The Rich Roll Podcast - Mastering The Mind With The Master of Meditation

Episode Date: August 13, 2013

Charlie Knoles is a visionary Vedic Meditation master teacher. And today he joins Julie and I to de-mystify this ancient practice and demonstrate just how powerful implementing a simple and consistent meditation practice can be as an unparalleled tool for total life transformation. Having taught thousands — everyone from A-list celebrities, to Fortune 500 CEO's, entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, nurses, athletes and underprivileged youth, Charlie has developed a unique expertise in distilling seemingly elusive and arcane Vedic traditions down to their essence so that the deepest concepts from spirituality and science may be expressed in simple, practical steps that are accessible, easily assimilated and, he would submit, absolutely necessary as a precedent to finding inner peace and happiness. Formally taught to meditate at age 4 by his father, the pre-eminent master (or “maharishi”) Vedic Meditation teacher Thom Knoles, Charlie followed in the footsteps of his father, developing a new curriculum for training meditation teachers and running deeply immersive courses in Vedic culture in the Himalayan mountains of India and on the northern coast of Bali. His background as a musician, his study of science and his experience as the father of three young children allow him to integrate many streams of knowledge and foster a deep understanding in his students. Today Charlie and Thom together run The Veda Center. Julie and I first had the pleasure of meeting Charlie through our involvement with MindBodyGreen. And what immediately struck me was just how grounded he is, particularly in comparison with other teachers I have encountered who tend to be, well let's just say more “ethereal”. No robes or holier than thou attitude, Charlie is very much a normal dude in the “world” — a husband, father of three young kids and even more of a photography and tech nerd than I am in fact. It's this relatable “normal guy” quality that distinguishes him and allows his vast knowledge to penetrate so many. Hence countless lives forever transformed. Enjoy! Rich

Welcome to Episode 43 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Charlie Knowles. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, Rich Roll here. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. We have a very exciting guest here today, Charlie Knowles. Say hello. Hi. We're going to dispense with the long introduction. I was getting some complaints because I was going on too long.

I was doing like 15 minutes of introduction before the guest, so I'm being too long-winded. People don't like that. What's that? They're complaining. Yeah, people are complaining. Okay. Like I said, people get demanding about their free content. You have to be careful, you know?

So, well, we do have to do a little bit of intro stuff. What if somebody's brand new to this podcast and they don't know anything about it? I think you just have to do your thing. All right. What is my thing? Your thing is to spread the word. Spread the word. So what do we do here?

What is my thing? Your thing is to spread the word. Spread the word. So what do we do here? This is a health and wellness and fitness related podcast if you're new, but we're not really simply relegated to that. So if you're looking for like the top 10 tips to make you a faster marathoner, this might not be the podcast for you because we do more of a Charlie Rose style here. We go deep with our guests.

We're not talking about that. We're not? No, today. What do you mean? I mean the marathon thing. No, today we're not talking about marathoning. Well, we're going to talk about a different kind of marathoning. I think.

But the point, you stepped on my point. You interrupted me. I'm so sorry. So we have all different kinds of people on the show. We have doctors and nutritionists and world-class athletes and entrepreneurs and spiritualists. And today we have a world-class meditation teacher. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere

to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself,

I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help,

go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find

treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do.

And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Meditation is a huge part, I think,

of being optimally healthy, of optimizing your wellness. And it doesn't get, I think it gets a raw deal. You know, a lot of people like to talk about health and diet and how many calories is this and what are your percentage of protein, fat, carbs, and low carb and all of that. But they completely overlook like this huge aspect of really functioning at your best, which is meditation. So we're going to get into that super deep today, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think all those things that you mentioned are really important, obviously, but the thing that people forget is that almost everyone knows what they're supposed

to do, but they don't necessarily make the best decisions, you know? And how do you make a good decision? Well, you have to have your mind clear and have it be functioning properly. You mean that gap between like being well-intentioned, like I know I should do this, but not by doing something else instead? Just not now. If you're faced with that challenge at 5 a.m., do I get up and go for a run? Do I eat a healthy, proteinaceous breakfast? Or do I go and load up on Cheerios?

Which one are you going to choose depends largely on how you feel and how well your mind is working. And if you're stressed and anxious and feeling insecure about your day, then you're not going to make the right decision. And so it feeds into all those things that you mentioned. Yeah, I do that a lot. I wake up and immediately my mind swells with all the things that I have to do that day and I get anxious immediately.

And it takes a lot of will to sort of say, I'm not going to entertain that right now. I'm going to sit down and be quiet. That's a battle for me. I wish I could tell you that I have a very consistent meditation practice on a daily basis. So do I. That's not the truth.

Julie would be happier if I did. That's what we'll fix today. And the worst part is… The world would be happier. So do I. That's not the truth. Yeah, Julie would be happier if I did. That's what we'll fix today. And the worst part is... The world would be happier. All of us. It affects all of us. Here, maybe take that pop filter off because you're sounding all muffled.

I know. Hold on. It's very odd. Like I'm underwater. Here, try that. Check. Hello. Oh, yes, much better.

Thanks. Sorry about that. Yeah, you'd be happier if I did that, and I'd be happier. And the worst, now what I was going to say is the worst part is, like, I know the difference. Like, I know that my day is better, and I function better, and everything is smoother when I do it. And yet, so often, I still can't make it happen. Yeah, people meet me, and, I mean, you know me a little bit and people who know me well often think that I'm naturally just this really happy,

buoyant person. And then I'm just this guy who's always happy all the time. I'm always that guy who's, you know, going up and saying, Hey to everyone and introducing myself and having lots of jokes and having a good time. I'm not that person. You know, I, I, I wake up in the morning and I feel just as terrible as everyone else does. You know, I have this practice that I do, which just, you know, in the morning and it's a fight, you know, that when I'm speaking from experience, when I say that, you know, when you wake up really early and you just can't think about, you know, the, the potential awfulness of the day ahead of you. And it just seems to, you know, come at you all at once. And it can be intimidating and overwhelming. And if you can just

get over that little bit of a hump and say, you know what, I'm going to spend, you know, 10, 15 minutes on tuning my mind in the same way that you'd spend, you know, to brush your teeth, get your shower, get your body clean, do a bit of exercise to tune your body. Your mind deserves as much love. And from that basis, as a result of doing that, you feel it. And I've been meditating since I was a little kid, since I was four years old. Right.

I very rarely miss a meditation now because I know what a terrible jerk I am. When you're not doing it. So that's what's wrong with me. Julie's saying, yes, that is what's wrong with you. No, I mean, I think that another way to put it would be because you know the amazing benefits and how it affects your life in a positive way. And it really is.

And I have to admit that I read many, many, many spiritual texts and books over the years. And I read in many, many, many, many, many texts that meditation was essential and I didn't do it right and i would read about it again and go oh there's that thing about meditation and there it is again and when i finally um was able to sit down and actually begin um i never miss yeah yeah it changes your life once you start to get into it regularly it's it changes you so much that you just you can't imagine what life would be without that um what do you think the reason

was that that was holding you back originally though i don't know i mean i think i was uh maybe still in a just a process of my life where i was seeking you know i was still gathering information and sort of like, well, I'm going to get to that, but I'm not going to do it right now. And maybe it's because, um, you know, I don't know, I guess I just wasn't ready because before you're ready, you just don't sit. Yeah. And then suddenly that's true. Yeah, you do. There's, there's a lot of, I think there's also, there's a lot of mystification, weird factor around it for a lot of people as well. You know, for some reason some reason, it's really interesting. The thing people seem to be most scared of is facing their own mind.

That's right. I used to have some relatives when I started practicing yoga. They were like, okay, go ahead and do the postures, but do not do the meditation. Right. Well, I think there's this weird secular thing that comes in. If somebody has a particular religious bent or they were raised in this church or that church, it's almost thing that really should be non-secular and completely non-dogmatic and non-threatening and helpful to anybody wherever you're at or whatever

your religious or spiritual conviction is, I think that that, you know, creates a thing that makes it difficult for a lot of people to embrace. Yeah, there's an interesting thing that, you know, when I teach people to meditate, you know, there's stages people go embrace. Yeah, there's an interesting thing that, you know, when I teach people to meditate, you know, there's stages people go through. Usually, for most people, they don't get it the first time, you know, that it takes a few days for them to really kind of sink into the experience and find the joy in it. But once they do, it's revelatory to them. You know, they have this moment where they begin to go beyond the more surface level of their mind, the quieter levels of consciousness.

They find that thoughts begin to get quiet and disappear, and they experience a more expansive aspect of their own consciousness. And almost every time that happens, people will say you know what i i've experienced this before you know i've had this when i was a little kid it's always when they're a little kid so it's like when i was 10 or when i was 12 i just had this spontaneously happen to me where i felt like i was really connected to nature and my mind was really open i felt this waves of bliss and joy coursing through my body and i didn't really know what was happening. I just kind of went with it and felt really like my mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

And it just happened by itself. And what that's convinced me is that a meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there. And that's the key for me. Kind of the role that I play is reminding people, you know what, there actually is a technique or a set of techniques that you can use to just turn that switch in your brain and make that thing happen, that thing that should be spontaneous, that perhaps once was spontaneous for you to experience. And so, I mean, a lot of these different techniques and all the techniques I draw from did come from religious traditions. You know, meditation exists in Judaism, in Christianity, in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Shamanism and Animism and all the different isms.

They all have it. And the reason is because it's becoming more accepted is you can teach the technique without the, you know, and by the way, you have to believe in... Without the ism. Without the ism, yeah. You don't have to believe in this particular god or this particular philosophy or something.

It's not meditation-ism. It's just meditation. That's right. You can have the experience, you know. You can have that natural experience, which is, I think, actually wired into our brains, built into our bodies to be able to have that. You probably know it. I mean, runners and stuff, the runner's high.

Yeah, for sure. It's actually the same thing. You can have that experience in other states as well. And it's when your mind and body becomes so attuned that everything just kind of feels perfect. You have this sort of peak experience. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely a big kind of value add of the training that I do, you know, I mean, to, to, to be able to tap into that. And it only happens when, you know, I don't have the earbuds in and I'm on the trail and I'm completely alone and I've already been going for a couple hours.

It takes a while to get to that state where my mind will finally start to slow down, and I can be present and release the anxiety and the stress and really just be. For sure. It's work. You know what I mean? It's a practice just like anything else. And I think one of the things that I've talked about before on the podcast that I'd love to hear you kind of expound on a little bit more is this idea that, you know, we all walk around thinking that, you know, we are our mind and we are our thoughts

and not really kind of understanding or really embracing this idea that our thinking mind and our higher state of consciousness are two different things. And it seems weird and like hard to wrap your brain around that. But, you know, a perfect example is, and I'm sure everybody has had this, where you observe yourself doing something or thinking a certain thing and you have kind of an outsider's perspective on it. Like, why am I, you know, saying this to this person and feeling this right now? Well, there's, so there's this, there's like this divide, right? This dichotomy between, you know, one part of you that is acting and thinking a certain way and another part of you

that is observing that or placing a judgment on that or entertaining a different way of handling something. Yeah. And a lot of meditation traditions, it's referred to as the silent witness or witnessing experience where you can sort of stand back and observe your life going on and not feel as overwhelmed by all of the conditions that normally suck you into it. talking about. I've got a nice easy way to think about it, which is, you know, when, when you interact with a little baby, if you get, get a little kid and you sort of look into its eyes, you don't look at that kid, you know, like when, when it's smile, when the kid smiles back at you and gets all excited and wiggling around and everything, they're not looking at you and thinking, oh man, he's really cool because he's got a cool car and a cool job. And you know, he's, he's got a great haircut and all that sort of stuff you do have a great haircut oh thank you thank you i appreciate that i try i try um uh but the um but the uh you know these kids these little babies

they don't look at you in that way they just they just completely interact with that that deeper level of your identity and vice versa when you look at the kid, you get so happy. And so this is pure sense of love and appreciation and joy and a moment of connectedness that you give yourself permission to have with a child. In seeing that little child and saying, this kid, they don't have anything cool about them. They don't have a cool job.

They haven't gone to a cool school and have cool clothes or anything. But you look at them, you can't help but feel completely connected to them and compelled to just love them completely. And what is it that you're interacting with? It's a deeper level of their identity that at that moment you can connect on. And as that kid grows up, the unfortunate thing is that they're going to learn, oh, that's not who you are actually.

