#95: Mental Wellness & Monk Training - Andrew Litchy, ND

45:45How is that transition for you? Well, but yeah, this happened in the summer, um, between, between years. And so I had about two or three weeks to really adjust to not being in the robes before I had to go back. So the immediate transition was difficult. It was a sense of loss. It was a sense of wondering if I made the right choice by even taking them off. And so that was hard. It was jarring. And there's a certain jarringness of getting back to daily life. I think post retreat, many people get a sense of this. Sometimes reentry can be strange. People are driving a suddenly very fast. Your basic speed of things is lower and you realize how much things are coming at you all the time.

46:41I thought that reentry was one of the more difficult ones um i in general i don't find that predictable whether it's going to be difficult or easy after any given retreat but that one definitely was and then yeah and then coming back it was okay i was but it was yeah uh the there was a couple of weeks uh where it felt jarring there's a question if it was a good idea to disrobe or not and just coming to terms with with lay life again yeah so if i if i understand your timeline right then around that time you started studies on meditators uh and different biomarkers so could you describe what you found in those studies and what you were looking for yeah so i was using heart rate variability and some of the some of the pilot research I was doing when I was going to school.

47:43I started that in 2007 before I did ordination. And we were looking at trying to see if there's cardiovascular synchronization during body work or other activities. And that was preparing for these meditation studies where we trained novices in twin meditation using the breath and loving kindness. Breath was the first study and loving kindness was the second. And what we did is we had a training program over 12 weeks where novices were trained. And then every couple of weeks, we looked at heart rate variability, an accounting task and a couple of rest tasks and a meditation task. And we were looking for a resonance peak in the heart variability spectrum, which is really looking for increased variability in the heartbeat, be it in particular frequencies.

48:40So a higher variability, meaning the nervous system is more readily adaptable. Is that right to sympathetic and parasympathetic? Yeah. So heart variability is really a math and a data collection issue. you're really looking for small changes in heart rate over time. And the thing is your heart, if it didn't have influence from your nervous system, it would beat at the same rate continually. That's, you know, would not change. But because we need to change our heart rate to adapt to our environment, we can see what influences there are in that. And it turns out that different influences, for example, your breathing rate will show up in different frequencies of change uh of different latencies of change in that rate so you can do complicated math for your transformations and you can pull out how much where what frequencies are the influence into the heart rate showing up and then you can say oh this is sympathetic tone that that is the cardiorespitary you know respiratory um arrhythmia piece this is about parasympathetic modulation and and even even frequencies we don't fully understand that may be related to thermal regulation or other deeper autonomic processes.

49:58Well, we can see changes in the amount of variability there. So that's what we were looking at. We were looking at the total amount of variability and where we saw changes in the spectrum. And particularly, we were looking for a marker of resonance. And in jhana, in deep meditation, there's this phenomena where the the variability will greatly increase thousands of times more in a very tight frequency band while people are in jhana or samadhi. And we were trying to see if that was a usable marker to define successful meditation. So we were training novices, and we were basically wondering how long it would take for them to get in jhana, and would we be able to capture that with our readings.

50:50And so we found, yeah, many people, particularly using loving kindness, after about three weeks of training or so, were entering Jhana as their personal report and the change in the heart variability spectrum. That was pretty exciting to see. Wow. So the experts had this drastic increase in heart rate variability during the deep meditation states called Jhana. And then the novices trained over three weeks. And were they trained at home? they're trained over 12 weeks so a total yeah yeah so a 12-week training program in both instances uh with classes um one of them we had 10 classes and the other i think we only had like six um and we tested them every two weeks or so uh and so those are the physiologic outcomes and then they had a journal that they they provided as well so we could uh check into how much they were meditating per day they were supposed to meditate 20 minutes and uh what experiences they had and so oh wow yeah 20 minutes a day just 20 minutes just 20 minutes a day yep yep and after three weeks of that they were already showing similar patterns the experts they were yeah we uh something like that yes we they were after three weeks about 50 to 60 percent of the people in the loving kindness group were reporting for Shana and starting to show some of the, some of this, uh, peak in the, in the spectrum.

