The Rich Roll Podcast - Light Watkins on The Inner Gym: How Meditation Can Train Consciousness For Happiness

Episode Date: August 31, 2015

I want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. So why is it so hard to just be happy? Many self-help gurus present happiness as a choice. The idea that happiness can be produced whenever we want, irrespective of circumstance. Simply learn to flick a certain mental switch and voila! It's an intoxicating idea. But is this axiom actually true? Meet Light Watkins. Friend, teacher and expert on mindfulness and meditation, Light proffers some interesting and perhaps somewhat controversial counterpoint perspectives on a question that deeply concerns all of us: how to best cultivate happiness? First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Beyond his beguiling good looks, Light Watkins is pretty much the coolest name ever. Right? On a more earnest note, I would characterize Light as a generous, highly accessible and contemplative entrepreneur of mindfulness — always convivial, impressively composed, and quick with a laugh. He has been operating in the meditation space for over 15 years and has been teaching Vedic Meditation since 2003. He's personally taught nearly 2,000 people to meditate, including bankers, artists, politicians, CEOs, care takers, educators, comedians, rock stars, students, and seekers of all kinds. He is the author of The Inner Gym: A 30-day Workout for Strengthening Happiness*, a frequent blogger, TEDx speaker and founder of The Shine Movement. A mashup of TED, Hotel Café & The Self-Realization Fellowship, The Shine is an all volunteer organization that hosts periodic gatherings that use music, film, philanthropy and storytelling to inspire people to do more, give more, and be more. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including: * a primer on Vedic Meditation * training consciousness like we train the body * the importance of consistency in daily routines * the distinction between knowledge & understanding * Skepticism of new-age gurus & practices * the image problem with meditation * de-excitation of the mind through mantra * the relationship between consciousness & restfulness * the impact of meditation on insomnia * the difference between biological and chronological time * meditation impact on the fight or flight response; and * strategies for strengthening happiness Light inspires me. I love this guy. After listening, I think you will too. I sincerely hope you enjoy our exchange. How do you cultivate happiness? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below. Peace + Plants, Rich

Previously I thought that meditation was just about sitting there thinking about my to-do list or conversations and so actually there's a deeper place. But immediately after you come out of that, you definitely feel a sense of wholeness that wasn't there before. And you feel a sense of relaxation that you may not have had before. that you may not have had before. And once you have it so many times, those two things, wholeness and relaxation, start to stabilize, and you find that the gap in between something happening and you reacting to it starts getting wider and wider and wider,

and things happen, like crazy things can happen, and you find yourself just kind of sitting in it and being more responsive as opposed to reactive. That's meditation and mindfulness teacher Light Watkins and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. All right, what's up, everybody? How are you doing? Welcome to the show, or welcome back if you're a longtime listener. My name is Rich Roll, and I am the host of the podcast that bears my name, the podcast where I sit down with the outliers, the paradigm breakers, the big forward

thinkers, and in the case of this week's guest, the paradigm breakers, the big forward thinkers. And in the case of this week's guest, the purveyors and the practitioners of the ancient, across all categories of excellence and positive culture change to mine the tools, the insights, and the principles that ultimately can help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for subscribing to my weekly newsletter. If you want to support this show, it's simple.

Do us a quick solid, give us a review on iTunes. Only takes a moment, helps us out a lot. And before your next Amazon purchase, first click through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. You can find it right there on the main podcast page. Will not cost you anything extra. Really doesn't take any extra time. And it's just a great free way to support the mission. And it really does put some nice wind in our sails. So thank you so much, everybody who has made that a practice. So I just got back from a couple days in Palo Alto.

I was in and around Stanford University, my alma mater, always great to be back there. And I did a couple really cool podcasts. The first one was with a Stanford biology professor by the name of Craig Heller. And he just so happened to be my human biology professor back in the day. I think it was around 1986. And he has been actively engaged in some really interesting research on human thermoregulation, specifically the impact of heat on peak athletic performance. And he's one of the minds behind some very compelling pioneering technology that's proven extraordinarily effective in helping athletes maintain optimal core temperatures with some pretty astonishing results. So pretty excited about that one. And

the second one was with a Princeton Fulbright scholar, Cambridge educated young professor by the name of William McCaskill. He's only 28 years old, and he's about to start a professorship in philosophy at Oxford in the fall. And he's the main guy behind this new, very interesting social movement called Effective Altruism, which is essentially a scientific reason and logic-based approach to trying to determine how to use our time and our resources to create the most good in the world. He's a fascinating, brilliant young guy, and I'm really excited about both of these interviews. So you have both of those to look forward to in the near future. All right, but let's get to today. So I think that we can all agree that we all want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. And most of us perceive this quest for happiness as a choice. In other words, that we can simply choose to be happy whenever we want, wherever we find ourselves, irrespective of circumstances. But is this actually true?

Well, today's guest, my friend and meditation and mindfulness teacher and expert, Light Watkins, he's got some pretty interesting, if not somewhat controversial, opinions on the subject. So, who is Light Watkins? Well, beyond having perhaps the coolest name of all time, Light is a really awesome and thoughtful guy who has been operating in the meditation space for about 15 years and has been teaching Vedic meditation since 2003. He's personally taught nearly 2,000 people how to meditate, including bankers, artists, politicians, CEOs, educators, comedians, rock stars, students, seekers of all types. And he's also a published author of a book called The Inner Gym, a 30-day workout for strengthening happiness. He's a blogger. He's a frequent contributor to MindBodyGreen, where I also contribute. He's a TEDx speaker. And he's the founder of something called

the Shine Movement, which has been described as sort of a mashup of TED Talk meets Hotel Cafe meets the Self-Realization Fellowship. The Shine is an all-volunteer organization that hosts periodic gatherings that use music, film, philanthropy, and storytelling to inspire people to do more, give more, and be more. It's a really cool thing, and we're going to talk about that today. And in addition, we cover a lot of ground. Some of the things we talk about are the importance of consistency in daily routines, The difference between knowledge and understanding. Skepticism in the yoga and meditation space. How to de-excite your mind and combat insomnia.

And how you can strengthen happiness. So I'm really proud of this conversation. I'm proud to be a friend of Light. He's a great guy. I hope you guys enjoy this. So without further ado, you guys want to talk to light let's talk to light sorry it's a little uh balmy it's like 100 degrees out we don't have air conditioning in this room

so it's dry heat so it's not like you're in um alabama which is where it's a little humid out for la i think you know it's it's a little it's. I think, you know, it's, it's a little, it's a little dank, but you know what? It's worth it to be here with you. Thank you for saying that. I was going to say in your third eye, we can just pretend we're in India, right? You're back in India and we'll just set that stage. So I thought a cool way to begin this would be if you could kind of set the energy for the interview and we could do like

a real quick kind of meditation to get the energy right what do you think uh we do that yeah we do that sure so um let's just uh make sure we're comfortable i always like to be comfortable when i'm meditating and we'll just close the eyes for a second. And we'll just kind of do a quick scan of the body, starting with the toes and then going up the legs and just relaxing, you know, just relaxing and releasing anything that seems to be a little tight, tense. Right? And and releasing anything that seems to be a little tight, tense, right?

And get to the waist and the stomach and just kind of let that stomach just relax. You know, in L.A. we have a tendency, or at least I have a tendency, to kind of flex the stomach a little bit too much. So just let that go. Let the shoulders go. And's take it down the arms just let the fingertips kind of soften i'm going up through the neck and to the head and let's take a deep breath in through the nose fill up the whole torso and then open the mouth inside out and then open the mouth and sigh it out and then open the eyes and i think we're ready to go good man i like it yeah i keep it simple already yeah it's amazing what just a real brief reset

like that can do exactly yeah i was driving uh back from my office, back to the house to do this. And, you know, I woke up this morning feeling pretty beat up, super tired. Like we had, I put in two days of pretty hard run workouts and then we had company over yesterday. And then I had to go to my office late last night to get a podcast up. So I didn't get to bed until like, I like to go to bed at like nine or 10 and I didn't go to bed until like two. Woke up early, not feeling great. Went to my office preparing for this interview and I'm driving back over here and I'm like, man, I'm tired. You know, I'm tired, but I feel good now. Where's your office? It's just down, it's just a couple exits down the highway. Well, I mean, there's so much,

it's real quiet in our house right now, but that's not what it usually is. It's like there's a lot of kids running around. There's a lot of action and a lot of activity. It's hard for me to focus. So I just have a tiny little office where I can go and do my thing. Yeah, I feel the same sometimes. You know, in L.A., you drive so much, and it's just kind of isolated in the car, and you can get a little bit sleepy.

And so I'll often pull over to the side of a road or go into some quiet neighborhood and you can get a little bit sleepy and so i'll often pull over to the side of a road or go into some quiet neighborhood and just park under a tree and just close my eyes for like 10 minutes and and just meditate and for a few just as a reset yeah it's amazing how much energy you can get from doing that it's great uh my problem is i get like i'm my my thing is I'm wired and tired. You know, like I have the anxiety that prevents me from being able to just spontaneously take a quick nap. And it also prevents me from taking that time to do the thing that will make me feel better because my mind is racing, right? Even though I'm tired.

So I get into that cycle, which is hard for me to break. So I get into that cycle, which is hard for me to break. Of course, when my meditation practice is, you know, is happening, I don't experience that. But, you know, I'm in that thing where I go in and out of it, you know. I'll do really well. I'll have, you know, I'll have periods where I'm just killing it, you know, every day and I'm feeling great. And then something intervenes and I fall out of it. It's just like anything else. It's like your eating habits or people who go to the gym for a while and fall off or what have you.

So consistency is always the thing that I'm trying to get on top of. Yeah, I'm going through a thing right now with my diet, just trying to eat a lot cleaner. I used to eat really clean for years and years, and then I just kind of fell off. I didn't really fall off three years ago, but I just kind of made a decision to be a little more relaxed with things. I started traveling a lot. You know, it's really hard to eat a good diet when you're always on the road. Throws your rhythm off. I was on the road every four weeks for about two weeks.

Wow. And, uh, yeah, I just, I just got, it was just overwhelming to always pre-plan meals and take stuff on the airplane. And now, you know, they make you throw half your stuff out when you get to the airport, which sucks. So, um, yeah, so I kind of let, let go of some of my restrictions and now I'm a lot more laxed about it but i want to get back into i want to get back to just being a little more aware of what i'm putting in my body well i can help you with that yeah you can help me with the meditation part how about that i figured so much i'm in the right place it's that thing uh it's that idea of uh self-knowledge will avail you nothing because i have all the tools I need. I know enough. And,

you know, I've done podcasts with our mutual friend, Charlie. I did a podcast with Andy Puticombe from Headspace, which was great. You know, I've had, you know, I've had the opportunity, the good fortune of having amazing conversations with people that do what you do. So I get it. I understand it. It's the implementation part, of course, that is the thing that I'm still attempting to master. And I think part of it, and I speak to this, but I'm also a victim of it, is this idea of perfection that always trips me up. Like if I can't do it, if I'm not doing it all the time, every morning, and I set aside the time, then I shouldn't be doing it at all. You know what I mean? And that prevents me from progressing. Yeah. I just posted something on social media the other

day. It said that meditating is not meditating that requires all this discipline. It's breaking the habit of decades of not meditating that requires discipline. And it reminded me of this, you know, there was this video floating around on social media about the backwards bicycle. Did you see that video? So some engineer guy down in the South, he had a Southern accent. He got hold of a backwards bicycle from some welder friends of his. And a backwards bicycle is basically a bicycle where when you turn the handlebars to the left, the wheels go, the wheel goes to the right, the front wheel goes to the right. And when you turn it to the right, the front wheel goes to the left.

So his whole point was that having knowledge of how to ride a bike, even though it's a different orientation, it's not enough. You have to have the consistent experience. And so when he tried to ride the bike initially, he could only get two or three feet before he ended up falling off the bike. And he practiced it every day. And his main goal was just to be able to ride the bike from one end of the driveway to the other end of the driveway. It took him eight months of practicing it for five minutes every morning before he was able to finally go from one end to the other end of his driveway and he said that something just clicked

one day and then all of a sudden he was able to ride it without stumbling and falling off and his two is uh his seven-year-old son it only took him two weeks to learn how to do the same thing oh that's interesting yeah it was he's his his his conclusion was that it's not about understanding. It's about having the experience, the direct experience. Yeah, consistent behavior. Yeah, and meditation is kind of the same thing. Right. Imagine eating properly is the same thing as well. Well, any kind of habit that you're trying to, you know, create sustainable practices around, you know.

