Jillian Pransky on Deep, Somatic Listening

or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good will. Thanks for joining us. The guest on this program is Jillian Pransky. She's taught mindfulness,

yoga and meditation for over twenty years. She serves as the director of the Restorative Therapeutic Yoga Teaching Center for Yoga Works. Is that what that says and a guest teacher on many renowned holistic learning centers. Her book is Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body, clear your mind, and open your heart. Isn't that what be is for? I'm just kidding. Here's the interview. Hey guys, this is Chris. I was goofing around there and I've

had a lot of coffee. Feeling a little slap happy. Let's get started. For those of you that have stepped up over the last couple of weeks and contributed to the show to make a donation to support me as I transition from my full time job to this, thank you, Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it. For those of you that are thinking about it, I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the things

that you can get as an incentive. So in addition to supporting the show that you love and making sure that that show is available for all the other people out there who need it, you can get a couple of things. At the five dollar level per month, you get ad free episodes, which means you wouldn't hear this pitch, and you wouldn't hear the sponsor pitches that are coming up after the next two music breaks, nothing but interview

and music for you five dollar level. At the ten dollar level, you get AD free episodes, which are wonderful. You also get the extras for each of the interviews that we do, and for most every interview, I talk somewhere from ten to sometimes thirty minutes more with the guests about things that we didn't have time to cover

in the show. And sometimes these are incredibly good conversations, and you get access to those as well as a free mini episode every month, and you can listen to the ad free episodes, you can listen to the show extras, and you can listen to the mini episodes in your podcast player just like you would anything else, so you don't have to go to the Patreon site to listen to it. You'll get a feed and you put it into your podcast app and you can listen to all

of those things. So those are some of the great benefits you get for being a supporter of the show. And again you get the best benefit, which is supporting something that matters to you and is making the world hopefully a better place. So go to one you feed dot net slash support today and sign up. Thank you, and here's the interview with Jillian Pranski. Hi, Jillian, welcome to the show. Hello, thanks for having me. Your book is called Deep Listening, a healing practice to calm your body,

clear your mind, and open your heart. And we will get into that in just a moment, but let's start like we always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it

for a second. He looks up and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I love that parable. It's actually even in my book, and it's complex for me, and it has meant different things to me at different stages of my life. Right now, um, it's quite complex. When I was young, all the way through my early twenties,

I believed really strongly in mind over matter. I was really into choosing optimism and joy and abundance, and I believed that they were a choice focus. I applied this to everything my work, exercise, lifestyle, and you know, I was the kind of person who I literally ran three miles and three months later ran a marathon because I had that mind over matter. I was just going to think positively and do it. And I had that feeling

that everything should be good over bad. In fact, when I came to yoga when I was twenty four, it was all about choosing light over darkness. And it wasn't until I was thirty and I had a panic attack, and for the first time I realized that I had been choosing the good wolf in a way that I

no longer think is really healthy. Actually, you know, before I had my eggs at my panic attack, my bona fide panic attack where I went into the emergency room with a heart attack, and I was already a yoga teacher. So when they told me was having a panic attack, I was like, no, I'm not having a heart attack. And less embarrassing than a panic attack. It is. It is, and and my family has heart disease, so it made

a lot of sense. A panic attack for this mind over matter, optimistic I can do anything kind of a girl did not make sense. And I always thought anxiety and depression were choice until I was thirty. I really believed that if that was the way you were, that was the way you were choosing to be. And it really took having my own panic attack and anxiety to realize that I had been not only starving the bad wolf, let's call it, but like giving it a really great

home deep inside me. He was living well off of me. It was eating me, And so I really had to learn that for me it wasn't an either or uh, And I had to choose to nourish the good wolf in a way that I had to feel that I was able to feel more whole and more integrated and more self acceptance and self compassion and self love. But then to meet the bad wolf and to soothe the bad wolf, and to acknowledge the bad wolf and to

integrate the bad wolf. Really and it wasn't until I learned to be with the bad wolf and actually gain the wisdom of all of those feelings that were seemingly ugly or hard or bad or uncomfortable or things that I'd rather extricate rather than friend. It wasn't until I befriended them and lived with them that I could really wisely choose the good wolf and make room for the bad wolf to not be so destructive, but to offer its wisdom when it would arise. Of course, it still