52:34Yep. Uh, experts really could get that peak a lot higher and a lot more intense. And, and so it's in the, the frequency would be tighter. Um, but, uh, yeah, after three weeks, people were getting into Shana, uh, 50 to 60 % of people. And by the end, by the end of the loving kindness, it was much higher. um wow yeah wow just 20 minutes of at-home practice with metta yeah that's pretty great I wonder is that study available or was this more of like a paper for school this is a pilot study yeah okay yeah if you I'm happy to show you what data yeah that that'd be awesome if I maybe I could post it or we could put it in the description of the video for people to to check out if you're okay with that.

53:21Sure. Sure. Do you remember what kind of factors you were deciding between at the time, whether to remain a monk or what was the other option at the time and why did you decide you wanted to become a doctor? Well, I was in school at the time already. I was already in in naturopathic medical school. So this was during between my first and second year. So that momentum was already going. I think partially, well, and I was also in a relationship at the time too. So I had the relation who I'm now married with and have a family. so that momentum was strong and and to go back to school and be in robes felt felt like it was not not what I should do I think I felt like I would have been in a lay environment without an appropriate teacher without appropriate preceptor most of the time and that seemed difficult so if I was going to enter that again I wanted to be in a monastic environment.

54:36Ultimately, I think that's, that's what made the decision like that. Who knows if Bonte was in town, you know, and I could do school and, and have the robes on at the same time, it might have been different. So it was really just a confluence of what was happening. Yeah. And by the time I left school, my son was born. And that was that. so your testament to the fact that you obviously you no one has to take on robes and become a monk to go really far with this practice and I've heard you speak a little bit in talks you have about how you were training at the time when you got really serious about the practice in this in your busy schedule maybe the sticky notes story was especially uh interesting and fun for me.

55:34And I think these, I'd love to learn more about it. And I think these tools could help people who are in a busy life, but they're, they really want to train their minds all the time. Yeah, sure. I think for most people were very, very busy and you can make time for formal meditation practice by entering sleep deprivation and so on. And that's, that's, that's an option and I did that. But I think realistically and most healthfully, your daily life is your practice. That is your practice moment is all the time. When you're at work, when you're walking down the street, when you're cooking dinner.

56:17And so how to bring mindfulness and attention and your meditation into those moments is the trick. It is one thing to be on the cushion and have a degree of collectedness, right? That's a controlled environment. That's your laboratory. That's easy. Your eyes are closed. Senses are shut down. Not much is happening, ideally. And so you really, really can remember that you're practicing. But as soon as you're out of that controlled environment, your habits come up again, right? what you normally do happens this or that pulls at you and so it it can be challenging to remember to be in your meditation and what you're trying to do with your training so you can't brute your force brute force your way into continuous mindfulness if you try to do that if you try to make it happen if you set an intention now today i will be mindful all day well you're going to forget it in two minutes, you know, unless you're very lucky.

57:21So the trick is making it more pleasant to return to mindfulness and giving yourself continual reminders to be mindful. So by making meditation pleasant and making a remembering meditation pleasant, mind wants to do that more. Part of the problem with continuous mindfulness and white knuckling it, well, we give ourselves negative reinforcement commonly when we forget, when we lose our mindfulness. So you have a task, become mindful, you realize you didn't do it. And then what do we normally do? Like, oh, no, okay, try harder. And that's like basically telling your brain like, oh, that was bad that I remembered.

58:09You know, this is a bad thing to go back to mindfulness because now I have to face my failure. So it's important to reprogram that return moment. So it's a joyful thing, right? So it's a pleasant thing. And when you're there, you relish the fact that you are there and you relish the fact that you remember. So that's one trick for bringing it into daily life is to give yourself positive reinforcement and not be hard on yourself. Right. So just to think of an example of this, so somebody's, you know, washing the dishes and they're thinking about that argument that they got into or that thing that was said that they didn't like from earlier in the day and all the things that they wanted to reply.

59:00And then all of a sudden there's this moment of like spontaneous, almost like waking up from a dream. Oh yeah. I'm just here washing the dishes. And, uh, and then what, what would they do next to make sure that that moment happens more often? Well, first celebrate it. Like, all right. Woke up again. Okay. You know, uh, that's number one smile, right? Smile and appreciate the fact you're back so i think that that is that's first and then you apply you apply your meditation technique at that time too to allow it to continue and that's if we're talking about the meditation that bonte uh taught it involves relaxing smiling and returning to to the present not pushing away your distractions right not not again feeling feeling bad that you were you were lost in thought about something painful right it's uh just coming back and appreciating that beautiful yeah and i think also bonte has quite a different definition of mindfulness than uh people may be familiar with um yeah maybe uh could you talk about how would how would someone then like where would they focus their mind well it's really more a Metacognitive awareness is what he's talking about.

