Ruby Wax: What Interviewing Murderers And Presidents Taught Me About Gut Instinct

0:00How did we start on this? I'm now having a horror of my childhood. I'm having a regression. Are we having a therapy session? Donald Trump, Madonna, Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, OJ. The body of 34-year-old Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of OJ Simpson, was found after midnight on the sidewalk outside her West Los Angeles home. Well, he had disassociative identity disorder. Part of his brain knows he killed her and part of his brain doesn't. And so that's how he passes lie detector tests. We put him in a white Bronco, which is the car he did the getaway in. He kept taking me by the house where the murder happened and he'd say, that's where the murder took place.

0:35And I said, well, you should know. Please welcome Ruby Wax. I'm intimidated a little by you. Really? Did understanding how your brain work help you resolve or support your depression? My thoughts are annihilating all the time. It's like machine guns are pointed at me. But after a week, the guns go down on the ground and I become enchanting. Do you know what I think about mindfulness? I think about it as mental flossing. Oh, that's good. I was outed by Comic Relief. They took a picture of me, but they blew it up into a poster size and they put it all over the tube stations. And it said on it, one in four people have mental illness.

1:15It gets worse. One in five people have dandruff. I have both. I don't think that. Could somebody Google that?

1:25Guys, I have written a book and I've just heard it's a Sunday Times bestseller, which is very exciting. Now it's called Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard because truly that is the reason why I really started this show. Healthy really shouldn't be this hard. And the one thing that I found from all the years of being in the wellbeing space and working as a nutritionist and interviewing incredible people is that there is one vital step that is missing in our health information us and ourselves and being self-compassionate treating ourselves as we would a best friend seems to be fully overlooked and maybe even seen as soft but this book is going to help you re-explore that and realize there is so much science behind just how we think shapes every cell in our body shapes our physiology how we metabolize food how we respond to food and even the choices that we make so if you want to know more this book quite literally might change your life so head to the show notes where I put the link you can head to Amazon or any good bookstore and you will be able to buy Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard and if you do I'd love to know what you think Ruby Wax hello welcome to Live Well Be Well thank you very much okay I'm just going to start with a very accent that was thank you very much it was it was Ruby's accent that's what it was.

2:43I couldn't understand who the mouth that came out of but it's mine. So well we just started with laughing and humor which is great but I just want to start with a very random question which is what is one thing that people just don't know about you? Like really think about that. That I'm not that social. A lot of times people think because I look gregarious and my shtick is gregarious. Like I'm a fast talker and thinker. But there's something very... I went to a party last night and I thought I really don't want to be here. Esther Perel was there and I'm very intimidated. I wasn't meant to be there.

3:26No. My friend messaged me saying Esther Perel was here. Who was your friend? A girl called Miley. I was Miley there? I don't know. No, you wouldn't know her. She's just a very old friend of mine from Estonia. How bizarre. She asked me to go. I think I know. Yeah. Yeah. She was wearing an AC Miyake top. Yeah. She left early. You should have gone. I was doing a talk. All right. Okay. Well, there she was. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I find I'm kind of intimidated around her. I mean, I would be, yeah. I mean, I stumble. and when I think somebody's highly, highly more intelligent, I lose my confidence. Really?

4:11So people think, oh, she's very confident, but I can lose it. And you can tell because I start, you know, the part of the brain that is memory goes immediately down. And so I stumble and I find myself banging myself on the leg going, why did I ask her that? Why did I say that? I'm so articulate with everybody else and funny. I get in front of a stair and I can't I can't deliver and she looks at me in a puzzled way like why do so many people like this woman I can see I feel her confusion would you know what that actually leads on to my exact question most of us walk into a room wanting someone to like us I mean it's being part of a tribe right when we rejected oh everybody I want everybody to like me yeah right but you know you've just described in that moment you felt kind of not smart enough maybe not good enough kind of comparison against esther peratt i mean she's a very high level yeah but you've also had this against and you speak about this in your live shows with trump and madonna as well you've had these like moments where i guess well that wouldn't say he was he wasn't intelligent but he was right exactly so you have this moment where your body kind of goes into a bit of a shutdown um you've had that on camera with the whole world watching which is very different to the average person listening to this right you can go into a room right and feel it but no one might know um what have you learned from those moments because it's interesting you had it last night which I didn't expect you to say I had it last night but I don't think it shows it's just my inner dialogue that gives me the review but even with Madonna or Trump or somebody that intimidates me.

