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Oprah's Super Soul

19 Aug 2026 · 33m · 14 chapters

Episode artwork

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Mindfulness 101

In short

Jon Kabat-Zinn explains mindfulness as “a love affair with life,” rooted in present-moment awareness and non-judgmental attention. He argues mindfulness is a form of meditation practiced in everyday moments (e.g., “stir the pot,” shower awareness), helps people relate differently to stress and chronic pain, and counters misconceptions that meditation requires blankness or special states. He also discusses acceptance as recognizing reality without the story that makes it worse, and how awareness can “hold” thoughts and sensations without being trapped by them.

Guest backgrounds

Jon Kabat-Zinn (born 1944, NYC) studied molecular biology (Ph.D., MIT), encountered Zen mindfulness in graduate school, and founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979 at UMass Medical School.

Key claims

mindfulness is “awareness on purpose” in the present; pain and suffering aren’t identical; acceptance isn’t resignation; thoughts can be seen as patterns and lose power when held in awareness.

Notable examples

shower “check-in” homework; chronic pain “welcome mat” for sensations; traffic-stress acceptance; ocean/mind metaphor (drop below waves to awareness).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

0:07

Jon's Journey into Mindfulness

Explore Jon's background and the evolution of mindfulness practices.

“Upwork connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records, so you can hire with confidence.”
2:27

Jon's Journey into Mindfulness

Explore Jon's background and the evolution of mindfulness practices.

“Over the last 35 years, John's trailblazing approach to health and healing has gone mainstream, bringing relief to countless patients suffering chronic illnesses and pain.”
4:28

Understanding Mindfulness

Delve into the essence of mindfulness and its practical applications.

“In it you say, I see mindfulness as a love affair with life.”
6:40

The Importance of Being Present

Discover how being present transforms relationships and interactions.

“Because whenever we've done shows with Deepak and others about meditation, people are like, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it right, when in fact, whatever is happening is what's supposed to be happening.”
9:29

Mindfulness in Today's World

Discuss the challenges of maintaining mindfulness in a distracted society.

“There's no greater gift you can give your children than to be present for them.”
15:23

Understanding Mindfulness Through the Shower

Learn how mindfulness can transform mundane activities into meaningful moments.

“I think your shower example is the best.”
17:46

Mindfulness and Pain Management

Discover how mindfulness aids in managing pain and changing perceptions of suffering.

“And we can actually make these connections and realize them in ways that we might not have been able to do the moment before.”
20:38

Acceptance and Stress Relief

Understand the concept of acceptance and its role in reducing stress.

“You know what's interesting, too, about, as I was saying, I can see how mindfulness can relieve stress.”
22:28

Finding Well-Being and Peace

Explore how to cultivate inner peace and well-being in everyday life.

“and it drops back down into a kind of stillness so it's not continually hyper-arousing itself.”
23:28

Pouring Energy into What's Right

Learn the importance of focusing on positive aspects of life for better mental health.

“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.”
Show all 14 chapters
28:03

Mindfulness as a Love Affair with Reality

Explore how mindfulness connects art and science, enriching our experience of life.

“My father didn't love to go to museums, although we did, but he was like tone deaf for both music and for paintings.”
30:05

The Nature of Thoughts and Awareness

Understand the relationship between thoughts, awareness, and the practice of mindfulness.

“Who tells oneself, I don't have any time?”
32:46

Life Before Death: The Importance of Presence

Reflect on the significance of being present and experiencing life fully before it's too late.

“I love how you say that the negative thoughts often, that we often hear, are not big enough thoughts.”
35:39

Getting Our Shit Together

A call to action for mindfulness and collective responsibility as a species.

“Because if you're zoning along on autopilot, you may miss, as we were saying, the most beautiful aspects of your own life.”
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Transcript

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1:57John Kabat-Zinn was born in New York City in 1944. He was a gifted student and entered Haverford College when he was 16 years old. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in molecular biology at MIT. In graduate school, John first attended a lecture about Zen Buddhism and mindfulness meditation. In 1979, John founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Of course, he became a pioneer in this field, developing a healing program that integrated Western medicine with Eastern mindfulness. Over the last 35 years, John's trailblazing approach to health and healing has gone mainstream, bringing relief to countless patients suffering chronic illnesses and pain.

