Meditation is Portable

have had both for decades. I'm in a better place with all of it, and I have the time to try to help other people, just by talking to people who have a lot of answers for us, and by trying to normalize that it's okay to talk about this stuff and uh to even have fun doing it. So Sharon Salzburg, I cannot believe she said yes to doing this podcast. This is how great she is. This podcast had not premiered yet and she agreed to come on to be a guest. That's right, everybody, I'm letting you

in behind the curtain. Some of these interviews were conduct did months before the premier date. But you know, she didn't know what she was getting herself into, and she said yes, and for that I love her. But I could just geek out on her all day. You'll hear

that in the interview. But Sharon is the author of eleven books, including Loving Kindness, the New York Times bestseller Real Happiness, and her twenty seventeen book Real Love, The Art of Mindful Connection, and her newest book, Real Change, Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves in the World. In nineteen seventies, Sharon went to India for an independent study program, and she returned to America in nineteen seventy four and began

teaching Vipasna insight meditation. In nineteen seventy six, she established, together with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield, the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts, which now ranks as one of the most prominent and active meditation centers in the Western world. Her meditations can be heard on the Insight Timer app.

She's a frequent guest on the ten Percent Happier podcast, and she hosts her own podcast, The Meta Hour, which features over a hundred interviews with the top leaders and voices in the mindfulness and meditation movement. All of the info on how to find Sharon for free and to buy her work is in the show notes. So before we get to share, and I'll just I'll tell you

what meditation means to me. Um, I'll never forget. A friend of mine asked me for advice on anxiety, and she said, but before you answer me, do not tell me to fucking meditate. And I know a lot of you listen. If you are still listening, despite the word meditation being in this week's show description, thank you. I know that because everyone is talking about it now that

it can be overwhelming and annoying. You hear the words meditation, you hear the words mindfulness, and you're like, uh, you know. You scroll through Instagram, there are influencers talking about it. It just seems like the latest trend, and in a way, it is. But it doesn't mean that mindfulness and that meditation are trends and not to be taken seriously. It's the way they are being capitalized on in this moment

that is very annoying. But if you can stick with us, you're going to be hearing from someone who really knows their ship. I couldn't think of a better way to put it. They know their ship. So I do meditate. It's one of the tools in my anxiety tool kit. I learned about it in the late ninety nineties from a therapist, and again I didn't even I've never heard the word mindful before. You know, it wasn't a buzzword yet.

So I think I was a little more I'm not susceptible, but I was a little more open to it because I hadn't been bombarded. But before this, I thought meditation was a religion. I didn't even know that it had anything to do with going hand in hand with cognitive behavior therapy, or anything to do with psychology, or that it even had healthy physical effects on people. I had no idea. I just thought, oh, I don't know. People do it to get closer to God or something. I

don't know. That's not my thing. And you know, obviously a lot of my anxiety comes from runaway thoughts that I don't even know that I'm thinking, and that's where meditation has helped me. Now it is a daily discipline. I do meditate ten minutes a day, and then sometimes I don't meditate at all. And on those days is there's never I'm never too busy. I always have ten minutes. You know, I had spent ten minutes on Twitter that day when I could have been meditating. But that's just

how it is. It's one of those things where it can be impossible to work yourself up to, and then once you do it, it's like, what was the big deal? Why was I avoiding that all day? The thing is, I think people think that meditation is this thing you do.

You know, you get your room all set up. You you've got the perfect candle in the perfect blanket, and you've got a white noise machine, and maybe you even bought a Buddha statue, and you know, I've got to feel in a spiritual mood to go meditate, and nobody wakes up in a spiritual mood. I don't even know if there's such a thing as a spiritual mood. But

meditation is supposed to meet us where we are. Meditation doesn't want us to come to it in a flowing robe if that's not our normal, you know, daily attire. But the way I look at meditation is on our side. It's a practice that says to us, whatever you're thinking and feeling is totally normal, and okay, I'm just here to help notice it and we'll talk with Sharon. You know, the biggest misconception about meditation is that it's about clearing

your mind. It is not about not mindfulness. Mindfulness is about noticing your mind. So the busier your mind is, sorry, get on that cushion, because probably quote the better you might even be at mindfulness, because it's just about noticing all of your thoughts. And once you start to notice your thoughts very deliberately, ten minutes a day over the course of weeks, months, it does start to change the way you think and the way you react to things, and the way you go about your every day. But