You know, that deeper level of you is not who you are. You're actually, you know, now you're going to go to a school and you're a person who went to this school and then you're going to get a job and you're going to be a person who does this job. And you identify yourself over time more and more with, you know, if you ask someone, who are you? Oh, you know, I came from Pensacola and I'm a plumber and, you know, I went to this university and, you know, this is to this university and, you know,

this is who I'm married to and so on. And there's a deeper level of yourself. All that stuff's fine, but it's not like any of that's bad. It's just that there's a deeper level of you that people are, they don't really know how to explore that or really know what that deeper aspect of themselves is beyond all of those surface levels of identity. And that's really what meditation is it's learning to discover this sort of more boundless aspect of your consciousness and your identity where you can um you can just feel and you can rather than saying you know i am you know this job and this place and this school and so on just i am you know i'm here. I'm here. I'm present.

It's perfect stillness and perfect dynamism at the same time. It's a lovely experience. It's difficult to put into words, actually, because it's one of those things that kind of goes beyond language a little bit. But everyone who's had it, they can all say, oh, yeah, I am. Yeah, that thing. I've got that completely. It's much easier to teach someone how to actually do it than to explain it.

Right. Have you experienced that? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And what was that like? It's, um, it's just a, an open state of kind of a lot of space and, uh, you know, no thoughts and, uh, really the pure natural state of bliss and joy. That's, that's really natural. That, that sort of, it's kind of holds all other things. And then we have all this external, um, stimulus and events and memory and noises and everything coming at us all the time. But, um, I've found by connecting a lot through the breath. And for me, the most powerful meditation times are 4.30 in the morning. That's where the really good stuff happens. That's really great. That's a good time to do it.

But I will say being a mom of four, I also learned to just bring that into my life. So sometimes it's when, you know, I was changing diapers or, you know, cleaning house or doing something very mundane. Absolutely. Yeah, I think you touched on a really important point too, which is the joy aspect of that. Part of the identity, that building of identity that happens as you grow older is that I'm happy because. I'm happy because I got my degree. I'm happy because I got this new car. I'm happy because the new iPhone is going to come out in a month and a half. I'm actually looking forward to that one. But it's all these things of their conditional happiness. I'm happy because I got the girl.

I'm happy because of this or that. You know, the problem with that, of course, is that when any one of those conditions is not met, you lose your happiness. And I think the beautiful thing about meditation is that you can find a source of happiness within yourself that's not dependent on any external circumstances. And so, I mean, I've worked with people who are mega billionaires in their mega billion dollar mansions and taught them to meditate. They can experience it just fine. I've worked with people who are in prisons, in cell blocks, who are in what they call, what do they call it now? Punitive segregation, I think that's called.

Oh, really? Is that the politically correct term? Yeah, euphemism for solitary confinement. Oh, wow, I've never heard that before. Yeah, and so they're literally in a concrete cube with nothing, no possessions whatsoever and no freedom. And they can experience that same inner happiness as well. It's completely independent.

Whether you've got the best boyfriend girlfriend spouse in the world you've got lots of money or you've got none of those things you can still find inner happiness when you meditate and that's the real beauty of it i think where it becomes really amazing so um usually on the podcast i do a little introductory segment where i can say all sorts of things about the guest who's coming on but since we skipped that i should at least let the listeners know that, you know, Charlie really is one of the leading meditation teachers in the world. And he's got a really fascinating backstory. And like you said, you're here, you're teaching, you travel all over the world doing workshops

and retreats and you're teaching celebrities and CEOs and average people and incarcerated people and underprivileged people and all sorts of different kinds of people. It's kind of amazing. And your backstory and kind of how this whole thing began is fascinating as well. So I'd love to hear you relate a little bit of that. Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, I was really lucky that both of my parents, they were in this kind of early wave of hippies who went over to India and decided that in the 1960s and early 70s and decided that they were going to study all Eastern knowledge. And they were very serious study uh quite intellectual and they came back um to australia where i was born and just started teaching people you know they started become they became meditation teachers themselves right so your dad tom is he american or is he he's yeah he's uh yeah he's the he's the son of a u.s air force general um he was a military kid and he uh like a great santini yeah right exactly um and

then uh he i guess in some flower power on his yeah yeah he decided that when he was um you know he was uh 17 or so he was gonna pack his surfboard and fly to australia partially i think because this vietnam war thing was happening and maybe that was a good idea. But also, you know, Australia was an appealing place to go and he met my mom over there. And so he's now a very well-known, very well-respected meditation teacher. Yeah, I've taken, I took some of his, I don't know if I would call it courses, workshops. It was several years ago, many years before we met, and they were amazing.

Yeah, he's so eloquent and so brilliant. I mean, I've been listening to him speaking about spiritual matters and scientific matters, philosophical matters, just about everything. He always has something amazing to say. Anyone, people ask him the most difficult questions of life, the universe and everything. And he comes back with the most profound, amazing answers. People ask him terrible, idiotic questions as well. He still comes back with incredible stuff. He's so eloquent and so brilliant. And so, you know, I kind of grew up with, with this amazing spiritual teacher as a as a father and um so when i was four years old he that's the youngest he teaches people to meditate but he taught me i remember on

my fourth but it was very exciting my fourth birthday you're gonna finally learn how to meditate i know how exciting forget the xbox i know yeah it was it was atari's back there It was Ataris back then. What was the technique? Can you share? Well, it was a mantra-based technique. I can't, it's the mantra, the top secret. Top secret. But I can, but yeah, it was essentially, there was a simple mantra that I was supposed to repeat inside my mind

without concentrating onto it or holding onto it, just kind of let it kind of drift through my mind and follow it. The analogy I use sometimes is it's like if you were to drop a gold coin into the water and just kind of you're diving in after it, you can sort of follow it down to these deeper layers of the ocean. That's kind of the way it feels where you can sort of see this shimmering image of this sound, which is very beautiful and kind of draws you it feels where you can sort of see this shimmering image of this sound, which is very beautiful and kind of draws you in in this repetitive way.

And all of a sudden you find yourself, and I remember my kids are very easy to teach to meditate. They have the experience very spontaneously. And I was no exception to that rule. The first time I did it, it just you know it's like it's mind expanding moment where um i just felt just full of joy and happiness and it was just kind of incredible my mind kind of felt like it was expansive and huge and then you know four minutes goes by because when you meditate when you're four you're supposed to only do it for four minutes and so four minutes goes by and come out it's like you know where was? It's incredible. I felt for a moment, I remember at four, I felt like I knew the secret to everything.

I knew the entire universe. And then I came back and I'm like, oh, I'm a four-year-old again, darn it. That's amazing because I think for a child to sit still and be able to do that, I mean, you must have some predisposition on a different level. I'll tell you, this is a really interesting preconception that a lot of adults have. I teach kids and adults, and kids are much easier to teach than adults.

Adults are the ones who have all of the preconceptions and all of the self-defeating thought patterns that they've built up over time, whereas kids, I give them a simple instruction, close your eyes, be aware of your breath, or maybe it's a mantra or some, whatever simple technique is I'm teaching to kids, depending on how much time I've got with them, because different techniques that are appropriate for different amounts of time. Um, then they will just follow the instruction and just have these amazing experiences. Then you ask them afterwards,

you know, what was your experience? And they will tell you the most amazing things. I mean, it's just, you know, and it's completely unscripted, unprompted. They don't even know what they're supposed to be saying. Sure, but it lines up. It lines up and it's, you know, it's mind-blowing. But when you teach an adult, on the other hand, you say something simple like, you know, close your eyes, sit still. Here's your mantra. Repeat it.

I'll be like, well, should I sit like this or should I sit like that? Should I be sitting in lotus position or should I be, you know, sitting like that? Close the eyes. I mean, fully close the eyes or just partially open the eyes. Am I supposed to be focusing on my breathing? The mantra is a little bit too loud. Am I thinking the mantra too much or what if other thoughts come in? Is that good or bad?

And I have always thought the mind goes in all the different places. So it's actually the adults that are much more difficult. It takes four days to teach an adult, I found. It takes half an hour to teach a kid. Interesting. But I think it's fascinating that you kind of followed your father in his footsteps. I mean, I

would not have been surprised if you decided you were going to be an investment banker. You know what I mean? To just do the like, oh, my crazy dad with his meditation stuff. I don't want any part of that. You're not rebelling. Yeah, it would have been more kind of predictable if you had kind of gone left on that.

I had my moments. Yeah. There were some times. When I was a teenager, I did all the things that teenagers do, you know, and, you know, one of which was kind of rebel against my parents for a while. And, you know, I hate my dad and this crazy stuff that they all do, did the whole thing, you know. But I realized very quickly that there was immense value to it because, you know, I stopped meditating for a little while. I was like, oh, man, I feel like crap.

You know, this is not a little while. I was like, oh, man, I feel like crap. This is not a good feeling. And so I actually came back to my dad and I was like, you know, I think maybe – and the other thing too, they were very good. And I really recommend this to any parents who are trying to get their kids to do anything in a sort of like health or just positive habits or anything. Don't push it on them and make it like a thing that they hate. Because my parents were really great about just saying, look, here's this thing that

we do and we all do it, but they weren't, they never forced me to do it. And so I got to choose it. You know, in the end, when I was about 16 or so, I really chose it. You know, it's like this thing, this legacy that they've built up is really valuable. And I went to my dad and I asked him, you know, how like this thing this legacy that they've built up is really valuable and i went to my dad and i asked him you know how long should i give this is you know if you give it three months do it twice a day meditate in the morning meditate in the evening for three months and then decide if you're gonna stop doing this and never do it again or you're gonna keep on doing it for the rest of

your life and you know make a hard decision about it don't don't be wishy-washy it's another good really good thing to say to a 16-year-old because they love certainty. So I did that. I gave it a try, and I ran this experiment. At the end of it, I was like, man, I feel like a superman at the end of this. This is awesome.

I couldn't imagine not doing my meditation. How would you be more specific about how different you felt after you had gone through that three-month period? It's interesting because the changes are incremental i mean in very much the same way that like working out is the same you know you see changes every day but it's really at the end of that period of time and what i was mostly doing is comparing it to my friends and you know when you're a teenager i mean i'm sure you remember high school it's like you see all these people just going through these psychodramas all the time and just really hurting themselves.

I just wasn't doing that. I wasn't panicking about social situations or I wasn't feeling like I was overwhelmed by school or the work that I had to do. I found my schoolwork really easy and everything was kind of my mind was flowing really fast. I could memorize things really well. So my schoolwork was, you know, I was acing tests even without, you know, doing my homework and, you know, it was, it was, um, and I just kind of felt really good all the time. And I felt like my creativity was really flowing. And, and again, for teenagers, it's a really important thing. You know, you're kind of at a period in your life where you're, um, you're forging an identity in who you are in the world and at a period in your life where you're um you're forging

an identity and who you are in the world and what you want to do and what you want to be and you have these you know teenagers tend to be very idealistic and i was very much that way and so i was you know coming up with amazing music and art and thoughts and you know just finding myself feeling great and you know interesting it's the first interestingly it's the first time too that i experienced the runner's high as well. I started to get myself into that state of mind so frequently that I was actually, it was because, you know, again, I didn't have a driver's license at the time. So I wanted to get to my friend's house. I actually just ran to his house.

It was like an hour run to get there. You must have been desperate to see your friend. No, it was, it was just, I just kind of, I kind of felt this, like I could have kind of knew it was going to happen something like on some sort of cellular level. I was just like, if I just do this, I'm going to feel great and I'll be fine. And I kind of got into this rhythm and then all of a sudden I was, I was running for like an hour or so to get to his place. And, and I just had that experience. It was like the whole universe opening up and feeling connected and just in myself.

And my mind was really clear and I just felt super happy inside. And it was like all of the – I'm not – unlike you, I'm not this super fit dude. I definitely wasn't then at the time. You're pretty fit. I'm all right. But I don't work on it to the same level that you do. Normally running for an hour would – I'd be having heart attacks at the end of it. But I felt't work on it to the same level that you do. Normally running for an hour, I'd be having heart attacks at the end of it.

But, you know, I felt no exhaustion. I was just like kind of in this blissful mode and it was wonderful. And it was a very psychological state that I got into. And it was so powerful that it was like, you know, this stuff has legs. I mean, in a real sense, it's not just kind of going off and communing with the universe and convincing yourself of some sort of fake thing. It's something which really has a powerful effect. But to get back to your story, so you have this experience when you're 16 and you kind of make this commitment to yourself.

And where does that lead you? I mean, I know you've traveled and, you know, studied and, you know, tell us a little bit about how you kind of developed your expertise. Yeah. So, I mean, I do travel a lot, actually. But, you know, at that time I was living in Australia and, you know, I was pretty lucky to be in this incredibly beautiful place. And I actually – part of my rebellion – I didn't really quite have all the rebellion out of me at that point just yet. I actually ran away from home, fell in love and eloped, ran off with my girlfriend. And we – yeah, it was fun.

Where did you go? Where would you go when you leave Australia to run away to? Well, we actually didn't leave Australia. It kind of felt like we did, though. We were living, a lot of people have this idea of Australia. And I get, I like to actually play tricks on Americans sometimes. People will ask me, you know, like, you know, did you ever see a crocodile or whatever?

