The One You Feed - Jillian Pransky on Deep, Somatic Listening

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

Jillian Pransky is a Certified Yoga Therapist, a teacher and an author of the new book, Deep Listening: A Healing Practice to Calm Your Body, Clear Your Mind and Open Your Heart. In this interview, Jillian dives deep into the topic of somatic listening; what it is, why it's important, how to do it and the benefits you can expect. Restorative Yoga is an avenue for this type of work and it can be life changing to say the least. Do you experience tension in your body? Do you have unpleasant feelings? Do you feel exhausted? If your answer is yes or sometimes to any of these questions, you'll want to hear what Jillian Pransky has to say in this episode.Fin digital assistant knows your preferences, can pay bills, email on your behalf, on demand, only pay for what you use, integrate with your calendar and email try it for free at www.fin.com/wolf $60 of Fin's time/tasks to see if you like itBombas socks Jacob a friend of the show has switched his entire sock drawer to Bombas! Donates a pair of socks for every pair sold save 20% www.bombas.com/wolf offer code wolfSimple Habit on the go to calm your nerves make mindfulness and meditation easy www.simplehabit.com/wolf to get a free 7 day trial of their premium library In This Interview, Jillian Pransky and I Discuss...Her book, Deep Listening: A Healing Practice to Calm Your Body, Clear Your Mind and Open Your HeartHow she used to believe anxiety and depression was a choiceLearning to be with the bad wolfBefriending her bad wolfThat not everything can be fixedWhen surrender is neededNot being able to fix some way someone has treated usRestorative YogaPaying attention to our body and mind so that we're aware of how we shut down and open up and to be with it with opennessDeep listening to yourself can leave you more hard and cutoff or open and tenderThe tension in our body signifying the stress responsePaying attention long enough that it softens and shiftsJudging the tension we find in our bodiesGetting curious about the tension we find, breathing into itAsking "How am I still guarding myself when I don't have to be?" during Restorative Yoga"Doing Less"How the busier we are the less we have to feelListening is the act of allowingLove is the act of allowingAllowing yourself to be supported even when you're activeThat which is regular is way better than that which is a lotA little bit all the time re-wires usHow exhausting it is to be somewhere we're notOur thoughts are like social mediaForward thinking and past thinking after present moment beingLetting go vs Letting beAnalogy of salt in water: shot glass vs mason jar"The practice isn't about learning how to stay here but learning how to come back."Jillian Pransky LinksHomepageFacebookTwitterInstagramSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we're in that state where we feel more connected and whole and then go do that sort of deeper busy work, we're doing it from a different place. We're not doing it from a place of fear. 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 no 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 really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions,

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. The guest on this program is Jillian Pransky. She's taught mindfulness, yoga, and meditation for over 20 years. She serves as the director of the Restorative Therapeutic Yoga Teaching Center for Yoga Works.

Is that what that says? And a guest teacher on many renowned holistic learning centers. Her book is Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body, clear your mind, and open your heart. Isn't that what B is for? I'm just kidding. Here's the interview. Hey guys, this is Chris. I was goofing around there and I've had a lot of coffee, feeling a little slap happy. Let's get started. For those of you that have stepped up over the last couple weeks and contributed to the show to make a donation to support me as I transition from my full-time job to this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it. For those of you that are thinking about it, I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the things that you can get as an incentive. So in addition to supporting the show that you love and making sure that that show is available for all the other people out there who need it, you can get a couple things. At the $5 level per month, you get ad-free episodes, which means you wouldn't hear this pitch and you wouldn't hear the sponsor

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just like you would anything else. So you don't have to go to the Patreon site to listen to it, you'll get a feed, and you put it into your podcast app, and you can listen to all of those things. So those are some of the great benefits you get for being a supporter of the show. And again, you get the best benefit, which is supporting something that matters to you and is making the world hopefully a better place. So go to one you feed.net slash support today and sign up. Thank you. And here's the interview with Jillian Pransky. Hi, Jillian. Welcome to the show. Hello. Thanks for having me. Your book is called Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body, clear your mind, and open your heart. And we will get into that in just a moment,

but let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson, and she 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second. He looks up and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother 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. I love that parable. It's actually even in my book and it's complex for me and it has meant different things to me at different stages of my life.

