Speaker 1: We've given our Instagram account a new look, and we're
Speaker 1: sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else, encouraging
Speaker 1: positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your
Speaker 1: good wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 1: of the show and some of Ginny and Iz's day
Speaker 1: to day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that
Speaker 1: anybody would be interested in. It's also a great place
Speaker 1: for you to give us feedback on the episodes that
Speaker 1: you like, or concepts that you've learned that you think
Speaker 1: are helpful, or any other feedback you'd like to give us.
Speaker 1: If you're on Instagram, follow us it at one underscore
Speaker 1: you underscore feed and those words are all spelled out
Speaker 1: one underscore You underscore feed to add some nourishing content
Speaker 1: to your daily scrolling. See you there.
Speaker 2: There's lots of people who are interested in mindfulness, and
Speaker 2: the main reason they don't act upon that interest is
Speaker 2: the perception they don't have time.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great to
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Rohan
Speaker 3: good Aatilica, the host of Meditative Story, an original award
Speaker 3: winning that combines immersive storytelling, breathtaking music, and mindfulness prompts
Speaker 3: to help listeners strengthen their inner life. Meditative Story has
Speaker 3: achieved critical acclaim, earning numerous Webby, Amby and Signal Award recognitions,
Speaker 3: and with over twenty five million downloads, the show is
Speaker 3: deeply beloved by a loyal community of listeners. Rohan is
Speaker 3: also the founder of the best selling app Bootify and
Speaker 3: author of Modern Mindfulness, How to be more relaxed, focused,
Speaker 3: and kind while living in a fast, digital, always on world.
Speaker 1: Hi Rohan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey Eric, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really excited to have a conversation with you
Speaker 1: about modern mindfulness, about your podcast, meditative story, and all
Speaker 1: things that are related to that. But before we start,
Speaker 1: let's do what we always do, which is the parable.
Speaker 1: In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops think about it for a second and they
Speaker 1: look up with their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: So many things. I think my first reaction is how
Speaker 2: the powable is a powable. What I mean by that
Speaker 2: is that it's a story. And I'm really interested in
Speaker 2: the way that different traditions, in particular sort of contemplative
Speaker 2: or person development traditions, use story as part of their
Speaker 2: method of teaching people. And then Therefore, how we as
Speaker 2: individuals use stories for personal growth, I guess. And the
Speaker 2: other thing, I'm really interested in the mechanic of that,
Speaker 2: and how when I'm listening to that powable, I guess
Speaker 2: in my first reactions, I'm imagine being the kid. I'm
Speaker 2: inhabiting the kid, it's character and his position. And I
Speaker 2: love how by imagining ourselves as someone else were able
Speaker 2: to explore themes of our own life through another person's story.
Speaker 2: That's really really important to me. And so a big
Speaker 2: part of what I do through my podcast work is
Speaker 2: dissect stories and look for interesting angles. And so when
Speaker 2: I hear the Power Boys, I've heard now many times
Speaker 2: on your show, I'm really interested in all the characters
Speaker 2: and all their different points of view. So you've got
Speaker 2: the kid who sort of represents maybe naivete I'm really
Speaker 2: interested in what's happened just before, Like what's the thing
Speaker 2: that's led to that conversation happening. I'm really interested in
Speaker 2: the grandparent because when I first heard the powerboll I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, you know, the grandparent, you represents wisdom,
Speaker 2: But actually how did they learn their wisdom? Was it
Speaker 2: the hard way? You know? Did they make mistakes? What
Speaker 2: mistakes did they make or do they learn it the
Speaker 2: easy way? Were they born just as a sort of
Speaker 2: beatific front of insight? And do they know? Does the
Speaker 2: grandparent know which wolf is? Which I've been intered in that,
Speaker 2: and then you know, me being me interested in there's
Speaker 2: more than there's two other characters. There's the bad Wolf
Speaker 2: and the good Wolf, and we can sort of almost
Speaker 2: anthropomorphize them, and the bad wolf is their classic fairy
Speaker 2: tale villain right in our culture, and then the good
Speaker 2: Wolf is the sort of the opposite of that. And
Speaker 2: do they know who they are? Do they know how
Speaker 2: they're being perceived? Are they siblings? Or I'm just doing that?
Speaker 2: So that's as soon as I hear the powable, like,
Speaker 2: I throw all these different threads and start exploring. There's
Speaker 2: so much creative potential in that palable and that's why,
Speaker 2: of course you start the show with it. So those
Speaker 2: are my first reactions to that.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating way to look at it and think
Speaker 1: about it, and it really does reflect the work that
Speaker 1: you do, which, as you've said, is this idea of
Speaker 1: how can other people's stories be transformative for us? And
Speaker 1: it seems that you elaborated some of the mechanisms for
Speaker 1: doing that in what you were just saying, right, like,
Speaker 1: think about it from this character's perspective, think about it
Speaker 1: from what might have just happened or what's going to
Speaker 1: happen next. But what have you learned in dissecting stories,
Speaker 1: as you've said about how we can hear other people's
Speaker 1: stories and have that then lead to change in us.
Speaker 1: What are some of the mechanisms that make that possible
Speaker 1: or would allow us to do that better.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's just help aways explain the mechanic of the show.
Speaker 2: The podcast so does explain the context. So in meditative story,
Speaker 2: we have a storyteller for each episode, and my wider
Speaker 2: team work with that storyteller to midwife a story out
Speaker 2: of them. Because the person themselves, even though they've lived
Speaker 2: an invariably fascinating and rich life, we as individuals don't
Speaker 2: necessarily see those moments or recognize the transformations in our
Speaker 2: own story today, and so the first part of it
Speaker 2: is working with someone to Typically it's probably like two three,
Speaker 2: four cares exploring, like, you know, tell us about the
Speaker 2: moments that really made a difference to you in your
Speaker 2: life and where come from? Tell us about your how
Speaker 2: you grew up and so eking out the story, and
Speaker 2: then our team then think about, okay, sort of reflect
Speaker 2: back on between the conversations with the storyteller. We reflect
Speaker 2: back on what the storyline is and what the insights are.
