The Power of Awe: A Micro-Mindfulness Practice with Dr. Michael Amster - podcast episode cover

The Power of Awe: A Micro-Mindfulness Practice with Dr. Michael Amster

Jan 11, 202445 min
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Episode description

Today, we are beginning a two part series with the co-authors of a powerful new book that I am so excited to share with you guys today.

In this episode of The Mindful Minute, I talk with Dr. Michael Amster about the power of awe and an incredible micro mindfulness practice that you can do in 30 seconds. 

I'm not kidding. 30 seconds. 

And speaking from my own experience with this practice, it will absolutely invigorate your meditation practice and benefit your days.

Michael is a San Francisco Bay Area-based physician and faculty member at Touro School of Medicine. As a pain management specialist, Michael is keenly aware of the integration of mind, body, and spirit and the effects of physical and psychospiritual pain on health and well-being.

Michael is a student of meditation for over 30 years, as well as a certified yoga teacher and meditation teacher trained at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Here is what you can expect in today’s episode:

 

00:05 Introduction and Welcome

07:59 Interview with Dr. Michael Amster

09:29 The Power of Awe: A New Approach to Mindfulness

13:22 The AWE Method Explained

18:42 The Impact of Awe on Emotional State

21:22 Practical Application of the AWE Method

25:47 Introduction to the Concept of Attention

26:43 Sharing Personal Experiences with the Practice

29:53 The Power of Sharing Awe with Others

30:18 Incorporating Awe into Daily Life

31:09 The Conceptual Aspect of Awe

32:24 Incorporating the Awe Practice into Daily Routine

35:10 The Benefits of the Awe Practice

41:45 The Power of Awe: Book and Other Resources

43:24 Closing Thoughts and Reflections

You can learn more about Dr. Amster and his new book, The Power of Awe here: https://thepowerofawe.com/

Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/dBYEUL to receive free mini meditations each month, creative musings, and more.

Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.com.

IG: @merylarnett                 

#meditatewithmeryl

Transcript

Welcome! You are listening to The Mindful Minute, Meditations Created for Everyday Joy. I'm your host, Meryl Arnett, and my passion is making meditation accessible and enjoyable. This podcast is recorded from my live Monday Night meditation class, where we have a brief discussion followed by a guided meditation. If you would like to access these

meditation practices as standalone audio files for your daily practice, please subscribe to my newsletter at merylarnett.com. It's free and you'll receive a new mini meditation each week, along with behind-the-scenes content and bonus material for each podcast episode. All right, let's grab a cup of tea, a comfy seat, and settle in for today's practice.

Hi, friends. Welcome to a new year and a new season of The Mindful Minute. I'm so glad to be with you today. As we settle into January, you're going to hear a few interviews in a row, which is a little unusual for this podcast. I try to keep it to one interview a month or so, maybe even less.

But this season, I really want to start out with a very specific focus. This focus has to do with attention and intention. You know, we have a lot coming at us these days, both in terms of stress and fear, as well as in the solutions that are offered by the wellness industry. Suddenly, it's just to yoga or raky or meditate or go on that retreat or by that journal or that crystal. And, you know, self-care is like another full-time job and one that we're probably failing it.

And I just, I'm not here for that. I'm not. And I don't want you to feel like when you listen to this podcast that it's one more thing you should be doing and aren't doing. I believe deeply in meditation because I love meditation. For me, it is luxurious and it feels creative and inspirational. It's benefited me tremendously in my own life. You know, it's not the only thing that I do though. I also really love to cook. I love to cook. And I love to spend intentional contemplative time in nature.

I write a little bit. I try to garden. I honor my ancestors. I play with or whole cards. I dream journal. And I don't do all of this every single day. I do do pieces of that every single day. And all of these little pieces of practice, they've become what what I call what I refer to as my home studying the heart practices.

They are the practices that settle me into myself. They allow me to feel the way I want to feel as I move through my days. They allow me to connect to care to love for all those in my life, as well as myself. They invite me to bring attention and intention into everything that I do. And so while certainly I will still be sharing meditation classes and guided meditations on this podcast.

