WHOOP Podcast - Laugh Your Stress Away with Comedian Dermot Whelan

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

On this week’s episode WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by Dermot Whelan. Dermot is an award-winning Radio and TV Broadcaster, Author, Comedian, Podcast Host, and Meditation Expert. As the host of The Mind Full Podcast, Dermot is sharing his wealth of knowledge and teachings around meditation, stress management, positivity, and more. Will and Dermot discuss how Dermot found comedy (1:35), his first time doing stand-up (8:15), developing material (11:07), finding meditation (15:50), Dermot’s 16-second meditation technique (23:33), meditation sparking Dermot’s health kick (31:24), how society views meditation (36:54), how Dermot uses WHOOP (40:50), and the power of fulfillment (48:07).Resources:Dermot’s WebsiteDermot’s InstagramThe Mind Full PodcastDermot’s BookSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, you can visit our website, sign up for a free 30-day trial. That's right, try Whoop for 30 days, no cost to you. Today I'm joined by Dermit Wheelan. Dermott is an award-winning radio and TV broadcaster, author, comedian, podcast host,

and meditation expert. As the host of the Mindful podcast, Dermott is sharing his wealth of knowledge and teachings around meditation, stress management, positivity, and more. Dermott and I discuss how Dermott found a passion for comedy, comedy relating to an extreme sport. Dermott shares a great story about jumping out of a plane versus doing stand-up, finding meditation and how he practices it today. Dermott's commitment to a healthier lifestyle. He talked about how others around him were the first to notice changes in his demeanor.

Myths that society has developed around meditation and mindfulness, how he has used Whoop for many years, and the power of fulfillment in your work and everyday life. If you have a question was answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at Whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here is my conversation with comedian and mindfulness expert, Dermit Wheelan. Dermit, welcome to the Whoop podcast. Will, absolute pleasure to be here. I'm stoked to have you on.

Let's go back in time. How did you find comedy? Wow. The airplane movies. That was my first introduction. Myself and my brother learned the script off by heart to airplane one and two. And that was, I guess, the time when I realized you could be weird and surreal, you know, and be funny. And Monty Python, of course.

I used to watch all those as a kid. the Flying Circus VHSs that I could get my hands on. So that was kind of my first entry into it. Then I started making silly home movies, you know, at home. How old were you when you were doing that? Oh, a teenager, you know, like 15, 16, that kind of thing. And then I kind of left it behind. I studied archaeology in university because I was a massive Indiana Jones fan.

I quickly realized that real archaeology is nothing like. It's nothing like Indiana Jones. In fact, Indiana Jones was a terrible archaeologist. That's what I mainly learned, you know. He documented nothing, had no respect for local tribes or customs, and every building he went into eventually collapsed. So, yeah, so after that, I worked in film for most of my 20s, and I actually got into stand-up comedy when I was 30.

And just loved it straight away. I got into improv as well. well. And now I blend stand-up comedy and meditation, which is weird to a lot of people, but it really works, you know. Well, we're definitely going to talk about meditation. I want to understand, so that's an interesting journey in a way, right? Because for most of your 20s, you weren't doing stand-up comedy or you weren't doing it at all, right? And so what was that moment where you said, actually, I want to be the one on stage? It was another stand-up comedian who got me into it. He's actually a New Yorker, a guy called Desbishop.

And I was, my first job in radio was working in news. So I used to stay back. I was like, I just could do an impression of a newsreader. And that's why I got the job. I didn't know anything about current affairs or world affairs or anything. I could just do that at six o'clock here are the headlines. And I gave it a lot of that. But I used to stay behind after work and use the newsroom equipment to make comedy sketches,

which then started getting played on the late night shock jock show. And while I was doing that, when Des, the stand-up comic, heard them because he used to do bits on the show too and ask me to come in and just try five minutes. So I was pretty reluctant because it scared the, you know what, out of me. But, you know, I guess for many comedians, once you get up there and you get that buzz, you know, it can be really special. I was always quite an anxious person, particularly in my 20s, and I was just talking to another stand-up comic about this this week as to why do people who have issues with anxiety end up gravitating towards jobs that would terrify people who have no issues with anxiety, you know, particularly stand-up comedy, you know, are doing anything on a stage.

And the chap I was talking to, he suggested that maybe, you know, while you're up there, the anxiety actually disappears. You get into that flow state and you don't feel anxiety there. So I guess it's this sort of precious window of performance, you know, and I guess athletes, you know, of which, you know, you have so much, you know, interaction with must feel the same thing that for that window of time when you're in that flow state, you're not second guessing yourself, you know, one of the components of flow state is that you stop judging yourself, you know, and so I guess that's what drew me to it and kept me going back up for more, you know. You know, the comparison between stand-up comedians and professional athletes, I think, is actually a good one.