Speaker 2: And the particular thing Eric we look for is what
Speaker 2: are the moments when a perspective changed for you within
Speaker 2: your life and so we saw something differently or we
Speaker 2: recognize something you thought was true was no longer true,
Speaker 2: all the other way around, and those have been the
Speaker 2: richest minds to mine, I guess. So we've spoken to someone,
Speaker 2: we've sort of worked out a story. So for example,
Speaker 2: a recent just the one that came to mind as
Speaker 2: a nature filmographer Tom Mustill, who was kayaking in just
Speaker 2: in the Monterey Bay in North California and was basically
Speaker 2: breached on by a massive humpback whale and survived it
Speaker 2: and it was a near death experience. But also it
Speaker 2: was a truly transformed to experience for Tom because he
Speaker 2: found out speaking to whale experts after that, you know,
Speaker 2: looking at the footage, was that the whale moved during
Speaker 2: the incident to basically save him and his friend, and
Speaker 2: it got him into this whole thing of like was that, well,
Speaker 2: how do wales communicate with humans? And then that's an
Speaker 2: obvious sort of transformation moment, but it's the more subtle
Speaker 2: stuff around. Obviously it was a near death experience, but
Speaker 2: also how did it make him change the way he
Speaker 2: saw the world? And then pulling on those threads and
Speaker 2: then the challenges for us as a team as to
Speaker 2: how do we present that in such a way that
Speaker 2: it elevates other people, And there's a few ways we
Speaker 2: do that. One is a big focus on present tense,
Speaker 2: so telling the story as if it's happening in that
Speaker 2: moment and so sort of encourages a sense of immersion
Speaker 2: that's important to you're right there, the whole idea, you're
Speaker 2: sort of right there, and the other aspect is around
Speaker 2: I guess sensory descriptions, like really asking the storyteller what
Speaker 2: did it smell, like, what was the temperature and that time,
Speaker 2: and sort of adding all that multi sensory experience, so
Speaker 2: it becomes as many dimensional as possible, and through that
Speaker 2: we tell story. And then I come in in particular
Speaker 2: after that, once the story has been told, to augment
Speaker 2: it and enhance it. So I do two things, Mainly
Speaker 2: while I introduce the show, but also at the end
Speaker 2: I write a meditation designed on the theme of the story.
Speaker 2: And then also during the show, I pop up two
Speaker 2: or three times to really land some of the stuff
Speaker 2: that's happening in the Tibetan bullish tribution. There's a style
Speaker 2: of teaching called pointing out instructions, which is where the
Speaker 2: meditator is having an experience, but they're not necessarily seeing
Speaker 2: all aspects of it, and so the job of the
Speaker 2: teachers to point out different parts of it where the
Speaker 2: richer insights lie. And that's sort of how I see
Speaker 2: my role is to help enhance that. And then also
Speaker 2: I have a lot of fun writing sort of bispo
Speaker 2: closing meditations, either taking a visual image from the episode
Speaker 2: or the story or a theme and then just playing
Speaker 2: with it. That's how it works. And I think the
Speaker 2: important sor of sort of storytelling. I think this show
Speaker 2: starts with the story and this goes on there. So
Speaker 2: I think we are sort of in the Fame family
Speaker 2: of show and I think and also I think a
Speaker 2: key thing also is recognizing that we have a composer,
Speaker 2: Ryan Holliday, who just creates this incredible it sort of
Speaker 2: demeans it to call it a sound bed. For me,
Speaker 2: it's the start of the show.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: I think there's incredible sound design and music that does
Speaker 2: the same thing as that what I'm doing, which is
Speaker 2: to enhance and bland the learning for people by using
Speaker 2: sound in an abstract way to do that, and the
Speaker 2: way that Ryan thinks about the pacing and the motifs
Speaker 2: and the energy of the sound is another sort of
Speaker 2: nonverbal way of landing. So what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2: You know, our mission is to create as much potential
Speaker 2: for a har moments in twenty minutes. Basically, that's our
Speaker 2: sort of a har moments per minute. That's our key
Speaker 2: metric if we But we know every listener is different.
Speaker 2: You don't know what they're doing, you don't know where
Speaker 2: they are, you don't know what their life experiences is.
Speaker 2: So we try to put out a bordinet of different
Speaker 2: types of ways people can resonate, and all it takes
Speaker 2: is that one thing and then suddenly it opens something
Speaker 2: up for them. So that's the way we do it.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating the way you guys put it all together.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, are there insights that you've taken from how
Speaker 1: you do that that our listeners might be able to
Speaker 1: look in their own lives and find those aha moments
Speaker 1: more frequently. Is there any tips of the craft that
Speaker 1: you think might then turn around and apply to individuals.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if you sort of zoom out a bit
Speaker 2: from what I described our particular show, our show does
Speaker 2: is what a lot of narrative stuff does. So if
Speaker 2: you're watching your favorite soap op fora or watching an
Speaker 2: engrossing film, if there's a moment that moves you, you know,
Speaker 2: you might just move on from it and go, oh,
Speaker 2: that was a really striking thing. All that reminded me
Speaker 2: of it, and well then you just forget about it
Speaker 2: and we'll like go on to the next thing. But
Speaker 2: the trick is almost to reflect on that, oh, I've
Speaker 2: just had this reaction to the words just happened. And
Speaker 2: if you've got the time, you're binge watching something whatever
Speaker 2: the hot show is at the moment. I don't know,
Speaker 2: if you're binge watching the Sopranos or whatever shit's creak,
Speaker 2: you might not have that sort of mental bandwidth to
Speaker 2: do that. But I think for me that is the
Speaker 2: key thing, because I think the ability to review and
Speaker 2: reflect on how we're reacting to story, and particularly coming
Speaker 2: back to the single story where we're inhabiting another person's
Speaker 2: life or other people's life, but we're having genuine emotional
Speaker 2: reactions to it, and so which are very much grounded
Speaker 2: in our own experience, and your fingerprint of emotional reactions
Speaker 2: to a particular movie will be radically different to another person.
Speaker 2: And being interested in that and say, oh, that reminded me,
Speaker 2: say you see a character. So I've watched an amazing film,
Speaker 2: Chinese American film called The Farewell, which is about Chinese
Speaker 2: American family. The matriarch of the family is dying, but
Speaker 2: she doesn't know, she doesn't know, and all her family
Speaker 2: go to visit her in China and effectively fake a
Speaker 2: wedding to spend time with her as a family occasion.
Speaker 2: It's a real wedding, basically a cousin in the family
Speaker 2: are getting married just so they can all spend time
Speaker 2: with this matriarch. And it's wonderful grandmother and incredibly moving
Speaker 2: and hilarious film. And then as I was watching, I
Speaker 2: was like, remind me of the matriarchs in my family.
Speaker 2: Then my maternal grandmother who's very sort of strong and
Speaker 2: certainly not as comic as the character in The Farewell.
Speaker 2: But then after watching the film, I deliberately spent time
Speaker 2: thinking about her, called my mum about her to talk
Speaker 2: about her. So allowing that extra bit of space around,
Speaker 2: using your reactions as the clue, you know, that's the clue.