But what happens when he goes to ride a normal bike now? Well, that was the next part of his videos. He tried to ride a normal bike. He couldn't ride it. He kept falling off after like two feet. And then he had to keep practicing it. And then finally it clicked and he was able to ride the normal. So you basically can either go one direction or the other direction, you know.

Right. Your brain and your body are going to habituate towards either riding the regular bike or the backwards bike. And same thing with meditation, either it's going to habituate towards not meditating or meditating. And it's up to you to be consistent enough so that your body will start to habituate towards meditating or whatever it is that you're trying to do. I like that. So I've been hearing your name for quite a while, and then we had the opportunity to meet, spend a little bit of time together at the Mind, Body, Green Revitalize Conference,

which was pretty cool. Did you enjoy that? It was a pretty cool event. It reminded me that I need to do more of those kinds of things in my life. I tend to be a bit of an isolationist and just kind of get into my own little world and my girlfriend and the stuff that I like to do, and I don't really network a lot and hang out with other people a lot. And that was

such an amazing experience just being with everybody and everyone was so, was so cool and humble and open. And yeah, I was just like, yeah, I got to do this again. You know, this was your second year, right? Uh, it was a set. Yeah. It was the second time that I've done it. Um, I probably do too many of those kinds of events, that one's really special uh but kind of poking around i would have thought the opposite because like suddenly like it wasn't that long ago that i first i think charlie was the one who said oh you should check light out and charlie was posting snapchats of your shine event and he was kind of telling me about it. And we're going to talk a little bit about that more in a minute. But then suddenly I started hearing your name everywhere,

and you're like popping up all over the place. That's a good thing, right? Yeah, you're definitely out there. If you think you're hibernating, I think the internet would say otherwise. But it was cool to spend time with you. And then then funny enough we were both in new york and and just randomly ran into each other how crazy was that so that is you know it's it's those you know it's the universe conspiring to make what what is now happening

right now exactly here we are so we we were both in tune enough to say yes to the opportunity of course man well you're just like literally what happened was uh i had to get a podcast up julie wanted to go to bed it was another late night late sunday night which is when i usually put them up and i was like there's no wi-fi in the lobby of the hotel where i was staying and i didn't want to keep her up in the room so i'm like where can i find like 24 hour wi-fi in new york so i just googled it and they're like oh ace hotel go to the lobby it's super groovy and tons of you know desks and stuff to set up so I just it was just down the street from where I was staying so there I was there's like a DJ playing it's like a whole party thing going on but I have

my headphones off trying to work and then I just hear Rich right it's like I had stumbled in that hotel a couple months before that when I was in New York on a teaching trip and that performer who had performed that night I can't remember her name now, but I just really liked her music. And I went up to her and I said, can you please put me on your list? So when you perform again and I'm in town, I can come by and check you out. And she sent me a Facebook message before I went to New York this past, that past week and said, I'll be at the Ace Hotel on Sunday night at 10 o'clock. You should come. And I said, absolutely. So I put it on my schedule.

And it was the one thing outside of teaching that I had planned to do. And I came out there. And I had a bunch of work to do as well. So I was doing my emails. And as soon as I was done, it was like midnight. And I look over and I see you over there. There's the guy over there. There were basically two of us at the table.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Very cool. Well, what you were doing in New York was pretty interesting. You were partaking in, what was it called? It was this huge. The Big Quiet. Right, this massive group meditation in Central Park. So tell me a little bit about that.

So a guy by the name of Jesse Israel, he came and took my meditation training about four years ago. And he's a really influential guy. He's from the music business. He used to manage. He used to manage, he used to be the manager or producer for MGMT back in the day when they first came out, they basically launched out of their NYU dorm room. And so that became his sort of entree to the music world. And he had a company called Cantor for a little while. Anyway, once he started meditating, he became quite taken by the whole thing and just got really involved with the practice and wanted to spread it around. And he probably introduced 60 people to me personally to come

and learn how to meditate with me and with other teachers in New York. And so about three, no, probably about six months ago, he started this social club called the Medi Club, where they meet about once a month, people who already have a meditation practice, any practice, they come together at some loft down in Soho. And they just, they listen to a little talk about, you know about different things that people who are young and entrepreneurs and meditating are dealing with in life. And then they meditate together. And so this big quiet event kind of was born out of that group. And so he put a call out to all of his friends and a bunch of the teachers that he knew. And he's also connected with the board of directors of Central Park Summer Stage.

And so, yeah, it all just kind of came together. And he got them to agree to do a group meditation before one of the acts, eBay and Jungle, performed at Summer Stage a couple weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. So how many people were there? We had about 400 or 500 people there, which was good. It was raining that day. I know, I remember.

I was going to come, but I was speaking at an event at the same time, so I couldn't make it, but it looked really cool. Yeah, it was nice. And Summer Stage isn't as big as I thought it was.

It was pretty full. The grounds was pretty full with people sitting on the ground meditating, so it was nice. Well, next year, Sheep's Meadow. Exactly. Just blanket that thing, right? So what is the experience when you're with that many people doing a group meditation?

I mean, there's got to be an energy or a vibration that comes with that that you can feel. There is. And what's more is many of us sit back-to-back. And there's something to that. When you sit back-to-back, and there's something to that. When you sit back-to-back with someone and you're both meditating, it's a different quality of experience than when you're doing it by yourself or you're just trying to kind of sit up straight in the middle of some place by yourself. And it was actually, you know, it's funny because that week,

right before I went to New York, I got an email from a guy in Chicago telling me that he doesn't know where he can meditate during his workday because he doesn't want his office mates to think he's sleeping on the job. So he's kind of embarrassed to find places around his job to meditate. So I took a personal challenge to meditate in public during my New York tour. And every day in the afternoon, I'd find a new place out in the public to meditate. And I wanted to do it indoors because the weather's not always the best in New York. So I went to Whole Foods one day in Union Square, went upstairs to the mezzanine and meditated in there for 20 minutes, sitting at one of the tables. I went into Jiva Mukti Yoga Studio, also in Union Square, and meditated in there.

In the cafe there? In the cafe. Actually, no. I just went up to the front desk and I said, hey, I need to meditate. Can I use one of your empty rooms? And they said, we don't have any empty rooms, but you can meditate in the hallway if you like, which I thought was pretty cool. They were acting like, you know, it was the most normal thing in the world for somebody to come in. Right, I'm going to, yeah. You're kind of going to the places where it's not going to

raise an eyebrow. Yeah, well, that's the idea, you know? And then I went to, you know, the best place I meditated was at Barnes & Noble up in Union Square, the very top floor. They have that book. Have you done any book things up there? I've been in that store. I haven't done an event there. That was perfect.

It was quiet, tons of chairs, and you can sit undisturbed. I went to a church one time and meditated up in Midtown. So anyway, my point was the big quiet was one of my deepest experiences for whatever reason. Maybe it was because we were sitting all in a group. Maybe it's because I was back to back with someone, but it was one of my deeper experiences that week in New York. That's cool. Is he going to do it, make it an annual event? I think he may even try to make it more regular than that. I think it'd be kind of interesting if they did just pop-ups, you know, different places.

Like the love mob kind of thing. Like the love mob. Yeah. The meditation mob. Yeah. I like that. That's cool. Yeah. Well, let's take it back a little bit. I want to hear like how this all began for you and, you know, kind of, you know, how you kind of grew up and got into meditation. I mean, you've got a, you have a pretty interesting background story. I mean, it's not like you were raised with this kind of, you have a pretty interesting background story. I mean, it's not like you were raised with this kind of ideology.

Right. I grew up in the Bible Belt down in Alabama where there have been more snowstorms than people meditating. And yeah, I never even knew anything about meditation growing up. I probably never even heard the word meditation. Were you like a church-going family? I mean, did you grow up with religion? Yeah, we went to church. I personally wasn't religious.

It was interesting. I went to an all-black church, and I remember thinking something was very off. There was the picture of the blonde Jesus on the wall, and I remember just kind of staring at it and just kind of thinking to myself, this doesn't feel right. and we had a white preacher. We had an all black church with a white preacher. Was it like Baptist fire and brimstone kind of church? No, it wasn't one of those kinds of churches.

It was a Methodist church. It was very, very calm. Everyone was very sedated, actually. And it's the most boring two hours of my entire existence. That's no fun. Every week. You're in the Bible Belt. So I never, exactly.

I didn't even realize. You're raising the roof a little. Yeah. That would have been more interesting at least. So I dreaded going to church, but if I didn't go to church, I couldn't do anything else that day. And you know, Saturday, Sunday, that's prime time when you're a kid. So I was a reluctant church goer.

But were your parents, I mean, were they super into it, or was it just this is what you do, and they're kind of like, that's what everybody does. It was like a social event. That's where they found social connections and things like that. And my dad didn't really go, but my mom went pretty religiously up on it, didn't she? And my brothers and all, I have three brothers,

and we all went to church, and we were all in the choir and we did that whole thing, but none of us could sing at all. And so it was just- I'm not gonna make, I should make you sing. No, it was just a comedy of errors. You just go there and you just laugh at people and then you get out and you can then really do

what you really wanted to do that day and because you'd already paid, it was like a basically you had to pay the price to be able to enjoy yourself. So, um, anyway, uh, when I left there, I moved around quite a bit. I went to college in DC at Howard university and then graduated there and got into, uh, advertising for about five minutes and living in Chicago and then realized right away, I don't want to work at a real job. Although it was a great job, you know, it was very creative.

You were one of the big agencies there? I was with, no, it was kind of more of a boutique agency called Burrell. But yeah, so it was cool, but I just knew I didn't want to be, I looked around and I saw all these you know the vice presidents and the creative directors and everybody and they just kind of seemed a bit too attached and too serious to what they were doing and i didn't want i just kind of saw for myself that this is where this goes you know right i'll find myself in a situation liquid come on yeah yeah and then and you can't leave because after a certain time you have your 401k and you have this and that. And I didn't want that kind of false sense of security.

And I wanted to be a little more adventurous. So I had done a little bit of amateur modeling in college. Now it's going to get good. Yeah. And it's funny because I remember a conversation that two people were having. I was eavesdropping on them at a fashion show in college, and they were talking about how Miami had this emerging fashion scene. And so I had this idea from years ago about going to Miami to become a model.

So I started to, I gave my notice at the job, and I started to try to get some pictures together. And I went around Chicago looking for an agent to represent me. No one, no one wanted to represent me. And then I met another model who was a photographer and she took some pictures of me and I realized I didn't have the right pictures. And then she shopped those pictures around and found someone to represent me. And that's how all that started. and then they sent me down to miami and then i'm from miami i went to new york and then i went to paris and then milan and then back to new york so you did the whole

deal i did the whole deal i wasn't like a supermodel ever but i eventually became a working model you know i was waiting tables for my first couple of years in New York. And, uh, and then I had this big gap campaign and that was fun. And then I started to just work and, you know, making a decent salary. And then it just, it wasn't fun anymore after about five or six years. Do any, uh, like underwear models on the sides of buses and stuff like that? All of that. Yeah. Did some of that. Yeah. But then, you know, I realized I wasn't really tapping into my full potential, and I started getting into yoga, so I started questioning things more. I started reading conversations with God.

What led you to the yoga? I was working out at the gym one night, and I saw all these hot girls standing outside of the yoga room, and they started filing in. It was a different quality of hot girl. They looked radiant, and they started filing in and they you know it's a different quality of hot girl they look they look radiant and they look you know just healthy right and so i got something going on yeah and i couldn't even help myself i just the next thing i knew i was i was in one of the yoga poses right and this is in new york in new york yeah and the upper west side and uh and

it was a horrible yoga class because i was the only guy in the class. That's not horrible. No, that part's not horrible. But the teacher gave me all of the attention for some reason. And I was like so stiff. And I just, I didn't feel like I was that good at it. But being the only guy in the class was benefit enough to come back and try it again. And after a while, I started to really get into it. And that's where I was first introduced to meditation is through the yoga practice. So I went to this one class, my girlfriend in New York drug me to this class on the Upper East Side, which I was very reluctant about going to because going from the West Side to the East Side is just such a

hassle at rush hour. And I go and this is this is really amazing classes it was at the time the most amazing yoga class i'd ever been to taught by this australian guy and then i never went back because it was just too much of a hassle to get to so two three years later we break up i moved to los angeles and about a month after moving to los angeles i go up to crunch gym to go to take a yoga class. Because at that point, I had retired myself from modeling and I wanted to start teaching yoga. Is that why you moved to LA? I moved to LA just to get out of New York and get away from that relationship that I was in.

