Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio hi Emlie Wentworth.
Speaker 1: And you're listening to Go ask Ali. Where this part
Speaker 1: of the season, I'm asking how do you grow a
Speaker 1: healthy relationship with yourself, with a spouse, with a sibling,
Speaker 1: even your dog walker? And on this episode we're talking
Speaker 1: about self care and more specifically our mental health. And
Speaker 1: here to help us all of transcend is today's guest
Speaker 1: Bob Roth. Bob Roth is a meditation leader and the
Speaker 1: author of the New York Times bestseller's Strength and Stillness,
Speaker 1: The Power of Transcendental Meditation. You may also know him
Speaker 1: from a serious x M radio show, Success Without Stress,
Speaker 1: or his bite sized talks on the podcast Stay Calm
Speaker 1: with Bob Roth. Bob also serves as CEO of the
Speaker 1: David Lynch Foundation, a nonprofit that provides trans sentental meditation
Speaker 1: to at risk populations. And before we start, I have
Speaker 1: to say that this is going to be a conversation
Speaker 1: but also a challenge because my husband, George is a
Speaker 1: big meditation guy twice a day, and Bob has been
Speaker 1: an integral part of his life, had taught him all
Speaker 1: about meditation almost all my posse, all my friends are
Speaker 1: big meditation people, and I honestly have been very skeptical
Speaker 1: about it. I haven't wanted to do it. George tells
Speaker 1: me at least once a day you should really meditate,
Speaker 1: or the reason you're doing that, it's because you don't meditate.
Speaker 1: And the reason you have wrinkles is because you don't meditate.
Speaker 1: So now I'm actually with the source. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you, Bob, about meditation, and I want to
Speaker 1: see this is a challenge if you can actually convert
Speaker 1: me to do so, So good morning. That lovely note.
Speaker 1: I just want you to to know, Bob, I'm furious with
Speaker 1: you and what you have to say, but let's have
Speaker 1: a comfortable conversation. I'm actually not furious at all. I'm actually,
Speaker 1: after many years, I could be a convert. So let's
Speaker 1: start out very very very rudimentary. Let me just ask
Speaker 1: you what is meditation. Well, the word meditation just means thinking.
Speaker 1: So there are so many different types of meditation. So
Speaker 1: you can have concentration type thinking. You can have prayer meditation,
Speaker 1: which is thinking about things. You can have focused attention
Speaker 1: meditation or mindfulness meditation, which is watching your thoughts and
Speaker 1: that the other is transcendental meditation, which is a simple
Speaker 1: technique that allows you to get to the deepest, quietest
Speaker 1: level of the thought process. And that's what George does, right, Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what my brother does and Jerry Seinfeld and everybody. Yes. Continue.
Speaker 1: So I like to use an analogy of an ocean
Speaker 1: where Ali, You're on a little boat during non COVID times,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you get these giant, thirty
Speaker 1: fifty highway waves, and you could think, oh my god,
Speaker 1: the whole ocean is an upheaval. But if you were
Speaker 1: to do a cross section of the ocean, you'd realize
Speaker 1: the nature of the ocean may be turbulent on the surface,
Speaker 1: but the ocean is miles deep, and the nature of
Speaker 1: the ocean at its depth is pretty darned silent. And
Speaker 1: that by analogy, we say the mind is the same way.
Speaker 1: The surface of our mind is like those choppy waves
Speaker 1: or so nambiesque waves. And some people call it the
Speaker 1: monkey mind, but I like to call it that God
Speaker 1: to God, to God, to God, to God to mind,
Speaker 1: I gotta do this, and I gotta do that. I
Speaker 1: gotta call him, and I gotta call her, and I
Speaker 1: gotta make a list, gotta find the list, gotta make
Speaker 1: a new list, gotta slow down, gotta get going. All
Speaker 1: the god is and it's a natural human desire to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'd like to have some inner calm here, some inner
Speaker 1: break of the noise, some inner equanimity. And the operative
Speaker 1: word there is inner, and the question is there such
Speaker 1: a thing as an inner? And if so, how do
Speaker 1: we get there? And that's the realm of meditation, bringing
Speaker 1: equanimity to the mind. I would think that, and I'm
Speaker 1: speaking for myself. The first part of meditation is almost
Speaker 1: like this huge wall that I couldn't penetrate, Meaning as
Speaker 1: soon as I sat down, my mind races and I
Speaker 1: do all those things. I think, oh God, I've got
Speaker 1: to I've got to pay the plumber, and I gotta
Speaker 1: do this. I just I cannot quiet my mind, yes,
Speaker 1: And which makes me immediately throw in the towel and
Speaker 1: go I can't possibly do this, which is actually it's
Speaker 1: a very sad misunderstanding of what meditation is about. Because
Speaker 1: so much of meditation these days, the understanding has been, oh,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a quiet ocean, what disrupts
Speaker 1: a quiet ocean waves, so stop the waves. You want
Speaker 1: to a calm mind. What disrupts a calm mind thoughts,
Speaker 1: So stop thoughts. But in transcendental meditation, we hypothesize that
Speaker 1: there's a level deep within your mind right now, Ali,
Speaker 1: whether you believe it or not, you could be skeptical.