Speaker 2: And sometimes those reactions a difficult you know, if it's
Speaker 2: based on trauma or whatever, then approach with caution. But
Speaker 2: I think the easy way to start could be to
Speaker 2: stuff that you find that move you positively. Be that
Speaker 2: in literature, be that in films, TV, visual art, podcasts, gaming,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. Using those then being me, and then
Speaker 2: what we doing is helping point out to people because
Speaker 2: when you have those reactions is because there's something in
Speaker 2: your own life that is related to it. And so
Speaker 2: going back to another episode, another favorite mind is when
Speaker 2: John Moore Another Nature when actually he's a wildlife photographer
Speaker 2: and he's in Rwanda photographing these gorillas and he misses
Speaker 2: the shot, like the ultimate shot of the silver Back.
Speaker 2: He completely screws up and you know, stuff goes down
Speaker 2: and he doesn't get it. Thinking about those moments when
Speaker 2: there was an opportunity and you didn't take it and
Speaker 2: sort of reflecting on that during that process yourself. Of
Speaker 2: like it could be like two minutes over a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. You could do some journaling off it. You know,
Speaker 2: you can talk to your friend about it and talk
Speaker 2: to your whatever the mechanic of it is, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever works for you. But the basic idea of taking
Speaker 2: at least a breath or two to inquire as to
Speaker 2: what are the moments of transformation where I missed an
Speaker 2: opportunity but actually spun it and use that as a
Speaker 2: way to grow and get better at something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think you're making a really critical point,
Speaker 1: which is that we don't often pause enough to reflect
Speaker 1: on the experiences that we're having. And there are lots
Speaker 1: of different ways to do it. Like you said, it
Speaker 1: can be a very quick, short thing. One of the
Speaker 1: things I like to do is that for watching a
Speaker 1: TV series. We just finished mad Men recently, and the
Speaker 1: layers of depth that are in that there's so many.
Speaker 1: So I just have a couple different books about people
Speaker 1: who are writing about the show, and even then just
Speaker 1: doing that simple thing of what happened in the show,
Speaker 1: and then what someone's interpretation or deeper analysis is of
Speaker 1: it brings the whole thing into a little bit clearer focus.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a thing that requires us to
Speaker 1: move from and you talk about this elsewhere, to move
Speaker 1: from just a consumer to a interactor. Maybe that's the
Speaker 1: wrong word. I don't know what word you would use.
Speaker 1: But you know, one of the things that you've done
Speaker 1: a lot of is worked in the modern mindfulness business
Speaker 1: building apps a very popular meditation app called Bootify. So
Speaker 1: you've reflected a lot about what modern mindfulness looks like,
Speaker 1: what apps look like. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you say as a problem is that the meditation app
Speaker 1: business is a content business. It is primarily putting the
Speaker 1: people who are meditating in the role if we're not
Speaker 1: careful of a content consumer. And I think what you
Speaker 1: and I are talking about here is, yes, we all
Speaker 1: consume content. There's nothing wrong with that, But how does
Speaker 1: that content become transformative or how does it actually change us?
Speaker 2: Yes, that is probably my major critique of the modern
Speaker 2: mindfulness sort of business world or the marketplace is that
Speaker 2: because all these companies, all these startups are hugely incentivized
Speaker 2: for it to be a content business. Because the main
Speaker 2: mechanic of modern app store economics is the monthly subscription,
Speaker 2: So your monthly recurring revenue is the thing that you'll
Speaker 2: investors will be asking about. And so you want to
Speaker 2: keep people hooked and you keep people consuming and the
Speaker 2: reason but if we never took any investment, I sort
Speaker 2: of approached it more like as an artist rather than
Speaker 2: as an entrepreneur, which meant that I was less incentivized
Speaker 2: by the commercial aspect of it. But also there's a
Speaker 2: philosophical component to it, which is, for me, the purpose
Speaker 2: of a good meditation app is to get you to
Speaker 2: the point where you no longer need a meditation app.
Speaker 2: Investors are not.
Speaker 1: Interested in that, right, right, the.
Speaker 2: Purpose is becoming obsolete. And that's why I've been always
Speaker 2: been really interested in when we approach it purely as
Speaker 2: a content business and people who've only ever meditated through
Speaker 2: listening to headphones by some guy telling you what to
Speaker 2: do with your attention, rather that exists than not exist.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But what
Speaker 2: it does is it creates a culture where we can
Speaker 2: only do it by consuming it. We can't do it ourselves,
Speaker 2: so there isn't an independence. It's a dependent relationship. And
Speaker 2: I'm really passionate about giving people the tools to become
Speaker 2: independent practitioners and to explore different things and learn how
Speaker 2: to meditate by themselves. And you know, I think I've
Speaker 2: had you know, many people of the years, you know,
Speaker 2: write to me and say we love this and that
Speaker 2: meditation you did one in particular saying I've fallen asleep
Speaker 2: to this particular meditation every night for the last five years.
Speaker 2: And part of me is delighted about that. Part of
Speaker 2: me also is a bit sad about that, because it
Speaker 2: means that the person hasn't really grocked the mechanic. And
Speaker 2: so what I try to do is really emphasize, even
Speaker 2: in a guided meditation, yes, do the instructions, you know,
Speaker 2: do this and that, but then also during that guide imitation,
Speaker 2: explaining what is happening. So we're doing this because this
Speaker 2: happens when you do that, you know, when you pay
Speaker 2: attention to the breath in this kind of way, and
Speaker 2: then this happens, and you keep doing that, then something
Speaker 2: else happens. So just really sort of sharing that mechanical
Speaker 2: aspect that's for me, the thing that allows someone to
Speaker 2: let go of the training with by constantly we're basically
Speaker 2: creating a culture of mindfress practitioners who are always cycling
Speaker 2: with training wheels. You're never going to win the Tour
Speaker 2: de France with that. But then you know, the flip
Speaker 2: side of that is the scale of which the modern
Speaker 2: mindfulness marketplace is and the number of people is touched
Speaker 2: that would never have gone anywhere near modes before is
Speaker 2: transformative in itself. So I think I'm a critic of
Speaker 2: what I think is a fundamentally good thing. But I
Speaker 2: sort of sit in a weird part of the Venn diagram,
Speaker 2: which is sort of old school traditional mindfulness purist with
Speaker 2: like a sort of fairly traditional training background, but also
Speaker 2: actively involved in the marketplace in a positive way. And
Speaker 2: so I think that that gives me sort of the
Speaker 2: ability to look both ways.