It was just too much. And yeah, I didn't know what I was going to do. I just kind of- Right. It was like a fresh start thing. I had a vague idea about maybe teaching yoga because I was kind of into yoga at the time. Yeah, so I go to this class at Crunch, and I'm in down dog, and I hear this teacher counting off in this strong Aussie accent. And I go, is that the same guy from that class I took in New York? And I go up to him at the end of the class. Because in New York, the class was dark.

It was at night, and this one was during the day. So I didn't really see the guy. I just knew I see the guy. I just knew I liked his class, and he turned out it was the same guy. He had just moved to L.A. as well, and he remembered me because he was attracted to my girlfriend. What? A yoga teacher?

Yeah, exactly. Can you believe that? And we became fast friends. And then three or four months later, he goes, I want you to meet this guy. This is my meditation teacher. And I show up at his apartment one night in West Hollywood. And it's like a February 2003. Charlie Knowles' dad comes out of the back room and sits down and gives us an introductory to meditation lecture, which I found to be the most amazing thing I'd ever heard.

And I thought he was the smartest guy I'd ever met. And he seemed to be the happiest person I'd ever been around. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember where the apartment was? Yeah, it was on Laurel Avenue Between Fountain and Sunset 1338 Laurel Avenue I might have been there Were you there for one of his intro talks?

This is years before, like 2003? Yeah I know that that's how you met him That was his first class when Tom Knowles came to I went to one of those sessions My buddy, Andrew Wheeler, was super into it And he was studying with Tom I know Andrew He was there back during that time Yeah He was super into it, and he was studying with Tom.

I know Andrew. He was there back during that time. He was super into it. He's a very good friend of mine. And he's like, you've got to come and check it out. And this is like before. It might have been earlier than that, though, because I think I just started dating Julie. I don't think we were married yet. It might have been 2002 or something.

I can't remember. Well, this would have been the first time Tom was at that apartment because that was the first time Will brought him there. Right. So it was at that apartment, but I think it might have been later on. Did you end up studying with Tom? No, I didn't. You know, I was into it, and I got a lot out of it,

but I think I just wasn't ready. Like I was doing yoga, but I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready, and I saw a lot of committed people, and I think I was intimidated a little bit. Like I wasn't ready. Like I was doing yoga, but I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. And I saw a lot of committed people. And I think I was intimidated a little bit. Like I wasn't ready to make that commitment at that time. But I remember looking around the room and there were a lot of people that I knew. Like a lot of people from recovery, active in the recovery community here in LA. And I was like, oh, I know like 10 people sitting here, which was interesting.

And I remember very well that he had, you know, he had an amazing presence. Yeah, that was a fun time too, because that was the, you know, that was my introduction to meditation, like proper meditation. And I got all my friends doing it. My mom came to town to visit me and Tom happened to be in town again teaching, and I got her to do it, and she loved it. And so it became sort of like this filter. If you didn't take the meditation course, then I knew that we weren't probably going to have a future together. As a girlfriend, as a friend. The litmus test.

Yeah. Because it was just so, I don't know, it was just so great. If you're on a path, you know, and the person that you want to be with is on a different path it's yeah but it's the same thing too with like veganism like i was a vegan back then and and i just it was hard to associate with people who weren't embracing that at least who weren't vegan friendly you know and i found that the friends of mine who weren't into it i just didn't really hang out with that that often and it was maybe a little bit too extreme um i'm definitely not that extreme these days in fact i hang out with people who don't even meditate right um you know forbid yeah and i didn't do that before so well otherwise you're just preaching to

the choir yeah you know what i mean yeah like you gotta you gotta take the message to the masses yeah so that's cool so that's the that's the starting point and i loved in in uh in your book and we're going to talk a little bit about that in a little bit as well, but you kind of described that first experience of meeting Tom and, and how he had made this kind of profound impact on you. And you gave this really kind of beautiful example about how he tapped his ring on a glass and, and, you know, kind of explained the physics behind that, that kind of blew your mind a little bit. So what was that about? of explained the the physics behind that that kind of blew your mind a little bit so what was that about well he does this thing you know he doesn't do it in every talk but in those days he would he would always start with the talk uh he would start to talk his talk about quantum mechanics concepts such as you know and that subatomic particle particular nature of reality things are so small that there's all this space in between and they don't touch even though on the sort of gross level of reality it looks like things are touching and sounds are being made but they're not and his whole point was that there are things that we can't see

and there's this ocean of consciousness that we can tap into where those particles come from and where happiness comes from and where thoughts come from. And, um, you know, in the West we have this idea that if we can't see it, it doesn't exist. And it's just kind of a way to kind of pierce through that indoctrination right away. And it got my attention and, uh, and I imagine it got a lot of other people's attention as well. So I kind of like that example because it's so simple. Right. I mean, basically he was tapping, he's clinking his ring on the glass, but he's saying there's actually no contact being made here. Yeah, exactly. Because there's so much space in between the ring and the glass on an atomic level.

So what do you think it is about Tom that just clicked in with you? Like what was specific about that? I mean, you know know obviously the teacher shows up when the student is ready and you were ready to hear what he had to offer but he was the his his whole thing his whole being his presentation it was the first time i'd ever experienced meditation in a relatable way where it didn't feel airy fairy because i'm not i'm not that kind of person even though i may hang out with those people you know that groups from time to time but i'm i'm a that kind of person, even though I may hang out with those people, that group from time to time. But I'm a very salt of the earth, kind of meat and potatoes type of guy when it comes to things like spirituality.

I think I have a healthy level of skepticism, and Tom spoke to all of that. And it didn't sound like he was selling anything. It sounded like he was just kind of informing me of a point of view that exists, and if I wanted to explore it more, then there's an opportunity to do that. And if not, then that's fine as well. Right. So what is some of that skepticism? Because I'm sure there's people listening who are skeptics or kind of dance around the edges.

Maybe they're a little bit interested, but something's preventing them from kind of really embracing it. Well, I had, as I mentioned before, in yoga, I was really stiff. You know, my hamstrings were like bridge cables, and I never was really all that physically active growing up. And so I didn't start lifting weights and things like that until I was an adult. But, you know, stretching wasn't the first priority in those days, and so I could barely touch my toes, even though at that time I was teaching yoga. I was probably the stiffest yoga teacher in all of LA.

But sitting in meditation in the sort of traditional way that we think about meditation, on the floor, on a cushion with your legs crossed, was like torture for me. You know, I'd rather be waterboarded by Dick Cheney than sit in meditation for five minutes. And so my previous meditation experiences were just, they just weren't all that great. And I, I, I was one of those people who said to themselves, you know, meditation is not really for me. Right. Well, the, the interesting kind of irony in that is that, uh, is, is this demarcation line between yoga and meditation? Like you're doing yoga, you're into it, you're teaching yoga,

but you're saying, yeah, meditation's not my thing, which is so bizarre because this westernized kind of bastardized version of yoga is really just about perfecting the pose and kind of getting lean and slim and getting a workout where, you know, the sutras, these postures are just about moving your body so that you can quiet your mind so that when you're in, you know, Shavasana at the end, you enter that meditative state. It's preparation of the body and mind. And that's, you know, a meditative state.

And people would say that, and I would say that as well, you know, but it just wasn't my direct experience. But you weren't, right, right. I wasn't having a direct experience. Uh-huh. So, either meditation was really hard and you just had to deal with it, or I wasn't doing it properly. And, you know, what got my attention with Tom was not only what he was saying, but what he was exuding. Like, he just had this radiance. Have you met Tom before?

Yeah. To me, he just had this radiance and he had this sense of relaxation that just wasn't very common. And I remember when he was talking, he didn't use any fillers. He was so eloquent. He was funny. He would chuckle and have all these inside jokes going on. I just, I don't know. I just thought that was really interesting. I think it's probably, I didn't

have any expectations either. You know, before I met him, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I didn't, I was actually doing my friend a favor because he invited me and I, you know, I liked how he moved through the world, but I didn't think I needed a meditation teacher to show me anything because I'd read all the, you know, the popular spiritual books and I was doing the Paramahansa Yogananda lessons, the self-realization fellowship lessons. The Kriya Yoga. The Kriya Yoga, exactly. And I kind of realized that was leading me towards more of a monastic path. And I knew I wasn't a monk for various purposes, various reasons. So, yeah, it just seemed, you know, when Tom mentioned that this is a householder technique, you can sit comfortably and you don't have to control the mind or the breath. That was all, that was just amazing for me to hear.

It was liberating, actually. And then when I started practicing it i started having tangible experiences and i thought okay well this is it right i've arrived so how long did you study with him and practice with him before you kind of had that um you know we can call it a light bulb moment or you know really kind of a uh uh you know brush up a brush up with uh enlightened state, I suppose you could call it. It's funny. I knew pretty much right away that I wanted to become a teacher of meditation right after I met him. And I started training with Tom.

The training lasts about four days. And then I would say, I mean, it's hard to remember. It's been 12 years now. But I would guesstimate that maybe within the first month, I had a moment of, I had that first taste of the bliss in meditation. Of the no mind. The no thought, yeah. How would you describe that?

no mind the no no thought yeah how can you how would you describe that it feels like you're in a void that's filling up with pure energy and you only know that it's happening after it happened type of a thing so it's like you're falling but it doesn't feel like you're you got the vertical effect of actual falling it's just kind of like you're falling, but it doesn't feel like you're, you got the vertical effect of actual falling. It's just kind of like you're, you're dropping into something and expanding at the same time. And, um, there's a lightness of being, um, combined with the forgetfulness of thinking. And yeah, it's just kind of one of those weird things, you know, it's like trying to describe what a watermelon tastes like to someone who's never had a but in terms of you know how what you what do you take from that experience that then informs kind of your daily life you know what i

mean as opposed to like oh i had a drug experience it was amazing and then you go back to your normal day life or what have you you're like how does that like you take that and you're like that was amazing but what does that mean? Yeah. Well, first of all, there's a cool factor around it. Like, wow, I was able to do this. And, you know, previously I thought that meditation was just about sitting there thinking about my to-do list or conversations. And so actually there's a deeper place.

But, you know, immediately after you come out of that, you definitely feel a sense of wholeness that wasn't there before. And you feel a sense of relaxation that you may not have had before. And once you have it so many times, those two things, wholeness and relaxation, start to stabilize. And you find that the gap in between something happening and you're reacting to it starts getting wider and wider and wider and things happen like crazy things can happen and you find yourself just kind of sitting in it and being more responsive as opposed to reactive so that's i noticed a lot of that going on in meditation. And this kind of meditation is Vedic meditation, right? So for somebody who's listening, can you explain what that means specifically?

So Vedic meditation is a form of meditation using a mantra. And normally when we think about mantra, we think of it in terms of chanting and focusing. But when you use a mantra in Vedic meditation, you're using it very passively. And the whole purpose of the mantra is to trigger an experience of mental de-excitation. So the mind de-excites from gross level thinking into subtle thinking and ultimately into no thinking. And the longest you can sustain that kind of mental state is about 20 minutes. So during the 20 minutes in a typical meditation, you know, you start off thinking the mantra softly for maybe a minute or two. And then your mind de-excites and you forget about the mantra.

And then a gap of time goes by, and then you may remember, oh, I'm meditating, at which point you come back to the mantra for another 30 seconds or maybe a minute, and then you get lost again, you de-excite again, and then another gap of time goes by. So you're only on the mantra for little pockets here and there, maybe three or four times at the most in an average meditation. But for the most part, your mind is getting lost in other more subtle experiences. And that's what causes the time to feel like it's going by super fast. And that's what also leads to a sense of energy and wholeness at the end of the meditation. And what is it about the mantra that distinguishes this type of practice from, say, focusing on the breath?