5:49Obviously, it wasn't for his intelligence, but it was his viciousness. It was just pure bile that rose. And so all I did was smile because I keep thinking it's an entertainment show. Just keep smiling. I did that with Bill Cosby as he insulted me one whack after another, making me get on my knees and calling him Dr. Cosby. I watch it because we show the audience during my tour. And I think for the sake of women, I shouldn't be smiling. But I'm so embarrassed that I covered it with pretending it's amusing. And now I would just keep my face very still. I wouldn't attack because then I'd lose my mojo and also my dignity.

6:33But I'd let him hang himself. I just say, but it's very difficult. It takes years of, I do meditation. It takes years of being able to hold your real feeling of humiliation and just ask a really intelligent question. I couldn't do that. I think I could control the cortisol now. So as we were talking about, when you get a blow to the heart, my remit is just keep smiling and pretend it's really funny, which makes me look stupider. And so I would do it differently now. With Esther, I don't think she notices. It's just I can't pull any cards out. So what did you do in that moment to kind of, I guess, I don't want to say make yourself feel good enough because ultimately, obviously you are, but to make yourself feel more balanced or regulated in that moment?

7:23Because obviously we all want people to like us. We all have that feeling. I think everyone listening to this podcast is going to relate to walking into a room and potentially not feeling good enough. Well, and your heart hurts. Yeah. So with that stare, I mean, I observe myself. I think that's from doing meditation. You observe it. It's not now suddenly you're evolved and you're over it. You just see the scars of childhood. You don't have to go to an analyst and find out why. Why it already happened. I have a wound, but the wound is, the more I kind of ride over it, the fainter the scar gets.

7:58So I know what I did. I kind of feel sad that I can't pull out the stops. This happened to me with somebody else, with Diana, Princess Diana. The first time I met her, I went into a plie. I was trying to curtsy. Why was I even curtsying? And I couldn't pull out. And Helena Kennedy kept saying, Ruby's really intelligent. Say something intelligent, Ruby. That's just pressure in itself, isn't it? Well, everybody else was holding a conversation. Anyway, later on, we became friends. And then she could see I was funny. I wish Esther would come to my camp, but I still haven't conquered that one. maybe we can conquer that one together we could work with me yeah yeah what do you think it is about her that made you feel maybe in more shutdown than other people I hope she's not listening I hope she is uh I feel like she um I I'm I'm not of her species so I've said some things that are me let's for example last night that other people laugh at and she doesn't seem to get so maybe it's a different sense of humor when somebody doesn't have my sense of humor I'm dead because I speak I you know I'm seeped in irony that's what I loved about coming to England because I got coated in it yeah and maybe I had the seeds of it in America but they didn't get it and so I came here and it was bingo these were my people so I say really sharp things you know jabby things but I'm kidding yeah and I don't know if that translates in her ear so I see her kind of wincing a little bit when I'm crude not crude but direct it's direct it's she's pretty direct too but it's in a different yeah framework yeah um I wish she'd like me but I can't do everything it's such a human experience to want to be liked though like you're not on your own in that way I mean I think you speak about it so publicly and beautifully which is the vulnerability in you and that's how people relate to you that's why I think when people get to know Ruby that's why they think you're funny because they know that you're so vulnerable and how you speak about things a lot of people really struggle to be vulnerable and a lot of people can really struggle to even connect to feeling disassociated when they walk into that room and feel an overwhelm of panic they just think there's something wrong for them or they think something's wrong with her and they get aggressive well they get defensive yeah what advice do you give to someone who maybe feels that?

10:24They don't feel anything. So they feel it, but they don't have an undercurrent that says, here's what might be going on. A little bit, I know everybody's against CBT-ish, is to say, I'm just reading this because... Cognitive behavior therapy. Right. Cognitive behavior therapy. I think that I distrust my reactions. So I've learned that. These are all reactions, Ruby. You had to defend yourself at that point, but they aren't relevant now. but God bless you. You have to, that's all you've got. You know, I haven't got a lot of ammo. It's like one leg is shorter than the other. So just compensate really.