Speaker 1: I think there's a really interesting question embedded in all
Speaker 1: of that, which is in what ways or what times
Speaker 1: or for what people are the fact that it's training
Speaker 1: wheels just fine?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Your analogy was You're not going to win the Tour
Speaker 1: at de France that way, and most people simply aren't
Speaker 1: going to write. And I think this is the whole
Speaker 1: modern mindfulness question critique debate that I think is so
Speaker 1: interesting is are we stripping something that's deep and beautiful
Speaker 1: down and making it modern and small and easy and content,
Speaker 1: which obviously we are right. The question is for some people,
Speaker 1: is that good? If there's a person who may just
Speaker 1: by nature not be the sort of person who's ever
Speaker 1: really going to develop a deep meditative practice, but does
Speaker 1: get a lot of benefit out of sitting down and
Speaker 1: having somebody guide them through meditation twenty minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and they feel like that's really helping them, is it
Speaker 1: necessary for everybody that they go on to the next
Speaker 1: level or do you see that different people have different needs.
Speaker 2: It's a really good question, I think. So I'll reframe
Speaker 2: my analogy, so I think, you know, training wheels to
Speaker 2: total Fon's winners, there's quite a lot. So if you
Speaker 2: think of a total Fan's winner or do like a
Speaker 2: professional cyclist, it's a very professional cyclist. So professional cyclist
Speaker 2: is an elite athlete who's you know, at the sort
Speaker 2: of super and they were elite meditators, right who are
Speaker 2: plumbing the depths of consciousness to the utmost and getting
Speaker 2: wild achievements and insights and doing all sorts of cool stuff.
Speaker 2: And that's very very sort of minor in the context
Speaker 2: by in the middle people who want to be able
Speaker 2: to cycle to work or they want to be able
Speaker 2: to cycle with their kids down their canal on a
Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon. Let's call them the regular cyclist, not the
Speaker 2: guys INCRA who are bombing up and down the Scottish
Speaker 2: Its every weekend. But the key thing is, I personally
Speaker 2: think that there's room for sort of everyone. But the
Speaker 2: key thing for me is knowing that those paths exist,
Speaker 2: so being aware of the breadcrumbs. So, for example, a
Speaker 2: lot of people, the majority actually based on the information,
Speaker 2: I've seen people get into mindfulness because of sleep problems. Right,
Speaker 2: So that's the sort of classic entry way into trying
Speaker 2: meditation if that's all you want, Right, If all you
Speaker 2: want is a bit of better sleep, you might just
Speaker 2: use mindfulness for that and that works, and then that's great.
Speaker 2: You can go tick. I'm feeling better. I've got some
Speaker 2: techniques I can use some body relaxation, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: and I don't need anything else. Who think about the
Speaker 2: basic mechanic of what is often happening in sleep and
Speaker 2: mindfulness is that people are learning two things. Where they're
Speaker 2: learning the calming aspect they're learning to move the baseline
Speaker 2: of their mind to acquieter space, and that that helps
Speaker 2: them get to sleep quicker because there's not so frantic
Speaker 2: at bedtime. And then the second aspect is the I guess,
Speaker 2: the insight or the wisdomspect, whether they're able to learn
Speaker 2: to let go of any of their or have a
Speaker 2: more softer relationship with the obsessive thoughts that might be
Speaker 2: keeping them up. But those two dimensions of calm and insight,
Speaker 2: which someone might have had a sort of nice opening
Speaker 2: introduction to to help their steep problems, those go deep, right,
Speaker 2: those go super deep. There's a range of different ways
Speaker 2: you can take through my fulness, and you can stop
Speaker 2: at any point, if there's nothing bad about stopping any point,
Speaker 2: if that's what you want to do. But it's just
Speaker 2: at least you know that they exist. I think that's
Speaker 2: the key thing, because again I've met lots of people
Speaker 2: who've come in through the app route and didn't know
Speaker 2: that other forms of meditation exist, or other styles, or
Speaker 2: you could do it without headphones, or you could do
Speaker 2: it walking, or you could do it in the context
Speaker 2: of relationships, or do with children. But then I've got
Speaker 2: good friends who are meditation teachers, and they think that
Speaker 2: they often host and lead retreats for young people and
Speaker 2: residential retreats, and then they see people who go all
Speaker 2: the way to the energy and bravery to go to
Speaker 2: an actual physical retreat, silent retreat for even a weekend.
Speaker 2: There's a lot there's a lot of barriers to doing that,
Speaker 2: and the people who just haven't tried an app to
Speaker 2: help them sleep better. So that sort of funnel that
Speaker 2: the right phrase maybe my marketing lingo coming in, but
Speaker 2: that funnel works. It's just that the app universe try
Speaker 2: to create individual universes around themselves to keep the user
Speaker 2: trapped within the subscription model. And so that's the thing
Speaker 2: is that if the person themselves is able to explore
Speaker 2: and things, that's fine. Because I think in the old days,
Speaker 2: pre app stores, pre phones, you know, pre digital, you
Speaker 2: might go into a bookstore a library and then you're
Speaker 2: literally seeing thirty different books, all slightly different, you know,
Speaker 2: like proper religious stuff, some more secular stuff, therapeutic stuff
Speaker 2: on the shelf. You see that they will exist because
Speaker 2: you're physically going through the spine. Yeah, Whereas within the
Speaker 2: app store, once you find something that works for you,
Speaker 2: initially they great, this is that, this is my thing now.
Speaker 1: So that's a really interesting insight.
Speaker 2: The nature of the algorithms and whatever, you know, keep
Speaker 2: you within fairly sort of niche spaces. So yeah, that's all,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the nature of the marketplace now in
Speaker 2: the broader sense, I think the thing you pointed to
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the shallow versus deep, it's very
Speaker 2: rarely the shallow people who are specialist in shallow people
Speaker 2: complaining about it. It's mainly the people who are specialists
Speaker 2: in the so called deeper practices saying the complaint is, hey,
Speaker 2: the marketplace is way bigger. Wisehead Space got gazillion users,
Speaker 2: and only ten people come to my dropping past. That's
Speaker 2: basically where a lot where the energies come from. So
Speaker 2: I'm being.
Speaker 1: A bit of bussieu. It's true.
Speaker 2: You know, less people will be interested in in the
Speaker 2: more hardcore stuff. That's just the nature of things, you know,
Speaker 2: whether that's cooking or meditating or running. You know, I
Speaker 2: like doing a ten k maybe every couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: It never make me run a mouth, and I'm very
Speaker 2: happy run a half math and I just call me bothered, right,
Speaker 2: I just know my thing, right, I love got other
Speaker 2: priorities in my life, and I say, I think that's
Speaker 2: just like true for mindfulness and spiritual practice as well.