Sort of, it's not, I think, the most obvious one. Yeah, I doubt their recovery scores are sooner. Well, that's right. I would say the comedians live a bit harder. But there's this feeling of you do all this work behind the scenes. for a very intense high pressure moment. Like I was listening to an interview that Jerry Seinfeld did. And he was talking about when you see those Olympic skiers at the very top of the mountain.

And the only thing between them and the bottom of the mountains, this little, you know, this little stick. And they know that in that next 90 seconds, their life's going to change for one way or the other. And he's like, yeah. And I know what that feeling's like to be. be right there on those blocks right before it goes yeah and he was referring to the pressure of you know having done all this work to then have 90 seconds on carson or you know four minutes on the tonight show or whatever it's like hey if this goes well like you know you're going to be on one track and if it goes poorly you're on another and there was something kind of you know brilliant thinking

about that and i also have a deep appreciation for the intensity of the moment that you feel when you get on that stage, and you've got a thousand, 10,000 people, and the room's kind of just dead. Like, you have to make it happen. Yeah, I've often compared it to an extreme sport. In fact, I remember jumping out of an airplane with a good palomine who's also a stand-up comic, and we were doing it, obviously, it was on purpose. There wasn't a problem with the plane.

We weren't crashing or anything. but it was a charity parachute jump and when we got to the ground obviously our adrenaline was sky high we were like oh my god that was amazing and then we kind of looked at each other and then we kind of looked at each other and still not a scary stand-up yeah that's funny

and so I do see it as an extreme sport it's you know I like to skateboard and you know I find if I don't do it if I leave gaps between it you know I'm just not as comfy on the board you know as a middle age guy flying down a hill then if I'm doing it all the time and I think any kind of extreme sport

is like that as well that you anything that's high adrenaline the more you do it you have to keep doing it or else the fear creeps back in and stand-up comedy is very much like that you know and certainly improv as well

you have to be even sharper I think because obviously you have no script so yeah I think the extreme sport anything that requires lots of adrenaline is a good comparison do you remember your first time on stage doing stand-up yeah i do i was i felt sick for about a week before it just because you're so anxious or so nervous yeah just think every time i thought of it you know your stomach's in summer and this is before you found meditation or really a way to

cope with that absolutely yeah yeah so drink a little booze that kind of strategy yeah a little I was what you term at that time a passionate drinker but you know I always say is it any wonder we reach for those kinds of things when we're under pressure alcohol or whatever else

it had nicotine whatever else it happens to be you know because when we're growing up you know what are the things that are particularly in Ireland could be similar in Boston you know what are the things that are the stress relief

tools that are demonstrated to us by the grown-ups around us when we're small. It's generally alcohol, nicotine, shouting, kicking things over. You know, so it's no wonder we tend to gravitate towards those things when we get a little bit older, you know. But I remember the gig, you know, your first gig is okay because you've got all your family and friends there and they're all cheering for you.

It's gig number two is the tough one because they're like, we supported you, whatever. You weren't that funny to begin with. But I remember my wife was in the audience and I was standing, it's this really small comedy club in Dublin called The International. It's a small room above a pub and it has just, I always used to laugh at it because it looks like it was burnt down, but actually it was just never renovated after it. It's, you know, it's pretty low-key, rough around the edges.

But the emcee was introducing me and I had a guitar because I was doing a comedy song as part of the act. and just as they were going okay hey would you welcome to the stage my wife leaned into me and went don't do the song I was like what German Wheeland I was too much when I was left looking at her

sort of being pulled to the stage by the momentum looking back at her going why did you say that why what's wrong with the song anyway I did the song and it went down well okay yeah so I learned a key message just don't listen to your wife a few seconds before you walk on stage

but you know I think I was meant to do five minutes and I did the classic open spot thing of like doing 25 because you feel like you're killing and you feel great but then you get off stage and the MC kicks your ass because you've just eaten into everybody else's time and yeah it's good but as I say it's it's it's the lonely gigs you know two three four it's those ones after it that are the real testers you know now how did you develop all that material because if I understand correctly like in order to have five minutes of killer material. You almost have to do like 40 minutes of set work to figure out what goes into that killer five. Yeah. It's really interesting. I've just come up from Los Angeles and I was in Santa Monica and I went to a comedy club there, Neil Brennan, who does a lot of work with Dave Chappelle. He was trying out new material and it was just great to watch him working out stuff. He was on for about 40 minutes and that's the reality you you mean it's really it's less comedy it's more sort of active editing you know it's just constantly cutting away the fat trim the fat trim the fat you know and i think that's what a lot of beginner stand-ups don't understand i certainly didn't

understand at the start you start to go into just these sort of padded stories that you know may not have punchlines are punchlines in the right place and you really have to learn to just be brutal and you're just it's like writing a book you're just cutting that stuff out cut trim the fat so yeah if you start with 40 minutes and you come out with a good seven or eight then that's a real win you know well i think comedians have like a remarkable lightness about them on stage that in some ways masks the incredible amount of work and sacrifice that goes into actually delivering the lines that they're delivering you know you the audience you're watching it's like it almost feels like you guys are coming up