And I'll tell them, oh, you know, we used to ride kangaroos to school in the morning when we were kids. My mum would just put me in the pouch and send the kangaroo off to school and people would actually believe me. But, you know, I actually grew up in, you know, Sydney is this amazing, beautiful cosmopolitan city and it's a very beautiful place.

There is nature all around you, but it feels very urban. And so my girlfriend and I ultimately ended up in far north Queensland, which is the northern tip of Australia, which is geographically and environmentally more like Papua New Guinea. Is that Cairns? Yeah, Cairns. Cairns is up there? Yeah, it's crocodile country.

It really is. So it's that kind of classic Australia. Like you can't just go swimming in a river or anything like that around there, right? Or even in the ocean, right? Well, the ocean's usually – well, it depends. The ocean's usually okay part of the year, but there's these stinging jellyfish. You can actually see it. I mean, the podcast listeners can't see, but I have this gnarly scar on my arm.

Oh, wow. That's like raised up or anything. That's from a jellyfish. Yeah, it's a jellyfish tentacle. Remind me to take a picture of that. That is wild. You know, these jellyfish that'll kill you. I was actually lucky that if they sting you badly,

you can die within minutes from those things. Why is everything in Australia so dangerous? Like all the nature. The funny thing is all of that stuff is just in the north of Australia. It's north, yeah, but it's intense up there. It is. It's like all the nature. The funny thing is, all of that stuff is just in the north of Australia. It's north, yeah, but it's intense up there. It is.

It's super intense. You've got all these deadly snakes and you've got these jellyfish and you've got crocodiles and like cassowaries, these birds that can like rip your guts open

if they see you. It's pretty crazy. And it's also extraordinarily beautiful. It's ridiculously beautiful i mean it is just the most amazing place and once you and you know queenslanders people who live up there they're first of all everyone in the rest of australia thinks queenslanders are all crazy and mad as cut snakes as they say but they are like they're all crocodile dundee they're just

nuts but in actual fact it's kind of it's it's kind of a a bit of a myth that they put on to try to get rid of the southerners but um but the uh you but when you're up there you just get used to it you know you kind of get used to what the rhythms of the land are and after a while you can start to really appreciate the area one of the things that was was really really fortunate to have while i was there um i was near one thing that's that's that's different to northern australia compared to a to sydney is that there's a an aboriginal population there the indigenous australians who um haven't been weren't moved off their land you know they're pretty much in the same place that they were and to a much greater extent had maintained their culture and traditions and i got to spend some time with some really incredible aboriginal leaders who um

the the the kind of the when you're talking about sort of meditation in action and being aware of your environment it was a real lesson i mean it's like they're kind of some of these guys seem to never switch out of that mode they're always present they always had this kind of awareness about them which was phenomenal I remember one experience I had particularly, you know, I went to this amazing river called Mossman Gorge, which if you're in Australia, oh my God, go to Mossman Gorge. It's so beautiful. And I was walking there with an Aboriginal friend and just as he was walking through this rainforest, which to me was sort of an impenetrable sea of green, he was just picking fruit and food and medicinal plants from all around him, like his constant awareness. And I was so focused on the path ahead of me that I couldn't see any of this stuff around me.

And as soon as you start to open up your peripheral vision and your awareness, your brain actually changes. your peripheral vision and your awareness, your brain actually changes, you know, and it's this, it's actually one of the simplest meditation methods that I like to teach people is just being aware of your peripheral vision, extending your arms out and just kind of wiggling your fingers so that you can see, you know, what's in, in your periphery and, um, start to have that sort of, it was something I learned from, from, from him. And, you know, it's like little experiences like that, like I'd sort of pick up on that kind of appreciation, that being in the place. It wasn't like these guys, I mean, I, I, I was, um, you know, not an Aboriginal person, so they're not going to initiate me or give me any, you know, of their really deep knowledge, but it was

interesting hanging out with them and kind of seeing these people and how they've still got this kind of vestigial awareness that hasn't been taken away from them despite the fact that they've been treated pretty poorly. And that was a big lesson for me in growing up. Is that an outgrowth, like a conscious practice or tradition on their part? Do they have things that foster that, or is that just a byproduct of the way they live their life, like closer to nature? In this case, this particular guy, Norman, he was teaching young kids, and so they would actually take kids away,

take young Aboriginal kids away and train them in the old techniques and show them traditional methods of hunting and food gathering and all these different things to give them that sense of awareness. He had a very strong sense of continuity with the old culture. But it very much was also just part of being on the land. And when you hang out with people who are living that more traditional lifestyle anywhere in the world, you do see that level of connectedness that we miss out on a bit.

It's still present for us, but we just kind of miss out on it because we're not tuned into it. You know, we tend to be more tuned into our electronics and so on and being so focused on single points that we just can't see it. You know, I see the same thing when I travel to places like Haiti or Bali or India, you know, people who, they have spiritual experiences that if we were to have them in our culture, we'd be institutionalized for having them.

But that's like every other Tuesday at the temple, you know. It's like, you know, literally It's like literally you talk to someone. So give an example of something like that. So I'm going to Haiti in two weeks. There's a long-term project I'm involved in down there, an environmental project. And you go to the voodoo dances that they do. And voodoo is very misunderstood.

It's not really like this whole voodoo doll kind of devil worship stuff that you hear about here it's a very very legit kind of shamanistic religion and um people will do these dances i'll get the drums going and they'll suddenly get possessed you know they'll they'll have like a spirit take over their body and that you can see this change in their eyes and they start dancing differently and it's they have it's it's um you know and and they take on a new persona and, they have, it's, it's, um, you know, and, and they're, they take on a new persona and a different, you know, whole different thing. Now, if you or I would have that happen to us, like we would, you know, go down to some cafe and someone's playing a bongo drum and all of a sudden you start to, you sort of.

Well, yeah, but if you were, if you were at a Kirtan in Venice, it would be just fine. Oh, sure. Yeah. If you were at a kirtan in Venice, it would be just fine. Oh, sure, yeah. So there are these little emerging pockets where we say, you know, these sorts of experiences are okay. And if you go down in the south in some of these, in the charismatic Christian churches, for example. Right, it's like speaking tongues. Yeah, they'll have these sorts of experiences.

But for most people in Western culture, we get really freaked out by stuff like that. Now I talk to people all the time, you know, they'll, we'll come to a meditation class and I'll have some really powerful, beautiful, overwhelming experience. It's not like, you know, possessed by spirit, but it's like, Yeah, that one's kind of extreme. It is, but you know, it's, well, it's extreme for us.

It's extreme because we have this idea of like, you know, the exorcist or whatever, but, um, you know, it can be just like energy moving through their body in different ways or feeling like overwhelming sensations or you know beautiful visions that come to them or something and they they'll have that during the meditation class and all of a sudden they have permission to talk about it you know in a in that setting and you know they'll have these people who like you know some and have very straight people you know people who are like accountants and financial industry you know hedge fund managers and you know really like not the kind of people you'd think would be talking about this stuff but they'll you know they'll start saying oh i just kind of felt this golden light come into me and

i felt it quivering through my heart and coursing through my limbs and all of a sudden i felt like this incredible blissful almost sexual energy coming through me and I was overwhelmed by ecstasy. And you're like, uh-huh. And there's actually, you know, this is, it's not an uncommon experience at all. It's something that most people can have spontaneously and can cultivate. And it doesn't have to be this kind of big weird thing that, you know, it can actually be quite a normal thing. And scientists can look at it in the brain and say, you know, there's this stuff going on in the brain and, you know, this is what's occurring here. But, you know, unfortunately in our culture we tend to stigmatize that behavior.

Right, it's not safe. And we were talking about this when we had dinner in New York and you were saying, you know, you do these workshops and then afterwards people come up and they tell you these incredibly elaborate and very specific visions that they have and they confide in you and say, I've never had anything like this, but they feel comfortable telling you and nobody else. It's kind of a confidential thing

that you have, which is kind of amazing and it goes to this idea. It makes me think about kind of what the true self is versus the self that you hold out to the world, the mask that you portray and the disconnect between those two things and how meditation can help you become more comfortable bridging that gap, sort of expressing who you really are to the world and being okay with that, I guess. Definitely. Yeah think that um the that's also another one of the big myths about meditation is that when you do it you're going to become this you know sort of uh you're

going to lose yourself but i've never seen that people who meditate all the time they become more of who they are you know you lose that layer of anxiety and stress people identify with their stress you know especially in new york speaking new york people get people all the time will say you know there's like i'm an anxious new yorker and it's like god that's just that's a strange self-identity to have um you know people get people identify like i'm an angry person you know i'm i'm an anxious person i can't sleep at night and they have all these ideas about who they are. Once you lose all of that, you find out who you really are, you know, and it's, um, it's a lot more liberating to have, uh, have, have your sense of self based on inner happiness and bliss. And, you know,

when I speak about these kinds of more far out experiences, they'll happen every now and then, you know, it's not something that like happens every time I meditate or anytime someone meditates, but every now and again they'll happen. And that should be normal as well. We should be able to talk about that and be able to say, you know, there's a way that you can understand these things. You know, there's a way to make it, you know, for it to be totally normal. I mean, you had this one experience you mentioned. Right in New York. Well, actually, I remembered after we spoke about it, because I was trying to grab it, and it wasn't quite in my consciousness.

But anyway, I was asking you because I had this one experience. I actually wasn't even meditating. I was up in my bedroom on my bed, and I was just sitting in an open state. And I felt my hands were huge like king kong right size hands and i was laughing because it was such a strange experience right and so i asked you when we were at dinner if he if he knew what that state was right and this is actually a really common meditation experience of when people it's it's one of the signs that you're beginning to go really really deep and uh your your mind has settled down and gotten quieter and quieter and a certain point you begin to transcend your senses you start to go beyond your sense of touch and this other sense

that we have called proprioception which is the knowledge of where the body is in space and so suddenly your brain is not receiving excuse me so suddenly your brain isn't receiving the information that's normally used to getting about where your body is where your hands are particularly it's usually hands feet or head that people have this and all of a sudden your brain sort of starts to search you know it's like where are my hands are they out here out here out here and such that and it's you the sensation subjectively that you have when that's happening is that my head is getting really huge or my hands are getting really really huge and so you'll you'll swear up and down that you've just got these enormous hands all of a sudden

it's um and it's it's it's what we call early stage transcendence where it's it's just that first stage. Before you fully go beyond the ego and the intellect, you just start to have these transcending specific senses, which transcending just means to go beyond, going beyond the specific senses. And you can go beyond your sense of touch, beyond your sense of sight, smell, taste.

The last one, you go beyond your sense of hearing. And so at a certain point, even I've had people who have very, very deep meditations, they haven't fallen asleep. They're sitting there and they're perfectly upright, but I even had one person, one student who I taught, who had this experience the very first time she meditated, within 30 seconds of learning.

She had huge hands in 30 seconds. It was actually going even a level beyond that where she was i she i gave her her her mantra her sound that she was supposed to repeat in her mind i told her to close her eyes and then i was like you know after 30 seconds i said okay open your eyes now and open your eyes open your seriously open your eyes like open your, seriously, open your eyes. Like it's time. And she, Oh, where was I? You know,

and she was, she had transcended, she transcended, she transcended all of her senses and kind of gone beyond everything. You know, and, and she had this huge grin on her face because she'd kind of touched this very blissful state of consciousness.

It's about one in a hundred people who have that experience the first time. Most people have it after about, you know, for a few days of practice. I'll start to have that. But, um, it's a, it's a, it's kind of a, a really beautiful, but also thoroughly normal experience. Yeah. I mean, I think most people, you know, we're, you know, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. So we're, we're all spiritual. It's not like Charlie's more spiritual than anybody else because he's a meditation teacher. So we're, we're all spiritual. It's not like Charlie's more spiritual than anybody else because he's a meditation teacher. So if we switch that way that we perceive ourselves

and you just think back in your childhood or think back in your life, I can almost guarantee that every single person has had some form of some communication with something beyond, you know, where they're at, physical body or. Yeah. It's so common and it's, it's sometimes people don't remember it until they have it again. You know, that's, that's one of the beauties of, um, teaching the classes that I teach is that, you know, they, they, they're reminded, they're like, Oh, this is something I've had before. And then it doesn't feel so weird to them anymore. People often have this, there is this weird factor about coming to a meditation class and learning to meditate.

And people think maybe it's something that only hippies do, or maybe it's something that only other kinds of people, those relaxed people. I'm uniquely type A and anxious, and my mind races. I could never do that. That's only those happy people meditate. It's like, yeah, they're happy because they meditate. Definitely in my case. But they still have this misconception.

