxiety medication, be on antidepressants. How do you address that? I think I can speak for both of us in that we are maximalists, that when it comes to well-being, you've got to surround the ball.

You've got to use every arrow in the quiver. And just because we're into meditation doesn't mean we're not into all the other scientifically proven ways of dealing with your mental health. You know, I often say that we, as a culture, we spend so much time working on our bodies, on our stock portfolios, on our cars, and no time on the one filter through which we experience everything, and that's our minds. And so if you have clinically diagnosed anxiety or depression, which, again, we need to be talking about more openly because there's so much stigma around it.

I've dealt with both since I was a kid. If you have that, you should avail yourself of every possible remedy. And if your doctor recommends that you take psych meds, then you should investigate it. If it works for you, then stay on them. Meditation is just another thing you can also use, along with exercise, getting enough sleep, having positive relationships, having a healthy diet, all the other no-brainers. What Jeff and I are saying is in the pantheon of no-brainers, meditation needs to be included. Yeah, I think with the meds thing, sometimes meds can get you to the baseline of then you can meditate.

And it's almost like, I mean, I know too many people whose lives have been, including people I know really, really well, really, really helped by these meds. I know other people who've had super hard time with it. But some of them- Yeah, I'm in the same boat. And some of them, it's like it gets you to a place where it's almost like the meds can help buy time for your own system to work itself out. And so you get to a place where you're, like, I have a lot of trouble with crazy energy surges up and down.

Like a manic thing? Yeah. Like I get hypomanic and then I get, like, despairing and then hypomanic. I actually just got a diagnosis two weeks ago that I probably have a mild form of bipolar. This is 46 years old. I'm finally learning. But it's not a surprise. I kind of knew it.

How do they diagnose that? So it was an interview. So it's an hour long. This case was like an hour and a half or an hour long interview where a guy just really took my history, like how I've been challenged. I have ADD, big time ADD. That's been diagnosed multiple times just because the way my attention works. But he basically really asked me lots of questions about my history and when things started to get into the more surges.

And they've been getting worse the past. And this is interesting because I meditate a ton. And there was a period where the meditation was super, super working really well and stabilizing everything. And then there was a period where the meditation felt like it wasn't working as well. And all this energy, it's like that trauma stuff I was talking about, all that stuff started to come up. So I go more into these ups and downs. And I found that the practice would help. It would help me from feeding the spikes.

But it wasn't, it hasn't been totally addressing it. Now, I haven't actually started any meds or done any lithium yet. Although I'm thinking maybe I would try that because I want to understand what folks go through. But basically, he just asked a lot of questions. There's, you know, I guess they have a diagnostic criteria on a set of like, does that seem to make sense for what we know about it? And because they've seen all these patients, they've got all these ideas. And it's so new, I don't even know what to do with the information. In fact, I'm kind of can't believe i'm talking about it because it seems a bit premature but i'm you know the way i think about it is i would consider doing meds because i just want to be

able to get to a place where i could then let my body kind of heal itself help itself out figure itself out and the meds might buy me time to do that then and the meditation can be part of that as well and that's just the messy human reality of it but you you seem like you've got your shit together so like what is it exactly that's bothering you so much you'd actually be considering medication well it's try writing a book with them yeah yeah because so i'm like fine six days a week and then one day a week so there's the there's the attentional stuff just being being overexcited about things and getting pulled in every direction. That's not really a problem so much anymore. Like I've learned to the problems there were more like you disappoint people.

You feel like you can't get your shit together. You know, you're just you're just so scattered that can happen. And and that that can create its own challenges. But the energy ones are more fundamental. It's like I wake up in the morning, you know, maybe once every week or two. And all of a sudden, I can feel my heart pounding. And I could feel like this incredible energy in my hands and my body. And I just, I'm in this hypomanic state. And I, and I and it feels good. I don't even realize it. But I'm going around, I'm talking, I'm excited about stuff. And I'm just jacked up on this, like, on this energy.

I'm excited about stuff and I'm just jacked up on this like on this energy. And it's and what comes up must go down. So I usually like it. But then what will happen is I realize later that I've been I've exaggerated like, oh, I've gone into something. I've been too aggressive of a situation. I've been exaggerating some situation. I got grand grandiose about something. And I feel super embarrassed that I was in this sort of like high and in a way that and I didn't have my shit together at all. And then I end up in the downswing, which is the catastrophizing, the like the despair sometimes.

