Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome to a special set of episodes of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting
Speaker 1: all of us. This disease has brought a host of medical, economic,
Speaker 1: and political problems, but it's also given us a ton
Speaker 1: of uncertainty and anxiety, which are beginning to have an
Speaker 1: enormous negative impact on our collective While being but whenever
Speaker 1: I'm confused or fearful, I remember that looking for answers
Speaker 1: in evidence based science is always the best way to go,
Speaker 1: and that's where I'm hoping this podcast can help. If
Speaker 1: your brain works anything like mine does, you may have
Speaker 1: spent a lot of this challenging COVID nineteen crisis in
Speaker 1: a near constant state of mental rumination. My inner monologue
Speaker 1: has been constantly racing from students and family members I
Speaker 1: need to check in on to what's left in my
Speaker 1: pantry for dinner, to the latest scary statistics, to oh no,
Speaker 1: did I just touch my face? My entire brain is
Speaker 1: like zip zipzipsipsip from one stressful thing to another. The
Speaker 1: continued uncertainty of this awful situation has made it nearly
Speaker 1: impossible for me to switch my thoughts off, and I
Speaker 1: know I'm not alone. One friend recently mentioned that even
Speaker 1: when she has gotten a chance to relax, to sit
Speaker 1: down with a good novel, she feels like she ends
Speaker 1: up reading the same sentence over and over again because
Speaker 1: her brain keeps jumping from one scary scenario to the next.
Speaker 1: If we're going to make it through this collective crisis
Speaker 1: with our mental health intact, we need to find ways
Speaker 1: to keep all our ruminative thoughts under control. The good
Speaker 1: news is that modern science and ancient traditions have converged
Speaker 1: on an effective and completely free way to quiet our
Speaker 1: racing minds. That's the practice of meditation. If you've listened
Speaker 1: to past episodes of The Happiness Lab, you've probably already
Speaker 1: heard about the benefits of meditation. But today I want
Speaker 1: to talk with someone who's seen these benefits firsthand, someone
Speaker 1: who started out as a huge skeptic but has converted
Speaker 1: to the power of mindfulness. And so I was super
Speaker 1: excited to welcome to the Happiness Lab. ABC News correspondent
Speaker 1: Dan Harris. He's the author of ten Percent Happier. How
Speaker 1: I teamed the voice in my head, reduced stress without
Speaker 1: losing my edge, and found self help that really works
Speaker 1: a true story. We'll start the episode with how Dan
Speaker 1: first came to this practice of meditation. So this was
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and four. I was anchoring the
Speaker 1: news updates on Good Morning America. The main hosts of
Speaker 1: the show were Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson. Diane and
Speaker 1: Charlie said, okay, over to Dan for the headlines of
Speaker 1: the morning. And as soon as that happened, as soon
Speaker 1: as the red light went on, my body went into mutiny.
Speaker 1: I could feel my chest titan, I could feel my
Speaker 1: lung seize up, my palms were sweaty, my mouth went dry.
Speaker 1: But my mind, in reaction to what was happening physiologically,
Speaker 1: started to freak out. And so the more I freaked
Speaker 1: out psychologically, the more my body reacted, and the more
Speaker 1: my body reacted, the more my mind reacted. And it
Speaker 1: was just a death spiral. And I just couldn't breathe,
Speaker 1: which is a prerequisite for being a news anchor. And
Speaker 1: I had to do something and I'd never done before,
Speaker 1: which is quit right in the middle of my stick.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that sucked. What was the fall up after that?
Speaker 1: I mean, you've never had one of these episodes before
Speaker 1: you go to your doctor and talk to him about it.
Speaker 1: So the first panic attack happened, everybody asked me what
Speaker 1: was wrong, and I lied and said nothing. I went
Speaker 1: backstage and my mom called me and she said, you
Speaker 1: just had a panic attack. I didn't really do him
Speaker 1: much about it. She hooked me up with a one
Speaker 1: doctor who I talked on the phone, and we didn't
Speaker 1: really do much about it. So I just carried out
Speaker 1: with my life and I was able to go on
Speaker 1: the show at the top of the next hour and
Speaker 1: I was fine, So I kind of got away with it.
Speaker 1: Then many months later, I had another one, but that
Speaker 1: was like a real wake up. So I then went
Speaker 1: to go see a doctor and he asked me a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions to try to figure out what was
Speaker 1: going on, and one of the questions was do do drugs?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I do do drugs, and he leaned
Speaker 1: back in his chair and gave me a very shrinky look,
Speaker 1: which communicated the following sentiment, okay, asshole, mystery solved to actually,
Speaker 1: I should back up. At this point the drugs. I
Speaker 1: had spent a lot of time after nine to eleven
Speaker 1: in places like Afghanistan, West Bank, Gaza, Israel. During the
Speaker 1: second at Fada, I was in Iraq many, many times.
Speaker 1: And when I came home from Iraq, I at one,
Speaker 1: after one six month stint, I got depressed and I
Speaker 1: didn't know I was depressed, and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do about it. So I a friend of mine
Speaker 1: offered me some cocaine. I had never done drugs before,
Speaker 1: and I said yes, And I really liked the cocaine
Speaker 1: and it made me feel better, but it wasn't I
Speaker 1: was never high on the air. I wasn't high the
Speaker 1: mornings I had panic attack. So I didn't connect the two.
