Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. In my work life, I'm a comedian and
Speaker 1: a writer. But in my real life, what I think
Speaker 1: of myself as is someone who has had generalized anxiety
Speaker 1: disorder panic disorder undiagnosed for ten years, then diagnosed, and
Speaker 1: have had both for decades. I'm in a better place
Speaker 1: with all of it, and I have the time to
Speaker 1: try to help other people, just by talking to people
Speaker 1: who have a lot of answers for us, and by
Speaker 1: trying to normalize that it's okay to talk about this
Speaker 1: stuff and uh to even have fun doing it. So
Speaker 1: Sharon Salzburg, I cannot believe she said yes to doing
Speaker 1: this podcast. This is how great she is. This podcast
Speaker 1: had not premiered yet and she agreed to come on
Speaker 1: to be a guest. That's right, everybody, I'm letting you
Speaker 1: in behind the curtain. Some of these interviews were conduct
Speaker 1: did months before the premier date. But you know, she
Speaker 1: didn't know what she was getting herself into, and she
Speaker 1: said yes, and for that I love her. But I
Speaker 1: could just geek out on her all day. You'll hear
Speaker 1: that in the interview. But Sharon is the author of
Speaker 1: eleven books, including Loving Kindness, the New York Times bestseller
Speaker 1: Real Happiness, and her twenty seventeen book Real Love, The
Speaker 1: Art of Mindful Connection, and her newest book, Real Change,
Speaker 1: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves in the World. In nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Sharon went to India for an independent study program, and
Speaker 1: she returned to America in nineteen seventy four and began
Speaker 1: teaching Vipasna insight meditation. In nineteen seventy six, she established,
Speaker 1: together with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield, the Insight Meditation
Speaker 1: Society in Barry, Massachusetts, which now ranks as one of
Speaker 1: the most prominent and active meditation centers in the Western world.
Speaker 1: Her meditations can be heard on the Insight Timer app.
Speaker 1: She's a frequent guest on the ten Percent Happier podcast,
Speaker 1: and she hosts her own podcast, The Meta Hour, which
Speaker 1: features over a hundred interviews with the top leaders and
Speaker 1: voices in the mindfulness and meditation movement. All of the
Speaker 1: info on how to find Sharon for free and to
Speaker 1: buy her work is in the show notes. So before
Speaker 1: we get to share, and I'll just I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what meditation means to me. Um, I'll never forget. A
Speaker 1: friend of mine asked me for advice on anxiety, and
Speaker 1: she said, but before you answer me, do not tell
Speaker 1: me to fucking meditate. And I know a lot of
Speaker 1: you listen. If you are still listening, despite the word
Speaker 1: meditation being in this week's show description, thank you. I
Speaker 1: know that because everyone is talking about it now that
Speaker 1: it can be overwhelming and annoying. You hear the words meditation,
Speaker 1: you hear the words mindfulness, and you're like, uh, you know.
Speaker 1: You scroll through Instagram, there are influencers talking about it.
Speaker 1: It just seems like the latest trend, and in a way,
Speaker 1: it is. But it doesn't mean that mindfulness and that
Speaker 1: meditation are trends and not to be taken seriously. It's
Speaker 1: the way they are being capitalized on in this moment
Speaker 1: that is very annoying. But if you can stick with us,
Speaker 1: you're going to be hearing from someone who really knows
Speaker 1: their ship. I couldn't think of a better way to
Speaker 1: put it. They know their ship. So I do meditate.
Speaker 1: It's one of the tools in my anxiety tool kit.
Speaker 1: I learned about it in the late ninety nineties from
Speaker 1: a therapist, and again I didn't even I've never heard
Speaker 1: the word mindful before. You know, it wasn't a buzzword yet.
Speaker 1: So I think I was a little more I'm not susceptible,
Speaker 1: but I was a little more open to it because
Speaker 1: I hadn't been bombarded. But before this, I thought meditation
Speaker 1: was a religion. I didn't even know that it had
Speaker 1: anything to do with going hand in hand with cognitive
Speaker 1: behavior therapy, or anything to do with psychology, or that
Speaker 1: it even had healthy physical effects on people. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I just thought, oh, I don't know. People
Speaker 1: do it to get closer to God or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's not my thing. And you know, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of my anxiety comes from runaway thoughts that
Speaker 1: I don't even know that I'm thinking, and that's where
Speaker 1: meditation has helped me. Now it is a daily discipline.
Speaker 1: I do meditate ten minutes a day, and then sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't meditate at all. And on those days is
Speaker 1: there's never I'm never too busy. I always have ten minutes.
Speaker 1: You know, I had spent ten minutes on Twitter that
Speaker 1: day when I could have been meditating. But that's just
Speaker 1: how it is. It's one of those things where it
Speaker 1: can be impossible to work yourself up to, and then
Speaker 1: once you do it, it's like, what was the big deal?
Speaker 1: Why was I avoiding that all day? The thing is,
Speaker 1: I think people think that meditation is this thing you do.
Speaker 1: You know, you get your room all set up. You
Speaker 1: you've got the perfect candle in the perfect blanket, and
Speaker 1: you've got a white noise machine, and maybe you even
Speaker 1: bought a Buddha statue, and you know, I've got to
Speaker 1: feel in a spiritual mood to go meditate, and nobody
Speaker 1: wakes up in a spiritual mood. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if there's such a thing as a spiritual mood. But
Speaker 1: meditation is supposed to meet us where we are. Meditation
Speaker 1: doesn't want us to come to it in a flowing
Speaker 1: robe if that's not our normal, you know, daily attire.
Speaker 1: But the way I look at meditation is on our side.
