Cory Mascara || Mindfulness and Self-Authorship

name is Taylor Chris. I am the executive producer of the Psychology Podcast, and today I'm especially excited to be interviewing my colleague and friends Cory Mascara. I could spend the entire episode talking about Corey's virtues, but I've picked a few gems here from his bio that I'm gonna read out loud. Corey's the founder of the Long Islands Center for Mindfulness, where he runs mindfulness retreats and teaches courses for people living in the Long Island in New

York areas. This is a personal favorite, something we're going to need to delve into later. Corey spent six months living in silence, practicing meditation as a Buddhist monk in Burma. Corey serves as faculty at the Columbia Teachers College, where he co teaches a mindfulness based leadership course. He's also an assistant instructor for the Master of Applied Positive Psychology course at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his

graduate work. Lastly, we have that Corey frequently shows up on The Doctor Oz Show as an expert in the topic of mindfulness meditation. Corey, So, glad to have you here today. Man, welcome, Thanks buddy. So Man, how are you doing well? Man, excited to be here, Glad to hear it, Thanks for coming on. Ye, So listen, We've discussed meditation in passing on the show before, but I look at this as a great opportunit community to take

a deep dive into the topic. I thought we'd just start with talking about you though, Like I'd love to hear more about the whole burmous situation about how you got into mindfulness originally, Like how does this become your life path? Yeah? So, I think I have somewhat of a unique story when it comes to how I got

into this practice. I think when someone thinks of like a meditation teacher or someone that's into meditation, they assume maybe that person is really spiritual or really religious, somewhat of a hippie, And actually that was not really the case for me at all. I got first interested in meditation mainly to impress a girl. Yeah, I think a lot of this kind, you know. I had this. I

had a hippie girlfriend in college. She was sort of into meditation and kind of introduced me to it, and I just went with it more or less so that she would think I was cool. That didn't quite work out because she broke up with me, but I did actually sincerely try to meditate. It wasn't just something I was saying I was going to do, and so I made this New Year's resolution. I was going to meditate three times a week for you know, however long and in a short period of time, I started to notice

some pretty cool shifts in my life. At that point, I was someone that was like waking up twenty eighty thirty times a night. I always have pretty bad insomnia, took sleep meds and stuff, and none of that really worked well. And within a few weeks of meditating, and I'm saying three times a week fifteen minutes, I went from waking up twenty to thirty times a night till like two to three times a night, and sometimes I

wasn't waking up at all. Right, And I'm not saying that as like a sales pitch for meditation, because I do not guarantee those results to everyone, But for me, that was that's what I noticed. So anyone that's suffering from insomnia could resonate with how powerful that would be. But I was I was a business person at the point. My major was a managerial economics, and I was actually planning to work on Wall Street. That was like one of the intentions I had. And a shift happened around

this point. So we were supposed to go to the New York socc Exchange, the entire economics department, and we were going to meet with this multi billionaire head front manager. And everyone said, like, this is the guy you want to be. If there's anywhere you could get in your career, it's here, you know, take notes, because this is he's going to show you the path. So it's like, all right, cool, maybe this guy will rekindle my enthusiasm for business. And

we went in there, all of us. This guy gave us a two hour talk and it just sucked my soul right out of my body and wow, yeah, and I you know, I said, I don't know exactly what I want to do with my life, but I know I don't want to end up like this guy. And now, to be fair to this guy, he could have just been having a bad day, maybe got up on the wrong side of the bed, who knows. But the point is that that experience challenged me to start asking, well, if I don't want to end up like that, what

is it that I want? And it kept coming down to the response like, I want to be happy, and so that became the fertile soil for this really long journey into mindfulness and you know everywhere else it went from beyond there that we could talk about more if you'd like, But that was the shift for me. Wow, I love all of that so much to impact there with regard to mindfulness, and thank you for sharing yourself

with us. Sure I love at this point if we could gear towards actually trying to define the thing itself. You know, I feel like mindfulness is kind of a hot word that you see every time you pick up the New York Times. At this point that the meeting might feel a little ambiguous to people, and I'm sure there are many definitions. Actually, it'd be very difficult to just give me the objective answer what is mindfulness and actuality? But you know, I sort of my own operating definition.

If I can hand that over to you can tell me how you feel about it. Yeah, and if it's totally out based, I'll just delete this part from the episode. Yeah, right, in a mindful way. Yeah, let's see. I appreciate that. So the way that I generally operate, or like the definition I give when I'm talking about mindfulness, is an intentional and non judgmental awareness of present experience. Yeah. I like that intentional non Wait say they got intentional, intentional,

non judgmental awareness awareness present experience. Yes, So that incorporates many of the main components that we see in my traditional definitions. John Cavidsen's paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non judgmentally. I think the scientific definition and that we have that some academics set up to put forth was an attending to the present moment. Or it's a self regulation of attention with an attitude of openness, curiosity,

and acceptance. So there's some similar threads there. Yeah, there some My my sort of working definition, very much working is it's sensing into deeply sensing into our internal and external experience with an attitude of non judgment and childlike curiosity.

But also, yeah, but there's also addendum to that, which is there has to be there's like this discerning quality to the awareness of your experience and exploring sort of the cause and effect relationship of whatever the variables are at the moment, such as like, as this thought arises, is it influencing or leading to well being or suffering?