2:48Today, his eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course is available in more than 700 medical centers, hospitals, and clinics around the world. But this groundbreaking scientist and teacher is also a best-selling author. His 10th book, Mindfulness for Beginners, reassures us that even though we may long for wholeness, the truth is it's already here and already ours. It's so fascinating to me that when we first met in 1992, the word mindful was actually cutting edge. People were like, what are you talking about? They didn't even know what we were talking about. And now it's sort of become the buzzword for the time.

3:31I mean, a lot of people use it in terms of their daily practice, their classes about it, their schools where they're teaching mindfulness to children, all because of you. It feels like this was your calling, would you say? Totally. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And my intention from very early on, I got into the practice of mindfulness when I was 22 years old. And I'm 70 now. So most of the things I got into when I was in my 20s, I didn't actually keep going. But this is something that really stayed. So it, in some sense, took root in a very deep way for me. Wow. So what is it really? Because I love that you now have done mindfulness for beginners.

4:20Because I think when we last spoke, you had written Coming to Our Senses. Big book. Big book. Intimidating for a lot of people. This, this, this is, this is... Easier entry. Easier entry. Easier glide path. Yes, absolutely. So mindfulness for beginners. In it you say, I see mindfulness as a love affair with life. Wow, what a powerful sentence. With reality and imagination. I see mindfulness as a love affair with life, with reality and imagination. with the beauty of your own being, with your heart and body and mind and with the world. Now, that sounds like a lot to take in, which it is. And that is why it can be so valuable to experiment systematically with cultivating mindfulness in your life.

5:12So what does it mean for us to cultivate mindfulness? It's actually very simple. It's the simplest thing we could ever do, isn't it? It's totally simple, but it's not so easy. And this is one of the beauties of it is that having worked now in the medical field for over 35 years, you're seeing that even though it's not easy, thousands and tens of thousands of people are willing to roll up their sleeves and actually cultivate it. So what mindfulness is, is a particular way of being in relationship to your life. And the place to start, of course, is the fact that we're only alive in this moment. The future hasn't happened yet.

5:53The past is memory and is over. But if you start to pay attention to where your mind is, most of the time it's not in the present moment. It's off someplace else, obsessing about the past or planning or worrying about the future. So what mindfulness is is a particular way of paying attention and the awareness that arises from paying attention in that way. And that way is on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. So is it the same thing as meditation? It is a form of meditation. Okay, because it's an easier entry. Glide path. I like glide path. It's an easier glide path, I think, for people to accept, I want to be more mindful than I want to meditate.

6:40Because whenever we've done shows with Deepak and others about meditation, people are like, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it right, when in fact, whatever is happening is what's supposed to be happening. Exactly. This is the biggest problem. People think something's supposed to happen. Yeah, and I know it's not happening because I'm just sitting here miserable and bored, and the breath is so stupid, and why do I have to pay attention to that? Or my mind is so inflamed. And they think, oh, if I were really meditating, my mind would be a blank, my breath would be easy, I'd feel so wonderful. So the easiest thing for people to think about mindfulness is that it equals awareness.

7:19You and I sitting here having a conversation, you know, the thought might cross one of our minds. Well, when are we going to get down to meditating? The fact is we are. And then your life in some sense becomes the meditation practice. You see, rather than something I have to do. Do for 20 minutes. 20 minutes or whatever. You're always doing it. If you are awake, if you are willing to be in your body, if you are willing to be in this moment, to whatever degree you can manage. Because a lot of the time, we got a lot of things going at the same time. Yeah, I just had a conversation with Michael Pollan, who wrote a book called Cooked, and he was saying, when you're in the kitchen cooking, if you're stirring the pot, just stir the pot.