Speaker 1: It's a practice that says to us, whatever you're thinking
Speaker 1: and feeling is totally normal, and okay, I'm just here
Speaker 1: to help notice it and we'll talk with Sharon. You know,
Speaker 1: the biggest misconception about meditation is that it's about clearing
Speaker 1: your mind. It is not about not mindfulness. Mindfulness is
Speaker 1: about noticing your mind. So the busier your mind is, sorry,
Speaker 1: get on that cushion, because probably quote the better you
Speaker 1: might even be at mindfulness, because it's just about noticing
Speaker 1: all of your thoughts. And once you start to notice
Speaker 1: your thoughts very deliberately, ten minutes a day over the
Speaker 1: course of weeks, months, it does start to change the
Speaker 1: way you think and the way you react to things,
Speaker 1: and the way you go about your every day. But
Speaker 1: I too have a complicated relationship with meditation. You know,
Speaker 1: if I don't do it the first thing when I
Speaker 1: get up, it looms as this big giant thing I
Speaker 1: have to do. And I know that people who don't meditate, obviously,
Speaker 1: can also have a complicated relationship with meditation. I think
Speaker 1: it's one of those words that just gets a reaction
Speaker 1: from people. Nobody's neutral when you say them, you know
Speaker 1: you should meditate. Nobody goes, oh, maybe I will. No,
Speaker 1: never had that happen. But I can tell you right now,
Speaker 1: just sit back, enjoy this episode and really get to
Speaker 1: know what meditation is. Don't confuse an ancient practice that's
Speaker 1: become trendy and commodified by some as the practice itself.
Speaker 1: It's really just about learning that with enough practice, we
Speaker 1: can be in the middle of a road rage and
Speaker 1: suddenly realize that we've just noticed our thoughts instead of
Speaker 1: acting on them. And yes, that's that's an example from
Speaker 1: my real life. So talking with Sharon today, I wanted
Speaker 1: to get into the mind of someone who might be
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast who just wants to know, just
Speaker 1: tell me how I do this thing and what is
Speaker 1: the truth about it. Supposed to be someone who's already
Speaker 1: heard there's no right way to meditate. You can start
Speaker 1: just doing five minutes a day, you know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've heard all that before, but I wanted to dig deeper.
Speaker 1: What stops people from trying it? Is it perfectionism, fear
Speaker 1: of sitting in their own thoughts. Is it that people
Speaker 1: don't understand exactly what meditation is and that's why they're hesitant.
Speaker 1: So we're talking to Sharon about all of this in
Speaker 1: the first part of my interview with her on Anxiety Bites.
Speaker 1: Here we go today on the show. My guest is
Speaker 1: a hero of mine, Sharon Salzburg. Sharon, thank you for
Speaker 1: being here until I did, really thank you. Let's get
Speaker 1: right into it, so this will be the first episode
Speaker 1: that deals entirely with meditation. I have to be honest.
Speaker 1: I I said, I'm going to drop it in after
Speaker 1: we've aired a few episodes already, and then I'm throwing
Speaker 1: the M word at everybody. Now, I use meditation as
Speaker 1: one of the tools in my anxiety tool kit. But
Speaker 1: when people have asked me for advice, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you deal with your anxiety? Before I can even
Speaker 1: take a breath to answer them, they'll say, but don't
Speaker 1: tell me to meditate. Now, why do you think people
Speaker 1: react this way? I mean preemptively even where they say
Speaker 1: they don't want to meditate. Is this new? I mean,
Speaker 1: you've been meditating for decades. Have you heard this before?
Speaker 1: What is going on with that? Well? I think has
Speaker 1: been this way. I always put in different ways for
Speaker 1: different reasons, and I can well imagine, given some of
Speaker 1: the associations people have with meditation that it's an absolutely
Speaker 1: excruciating idea, especially if you're like a high energy person,
Speaker 1: you know, leaning over into anxious and um the thought
Speaker 1: of you know, having to sit still and a pretzel
Speaker 1: like pusture with your eyes closed, not moving for three
Speaker 1: hours or whatever, you know, and not having any thoughts
Speaker 1: or even just being alone with your thoughts and having
Speaker 1: just this run. I mean, it is excruciating, and I
Speaker 1: don't blame them one bit for not finding it appealing.
Speaker 1: But the reality of meditation is, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: so much broader than that. And you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have to sit in a pretzel like pusture, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be uncomfortable, you don't have to do it
Speaker 1: for hours at a time. Um, neuroscience actually says, well,
Speaker 1: I've had two different things. One neuroscientist tell me seven
Speaker 1: to nine minutes a day will change your brain, and
Speaker 1: another neuroscientists tell me twelve minutes a day. So nobody
Speaker 1: actually knows, of course, But also no one is saying
Speaker 1: you have to do this for six hours a day,
Speaker 1: you know, and struggle and in order to have even
Speaker 1: measurable effects on your brain. And so you know. And
Speaker 1: it's also not the case that we meditate to wipe
Speaker 1: out thinking, you know, which would be impossible anyway. But
Speaker 1: we're trying to change our relationship to everything our physical experience.
Speaker 1: Sensations are emotions, are thoughts, because we want to have choice,
Speaker 1: we want to be empowered, you know, not to wipe
Speaker 1: out an experience, but to relate to it differently. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to take every thought to heart. Maybe
Speaker 1: we don't have to um be defined by certain emotions
Speaker 1: things like that, and so uh there and in so
Speaker 1: many ways, you know, you can practice meditation walking um,
Speaker 1: you can do it lying down, and you could do
Speaker 1: it uh using a word or mantra. You can do
Speaker 1: it using the breath, and it's like this fabulous period
Speaker 1: of experimentation if you're if you're in this to try,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than feeling I have to do it
Speaker 1: this way. I think that's important, Like if people could
Speaker 1: at the very least maybe adjust their approach to and
Speaker 1: think of it as something to be enthused about, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I'm a daily meditator. I try
Speaker 1: to do it before I even leave my bedroom so
Speaker 1: that I make sure that I do it that day.