11:00But one leg really is shorter than the other. So there's nothing I can do now. But I think the more I don't believe what I'm telling you, like probably she just thinks I'm a great, I don't know what she thinks. I'm just projecting my fear onto her. I'm using her as a canvas for my own paranoia. Interesting. Maybe she looks like somebody maybe she has an attitude maybe her accent reminds me of something I mean that's usually why you project onto people is they have somebody in high school who turned their head she's the popular girl and I had to crawl so everybody is a reminder of who they of something in your life I don't have time in my life to analyze it nor do I want to pay however much money it is for somebody else to analyze it just is the way it is so now deal with it I mean I mean you're also qualified to analyze that at the same time we're going to talk about that because I really want to talk to you about mindfulness and all the amazing things that you do in your retreats I mean I know that you're known as a comedian and I think we just had this conversation before the show I'm still referenced as a model right although I've been I am too scientific community for many years and so are you Ruby people think I'm the top model because you know I look so I'm so tall you are and I wear Valentino so well no I'm kidding sorry I just had to go there two models who are angry about there I'm always being labeled as a top model no I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that don't apologize but again I need the humor in this my mouth just goes and I think Ruby pull back pull back can I tell you something don't pull back because that's why people love you I attended TED earlier this year and I found myself in conversations with the founders of NoWatch.

12:44You've probably seen me wear something on my wrist and lots of you have messaged me asking me what this is. It looks like a classic watch but it's actually quietly tracking something much more meaningful, your autonomic nervous system. This is the system that governs everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm to overwhelm. Most wearables just give you a score but if you're anything like me that score can sometimes make you feel worse like you're already behind before your day even begins. No watch works differently there is no judgment and there is no dopamine chasing dashboard.

13:18It simply reflects what your body is already experiencing and also helps you notice what it might be missing. It gives you minute by minute timeline of your stress responses and your recovery. The recovery is the most important part and is the part that no one talks about and it is often the most revealing marker of our long-term health. In just five days it calibrates to your body and it builds your personal health fingerprint. You can try for free now for 30 days and if you use the code LWBW you can also get 15 % off. If you want to understand your body not just through performance but through self-awareness then this is where I'd begin the thing with mental health so I kind of transitioned from this model into mental health right and and nutrition and I kind of couldn't put them together so I started a mental health organization over here and a nutrition clinic over here and then somehow the podcast like weaved everything together mental health when you talk about it can feel really bloody heavy I'm being honest I I found it quite a hard world to navigate because I also don't want to talk about it from a depressing point of view so when I started be well it was about getting like Gary Barlow on to inspire people about his eating disorder and get people to speak about it from hope you have this amazing ability to speak about mental health and make people laugh and when I kind of was speaking to a couple neuroscientists yesterday you know I was kind of saying what do you what can one do when they're in that downward spiral and the first thing they said is humor you've got to connect to human I just thought about you automatically yesterday day and I was like well funnily enough I'm actually interviewing Ruby Waxner she does this beautifully right but I don't think we ever connect those two they feel very like far apart mental health conversations and humor but actually oh but that's how I make a living how can you talk to people how can you kind of be in one state but also embody it with the humor because people can feel like they're so far apart but actually you beautifully bring them together thank you but um if I was mentally ill at this point you know if I had my depression I wouldn't be I would you could talk to the chair in a better conversation than you could talk to me so I'm not in that state so I'm not funny when I'm ill I'm not I'm nothing I mean your mind is gone so do you have depression no no I've suffered with anxiety right it's a Different ballpark.

15:41Yeah. Yeah. So depression, you know, is you're dead, but you happen to be breathing. So people always think it's because you're sad or something happened. I go, nothing happened. You can win an award and you want to die. So that's that's that. But I they're my people. You know how like if you're Jewish, you can say things about being Jewish or if you're black American, you can do that. Well, I'm mentally ill. So my people let me go and let me say whatever I want. So when I first started doing this publicly, I've said this before, I was outed by Comic Relief. Oh, I didn't know. They took a picture of me, but they blew it up into a poster size and they put it all over the tube stations.

