The One You Feed - David Kundtz on The Art of Stopping

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

David Kundtz is a former director and presenter of Inside Track seminars and a former clergyman turned author. David has sold more than 113,000 books in English, Spanish, and Japanese and has also established a psychotherapy practice in Berkeley, CA. Eric and David discuss his book, The Art of Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep GoingIn this episode, Eric and David talk about what it means to practice “stopping” in life, including the three components and the many benefits of stopping.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, David Kundtz and I Discuss the Art of Stopping and…His book, The Art of Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep GoingStopping is doing nothing as much as possible in order to wake up, remember who you are and what you want.Stopping allows you to be still in order to access the wisdom within usThe “mountain of too much” How stopping allows us to make a distinction between what is important and not important.The numbness of moving through life and not experiencing itHow slowing down helps you to rememberTrue relaxation is one of the gifts of stoppingThe 3 components of stoppingStillpoints are opportunities to stop, breathe, and rememberUsing your creativity to bring meaning to your still pointsMaking triggers to help you remember your still pointsStopping is a form of meditationHow spending time in nature is compatible with stopping David Kundtz Links:David’s WebsiteTwitterFacebookBest Fiends: Engage your brain and play a game of puzzles with Best Fiends. Download for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play.   If you enjoyed this conversation with David Kundtz on the Art of Stopping, you might also enjoy these other episodes:A Big History of Everything with David ChristianBeing Heart Minded with Sarah BlondinGregg KrechSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you are quiet enough and still enough, you will know what's important to you and what you want, and you'll know what you don't want. And very often what you don't want is the thing the culture tells you you do. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday,

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podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is David Koons, a former director and presenter of InsideTrack Seminars and a former clergyman turned author. David has sold more than 113,000 books in English, Spanish, and Japanese, and established a psychotherapy practice in Berkeley, California. Today, David and Eric discuss his book, The Art of Stopping, How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going. Hi, David. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. We are going to be talking about your book, The Art of Stopping, How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are

always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yes, you know, I've seen that parable a while ago and I've always loved it and I've been thinking about it. And, you know, Eric, for me, it comes down to the idea of attention.

To what and to whom do you give your attention? what and to whom do you give your attention? And maybe that's another way of saying mindfulness. To what are you mindful at the moment or at any given moment? And the accumulation of those moments, the accumulation of that attention answers the question, who do you feed? It answers where do you give your priority? What do you listen to? What do you read? Who do you talk to? The daily ins and outs of one's life add up. And how you do one thing is how you do everything in some ways. So I like to think of the answer to that as to whom do you give attention? To whom do you give your mindful qualities of presence? That makes you who you are. And that answers the question of who wins. Yeah. Oftentimes we talk about time being the most precious resource, but

attention is right up there with time and they're kind of indivisible from each other in a sense. Really? But, but yeah, attention is really so important. And I think we'll spend a fair amount of time talking about attention as we move through this conversation. I want to lead us into the heart of your work, which is this concept of stopping. And, you know, this is your most recent book on it. I think you probably first introduced this idea. It's been a good number of years ago. So let's start by talking about what is stopping in the sense that you're using it here. Okay. Stopping is defined as doing nothing as much as possible. Sounds good so far.

For a long time. I'm just kidding. Okay. So doing nothing as much as possible for a short time or a long time in order to wake up, remember who you are and what you want. to wake up, remember who you are and what you want. The whole purpose of stopping, doing nothing, for a brief or a long time, is so that when you're going, you're going in the direction you want to go in, you're going with the people you want to go with, and you're going to the place that you really want to be going to.

to the place that you really want to be going to. In other words, stopping allows you, I believe, in our very, very distracted society, it's necessary to stop and be still in order to access the wisdom that I believe we all have within us that tells us what we need to know to have a successful life. It's there. We all have it. I believe we're born with that. That's a human characteristic. But we don't hear it because the noise and the distractions of the world, which are intense and attractive and everywhere. So we miss it. And we wind up some cold, gray morning

when we're too old to make many changes and say, oh, no, I missed it. To me, that's very tragic. That's the one thing you don't want to say when you wake up some cold, gray morning when you're an old man. So that's the whole purpose of stopping. Wonderful. And you bring up early in the book this idea of this modern problem of too much, right? Too much of everything, too much to do, too many choices, too much information, the list kind of goes on and on. And you say that, you know, part of the problem of too much these days is that we tend to treat

it as if it's just the same problem it's always been. And you say that it's really not the same problem it's always been. In what way is it different? Well, I think just the amount of it has changed its characteristic. It's the same kind of problem. There's more and more and more and more and more. But at one time, I call it the mountain of too much. That little hill that you could surmount when you were younger or when times were more simple, you could climb over that little hill. You could walk around that little

hill. You cram things in or you can cut things out. But it gets to a point where that little hill really has now become a mountain. And it's in your way and it's stopping you. In that sense, it's something new. And we get discouraged because we say, I should be able to do this. I've always been able to do this before. Why can't I do this now? Well, you can't do it now because there's too much. Nobody can do it. We can't do it.