Speaker 1: Of course, today I didn't do it because I knew
Speaker 1: I was interviewing you, and I was excited and nervous,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, what she's I have twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before we log on with Sharon, This would be a
Speaker 1: great time to meditate. And I went, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to. I'm going to make coffee. I'm going to
Speaker 1: stay jacked up like it was. You know, every day
Speaker 1: it's like I wake up and I'm a beginner again
Speaker 1: because I have to tell myself to do it right.
Speaker 1: Do you still experience that or I imagine you are
Speaker 1: kind of beyond that now. Yeah, it's not so much that.
Speaker 1: I mean I have I just had an anniversary. I've
Speaker 1: been meditating for fifty years. You can believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous. I mean, the passage of time is
Speaker 1: one of the most absurd things ever. You know, this
Speaker 1: meditation at all help with that feeling that life is
Speaker 1: flying by or no, well I think it is flying by.
Speaker 1: But a meditation helps with a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of aspects of things. Um, you know, I think that, uh,
Speaker 1: it does get to be more natural. And they're also
Speaker 1: ways of structuring the practice so that you feel support.
Speaker 1: So for example, UM, I always say to people, make
Speaker 1: a reasonable commitment, you know, is that five minutes a day,
Speaker 1: Is that seven to nine minutes a day is a
Speaker 1: three minutes a day? And for how long? And so
Speaker 1: you will find the difference in your life, which is
Speaker 1: where counts. And and so those two things, find a
Speaker 1: reasonable structure, don't worry about what you're experiencing in that
Speaker 1: five or ten or twenty minute period each day, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and look at your life for for changes.
Speaker 1: And then there's really another thing, which is finds a
Speaker 1: supportive community if you can, whether that's you know, online
Speaker 1: these days or whatever, it's just something um that helps
Speaker 1: so you don't feel you're doing it all alone. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to push back a little bit on the
Speaker 1: notion of, hey, you know, just start out with two
Speaker 1: to five minutes. I mean, it is true there are
Speaker 1: days that I just well, listen, there's never any day
Speaker 1: where I only have two minutes to meditate. If my
Speaker 1: life was that busy, that's a problem if I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, the president. But I now say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: only going to make two minutes time for two minutes today,
Speaker 1: and I mean, let's be honest, and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: But I've been reading this great book by this psychiatrist
Speaker 1: named Dr Born. He wrote this amazing book called The
Speaker 1: Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, and there's an entire chapter on
Speaker 1: perfectionism and how the root of a ton of anxiety
Speaker 1: is not that there's nuclear bombs or that you know,
Speaker 1: we had a hard childhood. It's that we're perfectionists, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to say to someone no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: totally fine to meditate for just two minutes. If you're starting,
Speaker 1: people are like, I don't believe that you're just being
Speaker 1: nice because you're a meditator person. But there's a right
Speaker 1: way to do it, and that involves going on a
Speaker 1: retreat for ten days or you know, it's impossible, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you do you come across a lot of
Speaker 1: people that you can sort of detect the perfectionism? Is
Speaker 1: what's stopping them? And what is there anything else you
Speaker 1: can say beyond okay, really you can just do it
Speaker 1: for two minutes. How do you get through to them? Well?
Speaker 1: I think, of of course they do, you know, men perfectionists.
Speaker 1: But I don't know that it comes out so much
Speaker 1: in the sense of the form or the structure, but
Speaker 1: more the idea of what people think they should be experiencing,
Speaker 1: which I think gets in a minute. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the phone the structure, i'd actually give them data.
Speaker 1: I mean, these real nerves scientists I talked to, you know,
Speaker 1: who each have their own labs, who are very prominent
Speaker 1: in the field of studying the brain and meditation. And
Speaker 1: even though they had somewhat different perspectives, you know, they
Speaker 1: had different numbers. They were in the neighborhood of one another.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, there's seven to nine minutes. Did they
Speaker 1: say how how long it takes? Like, in other words,
Speaker 1: is it a month of doing this? About a month? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has a short amount of time and then you
Speaker 1: have to keep going because it will start to fade,
Speaker 1: you know. But this is like getting the practice into place,
Speaker 1: you know, and having it, having it worked for you.