with it on the spot whereas of course you've rehearsed and rehearsed it and you know try different variations on it and just changing a few different words maybe evokes a completely different response and in a way it's like all that is masked through the the expert delivery but it I think it undersells just the insane amount of work that goes into it yeah there was a great phrase that we picked up in radio over the years and that's planned spontaneity yeah you know um right and you know i guess it's not a million miles from you walking into a negotiation you know sitting in a room with money men or something and you know you're you've got your idea of what you want to say and but you don't want to make anything sound rehearsed you know and i i guess there's

elements of that but yeah a lot of the time it's you You know, it's the, I guess to use a meditation analogy, it's the gaps between the breaths, you know, it's the silence between the notes. So it's not always the joke of what you're saying. Sometimes it's the pause just before you say it. Totally. You know, are the impression that you're, you know, looking up and just dreaming up the next part of the sentence when, in fact, you absolutely know what you're going to say. So, yeah, I guess it is that mixture between the, the word.

and the gaps between them, you know? Yeah, Miles Davis has this great quote, which is music is the time between beats. And I think there's a lot, that's like something I think about a lot in all contexts of life. Even business, you know, so often as an entrepreneur you get caught into this sort of the feeling of the high or the feeling of the low or the feeling of the deal closed or the feeling of it or the feeling of it's not working out and yet it's actually all the quiet in between that it's the process it's the people you get to work with

it's sort of an appreciation for the product you're building or the customers you have and in a way that's that is the time between the beats you know yeah and it's an appreciation of that time as you say when you're not you know you're not performing you know and that those days are those times where you're walking for a sandwich just having a look around, they're equally as important because that's, you know,

that's where thoughts begin, you know, where create, you need that space, you know. Like one of the things that I'm, I really try and share with people, particularly people in a corporate world, you know, when they're feeling overwhelmed, is creating that space because you absolutely, yes, the performance is key in those moments when you're high-fiving yourself and your team. That's awesome. But we need to create that space. It's that that Sanskrit word Akasha, you know, we need to build that in.

And that could be the length of one breath. It doesn't have to be the big. Now I have to go for the hour jog or I've got to go and sit on a park bench for 40 minutes. It literally can be one conscious breath. And that can be enough just to create that recovery and allow that space for thoughts, jokes, plans to emerge, you know. How did you find meditation? It was linked to comedy.

I had a panic attack while driving to perform at a comedy festival, which is not ideal preparation. I had never had a panic attack before, but I, you know, I see different stages in our life. You know, at any given time, we have a life soup. That's how I see it, you know, and all our ingredients are different. And your ingredients today could be different to your ingredients tomorrow,

depending on which directions you're being pushed and pulled in, you know. And for me back then, it was like 2007. My life soup was, you know, breakfast radio. So I was getting up at 4.30 a.m. I was doing comedy in the club. So I was getting home after midnight, four nights a week. So sleep wasn't huge. Thank God I didn't have a whoop back then.

I would have been in the red all the time. I was starting a young family, and my only coping mechanisms for stress were alcohol and nicotine. That was my thing, you know, and I just thought I could power through it. You know, it's that misunderstanding that we all have at times between resilience and, you know, and endurance, you know. Nobody knows that better than you because your whole product is based on, you know, understanding that and understanding recovery. But I certainly didn't. And, you know, I think that's the problem with a lot of people, particularly creative people who, not the, you know, I think we're all creative in different ways. But, you know, people who like to push themselves and are ambitious generally have people who have a lot of stamina are the ones who are going to burn out because we just don't stop, you know, and until our body goes, hey, what are you doing?

And that's what happened to me. I was driving down. I felt this pressure on my chest and my belly. I didn't know what was, it was like the invisible man was just sitting in on top of me. And eventually I pulled a car over. I was gasping for breath. And because I was panicking, it was getting even worse.

You know, and I thought I was having a heart attack or a stroke. And an ambulance was called. I remember lying on the side of the road and I was just at the driveway of this house. And, you know, it wasn't a particularly salubrious part of the village that I pulled in, I was thinking, don't let me die here, a place called Mullenavat. I don't want to die here. This is not, you know, I watch a lot of Viking TV shows. I wanted to die in a Viking way, you know, where the guy fires the flaming arrow out onto the boat. That's kind of my funeral that I was imagining. But anyway, an ambulance came. I found myself

in the back of the ambulance breathing into a brown paper bag, you know, which I don't think was an official health service brown paper bag and just mouth of sandwiches. But, you know, when you're sitting in the back of an ambulance breathing into a paper bag, you think, okay, maybe I could say yes to less things, no to more things, and maybe I could find ways of managing stress a little bit better.