Right now, it's quite complex. When I was young, all the way through my early 20s, I believed really strongly in mind over matter. I was really into choosing optimism and joy and abundance. And I believed that they were a choice focus. I applied this to everything, my work, a choice, focus. I applied this to everything, my work, exercise, lifestyle. And I was the kind of person who I literally ran three miles and three months later ran a marathon because I had that mind over matter. I was just going to think positively and do it. And I had that feeling that everything should be good over bad. In fact, when I came to yoga when I was 24, it was all about choosing light over darkness. And it wasn't until I was 30 and I had a panic attack. And for the first time, I realized that I had been choosing the good wolf in a way that I no longer think is really healthy, actually. Before I had my panic attack, my bona fide panic attack,

where I went into the emergency room with a heart attack, and I was already a yoga teacher. So when they told me I was having a panic attack, I was like, no, I'm having a heart attack. That's less embarrassing than a panic attack. It is, it is. And my family has heart disease, so it made a lot of sense. A panic attack for this mind over matter, optimistic, I can do anything kind of a girl

did not make sense. Right, right. And I always thought anxiety and depression were a choice. Until I was 30, I really believed that if that was the way you were, that was the way you were choosing to be. And it really took having my own panic attack and anxiety to realize that I had been not only starving the bad wolf, let's call it, but like giving it a really great home deep inside me. It was living well off of me. It was eating me.

and so i really had to learn that for me it wasn't an either or uh and i had to choose to nourish the good wolf in a way that i had to feel that i was able to feel more whole and more integrated and more self-acceptance and self-compassion and self-love but then to meet the bad wolf and to soothe the bad wolf and to acknowledge the bad wolf and to integrate the bad wolf, really. And it wasn't until I learned to be with the bad wolf and actually gain the wisdom of all of those feelings that were seemingly ugly or hard or bad or uncomfortable or things that I'd rather extricate rather than friend. It wasn't until I befriended them and lived with them that I could really wisely choose the good wolf and make room for the bad wolf to not be so destructive, but to offer its wisdom when it would arise.

Of course, it still arises sometimes in a way that's not so healthy. But in my practice, I'm able to sort of find that place where I can then come back to the good wolf and find balance all over again. Yeah, I think that's something I've been working with a variation on that. Some of the ethos of this whole show is about you can improve your life. There are things that we can do. There are healthy ways to be in the world. And I believe that truly. And what I've been dealing with lately, and it sort of comes up against what you are, which is what are the limits of that? Like at what point is your ability to do something run out of steam? And either that trying to do more is actually harmful or simply just ineffective.

Yeah. I think a lot of it depends on where are our resources coming from. Like all my mind over matter resources and my strength and my, it was almost a defiance against my bad wolf and not, I'm not going to be there. I'm not going to do that. It took a whole different level of self-acceptance and self-love to get the resources to still achieve great things, but from a place of sort of what I really wanted from my heart and my mind rather than just what

I wanted from my mind. Yep, totally makes sense. And I think a lot of your early career you spent doing yoga on Pema Chodron retreats. And it was something listening to Pema Chodron recently that hit both my girlfriend and I, which was this idea that not everything can be fixed. Yeah, yeah, that's been the biggest pill to swallow. That's a good word for it. Yeah. Yeah. We're up against that with some family members and diseases that they're just not going to get better. This isn't like, oh, well, maybe it'll turn around. It's,

you know, it's a degenerative disease. That's, well, it's Alzheimer's in this case. And so we're really up against that. Like everything that we would normally do in a situation to cope with and to help a person and all that, you're like, that stuff just doesn't apply. I mean, some of it certainly does, but the fixing it piece doesn't apply. And coming up against the limits of that, like, okay, this is where surrender is needed. Yeah, I find that in a lot of different areas, whether it's not being able to fix a diagnosis or not being able to fix the way someone did treat us or something that really did happen that we are creating room for forgiveness for so we can feed a different wolf. And being the mother of a 15-year-old, I want to be there for him as a good wolf.

