How To Move From Mindless to Mindful and What It Means for Your Health

[Ani]
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We are on episode 70, Brian.

[Brian]
Yes.

[Ani]
Hi there.

[Brian]
Hi.

[Ani]
How are you?

[Brian]
I am feeling very mindful.

[Ani]
Oh, yeah? About what?

[Brian]
Oh, about this topic.

[Ani]
What topic would that be?

[Brian]
Oh, this topic. Today's topic is how to move from mindless to mindful.

[Ani]
Why are we talking about that?

[Brian]
Well, I was inspired by a couple of reasons. So, I've really upticked my mindfulness practice over the last few months.

[Ani]
Oh, yeah. You just did some further training and stuff.

[Brian]
Yeah. And have really been... And for myself, too.

Oh, okay. I've really re-committed personally to deepening my mindfulness practice. What do you mean?

Like in a specific way? Yes. And we'll talk about that as we go through today, specifically kind of like some of the things I'm doing, some things that can be helpful.

Also, I was recently listening to a podcast with Ellen Langer on it. So, Ellen Langer is a researcher, right? She's been doing body-mind research for like 45 years, especially around longevity.

And she was... One of her first kind of landmark studies was what's called the counterclockwise study where she took... In the 70s.

So, this study was in the 70s. And she took a group of men in their 70s.

[Ani]
This is the 70th episode.

[Brian]
Yeah, exactly. Oh, isn't it funny? Oh, you're right.

I didn't realize that.

[Ani]
Hey, watch the last episode, 69, because we talked about spiritual stuff. Yeah, there you go.

[Brian]
That was a little bit right there. All right. There you go.

[Ani]
Okay. What were you saying?

[Brian]
Okay. So, this was in the 70s. She took a bunch of men in their 70s.

[Ani]
In their 70s.

[Brian]
In the 70th episode.

[Ani]
Okay, keep going.

[Brian]
To a retreat center that they designed, redesigned, and furnished as if it was the 1950s.

[Ani]
Oh, I remember you telling me about this.

[Brian]
Right? So, the furniture, the TV, the radio, the food, everything was all as if people were being immersed back into the 1950s. The newspapers, all the information that they were getting.

It was literally like they were living in the 1950s.

[Ani]
You said this was a retirement center?

[Brian]
Well, actually, it was a retreat center that they had refurnished as a 1950s time capsule. Yeah, they brought people into it.

[Ani]
Yeah, okay.

[Brian]
So, these men were in their 70s. They literally brought them back in time 20 years to the 1950s as if they were walking right back into that.

[Ani]
So, they would have been 50 years old.

[Brian]
Exactly. They would have been 20 years younger.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
Correct. And before they did that, they did a whole bunch of measurements of these guys, like their height, their finger length.

[Ani]
What's that about?

[Brian]
Well, apparently when you get older, your fingers get shorter.

[Ani]
I'm in trouble.

[Brian]
So, there you go. Really?

[Ani]
I've never heard that. Okay.

[Brian]
Their memory, their attention, cognitive tasks, like that kind of stuff. They had a whole battery of assessment tasks before they did this experiment. Okay.

So, they take this group of 70-year-old men back in time as if it's 1950s, and they were instructed to talk about time as if it was actually happening.

[Ani]
Uh-huh.

[Brian]
So, they're actually talking about current events as if they're actually happening, as if they're actually living in the 1950s.

[Ani]
Uh-huh.

[Brian]
So, they did this for a week, immersed in a week. And after a week, turns out that these men, they got taller. Their fingers got longer.

Their memory improved. Their cognitive tasks improved, as if they were 20 years younger.

[Ani]
Wow.

[Brian]
Than they actually were. Fascinating.

[Ani]
That is really cool.

[Brian]
Because they redid this study with a control group.

[Ani]
Uh-huh.

[Brian]
Same environment.

[Ani]
Okay.

[Brian]
Same 70-year-old men, different men, but you know, it's a control group.

[Ani]
Sure.

[Brian]
Sent them back in time, and they asked them to live in that for a week as if it was actually a- In the past? They knew it was 1970.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
And they were just kind of like going back. Back then, we did this. We did this.

Oh, do you remember how that was back then?

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
And they didn't have the same changes.

[Ani]
That's so good. That's so good.

[Brian]
That the other guys did.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
Yeah. So, actually like perceiving that counterclockwise, like turning the clock back and being completely immersed and perceiving that it has changed the time at a previous time, your physiology actually changes to meet that.

[Ani]
That makes so much sense. I mean, from a standpoint of like vibrational frequency, quantum physics and stuff like that. I mean, it's the kind of thing people talk about when you want to be someone different or have a different result in your life.

