The Tim Ferriss Show - #850: The Peace That's Always Within You — Guided Meditation by Zen Master Henry Shukman

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

This episode is part of a series called Meditation Monday. The teacher, Henry Shukman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach Sanbo Zen, and now, he’ll be your teacher.In addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday I’ll bring you a short 10-minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week.Over this four-episode series, you’ll develop a Zen toolkit to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life.Henry’s app, The Way, has changed my life since I first started using it. Unlike other meditation apps, where you’re overwhelmed with a thousand choices, The Way is a clear step-by-step training program guided entirely by Henry. Through a logical progression, you’ll develop real skills that stick with you.I’ve been using it daily, often twice a day, and it’s lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible.As a listener of my podcast, you can get 30 free sessions by visiting https://thewayapp.com/tim and downloading the app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. This episode is a brand new experiment called Meditation Monday. That means, in addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday, I will be bringing you a short 10-minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four-episode series, you'll develop a Zen toolkit specifically to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. The teacher, Henry Shookman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of the first. He is one, of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach what is called Sambo Zen. And I have found this particularly interesting and effective. And now he'll be your teacher.

I've been using Henry's app, The Way, once, often twice a day. And it has lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of the show, you yourself can get 30 free sessions by visiting theway app.com slash Tim. So if you like what you hear in these meditations, which will be valuable in and of themselves, you can get 30 free sessions by going to The Way app. app.com slash Tim. And for the time being, please enjoy this meditation Monday with Henry Shookman. Welcome to this meditation with me, Henry Shookman. In this little set of meditation so far, we've looked at doing a body scan. We've explored the practice of doing less or even not doing anything at all as a fantastic way to reset the nervous system. We've also explored how to be

with stress in a way that we're not kind of opposing it and fighting it, but we're including it. And how helpful that can actually be in bringing us to a more patient and compassionate approach to our own stresses. In this meditation, we're going to be exploring an old Zen teaching, which runs like this. Take the backwards step that shines the light inward. What on earth does this really mean? It means. finding a way to rest back into the sort of heart of our experience, into the very condition of our own awareness, as it were, into the fabric of awareness that underlies all our experience. That's a bit of a mouthful, but I'm going to be guiding us through the use of this little

directive from Zen, and I think showing how useful and helpful it can be in the midst of any ordinary life just taking a moment to disengage to come back into an intrinsic well-being a kind of unconditional well-being that the great traditions of meditation such as zen know is available to us okay let's get into a comfortable seated position close your eyes or lower your gaze have your hands where feels good for you could be in the lap could be on the thighs, let your arms go completely slack, let them just kind of dangle like old ropes, and actually let the whole body become floppy.

It doesn't matter if you're sitting upright with no support other than the seat. As long as you're somewhat balanced, you can still go floppy. and of course if you're reclining or your back is supported it might be easier just let everything become like a rag doll head throat shoulders arms hands floppy chest belly seat legs floppy So the whole body is kind of doing nothing, really releasing any need to activate any part of the body. Rest, coming into body wide rest. Now, it's a hidden secret of rest, actually, that in rest, a different kind of. quality of awareness can emerge by itself.

It's akin to the deeply creative possibilities of rest, that within rest and restfulness, another flavor of awareness can emerge by itself, where we're simply aware of being here, aware of our surroundings, and we might find that there's a quality of quiet and stillness in the space around us that we might not have noticed. So Zen says take the backwards step. just give yourself a little window of time right now when you can disengage.

So much of our life we're kind of forward facing, engaging with the world before us. That's just fine, but we can have a break from that that can be profoundly restorative. we just take a little micro step backward, disengage from the world, from activities, from your life, just for a moment, recede just a little bit from the world before you. come back into yourself and this backward step can as it were illuminate a quality of awareness a peaceful nature in ourselves that's always already here a wider sense of peace of peace ease that almost seems to spread through our life when we give ourselves a chance to notice it simply by disengaging taking this half step backwards this a little bit of a falling back receding receding back into ourselves, into some part of us, some part of our nature that's always been here,

as if it's really always been present throughout our lives, somehow almost holding our life experience, a broader awareness. a wider lens, wider aperture, wider field of vision. It's not some special accomplishment to find this, it's simply always being with us. A restful, just allow yourself to rest with it, to be in it. Just a moment more. Highly restorative. very refreshing this awareness can be for us a state of rest and a condition of awareness at once almost like there's a different perspective on life here a different vantage a broader view

somehow a little less bound by time. Little taste of a certain flavor of timelessness might show up as if we've just stepped back from the stream of time just for a moment from the stream of clock time being with ourselves more intimately. Thank you. So let's gently come out of the meditation. Let yourself move a little bit,

perhaps swaying the upper body, wiggling fingers and toes, opening the eyes, raising the gaze. Have a deeper inhale and exhale and look around you. and let's yeah close this meditation now I hope you find this or any of the other meditations a really helpful intervention to deploy at any time in the course of your daily life at the beginning of the day at the end of the day or any point in the course of the day thank you very very much indeed for joining me and I wish you a very fine rest

of your day. Thank you.