I too have a complicated relationship with meditation. You know, if I don't do it the first thing when I get up, it looms as this big giant thing I have to do. And I know that people who don't meditate, obviously, can also have a complicated relationship with meditation. I think it's one of those words that just gets a reaction from people. Nobody's neutral when you say them, you know you should meditate. Nobody goes, oh, maybe I will. No,

never had that happen. But I can tell you right now, just sit back, enjoy this episode and really get to know what meditation is. Don't confuse an ancient practice that's become trendy and commodified by some as the practice itself. It's really just about learning that with enough practice, we can be in the middle of a road rage and suddenly realize that we've just noticed our thoughts instead of acting on them. And yes, that's that's an example from

my real life. So talking with Sharon today, I wanted to get into the mind of someone who might be listening to this podcast who just wants to know, just tell me how I do this thing and what is the truth about it. Supposed to be someone who's already heard there's no right way to meditate. You can start just doing five minutes a day, you know. I'm sure you've heard all that before, but I wanted to dig deeper. What stops people from trying it? Is it perfectionism, fear

of sitting in their own thoughts. Is it that people don't understand exactly what meditation is and that's why they're hesitant. So we're talking to Sharon about all of this in the first part of my interview with her on Anxiety Bites. Here we go today on the show. My guest is a hero of mine, Sharon Salzburg. Sharon, thank you for being here until I did, really thank you. Let's get right into it, so this will be the first episode that deals entirely with meditation. I have to be honest.

I I said, I'm going to drop it in after we've aired a few episodes already, and then I'm throwing the M word at everybody. Now, I use meditation as one of the tools in my anxiety tool kit. But when people have asked me for advice, you know, how do you deal with your anxiety? Before I can even take a breath to answer them, they'll say, but don't tell me to meditate. Now, why do you think people react this way? I mean preemptively even where they say

they don't want to meditate. Is this new? I mean, you've been meditating for decades. Have you heard this before? What is going on with that? Well? I think has

been this way. I always put in different ways for different reasons, and I can well imagine, given some of the associations people have with meditation that it's an absolutely excruciating idea, especially if you're like a high energy person, you know, leaning over into anxious and um the thought of you know, having to sit still and a pretzel like pusture with your eyes closed, not moving for three hours or whatever, you know, and not having any thoughts

or even just being alone with your thoughts and having just this run. I mean, it is excruciating, and I don't blame them one bit for not finding it appealing. But the reality of meditation is, first of all, it's so much broader than that. And you know, you don't have to sit in a pretzel like pusture, you don't have to be uncomfortable, you don't have to do it for hours at a time. Um, neuroscience actually says, well,

I've had two different things. One neuroscientist tell me seven to nine minutes a day will change your brain, and another neuroscientists tell me twelve minutes a day. So nobody actually knows, of course, But also no one is saying you have to do this for six hours a day, you know, and struggle and in order to have even measurable effects on your brain. And so you know. And it's also not the case that we meditate to wipe

out thinking, you know, which would be impossible anyway. But we're trying to change our relationship to everything our physical experience. Sensations are emotions, are thoughts, because we want to have choice, we want to be empowered, you know, not to wipe out an experience, but to relate to it differently. You know,

we don't have to take every thought to heart. Maybe we don't have to um be defined by certain emotions things like that, and so uh there and in so many ways, you know, you can practice meditation walking um, you can do it lying down, and you could do it uh using a word or mantra. You can do it using the breath, and it's like this fabulous period of experimentation if you're if you're in this to try, you know, rather than feeling I have to do it

this way. I think that's important, Like if people could at the very least maybe adjust their approach to and think of it as something to be enthused about, you know. And it's interesting because I'm a daily meditator. I try to do it before I even leave my bedroom so that I make sure that I do it that day.