1:00:27It's really watching the process of cognition or the process of experience. So it's remembering to be aware of experience. And he would say something like, remember to watch the movements of mind attention as it moves from thing to thing. That's how he would say it. So you're just remembering to be aware of what is happening like that. Yeah. I think other definitions, common ones are about having equanimity, having non-judgment, radical acceptance or something of what's happening in the moment. And there's utility to those attitudes. They will only take you so far, I think. So his is about watching the process.

1:01:12Yeah. So this, I like the way you phrased it. So it's this remembering to have the meta awareness, the observation of the mind, not to focus on this or that or control the mind in any way. Yes. Yep. Yep. How to let go of controlling. That's the thing. And it's a wonderful paradox, right, of meditation training that we're developing a control, right, that that will let us process a procedure that lets us let go of procedures and let go of conceptualization. Right. So there is a paradox there, I think. OK, yeah, I want I wanted to make sure that I think you were maybe going to tell the sticky note story next.

1:02:05And I thought that might be helpful, too. Nice. Yeah. Sticky notes. So sticky notes are just simply reminders to be mindful. And so what I what I did then is I wrote sticky notes. I wrote smile on sticky notes and I placed them all over my house that I shared with a couple of roommates. And when you do this, you have to put them in places that are surprising. If you put them in a place that's obvious, you won't see them pretty soon. So inside the dryer door, for example, or a cabinet, or a place you don't go very often. So you discover these as you're going about your daily life. And when you see them, you just remember to be mindful.

1:02:51So, yeah, and mindfulness rules and kind of clues like that are really, really helpful. They can't be too, too frequent. You know, it's not like every time you walk through a door that that's pretty advanced. That's that's difficult. But if you're at work, maybe there's a hallway you always go to when you go to the restroom or a stairway that you go up to up once or twice a day. Right. That's perfect. that's a mindfulness reminder. Or you make a game of smiling to people. That's a fun game. As people walk by, you know, your job is to smile. And that helps remind you to be mindful. You share loving kindness with them like that, and that will help it go in.

1:03:44uh one another mindfulness trick is is continuous smiling and despite this this is actually easier than continuous mindfulness i think if you if you make a goal to have your posture as much as possible be a smile um and you connect that smile to loving kindness that is very that's very powerful i think a physical posture is easier to maintain than a mental posture at first and so you always keep that on you notice the smile is not there you know you've lost mindfulness and you just bring it back so that's probably the first real continuous meditation practice to to bring in is try to smile all the time Beautiful.

1:04:29So, um, so you're posting these notes around your apartment. And at the time you were a student. so how did you find how was your mindfulness kind of building as you were also having all these things to do do you find it was working right away or did that take some time oh it took some time um those days i i was single i was practicing intensely like three and a half four hours a day i was going to school and so that's what life was like then um and even still for me it took a while to build up that continuous kind of mindfulness. But it's perfectly possible to develop a meditation practice in a busy life.

1:05:19It's absolutely doable. Retreats are very helpful. But if you make a lot of your life revolve around it, or you have little clues there about it, it can integrate seamlessly. And so I actually don't think lay life is a particular barrier. It's certainly harder than a, uh, but it's doable, right. As long as if you modify it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you've, you said in one of your videos that, uh, it's possible for somebody to be mindful from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed and, you know, even into their dreams. But yeah, how would somebody expect to progress on that path? How long might that take them to build the skill where they're mindful all day long?

1:06:21Well, I think it's going to be individual, but I think that particular skill has some stages and a couple inflection points. One way to do it is working with the smile and then working with loving kindness or jhana practice in daily life and setting a home base that's very pleasant. And so you're always with a pleasant home base, a pleasant state of mind that keeps you bringing up loving kindness, keeping your mindfulness present. in this stage you'll lose your mindfulness uh and you'll come back to it and i mean i people must be individual right some people i'm sure get this right away um and most people i would expect years years of practice and dedicated practice for this to really develop and at a certain point mindfulness changes right it becomes it becomes goes from something you are developing to more that something is a default.