They speak to the I am in the now.

[Brian]
Yeah.

[Ani]
Like I am wealthy or whatever. Like a lot of times, it doesn't stick. People aren't completely immersed in the environment actually to really change their vibrational frequency.

[Brian]
Yeah.

[Ani]
But it sounds like they really like put them back into a real sensory environment. I mean, that's what I'm thinking about.

[Brian]
And what you said right there is really important in the now environment, which is a hallmark part of mindfulness.

[Ani]
Right.

[Brian]
So, it brings us back to kind of our topic. So, Ellen    Langer just wrote a book on mindfulness.

[Ani]
Oh, really?

[Brian]
The other thing that she – based on all of her studies, she has 45 years of studies, which she has basically put her stamp on now is that unmanaged, uncontrolled stress is for her the number one cause of disease, bar none.

[Ani]
Well, I think people have really talked about that.

[Brian]
She's willing to put – But other people are kind of like, I don't know. It's a contributor. It's kind of thing.

She's pretty much said like – It is. It is. It is what creates disease.

[Ani]
Uncontrolled stress is what creates disease.

[Brian]
Is what creates disease. I haven't read her book, so I'm just going to say that.

[Ani]
I'm sure you will. You can tell us. But I will.

[Brian]
I will get her book. But just the podcast I listened to her on talking about these things was really, really inspiring.

[Ani]
It's really nice to hear that somebody is finally like putting a stake in the ground about that because – She's got the cred.

[Brian]
Totally. Like 45 years.

[Ani]
People have been talking about it. I mean, people talk about it all the time, but people are so unwilling to actually say that.

[Brian]
Yeah. Let me just – While we're on the topic of Ellen Langer, let me just share one more study, which I thought was fascinating. She talked a little bit about the counterclockwise study on this podcast, but I had read about that years and years and years ago.

Actually, that was one of the things that really stimulated me to want to do more of this work was that study. But a newer study that she did, apparently she talks about in the book, was they have a room and people do a group meditation in a room, let's say. So people are in a room meditating.

Then the meditators leave the room. They bring a whole other different set of people in the room and give them cognitive tasks to perform.

[Ani]
They perform better. Totally.

[Brian]
In a room that people had just meditated in than if they hadn't meditated there.

[Ani]
I can see that. That's a great study.

[Brian]
They don't have the explanation of why that happens. She's like, when we're trying to figure out why this works, we know that if people are in a room meditating and then that room is then used afterwards for cognitive tasks that people actually perform better. There's something left in the room.

[Ani]
Would you be willing to start doing your meditation practice in my office now?

[Brian]
Yeah, sure.

[Ani]
Sure.

[Brian]
I'll give you 10 minutes. This kind of stuff, she's got all kinds of studies that talk about all kinds of things like this, which is really, really, really cool.

[Ani]
I think we're still talking about why we're talking about this. At this point, my conclusion is because it's fascinating.

[Brian]
It's fascinating, but also if people are experiencing anxiety or stress or dis-ease or whatever they're experiencing, basically what I want to roll out for you and say, you know what? Moving from being mindless to mindful is one of the most important things you can do.

[Ani]
You've been doing this? As a personal practice?

[Brian]
As a personal practice, but also there's tons of research to show why this is so incredibly valuable.

[Ani]
Have you been doing specific practices?

[Brian]
Let's get to that. I want to know. I don't know if I've actually noticed.

Let's just talk about mindlessness for a second. Mindlessness is when we are really operating from what we call our default mode network. We're just going on autopilot.

We're not really paying attention. We're driving the car, but thinking about dinner. We're making dinner, but thinking about work.

We're doing this, but we're thinking about that. We're just mindless, going through the day mindlessly.

[Ani]
I was thinking about this last night because we were at my son's basketball game and we're sitting there and so many people are on their phones at halftime. I was just thinking about the increase in mindlessness behavior that must be going on nowadays because there are so many people at halftime on their phones. There were some people interacting with each other, but if we weren't in phone culture, everybody would be interacting with each other.

We're at least paying attention to what's going on in the moment, but there are so many people in this mindless state.

[Brian]
We are living in a culture of mindlessness, which again, what Ellen Langer talks about is actually one of the contributors to disease, is mindlessness.

[Ani]
Which makes sense because all the statistics say we're getting more unhealthy. That's what all the statistics are saying. We're more stressed.

We're more anxious. We're more unhealthy. Nobody can figure out why.

[Brian]
When we're mindless and we're in that default mode network, we're just recreating old patterns again and again and again and again. We're just living through old patterns, old patterns of perception, old patterns of threat, old patterns of helplessness, whatever it is that we're just living through. We're just doing it mindlessly.