Speaker 1: But as soon as the doctor asked me about drugs,
Speaker 1: I made the connection. And he argued that it was
Speaker 1: enough to change my brain chemistry and make it more
Speaker 1: likely for me to have a panic attack. And so
Speaker 1: that is what really made me change my life. And
Speaker 1: it was partly the drugs. But in some ways the
Speaker 1: cocaine you were doing was a symptom of something else. Right,
Speaker 1: In some ways it was the workaholism plus the drugs.
Speaker 1: Probably right, I think it was ambition. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: you put your finger on it. You know, I had
Speaker 1: volunteered to go cover these wars after nine to eleven
Speaker 1: without really thinking much about the psychological consequences. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was an intense time. And I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to draw a straight line back to my
Speaker 1: desire to make a mark in the world, right, which
Speaker 1: was unique to you, I think, being an anchor in
Speaker 1: the midst of the post nine to eleven world. But
Speaker 1: I mean lots of us go through this where we
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, our work is everything and we
Speaker 1: have to be on all the time and do whatever
Speaker 1: is necessary, whether that's drugs or work one hundred hours
Speaker 1: a week or I mean, this is in some ways unique.
Speaker 1: So and so I want to fall up on this
Speaker 1: story from there. So you know, your doctor tells you
Speaker 1: get off the drugs, but it sounded like after that
Speaker 1: you still started searching for ways to kind of find
Speaker 1: a better path. So it actually a bunch of things
Speaker 1: happened after that faithful morning. When I sat with the
Speaker 1: doctor in his kind of shabby little office. He didn't
Speaker 1: think I needed to go to rehab, but he definitely
Speaker 1: said I needed to quit doing drugs and that I
Speaker 1: needed to come see him once or twice a week indefinitely.
Speaker 1: So I did do that. What happened next was that
Speaker 1: my boss, a very famous news anchor named Peter Jennings.
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy at his peak was reaching thirty
Speaker 1: million people in night and he was a very smart
Speaker 1: and interesting guy. And he asked me to start covering
Speaker 1: faith in spirituality, which I did not want to do.
Speaker 1: I was raised in the People's Republic of Massachusetts and
Speaker 1: my parents are both left of Trotsky academic physicians, atheists.
Speaker 1: As I often joke, I did have a bar mitzvah,
Speaker 1: but only for money, so I'm not I was not
Speaker 1: spiritually inclined. And I told some of that to Peter
Speaker 1: and he said he didn't care. He wanted me to
Speaker 1: do it anyway, and it became great transformative assignment for me.
Speaker 1: I realized how ignorant I was about issues related to
Speaker 1: faith and spirituality. I made a bunch of friends. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in mosques and megachurches and
Speaker 1: Mormon temples, and it was fascinating that said, none of
Speaker 1: what I encountered spoke to me personally. I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: join a church or go kosher or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But eventually one of my producers, Felicia Baberica. She had
Speaker 1: been turned onto a self help author by the name
Speaker 1: of Eckhart totally, and Eckhart totally was not somebody I'd
Speaker 1: ahead ever heard of, but Felicia said he might make
Speaker 1: a good story for me. So I did a little googling,
Speaker 1: and turns out he's beloved by celebrities. Oprah has put
Speaker 1: copies of his book in every bedroom and every house
Speaker 1: she owned. So it struck me as weird enough for
Speaker 1: a good TV story, So I ordered one of his
Speaker 1: books at the first The book just struck me as ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You know, he's using pseudoscientific like vibrational fields, and he's
Speaker 1: making these grandiose claims about how he had a spiritual
Speaker 1: awakening and lived on a park bench in the city
Speaker 1: of London for two years in a state of bliss.
Speaker 1: And then he started to unferral thesis about the human
Speaker 1: situation that I thought was so spot on. His argument
Speaker 1: is that we all have a voice in our head
Speaker 1: that chases you out of bed, and he's yammering at
Speaker 1: you all day long and has you constantly wanting stuff,
Speaker 1: not wanting stuff, judging people, comparing yourself to other people,
Speaker 1: judging yourself, thinking about the past, or thinking about the
Speaker 1: future to the detriment of you know, whatever's happening right now.
Speaker 1: That just struck me as spot on true. And this
Speaker 1: thesis explained the most embarrassing moment of my life, that
Speaker 1: the panic attack was the result of me just being
Speaker 1: yanked around by this voice in my head. And that
Speaker 1: just struck me as a massive and important realization. And
Speaker 1: so that was sort of like point number one, where
Speaker 1: you sort of realized that there was this interesting take
Speaker 1: on the human condition that if we could just get
Speaker 1: control over this crazy voice in our head, we might
Speaker 1: live a better life and sort of will flourish a
Speaker 1: little bit more. But the real step forward was when
Speaker 1: I think you get a book from your wife, if
Speaker 1: I remember the story correctly, that really pointed you more
Speaker 1: towards meditation as a specific path to controlling that voice
Speaker 1: in your head. Yeah. So I was super confused when
Speaker 1: I read Toli's book because I couldn't see any actionable
Speaker 1: practical advice. Was just really frustrating, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do about this. I ended up spending a
Speaker 1: bunch of time looking into the self help world, met
Speaker 1: a lot of people who promised that you can solve
Speaker 1: all of your problems through the power of positive thinking,
Speaker 1: which is not a possibility actively bad actually the research
Speaker 1: subject actively yes, yes, it's reckless hope. I think that
Speaker 1: they're peddling. And then I came in the middle of
Speaker 1: all of this, I came home and my then fiance
Speaker 1: and now baby mama Bianca, gave me a book by
Speaker 1: a guy named doctor Mark Epstein. Bianca said, you know,
Speaker 1: she'd been hearing me yammer on about totally and whatever,
Speaker 1: and this might be useful for me. So I read
Speaker 1: the book that night and I had a big aha moment,
Speaker 1: which was that all the stuff that was most compelling
Speaker 1: from ek Caartoli was lifted from somebody called the Buddha,
Speaker 1: and the Buddha actually had practical advice, which was meditate.