arises sometimes in a way that's not so healthy. But in my practice I'm able to sort of find that place where I can then come back to the good wolf and find balance all over again. Yeah, I think that's something I've in working with a variation on that. Some of the ethos of this whole show is about you can improve your life. You know, there are things that we can do, there are healthy ways to be

in the world. And I believe that truly, and what I've been dealing with lately, and it sort of comes up against what you are, which is what are the limits of that? Like, at what point is your ability to do something run out of steam and either that

trying to do more is actually harmful or simply just ineffective. Yeah, I think a lot of it depends on where are resources coming from, Like all my mind over matter resources and my strength, and my was almost a defiance against my bad wolth uh and not I'm not going to

be there. I'm not going to do that. It took a whole different level of self acceptance and self love to get the resources to still achieve great things, but from a place of sort of what I really wanted from my heart my mind rather than just what I

wanted from my mind. Yeah, totally makes sense. And I think a lot of your early career you spent doing yoga on Pema Chodren retreats, and it was something listening to Pema Chodren recently that that hit both my girlfriend and I, which was this idea that not everything can be fixed. Yeah. Yeah, that's been the biggest hill to swallow. That's a good word for it. Yeah, we're up against that with some family members and diseases that they're just not going to get better. This isn't like a oh

well maybe it'll turn around. It's you know, it's a degenerative disease. That's it's Alzheimer's in this case. And so we're really up against that, Like everything that we would normally do in a situation to cope with and to help a person and all that. You're like that that stuff just doesn't apply. I mean some of it certainly does, but the fixing it piece doesn't apply. And coming up against the limits of that like, okay, this is where

surrender is needed. Yeah. I find that in a lot of different areas, whether it's not being able to fix a diagnosis, or not being able to fix the way someone did treat us, or you know, something that really did happen that we are creating room for forgiveness for so we can feed a different wolf. And you know, being the mother of a fifteen year old, I want to really be I want to be there for him as a good wolf. But every time he you know, shares with me what he's what's ailing him, I want

to fix it. And I'm really you know, all these things that are not fixable. But the wisdom really is also in creating space that comes back to also where the fear and connectedness can also live together. So let's transition to your book a little bit. And the title of the book is deep listening. So what does that mean to you? What's deep listening? For me? Deep listening

is very pervasive in my life. It was form practice on my meditation, cushion, and specifically in restored of yoga, which is different than yoga that has a lot of movement to it. It's more like the shivasana at the end of yoga class. It's still it's RESTful. There um poses that you lay down in different shapes over props and really do conscious relaxation in positions where you're body scanning and visiting parts of your body that are either tense, tight,

achy uncomfortable, or or open and expansive and vibrant. But as we rest really paying attention to ourselves, visiting with ourselves in an open way so that we can respond to what we find calmly and openly and curiously or compassionately. So for me, deep listening it's really about paying attention

to ourselves, our body, our mind. There's in conversation in a way that we are aware of how we shut down and how we open up simultaneously, are able to with that awareness that we're shutting down or opening up, be there with ourselves to stay as open as possible. In the book, I like what you say. You say it isn't so much a specific technique as it's an

approach to how we receive and respond to ourselves and others. Yeah, what I've definitely found again this goes back to the parable is that the way I listened to myself the way I listen to others. But the way I listen to myself will either leave me feeling more hard and more cut off, or more soft and more open. It will lead me feeling either more need for protection or more available. The way I listened to myself will either feed my bad wolf or feed my love, my compassion,

my understanding. So deep listening is really well, then how do we do that at How do we get grounded? How do we get present? How do we stay soft and open even when we feel uncomfortable with what it is we're listening to? So specifically, when you say you know how I listened to myself, you know has these outcomes like what sort of listening you You mentioned the body as one, what are the other things that you're

listening for? Well, when I say the body, what I really mean is most specifically, it winds up being tension. And tension is really the stress response finding a home in our body. So when you're listening to tension, it might feel like pain or maybe it feels numb, or maybe it feels restricted and breath isn't just in there. But if you stay with that area long enough, what