So quite by chance, after that, I met a lady who asked me to emcee her book launch. She just launched a novel. And she told me that she was teaching meditation to law enforcement. And I was like, hmm, that's interesting because I thought this was, I was very cynical about meditation, the whole world of it. I thought it was just kind of her hippie-dippy types, you know, who got up in the morning and covered themselves in hummus. But, you know, I thought, okay, keep an open mind, you got to try something, you know, because the old Guinness and Marlboro lights aren't really working for you. yeah so I got on and I noticed pretty profound changes pretty quickly you know um sleep improved

mood improved and with a lot of these things it's a bit like when you start working out you may not notice any changes but other people might say it to you you go what's up with you you know you seem different you know yeah something about you and meditation does that to you you know as you know you're a keen meditator but um it was actually my wife who said it to me And she's like, have you noticed how relaxed you are at bedtime, you know, how calm you are around the kids, you know, the kids bedtime, you know. Not that I was a terrible father before that, you know, she's not like, wow, Dermit, you haven't hit the kids in 20 minutes. Only two of them are bleeding. Fantastic.

But, you know, I guess what she was pointed to is that, you know, kids bedtime is one of those natural stress areas of the day. You've come home from work, you're tired, the kids are running around. just wanted to go to bed so you can flop down on the couch and watch, whatever. But instead of kind of getting tense or aggravated or using a dad voice all the time, you know, she noticed that I was a lot more patient and a bit more creative and we were playing games. And in fact, one of the little characters that I used to do with them at bedtime ended up being one that I brought to the radio show and then ended up writing a children's book about, you know?

Wow. So it just shows you that when you create that space, we were talking about when, you know, you can manage to come into the presence, so you're not in the future thinking, I just want to be down on that couch, you know, are in the past thinking, God, what a day. You know, my brain is still in that meeting that went pear-shaped earlier. You know, when we can get into that little space, create that space, you know, magical things happen, you know. When do you meditate? Or what's your practice with it? I like to think that I'm meditating most of the time. Now, I do meditate every morning.

I like to, I get kind of 40 minutes is my sweet spot. That's where I sort of feel, okay, I've gotten into it. And that's a pretty meaningful amount of time. Yeah, but I find it takes me a good, takes me at least 15 minutes for the, you know, the crazy to calm down a little bit for that. I call it a fizz, you know, just to let those bubbles. die down. But, you know, life is busy.

Sometimes you sleep it out and you go, oh, my God, it's the time. And, you know, you don't get that. But, you know, for me, what I try and share with people, I talk about the mini moment, you know. And for me, that is almost more important, you know. I've had a few mini moments since I came into this room. I've just resetting, you know. And that can be one conscious breath, you know. And I think people think, well, I need to be doing an hour in the morning.

morning and to see the benefits. And, you know, if you're about to have a conversation, you're not comfortable with, or a meeting where you're thinking, I really need this to go well, I need to be fully present here. Or maybe you just want to be present with the people that you really care about and you don't want to have your mind still in the working day or I thinking about the next one. Those little resets are massive, you know, and they can be simply one conscious breath, you know, I share a 16 second meditation technique. It's called box breathing. I know you're familiar with it. But to reassure people that, you know, 16 seconds can be enough for you to hit that reset button. So when you do walk into that meeting, you do have that

conversation, you know, that there's more chance of all that going well. If you've managed to just turn off a little smoke alarm in your mind that's possibly ringing and ringing at times when you don't really need it to be ringing, you know? Well, you mentioned your 16-second technique. Should we try that now? Yeah, sure. So this is the first meditation I ever learned. And I was surprised and frustrated that no one had taught me this in school.

Like, why wasn't anyone teaching this stuff? Oh, totally. So the idea, very simply, is you're breathing in for four, you're holding for four, you're letting that breath go for four, and then you're holding for four. And that's it. And it doesn't have to be actual seconds. It's just their beats, you know. So we can try it. Anybody watching this is the easiest meditation you're going to ever do. So breathing in, four and hold. Two, three, four and let that go. Two, three, four and hold. Two, three, four. And then you're just breathing normally. It's an easy game. A nice little test, if you think of something that's kind of annoying you, something that's just on your mind, you don't want to go into a full therapy session, but if you just think of something that's kind of niggling at you and do that technique, I guarantee you at the end of that technique, you'll realize that for that 16 seconds, at least you weren't thinking about that little annoying, you know, mental wasp that was flying around, you know? Yeah, the technique we just did is often referred to as box breathing, and you can do it with, I think, as little as three seconds, maybe as much as 10 seconds, depending on how sophisticated someone gets it at breathing, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's doing so many things, you know, as I said, it is, you know, a lot of our trouble is just that mind wandering, that our mind is bouncing from the future, the past, the future of the past all the time. You know, there's a Harvard study from about 12 years ago that was called a wandering.