But every time he shares with me what's ailing him, I want to fix it. And I'm really, all these things that are not fixable, but the wisdom really is also in creating space that comes back to also where the fear and the connectedness can also live together. Yep. So let's transition to your book a little bit. And the title of the book is Deep Listening. So what does that mean to you? What's deep listening? For me, deep listening is very pervasive in my life. It was formal practice on my meditation cushion and specifically in restorative yoga, which

is different than yoga that has a lot of movement to it. It's more like the Shavasana at the end of yoga class. It's still, it's restful. They're poses that you lay down in different shapes over props and really do conscious relaxation in positions where you're body scanning and visiting parts of your body that are either tense, tight, achy, uncomfortable, or open and expansive and vibrant. But as we rest, really paying attention to ourselves, visiting with ourselves in an open way so that we can respond to what we find calmly and openly and curiously or compassionately. So for me, deep listening, it's really about paying attention to ourselves, our body, our mind, others in conversation in a way that we are aware of how we shut down and how we open up.

Simultaneously are able to, with that awareness that we're shutting down or opening up, be there with ourselves to stay as open as possible. Yeah. In the book, I like what you say. You say it isn't so much a specific technique as it's an approach to how we receive and respond to ourselves and others. Yeah. What I've definitely found, again, this goes back to the parable, is that the way I listen to myself, the way I listen to others, but the way I listen to myself will either leave me feeling more hard and more cut off or more soft and more open. It will leave me feeling either more need for protection or more available. The way I listen to

myself will either feed my bad wolf or feed my love, my compassion, my understanding. So deep listening is really, well, then how do we do that? How do we get grounded? How do we get present? How do we stay soft and open even when we feel uncomfortable with what it is we're listening to. So specifically when you say, you know, how I listen to myself, you know, has these outcomes, like what sort of listening, you mentioned the body as one, what are the other things that you're listening for? Well, when I say the body, what I really mean is most specifically it winds up being tension. And tension is really the stress response, finding a home in our body. So when you're listening to tension, it might feel like pain,

or maybe it feels numb, or maybe it feels restricted and breath isn't just in there. But if you stay with that area long enough, what bubbles up is emotion and thought. Tension has a psycho-emotional component to it. So you wind up listening to language, to imagery, to memories, to emotions. I don't know what it is that I would be listening to. It's whatever really arises when I pay attention to myself. And most often when I pay attention to myself, what arises is things that are not working out so well, problems that I'm solving, ruminating over disappointments or sadness or anger or confusion or just busyness, just a list of things to do. But rarely do I sit down and listen and all these lovely feelings and thoughts bubble up. up. So, you know, I guess if I had to really shorten the definition, it winds up being a lot of listening to the way we diminish, we don't feel comfortable, or I don't feel comfortable, and paying attention long enough that that softens, and it shifts.

So talk to me about restorative yoga, deep listening, and meditation. Is this restorative yoga where you are sort of listening to your body, is that a substitute for meditation? It's really an integrated practice. And this is my approach as a meditation teacher, a mindfulness teacher, and a yoga teacher. And anybody who's any one of those things is always going to take everything they've studied and introduce it in a way that's meaningful to them. And so the way I use restorative yoga is very much the way a meditator may sit on the cushion and listen and practice listening to their thoughts. It's a little bit more of an embodied meditation practice. It's really the middle ground

where a bodily somatic movement practice meets a still meditation practice. It's great for meditators who are uncomfortable sitting up. It's great for yogis who are not comfortable sitting. But really what I love most about it is because I studied these two things separately. I studied really traditional forms of meditation. I started

very young with TM. At nine years old, my mother brought my family to TM as really a threat to my father. It was like TM or marriage counseling. Wow, that's a tough choice, actually, when you get down to what meditation can be like in certain cases. It's true. It's true. But it stuck for me. So I have a lot of formal meditation training. I have a lot of formal what we call asana training. And what I love is sometimes meditation practice can be too much of the mind, depending on how you study it and whose guidance you're following or how you want to get caught up. And a lot of traditional language, at least 20 years ago when I began studying, was how to get over yourself. And you are not your thoughts and you are not your body, especially from a yoga meditation point of view.