Speaker 1: I was a little hung up on that because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to meditate. I had a bad attitude about it.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting to finally have something real to do.
Speaker 1: And so what didn't that feel like when you first
Speaker 1: started meditating, right, because now you have to sit there
Speaker 1: for five minutes kind of being like adopting this practice
Speaker 1: that you probably before with your scientist, had thought of
Speaker 1: as like hippie dippy or like people in robes do
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, or I mean, what was the
Speaker 1: first what was the first few steps? Like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was humbling. You're absolutely right. I did not want to
Speaker 1: do it. I was super intrigued by the notion of
Speaker 1: this voice in our head, and I had this powerful
Speaker 1: intuition that managing that voice would change my life. And
Speaker 1: as you indicated, I had a really bad at tute
Speaker 1: about meditation. I thought it was for people who are,
Speaker 1: you know, really into aromatherapy and Cat Stevens and you
Speaker 1: use the word now must day with no irony, and
Speaker 1: that's not entirely untrue, by the way. But what really
Speaker 1: changed my mind was the science. There's just all this,
Speaker 1: you know this, there's a ton of science. I suggest
Speaker 1: that meditation can you know, literally rewire your brain and
Speaker 1: the parts of the brain associated with stress or attention regulation.
Speaker 1: It's been shown to lower blood pressure, boost your immune system.
Speaker 1: And so that was super intriguing. Given that my parents
Speaker 1: are scientists, my wife is a scientist. I was not
Speaker 1: good enough at math to go into that direction. So
Speaker 1: now I wear makeup and talk to TV cameras, but
Speaker 1: I respect science. So that's really what changed my mind.
Speaker 1: And so I was reading a book by John cabot Zin,
Speaker 1: who's a former MIT scientist who pioneered something called mindfulness
Speaker 1: based stress reduction, which is a secularized version of Buddhist meditation.
Speaker 1: And I was reading his book and I said, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this, and I set an alarm on
Speaker 1: my BlackBerry. This is how long ago. This was like
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Set an alarm for five minutes. And
Speaker 1: I sat on the floor, not cross legged because I
Speaker 1: don't like that, and I was I'm not so limber,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of my back was leaning up
Speaker 1: against a bed and my legs were splayed out in
Speaker 1: front of me. And you know, the basic instruction is
Speaker 1: to sit, try to feel your breath coming in and
Speaker 1: going out, and then when you get distracted, start again.
Speaker 1: It was humbling. It was like holding a live fish
Speaker 1: in your hand. It's just your The mind's always squirming
Speaker 1: away from you. Once you see where it's going, it's
Speaker 1: really embarrassing. You know, you're just you know, composing tweets,
Speaker 1: plotting revenge, thinking about lunch, random thoughts, you know where
Speaker 1: to gerbils run wild and and then you just have
Speaker 1: to catch it and begin again and again and again,
Speaker 1: and after the first five minutes was up, I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not some nonsense hippie pastime, this isn't hacky sack.
Speaker 1: This is really a powerful exercise. And I just decided
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to do this every day for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future. And here I am, and so now a
Speaker 1: decade on doing it every day, Like, what's the difference
Speaker 1: in terms of your inner monologue? Well, look, I entitled
Speaker 1: my book and then everything I've done subsequently ten percent Happier.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of stuck with math jokes the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. But you know it's true enough, right,
Speaker 1: It's not going to solve all of your problems. Nothing's
Speaker 1: going to solve all of your problems. That's why that's
Speaker 1: why I called the book ten percent Happier. My publisher
Speaker 1: didn't get the joke, and she was trying to bargain
Speaker 1: me up to twenty. You know, it sounds so you
Speaker 1: can think about it like an investment. So I think
Speaker 1: the ten percent compounds annually. This is a skill. The
Speaker 1: ability to work with and have a different relationship with
Speaker 1: the voice in your head is a skill, and you
Speaker 1: get better over time. I find that my inner weather
Speaker 1: has become significantly balmier. But does that mean that I'm
Speaker 1: perpetually blissed out? Absolutely not am. I I'm super anxious
Speaker 1: right now in the middle of this pandemic. I am
Speaker 1: worried about my business. I'm worried about the state of
Speaker 1: the world. I'm worried about Your wife works in healthcare too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there you go. My wife is incredibly stressful. She
Speaker 1: is an intensive care specialist and so she works in
Speaker 1: the ICU. She knows how to work a ventilator, her
Speaker 1: skills are very much in demand. She's highly, highly skilled
Speaker 1: and trained, and I think it's the right think for
Speaker 1: her to do to go back to work. But I'm
Speaker 1: worried about you know, these people are dying and so
Speaker 1: I'm worried about that. You know, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: I'm worried about her infecting me when she comes home.