As this emotion arises, does a trigger this thought? So there's like an investigative quality to that awareness that often gets overlooked in a lot of the definitions of mindfulness that I think is important. I totally agree. I mean, from my understanding of how mindfulness is used with regard to like cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that, there

is like a metacognitive element thinking about thinking. It's like, sure, I see that this thought has come in front of my mind's eye, but how does that make me feel? What does that effect does that have on my behavior? Other cognitions? And yeah, yeah, right, and so it kind of it starts with that in order to see that, you first have to be aware of that. And as psychology, right, we call that metacognition, and there's that element of mindfulness,

and you know it is fair. Just for the record, so many people are still debating what is the actual definition of mindfulness. Is a word that we're translating from Buddhist texts, this word called sati, which is actually translated as remembering to remember, meaning like to remember what's here right now in this present moment, so feeling into the body, the thoughts, emotions, anything that you're seeing, so like remember

coming back to that. And so it's still confusing and ambiguous how exactly we define this thing, and many people do just end the definition at like a non judgmental awareness of what's happening. And so in the context of like cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, you first need to have an awareness of what other thoughts before you can

begin shifting them. And in mindfulness, you're not actually shifting the thoughts intentionally, but you are observing how are they influencing your experience and how when this thought arises, how does it impact this emotion or you know, as some would say, is this thought wholesome? Or unwholesome, skillful or unskillful, and specifically as it relates to the context of like, is this supporting well being or is it leading to

more suffering for myself and other people? Which may be more of the Buddhist take, which does have an ethical component to it. In the mainstream world that is not emphasized as much, but I still think it's important. Yeah, yeah, if that makes sense. So, like, are my actions leading are they out of a place of compassion for both myself and for other people, which is a big component of this fantastic I imagine that could lead to a

better world if we gets more mindful. Yeah, imagine if we could take five percent of that each person, or even just the intention not to not to kill one another, just that basic framework living through that model, it would be tremendous. But it's, you know, not a reality that we're living in, but one that we could aspire to move toward. Mindfulness might be a nice conduit and a helping skill spread around, which is one reason we're doing this podcast right now. Yeah, let's get that word out.

I love. So we've covered some of the definitions I love. I'd love to like experiment with some examples with regard to the definitions that we've given, Like mentally, you know, so if I can, I'm gonna run with just my own because I have that memorize an intentional and non judgmental awareness of present experience. Now, I feel like it's maybe nebulous is the right term, or open to many

different kinds of experiences that could be called mindfulness. So I'm curious, like, what would your thoughts be on if I were to tell you that listening to music is a mindfulness exercise for me? Would you say that's like proper use in that term? Yeah, I it depends on how you're listening to it. Sure, So often in meditation we get obsessed with the thing we're listening to, and so like the most common thing I think people think of with meditations like, oh, I have to focus on

my breath. Yes, And really this has very little to do with the breath. The breath is just an object of our awareness. But what we're most interested in is the quality of awareness and attention that we're bringing to that experience. Sure, so when you take that perspective, it really doesn't matter what you're listening to or what you're focusing on. It's how you're focusing on it and how

you're listening to it. So if you're listening to music and you're just completely lost in it and it's just going on in the background, nothing against that, but I

would argue that that's not mindfulness. Sure. However, if you're choosing to deliberately just you put on the headphones and listen to the music and actually just be with the sound of the music and following the rhythm, the tempo, the nuances of the song and being there for each moment of it, that is a different kind of presence and awareness that you're bringing to it, especially if you go into it with a realm of like not judging every part of the song as it arises or this

is good, this is bad, sort of just moving fluidly with the like this is here now, this is what I'm listening to. I hear like intentionality and judgment with regard to how you're talking about listening to music. Yeah, the way that you approach it is anchor the right term. I feel like the music would be an anchor for the attention. Yeah, right, Yeah, there would be an intentionality that if I'm listening and my mind starts to wander to what I'm going to do later, like a to

do list. Then I'm not exactly practicing mindfulness as I listened to that music, right, because my attention is drifted away from the thing that I'm trying to cultivate attention towards. Yeah, so, and that is since if yeah, that were the intention to focus on, to actually be with the sound of the song, and the mind wanders off to your grocery list, and you're just You're like, oh, now I'm going to start thinking about my grocery list. Well, now now you're

thinking of your grocery list. Sure, and there's nothing wrong with thinking, and oh good, I do that. Yeah, I can't stop. Good. It means you're alive. And if anyone were to stop thinking, I would I would be concerned.