bubbles up is emotion and thought. Tension has a psycho emotional component to it, so you wind up listening to language too, imagery, to memories, to emotions that you don't I don't know what it is that I would be

listening to. It's whatever really arises when I pay attention to myself, And most often when I pay attention to myself, what arises is things that are not working out so well, problems that I'm solving, ruminating over, disappointments or sadness or anger or confusion or just business, just a list of things to do. But rarely do I sit down and listen,

and all these lovely feelings and thoughts bubble up. So you know, I guess, if I had to really shorten the definition, it winds up being a lot of listening to the way we diminish, we don't feel comfortable or I don't feel comfortable, and paying attention long enough that that softens and it shifts. So talk to me about restorative yoga, deep listening and meditation. Is this restorative yoga where you're sort of listening to your body. Is that

a substitute for meditation. It's really an integrated practice. And this is my approach as a meditation teacher, a mindfulness teacher, and a yoga teacher. And anybody who's any one of those things is always going to take everything they've studied and introduced it in a way that's meaningful to them. And so the way I use restorative yoga is very much the way a meditator may sit on the cushion and listen and practice listening to their thoughts. It's a

little bit more of an embodied meditation practice. It's really the middle ground where a bodily somatic movement practice meets a still meditation practice. It's great for meditators who are uncomfortable sitting up. It's great for yogi's who are not comfortable sitting. But really, what I love most about it is because I studied these two things separately. I studied really traditional forms of meditation. I started very young with TM. At nine years old, my mother brought my family to

TM as a really a threat to my father. It was like TM or marriage counseling. Wow, that's a tough choice actually when you when you get down to what meditation can be like in certain cases, it's true, it's true, um, but it's stuck for me. So I have a lot of formal meditation training. I have a lot of formal what we call austin a training, and what I love

is um. Sometimes meditation practice can be too much of the mind, depending on how you study it and whose guidance your following, or how you want to get caught up and a lot of traditional language, at least twenty years ago when I began studying, was how to get over yourself and you are not your thoughts and you are not your body. That especially from a yoga meditation point of view, you know you are not these things, you are something else. And it never really resonated with me.

I am in my yoga training, studied contric yoga, which is very much of the body on the earth, on this planet, living this duration of time in a body and um, So for me, restored to yoga is just truly it's conscious relaxation and it's a way to meditate really incorporating the somatic felt experience. Yeah, that's an area that I have felt I would do well to spend

more time. I hit these points where I'm like, I notice these blockages of tension in my body, and my response, similar to our our early conversation, is like, all right, I'm gonna lay on this foam roller until this thing goes away, which I have recognized even though I thought, well, if I can breathe into it, it's okay. But I think I've hit this realization where I'm like, I don't think that's what my body wants. I don't think that's working.

I've been drawn to more somatic practices lately. Yeah. I love that you bring that up, because you know, most people's response when they find something that they want to change or shift, they're you know, not you, but most

of us me. There's a judgment about it, um, you know, and it's something that we're trying to change that's bad, and we have this either or right, we have this either or And what happens neurologically physiologically when we find tension and we're upset about it when we judge it, when we have an anger towards the tension that's still there after all these years and all these practices, whatever it is that we're not okay with finding gets better

at hardening. And so when you find tension and you have judgment, it leaves you feeling actually literally physiologically cuts off more interesting, but leaves you feeling more separate and alone, as opposed to finding it, relaxing with it, and or invite just being curious about it, inviting the breath around it,

whatever that language that may resonate be. You then begin to create the conditions for it to shift, to change, to open, to soften, to set the conditions for healing both in your body and also for the thought pattern to change. Interesting. Yeah, I've seen restored of yoga is yin yoga variation on this, some people put them in the same category. The way I teach restored of yoga

is to take off all unnecessary work. So I would prop a body so that there is I'm bringing the ground up to meet the body where there might be physical limitations. There should be no sensation of stretch, no sensation of strain. So if you're fully propped and you're relaxing, but you still notice your tents or you're holding on and you don't have to be that's what we're working with.