Of course, today I didn't do it because I knew I was interviewing you, and I was excited and nervous, and so I thought, what she's I have twenty minutes before we log on with Sharon, This would be a great time to meditate. And I went, no, I'm not going to. I'm going to make coffee. I'm going to stay jacked up like it was. You know, every day it's like I wake up and I'm a beginner again because I have to tell myself to do it right. Do you still experience that or I imagine you are

kind of beyond that now. Yeah, it's not so much that. I mean I have I just had an anniversary. I've been meditating for fifty years. You can believe that, you know, which is ridiculous. I mean, the passage of time is one of the most absurd things ever. You know, this meditation at all help with that feeling that life is flying by or no, well I think it is flying by. But a meditation helps with a lot of a lot of aspects of things. Um, you know, I think that, uh,

it does get to be more natural. And they're also ways of structuring the practice so that you feel support. So for example, UM, I always say to people, make a reasonable commitment, you know, is that five minutes a day, Is that seven to nine minutes a day is a three minutes a day? And for how long? And so you will find the difference in your life, which is

where counts. And and so those two things, find a reasonable structure, don't worry about what you're experiencing in that five or ten or twenty minute period each day, whatever it is, and look at your life for for changes. And then there's really another thing, which is finds a supportive community if you can, whether that's you know, online these days or whatever, it's just something um that helps

so you don't feel you're doing it all alone. I'm just going to push back a little bit on the notion of, hey, you know, just start out with two to five minutes. I mean, it is true there are days that I just well, listen, there's never any day where I only have two minutes to meditate. If my life was that busy, that's a problem if I'm not, you know, the president. But I now say, well, I'm only going to make two minutes time for two minutes today, and I mean, let's be honest, and I'll do it.

But I've been reading this great book by this psychiatrist named Dr Born. He wrote this amazing book called The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, and there's an entire chapter on perfectionism and how the root of a ton of anxiety is not that there's nuclear bombs or that you know, we had a hard childhood. It's that we're perfectionists, and it's hard to say to someone no, no, no, it's

totally fine to meditate for just two minutes. If you're starting, people are like, I don't believe that you're just being nice because you're a meditator person. But there's a right way to do it, and that involves going on a retreat for ten days or you know, it's impossible, Like, how do you do you come across a lot of people that you can sort of detect the perfectionism? Is what's stopping them? And what is there anything else you can say beyond okay, really you can just do it

for two minutes. How do you get through to them? Well? I think, of of course they do, you know, men perfectionists. But I don't know that it comes out so much in the sense of the form or the structure, but more the idea of what people think they should be experiencing, which I think gets in a minute. But in terms of the phone the structure, i'd actually give them data. I mean, these real nerves scientists I talked to, you know, who each have their own labs, who are very prominent

in the field of studying the brain and meditation. And even though they had somewhat different perspectives, you know, they had different numbers. They were in the neighborhood of one another. You know, Yeah, there's seven to nine minutes. Did they say how how long it takes? Like, in other words, is it a month of doing this? About a month? Yeah, it has a short amount of time and then you have to keep going because it will start to fade,

you know. But this is like getting the practice into place, you know, and having it, having it worked for you. And so, um, the second well, the first nerve scientist, I'll just say it was Richie Davidson, who has a lab at the University Wisconsindent Madison. Um is many books about meditation and the brain. And um, he said seven to nine minutes a day. So I mean, again, no one knows for sure clearly, but but there is there is some science behind this. If that's going to help

for you to feel okay, it's it's worth doing. I find it. Perfectionism really comes out and certainly came out of me with the idea of what I think or we think we should be experiencing. And so, you know, while we're meditating while we're meditating, you know, and so um, Now, of course I'm not in any social situations, but back when I was like a year and a half ago, if I was introduced at a party or some social situation as a meditation teacher, people are often responded by saying, oh,