Speaker 1: Something that you talk a lot about you wrote about
Speaker 1: in your book is dealing with the issue of the
Speaker 1: time problem that you mentioned, right, because we all have
Speaker 1: to make decisions about where we spend our time and
Speaker 1: how much time we spend on certain things. And you've
Speaker 1: set out to kind of try and solve that or
Speaker 1: at least find ways of addressing it. And you've got
Speaker 1: a rule that you talk about in your book, which
Speaker 1: is rule number one is make mindfulness first and foremost
Speaker 1: am mobile activity. Share a little bit about what you
Speaker 1: mean by.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, So I'll just sort of rewind a bit
Speaker 2: and just explain what I mean by the time problem. So,
Speaker 2: there's lots of people who are interested in mindfulness, and
Speaker 2: the main reason they don't act upon that interest is
Speaker 2: the perception they don't have time. You just need to
Speaker 2: do it for ten minutes a day. And actually even the
Speaker 2: idea of finding ten minutes of quiet time in a
Speaker 2: busy family, sort of chaotic house or whatever it is
Speaker 2: your life that can feel too much, especially when the
Speaker 2: individual's perception of mindfulness or meditation is culturally. You know,
Speaker 2: do a googling research for whatever, and you'll find maybe
Speaker 2: it's changing a little bit now, but certainly when we launched.
Speaker 2: But if I the you know, meditation looked like a
Speaker 2: person in a rainforest, It looked like a person sitting
Speaker 2: cross legged doing some yogic moudras. It looked like someone
Speaker 2: far away from what my actual life looks like.
Speaker 1: Now it looks like a very rich white woman sitting
Speaker 1: in a beautiful room.
Speaker 2: But sure, sure, yeah, for whom silence and time are
Speaker 2: not scarce resources, unlike for a majority of the rest
Speaker 2: of us. And so I don't have time problem. For me.
Speaker 2: Part of my background outside of mindfulness is in design
Speaker 2: and designing technology, and in the world of design, you
Speaker 2: talk about solving problems, and so that I don't have
Speaker 2: time problem is the key one to solve. And the
Speaker 2: way I approached it was actually through my own experience.
Speaker 2: So you talked about you know, meditation going mobile. So
Speaker 2: the idea that you don't have to be in a quiet, calm,
Speaker 2: sitting down posture to do meditation. You can do it
Speaker 2: wherever you are, whatever you're doing. If I have a mantra.
Speaker 2: It's like you can do it wherever you are, what
Speaker 2: you're doing, you just need to know how right. You
Speaker 2: need to let go of the mental model that meditation
Speaker 2: needs to look like something. If you're open to the
Speaker 2: idea that someone meditating can be invisible, it's stealth. It's
Speaker 2: a total stealth activity. If you're up for that, then
Speaker 2: all you need to know is the technique of how
Speaker 2: do you meditate whilst walking? How do you meditate whilst
Speaker 2: you're on the subway, how do you meditate whilst you're
Speaker 2: scrolling Instagram?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The solution I sort of designed for the I don't
Speaker 2: have time problem is to you don't have time, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Instead of making dedicated time for meditation, we will layer
Speaker 2: meditation on top of anything else you're doing and then
Speaker 2: the problem then becomes then remembering to do it, and
Speaker 2: then the app makes the sort of convenience of that.
Speaker 2: And so that's the heart of it, and the heart
Speaker 2: of that, like I said, came from my own experience
Speaker 2: where when I really got into meditation just after leaving college,
Speaker 2: I also started work in London in a really busy
Speaker 2: sort of corporate job, and you know, I was loving
Speaker 2: it was, you know, it was fast paced, really exciting.
Speaker 2: But at the same time I was doing all these
Speaker 2: hardcore meditation practices and going on retreats in weird monasteries
Speaker 2: and off of London now and then in those meditation environments,
Speaker 2: no one was teaching me about how do you meditate
Speaker 2: with technology, how do you meditate in the context of
Speaker 2: internet dating, whatever, So that conversation wasn't happening with these
Speaker 2: random time monks, right, So then it was on common
Speaker 2: on me. I sort of have a choice there, like
Speaker 2: compartmentalize your practice from the rest of your life, which
Speaker 2: can be an okay solution, but the problem is it's
Speaker 2: that it then becomes compoulab by definition it doesn't touch
Speaker 2: your other stuff, and then it can really kick you
Speaker 2: in the butt later on. And so the other solution
Speaker 2: is to work out, okay, how do I practice with
Speaker 2: the same sort of level of intention in this busy,
Speaker 2: chaotic life. You know, I was watching on my commute.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I don't have time to do
Speaker 2: a half an hour sitting practice at home, and I
Speaker 2: was on the tube, which was half an hour journey,
Speaker 2: and I was like, why don't I just do it now?
Speaker 2: I am literally sitting down. Yeah, it's vibrating and it's noisy,
Speaker 2: and it's whatever busy, But that's great. Those are the
Speaker 2: sensory experiences I will use as my object. I won't
Speaker 2: use a quiet object. I use a chaotic object. And
Speaker 2: let's see what that's like. And this is where going
Speaker 2: back to the idea of understanding the mechanics, understanding the techniques.
Speaker 2: If you know three or four or five basic techniques
Speaker 2: like concentration, you know, the idea of choosing something and
Speaker 2: looking to keep your attention on that object. We want
Speaker 2: a technique like loving kindness, a technique like paying attention
Speaker 2: to the relationship to things, so something's happening and then
Speaker 2: watching your mind react to that thing happening. You know,
Speaker 2: there were sort of three or four really really core
Speaker 2: It was only you know, within my limited world of
Speaker 2: the classic monufust tradition. There's sort of three or four
Speaker 2: really core techniques, and then you can apply those that everywhere.
Speaker 2: But just you have to be playful. You have to
Speaker 2: let go of that idea of what meditation looks like.
Speaker 2: You know, I remember early on and I was trying
Speaker 2: to meditate on the tube. I was like trying to
Speaker 2: find my breath and I couldn't. Of course I couldn't.
Speaker 2: It was like but then I was like, well, hang on,
Speaker 2: why don't I pay attention to the vibrations of the
Speaker 2: body because there are such a dominant sensation. And suddenly
Speaker 2: I was like locked in. I just was using the
Speaker 2: wrong object. I was using the right technique with the
Speaker 2: wrong object. And so one of the things that really
Speaker 2: inspired me on that journey was in part of London
Speaker 2: called South Bank, which is just literally on the South Bank.
Speaker 2: It's where during the eighties and nineties is where the
Speaker 2: skate culture grew up. There big skate park sort of
Speaker 2: in the shadows of the National Theater there, but then
Speaker 2: it became the hub for London free erunners or park
Speaker 2: or practitioners, and so on my lunch break, I'd all
Speaker 2: just walking around. I'd see these amazing people jumping around,
Speaker 2: flipping themselves off lamp posts, doing these incredible acrobatic things.