I also really hope to bring in a few of these smaller home studying practices so that you have other pieces. And my pieces might not be your pieces. I'm not here to tell you what will and won't work for you. But I'll share what's worked for me and what I enjoy and what brings me pleasure in my days in hopes that it supports you to. And so these next three interviews starting today are pieces that I hope you find inspirational or curious or something that feels like I want to do that.

And if it doesn't, you don't have to do it. You can listen, you can enjoy it. You can move on to whatever practices do support you in feeling good in your days. So to start with, we are moving into a two part series with the co authors of a powerful new book that I am so excited to share with you guys today.

I have been waiting over a month to talk about this with y'all. So today we are talking with Dr. Michael Amster about the power of all an incredible micro mindfulness practice that you can do in 30 seconds. I'm not kidding 30 seconds and speaking from my own experience with this practice, it will absolutely invigorate your meditation practice and benefit your days.

Michael is a San Francisco Bay Area based physician and a faculty member of the true school of medicine as a pain management specialist. Michael is keenly aware of the integration of mind, body and spirit and the effects of physical and psychospiritual pain on health and well being. Michael is a student of meditation for over 30 years, as well as a certified yoga teacher and a meditation teacher trained at spirit rock meditation center.

Today, Michael and I are going to talk about the emotion of all. Michael teaches us an incredible mini practice that we can do in any given moment to connect with the emotion of all. And we will talk about the numerous clinical studies that they've done on this particular practice what and so we can talk about really the science of why.

All decreases stress anxiety depression burnout and improves our well being are connectedness or generosity and our happiness. I know this sounds too good to be true. I thought so as well. I am really truly in love with this book and this practice. I have recommended it to so many people in my life already. I do this practice multiple times a day now and I'm delighted to share it with you. So without further ado, join me and Michael in today's conversation.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. Thank you so much, Merrill, for welcoming on the podcast and I'm just thrilled to meet your community of listeners. And as we we talked a little before we started tonight. I'm a fan of your work and just really thrilled to be here. Thank you. I have to tell you before we get started, you know, I got your book, the power of our.

And in all honesty, I was a little bit wary because I tend to hesitate when anybody says they're going to offer me anything in less than a minute a day. And I was like, I don't know about this. And then I opened your book and I started reading it. I was like astounded by the amount of research and science that's presented. I was astounded by the simplicity and yet a totally unique to me practice that I implemented that day and have you since with profound effect quite honestly.

And so I knew I had to talk to you because this is really at least in my experience as a meditation teacher, it really feels like life changing stuff here. So I wonder before we get into everything that you are doing. I wonder if maybe you could tell us a little bit about the work that you do. I know that you're both in medicine and in mindfulness. Maybe you could share a bit about who you are.

Yeah, well, I've been a student of mindfulness since I was in college. And I think for many people, we become students of meditation or mindfulness from some adversity or challenges that we have in our life. And so I used to suffer from really bad test taking anxiety. And I had panic attacks in college and I had a really big one taking the medical school admissions tests.

And for anyone who's ever had one of those experiences, your mind completely shuts down and your heart's racing. I started crying. I stormed out of the exam, just feeling completely deaf. And I was really at a crossroads where I needed to either manage my anxiety through medication or find some more natural way. And a friend of mine took me on a 10 day of apostinary treat, which was my first experience.

And it was to be quite honest, probably one of the hardest 10 days of my life, but I came out of it transformed. And I've been a devoted student of Buddhist meditation for over 30 years. And then was trained as a Dharma teacher at spirit rock, which is a center here on the west coast that trained Buddhist teachers about a decade ago.

And then I let us song for many years. And then I've been teaching mindfulness to my patients as a pain management specialist for as long as I've been practicing medicine. That's a big part of what I do is leading chronic pain groups and we introduce mindfulness principles.

And what I have found over the years is that people really can struggle with sustained mindfulness practice. It's not easy. It takes a lot of effort and it can over time, maybe doesn't get easier for people like it can be even a harder practice, especially with people with chronic pain.

So I had a conversation with my friend and colleague Jake Eagle, who's a mindfulness teacher and leads a spiritual community called live conscious calm. And we started doubting with the idea of brief micro meditation practices that people could take off the cushion or off the mat and do about in their regular daily life, wherever they are at any place anytime.