Speaker 1: And we have a kid, and I would be super
Speaker 1: frantic if kids were getting sick regularly, which doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be the case. But still, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things stressing me out, and I don't think meditation
Speaker 1: is going to solve all of that. I just think
Speaker 1: it makes you more balanced, more resilient, more thoughtful in
Speaker 1: the face of life's ups and downs. So let's dig
Speaker 1: into some of the specific things that meditation might be
Speaker 1: helping in this domain, again with the caveat that it's
Speaker 1: not going to make this pandemic perfect, but even if
Speaker 1: it's making each of these things ten percent better, that's
Speaker 1: pretty big in the current crisis. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: meditation and anxiety. So what's some of the evidence jesting
Speaker 1: that just this simple act of following your breath for
Speaker 1: five to ten minutes a day will allow you to
Speaker 1: reduce this or fear that we're all feeling right now.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear. You know, the people in
Speaker 1: my position tend to hype the science. I worry that
Speaker 1: some of their reporting around meditation and science has been
Speaker 1: a little bit irresponsible or overblown, and so I try
Speaker 1: to be careful, largely because my wife police is what
Speaker 1: I say about this to point out that, you know,
Speaker 1: the research around meditation is very much in its early stages.
Speaker 1: It's been going on for ten, fifteen to twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's really ramped up in huge ways now, but it's
Speaker 1: still early days. So I usually use the term like
Speaker 1: the research strongly suggests the following. But where the research
Speaker 1: is the strongest is around anxiety and depression. That's really
Speaker 1: where it's the strongest. And anxiety and depression or two
Speaker 1: things that I've been dealing with my whole life. I
Speaker 1: was a little kid and my parents had to send
Speaker 1: me to shrink because I was worried about nuclear war.
Speaker 1: So these are not new am for me, and it's
Speaker 1: really heartening to see that meditation is good for those
Speaker 1: two conditions. How does it work? Because I think if
Speaker 1: you're an individual human being, you may not care so
Speaker 1: much about what the data show. You probably just care
Speaker 1: about like, what's this going to do for me? And
Speaker 1: how is it going to do it? The act of
Speaker 1: sitting and trying to watch your breath inevitably getting distracted
Speaker 1: over and over and over, and then noticing what's distracted
Speaker 1: you and starting again and again and again. That over
Speaker 1: time boosts your self awareness. You have more visibility into
Speaker 1: your inner life. And once you see clearly these anxiety loops,
Speaker 1: these thought patterns, these ancient habits, these storylines embedded into
Speaker 1: us by our parents or by the culture, once you
Speaker 1: can see those clearly, they have less of a chance
Speaker 1: of owning you, and that is a game changing skill
Speaker 1: that you can You know, after a few weeks of
Speaker 1: meditation as a beginner, you start to really see it
Speaker 1: show up in your life. But over time it you
Speaker 1: just get better at it and better at it. And
Speaker 1: for me, that has been one of, if not the
Speaker 1: most powerful results of meditation. And so the second domain
Speaker 1: I wanted to dig into is the domain of sleep. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that one of the things that
Speaker 1: anxiety does and stress does in general, is it kind
Speaker 1: of jacks up our sympathetic nervous system in a way
Speaker 1: that's hard for us to rest in any form, but
Speaker 1: particularly in sleep. Have you found personally that this active
Speaker 1: meditating every day has helped your sleep and know of
Speaker 1: any other evidence for it. Yeah, so there is evidence
Speaker 1: that meditation is good for sleep. But there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of irony here because the word Buddha means awake. So
Speaker 1: meditation was not designed to help you sleep. It was
Speaker 1: designed to wake you up to your inner cacophony so
Speaker 1: that you have a different relationship to it, and so
Speaker 1: that you can see other fundamental truths about the universe,
Speaker 1: like impermanence, the fact that everything's changing all the time,
Speaker 1: and there's not much we can do about it, which
Speaker 1: is actually scary and liberating at the same time. That
Speaker 1: was the original purpose of meditation. But in our modern life,
Speaker 1: where our ancient sort of racing mind for which we evolved,
Speaker 1: you know, we evolved to be a you know, for
Speaker 1: threat detection and finding food and mates, we evolved to
Speaker 1: have a raising mind, it's not serving us in a
Speaker 1: modern context in many ways. So you get into bed
Speaker 1: at night and the mind is racing, and we don't
Speaker 1: know what to do about it. And so meditation is
Speaker 1: really useful for calming you down, focusing you on something
Speaker 1: other than your thoughts, even if just for a nanosecond,
Speaker 1: kind of a circuit breaker on our repetitive inner loops.