Whereas in yin yoga, there's actually some stretch and strain on purpose that still remulates tissue in a particular way. I'm fully mostly only interested in restorative yoga as a way of looking at how am I still guarding myself when I don't have to be? How am I still protecting myself when I don't have to be? How am I still gripping and holding on to myself when it's not necessary because I'm safe because there's props underneath me, because I'm quiet. All this stuff is still happening, and

yet it doesn't. So what is that? And once I start to pay attention to what is that? Storylines come up. All sorts of ideas surround why I'm still holding myself together. Things I need to look at, things I need to spend time with, things i need to be friends. Interesting because I've often heard from yoga practitioners like, well, you'll do a certain pose and you might start to get emotions or thoughts, And I'm like, that has never occurred

for me. You know, I'm intuitive, And as we're talking that some of that is probably that I'm still holding yes, And also a lot of our yoga is there's so much movement involved and there's so much instruction involved, and there's so much left brain language involved, and it asks you to do things, and that's different than the kind of yoga i'm talking about. The kind of yoga i'm talking about is asking you to do less, in fact, don't do anything, and usually the language is much more

right brained. It's imagery. Let the earth cradle you, feel your breath soften you inside, allow your breath to be received by a softening belly. I'm taking away outer stimulus. I'm taking away activity. I'm taking away you learning how to move your body from a left brain follow instruction place.

I'm taking all that away. I'm leaving you on the ground on support, with nothing left to do but allow yourself to be supported by the ground A allow your breath to come and go without resisting it, and notice what's going on. Of course, just like meditation, the superficial first layer is going to be all the business of your thoughts. But that's the gift of doing it. A bodily practices. We're used to focusing on our breath and meditation, depending on what kind you do well, doing body scans

and spending time in your body. It's not like yoga nidra, where you're going from place to place to place to place to place on each breath. It's there's time, there's time to move in, there's time to feel, there's time to notice, there's time to notice that you're making up stories about what you're noticing and stopping doing that, just like a meditation practice. It's so interesting how certain things land on us depending where we are in our progress.

Because I read your book. I don't know when we originally had this schedule. I think like April perhaps, So I read your book in April and and I enjoyed it. And yet now talking to you, I'm like, there's a whole another level there that I did not get. I've gone on a fairly long silent retreat in the interim, and some of what I got in that was this idea of, Okay, I need to be doing less. Part of my practice is doing less in certain ways. And and it it sounds now that like a lot of

what your teaching is very aligned with that. Yeah, and it's interesting, But how doing less we'll keep on having new meanings. Yes, that's not an experience so much, it's something I'm growing. Well. No, I do have some experience of it. I mean, I think what I got out of the in the silent retreat was I realized all the levels of continuing to let go that I had not even fathomed existed. Yeah, I'm not sure we can ever end that particular exercise. Yeah, I I believe it.

I just kept going, all right, I've let go, and I'm like, nope. It was this idea of awakening to our true nature and that starting to realize that like not going to find my true nature by going somewhere, and so many of the things that we do, whether it be yoga or meditation or other practices, there's an element of going somewhere or doing something and realizing like a all that takes away from not that it's all bad.

I mean, everything has its place. But for me, it hit a point where it was like about doing less, which is counterintuitive to me. It's not My nature is not, you know, as we talked about in the beginning, My nature is to like go, do you know? And and I'm learning at a deeper level about the limits of that. I find for most people, at least the people I attract, is that most people were trained in doing more. Everything about our life is set up to train us to

do more, achieve more, succeed more. And then you put on top of that that the busier we are, the less we actually have to feel, the less we have to observe, the less we have to make friends with. And you know, there's there's the slowing down physically, there's the slowing down mentally, but there's the allowing that is even this other worldly thing. It comes a little bit in that at fixed category that we mentioned earlier, but there's also allowing that like, um, listening is really the

act of allowing. Love is really the act of allowing. Breathing is really the act of allowing. You know, once I sort of started getting the very basics, which was like, oh, I hold myself off the ground. What do you mean by that? I mean there's a chair underneath me, but I'm not really sitting down in it. Where there's a bed underneath me and I'm not really laying down on it.