Yeah, so the mantra has this property of being charming to the mind, right? charming to the mind, right? And what people don't often realize is that their minds are, in fact, being controlled by charm. Or to put it more specifically, there's a principle known as traction that sort of governs which direction the mind goes in. So whenever your mind is presented with two thoughts, one thought may be to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And the other thought may be to text my good friend who I have plans with later on tonight. Whichever thought seems most charming, your mind is naturally going to kind of go in that direction. And then that's going to dictate your action after that. So when we're talking about traction, traction is when you have another thought, a new thought that can trump those regular surface thoughts.

And that's where the mantra comes in. And think of it like this. You're playing music that you consider to be average, and then you hear music that you consider to be very beautiful. As soon as you detect something more beautiful than what you are currently experiencing, it doesn't take any effort for the mind to go from, oh, that's just okay to, oh my God, that's amazing. Right? So when we like it happening, we call it attraction. The mind is attracted. You're attracted to something. So attraction is not a choice. So the mantra becomes the beautiful music to the average music, which would be texting your friend or making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or watching television or something like that. So you're sitting there meditating

and you're having these regular, normal, mundane, routine thoughts. And then you introduce the sound of this mantra, which has no meaning, by the way, which is one of the reasons why it works so well is because it doesn't have the same sort of association as the other thoughts you're already having. And the mind can't resist it any more than it can resist liking the certain music that you consider to be very charming. So it just naturally starts to move in this direction. And then as it moves towards the mantra, the mantra starts to become more subtle,

which increases its attraction. So it never quite catches up to the mantra starts to become more subtle which increases its attraction so you never it never quite catches up to the mantra but as it's as it's de-exciting it's starting to become increasingly more forgetful and then at some point it just kind of gets sucked into one of those gaps in between the thoughts all right all right so this is getting pretty erudite, but I'm trying to wrap my head around this. So what if your mantra is not that charming to you? You know, is it, I mean, I know that in the kind of tradition of Vedic, that the teacher provides the student with the mantra, right?

Sort of a custom mantra for each person, and it's sort of bequeathed, right? And the idea behind that is this is sort of suited for you, whoever you are. But how is it that this mantra gets these superpowers that your mind will inherently find to be more attractive or charming than the idea of eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Two reasons. idea of uh you know eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich uh two reasons number one because it's meaningless right whereas eating a peanut butter sandwich means a lot of things but number two it it's it's operating via vibration so you may not personally intellectually you may not like the mantra you may think the other mantra sounds like uh you know, my ex-wife or something like that. But it's affecting you on a

more subtle frequency, on your vibratory frequency. And that's why, you know, I tell people you don't want to actually go into a book or go online and try to find a mantra because when you look at the mantra, just by you looking at it, you're going to end up giving it an association, which is going to dilute the effectiveness of it. So you're never supposed to write it down. No, you never write it down. You don't even think about it. You don't think about how it's spelled. You don't think about what words it sounds like. You know how we do the word association game. You don't do anything with it other than use it for meditation. So when you first get your mantra, your teacher whispers it to you. So it's already being transmitted in a very vague way.

And it may take you a little while before you can work out the enunciation. And then when you start whispering it back, it kind of stays at that subtle level, even as a whisper. And then you start taking it down lower and lower and lower and then you're just told to think the mantra and as you're thinking it you start to think it even quieter right so everything is happening very subtly and um when you when you write it down or when you look at it spelled out you're going to naturally give it an association so it's not it's not good to do that and and that's why the mind will not be able to resist it because it's a subtle sound.

And subtle sounds inherently are more attractive than surface sounds. Right, right, right. And they're primordial sounds in nature, meaning they're basically the equivalent of, say, like rain sounds or the wind or the tide ebbing and flowing. If you could enunciate those kinds of sounds using Sanskrit enunciation, then it would give you that primordial quality. And I don't know, you're old enough to know CDs and records and things like that. But back in the day,

when they would have nature sound CDs, there would usually be a disclaimer on the CD case. Do you know what the disclaimer might have said? No, I don't know. Don't listen to this while you're driving. Oh, really? Yeah. And why would they warn you not to listen to a really beautiful rain CD while you're driving?

That's ridiculous, right? The reason is because it makes you fall asleep. So there's something about natural sounds that has an innate ability to de-excite the mind, which is basically what sleeping is. Sleeping is a de-exciting process. So meditation can also be in the same category with sleep in the sense that your mind is de-exciting, except when you're resting in the meditation, your body's actually been shown to rest deeper than sleep, which also helps it pass that so what test you mentioned earlier in the meditation, your body's actually been shown to rest deeper than sleep, which also helps it pass that so what test you mentioned earlier, you know, why is house is

valuable? Right? Well, but it's also I mean, it's distinguished from sleep in the sense that you are you're deep, you're D exciting, but you're also awakening. Yeah, there's it's a it's a mixture of consciousness and restfulness at the same time, which is a very unique physiological signature. Well, I think that's a great point, and it kind of gets into one of your primary points or benefits of meditation that you speak to quite often, which is this idea of restfulness, you know, that, that's so much of disease right now. Western disease is related. I mean, you know, I talk about its relationship to diet quite often, but, um, but really so much of it also boils down to, um, the fact that we're not well rested beyond our sleep. Like you can sleep eight hours, but you wake up, you don't feel well because you're not de-excited, you're overly excited. And, and, you know, we're living in this, you know, world where we're overstressed and we're anxious all the time and our minds are cycling.

And, and, and so sleep isn't enough. Right. Yeah. And, and what we also know, speaking of diet is that one of the first systems to get compromised, you're highly stressed and you're not getting enough rest is your digestive system. So you could be eating the cleanest foods, but if you're a stressed out person, your body isn't going to be able to assimilate those minerals and nutrients as efficiently as they would if you were less stressed, more rested. But we can't see that light. No. We don't hear about that. I had a guy come see me in New York whose Ayurvedic doctor told him, he went to go see this doctor because he had these gastrointestinal issues.

And this doctor says, you know, I can give you all these remedies and herbal treatments and things, but it's not going to do anything until you start meditating because your digestive system is not working properly. That's one of the reasons why you have these GI problems. So, right. So I get that a lot too. People come for those purposes, you know, just to kind of, so meditation in that sense

can be like a foundational practice. Yeah. I mean, in its broadest sense, basically we're talking about the fact that that you have to approach health in a holistic way in the sense that you have to it's a balance in the ayurvedic tradition it's it's balancing your doshas it's all of your energy systems and that you can eat kale all day long but if you're bananas and you know you're in a abusive relationship right you're not healthy and and you're not balanced and so i loved how you addressed it you know completely non-verbally in that beautiful little um youtube uh flick where you have the you

the rubik's cube right there's just subtitles and and it really kind of illustrates that point i'll put that i'll put that i'll embed that in the uh on the episode page for this podcast because it's super cool but basically you know every side of the cube has to have its color intact for you to be balanced and when you spin it you know and you get out of balance like meditate and each side had you know what was it like digestion digestion immunity reproduction happiness sleep and uh hormonal. Those are the major systems that can get out of whack when we are stressed. Right. And then meditation is really kind of solving the Rubik's cube. Yeah. Well, starting with rest, rest has to be the foundation. If you're not resting properly, then nothing else

is going to stay balanced. You may be able to have peak moments where something gets balanced for a second or two, but yeah, it'll go back out of balance pretty easily if you're not resting. We can go longer from no food and water than we can from no rest. We have to rest. And we're a society that pushes ourselves so much that it's become almost pandemic sleep deprivation. Most of us are suffering from sleep deprivation. sleep deprivation. Most of us are suffering from sleep deprivation. I think the latest statistic from 2013 is that only one in 10 people are sleeping in the way the body is designed to rest at night, which is crazy. So it's easy to get into a situation where your rest levels are being outweighed by your stress levels. And that just takes you on a completely different trajectory towards places you don't really want to go.

I mean, not only is it a pandemic, I mean, we pride ourselves on it. It's like, I don't need sleep. You can sleep when you're dead and all that kind of stuff. You'll find out pretty quickly. I mean, you know, that's right up there with like no fear. You know, I think that's not helping us really. But I think it is interesting to kind of bring that into perspective and, you know, put that into a microscope. Because, I mean, sleep, I just can't, you know, I can't function, you know.

And so sleep for me, and I've had issues with it. Like I've had, you know, issues with sleep problems and, you know, restfulness. And, you know, one of the benefits of kind of doing what I do is generally I don't have to be anywhere super early in the morning and I sleep until I wake up. Like I don't, and if everything is balanced,

I naturally wake up quite early and I feel great. But if I'm out of balance, I allow myself to sleep in and get the rest that I need because I just can't, I can't function, I can't be of service to other people unless I take care of that first. But,

you know, I need to work on the consistent meditation aspect of that. Hey, you know, it's, uh, it's one of the biggest things that leads to people being able to sleep better. I find the meditation,

it's almost so common that, um, I can predict it. You know, I've had people who are complete insomniacs for years on all kinds of sleep medications. They start meditating and literally within days they're sleeping like babies at night. There's one woman who told me she didn't get to sleep until 5.30 in the morning every morning for the last four years and she had to be up at 7.30 to go to work.

This is every day. Can you imagine? That sounds like a nightmare. And so, of course, the people who, the insomniacs are the most skeptical people that I end up coming across. And I love it because I know that once they start practicing, they're going to have that wonderful delight of being able to finally sleep at night. And it took her two days after starting a meditation practice before she started sleeping at 11 30 at night and through the night and every night from then on and and um it was it was amazing to watch every time you know and and and that i trust it involved doing the the the meditation practice

20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night ideally yeah if you want to get the biggest bang for the buck yeah i do it twice a day yeah but there have been some pretty uh remarkable changes that people have reported from just doing it once a day yeah the twice a day thing trust me up like the morning i can get i can do it yeah at night like i think it's more about structured than anything else like let's say you do the same thing the same practice but you do it five times a week versus doing five different types of meditation in one week. You're going to get a lot more benefit from doing it consistently, the same thing, even though you don't do it every single day, twice a day versus kind of jumping around the board. The whole notion of there's no right way to meditate and you listen to your body and one day you do a walking meditation the next day you do a seated meditation the next day you do mala beats that doesn't really it does it's not going to lead to anything tangible right as quickly as

having some structure right locking in like just this is you're doing it this one way like whatever that one way is for you find the one way committing that. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I like that. I mean, I work well with structure, but I think what happens to me is I get intimidated by the, like, if you say, well, you got to do it every day, twice a day, then I get freaked out, you know? So it's easier if you say, well, you know, doing it sometimes is better than nothing. But I think that idea of like creating structure where you're like, it's really just a matter of priorities, right? How important is it to you? So if it's important enough to you, then you're going to move other stuff around and make the time.

And you also may need a little reverse psychology, you know, Rich, your program is five times a day for an hour each time. And all of a sudden, 20 minutes twice a day doesn't seem like that long. Well, the great irony is that if I did that, I know that my life would improve dramatically. But there's that reluctance. And I know it. But there's still that thing that I've got to get to in order to incorporate it and implement it. And once I do, then it creates its own propulsion and momentum.

Exactly. But you have to excite that momentum. You have to light that spark and actually do it i tell my i tell my meditators i say imagine you're a boeing 747 at the end of a runway and you got to build up enough momentum to get lift off you know once you go fast enough the laws of nature the laws of aerodynamics are going to take you up right to the air but if you stop if you start and then you stop halfway down the runway planes never getting off you're not going to get off the ground you have to turn around and do it again it's going to take all this energy and you have to go back and refuel

and you know so you're actually saving yourself time by being very rigid in the beginning and just giving yourself that window of three or four months non-negotiable practice and then you get lift off and you don't have to think about it anymore you know you've liberated yourself from the need to barter and negotiate for the rest of your life every day about meditation well i like that idea of saving time and that's another thing that you speak to. And I want to get into the book, The Inner Gym, and also your TED Talk, which I loved, which was cool. It just went up. I really enjoyed that. You did a great job with that.