Speaker 1: And for many people that really helps the process of
Speaker 1: going to sleep. And so I have I'm very much
Speaker 1: in the habit of the last thing I do every
Speaker 1: day is meditate. Yeah, me too. That's that's the main
Speaker 1: time that I do it. And I can tell when
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it, when I'm like really busy and
Speaker 1: get to bed late, and I'm like, again, fall prey
Speaker 1: to all the biases that make us not do this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I'm just going to fall asleep right now.
Speaker 1: My sleep is just so much worse than if I'd
Speaker 1: taken in three minutes to just follow my breath. But
Speaker 1: that gets to the problem, which is and I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that you wrote your second book.
Speaker 1: I think I heard you interviewed at one point and
Speaker 1: you said, you know, you thought when you wrote the
Speaker 1: first book and gave all the evidence that everybody who
Speaker 1: read it would just instantly meditate and the world would
Speaker 1: be a better place, hurl themselves into the lotus position.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought they would do. But alas, we
Speaker 1: are creatures of like horrid neuroses that prevent us from
Speaker 1: doing really good things that would be awesome for us.
Speaker 1: So when we get back from the break, I actually
Speaker 1: want to talk more about the things that prevent us
Speaker 1: from doing it, especially right now during the COVID crisis,
Speaker 1: and what we can do to overcome those voices in
Speaker 1: our head that are telling us not right now won't work,
Speaker 1: try it later. Meditation could be a huge help for
Speaker 1: all of us right now, but that doesn't necessarily make
Speaker 1: it easy to sit down and get our own on
Speaker 1: during this tough time. And so I asked Dan Harris
Speaker 1: for some help. I wanted him to walk me through
Speaker 1: the reasons why we don't necessarily make it onto our
Speaker 1: meditation cushion, especially when we most need it. It's probably
Speaker 1: super frustrating and deeply annoying to hear people extol the
Speaker 1: virtues of meditation, and then many people listen to this
Speaker 1: are thinking, well, I haven't done it, so now this
Speaker 1: thing that's supposed to distress me is just making me
Speaker 1: more stressed because I you know, I'm engaged in self
Speaker 1: laceration around not doing this thing that everybody says I
Speaker 1: should do, and blah blah blah. So I get it.
Speaker 1: So I'm here to make this easier for you and
Speaker 1: lower the bar. I don't think twenty minutes is a
Speaker 1: reasonable ask for many people at the beginning, which is
Speaker 1: why one of my little slogans is one minute counts.
Speaker 1: I get that people are time starved. Even when we're
Speaker 1: locked in our homes, we feel time starved. I've been
Speaker 1: been meditating at night with my elderly neighbor. She's got
Speaker 1: some anxiety, but for lots of legitimate reasons, and so
Speaker 1: we go out into the hallway and stay physically distanced
Speaker 1: and meditate together, and sometimes my son comes out to see.
Speaker 1: He's five, he doesn't like meditation, but he comes out
Speaker 1: to say hello. And I've noticed that she talks about
Speaker 1: how she has nothing to do all day and she's
Speaker 1: beating herself up for not meditating during the day. And
Speaker 1: I get it. We feel time starved no matter what's
Speaker 1: going on in our lives, and I'm not here to
Speaker 1: talk you out of that. What I do think is useful, though,
Speaker 1: is to lower the bar enough so that people can
Speaker 1: actually can and will actually do this thing. And so
Speaker 1: one minute Counts is I think it sets people's minds
Speaker 1: at ease. It seems so eminently doable that I like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd rather see people do five to ten minutes,
Speaker 1: but I think one minute definitely does count, and you
Speaker 1: are getting real benefit from that, and I think it
Speaker 1: can lead to a deeper practice over time. The other
Speaker 1: thing I love about the one minute Counts is that
Speaker 1: the one minute doesn't necessarily have to be you in
Speaker 1: the lotus position, you know in some fake meditations, shrine
Speaker 1: in your tiny apartment with your family around you. It
Speaker 1: can be when you're washing the dishes, it can be
Speaker 1: when you're unloading the dishwasher, it can be when you're
Speaker 1: washing your hands. I've heard as another great one like
Speaker 1: if you just take time to follow your breath and
Speaker 1: be present during those moments, in some sense, that can
Speaker 1: count too. Okay, so you've actually said something very important.
Speaker 1: Two things are true. One, it is true that we
Speaker 1: can co opt our daily activities to turn them into meditation,
Speaker 1: so I have a bunch of things to say about that.
Speaker 1: But it is also true that there is a difference
Speaker 1: between sort of free range meditation as I call it,
Speaker 1: you know, on the go daily life meditation where you're
Speaker 1: mindful while you're washing the dishes or washing your hands
Speaker 1: or whatever, and formal practice. And I believe that if
Speaker 1: you're doing on the go practice mindfulness practices, that's great.
Speaker 1: You should feel good about that, and if that's all
Speaker 1: you ever do, great, bravo done. But I also believe
Speaker 1: that there is immense value to formal practice, even if
Speaker 1: it's just for a minute or five minutes, and that
Speaker 1: that can turbo charge the free range practices. So I
Speaker 1: just want to make that plug. But on your point
Speaker 1: about these sort of on the go mindfulness practices, absolutely
Speaker 1: you can turn anything you're doing into meditation just by
Speaker 1: paying attention to it. Let's take washing your hands, because
Speaker 1: we all have to do this for twenty seconds a
Speaker 1: million times a day. And now my hands are just
Speaker 1: you know, as dry as the sahara and cracked and painful,
Speaker 1: which is a good sign. We should all we should
Speaker 1: all have painful hands, right seeing that, Yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: take washing your hands. You can sing Happy Birthday twice, fine,
Speaker 1: or you can use those twenty seconds to just feel
Speaker 1: the road data of your senses. What does it feel
Speaker 1: like when the hot or cold or warm water hits
Speaker 1: your hands? Was it feel like as your fingers intertwined?