I tried that once. I failed at it. Yeah, and we don't believe you can fail at it. You cannot have the wrong experience. You might have an uncomfortable experience, but you cannot do it wrong because everything is it's not about what's happening. It's about how we're relating to what's happening. And so if I were to ask these people, why do you think you failed at it? They would likely say I couldn't stop me thinking. I couldn't make my mind blank, I couldn't clear my mind, I couldn't

have only beautiful thoughts. I couldn't keep the sleepiness from arising, I couldn't keep the anxiety from arizing. Whatever it is. Remember, we're all about relationship. It's not about what's happening. It's about how we're relating to what's happening. And so um, that's a very hard thing to believe. It is I think I think once people do believe it that Okay, I know what you're saying, it's time to sit and get quiet and notice our thoughts. Then that's the next

level of resistance and scariness. Well, I don't want to know my thoughts, you know, and I don't want to sit with the feelings. I read this study. I don't have any I'm going to paraphrase it, but um, it came out during the pandemic that people would rather get a shock that's really painful than sit alone with their thoughts for like four minutes. And there was some gender difference. By the way, interesting study as the University of Virginia.

And let me guess women can sit with their thoughts better. Yeah, I'm just saying, you know, is I also I thought about, you know, so many people, not everyone, of course, has been isolated in this situation. Some people have been working every day, some people live in you know, different kinds of situations. But for the people who have been alone all the kind of alone with their thoughts, I thought

of that study right away. You know how hard it would be, um, because here too, you know, you're not sort of like thrown in the deep end and plunging into like looking at your thoughts and you're all shocked and embarrassed and freaked out. You know. It's like we learned certain skills. We learned skills of being kind to ourselves no matter what we're going through. We learned skills of having more presence and balance, which is really the whole key. You know. It's like, because we so often

can't insist on changing what's coming up. It's like you can't wake up in the morning and say, I'm not going to get anxious all day today. I refuse, you know.

I mean, we learned certain conditioning elements. We learned, well, it's stronger if I don't sleep, or if I eat, you know, eighteen pounds of sugar for breakfast, whatever it is, you know, And so we can affect conditions, but we can't control them and say, well, I've decided, you know, is that going to come up today because we don't know, and so learning how to relate to let's just say, anxiety that's already arisen, I'm not to maybe cascade and dive deep into it and also not fight it and

hate it and hate yourself forward. That's the whole skills training anxiety bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of our sponsors. Where I find meditation goes really beautifully with cognitive therapy is incognitive behavior therapy. They'll tell you, don't believe your thoughts, don't follow your thought. You know, just because you think, um, that it seems like a really good day for a nuclear war to breakout, doesn't mean it's going to where you're convinced the plane

you're on is going to crash. And and you and I have this in common. This is a quote from from you that I read, um that you said, many are made anxious by not knowing, but I am afraid of the things I believe to be certain. The plane is going to crash, my car is going to break down. Whether the anxiety comes from this certainty that we are right or the despair that nothing is going to ever work. Um. We want to give this high energy a big space so it no longer bounces off the walls of the mind.

So is the big space meditation in that sense? Yeah, you know, I mean there's so many different approaches, and I think, you know, I think an important thing is not to um make the experiment with a kind of mind of past fail Yeah, you know, a big because some approaches work right now and may not work tomorrow, or they may not work today, they might work tomorrow, or you know, you try something and it doesn't really

seem to bring you more balanced. Okay, it's not because you have a character flaw or you need remedial work or you know, where you're so far gone that it's it's unthinkable. It's like that particular approaches and working right now, um, because what we're trying to do is really bring some

balance into our being. And balance doesn't mean flatness in terms of our experience, means like the holding environment is open, spacious, as you said, um, connected, you know, so we're talking about the the environment within which all these things are gonna arise and pass away. And balance always looks different, you know, like some days where um, way too far back from what we're feeling and we need to kind of come forward a little bit and and feel it.