Speaker 1: Right now, there's a level where your mind is already
Speaker 1: calm and settled and peaceful and alert, and it's the
Speaker 1: source of your creativity and energy, and we've lost access
Speaker 1: to it. And incidental meditation gives keyword coming up here
Speaker 1: effortless access to that quiet level within it requires no
Speaker 1: control of the mind. And I teach ten year old
Speaker 1: kids with a d D who couldn't close their eyes
Speaker 1: for half a minute without going nuts, and they can
Speaker 1: do tm. They love it because it's effortless, right, And
Speaker 1: so what does it mean to transcend? Does it mean
Speaker 1: to get into the depths of the quiet part of
Speaker 1: your mind? It just means that vertical dimension that there is.
Speaker 1: The ocean is not just the surface, and the mind
Speaker 1: is not just all my thoughts that I have to
Speaker 1: somehow stop, but that there's a vertical dimension, there's quieter
Speaker 1: levels of the mind. You already know that you go
Speaker 1: to a park and you see some kid, when you
Speaker 1: could go to a park and you see some kid
Speaker 1: and you say, whoa, that little kid is a hothead.
Speaker 1: That little kid is boiling over with rage and his
Speaker 1: poor little body is tense. But we also know, oh,
Speaker 1: that person is cool, calm and collected, and we have
Speaker 1: that phrase Cooler minds will prevail. So the hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that underneath all that noise is the level of you,
Speaker 1: your mind that is already settled. Sometimes athletes access it
Speaker 1: when they experience the zone. Sometimes maybe when you're doing
Speaker 1: comedy or you're doing something you just click into something
Speaker 1: and you feel clear and inside it's quiet, and yet
Speaker 1: you're just you got it. That's just accessing those deeper,
Speaker 1: quieter levels of the mind. And to transcend in this case,
Speaker 1: just means to settle down. And what is our brain
Speaker 1: doing at this point? Well, interesting things when we're not meditating.
Speaker 1: The brain wave activity when we're just a normal waking
Speaker 1: state is called beta brain waves, which are thirteen to
Speaker 1: twenty cycles per second, and that's scattered. You're all over
Speaker 1: the place, so that's thirteen to twenty cycles per second
Speaker 1: when you're sleeping, just by putting things in context. Sleeping
Speaker 1: is about one or two cycles per second because you're unconscious.
Speaker 1: Dreaming is three to four cycles per second to seven
Speaker 1: or eight, and cycles per second means how many times
Speaker 1: is the electrical activity of your brain go up and
Speaker 1: down in a second. So when you're unconscious, it's just
Speaker 1: almost not at all. When you're in waking state, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fast. During TM, it's eight to ten cycles per second,
Speaker 1: and that is a settled but wide awake state of
Speaker 1: the mind. So it's something real. It's not just make
Speaker 1: believe booga booga, who we do we New age stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a complete change in the way your brain functions
Speaker 1: during TM. I do know that George has a very
Speaker 1: stressful job, and certainly the past four years the new
Speaker 1: cycle has been non ending, and he will meditate and
Speaker 1: he'll feel after twenty minutes like he's taken a long nap. Well,
Speaker 1: you ever heard of cortisol? Yeah? Yeah, Cortisol is a
Speaker 1: stress hormone. It's secreted by the adrenal glance which sit
Speaker 1: on top of our kidneys, and cortisol weakens digestion, it
Speaker 1: weakens the immune system. That's why if a person is
Speaker 1: stressed or anxious to get sick more often. It floods
Speaker 1: a part of the brain, the memory center in the
Speaker 1: brain called the hippocampus, which is why when you're stressed
Speaker 1: you can't remember things. If you get a good night's sleep,
Speaker 1: eight hours of sleep, your cortisol levels will drop twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of TM, cortisol levels drop every time. Now that's
Speaker 1: not all meditations. That's transcendental meditation. And I have to
Speaker 1: say again, being a believer is irrelevant. I don't have
Speaker 1: to believe in gravity for this pen to fall. So
Speaker 1: a person could come to learn to t M and
Speaker 1: say I think this is a croc doesn't matter, it
Speaker 1: will still work. Let me be one of those people
Speaker 1: right now, go for it. Just for any cynics out
Speaker 1: there listening, Bob, why don't I just take a Zanex
Speaker 1: and get the same effect, because you don't get the
Speaker 1: same effect. Actually, zan X it calms it parts of
Speaker 1: the brain where we get anxious, called the amygdala. It
Speaker 1: calms it, but it also doesn't actually get to the
Speaker 1: underlying stress that's causing that anxiety. There's a build up.
