The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #94 - Comparing the two broad types of meditation, and Peter’s favorite meditation apps

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Today's episode of The Qualys is from podcast #34 – Sam Harris, Ph.D.: The transformative power of mindfulness.   The Qualys is a subscriber-exclusive podcast, released Tuesday through Friday, and published exclusively on our private, subscriber-only podcast feed. Qualys is short-hand for “qualifying round,” which are typically the fastest laps driven in a race car—done before the race to determine starting position on the grid for race day. The Qualys are short (i.e., “fast”), typically less than ten minutes, and highlight the best questions, topics, and tactics discussed on The Drive. Occasionally, we will also release an episode on the main podcast feed for non-subscribers, which is what you are listening to now. Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/qualys/   Subscribe to receive access to all episodes of The Qualys (and other exclusive subscriber-only content): https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/  Connect with Peter on Facebook.com/PeterAttiaMD | Twitter.com/PeterAttiaMD | Instagram.com/PeterAttiaMD 

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atia Qualies, a member exclusive podcast. The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for Qualification Round, which is something you do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions, topics and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of the drive. So if you enjoy the quality, you can access dozens more of them through our membership program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's quality. You've talked about this idea of noticing what is arising versus not noticing at all. Can you elaborate on this?

Yeah, so I guess I should define mindfulness, which is really the target state that one is trying to cultivate in at least this, what's the most popular type of meditation now? I mean, they're different as you alluded to, they're different types. They're two basic types of meditation where the distinction is between being lost and thought and being clearly aware of whatever the object of meditation is. So that's true for all types of meditation. Thought really is the obstacle one is overcoming when one is learning to meditate because our natural our default mode is to just be lost in thought we're telling ourselves a story all day long and we're not aware of it so once one begins to meditate one is trying to pay attention to something and this is where the two

different types diverge. The first that you alluded to, like a mantra-based or a concentration-based object of focus, is the attempt to pay attention to one thing to the exclusion of everything else. You want your attention to be absorbed in that object, and in many of those practices, the explicit goal is to do that so well that thoughts no longer arise, right? So you're really trying to get rid of thought in some basic sense. So the arising of thought in that context is a sign that you're not meditating hard enough, or one pointedly enough. Those types of practices can produce extraordinarily positive states of mind that you can feel bliss and rapture and you can actually use as

an object of meditation specific states of mind like loving kindness, which is called meta in the Buddhist tradition, or sympathetic joy or compassion or equanimity, you can cultivate specific attitudes, which if you can focus on them to the exclusion of anything else, you're inhabiting that state to a degree that most people would find unrecognizable. But the second type of meditation, which is the type I have spent much more time doing and is almost universally considered the more fundamental or the deeper practice is often described as mindfulness because that's the state you're using in the Buddhist tradition to cultivate it. Mindfulness comes from a practice called Vapasana, which is insight meditation.

And there you're not trying to selectively notice one thing or another. You are trying to break the spell of being distracted by thought. So you're trying to be aware of everything without perceiving things through this discursivity or this conceptual lens in each moment. But your attention can be much more choiceless. I mean, you can just notice whatever, in fact, you notice. You're noticing things all the time. Sounds, sensations, and moods, and thoughts.

But you're not noticing them clearly because you're thinking every moment of the day. My phone is begins for most people as a training on one object like the breath, but very quickly it becomes something that you apply to the full range of your experience. And what's nice about it, apart from all the benefits of doing it and all the things that can be realized by doing it,

this type of meditation is clearly coincident with any experience you can have. I mean, there's nothing that is excluded in principle from the meditation. You're not, you can be working out or watching a movie or I mean, there's no, there's no thing that in principle does not admit of mindfulness. And that's not true does not admit of mindfulness.

That's not true of other types of practice. Yeah, just sharing one example, because the other thing that I remember you said at the time, I said, you know, Sam, I want to really shift this practice and sort of, I want to figure out a way to experience that more and more. And you actually said, look, there are a bunch of apps that are already out there that are all pretty good. I mean, obviously, you're producing yours because you think it's going to offer something additional and I'll just make my plug for it here.

I've used every one of the apps out there and I do find yours the best. But I also realize that there's no one thing that's the best. It's the way you explain things just resonates with me and it might not resonate with the next person. But the other app that I really liked that you recommended was 10% happier, which is Dan Harris's app. No, no, no relation, of course. And even within Dan's app, there are many teachers, but there are a couple that I really like. Jeff Warren and Joseph, Joseph Goldstein, Joseph Goldstein. Yeah. Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the quality. New episodes of thes are released Tuesday through Friday each week and are published

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