Speaker 1: Was it feel like as you put the soap on
Speaker 1: and the soap washes off? What noises are you're hearing?
Speaker 1: What are you seeing in front of you? And then
Speaker 1: every time you get distracted, which you will, You'll get
Speaker 1: distracted a million times. You get carried away by your
Speaker 1: to do list, by your phantasmagoric projections into the future
Speaker 1: about this pandemic and this Gently catch yourself and return
Speaker 1: to the physical sensations. I think that's a better way
Speaker 1: to spend twenty seconds than just singing Happy Birthday or
Speaker 1: neurotically worrying about any number of things. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. So that's kind of one thing, this idea
Speaker 1: that people don't have enough time. I think another thing
Speaker 1: that's coming up for a lot of people right now,
Speaker 1: especially given that everybody's squished with their family into small
Speaker 1: apartments and things and can't get out to leave, is
Speaker 1: it feels like I don't have any privacy to do
Speaker 1: this right now that like, you know, my kid could
Speaker 1: kind of could walk in while I'm sitting there trying
Speaker 1: to follow my breath. You know, there's stuff going on everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find silence. What advice do you have
Speaker 1: for people who just feel like they're too kind of
Speaker 1: trapped in their homes with so many folks around to
Speaker 1: do this. Well, first of all, I feel you. I'm
Speaker 1: in my home with my wife and our five year old,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot. So I think you've got to
Speaker 1: give yourself a break and recognize that some days, many days,
Speaker 1: perhaps most days, you won't get to it. However, there
Speaker 1: are little tricks. So for bedtime, for example, if you've
Speaker 1: got younger children you're putting them to bed, there's always
Speaker 1: that space between when they stopped talking and when you
Speaker 1: can actually extricate yourself. So if you're lying there spooned
Speaker 1: with your kid or sitting in a chair next to
Speaker 1: the bed, steal that minute or two right before you
Speaker 1: go to bed. Great time. You know, we have a
Speaker 1: comfy chair in the corner of our bedroom and I
Speaker 1: use that my policies. I just meditate until I feel
Speaker 1: super tired. I don't know how long that is. I'm
Speaker 1: a timing it, but I think it's a while that
Speaker 1: you will definitely have time for that. Lock yourself in
Speaker 1: the bathroom, use noise canceling headphones first thing in the
Speaker 1: morning before anybody else is up. Lots of little tricks
Speaker 1: you can use and give yourself a break if you
Speaker 1: don't get to it. The final thing, and this one
Speaker 1: comes up a lot for me when I'm sitting to
Speaker 1: like literally sit down and meditate, is I'm kind of
Speaker 1: more scared now than I normally am. I feel like
Speaker 1: when I first started meditating, I was really worried about
Speaker 1: the Pandora's box. You know, what crap from my childhood
Speaker 1: is going to come up, what insecurities are going to
Speaker 1: fly by. It can and sometimes be really scary when
Speaker 1: you're really listening to this voice closely, and I feel
Speaker 1: like that's even more scary now when in some ways
Speaker 1: our anxieties are justified in certain senses, right, like our
Speaker 1: mortality is coming closer than it's ever been for some
Speaker 1: of us, especially those with pre existing conditions, And so
Speaker 1: how do you fight this one where it's like, it
Speaker 1: just seems like if I sit down to just follow
Speaker 1: my breath and pay attention to what I'm feeling, it's
Speaker 1: going to feel really awful, particularly in the current time. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just validate the point. I think it's true.
Speaker 1: It's true if you meditate, it's possible that difficult things
Speaker 1: from your past will surface. I think it's also true
Speaker 1: that if you meditate right now and you don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of trauma in your past, the trauma of
Speaker 1: being alive right now it may surface for you. And
Speaker 1: so I don't want to sugarcoat that, but I think
Speaker 1: the choice is do you want to have this stuff
Speaker 1: because it's there, the traumas there. Would you like to
Speaker 1: have it lurking in the background of your psyche, driving
Speaker 1: you blindly in many ways, or would you like to
Speaker 1: drag it into the sunlight and investigate it journalistically, non judgmentally,
Speaker 1: in a friendly, kind way, so that you have a choice.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what meditation offers to us is
Speaker 1: instead of reacting blindly to everything because we have no
Speaker 1: visibility into our inner life, you can respond wisely. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in a we are in an extremely uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: difficult situation right now. Do you want to face that
Speaker 1: fourth rightly so that you can be calmer, insaner, and
Speaker 1: that you can be more effective and more helpful to
Speaker 1: other people. I think meditations are going to be very
Speaker 1: useful in that sense. I don't think I'm not a
Speaker 1: meditation fundamentalist. I think there are other ways that can
Speaker 1: also be useful. Calling your shrink if you need medication,
Speaker 1: taking that medication, getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well, making
Speaker 1: sure you have social connection, tuning into your capacity to help,
Speaker 1: which can elevate you out of you the black hole
Speaker 1: of self obsession. There are many ways to cope with
Speaker 1: this moment. I would just submit that meditation should be
Speaker 1: one of them that you should consider. And in some sense,
Speaker 1: if you're doing it right, if you're doing it right,
Speaker 1: meaning that you're doing it non judgmentally, in some ways,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to not embrace those yucky emotions, but at
Speaker 1: least be there with them and be compassionate about the
Speaker 1: fact that you have them, which in our daily lives
Speaker 1: we tend not to do with the yucky stuff going
Speaker 1: on gold Star, I mean, that's exactly right. That's the
Speaker 1: radical move of meditation, which is our habitual response to
Speaker 1: difficult emotions is fight it or feed it. This is
Speaker 1: something completely different. This is just being with it, investigating it.