Human beings can't. The amount of things facing us in life has reached the point where the human mind and soul and the whole human reality can't cope without help, without being, doing, or going in some direction, in some place that allows us the access to our wisdom. And so we're going to get into how we stop later. There's actual different components of stopping, and we're going to get to the method here in a little bit. But I first want to ask, how does stopping help with the problem of too much? Does it allow us to clarify what's really important and thus we are able to let go of lots of things that aren't important? Or does it give us some stability as we climb the mountain of too much?

In what ways is stopping help us? It helps us with the problem of too much because it allows us access to make decisions and to cut out and to make a distinction between those things that are truly important to us and those things that are not. So it gives us the power and the insight to say no to this and yes to that, rather than just taking everything as it comes into our life, as the popular culture would present it to us. It gives us discernment, I'd say would be the word. And I don't think we can have real true discernment until we have solitude, quiet, created space, so that we really can make an honest, informed decision, a decision based on the reality of our life rather than on what somebody wants us to believe. You talk about some of the consequences

of the type of life we are leading. And I love what some of these are. I'm just going to read a couple of them because I think they speak to what a lot of us are feeling, right? You say that our wisdom never finds its voice. It's drowned out by distractions. We forget what's truly important to us. And this is a really big one. I know in the coaching clients I talk to in the spiritual habits work that we do, the way you phrase it is we feel as though we are moving through life, but not actually experiencing it. Yes, there's sort of a numbness. That I think is really the result of trying to cope with the mountain of too much without first stopping. It numbs us because there's just too much. There's just too much of everything. There's too many choices. There's too many opportunities. There's too too much of everything. There's too many choices.

There's too many opportunities. There's too many of the good things as well as too many of the bad things. And with the Internet life and the social media that is so pervasive now, it just adds more and more and more and more. And it's overwhelming. It's just overwhelming. And my whole theory is based on if you are quiet enough and still enough, you will know what's important to you and what you want, and you'll

know what you don't want. And very often what you don't want is the thing the culture tells you, you do. Yeah, absolutely. You make an interesting point as we talk about going slower versus going fast. And you say slowness fosters remembering and speed engenders forgetting. Say more about that. Absolutely. That's a quote from Milan Kundera. He's a Czech novelist. His equation is, if you slow down, you remember. If you go fast, you forget. And I think that rings true to human experience. Just imagine yourself, you're walking down the street, you're not particularly thinking of anything,

and then all of a sudden you remember something, or you want to remember something. What was the name of that person that I wanted to call? And as you try to remember, you automatically slow down. You might even stop and say, okay, that's it. Then you go on your way. It's an equation that the slower you are, the more you're going to remember. And the faster you go, the more you forget. Chris must surely remember a lot at the pace he goes. He's our producer. You don't get that joke. He's the guy who's got to edit this.

He's like, I'm crying out loud. I slip digs in at him from time to time. I think that's really true. The other thing that you mentioned about this sort of numbness that comes, that numbness leads to forgetting too, because it is actual degree of emotion that makes things memorable. We actually kind of know the biochemistry at this point of what causes certain memories to get encoded. And it's certain neurochemicals that are triggered by things having an emotional experience. And so if everything is numb all the time, you just don't remember. You don't.

Which is, as somebody who's dealt with depression for a lot of my life, there's a lot of memory that's not there. It's getting better, but a lot of it there. And I think it's a combination of, yes, always moving fast and sort of being numb. Exactly. Yeah. And there's so much that we lose that is so valuable. When you stop, that can come back. If you slow down, that can come back and enrich your life. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, yeah, really., really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to get us here soon to the methods of stopping listeners are probably like well what does this mean stopping like and we're going to get there I promise soon but I want to explore just a moment more some of the gifts of stopping we've talked about the problem but some of the gifts you lay out six different gifts of stopping.