Speaker 1: Every day you're raising kids, you're under pressure. We just
Speaker 1: absorbed stress. We absorbed stress we absorbed stress. The best
Speaker 1: antidote to stress is rest, but there's too much sleep
Speaker 1: isn't enough. So when you talk about transcendental meditation, we
Speaker 1: can strip away all the vocabulary and the verbiage and
Speaker 1: we can just say you're giving your body deep rest
Speaker 1: at will, deeper than sleep in many regards, and yet
Speaker 1: you're awake, and that has a whole constellation of health benefits.
Speaker 1: Beyond reducing cortisol, there's another hormone called serotonin, which is
Speaker 1: your happiness neurotransmitter. When a person is depressed, they have
Speaker 1: low levels of serotonin. Prozac mimics serotonin. During transcendental meditation,
Speaker 1: there's an increase, significant increase in serotonin and it stays up.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's been found to be very effective
Speaker 1: when we work with veterans who have post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker 1: It reboots your whole system with no side effects. So
Speaker 1: if I were on zoloft or prozac, it's an artificial
Speaker 1: way of getting to a very natural state. Well, what
Speaker 1: those do is they just mask the symptoms, but you're
Speaker 1: not allowing that build up of trauma or stress intention
Speaker 1: which fuels that depression. You're not allowing your body to
Speaker 1: heal itself. So when your body during t M gets
Speaker 1: this very deep state of rest, this build up of
Speaker 1: stress intention, it's as if a not it gets to
Speaker 1: be unwound. So in your skepticism towards TM, just look
Speaker 1: at it is. The human nervous system has a mechanism
Speaker 1: to take profound rest at will. And when we don't
Speaker 1: do that, we're not accessing all the potentiality of the body.
Speaker 1: H People say to me, well, why do you have
Speaker 1: to meditate? And you know, maybe years ago or something
Speaker 1: like that, when life was a little less stressed, maybe
Speaker 1: we naturally accessed it, but life is so intense now,
Speaker 1: particularly right now. Yeah. Yeah, The purpose of meditation thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of years old is the skill set to
Speaker 1: be able to access it at will. You noticed now
Speaker 1: during the difficult period in our history that people are
Speaker 1: using meditation more and more. Oh yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest causes of stress, we're told is uncertainty, lack of control.
Speaker 1: You know, we teach our children you have life experiences,
Speaker 1: and you make your decisions based on what you knew
Speaker 1: from the past, use your common sense. Well, now everything
Speaker 1: is up in the air. What we know from the past,
Speaker 1: those rules don't hold. So there's this uncertainty, there's this
Speaker 1: lack of control, there's this anxiety. So where do I
Speaker 1: find certainty? Well, it turns out inside, at least with TM.
Speaker 1: Inside there's that level which is settled and steady. And
Speaker 1: when you want to talk to George about something or
Speaker 1: one of your kids, you say, let's go someplace quiet
Speaker 1: to talk. Just let's go someplace. You don't say, let's
Speaker 1: go to a sports bar. And so all we're doing
Speaker 1: is access it. Well, maybe some people would go not
Speaker 1: to George. Yeah, but like the ocean, there's a level
Speaker 1: inside of us that we can access that's there. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a skeptic by nature. I'm not into
Speaker 1: New age woo woo. I love big ideas, but it's
Speaker 1: got to be rooted in something. But the lovely thing
Speaker 1: about transcendental meditation, anybody can be completely skeptical and there's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of research now that shows that it works.
Speaker 1: We're about to start a study with the Veterans Administration
Speaker 1: in nine v A hospitals on the effect of TM
Speaker 1: for reducing suicide and PTSD and anxiety and depression. We're
Speaker 1: also going to do another study on TM and high
Speaker 1: blood pressure, because that's the number one cause of death
Speaker 1: among adults in America's high blood pressure and TM in
Speaker 1: earlier studies has been shown to be more effective than
Speaker 1: anti hypertensive medication. So we're doing those studies so that
Speaker 1: it will be covered by Medicare and your insurance companies.
Speaker 1: So it's a new time, it's a new time to work.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, Yeah, and we're back. Can
Speaker 1: you give me examples of some of the people that
Speaker 1: you've worked with who are under immense stress and some
Speaker 1: of the changes that you witnessed in them. Well, we're
Speaker 1: working with a nurse who's on the front lines of
Speaker 1: the COVID epidemic in Washington, d C. In a public hospital,
Speaker 1: and she has been twelve fourteen hour shifts. She's a
Speaker 1: single mom. She comes home, she can't hug her children.
