Speaker 1: When we're in that state where we feel more connected
Speaker 1: and whole, and then go do that sort of deeper
Speaker 1: busy work. We're doing it from a different place. We're
Speaker 1: not doing it from a place of fear. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good will. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: The guest on this program is Jillian Pransky. She's taught mindfulness,
Speaker 1: yoga and meditation for over twenty years. She serves as
Speaker 1: the director of the Restorative Therapeutic Yoga Teaching Center for
Speaker 1: Yoga Works. Is that what that says and a guest
Speaker 1: teacher on many renowned holistic learning centers. Her book is
Speaker 1: Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body, clear
Speaker 1: your mind, and open your heart. Isn't that what be
Speaker 1: is for? I'm just kidding. Here's the interview. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: this is Chris. I was goofing around there and I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of coffee. Feeling a little slap happy.
Speaker 1: Let's get started. For those of you that have stepped
Speaker 1: up over the last couple of weeks and contributed to
Speaker 1: the show to make a donation to support me as
Speaker 1: I transition from my full time job to this, thank you,
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Speaker 1: You also get the extras for each of the interviews
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Speaker 1: something that matters to you and is making the world
Speaker 1: hopefully a better place. So go to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash support today and sign up. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and here's the interview with Jillian Pranski. Hi, Jillian, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hello, thanks for having me. Your book
Speaker 1: is called Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body,
Speaker 1: clear your mind, and open your heart. And we will
Speaker 1: get into that in just a moment, but let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. There is a
Speaker 1: grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second. He looks up and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother 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. I love that parable. It's
Speaker 1: actually even in my book, and it's complex for me,
Speaker 1: and it has meant different things to me at different
Speaker 1: stages of my life. Right now, um, it's quite complex.
Speaker 1: When I was young, all the way through my early twenties,
Speaker 1: I believed really strongly in mind over matter. I was
Speaker 1: really into choosing optimism and joy and abundance, and I
Speaker 1: believed that they were a choice focus. I applied this
Speaker 1: to everything my work, exercise, lifestyle, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was the kind of person who I literally ran three
Speaker 1: miles and three months later ran a marathon because I
Speaker 1: had that mind over matter. I was just going to
Speaker 1: think positively and do it. And I had that feeling
Speaker 1: that everything should be good over bad. In fact, when
Speaker 1: I came to yoga when I was twenty four, it
Speaker 1: was all about choosing light over darkness. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I was thirty and I had a panic attack,
Speaker 1: and for the first time I realized that I had
Speaker 1: been choosing the good wolf in a way that I
Speaker 1: no longer think is really healthy. Actually, you know, before
Speaker 1: I had my eggs at my panic attack, my bona
Speaker 1: fide panic attack where I went into the emergency room
Speaker 1: with a heart attack, and I was already a yoga teacher.
Speaker 1: So when they told me was having a panic attack,
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm not having a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And less embarrassing than a panic attack. It is. It is,
Speaker 1: and and my family has heart disease, so it made
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. A panic attack for this mind
Speaker 1: over matter, optimistic I can do anything kind of a
Speaker 1: girl did not make sense. And I always thought anxiety
Speaker 1: and depression were choice until I was thirty. I really
Speaker 1: believed that if that was the way you were, that
Speaker 1: was the way you were choosing to be. And it
Speaker 1: really took having my own panic attack and anxiety to
Speaker 1: realize that I had been not only starving the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: let's call it, but like giving it a really great
Speaker 1: home deep inside me. He was living well off of me.
Speaker 1: It was eating me, And so I really had to
Speaker 1: learn that for me it wasn't an either or uh,
Speaker 1: And I had to choose to nourish the good wolf
Speaker 1: in a way that I had to feel that I
Speaker 1: was able to feel more whole and more integrated and
Speaker 1: more self acceptance and self compassion and self love. But
Speaker 1: then to meet the bad wolf and to soothe the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, and to acknowledge the bad wolf and to
Speaker 1: integrate the bad wolf. Really and it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: learned to be with the bad wolf and actually gain
Speaker 1: the wisdom of all of those feelings that were seemingly
Speaker 1: ugly or hard or bad or uncomfortable or things that
Speaker 1: I'd rather extricate rather than friend. It wasn't until I
Speaker 1: befriended them and lived with them that I could really
Speaker 1: wisely choose the good wolf and make room for the
Speaker 1: bad wolf to not be so destructive, but to offer
Speaker 1: its wisdom when it would arise. Of course, it still
Speaker 1: arises sometimes in a way that's not so healthy. But
Speaker 1: in my practice I'm able to sort of find that
Speaker 1: place where I can then come back to the good
Speaker 1: wolf and find balance all over again. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's something I've in working with a variation on that.