And so suddenly when they remember, oh, yeah, I've had this before, it's almost like you've forgotten how to go to sleep or something. And I'm just kind of teaching you like, oh, yeah, here's this method. You just put pajamas on and lie down. And you're like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that makes me go to sleep or something. And I'm just kind of teaching you like, oh, yeah, here's this method. You can go to, you just put pajamas on and lie down. And then you're like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that makes me go to sleep. I mean, I like also what you were saying about how your father

had you commit to the practice in a very committed way for three months, I think you said. And when I'm teaching meditation or I'm sharing my process, I say 40 days or at least 21, if not 40. But the idea is, is that it's important that you don't judge it and you don't look for the experience because the

second you look for the experience, it's not coming. That's right. And you know, the experience is very often something that you don't expect. And so when people are thinking, okay, what are, people always have this misconception, you know, I, I misconception, and I get it all the time when I go to a yoga class, and I love my yoga classes and I love my yoga teachers, but I'll often do the little lip service to meditation at the end. And we'll be in Shavasana lying down and they'll say, now, close your eyes and clear your mind of all thoughts. your eyes and clear your mind of all thoughts. And I feel like sort of saying, you're putting my hand up and say, look, as a fellow professional in the industry, let me just point out that's step 10, not step one, you know? And if you're expecting it, that's what's going to happen the day that you, the first time you meditate, it'll be something different actually. And the different experience that you don't expect will usually be the more profound one that you,

Um, the different experience that you don't expect will usually be the more profound one that you, um, because by definition, it's something that you haven't experienced within your memory anyway. You know, you might not remember having had that experience before. And so, um, when it happens, people are really surprised, like the hands, who would have guessed, who would have guessed that one? But that's one of the really common early stage really common early stage transcendence experiences that people have. So people will often bring that one up in a class. Like, I thought my hands were going huge.

What was that all about? I was expecting to commune with a golden light and have it talk to me and give me holy wisdom. Instead I had elephantitis. Huge hands. I didn't want that one. But actually it's one of the little check marks. I go, oh, yeah, that was actually a good meditation you just had now. Right.

And I think the more open you can be and the more just innocent. And I always advise, don't judge it. You just do the time. You sign up and you do the time with no attachment and no judgment on what's going on. Right, right. Well, I think, yeah, a couple things. I mean, first, I think the big stumbling block with a lot of people is, well, how do I – I don't know how to do it. I don't know how do I start or what am I supposed to do?

And they go to a yoga class and, like you said, somebody just says, free your mind of thought. And it's like, well, I don't know how to do that, you know, as opposed to give somebody a task like repeat a mantra or hum or whatever, something that they can focus on that will actually serve to quiet the mind. So can you talk a little bit about somebody who's interested in this but just needs like a little kick to get going or something that they can think about that they can implement well i mean the the you know what you're speaking about here is that there are these traditions from around the world where people have actually thought about how to get into that state and that's where you know where i can actually bring some bring some knowledge to this you know there's later on in my life after I, after I was living in Australia, I traveled to India, I studied over there, did further study with my father, who's a great teacher.

I know, you just skipped right over India, but we got to talk about that. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, but you, I learned a lot from the Vedic tradition, which is the tradition from northern India, which is where yoga comes from. It's where Ayurveda comes from, if you know Ayurvedic medicine. And a lot of the knowledge that we have about, when you trace back the lineages of Buddhism and Zen and all these things,

they all actually come from the Vedic tradition from northern India. Literally as old as the hills. It comes from the hills of the mountains of northern India. So how many thousands of years would you say? 6,000? Well, it's debatable. It depends on who you believe. The Western historians will say sort of maximum 3,000 years

because that's when you can trace back the written accounts of it. The written Vedas. Yeah, the written Vedas, which are these amazing, incredibly circuitous, but brilliant Sanskrit epics. But, of course, Sanskrit, the language was an oral tradition prior to that, so it probably goes back thousands of years prior to that. And the Vedic Indians will tell you that it goes back tens of thousands of years and even more sometimes.

So it depends on who you ask. Predating the existence of humans. Yes. They have a different chronology of the universe. But they've been right about a lot of things. So I'd certainly give them – I'm open-minded about it. So anyway, there are these traditions and techniques, and some of the really simple ones that they have,

there's basically four methods of meditation that exist. If you look at all the thousands of traditions from around the world and the different variants, you're either bringing yourself into a present state of awareness by bringing your mind to your breath and just being aware of the present moment in some way. Usually breathing is the thing that you bring your mind to. The other method is to be focusing on something, whether it's prayer beads, a prayer, a visualization,

It's prayer beads, a prayer, a visualization, some sort of contemplative thing of being in a special place or a shrine or a god or whatever it is, but focusing on something. The third method is to repeat a mantra that will quiet the ego and the intellect and allow you to experience these subtler states of consciousness. And can you speak to that a little bit? I think the mantra idea, a lot of people struggle with that. Like, what is it about repeating this word? And what's so special about the word that you're given and this word versus that word? Yeah. Well, there's literally thousands of mantras. And in actual fact, there's been some interesting research on just using kind of generic sounds.

Like there's a guy named Herbert Benson who did some some interesting research on just using kind of generic sounds like there's a guy named herbert benson who did some really interesting research um where he said okay right let's just get rid of all the mantras and just use the word one and just repeat that now use an english word and just repeat that and it actually led to some pretty amazing results so even that will work it can just be the repetition of a sound that'll have really powerful effects but what's really does it have to be out loud could it be in in your mind? Yeah, in your mind seems to be the best way to do it, just to silently repeat it mentally. And here's an interesting... Herbert, if you're listening,

you could improve your writing techniques. He's a terrible writer, but his ideas are good and his research is really good. His books are worth reading, just if you can kind of get through the slightly pompous writing style. The ideas are very good. There's some good methods there.

We love you, Herbert. He's a great researcher. He's done some great research. He's a serious scientist. He could use a ghostwriter. But the mantras that come from northern India are really interesting. They seem to be these sort of primordial sounds that exist at the root of consciousness.

And there's nothing terribly strange about that. There's actually linguists know now that there are certain words that exist in every culture around almost every language. They'll have the same word for the same thing. Like mama is a standard one that almost every culture that means mother, the same thing. Babies say it spontaneously. And it turns out to not be a coincidence. It seems to be kind of written into our brains that that word has that

significance. And what's really interesting is that these mantras, the mantras that I use from the Vedic tradition, is that these mantras, the mantras that I use from the Vedic tradition, I also find them when I talk to Kabbalistic meditation teachers who are from Judaism. They'll have very similar or the same sounds that they use. They turn up all over the world in whatever culture you look at. Yeah, that's wild.

It is really wild. And what's even more interesting, I run a teacher training course. We take people away for three months and have them do really intensive meditation. At the very end of the three-month course, we'll tell them, I hear all the mantras. And very often they'll say, when we give them to them, they're like, oh, that's what those sounds were. They kept coming to me during my meditation.

And it seems to be that these particular set of sounds, and this is the story of their origin, by the way, when you trace back the story of it, there are these sages who lived in the mountains of India and they just spent a lot of time meditating, doing very, very difficult practices, much more difficult than the ones that we do because they didn't know the mantras back then.

And over time, they started to just have these sounds spring into their mind like oh that's interesting you know write that one down and um and to also notice that when people repeated these sounds it sort of brought them into the state of mind from which the sounds came from which is this quieter state of consciousness and so it's like a mental trigger which just has this kind of soothing calming effect on on the ego and the intellect. And so I've found there's a whole science and art to teaching them and giving the right one to the right person that comes from the Vedic tradition. And I've found that when I've given the correct ones to people, it's had really powerful effects.

When I've done my own research study where I've deliberately and with people's consent, you know. So I'm going to give you the wrong one? I don't tell them whether I'm going to give them the wrong one or the right one. But I've actually done a little, done my own sort of research study on it to see. And it's really interesting to see the ones that

are the legitimate mantras have a much more powerful effect of bringing people into this very quiet, deep state of consciousness. So when you're working with somebody and teaching them and you're ready to give them their mantra, what are the variables that are running through your mind that help you? What's the calculus in making that decision? Well, it kind of comes down to some of the things that we were talking about earlier, these powerful spiritual experiences that people have sometimes spontaneously.

these powerful spiritual experiences that people have sometimes spontaneously. You can think of it, just think of it in terms of if there was a little baby and that baby was to have, when I see my little son, for example, I've got a seven-month-old baby boy. When I see him, sometimes he just kind of goes crazy when he looks at me. Like just seeing me and having that powerful kind of love for father kind of thing will just overwhelm him so much. He kind of shakes his hands and his feet and he kind of wriggles all around, goes nuts. Now, I have that same happiness when I see someone sometimes, but my nervous system has

evolved to the point where I can experience that, but not shake my arms and feet around when that happens, usually. And so there's sort of an evolution of the nervous system that goes on over time. Um, and the same is true for these powerful spiritual experiences that people have. Some, some experiences can kind of, you can have and you'd be like, oh yeah, that's all right. But then you go and get your cup of coffee and you're perfectly fine afterwards. Other ones, if you were to have it would kind of freak you out a little bit, you know, and, and, and blow your mind a bit. And I think that if you hang around in kind of spiritual communities,

everyone knows at least one person who seems like this kind of spiritual casualty. Their mind's been blown out a little bit by some overwhelming experience they've never been quite able to metabolize. Now, basically over the span of thousands of years, these Vedic sages, they kind of figured out the right mantra you know for each different stage of development you know like if you if you can if you can handle this kind of level of spiritual experience then this mantra is right for you and this one is the right one here later on in life and so on and so your mantra can change it's

not something you take with you yeah exactly and so over time, you know, in an ideal society, if we lived kind of a healthy, good lifestyle and we had a well-balanced society, what you'd hope is that over time you'd become more and more evolved and able to experience deeper and more powerful things. But ha, ha, ha, ha, we don't live in that kind of society. People wreck themselves in all sorts of different ways through drugs or bad lifestyle or just hanging out with horrible people or whatever

and so their growth is slowed down and so there are specific signs that a trained teacher um is trained to look for to be able to give away whether a person is at the right they might have accelerated their growth or held it back in certain ways and the right march would be appropriate for them at that time now interestingly uh you can learn your mantra and you know keep using it for decades and it will still work for you because over time it becomes almost like a pavlovian response you know you start to repeat it and you're and it has that effect of bringing you into this quieter state of consciousness enough times that your mind knows how to get there regardless of whether it has the the uh the mantra to guide it or not it's a little bit like if you go to a new city at first you need the gps to guide you around everywhere but after you've

driven a certain route enough times you're like okay i can i can do this without the guide and so you know the at that point after a few years of practice, you just kind of sit there and you think your mantra a few times and you go into this deep state of consciousness very quickly and easily. And so it's still effective, but just in a different way. But yeah, it can change as well over time. There are advanced techniques that you can learn that would change the mantra and have really, it's like the qualitative aspect, the qualitative experience that you can learn that would change the mantra and have really it's like the qualitative

aspect the qualitative experience that you have is very different when you practice some of these advanced techniques compared to some of the um beginner ones and so um yeah it's it's powerful it's really interesting stuff and when you were learning these techniques when you went to the when you went to northern india i mean were you studying under masters and sitting in the caves of you know in the mountains like what was that like uh so it's a bit of all of the above you know i've of course spent my life studying the stuff because i had this master teacher for a father. But it's been a really nice thing to go to. I go to India regularly, actually, and I study more.

And so various different masters. I have sat in the caves and sat for long periods of time. And sometimes it's a matter of just really going and metabolizing the experience. And so you go up into the mountains of northern India and there is this kind of... When you go there, you realize it's not an accident that this incredible philosophical, spiritual tradition came from here. It's a place that kind of is infused with that energy. And so as soon as you're there, you just kind of feel it. So that's a big part of it as well.

But it's really nice to go and sit with some of these masters who have been keeping consistent with the tradition for thousands of years. And the interesting thing, I was saying earlier about how all cultures and traditions have a form of meditation within them, and it's true. But in India, you have this great confluence of it's also a tradition which has the culture has been around for a long time unbroken so you have this unbroken lineage they have

some cultures don't have like for example the Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal culture they don't have you know writing they have other ways of memorizing knowledge of songs and so on and rituals but in India they have sanskrit which is this incredibly incredibly rich and detailed language with these epics and stuff like that and

there's it's like a code it has a lot of the knowledge that was transmitted from thousands of years ago and recontextualized by it's a scholarly tradition that has developed over thousands of years so they've developed a lot of these concepts and traditions really so deeply, much more deeply than many other cultures have. And so when you sit with some of these people who are the descendants of these long lineages, you're literally just drinking from the source. You're getting this great knowledge that's coming down from thousands of years of work.