mind is an unhappy mind, you know, and it showed that, you know, 40, almost half of our time, 47% of the time, we're not focused on the thing that we're doing. Our mind is either in the future or it's in the past, you know. And they worked out through this study that the more our mind wanders, the less happy we feel, you know. So anything that allows us to pull us into that mini moment that I was talking about, anything. And it doesn't have to be the grand gesture. Yes, if you paint or you want to exercise or whatever it happens to be that gets you into that present moment then great but it's those mini moments throughout the day those little resets that are massive you know because I know for me that fizziness that I get in my mind it's a

slow build and I think for a lot of us that stress that overwhelm that sense of burnout that sense of if I get one more email my head is going to explode you know that's not instant that's a slow build you know so if we keep introducing these little resets throughout the day and that could be as easy as just putting a post it on your laptop or sometimes i write 16 on my hand you know are just anything to remind you just to stop what you're doing you can even do just a belly breath i mean how simple is that you just put one hand on the belly i find this works best if you put your hand on your own belly um because you're less likely to get fired are kicked off the bus.

But you know, you put one hand on your belly and you just imagine there's a balloon in there and when you breathe in, you inflate that balloon, you hold it, and then you let the breath go. Feel the balloon drop back down again.

You know, and already you can feel things. Your cortisol lowering, heart rate slowing, and you are less likely to you know, scorch the village at the next meeting you have, you know. Yeah, for me, it's been a life changer, finding meditation. Funny enough, I actually discovered meditation through a similar kind of moment in time,

if you will. I had a panic attack. I was driving in a car. I ended up in the hospital. And by the way, it was such an unfamiliar sensation or state to be in. I actually was wondering, like, had I been food poisoned? Like, you know, I assumed that. something had, like, entered my body that was poisonous or something.

And really, it was just that I was stressed out of my mind and not taking care of myself. But that's so funny, because a lot of people do that. When they feel that panic come on, our mind goes to these crazy places. I remember when I was in the car, that's funny you just said that because I just remembered, I had a bottle of organic pink lemonade that was there. And I was, God, I don't feel well at all. I think I was smoking a cigarette at the time, you know, and had been drinking the day before to deal with the nerves of doing this big festival,

you know, where all my heroes were going to be. You know, I remember picking up the bottle of pink lemonade going, what is in this? Yeah. Oh, oh, great, raw cane sugar. I mean, really, you know, how dare they give that to me. This is obviously the cause of my panic and discomfort. I had a very similar thing where I had gone to this.

like sketchy Greek place for lunch in Manhattan. And of course I assumed it was like the Greek place is food versus, you know, the alcohol I drank the night before or the unlimited amount of coffee I drank during the day. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, all of these occasions are as uncomfortable as they are at the time are opportunities for us, I guess, to dig right down into what you do for a living, what you're so passionate about, is that understanding how. how we work. You know, you're looking under the hood. You know, that panic attack was extremely uncomfortable and it was embarrassing and it was frightening, you know. But it gave me the opportunity for me to go, okay, my body is sending me signals. My body is giving me information all the time.

And so is my mind. So are my thoughts. Everything is giving me information. So isn't it about time I started listening to some of that before it has to scream. so loudly, you know, I would like to go to work without involving the emergency services, you know, wouldn't that be nice? So it gives us the opportunity to just to begin to, it's a bit like learning a language. You know, you learn the language of your body, you know, and you understand your stressors. What stresses you out, you know, may not stress me out as much and vice versa. You know, coffee could have a completely different effect on you than it does to me. You know, I'm a decaf guy because every time I, if I have a real coffee, I feel like I'm, you know, about to sit

my, my end of school exams again, you know, that, oh my God, you know, so alcohol is a massive no-no for me. I see it as a wrecking ball for my nervous system. So you don't drink alcohol, you don't smoke anymore? I may have alcohol from time to time, but it's, it's very infrequent. It's been months since I had one and, you know, I don't miss it. Definitely don't smoke anymore. what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop that's right you can check out whoop at woup dot com it measures everything around sleep recovery strain and you can now sign up for free for 30 days so you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free get to try it for 30

days, see whether you want to be a member, and that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. Was meditation the gateway for you to have this whole health kick? Yeah, but it's not as if you, you know, sometimes I guess the image of meditation is that, and the one that I push back against a lot is the image of meditation that's sold to us online, you know, the lotus position mountaintop, you know, and as soon as you start, you go, oh, my God. God, now I'm pretty much Jesus. You know, it's not that. You know, first of all, it doesn't have to be a mountaintop or a wooden jetty over a

lake because, you know, a lot of people don't live there. I don't have access to it. And it's a bit impractical to run up a mountain every time you're feeling a bit stressed from work. You know, so it's about just weaving it into your life in small ways. Also, you know, it's a slow burn. Sometimes meditation can bring you to an uncomfortable place. You know, and what it does is it kind of lifts up the ingredients in your life soup and goes, this is what's going in your life soup.