Speaker 1: Some of the ethos of this whole show is about
Speaker 1: you can improve your life. You know, there are things
Speaker 1: that we can do, there are healthy ways to be
Speaker 1: in the world. And I believe that truly, and what
Speaker 1: I've been dealing with lately, and it sort of comes
Speaker 1: up against what you are, which is what are the
Speaker 1: limits of that? Like, at what point is your ability
Speaker 1: to do something run out of steam and either that
Speaker 1: trying to do more is actually harmful or simply just ineffective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it depends on where are
Speaker 1: resources coming from, Like all my mind over matter resources
Speaker 1: and my strength, and my was almost a defiance against
Speaker 1: my bad wolth uh and not I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be there. I'm not going to do that. It took
Speaker 1: a whole different level of self acceptance and self love
Speaker 1: to get the resources to still achieve great things, but
Speaker 1: from a place of sort of what I really wanted
Speaker 1: from my heart my mind rather than just what I
Speaker 1: wanted from my mind. Yeah, totally makes sense. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of your early career you spent doing
Speaker 1: yoga on Pema Chodren retreats, and it was something listening
Speaker 1: to Pema Chodren recently that that hit both my girlfriend
Speaker 1: and I, which was this idea that not everything can
Speaker 1: be fixed. Yeah. Yeah, that's been the biggest hill to swallow.
Speaker 1: That's a good word for it. Yeah, we're up against
Speaker 1: that with some family members and diseases that they're just
Speaker 1: not going to get better. This isn't like a oh
Speaker 1: well maybe it'll turn around. It's you know, it's a
Speaker 1: degenerative disease. That's it's Alzheimer's in this case. And so
Speaker 1: we're really up against that, Like everything that we would
Speaker 1: normally do in a situation to cope with and to
Speaker 1: help a person and all that. You're like that that
Speaker 1: stuff just doesn't apply. I mean some of it certainly does,
Speaker 1: but the fixing it piece doesn't apply. And coming up
Speaker 1: against the limits of that like, okay, this is where
Speaker 1: surrender is needed. Yeah. I find that in a lot
Speaker 1: of different areas, whether it's not being able to fix
Speaker 1: a diagnosis, or not being able to fix the way
Speaker 1: someone did treat us, or you know, something that really
Speaker 1: did happen that we are creating room for forgiveness for
Speaker 1: so we can feed a different wolf. And you know,
Speaker 1: being the mother of a fifteen year old, I want
Speaker 1: to really be I want to be there for him
Speaker 1: as a good wolf. But every time he you know,
Speaker 1: shares with me what he's what's ailing him, I want
Speaker 1: to fix it. And I'm really you know, all these
Speaker 1: things that are not fixable. But the wisdom really is
Speaker 1: also in creating space that comes back to also where
Speaker 1: the fear and connectedness can also live together. So let's
Speaker 1: transition to your book a little bit. And the title
Speaker 1: of the book is deep listening. So what does that
Speaker 1: mean to you? What's deep listening? For me? Deep listening
Speaker 1: is very pervasive in my life. It was form practice
Speaker 1: on my meditation, cushion, and specifically in restored of yoga,
Speaker 1: which is different than yoga that has a lot of
Speaker 1: movement to it. It's more like the shivasana at the
Speaker 1: end of yoga class. It's still it's RESTful. There um
Speaker 1: poses that you lay down in different shapes over props
Speaker 1: and really do conscious relaxation in positions where you're body
Speaker 1: scanning and visiting parts of your body that are either tense, tight,
Speaker 1: achy uncomfortable, or or open and expansive and vibrant. But
Speaker 1: as we rest really paying attention to ourselves, visiting with
Speaker 1: ourselves in an open way so that we can respond
Speaker 1: to what we find calmly and openly and curiously or compassionately.
Speaker 1: So for me, deep listening it's really about paying attention
Speaker 1: to ourselves, our body, our mind. There's in conversation in
Speaker 1: a way that we are aware of how we shut
Speaker 1: down and how we open up simultaneously, are able to
Speaker 1: with that awareness that we're shutting down or opening up,
Speaker 1: be there with ourselves to stay as open as possible.
Speaker 1: In the book, I like what you say. You say
Speaker 1: it isn't so much a specific technique as it's an
Speaker 1: approach to how we receive and respond to ourselves and others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what I've definitely found again this goes back to the
Speaker 1: parable is that the way I listened to myself the
Speaker 1: way I listen to others. But the way I listen
Speaker 1: to myself will either leave me feeling more hard and
Speaker 1: more cut off, or more soft and more open. It
Speaker 1: will lead me feeling either more need for protection or
Speaker 1: more available. The way I listened to myself will either
Speaker 1: feed my bad wolf or feed my love, my compassion,
Speaker 1: my understanding. So deep listening is really well, then how
Speaker 1: do we do that at How do we get grounded?
Speaker 1: How do we get present? How do we stay soft
Speaker 1: and open even when we feel uncomfortable with what it
Speaker 1: is we're listening to? So specifically, when you say you
Speaker 1: know how I listened to myself, you know has these
Speaker 1: outcomes like what sort of listening you You mentioned the
Speaker 1: body as one, what are the other things that you're
Speaker 1: listening for? Well, when I say the body, what I
Speaker 1: really mean is most specifically, it winds up being tension.