Like, you know, I just let me lose like that thing about being in the center that I was talking about. When it's there, it's so true and it's so there. And all of a sudden I'm not there at all. I don't feel anything. I feel like there's no meaning to anything. And I'm just in this desolation thing. And that lasts for a few hours or like a day or something. And then I'll pop out and I'm fine.

And I know that once a week or once every week, two weeks or something, I'm going to go into that cycle. Now, I've done my whole life without having, I've tried to manage it entirely with meditation, with exercise, with diet. And I may just continue to keep doing that. Have you gotten better at it? I have gotten – well, so I have gotten better at managing it. Absolutely no question.

I've gotten way better at not believing in it when I'm in a high and not believing when I'm in the down. I don't want to interrupt you, but the thought process, like when it kicks in, like what – are you aware of it? So, yeah, it starts as – well, I am because it starts as energy in the body. So I feel the vibratiness. I'm like, okay, that's my first early warning sign. And then it gets bigger and bigger. But the thing is, it's addictive. Do you mind your heart rate while this is happening?

No, but I can feel the fucking heart sometimes is going like a jackhammer. And other times the heart, it cools out. But it's like the, I mean, the power is still there. The feeling of, and it's like the power is still there. And it's that feeling of power, which is very- Why don't you work out when that hits? Dude, that is what I do. I hit a punching bag. This has been the best thing in the world for me,

has been hitting a punching bag. Meditation can't do shit when I'm in that place. But punching bag, I feel calm and centered afterwards. So that is the main intervention of what I'm doing. I may never go the med route. I think I can handle it. Like I've been doing it until now, but what makes me want to do it is I want to know what other people have to deal with. Like, I want to know what it's like to be on those things. And what, and so I can help those people maximally and say, this is what I can tell you about what meditation can do. And this is what

I can tell you about what it can't do. This is what I can tell you about how physical practice can help, but how they might not be able to help. This is what I can tell you about what it can't do This is what I can tell you about how physical practice can help But how they might not be able to help This is what I can say about how meds have helped in heaven So if I can get experience with those different things And talk to lots of other people who've done it Then I can triangulate it on helping people out In a more effective way So when you get these surges

You get this energy surge You exercise, you hit the bag You feel great Does that even everything out? Yeah. Yeah, usually it can discharge the energy. Then why on earth would you be thinking about taking lithium? Well.

That seems insane. Because then I'm. There's a very organic solution to this problem. Well, I don't know that it always will work with the punching bag. But it's working right now, right? It hasn't perfectly worked every time. What's, when you say it hasn't perfectly. So sometimes I go and I hit the bags and afterwards

the energy is still in me. It may not have the same edge, but it's still... I can still feel it. Now when you say energy, it's really interesting to someone who doesn't get these surges. I'm just trying to like... Do you feel like you're on caffeine? Do you feel like a speed thing?

Like speed. It feels like... Out of nowhere. So you wake up and you're on speed. I'm on speed. Wow. And there's nothing I did externally. Nothing happened. I didn't take anything. I didn't do anything.

All of a sudden, so this is the thing. Is there a corresponding thought process that goes with this? Is there a zest for life? Oh, yeah. Is there like, fucking life is awesome. It's amazing. I want to go kick some ass. Yeah.

It's pure exuberance. That sounds great. It is great, but that's the problem of it. It's great, so you feed it. You want more of it. Basically, it's like this. It's also not always great for the people around you. It's not always great for the people around you.

We're like this, right? We have our ups and downs. This is like, and the more you feed the up, the higher you go, but that means that the bigger you have to fall. That's what I've learned, is that when I feed the up, the higher you go. But that means that the bigger you have to fall. So that's what I've learned is that when I feed the grandiosity, the energy, the exuberance, I'm super fun to be with at parties, for sure.