And other days we're way too enmeshed and overwhelmed by what we're feeling and we need to center a bit, you know, and get some space. And so balance is always going to look different. Some things they'll just be useful on some days, and it's okay. If they don't work, you know, you try something else. So one of the approaches is really around that holding environment, you know, and it's it's learning to relate with presents, with balance, with kindness,

no matter what's going on. Most meditation practices, you're just aware of the breath anyhow it's appearing, you know, ragged or smooth. It doesn't matter, you know, you're just paying attention. But there are ways of breathing that are aren't consciously changing the pattern of the breath. And um, so they say, for example, if you're out breath is longer than you're in breath, the parasympathetic nerve a system will start taking

over from the sympathetic nervous system. You'll just chill, you know, and you'll feel much more relaxed. And so um there are a lot of fancy ways of doing that, like you breathe into the count of four in your hold for four, and you breathe out for the count of vapor. It doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is that your outbreath be longer than you're in breath. And and one of the things I think, um that's very useful around that approach is that it takes away the

stigma from what you're feeling. It's like, your nervous system is whyed a certain way for whatever reason. Maybe it's a more recent event, maybe it's you know, some other reason, but you know, the shame and the embarrassment and the freaked outedness and all those are the things that we

tend to add. They don't need to be here, and so you realize, oh, you know, the very fundamental thing is the first it's the hold the environment, because then you kind of approach anything you're experiencing and see if she might bring it into balance. And then the second it's like really use tols. Well, you know, the parasympathetic nervous system thing is so interesting because I I found that once I learned about that, it really calmed me down.

It's it's nice to know that it's physical and that it's not my fault and that I'm making it worse by thinking I'm so unique. Um, and I came up with something. Maybe I didn't, I mean I think I did. I'm sure other people have thought this, But the way that I think about it is when my sympathetic nervous system is freaking out and thinking it's protecting me by raising my heart and giving me this shallow breathing feeling. I know that it's time to get the parasympathetic nervous

system going. And the way I think about it is the paramedics are coming and they exist in my body like I don't have to call anyone. They're already he or they just have to be woken up, untild It's time to get to work. So that's my little trick. Anything silly where I talked to myself like I'm a kid almost really takes me out of my brain in

that moment, you know. Um so getting to breathing. Will you tell me and our listeners about the kind of meditation that you study, practice, teach, actually teach too main kinds of meditation. One is mindfulness, which I can talk about in a minute, and the other is called loving kindness, where, uh, you know, rather than say resting our attention on the feeling of the breath, we're silently repeating certain phrases like may you be happy, may you be peaceful. It's like

gift giving or generosity of the spirit. And one of the things that particular approach to meditation does is it takes that energy and it channels it, you know, because let's say anxiety is a very high energy state and energies bad. It's just this out of balance in that situation, you know, And it's it's taking that energy and actually giving it a place to go, which isn't a kindness

toward ourselves or toward others. And so I know, for example, my friends who have terrible insomnia, and rather than lie in bed and fret, they'll do loving kindness meditation and can you take us through what those phrases typically are Usually classically you start with yourself, and so it might be remember this is like gift giving or offering might be something like may I be safe or field safe? May I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.

Live with ease means and the things of day to day life, like livelihood or family may not be such a struggle. May I live with these? So sometimes people say to me, because of the may I or may you? Like, who am I asking? Well, you're not asking anybody anything, You're offering. It's like you hand some of a birthday card and you say, may you have a great year. So you're almost offering it to yourself. Is that you begin with, we offer it to ourselves, and then classically

we'd offer it to a variety of different beings. They say beings because it might be like a puppy or something you know, not a person, um, and it might be you know, somebody you really care for, someone's helped you, someone you feel grateful for. It might be. And then you know, we go through a progression depending on how much time you have and what fits and that sort of middle place. Uh. A very classic um example would be someone we call a neutral person. That's somebody we

don't especially like. We're just like you might not even know their name, and so in effect we're saying what happens when you look at them rather than through them, like may be safe, may be happy mm hm. And so the beginning is is commonly oneself. The very ends is all beings everywhere, all of life, and what you do in the middle might change every time you do it.