Speaker 1: And tension is really the stress response finding a home
Speaker 1: in our body. So when you're listening to tension, it
Speaker 1: might feel like pain or maybe it feels numb, or
Speaker 1: maybe it feels restricted and breath isn't just in there.
Speaker 1: But if you stay with that area long enough, what
Speaker 1: bubbles up is emotion and thought. Tension has a psycho
Speaker 1: emotional component to it, so you wind up listening to
Speaker 1: language too, imagery, to memories, to emotions that you don't
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is that I would be
Speaker 1: listening to. It's whatever really arises when I pay attention
Speaker 1: to myself, And most often when I pay attention to myself,
Speaker 1: what arises is things that are not working out so well,
Speaker 1: problems that I'm solving, ruminating over, disappointments or sadness or
Speaker 1: anger or confusion or just business, just a list of
Speaker 1: things to do. But rarely do I sit down and listen,
Speaker 1: and all these lovely feelings and thoughts bubble up. So
Speaker 1: you know, I guess, if I had to really shorten
Speaker 1: the definition, it winds up being a lot of listening
Speaker 1: to the way we diminish, we don't feel comfortable or
Speaker 1: I don't feel comfortable, and paying attention long enough that
Speaker 1: that softens and it shifts. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: restorative yoga, deep listening and meditation. Is this restorative yoga
Speaker 1: where you're sort of listening to your body. Is that
Speaker 1: a substitute for meditation. It's really an integrated practice. And
Speaker 1: this is my approach as a meditation teacher, a mindfulness teacher,
Speaker 1: and a yoga teacher. And anybody who's any one of
Speaker 1: those things is always going to take everything they've studied
Speaker 1: and introduced it in a way that's meaningful to them.
Speaker 1: And so the way I use restorative yoga is very
Speaker 1: much the way a meditator may sit on the cushion
Speaker 1: and listen and practice listening to their thoughts. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit more of an embodied meditation practice. It's really
Speaker 1: the middle ground where a bodily somatic movement practice meets
Speaker 1: a still meditation practice. It's great for meditators who are
Speaker 1: uncomfortable sitting up. It's great for yogi's who are not
Speaker 1: comfortable sitting. But really, what I love most about it
Speaker 1: is because I studied these two things separately. I studied
Speaker 1: really traditional forms of meditation. I started very young with TM.
Speaker 1: At nine years old, my mother brought my family to
Speaker 1: TM as a really a threat to my father. It
Speaker 1: was like TM or marriage counseling. Wow, that's a tough
Speaker 1: choice actually when you when you get down to what
Speaker 1: meditation can be like in certain cases, it's true, it's true, um,
Speaker 1: but it's stuck for me. So I have a lot
Speaker 1: of formal meditation training. I have a lot of formal
Speaker 1: what we call austin a training, and what I love
Speaker 1: is um. Sometimes meditation practice can be too much of
Speaker 1: the mind, depending on how you study it and whose
Speaker 1: guidance your following, or how you want to get caught
Speaker 1: up and a lot of traditional language, at least twenty
Speaker 1: years ago when I began studying, was how to get
Speaker 1: over yourself and you are not your thoughts and you
Speaker 1: are not your body. That especially from a yoga meditation
Speaker 1: point of view, you know you are not these things,
Speaker 1: you are something else. And it never really resonated with me.
Speaker 1: I am in my yoga training, studied contric yoga, which
Speaker 1: is very much of the body on the earth, on
Speaker 1: this planet, living this duration of time in a body
Speaker 1: and um, So for me, restored to yoga is just
Speaker 1: truly it's conscious relaxation and it's a way to meditate
Speaker 1: really incorporating the somatic felt experience. Yeah, that's an area
Speaker 1: that I have felt I would do well to spend
Speaker 1: more time. I hit these points where I'm like, I
Speaker 1: notice these blockages of tension in my body, and my response,
Speaker 1: similar to our our early conversation, is like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lay on this foam roller until this thing
Speaker 1: goes away, which I have recognized even though I thought, well,
Speaker 1: if I can breathe into it, it's okay. But I
Speaker 1: think I've hit this realization where I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's what my body wants. I don't think that's working.