You can think of like when you pick up I've ever picked up an infant or a like a toddler that was awake and they were one particular weight when they were awake and interested and out in the world, and then they fell asleep in the car and you have to bring them in the house, and they weighed all of a sudden twenty pounds more. Well, that difference

is a lot like I'm always off the ground. I'm never really allowing myself to be in support, And allowing myself to be supported even when I'm active is a slowing down. That was a huge lesson allowing breath to come and go, especially as yoga teachers are. Even in meditation, uh, maybe not so much as yoga. It gets very confusing because we say breathe in, breathe out, and we have this idea that we are in charge and we are

in control and we are doing the breathing. But when you really learn sort of that literal mechanisms of the respiratory system and that breath comes to you and goes that allowing how do we relax and allow it to come and go without doing anything. That's a whole another

level of slowing down the mind. We're not even talking about the mind yet, or the emotions or anything else, but just those two things, allowing the ground to hold us, allowing the breath to come and go can set the stage for some of these layers of doing to begin to become obvious for the first time. I don't have time for all this, and nobody got time for that. No, it's it's like I said, it's just so interesting the way things land on us differently. So let's go a

little further into the book. So there was something that you you talk about in the book that I did resonate with completely. And I believe in so much which is a little plus often equals a lot. Yeah. Yeah, big fan of that, big fan of that. So talk to me about that. I literally believe that in my yoga practice, in my meditation practice, whether it's um when I first started, I mean, everything was more is better.

Everything about my life until I was thirty was more is better when I would practice, especially the way more senior practitioners made it feel like I should be practicing for two hours, uh and have my job and have relationships and keep a house. Really, for me, it's it could be five twenty sixty minutes. It's the amount that what is regular is way better than what is a lot. But I had this amazing experience which I do write about in my book, that I would love to share.

I find that people can really. Um, sort of understand it this way is my son was born anaphylactic to wheat and gluten. So that means if I kissed, if I ate a pretzel and kissed him on the lips, we'd be in the hospital. He'd stop breathing. And as you know, um, when toddler's are little, although now there's gluten free food on the market, but they share cheerios and cookies and everything is gluten. So it's a pretty

intense childhood for him. When he was ten, he was invited into this clinical trial study where they induced an anaphylactic reaction and they discovered exactly the amount of wheat that is immune system would read as the enemy and threaten his life. And they went just a notch under that. So it was and it was microscop opic to you and I. It was it was literally less than a

grain of sand. They started introducing the smallest amount of gluten to his system, and every two weeks we would go back to the hospital and they would check out how his system was reading this teeny teeny little amount. Well over three years of being modulated every two weeks of a little bit a little bit, a little bit over three years, he is no longer allergic to wheat or gluten, and his system has completely rewired, rewired its entire orientation to what would have killed him. And we

were flying from Iceland to back to America. We were in over the water and he accidentally ate half a week sandwich. He recognized it very quickly, actually, but at that point we were two and a half years into the study. Had we had been to and half years before that, you would have read about us in the news. That is such a clear and great example of that concept. Regularity a little bit all the time rewires us. Yep. I am such a fan of of the idea of

small steps. You know. I think the thing I say often on the show is you'd be amazed what a series of small steps taken day after day after day will accomplish. Yeah. I mean, I'm the result of a twenty five year long practice, and by the time I really started practicing, I was not all or nothing. I was well into modulating. But it has changed my life, and it changed some really intense relationships that never would have changed if I took a sledgehammer to them. Yep.

So another thing that you say in the book and I just really resonated with this a lot. You basically say that when we're somewhere else rather than here expending our energy on planning for the future or rehashing the past, we feel drained. It's exhausting to be somewhere other than where we are. Oh yeah, I illustrated that with a story that Tick not Han told on a retreat. He tells this story about a reporter that goes to Plumb Village. Tickno Han is a master Vietnamese monk and he has

Plumb Village in in France. This reporter goes to visit to do a think a magazine story on him, and before he does the report, tickno Han says to him, you need to come on our daily meditation walk. It's lovely, it's easy, and then we'll do the report later. So they go on this very long, very graceful, very slow, very lovely walk in a beautiful field greenery and flowers and children and hand holding and sunshine, and it couldn't

be more peaceful and easeful. And when they were done, tickno Han said to him, as they met to prepare for the report interview, you know, how was that for you? The reporter was just like horrible, I am exhausted, and tikna Han says to him something like why, you know how how can you be exhausted? That was such an easeful,

replenishing walk. It was for replenishment and um. He explains how the whole time he was thinking about his article and his interview, and he was worrying about what questions he was going to ask him, was he going to forget this and what angle would he take on it? And he was never even on that walk. Everybody finished that walk replenished and nourished and more awake to connect, and he finished it depleted and separate and not available. Yeah.