Maybe we could run through what just a couple of those are. Okay, the most important one to me is the gift of attention. Slowing down, being still, allows you to attend to the moment. It's another way of saying mindfulness, really. It allows you to be mindful, in other words, to be present in the moment, to look the person in the eye that you're actually talking to, or to be aware as much as you can of what you're actually doing. For those who are religious, for me, in my background, I was a clergy for years, attention is another way of saying prayer. It's another way of praying. Attention is prayer, which is sort of, it's a leap for some people, but I see you nodding. I think for many,

it would ring true. Yeah, the poet Mary Oliver said that attention is the beginning of devotion. Ah, beautiful. I didn't know that line. Thank you. Yeah. Another of the benefits of is what I call relaxation. In other words, to really be in a relaxed state. And so many of us these days, I think never really get to a relaxed state. You think of people, especially who are caregivers or for people who are dealing with people with chronic illness or with tensions in the family or tensions at work or now, good heavens, these married couples with three kids at home, homeschooling, two jobs. I don't want to be glib about this. I don't see how they do it. And I'm very cautious when I talk about stopping to people

like that, because that's really challenging. They have a lot on their plate. And thank God, I think it's beginning to ease up a little bit now in our country. So I hope so. But anyway, that sense of relaxation, of true relaxation, of not really experiencing stress in the moment. of not really experiencing stress in the moment. Another of the gifts that I find very, very important is, I don't know if you know James Hillman, but the Jungian concept of embracing the shadow. So many of us, with our training and the way and the kind of culture that we're brought up in,

do not like to look at the dark sides of our lives, the dark sides of our character, the dark side of anything at all. We want to keep it bright and happy and moving. Move it along. Don't stop and think because it'll get dark. Well, Jung's concept of embracing the shadow is just that, to move into those things that seem dark in your life. Embrace them. Understand them. Incorporate them into your life. Transform them from shadow to light.

And again, stopping gives you a chance to do that, mainly because it gives you a chance to identify what exactly is your shadow. Who is your shadow? What are the characteristics of your shadow personality? Stopping, being still, being quiet, being alone helps you identify that. Perfect. Thank you. Those are really important. The other ones are, I'll just hit them real quick, knowing and enjoying solitude, having better boundaries, and identifying and living out your purpose. All six of those are really important. Okay, let's move into the method of stopping. The stopping, as you describe it, has three components. Why don't you go ahead and

tell us what the three of those are and give us a little description and then we'll dive into each of them individually. Great. Okay, stopping is divided basically into three different parts, and they're arbitrary. This is not written in stone, and you can use these terms or not. It doesn't make any difference. But for the purpose of understanding what stopping is, I use these three terms. One is still points, the next is stopovers, and the third is grinding halts. And they're divided, as you might guess, by the amount of time you spend doing each one. Beginning with still points, because that's the heart and soul of stopping. That's the entrance.

That's where you get into stopping first, is by doing still points. Which are anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to maybe a few hours. In other words, a shorter amount of time, and that literally can be a few minutes, to maybe a few hours. In other words, a shorter amount of time, and that literally can be a few seconds, in which you stop, close your eyes if it's safe and possible, turn your energy in, and then just be still. Or you can say a little prayer if that's what you like, or you can give yourself an affirmation if that's something that helps you,

or you can think of someone you love. It doesn't make any difference what you do. This is the great thing about stopping. Stopping works on its own. All you have to do is shut up, be still, be quiet, be alone, and listen. That's so key, even if it's for a few seconds. So what I like to encourage people to do, and I've done this a lot with my clients, is go to the bathroom, shut the door, lock the door if you can. Look in the mirror, look in your eyes, put a little cooled water on your wrists and give yourself the message you need at the moment. You can do this, or this will pass, this too will pass, or whatever you want, or nothing.

Don't do anything. Just be still. Breathe. That's a still point. And that can last for a few seconds, a few minutes. You can go and sit in a room for an hour. This is the challenge I used to give my people in my seminars. Plan a day, some time within maybe a few days ahead, next week, early next week, or sometime in the near future. Plan a day so that you can spend a half hour alone in a room somewhere, no one else there, just you, and sit in a chair and don't do anything. Just sit there and see what that's like. Now, most people say, why in the world would I ever do that? That's the stupidest thing. Because we're afraid of it. We're afraid of it. When there's nothing going on, we get afraid and we fill it up. So think to yourself, what would you do if you had to do that? Sit in a chair for a half hour or an hour and do nothing. Just sit there. Well,