Thank you. But you kind of address these misconceptions about you have like your – and you wrote like a piece for, I think, Mind, Body, Green about common misconceptions about meditation. And one of those, just to kind of take a cue from what you were just saying, is, you know, I don't have enough time. It takes up too much time. But you have this really cool way of articulating how there's actually this inverse relationship with time. Because there's biological time and chronological time. Right. And chronological time, of course, advances once every 12 months, one year every 12 months.

Biological time fluctuates depending on your stress levels. And if you're doing everything you're supposed to do, you can actually reverse your biological clock. And this has been proven in many studies. And what's been shown with meditation, and this one was specific to transcendental meditation. This was a TM study. Right. And let's just camp out there for one second to take a quick tangent before you get into that. So what's the difference between TM and Vedic? So transcendental meditation is an organization and, you know, TM is the trademark name of that organization. My teacher, Tom, taught for transcendcendental Meditation for many years.

And then he started teaching independently. And of course, when he left the organization, you can no longer call your brand of meditation in the same name as the trademark brand. So he started to call it Vedic Meditation instead. Right. But the principles and the and the traditions are the the style of meditation is remarkably similar to to the transcendental although they probably wouldn't agree with that or say that but because you know they have certain standards and things

that they have implemented recently and uh tom learned back in the 1970s so however tom is teaching now and how he's taught us to teach is however they were teaching back in the 1970s. It would be, an analogy would be if you were to open up a yoga studio and start teaching the Bikram method of yoga without permission. Yeah, and calling it hot yoga. Or calling it Bikram yoga without getting the license or something like that. Yeah, yeah. You'd have a lawyer knocking on your door at some point. But, you know, you'd call it rich yoga or light yoga or hot yoga all, yeah. Right? You'd have a lawyer knocking on your door at some point.

But, you know, you'd call it rich yoga or light yoga or hot yoga all day long. Right. But, you know, nobody can patent or trademark yoga or sequences and all of this. Don't tell Bikram that. He actually did it, didn't he? Well, he tried to. He kind of, you know, I guess he figured he had to. And he had the money to do it. And he lives in America, and that's what we do in America. Right. So, you know, he did what he had to and he had the money to do it so and he lives in america and that's what we do in america so you know he did what he had to do but um i don't think he was successful in in

patenting his his sequence but that you know in meditation whether it's tm or vm or whatever m everybody agrees that it's a very old tradition it comes from sources back in india and there's no way you can own that all you can own is your name and um and your India and there's no way you can own that. All you can own is your name and your organization. And what's interesting is that most of the studies that were conducted on TM were done back in the 1970s, back when Tom was teaching and learning how to meditate. So, you know, the benefits, if people need scientific studies to be convinced of the benefits of meditating, the benefits still are applicable to whatever it is that he's teaching and that I'm teaching today. All right, so biological time.

Yeah, so one of the studies showed that if you were 30 years old at the time that you started meditating and you happen to have a biological age of a 30-year-old, which means your skin elasticity and your vision and your hearing and all of that was that of an average 30-year-old, and you meditate it for five years on a regular basis, meaning mostly on a daily basis, that over those five years, as your chronological age continued building until you were 35, your biological age on average would become that of a 23-year-old, which means that you would be seven years younger than you were when you first started meditating after five years of meditating. Got it.

And that didn't mean you were going to turn into the curious case of Benjamin Button and end up in diapers. What happens is after that first five years, you start aging at the rate of about six months for every calendar year. So evidently, that's normal. Average is about aging about 1.1 to 1.2 years biologically for every chronological year. So most people on average are getting a little bit older biologically than they are chronologically every year,

just based on the amount of stress that we take on. All you have to do is look at any president. Yeah, like they always do that before they went into office and after, and they age dramatically. And so that's self-evident um but what's what's really fascinating to me is that the body produces elastin you know when you go buy a stretchy shirt that has elastin in it that's what your body also has in it and that can keep your skin a having the ability to pop right back into place. When you're under a lot of stress, that elastin, although it's in your body, it can't penetrate through the cells because the stress chemistry forms these

casings around your cells to keep your body in stress mode. So it's almost like a bulletproof vest around your cells that your body's hormones and peptides can't penetrate. So that can also apply to food. You know, the nutrients and minerals from food can't be metabolized properly because they can't penetrate those cells. Synovial fluid, which keeps our joints oiled. You know, people start complaining about back pains and knee pains and arthritis and all that. If you look at all of those symptoms,

pretty much any symptom that we suffer from today as a society, particularly the lifestyle symptoms, the non-genetic symptoms, and you compare them with the symptoms of the fight-or-flight reaction, you'll see an undeniable connection. And you can do that online. You can just go to fight-or-flight and you see a ton of symptoms. Oh, there it is. That's the thing.

My skin problem is right there. and that thing that's happening, my eye twitch is right there. It's all there. It's crazy. That's amazing. That's pretty interesting, and I think it begs a larger question of just understanding that we have more control over these processes than we think. Absolutely.

It's an inside job. Right. It's an inside job. It's an inside job. All that stuff that an inside job. It's an inside job. All that stuff that's happening has nothing to do with the economy, nothing to do with what your grandmother said or didn't say. It's your reaction to all of those things.

Yeah, it's how you individually are personally responding to every single situation in your life. The sort of extreme converse example to the president's aging are these stories that you hear of the great meditating uh, you know, meditating mystics high in the Himalayas. And, you know, you hear these stories like,

you know, you read autobiography of a Yogi and then you hear about how, you know, after Paramahansa Yogananda died, like his body did not decompose for like an extremely long period of time where these guys that go into these caves and they meditate for eons without aging and you know all this kinds of stuff i mean what do you what do you make of all of that because some of the stories are they get they get insane yeah so you have stopped eating you know for years and all kinds of stuff a lot of those stories are related to monastic uh practitioners well almost exclusively yes so like these are the great sadhus so one one of the things Charlie has said before that I really like, he says, those guys are kind of like the Olympian athletes. Right.

And we're just like the regular people, you know. And those things are nice if you want to put that kind of time into the practice, which most people don't. Because although you want to be able to sleep better and be a little bit happier, it's not outweighing your priority to have a family and to have children and to go and make your ends meet. They're the ultra endurance athletes. They don't care about families and watching the game and going to see Jurassic World and these kinds of recreational activities that we make a priority in our life, and that's fine.

And so they can dedicate hours and hours and hours in the same way that a michael phelps can dedicate hours to his swimming regimen and um and that's what ends up happening when you dedicate that kind of time to consciousness activities as you can do really amazing things but when you hear those stories i mean do you i mean sometimes they strain the you know boundaries of possibility at least in the logical three-dimensional plane. Well, there's been proof that the body can heal itself of pretty much anything. Somebody's done that somewhere in the world. And the whole idea of mind over matter is so common, it's become cliche.

And you can just, there are all kinds of stories out there. Have I personally seen people disappear and reappear and all of that? No, not really. But that's just not where I am in my life. You know, I'm sure if I wanted to dedicate some time to going out and kind of like what Paramahansa Yogananda did, where you go on that tour to all those different gurus and saints, if you're sincere enough and reverent enough, I'm sure you can be taken into those kinds of circles and be shown some things.

I've had friends who've been to India and they've seen some pretty amazing things. Right. Well, I think, you know, even on a very base level, you,

you know, it's pretty well documented that some of these guys can lower their heart rate down to like almost nothing, you know, like one beat per minute, things like that. And you know, they don't have to breathe that much.

I mean, there are, there's plenty of like documentation on that kind of stuff so it's it's super fascinating and i think it's it's so interesting like what is it about like right now that meditation is becoming so much of a of a zeitgeisty kind of you know, mainstream accepted practice. Like, it's certainly been around for, you know, thousands of years. But there's something about right now where it really is coming into its own in Western culture in a way that is unprecedented.

I think we've gotten to the point now where, as a culture, we've done enough research in this idea that happiness is coming in the future. You know, as soon as I achieve the thing or as soon as I make enough money, as soon as I fall in love, I'm going to be happy. And I think people now are waking up to the idea that, and looking around and noticing people who've achieved everything and they're not particularly any happier than anyone else. And so there's got to be something else to it.

And you have more people now who have been exposed to things like meditation and yoga. And it was only a natural bridge from yoga. There's been a big yoga sensation happening in the last 30 years. And I would say meditation is probably where yoga was 10 or 15 years ago so it was coming the entire time yeah on the heels of you and uh and now it's here and or it's yeah it's it's it's just about here and i think people like me you know young black guy from alabama talking about it and people like you the vegan guy talking about it and you know people, the vegan guy talking about it and, you know, people like. Well, that's the vegan guy.

Like, that's predictable. Yeah, but you're not. You're not. You were sitting here in your house. It was like this beautiful modern house. You know, being the vegan guy, you'd expect you halfway to be in a yurt somewhere with your shoes on. Well, yeah, you have to invert the paradigm.

And meditation comes, you know, when it comes in your physical corpus, like that's unexpected. You know, that's interesting and that's provocative and fresh and modern. Like you're a super handsome black dude. You know, you're not wearing a sari or anything like that. You're not wearing sandals. And you have guys like Russell Simmons. You know, David Lynch has done a really big, had a big influence on meditation because he's gotten so many celebrities doing it.

Guys like Big Sean, the rapper, talking about meditation and 50 Cent. So I think it's seeping more and more into pop culture, and it's just a matter of time before more people start doing it. My guess is that in the next five or ten years, they'll be selling meditation cushions and 7-Elevens in places like Tennessee and Alabama. I love it. It's going in that direction. I hope to see it.

The problem is, you know, once things hit critical mass, they start getting saturated and everybody and their mother, you know, because there's no, unlike yoga, with yoga, usually there's a certification process. Unlike yoga, with yoga, usually there's a certification process. You do your 200-hour certification and you become a yoga teacher. With meditation, there's no certification process. It's just anybody and their mother can say, I'm a meditation teacher. Anybody can come up with a meditation app.

And most of what's happening out there now is, I think, it's a case of the blind leading the blind. People don't fully understand the mechanics of meditation. And maybe they'll even say, I don't understand the mechanics of meditation because it's different from what they do. But I'm hoping that enough people can at least try it in a way that makes sense to them, that inspires them to continue on and not preclude that they can't meditate, like I used to say, because it was so difficult, because somebody who didn't understand it introduced them to the meditation. But, you know, just the fact that meditation is even in the conversation is a good thing. Right. I mean, ultimately, that has to play out, right? And the quality will rise to the top over time.

But yeah, there'll be a period of time where every snake oil salesman is going to try to sell you something. But the market will weed that out, I would imagine, over time. But we have to weather that. But you brought up something really interesting, which is this idea that people are struggling with their happiness quotient and really understanding on a deep level that perhaps it's not related to my status in the community or my bank account or the car that I'm driving. And that brings up kind of another theme that's kind of front and center in your book, The Energem, which is this idea that happiness is not a choice. of front and center in your book, The Inner Gem, which is this idea that happiness is not a choice. And that's a very counterintuitive concept because a lot of self-help gurus will tell you that happiness is indeed a choice.

You have to make this choice to be happy. It's available to you. You can access it at any time. And you're taking a different tack with this. So kind of elaborate on that. Well, I think telling people that happiness is a choice sets them up for disappointment and failure because, of course, we all want to be happy.

And if you think that it's just as easy as choosing to be happy and you try to choose to be happy and you find that you're not able to be happy, then it's going to make you feel like, well, something's wrong with me. And the premise of my book, The Inner Gem, is that happiness is more of a byproduct of building an inner strength so that once you cultivate this inner strength, you can just be happy effortlessly without even having to think about being happy.

And I compare it to pull-ups. If you have never done a pull-up before and someone asks you to jump up to a bar and pull yourself up and your arms are weak and you jump up there and you can't pull yourself up, you're not going to be frustrated because you understand, look, I've never done this before, but what will it take for me to be able to do that? Exercise.

I'll get up there and I'll practice whatever movements are required in order for me to eventually pull myself up and then keep practicing and keep practicing. And then at some point, I can do two of them and then I can do three of them. And then you work your way up to doing 10 of them. And then if someone says, someone challenges you, or you're in a situation where you have to pull yourself up a few times, doing it three or four times is no big deal. You can do it 10 times, right? And so I'm saying happiness is like that. Happiness. Happiness isn't a choice.