Speaker 1: She walks in the door at one in the morning,
Speaker 1: peels her clothes off, puts him in a washing machine,
Speaker 1: takes the shower, goes to bed. Sometimes doesn't even see
Speaker 1: her children the next morning. And this has been going
Speaker 1: on for months. And she was drinking to self medicaid
Speaker 1: and she couldn't sleep, and she learned transcendental meditation. We
Speaker 1: have something with the David Lynch Foundation called Heal the
Speaker 1: Healers where we provide TM for free to these providers
Speaker 1: on the front lines. And she said, within two weeks
Speaker 1: of meditating, and we have this on video, within two
Speaker 1: weeks of meditating, she was sleeping through the night, and
Speaker 1: she was nicer to her kids, and she also was stronger.
Speaker 1: She talked to her supervisor and said, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: I'm a good nurse. You're gonna have to because she
Speaker 1: was getting pushed around. And she said, it's been a
Speaker 1: lifesaver for her. I mean there's other things we have
Speaker 1: to do. You have to eat properly, you have to exercise,
Speaker 1: you know all those things, but this has been a
Speaker 1: missing element, the ability to let your body take this
Speaker 1: profound rest at will. Have you thought about implementing it
Speaker 1: in schools. Well, we have been in a number of
Speaker 1: schools so previous research has shown its benefit for learning.
Speaker 1: Grades go up and suspensions and expulsions go down. There
Speaker 1: was a big study in Chicago with two thousand kids.
Speaker 1: They wanted to see in the toughest schools Alley picked
Speaker 1: by the Chicago Pubs school System if teenagers meditated, would
Speaker 1: there be fewer arrests for violent crime because that's impulsivity
Speaker 1: in the brain, and if a child gets arrested for
Speaker 1: violent crime, her or his life is over basically. And
Speaker 1: whenever they've done interventions, if there was a reduction of
Speaker 1: ten percent, fift reductions and arrests, they were thrilled. In
Speaker 1: this study seventy percent reduction and arrest for violent crime
Speaker 1: seven zero. So now what we're doing is wanting to
Speaker 1: expand that to larger school systems so that it also
Speaker 1: can be covered by government funding because we're leaving kids out,
Speaker 1: you know, kids where your kids go to school. Everybody
Speaker 1: the level of trauma and stress. The number two cause
Speaker 1: of death among teenagers as suicide. So yes, I think
Speaker 1: this needs to be part of schools, just like physical education.
Speaker 1: I do too, actually, because the particularly the teenage brain,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's a there's a risky behavior always
Speaker 1: and particularly right now, the teenage suicide rate is so high.
Speaker 1: And I've even I have my own little guinea pig
Speaker 1: at home, our youngest daughter, and on a much less level,
Speaker 1: she gets very stressed out. You know, she's a very
Speaker 1: feeling person and she gets stressed out about school. She
Speaker 1: gets stressed out about the world. When she was younger,
Speaker 1: she had these night terrors about isis and George got
Speaker 1: her to meditate and it's really helped her a lot. Well,
Speaker 1: there's something called HSP a highly sensitive person, and that's
Speaker 1: a technical term unlike woo woo, highly sensitive person and
Speaker 1: highly sensitive person like your daughter means that they feel
Speaker 1: things very deeply, and there's a lot of fear, and
Speaker 1: there's a richness to their life because they feel things deeply.
Speaker 1: But then there's also there's a downside because they get overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: And so transcendental meditation is a tool, is not a philosophy.
Speaker 1: If I or someone were to teach you to meditate,
Speaker 1: to teach has no agenda. They say, Ali, here's something
Speaker 1: you do. It takes about an hour day over four
Speaker 1: days to learn it. Then I leave you alone and
Speaker 1: then you do it as you wish to do it,
Speaker 1: and you're just accessing that mechanism of deep rest. And
Speaker 1: so a child, an adult, a single mom, of anybody
Speaker 1: these days, the whole world is at risk. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about the power of discernment being just as effective
Speaker 1: as being assertive. So discernment and assertive two different things. Discernment,
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful Can I talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the brain? Yes, okay, good, okay. So there's two parts
Speaker 1: of the brain. There's the emotional brain, which is the
Speaker 1: old part of your brain. It's in the center of
Speaker 1: your brain. It's called the limbic system. That's your emotional
Speaker 1: center reactivity. And then there's the pre final cortex, that
Speaker 1: front of the brain, which is your rational brain, which
Speaker 1: is your ability to think clearly. What happens is when
Speaker 1: we're stressed. Information comes into this emotional part of the brain,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to ping up to the prefinal cortex
Speaker 1: to say, is this as scary as I think it is?