I've done some kind ones, I've done some of yours, and I really love the loving kindness I I did it um when I was having a lot of pain and anxiety after a breakup, and I know that one of the options is to offer may you be happy and live with these to someone that's hurt you and that you know, and that you can actually talk about noticing feelings. When that person comes up, you can feel your body tightening. And then after doing the loving kindness

offering to them, I feel like I'm melting. And and I always know maybe this isn't true, but I always think, when we offer the loving kindness to someone that maybe has hurt us or that is difficult for us to think about, is it really like technically still a back door to offering it to ourselves? Does that make in this book loving kindness? You wrote it is fear of pain that provokes and sustains this um splitting off of

parts of ourselves. To avoid feeling pain, we shut out crucial portions of awareness, even though this closing off, this internal separation is deadening. And then later you say, the fear of pain that we tried to escape becomes in fact our constant companion. What's a better constant companion, Well, compassion. Let's let's try compassion for ourselves and for others. You know, And a lot of times people have the conditioning and the belief that compassion is kind of weak and weakening,

but really it's a tremendous strength. And um, you know, I'm told that they're all kinds of performance studies, for example, that have been done that show like a harsh punitive environment, either internal the way we'll react to having made a mistake or something like that, or external will spike our performance, but briefly then we'll crash. That. Actually, the most effective efficient way to change a habit, to learn something new,

to make progress and something is actually self compassion. You realize I blew it. It's part of the human condition. What can I learn? Let's move on, which is a different thing. I'm here, I'm so bad and so off once the terrible We'll be right back. Hi, it's me Jen, just pumping in at the halfway point here. I hope you're enjoying my talk with Sharon Salzburg. But let's just

recap what we've learned so far. So if there's five takeaways from what Sharon said, in my opinion, it's first one is you'll find the difference meditation makes in your life. Don't worry about what you're experiencing in the five to twenty minutes of your meditation. Secondly, neuroscientists that meditating for even just seven to nine minutes a day, every day

for a month can make positive changes in your brain. Three, you cannot fail at meditation, for meditation is not about what's happening, but about how we're relating to what's happening. And five, anxiety is a high energy state, and that energy is not bad, it's just out of balance. So in the second half of this interview, I am talking to Sharon about her relationship to anxiety and how exactly

do we do this mindfulness thing. And Sharon has been meditating for fifty years and she can still fall into catastrophic thinking. And you know, she didn't meditate herself out of the human condition. And so in this next part she talks about how all of us need to give ourselves a break and stump beating up on ourselves and

realize there is nothing wrong with us. Here we go, I'm mindfulness, So tell you, so take me through you know, the the history of your history of getting into meditation, and and and then of course what what exactly is a mindfulness meditation? Okay, So I went to India, I love these many years ago, I went to India nine as a junior in college UM in order to study meditation, I had an independent study project approved by the university

to go to Indian study meditation. And that was because when I was a sophomore of the year before, I taken an Asian philosophy class and really, honestly, as far as I can remember, it was just happenstance, like it was on Tuesday. That's convenient, let me do that one. Uh, And there I was, and of course totally changed my life.

And that was I think two fold. One was UM, I, like many people, had had a very traumatic, painful childhood, and like for many people, my family system was one where this was never ever spoken about, and so I didn't know what to do with all of those feelings

inside of me. And and then you know, I got to college and was taking this class and they were talking about the Buddha on and his kind of lifting up of the suffering that's in life, saying this is a part of life, this is inevitable, this is natural. And what that translated to in my head was, Oh, you're not so weird, Yeah you actually belong, You're a part of things. This is just a part of life. And and so the tremendous isolation I had felt all

along that was changed. And then I heard in that class that through were these methods, they were techniques, There were tools that people actually used called meditation, and if you practice them, you could be a whole lot happier. And so one of the styles you teach is mindfulness, which is it based in the Buddhist tradition? Is yeah, I mean it's a funny thing, you know, Like I said, yes very quickly. But like the first night of my first retreat, so January seven, n one, the teacher was

sn Goenka. It was an intensive ten day like immersion course in meditation, and that first night he said, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism, the Buddha tootal way of life. This is in no way about becoming a Buddhist or rejecting anything else. It's just about the power of your own awareness. And so like that was the first night. You know, that was really my foundational teaching. And I've