Speaker 1: And so, um, the second well, the first nerve scientist,
Speaker 1: I'll just say it was Richie Davidson, who has a
Speaker 1: lab at the University Wisconsindent Madison. Um is many books
Speaker 1: about meditation and the brain. And um, he said seven
Speaker 1: to nine minutes a day. So I mean, again, no
Speaker 1: one knows for sure clearly, but but there is there
Speaker 1: is some science behind this. If that's going to help
Speaker 1: for you to feel okay, it's it's worth doing. I
Speaker 1: find it. Perfectionism really comes out and certainly came out
Speaker 1: of me with the idea of what I think or
Speaker 1: we think we should be experiencing. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: while we're meditating while we're meditating, you know, and so um, Now,
Speaker 1: of course I'm not in any social situations, but back
Speaker 1: when I was like a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: if I was introduced at a party or some social
Speaker 1: situation as a meditation teacher, people are often responded by saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I tried that once. I failed at it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we don't believe you can fail at it. You cannot
Speaker 1: have the wrong experience. You might have an uncomfortable experience,
Speaker 1: but you cannot do it wrong because everything is it's
Speaker 1: not about what's happening. It's about how we're relating to
Speaker 1: what's happening. And so if I were to ask these people,
Speaker 1: why do you think you failed at it? They would
Speaker 1: likely say I couldn't stop me thinking. I couldn't make
Speaker 1: my mind blank, I couldn't clear my mind, I couldn't
Speaker 1: have only beautiful thoughts. I couldn't keep the sleepiness from arising,
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep the anxiety from arizing. Whatever it is. Remember,
Speaker 1: we're all about relationship. It's not about what's happening. It's
Speaker 1: about how we're relating to what's happening. And so um,
Speaker 1: that's a very hard thing to believe. It is I
Speaker 1: think I think once people do believe it that Okay,
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, it's time to sit and
Speaker 1: get quiet and notice our thoughts. Then that's the next
Speaker 1: level of resistance and scariness. Well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: know my thoughts, you know, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: sit with the feelings. I read this study. I don't
Speaker 1: have any I'm going to paraphrase it, but um, it
Speaker 1: came out during the pandemic that people would rather get
Speaker 1: a shock that's really painful than sit alone with their
Speaker 1: thoughts for like four minutes. And there was some gender difference.
Speaker 1: By the way, interesting study as the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1: And let me guess women can sit with their thoughts better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, is I also I thought about,
Speaker 1: you know, so many people, not everyone, of course, has
Speaker 1: been isolated in this situation. Some people have been working
Speaker 1: every day, some people live in you know, different kinds
Speaker 1: of situations. But for the people who have been alone
Speaker 1: all the kind of alone with their thoughts, I thought
Speaker 1: of that study right away. You know how hard it
Speaker 1: would be, um, because here too, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: sort of like thrown in the deep end and plunging
Speaker 1: into like looking at your thoughts and you're all shocked
Speaker 1: and embarrassed and freaked out. You know. It's like we
Speaker 1: learned certain skills. We learned skills of being kind to
Speaker 1: ourselves no matter what we're going through. We learned skills
Speaker 1: of having more presence and balance, which is really the
Speaker 1: whole key. You know. It's like, because we so often
Speaker 1: can't insist on changing what's coming up. It's like you
Speaker 1: can't wake up in the morning and say, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get anxious all day today. I refuse, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we learned certain conditioning elements. We learned, well,
Speaker 1: it's stronger if I don't sleep, or if I eat,
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen pounds of sugar for breakfast, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you know, And so we can affect conditions, but we
Speaker 1: can't control them and say, well, I've decided, you know,
Speaker 1: is that going to come up today because we don't know,
Speaker 1: and so learning how to relate to let's just say,
Speaker 1: anxiety that's already arisen, I'm not to maybe cascade and
Speaker 1: dive deep into it and also not fight it and
Speaker 1: hate it and hate yourself forward. That's the whole skills
Speaker 1: training anxiety bites will be right back after a quick
Speaker 1: little message from one of our sponsors. Where I find
Speaker 1: meditation goes really beautifully with cognitive therapy is incognitive behavior therapy.
Speaker 1: They'll tell you, don't believe your thoughts, don't follow your thought.
Speaker 1: You know, just because you think, um, that it seems
Speaker 1: like a really good day for a nuclear war to breakout,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's going to where you're convinced the plane
Speaker 1: you're on is going to crash. And and you and
Speaker 1: I have this in common. This is a quote from
Speaker 1: from you that I read, um that you said, many
Speaker 1: are made anxious by not knowing, but I am afraid
Speaker 1: of the things I believe to be certain. The plane
Speaker 1: is going to crash, my car is going to break down.
Speaker 1: Whether the anxiety comes from this certainty that we are
Speaker 1: right or the despair that nothing is going to ever work. Um.
Speaker 1: We want to give this high energy a big space
Speaker 1: so it no longer bounces off the walls of the mind.
Speaker 1: So is the big space meditation in that sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean there's so many different approaches, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think an important thing is
Speaker 1: not to um make the experiment with a kind of
Speaker 1: mind of past fail Yeah, you know, a big because
Speaker 1: some approaches work right now and may not work tomorrow,
Speaker 1: or they may not work today, they might work tomorrow,
Speaker 1: or you know, you try something and it doesn't really
Speaker 1: seem to bring you more balanced. Okay, it's not because
Speaker 1: you have a character flaw or you need remedial work
Speaker 1: or you know, where you're so far gone that it's
Speaker 1: it's unthinkable. It's like that particular approaches and working right now, um,
Speaker 1: because what we're trying to do is really bring some
Speaker 1: balance into our being. And balance doesn't mean flatness in
Speaker 1: terms of our experience, means like the holding environment is open, spacious,
Speaker 1: as you said, um, connected, you know, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about the the environment within which all these things are
Speaker 1: gonna arise and pass away. And balance always looks different,
Speaker 1: you know, like some days where um, way too far
Speaker 1: back from what we're feeling and we need to kind
Speaker 1: of come forward a little bit and and feel it.
Speaker 1: And other days we're way too enmeshed and overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: what we're feeling and we need to center a bit,
Speaker 1: you know, and get some space. And so balance is
Speaker 1: always going to look different. Some things they'll just be
Speaker 1: useful on some days, and it's okay. If they don't work,
Speaker 1: you know, you try something else. So one of the
Speaker 1: approaches is really around that holding environment, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's learning to relate with presents, with balance, with kindness,
Speaker 1: no matter what's going on. Most meditation practices, you're just
Speaker 1: aware of the breath anyhow it's appearing, you know, ragged
Speaker 1: or smooth. It doesn't matter, you know, you're just paying attention.