And I think this is just one of the biggest misconceptions of mindfulness is that it's a complete absence of thought, and in fact, the awareness of your mind wandering off to thinking about your grocery list, that awareness is as much a part of the meditation as the awareness of the song itself or the breath itself, or whatever it is you're trying to focus on. Seeing that your mind wanders off then gives you the ability to choose if

you'd like to bring it back to this moment. It also gives you ability to choose if you'd rather just prefer to let it wander off, and there's nothing wrong with that. So I do want to make clear to anyone listening that mindfulness is not saying like you can't think about things, you can't mind wander, you can't think

about the future, you can't plan, absolutely not. What it's doing is allowing you to have enough awareness, enough presence so that you can actually intentionally choose what you're paying attention to and not be so caught in things that perhaps you didn't intentionally set out to be thinking about

or focusing on. And sometimes mind wandering is fine, and letting ourselves wander in that way, as the new research is showing, especially the resource that Scott is doing, it can be incredibly helpful, especially as it relates to creativity and everything else that's coming up that I'm not as aware of as I should be. I think if we're just lost on that automatic pilot mind wandering for much of our lives, where we end up not living a lot of our lives. We're kind of just caught in

our own heads. And there's something to me about living deliberately, intentionally with purpose and awareness and wakefulness that I find to be highly compelling. Yeah, wonderfully foot man goodness. Lots of unpack there. So I am a person who used to think that meditation was a bit of hippy dippy New Age poppy cock. I thought it was something that people kind of did to fit in as part of

like a bohemian subculture. But after so much research, after pouring over a lot of research, I felt it difficult for a science minded person to avoid how useful mindfulness can be when pursuing well being, And so I set out to do it. I really tried to take on a practice which is a very new thing for me, and geez, I just found it so difficult. And I think a lot of that has to do with the

misconceptions that you just addressed. Even you know that when I sit, my mind should be totally clear, my mind should not wander, I should not have thoughts and means I'm doing it wrong, And at that point I get frustrated and I quit. Yeah, and you know, I think that these misconceptions actually get in the way of a lot of people picking up a mindfulm's practice and sticking with it on any level. And I think it's a great service that you're doing by helping us understand that

it's helped me a ton. I mean, you know, I've actually I've worked with Corey, someone extensively over known in the past year's mind Foster treats and things that are wonderful, little touching moment. Yeah, you know, if I can just reiterate, I think it's so important to understand that sitting down for a mindfulness practice does not mean not thinking or that there's something wrong if your mind starts to wander, because that's just what minds do. I feel like, as

you say, right, like, it's always going to drift. I

don't you know. We've sat and listened to doctor Michael Bame, who's an expert of mindfulness working over at the University of Pennsylvania, and he always says that it's a great moment of celebration when you notice that your mind has wandered away from your breath, because in that there's an opportunity in awareness to choose what you're going to pay attention to, whether you're going to guide your attention back to the breath, or whether you're going to choose to

let your mind rest elsewhere. And I think that so much of our life is determined by what we're thinking or what we're focused on, that this ability to become more aware of what we're thinking about and maybe even of some of our more automatic thoughts, gives us the ability to choose what our life is like. It allows us to more intentionally and deliberately select what our experience is going to be like, which I think is a

cornerstone of living in existentially and philosophically satisfying existence. To go on a bit of a tangent or yeah, yeah, yeah, quol Man, so jeez. So far, I feel like we've covered a definition of mindfulness well that we can work with, and we have an idea of what it isn't and what it might be. I'm curious if there's a listener right now who's not bought in, which couldn't happen of course after listening so far, But what would you say are some of the practical benefits of taking on a

mindfulness practice? Yeah? So, I mean this varies for everyone. It's not like a pill that just has the same results for each person. Everything that has preceded this moment of your life becomes like the platform for doing this work of being present and what you experience doing this work and being the present. And so people come to this practice with all different things and all different backgrounds, and some people are more prone to lots of mind wandering,

some people have a trauma experience. Some people are just trying to figure out, like what do I want to do with my life? Some people are highly stressed, highly anxious, highly depressed, just an ability to focus. So really like what's going to occur or what you're going to get out of this will depend on first what you're bringing to it, and often what we think we're trying to get out of this is different than what we actually need on a deeper level or what we actually get

out of it. But in general, what we I mean with the research supports is just continued seeing the reductions and stress, anxiety, and depression being more of an ability to manage mind wandering and direct your focus to where it is you are trying to focus. Improvements and joy, empathy, creativity, ability to connect with other people in relationship. So that's

pretty cool. And what I would say you'd get out of this usually across the board if we're looking for something just generic that most people would experience, and that actually becomes a foundation for all change. It's just a greater understanding of who you are from the inside out and your tendencies, your quirks, your conditionings, your patterns. Most of these things that we're often blind to because we're running them so often is kind of like just asking

a fish what is water. We're so used to our personality traits, our reactivities, our conditionings that we don't even know that their conditionings, their reactivities, that they're patterns, and just waking up to these things it gives us more freedom to choose how we'll live our lives. Victor Frankel said it well. He said, between stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response lizes our growth and

our freedom. And I think what we're doing in mindfulness practice, above and beyond anything else, is learning to see that space and then inhabit that space. Only in that space that we can direct our lives with any sort of intentional anality, clarity, purpose, meaning and direction. So at the foundation of this, we're giving people freedom to choose how toy to live their lives. And let me also say, it's like we're not giving that to people. People are

giving that to themselves. This is a capacity that is innate to anyone that's a human being. So it's not like me, as a mindfulness teacher, is giving that to someone. All I do is just create the space for them to explore this and understand this. But we have to do the work as petitioners. You have to do the work as a practitioner to cultivate this for yourself. But it's on you. It's always on you, and it's just an important thing to keep in mind where my teachers