16:25And it said on it, one in four people have mental illness. Gets worse. One in five people have dandruff. I have both. I don't have dandruff. that's unbelievable and a picture of me looking slightly miserable with a red nose on my face so when I saw it in the tube I hurled myself against the wall but then there were more I couldn't hurl enough all the way down the tube station and I was mortified so I thought I'm gonna have to write a show and pretend that's my publicity post you know how they put it in the tube station that I had done that on purpose because I didn't want anybody to know I was ill because good luck holding a job at BBC.

17:04So I pretended I was doing a show. Didn't they have to get rights to put that up? Didn't they have to get your... They didn't ask. It's comic relief. Right, okay. And I let them take the picture, but I thought, because my career was nosediving, the bigger your poster is, the more popular you are. So I was surprised Stephen Fry, I thought, was on the upward. His would be gigantic and I'd be a stamp. But they used my picture. So it's nobody's fault. I just never asked. So then I performed in mental institutions for two years to write a script about mental illness. And I used to say that the bipolars would say, I laughed, I cried.

17:42I give myself reviews from them and the psychotics, you know, but they loved me because I could, you know, I could deal with them directly. I mean, I, if you give me somebody in the depth of it, I will be able to, and I'm not ill, I can make them laugh. So these people in these clinics, and it was heartbreaking. They didn't have a stage, so I'd do it on the counter of the buffet or sometimes in the ladies' loo for three people. They'd be wheeled in and really severely sick, but I'd get them to, my motive was to make them laugh. And they'd make me hysterical because there'd be question and answer.

18:17And one woman asked me, how do you get a poltergeist out of Hoover or there's a communist living at my back molar. They were sensational reactions to my show and I loved them and my payoff was I would be able to stay overnight in the mental ward because that's my home away from home. I feel really safe there. Wow, why? Because I'm being taken care of and nobody can harm me. Right. And there's a lady with that kind of you know cupcake on their heads, the nurses in this country. Don't they wear a kind of weird thing on their head? You mean like the little triangles? I think so. Like the bonnets?

18:52Isn't that quite old school? Isn't that like an old? Yeah, but the Priory, they were wearing it. And they'd come in and they'd give me my little cup with my pills in it. And I would suck my thumb and I'd be, I loved the people. So you go back to childhood, basically. I go back to childhood. When I was on tour about, I don't know, 20 years ago, I'd make them stop if I was in the south at the Priory so I could smell the lobby. Because it brings me back to safety. that's a mother I never had and then when they did who do you think you are I saw that I came from five generations of people that were incarcerated incarcerated meaning in a mental they called an insane asylum that I kept going to different archivists and they said guess what your great great aunt did and I said was she an actress and they said no she was insane how did that make you feel well it because that labeling I just feel so well they'd had something called agitation so did they have what I've got which is agitation it's not mental illness but it's funny they used to put them in cold baths and now I have a cold bath in my garden so they weren't so often I don't have a whirling chair but I've got I've got a tub anyway I'm going off piece but I kind of think about this right I'm quite um what's the word quite protective of how I speak about mental health because I think mental illness has had a bit of a bad rep and people get quite scared about connecting to that and I think I think everyone suffers in some way shape or form because we have a brain and we live in the world that we live in I have to disagree I have to say everybody suffers but mental illness is cancer you know what a tumor is to cancer I mean a mental illness is to depression but I think also people can also come and go from these states right rather than just feeling like they can oh you come and go that's why people think it's a that's why there's a stigma yeah because they say if you're okay now ruby you're sitting here having you couldn't possibly well herpes comes and goes that's the first direct reference i've heard but yeah i love that um you know so yeah i want a t-shirt that says herpes comes and goes with no explanation so how would you define mental mental illness the the real illness i mean schizophrenia Epidemia, borderline personality, depression, bipolar.

21:13How do I say? I've had, I'm going off again because that's how my brain works. I do shows for 15 years. And in the second half, I speak to the audience. I've had a lot of people maybe once a week stand up and go, I have cancer. I now have depression. I say, which is worse? It's always a depression. It's always, it is agony. That's why people commit suicide. Yeah, of course. Not because they had a lump. Well, because it's so isolating. when you're in that space it hurts it hurts you want to die it's a it's pain beyond any pain you could imagine so the thing the thing that is incredible about what you did with your mental illness is you actually went back and studied about it you went to oxford i don't know if i mean i think maybe a lot of people do know this but you went to a master's degree in mindfulness based cognitive therapy back in 2013 i mean you were new to this right so 2013 am i getting that date right yeah um mindfulness now is spoken about a lot a lot more even with nutrition even with things like oh everybody's mindful now people talk a lot about it but back then it wasn't spoken about as much as it is today it was kind of this new emerging area of research did you did understanding how your brain work help you resolve or support your depression or did it not did it kind of any way kind of help you explore that more or do you think that because I think about this with knowledge and food we have so much information now with food and diet and health but some of us still really struggle to do those behaviors right a lot of us can still struggle to eat really well did understanding about the brain and mindfulness help you control your mind in any way shape or form it's not about it's not about control I had gone to every therapist known to man, and I became a therapist.