I'll do crazy shit. That's usually when I've had all my injuries, my various breaks, because I've been on one of these crazy highs. So that's another reason not to do it. But inevitably, there's going to be a part where it's going to crash. So now my whole job is from being a meditation teacher is, I feel the energy start to come up, and I back off. So it's like, I let it just come through me, I try to let it just come up like a wave. And just

and I and it's really uncomfortable being in that vibrating energy and not acting on it, not saying some stupid shit, or not like being more, whatever, not acting on it, not saying some stupid shit or not like being more whatever, not acting on it and keeping it going. I have to kind of let it. So I just try to keep myself calm and centered and I try to let it just feed itself through. And now with the punching bag or with the biking or with these things that really can help with that process. So I do think I might be on the verge of, maybe I won't do that. Maybe I won't, but I don't know. Because the thing is, dude, it's fucking hard. Talk to anyone who's bipolar or up in those ups and downs.

It's hard to be in that. It's exhausting. Every week, it's like you wake up, you don't know who you're going to be this week. Who am I going to be today? Or if you're in a down place, now you've made all these plans with somebody, and then you've got to cancel the plans. But you were saying this is a slightly bipolar situation for you

so it's not I think the bipolar I'm not sure one of them there's bipolar 1 and bipolar 2 one is more extreme like real mania where you go and fucking buy 50 couches and like hey honey I bought 50 couches we're gonna put couches all over the neighborhood you know like your classic manic episode it doesn't

go for me I never had that happen. I just have the hypomania. So like the lots of the energy, but I don't go into total craziness. And biologically, what is the process? Like what is actually happening to you? What's causing this? I don't know.

There's no, they don't understand that? No, I mean, so this is new for me. I'm just, I just found out in two weeks. So I haven't really done the research on the brain science yet. They do say there's a brain signature, just like there is for ADD for bipolar. There's a particular signature of what, of what it looks like. It has some kind of dampening of the frontal activity. So probably a lot of activation and maybe the amygdala or something. I don't know. All I know is from the inside, it really feels different.

It feels like, I mean, I'm sure people can relate, like when you've had a coffee and you've got that vibrating energy or you're feeling super confident about yourself, but it's almost like your confidence goes too far. You're a little bit like overconfident. You're kind of delusional. And that actually happens in meditation too. Like that stage, you know, you're, you're kind of delusional. It's a, and then that, and that actually happens in meditation too. Like that stage, the upstage of meditation,

then people call it the arising and passing. You can get into a stage where suddenly you really feel like you get it. You, oh yeah, I understand. It's like what Dan said. Yeah, I got it. They're going to put a fucking plaque here on the wall. I'm the best meditator on the planet. Like, cause you've got, you're just, you know,

you're just all that energy is coming through you. And then inevitably there's the crash. So actually, that is why I didn't get diagnosed for so long. I thought it was just meditation. I thought I was just noticing the cycles because of my meditation. And it was really just ADD. And it wasn't until it started just to become, I started to see, okay, there is a real pattern here. Like, I need to just talk to somebody and get some other perspectives on this.

I just, I think it's worth pointing out that it's highly unusual and very courageous for somebody in Jeff's position. It's highly unusual for anybody to talk about having mental difficulties at all in our culture. Unfortunately, we need more people who are willing to say, you know, I deal with anxiety, depression, bipolar, ADD. But for somebody who's a meditation teacher to do it, because as Jeff has said, that the traditional understanding of meditation teacher is somebody who's got their shit together on every level. For somebody who's a meditation teacher to come out and say, yeah, I have these challenges is incredibly brave and also really important. Because I think, and working with Jeff on writing this book, one of the things, you know, there were times when the patterns that he's describing were very annoying to me to deal

with as his co-author. But over time, and actually, I started to see that he was wrestling with this stuff. And in many ways, it felt like a meditation teacher. It was obvious to me that he was wrestling with this stuff and in many ways it felt like a meditation teacher. It was obvious to me that he is a meditation teacher with imposter syndrome. And now I think he gets, and I think you can hear it in what he's saying, that actually these challenges make him a better teacher. That he's more in touch with the things that we're all dealing with. And sometimes on an exponentially higher level, you know, of degree of difficulty. And that therefore he's better at getting under the hood and helping other people with their mental challenges.