We're using our phones and those types of things for just escapes, to try to escape our suffering or our pain, but it's not really ...

[Ani]
The pace, man. Just to speak for myself, one of the reasons I will pull out my phone every once in a while to get a little bit of relief even, it's from the pace. The pace is so intense in our society because technology just keeps getting faster and faster and faster.

[Brian]
Absolutely. We're living in a mindless society. We're living in a society that promotes mindlessness.

Re-experiencing old patterns, acting out reflexively based on those old patterns. It's not only we're experiencing internally, we're acting it out reflexively. We don't even realize that we're eating unhealthy food.

We don't even realize that we're having another cigarette. We don't even realize we're having another drink. We don't even realize that we're honking our horns at people because they're at a green light for two and a half seconds longer than we think they should be.

We're just mindlessly doing all these things all the time. That's just really agitating, creating inflammation in our system, to Ellen Langer's point, really building a lot of stress. What you see is that in our culture, we're either habitually living in the future or the past.

We're habitually living with, what do I have to do next? Looking at my calendar, what do I have to do next? What's next?

Oh, my God, I got to do the next. I'm worried about this. I'm worried about next week.

I'm worried about next month. I'm worried about next year. Am I going to have enough money for retirement?

I'm freaking out about my money retirement that's 10, 20 years from now. I'm not saying it's not important to consider those things, but we habitually live in the future, which we know promotes anxiety. That is, I think, one of the largest promoters of anxiety is living in the future or we're living in the past, which really promotes depression and regrets and 'wish I would have done this, wish I would have done that.'

I was having a conversation with my son recently and he said, "you know what I realized?" He said, "the whole what-if question is really one of the most damaging things that I ask myself. Like, what if I had done this?

What if I had done that?" I said, "you know, that's a really great observation of a great method to torture yourself."

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
And it really is.

[Ani]
It is.

[Brian]
Right? The what ifs, because basically that's done.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
You could do something now moving forward, but you can't ever go back and change what's already occurred.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
And so, but when we live in that state, it creates a lot of depression.

[Ani]
Right.

[Brian]
A lot of regrets.

[Ani]
And our mindlessness about it has us continually reliving those patterns. And not even realizing.

[Brian]
Totally. So, mindlessness, let's just say, are you living mindlessly? Are you either living with conditioned patterns all the time or most of the time?

Or how often? Let's say that. How often are you reflexively reacting or acting on things?

How often are you living in the future or in the past? Those are all hallmarks of mindlessness. And what the research is telling us is that that is a contributor to disease.

[Ani]
I think a contributor to mindlessness, too, can be that so few people actually know how to truly transform their behavior. And it gets frustrating because we have this thing that we want to change and transform. And we don't really know how.

And we've tried and we've tried. And it just gets so frustrating. Very few people actually know how to transform themselves.

Which, by the way, when you do the process, at least the processes of transformation that we teach here at the Academy, they truly put you into the now.

[Brian]
Yeah. And I would say that our processes, all of them are rooted in mindfulness. For sure.

It's a core part of what we do here.

[Ani]
A core foundational aspect.

[Brian]
A core foundational part.

[Ani]
Through all of the programming.

[Brian]
Right. And it might not look like mindfulness sitting on a cushion. And it actually doesn't have to look that way, by the way.

And I would even say sometimes it's better to look other ways. But we're going to talk about that in a couple of minutes. But right now, what we just want to say here is the other reason I really wanted to do this episode is to, again, further explore and highlight the fact that everything we do here is rooted in mindfulness.

[Ani]
I'm glad you brought it up because I recently had one of our clients talking about how she was on a panel with people in our, she's a local, people who are in our state and region who were talking about food systems and curing, word used on purpose, food insecurity. And so she was telling me, I wasn't making the connection that that had anything to do with disease, but she was telling me that the panel she was on had a bunch of doctors on it. And I said, why were there doctors on your panel?

You're talking about food insecurity. And she said, well, poverty and disease. And then I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay. Now I see these interconnections.

So they're trying to cure food insecurity. And she had brought up the connection between stress and disease. And the doctors on the panel said, "but there's no evidence to substantiate that", which is ridiculous because there's lots of it.

But I think maybe it was last week we were talking about two weeks ago, we were talking about how antiquated the, the way that we're taught, you know, with our bachelor's master's doctorate programs or whatever, and stuff, the curriculums that were the things that we have learned are so antiquated and the rate of technology and the rate at which we are discovering things, the rate of our human evolution, this is like, it's not catching up with the rate at which we're teaching people, you know?