And first we played with the idea we called micro doses of mindfulness or micro dosing mindfulness and then I flew out to Hawaii in I think it was 2019. And I spent a week with Jake. He lives in Hawaii on the big island and for those who have been to Hawaii, it's filled with a lot of extraordinary awe, the colors of the mountains, the rainbows, the lava, the food ocean, everything.

It's just filled with amazement and wonder. And it was actually in this very simple moment, while we were kind of exploring what this ideal mindfulness practice would be that would give someone a taste of, you know, profound peace and presence in just seconds. And it was really about awe. And I was making pancakes one morning for Jake and his wife Hannah. And prior to that experience, I had made pancakes hundreds of times for my child and for friends and us.

I'm always multitasking like for the better I'm off making sausage or bacon or coffee or putting my kids lunch together for school. And I just stood there and watched the pancakes very attentively watching them transform from a batter into this big puffy pancake and I had this epiphany and it was a profound moment of awe really. And that very simple ordinary act of watching pancakes cook.

And so from that, Jake and I sort of dissected what happened and we came up with what we call the all method. It's a three step practice. We use the word, as an acronym, actually, we break into step three steps. Sorry, attention, wait, exhale and expand. And I'm going to get the teacher a little bit more about that later tonight.

But it was really incredible. We did some initial research and our practices. I did a pilot study with 12 of my patients and Jake did something similar with the group of his patients and we saw really incredible outcomes of terms of improvement of depression, anxiety and pain.

And I approached Dacker Keltner who is the grand out of all research. He's at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. He's the founder of the center. He's been spendings whole career on on awe. And he was so impressed with our initial findings that he said that this was the feature of mindfulness to go out and.

Then immediately after I met Dacker, the pandemic struck and we reached out to him to do a very emergent study with people to know really struggling with shelter in place with anxiety and depression skyrocketing with all the political strife also also happening around the Frank Lloyd riots and everything that was going on. We did these two really robust studies, one incorporated.

We enroll over 150 doctors and nurses on the front lines during COVID and then the other was 300 primary care patients and from that we were able to look at the more longitudinal benefits of this all method practice.

And so I mean there's so much in this and the future of mindfulness like what a huge huge statement to make and and yet when I was reading through your work, I really did feel immediately the ways this was going to resonate with the students that I work with the way it resonated with me. And so maybe let's start with what is off let's talk a little bit about what is sure yeah well so I would you know ask you and your listeners so you think about a moment of all you've had in your life.

And for a lot of people they think of an extraordinary moment of all maybe you've been to the grand canyon or you've like witness just a profoundly beautiful sunset or you've been at the birth of your child and seeing them come into the world. Now those are all moments of awe and there it from a scientific perspective when we think about all the sort of two aspects to it.

So one is that when we have a moment of awe we experience a sense of vastness within ourselves typically I mean we might see something vast outside in the world but our sense of identity becomes vast so we feel like we're bigger we feel connected to the vastness of the universe to you know God to to you know universal consciousness whatever whatever word you want to use.

It's like that sense of us feeling connected to something bigger than the self and another aspect about it is from a scientific emotion is that it often scrambles our sense of reality for like one hour that is so beautiful. You know I was I'm up here in the snow right now and I was just not showing with my spouse and Allahana in our dog and we came across this tree and I was just an ordinary tree but it was so incredibly beautiful looking at the bark and the patterns.

It wasn't an extreme vista but it was this in that moment just seeing the intricate detail of the bark that really elicited me for me a moment of awe and in our book we use a very simple definition we say it's an emotional experience in which we sense being in the presence of something that transcends our normal perception of the world.

It can be just something as subtle as we become very aware of sensation and our fingertips and we can all do this practice together right now just focus your sensation on the fingertips and notice the riches of them of your fingers you're not normally aware of that but right now we're like really noticing how our fingers feel.

And then that can be a moment of awe right there that our nervous system allows us to experience that you know all goes wiring up our hand up into our brain and the synopsis we're able to have this really profound you know present moment experience of wonder and amazement.