You know, you are not these things. You are something else. And it never really resonated with me. I, in my yoga training, studied tantric yoga, which is very much of the body on the earth, on this planet, living this duration of time in a body. And so for me, restorative yoga is just truly it's conscious relaxation. And it's a way to meditate, really incorporating the somatic felt experience. Yeah, that's an area that I have felt I would do well to spend more time. I hit these points where

I'm like, I noticed these blockages of tension in my body. And my response similar to our, our early conversation is like, all right, I'm going to lay on this foam roller until this thing goes away, which I have recognized, even though I thought, well, if I can breathe into it, it's okay. But I think I've hit this realization where I'm like, I don't think that's what my body wants. I don't think that's working. I've been drawn to more somatic practices lately. Yeah. I love that you bring that up because, you know, most people's response when they find something that they want to change or shift, they're, you know, not you, but most of us, me, there's a judgment about it. You know, and it's something that we're trying to change that's bad.

Right. And we have this either or, right? We have this either or right we have this either or and what happens neurologically physiologically when we find tension and we're upset about it when we judge it when we have an anger towards the the tension that's still there after all these years and all these practices whatever it is that we're not okay with finding gets better at hardening. And so when you find tension and you have judgment, it leaves you feeling,

it actually literally physiologically cuts off more. Interesting. But leaves you feeling more separate and alone as opposed to finding it, relaxing with it, and or just being curious about it, inviting the breath around it, whatever that language that may resonate be. You then begin to create the conditions for it to shift, to change, to open, to soften, to set the conditions for healing both in your body and also for the thought pattern to change. Interesting. Yeah, I've seen restorative yoga. Is yin yoga a variation on this?

Some people put them in the same category. The way I teach restorative yoga is to take off all unnecessary work. So I would prop a body so that there is, I'm bringing the ground up to meet the body where there might be physical limitations. There should be no sensation of stretch, no sensation of strain. So if you're fully propped and you're relaxing, but you still notice you're tense or you're holding on and you don't have to be, that's what we're working with. Whereas in yin yoga, there's actually some stretch and strain on purpose

that stimulates tissue in a particular way. I'm fully, mostly, only interested in restorative yoga as a way of looking at how am I still guarding myself when I don't have to be at how am I still guarding myself when I don't have to be? How am I still protecting myself when I don't have to be? How am I still gripping and holding on to myself when it's not necessary? Because I'm safe, because there's props underneath me, because I'm quiet. All this stuff is still happening and yet it doesn't. So what is that? because I'm quiet. All this stuff is still happening, and yet it doesn't. So what is that?

And once I start to pay attention to what is that, storylines come up. All sorts of ideas surround why I'm still holding myself together. Things I need to look at, things I need to spend time with, things I need to befriend. Interesting, because I've often heard from yoga practitioners like, well, you'll do a certain pose, and you might start to get emotions or thoughts. And yoga practitioners like, well, you'll do a certain pose and you might start to get emotions or thoughts. And I'm like, that has never occurred for me. You know, I'm intuitive. And as we're talking that some of that is probably that I'm still holding. Yes. And also a lot of our yoga is there's so much movement involved and there's so much instruction involved and there's so much left brain language involved, and it asks you to do things. And that's different than the kind of yoga I'm talking about.

The kind of yoga I'm talking about is asking you to do less. In fact, don't do anything. And usually the language is much more right brained. It's imagery. Let the earth cradle you. Feel your breath soften you inside. Allow your breath to be received by a softening belly. I'm taking away outer stimulus.