Yeah, I mean, you hear these... Well, first of all, so it's this confluence of this incredibly ancient language, the most ancient language, mixed with this geography, mixed with this tradition, this unbroken chain. And actually, it's a cultural priority, like sort of spiritual expansion, spiritual growth, spiritual searching is like a cultural mandate there. Yeah.

I mean, in a way that it just doesn't exist anywhere else. I mean, I've never been to India, so it's all... I mean, Julie, you went to Arunachala. Yeah. Well, I mean, the spirituality is supported in India. I mean, so it's sort of the most important thing yeah you know well i i've met these you know you meet these these guys and women too but it happened to be guys in this case um who you know have kind of given up

everything to wander the earth and they wear the robes and they kind of you know renunciates renunciates who've given up all their possessions and and um they've gone to follow a tradition find a master and study and i was talking to this one guy who just he really looked the part you know straight out of central casting for a for a spiritual kind of indian guy a long beard orange robes the the painted symbol on his forehead and, you know, the long hair and everything, the beads and the staff and the whole, like, you know, this Obi-Wan Kenobi of India, you know. In orange.

Great in orange, yes, great guy. And so we're sitting on the banks of the Ganges River, the holy river in India, and talking, and I was kind of soaking up all of his incredible knowledge. You know, he was really, like, quite brilliant. And at the end of sitting and talking to him for a couple hours and just, you know, writing everything down and it's like, this guy's like he must have just lived in the Himalayas his whole life in

some monastery or something. And I find out that, you know, five years ago he was actually an advertising executive living in Mumbai. And, you know, and that's actually the story of a lot of these people is that they get to a certain point. They're like, okay, cool. I've done the whole materialist thing now. And now I'm going to go off and just sit in the mountain and meditate in robes for the rest of my life. And in India, you can do that and it's, it's okay. Whereas in

America, you're just a bum. Yeah. And it's actually, it's a, it's a real shame. You know, I see a lot of people, I know, a lot of people come in, especially here in LA, a lot of people who come to learn with me are people who've gone through 12-step programs and people who are trying to get off drugs. And the consistent experience that I see there is that people are actually looking for a spiritual release and absolution and kind of like something that takes them beyond themselves.

And you'll use the best tools available to you from your culture. And it's unfortunate that in our culture the only tools we have are, you know, drugs and, you know, if you – Sex. Sex as well, yeah, sure. Gambling. Well, the big one, shopping. Yeah, right. Consumerism.

Yeah, yeah. It's the ultimate opiate of, you know, our culture, I think. Humorism is the ultimate opiate of our culture, I think. Completely. And so people will draw on these things, and what they want is to have something which takes them beyond. And so in these cultures in India, they've just got something. They've got this other thing, which actually works much better, and it will give you this deeper experience.

And it's really nice teaching here and beginning to have this little seed of culture where people are just sitting in a room closing their eyes and finding that sense of absolution you know it's it's a really powerful thing and you know it allows you to say oh well you know maybe i'll maybe i'll choose this rather than those unhealthy habits which would have taken me somewhere else that's what most that's what most of these guys who are doing this in india have got that we don't. Right, but I think in you relating that, you know, it brings up another

kind of fear or barrier that someone might have, which is this idea that if you start doing this, then you're going to be a renunciate. You're going to lose your house and you're going to be wandering around Venice and sleeping in a dumpster. Whereas I remember years ago, Russell Simmons used to go to this yoga class that we went to

and he would tell Steve, the teacher, he's like, man, if I keep meditating and coming to yoga, I'm going to lose all my business. I'm going to go broke. And he doubled down on his meditation and yoga and doubled his business or whatever the next year or whatever. So it's not about like, I think there's this idea

that if you do it, you're going to change who you are or lose what you have. How do you approach that for somebody who's new and harbors that kind of sentiment? Well, luckily, there are all these counter examples that you can instantly quote. You can look at like your Steve Jobs

type of guy who's a serious Zen meditator who's started one of the most successful technology companies in the world, one of the most highly valued companies in the world. Investors like Ray Dalio who's like investors look at him like he's a god, but he's a guy who credits all of his success to meditation. And there's a lot of people like that who you can point to and just say, well, these guys didn't lose their billions. And Richard Branson is another guy, another meditator.

There was a big article in, I think it was the New York Times, a couple of months ago about how it's really become the rage in Silicon Valley. It's almost like a must-do thing for the sort of successful entrepreneur on the rise. And, you know, in India, you know, again, because, you know, this isn't – no, for us, this is the first time we're asking this question. For them, they've been asking this question for thousands of years. They actually have some good answers to it. They actually have two different traditions. You know, they've got one tradition which is for renunciates and one which is for what they call householders, which are people who have possessions and stresses, basically,

that come with possessions. And you're teaching the householders. I'm teaching the householder technique, yeah. I mean, that's, you know, if a monk were to come to me and want to learn to meditate, I'd have to teach them a whole different set of techniques to what I normally teach in a regular class, because it's just, it's actually not for them. There's a lot of assumptions you can make. If someone's a monk, then you can assume that they actually can close their eyes and clear their mind of all thoughts.

They only eat brown rice and live on a mountain somewhere and don't have any sexual relationships or anything. If that, like I wanted to ask you about these, you hear these stories about these sadhus who sit in meditation for six months. And they have people that kind of tend to them and they don't move. six months and they have people that kind of tend to them and they don't move and the idea of the breatharian who sort of transcended this need to eat food. I mean, have you witnessed this kind of thing or where does the truth lie on these? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, in terms of the breatharian, you'd have to actually sit and watch someone for, you know, non-stop for six months. I've never had the patience

to do that yet. So I can't give you a definitive answer on that one. But there really are people who sit, you know, for months at a time, and they'll have people come and bring them a little handful of rice or something like that, and they'll subsist on very little and just sit in one place for months at a time. And it's quite amazing to see. There are stories of people doing it for years.

Right. And you develop the ability to control your metabolism. You lower your heart rate. You lower your respiratory rate. Absolutely. All these sort of things are actually under your control to somebody who is a master. Absolutely. And so now when we think of something like yoga, we think of something that's actually pretty much, it's more like aerobics now in the West.

I mean, it's actually pretty much, it's more like aerobics now in the West. But in India, if you're referred to as a yogi, you're a person who's mastered your nervous system, mastered your body. And they'll do things like, you know, hike up into the mountains and they'll find a frozen pond up in the mountains and they'll crack a hole in the ice and sit in the freezing water for eight hours in meditation. And they do this by intense body control. Now, you ask the standard yoga works yogi if they could do that,

and they couldn't. Of course not. It has nothing to do with how you do your down dog. Right, exactly. There's a whole set of different techniques. But the important thing to understand here is that the expertise and mastery of that comes first. Someone who's doing that, they're not suffering in that state.

We look at that and go, oh, my God, that must be so painful. But to that person, if you ask them, like, no, man, I'm in this kind of blissful, ecstatic state inside. I've just kind of gone beyond. That's that ultimate, the thing that I was talking about earlier of going beyond the senses. They go beyond their sense of touch and pain and everything. You know what?

When we talked at dinner in New York, you were talking about these additional senses, and I'd never heard anybody explain that in that way. Do you remember? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So we're told that we have five senses. Some people say we have six, but they're all wrong. M. Night Shyamalan.

I'm sorry. Sorry, M. Night. That was a bad joke um but there's um you i mean and i'm not talking like you know some sort of spiritual mumbo jumbo like just straight up science you know you you have um you know your sense of first of all your sense of smell and your sense of taste are actually just one sense just just through your nose it's more sensitive um really that's one thing yeah this is one thing it's chemical sensitivity it's ability ability to determine different chemicals um through your senses so most if people who lose their sense of smell lose their sense of taste as well most of taste is actually smell um then but then if you if you look at your sense of balance for example that's a sense we don't talk about that much, but that's another one of your senses.

Then what we call touch is actually broken up into several different things. So you have your pressure sensitivity, pain sensitivity, hot and cold sensitivity, proprioception, which is the knowledge of where the body is in space. I think that's most of them. But that one, it's actually like... Yeah, and that has to do with the hand thing, right? Right, right.

When you sort of go into meditation and you lose that sense or you transcend that sense, that's when you don't know how big your hand is or where it is in space. You might even feel like you don't have a body. Sometimes people just feel like, my whole body just disappeared, you know, which is kind of a cool experience to have.

But, you know, proprioception is like if you if you close your eyes and try to bring your hands together you can do it without looking and you can do it over behind your head or in front of you in front of you or behind your back whatever because you just have this innate sense of where your body is that's actually one of your senses um it's very useful for gymnasts and dancers and yoga people and stuff like that. And so when you meditate, you go beyond all of these senses. And each one can actually kind of turn off independently. And so, for example, there are techniques I teach for pain management. And I've taught people with stage 4 cancer who are on a morphine drip and just taking huge amounts of painkillers.

I'll teach them these pain management techniques, and they'll manage to... And morphine's terrible. If you're on high dosages of it, you're just off in space. You can't communicate with people. Maybe someone's final days and they can't communicate or be with their family. It's a terrible tragedy.

But obviously they should do it if that's the only option that they have. But as soon as you, people have practiced these pain techniques and they can decrease their morphine usage by, and be able to like sort of be there and be present much more because they're using a meditation technique. I had a person who was allergic to painkillers who had to get major dental surgery and I taught him the same techniques. to get major dental surgery and I taught him the same techniques. He could go beyond his sense of pain and he managed to have this dental surgery without any painkillers and be perfectly comfortable during the process. And so, you know, these are actually really useful things that we can do and use for specific things. Interesting.

That's amazing. It's hot in here, we're baking in the podcast studio today I was going to ask you can you share one of your pain management techniques I have one that I use but I wonder if it's a similar one

I use one where I take my awareness into the center of the pain, and then I describe it very, very viscerally, like qualities like, okay, does it have a color? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it rough? Is it smooth? Does it have an emotion? Is there a memory there? And by the time I get through all of that, then you go, where's the pain? And the pain will move.

It'll go somewhere else. So if I found for my own self, the thing is that it needs a facilitator to actually guide you. So if I have a willing facilitator and about 45 minutes, I can have somebody do that with a migraine-level headache and completely dissolve it. The challenge is that you have to have a facilitator in 45 minutes. I can do it fairly well with myself, but not as good as if someone's facilitating. Is it similar? It's different.

That sounds like a fascinating technique. I'm very curious to know more about that. But the technique for managing pain, it's a little difficult to teach over a podcast just because it assumes the ability to meditate already, to be able to transcend. Right. But I can describe what you do.

Right. You will simply bring your awareness to the palms of the hands, palms facing up. I'll actually get someone to run their fingernail over the palm of their hand so they can feel, like to basically kind of scratch the palm of their hand with their fingernail so they can feel the sensation. If you just kind of do it at home right now, just scratch the palm of your hand, you can feel,

you actually feel it for quite a while afterwards. You can feel the sensation in the palms of your hands. So then you close your eyes and you begin thinking your mantra or whatever technique you happen to be using at the time and you start to just feel the sensation the palms of the hands fading away and fading away and fading away and fading away and at a certain point that sensation will continue to fade away and beyond the point when the sensation the palms of the hands fades away um then the mantra will begin to take you deeper and deeper and deeper. And at a certain point, you'll even start to go even further past your sense of touch

and you'll start to really have this clear sense of, wow, I'm not feeling anything anymore. Then all of a sudden, when you realize that, you've actually come out of the state again. You'll feel it. So the pain will come back. Right. Then you begin the process again. You run your fingernail over the palms of your hands again and feel the sensation fade away and fade away and fade away. Come to your mantra, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Begin to transcend your sense of touch again. And you keep doing this over and over again. What this does is it actually trains your brain to be able to go beyond your sense of touch and your sense of pain because this is the direction that you go. This is the actual mechanism, the sequence that the brain has to go through to be able to experience this sensation beyond pain.

And it's such a simple technique. It's powerful. It's really powerful. Now, it does require that you've already gotten some expertise in transcending and kind of going beyond the senses. But again, that can be trained in like a matter of like a day or two. And so, you know, I give myself four days just to be safe, but, you know, really like two days is sufficient.

And someone, you know, people will usually start to experience that. And so it can be a really helpful thing, especially for chronic pain as well. A lot of chronic pain that people have, where doctors don't even, they can't even tell what's wrong with you. You know, just weird pain. Right. And, you know, they're like, well, tell what's wrong with you. It's just weird pain. Right. And they're like, well, there's nothing wrong with you that we can see.

You shouldn't be feeling this pain. Like, well, I am. Right. Not terribly awful. So now what do I do? So you can either dose yourself up on horrible drugs that have side effects or you can start to train your brain to go beyond the pain. I've worked with people with terrible back spasms and knee problems and all sorts of things.