Yeah, so in many ways, what you're experiencing for your own profession is almost a gift. That's what I say. Because you have this unique opportunity to explore your own consciousness in a very challenging way and also to be Completely honest about it, which is very very beneficial to not just your students But a lot of the people that are listening to this right now. It's now It's living inside the snow because you get it's more it just makes everything more dramatic Yeah You can see the dynamics because it's so freaking dramatic in you

You're then able to see the more subtle way it plays out for everyone because all the stuff i'm talking about it's just the human condition hand everyone's got is is struggling with a version of this it may not be to that extreme thing but are they but they got it or they have an orthogonal challenge over here something a little bit different so you're you're continually training your compassion for how hard it can be in life but you're also learning very practically how to work with the dynamics of that stuff. Is the downside of that the reaction to the upside, or is there a corresponding physical feeling? I think of it as like a rope. It's like you're, you know, you got a rope, and it's like this. It's just physics.

It's just what comes up must come down. And mine is a bit unusual in that I'm more up. I don't have a ton of, I don't stay down long. That sounds great. So that's why it's, I'm more up. I don't have a ton of, I don't stay down long. That sounds great. So that's why it took so long to get diagnosed. But then, but trust me, being up all is deranged too. You know, it's like you're, you know, I go back sometimes. I had an experience where I just was trying to fix up my website.

I looked back at an old talk I did and like that. I was video. I was in this big room. I'm like, holy shit. I was so manic. You know, I just, I was crazy. I was like, what the fuck was I doing? What about the memos you sent me when we were writing the book?

Yeah. So you're like. I'll just say some, what was the. Yeah. Go ahead. What was so crazy about the memos? So, you know, I mean, do you want to explain it? Okay.

So we would be, this is a, the book we wrote is for beginners. It's like, I wanted it to be really simple. And we were doing it on a crazy deadline. So we did a road trip across the country in January 2017, so not long ago. And at the end of the road trip, we recorded all of it. We got the transcripts back, and we had to hand the book in in June. That set me up on a schedule where i had to write a chapter a week which is insane because i have a i anchor two shows at abc and

i have a wife and a child and it would be insane even if i didn't have that and so my job was to write the the narrative the overarching structure of the book and jeff was going to write the meditation instructions that got inserted in and all i wanted from him was to give me some basic fucking meditation instructions. I did not want an exegesis on the Upanishads. I didn't need him to go through and explain to me the whole Pali canon from Buddhism or do his version of the Bhagavad Gita. But he would send me these memos with his grandiose...

He would be on a manic up swing. He would have these ideas about how he was going to explain meditation as it's never been explained before as a series of exfoliations of the mind, blah, blah, blah, 17 pages. 50, 17 pages of like tightly... You know, because you get the energy comes up

and you get super excited and now I'm just pumped. I want to talk about all these little kind of like complicated bits and put it all together and create this really elaborate scaffolding and a metaphor to describe exactly how the mind works. And that's why, you know, that's why I had that's why I didn't get the book done before I was working on with Dan. I spent 10 years working on this book about enlightenment, about the about the progress of insight and meditation. And I just kept getting more and more complicated because I would kind of simplify it and be very sane. I'd have it all understood. And then I would suddenly go into one of these episodes

and I would explode it all and elaborate whole new dimensions of stuff. And it was like I would never get anything done. I want to say in your defense that the memoirs, because I've gone back and read the memoirs, they were great. It's just not what I needed while writing a very simple book on a deadline. And I would get these memos. I don't know what to do with this. And so that actually you're putting your, so that is the reason why the ups are challenging.

Because when you're in an up, you're not really seeing the world as it is. Like this is a person who needs a very particular thing. If you're just centered, you know that you respond with that. But you're in your seeing the world as it is. Like this is a person who needs a very particular thing. If you're just centered, you know that, you respond with that. But you're in your own story about something. And that is the part that's so pernicious or dangerous about the ops. And, you know, and so that happened

in the process of working on the book. But then we got to sort it out. Yeah, of course, of course. And there's something about being on an upswing like that. And this can happen for everybody. It's not just Jeff. We're picking on Jeff here. But when any of us is on an upswing or any of us is just caught in any mental state, your capacity for empathy and compassion goes way down because you're stuck in your own story.

own story and uh the name of the game here at the end of the day notwithstanding my already stated misgivings about words like compassion that is where the rubber hits the road because you can talk about performance that is important but i think the real measuring stick for how well you've trained your mind is are you an asshole hmm yeah that's huge right like how how, are you an asshole? Hmm. Yeah, that's huge, right? Like how well are you interacting with other people? That's right. That is the money. Do you care enough about other people to actually see who they are? Yes.