And did I read that awe is maybe the only of the you know sort of positive I don't love to use that description but the more positive emotions but it's one of the only ones that we can experience at the same time that we might be experiencing depression or anxiety as opposed to like joy right.

Yeah so when we talk about our book and we actually dedicated chapter this is that all can be a very powerful emotion that we can be in the presence of when we're having a hard time so we talk about for example if we're feeling depressed if let's go on through divorce and through a loss of a job or an illness we can't force ourselves to get out of that depressed state.

I mean I've been there myself in my life and I can't make it happen that I can you convince myself to be happy but we can still access all even more how they're really hard time when we're depressed when we're feeling anxious always available.

We share a story to Victor Frankl who is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust he is a psychiatrist and wrote Mancer Schraminian and he shares about how awe was one of the factors that kept him and other inmates going is that they could still find beauty and wonder of the world. Just you know looking outside the walls of the camp in the beauty of the natural world to keep them going even being one of the darkest places of human history.

You share a quote that is often attributed to him and it's a quote that I use all of the time about this idea between their being space between stimulus and response and I loved both reading that and also sort of the work that you've done around that that it's about our perception right as opposed to just stimulus and response which is fast and maybe into me.

Yeah I use the same quote all the time in my teaching of mindfulness is what I'm good quote for GG mindfulness it is because that gap is our freedom right that's where freedom lies is our ability to choose what our reaction is going to be in the given moment. Especially true with chronic illness and which I see a lot with the work I do and people not reacting to their pain and making stories about it.

So let's tell people let's walk them through the steps of a w e in this micro mindfulness practice. Yeah so as I shared we use the word on it's an acronym for the three steps so what I'll do is I will first kind of explain the practice and why it works and then I'll run people through a more deeper practice.

So if you're in the car driving while listening to this podcast and I know that I usually listen to podcasts while I'm driving just be mindful about sometimes this practice can be really powerful and we we talk about all happening on a spectrum and on the far end of the spectrum is what we say is an orgasm of extreme you know all experiences so just be mindful and you're always welcome to come to do our website where we have some recorded practice.

And all practices as well as some more extended practices as well that we also have in our book so it's. It's a very simple practice to take 15 seconds to do something to talk you through it right now in terms of like how it works then we'll do a very more quick practice so a stands for attention.

And what we're asking you to do is to bring your full and divided attention to something that you value appreciate or find amazing so in the space that you're in right now just look for something maybe it's a piece of our law. There might be some photographs of family members and if you can't find something you could always ramp a memory of the past and that can elicit a moment of law.

To get about someone who's passed away in a special time you have someone maybe during the holidays or a birthday or something like that so you're going to bring your full attention to that moment. And then the W stands for weight and a weight is a simple pause of breath or two.

And what I like to think about the weight is the weight is a gift so you know when you're walking with a friend through a doorway and they walk ahead of you and they open the door and then they're waiting for you and you get to go through it feels really good. When someone's care taking you well this is an opportunity to care take yourself. You're waiting and you're really gifting yourself this opportunity to have the profound moment of all right now in the ordinary moment of your life.

And then the East stands for two things one is a nice long exhalation out. And when we take a longer exhale than an inhale what we're doing is we're stimulating our Vegas nerve and at the very bottom of our diaphragm sits the Vegas nerve and that's the master computer of the autonomic nervous system that controls our fight fight free response so we're really leveraging our nervous system to give our sense give ourselves a sense of rest relaxation and all.

And then the E also stands for expansion because when we have a moment of awe we experience our self getting bigger and we feel connection and we often feel action energetic expansion where if you can recall moment of all maybe felt like some tingle or chills you know in your extremities that's because there is an energetic release when we have a moment of all. So that's the basics of the design of the practice and so i'm going to now talk everyone through it a little bit faster clip.

All right so we're going to begin with attention and so to bring yourself to this present moment and you're full and invited attention to something that you value appreciate. We find amazing. And we're going to have a nice weight just a breath or two just really being fully with that moment. Take a nice inhale in and a longer exhale.

And letting that energy of that moment expand and fill you up and take another breath and just notice how you feel right now you know something change and your physiology. And how is that for you, Meryl it was lovely you know i had the opportunity over the last maybe two weeks to really play with this practice and there are two that just really jump out of me and i've tried to incorporate it a couple times each day but.