Social media is one of those things that I have noticed that when I engage in it, I feel depleted in some way afterwards. And I think that is as good a description as why is because I am not at all present at all for any of that, and I've just it's something I've noticed about myself. I just was like, it just takes something out of me that I can't articulate until I sort of read that and

I went, I think that's it. You know, it's funny I think of our thoughts like social media like we're always scrolling, you know, whether we whether we're literally looking at our phone or not, like we're just scrolling in our head. Yeah, that's a great way to think of it. And I mean, I think you know, I'm not one of those people that believes like there is time where planning for the future or rehashing the past is useful. It's a it's a useful activity. You know, how could

I have done that differently? Or but how often I do it to the amount of time it's useful is so far out of proportion. Yeah, you know, it is absolutely critical and useful and is one of the great things that makes us human. But I think you know

we're way out of balance with it. Well, can I just say I also find that it's most effective and productive to do that hashing the past or thinking the forward after we've actually been relaxed and nourished and calm, and when we're in that state where we feel more connected and whole, and then go do that sort of deeper, busy work. We're doing it from a different place. We're not doing it from a place of fear, We're not

doing it from a place of you know, defensiveness. We're doing it from a place of what's really a wise choice now? And what what can I really learn? Yeah, I mean I definitely have found for me that when I'm meditating and doing it more intensely at periods, that after that the level of thought that I have. You know, I know that in meditation one, you know, settle down the thoughts, but what what occurs in my thoughts after

that is so much more effective. Yeah. You know, when I go on like a retreat, I try and limit the time that I let my brain just run. You know, I'm like, all right, this is not what I'm here for. I'm going to be more conscious about how I used my thought. But when I do give it a little bit of space, I'm like, wow, you know, like boys that thinking clear or or concise or you know, just great ideas come. I love this because this is something else I've been thinking about lately. It's the idea of

letting go versus letting be. Yeah, that was sort of, I guess a little bit like the way I was thinking more about the Bad Wolf Good Wolf parable as well, because when I started yoga, when I wanted it to all be light, all good, I'll be right, I was on a mission. Um, if I just do this, I'll be good. So that means everything that I found that I wasn't happy, I needed to let go that wasn't

a good part of me. And that language of letting go, I feel, is really tricky, especially when you're working with others, when you're in community and you're all trying to um understand what harmony and wholeness might feel like. The language of letting go can be, oh, you just release your grip. But for a lot of people, the language of letting go means getting rid of something that's not good, getting rid of a part of them, and it sets up

a binary system. It sets up a dogmatic view, which I feel like just charges what it is we're not comfortable with. So letting be is a little bit more like making space. And um, I love the salty solution example, which is it's also hard to understand, well, how do I make space for something? So if you a table spoon of salt and a shot glass, and you put the tablespoon of salt in the shot glass of water,

you'd have a particular salty solution. But if you took the tablespoon of salt and you put it in a bigger glass like a mason jar rather than a shot glass, you'd have a different salty solution. And if you use a bucket, you'd have another salty solution. So every time you make the container bigger, that same salt, that same thing you wanted to get rid of, that same thing that was uncomfortable or bad or angry or hurt, that

salty nous. When you relax your body and you let go of tension, your container literally gets bigger, your breath gets bigger, your mind gets bigger, and what was salty has more space to not be um such a concentrated solution and be in so overwhelming or in control. So rather than getting rid of the salt, which you really can't do anyway, Um, all of our experiences are always

going to be part of who we are. You make room for it and you let it be, and in that case it sort of dissipates and becomes maybe some a wise piece of reference material or helps guide you in some way overall, but it doesn't control how you feel, how you act, what you listen for, what you do. Yeah,

that's a really great analogy. You know, my experience with letting go versus letting be would be when I would know that the wise thing to do is to let something go, and yet it's not going, you know, like I should let go of that, and I'm trying, but I'm still thinking about it. I'm still upset about it. It's still right there, and then that turns into I'm failing.