Speaker 1: Is this like dangerous? And then the prefinal cortex this
Speaker 1: friend and says, no, no, you're okay, it's not a problem.
Speaker 1: That person who gave you the dirty look with just
Speaker 1: having a bad day something like that. And so it
Speaker 1: bypasses that your rational brain and it just goes to
Speaker 1: your adrenal glance and pumps out cortisol and adrenaline and
Speaker 1: now you can't think clearly. So what transcendental meditation does
Speaker 1: is it calms and keeps steady this emotional center. The
Speaker 1: Olympic system just keeps it steady. It doesn't shut it off.
Speaker 1: We need it, but it just keeps it balanced and
Speaker 1: wakes up the cognitive, the decision making, the ability to
Speaker 1: make clear decisions. And that's why you say to a child,
Speaker 1: think before you act, look before you cross. And as
Speaker 1: adults we need to do the same thing. But if
Speaker 1: we're stra asked, then our bodies in the reactivity mode
Speaker 1: and we can never do it. And again, meditation helps
Speaker 1: keep balance. It's interesting. Years ago, I was living in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and I had just done a show. I
Speaker 1: was part of a theater company and um, and I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by a gang and they robbed me and
Speaker 1: it was a very sort of dark time. And what
Speaker 1: was interesting to me was I got incredibly submissive, like
Speaker 1: I just shut down, you know, my mind shut down,
Speaker 1: I looked down, my body shut down, and I was in,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, a meditative state, and
Speaker 1: I was going along with whatever they wanted. And suddenly
Speaker 1: something in my brain woke up and it was this
Speaker 1: kind of fight or flight thing and I ran, you know,
Speaker 1: my adrenaline just kicked in and I ran away from
Speaker 1: the situation. But I've always looked back at that time,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is my hesitation about meditation. I felt
Speaker 1: that because my brain shut down, that being in that state,
Speaker 1: it could win against my survival instincts. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was not a meditative state. So there's this term
Speaker 1: fight or flight you just mentioned, but there's actually a
Speaker 1: third quality they called fight flight or freeze. And so
Speaker 1: you were in the fight or flight mode. So you
Speaker 1: went into that freeze mode of just immobilized, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything, and then it shifted gears to run like
Speaker 1: hell or fight. So that was not a meditative state.
Speaker 1: Meditative state you wouldn't be incapacitated. Meditative state is wide awake,
Speaker 1: very alert and just it's like a ninja or a
Speaker 1: martial artists where they're just steady inside and clear, but
Speaker 1: able to act like that. So I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up, because that was not a meditative experience. That
Speaker 1: was freeze. But I think that people confused that, which
Speaker 1: is why I brought it up, because I did. Yeah. So, actually,
Speaker 1: the roots of transcendental meditation are the warrior classes of
Speaker 1: ancient times. In your hand to hand you can't fight
Speaker 1: out of anger fear, jealousy, all this silly stuff, macho.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the most the best warris
Speaker 1: the ones who never fought, so they're rock solid, steady
Speaker 1: inside and alert and ready to go if they need
Speaker 1: to go. So this is the opposite of that fight
Speaker 1: flighter freeze. Um. I want to delve in a little
Speaker 1: bit to the idea of keeping calm, and you talk
Speaker 1: about the science of intuition, which I'm fascinated by because
Speaker 1: you know, it's my gut. I like, I like trying
Speaker 1: to listen to my gut and have self awareness. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about that sienes of intuition. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: very interesting thing because again there's a balance between going
Speaker 1: with your feelings, which are subtler, and going with emotions
Speaker 1: which can be reactive. You know, well of my guts
Speaker 1: telling me that he's a well, that really wasn't intuition.
Speaker 1: That was just one was hyper reactive to the situation.
Speaker 1: Intuition and actually is a subtler and more powerful quality
Speaker 1: of the mind than intellect. So in the ancient understanding,
Speaker 1: you have the thinking mind that's like the way it's
Speaker 1: just I'm thinking a million thoughts and then subtler than
Speaker 1: that is your intellect that says I'm going to eat that,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to eat that, or I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wear this, or I'm not gonna do that. So that's
Speaker 1: the choice, the ability to filter out all those million
Speaker 1: thoughts and pick one based on previous information. Intuition is
Speaker 1: subtler than that. Intuition is on a deep feeling level
Speaker 1: of almost truthfulness. This resonates with me. I know in
Speaker 1: my heart of hearts this is wrong or this is right.