Happiness is a practice. Yeah, you practice. You do the inner exercises that will strengthen your happiness muscles. So then when you're in a situation that could potentially destroy you emotionally or psychologically, and you've already been cultivating the happiness muscle, your happiness will just protrude and will stabilize in those kinds of situations. So you'll find yourself surprisingly content and even feeling a sense of fulfillment, despite the fact that things didn't go your way in that situation.

It's not the end of the world. Right, right, right. So the Buddha said, as you quote in your book, there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. Right. Right. And you can like do mental gymnastics with that all day long and try to wrap your head around what that means.

But what's great about your book is you it's very practical. Like you just you take this idea that, you know, happiness is a practice and then you create basically this roadmap. It's like six tools that are very kind of you know macro tools um to incorporate into your life and practice as part of this practice of accessing happiness for yourself and it's cool man like i like how you begin each chapter with basically a personal story that a personal experience of yours that kind of illustrates the point. And then you have kind of very, um, tangible tactile things like here, here's what you can do and kind of workbook and you analogize it to the physical gym, right? Like this is like foam rolling or this is like pull-ups or what have you that makes it very relatable.

Um, but I want to just like run through some of these. I mean, the first one is be still, then be thankful, receive freely, slow down, be patient, and give freely. Now these are like, these concepts are as old as humankind, you know, and on some level self-evident, and yet completely, you know, elude us in the gestalt of our modern lives. Which is interesting. I was looking at the contents the other day, and I thought to myself, this is what we tell our kids.

Be still, be thankful. And this is exactly what we need to hear more ourselves, because as you get older, you get disappointed so many times in life and get rejected so many times that we start to, that whole indoctrination of happiness is coming in the future starts to seep in, even though we may not want it to be there or intellectually, we understand that that's not the answer, but we still live our lives as if it is. And it takes repetition. It takes repetition

in order to overcome that indoctrination because itination. Because it's much stronger than we give it credit for. And so, yeah, the whole idea of the book is to have micro practices where you're not thinking about exercising my happiness or anything like that. You're just meditating for five minutes a day. And then you're adding on, you know, writing down five things you're grateful for every day. And these little things. The gratitude list is so powerful. It's the little things, yeah.

And all these things have been shown scientifically, if people need that. It's been shown scientifically to enhance our self-described sense of happiness, you know, slowing down and enjoying the moment, being more patient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know? Exactly. We say that, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, that's what it comes down to.

It's not, there's no big moment that is going to occur that's going to make us happy. And that's the cold, hard reality. We hold on to that. Life. Our whole society is structured around that idea. And that's, we hard reality we hold on to that life our whole society is structured around that idea and that's we're just pummeled with that message through advertising constantly movies you know you complete me and all of that all the songs on the radio as soon as you meet the right person you're going to be happy ever after and it's all bs i mean i hear the the refrain in recovery constantly like we're

in los angeles there's a lot of really successful prosperous people and i can't tell you how many people i know that are you know very very wealthy you know money is not a concern for them and they're unhappy and it's like they almost have to get to that and even even with that it's still the next thing because there's always somebody who's doing a little bit better than you. And you're always like fomenting that resentment. Like, well, that guy's got that. Like, I don't care if you're, you know, head of a studio or what have you. There's always somebody else that's like you're angling for.

It's like, if I just get that. And if I just get that. And it's like, it's a habit trail to crazy town. Yeah. My teacher used to say, once you get that and it's like, it's a, it's a habit trail to crazy town. Yeah. My teacher used to say, once you get to the one mountain top, now it allows you to see all the other mountain tops you don't have. Right. And that is the peril of the human condition.

Right. So it is the reconditioning. It is the practice and the practice. It's almost, it's funny. You were saying, well, this is,, well, this is what we tell our kids and we find it so difficult to master in our own lives. The answer is always the same. And with that comes sort of a level of annoyance.

Like, really? It's the same answer. Be grateful. Give freely. Give freely and privately without without you know conditions really that's the answer again yeah but it is yeah you know it's like how can i get beyond the velvet rope to the super secret answer that you're not telling anyone it's like no it's the same thing and that's what all the internet marketers are hoping you're exactly into that there's some

super secret thing you have to take the mastermind this this and that, in order to figure it all out. Don't get me started on that. I go insane. I subscribe to a lot of those just because I like to see the emails. And I'm like, just because I like to study it. And I just get these emails. And I'm like, really, man? Does anyone buy into this?

It's like, here's the super secret 10 things that no one's telling you that I just discovered. I'm like, come on, man. There's a market for that. People buy into it. They really do. Because there's a trick. There's a mental trick. It's called magical thinking.

They think that there's some secret to things that some guy has figured out in that someone, some guy has figured out in his Hollywood Hills office and he's going to share it with you now. Yeah. Cause he's driving around in a Lamborghini or whatever. It's the, it's the acquisitive approach to happiness. So, um, yeah. And it's, you know, the funny thing about the inner gym is that's just the whole idea. I'm going to tell you my secret now. All right. Yeah. You've never told anyone, right? I've never told anyone before. Finally, you've decided that you're

going to, the whole idea is just to introduce people to meditation. And I knew that if it was a meditation book, nobody would read it. But if it's a book about happiness and you know, you sprinkle some other things around it that people may at least entertain the idea of thumbing through it. But meditation is really one of the key habits. Once you do meditation, it's easier to be grateful, it's easier to give, it's easier to be patient and slow down and all the other things. But you can't be patient and slow down and do all those other things with any sort of authenticity if you're not practicing some sort of inner quiet quietude and this is part one of a four volume series um where i'm using it

as the metaphor for working out so i basically the story behind the whole gym metaphor is I used to, when I was a vegan, when I was a strict vegan, which I was for 12 years. We're going to get you back there, by the way. I'm open to that. When I was a strict vegan, I was about 172 pounds wet. Are you like 210 now or something? I'm 2052 pounds wet. And I was just... Are you like 210 now or something? I'm 205 now, yeah.

And I had been working out my entire adult life and I just could never put on any weight. And what I realized was the way I was working out was not the best way for putting on weight. I didn't even realize that there are different styles of working out for different purposes. And I came across this book called Scrawny to Brawny about four years ago. That sounds like a book that would be advertised in the back of a comic book. Yeah, it is. It's a total internet marketing book, The Secret to Gaining Muscle Mass for Ectomorphs.

And I realized, oh, yeah, I'm an ectomorph. I'm a skinny guy who has a problem putting on weight. I've always had a problem putting on weight. If I skipped a meal, I would lose a pound. Probably good when you're a male model, though. No, actually not. Oh, yeah. It would have been better to be a little bit bigger. So I studied this guy. His name is john berardi i studied his program from scrawny to brawny and um and realized that instead of i was doing the long runs every

day i was doing like three mile runs yeah up runyon canyon every morning and i was doing 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups and i was doing that every single day all these crunches and i was doing the same thing every day and i realized that in order to build muscle you can't do the same thing every day yeah you gotta mix more weight lower reps don't work out as much gotta mix it up don't do hardly any cardio and so I switched everything and I started to just I put on literally like 30 pounds in six months and And, you know, as a skinny guy, as a former skinny guy, it was just the most amazing thing in the world. I just loved it. Cause I, you know, the thing is with skinny women, um, it's, it's perfectly acceptable to say,

you know, you, you look, you lost weight, you weight, you know? What the cardinal sin is saying, you look like you gain weight to a woman. You can never say that, no matter how much weight she's gained. But to a guy, people have no problem saying, you look too skinny, and, you know, are you eating, and that kind of thing. And it would just, you know, I'd be walking down the street feeling really good about myself, and then somebody would come up to me and go, Jesus Christ, are you eating? You look too skinny. And it would just, you know, mess me up for a little

bit. And, uh, so I always kind of was self-conscious about my weight and not being able to feel like I could put on any mass. So I was over the moon that I had this experience. And then it occurred to me that being happy was kind of the same thing. You know, like you think happiness is the byproduct of this thing, but actually you're putting the cart before the horse. You want to actually put happiness in the forefront. You want to put yourself in a position to cultivate happiness within because it is an inside job. And then if you do that, then you're going to find that happiness comes up and then you're going to make decisions based on the happiness you have inside instead of based on the emptiness you have inside, which are going to be two completely

different choices. Right, right. Just to play out the analogy, basically what you're saying is, is you were doing the wrong kind of workout to access the result. Like if you're, if you're chasing happiness through material possessions or status or whatever, that's like doing the wrong kind of workout to access the result. Like if you're chasing happiness through material possessions or status or whatever, that's like doing the running up, running canyon to put weight on, right? Yeah, exactly. It's not going to happen. There's no way it's going to happen. So the first book is the foundational, which is more like corrective exercises.

The second volume, which is in the process of being published now, is the bulking. That's where we do the really heavy lifting and less reps. So it's going to bring in practices like saying no and figuring out your life's purpose and same kind of format, you know, six new exercises. The next one is going to be called ripping, which is where you trim away the fat. And then the next one is going to be the stabilization. And it sort of culminates 26 exercises from 24 exercises and then the next one is going to be the stabilization. And so it culminates 24 exercises from now. Each one is going to have a more elaborate meditation program. So by the last volume, you're meditating for 20 minutes instead of just five minutes. So it's a plan.

It's like my Star Wars. I have the whole thing written out. I know who's whose father, how it all ends. Throughout this first book, speaking of Star Wars, I love how you use the Force analogy and you kind of bring Star Wars into it. And it really is basically saying this is a superpower that you can cultivate in the same way that Luke has to like develop his skillset with the force and learn how to kind of channel that. And, and when you watch the movies and you see his initial resistance to it and how he grapples with it,

it's so similar to how we kind of perceive meditation. Like, yeah, that's not for me. I can't see it. Like I can't, you can't hold it in your hand. So you just feel like, ah, I don't have time for this. Yeah. And, and the truth is, you is, not to get too mystical, but when you are kind of vibrating with that resonance, when you're really kind of like tapped in and you're doing it, like it's almost like, and I've experienced this,

probably not to the level that you have, but stuff just shows up. Like your life is in sync in a way where things are functioning on a different level so for example like a very simple example would be running into you at the ace hotel like there's the synchronicities that happen that create this kind of flow in your life that creates this propulsion that pushes you forward on the best trajectory for you, like with your highest consciousness in mind. Right. Yeah.

I'm sure you've had crazy experiences with that. Yeah, and those crazy experiences become just the norm after a while. Right. Yeah, that's what's going on all the time. Like you're paying attention and it's showing up. It's an effortless thing, though. You're not trying to make anything happen. Right. And it gets to the point where you can be in a traffic jam your flight can get canceled and you your immediate response is okay something amazing is about to happen there's a story of um you know about i think it's 2009 I told the story in the book as well about the traffic jam that I was in

on my way to teach yoga. And it was a completely phantom, crazy traffic jam that never happened on that stretch of road on the way to teach my class. And so I ended up being 10 minutes late, which was quite a big deal for me because I don't like being late to things. And that creates a lot of anxiety.

It does. For me, it does. Yeah. And so I showed up 10 minutes late because I just't like being late to things. And that creates a lot of anxiety. It does. For me, it does. Yeah. And so I showed up 10 minutes late because I just couldn't help it. And turned out the big mirror on the wall of the yoga room right in front of the place where I would have been sitting dislodged and came crashing down 10 minutes before I walked into the room. And I would have been set up and ready to go when that happened.

Would have fell on your head. Would have fell on my head and whoever was around me. So it saved all of us from having a very bad start to our day that day. That traffic jam that I was cursing 10 minutes before was saving my life. And after having so many experiences like that, you know, you start to see them as blessings. Yeah, you know you're being guided. I think that, look, we're hardwired to judge whatever situation we're in in this kind of dualistic way. This is bad. This is good. I'm stuck in a traffic jam. This is bad.

We just don't have the information. There's no way that we have enough evidence to make that kind of adjudication for ourselves. We snap to it immediately. It's our nature. But in truth, you know, we don't know. And most of the things that I look back on my life and at the time I thought were like the worst things to ever happen to me turn out to be the most gigantic blessings in retrospect. And that's, I think that's the power of having a teacher, a mentor, a guru. Back in India, you would never dream of teaching yourself something like meditation or trying to work it out yourself. You'd always try to find a teacher to help you see the way.