1:07:30And that inflection point is important. So when mindfulness goes from an effortless, effortful thing to something you're trying to do, something that's truly effortlessness, effortless, and more that it just is always happening, you don't, you can't try to do it because it is. And that's the real state change, trait change, when it goes from training the faculty, we would say, and turning into the power where it becomes a different experience and no longer volitional, no longer done on purpose. so yeah is this uh a moment where it shifts or is that shift gradual a gradual training i mean rather like does the gradual training eventually lead to a moment where that's just maybe in your own life could you remember there was a moment where it wasn't like that or was it just at some point you realize oh yeah the the light's always kind of on for both those stages i think for me it was yeah like that there's a moment where like oh that's happening um in the initial stage with effort effortfulness was just like oh look at that all day all day that was happening and okay all day all day wow uh yep and it just was and just check in and like oh there it is all right like that's great um the to to mindfulness becoming effortless that's that for me at least it was suddenly that capacity understood what that was and it wasn't like something was gained it was more like something was lost that was blocking it but it would come and go at periods of time and it couldn't volitionally do it so it would be there sometimes and sometimes not until it just uh yeah like that so it was also a progression but something effortless like that you can't do it if you try to do it you don't so it has to you have to again kind of fall into it or it has to has to come to you in a way evident but it becomes because because of an understanding of experience and an understanding of um that there is an option to not have distraction like that uh so particular insights will open that possibility.

1:10:06Yeah, that would be fun to get into as well. But I also wanted to circle back because you'd mentioned having a home base, someplace for the mind to kind of rest when somebody's aware. And what would you recommend here? I think loving kindness is one you've already mentioned. But are there others that where somebody could use as kind of a place to collect their mind around? Yeah. Yep. There's loving kindness. For some people, the breath is a fine place to do it if they can do that without over-focusing on it. I think body sensations are another good place. So the smile or other kinds of working with body sensations are quite useful as a home base.

1:10:59There's something about body awareness at different stages of training, which is, well, it really seems to quiet the thinking and getting into the sensations will stop the reflexive thinking, the virtual reality. It was, you know, we set up for ourselves and get lost in over and over again. Yeah. The body seems a way out of that too. so you would kind of keep that in your peripheral awareness in other words it would always just be making sure that the body you're aware of your body but you're not focusing on it it's just kind of somewhere in the background of your experience as you're cleaning the dishes or whatever it might be yep right Right.

1:11:52Yeah. You know, maybe we have peripheral awareness and maybe we have a focused awareness. We can think of it that way. The focused awareness is basically a limiting, a limiter of the more global awareness. And so you want to want to make sure you're not limiting everything to to just what what you're doing or just your thoughts. So you keep it a little bit open. So all that can be there in the background, like you said. Is that possible even while somebody is doing a focused attention task, like let's say writing on the computer? Yeah, yeah, I think it is. I think it's more challenging then. And then you also have the question of why do you do that then, though?

1:12:41you're writing on the computer um i think writing on the computer is fine what's not fine is dwelling on you know something that happened you don't like while you're trying to write on the computer that's that's the problem and so um yep so let's see so so in daily life you're you're uh you can write on the computer be smiling with loving kindness that's that's that's great right So you can do that with loving kindness and metta like that. So out of the metta verse and into the metta with two T's verse. Exactly. Yeah, the Pali word for loving kindness is metta. Well, speaking of virtual realities and metaverse and things, there's this key distinction that I think you've kind of touched on a couple of times that I'd like to dive into, which is that there's a big difference between our thoughts and the kind of stories that we often live inside and the reality of experience on another level, just direct experience.

1:13:59So how can people think about this in the context of daily life how could they start to get a kind of wake up out of the dream of living in concepts and start to get more in touch with reality in a sense well yeah i i think in learning to see concepts for what they are is a part of a gradual training as well i think um so so how you work with this maybe in the beginning of your training is how you is different than how you work with it in intermediate or later stages as well um so the i think concepts are a example of what what maybe we're talking about here formations or fabricating things is uh sand yeah so you have sand on a beach when it's not organized you look at in your hand it's sand right if you put it in a block it becomes a brick if you put the bricks together it becomes a wall right and when you look at the wall you're no longer seeing the sand and you don't know about the sand and it is a wall but it's actually all of those things at the same time and none of them.