How do you feel about that? It's not as if it comes up with all the answers and says, here, listen, I've taken out this and that. And, you know, now it's it's just chickpeas and positive thoughts. It's not like that, you know, it's, for me, it showed me the things that weren't working for me. because I finally put the brakes on and created some of that space. And so actually I became really aware that there was a civil war in my mind between alcohol and the other part of me that just wanted stillness and wellness and feeling good. And that raged for a couple of years,

where I would fall back into those neural pathways and fall back into those things that I thought I needed to reach for to feel calm. And so, and that's an uncomfortable time and we're kind of, we can see, see where we need to go, but all the old ways of thinking and behaving are still there, you know, and that can be a civil war that's uncomfortable, you know. So it isn't all roasts, but I guess, again, we just got to create those little moments of space,

whether that's an hour in your morning, five minutes or whether 16 seconds is all you got, then start there, you know, because then you start to have. those conversations with yourself. Then you can learn the language of your body and your mind and actually start working together because I felt for many years I was pushing against parts of myself. It was a resistance way of living. Whereas now I see myself in partnership.

I'm in partnership with my body and I'm in partnership with the higher version of myself that actually knows a bit more than this one is doing his best day to day. you know and when you feel like you're you know the biggest shift for me and i would say this to anyone who feels curious about meditation and feels like maybe they're prone to beating themselves up and again it's the ambitious go-getters you know people with huge stamina are the people who are probably more likely to be harder on themselves you know the greatest gift it's given me over the years is that it turned down the volume to almost zero of that voice that beat the crap out of me for years.

Now, that voice starts from a good place going, you know, let's do our best here and we don't want to forget things or you don't want to mess up. And particularly if you work for yourself, it gets louder and louder because you've got to be on point the whole time. But I remember one day waking up a few years after I started meditating. And I remember, you know, when you have that thought of you never sent an email. And I went, oh, God, Dermit, you. idiot. And I went, wow, I haven't heard that voice in a while. You know, and I realized that

harshness that was directed at me, that's why I drank. I realized, you know, after sitting with for a lot of time, I realized that alcohol was giving me silence from that voice that was beating the crap out of myself. I realized when I was dry, I had like about a third of a pint of Guinness and I went, silence. And I really, that's what I had been chasing. I've been chasing silence

from that voice that was beating me up, you know? And, you know, if you are curious about getting to meditation, but this could be

the greatest gift it will ever give you is that it will, it will reduce that harshness. You know, it fires up our empathy center when we do it. You know,

the brain scans show that. Yes, that means we have kinder thoughts towards other people. But the real winner is that you've kind of thoughts towards yourself. Then you can get out of your own way and get on with the stuff that you want to do.

But some people think, is that going to make me soft? You know, I have a brother who is very slowly gravitating towards this, but he's a high-flying, flying business guy, runs companies. And he was like, I don't want to do meditation because it'll take my edge. You know, I don't want to be all come by, you know, how am I going to get my stuff done?

even now he's realizing okay actually you know that voice that's hammering me all the time is an obstacle it's getting in my way you know and when we just take that stuff out of the way then we can do magical things you know when that voice flips from being our biggest critic to being our number one supporter like that's a powerful feeling i love so many themes that you just touched on i think the the notion of of meditation being fed to us from society in a very woo-woo way, it masks what a superpower it is for everyone. And in fact, a lot of these hard-driving people who say, oh, it's going to make me soft or

something, they're actually the people that it will amplify their lives the most. And I couldn't believe after I started meditating how many successful people I met who confided me that they also meditated. And, you know, I've been doing whoop now for 12 years, so I've gotten to meet many of the highest performing people in the world, honestly, whether they're professional athletes or hedge fund managers or fill in the blank. And I would say 90% of them have some form of meditation practice, which is pretty amazing to think about. You know, certainly people wouldn't call, you know, Patrick Mahomes or Rory McElroy or Cristiano Ronaldo like soft. And these are all people who have a form of visualization. or breathing or, you know, fill in the blank as it relates to kind of sitting with

themselves and thinking and being quiet. Yeah. And, you know, I think, as you say, the way it's been marketed, it really is just a marketing thing, you know, for me. I think meditation is marketed to a very, usually, it's very female-orientated. It's usually marketed to females. with disposable income, it's that sort of clean Lulu Lemon yoga pants type existence, which is wonderful.

And it's, you know, all of those, that sector of society need meditation too. But there's a whole other slew of people like, you know, particularly men, I think, have been left out of that conversation. You know, when I do my live shows, the thing that makes me happiest of all is seeing the amount of men there because I've done the spiritual weekends, you know, You know, a part of my training, and I'm just interested in it anyway. But I'm used to being the one guy out of a hundred women, you know, or maybe there's another guy and our eyes are kind of meeting across the room.