Because that's stuff that my teacher used to say to us all the time. Everything that happens to you is happening for all reasons. And there's no point in trying to figure it out. Just relax and just stay in the present moment and go with it, and you're going to see that it's going to turn out better than you ever imagined for yourself. And he would just say that all the time. And I feel like if I didn't have that, it would still take me a lot longer to get to that place. Versus having someone who you already admire, who you see is exuding those principles and properties that you want, and it just makes it that much easier, you know, because you have someone who's been there before you. Right. Well, we're in Los Angeles. I mean, you know, or if you're in New York,

it's not a problem to find a qualified meditation teacher. But what if somebody's listening, you know, in a place where that's not accessible? You can get a book. That could be your teacher. You know, that's one of the things. So it doesn't have to be the in-person. But for Vedic, it kind of does, right? Well, to learn the technique properly, yes, you would need a teacher. And yes, that may require you to travel somewhere, but it will be well worth whatever it takes for you to get to some person live to teach you.

I mean, the good news is you don't have to go to India anymore. You know, 50 years ago, the only place you could have gone to learn any of this stuff related to meditation was India. And that would have been a much more expensive and comprehensive trip for anyone. Now you just got to go to LA or New York or Chicago or, you know, somewhere like that. And everybody lives within three hours flying of any one of those places in the States. So then it comes back to establishing priorities around it. Yeah, exactly.

Like, okay, so you have your $2,000 or your $1,000 is going to take you to make the trip and all that. What else are you spending it on? And is that thing going to lead you to have better sleep at night? Is that going to refund you back your biological time? Probably not. So you may have to save money. I've had people fly across the country to train with me and it's impressive and it makes me a little bit less tolerant when someone doesn't want to drive across town to come to the training. You must have like the entitled, like, well, you got to come to my house. I'm not driving to you.

I'll come to your house if you make it worth my while. But I'm not going to pay you to come to your house to teach you how to meditate. Right. Well, in order to get people over the hump to kind of wrap their heads around, like, something like that being worth their, you know, their hard-earned paycheck, you know, it might be worth kind of exploring some of these misconceptions about meditation that I think kind of prevent people from embracing it. And you've done like a pretty nice rundown. And we've talked already about the time thing with the biological clock, but, you know, what are some of the other things that you see are common impediments,

but are kind of misplaced ideas? The idea that there's no correct way to meditate. And as we said earlier, you know, there's, I'm not idea that there's no correct way to meditate. And as we said earlier, I'm not saying that there's only one style that's best for everybody, but we're saying you just need to pick something and stick to it. Pick something that has some structure to it. Ideally that someone else

has kind of already done the research on. And so they're just going to show you how it's done so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Right. But, you know, like I charlie on the show and he's he always says uh meditation is failure proof but i think that's speaking to something different that's the idea that simply by doing it there's not a value judgment on whether you did it well or right right that just doing it whether your mind is rebelling while you're doing it, you are succeeding because that is the process. But that's different from the idea of there are better ways to meditate than others. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. I mean, I think once you pick your method that works for you, then it is failure proof. It's just a matter of how you're doing it enough time. Yeah. If you do it over enough time, you're going to succeed. It's like the gym is failure-proof. There's no such thing as the gym didn't work for me. It just means you didn't go to the gym or maybe you didn't exercise in a way that was the best for whatever your personal goals were.

But, yeah, the gym itself is just a tool. And meditation like that is just a tool. And if you use it properly, then it's going to work for you. So it's just a matter of doing it properly. And so another big misconception is that people, you have to, you have to sit like a monk in order to have an effective meditation practice. And I know we have this idea, and it comes from our conditioning. You know, we're Americans, and we're always taught since we were children

that the harder you work, the more successful you're going to be. And so there's an element of hard work that is necessary in order to succeed at meditation, and nothing could be further from the truth. It's actually the opposite. It's the lazier, in my experience, the lazier you are mentally, the better it's going to work. And in terms of achieving a level of inner quietness

that I think people want when they think about meditation, you know, everybody who meditates, nobody's meditating to have a busier mind, right? You want to meditate so that you can actually feel like you're able to quiet all the anxiety and whatever else you're experiencing on a mental level and uh and so if you're just sitting comfortably that in and of itself can position your mind to to achieve a level of rest that it wouldn't be able to get otherwise. And just a really easy thought experiment on this is if I were to say to you, Rich, to go and lean against the wall behind you and go to sleep, right? So you can go lean up against the wall, and it doesn't matter how, what angle you're leaning at,

you're not going to fall asleep. We all know that because you're not in the position for sleeping. You're in the position for being awake. And you may be able to get a little bit relaxed, but not nearly as relaxed as you could get if you were lying on your couch over here. If you lie down on your back on your couch, you go to sleep right away. You don't even have to think about it. You just slip into that state. And so by sitting comfortably, you keep yourself better positioned to slip into that state than you would if you were sitting with your back straight and your fingers together

in a way where you're having to exert all of this physical activity, which is more of a monastic approach to meditation. Right. Well, that's sort of part and parcel of kind of moving beyond kind of the trappings that you see. If you go to the attire that people wear, like some people are wearing, you know, kind of all kinds of weird clothes and, and they'll greet you with an embrace that they kind of, they're hugging you a little bit too long. You know what I mean? Gazing a little bit too long. Yeah. Like a little bit too intently without blinking, looking into your eyes and all that kind of stuff that freaks people out. Um, you know what I mean mean And it doesn't have to be that way

And their voice is a little bit too soft A little bit Yeah a little bit too precious And with that For me When I experience that I'm like This is not authentic

Like this is not who this guy really is He's affecting this personality For a You know For a purpose Or he's created an identity around this That doesn't feel real to me and i think that and you don't want to be that person no of course no i don't aspire to that you know i don't aspire to

that like i'd much rather like with you and with charlie and and with andy it's like these are just like i relate to you as a human being like i'm getting the real person right there's no affect to it and that's what i love about guys like Howard Stern who are out there and Jerry Seinfeld and these kinds of guys who have been meditating for decades and you don't look at them and think to yourself oh they're the poster child for meditation

but they're guys who are operating at the top of their game and they happen to meditate at the same time Howard Stern started doing TM like in the 70s I think I think. Yeah, yeah. He said, I think his story is his sister was depressed and started meditating, and he noticed such a difference in her

that even though he was skeptical at first, he gave it a shot, and he hasn't missed a meditation in over 20 or 30 years. That's amazing. Yeah. But that's not an uncommon story with these sort of householder styles of meditation. Yeah. When people start doing it in a way that feels good, not an uncommon story with right with these sort of householder styles of meditation yeah when

people start doing it in a way that feels good and and it it starts to become this experience that's very similar even better sometimes than taking sleep uh taking a nap or going to sleep i mean no one ever says i don't look forward to sleeping at night right that's you look you want to sleep you want to be able to get in the bed and just slip into that nice thick blackout sleeping state and imagine if you can meditate in a way that felt like that like a tangible authentic feeling of deep rest i mean you would love it you you wouldn't be able to wait until you meditate it it'd be easy to rearrange your whole day around your meditation. And that's what I've been enjoying for the last 10 years that I've been teaching it. There's something frightening about that as well, though.

And I think this is another misconception that I'm interested in your thoughts in, which is that if you are somebody who is type A or a high performer, there is this idea that your performance or your success is tied to that edge. You know, it's like, like my work ethic is what is propelling me forward. And the idea that you would teach me a practice that perhaps would erode that or, you know, would translate into me not performing as well. And I remember, like, Russell Simmons used to go to this yoga class that we used to go to. At Maha?

At Maha, yeah. So Steve Ross, you know Steve. I used to teach at Maha. Oh, you did? Russell came to a couple classes. Oh, wow, cool. I think that's where I recognize you from. Maybe, yeah.

I mean, I met Julie at Maha Yoga in like 1999, 2000. Right. Somewhere around that time. And we used to do yoga retreats with Steve in Italy. So I don't know if you were around there at that time. No, I wasn't around until the... And I love Steve. Steve gets a lot of shit, but I think he's one of the happiest...

Steve is awesome. ...people I've ever met. Like, he walks the walk more than any other yoga teacher I've ever met. And he just exudes happiness he's he is so happy you know it's amazing yeah he's the one teacher that doesn't take himself seriously at all no like he's a he's beyond it and i and i remember like going to his class and it's like this guy doesn't teach he's not really teaching and and i was like why isn't he why isn't he teaching anyone yoga like i want i actually

want to learn and i think it's almost a an advanced perspective where he's like that doesn't really matter right i'm beyond that he's teaching you how to be yeah and and he takes a lot of grief because there would be all these sort of beautiful starlets in his class and he's playing hip-hop music like oh this is beginner yoga this isn't the real yoga but on some level it's almost past that because he's like creating this safe place for people to begin that journey and and and allow them to have their own experience with it without any judgment and you have to be yeah you have to be judgment free in that kind of environment right and and his his, like, just sheer childish joy for what he does.

And, you know, we spent a lot of time with him and been at his house. And, I mean, when he's not teaching, he's meditating, basically, all the time. And he was an original point of entry for Russell, I think one of his first teachers. And I remember Russell said one day, man, if I keep doing this,

I'm going to lose all my money. You know, like, he had that doing this, I'm going to lose all my money. You know, like he had that fear to bring it back to this misconception. And the inverse happened. Like he like tripled his income or something like that. You can amplify your prosperity by finding that patience and that, more importantly, kind of, you know, tapping the vein of intuition where you can rely on your instincts and it comes without that effort. You know, it's like I hold on to that. Like if I'm not in pain and feeling it, then, you know, I'm not doing everything I can. And for me, the mental challenge is to get over that and realize that that's an illusion. There is a better way of being in that kind of synergistic flow state

to allow ease to rise to the surface as opposed to effort. Yeah, and that's what I tell people too. That edge that they refer to is not the same kind of edge that I'm talking about when I'm saying meditation helps you get rid of the edge. It's like that Buddhist, actually it that I'm talking about when I'm saying meditation helps you get rid of the edge. You know, it's like that Buddhist, actually it's a quote that was attributed to Buddha, but I don't think it was, that's accurate. But it's the quote that says, you know, what did you get from meditation? I didn't gain anything from meditation.

But I'll tell you what I lost. I lost fear. I lost my anxiety. I lost my need to compete, you know, with people who are not even in my arena. I lost all the things that are basically holding you back from being your most authentic self. And it's not about trying to go into it and maintaining any sense of pressure and demand, I mean, that's going to be there anyway. If you're living life on planet Earth, you're going to be under pressure situations. You're going to have demands.

But where we tend to trip up the most and make the most mistakes is when we are attached to the outcome. We're too attached to the outcome. And that's where we want to start controlling things. And that's where we start to hurt controlling things. And that's where we start to hurt ourselves and maybe even hurt other people. And so meditation just kind of gives us the quick release to let go of that attachment and to be able to pull back the lens and see the bigger picture and see that, okay, well, this thing here isn't happening in the way that I

thought it was going to happen. But look, there are 10 other things, 10 other possibilities, and they're all very interesting. And I even have a level of consciousness that gives me the ability to see in the moment that this thing here, that's one of the 10, this is going to be the best course of action right now. If I decide right now that this is what needs to happen, then this is going to be the best course of action right now. If I decide right now that this is what needs to happen, then this is the best course of action. If I wait 10 minutes, then this will be the best course of action. So that consciousness that you acquire from your meditation is going to give you the ultimate freedom.

We have this idea that freedom comes from having choices, but actually, as it's been shown in many studies now and in this very famous TED talk, The Paradox of Choice, choice actually makes you paralyzed because you don't want to make the wrong choice. And in the East, it's the opposite. Freedom doesn't come from choice.