So I think one of the things that we'll all have to confront, you and I included, is when we go out there, there are so many people who don't understand the most current research and the most current ways of thinking about things.

[Brian]
Yeah. Yeah. And I would also say too, the idea that stress and disease has something to do with each other, that's been researched for decades now.

I mean, it's a long time. So that's not even current. That's, that's pretty well established.

So I really think if, if you haven't seen that research, you're really not looking at all.

[Ani]
You're really not looking for it.

[Brian]
You're not even, because it's probably actually in whatever social media feed you read right now.

[Ani]
It's got to be. Well, it depends on who you are and what your social media feed is.

[Brian]
But go to PubMed and look up stress and disease and you're going to get hundreds of articles immediately. Okay. Anyway.

[Ani]
So. Did you just see the social media feed? I get nerdy about words sometimes.

They're feeding us.

[Brian]
They are feeding us. Yeah. So I guess maybe, maybe it won't be in your feed.

Let me put it that way.

[Ani]
Anyway.

[Brian]
But it's, it's pretty well established and even common knowledge now that stress and disease has something to do with each other.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
So I'm kind of, I was kind of shocked to hear that. Okay. So everything we do here is rooted in mindfulness.

And so let's just talk about some of the benefits of practicing mindfulness because they are also wide and deep. Okay. So whether you're looking at studies on PubMed, I pulled some stuff from the American Psychological Association just right here in front of me.

So what do we got? We got reduced rumination. So if you want to have reduced ruminating thoughts, mindfulness helps with that.

These are all evidence-based results.

[Ani]
Can I just stop for a second? When, cause I was just doing some research about something else and the stuff that I was looking at was linking mindfulness as like mindfulness equals meditation. You talking about meditation or are you talking about mindfulness?

[Brian]
Well, that's a good point, right? So mindfulness can be used as a meditation.

[Ani]
Right.

[Brian]
Right. And if you look at meditation, if the definition we're using for meditation is to nonjudgmentally return my attention to a point of focus that I previously established, then mindfulness, yeah, it's a meditative practice.

[Ani]
Meditation is a mindfulness practice.

[Brian]
Yeah, exactly.

[Ani]
There's also other ways in which to become mindful. So you're not specifically talking about meditation. You're talking about mindfulness.

[Brian]
I'm talking about mindfulness in general.

[Ani]
Okay. I really appreciate that we're having that conversation.

[Brian]
Practicing mindfulness.

[Ani]
Because I think it's a shame that the things that were fed online so often simply point to meditation as mindfulness.

[Brian]
Which is an important foundational part of that practice.

[Ani]
It is. And so many people find meditation frustrating for so many reasons that we talked about before. Anyway.

Okay. Get back to what you were talking about. I just wanted to clarify that.

[Brian]
Practicing mindfulness. Okay. So reduced rumination, boosts working memory, improves attentional focus, less emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, greater relationship satisfaction, decreased perceptions of pain, increased ability to tolerate pain, reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, diminished use of medications, enhanced medical decision-making, better adherence to medical treatments, increased motivation to make lifestyle changes, enhanced neuroendocrine and immune system function, enhanced empathy, compassion, and interoception.

[Ani]
Just a few things.

[Brian]
Just a couple of things.

[Ani]
Reminds me of the commercials that talk about drugs, but have all those side effects. They're like diarrhea and you might die, but take this anyway.

[Brian]
Yeah. So here's all the side effects of practicing mindfulness. Yeah.

So well-established results. So let's talk about what is mindful. So when you're practicing mindfulness, what are you actually doing?

So there's four parts, four key parts to mindfulness. So the first key part of mindfulness is practicing moment-to-moment awareness. So practicing being in the present moment.

So not habitually living in the future or the past, but living in the present moment. So that's one of the legs, if you will, of practicing mindfulness. So another leg is practicing nonjudgmental witnessing of self and habitual patterns of behavior.

So let's just break down that for a second. So if I'm practicing moment-to-moment awareness, which is the start of this. I don't think you can actually do these other things well unless first you're doing this.

Like literally existing and paying attention to the now moment, like what's happening right now. When I'm paying attention to what's happening right now, I can nonjudgmentally witness myself and my habitual patterns of behavior. If I'm living in the present or the past, I'm acting out those habitual patterns.

I'm immersed with them. My identity is caught up in them. Sure, that makes sense.

But if I'm in the present moment, I can witness them as if they are an aspect of myself, but is not myself.

[Ani]
Sure.

[Brian]
Right?

[Ani]
Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking it's like the patterns are driving the car when we're not mindful.

[Brian]
Yeah. They're just going.

[Ani]
There's momentum behind them is the thing.

[Brian]
Yeah. I just want to highlight too is I'm starting every one of these pillars with the word practice. Right?