To see the character in their face, what they're really telling you. Can you actually just get out of your own bullshit and see what's going on in front of you? That's the name of the game. Right. And the most awkward conversations you ever have are when people are just talking at you. Exactly. They're not even taking you into consideration. Why would you even talk to that person anyway?

They're just talking to themselves. But you've got to, for me, it's about what this journey is often about. Journey is another word that I don't really like. But what this exploration is all about, adventure, whatever you want to call it, is I see sometimes I'm that guy. I'm that guy. I'm not really listening. And you got to see that.

You have to see that stuff in yourself instead of just complaining about it in others in order to really get to the good stuff, which is actually then learning how to listen. And it's also, like we were talking about, it's very important for people to hear because everybody's that guy sometimes. Exactly. We may not like to admit it.

Many of us like to spend a lot of time complaining about how everybody else is a schmuck. But you gotta see that stuff. It gets back to the snout, man. You gotta see that stuff. And actually, that's the good stuff. There can be a real pleasure, truly a pleasure in seeing it. There's a great expression from this eminent spiritual teacher named Ram Dass who lives in Hawaii. Many of your listeners may have heard of him.

He talks about how meditation doesn't conquer your neuroses. It makes you a connoisseur of your neuroses. You're like a sommelier of your own insanity. And there's a real pleasure every time you see anger come up or your own selfishness come up. Oh, I see you. I see you. There's a real pleasure in that because then in the seeing, you're then not owned by it. You're not in it. You're not in it.

That's playing the game well. And that's what this game is. Now, for the uninitiated, all this is very hard to absorb. They're sitting back and then listening to this long conversation and trying to put

all these pieces together. What's the best first step to take? Actually try meditation is the best step to take. And here's the thing to know. This doesn't require a ton of time. I often point out to people that a five to ten minute a day habit is a great habit. Everybody wants to know what's the least amount of meditation I can do and get the advertised benefits of meditation. All this stuff we've been talking about in high-minded terms,

but there are some easier-to-comprehend benefits from meditation, lower blood pressure, boosted immune system, literally rewiring key parts of the brain that have to do with focus and things like that. People want to know, what's the least I can do to get that good stuff? We haven't cracked that by we. I mean the scientific community that studies meditation, I'm actually part of it, but I know a lot of these men and women, they haven't figured out exactly what it is, what's the minimum dose. But I've asked them, you know, is five to 10 minutes probably enough? And the general consensus

is probably enough to derive many of these benefits. But so that's the good news. But I think the even better news is if five to 10 minutes sounds like too much for you, one minute, But I think the even better news is if five to ten minutes sounds like too much for you, one minute most days, one minute daily-ish is really enough to see what you need to see. What you need to see is that you're fucking crazy. You need to see it over and over again. This is the schnauzer getting his snout put in the poop. You need to have that happen to you over and over again. Why? Because every time you see that, every time you sit, try to focus on your breath,

see that you've become distracted, in that moment, that's the moment when most people think I've failed at meditation. It's actually the victory. And when you see how crazy you are when you've become distracted and learn how to start again and again and again, every time you see that you've become distracted, that's a win. And it's a win of really towering consequences because then you see that you don't have to be owned by all that craziness.

You could recognize it. You could nip it in its tracks. Another thing that I think that people should take into consideration about this talk of this meditation and trying to manage the mind is that one of the big issues and struggles that we face with today is addiction to social media. Yes. It's a giant, and it is the exact opposite of meditation. Yes, it is.