What about migraines? Yeah, migraines definitely. Meditation is super helpful for migraines. I have a theory about migraines. I don't know if it's actually true. I think Julie would like to hear that. Tell me. Julie's struggled with migraines and

has been able to kind of master them when they come up. I actually have a great protocol right now that's been working really well, but tell me. and able to kind of master them when they come up. But it's still something that you live with. I actually have a great protocol right now that's been working really well, but tell me. Yeah, yeah. So what I think migraines are called, you know, your body's doing this constant synchrony between two different halves of the

nervous system, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, which are basically responsible for relaxation or stress. And, you know, literally every time you inhale, you're using one half of it, and every time you exhale, you're using the other half. And there's a lot of things like sex, for example, that requires synchrony between the two halves in really interesting ways. You have to – the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for relaxation. And to become sexually aroused, you have to be more in the parasympathetic mode.

But to have an orgasm, you have to be more in the sympathetic mode. That's the part responsible for stress, which is really interesting. But there's a lot of tasks that your body does that requires this constant back and forth between switching this half on and switching that half on. And I think that migraines are caused by mistiming between these two different halves being fired at the same time and so basically to be able to manage migraines

what I teach people to do is to switch back and forth in a very deliberate way between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system when they're not having a migraine, when they're just sitting there. So there's different breathing patterns you can use. One of the simplest meditation techniques you can practice, actually, is just counting your exhale for four counts and counting your inhale for two counts.

And what that does is the exhale is parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated. The inhale is sympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system remember is for stress and anxiety. So you're basically teaching your body to be more on the relaxation side. If you were to do the opposite though, and take long, like long inhales and short exhales

then you are triggering the sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for stress and anxiety um so what you can do is do two minutes of each you do two minutes of counting doing like a like an exhale one two three four and inhale one two exhale one two three four three, four, and inhale one, two, exhale one, two, three, four, inhale one, two. Then two minutes later, you do the exact opposite pattern. And you switch back and forth maybe three or four times. So it might take like eight minutes or so to do this. And what you're doing is sort of triggering each different half to go at the right times.

And I've taught this to several people who have just like horrendous chronic migraines based on a theory that I had. And it seems to be really, really effective. So yeah. So like in my Kriya practice, so I'm doing very, I'm doing even inhales and exhales, but spinal breathing. So you're saying one of those should be shortened. Well, I say that... I mean, it would be a different practice. Sure, sure. That's true, yeah.

It's good. Different techniques are really good for different things. I would actually devote some time specifically to this, to just doing like... And you don't have to worry too much about like, am I breathing to my abdomen or to my spine or any of those different things, just breathing in and breathing out and just keep it really simple. Cause if you try to think about too many things at once, you could probably handle it just fine. But for the average person, it's going to be like mental,

mental juggling too much. So you just like breathe in for out for two. Oh, sorry. So breathe out for four, out for two. Oh, sorry. So breathe out for four, in for two, and switch the other one. And you switch back and forth. And you basically, again, training your brain. It's like, this is the way you're going to work. And it's literally just doing

kind of like, you know, sort of circuit training. Yeah, you're basically facilitating better communication between these two systems and kind of rebooting the system around it. Yeah, yeah. But what led you to this theory that this is what is leading to migraines? Oh, interesting.

So I had a girlfriend who – I don't know what rating this podcast has, but you can say whatever you want. Go ahead. So I had this girlfriend who was just – she was actually the one that I ran away from home with my, my, my, my looping love.

Awesome. Um, and she had a terrible, terrible migraines and she was just, she would have them so bad. She'd begin to hallucinate and just like be like a whole day. She just spent in this, you know,

she'd have the auras come on beforehand and it was, she would start like, Oh no, migraines coming. And, uh, she found out though that if, when she got start like, oh no, a migraine's coming. And she found out, though, that if when she got these early signs of it, where the auras start to come, if she went and masturbated, it would prevent the migraine from coming on.

Yeah, there's lots of studies that that works. That sounds a lot more fun than the breathing technique. Well, it can be socially awkward. I need to go right now. Well, that would happen. You could also have sex. You don't have to masturbate. Yes, but again, that requires another person to be there.

Another person. Is that facilitated? Yeah, exactly. Which is fine for me. I was like, oh, you're going to have a migraine or something. But there would be situations where we'd be like at dinner and and she'd be like oh i've got to go i've got to go in the bathroom for two minutes only two minutes uh yeah she was she was a master she was efficient yeah um but the uh but then so i said to think about this and think about you know the way that the way that sexual arousal and orgasm are linked

to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the way there's a choreography between the two. And maybe that what was going on is that was kind of just rebooting the system. You know, it's kind of like turning your computer off and turning it back on again. And suddenly the system is reboot and you can start to have this kind of, you can have proper functioning again.

And so what I wanted to do and the other problem with that technique is it didn't seem to be no matter how much she did that technique it didn't seem to be training her to not have the orgasm the orgasm the other migraines so it wasn't curing them yeah it was just it was just kind of real healing right it was it was sort of band-aid solution kind of thing and you know i own a good a good one. But I started to think about this over years, actually, and having a lot of people come to me and learn to meditate and having migraines and so on. And I just started to experiment with it, you know,

and I knew that breathing was the simplest way to interface with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. And bing, bada-boom, it all seemed to work and seemed to actually train people to not have the migraines in the first place, which is the more important thing. Wow. Yeah, super simple. That's crazy.

You might try that. Absolutely. You might try that. I mean, a lot of times when I get them, it's when I'm coming back into my body after being out somewhere. Right. Who knows where. Right.

And I can feel it. I don't get the flashing things. And I call them migraines, but they're not really, they're not, you know, diagnosed migraines. Right. But I can feel all this kind of funny, you know, it's like I'm not in my body. My energy's not in. Yeah. So that would be, that would be really super helpful. I've actually come across an amazing protocol that's been working just miraculously

and it is the water enema. Seriously and the thing, I mean it's just, it's miraculous because it works so powerfully and it's just, you know, two quarts of, of warm water, no herbs.

And, um, you just do it. You can do it like, um, until the migraine subsides, but it's literally like within, uh, 10 minutes there's relief and then I can be good for like two hours or three hours and then I might have to repeat it. But when you're a migraine sufferer, you have to take medication or you feel weird the next day. And then the next day, this has been helping me tremendously. And it, it's, it's, it's amazing. My friend, um, I have a girlfriend who's a master gardener and she turned me onto it and I was a resistant I was resistant at first, just sort of exhausted, people telling me, try this or do this.

You get kind of worn down. For sure. But I trusted her, and I don't have an issue with it at all. So anyway, it's awesome. It's been amazingly helpful. I especially like it because it stays within my theory because the gut is like the punching bag for the autonomic nervous system. And so generally when people get really stressed, the first thing that will get affected is

their bowels and their stomach. That's why stomach ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome get really affected by stress and anxiety. And so it seems to be that's another way where you're kind of you're basically tricking your body into thinking that it's going into the other mode of the of the nervous system okay and you know because normally what happens when you relax you'd be able to you know be expect to expel your feces to release to release yeah that's right um so yeah but it's it's i like that it's like a little body hack for um it really or your nervous system into that right mode.

Absolutely. But I'm going to experiment with the breathing and I'll add that in and then see how long between. Because I think I am this kind of being. I'm just sensitive on these other levels and so it just shows up. So I just have to be able to manage it and you know pranayama and all the breathing you know when i teach yoga i teach um i'm always drawing the attention back to the body like whole body breathes whole body breathes like the whole time right so the breath is powerful and balancing you know both channels and so i think you're onto something yeah yeah it'd be amazing i mean it's uh and i find that simplicity works really well. You know, if you can give someone a simple solution that's 80% effective,

they're more likely to do it than a complex solution, which is 100% effective, you know. And this one seems to be that perfect sweet spot where it takes like eight minutes. But you have to do it. It's like training. You have to do it every day. The good thing is it actually feels pretty good when you do it.

Right, sure. And you feel like you've kind of conditioned your nervous system in a very real way. I just recommend begin and end on the relaxation version of that cycle, which is the long exhales and short inhales, so that afterwards you feel relaxed. So land and end on the long exhale. Yeah, because you'll feel a really distinct difference.

When you switch over to the other mode, you'll go, oh, man, I feel kind of anxious and excitable, you know, and like you're ready to jump up. But then when you do the other one, you're like, oh, that's really relaxing and nice. You're triggering your nervous system in a really real way. Yeah, it's cool. Awesome. Yeah, you used the word or the phrase body hack. Yeah.

But, I mean, meditation really is a mental hack. It is. It's a physical hack. It's a body hack. Yeah. But, I mean, meditation really is a mental hack. It is. It's a physical hack. It's a mental hack. It's an emotional hack. It's both. I think when people ask me what meditation is, I just define it as any method where you're changing your state of consciousness

using only your body or your mind. So it excludes using drugs and so on. But it really is. And there's so many different methods that you can use, you know. And they all have basically, you know, the people who have studied this stuff and both the scientists in the modern age and also the sages from Japan and India and China and so on, they basically catalog these different methods for triggering the body and mind in different ways.

And that's, on one level, that's all it is. And you can just keep it as simple. It's like a really systematic body and mind hack that you can do. Yeah, and I mean, I think it's important also to say that, you know, meditation is going to reveal more of who you are. That's right. And we're all different. That's right. So, I mean, there's a reason that, you know, we incarnated into, you know,

this part of the world and that, you know, you're not living in a cave somewhere. So there should be no fear or no projection over, like, if you meditate, then you're going to be, you're not going to a cave somewhere so there should be no fear or no projection over like if you meditate then you're going to be you're not going to be pulled off your course you're going to be totally aligned on your course right and you know you as a soul you know designed your life like your life is for your unfoldment it's for your evolution and And so all of us, you know, want to get aligned to that which we really are. So it's really meditation is aligning to your authentic self. There's no tricks or, you know, some danger that you're going to, you know, fall into someone else's life.

Yeah. I can tell you that everyone who's taken my meditation classes have all been very unique individuals and they've they've all maintained their amazing unique and wonderful qualities it's just made them stronger in fact in in every way and you see these people are so different you know and it's actually beautiful when you see when you get rid of like i think of the stress and anxiety as being the muck that covers up the window so that you can't actually see what that, see inside and see who that person really is. Once you clear that off, then it's amazing.

You have this incredible clarity and they have this incredible clarity too. Like they can actually see out, you know, and, and it's, and it's, uh, it's an, it's a, it's an amazing thing to watch and it's And it's the unfoldment of the self. And I think of it, it's just, you know, it's like people get up in the morning, they brush their teeth. You know, you clean your mouth. And you should pay the same amount of attention to your brain. You know, as you get up and clean your brain. It's a little dusty in there.

I don't know, man. That's very threatening. You know, I think that if there's one sort of consistent theme with this podcast, it's really about bringing a diversity of people to the listener to empower them, to create greater self-empowerment over your life. Right. And there really isn't anything more powerful than developing a mastery over your conscious self. If you can master that or at least take steps towards that mastery, then the kingdom is yours. I mean, really.

And if you're stuck in life, if you don't like your job, if you're not sure who you are or how you want to express yourself, if you are feeling aimless or misguided or unanchored, honestly, the greatest gift you could give to yourself is to begin some form of meditation practice with a technique that resonates with you. Exactly. And you will develop a greater connection with who you are, who you're meant to be. At a very minimum, you'll be more expressive in your creativity.

You'll feel more grounded in who you are, more comfortable in yourself, more self-assured. I mean, there's really no limit. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And, you know, as a quick plug and shout out too, I mean, I've just spent a lot of time working on these online courses. I was going to get to that. Go for it then. Well, you know, the idea of that, I idea that I teach a lot where I live in Venice, and that's Venice Beach, not Venice, Italy. Right, and you're carrying on a great tradition of having Australians who live in Venice be on the podcast.

I think every other guest we have is from Australia. It's becoming ridiculous. That's funny. We should just move the show to Australia. We have to go to Australia and podcast from Australia. You really should. We absolutely do. Venice is little Sydney.

It's just full of people from Sydney. It's very much like Sydney. But then, so then, where was I? Your online courses. Your online courses, yes. You spend a lot of time. Well, you know, I teach in Venice and I teach a lot in Manhattan as well, sometimes in San Francisco and Miami. But that's basically my four places in America, I teach in Venice and I teach a lot in Manhattan as well, sometimes in San Francisco and Miami.