always believed it. I've always taught that way myself. So a lot of the imagery I use it often, I might say, according to the Buddhist psychology, or you know, but it's not about Buddhism, which is kind of a fake term anyway, Mum. You know, it's about the power of one's own mind. It's just that, you know, I spent those years like learning within that context, and so the imagery, the stories, uh that come most easily for

me is is expressing me that way. One of the phrases we used to describe mindfulness and what we do in meditation is like, look for the add ons. It's not just this experience, it's what we're also adding onto it. What's gonna feel like tomorrow. I'm the only one in the whole world. This is all my fault, you know, and we're just piling on and so we're left trying to hold this superstructure we have created, and it's so hard. It's hard enough, you know, Like I mean, the story

usually tell to describe this as um. I was teaching with my friend Joseph somewhere once, and Joseph and I were sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea, and someone came in in some distress. Instaid to Joseph, I just had this really terrible experience. So Joseph said, what happened? And he said, I felt all this tension and my jaw, and I realized what an incredibly uptype person I am and how I always have been and

I always will be. So Joseph said, you mean you felt a lot of tension in your jaw, And he said yes. And I've never been able to get close to people and it's never going to change. Joseph said, you mean you felt a lot of tension in your john. It was really interesting for me, like watching them go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And finally Joseph said to him, why are you adding

a miserable self image to a painful experience. It's actually painful enough just to feel at tension in your jaw. But now you're gonna be alone for the rest of your life, you know. So we would say, look for the add ons. That's such a great simple way to put it. I love that. So now take me through, for me, take me through. What what so you say to someone you should meditate, Not that you would say that to someone, but someone says to someone you should meditate.

Just try it two minutes. Now what are they going to do? They sit down and they're noticing their breath and what the heck does that mean? And what is what is that? Okay? So um, in a just to lay a bigger context to mindfulness. Usually the way it's practiced, I mean, the essence of it is what we just we're talking about, like being with our experience, whatever it is, without so many of the add ons intruding. They may arise, but they're not hanging around because you're not grabbing onto them,

you know. So um, that's where we're getting to. So in the process, often we choose what's called the primary object. That's the home base. That's where we're gonna start, that's what we're gonna keep coming back to. But we're not there all the time, right, Um, But it's it is like home base. So usually, very commonly, that's the feeling of the breath. It's actually the sensations of the normal breath. Unlike different yoga practices. We might be breathing, you know,

in one nostril in that the other. It's very intentional. This is just the breath, however's happening. Um. And so we have an object, like the feeling of the breath, we rest our attention on that object and then a little dwippy things happen, you know, thoughts, hearing, things like that, but we're connected to the breath, so we just let them go by. And then something happens that's much stronger. You have this wave of joy, this wave of anger um or you know, a strong and physical sensation. So

that becomes the new object of interest or awareness. We just recognize, oh, this is what's happening right now, and then we see if we can let go and come back to let's say, the feeling of the breath. And then there are many, many times which is gone. It's like we have no idea how we ended up thinking about Portugal, you know, or whatever, you know, where we fall asleep, And those are important moments too, because the suggestion is, well, don't forget, don't judge yourself, it's really okay.

See if you can let go gently and with a lot of compassion for yourself, just start again. So we let go, and we begin again, and we let go and we begin again. And that's the most fundamental movement of the entire practice. And I think it's the most useful thing I learned in meditation. Well, yeah, times to day that we have to do that as one of my early teachers said, if you're breathing, you can be meditating. Um. The second reason is that, as this one teacher said

to me, which I was very charming, he says, very portable. Yeah, we also practice say that twelve minutes a day given me she hear do. Let's say we practice twelve minutes a day sitting formally in a dedicated way, and we're using the breath as that prime are object or home base, the place we come back to when we've just wandered off, the place we get rest at. We just rest our