7:59It's like, you think you understand what it means, but it has infinite depth to it. So when you're stirring the pot, just stir the pot. So what does that mean? It's powerful. The more you let that run inside you, the more it actually transforms your understanding of who you are. It's very deep. Very deep. So to be mindful means to be... there's no difference between being mindful and then being fully in this moment now. With awareness. With awareness. So it's not just being... It's having this conversation but also being... Knowing that we're having the conversation. Because conversations are complicated.

8:43Every moment is complicated in the sense that in the next moment You could bring something up. I would respond one way. If you brought something else up, I might respond another way. I could interrupt you, be impolite. I mean, there are a million different ways in which this could unfold. But since you're holding it and I'm holding it, there's a certain way in which we're both holding a space that allows something to emerge that might not emerge otherwise. And if people were having trouble understanding it, look at how many conversations people have with their kids where they're not even really, or anybody.

9:13And you're just sort of playing lip service. Yeah, you're not being fully present. And not only that, but your kids can feel the... Your kids know it. And they know it. That's it. Your kids, more so than anybody, can feel when you are feeling them, when you have the awareness of them. They know when you're present. Yeah, when you're being... And there's no greater gift. Yeah. There's no greater gift you can give your children than to be present for them. Yeah. You say there are so many misconceptions about what meditation really is. This is from the introduction to wherever you go, there you are.

9:42You say, when we speak of meditation, it's important for you to know that this is not some weird cryptic activity, as our popular culture might have it. It does not involve becoming some kind of zombie vegetable, self-absorbed narcissist, naval gazer, or space cadet. Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. Wow, that's so powerful. It's about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. And the irony is, of course, you already are yourself. If you could get out of your own way, you could be yourself 24-7. Yes. So in a sense, what this meditation practice is about is kind of continually noticing how much we get in our own way through our thinking, through our emotions.

10:29Why is it then so hard for everybody if it's that simple? It's just about getting out of your own way. Why does everybody make it so hard? You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I think that, you know, it may be that it didn't used to be that hard when we were living as hunters and gatherers. You had to be mindful or you'd get eaten. When we would sit around fires at the end of the day as hunters and gatherers for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, once we discovered fire, well, there was no electric lights. I mean, the only thing that was happening was the fire. And you sit around with a group of people and you stare into the embers.

11:08That's mindfulness. And you say, actually, in this book, that it is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. Yeah, it's the direct opposite of taking. I still agree with what I wrote there. You were so brilliant. 25 years ago. You were so brilliant. So when we were having this conversation back in the 90s, I mean, that was before the internet, that was before social media, that was before all the stuff. How is it harder to be less distracted now? If there is a distractibility index or a self-distraction index, it's going through the roof due to the increasing acceleration of everything.

11:50We have to do it. Yeah, and also with the internet and social media and everything coming at us digitally. How do we balance the doing with the being? Well, mindfulness is all about being. And the cliche goes, we're called human beings. But we actually have lost touch with that element of life. That's what we were doing sitting around fires as hunters and gathering. We were being. But now it's gotten so much more complex. What mindfulness is saying is find your own way. Listen to your own heart. Listen to your own, you used the word longing. Longing. Listen to your own yearning. because what we're really trying to do is live our life as if it really mattered.

12:37Because it does. It does. And I like to say more than you think and then more than you can think because thinking only takes us so far. And it's kind of gotten more PR than other aspects of our being, like awareness itself and also embodied wakefulness, you know, that the body gets left out of the equation and we're pretty much up here a lot of the time. And even education is like pouring stuff into here as facts, but where there's no wisdom associated, where there's no understanding, there's no wisdom. I think that's going to change. It is changing. I think it is changing. And the reason I think it has to change is because I can see the world getting crazier, busier, your life becoming more and more compounded by stuff and outside forces.

13:26The only way to survive that is through a sense of mindfulness. I think so, yeah. Hey, it's Ashley from OWN. We're doing some outdoor renovations, and I have been so excited to make some changes so that we can truly enjoy our backyard before the summer ends. A new fire pit and outdoor chairs have been at the top of the list, and finding the perfect fit was an easy task thanks to Wayfair. What I love most about Wayfair is that you can find quality materials that stand up to real life. I decided to shop with Wayfair Verified, your shortcut to durable pieces, hand-vetted by product specialists, using a 10-point quality inspection, testing things like quality of materials, functionality and features, and even how long it takes to build.