1:15:26So the deal is when we are, well, when we're thinking of things in terms of a higher level abstractions, we get away from what it is. So when we're dealing with the wall, we lose contact, we can lose contact with the sand. And we start dealing with the reality of a wall. So that seems fine if we're dealing with some sand on the beach, right but when when we have uh when we're labeling events when we're labeling emotions or experience uh before long we're away from what's really happening with the the feelings in the body the feelings in the mind and we're dealing with ideas of things the idea of anxiety right the idea of depression or anger and and these these concepts are much harder to work with uh partially because they're not there they're illusions you can't you know that's not what's happening and and so we become trapped in in that our ideas of this and that and in these ideas there's innately a separation between subject and object um there is the subject that is perceiving the wall that is perceiving the the collection of of sensations that we've labeled as anxiety right um and that that sets up this false dichotomy of me and you me and the world uh this and that and and and so we live in that we live in the separation and the concepts without being in the direct experience of it um so that's that's the problem um

1:17:14uh and how we work with that uh i think well first it takes a collected mind to start to start to really understand this on an experiential level it's one thing to say these words and that's why i say it's a it's a more gradual training i mean you can talk about this intellectually and maybe have an idea that oh yeah i get that you know but with your mind the whole system doesn't really grok it doesn't really understand it it won't lead to transformation um because what mind does with these things is it is it assumes they're solid and real it latches on to them and you start thinking about them and have more distraction and you have all these the virtual reality room uh this all these interactions with things that are not really happening and there's this whole world it's hugely expansive of all these ideas that are not really there um so so as we're training in mindfulness and meditation ultimately we're catching ourselves doing that, catching ourselves and being pulled away from our direct experience and bringing ourselves back to a home base or to what we're doing.

1:18:31And so that habit of getting lost in there goes away. If we say, if we try to, and so that's the beginning, that's how you start working with it, simply working with focused attention, starting to become more collected. Later on, we can start to see the component parts of this process and we have more access to to the process itself of how this happens and we can let go of the distraction process earlier and earlier and as we do this over and over again our mind starts to get the picture it starts to not not engage in these in getting distracted so easily or so intensely and then in later stages when mind really, really gets it on a deep level, it stops interacting with these things in the same way.

1:19:24And so a feeling or a thought can arise and mind doesn't do that anymore. It's just tired of doing that. It's kind of like, and it won't. Well, why would it? Why would it do that? It's like touching a hot stove. You do that once or twice, you don't do that again. And when you start seeing the fabrication process deep enough. You just don't. It's not going to be trapped by that again, not going to be following that again. And naturally, you let it go. And this is also around the inflection point of the effortless mindfulness and the effortless other meditation qualities when mind really just learns it on a deep level and won't do it anymore.

1:20:12So somebody at this level would still... would still perceive a wall they wouldn't be seeing through it to the sand but they wouldn't um the the the hot stove analogy uh is a really good one and i'm just thinking of like in that case that the hot stove would be thinking you know i'm here and the wall's there and coming up with a story about that wall and how you don't like it and it shouldn't be there and it needs to be torn down because it's dividing Germany or something like that and all sorts of emotions that might come with that story. Is that right? What are some examples of that? I think time is a good example.

1:21:10uh time so when when you examine your experience of time you can analyze in such a way that you're like convinced that it is not really there it's a series of mind moments it's a construct you can reach a state which is timeless right and and so you're like oh yeah time is time is a fabrication um but you don't want to be late and you look at your phone and look at the time and And so those two things are not in opposition when you're viewing things this way. The utility of time as a number and the knowledge that is the construct, no contradiction there. But, you know, if you're dealing, but that's confusing maybe if you're trying to put it together in a unified picture.

1:22:00Like, oh, so wait a second, how does someone possibly deal with this? It's, you know, how does someone both think time is not there and you say, watch, that's total paradox. That's not right. It's like, no, it's fine. Yeah. Time works in that context. Time doesn't exist, actually. But, yeah, I'm not going to be late either. Yeah. All of this comes down to simplicity, right? Just straightforwardness. Like, yeah. so uh uh the the the experience that time isn't uh a real thing can be occurring yeah um but then there's some part of the mind that is also aware that the appropriate thing to do is like set an alarm and follow out the script of the day, even while somebody's in that kind of blissful, like timeless way of being.