Speaker 1: But there are ways of breathing that are aren't consciously
Speaker 1: changing the pattern of the breath. And um, so they say,
Speaker 1: for example, if you're out breath is longer than you're
Speaker 1: in breath, the parasympathetic nerve a system will start taking
Speaker 1: over from the sympathetic nervous system. You'll just chill, you know,
Speaker 1: and you'll feel much more relaxed. And so um there
Speaker 1: are a lot of fancy ways of doing that, like
Speaker 1: you breathe into the count of four in your hold
Speaker 1: for four, and you breathe out for the count of vapor.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is
Speaker 1: that your outbreath be longer than you're in breath. And
Speaker 1: and one of the things I think, um that's very
Speaker 1: useful around that approach is that it takes away the
Speaker 1: stigma from what you're feeling. It's like, your nervous system
Speaker 1: is whyed a certain way for whatever reason. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a more recent event, maybe it's you know, some other reason,
Speaker 1: but you know, the shame and the embarrassment and the
Speaker 1: freaked outedness and all those are the things that we
Speaker 1: tend to add. They don't need to be here, and
Speaker 1: so you realize, oh, you know, the very fundamental thing
Speaker 1: is the first it's the hold the environment, because then
Speaker 1: you kind of approach anything you're experiencing and see if
Speaker 1: she might bring it into balance. And then the second
Speaker 1: it's like really use tols. Well, you know, the parasympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system thing is so interesting because I I found
Speaker 1: that once I learned about that, it really calmed me down.
Speaker 1: It's it's nice to know that it's physical and that
Speaker 1: it's not my fault and that I'm making it worse
Speaker 1: by thinking I'm so unique. Um, and I came up
Speaker 1: with something. Maybe I didn't, I mean I think I did.
Speaker 1: I'm sure other people have thought this, But the way
Speaker 1: that I think about it is when my sympathetic nervous
Speaker 1: system is freaking out and thinking it's protecting me by
Speaker 1: raising my heart and giving me this shallow breathing feeling.
Speaker 1: I know that it's time to get the parasympathetic nervous
Speaker 1: system going. And the way I think about it is
Speaker 1: the paramedics are coming and they exist in my body
Speaker 1: like I don't have to call anyone. They're already he
Speaker 1: or they just have to be woken up, untild It's
Speaker 1: time to get to work. So that's my little trick.
Speaker 1: Anything silly where I talked to myself like I'm a
Speaker 1: kid almost really takes me out of my brain in
Speaker 1: that moment, you know. Um so getting to breathing. Will
Speaker 1: you tell me and our listeners about the kind of
Speaker 1: meditation that you study, practice, teach, actually teach too main
Speaker 1: kinds of meditation. One is mindfulness, which I can talk
Speaker 1: about in a minute, and the other is called loving kindness, where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than say resting our attention on the
Speaker 1: feeling of the breath, we're silently repeating certain phrases like
Speaker 1: may you be happy, may you be peaceful. It's like
Speaker 1: gift giving or generosity of the spirit. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that particular approach to meditation does is it
Speaker 1: takes that energy and it channels it, you know, because
Speaker 1: let's say anxiety is a very high energy state and
Speaker 1: energies bad. It's just this out of balance in that situation,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's it's taking that energy and actually
Speaker 1: giving it a place to go, which isn't a kindness
Speaker 1: toward ourselves or toward others. And so I know, for example,
Speaker 1: my friends who have terrible insomnia, and rather than lie
Speaker 1: in bed and fret, they'll do loving kindness meditation and
Speaker 1: can you take us through what those phrases typically are
Speaker 1: Usually classically you start with yourself, and so it might
Speaker 1: be remember this is like gift giving or offering might
Speaker 1: be something like may I be safe or field safe?
Speaker 1: May I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.
Speaker 1: Live with ease means and the things of day to
Speaker 1: day life, like livelihood or family may not be such
Speaker 1: a struggle. May I live with these? So sometimes people
Speaker 1: say to me, because of the may I or may you? Like,
Speaker 1: who am I asking? Well, you're not asking anybody anything,
Speaker 1: You're offering. It's like you hand some of a birthday
Speaker 1: card and you say, may you have a great year.
Speaker 1: So you're almost offering it to yourself. Is that you
Speaker 1: begin with, we offer it to ourselves, and then classically
Speaker 1: we'd offer it to a variety of different beings. They
Speaker 1: say beings because it might be like a puppy or
Speaker 1: something you know, not a person, um, and it might
Speaker 1: be you know, somebody you really care for, someone's helped you,
Speaker 1: someone you feel grateful for. It might be. And then
Speaker 1: you know, we go through a progression depending on how
Speaker 1: much time you have and what fits and that sort
Speaker 1: of middle place. Uh. A very classic um example would
Speaker 1: be someone we call a neutral person. That's somebody we
Speaker 1: don't especially like. We're just like you might not even
Speaker 1: know their name, and so in effect we're saying what
Speaker 1: happens when you look at them rather than through them,
Speaker 1: like may be safe, may be happy mm hm. And
Speaker 1: so the beginning is is commonly oneself. The very ends
Speaker 1: is all beings everywhere, all of life, and what you
Speaker 1: do in the middle might change every time you do it.