Like, don't tell on me. Yeah, you got dragged here as well. Yeah. But, you know, a lot more, that's why what you're doing is so important in terms of making it accessible, you know. I have a 16-year-old boy, he's my middle child, and he had no interest in meditation. Certainly didn't want to hear his old man, you know, talking to him about it. But it was through fitness, myself, my wife, he started going to the gyms. He's, you know, typical teenager that's just love going to the gym, getting small.

But we could hear one night outside his bedroom, he's listening to a guided meditation. I was like, wow, where is that coming from? But if he had found it through sport, he found it through listening to videos with the people that he was interested in and using resources that are presented to him in a sporting fitness environment, you know. So when you bring this stuff to someone in a language they can relate to, they're in, you know. you know my meditation teacher teaches the same stuff to the san francisco police department they don't call it meditation they call it tactical breathing you know sure there's a language there's a marketing rebrand exactly but it's the same stuff so so to see you know the access that whoop is giving people that is presenting it to to them and going look here here's it presented in the

language of of the app that you love on your phone what you know why not to try that out. How long have you been wearing whoop? I was actually discussing this with Abby from your team earlier on, trying to remember when I actually started, because it's many years. I was an early adapter of the three. Okay. So that would probably make it six or seven years. Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah. And I guess like so many of the whoop wears, it just becomes part of your, you know, it's just part of your body. You'd be kind of amazed by my, my, my, tan line here at this point. That's like a 12 year tan line. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it just

becomes part of your day, part of your life. I took it up to the top of Kilimanjaro earlier this year. And congratulations. Yeah, thanks. It's a good climb. That was a good, it was a really good experience, you know, tough, a lot tougher than, than you think it's going to be. You think you're a kind of Sunday hike is going to train you for it, but it absolutely does not, you know, at 5,000 meters when you're gas. Some high strain scores? Super high strain. I guess because the internet was patchy up there, you're kind of getting bits and pieces.

What was really interesting was blood oxygen, which is usually your ball sox probably collapse. Wow. Yeah. Like it's, you know, it usually sits at 98% in around there. And I got a glimpse and it was in the low 70s. And I was like, how am I still alive? Yeah, right. know, but it just shows you what your body's capable of, you know, and that's when the

mental game really kicks in as well, because as part of you looking at stats and you're like, you know, how am I, you know, for people who don't know, Kilimanjaro is the world's tallest freestanding mountain. It's in Tanzania, in Africa, and it's just shy of 6,000 meters. So there are real altitude effects when you're up there. And when you feel your body doing that, when you feel your heart, you know, really struggling to keep the, keep the machine going, you can start to go into panic mode. And actually, anxiety was something that I noticed amongst the whole crew that people started to get anxious. It was almost like a Marvel movie where, you know, somebody has a special power that can amplify everyone's worries, you know. So the older people were worried about having heart attacks and dying, you know.

So the people who were people pleasers were worried about letting everybody else down, you know, slowing everybody up. And I found that really interesting that it just amped up everyone's personal anxiety. Because I guess, you know, in many ways, anxiety is a two-way street in that, yes, we can have anxious thoughts and then our body follows suit and starts firing in chemicals. But actually, you can work the other way around. if your physical body is put in a high-stress state, the anxious thoughts can then follow because it's like, oh, we're feeling anxious.

We should be worried about something. So I thought that was quite interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. And altitude really can have a profound effect on your body. I mean, interestingly, when we were doing all this research around COVID-19 and an elevated respiratory rate, one of the major things that, looked like COVID on whoop was when someone was not at altitude and then went to altitude because they had the spike in respiratory rate. They had the spike in resting heart rate and

they had the collapse and hurry variability. And those became the markers for COVID inside our algorithm. So it's pretty it's kind of an interesting thing. Now of course the GPS you could figure that out that difference. But anyway, the body's a fascinating thing. Yeah. Well, there's a few things that are my, you know, are my kind of go to that Woop really helped me with in terms of seeing the effectiveness of it. And again, I love the fact that just we're learning our own individual languages and, you know, things work for you that may not work in the same way for other people. For me, stretching is massive for my HRV. So any type of yoga, I mean, I was doing it this morning, I know is going to have an impact on my HRV and help my sleep and recovery

without a doubt, chanting is a really interesting one because, you know, I wouldn't be naturally drawn towards that side of things. But I found that if I chanted, or if I, when I chant simply a-m and I do that, it's obviously slowing down my respiratory rate. But that actually has a profound impact on HRVN recovery as well for me. And how does that work? In terms of actually doing it. Yeah. So if we were to do it here now, you just sit with a reasonably straight back.

And then you're combining the, the, um, ah, ooh and mm sound. So it's, ah, oh, oh,

oh, and what that does is, and any of these techniques, generally, they reduce our breathing to about six breaths per minute. And that, there's loads of science around when you do that, you will increase your HRV. Fascinating.