The wise person would let this go. And yet and so for me that that let it be with so much better, Like if it's still there and it's still bothering me, it's still there and it's still bothering me. All I can do in that moment is to let it be. Yeah, and my wise this teachers Pemacho Dren. What I feel like I'm learning from her is the

let it be. Like I'm not so sure she would she would use the language of letting go in the same way that a lot of you know, like maybe when I was less studied or less matured or less experienced, I may have used yeah. Oh. She changed my life with the book When Things Fall Apart. It was the first time and I had been exposed to spiritual concepts for a fair amount of time. It was the first time I was like really got like, oh, okay, it

can just be here. I can just learn what's happening, be present, and that I don't have to try and make it go away incredibly difficult time for me, but permanently in the way that you know. And I think that's a lesson obviously that I continue to learn at deeper and deeper levels. But yeah, that is such a profound idea, and that that let it Be is a continuation of our conversation of can't fix things, can't fix everything.

It's a continuation of allowing, learning to allow. And even that let it Be is the conversation of slowing down, you know, not being on top of everything and controlling everything and trying to work it all out. Is it is? All of those conversations are at the heart of Let It Be. And it's a really good Beatles song, indeed it is. You've got a line in here that speaks to this a lot. And you said that all my efforts at relaxation used to be about getting better. I

was going to be a good relaxer. Yes are you? Um, sometimes it's my it's my life work, which say something about how important it is to me. But you know what I find, which I'm heartened that you know I do hear from the people that I glean the most wisdom from. Is that just when I think I've had this incredible insight to how I can consciously relax always and more often, I'll lay down the next day and I'm all bound up again and all wound up again. And I'll tell you what I'm really good at. I'm

really good at re relaxing. I don't really think the idea is to stay relaxed or to relax instantly. I think it's to notice when we're not relaxed. I think it's to notice how we're not relaxed. I think it's to notice how we're resisting relaxation. And when I say relaxation, I don't mean how we're laying down on the couch doing nothing. I mean how are we hardening and protecting ourselves from the present moment that we're in. That's what

I mean about relaxation. How are we hardening and protecting ourselves from the present moment that we're in in the environment around us and within us. And in that sense, I'm always hardening. I'm always harding against the environment within me. I'm always hardening against the environment out of me. I'm really good at noticing that I'm really great actually and noticing that I'm hardening, which I think makes me a good practitioner because it invites me to re relax and

practice all over again. And let me tell you, I practiced every day all day long. Yeah. There's another line that I pulled out from the book, which is the practice isn't to figure out how to stay here, it's learning how to come back. Yeah. There's so many levels that that's wise. But one of them is that if we expect that we will stay permanently relaxed or peaceful or calm or whatever, then we end up being very disappointed in ourselves and we end up we end up

using self improvement almost as a way to beat ourselves. Yeah, exactly. I think that that's you know how I said that was a hard pill to swallow. With the fix It, I think one of the hardest but most profound aspects is coming to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to practice this every day, all day long for the rest of my life like that. It's not an arrival line. As disappointing as that is, it's also super liberating once you accept it. I mean I agree completely.

I think that is a learning for me has been like there's no end point here, and once I recognize and accept that, it is very liberating. Initially it's like, oh, for crying out loud, like you know, like when is it going to be over? But recognizing that that's not the way that things work is tremendously liberating, and at least it has been for me. Yeah, it has been for me too well. Julian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I'm really

glad that we got to have this conversation. Will have links in the show notes people can find you and your book and all that, and you and I are going to have a little post show conversation where we're gonna talk about do overs and being like an hour glass, a couple of practices you have. So listeners, if you're interested in the post show conversations, you can go to when you feed dot net slash support and you can learn how you can be a supporter of the show

and get access to those. But thank you so much, Chilli, and I really enjoyed. Thank you. I enjoyed it to Okay, take care, thank you bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you. Please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.