Speaker 1: I've been drawn to more somatic practices lately. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love that you bring that up, because you know, most
Speaker 1: people's response when they find something that they want to
Speaker 1: change or shift, they're you know, not you, but most
Speaker 1: of us me. There's a judgment about it, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's something that we're trying to change that's bad,
Speaker 1: and we have this either or right, we have this
Speaker 1: either or And what happens neurologically physiologically when we find
Speaker 1: tension and we're upset about it when we judge it,
Speaker 1: when we have an anger towards the tension that's still
Speaker 1: there after all these years and all these practices, whatever
Speaker 1: it is that we're not okay with finding gets better
Speaker 1: at hardening. And so when you find tension and you
Speaker 1: have judgment, it leaves you feeling actually literally physiologically cuts
Speaker 1: off more interesting, but leaves you feeling more separate and alone,
Speaker 1: as opposed to finding it, relaxing with it, and or
Speaker 1: invite just being curious about it, inviting the breath around it,
Speaker 1: whatever that language that may resonate be. You then begin
Speaker 1: to create the conditions for it to shift, to change,
Speaker 1: to open, to soften, to set the conditions for healing
Speaker 1: both in your body and also for the thought pattern
Speaker 1: to change. Interesting. Yeah, I've seen restored of yoga is
Speaker 1: yin yoga variation on this, some people put them in
Speaker 1: the same category. The way I teach restored of yoga
Speaker 1: is to take off all unnecessary work. So I would
Speaker 1: prop a body so that there is I'm bringing the
Speaker 1: ground up to meet the body where there might be
Speaker 1: physical limitations. There should be no sensation of stretch, no
Speaker 1: sensation of strain. So if you're fully propped and you're relaxing,
Speaker 1: but you still notice your tents or you're holding on
Speaker 1: and you don't have to be that's what we're working with.
Speaker 1: Whereas in yin yoga, there's actually some stretch and strain
Speaker 1: on purpose that still remulates tissue in a particular way.
Speaker 1: I'm fully mostly only interested in restorative yoga as a
Speaker 1: way of looking at how am I still guarding myself
Speaker 1: when I don't have to be? How am I still
Speaker 1: protecting myself when I don't have to be? How am
Speaker 1: I still gripping and holding on to myself when it's
Speaker 1: not necessary because I'm safe because there's props underneath me,
Speaker 1: because I'm quiet. All this stuff is still happening, and
Speaker 1: yet it doesn't. So what is that? And once I
Speaker 1: start to pay attention to what is that? Storylines come up.
Speaker 1: All sorts of ideas surround why I'm still holding myself together.
Speaker 1: Things I need to look at, things I need to
Speaker 1: spend time with, things i need to be friends. Interesting
Speaker 1: because I've often heard from yoga practitioners like, well, you'll
Speaker 1: do a certain pose and you might start to get
Speaker 1: emotions or thoughts, And I'm like, that has never occurred
Speaker 1: for me. You know, I'm intuitive, And as we're talking
Speaker 1: that some of that is probably that I'm still holding yes,
Speaker 1: And also a lot of our yoga is there's so
Speaker 1: much movement involved and there's so much instruction involved, and
Speaker 1: there's so much left brain language involved, and it asks
Speaker 1: you to do things, and that's different than the kind
Speaker 1: of yoga i'm talking about. The kind of yoga i'm
Speaker 1: talking about is asking you to do less, in fact,
Speaker 1: don't do anything, and usually the language is much more
Speaker 1: right brained. It's imagery. Let the earth cradle you, feel
Speaker 1: your breath soften you inside, allow your breath to be
Speaker 1: received by a softening belly. I'm taking away outer stimulus.
Speaker 1: I'm taking away activity. I'm taking away you learning how
Speaker 1: to move your body from a left brain follow instruction place.
Speaker 1: I'm taking all that away. I'm leaving you on the
Speaker 1: ground on support, with nothing left to do but allow
Speaker 1: yourself to be supported by the ground A allow your
Speaker 1: breath to come and go without resisting it, and notice
Speaker 1: what's going on. Of course, just like meditation, the superficial
Speaker 1: first layer is going to be all the business of
Speaker 1: your thoughts. But that's the gift of doing it. A
Speaker 1: bodily practices. We're used to focusing on our breath and meditation,
Speaker 1: depending on what kind you do well, doing body scans
Speaker 1: and spending time in your body. It's not like yoga nidra,
Speaker 1: where you're going from place to place to place to
Speaker 1: place to place on each breath. It's there's time, there's
Speaker 1: time to move in, there's time to feel, there's time
Speaker 1: to notice, there's time to notice that you're making up
Speaker 1: stories about what you're noticing and stopping doing that, just
Speaker 1: like a meditation practice. It's so interesting how certain things
Speaker 1: land on us depending where we are in our progress.
Speaker 1: Because I read your book. I don't know when we
Speaker 1: originally had this schedule. I think like April perhaps, So
Speaker 1: I read your book in April and and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And yet now talking to you, I'm like, there's a
Speaker 1: whole another level there that I did not get. I've
Speaker 1: gone on a fairly long silent retreat in the interim,
Speaker 1: and some of what I got in that was this
Speaker 1: idea of, Okay, I need to be doing less. Part
Speaker 1: of my practice is doing less in certain ways. And
Speaker 1: and it it sounds now that like a lot of
Speaker 1: what your teaching is very aligned with that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting, But how doing less we'll keep on having
Speaker 1: new meanings. Yes, that's not an experience so much, it's
Speaker 1: something I'm growing. Well. No, I do have some experience
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, I think what I got out
Speaker 1: of the in the silent retreat was I realized all
Speaker 1: the levels of continuing to let go that I had
Speaker 1: not even fathomed existed. Yeah, I'm not sure we can
Speaker 1: ever end that particular exercise. Yeah, I I believe it.