It has an impact on it. And box breathing, by the way, which we did earlier, is also shown to increase your HRV. So for those listening who want to improve their HIV, there's two little techniques we just went over today that improve your HRV. Yeah, really effective. There's a really cool study that came out of Italy in 2001. And...

What they discovered was they compared Buddhist chanting, the Omani Padme Ha'am chant, and they compared that to the rosary. So people do in decades of the rosary from Catholic faiths. And they found that they had exactly the same effect. They created heart coherence. So people's heart rhythm started to beat in sync. But also, they both increased HRV,

and they reduced breathing to, on average, six breaths per minute. And it's the same across Native American styles of chanting and wherever you go around the world. So it was something that I was showing to my teenage son. I was using the whoop, and I got him to start chanting, oh, God, Dad, you know, really? And I was like, just do it. And I put the whoop on his wrist, and I had the heart monitor. And I was saying, just watch that while they're doing it.

So he's going, oh, wow. And you see his heart rate drop and drop and drop and drop, you know, by about 15 beats per minute, you know, within a few, you know, within about 30 seconds or so. So as much as we kind of knock those hippier side of things, there's actually a lot of science in there and they're very, very effective. Well, I know we got to let you get out of here. But I want to wrap by saying that you, you know, you've written this bestselling book. mindful, unrighted your head to stress your life. And it's terrific. And in the beginning of the book, you talk about this experience where you're on stage doing stand-up comedy to 10,000 people,

and you get off stage and you don't really feel much. And then, you know, I forget the period of time later, but you give this two days. Two days later, you give a speech in front of a, you know, corporation to 30 executives teaching them about meditation and at the end of that you were buzzing and you had felt something of a I think something of a calling from it. Yeah for me it highlighted that word fulfillment which I think is one that we sort of read about and we see maybe on aspirational quotes on Instagram but when you feel it it's very real and I think for me fulfillment is anything where you're bringing more of you to the table. you know and i guess at that time you know 10 years previous to that that arena show i would have

been like just buzzing for months after doing comedy on that stage by the time i got to that moment that i talk about in the book there were other parts of me that had been brought to the surface you know that quieter stiller you know meditator part of me who like to think about things a little bit deep, you know, deeper. And when I found myself using all the skills that I had gained over, you know, two decades beforehand on stages, but then was combining that with the information and passion that I have around meditation and how it can help us, you know, in our daily lives, that was fulfillment for me because I was bringing all of me to the table.

And even though I was in a, you know, an insurance company. 30 people who, you know, some of whom looked interested, I couldn't have been happier because if I got to one person, you know, that's all the difference for me. That was just more fulfilling than, you know, a huge crowd of laughing people. But it's not to take away from, you know, anyone who does that are all the times that I did it.

But, you know, to get that sense of fulfillment, how much of you are you bringing to the table every day? And I think that's why a lot of people get disillusioned in their jobs and get tired and get cranky in their jobs. Sure. Because maybe that software, you know, they were, their running was suitable for them a few models back, you know, whereas where they are now requires a bit of an update. And maybe that is, you know, sometimes you think that, oh, do I have to blow up my life now

I'm going to tell my boss to go screw himself. You know, no, sometimes it's just introducing something that's representative of another part of you, you know. Maybe it's just doing something with your coworkers, you know, that isn't work-related, but that you're able to help them with, you know. Maybe you can teach them to do something or share some knowledge that you have in some other part of your life with your work colleagues. Those things can have a massive impact.

And then you're starting to feel fulfilled, you know. Well, I'm happy you've found that calling, and I think you're an unbelievable ambassador for meditation and focus and all the benefits of it. So thank you so much for coming on this podcast, spending some time with me. The book is Mindful, Unwreck Your Head, DeStress Your Life. You've got the Mindful podcast, which has just come out very recently, so people can check that out. Yep, and there's Mindful, the live tour, which will be happening as well. So that's a great opportunity for me to get into big theaters and bring people, I call it, belly laughs and belly breaths. So you stand up to, you know, get them into that space where they're open to it. And

then they're one minute they're laughing. Next minute they're meditating. Dermer, thank you. Thanks so much, Will. Pleasure to be here in Boston as well. I'm a huge Ray Donovan fan. So this is very exciting for me. Well, it's been great having you. Thanks again. Thanks so much. Thank you to Dermott for joining me today to discuss his passion for meditation and mindfulness. Be sure to check out Dermott's show, The Mindful Podcast, for more of Dermott's great insights. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the WOOP podcast.

Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. Have a question once he answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast to Woop.com. Call us 508-434349.52. If you're thinking about joining Woop, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership and take the first step to unlocking your own best performance today. New members can use the code will, W-I-L, to get a $60 credit on W-W-A-Ccessaries. And that's a wrap.

Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the W-WoP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.