23:06I was a therapist. That's the best thing about you. But I was awful because I used to say to people, oh, just cut to the punchline. Come on, let's just say what we think is in the room. Let's name the elephant. I didn't say that, but that's what I thought. So I never would have the patience. But once I got thrown out of television, I thought I got to find something. So I immediately went to study to be a psychotherapist. but that's not what we're talking about do you see how my mind jumps you've got a lot to say a lot of lived experience and I jump, I play jazz out of my mouth rather than a symphony so I didn't understand depression because not enough money has been thrown at it so nobody knows depression if they had thrown as much money to depression as to smallpox we'd have a cure I'm not negating what Bill Gates does or malaria.

24:01But I'm just saying there's no money in it. It's not sexy. Well, now it is because now we're looking at numbers, especially for kids. But I don't understand where depression comes from or where it is in the brain because nobody knows. But I did the mindfulness I caught on because, A, you do exactly what we've been talking about. You learn to have distance from your thoughts, and that's liberating. I now don't have depression, but depression is in the room. So my whole being is anxious. There is anxiety. So it really teaches you to just notice specifically there is depression, but there's still Ruby.

24:46So once you can make that separation a little bit, I can observe the thoughts rather than be caught in the slipstream. of their, and my thoughts are annihilating all the time. It's like machine guns are pointed at me. And this is from childhood. I don't have to keep going and bore everybody's senses about what happened. And I've turned that into comedy, you know, so, but it doesn't liberate you. I just have the machine guns pointed. So when you have depression, they fire, they start firing at you. But usually the thoughts are annihilating. So mindfulness gives me a little distance to go, Ruby, it's just a recording.

25:21It's just a recording. It's just a habit that is ingrained that helped you survive. So I can still function behind the annihilation. I mean, there's a bit of me that's adorable, but I didn't know that until I did mindfulness. And when I go on retreats, like a 30-day silent retreat, I can get to that. The beginning is the guns are really pointed and they're really trying to show, you know, how I don't deserve to live. But after a week, the guns go down on the ground and I become enchanting and colors are really vivid and food tastes delicious because I go back to who I was before the guns. How long does that last for?