Not perfect. It's a practice. Just by simply practicing being in the present moment, we're having a positive effect on our physiology and our relationships and our cognitive processes and all the list of things I just said.

If we're practicing nonjudgmental witnessing, so what does that look like? Well, that looks like we're just really just kind to ourselves. A lot of people, and I certainly started off this way when I first started practicing meditation and my mind would wander onto something else.

I would just beat myself up.

[Ani]
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was trained as a Sangha leader in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh when I was in my 20s.

One of my favorite reasons for being around that community, everybody was just so kind, nice, sweet smile on their face. It just felt like an amazing place to be. My self-talk wasn't always a great place to be and it felt so awesome.

[Brian]
Yeah. Yeah. Imagine if we could start to transition and transform our own self-talk.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
Like that. For sure.

[Ani]
I've definitely done that.

[Brian]
Yeah. That can change everything in your life.

[Ani]
Yep.

[Brian]
When you're kinder to yourself, you can really be kinder to other people. It feels good. It's a natural outpouring of who you are.

[Ani]
It feels better.

[Brian]
Yeah, and your health is better, right? Okay. The third part is to disengage from strong attachments to beliefs, thoughts, and emotions.

What does that look like? Imagine in the present moment, I'm witnessing myself and my habitual patterns of behavior. Wow.

I can't believe that's what I say when I feel this way.

[Ani]
Well, right there, there's the detachment because there's the witnessing.

[Brian]
Yeah, exactly. As soon as you're witnessing, there's the detachment. Then I can start to let go of the belief that I've associated with that.

Wow. What belief must I have to have me reflexively act that way? Right.

What emotion am I experiencing that is causing me to reflexively act that way? What thoughts am I having that are causing me to reflexively act that way? When I'm in the present moment and from that witnessing position, I can start asking myself those questions and to start getting a better vantage point.

It almost kind of reminds me, I don't remember what class this was in in high school, but I remember it might have been biology class or something, that there was an image on the picture in the textbook. It said, identify this image. I couldn't tell what it was.

It was fuzzy, brown. There were these little pins sticking out of something. I was like, I don't know what that is.

Then you turn the page and that picture was a magnification of a bee.

[Ani]
Oh, sure. Right. Yeah.

[Brian]
Right?

[Ani]
I like those puzzles. Yeah.

[Brian]
When you have a microscopic magnification of a bee's body, you cannot tell what it is because you're so close to it. If you just pull out, all of a sudden you're like, oh, it's a bee.

[Ani]
Right.

[Brian]
I was looking at such a small, tiny part of that bee, I lost the whole context of what the whole bee was. This is kind of what we're talking about with mindfulness. It kind of pulls you out and you start to look at the whole context of what you're experiencing, not just the pain and the default mode network stuff.

[Ani]
It reminds me of relationship challenges because we're actually attached to the other person when we're having relationship challenges. But when we insert mindfulness and become the witness, then we can actually detach from that attachment that we have to the other person in the relationship in a way that allows us to do something with it. But without that detachment, without that witnessing, we're actually trying to solve the relationship challenge, but we have the attachment to it.

Yeah. And so we continue to recreate, like you were saying, we recreate the same relationship patterns over and over again without that witnessing and detachment.

[Brian]
Yeah. And the thing I like about this, the part of the statement, it's like we're practicing disengaging, disengaging from the strong attachment.

[Ani]
Yeah. That's a great word, disengage.

[Brian]
Yeah. In other words, we're saying, oh, there's a strong attachment, so I'm not actually trying to detach. I'm actually disengaging.

Actually, think about this too. I'm not disengaging from the emotion, thought, and belief. I'm disengaging from the strong attachment to the thought, emotion, or belief.

[Ani]
Because as soon as you do that, then you can be mindful and watch, witness, and actually do something with it.

[Brian]
Because think about this intermediary part is so critical to think about because so many times we are like the belief is so important to us. We're like, if I let go of that belief, then I'm going to be taken advantage of, that other people are going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and I can't do that. But what if I don't let go of the belief, but I disengage from my attachment to it?

Now that's really powerful to think about, or the emotion. I'm right. What are you talking about?

I'm so right. You did something wrong. I'm attached to the emotion of anger and judgment and all that kind of stuff.

It's hard to detach from the thing we're experiencing, but if we disengage from the attachment to what we're experiencing, that creates this intermediary step that's so powerful in practicing mindfulness. The last pillar is practicing non-reactivity. This kind of brings it all kind of back home again.

Because if we're actually using non-reactivity to pause, if we're practicing non-reactivity, it means that I'm practicing being in the present moment. Something potentially activated me. If I just pause for a moment, then I'm practicing non-reactivity.