are not gurus. This is not like a system that you have to put in place. Put put in place my system or the eyefulness system. Well, it's just just tapping into an innate capacity that you have as a human being that tends to be lost, especially in our culture with so much distraction. Yeah magic, then yeah, I think so another at least misconception that I had, and so you know, through my projecting, I'm thinking other people had this perception also. The mindfulness is supposed to just

be easy and euphoric. Yeah. You know, there's this great picture that gets passed around. We were part of the same master's program that you pen for applied positive psychology, and I feel like that one gets tough whenever there's a presentation. So it's at the same times magazine picture of this woman who just looks like she is having the most wonderful time of her life sitting there practicing mindfulness. Yeah, and I don't think that's something that is excluded. I've

had moments like that myself when I've been practicing. But I feel like that puts an undue pressure where when you sit there and you're not having funny you should just stop because it's not a worthwhile practice or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, And so this is one of the issues you're going to get anytime that's something like well, anytime something becomes mainstream in capitalists America, marketing firms and the media will take it and distort it and figure out how to

package it. And you know, that's just it's the nature of the beast. And if this is going to grow in a substantial way, that's an inevitable byproduct. So yeah, we do end up seeing things like Time magazine, and it's great that they're covering mindfulness, but on the cover you have like the most beautiful woman in the world, and her hair is like blowing in the wind, and she looks super peaceful and her eyes are closed and it looks like she's hit Nirvana, and I have you know,

the majority of my meditations are not like that. It's often kind of like gritting your teeth trying to get through it and squirming a lot and being in pain, and so it sends the message that mindfulness is like feeling good, illness is rainbows and unicorns, or even that

mindfulness is peace, and that's not the case. Now. That is sometimes a by product of mindfulness, peace, greater ease, greater well being, greater happiness, greater really from suffering, absolutely a byproduct of this practice, or else we wouldn't do it in the first place. We're not going to do

it so that we suffer more. But in the process of turning towards your own experience and being with yourself and taking time to be still and drop in, it's kind of like looking in the mirror and taking a long, hard look in the mirror, and sometimes we see parts of ourselves that we don't want to see. Sometimes there are things that come up that are uncomfortable. Sometimes there's pain in the body that comes up that is painful,

and thoughts and emotions. Sometimes there's grief, Sometimes there's tragedies. Sometimes there's just memories that arise out of nowhere that have been suppressed for so long that never had the opportunity to heal. And so this process of moving into greater peace that people are looking for, a greater well being, it's actually it's not a process of just like uninterrupted

blissful moments, because that's just not life. It's actually a process of learning to be with the full range of who you are as a human being, the pleasant thoughts and the difficult thoughts, the pleasant emotions, the difficult emotions, the pleasant sensations in the body, the difficult sensations and body, the ten thousand enjoys, the ten thousand sorrows, embracing the totality of what it means to be a human being.

Because we can't just shut ourselves off to that which we don't want and then expect to be able to tune into that which we do want. It just doesn't work like that. And so this practice is to me a process of growing into what it means to be a human, the fullness of what it means to be a human. And when there's pain, allowing ourselves to feel the pain without fighting it, without resisting it, without saying I shouldn't be feeling this way without immediately trying to

be happier. And when there's joy and well being, allowing yourself to appreciate that and savor it and take it in, but not hold on to it in such a way that you know, if this isn't here anymore, then my life is ruined. Right, we do that in relationship. We hold on to this person. It's like I need this person to complete me, and if they're not there anymore, my life, My life is ruined. With houses, with cars, with material objects, none of there's no issue with that.

And mindfulness is not saying like you have to live as a renunciate monk, but it's saying, explore your relationship to experience and in there is the is the wisdom that leads to this deeper liberation that we're often talking about, This deeper freedom that leads to higher levels of peace and well being and reductions and suffering that is pervasive and just being a human being. Well quote, man, it's going to be like my life in the night, it's beautiful.

She's as the executive producer. I always have to make nods to other episodes. Make sure to listen to Todd Kshton also on like a Wonderful book, The Upside of Your Dark Side, talks at length about a lot of research it shows that those uncomfortable feelings, things like anxiety or anger, are actually strategic and essential to living a life of well being. And I mean, of course, like being our authentic selves and getting in touch with who we are and just the human condition. It involves those

kinds of things, you know, they're just around. And he also talks about he puts this whole chapter that put down mindfulness. Yeah, I believe it was in that book, The Upside of Your Dark Side. I don't quite agree with all the statements that were made in that chapter, but there are good points. And the main point is that you don't have to follow mindfulness as a prescription for every moment. I mean, allow mindfulness. This is not a doctrine. It's not saying like you need to live

your life in this way. What it is is saying, hey, there's this capacity of awareness that you have that perhaps you've been out of touch with, and when you tune into it, it can give you access to more resources and understandings of who you are on a deeper level and how you might be in a different relationship to this moment, and ways that cultivate well being and reduce suffering for yourself. It's really it is. It's a science experiment.

You're the researcher and you're the subject, as John Kvitson says, and everything that comes up is the experiment. It's the curriculum, it's what you're working with. So each moment of paying attention is just another moment of new data that you get that you get to use to inform how do you want to live your life in the next moment.