1:23:02Is that right?

1:23:08So it's, uh,

1:23:14so, so you can realize all the ideas about time are, uh, simply ideas and you're not going to to spend time thinking about it or worrying about it. And so you lose a whole bunch of processing about time, about that, and that whole tendency to be proliferating about it tends to go away. So the whole set of internal experience about time and about thinking of God goes away. And so what is left when that modeling stops happening is simply the present moment, which includes having to work with your clock. Yep. But what is gone is the suffering of thinking of this or that, you know, worrying about time, worrying about what to do.

1:24:06So it's kind of like a loss of a huge amount of internal processing. It's just gone because the fabrication process doesn't trigger all this internal modeling anymore. what a what a relief so so the the internal monologue is gone the kind of voice that can keep us up at night is no longer really uh there unless i guess unless it's needed in some cases yeah nothing wrong with thoughts unless unless they really get you like and you need them you need to function but maybe one time right maybe have that one time not 20 times and maybe when you intend to yeah wow yeah that's such a beautiful potential for the human mind that i think not many people are aware even exist i guess as a possibility

1:25:12yeah i think it that can should be baseline you know i like that i think um right i think as we understand the effects of language more the effects of how we talk about things more there's no reason why this couldn't be taught to kids as a mode of being in the world generally it's uh like that and i i imagine maybe maybe that's has happened in cultures too where it's like that you know I've heard you talk about how you you started training your own son at a pretty young age and parents listening might be interested like how would one start the training for a child and what could they expect well we started my boy always saw me meditating a meditation blanket and cushion.

1:26:05And I have pictures of him as like 18 months sitting on my cushion wrapped in a blanket. It's adorable. So it was part of his life from a very young age. So it was normalized. Normalized is part of something we do. We started really working with it at bedtime. And that was like wishing grandparents, wishing them to be happy, wanting everybody to be happy, going through everything in the day, may they be happy, may teacher be happy, da da da. And so that was one of the first things we did. and at a young age they he was able to identify loving kindness very easily and so again just a little cue to look for the the feeling in the body and he was able to identify that so that was that was easy but having a two-year-old or three-year-old sit still and uh is not and and so that was an entirely different kind of training which was like learning learning we we sit still for a minute right and that's expected we just sit here and we don't do anything and that's okay and it's fun and so going into that slowly right uh so that's that's early early young kind of training um and as as he got older and was able to talk about things more than we could have formal meditation practices uh where we would sit down for three minutes five minutes have the timer going do loving kindness and bring it in that way um you know and amazingly at some point he when he would get very upset uh something he would say oh you need to meditate and he would just go and by himself and meditate for a minute or two and come back and be much better.

1:28:10And so as older kids are doing that, you may point out to them, what is it like? What do you feel now before we practice? And now how do you feel after? So they see what it does, and that can be very clear to them. Now he's 13, and he's stopped asked him to go on retreat with me and he's uh we're taking a different tact with it now uh not not pushing it not forcing it he meditates when he wants to occasionally and and i kind of think that's perfect um for him uh i plan on uh really bringing it up in his mid-20s again when uh there's really a time to go on retreat now yeah and i think for him that is good i think there's something useful about, well, this, the deeper meditation training is really a kind of a deconstruction or the personality process and things we think of as ourselves, right?

1:29:10How we interact with the world. And that can be somewhat destabilizing for adults, you know? And so I'm looking forward to when he is more established as himself as an adult in the world, when it's really time to start breaking that down again. I'm sure he will, but I think developmentally, I think it's important to let them do what they want to do with that. That's my thinking right now. Yeah. It reminds me of a quote by Jack Angler. I think the Harvard psychologist said that you have to be somebody before you can be nobody. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. But yeah, I'm surprised how like maybe it shouldn't be so surprising, but kids seem to pick up meditation pretty quick, especially the loving kindness.