in about two minutes, you'd want to get up and walk around. I'm sure I would. Most of us would. We'll explore the still points in more detail in a minute because I think there's a lot in there. But yeah, let's move on to the second component. The second way to describe stopping is a stopover. And that's simply a longer time. That's a day, a week of going away or staying at home or whatever, of doing nothing as much as possible. I always add as much as possible. Is it really possible to do absolutely nothing? Probably not, because the monkey mind, the chatter is going all the time in our minds. So is it really possible to do absolutely nothing? Well, I don't even care about the answer to that question, because it isn't important. Do nothing as much as it's possible for you. I had one client once who said, you know, the only way I can really

do nothing is playing golf. And I thought, well, that wouldn't do it for me. But you know, if it does it for you, fine. That's the key thing. That's why I call it an art. You have to give it life, your way. If playing golf is the best you can do in regard to stopping, then do that. Playing golf is the best you can do in regard to stopping, then do that. So that's a stopover. It's just a longer time. Somebody just recently told me every week they have a me day. In other words, they just do what they want to do.

And sometimes that's nothing. Sometimes it's just fussing around. You know, I often think in regard to stopovers, I often think of kids these days. And I feel badly for them because as far as I can understand it, they don't have a lot of free time, of time just hanging out, fooling around. You know, my parents used to say to me, go outside and play. And that's what we do. We do nothing but fuss around. But kids seem to be so programmed today.

Taken here and taken there. They're made to be competitive. Because when they're hanging out like that, they're learning something about themselves. They're learning about their world. They're learning about a lot of things. They don't recognize it at the time, but that's okay. Now, the third one is a grinding halt. And there are many people who will never have a grinding halt in their lives.

A grinding halt is a very long time of doing nothing. Most people, unfortunately, get to the grinding halt stage by getting sick or having an accident, or by being in a pandemic, as we are. These are enforced grinding halts in many ways for many of us. A grinding halt like a week or two week silent retreat. Going into the mountains and camping alone for a week, for, you know, eight days, for 10 days, for two weeks, for a longer time. That's the best part of stopping, I think. In fact, that's how I discovered this whole idea of stopping is because I came to a crisis in my life. And I didn't know what to do. I was a mess, frankly.

And I was 40 and a mess. And so, to make a long story short, I went away, got a little cabin on the north coast of California, and I did nothing. I didn't know what else to do, so I did nothing. I enrolled in a watercolor class and made a few terrible watercolors, but that's all I did nothing. I didn't know what else to do, so I did nothing. I enrolled in a watercolor class and made a few terrible watercolors, but that's all I did. Later, as I reflected on that, I said, boy, that was an important time. I like to use the analogy of a computer, but I don't think it's accurate. Computer people have told me it's not a very accurate analogy. But anyway, I think of my brain scanning, scanning, scanning, scanning, scanning, like a computer does, whipping across all those zeros and ones and taking into account everything

that's gone before and everything that might happen ahead. My original discovery of stopping was a grinding halt. I was there for a month. I didn't do anything. And I really mean nothing. I cooked my own food. I went for hikes every day, walked on the beach, painted a few pictures. But during that time, what was happening for me was a clarification, a getting in touch with my inner wisdom. I'm convinced, Eric, that we all are born with this inner wisdom. It's not something we have to work for and work for and work for. No, it's there. It's free. It's in the human being. We just have to be still enough to allow it to bring us the wisdom and the understanding

that is already there. So that's a grinding halt, a longer one. And there's examples of those things that are in the book, but we might not go into those now. Let's back up and hit a little bit on still points a little bit more, because I think that stopovers and grinding halts are harder for a lot of people to find. Certainly grinding halts, as you said, I think stopovers are available. I think they're there. You know, most coaching clients I work with were

working on getting some period of quiet into every day, some period of stillness, you know, meditation of one type or another. But I really love the concept of still points. And it's something I have been really focused a lot on over the last year and a half as I developed a program called Spiritual Habits. And the heart of the Spiritual Habits program is the idea that little by little, little becomes a lot. You talk about that a lot in the book, that these little still points really add up over time. They accumulate. So for people who are saying, well, you know what, life is really busy. I might get some stopovers here and there. But to your point, the purpose of stopping is to be able to go. A lot of times still points are the only accessible point, at least to start for a lot of people.