So I had sort of a bigger all moment couple days ago i was sitting at my kitchen table which is where I tend to work because we have great windows so grateful for the light. And as i'm sitting there working i start hearing a noise that like draws my attention outside and i see. So many birds in our backyard i'm like oh this is so interesting so i walk out on the back deck and you know a star lane it's like this iridescent black bird about half the size of a crow.

And they fly in these unbelievably enormous groups called murmurations which i think is so beautiful anyway a murmuration of star lanes landed in our backyard and then as if it was one being. I mean i'm estimating without exaggeration 2000 birds took flight from our backyard like up into there it was just this huge moment and it would be a huge moment i think regardless of whether you are practicing anything.

But i had already been sort of doing this technique and so i just stood there and i was like oh exhale and feel what you're feeling and it was so. Physically powerful to feel that so is incredible. And then the other experience i had opposite end of this spectrum i have two kids listeners now i have a five year old daughter my five year old daughter.

Spent the night with her best bud last night which is just next door it's like literally next door so not far she was so excited i'm excited for her but then i'm sitting on my couch last night. And i am worried just like is she going to be able to sleep is she going to be scared is she going to feel comfortable telling the mom is she means me like i could just feel myself starting to spiral into mom anxiety.

And as i felt it i thought you know what this i know that what this is is like unbelievable love for my kid and let me just feel that for a moment instead of get spiral get stuck in the spiral of thoughts that was starting to happen. And right there on the couch tv was playing the rest of my family was in the room i didn't do anything different but i just said to myself picture your daughter remind yourself how much you love her.

I did the weight i did the exhale and i focused on that feeling versus the anxiety feeling and it's really shifted. That moment for me and it was i didn't have to go somewhere else and i didn't have to do anything i didn't have to call the neighbor it was all fine and my daughter did great she had a great spend the night. But yeah it's a very powerful practice.

That's i love what you share and i will tell you for me listen into what you just shared it gave me a moment of awe and that's one thing about love about this practice is that it's a contagious practice in a good way to be contagious when we share with others we can inspire on them. Oh i love that yeah it's really beautiful in that way it's in since you have young children and young children are the epitome of awe and wonder and how they experience the world.

It might be a fun practice to do is to sit around the table maybe if you pause before you eat your meal for a little gratitude you know does everyone go around and share their off the day and. I've heard from people that have done this with young children that they're just so an awe of what their children have to share about the world and what they see.

They're just like blown away they've never could have never imagined that that's what they would have said i think there's just so special and unique of how children see the world. And in a lot of ways i think what this practices about is is taking us back to living our lives in childlike wonder. There's a quote that I really love by rabbi Abraham Joshua haschal he was a contemporary of mlk and they were very close and a lot of the photos like at the cell on march they're standing side by side.

And he he sort of the rabbi who lived about his life and his teachings were about radical amazement and wonder and he says our goal should be to live life and radical amazement. Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted everything is phenomenal everything is incredible never treat life casually to be spiritual is to be amazed.

And I just love this practice and i've seen in that help hundreds and thousands not hundreds of thousands of hundreds and then now thousands of people. And we've actually been conducted another study with cova long hall patients a nation wide study would seem benefits with the practice as well so it's. It's really exciting as a medical doctor to and a long term Buddhist practitioner to see the marriage of science and spirituality and when they really work hand in hand.

And so you are encouraging participants in your studies or people that you are teaching this technique to this is like. As many times a day as you think of it or how are you inviting people to incorporate this into their days. So what we did in our two big research studies is we taught this in a twenty one day program and so we taught this through a zoom virtual class because it's a nation wide study and. We met four times of seven days apart so it was over the twenty one day period and then.

We asked people just to practice this three times a day so. The practice takes about fifteen to twenty seconds and three times a day is out up to about a minute a day and that was the minimum we asked people to do but we didn't ask people if they want to do a more and so this is really cool is that we know from our research that there's a dose response. So the more you dose on your day the more benefit you have and there's no side effects are downside so you can you can do this ten times a day.