Speaker 2: Is about the time the first Daniel Craig Bond film,
Speaker 2: when Parker was really park has always been cool, but
Speaker 2: it was especially cool then, and I was just really
Speaker 2: really inspired by that. This Actually, before I was into meditation,
Speaker 2: I was really inspired by this idea of using everything
Speaker 2: around you as your playground. They use architecture as their playground,
Speaker 2: as their exercise equipment, as their dance space or playspace.
Speaker 2: And I had this idea of using everything around you
Speaker 2: as an opportunity to do what you want to do,
Speaker 2: reframing the environment around you, seeing it in new ways.
Speaker 2: And I got into what in those days was called
Speaker 2: social games or urban games that using big scale games
Speaker 2: played in around cities where you've sort of created like
Speaker 2: stories and experiences where you ran around cities and did
Speaker 2: wild things and using the city in an unusual innovative way.
Speaker 2: And Parker did it. Social game did it, and I
Speaker 2: thought meditation can do it as well, and that sort
Speaker 2: of was my inspiration.
Speaker 1: Do you make a distinction between meditation and mindfulness and
Speaker 1: if so, what is it? Because you've talked about meditating
Speaker 1: wherever you are versus being mindful wherever you are, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you think about those terms.
Speaker 2: I personally use them interchangeably. Okay, meditation has more baggage
Speaker 2: to it. The reason we use mine is because people
Speaker 2: had baggage with the word meditation because it had that
Speaker 2: spiritual aspect to it. In the traditional sense, and so
Speaker 2: mindfulness was effectively used as a way to decouple the
Speaker 2: spiritual elements. It's a new word for people, sounds good.
Speaker 2: It allowed the new way of the modern mindfulness movement
Speaker 2: to sort of imprint on culture with a new label.
Speaker 2: So I'm happy to use both. Certainly for the more
Speaker 2: dynamic style of practice that I talked about. If I'm
Speaker 2: doing a more traditional seated meditation, you'd feel a bit
Speaker 2: jarring to say I just did forty five minutes of mindfulness.
Speaker 2: That's not the language I would use, right, But then
Speaker 2: life's too short to get too caught up in the
Speaker 2: semantics of things. I think whatever works for you, I
Speaker 2: think is I definitely leave it in the gift of
Speaker 2: the person to find the term that works for them.
Speaker 2: But then you know, now mindflance has its own type
Speaker 2: of baggage as well. I guess we'll have its own
Speaker 2: But then that's the nature of things.
Speaker 1: It certainly does have its own baggage at this point.
Speaker 1: So I just want to clarify that last point a
Speaker 1: little bit. If somebody or to be walking down the street,
Speaker 1: and while they're walking down the street, they are focusing
Speaker 1: on all the sounds that they can hear you would
Speaker 1: call that a type of mobile meditation more or less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'll get into a bit of definition. So
Speaker 2: you know, everyone has their own version of this, But
Speaker 2: for me, meditation I go back to the sort of
Speaker 2: very classical word. There's a word in the Pali tradition
Speaker 2: and terividibilism, and the word is barvarana, and barvarana means
Speaker 2: cultivation and I love that, And so the word for
Speaker 2: meditation isn't meditation. The word meditation is a word is
Speaker 2: sort of a nineteenth century British archaeological construct. But going
Speaker 2: back to this idea of cultivation and what you're what
Speaker 2: are you cultivating? You're cultivating beautiful qualities of the heart.
Speaker 2: So if you're doing some practice whilst you're walking and
Speaker 2: you're maybe growing appreciation or growing body awareness or growing
Speaker 2: sensory awareness, that is as good a definition as meditation
Speaker 2: as you know. If you're intentionally cultivating positive aspects of
Speaker 2: yourself through the use of your attention, that's meditation for me.
Speaker 2: Those three elements. You're doing it on purpose, is something
Speaker 2: to do with your attention, and you're developing a particularly
Speaker 2: positive quality. And if those two things exist, then I
Speaker 2: will declare it as meditation. I will happily, happily challenge
Speaker 2: anyone who disagrees with me.
Speaker 1: It will get the Rohan stamp of approval.
Speaker 2: Because it's generous as well. I think that's really important,
Speaker 2: having a generous definition of what it is, because we've
Speaker 2: spent we When I say we, I mean like the
Speaker 2: last two thousand years of meditation culture, we spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time excluding people and are they on purpose
Speaker 2: by saying no, you can't practice if you're a woman
Speaker 2: or whatever, you can't practice if you're not Asian what
Speaker 2: it is. So then all those things have changed over
Speaker 2: time the reason you can't practice, and so the flipping
Speaker 2: it around, and you know, having a definition which is
Speaker 2: really generous and inclusive, I think is really important rather
Speaker 2: there being a thing that is hard to attain makes sense.
Speaker 1: So in the book, as you're talking about this development
Speaker 1: of this mobile mindfulness, you've got sort of eight key
Speaker 1: ideas and the first we've sort of covered, which is
Speaker 1: include everything. But there's something you say in that section
Speaker 1: that I'm really interested in, and you talk about having
Speaker 1: faith that this mindfulness approach can transform our lives. You say,
Speaker 1: even though faith can often be an unfashionable word. The
Speaker 1: mobile mindfulness approach does need us to have the firm
Speaker 1: belief that we can develop these positive qualities in everyday life.
Speaker 1: Say a little more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the reason I think faith is important is
Speaker 2: that it's not always possible to see the intrinsic result
Speaker 2: of a meditation practice or some part of mindfulness in
Speaker 2: the moment. And so it's not like it's not like
Speaker 2: eating candy where to eat it. It's sweet, you know,
Speaker 2: it's sweet, and sometimes it feels like nothing's happening. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it maybe be difficult because maybe your body awareness has
Speaker 2: grown and you're sensitive to a sensation in the body
Speaker 2: or some tension that you weren't aware of because it's
Speaker 2: quite subtle. And so at that point, say that's in
Speaker 2: that example. Oh, actually, mind for us is really painful.
Speaker 2: Doing the meditation is really painful. I don't want to
Speaker 2: do it anymore, and so having the faith to recognize
Speaker 2: that there is a trajectory to it and the benefits.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it do come intrinsically. After a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: you might be sleeping that a little bit better, and
Speaker 2: that's great, But sometimes it either feels neutral or you know,
Speaker 2: at worse feels difficult trusting the process. I think it's
Speaker 2: the phrase used a lot nowadays. But the flip side
Speaker 2: of that, Erica also is sometimes it can be really valuable,
Speaker 2: especially when your early issue or not necessarily super mature
Speaker 2: in the practice. And also if you're doing it by yourself,
Speaker 2: is to just lean into the stuff which it is
Speaker 2: feels more positive. So you don't need to have faith
Speaker 2: in something which is just working straight away. If you've
Speaker 2: cut somebody upon a technique which makes you feel super
Speaker 2: calm and super connected or whatever it is, just do that.