That's so exciting. So to transition to a different line of questioning here in terms of my own experience forgetting the audience for a second kidding, we love you guys. I figure, actually this is an issue that many of us have. I've really enjoyed the times that I could stick to my mindfulness practice. You know, I after you

retreat very immersive. I got to spend many hours in the day practicing with you and some close friends, and it kept up for a good two weeks, and I really like noticed a palpable difference in the texture of my experience to try and use some of the language. It was a wonderful thing. I really appreciated it. But I just kind of I stopped. I fell off, you know, And I think that it's bound to happen at some point.

Nobody's like a you know, completely going to adhere to every goal I've ever had at all times, forever and always. It's natural. But I was wondering, essentially, do you have some tips, tricks, things that you'd recommend for how to stay on the horse, how to keep your practice going. Yeah. Yeah, So this is again one of the most common things I see with my students and hear from other teachers, is that people just they really want to start a meditation practice, but maybe they do a four a tuck

of time and then they fall up the wagon. And so here is my latest feelings around this, theories around this prescription for this. When somebody takes some mindfulness course or listens to maybe a podcast episode, they often get really inspired, they hear some great research, they think, wow, this is what I need, and so they say, all right, I'm going to meditate for thirty minutes every day. I'm where I do this forever, and so like that's great.

And so maybe the first few days they're really into it. Maybe the first week they've been doing it every single day. As time goes on, without the support of people like minded people maybe doing this with you, or without a course to support you, it can be very easy for old conditionings to come up and for like that thirty minute block you have, you start think about, oh, I need to meditate today. The mind could go well, you could also go for a walk and that would be

really nice too. Or you could sleep in for another thirty minutes, or you could go read a book, or you can watch TV, or you could go sit in

that couch and eat potato chips. And often that can be a lot more seductive and a lot more appealing than sometimes just sitting in silence meditating for thirty minutes, especially when meditating can be uncomfortable in the beginning, and so what happens is the mind sees or thirty minutes of meditation, there's no way I can do that right now, or I don't want to do that, and we end up arguing ourselves out of the meditation and like that,

it can just slip through our fingers. So what I encourage people to do, because I'm a big believer in having a regular daily practice, something that you do in your life regularly is just commit to one minute a day. And the reason for this is severalfold. There's the first obvious is that it's just they're very little barriers to enter. Everyone has minute. Yeah, if you don't have a minute,

you don't have a life. And so I will never take that from anyone that I don't have a minute, even if you're going through some serious circumstances, like if you're in the bathroom, you could take just another minute, just while you're sitting on the toilet to drop in so we can all find a mint a minute. And so with that in mind, the mindset where you start thinking, I gotta do my meditation practice today, and you go all right, I gotta do a minute. It's very hard

to argue yourself out of a minute. It's like, all right, finally I'll do a minute. It, yeah, I'll get do a minute. I I'll do a minute, and so we wake up, maybe we sit down. All right, I'm gonna do my one minute, and we sit down and maybe we get to like the fifty five second mark, and then as we're sitting it starts to feel it's like, all right, this is kind of nice. In mind goes all right, maybe maybe i'll do two minutes. Right, so we sit a little bit longer. Maybe it's at a

minute fifty five. Now it's like, well, all right, i'll do three minutes. I'll do three, and a time goes on, we get up to three minutes and it's like, actually, you know what, this feels really good. I need more of this, and we might do four and five, And so that one minute can turn into five minutes, ten, fifteen minutes as time goes on. And so what's interesting you see the shift here? Will we go from the thirty minutes we end up arguing ourselves out of the meditation.

When we start with one minute, we get ourselves to do it, and then we often start arguing ourselves into the meditation. Sure, which I'm very into for a lot of reasons, especially as it relates to a DC and Ryan's work on self determination. Theory where yeah, to feel intrinsically motivated, to feel self self determined, we need these three psychological core competencies of autonomy, relatedness, and yeah and competence. Yeah. So the one I'm most interested in there is autonomy.

And when you set like a timer for yourself or you have the standard of I need to do thirty minutes, it's a form of external regulation and it's subtle, and I haven't heard anyone actually talk about this in the meditation world. It's still kind of like a working theory that have but it's my feeling that that subtle external regulation of the timer actually prevents some intrinsic motivation to meditate.

Whereas if you start with one minute and there's no time that you have other like beyond the minute, it's like I could get up whenever I want. You have full autonomy there, and you are choosing in every single moment whether you'll stay in the meditation or whether you'll leave in the meditation, And in my experience with that, there's a different quality of paying attention. It's a different

quality of presence because you're self selecting. It's a difference between like being a kid and really wanting to sign up to play soccer, versus your parents saying you need to play soccer. You're going to go there, You're going to go through it kind of because you have to. But if you signed up and you're excited for it and you're interested in it, there's going to be a

different quality of attention. And so I think if we can bring that into the mindfulness practice, it shifts it from being this chore something that we need to do, to something that we are actually exploring with this childlike inquiry, curiosity, investigative nature that can get lost. Oh yeah, yeah. So I think just one minute can be helpful for people. Just make that your commitment and then some times, some

days it's like, okay, just be at one minute. If you say after a minute, I got to get up good, it's important to honor and to respect yourself and to show your future self that that's a possibility. If you're creating the regulation in your mind and no, I have to do more than one minute, you've already missed the point. The idea is just to have at least one minute just to get your butt on the cushion, your butt on the chair to do it, and then after one minute.