And when I teach us the people I often recommend to begin to to attach your moments of odd is something that you already do a habit you already do all every you know throughout your day so a lot of people start their day drinking a cup of coffee or tea. In the morning or a cup of juice so use as an opportunity to have a moment of all. You know whether it's you know making tea or coffee and you know smelling the grounds or the tea bag watching water boil and be among a tasty net smelling it.

If you're in your body and you're got warming you up in a cold winter morning like all these are great opportunities to experience on a different way every day every day you can have that morning ritual and have a different experience of all.

I love that I love that we don't have to wait for two thousand starlings to land in our backyard to do this practice we get to incorporate it into our day as it is and I also love for all of us that want to have a mindfulness practice and our day falls apart and we don't get that ten minutes sit or that twenty minutes sit that we thought we were going to do.

To not have to write that day off as a loss but to know that there are however many seconds in a day are opportunities for us to do this very little practice that has such a huge feeling attached to it.

Yeah exactly it's it's such a phenomenal mindfulness practice like you said it can be done anywhere and at any time you know any place like you could be in the line at the airport to in the TSA checkpoint when you start to get stressed out because you think you're going to miss your flight and you can use it as opportunity to have a moment of odd like you compress your nervous system and to calm down.

And one thing I really love about this having taught mindfulness meditation to many students over the years is that this practice has a immediate reward you feel good when you have a moment of all sadly traditional mindfulness practices sometimes you finish your ten minutes sit and you're not feeling very good. It can bring up stuff it can I'm not seeing those practices on how value they really do and it's important that we have like deeper dives of mindfulness but this is a practice that.

In my experience for people that have struggled with traditional mindfulness practices of sitting for a long periods of time people that struggle with ADHD with a very you know big monkey mind.

This is a practice for anyone can do anyone can focus on one thing that you find amazing beautiful incredible for ten seconds and then to just let it fill you up take it nice long exhale out and reset your nervous system like anyone can do that yeah that's and it's a great practice you can like I said we you take it anywhere you go you're you're at a red light. You got kids fighting in the back seat.

Story yeah you're like okay i'm having my moment of all right now look out you know just look out of the sky like at a tree like at a bird. Look at a stoplight you know stop lights. I know it's just as you said that I was realizing you know what of my just own personal habits I don't even know where it developed to be truthful is almost every night before I go to bed I step outside and I take like 30 seconds to stare up at the night sky I have done it most of my adult life.

And I'm never really I don't know why I just know that I feel good when I do it it like does something for me to do that experience but as you're talking i'm like oh. I'm clearly experiencing this moment of all I don't know that I've ever had a name for it but it's exactly what i'm doing is i'm standing there under a sky that reminds me of.

Essentially have vast the universe is and the other thing I love about that I personally love is like I love thinking about the fact that the moon is the exact same moon every single ancestor I've ever had has looked up and seen like to me that's just an incredible. Thing to think about but it's it's a little all practice and now I have a name and a practice and a remembrance to make sure I exhale and sit there for a second longer yeah.

Yeah it's beautiful we talk about our book about we can we start out these three main categories of on what you've just shared is off concepts or we call it conceptual off you know thinking about that. Like you said I never thought of it in that way but all my ancestors looked at the same exact moon or as long as human life has been on this planet that we've had that moon yeah yeah that's that's on spying what are the other types of awe.

Oh so we have all the senses and so are you all and that's really what we usually teach in our. Our twenty one day program it's sort of the gateway of of accessing also we use all of our senses right so through visual experiences auditory tasty smell kinesthetic feeling all those can be.

Gateway profound ways of experiencing all I think that's what most of us are familiar with is we have those ob moments of when we see a beautiful sunset or where like maybe brushing our child's hair and we just feel that softness in our hands and that elicits that moment of awe. And then there's all that we call interconnected awe and that's the all we have with other humans and other like sentient beings like our pets.

So we can be you know and just profound awe of spending time with our dog or cat or. Our children even when they're maybe acting out you know really profound moment of of watching them grow and expand and their identity. And then the third is all the concepts that we've been talking about.