I agree. It is this constant, like, clicking and being distracted and just getting all this weird input from stuff. And I enjoy social media on occasion, but you've got to recognize that this is something that can overwhelm your consciousness and i'm not going to present myself as holy or an illness because i too enjoy it and sometimes i take it too far there's no question about it i'll get lost in in social media where meditation is useful is because again what you're training

is self-awareness you're just training to see your own stuff clearly so that it doesn't own you. In the course of meditation, if you have some meditation under the belt, when you're so deep in a Twitter hole that you're, you know, spent three hours on the thing, maybe meditation can kick in at some point and say, oh, my stomach is bubbling. My head is aching. I haven't eaten. I'm not ignoring my children. And you can pull yourself out of the spiral. And you just get better and better at doing that. I don't think perfection is on offer. I don't know that all of us are going to live like Shinzen Young, where the universe is

just bubbling up through us all the time, and we're not craving anything. It makes us meditate for 50 years. Yeah, okay, so great. It's nice to have those aspirational figures out there. It's also great to have masters out there who can get in and help us with our meditation practice. For most of us, at a level of 5 to 10 minutes a day, or 1 minute a day, or 1 minute most

days, it's just that you're going to become marginally less of a schmuck. And that's really valuable. It does not have to be complicated. Sit down for 5 minutes, do it for 10 minutes, notice your breath, then you get distracted, come minutes. Do it for 10 minutes. Notice your breath. Then you get distracted. Come back.

Notice what got you distracted. That's it. You do that, you'll find your own way into these insights. You know, you will start to learn how it works. Take the time to do that. You don't even have to do it in a sitting practice. You could do it, you know, when you're exercising or something. It's just harder to do it when there's more going on.

I mean, normally we lead with that. But since you're a beautiful weirdo, you took us into like all sorts of spaces and and that's where we went first and jeff is is in my view one of the best people in the world at talking about meditation at the deep end but normally we lead with what we just discussed but you know such is life well i think that this is an important aspect of it to to focus on that social media use and this addiction that we have is literally the exact opposite yeah of this mindfulness and meditation and really concentrating on being completely free of all these these devices and things that you're distracting yourself i mean the thing i think it's like living is making habits what habit are you reinforcing you are what you repeatedly do

you so if you're just completely if you're training your attention to be fragmented it's going to only get more fragmented because things just keep changing they get deeper and deeper and deeper so at some point you need to start training a different set of circuits. It's just about that. It's about what you're going to train and what you're not going to train. Most of us don't think of life that way. We land in life, and you just start doing stuff. But the things you're doing are the things that are going to become your inevitable conditioning.

That's a very sobering thought. But it's also a liberating thought because it shows you that if you can start to do the stuff that's better for you better for your brain your body then you can start to reverse that stuff as well amen to what you just said and just to amplify your point about this the you know mindless use of social media being the opposite of meditation I actually think that it's interesting I think the proliferation of communication technology is in part why meditation has become so in vogue. Because people know on some level whether they can articulate it or not that something's wrong. We are – there's this really interesting woman, Manoush Zamarodi, who has a podcast called Note to Self.

And it's all about our relationship with technology. And I was talking to her recently, and she said, we're conducting this massive science experiment with these devices. And we don't know what the outcome is going to be, but it's happening globally. And people have a sense that something's off. And that, I think, is why meditation has become such a big thing. Yeah, but, you know, actually, what I think is really interesting is, have you guys heard of the slow technology movement? There's a few different ideas around this, like slow design. The basic idea is that right now, the interfaces that we use, these flat screens, these, and

all the notifications, the buzzing, the flickers, that's kind of blowing our attention apart. But that, it's, so it's training the brain and the mind in a particular kind of way. But in the exact same spirit, if you were to start to design these interfaces in a way that according to basic mental health principles, you might be able to create more positive habits. So it's just starting to think, like, actually, how could we design our devices, our interfaces, our technology in a way that's promoting more, you know, happiness, more connection, more of all the good stuff. And that's a question people are just starting to ask. And I think it's really, really cool to think about things in that way that it could be an opportunity. There could be an opportunity with the technologies to do something really awesome. So it's not like it's – because they're neutral in a way.

It's just a tool. It's how you use the tool and the way in which the tool is designed that's so important. The allegation is that actually many of these devices and platforms have been designed specifically to make you – But that's not neutral. They're like salty potato chips that you can't stop eating. Yeah. But I'll just put in one plug. Yeah. But I'll just put in one plug. But while we're waiting for slow technology to come to fruition, there are ways that it's on us as users to use these things wisely.