Speaker 1: I just kept going, all right, I've let go, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, nope. It was this idea of awakening to
Speaker 1: our true nature and that starting to realize that like
Speaker 1: not going to find my true nature by going somewhere,
Speaker 1: and so many of the things that we do, whether
Speaker 1: it be yoga or meditation or other practices, there's an
Speaker 1: element of going somewhere or doing something and realizing like
Speaker 1: a all that takes away from not that it's all bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything has its place. But for me, it
Speaker 1: hit a point where it was like about doing less,
Speaker 1: which is counterintuitive to me. It's not My nature is not,
Speaker 1: you know, as we talked about in the beginning, My
Speaker 1: nature is to like go, do you know? And and
Speaker 1: I'm learning at a deeper level about the limits of that.
Speaker 1: I find for most people, at least the people I attract,
Speaker 1: is that most people were trained in doing more. Everything
Speaker 1: about our life is set up to train us to
Speaker 1: do more, achieve more, succeed more. And then you put
Speaker 1: on top of that that the busier we are, the
Speaker 1: less we actually have to feel, the less we have
Speaker 1: to observe, the less we have to make friends with.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's there's the slowing down physically, there's
Speaker 1: the slowing down mentally, but there's the allowing that is
Speaker 1: even this other worldly thing. It comes a little bit
Speaker 1: in that at fixed category that we mentioned earlier, but
Speaker 1: there's also allowing that like, um, listening is really the
Speaker 1: act of allowing. Love is really the act of allowing.
Speaker 1: Breathing is really the act of allowing. You know, once
Speaker 1: I sort of started getting the very basics, which was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hold myself off the ground. What do you mean
Speaker 1: by that? I mean there's a chair underneath me, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really sitting down in it. Where there's a
Speaker 1: bed underneath me and I'm not really laying down on it.
Speaker 1: You can think of like when you pick up I've
Speaker 1: ever picked up an infant or a like a toddler
Speaker 1: that was awake and they were one particular weight when
Speaker 1: they were awake and interested and out in the world,
Speaker 1: and then they fell asleep in the car and you
Speaker 1: have to bring them in the house, and they weighed
Speaker 1: all of a sudden twenty pounds more. Well, that difference
Speaker 1: is a lot like I'm always off the ground. I'm
Speaker 1: never really allowing myself to be in support, And allowing
Speaker 1: myself to be supported even when I'm active is a
Speaker 1: slowing down. That was a huge lesson allowing breath to
Speaker 1: come and go, especially as yoga teachers are. Even in meditation, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much as yoga. It gets very confusing
Speaker 1: because we say breathe in, breathe out, and we have
Speaker 1: this idea that we are in charge and we are
Speaker 1: in control and we are doing the breathing. But when
Speaker 1: you really learn sort of that literal mechanisms of the
Speaker 1: respiratory system and that breath comes to you and goes
Speaker 1: that allowing how do we relax and allow it to
Speaker 1: come and go without doing anything. That's a whole another
Speaker 1: level of slowing down the mind. We're not even talking
Speaker 1: about the mind yet, or the emotions or anything else,
Speaker 1: but just those two things, allowing the ground to hold us,
Speaker 1: allowing the breath to come and go can set the
Speaker 1: stage for some of these layers of doing to begin
Speaker 1: to become obvious for the first time. I don't have
Speaker 1: time for all this, and nobody got time for that. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's like I said, it's just so interesting the
Speaker 1: way things land on us differently. So let's go a
Speaker 1: little further into the book. So there was something that
Speaker 1: you you talk about in the book that I did
Speaker 1: resonate with completely. And I believe in so much which
Speaker 1: is a little plus often equals a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big fan of that, big fan of that. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about that. I literally believe that in my
Speaker 1: yoga practice, in my meditation practice, whether it's um when
Speaker 1: I first started, I mean, everything was more is better.
Speaker 1: Everything about my life until I was thirty was more
Speaker 1: is better when I would practice, especially the way more
Speaker 1: senior practitioners made it feel like I should be practicing
Speaker 1: for two hours, uh and have my job and have
Speaker 1: relationships and keep a house. Really, for me, it's it
Speaker 1: could be five twenty sixty minutes. It's the amount that
Speaker 1: what is regular is way better than what is a lot.
Speaker 1: But I had this amazing experience which I do write
Speaker 1: about in my book, that I would love to share.
Speaker 1: I find that people can really. Um, sort of understand
Speaker 1: it this way is my son was born anaphylactic to
Speaker 1: wheat and gluten. So that means if I kissed, if
Speaker 1: I ate a pretzel and kissed him on the lips,
Speaker 1: we'd be in the hospital. He'd stop breathing. And as
Speaker 1: you know, um, when toddler's are little, although now there's
Speaker 1: gluten free food on the market, but they share cheerios
Speaker 1: and cookies and everything is gluten. So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: intense childhood for him. When he was ten, he was
Speaker 1: invited into this clinical trial study where they induced an
Speaker 1: anaphylactic reaction and they discovered exactly the amount of wheat
Speaker 1: that is immune system would read as the enemy and
Speaker 1: threaten his life. And they went just a notch under that.