And so I want to go into a little bit more detail there because I think they are really useful and really important. And you say that they are brief and they're meant to be used anytime, all the time and many times a day. Let's talk about some of the intervals that still points can occur in. You use going to the bathroom as a great one. You know, I certainly know I have used that countless times, and I've often used the walk to and from the bathroom as a great sort of still point or a moment to connect or practice or whatever the term you want to use. Let's talk about some other places that people might find still points in their day. Okay, one of the things that I find most people really relate to is while driving. Because most of us drive a car. When we're doing that, we're often stressed. Driving, especially in cities or really anywhere, you have to be alert and there's a degree of stress in driving

so a still point while driving is when you're stopped let's take that as one example when you're stopped, you're at a red light okay, there's a perfect time your hands on the wheel close your eyes turn your energy in

do your still point do say something, say nothing, be still, breathe. Just a few minutes. Open your eyes before the person behind you honks. And there you have it. While you're driving, if you're going long distance, you always have to, of course, be aware of safety. Safety is the most important thing. But driving can be monotonous if you're on the freeway going a long distance. A perfect time to be still, free your mind. Or another thing that really is great to do at still points is what I call noticing. Notice what's going on in your mind.

What is your chatter about? You work at a desk, and you're at your desk working, and all of a sudden, a kid that you knew in eighth grade comes into your mind. And you think, I haven't thought about her for a long time. Don't miss that. What does that mean? Why did that happen? Why did that little friend come into your mind at that point? Oh, that's interesting. Why did that little friend come into your mind at that point? Oh, that's interesting. Notice that.

Because so often we don't notice those things that are in our mind that we're thinking about. I'm convinced most of us think about a lot of things from our past. Think about our parents, or we think about our youth, or we think about yesterday. Notice why is it that you're thinking that. You might not get an answer right away, but you've noticed it. Now it's more accessible to you. And it will give you the wisdom that it might have for you at another time. You use a phrase, to do in a still point, and I think it's a nice framework, which is stop, breathe, and remember.

Stop, breathe, and remember, yes. Okay, that's the essence of it. It's so simple. Eric, as you know, all ancient spiritual traditions have taught this for eons, for ages. What I try to do with stopping is give it a Western spin for the Western mind and the Western lifestyle, the lifestyle that's really given to us. We're born into this culture, and we have to live within it. So how does the ancient wisdom get translated into my 21st century life?

You also say that in that remember phase, you know, you could remember, say, a short prayer. You could say a message you need to hear at the moment. You could do some self-encouragement. You could remember something that's important. I keep referencing the Spiritual Habits Program, but only because as I read your book, I just kept feeling like there was such a synergy. It ties together. You know, the first principle in the Spiritual Habits Program is intention and attention. And so a still point is a moment to remember, what's my intention? What was my intention? What's important about this? What matters here? Perfect. Perfect. I would often use still points. I did seminars for

stress management for nurses. I'm basically an introvert. So doing all that extroverted stuff of giving a seminar was very challenging for me. So I would give myself still points during the whole presentation, maybe 10 or 12 during the whole day. And no one even noticed that I was doing it because I would just stop for a moment. I wouldn't close my eyes. I'd just stop, maybe turn around and walk over to the podium and do this. But that was a still point for me. That was saying, as you indicated, that was reminding me, why do I do this? What's my motive? What am I trying to accomplish in this event? And so forth.

Yep. The other thing you say, and I think this is really... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Important. You say the more you use your creativity to imprint still points with your own uniqueness,

the more effective they will be. I think that's a really important point. Like, what do I want to do in my still points? Thank you for emphasizing that. That's so important. That's why we call it the art of stopping, because you bring to it yourself, your spirit, your way of doing it, and that's what's going to work. One of the things that I believe happens is when you say still points is the essence of stopping, and it is, is once you've experienced the cumulative power of still points, then you will be motivated to get a stopover. And if you're motivated, you'll get it. Yeah. If you really want it, if you want to sit in a room for a half hour, you'd find time to do it.

You find time to watch television. You find time to read a book. You find time to do a lot of things if you really wanted it. And my conviction is once you've enjoyed the pleasure of still points, you'll say, boy, that would be nice to just do nothing for an hour. Yeah, that sounds sort of interesting, even though maybe now you're saying, no, that sounds pretty horrible. Right. And I actually think it's interesting, you know, certainly a lot of people who listen to this show are going to be people who have tried meditation, are focused on meditation, they see some benefit in meditation. And so I think a lot of people in this program are listening, are likely trying for some stopovers, but I think that we underestimate the value of the still point. The reason I love the still