Speaker 1: I've done some kind ones, I've done some of yours,
Speaker 1: and I really love the loving kindness I I did
Speaker 1: it um when I was having a lot of pain
Speaker 1: and anxiety after a breakup, and I know that one
Speaker 1: of the options is to offer may you be happy
Speaker 1: and live with these to someone that's hurt you and
Speaker 1: that you know, and that you can actually talk about
Speaker 1: noticing feelings. When that person comes up, you can feel
Speaker 1: your body tightening. And then after doing the loving kindness
Speaker 1: offering to them, I feel like I'm melting. And and
Speaker 1: I always know maybe this isn't true, but I always think,
Speaker 1: when we offer the loving kindness to someone that maybe
Speaker 1: has hurt us or that is difficult for us to
Speaker 1: think about, is it really like technically still a back
Speaker 1: door to offering it to ourselves? Does that make in
Speaker 1: this book loving kindness? You wrote it is fear of
Speaker 1: pain that provokes and sustains this um splitting off of
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves. To avoid feeling pain, we shut out
Speaker 1: crucial portions of awareness, even though this closing off, this
Speaker 1: internal separation is deadening. And then later you say, the
Speaker 1: fear of pain that we tried to escape becomes in
Speaker 1: fact our constant companion. What's a better constant companion, Well, compassion.
Speaker 1: Let's let's try compassion for ourselves and for others. You know,
Speaker 1: And a lot of times people have the conditioning and
Speaker 1: the belief that compassion is kind of weak and weakening,
Speaker 1: but really it's a tremendous strength. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm told that they're all kinds of performance studies, for example,
Speaker 1: that have been done that show like a harsh punitive environment,
Speaker 1: either internal the way we'll react to having made a
Speaker 1: mistake or something like that, or external will spike our performance,
Speaker 1: but briefly then we'll crash. That. Actually, the most effective
Speaker 1: efficient way to change a habit, to learn something new,
Speaker 1: to make progress and something is actually self compassion. You
Speaker 1: realize I blew it. It's part of the human condition.
Speaker 1: What can I learn? Let's move on, which is a
Speaker 1: different thing. I'm here, I'm so bad and so off
Speaker 1: once the terrible We'll be right back. Hi, it's me Jen,
Speaker 1: just pumping in at the halfway point here. I hope
Speaker 1: you're enjoying my talk with Sharon Salzburg. But let's just
Speaker 1: recap what we've learned so far. So if there's five
Speaker 1: takeaways from what Sharon said, in my opinion, it's first
Speaker 1: one is you'll find the difference meditation makes in your life.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about what you're experiencing in the five to
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of your meditation. Secondly, neuroscientists that meditating for
Speaker 1: even just seven to nine minutes a day, every day
Speaker 1: for a month can make positive changes in your brain. Three,
Speaker 1: you cannot fail at meditation, for meditation is not about
Speaker 1: what's happening, but about how we're relating to what's happening.
Speaker 1: And five, anxiety is a high energy state, and that
Speaker 1: energy is not bad, it's just out of balance. So
Speaker 1: in the second half of this interview, I am talking
Speaker 1: to Sharon about her relationship to anxiety and how exactly
Speaker 1: do we do this mindfulness thing. And Sharon has been
Speaker 1: meditating for fifty years and she can still fall into
Speaker 1: catastrophic thinking. And you know, she didn't meditate herself out
Speaker 1: of the human condition. And so in this next part
Speaker 1: she talks about how all of us need to give
Speaker 1: ourselves a break and stump beating up on ourselves and
Speaker 1: realize there is nothing wrong with us. Here we go,
Speaker 1: I'm mindfulness, So tell you, so take me through you know,
Speaker 1: the the history of your history of getting into meditation,
Speaker 1: and and and then of course what what exactly is
Speaker 1: a mindfulness meditation? Okay, So I went to India, I
Speaker 1: love these many years ago, I went to India nine
Speaker 1: as a junior in college UM in order to study meditation,
Speaker 1: I had an independent study project approved by the university
Speaker 1: to go to Indian study meditation. And that was because
Speaker 1: when I was a sophomore of the year before, I
Speaker 1: taken an Asian philosophy class and really, honestly, as far
Speaker 1: as I can remember, it was just happenstance, like it
Speaker 1: was on Tuesday. That's convenient, let me do that one. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there I was, and of course totally changed my life.
Speaker 1: And that was I think two fold. One was UM, I,
Speaker 1: like many people, had had a very traumatic, painful childhood,
Speaker 1: and like for many people, my family system was one
Speaker 1: where this was never ever spoken about, and so I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do with all of those feelings
Speaker 1: inside of me. And and then you know, I got
Speaker 1: to college and was taking this class and they were
Speaker 1: talking about the Buddha on and his kind of lifting
Speaker 1: up of the suffering that's in life, saying this is
Speaker 1: a part of life, this is inevitable, this is natural.
Speaker 1: And what that translated to in my head was, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're not so weird, Yeah you actually belong, You're a
Speaker 1: part of things. This is just a part of life.
Speaker 1: And and so the tremendous isolation I had felt all
Speaker 1: along that was changed. And then I heard in that
Speaker 1: class that through were these methods, they were techniques, There
Speaker 1: were tools that people actually used called meditation, and if
Speaker 1: you practice them, you could be a whole lot happier.
Speaker 1: And so one of the styles you teach is mindfulness,
Speaker 1: which is it based in the Buddhist tradition? Is yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a funny thing, you know, Like I said,
Speaker 1: yes very quickly. But like the first night of my
Speaker 1: first retreat, so January seven, n one, the teacher was
Speaker 1: sn Goenka. It was an intensive ten day like immersion
Speaker 1: course in meditation, and that first night he said, the
Speaker 1: Buddha did not teach Buddhism, the Buddha tootal way of life.