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14:44This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W. Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting, and Walden is here to help you achieve it. Take the first step to make your impact. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. certified to operate by Shev. It's interesting when people have a difficult time understanding it.

15:26I think your shower example is the best. You remember that? Yeah. I like to say to people, okay, here's a little homework for you after we've talked about mindfulness. And it's very important to keep in mind that mindfulness is not a concept. It's a practice. You have to actually exercise a certain kind of muscle. So I say, here's a little mindfulness homework for you. The next time you're in the shower, check and see if you're in the shower. Because you may not be in the shower, or you may have your whole Monday morning, 9 o 'clock meeting in the shower with you. But you're not actually there under the water feeling the water on your skin.

16:07You're off in the future or off in the past. So that's exercising the muscle. The more you do that, the more you realize, when I'm in the shower, I'm in the shower. When I'm brushing my teeth, I'm brushing my teeth. When I'm saying goodbye to my family, I'm saying goodbye to my family. It only takes a fraction of a second longer to do it with awareness. Okay, so everybody who's watching this right now, the next time you get in the shower, you're going to think, am I in the shower, or are you in the meeting, or are you already on the freeway? Check. And as soon as you check, you're back. And you have something you can do about it.

16:41If you are obsessed with some kind of thing, worried about how things are going to go that day or whatever, that's all fine. Your awareness is big enough to hold it all. It's not like now you have to suppress all that thinking or the meeting in the shower. The knowing it is good enough. That knowing is what we call awareness. And then it's laughable. So you'll feel better because you have a sense of humor. Don't you feel, I have some of my best ideas in the shower. And I think one of the reasons why I actually question why so many great ideas come in the shower. Somebody said it's because of the warm water on the back of your neck.

17:16But I think it's also because when you're fully just in that moment, there creates an opening or clearing for other things to come through. And that's intimately associated with mindfulness, that creativity and imagination. When we get quiet, when we get still, when we rest, you could say, in awareness, our natural impulse to see connections that we didn't see the moment before is unimpeded. And we can actually make these connections and realize them in ways that we might not have been able to do the moment before. So being in the shower, when you're really in the shower, is... That's meditation practice.

17:58That's a meditation practice. Yes. And a beautiful one. And guess what? Doesn't take any more time. Doesn't take any more time to actually be in the shower. No. It's not like I'm saying, take a half-hour shower. No, be aware of how much water we're wasting, too. I mean, that's part of the awareness field as well. When Jon Kabat-Zinn began meditating as a young man, the practice was considered the product of the 60s counterculture. It wasn't considered science, but in 1979, he had this revolutionary idea to bring meditation and yoga to mainstream medicine. He developed a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to help patients transform the experience of pain by changing their relationship to it.

18:41Today, John's groundbreaking eight-week course has helped countless patients through their journeys with cancer, with heart disease, and addiction. It is the cornerstone of his work and many of his books. I love the title, Mindfulness for Beginners, Reclaiming the Present Moment in Your Life. how is it that being more mindful can help your pain? I can understand how it can help your stress, but how does it actually help your pain? Because if you're feeling pain in a moment, if you're feeling pain, physical pain, how does being mindful not make you more aware of the physical pain that you're feeling?

19:21It does, but at the same time it empowers you to investigate your experience, which you are in some sense describing as pain in your own mind and saying this hurts and there's a whole story that's going on, there's a whole emotional aspect to it. And a lot of the time we're living in the story and the emotion rather than the actual experience. And then you think of yourself as a chronic pain patient and then you're stuck and you have to have someone else deal with it. So inviting people who have chronic pain conditions to actually see if there's not something that they can do for themselves as a complement to whatever medicine could do for them is tremendously powerful.