1:30:06Um, somebody was telling me that their child, I think he's about seven or so and he'll, she'll say, okay, time to send loving kindness to grandma. and he'll say uh you know uh like bing sent like like almost like some kind of like a a radar or a text message he's just sending with his mind uh and and he does that on his he did that on his own and nobody had to explain that to him so it's almost like they just get how it works they don't Like they need less explanation than adults. Yeah. Perhaps. Oh, for sure. I think the meditation process is remedial. You know, it's getting rid of habits and things we picked up along the way.

1:30:56Kids have less of that. And yeah, so it's right there for them. I guess the last main topic I wanted to discuss on this podcast with you, Drew, is like the general wellness tips you'd have because your day job is to help people not just with their minds but kind of in a holistic way to be healthy and happy in all different ways so um what would you say are kind of the top five or so if somebody just to uh yeah like the top five wellness tips or however many you'd like to list out that you think everyone should be doing? Well, let's start with sleep. I think sleep is absolutely core. Sleep is interesting too because we have no volitional control of sleep.

1:31:53We don't really understand sleep either. Why do we need to sleep? We just know mammals do. if you look at mammals too like our people people with brains right everyone with brains sleeps um i think mostly um we're the only mammal that will ever ever cut into our sleep schedule everyone else is like no way would we not sleep on time so we're we're a little weird like where we would would sleep deprives ourselves that's that's bizarre like as far as it goes so um And we can't make ourselves sleep, but we allow ourselves time. So I think regularity, bedtime, wake-up time, and really having understanding that that is important is huge.

1:32:41How much sleep we need is very individual. Some people need only to sleep five hours a night. Some people need 10 hours a night. I don't think we can say everyone needs seven or eight. That's really the average. but preserving sleep, getting enough, having a pretty consistent bedtime and wake-up time, really important for mental health and quality of life like that. That's number one. And then, I guess in no particular order, activity, keeping yourself moving and grounded. I'm a huge proponent of exercise and being outside. And this keeps you grounded. To go back to meditation practice, intensive meditation practice can be, I wouldn't say destabilizing, but it can be wild at times, wild.

1:33:32And there can be changes in how people perceive things. And even entering altered states can be confusing. and so moving the body stay in contact with the body in the outside world and and what's happening there is incredibly healing and important and we need to move again i mean we live in cities and drive places and i think that's a relatively new thing as well not walking a lot not moving a lot not running you know i think we evolved to be running like chasing down animals in groups That's what we did, I think. That's why we're not doing that. So many of us are not. So appropriate physical activity, appropriate outside time, very important.

1:34:19And then, of course, taking care of yourself with appropriate food. And that's trying to eat whole foods often, a diet that's appropriate for yourself. That will keep you grounded. You know, I think junk food and processed food is a doorway to mental illness, frankly. It's no micronutrients, a lot of chemicals that can be neuro excitatory and problematic. And so we have like a weaponized food system where it looks good, smells good, makes you want to eat more and offers nothing nutritionally that's needed. So we have to be careful about how we feed ourselves. I don't mean you have to be really neurotic about it.

1:35:05you eat perfectly all the time and there's time for desserts or junk or yep that's that's okay if you like that too but um have to be really careful about these um we see this problems a lot when people go to college uh this is a this is a classic example of these things falling apart for people first year college people go not sleeping well very stressed they're eating cafeteria food and there's a high incidence of people really having depression depressive episodes, mental health issues in the first year away from home. And it's about lifestyle. And so, yeah, so I think these are the core. Sleep, enough, get outside, don't forget to move, and don't eat all the junk.

1:35:52Eat good food. But you can identify. If you don't know what's on the label, right? Maybe you shouldn't eat that a lot.

1:36:02Right. Well, that's very practical. And as you said, all these things impact the mind directly, not just the body. Right. Is this body-mind connection that I've heard about a little bit, you have to support your lifestyle and physicality if you expect your mind to operate well and to yep and to be able to do the meditation practice you have to have those things things on board what would you say is the most common problem that you see for people coming to see you what do you most commonly prescribe i I guess.

1:36:48Well, I see a lot of people with complex chronic illness or difficult problems that they're not able to get help with in a conventional system or very serious health problems where, where, or again, the conventional system doesn't have good supports, good nutrition or other kinds of support. You know, people going through cancer frequently, there's candy in the waiting room and, you know, or they're told it doesn't matter what you eat, just get the calories in, right? And while there's some truth to that, I think there's a lot of problems with that as well, as I was just talking about. So I think one of the most common things I talk about with people is basic nutrition and choosing food that is appropriate and eating a way that's healthy for the body.