Speaker 1: This is in no way about becoming a Buddhist or
Speaker 1: rejecting anything else. It's just about the power of your
Speaker 1: own awareness. And so like that was the first night.
Speaker 1: You know, that was really my foundational teaching. And I've
Speaker 1: always believed it. I've always taught that way myself. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the imagery I use it often, I
Speaker 1: might say, according to the Buddhist psychology, or you know,
Speaker 1: but it's not about Buddhism, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: fake term anyway, Mum. You know, it's about the power
Speaker 1: of one's own mind. It's just that, you know, I
Speaker 1: spent those years like learning within that context, and so
Speaker 1: the imagery, the stories, uh that come most easily for
Speaker 1: me is is expressing me that way. One of the
Speaker 1: phrases we used to describe mindfulness and what we do
Speaker 1: in meditation is like, look for the add ons. It's
Speaker 1: not just this experience, it's what we're also adding onto it.
Speaker 1: What's gonna feel like tomorrow. I'm the only one in
Speaker 1: the whole world. This is all my fault, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're just piling on and so we're left trying
Speaker 1: to hold this superstructure we have created, and it's so hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard enough, you know, Like I mean, the story
Speaker 1: usually tell to describe this as um. I was teaching
Speaker 1: with my friend Joseph somewhere once, and Joseph and I
Speaker 1: were sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea,
Speaker 1: and someone came in in some distress. Instaid to Joseph,
Speaker 1: I just had this really terrible experience. So Joseph said,
Speaker 1: what happened? And he said, I felt all this tension
Speaker 1: and my jaw, and I realized what an incredibly uptype
Speaker 1: person I am and how I always have been and
Speaker 1: I always will be. So Joseph said, you mean you
Speaker 1: felt a lot of tension in your jaw, And he
Speaker 1: said yes. And I've never been able to get close
Speaker 1: to people and it's never going to change. Joseph said,
Speaker 1: you mean you felt a lot of tension in your john.
Speaker 1: It was really interesting for me, like watching them go
Speaker 1: back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker 1: And finally Joseph said to him, why are you adding
Speaker 1: a miserable self image to a painful experience. It's actually
Speaker 1: painful enough just to feel at tension in your jaw.
Speaker 1: But now you're gonna be alone for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, you know. So we would say, look for
Speaker 1: the add ons. That's such a great simple way to
Speaker 1: put it. I love that. So now take me through,
Speaker 1: for me, take me through. What what so you say
Speaker 1: to someone you should meditate, Not that you would say
Speaker 1: that to someone, but someone says to someone you should meditate.
Speaker 1: Just try it two minutes. Now what are they going
Speaker 1: to do? They sit down and they're noticing their breath
Speaker 1: and what the heck does that mean? And what is
Speaker 1: what is that? Okay? So um, in a just to
Speaker 1: lay a bigger context to mindfulness. Usually the way it's practiced,
Speaker 1: I mean, the essence of it is what we just
Speaker 1: we're talking about, like being with our experience, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: without so many of the add ons intruding. They may arise,
Speaker 1: but they're not hanging around because you're not grabbing onto them,
Speaker 1: you know. So um, that's where we're getting to. So
Speaker 1: in the process, often we choose what's called the primary object.
Speaker 1: That's the home base. That's where we're gonna start, that's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna keep coming back to. But we're not
Speaker 1: there all the time, right, Um, But it's it is
Speaker 1: like home base. So usually, very commonly, that's the feeling
Speaker 1: of the breath. It's actually the sensations of the normal breath.
Speaker 1: Unlike different yoga practices. We might be breathing, you know,
Speaker 1: in one nostril in that the other. It's very intentional.
Speaker 1: This is just the breath, however's happening. Um. And so
Speaker 1: we have an object, like the feeling of the breath,
Speaker 1: we rest our attention on that object and then a
Speaker 1: little dwippy things happen, you know, thoughts, hearing, things like that,
Speaker 1: but we're connected to the breath, so we just let
Speaker 1: them go by. And then something happens that's much stronger.
Speaker 1: You have this wave of joy, this wave of anger
Speaker 1: um or you know, a strong and physical sensation. So
Speaker 1: that becomes the new object of interest or awareness. We
Speaker 1: just recognize, oh, this is what's happening right now, and
Speaker 1: then we see if we can let go and come
Speaker 1: back to let's say, the feeling of the breath. And
Speaker 1: then there are many, many times which is gone. It's
Speaker 1: like we have no idea how we ended up thinking
Speaker 1: about Portugal, you know, or whatever, you know, where we
Speaker 1: fall asleep, And those are important moments too, because the
Speaker 1: suggestion is, well, don't forget, don't judge yourself, it's really okay.
Speaker 1: See if you can let go gently and with a
Speaker 1: lot of compassion for yourself, just start again. So we
Speaker 1: let go, and we begin again, and we let go
Speaker 1: and we begin again. And that's the most fundamental movement
Speaker 1: of the entire practice. And I think it's the most
Speaker 1: useful thing I learned in meditation. Well, yeah, times to
Speaker 1: day that we have to do that as one of
Speaker 1: my early teachers said, if you're breathing, you can be meditating. Um.
Speaker 1: The second reason is that, as this one teacher said
Speaker 1: to me, which I was very charming, he says, very portable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we also practice say that twelve minutes a day given
Speaker 1: me she hear do. Let's say we practice twelve minutes
Speaker 1: a day sitting formally in a dedicated way, and we're
Speaker 1: using the breath as that prime are object or home base,
Speaker 1: the place we come back to when we've just wandered off,
Speaker 1: the place we get rest at. We just rest our
Speaker 1: attention on the feeling of the breath. Um. And then
Speaker 1: we're at work or we're commuting, you know, maybe we're
Speaker 1: once again with a group of people surrounding us and
Speaker 1: somebody's getting angry and we're getting anxious, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really like open up your closet door and
Speaker 1: poleetical this equipment or start playing music or do yourself.