20:01And it turns out that even though you feel like, I don't want to go anywhere near my pain, you're telling me to put the welcome mat out for the sensations and hold them in awareness with kindness. I don't want to do that. But when you start to do it, you actually can have the experience that you're much bigger than your pain. And the pain and suffering are not exactly the same thing. And so there can be sensation, quite intense, that you can then accommodate, learn to live with in a way that doctors love to tell their patients, well, you're going to have to learn to live with this, but then they don't tell you how.

20:37Powerful. That's powerful. You know what's interesting, too, about, as I was saying, I can see how mindfulness can relieve stress. One of my greatest definitions of stress, I remember reading from Eckhart Tolle, he was saying that stress basically is wanting whatever the moment is to be something that it's not. I love that. Isn't that great? I remember that. Yes. The power of now. The power of now. And wanting this moment to be something that's not, whether you're stuck in traffic, whether you're in a relationship. And he was saying it's a form of insanity. It is, because the moment can only be what it is now.

21:09It can only be what it is now. And so when you literally take a breath and you accept the moment for what it is now and then take that path and move into, I now accept this moment as it is. You see, people, when they hear the word acceptance, they actually think that maybe you mean be resigned to it, not try to work with it, not try to grow out of it. But it doesn't mean passive resignation. Acceptance means recognizing the actuality of things without your story about how bad it is or including your story about how bad it is. As simple as being stuck in traffic and you're going to be late for whatever the appointment is.

21:52You have a number of ways you could relate to it. You want to stress yourself out beyond belief? Okay. Tell yourself that story and then feel what's going on in the body. Or feel what's going on in the body. Watch yourself telling the story. Hold the whole thing in awareness and realize your life isn't going to end because of the traffic. And even if you are late, if you are late, accept that you are. And what will I do the next time not to be? And that is it. I mean, the moment you have the acceptance, which is, you're right, not resign to it. But I accept that this is the situation. there's sort of like a relief that comes.

22:27That's wisdom. And the body has its ear to the rail and it drops back down into a kind of stillness so it's not continually hyper-arousing itself. Do you find it more and more... Well, first of all, I know that this is what we all yearn for because as human beings, isn't that what we crave? I think so. I think we're all yearning for a moment of peace, a moment of well-being that is outside of time, that doesn't have to do with getting someplace else, but allowing ourselves to be where we already are and be at home. And the good news is you can be at home 24-7. You're just at home wherever you are.

23:14Well, this is, I underline this. This is a tweetable moment here. This is on page 61 of the book. As long as you are breathing, and anybody going through a hard time right now, you're going to want to write this one down. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong. We say that to our patients in the stress reduction clinic. That's worth repeating. I'm going to repeat it. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong. Wow, that is such a powerful testimony. We say to people, and we're going to, in this eight-week program, we're going to pour energy into what's right with you, let the rest of the hospital and your health care medical team take care of what's quote-unquote wrong with you, and see what happens.

24:08I love what you just said, that if you're working with patients in the hospital, whether it's pain or stress or whatever, You say, we're going to, for the next eight weeks, keyword, pour energy into what is right with you. In the form of attention. In the form of attention. How do we give that kind of attention to ourselves? Is that possible for me, to anyone listening to us, watching us right now, to start to pouring energy into that which is right with you? I just love the idea of that. Well, you can do it like this. instead of trying to sort of sustain it over a day, try to just capture it moment by moment.

24:48Brief moments, many times, you know? Throughout the day, you remember, oh, yeah, I'm picking up my child at school, let me be 100 % present and not on my phone while I'm picking up my child at school. Mm-hmm. Like that. I'm-I'm preparing dinner, let me actually... Stir the pot. Stir the pot. Stir the pot. Cut the carrots. Just stir the pot. When I'm cutting the carrots, cutting the carrots. Cut the carrot. Exactly. When I'm steaming the broccoli, just steaming the broccoli. When I'm peeling the garlic, just peel the garlic. It's teaching you to come back to who you actually already are. And it grows over time.

25:24So in that sense, life becomes the meditation teacher. I love that. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W. Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting, and Walden is here to help you achieve it. Take the first step to make your impact. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University.