Speaker 1: So the great meditation teacher Tara Brock has a little
Speaker 1: acronym that I like called rain our aim. You're hit
Speaker 1: by a big, powerful emotion, are is just recognized what's
Speaker 1: happening right now? A is allow it instead of fighting
Speaker 1: it or feeding it, giving into the anger and you know,
Speaker 1: making the phone call that you wish you hadn't made,
Speaker 1: or giving it to the fear, and you know, buying
Speaker 1: all the surgical masks that the doctors actually need. Just
Speaker 1: allow it to be here and then I investigate it.
Speaker 1: Feelings they call them feelings for a reason. They show
Speaker 1: up in your body. And you can take a look
Speaker 1: at your chest, tightening your head, thrumming, maybe some nervous
Speaker 1: energy down your arms. Take a look at that kind
Speaker 1: of non judgmentally, and then n can mean nurture. It's
Speaker 1: a little little syrupy for my taste, but have a
Speaker 1: friendly attitude toward it. Instead of judging yourself for having
Speaker 1: this emotion or wishing it away or giving into it,
Speaker 1: you can actually have a warmer relationship to see that
Speaker 1: the anxiety is just your mind's way of protecting you.
Speaker 1: Maybe not super skillfully, but it is this little neurotic
Speaker 1: voice in your head is trying to help you, and
Speaker 1: you can generate some warmth toward that, and then you
Speaker 1: can you know, blow it a kiss and go in
Speaker 1: another direction. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard the phrase you use.
Speaker 1: This is what I like to use from my end
Speaker 1: is like you're cool. Hey, you're cool. Yeah, chest tight,
Speaker 1: you know you're cool. That's all right, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: just like nurture and love it and you know, try
Speaker 1: to you know, encourage it. But just like it's cool,
Speaker 1: you're there. I'm not going to freak out, just hang out.
Speaker 1: You know. When we talk about meditation, we often talk
Speaker 1: specifically about like breath based meditation, where we're just kind
Speaker 1: of following our breath. But lots of folks have argued
Speaker 1: there right now. What we need is a different kind
Speaker 1: of meditation, one that focuses on other people right now. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a pitch for this is I
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: pitch for love. And I want me to say something
Speaker 1: about love here, because I think that love has been
Speaker 1: pounded pulverized into meaninglessness through wrote repetition and Hollywood cliche
Speaker 1: and bad Bon Jovi songs. I think we kind of
Speaker 1: need to knock love off of its pedestal and just
Speaker 1: define it down just something super simple that doesn't require
Speaker 1: string music or anything like that. It's just the capacity
Speaker 1: to give a shit. We all have that. It's deeply
Speaker 1: wired into us or we are a social species. The
Speaker 1: human who was only human on the savannah back in
Speaker 1: the day was probably a dead human because you need
Speaker 1: it to be part of a tribe, a pack, so
Speaker 1: we can all tap into this innate ability we have
Speaker 1: to care about other people and about ourselves. There's a
Speaker 1: pretty good argument to be made that if you can't
Speaker 1: have a friendly relationship to it yourself, you're going to
Speaker 1: have a hard time doing it for others. So there's
Speaker 1: a kind of meditation that, as you might imagine, I
Speaker 1: had a negative reaction to when I first heard about it.
Speaker 1: It's called loving kindness meditation. It is like like using
Speaker 1: all the cheese from like meditation, like technology to like
Speaker 1: make us feel really hippie dippy about it. Yes, but
Speaker 1: I was interviewing somebody recently. They were doing this loving
Speaker 1: kindness meditation and she went to the teacher to complain
Speaker 1: about it, and the teacher said, if you can't do cheesy,
Speaker 1: you can't be free. I think that is an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful thing to say. So let me tell you what
Speaker 1: the meditation is. Because some of you, who if you're
Speaker 1: like me, an anti sentimentalist, you're going to have a reaction,
Speaker 1: which is you basically picture a series of beings. Often
Speaker 1: we start with ourselves and then you move on to
Speaker 1: like a close friend, a mentor, a neutral person, a
Speaker 1: difficult person, and then everybody. And as you're envisioning these people,
Speaker 1: you repeat silently for phrases may be happy, maybe be safe,
Speaker 1: may be healthy, may you live with ease. To me,
Speaker 1: at least, it sounded like Valentine's Day with a knife
Speaker 1: to my throat. But but there's been an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of study of this kind of meditation, and it's been
Speaker 1: shown to have really powerful effects not only on our physiology,
Speaker 1: but also on our psychology and behavior. And I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm saying this, but I think what is going
Speaker 1: to save us, both individually and collectively right now is love.