Speaker 1: But you can be breathing right and it's perfectly private.
Speaker 1: Nobody even has to know you're doing it, you know,
Speaker 1: and you have a way of coming back to yourself,
Speaker 1: re centering, coming back to the moment. And when we
Speaker 1: do that, when we come back to ourselves in that way,
Speaker 1: we come back to our values, we come back to
Speaker 1: what we really care about, our priorities. So the third
Speaker 1: aspect of the breath, after being universal and portable, is
Speaker 1: that it's said to be failing neutral, you know, um,
Speaker 1: And so much of what arises in meditation is beautiful
Speaker 1: and wondrous and exhilarating, and so much can be difficult
Speaker 1: and expected too, and and then we have the breath
Speaker 1: where we can just chill. Right. So, if you're not
Speaker 1: going to use the breath as that primary object, and
Speaker 1: that's totally fine, you don't have to, UM, then see
Speaker 1: if you can find something else that satisfies those other criteria.
Speaker 1: You know, people use like the sensation of their hands
Speaker 1: touching or uh, different touchpoints in the body where there
Speaker 1: are any contact or there are lots of options for
Speaker 1: things to use. So it really does not have to
Speaker 1: be the breath. I want to just end on one thing. UM,
Speaker 1: do you have a relationship to anxiety today? You know
Speaker 1: what is it today? Um? If? If any? UM? I
Speaker 1: think there are many to and aspects to that as well.
Speaker 1: You know, UM, I have a friend who describes herself
Speaker 1: as a recovering catastrophize her, you know, and so um
Speaker 1: and I can relate to that, you know. Uh, but
Speaker 1: that was what drove her to meditation practice, was because
Speaker 1: she was haunted by these as she said, I'm the
Speaker 1: kind of person she's like in her eighties now. Uh
Speaker 1: so her adult children are really adults, she said, I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person who call one of my children
Speaker 1: and they don't answer the phone. So I think, well,
Speaker 1: they must be dead. Did I never think they're taking
Speaker 1: a shower? Or they just fell in love and I
Speaker 1: don't feel like talking to their mother, you know, It's
Speaker 1: like it must be dead. But now she has those
Speaker 1: thoughts and she laughs at them, you know, and or
Speaker 1: she has a much greater ability and as she put it,
Speaker 1: which is true, if something really is a problem, I'm
Speaker 1: like a hawk. I can do anything. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: She's been very strong in this truly terrible time. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of catastrophizer is actually at an
Speaker 1: easy time with the pandemic, because it's like, is this all? Oh,
Speaker 1: I've imagined way worse than this, you know, Yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really felt why, but you know, and I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like it's a um I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a wave, you know, and everyone is different,
Speaker 1: of course, but I mean I know people who had
Speaker 1: enormous anxiety in the beginning of UM, you know, March
Speaker 1: and I have been incredibly strong, and and also people
Speaker 1: who have learned a lot, you know, about their expectations
Speaker 1: and the things that you know, talk about perfectionism. You know, people, no,
Speaker 1: not just now, but forever, have said to me, I
Speaker 1: should be doing better. You know, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I'm so freaked out, I'm so lucky, or you know,
Speaker 1: why aren't I grateful? I don't know, you know what
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? Like I can't cope and the
Speaker 1: way everyone else canon That happened to me once this
Speaker 1: woman was saying things like that to me years ago
Speaker 1: on I said, I want you to write me a
Speaker 1: list of everything you've been through this year, and she
Speaker 1: chose instead to draw it instead of write it out.
Speaker 1: And it was horrendous. You know. It was like my
Speaker 1: house burnt down, my cat died, my brother and I
Speaker 1: got it strange. I was like, well, let's read this,
Speaker 1: let's look at this together, you know, like, yeah, giving
Speaker 1: yourself a break, please, you know, And that's sort of
Speaker 1: my main message. God, I love that woman. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys for listening to today's episode of Anxiety Bites, and
Speaker 1: I got five more takeaways for you from what we
Speaker 1: just learned from Sharon. So one, if you're breathing, you
Speaker 1: can be meditating. Meditation is portable. Number Two, are you
Speaker 1: telling yourself an untrue story? Look for the add ons.
Speaker 1: They may arise, but if you don't grab onto them,
Speaker 1: they're not going to hang around. Three, the most important
Speaker 1: part of a meditation is the moment where you recognize, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what's happening right now, and then see if
Speaker 1: you can let it go and come back to the
Speaker 1: feeling of the breath. For don't judge yourself. It's really okay.
Speaker 1: Let go gently with a lot of compassion for yourself
Speaker 1: and just start again. We let go and we begin again,
Speaker 1: and that is the most fundamental movement of the entire practice.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to judge myself for that saying that
Speaker 1: word wrong. I'm not even going to delete it and
Speaker 1: start over. That's it. I mean, I said movement wrong.
Speaker 1: And five give yourselves a break, Give yourselves a break again.
Speaker 1: All of Sharon's work can be found through the links
Speaker 1: in the show notes, and again a lot of her
Speaker 1: meditations are free, so there you go. If you've never
Speaker 1: thought about meditating before, maybe this episode was the kick
Speaker 1: in the ask that you needed, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening. Either way, I can't see what you're doing,
Speaker 1: so no judgment from me. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Anxiety bites, but don't forget, you're in control. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.