Speaker 1: So it was and it was microscop opic to you
Speaker 1: and I. It was it was literally less than a
Speaker 1: grain of sand. They started introducing the smallest amount of
Speaker 1: gluten to his system, and every two weeks we would
Speaker 1: go back to the hospital and they would check out
Speaker 1: how his system was reading this teeny teeny little amount.
Speaker 1: Well over three years of being modulated every two weeks
Speaker 1: of a little bit a little bit, a little bit
Speaker 1: over three years, he is no longer allergic to wheat
Speaker 1: or gluten, and his system has completely rewired, rewired its
Speaker 1: entire orientation to what would have killed him. And we
Speaker 1: were flying from Iceland to back to America. We were
Speaker 1: in over the water and he accidentally ate half a
Speaker 1: week sandwich. He recognized it very quickly, actually, but at
Speaker 1: that point we were two and a half years into
Speaker 1: the study. Had we had been to and half years
Speaker 1: before that, you would have read about us in the news.
Speaker 1: That is such a clear and great example of that concept.
Speaker 1: Regularity a little bit all the time rewires us. Yep.
Speaker 1: I am such a fan of of the idea of
Speaker 1: small steps. You know. I think the thing I say
Speaker 1: often on the show is you'd be amazed what a
Speaker 1: series of small steps taken day after day after day
Speaker 1: will accomplish. Yeah. I mean, I'm the result of a
Speaker 1: twenty five year long practice, and by the time I
Speaker 1: really started practicing, I was not all or nothing. I
Speaker 1: was well into modulating. But it has changed my life,
Speaker 1: and it changed some really intense relationships that never would
Speaker 1: have changed if I took a sledgehammer to them. Yep.
Speaker 1: So another thing that you say in the book and
Speaker 1: I just really resonated with this a lot. You basically
Speaker 1: say that when we're somewhere else rather than here expending
Speaker 1: our energy on planning for the future or rehashing the past,
Speaker 1: we feel drained. It's exhausting to be somewhere other than
Speaker 1: where we are. Oh yeah, I illustrated that with a
Speaker 1: story that Tick not Han told on a retreat. He
Speaker 1: tells this story about a reporter that goes to Plumb Village.
Speaker 1: Tickno Han is a master Vietnamese monk and he has
Speaker 1: Plumb Village in in France. This reporter goes to visit
Speaker 1: to do a think a magazine story on him, and
Speaker 1: before he does the report, tickno Han says to him,
Speaker 1: you need to come on our daily meditation walk. It's lovely,
Speaker 1: it's easy, and then we'll do the report later. So
Speaker 1: they go on this very long, very graceful, very slow,
Speaker 1: very lovely walk in a beautiful field greenery and flowers
Speaker 1: and children and hand holding and sunshine, and it couldn't
Speaker 1: be more peaceful and easeful. And when they were done,
Speaker 1: tickno Han said to him, as they met to prepare
Speaker 1: for the report interview, you know, how was that for you?
Speaker 1: The reporter was just like horrible, I am exhausted, and
Speaker 1: tikna Han says to him something like why, you know
Speaker 1: how how can you be exhausted? That was such an easeful,
Speaker 1: replenishing walk. It was for replenishment and um. He explains
Speaker 1: how the whole time he was thinking about his article
Speaker 1: and his interview, and he was worrying about what questions
Speaker 1: he was going to ask him, was he going to
Speaker 1: forget this and what angle would he take on it?