26:02Well if I keep doing I do it every morning it's not a hundred percent otherwise I would be Buddha but it's there's moments let's say when I walk in and I see somebody who scares me like we were talking about earlier I can go it's just the guns Ruby it's not you you have guns pointed from a early early childhood but it's not you there's something quite you know innocent about me I guess that to me sounds like you harness back control it's not control it's observation I think control means you're repressing it you know and sitting on it but this is observation I'm friendly with the with the guns now yeah I mean as controls and like not letting that thought overtake your mind you're kind of like more in the driver's seat is kind of what I would say the thoughts are there they're just quieter yeah they're just a little quieter like while we're talking now I'm thinking I'm intimidated a little by you because you remind me of somebody I went to school with really I could name the name and if I wasn't aware of it I'd be my breath would be taken away because she was quite she was the popular girl and she remained the popular girl and she's my image of uh the first girl that really I went oh stand back Ruby you've got a competitor here isn't it funny how those early years of our life shape us so much I feel like I always remember the full name of everyone at school like whenever I reference someone back at school I normally say their full name because it's had such an imprint on my life really were you popular I don't I don't think i was like the hyper popular i think i was just kind of i flitted between a lot of groups right um i also you know i was neurodivergent which i didn't know so i would be told to stand outside the class a lot of the time because i wouldn't shut up oh really yeah so i felt like i missed a lot of my school life because i would just be talking outside the whole time then i'd be chatting to everyone else well you don't seem at the mercy of it now except you have a podcast so that's why so now it fits but now i understand my brain is different like when i went back to university later and I was diagnosed with dyslexia to start with um she taught me my brain and so I didn't hate my brain anymore I just I was so frustrated with my brain they explained dyslexia to you yeah yeah I'd never heard of all that word I didn't know what that word meant yeah that's liberating and you know when she told me how my brain worked like you keep saying your brain goes off in spirals but that's how she said my brain was when I went into a supermarket she was like most people when they go and buy a meal they want a spaghetti bolognese they'll be like yeah yeah know we get pasta i want to get some beef i want to get some tomato sauce you will go in and you'll be like i'm gonna make the tomato sauce and i'm gonna create this and i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that and then you're like 10 minutes later you're like why am i even here i'm like that's my brain and it just felt like a validation that the brain wasn't broken yeah and she said like when you leave this it will be your biggest superpower just just when you're in more of a linear system your brain struggles to stay on the linear path and i was like no one's ever said that to me before oh yeah and that gave me some like autonomy yeah to go off and actually believe in myself but if you don't have belief yeah then you feel very constrained i have one small ask while you're watching this show if you're enjoying it please hit subscribe on whichever platform you're listening on this really really helps the show more than you can realize it helps people that have never listened to the show before come across it and see all the incredible episodes that we have with the amazing guests so if there's one small favor today if you're not already a subscriber please do subscribe when they said you have clinical depression i felt liberated it's just that there's no explanation so i don't have what you have which is understanding dyslexia because that can be explained but depression as i said again no money no idea you just have a diseased brain somewhere have you in your own head try to understand what it means like for you have you tried to make sense of what depression means for you yeah well it's it's near death it's as as dark as it gets and um I know the moment where you go I don't care if I get a manicure or jump off a cliff I know that moment or you walk slowly in front of a car um hoping that it'll hit because you don't have the bravery to do it but you certainly feel the urge to make this end I I can't say any any more about it I do know about the brain but where it's lodged we don't know how did you go from that to comedy I made fun of the driver how did you you know so many people listening to this might be suffering with depression right now right and I think the thing that I've heard about clinical depression is that you just don't know if there's any hope yeah there is hope though this is yeah and that's what you can from what I've understood is what many can feel like like you just you can't see when you're in it forget about it like don't even do mindfulness you haven't got a mind you're wasting your time with a therapist when you're in that state you're gone the your your agency is on holiday there is no you.

31:16That's what's a bizarre thing. You'll try to imitate you. You know, when I used to have it at work, I'd imitate who I thought I was with sweat running down me. I even once, I was doing a show. My husband had to get me out of the clinic to do a show about depression. And I had a person with depression in my house. So I was wearing my pajamas with my coat over it because I didn't want the BBC to know that I was sick. And I interviewed a person with depression. And they looked at me like you are so much worse than I am and the camera crew didn't catch it at all and then when it was over he took me back to the clinic but doesn't that just show how invisible it can be to so many other people well if they didn't if they didn't even catch on they didn't catch but if they looked in my eyes they'd see it very few people looking in the eyes you can see the disease in the eyes that's why teachers should look in eyes of children because there's no mistaking it's like taking a pulse they look dead so tell me the hope of how you got from from that where you are now for anyone it was episodic it would have done it anyway you go in you go out it's not like um schizophrenia or borderline where you have to take you know you're pretty much in that state all the time I'm in I'm out that's why there's such a stigma pull yourself together or perk up that's what they used to say and I'd say oh because I never thought of that but um where I am now this isn't this is who I am I just happen to have this thing that rears its head and no reason why it rears its head I can't say whenever I smell a plant it just happens and I could be at the height of my career and it happens so wow yeah it just happens so do you think mindfulness has helped as a bolster towards it do you think it's helped gain you more perspective on on depression and just yourself I can tell when it's coming that's why I went to Oxford yeah there's signs as I say you're outside yourself a little bit but in a healthy way not in a kind of I'm watching myself from outer space because I have been picked up by aliens you didn't know that but um I can watch and I can take my temperature inside a little bit or take my pulse and say, these thoughts are getting dangerous.