I'm taking away activity. I'm taking away you learning how to move your body from a left brain follow instruction place. I'm taking all that away. place. I'm taking all that away. I'm leaving you on the ground, on support with nothing left to do, but allow yourself to be supported by the ground. Allow your breath to come and go without resisting it and notice what's going on. Of course, just like meditation, the superficial first layer is going to be all the busyness of your thoughts, but that's the gift of doing it. A bodily practice is we're used to focusing on our breath and meditation, depending on what kind you do. Well, doing body scans and spending time in your body, it's not like yoga nidra where you're going

from place to place, to place, place to place to place on each breath. There's time. There's time to move in. There's time to feel. There's time to notice. There's time to notice that you're making up stories about what you're noticing and stopping doing that. Just like a meditation practice. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

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It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's so interesting how certain things land on us depending where we are in our progress. Because I read your book, I don't know when we originally had this scheduled, I think like April perhaps. Yeah. So I read your book in April and I enjoyed it. And yet now talking to you, I'm like, there's a whole nother level there that I did not get. I've gone on a fairly long,

silent retreat in the interim. And some of what I got in that was this idea of, okay, I need to be doing less. Part of my practice is doing less in certain ways. And it sounds now that like a lot of what you're teaching is very aligned with that. Yeah. And it's interesting, but how doing less will keep on having new meanings. Yes. That's not an experience so much. It's something I'm growing. Well, no, I do have some experience of it. I mean, I think what I got out of the, in the silent retreat was I realized all the levels of continuing to let go that I had not even fathomed existed.

Yeah. I'm not sure we can ever end that particular exercise. Yeah. I believe it. I just kept going, all right, I've let go. And I'm like, nope. Yeah. It was this idea of awakening to our true nature and that starting to realize that like, I'm not going to find my true nature by going somewhere. Yeah. And so many of the things that we do, whether it be yoga or meditation or other practices, there's an element of going somewhere or doing something and realizing like all that takes away from not that it's all bad. takes away from, not that it's all bad. I mean, everything has its place. But for me,

it hit a point where it was like about doing less, which is counterintuitive to me. It's not, my nature is not, you know, as we talked about in the beginning, my nature is to like, go do, you know, and I'm learning at a deeper level about the limits of that. I find for most people, at least the people I attract, is that most people, we're trained in doing more. Everything about our life is set up to train us to do more, achieve more, succeed more. And then you put on top of that, that the busier we are, the less we actually have to feel, the less we have to observe, the less we have to make friends with. And there's the slowing down physically, there's the slowing down mentally,

but there's the allowing that is even this other worldly thing. It comes a little bit in that can't fix category that we mentioned earlier, but there's also allowing that like, listening is really the act of allowing. Love is really the act of allowing. Breathing is really the act of allowing. You know, once I sort of started getting the very basics, which was like, oh, I hold myself off the ground. Well, what do you mean by that? I mean, there's a chair underneath me, but I'm not really sitting down in it. Or there's a bed underneath me and I'm not really laying down on it. You can think of like, when you pick up, have you ever picked up an infant or like a toddler that was awake? And they were one particular weight when they were awake and interested and out in the world,

and then they fell asleep in the car and you you had to bring them in the house, and they weighed all of a sudden 20 pounds more. Well, that difference is a lot like, I'm always off the ground. I'm never really allowing myself to be in support. And allowing myself to be supported, even when I'm active, is a slowing down. That was a huge lesson, allowing breath to come and go, especially as yoga teachers or even in meditation, maybe not so much as yoga. It gets very confusing because we say, breathe in, breathe out. And we have this idea that we are in charge and we are in control and we are doing the breathing. But when you really learn sort of that literal mechanisms of the respiratory system and that breath comes to you and goes, that allowing, how do we relax and allow it to come and go without doing anything? That's a whole nother level of slowing down the mind. We're not even talking about the mind yet or the emotions

or anything else, but just those two things, allowing the ground to hold us, allowing the breath to come and go, can set the stage for some of these layers of doing to begin to become obvious for the first time. I don't have time for all this. Ain't nobody got time for that. No, it's, like I said, it's just so interesting the way things land on us differently. So let's go a little further into the book. So there was something that you talk about in the book that I did resonate with completely, and I believe in so much, which is a little plus often equals a lot. Yeah, yeah. Big fan of that.