But there's like my four places in America that I teach. And what do you know, there's actually people that live in other places that might actually benefit from learning. And there's people in smaller towns where it's just harder to make it make economic sense to go and to fly into a place and stay for a week and teach meditation classes in, in these small towns, you know, and, um, or just places where there's just not, not as much momentum behind it as there is obviously on the beach in California and places like, like New York. Um, so, you know, made these courses that are really super accessible and I've,

I've gone through kind of trying to really demystify the practice and make it really easy for anyone to be able to learn. And I'm really happy with the way they came out. They're really great courses. And I actually started playing some of them back. And, you know, I'm very self-critical, actually. We all are. I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

And so I was actually quite pleasantly surprised when I was listening back to them and going, man, these are actually kind of nice. I'm actually feeling more meditative just from listening to them. That's good. No, the courses are, it is amazing. You did an incredible job. You know, Julie and I have viewed all the videos

and obviously that's how we met. We didn't know each other before this opportunity came up where we both did these online courses with mind body green and uh and you had shot yours i want to talk about this a little bit you did yours in new york and you did it like two months or so before we shot ours and then and you had shot yours and then jason from mind body green came to la and we all this this big dinner at Cafe Gratitude where we met you. And we were asking you all these questions about like how did the shoot go and what did you do and how did you get ready because I was all nervous about how we were going to do ours. And you had a lot of great input and feedback and you did – and we used a lot of your advice in doing ours. Yours is – it's incredible.

your advice and doing ours. Yours is incredible. And look, Charlie is a world-renowned teacher and personal access to him is not cheap. Not free, certainly. And if somebody wants

to hire you to coach them or to teach them, you're available to that, right? But it's not a cheap thing. I run classes that are a bit more affordable. To take my four-day class, it's about $500 unless you're a student or military where it's $275. But we wanted to price these MindBodyGreen courses

more accessibly, I'd say. I think my price is actually pretty reasonable. But to make it more accessible to a broader range of people, so it's like $99 to take it. Yeah, and how many hours of content is it? It's about six and a half hours broken up into 10 to 15 minutes, some are as short as five minutes. The idea is that you can spread this out over about three months of study.

The idea is that you can spread this out over about three months of study. And I go through, I mentioned earlier, four different basic schools of meditation, four different categories that all meditation techniques fall into. And I go through techniques in all four different categories. And so it's really sort of made to be, you know, how can someone approach this? And whatever kind of person you are, there's one of the techniques in there that's going to work, you know, how can someone approach this? And whatever kind of person you are, there's one of the techniques in there that's going to work for you. And so it gives you this capacity to try out different things.

If you wanted to then study more and learn more about a specific tradition, it's a great jumping-off point, but it's also completely self-contained. Like, you could just study that and get a lifetime of benefit from it. Right. You could be somebody who's never meditated one day in their life and doesn't know anything about it, and you could take the course, and it would tell you everything you need to know to get going, or you could be an experienced person, and maybe you're coming from a different tradition

or maybe the same tradition, but just to go deeper and learn more. Yeah, I've had several people, actually, who've written to me and said that, you know, they were students of Zen or students of some other technique, and, you know, even Vedic meditation, which is the technique that I typically teach the most. And they've then taken these courses. And it's just there's these other methods that they've never encountered with different ways, different – it's like think of it different gears.

First gear is great for parking, but fourth gear is the best metaphor highway driving, you know? And so if you're always driving around in fourth gear before you probably weren't as maneuverable as you could have been when you're at slow speeds. You know, there's a different gear for the mind that works better in different circumstances. And so in this, I kind of go through all different phases that the mind can, can be in and give you a way to sort of integrate that into your life and make it feel like you can bring it into action. Right.

And like our program, you have the online community aspect of it where people can ask questions and interact with you. It's been really fun, actually. You get your own private Charlie in your home, right? Yeah, it's been really nice. I've been... You're getting a lot of good questions? I am, actually.

Yeah, really good ones. I've been answering, being pretty active on that and answering a lot of questions, and it's nice to have that. And then what's been really cool, too, is to see some of the other community members who've stepped up and started to answer questions as well. That's the idea. Yeah, that's great.

A few of them have become kind of expert. And I've encouraged certain people who consistently really kind of get it and say, man, you give good answers, go for it. Sometimes the answers other people give are as good or better than anything I could say, and I've been really happy with that. That's great. That's a great aspect of those message boards. Yeah, definitely.

Just being able to share together with the community is great. Definitely. But this is great. I'm really, really glad that you did this program because it is greatly needed. And, you know, how much easier than to just have it in your house or wherever you are. Right. You know, even if you do live in New York or you live in any of these cities. But basically, it's available anywhere.

Yeah. I don't think there's anything else like it that exists. Right. Right. And a lot of people, you know, they're new to it. They don't, you know, maybe they're like, I don't think there's anything else like it that exists, right? And a lot of people they're new to it. Maybe they're like, I don't want to show up at some loft and go see it. They're not comfortable enough with it yet

to take that step and so this is a really safe way to explore it in a very unthreatening way. Maybe the guy's going to be really weird and one of those creepy guru people. He's going to be barefoot and wearing a robe. I'm going to be surrounded by weirdos. Everyone else in the class is going to be some weird person.

I'm going to feel all uncomfortable, which is almost never the case. No, actually, if you do that in LA, you probably meet a lot of celebrities that way. That's probably better than going to a fancy restaurant. Yeah, no, it's definitely true in my classes. I know. I'm not going to ask you to spill secrets.

I've got a fair few non-disclosure agreements. I'm not even going to ask you as much as I would like to. So, Charlie, let's talk about your childhood a little bit more. Can we go back a little bit? Sure. I've been accused of hosting some pretty alternative healers over here.

And when you spoke on the panel at Apple I kind of giggled because I thought you said that you had grown up with these hippie parents in kind of a interesting environment. Most of my life was spent in these, in my parents set up these meditation centers. And,

you know, so I spent most of my life essentially kind of surrounded by, we'd have these foreign dignitaries arriving at our house. We'd have, I remember, you know, I remember when I was a little kid before he was famous, Deepak Chopra came and stayed at our place.

And, you know, it's kind of like, Oh, there's Uncle Deepak, you know, no big deal. And then, but we had, you know, beyond him and more well-known people, we just had like this Indian sages just kind of turning up at our house and staying with us for months at a time. And, you know, all sorts of colorful characters, you know, people,

we had, you know, heads of state, foreign dignitaries arriving, and I'd get phone calls at 3 in the morning from some person speaking Hindi. I'd pick up the phone all bleary-eyed as a kid and be like, what's going on? Is someone speaking in Hindi to me at 3 a.m.? It was a really interesting environment to grow up in. And at that time, I mean, yoga hadn't hit its huge popularity. Vegetarianism was – I remember the first time I went to a restaurant

that served tofu. That was like, oh, my God, you know, it's actually a restaurant that has a vegetarian menu. I mean, it was amazing. You know, there were all these – it was was very cutting edge people think of the 60s and 70s as being a very freewheeling time but for most people in most places it was a time of great conservatism and so you know this interesting household that i have full of all these like bizarro characters was just you know it was fascinating and you know when i as a kid i got to

get exposed to that non-stop. It was amazing. Yeah, that's a little bit like what Julie likes to do here. Yeah. They don't stay for months though. They don't stay for months. But there are definitely quite a few characters passing through. When I come home I never know who's going to be sitting in the living room.

But actually not really anymore because i'm sort of complete and all that but it was going on until yeah i still hosted somebody last year now now it's not from a seeking point it would just be to laugh it would just be if yeah if you want to come oh there's a guru right now somebody wants to introduce me to him and he's saraswati lineage and i said yeah i said great if he's saraswati lineage. And I said, yeah, I said, great. If he's Saraswati, bring him to Jai because it's, you know, creativity and it's for him. And then she called me back and said, Oh, well there's a protocol and you have to come. And I said, no, I said, I don't do any protocol, but if he wants to come, he's welcome. But I'm not doing any of that. So there was a, there's something I wanted to mention when we had, uh, Paramhansa Nithyananda came to the house,

he was like this Indian master guru dude. He's pretty cool. He's young and he's really kind of an amazing guy with great wisdom. And he talked about something that you touched on earlier when you were talking about you have people that come to you and they say, I'm a stressed out New Yorker or I have all this anxiety. And they have this story that they tell you and they say, I'm a stressed out New Yorker or I have all this anxiety. And they have this story that they tell about who they are, that they have an attachment to an identity that they repeat and reinforce over time.

And Swamiji talked about that and he said it's like – he used the analogy of a stick, right? Or a branch. And you have these notches on a branch that are these stories that you tell yourself. And because they're repeated so often and so kind of reinforced over time that they become real to you when in reality they're not real at all. They're completely illusory. But to get somebody to transcend that

and say you're not this identity or you're not this person that you think you are, this story. It's just a story you're telling, right? Am I describing that accurately? Do you remember what he was talking about? Yeah, I think it was a chain. He was saying that, you know, basically you as a human, you pick up events in your lifetime and, you know, some people pick up events of suffering and most people pick up

events of suffering and they say oh i was teased as a little child oh i'm you know i'm a stressed out new yorker you know they create this chain of stress and that's their identity and then he says also uh some people do the opposite and they make a happy chain and they say, you know, I'm so happy and you know, everything always goes great for me and I always win and they create that chain. Right. And he was saying that neither, both are lies, like neither are the truth because there's nothing but the present moment.

Right. And if you just drop that whole story, you can go beyond that and touch the consciousness of who you are, which is much more than those. And that's like polarity in this dimension. It's the highs and the lows. And, you know, I call it the seesaw of like running over here like this is great. You know, then, oh, shoot, run. This is really bad. It's the way the human mind works.

You're always looking for something to hold on to. You know what I mean? You're always your mind is grabbing for something, whether, you know, you're driving on the road, where's the road sign and the stoplight and that's all you're focused on. Like that's just the way we're wired. So to be able to kind of get to a place where you can let go of that, like you said, expand your peripheral vision or, you know, think twice or let go of this story that you've been telling yourself your whole life about how Billy beat me up in the schoolyard or whatever it is, right? Yeah.

Well, and I think it's important. I think I'm, you know, I can't really speak for him, but I'm pretty sure that this teacher, what he was saying, too, is the importance of experiencing that rather than just convincing yourself philosophically of the idea. There's a lot of books and self-help books that will tell you things like that, like get beyond your story. Like read about it. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to work. Okay.

How? How do you do that? You know? And, you know, or, you know, they'll say things like, you know, experience yourself as being universal. It's like, well, I'm here in a room. I'm going to be eating a sandwich. So how, you know?

I'm here in a room and I'm eating a sandwich. So how, you know? And that's really what the meditative process is, is direct experience rather than philosophy. Like I don't, I've spent very little time when I'm teaching trying to convince people that, oh, yeah, this is what you're going to have. In fact, I prefer to give them this technique and not say too much about it. Let them come back to me and say, wow, I just kind of had this moment where I went beyond everything. It's like, yep, that's an expected result, you know,

and have them be the one that tells me about it and then confirm. Because it's really cool to see that spontaneously happen in every kind of person too. People come with all these different things and say, you know, every single person who comes when they come to like an introductory talk or something, they'll come up to me like, I can't do this. There's no way that I, I'm unique. I'm the one person who's too stressed, who's too type A, who's too, you know, too, too, my mind is too busy. I won't be able to do it.

Everyone else can. In recovery, they call that terminally, terminally exceptional. Right. I love that. That's a good term. And, you know, it's just like every single – and then the next person comes and says the exact same story. You know, and it's like – No, you're just a human being.

Yeah, you're a human being. Your plumbing is pretty much the same as everybody else here. Yeah, we've all got the same stuff inside our heads, you know. And we're all raised in a similar culture too. You know, we all have the same background assumptions. And so it's really fun to see these techniques that just work. They work. They don't discriminate.

Yeah, it's sort of like they work regardless of your opinion of them. Exactly, which is kind of like it becomes very scientific at that point. It doesn't matter what your opinion of this is if you do it. People come in who are spiritual spiritualists and like really, really into like almost far out concepts of everything. Now people who are like died in the wool, atheists and agnostics who come in and take the class, they have the exact same experience,

you know? And I actually, it almost, it's almost more fun to teach someone who doesn't believe that it's going to work. I have this phenomenon often teach, you know, like, like in a lot of wellness kind of communities, it's very heavily like female dominated. And so when I teach for two, like I'll teach two weeks in one place

and I'll teach one course one week and then second course the next week. The first week will often be like 85% women, which is typical for yoga classes and so on. And the second week they drag their boyfriends and husbands along. So the second week is just- Who don't want to be there. They're completely unwilling. And they're like, and you know, their girlfriend or their wife is less than-

They're just like, if I want to hang on to this girl, I'm going to have to do this. Exactly. And sometimes they literally will say like, if you don't go to this thing, I'm going to break up with you. Right. So they're just sitting there like- The final moment. The first day that they just hate me. They're like, God, who is this?

Who is this guy? Who is this asshole that I've got to listen to? You know? Right. And, uh, and so I have this experience a lot of teaching these really skeptical guys who are just like completely dead set that like, this isn't going to work. They're actually emotionally involved, invested in the idea that it's not going to work. They want to prove their girl wrong.