33:31These are the usual elevator music thoughts of like, you know, look what you look like. She's so much prettier. You really, Ruby, you should have brought some nice, you know, the usual, just insulting slightly. You call them theme tunes, right? Theme tunes. Yeah. And then suddenly they become vicious, more vicious and faster. And my hair gets depressed. I can actually feel my hair starts to change. And I look in, and now my husband knows, look in her eyes, and when they're dead, they look like shark eyes, then it's time to go to the institution. So I can see it coming. And instead of going to more parties to show everybody I'm fine, and maybe it'll go away, I usually check in a hotel, and I shut the lights off for five days, and it passes like a devil, rather than fighting it.

34:21If you fight it, it lasts longer. gosh that sounds to me a bit like a drowning analogy you know when you're like in the water and you kind of get taken in by the tide and you're fighting to kind of stay up above the yeah the wave and you're like doing everything you can i'm not waving i'm drowning yeah and actually they just say you need to like let go because then you will naturally resurface yeah i mean i found myself at things when i was fighting it i go to everything they asked me to go to. I'm invited to a charity for Save the Puffins. And I got there and thought, I don't give a shit about puffins.

34:56What am I doing here?

35:03And then I went scuba diving in December at Brighton Pier. I decided I have to learn to scuba dive. And now I'm upside down in the water to get my certificate. It's December. and the woman was crazier than I was who said this is one of the most beautiful dives in the world I went down there there was that was yeah it was a shopping cart and a thong that was a that was the dive and I thought you just do everything because you want to say I'm fine I'm fine it's kind of escapism right it's kind of like running well you think you can over over outrun the depression but you can't and then it'll grab you by the legs and drag you back in like a monster so let's go to mindfulness yeah talk to me about your mindfulness practice I think this is something when I came to your house it was incredible I think as and the reason why I said I mean that I didn't I was not the top model but I was known as a model for years and it took me a long time to kind of change the narrative into the health nutrition mental health world you know you've been known here as a comedian to make people laugh that's why people love you for so long but when I sat there I've known that you worked within mindfulness but you know so much it's incredible I mean you've written books on this you know you do retreats on this um but I think you know sometimes it can be overshadowed by just how much you do know and I think you have an amazing way of describing mindfulness that actually feels very relatable and there's only someone else who I had on the show Matt Hague yeah who also has an amazing way of describing depression but also tools to that has helped him my i want to know did he describe it better than i did his he didn't talk about mindfulness but he talks about depression i want to know who won do you see how sad i am i want to know not competitive not at all completely come on no was he better than me we should do a podcast with three of us isn't that sad you can put it to the live audience i'm now telling you my subtext because as soon as you said Matt Hague I went did he describe depression better than I did no okay I won completely different all right which was great he talks about it as he talks about does that make you hate me that I asked that question no it makes me feel like you're just very authentic I think everyone thinks that that's the bit that's the best thing this is probably stuff that comes into people's brains immediately right because that's kind of status is a big part of how our brains work yeah and if anyone says that that's not true then they're not oh no we're always thinking where am I coming in in this where am I in the tribe yeah right so I mean it's just a very who's gonna let me into the watering hole I always think they let comedians in because they weren't attractive but they made somebody laugh so they said make way make way for the loser you just say what's in your brain and everyone relates to it so oh good it's fine it could be me in a corner just bubbling away rocking oh go ahead talk to me about mindfulness like just let's get people to understand what mindfulness is first of all you know there's a pat answer to this people say things like to become present and I go what does that mean yeah you know or they say non-judgmental well what does that mean so when I explain it and I do my retreats can I say where my retreats are of course oh I do once a month I do them at home 20 people can come to my house and then I went to right yeah and then um another one is coming up uh July the 9th July the 9th and it's in Belcom thank you you're very good um which is a beautiful country estate so we're inviting people to come to that so that's July 9th and it's on my website rubywax.net And then another one is at 42 Acres, September 7th.

38:57So that's also there. So I'm running them, and I'm trying to make people understand. I may be a comedian, but I also have, like you, I have another skill. I really know how to teach it, and I know how to explain without being heavy what happens in your brain when you do practice it. I don't mean the coloring book. I mean the real thing. And if mindfulness wasn't as potent as it is, that you could see the results in a scanner, because I don't believe in anything woo-woo. I had to go to Oxford and look at what the results are of practicing mindfulness. It's just like looking at a six-pack. You clearly did something to get that six-pack.