Speaker 2: Faith by oneself is quite tricky. Faith in community, and
Speaker 2: it's the broader sense, you know. You know again going
Speaker 2: back to the old school, pre digital days, and you
Speaker 2: go to a random drop in meditation class and you
Speaker 2: sit there and go at the end at the cup
Speaker 2: of tea or actually I don't just didn't feel like
Speaker 2: I'm gainingwhere the other person might go. Actually I felt
Speaker 2: exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And now just six months later things a really turned
Speaker 2: a corner. And that is the importance of community, which yes,
Speaker 2: and which community enables a lot of faith. And so
Speaker 2: that's why if you're more of a solo practitioner. Then
Speaker 2: sometimes it can be important just to yes, have faith,
Speaker 2: but also lean into the stuff that feels good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a really good point about faith
Speaker 1: being hard in community. If I think about getting sober, right,
Speaker 1: the community was such a huge part of it. Like
Speaker 1: you could have told me that, like, well, work the
Speaker 1: twelve steps and you'll get sober, and I could have
Speaker 1: had some faith in that, but that would have been
Speaker 1: very hard to maintain if I didn't see people all
Speaker 1: around me who were saying, yes, I did it, I
Speaker 1: did it. I did it. Yeah, it was hard, but
Speaker 1: I did it. The next thing that you talk about
Speaker 1: is remembering to remember. And so this is the idea
Speaker 1: of if we're going to practice mindfulness, meditation, whatever we
Speaker 1: want to call it, in our day to day life,
Speaker 1: as we go through, remembering to do it is a
Speaker 1: real challenge. And so you know, in the Spiritual Habits
Speaker 1: program that I teach, we spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: focusing on triggers in the positive sense, trigger in the
Speaker 1: sense of reminding me to do something. And you've got
Speaker 1: a story in the book that I absolutely love, and
Speaker 1: you say, when I was starting out mindfulness, I decided
Speaker 1: that whenever I saw anyone wearing a hat or something red,
Speaker 1: I would send them kind thoughts. And that sounds sort
Speaker 1: of silly, but I note from personal experience exactly how
Speaker 1: well that works that eventually that does become habitual and
Speaker 1: it becomes a constant and concer distant trigger as a
Speaker 1: reminder to practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the word city is a good one,
Speaker 2: and I think cilly is a positive thing in this
Speaker 2: context because it becomes playful and it becomes like a game.
Speaker 2: One of my most sort of probably the most sort
Speaker 2: of influential teacher I had a Burmese meditation teacher. He
Speaker 2: would just say, like, you know, if it's not fun,
Speaker 2: then what's the point. And so he really pointed me
Speaker 2: towards like playfulness and finding the fun in practice and
Speaker 2: approaching things like that. And so it comes back to
Speaker 2: it also around how stuff like meditation and mindfulness it
Speaker 2: can feel heavy at worst, it can feel like a chore,
Speaker 2: and so another thing on your to do list, and
Speaker 2: then you can then that leads into more spirals around
Speaker 2: feeling tight about it. You know, you'll know much more
Speaker 2: about this through your habits work. But using those devices
Speaker 2: like wearing red or hat, even if you're lucky wearing
Speaker 2: a red hat.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, right, they get extra kindness.
Speaker 2: Extra kindness a red beret can so I can still
Speaker 2: actually see her and I can visualize what she looks.
Speaker 2: The first person that happened, and she had a red
Speaker 2: coat on as well, so it was ultimate. I couldn't
Speaker 2: get any I peaked at that point, but creating those
Speaker 2: little things, just trying them out, and they're like, there's
Speaker 2: no cost to giving it a go, and if it
Speaker 2: doesn't work then but eventually one of them will will stick.
Speaker 2: There's some really really easy ones that red hat so
Speaker 2: red coats are a little bit arbitrary, something relatively easy
Speaker 2: unless you have any particular triggers around it, something like
Speaker 2: if you see a pregnant woman in the street, right,
Speaker 2: and then a simple offer of may you and your
Speaker 2: child be well?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know, some people that will be challenging, but for
Speaker 2: many people that will be easy. Were relatively easy. But
Speaker 2: I've done that so often that it just spontaneously happens,
Speaker 2: and that is just like it's wild and lovely, how
Speaker 2: like it just becomes as part of what my body does,
Speaker 2: like digesting food or you know, it's just the thing
Speaker 2: that I do and so just finding those little things
Speaker 2: and they build, they really really build up over time
Speaker 2: to move that baseline and yourself towards those qualities that
Speaker 2: we care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, little by little, a little becomes a lot. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the one about faith. It
Speaker 1: is useful to have faith that these little moments will
Speaker 1: add up, right, because the moment of wishing kindness to
Speaker 1: somebody wearing red across the street is relatively small. You
Speaker 1: might lean into it and derive some degree of pleasure
Speaker 1: from it, but it's often the cumulative effect of these things,
Speaker 1: and that's where the faith can be so valuable. That
Speaker 1: really that understanding the concept that little by little, a
Speaker 1: little becomes a lot, and you talk about that, you say,
Speaker 1: one of the other things is to understand how mindfulness works.
Speaker 1: And I think this goes back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, which was one of the criticisms of apps,
Speaker 1: is that the apps teach you to do something in
Speaker 1: a very particular way, in a very particular circumstance. And
Speaker 1: we might even say in certain cases they're not teaching you.
Speaker 1: They're just telling you. They're leading you, and to develop
Speaker 1: this mindfulness in all aspects of your life. The creativity
Speaker 1: comes from combining different things, but you've got to know
Speaker 1: what the elements are to combine exactly.
Speaker 2: Use another metaphor, we need to know your scales, yeah,
Speaker 2: before you can then start improvising. That's when I'm most
Speaker 2: certainly with Bodify. That was the most sort of exciting
Speaker 2: thing to get people's hearing from people who'd sort of
Speaker 2: got that bit. You know. We didn't try to hear
Speaker 2: people of the head being super didactic, but to just
Speaker 2: introduce in each meditation to saying here's what we did,
Speaker 2: and this is why we think it works. So it's
Speaker 2: a review and it's part of that sort of calling
Speaker 2: back all the way back to the beginning when we
Speaker 2: talked about when someone is listening to or watching a
Speaker 2: story and noticing the moments when they're resonating and getting
Speaker 2: interested in and reviewing. At that point, it's taking the
Speaker 2: time that little extra bit of reflection what's actually happening here.