One thing I would say is as somebody who does use Twitter and Instagram is there's a great tweet from this guy, Ian Bremmer, who who's a big thinker about current affairs. His I think his pin tweet is something like, if you're only following people you agree with, you're doing it wrong. And I think there's a way in which actually, our social media use and in that we create these cocoons, these bubbles, these ideological echo chambers, we're only following people who give us visceral, satisfying, ideological red meat. If, in fact, you can use these platforms and podcasts to listen to people with whom you disagree and maybe even communicate with them, then actually that is a thoughtful and wise use of this technology and may solve some, what I would argue is the biggest problem this country's facing right now, which is toxic tribalism. Toxic tribalism is a really good way of putting it.

Yeah. That's like everyone's just stuck in their own Facebook feeds. Yeah. It's basically the Facebook feed is your reality. Yeah, but you can use Facebook to connect with people who, your neighbors who disagree with you and to actually be able to hear their arguments in a way that isn't blindly reactive. It's about doing the rounds of the community. Can you actually go out there and do the rounds of the community

and check out some different perspectives? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's very important. I do that a lot. I follow a lot of people that I don't agree with, and I also try to talk to a lot of people that I don't agree with. I think that's also important, too, and to have some sort of common ground where you can explore the ideas themselves and not

look at the person who presents the ideas as your enemy. That's a real problem today in this country, obviously. I agree. I mean, we've never been more divided in terms of right, left and the ideologies, especially when you have such a divisive president. I mean, you have this person at the very top of the heap who literally chastises people and mocks them on Twitter. I mean, you have a mocking, insulting president.

It's fucked up. Who uses social media. And there's a trickle down from that. Unquestionably, there's people that look to the guy who's at the top of the food chain as being the one who we should sort of model ourselves after in some way, shape, or form. And so the idea that people are leaning in that direction now where they weren't for eight years, it's weird. It's a weird time for interaction and debating ideas. Yeah. Well, it's also, again, one of the negative things about social media is that thing of just like the whole trolling thing. You can just say whatever you want because you don't actually have a real human being right in front of you. Yeah. Well, it's also, that's, again, one of the negative things about social media is that thing of just like the whole trolling thing.

You can just say whatever you want because you don't actually have a real human being right in front of you. That's right. You can't see their hurt expression in their face. You don't see their hurt. So people are just this unbridled reactivity that just creates more reactivity. I need to see this. I see it in my own Twitter feed. Snowballs.

With people saying things to me that I doubt they would ever say to my face. Of course. Yeah. I mean, that's what we do. That's what people do. And that's one of the things that's so bizarre about the lack of social cues. You're not standing in front of someone.

There's no consequences. It's communication in an incredibly unnatural and unrealistic way. All our lives throughout the time that we were monkeys coming out of trees, our exchanges have been face to face until very recently yes you know yes and again i know we're flogging the meditation thing and i don't want to present it as a panacea because it's not and nor is it the only approach

to increasing the sanity quotient in our society which badly needs to happen but again i do think that meditation mindfulness the sort of self-awareness that's generated through meditation can play a positive role in this, the aforementioned toxic tribalism. Because if you're so caught up in your own story, you can't, as we've discussed, have the kind of empathy that is needed to understand people who have differing views. And meditation is a way, among other techniques, to kind of just reduce how seriously,

how personally you're taking your own inner chaos. And I think that can be very useful right now. Do I think everybody in the world is automatically going to hurl themselves into the lotus position? No. But I think each individual can take a personal responsibility for making things less crazy.

I agree with you 100%. I think that's a good way to wrap this up. Yeah, bro. We're good? Thank you very much. Anything else to add before we wrap this? Thank you for putting me in the tank. I really appreciate that.

There's an expression, gratitude is the expectation of future favors. So I expect to be back in that tank. Anytime. You let me know when you're in town. We'll hook it up. And by the way, there's hundreds of tank centers all over the country now. I'm sure you're in New York, right? Yes.

I'm sure they have them. I know they have them in New York. They have them all over California now. So they're everywhere, all over the states. So find them. Thank you guys. Sure. Appreciate it.

And the book, to people, the title. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. There you go. That's it. Bye, everybody. That was three hours. Wow. Wow.