If you feel like you're compelled to go further, you can continue going further. And I'm sure the pushback to this will be people saying, well, you know, in the beginning, people need some parameters around this. It's too easy to get up and it's not going to be comfortable, and a lot of people are going to want to go forward. And I agree, and so maybe, like the first three months, you're just sitting for one minute and you don't go

further than that. But I think having a regular practice instilled and cultivating the habit is more important than forcing someone in the beginning to do twenty or thirty minutes, hoping that eventually they get to the point where they see some benefits from it, because I see too many people just fall off the wagon because it's too long, or I can't sustain it, or it's too difficult. Obviously more meditation would be better, but you could take that to the extreme of eighteen hours a day. Are we

going to do that? No? All right, so she would do ten hours. Are we going to do that? Probably not all right? Four hours are we going to do that? Probably not one hour. Maybe I could do that, but most people can't. Half an hour, all right, Yeah, maybe that's why ten minutes. Yeah, if you got that, do ten minutes, one minute. If you got that, do one minute, if it's thirty seconds to third, if it's five seconds to five seconds. I'm just about doing what you can do,

what you're going to do. I'm not about to telling people how they should live their lives, how they should practice meditation. Yes, neuroscience does show that if you practice for longer periods of time, you will adjust your brain in different ways and it'll grow and shift through neuroplasticity.

But the daily commitment to dropping into your own experience, even if just for one minute, I think is the greatest gift you can give yourself over the course of your lifetime, because then you have access to it at other points throughout the day. And what you're showing yourself every day is that you're worth showing up for nice self compassion point on that. I like it. Yeah, I just the quick thing that came to mind with the

last one. You made those wonderful backt by decades of research and self determination theory, that autonomy point in particular, what you're actually motivated to do, and like what's being forced on you or what you're forcing yourself to do. Of course, there's like less motivation, you don't have the same degree of success, things of that nature. The analogy I always use is just kind of funny one. I used to be a personal trainer. I don't know if

I've ever told you that. Yeah, it's like nutrition stuff. I'd always say that there's probably a more efficient nutrition system to get to your target weight or something like that. But if it's so hated, if you absolutely can't stand being on it, then you're just not going to do it. The program that you actually are on and stick to is going to be way more valuable than the one that might be more effective that you just won't Yes, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah,

I agree. Yeah. The best meditation is the meditation you're going to do. The best exercise the exercise you're going to do. This diet is a diear you're going to stick to. I'm all about practicality, and I don't think we really share that, and yeah, pragmatism, yeah, man, all right, man, Well, so I've got a question for you that is near and dear to my heart. I don't know if you know. It was a philosophy major back in school, that guy,

I can't help it. So I'm curious, in your mind, in your eyes, what do you think is philosophically significant about mindfulness? I mean, obviously it's been kind of contemplative spiritual practice for many years. It's got a little more secular now, but do you do you think that it is in some way essential to living a good life? So it helps us stop taking ourselves so seriously? And that could be taken in two perspectives. One just the try stop taking yourself so seriously, but then there's like

the deeper of like who actually is? Who actually? Are you? Right? If we're going to talk about philosophy? And so one of the favorite questions I get from my students at some point in their practice is, you know, they start looking at my thoughts, their thoughts, and they watch their thoughts come and go and change, and we talk about just you know, just watch your thoughts come and go, and then eventually they start asking It's like, well, if I'm not my thoughts, then who am I. That's a

great question. And I don't have a response to it, and I'm not sure anyone has a response to it. But what it does point to is that we are something potentially bigger than our thoughts. We are something potentially bigger than our emotions, bigger than our pain, bigger than the relationship that we might have had and then just got out of, Bigger than the story of our life. And I work at this place, and I have these friends, and I'm in this relationship, and I make X amount

of money. It's a larger story that we often identify with and hold it very dearly to us because we're creatures that I think are designed to try and make sense of things and find what is our identity and what is our place and relationship to the extra in

old world, and so there's merit to that. And it can also be toxic if you just have a very cemented idea of who you are and there's no room for fluidity of that, then we can end up getting stuck acting out certain belief patterns or ideas of about who we are throughout the course of a life span.

And so just again just from a philosophical perspective, I think it helps soften our grip around who we think we are and allow room for some fluidity and evolution and growth and new understanding that maybe who we are is much bigger than anything that we could think. I love that. So mindfulness gives us an opportunity for self authorship.