attention on the feeling of the breath. Um. And then we're at work or we're commuting, you know, maybe we're once again with a group of people surrounding us and somebody's getting angry and we're getting anxious, and you know, you can't really like open up your closet door and poleetical this equipment or start playing music or do yourself. But you can be breathing right and it's perfectly private. Nobody even has to know you're doing it, you know, and you have a way of coming back to yourself,

re centering, coming back to the moment. And when we do that, when we come back to ourselves in that way, we come back to our values, we come back to what we really care about, our priorities. So the third aspect of the breath, after being universal and portable, is that it's said to be failing neutral, you know, um, And so much of what arises in meditation is beautiful and wondrous and exhilarating, and so much can be difficult and expected too, and and then we have the breath

where we can just chill. Right. So, if you're not going to use the breath as that primary object, and that's totally fine, you don't have to, UM, then see if you can find something else that satisfies those other criteria. You know, people use like the sensation of their hands touching or uh, different touchpoints in the body where there are any contact or there are lots of options for things to use. So it really does not have to be the breath. I want to just end on one thing. UM,

do you have a relationship to anxiety today? You know what is it today? Um? If? If any? UM? I think there are many to and aspects to that as well. You know, UM, I have a friend who describes herself as a recovering catastrophize her, you know, and so um and I can relate to that, you know. Uh, but that was what drove her to meditation practice, was because she was haunted by these as she said, I'm the

kind of person she's like in her eighties now. Uh so her adult children are really adults, she said, I'm the kind of person who call one of my children and they don't answer the phone. So I think, well, they must be dead. Did I never think they're taking a shower? Or they just fell in love and I don't feel like talking to their mother, you know, It's

like it must be dead. But now she has those thoughts and she laughs at them, you know, and or she has a much greater ability and as she put it, which is true, if something really is a problem, I'm like a hawk. I can do anything. So uh, you know, She's been very strong in this truly terrible time. And I think a lot of catastrophizer is actually at an easy time with the pandemic, because it's like, is this all? Oh, I've imagined way worse than this, you know, Yeah, that's fantastic.

I hadn't really felt why, but you know, and I feel like I feel like it's a um I mean, it is a wave, you know, and everyone is different, of course, but I mean I know people who had enormous anxiety in the beginning of UM, you know, March and I have been incredibly strong, and and also people who have learned a lot, you know, about their expectations and the things that you know, talk about perfectionism. You know, people, no, not just now, but forever, have said to me, I

should be doing better. You know, I don't know why I'm so freaked out, I'm so lucky, or you know, why aren't I grateful? I don't know, you know what what's wrong with me? Like I can't cope and the way everyone else canon That happened to me once this woman was saying things like that to me years ago on I said, I want you to write me a list of everything you've been through this year, and she chose instead to draw it instead of write it out.

And it was horrendous. You know. It was like my house burnt down, my cat died, my brother and I got it strange. I was like, well, let's read this, let's look at this together, you know, like, yeah, giving yourself a break, please, you know, And that's sort of my main message. God, I love that woman. Thank you guys for listening to today's episode of Anxiety Bites, and I got five more takeaways for you from what we just learned from Sharon. So one, if you're breathing, you

can be meditating. Meditation is portable. Number Two, are you telling yourself an untrue story? Look for the add ons. They may arise, but if you don't grab onto them, they're not going to hang around. Three, the most important part of a meditation is the moment where you recognize, oh, this is what's happening right now, and then see if you can let it go and come back to the feeling of the breath. For don't judge yourself. It's really okay. Let go gently with a lot of compassion for yourself

and just start again. We let go and we begin again, and that is the most fundamental movement of the entire practice. I'm not going to judge myself for that saying that word wrong. I'm not even going to delete it and start over. That's it. I mean, I said movement wrong. And five give yourselves a break, Give yourselves a break again. All of Sharon's work can be found through the links in the show notes, and again a lot of her

meditations are free, so there you go. If you've never thought about meditating before, maybe this episode was the kick in the ask that you needed, or maybe you just enjoyed listening. Either way, I can't see what you're doing, so no judgment from me. I'll talk to you soon. Anxiety bites, but don't forget, you're in control. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.