39:35So when you look at a scanner and you see certain areas that are more buff than they would normally be, the amygdala is deactivated. you um you know the insula is more buff i don't know buff there's more neurons in it so you could only say more muscle if people don't know what you know a more neuron mass the acc entanglement cingulate cortex is also there's more neural connections and that's in charge of we're making it simple but your attention to be able to pull focus away from distraction now if that isn't the million dollar gift in this century to be able to control your attention, then I don't know what is to take your eye off what's dragging you away.

40:19Because there's engineers that are geniuses. That's their whole job is to take your attention. And then you spend money on it. So if you can take your attention and put it like on your kids or on your holiday, you won the lottery. So what is it then? Like is it meditation? Or is it very different to meditation? It is meditation. It's the same thing. But it's not got the religious connotation. But when you're in your body or in a sense, sight, sight, taste, touch, smell, you're activating. I'm making it simple. The insula, which is interception, it's feeling of the body. You're in the body. And the amygdala, the yappering up here, the constant chatter, deactivates.

41:02Now, when you're in constant chatter mode, you're back in fight and flight and the insulin deactivates. So it's one or the other. You're either in sense mode or you're in gabbling thinking mode. It doesn't mean the thinking stops. It just gets a little quieter. You can't be focused in both areas. Try it. You know, you can't sense your feet and also think at the same time. It's one or another. And that back and forth, it's not like you're going to stop thinking. That back and forth of noticing where the thoughts go, appreciating them, because that's what we do for a living, than taking it to, let's say, your breath, losing your track, go back to the thinking, come back to the breath, thoughts come in.

41:44You need those thoughts, and you come back to the breath. It's like lifting a weight, and so more and more neural connections happen in the insula and the other areas. So when the shit hits the fan and you're with somebody shouting at you, it's easier to bring focus into the body so that you don't get caught. You don't disassociate, basically. Or you get caught in that argument, like you become vicious because they're vicious. You really learn to go, these are just thoughts. They come and go. I have a very, you know, now buffed up part of my body that while you're shouting at me, I can bring my attention to my breath.

42:19You can't do this unless you practice. Or feeling my feet on the ground. When I'm on stage sometimes, I used to lose my lines. But now, and the audience turned on you like animals because they don't like seeing a comedian dying. So maybe they think, well, now we have the watering hole, so let her die. But I send my focus to my feet on the ground, and immediately the cortisol comes down. Immediately, because my attention is now in my feet. And then I can tell it's working because the audience start laughing again, and their eyes lighten up. So I'm in control of my stress. I don't know if I'm explaining it, but I do go into deeper.

42:58Or here's what happens scientifically. And that's what makes me love it. And you become present. Because if you're in your body, let's say I'm breathing, you can't breathe tomorrow or last week. I'm breathing right now. If you say I'm in the present, you're wrong. Sorry, I'm on medication so my mouth dries up. That's why. See, I think the thing that is about that, even when you're talking about it, I feel quite calm. Because you're kind of bringing everything back inwards. which you said today everything is pulled outwards there's like everything is pulled inwards that's exactly it you're back in your body and your body doesn't have words exactly it only has sensation and sensation can't kill you words can I mean I think the thing about this you sat down and you said you know look my brain goes everywhere and it's you kind of use it in a negative connotation I saw it but it's like a superpower because you're just processing so much which is why you're you've got so many different neuron connections happening but a lot of people might feel like this right and then they go well that sounds great Ruby but I struggle to do that I struggle to sit still yeah then you know if it's really bad if it's really awful don't do it it's like forcing you to go to yoga you know there's a point where you're doing damage because you're forcing your body so don't do it but everything you learn from walking to playing tennis to you know, sitting up was always a struggle in the beginning.

44:26It will always be a struggle, but I don't like going to the gym either. But if I want my stomach to be back in the ranch, rather than hanging over the chair, I have to go to the gym. I don't like it. So with mindfulness, I want to live longer. And I want to, I don't want to be at the mercy of my thoughts all day long telling me, don't go see Esther because she's going to scare you. Don't go to Norwich because you don't, everybody's going to think you're an idiot. You know, I don't want to obey my thoughts. So because they're grueling. So I have to sit and do mindfulness every day, but not in a gluten-free cushion situation.