Speaker 2: It means that if your practice becomes sustainable at that point,
Speaker 2: you can get some of that independence. And I think
Speaker 2: that's what teachers do. That's the whole point. Teachers don't
Speaker 2: want to see you turning up to the class forever
Speaker 2: and ever and ever. They don't want to see you
Speaker 2: on retreat every minute of the day for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life. That's probably not what they want to do.
Speaker 2: So giving people the tools to then move on and
Speaker 2: be independent and also importantly that then means that that's
Speaker 2: how evolution works in the mindfulness tradition. So in the
Speaker 2: context of people, So I'm part of a generation who
Speaker 2: have decent meditation training but also have very active digital lives,
Speaker 2: and so we're sort of one of the first group
Speaker 2: of people to sort of understand, like or to explore
Speaker 2: and eventually hopefully understand and continue to understand how meditation
Speaker 2: and technology can live together positively. What the upsides are
Speaker 2: downsides because talking before about you know, the story of
Speaker 2: meditation and the story of suddenly mindfuls meditation is that
Speaker 2: exclusionary story of like, oh no, you can't meditate unless
Speaker 2: you're a woman, unless you're a man, You can't meditation
Speaker 2: unless you're Asian, and now probably ten years ago, you
Speaker 2: can't meditate unless you turn your phones off. You can't
Speaker 2: meditate unless you divorce yourself from this part of your
Speaker 2: life because that stuff is not mindful, which is basically
Speaker 2: a cultural result of boomer mindfulness teachers, and so I
Speaker 2: totally understood why that is. All those barriers to not
Speaker 2: including things were due to cultural reasons, not intrinsic mindfulness reasons.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a line I think I've struggle
Speaker 2: to argue that practice mindfulness whilst bulldozing the Amazonian rainforest.
Speaker 2: There's not like there is a line at which you draw.
Speaker 2: There are some things which maybe you shouldn't be doing
Speaker 2: in the context of mindfulness, but should be interested in
Speaker 2: the barriers. Providing people the tools to learn the mechanics
Speaker 2: and understand how mynfness works means that it's a live tradition.
Speaker 2: Looking back on the last ten years of work I've
Speaker 2: done of thing just to just help the tradition feel
Speaker 2: like more culturally relevant and more part of the times,
Speaker 2: and being part of that sort of inflection point of
Speaker 2: this particular bit of the mindfulness stories. And then who
Speaker 2: knows how whey will go in the future.
Speaker 1: You said earlier being mindful while scrolling Instagram? Is that
Speaker 1: an actual idea that you have? How do we be mindful?
Speaker 1: And we are engaged in apps that tend to not
Speaker 1: be mindful by nature? And try and almost in a
Speaker 1: way make us in a trance so that we stay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard because you know, there were ten thousand
Speaker 2: behavioral scientists that Facebook trying to get you stuck on Instagram.
Speaker 2: So it's a difficult way, right, It's a difficult challenge.
Speaker 2: But no, absolutely are things I think call out two
Speaker 2: particular exercises you can do. One is based around body awareness.
Speaker 2: So the good thing about phones at the moment is
Speaker 2: that there physically exist, by which you know they probably
Speaker 2: won't in the future. So the fact that you're holding
Speaker 2: in your hand and you are touching it to move
Speaker 2: content means that there's a physical experience to scholing Instagram,
Speaker 2: which means that you can scholl Instagram and practice body
Speaker 2: awareness at the same time. Be that the texture of
Speaker 2: your phone case in your and the feeling of your
Speaker 2: firmb on thel and however small in a way you
Speaker 2: do that, that means that part of your mind and
Speaker 2: part of your attention and part of your awareness is
Speaker 2: not stuck in the content vortext. If there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of it which is intentionally to be really sort
Speaker 2: of like reductive, I'm sure sort of attention scientists will
Speaker 2: probably explain why this is not true. But my failt
Speaker 2: experience is that when part of my attention is on
Speaker 2: the physical aspect of using my phone, I'm less likely
Speaker 2: to wake up like ten minutes later and go shit,
Speaker 2: I've just gone down a YouTube wormhole. So it becomes
Speaker 2: like a lifeline. That's a physical way of doing it,
Speaker 2: and that's a super small thing. It's very minor, but
Speaker 2: it works, and it's a very simple, sort of accessible
Speaker 2: way of doing it. Another way of doing it is
Speaker 2: just actually around. Going back to what we talked about before,
Speaker 2: is like approaching social media scrolling as a insight practice.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is an insight practice
Speaker 2: is one which is interested in how are my and
Speaker 2: moves around experience, not necessarily what's happening, but how is
Speaker 2: our mind moving around what's happening? So if I'm scrolling
Speaker 2: and I stop at this post but not the previous post,
Speaker 2: can I be interested in that? Can I be interested
Speaker 2: in why? And it might be a simple thing like oh,
Speaker 2: that was my football team and the previous one wasn't
Speaker 2: my football team. So I'm not that saying they could
Speaker 2: be banal like that, but a lot of the times
Speaker 2: it could be quite interesting as to like you know,
Speaker 2: what are the patterns, what can you learn from your
Speaker 2: mind about this? And will necessarily very pretty some of it, right,
Speaker 2: But again I think I don't want you people to
Speaker 2: think that I'm just like saying, oh, you can do this,
Speaker 2: and so therefore cart blow and she use as much
Speaker 2: social media as you want. Knock yourself out. It's all good,
Speaker 2: it's not. But there are little things we can do.
Speaker 2: I do the hard stuff. I use sort of my
Speaker 2: freedom map, which blocks my social media during eight hours
Speaker 2: a day so I can just get on with other stuff.
Speaker 2: I do that, but I also do this other stuff
Speaker 2: as well. That'll so that you can change your relationship
Speaker 2: to the stuff. So there are universe of people against
Speaker 2: stopping us, wanting us to get sucked into that content,
Speaker 2: but there are little things we can do and they.
Speaker 1: Do work excellent. Well, Rohan, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on. It's such a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: And we'll have links in the show notes to your
Speaker 1: podcast meditative story. And as I understand that you're going
Speaker 1: to be creating a meditation based on the parable of
Speaker 1: the two wolves, is that correct?
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: I think we're playing with this idea of the four
Speaker 2: perspectives and we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Well, I look forward to hearing it. I know our
Speaker 1: listeners will be interested in hearing it also, So thank
Speaker 1: you so much.
Speaker 2: Rohan, lovely thanks. I appreciate it.
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