Freedom comes from having a consciousness to know which direction is the best one for you in the moment. Interesting. Yeah, it's related to kind of that stoic idea of, you know, the more that we can kind of remove these trappings from our life and this decision tree and the decision fatigue

and live more simply, you know, in the essence of, you know, how we were created, then that increases the happiness quotient. Yeah. And it directs of, you know, how we were created, then that increases the happiness quotient. Yeah. And it, and it, and it directs us, I think too. And I tell people you'll, you, you meditate. Doesn't mean you're going to be a millionaire. Doesn't mean you're going to have a successful startup. Doesn't mean you're going to get married and fall in love. Oh, come on. But what, what happened, what changes is your, you can't make that guarantee. What kind of meditation teacher are you? You need to, you need to re, uh, draft that, that email that you're

sending out. I'm the meat and potatoes. No, but what happens is make a million dollars and, what kind of meditation teacher are you? You need to, you need to re draft that, that email that you're sending. I'm the meat and potatoes. No, but what happens is make a million dollars. And your perception changes to so much that you can accept, you can accept where you are and what's happening. And it's really about coming from a level of acceptance that gives you the greatest ability to be able to move forward in a way that's sustainable.

Right. I like that, man in a way that's sustainable. Right. I like that, man. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Fantastic. I love it, dude. I love the interview. Thanks for your questions.

That was beautiful. No, I really enjoyed that. Come back on when your next book comes out. When is it coming out? It was supposed to come out in April, but you know how that goes. Are you self-publishing? I am.

I'm doing both. I've self-publishing? I am. I'm doing both. I've self-published The Inner Gym just because I wanted to just do it for myself and get it out. And I didn't want to be one of those people in LA, you know, I had a book idea and, you know, and then, but never really, nothing, nothing ever really happening. So just for me, I didn't even think about approaching a publisher. At least it's not a screenplay. No, no screenplays. There's no movie coming out for the Inner Gym.

But now I'm talking to a publisher, and we're working on the next project not related to the Inner Gym. Oh, cool. Yeah. Awesome, man. I love it. We didn't even talk about The Shine. We got to talk about that for a minute. Let's talk about The Shine. Yeah, I forgot about that.

You got to come to The Shine. I know. I want to come come so when's the next one july july 29th um it's the last wednesday of the month cool and uh you should come and bring your wife and it'll be amazing experience it's a great community um again we kind of sneak meditation into this really wonderful social event which is really a variety show based around inspiration. Right, so you created this event with the idea of kind of introducing meditation, but it's really, it's so much more than that. It's like this cultivated, you know.

It's a curated, you know, we have music, we have really soulful music, we have comedy, we have short film. You had Kyle Cease, right? Kyle Cease recently. I just met him. We both presented in Sun Valley at this wellness festival. And I see him at Air One down the street all the time. Hopefully, you didn't have to go after him when you presented.

No, no. Thank God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we presented at different times. I actually haven't. I couldn't see his act. So I still haven't seen it. But he gave me his DVD.

Yeah. Yeah. He's great. It was the second time he's been at The Shine. Uh-huh. And hoping to have him back again soon. And you got music. You had Magic Giant, right?

Magic Giant came and performed. When Charlie was there, Charlie led the meditation. So it's like a bazaar of different interesting things that people, that will just hopefully inspire people. And I want to introduce people to various styles of meditation and people who are out there with walking their own hero's journey and who've done amazing things with not a lot of resources, just to kind of show that you don't need a whole lot to change, to enact change in the world. One of the best parts about it is called the Shine On

Challenge, where we basically take a portion of the proceeds from the last event and we give it to someone from the audience in the next event. And we charge them with the mission of going out into the world and spending the money in any way that feels right to them to better humanity. So we've had people... That's super cool. We've had people go out and buy food for veterans and give stuff to homeless people. And the last woman who won, she made signs with positive quotes and put them all up around Inglewood. And she's painted a mural down in the Crenshaw Corridor. And, you know, it's so amazing because we get to contribute to this and we get to see how it gets enacted through the individual.

And so it's a really specific way of sort of micro charity. What was cool, you wrote this kind of article on how you conceptualize this whole thing that you put up on Medium. And what I loved about that is you basically chronicle the entire evolution, you know, from seed of idea all the way to what has become today. And you kind of show pictures of where it started and where it's arrived. And it's really a beautiful testament to, you know, what is truly the power of, you know, grassroots idea and movement, because you didn't try to come out of the gate with, you know, renting some gigantic hall and let's go big or go home. Like, you're just like, no, I'm doing this from the heart. We'll start with a few people in somebody's living room and next week we'll get a few more people.

And then, you know, fast forward to the next one and you're keep getting bigger venues and more people and a higher caliber of, you know, performer and speaker and all that kind of stuff. And it kind of just, it's beautiful how it's kind of, you know, been this flower that's just, you know, performer and speaker and all that kind of stuff. And it kind of just, it's beautiful how it's kind of, you know, been this flower that's just, you know, blossomed like this. Yeah. And it's, and I'm not unique, you know, part of that article, part of the intention behind writing the article was to, which is called the evolution of the shine. If anybody wants to look it up. Yeah. I'll put it in the show notes on there for that. So it's to inspire because, you know, we all have these ideas that the shine was an idea in my head for two years, two or three years before I ever did anything with it. And we all have these ideas. The Shine was an idea in my head for two years, two or three years before I ever

did anything with it. And we all have these ideas about doing, I should write this book, or I should start up this nonprofit, or I should drive across country on a motorcycle. And we don't do it. And it's because we overwhelm ourselves by thinking about the big picture. Right. Or it has to be a big success right away or I'm a failure. Instead of the next step. And the success comes in taking just the next step and seeing what happens, you know?

And before you know it, you'll be in a situation where, yeah, you're getting a lot of support, not a nature of support for what you're doing. So it's exciting. So one of the things that you did with The shine, didn't you have like when you register, you have to like answer a question or something like that? To get into the shine now, you have to answer the question of the month.

So what was the question last time? The last question of the month was, we just did a shine last week. If you were offered a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go? Uh-huh. Yeah. And then what do you do with those responses people so you brought we have stickers we have these little black cool looking stickers and we have this uh copper these copper sharpies so we were using regular like sort of staples you know name tags that just kind of looked cheesy and tacky and we found that

people were reluctant to wear them on their cool clothes. Right. Because you're in Venice, and that's not going to go with the outfit. So we got these black stickers with these gold and copper pins, and now everybody loves them. And so you just write your answer, and it looks like you're wearing a little button with this weird answer on them. And people use them as a conversation starter.

So you can go up to people, and you instantly have something you can talk about. Oh, wow, you want to go to Ireland, you know? I was just in Ireland last month or whatever like that. So is that without name? It's just the answer? No name, yeah, no name. So there's no names, it's just this is your destination.

Yeah, just the answer. Oh, that's really cool. Wow, so for the one July 29th, who's speaking and who's performing? For July 29th, we haven't booked the performer yet. We're still reaching out to some people. And it's normally like a last-minute thing. Like literally three or two weeks beforehand, we'll solidify the lineup.

But the speaker is going to be a guy by the name of Steve Glenn, who's one of the— Oh, I know Steve. You know Steve? Yeah, yeah. Yes. I didn't realize how big of a deal Steve was until I started doing some research in his macro. With his lead houses and all of that?

With his lead houses. And he was one of the co-founders of the Idea Lab. And he's done a lot of stuff with the Clinton Foundation. Yeah, he's a pretty impressive guy. Yeah. And I've been knowing Steve for years. He lives right around the corner from me. And I was at a dinner party talking to someone who's on his foundation, the Sustainable Council in Santa Monica.

And Steve does these things called Fred Talks. Have you been to a Fred Talk? I haven't. I'm familiar with it, but I haven't been. So that was one of my inspirations for starting The Shine. So Steve will have people come to his house, which is a lead house. house which is a lead house and um yeah he has this business where he builds like he works with an amazing architect and creates these beautiful modern homes that are all lead approved in other words completely sustainable i forget what the name of the business prefabricated homes yeah

living homes is living homes that's right yeah and um so he'll have these events fred talks and there'll be maybe seven or eight people who give many little ted talks and um and he's been doing this why is it called for years friends uh sharing ideas and i forget what it all stands for but so yeah i was talking to my this girl at this dinner party about steve and she was saying i was telling her about the shine and she was saying oh you should have steve come and give a shine talk and i go oh, Oh yeah, tell me more about that. And she just told me a little bit more about his, everything he's doing. And I was like, wow, that is pretty impressive. So he's kind of like the archetypal presenter, someone who's like a regular person who's been doing amazing things, you know, maybe even under the radar. And, uh, and I think he'll have some inspiration and he's a

great presenter too. You know, he's a very inspiration. And he's a great presenter, too. He's a very natural speaker, and he's funny, and that's what we want. We don't want any heaviness. We don't want any seriousness. We want people to be light and kind of funny and interesting. But we'll have a pretty amazing lineup. It's really just like, okay, I'll see some short film somewhere, and I'm like, oh, we should do that. Or I'll hear somebody do a stand-up routine,

and I'll try to get them. And so you never really know who's going to come together. It all just kind of comes together. It all just kind of comes together. Right, right, right. I love it. And so are you doing this monthly? We are doing it monthly.

We've been doing it monthly, and we're going to start going to every other month because it's just a lot of freaking work. And we're all volunteering with it, even though we're charging for it. But all that money goes to pay for the event costs and it's it's expensive to throw an event in la in venice particularly so uh just to kind of maintain the quality control i think we have to space them out a little bit more right and where is what's the venue for this one this one is going to be held at Full Circle, which is the venue on Rose Avenue in Hampton.

And you'll put the website, shinemovement.org. Very cool. But it's not sold out yet, right? Not yet. But the last six have sold out. So don't wait until the last minute. People can't get enough of this thing for some reason. Right on.

All right, man. I love it. So the website for that is theshinemovement.org. And if you're digging on light and you want to connect with him, maybe you want to get on an airplane and fly out here and hire him to teach you Vedic meditation. Yeah, lightwatkins.com. But you also have beginmeditating.com, right? Yeah, that's the dedicated meditation.

But since I've been doing all this other stuff, I kind of needed an umbrella site. So light Watkins. You can get to me for meditation or for the shine or for speaking all through lightwatkins.com. And at Light Watkins on Twitter. At Light Watkins on Twitter. And the book is The Inner Gym. You can get it on Amazon. Click through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com and everybody wins with that.

The TED Talk, the TEDx Venice Beach, which is pretty cool, which just went live. I'll embed that on the episode page. You guys should check that out too. Anything else? I think that's enough for them right now. Do we do it? I'm a typical

Gemini. I get my hands in too many things and it's good to kind of be a little more focused. You're pretty focused. Even if there are other things, I'm a typical Gemini. I get my hands in too many things and it's good to kind of be a little more focused. You're pretty focused. Even if there are other things, I'm not going to talk about anything else. There's plenty of other things. You'll just have to come back on and we'll talk more about it. We've got to talk about vegan food. We can talk about that.

We can get more into the Shine stuff too. Yeah, exactly. And everything that you're doing, man. So other than the Shine, is there anything else coming up? Are you traveling? I'm going to Tulum for a retreat this weekend, and that will probably have happened, I think, by the time this comes out. But, yeah, we're going to go to Costa Rica over the new year. We're going to do a meditation retreat, learn how to meditate,

get out of the rigmarole of your daily life and come in and learn on a tropical beach so that should be kind of fun if anybody wants to join for that nice man all right so they can find more about that out at lightwalking.com exactly yeah all right dude how do you feel you feel good i feel perfect yeah i'm a little hot but i know it's a little hot here but it's okay we got through it exactly good man thanks so much all right thank you thanks for having me plants it. Exactly. Good, man. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Plants. Excellent. I hope you guys enjoyed the compelling, dynamic, and ever debonair Light Watkins. If you're digging on him, make sure you check out his book, The Inner Gym. Also, I think it's worth

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of Finding Ultra. We got 100% organic cotton garments. We have plant-powered tech tees. We got sticker packs. We have fine art prints. Lots of cool stuff there. Basically, everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. We got your bases covered at richroll.com. Keep sending in your questions for future Q&A podcasts to info at richroll.com. You know the deal. We're doing more of those. So we want to hear from you guys. What do you want us to talk about? Also, check out my online courses at mindbodygreen.com, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and The Art of Living with Purpose. Thank you for supporting the show, you guys. Keep telling your friends, sharing it on social media. I love it. Keep using the banner at Rich Roll,

the Amazon banner at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. And I will see you guys in a couple of days. So have a great one. And I look forward to our next experience, our next podcast experience together. Peace. Plants. plants.