Speaker 1: Someone says, why are you going? Why are you doing that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just feels right. But that to
Speaker 1: go with your intuition means that you really have to
Speaker 1: have a calm, clear mind, so it's not fired up
Speaker 1: by emotions and reactivity. And he said, and she said,
Speaker 1: and you did that two weeks ago, and that's not
Speaker 1: what you want. So to rely on intuition, which is
Speaker 1: a more powerful way to make decisions, it requires that
Speaker 1: clear mind. They call it in the ancient meditation text,
Speaker 1: they call it. Having a mind like that is like
Speaker 1: a candle flame in a windless place. It's just crystal clear.
Speaker 1: I've thought deeply about this, and I know this to
Speaker 1: be true. It's hard it's hard to get there. That's
Speaker 1: a value though, of meditation. Though, that's a value of
Speaker 1: meditation because that level is there. But if we're stressed
Speaker 1: and anxious, then we're constantly in a reactive mode. One
Speaker 1: other thing I want to tell you, there's a wonderful,
Speaker 1: amazing book called The Body Keeps the Score. It's it's
Speaker 1: about how you can have experiences. Maybe you're talking about
Speaker 1: that gang, or even when you're in the womb, or
Speaker 1: your five years old and something traumatic happened to you.
Speaker 1: You don't remember the experience, but your body never forgets.
Speaker 1: Your body keeps the score, and that stress or trauma
Speaker 1: is in your body and it's influencing all of your
Speaker 1: decisions going forward. So again, the value of transcending, of meditation,
Speaker 1: of giving the body this deep rest so those knots
Speaker 1: of stress can be healed. Absolutely essentially, how would meditation
Speaker 1: help with trauma? So there's two aspects to trauma. One
Speaker 1: is the neural pathways. Quick description is you have a
Speaker 1: jungle and then you cut a road and that becomes
Speaker 1: your path. So I have a neural pathway of when
Speaker 1: I am sad to self medicate, I eat, or I
Speaker 1: drink or have sex, and whenever I have the experience
Speaker 1: of sad, then that's how I'm self medicate. I go
Speaker 1: that pathway and you can. So let's let's say you're
Speaker 1: a soldier in Iraq and you experience, let's say the
Speaker 1: loss of a friend. You saw him killed in front
Speaker 1: of your eyes, and that lives in you. Yes, and
Speaker 1: you saw your friend and there was an explosion and that,
Speaker 1: and so what happens now is now you have a
Speaker 1: neural pathway. If you ever hear a firecracker go off,
Speaker 1: or fireworks or a card backfire, your neural pathway, your reaction,
Speaker 1: your trauma is to fight or flight or freeze when
Speaker 1: something goes off. So what happens when you meditate, when
Speaker 1: you take this deep rest, First, your body gets this
Speaker 1: deep relaxation which allows the chemicals to reset. So the
Speaker 1: cortisol goes down, and the serotonin goes up, and the
Speaker 1: dopamine increases. But ali even more importantly, now the experience
Speaker 1: of accessing that quiet within you. Now your brain is
Speaker 1: setting new neural pathways, new paths, calmer, healthier, more normal,
Speaker 1: similar to before you had that experience. And so now
Speaker 1: you're giving the body and the brain new experiences and
Speaker 1: those become there's a term called neuroplasticity. The neurons or
Speaker 1: brain cells that fire together during meditation healthy wire together
Speaker 1: out of meditation. And that's one reason why abstinence programs
Speaker 1: like persons an alcoholic and they go away for a
Speaker 1: month for treatment and they don't take any alcohol and
Speaker 1: they're clean, and then they come back to their community
Speaker 1: and then they're just back at it again because nothing
Speaker 1: has changed. They've just stopped drinking alcohol. With meditation, you're
Speaker 1: actually giving the brain a new, healthy experience. So that's
Speaker 1: true with all of trauma. You're giving the brain a
Speaker 1: balanced experience, which is why we're working with veterans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's meditation taught at rehab centers as well. Yes, more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to come after the short break. Welcome back. I think.
Speaker 1: I think people particularly right now, aren't taking care of themselves,
Speaker 1: and so anything that seems to sort of help our
Speaker 1: inner self seems not unnecessary but indulgent, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. You know, Ali, there's one thousand, four and
Speaker 1: forty minutes in a day, and we're talking about forty
Speaker 1: minutes something like that to just for what for ourselves. So,
Speaker 1: as Jerry Seinfeld says, if you don't plug in your
Speaker 1: cell phone, if you don't recharge it, it's useless. So
Speaker 1: just to reboot ourselves so that we can be present
Speaker 1: for our children, we can be present for our partner,
Speaker 1: we can be present for the work we do. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we're just going to run out and run out, and
Speaker 1: then we're getting into this downward cycle of self medication.
Speaker 1: And so it does require a decision that, Okay, for
Speaker 1: a month, I'm gonna try this TM for a month,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try walking or exercising and see if
Speaker 1: the return on the investment of that time isn't valuable.