If I just create a space between impulse and action, I'm creating a gap, and that's that non-reactivity. That actually allows me to become more non-judgmentally witnessing. It also allows me to bring a sense of disengagement to my strong attachments to the beliefs, emotions, and thoughts.

They all kind of work in concert with one another.

[Ani]
This has been my experience. That last one can be really challenging for people. It's one of the reasons they go back into numbing behavior or this mindlessness is because the non-reactivity is so challenging.

They just don't have the tools to really be able to help them to step into it.

[Brian]
Again, let's talk a little bit about some basic practices.

[Ani]
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah, we're going to talk about what you've been doing?

[Brian]
Oh, so what I've been doing is I already do a daily practice of flexibility practice, a yoga practice in the morning. I do a daily Qigong, Tai Chi practice as well, and I try to get exercise every day too. I'm doing those things.
So what I've really done with those practices, which are already a bit inherently mindful, is I've just even brought a little more focus into what I'm experiencing in the moment. Because oftentimes, beginning of the day, I get up, my mind's already going into the day. And, like, I'm gonna get this done. I've got that. I've got a meeting at this time. I've got to do that. I'm problem solving. What am I going to do with the podcast kind of thing? And I've really taken more initiative in bringing myself again back to what I'm experiencing in the moment. I actually, I've been not picking up my phone first thing in the morning. To not even get into anything at all and just get right into my morning kind of routine and practice. In doing that... So the first thing I would suggest that people actually have, if you want to start practicing mindfulness, start having the experiences and the improvements of mindfulness. I will say this too, that knowing all about mindfulness did not actually get those changes.

[Ani]
Right. Can't just read about it?

[Brian] 
Can't just read about it.

[Ani]
Oh, man. Yeah. 

[Brian]
So if you're the kind of person who's like, oh, I know all about mindfulness, and I'm reading about mindfulness. Well, you gotta practice it. I mean, that's where you actually get changes.
 
[Ani]
Yeah. Also, before I forget to say it, if you're a person who's been wanting to put practices into place and you have a really hard time, like, I hear it from people all the time. I know I just need 5, 10 minutes, but I have a horrible time finding it. We have a great PDF in our library. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, it's called something like Our Favorite Resources. There's a PDF called Making Time for Your Practice. We wrote it, like, 15 years ago. I still bring it up every once in a while for clients because it's really good. 

[Brian]
Yeah. Really good stuff. So one of the first foundational steps of benefiting from mindfulness is having a daily practice, having a daily somatic practice. Now, that practice does not necessarily have to look like just like plopping down on a cushion. 

[Ani]
But it does take setting aside time.

[Brian]
Yeah. So what do you do for your daily somatic mindfulness practice, Ani?

[Ani]
Well, I'm big into exercising right now because I'm training for marathon. So I've actually and thank you for asking, by the way. I've let go of some of the other stuff I was doing, like the cushion practice and the breath work practices that I was really appreciating because I'm spending upwards of an hour to an hour and a half a day exercising. So when I run, I don't listen to anything. And I concentrate on my breathing. I can't tell you how awesome it's been. I love it so much, especially when I'm outside. I just love it.

[Brian]
Yeah. That's great. So there's a wonderful way to make your exercise mindful.

[Ani]
Yeah. Exactly. Right. I just a side note to let you know, I've been thinking about how as the kids continue to transition out of our home, one of the things that I wanna bring back to my life that I used to do before kids is have mindful meals. It's one of my favorite mindfulness practices. I love mindful eating. And just to do it, like, once a week for one meal would be so great. So that's something else I wanna put.

[Brian]
Cool. Well, I'm interested to talk with you about what that would look like and how to make that happen. Do you have a daily somatic practice? That's, like, really the foundation. And the reason that's important is because, I think oftentimes people try to practice mindfulness when they're in crisis.

[Ani]
Yeah.

[Brian]
And if you don't already have the tools to do that, it's like trying to become a firefighter during a fire.

[Ani]
100% of patients with the same thing. EMS, like yeah. And it makes perfect sense. People get that. We talk about it in terms of taking vitamins or taking aspirin. You know, you take an Ibuprofen when you have a headache, but you're gonna take your vitamins every day. So make it like your vitamins.

[Brian]
So that's less likely you get a headache.

[Ani]
Exactly. Right?