26:05Set a course for change. certified to operate by Shev. In a world where AI is changing every role in every industry, knowing who actually has deep expertise matters more than ever. Upwork connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records, so you can hire with confidence. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise, so you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI-powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers matched to your goals in under six hours.

26:44No endless searching required. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up, and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com, upwork.com. Tell us how you came to know what you know. I knew you grew up in a home where art and science were aligned side by side. How did that shape you? Well, first of all, I was born in New York City in 1944, and my father was what would be called now a molecular immunologist.

27:32He was incredibly happy doing that. My mother was a painter who was very prolific and just continued to paint her entire life. She's over a hundred years old now and she's still redoing her sketches in her hundreds of sketchbooks. And that's her meditation, I realized long afterwards. And my father's meditation was in some sense his love of science and in particular immunology And that was his meditation. Exactly. And as a child, I began to see that these two different ways of knowing the world, the art world, the world through the eye of an artist and the world through the eye of a scientist, they actually didn't share their worlds that much.

28:20My father didn't love to go to museums, although we did, but he was like tone deaf for both music and for paintings. and my mother couldn't understand the complexity of his, you know, molecular, you know, sort of stuff. But as a child, I saw that there's got to be a way that we can have it all. And so I was always looking for that and I was on the path to becoming a scientist. But at the same time, I was really interested in languages and things like that and poetry and music. And when I first got exposed to meditation, I realized, this is what I've been looking for. And it's a love affair. I can't put it any other way because science is really a love affair with reality.

29:07And art is also a love affair with reality. And they're just the reality. And mindfulness is a love affair with life. Exactly. Wow. So is mindfulness science? Is it art? Is it spiritual? It's a gateway into the full dimensionality of being human and being alive. I love that. It's a gateway into the full dimensionality of being human. And without it, you're just missing out. Well, you're missing a lot. You know, if you miss the look in your child's eye one day, you've missed it. If you've missed the look in your lover's eyes the next day, you've missed that. If you miss the beauty of sitting under trees, well, you've missed that.

29:53If you sum that over many moments, many years, you may wind up missing the most beautiful aspects of your own life. Who are you going to blame for that? I was too busy. Well, who is too busy? Who tells oneself, I don't have any time? When all you've got is time, all you've got is this moment. and we might as well take it while we're alive because sooner or later we're going to be dead. So it's the perfect moment is this one. Yeah. I think you used the example in the book of trying to, it was one of these books, about trying to put a glass plate over the ocean. Over the ocean. Yes. Well, if you think about the mind, if you start to befriend your mind, which is another way to talk about mindfulness, start befriending your mind by paying attention to it.

30:43You'll notice that... It talks too much. Yeah, it talks a lot. Oh my gosh, you never shut up. That's where the metaphor comes in of the ocean. Okay, so the ocean, depending on the atmospheric conditions, is always waving. Yeah. It's always waving. Sometimes, depending on the atmospheric condition, it could be flat like a mirror. At other times, like tsunami, you know, tumultuous. I mean, a hurricane force waves, 100-foot waves and so forth. Perfect storm. But if you drop down 30 or 40 feet in the ocean, even in the midst of these 30 or 40-foot waves, gentle undulation, same with the mind, drop underneath your anger, underneath your anxiety, underneath all that, what do you find?

31:27You find awareness capable of holding it all and seeing, knowing this is anxiety. And it's the same awareness that is connected to everything. And everybody. And everybody. Yeah, so we're not so separate. That's where we're all the same. We're all the same in our awareness. Exactly. And compassion arises naturally out of that. Out of awareness, yeah. Because the immediate experience is one of interconnectedness, that we share in a larger space where we can't, like, have this conversation. I need you and you need me to have this conversation, and we need the people out there hearing it. Or what's the point of us doing this except for our own fun?

32:09I like it. I do too. But the point is that the interconnectedness invites compassion, invites kindness, because we see that no matter how different we are, we're not that different. We are mostly totally the same as human beings. Our minds are unruly. We distract ourselves, you know, infinitely. We're like, you know, out of our minds a lot of the time, but we have the capacity to know it and therefore drop back in. Well, I think that's true. We're out of our mind. No, we're out of our awareness most of the time. And out of our hearts. And out of our hearts. I love how you say that the negative thoughts often, that we often hear, are not big enough thoughts.