Speaker 1: And he was never even on that walk. Everybody finished
Speaker 1: that walk replenished and nourished and more awake to connect,
Speaker 1: and he finished it depleted and separate and not available. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Social media is one of those things that I have
Speaker 1: noticed that when I engage in it, I feel depleted
Speaker 1: in some way afterwards. And I think that is as
Speaker 1: good a description as why is because I am not
Speaker 1: at all present at all for any of that, and
Speaker 1: I've just it's something I've noticed about myself. I just
Speaker 1: was like, it just takes something out of me that
Speaker 1: I can't articulate until I sort of read that and
Speaker 1: I went, I think that's it. You know, it's funny
Speaker 1: I think of our thoughts like social media like we're
Speaker 1: always scrolling, you know, whether we whether we're literally looking
Speaker 1: at our phone or not, like we're just scrolling in
Speaker 1: our head. Yeah, that's a great way to think of it.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think you know, I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those people that believes like there is time where
Speaker 1: planning for the future or rehashing the past is useful.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a useful activity. You know, how could
Speaker 1: I have done that differently? Or but how often I
Speaker 1: do it to the amount of time it's useful is
Speaker 1: so far out of proportion. Yeah, you know, it is
Speaker 1: absolutely critical and useful and is one of the great
Speaker 1: things that makes us human. But I think you know
Speaker 1: we're way out of balance with it. Well, can I
Speaker 1: just say I also find that it's most effective and
Speaker 1: productive to do that hashing the past or thinking the
Speaker 1: forward after we've actually been relaxed and nourished and calm,
Speaker 1: and when we're in that state where we feel more
Speaker 1: connected and whole, and then go do that sort of deeper,
Speaker 1: busy work. We're doing it from a different place. We're
Speaker 1: not doing it from a place of fear, We're not
Speaker 1: doing it from a place of you know, defensiveness. We're
Speaker 1: doing it from a place of what's really a wise
Speaker 1: choice now? And what what can I really learn? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I definitely have found for me that when
Speaker 1: I'm meditating and doing it more intensely at periods, that
Speaker 1: after that the level of thought that I have. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that in meditation one, you know, settle down
Speaker 1: the thoughts, but what what occurs in my thoughts after
Speaker 1: that is so much more effective. Yeah. You know, when
Speaker 1: I go on like a retreat, I try and limit
Speaker 1: the time that I let my brain just run. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, this is not what I'm here for.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be more conscious about how I used
Speaker 1: my thought. But when I do give it a little
Speaker 1: bit of space, I'm like, wow, you know, like boys
Speaker 1: that thinking clear or or concise or you know, just
Speaker 1: great ideas come. I love this because this is something
Speaker 1: else I've been thinking about lately. It's the idea of
Speaker 1: letting go versus letting be. Yeah, that was sort of,
Speaker 1: I guess a little bit like the way I was
Speaker 1: thinking more about the Bad Wolf Good Wolf parable as well,
Speaker 1: because when I started yoga, when I wanted it to
Speaker 1: all be light, all good, I'll be right, I was
Speaker 1: on a mission. Um, if I just do this, I'll
Speaker 1: be good. So that means everything that I found that
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy, I needed to let go that wasn't
Speaker 1: a good part of me. And that language of letting go,
Speaker 1: I feel, is really tricky, especially when you're working with others,
Speaker 1: when you're in community and you're all trying to um
Speaker 1: understand what harmony and wholeness might feel like. The language
Speaker 1: of letting go can be, oh, you just release your grip.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people, the language of letting
Speaker 1: go means getting rid of something that's not good, getting
Speaker 1: rid of a part of them, and it sets up
Speaker 1: a binary system. It sets up a dogmatic view, which
Speaker 1: I feel like just charges what it is we're not
Speaker 1: comfortable with. So letting be is a little bit more
Speaker 1: like making space. And um, I love the salty solution example,
Speaker 1: which is it's also hard to understand, well, how do
Speaker 1: I make space for something? So if you a table
Speaker 1: spoon of salt and a shot glass, and you put
Speaker 1: the tablespoon of salt in the shot glass of water,
Speaker 1: you'd have a particular salty solution. But if you took
Speaker 1: the tablespoon of salt and you put it in a
Speaker 1: bigger glass like a mason jar rather than a shot glass,
Speaker 1: you'd have a different salty solution. And if you use
Speaker 1: a bucket, you'd have another salty solution. So every time
Speaker 1: you make the container bigger, that same salt, that same
Speaker 1: thing you wanted to get rid of, that same thing
Speaker 1: that was uncomfortable or bad or angry or hurt, that
Speaker 1: salty nous. When you relax your body and you let
Speaker 1: go of tension, your container literally gets bigger, your breath
Speaker 1: gets bigger, your mind gets bigger, and what was salty
Speaker 1: has more space to not be um such a concentrated
Speaker 1: solution and be in so overwhelming or in control. So
Speaker 1: rather than getting rid of the salt, which you really
Speaker 1: can't do anyway, Um, all of our experiences are always
Speaker 1: going to be part of who we are. You make
Speaker 1: room for it and you let it be, and in
Speaker 1: that case it sort of dissipates and becomes maybe some
Speaker 1: a wise piece of reference material or helps guide you
Speaker 1: in some way overall, but it doesn't control how you feel,
Speaker 1: how you act, what you listen for, what you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really great analogy. You know, my experience with
Speaker 1: letting go versus letting be would be when I would
Speaker 1: know that the wise thing to do is to let
Speaker 1: something go, and yet it's not going, you know, like
Speaker 1: I should let go of that, and I'm trying, but
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about it. I'm still upset about it.
Speaker 1: It's still right there, and then that turns into I'm failing.
Speaker 1: The wise person would let this go. And yet and
Speaker 1: so for me that that let it be with so
Speaker 1: much better, Like if it's still there and it's still
Speaker 1: bothering me, it's still there and it's still bothering me.
Speaker 1: All I can do in that moment is to let
Speaker 1: it be. Yeah, and my wise this teachers Pemacho Dren.