point so much, and the reason I keep talking about it, is because even if we get to the point where we have a 30-minute stopover, but you're calling it a stopover, I might say it's my 30-minute Zen practice each day, whatever we want to call it. Whatever, it doesn't make a difference. If I'm not finding a way to integrate these sort of still points throughout my day, it puts all of my spiritual practice, all of my deeper work into that 30-minute window, and then it leaves 23 and a half hours of the rest of the day that I just rumble along on autopilot. three and a half hours of the rest of the day that I just rumble along on autopilot. And I'm so interested in how do we take these spiritual ideas and infuse them into way more moments of life. And for that to happen, we've, as you're sort of saying with still points, we've got to

find lots of very short places to inject them. Yes, exactly. And one of the things that can help to put lots of those little still points in your day is to find triggers to which to attach them. Something that will remind you every time you put your hand on the telephone or after you hang up the telephone, a still point. Every time you go to the copy machine, a still point. Every time you go to the car, every time you slam the car door, every time you put the key in the ignition, anything, all those rituals that we do every day, many, many, many every day

before dinner, before you eat, whatever, make those the trigger for your still point. Breathe and be still. I just made a quick note here of several different still point ideas. You know, on a scheduled break, walking from one task to another in a tense situation, commuting, bathroom breaks, we hit some of those. But I love all those things you point out. And I've said this on the show before listeners have heard this a few times, but I used to use walking to and from the car when I used to go out to a day job, I would walk to and from the car. And that was always my time to be very present. I tried to sort of really take in a variety of sensory information, ground myself in my senses

back and forth. And it was just sort of, like you said, it was just a very common trigger. And once I got that down, it took a little while remembering, but soon I had it down. That was what I did in those intervals. You know, as you were talking, it reminded me of another thing that often can be very helpful for people, and that is pacing or walking a definite path. In other words, you can do stopping while moving. If you pace, for example, you'll find very often in religious orders, you'll see monks walking back and forth, praying the rosary or praying their breviary or whatever it is. But pacing a safe path, a path that you know, a path that you don't have to watch where you're walking. There's something that's called the labyrinth, a planned map of a trail that moves around and then finally ends up in the middle.

But it's all predetermined. You don't have to think about where you're going. You just follow the line in front of you. And it turns, and it goes, and it goes around in circles, and you don't have to think about it. You can just look down. That can be very, very helpful for many people, especially people who are extroverts or people who have high metabolisms. I think people with high metabolisms have a harder time with this because their natural inclination of their body is to move. I have a friend who has a very, very active metabolism, and he's always just jumping. It's like he's jumping around all the time.

And that's just the way he's built. But what really, really can help people like that is that pacing. Or just walk in a circle. And you can do it inside your house. Walk around the dining room table, whatever is safe and predictable, then that's a wonderful way to stop because you don't have to think about where you're going. Now you with stopping say it's doing nothing as much as possible. And I'm curious whether you think meditation is stopping or is that doing

something or somewhere in between or depends? somewhere in between? Or depends? Somewhere in between and depends. Yeah. I think stopping is a form of meditation. Stopping and meditation are similar. Different form is all. I've practiced meditation in my life, at periods in my life, and I'm very, very pro-meditation in the sense of a formal meditation, sitting down in a zazen and so forth. The problem is for most contemporary Westerners, they don't do it. They might have great intentions, but they don't do it because it takes a good bit of discipline. It takes a good bit of motivation to really, really sit down and do that. So let's say the purposes of stopping a meditation are the same. Yeah. And a lot of meditation teachers would say that the closer you are to your definition of

actually doing nothing, the better you're doing in meditation. You know, certainly in my tradition, the one that I'm in nowadays, Zen, you know, we talk about Zazen and there's a form of Zazen, which is literally just sitting. And that's about all the instruction you'll get. Just sit there. Right? Just sit there. That's it. Yeah.

The other thing I want to emphasize about stopping in general is to go as much as possible into nature. to the natural world. You're going to just automatically up your success and the results of your stopping activity because nature is healing. And even if it's just the local park or a walk around the block, if that's as much as you can do, okay, that's something. Look at the trees, listen for the birds, immerse yourself as much as you can in nature. And you'll find that stopping is very, very compatible with that. Well, we are at our stopping point. Oh, that's such a bad joke. I couldn't resist, Chris. You can cut that one out if you have to. But we are at our stopping point here. We're going to continue in the post-show conversation with really talking about a definition of spirituality that you have that I really love. And it brings a lot of things

together into one great definition. So we're going to talk about that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you would like access to the post-show conversation to a weekly episode I do called Teaching Song and a Poem and And the joy of supporting this show, as well as ad-free episodes, go to oneufeed.net slash join. David, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure to have you on and talk with you. And I really enjoyed your book. Eric, thank you so much. I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge,

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