32:53That's a big aha. Explain what you mean by that. A lot of the time, we think we know who we are. and we have a whole story about who we are. And what that point is, is that the story's just not big enough. How much is the story about how beautiful you are? How much is the story about how large your heart is when it's at its most content, happiest? Ah, yeah. Okay? So we write the story of how miserable I am, how much I need this or that, need more money, need more this, need more that, need more health, all of which may be true on a relative level, but it's just not a big enough story. So the story of like your luminosity, your beauty, the fact that there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what's wrong with you.

33:39Ooh, I love that. That doesn't come on the radar screen. But as soon as we bring it back, we remind ourselves. See, that's the meditation. So are we as human beings, are we designed to just judge ourself by the negative all the time? Because why is it that... No, I don't think so. Why is it that the negative thoughts have such an impact on us? A lot of it has to do with our upbringing and our education, that we are educated in a certain way, but we're not being educated how to be, only how to accomplish. So it's all about acquisition. It's about getting stuff we don't have. You say it's when we actually believe our thoughts that we spiral into anxiety and depression.

34:23Exactly. And as soon as you see that that depression is caused by what was called in psychology depressive rumination, it's like a particular kind of toxic thought pattern that drills you down deeper and deeper and deeper into a black hole of nothingness. Yeah. And as soon as you realize that's a thought pattern, then the you that realizes it isn't part of the pattern. And you can actually... You can stop it. You can disconnect. You can write yourself a restraining order. Or like a soap bubble. You know, you touch a soap bubble, it goes poof. Thoughts, when you see them in awareness, when you hold them in awareness, it's like touching a soap bubble.

35:00It'll just self-liberate. It'll go poof. And it doesn't spiral down into that chain of concatenation of depressive thoughts. When you realize that you are not your thoughts, but the awareness of your thoughts. Exactly. Not the thinker, but the awareness. The awareness. Beautiful. Beautiful. What do you think happens when we die? Oh, I know you've asked a lot of people that question. I'll give you a very short answer. Okay. I don't know, and I don't actually think about it. I'm interested in life before death. The question, actually, is there life before death? That's the question I'm interested in.

35:38Is there life before death? Because if you're zoning along on autopilot, you may miss, as we were saying, the most beautiful aspects of your own life. in a certain way, you died... Years ago. Exactly, years ago. There are a lot of people I see who've been dead for a long time. And nobody's ever said that. Is there life... That's the question you need to be asking yourself. What is your life before death? Is there life before death? Is there life before death? Finish this sentence, I believe.

36:15I don't do well with belief. So I would put it more in terms of I experience. Okay. Okay? So I experience the beauty of human beings in uncanny ways that allow me to feel a deep optimism about what we are capable of as individuals, as a nation, as a species. and that when push comes to shove, and I hope it just doesn't get too horrible, any more horrible than it is now before it turns, we need to wake up to a much larger understanding of the beauty of being here on this planet together and, if you don't mind me putting it this way, get our sh** together as a species. I like that. For Super Soul, get your sh** together.

37:13That's pretty good. And you can do it right in this moment. There's no other moment. I love it. That's a good way of saying, be mindful or get your shit together. That's great. Thank you. That's really good. Good. Thank you. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.

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From the publisher
This episode is a re-release; it originally aired on April 12, 2015. With the demands of modern times, it can be difficult to live a life that feels truly balanced. Jon Kabat-Zinn, author and professor emeritus of medicine, says mindfulness can be a vital tool in cutting through the noise of daily life. Jon, the founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, offers an introduction to the practice of mindfulness and reveals how it can be used to help manage stress, anxiety, pain and chronic illness. He also discusses his books, including the best-seller "Wherever You Go, There You Are" and "Coming to Our Senses," and shares a simple test to help you begin cultivating your own mindfulness practice.

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