And so it's really fun actually to say like day two, they're like, whoa. They're like, Charlie, can I talk to you for a minute? Privately? Yeah, that wasn't took privately away from everyone else. They don't have to lose face. I love that. That's hilarious.

It's really good. Well, cool, man. Well, we've been going almost two hours, but I do, before we close it up, I want to, um, ask you about one other thing that something that, that, um, that I have an issue with is, uh, is, is sleep. And I know that a lot of the techniques that you teach and you're, you're, you sort of help people enhance their sleep and, uh, improve their sleep. And for me, I struggle with that. Like when I'm training, it's a non-issue. But sometimes like when I'm not training as vigorously or my diet isn't completely dialed in that day, like I have really – I have issues with restless sleep.

Right, right. Well, I mean that's probably the number one reason why people come to learn to meditate actually is because of sleep issues. That's really helpful. I mean, I don't have much more to say other than, other than you need to set up a daily meditation practice. You don't have to do it.

I think twice a day is the, is the, is the ideal before your breakfast and then sometime before your evening meal. And you set up a daily meditation practice because what typically happens, experience most people have when they're having rest having trouble getting to sleep is you know you can be absolutely exhausted completely wiped out and feel like your eyes are like you can barely keep your eyes open and then but then as soon as your head hits the pillow all of a sudden your mind starts to race with thoughts and their thoughts keep you awake and the what's behind that phenomenon is that anytime your body relaxes,

you begin to release stress, and stress release is always accompanied by rapid thoughts. And so this is the benefit. When people have a meditation session where they sit there and all they're doing is thinking really, really fast, sometimes people have this thing where they'll sit there and they start to relax, but their mind starts to blaze with thoughts even faster than it would normally go. What's happening is that they're pre-processing all of that stress release,

and then they'll come out of it like, oh, that meditation really sucked. Nothing happened to me. But then that night, they'll just fall asleep. Because they got it out of their system in the meditation session. Now that's about 50% of the meditation sessions will be what we call stress release meditations, a thought-filled meditation like that. And the other half, once you've released the stress, the other meditation sessions, you'll go deep. And so there's a kind of tick-tock pattern that goes back and forth between them. And that's why the twice a day is really nice, because it gives you one stress release meditation and one really deep one in the same day.

And then that evening when you lie down, you're just like, oh, it's much, much easier to go to sleep. And your sleep quality improves too. That's a really important thing because when you have high levels of stress, you won't go through the six phases of sleep that you need to go through to feel like you've had a full night's rest. And so that's caused by elevated cortisol levels in your bloodstream, which is another thing, the stress chemical, which makes you feel anxious. And by the way, running and doing these things actually decreases your levels of it. It's one of the great ways of doing it, doing any sort of exercise.

But meditation will do the same thing. So it makes a lot of sense that when you're training, you don't have that problem so much because actually the decreased levels of cortisol. But you can meditate and have the same effect. And there are specific techniques, kind of again that sort of band-aid method of getting into a deeper state right before sleep, which are helpful. But what i'd really recommend is just you know setting up a daily practice because i've worked with people who've one of one of the extreme cases a good friend of mine who had she would she learned to meditate

when she was in her early 30s and she'd had chronic insomnia since age 11 and she's what she claimed that i don't know how this could possibly be true, but she claimed that she had not slept since she was 11. She just lies there every night awake. And she looked pretty haggard when she came in. She was really super sleep deprived. And then three months after learning to meditate, she was just, for the first time in her life, after being through therapy, drugs, everything,

she was falling asleep and sleeping really well every night. Wow. I mean, it can be that effective. And then, you know, a year later she calls me up and says, my meditations have stopped working. All I'm doing is sitting here thinking. I said, I'm going to stop. And I wrote back to her and said, well, you're probably not

because you wouldn't have written to me if you were actually going to stop, you know. But give it a try. Cry for help. Yeah, yeah. I told her to give it a try, you know, and, but give it a try. Cry for help. Yeah. Yeah. I told her to give it a try, you know, stop meditating, see what happens, you know, and then she did. And predictably two days later, the insomnia returned.

Wow. And, uh, and it's because those meditation sessions, she was doing that pre-processing. Um, it's a really important thing to do. Interesting. Yeah. So Charlie, do you do, um do you recommend then like sunset hour? Oh, look, here's the thing. I do.

I love the time in the morning right around dawn and the time right around sunset for meditation. And there's all sorts of stuff written up, all different traditions saying that's just this perfect time to meditate. However, when I say that, people get very caught up in that. They miss those times like, oh, well, I'm not going to do it. I can't do it now. So I don't like to set up dependencies for people. And I find that you can meditate really well under all sorts of circumstances. And so those are really good times for sure. And they just happen to line up really nicely

with the sort of before breakfast and before evening time as well. So it's when your body is most tuned and ready. And these transitional points in the day where your body's also going through a transition, it's nice to ease that transition a little bit with a meditation session. What about before bed? Well, it depends on the technique that you're doing. For most of the techniques that I teach, I don't recommend it actually, because it can mess with your sleeping cycles. And so, you know, if people meditate right before sleep, what they'll often find is that they'll have one night's sleep, which is, they'll fall asleep while they're meditating and they'll kind of stay in this really deep state throughout their whole sleep and they'll have the best night's

sleep of their life, wake up, feel fantastic, and think, I'm going to do that again tomorrow. And they try it again and it doesn't work. And it's because they've actually rested so deeply that they're now super energized and it'll throw off your sleep cycle sometimes for several days. That happens to me. Like I'll have a night where I don't sleep well or maybe two nights in a row where I don't sleep well

and then I'm just so exhausted that I just sleep super deep. Right. And then the sleep super deep. Right. And then the cycle repeats itself. Right. Because I slept so hard that unless I go out and train all day and exhaust myself, I can't go to sleep that night. Yeah. I think it's going to be awesome for you to do that.

I'm in. I'm going to do it. Hallelujah. Are you committing to three months now on air? There you go. Let's hear it, Rich Roll. I think I will commit to three months now on air? There you go. Let's hear it, Rich Roll. I think I will commit to three months. I don't believe in committing to anything for less than three months.

I think that in my experience, anytime I've ever tried to change anything in my life, it's required a 90-day minimum transition period. I think you need 90 days to implement a change in your life. Yeah. So if I'm going to do it, do it for a week. If I'm going to do it, do it for a week. If you're going to do it, do it for 90 days.

I'll commit. I'll share my experience on the podcast. Awesome. Alright, man. We've got to wrap it up. Sounds good. Yeah, it's pretty good. Is there anything else you want to share, Charlie?

You think you're good? My brain is empty. It's empty. That's a good place, right? I don't think your brain is empty. I think you could continue for many hours on this. That's probably good. So I'm not worried about that because I will have you back on the show for sure.

Great. Because you're a wealth of information. Yeah, let's do this again for sure. Thank you for coming by. My pleasure. And we love having your beautiful wife and your beautiful children. Absolutely. The whole family is quite gorgeous. All of them. I like them a lot. Yeah, I can see why. So for sure. So definitely check out Charlie's meditation program. Just go to mindbodygreen.com. It's on the homepage. Scroll down. You'll see it right there.

And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And if you want to learn more about Charlie, you can go to the website for the VEDA Center, right? It's just thevedacenter.com? Yeah, T-H-E-V-E-D-A center.com. And you're currently redoing charlienowles.com, right? Yeah, yeah. And charlienowles.com and thevadercenter.com both have a lovely refresh

hopefully by the time this podcast airs but we'll see it's going to air tonight we'll be a race I'll be trying to get this podcast done and you'll be trying to get your website done at this point I think it'll probably post at like 1am or something like that

that's your deadline but then nobody listens to the show it takes people a day or two it'll probably post at like 1am or something like that. That's your deadline. But then nobody listens to the show for, I mean, it takes people a day or two. Oh yeah, that's right. It'll be their morning. Oh my god. You can do it. Just channel all that really focused mental energy

that you have. So far, so good. It seems to be working out well so far. And Charlie's on Twitter, at Charlie Knowles, K-N-O-L-E-S. Correct. No W in there, right? Well, I found if you Google the other one,

it still ends up with me now. Oh, well, that's nice. That's how powerful you are. Bam! You misspell it, and it still goes to you. That's real power in the digital age, right? It is, yeah.

And Instagram, too. Anywhere else you want? Instagram is Charlie Knowles also? Yeah, yeah. And Instagram, too. Anywhere else you want. Instagram is Charlie Knowles also. Yeah, yeah. I've kept the Twitter and the Instagram the same, yeah. Anywhere else you want people to find you? Instagram is my favorite method. I actually don't –

Yeah, you're not big on the Twitter. No. I enjoy Instagram. Twitter is kind of work. But I'll do it. I'm beginning to find some joy in it. But Instagram I love. So if you want to find me in a place that I love it, then Instagram's the place.

Cool. And you have a couple of retreats coming up, right? I do. One in New York and one in Malibu. Yeah. One in September 13 to 16 in New York and then October 11, 12-ish somewhere in Malibu. And there's still openings for that? There are. We actually haven't. We've put the link up on the website, but haven't sent anything out yet.

They will sell out super fast. So if you're interested in getting on them, get on it now before we make the big announcement. Yeah, and the details are at the VEDACENTER.com. The VEDACENTER.com, yeah. And you're going to do those with your dad too, or those just you, those ones will be not just me, but, but I will be the main teacher at those ones.

Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. And do you have any other, are you traveling around doing stuff where, I mean, for people that are in different cities, are you going to be appearing anywhere where people might want to know where

you're at at the moment? The only thing on the calendar is New York and LA at the moment. Um, but yeah, I'll, I'll, if, if people follow me on, on any of those media that we mentioned before, they'll hear all about it for sure.

All right, man. Righteous brother. All right. Thanks again for coming by. You're welcome. If you want to support the show, the best way to do that is to use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. A lot of people have been using it. I get emails from people like, hey, I bought this or that, and I use the banner ad, and I always reply like, you're a hero. It doesn't cost you anything extra. You are a hero.

Yeah, you're supporting this show. It's awesome. Thank you. It's cool because it doesn't cost anybody anything to do it, but they're still going out of their way to say, hey, I'm going to support this guy, I like what he's doing, so I'm going to make my Amazon purchase by clicking here first. It's awesome. So thank you, everybody that's doing that. Especially if you're going to buy a new MacBook Pro. Exactly.

If you're going to be buying really expensive items, then you're not just a hero, you're a superhero. I'm a superhero. All right. And you can also donate to the show. There's a Support the Podcast banner ad. You can donate whatever you like. You can donate weekly, monthly, or one time.

And thank you so much to everybody that's been doing that. It really helps us keep the lights on. And we got some fun new announcements we're going to make about the podcast soon. Yes. Are we going to do it now? No, we're not going to do it're going to make about the podcast soon. Yes. Are we going to do it now? No, we're not going to do it now. Yeah, but it's pretty cool. Some good stuff coming up.

Lots of amazing guests. Thank you, everybody, to know more about what we're doing. Hey, we have a plant-based nutrition course at mindbodygreen.com too. So if you want to get more plants in your life, I don't care if you're a vegan or you're a hardcore standard American diet Burger King guy, everybody needs more plants in their diet. Mindbodygreen.com. Check out our course. Tara Stiles' yoga course as well.

And Julie, you have your meditation program, right? I do. I have my meditation program. Humming program. It's based on a humming mantra. a humming mantra. And it's the meditation technique that transformed my life more than any other technique. So I only share one with you.

Charlie shares many, many, many, many. But anyway, this is dear to me. And it also has an amazing visualization, which connects you with your soul purpose so that you can be more your authentic self. Um, so that's Jai release. It's at richroll.com. Yeah. You just click on products.

You'll find it there. Simple. Got a bunch of stuff there. We've got a lot of new products coming that everybody's been asking about the plant power t-shirts. They're coming. We're working on it. We just, you know, this website stuff just takes time, right?

I know that one. And if you don't have our cookbook and you're not going to get the plant powered program, you can download that also at richroll.com For sure. And you can find my music at srimatimusic.com

s-r-i-m-a-t-i-music.com If you're interested to know what a Sanskrit mantra sounds like you can go to track 8 which is the Aditya mantra. Very, very powerful sun mantra. It's the one that I channeled the music for

so it's original and you can check it out there. Awesome. Alright. We're done, right? I think we did it. Cool. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie. Namaste. Awesome. You right. We're done, right? I think we did it. Cool. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie. Feel good? Namaste.

You all right? Awesome. You're all good? Yeah, totally. All right. Thanks, Julie. See you soon. Thanks, Rich Roll.

All right. Peace. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Namaste. Namaste. Namaste. Thank you.