Speaker 1: As I defined it before. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: super gooey. It doesn't have to be something out of
Speaker 1: a movie. But it can be as simple as having compassion.
Speaker 1: Has been described as empathy, which is feeling other people's
Speaker 1: feelings plus action, just having the desire to help. So
Speaker 1: what are you doing with your elderly neighbors, What are
Speaker 1: you doing with the people with whom you share an apartment?
Speaker 1: What are you doing if you live alone? Are you
Speaker 1: supporting local businesses? Just that move of tapping into your
Speaker 1: your innate capacity to give a shit about other people
Speaker 1: and yourself can elevate you out of the morass of
Speaker 1: kind of self centered neuroses. And as I said a
Speaker 1: moment ago, I think it's what will help us survive
Speaker 1: this thing individually but also as a culture. Given all
Speaker 1: the science of the stuff and what you've seen in
Speaker 1: your own life, are you hopeful that If people use
Speaker 1: some of these techniques, it's one of many things they
Speaker 1: can do to feel better during this crazy time. I one, now,
Speaker 1: I'm violating my ten percent a little stick, but I
Speaker 1: am one hundred percent confident that if you add just
Speaker 1: small doses of daily ish meditation, it's going to make
Speaker 1: a difference in your life. I don't I'm not laboring
Speaker 1: under the delusion that immediately all three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million Americans or seven billion humans are going to just
Speaker 1: start meditating. But I think calm is contagious, just like
Speaker 1: panic is contagious. As talking to a great meditation teacher
Speaker 1: the other day who quoted something that the very famous
Speaker 1: zendmaster Tick not Han said, which is that you can
Speaker 1: think about our current situation, or any stressful situation, like
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in a boat in a storm.
Speaker 1: Of course that's a stressful situation. Some people are going
Speaker 1: to be freaking out, but one calm person on that
Speaker 1: boat can change the atmosphere dramatically. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think we have to expect that everybody's going to meditate.
Speaker 1: Don't try to like browbeat your spouse into doing it
Speaker 1: or your parents into doing it. If you do it.
Speaker 1: The way you show up will be different some percentage
Speaker 1: of the time, and that can make any calculable difference.
Speaker 1: I hope you've gotten some helpful tips for how you
Speaker 1: can reap the benefits of a little mindfulness in this
Speaker 1: stressful time. And I hope you'll also check out Dan's
Speaker 1: podcast ten Percent Happier, where he'll give you even more
Speaker 1: tips for becoming present in the stressful time. But I
Speaker 1: also wanted to take Dan's charge seriously that one minute
Speaker 1: is all you need to get started. So let's end
Speaker 1: this episode with a quick one minute ish meditation together.
Speaker 1: If you're walking around listening to this, why don't you
Speaker 1: hit pause on this recording for a second and go
Speaker 1: find a comfortable seat. So, now that you're sitting down,
Speaker 1: I want you to quickly close your eyes and become present.
Speaker 1: Just pay attention to how your body is feeling right now.
Speaker 1: Then I want all of you to take a long,
Speaker 1: deep breath in and then breathe out really smoothly. Now,
Speaker 1: let's take another long deep breath in, really filling your belly,
Speaker 1: and then breathe it out. And one more time, just
Speaker 1: a really deep breath in, really filling that belly and
Speaker 1: breathe it out, and now I just want you to
Speaker 1: have your breath returned to normal, and I want you
Speaker 1: to just follow where your breath feels like it's moving
Speaker 1: in your body. Sometimes this will be at the edge
Speaker 1: of your nose or at the edge of your lips,
Speaker 1: but it could also just be in your chest or
Speaker 1: in your belly where you see your belly rising and falling.
Speaker 1: And for the next few seconds, just pay attention to
Speaker 1: where your breath is. Don't try to change it, just
Speaker 1: follow it. And if your mind wanders from your breath,
Speaker 1: which it will inevitably do, just really non judgmentally bring
Speaker 1: it back and just go back to focusing on your breath.
Speaker 1: Now that you've had a few seconds to take time
Speaker 1: to focus on your breath, will end with one big,
Speaker 1: deep breath in and then give it a big sigh out.
Speaker 1: And so that's it. Y'all just did a quick one
Speaker 1: minute meditation. I'll invite you to take a second to
Speaker 1: see how you feel. Take a second to notice how
Speaker 1: that one minute of taking time to be mindful feels
Speaker 1: in your body right now. If you're like me, it
Speaker 1: feels pretty good. And so it's worth remembering that you
Speaker 1: can do that at any time, the mindfulness benefits are
Speaker 1: there for you. You just need to take a moment
Speaker 1: to breathe. We'll see you for the next episode of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is a Pushkin podcast. It's co written and produced
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley and mastered by Evan Viola. Our original
Speaker 1: music is written by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Ben Davis,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Carly Mgliori, Julia Barton, neil A Belle, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the Pushkin crew.