It sounds like, you know, once we liberate ourselves from our automatic thought patterns and behaviors, it gives us an ability to self determined, to really obtiously ask like who do I want to be and then implement that. It sounds like to me. So in the vein of keeping this episode especially practical, I'm curious, are there some activities that you can offer to the audience that can be used to just ground yourself really quickly so that you can show up to the next moment with full presence

and a higher degree of intentionality. Yeah. So that's something that I teach to people age five all the way up to age ninety five. It's called take five. I forget who taught this to me or where this comes from, So I apologize for not giving due credit. I did not make this up. I'll just take credit or I'll just so from Corey. Yeah, I think it's like a school intervention because it's great with kids, but also of any age. And so for anyone listening right now, I

want you to do this with us. I want you to take out your left hand, put it in front of you like you were holding up a pizza, and then take your right port of finger and put it at the base center of your palm, right near your wrist. That's what we're gonna do is let's slide that point of finger up the thumb. But as we do, take an inhale through the nose, so sliding up and slide back down and take an exhale slide up the porner finger with an inhale, slide back down oxtail. Same with

the middle finger back down, ring finger back down. I'm pinky back down now. If you're feeling really ambitious, you could do this. On the other hand, you could do take ten. But this is called take five. It takes about thirty seconds. It's simple, it's easy. There's something about the tactile nature of this and a line it sinking it with your breath that tends to be very soothing and engages a para sympathetic nervous system. And you know,

so is this activity mindfulness per se? Not necessarily, it can be if you're really bringing this attentional awareness to the feelings in your fingers and singing with the breath. I think, above and beyond that, it's a way that we can interrupt perhaps a cycle of negative thinking, rumination, constant stress, being on this treadmill of doing, doing, doing, and just stopping for a moment, being grounded, reconnecting with the breath, reconnecting to something that's happening right here, and

then proceeding from that moment. And you might have done this and thought like, all right, this is foolish. I'm not going to walk around and pet my finger all day every time it stressed and listen, I get that. But I can tell you like I have introduced it to people, you know, in school systems, the kids that love it. Although I have to CEOs of companies and get I get emails back from the CEOs. I said, hey, Core, you know, I thought that Take five thing was kind

of weird. And then before I had to go give a big talk in a meeting, I was under my desk doing Take five and they say, like that was that was awesome. So it tends to have merit for anyone across the lifespan. And so I really encourage you have like all the things I teach, and I like to think I teach some things with some depth to it. This tends to be like the biggest takeaway for people. It's called Take five. So very simple, practical, easy to

implement strategy. You could use it for yourself. You could teach it to your kids, you could teach it to your husband or your wife, or anyone that might be of interest. Very cool. Love that I actually feel immediately relaxed. It's really simple, you know, little courageous vulnerability here. This is my first guest interview, entirely A little nervous about it. All of a sudden, I feel quite chill. I should have done it in the beginning. Yeah, that would have

been a smart move, right. I love these somatic interventions, you know, because I find that if your mind is racing sometimes it can be really hard to just I'm just not going to let it race anymore. Yeah, you know, I'm just going to stop it. Yeah, it doesn't work when it's really going off. But I find that, like coming at the body, coming at the breath, finding some way to tap into the nervous system is super effective.

I mean, like, I've actually been doing these kinds of things before talks, and it centers me to walk out there without the mind running around. It gives me an opportunity to be a little more present and I think like functional for people. Yeah, and even from a Buddhist perspective, Like the first thing that he taught in relationship to cultivating mindfulness was mindfulness of the body. It's like the

first foundation of mindfulness dropping into the body. So not to take this and take a religious or spiritual turn on this, but since some of the best articulations of mindfulness come from the Buddhist tradition, there is something to glean from that piece of understanding and wisdom. Yeah, something about dropping into the body that can be very settling. We are animals, after all, right, Yeah, yeah, we are so. Corey.

We're going to include one of your guided meditations in like the podcast notes for this episode, and I've heard this one before. It's a personal favorite of mine. Totally recommend everyone out there give it a listen. That a smooth chocolate voice of Corey's. They'll bless them a little bit. But I was curious if we could explore some of like maybe the different ways that you could practice meditation,

novel ways maybe that people haven't heard of. I feel like people immediately the mind travels to sitting, paying attention to the breath. Yeah. What are some of the other practices that people might want to engage in or try out for themselves. Yeah, I mean so there are a number of measurable amount of meditation practices that you can do, but particularly in the realm of mindfulness. You know, you can bring mindfulness, as we've said, to any part of

your experience. And I think often people think, oh, mindfulness meditation, I need to be sitting on the ground, cross legged in full lotus position with my hands and amudra and going own and nothing against any of that. There are certain traditions that value sitting on the floor more sitting in a chair. But if you look at what we're doing, we're cultivating attention, presence, and awareness, and you can do that in any posture, standing, lying down, sitting, walking, or

even sitting on your head. So one, if sitting doesn't work for you, feel free to stand and you could do the standing meditation, be either focusing on your breath.

But the first like twenty minutes of mind meditation in the morning is actually just a standing meditation where I stand and I feel my feet grounded into the earth, almost like a tree grounded into the earth, and I just try and say as still as possible and just feel the sensations in my body and feel myself being grounded, feel the weight shift on my feed and see if I can balance the weight between my right foot and

my left foot. And in that I'm just I'm dropping in and feeling and paying attention to the sensations in my body. So it's a great way to ground myself on the body. And it's also great for posture. So it kills two perns with one stone. Yeah, so if you're not into sitting and watch right standing, you can do that. There are other practices like a choiceless awareness,

or open presence or open monitoring. Those are three phrases described the same thing, where instead of bringing your attention just back to the breath as an anchor, you sort of just let your mind go wherever it wants to go. But you're aware as that happens so often when we're mind wandering, we're not really aware that we're mind wandering. So that's like being in class. If you're a student and like an hour goes by and you have no

idea where you were. That's just aimless mind wandering in there. Yeah, but we can also like sit down and just allow our minds to think and be very aware that, oh, the mind is thinking right now, and allow feelings to come up and just oh, notice what we're feeling right now, where left sounds to arise? And notice what sounds are there.