[Brian]
So make it like your vitamins. So daily somatic practice is really important. If you don't know what those things are, you know, check out our somatic practice essentials program and you learn a whole suite of somatic practices. 
Okay. Now what about practicing mindful moments during the day? So this is something that I do too. So I think that you kinda mentioned this with your running. What I've been doing too is when I'm driving in the car is I'll just not listen to anything at all. I just drive in silence. And I'll just listen to my breathing. And I'll listen to the the road noise of the car, and it's wintertime here right now. So I'll feel the heat blowing off the heater or the heated seat or whatever it is. I always become very present moment focused as I'm driving the car.

[Ani]
I do that a lot too, and it's interesting to me when I have other people in my car, how they either go into mindlessness or they have to have kind of stimulation. Otherwise, it's bothersome to them. Like, they can't tolerate it.

[Brian]
Exactly. Yeah. Right. And so that's just a version of how wound up our nervous systems are. Right? And so to pull us into that present moment... so taking mindful moments during the day. So I'll walk between our office and the house, and I'll just listen to the crunch of the snow underneath my feet, and I'll just pay attention to my breath. I'll feel the cold air. I'll just let myself feel the cold air. So all those sensory components is that mindfulness is really very, very linked to our sensory experience because our sensory experience is linked to what's happening in the present moment. So how do we pay attention to present moment? Well, we pay attention to our sensory experience. 

[Ani]
One of my favorite ways to do that's in the shower. Mindful showers. That's whether I'm doing a regular shower or whether I'm doing a cold plunge shower. 

[Brian]
Which you'll feel the what? The temperature of the water or the the water itself?

[Ani]
I think primarily, like, how it's affecting my senses because the water will feel warm, but then my sensory system feels a certain way, whether it's tingly or expanding or whatever, and actually, like, paying attention to my sensory experience and labeling it. 

[Brian]
Great. Okay. Perfect. That's a great mindfulness experience. Cool. You could pay attention to your to your breathing or your heartbeat. That's like another great way to become present moment focused or mindful. You just pause for a moment, sit, pay attention. Well, just pay attention to my breath, pay attention to my heartbeat sort of thing. 
What's another one you can do? Well, here's a cool one is you can just pause for a second and notice something different about something you do or experience regularly.

[Ani]
So I know there's something different about you? I look at you all the time.

[Brian]
Yeah. So what do you notice different?

[Ani]
Got a whisker right there.

[Brian]
Got a whisker sticking out right there. Okay. Yeah. So those kinds of things. So this kinda gets us out of that default mode network. So we're doing the same thing all the time.

[Ani]
I love this one. Yeah.

[Brian]
And so all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pause and go, what is actually what have I not ever noticed before about this particular thing that I think I do all the time? 

[Ani]
This one for me is a mindfulness practice that really brings joy. Because to notice... oh, you and I have been joking about how it feels like Groundhog Day sometimes.

[Brian]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Ani]
Um, right? You know, go to bed, get up, go to bed, get up, and we'll go get get into bed and be like, it's Groundhog Day. I was just doing this. What wasn't I? Um, and it brings such joy to notice the things that we do all the time and to notice something different. 

[Brian]
Yeah. And and that they're actually there's there's multiple things going on. We're only paying attention to a small percentage there. Yeah. So if there's something you do regularly, um, what about it tastes different, smells different, looks different, feels different, sounds different. Right? There's something use your senses. Use your senses to pick up and note it notice something different that's going on or happening in a routine that you think that you do the same thing all the time.

[Ani]
Yeah. Right. It's a great one. I like that one.

[Brian]
That's a really great one. Um, okay. So, uh, you already talked about how difficult this one is. But when you feel a strong impulse to speak or to act, and maybe maybe practice this a little bit when it doesn't feel really charged. Like, so the way I started practicing this is, like, in a meeting or something. Um, you know, people might be talking, and I have an impulse to speak. And instead of just and it doesn't feel like it's life or death, but it just there's an impulse to do that. I would I would just wait with the impulse and I say, oh, what happens if I just wait with this and I feel does the impulse build and build and build and build the bill? Like, I'm ready to jump out of my seat. Does the impulse come up and then and then it goes back down again in this and then something even ew and more important comes to mind.Yeah. So what if you just practice non reactivity in non, um, crisis kind of situate feeling situations? Just start to build that muscle a little bit. Then that will allow you to be in more higher stakes conversations d pause and practice non reactivity. But it really comes down to paying attention to what does it feel like in your body, in your soma when you have an impulse to act, but you just pause on it for a moment.

[Ani]
So the plug for that, because it can feel it can sound like torturous. Why would I even do that? It's so great because you get to notice something that's going on in here that you did not know about Mhmm. When you do that. And I think that exploration is so fascinating. I love to learn about myself, so I get to learn something really interesting about myself when I do that.