Speaker 1: And if you pick the right meditation or you pick
Speaker 1: the right exercise, it will come back a hundredfold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think women are guilty of that more than ever,
Speaker 1: more than anyone, Allie, more than anyone. And the reason
Speaker 1: I say that is I was feeling that for a
Speaker 1: long time and then I started taking these long walks
Speaker 1: and taking a little bit of time for myself and
Speaker 1: I felt so much better just in my day to
Speaker 1: day life. So one of the things I want to do,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna surprise my producer, but what I
Speaker 1: want to do, Bob, is because we've had this fascinating conversation,
Speaker 1: is I would like to go and work with you
Speaker 1: on meditation and then be able to come back as
Speaker 1: somebody that's gone through this process and be able to
Speaker 1: speak about it, because I actually feel like having talked
Speaker 1: about it on a podcast is one thing, but for
Speaker 1: me to experience it might be a whole life changing
Speaker 1: thing for myself. Um, but before I go do that,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you there there are listeners who
Speaker 1: maybe aren't comfortable with the idea of meditation, or they
Speaker 1: feel like they're not capable of doing it. So what
Speaker 1: would be some of the techniques you would suggest to
Speaker 1: them to start getting used to the process of it.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question. Some people will say to me,
Speaker 1: I believe it's almost going back to what you said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and I am going to answer your question.
Speaker 1: I'm just putting this in context. They'll say to me,
Speaker 1: I believe meditation is good. I just don't think I
Speaker 1: can do it. I just don't think my mind is
Speaker 1: I have a type A A D D. I can't
Speaker 1: sit for thirty seconds and I don't want to fail,
Speaker 1: So I just have to say that if you don't
Speaker 1: like the word meditation or transcendental meditation, just call it
Speaker 1: technique X. I don't care, just vocabulary. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any difference. So my first answer to that is it's taught.
Speaker 1: It takes about an hour a day over four or
Speaker 1: consecutive days. It's not taught out of a book. It's
Speaker 1: not a mass meditation. This ability to turn your attention
Speaker 1: within and experience those quiet levels of you is simple
Speaker 1: but delicate. So Ali, if I were to teach you,
Speaker 1: then you know I'll take that time, and then you've
Speaker 1: got it for your whole life. If in the meanwhile
Speaker 1: you want to do something, you know, I mean you
Speaker 1: can do anything. You can go online and look up
Speaker 1: some breathing exercise. The purpose of breathing exercises the medical
Speaker 1: side is you breathe in through your nostrils. You bring
Speaker 1: air up into your brain. It calms your amygdala, which
Speaker 1: is your reactivity center. So something as simple as breathing
Speaker 1: in through your nose, holding it for a second and
Speaker 1: then out through your lips and holding it for a
Speaker 1: second and do that ten times has a very calming effect.
Speaker 1: Because oxygen feeds your brain and when we're anxious to
Speaker 1: breach your mouth. It never gets to your brain. So
Speaker 1: I would recommend to your listeners don't get too caught
Speaker 1: up in some complicated app sort of thing. Find some
Speaker 1: simple breathing that has a very powerful temporary effect, and
Speaker 1: then I would email me at Bob at David Lynch
Speaker 1: Foundation dot org, and if you have further questions, I'll
Speaker 1: answer them. That is my personal email address that doesn't
Speaker 1: go to somebody else. Thank you, Bob. You can email
Speaker 1: me in I will answer your questions. And how do
Speaker 1: you deal with people who say it's too pricey for me? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a The course spe now is according to
Speaker 1: a person's salary. If you make x amount of money,
Speaker 1: it's three dollars. If you make this much money, it's
Speaker 1: five dollars. If you can't afford it, you write a
Speaker 1: letter to me at the David Lynch Foundation and we
Speaker 1: give it to you for free, so we don't turn
Speaker 1: people away, and the course speed just goes to you know,
Speaker 1: it's a profession for teachers. So, Bob, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to try meditation because I had a whiff of it
Speaker 1: just taking some time alone that it made me want
Speaker 1: to do even more and go deeper. Will you take
Speaker 1: me on this journey? Will you do these four sessions
Speaker 1: with me? I think I've probably been waiting for this question. Okay,
Speaker 1: I would love to teach you, and I should say
Speaker 1: for your listeners, wherever you are in the world, there's
Speaker 1: a thousand TM centers transmit Elementitation centers, and there are
Speaker 1: certified teachers and it's a nonprofit organization. Go to TM
Speaker 1: dot org and you can find out where TM centers
Speaker 1: are near you. But yeah, I'd be very happy to
Speaker 1: teach you. Ali, Bob Ra, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: this really very very eye opening and inspiring and challenge accepted.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, so I'm looking forward to this. Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 1: Really nice chatting with you a lot. So I started
Speaker 1: my four day meditation with Bob Rock, and every morning
Speaker 1: I would drive over to his house and I would
Speaker 1: experience such anxiety, curiosity, cynicism because I've just had this
Speaker 1: bizarre notion of what meditation was, and I've always felt
Speaker 1: like I was just too high strung for it. So
Speaker 1: the first day, I walked in very calm presence. Bob
Speaker 1: is a very calm person, took off my shoes, filled
Speaker 1: out a form about meditation, and we went into a
Speaker 1: room that was completely bare, and Bob started this ritual
Speaker 1: with flowers and a piece of fruit, and it felt
Speaker 1: a little bit culty, which threw me, but then I
Speaker 1: just leaned into it and it was actually a beautiful
Speaker 1: Buddhist ceremony. And then we tried meditation, and again, my
Speaker 1: brain is going a thousand miles an hour. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about all the things I needed to do that day.