Big fan of that. So talk to me about that. I literally believe that in my yoga practice, in my meditation practice, whether it's when I first started, I mean, everything was more is better. Yeah, everything about my life until I was 30 was more is better. When I would practice, especially the way more senior practitioners made it feel like I should be practicing for two hours and have my job and have relationships and keep a house. Really, for me, it could be five, 20, 60 minutes. It's the amount that what is regular is way better than what is a lot. Yeah.

But I had this amazing experience, which I do write about in my book, that I would love to share. I find that people can really sort of understand it this way. My son was born anaphylactic to wheat and gluten. So that means if I ate a pretzel and kissed him on the lips, we'd be in the hospital. He'd stop breathing. we'd be in the hospital. He'd stop breathing. And as you know, when toddlers are little, although now there's gluten-free food on the market, but they share Cheerios and cookies and everything is gluten. So it was a pretty intense childhood for him. When he was 10, he was invited into this clinical trial study where they induced an anaphylactic reaction and they discovered

exactly the amount of wheat that his immune system would read as the enemy and threaten his life. And they went just a notch under that. And it was microscopic. To you and I, it was literally less than a grain of sand. They started introducing the smallest amount of gluten to his system. And every two weeks, we would go back to the hospital, and they would check out how his system was reading this teeny, teeny little amount. Well, over three years of being modulated every two weeks of a little bit, a little bit, over three years, he is no longer allergic to wheat or gluten. And his system has completely rewired,

100% rewired its entire orientation to what would have killed him. And we were flying from Iceland back to America. We were over the water. And he accidentally ate half a wheat sandwich. He recognized it very quickly, actually. But at that point, we were two and a half years into the study. Had we had been two and a half years before that, you would have read about us in the news. That is such a clear and great example of that concept. Regularity, a little bit all the time rewires us. Yep. Yep. I am such a fan of the idea of small steps. I think the thing I say often on the show is you'd be amazed what a series of small steps taken day after day after day will accomplish.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm the result of a 25-year-long practice. And by the time I really started practicing, I was not all or nothing. I was well into modulating. But it has changed my life. And it changed some really intense relationships that never would have changed if I took a sledgehammer to them. never would have changed if I took a sledgehammer to them. Yep. So another thing that you say in the book, and I just really resonated with this a lot, you basically say that when we're somewhere else rather than here, expending our energy on planning for the future or rehashing the past, we feel drained. It's exhausting to be somewhere other than where we are. Oh, yeah.

I illustrated that with a story that Thich Nhat Hanh told on a retreat. He tells this story about a reporter that goes to Plum Village. Thich Nhat Hanh is a master Vietnamese monk, and he has Plum Village in France. This reporter goes to visit to do a, I think a magazine story on him. And before he does the report, Thich Nhat Hanh says to him, you need to come on our daily meditation walk. It's lovely. It's easy. And then we'll do the report later. So they go on this very long, very graceful, very slow, very lovely walk in a beautiful field, greenery and flowers and children and handholding and sunshine. And it couldn't be more peaceful and easeful. And when they were done,

Thich Nhat Hanh said to him as they met to prepare for the report interview, you know, how was that for you? And the reporter was just like, interview. How was that for you? The reporter was just like, horrible. I am exhausted. And Thich Nhat Hanh says to him something like, why? How can you be exhausted? That was such an easeful replenishing walk. It was for replenishment. And he explains how the whole time he was thinking about his article and his interview, and he was worrying about what questions he was going to ask him. Was he going to forget this? And what angle would he take on it? And he was never even on that walk.