[Brian]
Yeah. Right. And so that's the gate which is what you pointed out, Ani. That's the gateway to, um, non judgmentally witnessing yourself and your habitual patterns of behavior. So when we pause and we get to witness ourselves, and we and we learn something about ourselves, and then we can actually change something about ourselves. We like to say here, you know, that the first step in any change process and it's the first step in our somatic, um, coaching process, our sensation based motivation coaching process is become aware of. And you you cannot change anything in your life unless you become aware of something different. 

[Ani]
And that's why I like nonjudgmental witnessing, honestly. It isn't so I can watch myself do all kinds of crazy stuff or or, like, get on myself. Because sometimes it's not I don't like what I see in there. Right. And as soon as I see it, I can actually do something with that, and that's really exciting.

[Brian]
Yeah. It's that whole become aware of step. And and I say that's why everything we do here is rooted in mindfulness because that's the first step. Right? And you really really can't truly become aware of something until you're mindful with it. 
Um, so that's another one. Um, you know, you can witness yourself witness yourself. This is one of my favorites. Witness yourself doing routine activities like brushing your teeth or drinking a cup of coffee and to witness yourself. I mean, have you ever seen how a baby, uh, when a baby kinda looks at their hand Like, it's the and that they don't know, like, that that's theirs. Yeah. They're like, their hands are out in front of them. They're kinda looking at it in a way where it's like, woah. That's cool. But but they haven't really learned to control it yet, and they don't even realize it's really connected with them. You know what I'm talking about? 
Totally.
So have you ever tried to brush your teeth that way? 

[Ani]
I've gotta tell you. This one this one's really hard for me. I love this one. I can see that you love it. I can I really kind of witness you loving it?

[Brian]
Yeah. I really watch myself. I I kinda watch my body moving and, like, picking up a glass of water or or walking, and, like, this is just a great way to become mindful and practice our witnessing how you how you move.  It creates that little gap through that baby's vision sort of thing. So that's a fun one.

[Ani]
Great idea. Yeah. Great. That's so fun for me. But I appreciate that you like it.

[Brian]
I have I have one more I like to add in. It's a nightly routine I do. Uh-huh. So, um, when I go to bed at night, I'll, uh, well, you know, because you seem to do this. I might might not know what I'm doing. So I get in there. 

[Ani]
secret revealed. 

[Brian]
I pull the covers up. Right? We have an I have a nice weighted blanket on me. And then I put one hand on my heart and one hand on my abdomen, on my on my middle of my lower dan tien. And I just do a a body scan where I allow my body to sink down and I feel my my feet and my legs and my, uh, back my buttocks and my back just sink down into the pillow and and bed, allow myself to be supported. And then I just feel my heartbeat, and I feel my breathing, feel my heartbeat, my breathing. So I'm become very present with it. And then I say a little thank you mantra as I'm as I'm lying there. So it's kind of my nightly mindfulness practice. And I think it's it's really important to do those things because that sets us up for sleep to have a restful and and more recuperative sleep because at nights I don't do that. Excuse me. And I go to bed with something on my mind. I don't sleep as well, you know? So I have an opportunity. So I just get into bed a little bit um, few minutes before I would actually fall asleep sort of thing. And I do that mindfulness practice, and it's, um, been really, really wonderful for me to do that.

[Ani]
Oh, it's been nice for me too.Yeah. Because when you're restless, I hear about it, see it, feel it. Yeah. I like that.
So thank you very much. Yeah.

[Brian]
Do you have any other, um, mindfulness tips or practices, um, to share with our listeners here?

[Ani]
You really, you know, gave people a lot and some that probably people hadn't necessarily heard of before. So I'm mindful that when we give people too many things, it becomes so many choices. Mhmm. I really like the things that you've chosen.

[Brian]
Cool. Well well, if some of those, um, things that we've shared today resonate with you, if any of the information we talked about today resonated with you, please send us an email, a snail mail, a phone call. 

[Ani]
Comment below.

[Brian]
Comment below. Please let us know what you're thinking about. And if you have any thoughts or questions about that, we would love to hear from you. 

[Ani]
Yeah. I encourage you with this episode. If this is an episode that speaks to you, share it with somebody that you like to talk to because then you can both be having this conversation. I find having a partner who has these kinds of conversations with me helps me to put these things into practice. So whether it's a friend or a sister or brother or your partner, just somebody you can talk to about it. Share this episode and then you have a common language to be able to come back to.

[Brian]
Yeah. And most importantly, start practicing. And if you, uh, have the, uh, inclination to dive deeper with the material, you know, think about joining us for our somatic, uh, essentials practice, um, where you can just really uplevel your mindfulness skills.

[Ani]
Sounds great. Thanks, Brian. Thanks so much, everybody. Bye bye.