Speaker 1: And as I put my feet down on the ground
Speaker 1: and I put a blanket over my lap, I thought,
Speaker 1: there's no way I'm going to do this. There's no
Speaker 1: way I'm going to do this. And Bob kept saying
Speaker 1: to me, there's no right way of doing it. You
Speaker 1: just breathe, and he gave me my mantra. And the
Speaker 1: first day I actually found myself relaxed. I actually, if
Speaker 1: we looked at meditation like the waves on the top
Speaker 1: and the deepest part of the ocean on the bottom,
Speaker 1: I dipped down, which was amazing for me. So I
Speaker 1: left very optimistic. The second day I came and we meditated,
Speaker 1: and I experienced something I had never experienced before, which
Speaker 1: was I have been toying away with an idea for
Speaker 1: a movie, but just didn't really think it through, and
Speaker 1: it was in the preliminary stages of like would this
Speaker 1: be interesting? And as I meditated, I saw the whole
Speaker 1: movie completely cinematically, as if I had sat down in
Speaker 1: a movie theater and watched the film the beginning, the middle,
Speaker 1: and the end, and it was so vivid and so
Speaker 1: colorful that when I got out of the meditation, I
Speaker 1: was invigorated and excited, and I immediately wanted to write
Speaker 1: the movie so that I thought, this is the greatest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. And I realized I don't give
Speaker 1: myself enough time to actually I think and quote unquote
Speaker 1: meditate on some of my creative ideas. Um the third day,
Speaker 1: I had another great meditation, and I started doing it
Speaker 1: myself in the morning and then in the afternoon. And
Speaker 1: the last day we mostly just talked about tools and
Speaker 1: ways to keep it going. And what I realized was
Speaker 1: my big epiphany about meditation was I thought it was
Speaker 1: I was basically going to put myself in a coma,
Speaker 1: but it is the opposite. When I meditate for twenty
Speaker 1: minutes and then I'm done and I opened my eyes,
Speaker 1: I actually have more energy I thought I would, you know,
Speaker 1: fall asleep and start snoring every time I meditated, But
Speaker 1: I actually have more energy. You know. It's not like
Speaker 1: a cup of espresso energy, but I just feel more alive.
Speaker 1: It's all about neuroscience and it's all about how the
Speaker 1: brain works. And if you meditate twice a day for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes and you just repeat your mantra over and
Speaker 1: over again, anything that happens is okay. You could go
Speaker 1: into a deep place, you could spend that twenty minutes
Speaker 1: with your brain just shooting off all kinds of thoughts
Speaker 1: of things you have to do, and it's okay. But
Speaker 1: one of the things so important when it comes to
Speaker 1: meditation is all of it is okay. All of it
Speaker 1: is fine, and each meditation will be completely different, and
Speaker 1: that's what's so fascinating about it. So I couldn't be
Speaker 1: happier that I finally got over my little cynical hurdle
Speaker 1: and now my friend Murashka and my husband George, they
Speaker 1: want to meditate with me, which that's gonna be my
Speaker 1: next big thing, because I keep thinking I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: the giggles, or someone's gonna fart, or it's just not
Speaker 1: going to be productive, but so we'll see. But I
Speaker 1: am now part of the meditated population, the TM group,
Speaker 1: and I think it's I think my life is better
Speaker 1: for it. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Ali
Speaker 1: next week and Go Ask Alli. I talked to Arthur Brooks,
Speaker 1: a writer and researcher of happiness, and I have to
Speaker 1: say right now, everybody could use a little happiness, and
Speaker 1: it turns out there's a lot of science in it too.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and
Speaker 1: follow me on social media on Twitter, Ali e Wentworth
Speaker 1: and on Instagram the Real Ali Wentworth And if you
Speaker 1: have questions or guests you'd like to hear from, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, call or text me at
Speaker 1: three to three four six three five six or email me.
Speaker 1: Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com. Go Ask
Speaker 1: Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
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