Everybody finished that walk replenished and nourished and more awake to connect. And he finished it depleted and separate and not available. Yeah. Social media is one of those things that I have noticed that when I engage in it, I feel depleted in some way afterwards. And I think that is as good a description as why is because I am not at all present at all for any of that. And I've just, it's something I've noticed about myself. I just was like, it just takes something out of me that I can't articulate until I sort of read that. And I went,

I think that's it. You know, it's funny. I think of our thoughts like social media, like we're always scrolling, you know, whether we, whether we're literally looking at our phone or not, like we're just scrolling in our head. Yeah. That's a great way to think of it. And I mean, I think, you know, I'm not one of those people that believes like, there is time where planning for the future or rehashing the past is useful. It's a useful activity. You know, how could I have done that differently? But how often I do it to the amount of time it's useful is so far out of proportion. Yeah. You know, it is absolutely critical and useful and is one of the great things that makes us human. But I think, you know, we're way out of balance with it. Well, can I just say, I also find that it's most effective and productive to do that hashing the past or thinking the forward after we've actually been relaxed and nourished and calm. we've actually been relaxed and nourished and calm. And when we're in that state where we feel more connected and whole and then go do that sort of deeper busy work,

we're doing it from a different place. We're not doing it from a place of fear. We're not doing it from a place of defensiveness. We're doing it from a place of what's really a wise choice now and what can I really learn? Yeah, I mean, I definitely have found for me that when I'm meditating and doing it more intensely at periods that after that, the level of thought that I have, you know, I know that in meditation, you know, settle down the thoughts, but what occurs in my thoughts after that is so much more effective. Yeah. You know, when I go on like a retreat, I try and limit the time that I let my brain just run. You know, I'm like, all right, this is not what I'm here for.

I'm going to be more conscious about how I use my thought. But when I do give it a little bit of space, I'm like, wow, you know, like, boy, is that thinking clear or concise or, you know, just great ideas come. 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.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. I love this because this is something else I've been thinking about lately. It's the idea of letting go versus letting be. Yeah, that was sort of, I guess, a little bit like the way I was thinking more about the bad wolf, good wolf parable as well. Because when I started yoga, when I wanted it to all be light, all be good, all be right. I was on a mission. If I just do this, I'll be good. So that means everything that I found that I wasn't happy, I needed to let go. That wasn't a good part of me.

And that language of letting go, I feel, is really tricky, especially when you're working with others, when you're in community and you're all trying to understand what harmony and wholeness might feel like, the language of letting go can be, oh, you just release your grip. But for a lot of people, the language of letting go means getting rid of something that's not good, getting rid of a part of them. And it sets up a binary system. It sets up a dogmatic view, which I feel like just charges what it is we're not comfortable with. So letting be is a little bit more like making space. And I love the salty solution example, which is, it's also hard to understand, well, how do I make space for something? So if you had a tablespoon of salt and a shot glass, and you put the tablespoon of salt

in the shot glass of water, you'd have a particular salty solution. But if you took the tablespoon of salt and you put it in a bigger glass, like a mason jar, rather than a shot glass, you'd have a different salty solution. And if you used a bucket, you'd have another salty solution. So every time you make the container bigger, that same salt, that same thing you wanted to get rid of, that same thing that was uncomfortable or bad or angry or hurt, that saltiness, when you relax your body and you let go of tension, your container literally gets bigger. Your breath gets bigger. literally gets bigger. Your breath gets bigger. Your mind gets bigger. And what was salty has more space to not be such a concentrated solution and be so overwhelming or in control.

So rather than getting rid of the salt, which you really can't do anyway, all of our experiences are always going to be part of who we are. You make room for it, and you let it be. And in that case, it sort of dissipates and becomes maybe some a wise piece of reference material or helps guide you in some way overall, but it doesn't control how you feel, how you act, what you listen for, what you do. Yeah, that's a really great analogy. You know, my experience with letting go versus letting be would be when I would know that the wise thing to do is to let something go. And yet, it's not going, you know, like, I should let go of that. And I'm trying, but I'm still thinking about it. I'm still upset about it. It's still right there. And then that turns into I'm failing. The wise person would let this go. And yet, and so for me, that let it be

was so much better. Like if it's still there and it's still bothering me, it's still there and it's still bothering me. All I can do in that moment is to let it be. Yeah. And my wisest teachers, Pema Chodron, what I feel like I'm learning from her is the let it be. Like, I'm not so sure she would use the language of letting go in the same way that a lot of, you know, like maybe when I was less studied or less matured or less experienced I may have used. Yeah. Oh, she changed my life with the book, When Things Fall Apart. It was the first time, and I had been exposed to spiritual concepts for a fair amount of time. It was the first time I was like, really got like, oh, okay, it can just be here. I can just let what's happening be present and that I don't have to try and make it go away.