Speaker 1: What I feel like I'm learning from her is the
Speaker 1: let it be. Like I'm not so sure she would
Speaker 1: she would use the language of letting go in the
Speaker 1: same way that a lot of you know, like maybe
Speaker 1: when I was less studied or less matured or less experienced,
Speaker 1: I may have used yeah. Oh. She changed my life
Speaker 1: with the book When Things Fall Apart. It was the
Speaker 1: first time and I had been exposed to spiritual concepts
Speaker 1: for a fair amount of time. It was the first
Speaker 1: time I was like really got like, oh, okay, it
Speaker 1: can just be here. I can just learn what's happening,
Speaker 1: be present, and that I don't have to try and
Speaker 1: make it go away incredibly difficult time for me, but
Speaker 1: permanently in the way that you know. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a lesson obviously that I continue to learn at
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper levels. But yeah, that is such a
Speaker 1: profound idea, and that that let it Be is a
Speaker 1: continuation of our conversation of can't fix things, can't fix everything.
Speaker 1: It's a continuation of allowing, learning to allow. And even
Speaker 1: that let it Be is the conversation of slowing down,
Speaker 1: you know, not being on top of everything and controlling
Speaker 1: everything and trying to work it all out. Is it is?
Speaker 1: All of those conversations are at the heart of Let
Speaker 1: It Be. And it's a really good Beatles song, indeed
Speaker 1: it is. You've got a line in here that speaks
Speaker 1: to this a lot. And you said that all my
Speaker 1: efforts at relaxation used to be about getting better. I
Speaker 1: was going to be a good relaxer. Yes are you? Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's my it's my life work, which say something
Speaker 1: about how important it is to me. But you know
Speaker 1: what I find, which I'm heartened that you know I
Speaker 1: do hear from the people that I glean the most
Speaker 1: wisdom from. Is that just when I think I've had
Speaker 1: this incredible insight to how I can consciously relax always
Speaker 1: and more often, I'll lay down the next day and
Speaker 1: I'm all bound up again and all wound up again.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what I'm really good at. I'm
Speaker 1: really good at re relaxing. I don't really think the
Speaker 1: idea is to stay relaxed or to relax instantly. I
Speaker 1: think it's to notice when we're not relaxed. I think
Speaker 1: it's to notice how we're not relaxed. I think it's
Speaker 1: to notice how we're resisting relaxation. And when I say relaxation,
Speaker 1: I don't mean how we're laying down on the couch
Speaker 1: doing nothing. I mean how are we hardening and protecting
Speaker 1: ourselves from the present moment that we're in. That's what
Speaker 1: I mean about relaxation. How are we hardening and protecting
Speaker 1: ourselves from the present moment that we're in in the
Speaker 1: environment around us and within us. And in that sense,
Speaker 1: I'm always hardening. I'm always harding against the environment within me.
Speaker 1: I'm always hardening against the environment out of me. I'm
Speaker 1: really good at noticing that I'm really great actually and
Speaker 1: noticing that I'm hardening, which I think makes me a
Speaker 1: good practitioner because it invites me to re relax and
Speaker 1: practice all over again. And let me tell you, I
Speaker 1: practiced every day all day long. Yeah. There's another line
Speaker 1: that I pulled out from the book, which is the
Speaker 1: practice isn't to figure out how to stay here, it's
Speaker 1: learning how to come back. Yeah. There's so many levels
Speaker 1: that that's wise. But one of them is that if
Speaker 1: we expect that we will stay permanently relaxed or peaceful
Speaker 1: or calm or whatever, then we end up being very
Speaker 1: disappointed in ourselves and we end up we end up
Speaker 1: using self improvement almost as a way to beat ourselves. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that that's you know how I said that
Speaker 1: was a hard pill to swallow. With the fix It,
Speaker 1: I think one of the hardest but most profound aspects
Speaker 1: is coming to terms with the fact that I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to practice this every day, all day long
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life like that. It's not
Speaker 1: an arrival line. As disappointing as that is, it's also
Speaker 1: super liberating once you accept it. I mean I agree completely.
Speaker 1: I think that is a learning for me has been
Speaker 1: like there's no end point here, and once I recognize
Speaker 1: and accept that, it is very liberating. Initially it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: for crying out loud, like you know, like when is
Speaker 1: it going to be over? But recognizing that that's not
Speaker 1: the way that things work is tremendously liberating, and at
Speaker 1: least it has been for me. Yeah, it has been
Speaker 1: for me too well. Julian, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on the show. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that we got to have this conversation. Will have
Speaker 1: links in the show notes people can find you and
Speaker 1: your book and all that, and you and I are
Speaker 1: going to have a little post show conversation where we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about do overs and being like an hour glass,
Speaker 1: a couple of practices you have. So listeners, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in the post show conversations, you can go to
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net slash support and you can
Speaker 1: learn how you can be a supporter of the show
Speaker 1: and get access to those. But thank you so much, Chilli,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed. Thank you. I enjoyed it to Okay,
Speaker 1: take care, thank you bye. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you. Please consider making a donation to
Speaker 1: the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you
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Speaker 1: would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.