People are just can be blown away by the the photos that we get to watch from the different space telescopes like the Hubble telescope and the James Webb telescope that is looking at light that was put out 15 16 billion years ago when the universe I guess the whole universe is 17 billion years old but as far as we know now. It's just so wild clearly I'm a conceptual all kind of person that stuff lights be up so interesting.

And it is interesting like we all sort of have a natural propensity you know and what type of all were most naturally attracted to that we can tap into in our lives.

And so yeah it's really it's it's neat like and what we also know from our research that you if you're not necessarily a natural all person we we have in our book an all scale so you can take a little questionnaire and get a number of like how naturally you are an all person well we know from this practice that just doing this in 20 one days you build a muscle.

We call it the all muscle but you you're literally changing your wiring. So that instead of all being a temporary state it becomes a trait who you are as a person. And then you don't have to use this practice anymore practice is really training wheels to get you started on an all practice but then once you have it in your bones so to speak or in your muscles.

You will experience all just happening all the time spontaneously and then you started to live life in the way that Abraham has you talking about this just seeing the radical measurement of everything around us all the time. And the book is the power of all it's out now yes.

It is out it's about earlier in 2023 it we also can find us on our website at the power wall calm and we do some online classes and we have a sweet little newsletter we're not big marketing people jaconize not our style but we have it we call it the moments of on newsletter so every other week we send out a moment of all you can just read it and be inspired and yeah so that's kind of what we've been doing in terms of marketing ourselves.

We just really love connecting with people so I would encourage any of the listeners to they want to reach me personally. Michael at the powerbaw calm he happy to love hearing from people who are inspired by our work. We also have on our website we call it our moment of all page where people can post their moments of awe. Oh that's lovely other people yeah it really is nice and we have a close face we have Facebook group that people can be in touch and share as well as some online classes.

So nice yeah and I really wanted I wanted to close briefly by saying that we actually close our book with that this your example of looking up at at the night stars. No I love that I haven't got no idea and yet so yeah we talk about that our epilogue I mean I could read if you want me to right now or well I do I would love for you to read a little bit about making all a piece of our sort of engagement in the world. I know you talk about a bit about that in the epilogue yes.

Yeah so you know we've been talking a lot about us as individuals and how I is as much very much self health technique. But I just want to share a few paragraphs about how the implications of all goes well beyond persons transformation.

So all that is everything and perhaps most telling is the effect of how others were wired to tune to others behaviors and moods are nervous system senses the emotions of those around us just as being the recipient of a warm smile can lighten our mood when we're in a those around us feel it too.

As contagious and so practicing the all method is one not so small way we can contribute to the world in this book we've covered how the all method is grounded in science and that a whole body of science supports that all changes lives. So we have a big simple crash ending to the power behind the simple practice of the all method practice frequently enough by enough people the critical mass as it were everyone would experience a significant heightened shift.

And consciousness all changes us and when we share our all we change the world. How can we be an off someone and physically or emotionally harm them. How can we be an off the natural world and destroy it. How can we be an off life itself and not live as if every day were a miracle.

In all the tone of every conversation from the personal to the political shifts from having an agenda to being open and curious our conversations impact how we raise our kids how we help our aging parents how we treat our spouse how we participate in community. How we mentor supervised people how we govern a city and how we lead a nation.

We can think of no downside to practice in the all method because all is the light the appreciation of nature and different cultures the curious and open mind the generous and giving soul even during times of darkness these days we need all more than ever. So all waits you and surrounds you in the ordinary moments of your life like the view the stars the building nights guy is free and always available. All you need to do is pay attention to what you value appreciate and find amazing.

Wait and then exhale and expand into the limited timelessness of all. Michael thank you I love that I love this conversation stay listeners you have your marching orders friends let's go look for some all. Yeah well I'm an off what you're doing and the work you're doing and the mindfulness that you're spreading the world thank you so much. I was just on to be here tonight to get to meet your community with centers as well thank you thank you Michael I will thank you.

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The mindful minute is recorded on Muscogee land and produced with the support of Madeline Day production management and Brianna Nielsen virtual assistance to join my live classes ask questions or learn more about my teacher trainings please visit marillarnet.com. Thanks again for listening I'll see you guys next week.

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