Incredibly difficult time for me, but permanently in the way that, you know, and I think that's a lesson, obviously, that I continue to learn at deeper and deeper levels. But yeah, that is such a profound idea. And that let it be is a continuation of our conversation of can't fix things, can't fix everything. It's a continuation of allowing, learning to allow. And even that let it be is the conversation of slowing down, you know, not being on top of everything and controlling everything and trying to work it all out is, it is all of those conversations are at the heart of Let It Be. And it's a really good Beatles song. Indeed it is.

You've got a line in here that speaks to this a lot. And you said that all my efforts at relaxation used to be about getting better. Yeah, I was gonna be a good relaxer. Yes, are you? Sometimes. to be a good relaxer. Yes. Are you? Um, sometimes it's my, it's my life work, which should say something about how important it is to me. But you know what I find, which I'm heartened that, you know, I do hear from the people that I, I glean the most wisdom from is that just when I think I've had this incredible insight to how I can consciously relax always and more often,

I'll lay down the next day and I'm all bound up again and all wound up again. And I'll tell you what I'm really good at. I'm really good at re-relaxing. Elaborate. I don't really think the idea is to stay relaxed or to relax instantly. I think it's to notice when we're not relaxed. I think it's to notice how we're not relaxed. I think it's to notice how we're resisting relaxation. And when I say relaxation, I don't mean how we're laying down on the couch doing nothing. I mean, how are we hardening and protecting ourselves from the present moment that we're in?

That's what I mean about relaxation. How are we hardening and protecting ourselves from the present moment that we're in, in the environment around us and within us? And in that sense, I'm always hardening. I'm always hardening against the environment within me. I'm always hardening against the environment out of me. I'm really good at noticing that. I'm really great, actually, at noticing that I'm hardening, which I think makes me a good practitioner because it invites me to re-relax and practice all over again. And let me tell you, I practice every day, all day long. Yeah. This is another line that I pulled out from the book, which is the practice isn't to

figure out how to stay here. It's learning how to come back. There's so many levels that that's wise, but one of them is that if we expect that we'll stay permanently relaxed or peaceful or that we'll stay permanently relaxed or peaceful or calm or whatever, then we end up being very disappointed in ourselves. And we end up using self-improvement almost as a way to beat ourselves. Yeah, exactly. I think that that's how I said that was a hard pill to swallow with the fix it. I think one of the hardest but most profound aspects is coming to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to practice this every day, all day long for the rest of my life. Like that it's not an arrival line. As disappointing as that is, it's also super liberating. Once you accept it, I mean, I agree completely. I think that is a learning for me has been like, there's no end point here. And once I recognize and accept that

it is very liberating. Initially, it's like, oh, for crying out loud, like, you know, like, oh, when is it going to be over? But recognizing that that's not the way that things work is tremendously liberating. And at least it has been for me. Yeah, it has been for me too. Well, Jillian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I'm really glad that we got to have this conversation. We'll have links in the show notes. People can find you and your book and all that.

And you and I are going to have a little post-show conversation where we're going to talk about do-overs and being like an hourglass. A couple practices you have. So, listeners, if you're interested in the post-show conversations, you can go to whenyoufeed.net slash support, and you can learn how you can be a supporter of the show and get access to those. But thank you so much, Jillian. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. I enjoyed it, too. Okay. Take it. Thank you. I enjoyed it too. Okay. Take care.

Thank you. Bye. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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