And the visual metaphor I use for this is like, imagine when you're sitting in a car in the passenger seat and you kind of look out the side of the window and let's say you were going five miles per hour, so the car is just moving slowly forward, but as you're passing, you see, oh there's a tree.

Oh there's a stop sign, or there's a person. Oh there's a house, there's another tree, there's a lawn, there's a dog, there's a fire hydrant, and so and so it's this awareness you're kind of just like sitting in your experience as experience is moving by and just noticing, Oh, there's a thought, there's another thought, there's a sensation, there's an emotion, there's a sound, there's another thought, and you just kind of be with that is this moving moment

after moment after moment, And so that's choice, this awareness which can be a really helpful practice. If you're finding that it's really hard to bring your attention back to the breath, don't fight it. Just allow the mind to wander and just be aware that the mind is wandering. And then you know, other things I like to do is, especially on a nice day, I'll go sit outside and just like stare at a tree, or sit in my backyard and just look at you know, look out into

the distance. Or when I was in Burma, after I would eat breakfast, I would come down and I would sit at the end of the edge of this lake and I would just look out over the lake. And that's what we call seeing meditation. Just observing, just seeing. You don't have to get caught up in a story

about what you're seeing. Oh this is so pretty, or oh this is so ugly, or oh I wonder what that is, just noticing just oh, just the sunset, and just being in the presence of that, the raw, direct primary experience of that before we get caught up in a judgment around that thing. There's a quality of intimacy in that awareness, in that presence. So that's just seeing meditation.

And then you could do walking meditation, which is just you know, just walking and as you're walking, just be aware that you're walking and feel each foot pressed against the floor. If you want to do formal walking, usually it's like you take ten steps, stop and then turn around, take another ten steps in the opposite direction, turn around, and you just go back and forth and with each step you're you're sensing into the foot, grounded into the earth.

And this is a great thing that you could do maybe in the morning, while you're walking your dog or you're just you're going outside, make that into a mindfulness meditation practice, just dropping into your experience, feeling it more vividly, more intentionally, with greater awareness. And so those are a few. There are plenty out there, and I don't want to overwhelm everyone with the paradox of the choice nice sorts. Yeah,

but they're they're endless resources. So if you want to type into Google mindfulness meditations are, go on YouTube, you're going to find plenty with plenty of stuff that's out there, and feel free to get in touch with me the email and I could send you some stuff as well. We'll include that on the yeah stuff in the podcast. It's very cool to have some different options about how we could get started meditating and also gain some variety about how we might mix it up with our different

kinds of meditations. If I could just say, if you're out there and you're anything like me and have ADHD, I actually found it extremely difficult to just stop and listen to my breathing and continually restrain my thoughts. I mean, obviously with ADHD, as it is an executive control function issue, but for me, an easy entry point with getting started with mindfulness meditation was the open monitoring style. Actually, it

allowed me to daydream. I could actually sit back and let my mind do what it did normally, sort of on its default, but with the intentionality and with the non judgment behind it that constitution and mindfulness practice. I would recommend that to anybody out there who has ADHD and has had some trouble with mindfulness. It's a nice

easy entry point. Yeah. I find open monitoring is great to do right before you go to bed, just because I'm often very tired and I don't want to force my attention anywhere, and so just like letting my mind wander, it's sort of similar to just like letting the day move through me any emotions that are left over, any thoughts, just let them come and go without interfering, just allowing, and it can be quite peaceful and cleansing, emotionally cleansing.

I guess who like that? I know? Right? Cool? All right, Corey, Well thank you a thousand times, my friend. I would like to be mindful of your time. I'm not proud of that, you right, But you know, I was wondering if you just had any last comments you'd like to share with the audience or wrap up for convo. Yeah, there's a poem that stands out that it's become a staple in the mindfulness community, but I'll just leave everyone with it. It's called the guest House by Roomy, where

he says this being human is a guest house. Every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor, and says, welcome and entertain them all. Even if there are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. They may be clearing your out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame,

the malice. Meet them at the door, laughing and invite them in be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guy from beyond. So I think if there's any message maybe that you might take from this episode is that this being human is a guest house, and living your life is going to be a guest house. And they're going to be things that come up that are wonderful and joyous and beautiful and things that come

up that are painful and difficult and tragic. And I think as we integrate mindfulness into our lives, one thing it allows us to do is embrace the fullness of who we are, the totality of what it means to live as a human being. And it's my experience and deep belief that that adds an entirely different level to this journey that we're all embarking on together of being a human. So that's my encouragement. You have permission to be human. It's okay to feel sad. You don't always

need a motivational quote. Sometimes you just need to allow yourself to feel sad, to feel grief, to feel pain, and that often lays the fertile soil for joy, appreciation, gratitude, and savoring to arise organically. All right, man, Yeah, thank you thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott BARRK Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just

as thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com