1:37:46I think gut health affects body greatly and, you know, affects our immune system tremendously. What we eat, how we eat it, very important. So I'd say that's the most common thing we work with, but we work with a lot of stuff and no one gets out of the office without a mind-body intervention, whether they know it or not, right? I think part of being a healthcare practitioner ideally should be the connection between people and like being yourself, you're like really yourself, not your persona of a good healthcare worker, but like you with that person is tremendously healing. And that allows a transformative space when you have a connection with your provider that that is with you you know um so that that's that's a very important thing in the healthcare field too is to uh how to how to make a connection that's healthy that's authentic and uh and that's useful this is something bonte would talk about too is you know maybe there's an idea that people that are suffering they want sympathy or they want to be fixed, or maybe your job is to fix them or make things better, you know, make it go away.

1:39:12And there is some truth to that. That's why people go see providers. But also, what they really want also is connection and being seen and being treated as a person. And that allows them to make the changes necessary to help themselves in situations when there are not can't make changes to help themselves that improves their quality of life and spiritual well-being greatly to have that real connection like that so beautiful yeah i hadn't thought about that role as much maybe it's underplayed in in the health care profession that it's not just about what's getting prescribed but like that connection that you're talking about the role that used to be played by shamans and tribes or you know the the kind of uh yeah just having a healer having someone who's really listening and and cares about you itself is part of the treatment is what i'm hearing yeah yeah oh yeah there's nothing worse than feeling isolated when you're very ill you know and no one's you know you're you're on your own in a scary situation and yeah everyone's being weird and yeah it's not good you know bonte was amazing uh with this right uh he he could connect with anybody and he was always himself like but he was always himself in his interactions there was no like holding back he was just there he was

1:40:53and that was amazing to see you know and um getting to watch that over the years how he just was and and what uh not everyone liked him you know and that was fine you know because but but uh but you what you got with him was was real you know and uh and that was that was So it was an amazing quality about him, I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.

1:41:33Bhante wasn't your typical monk that someone might think of when they think of kind of, I don't know, like a serious person in a robe or like a, I don't know. But he, that's what made me at first so drawn to him was that he really cared more than anything about his meditator's well-being and doing the practice. and he also cared for a tradition, but he was kind of an iconoclast in that he had that personality of, like, I've tried many things and here's what's worked and I'm going to tell you about it. And I'm going to tell you about it in my language. And that was wonderful. It was nice to hear about your experience with Bonte.

1:42:33your early training and also the potential for the human mind and where these practices can lead as well as some kind of practical tips people can bring into their lives. Is there anything else that you might like listeners to know? Anything you think might benefit them or a key takeaway that you might have for people? at the, at the end? Yeah. Hard question. No, I think, I think the key takeaway is have fun. Um, I think that's the, the core, uh, of this is like everything. I mean, we practice meditation to improve our quality of life, right. And improve the quality of life those around us and that that means uh enjoying it um like um don't take things too seriously um when you're not taking things seriously mind is balanced and and really really being serious or trying too hard is the biggest biggest uh uh obstacle for most people in their practice um Um, practice is really, it is really simple.

1:43:53Uh, if we can just get out of the way and do it, uh, and what we do is not do anything, right? How can we let ourselves do that? We can't do that by trying. We can't do that by being serious. Uh, we can do that by having fun and smiling and being curious about what happens next, right? Uh, by, by being playful with the difficult things when they arise and being appreciative when the pleasant things arise, not really preferring either, just being curious about the process. It's like that. So yeah, the takeaway is have fun. Fun will get you a long way. And look to see if it is fun, right? Fun is not always just having McDonald's or staying up too late or whatever it is.

1:44:43What is really fun what is really fun that investigation is fruitful yeah yeah we're not going for the regular ronald mcdonald kind of happiness here yeah well if you if you see something gratifying like that how does it feel feels good for a second then you feel bad like that's not actually fun like it seemed like it was gonna be you had that concept it was gonna be but that concept didn't really bear out to what was really going on. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much. Where can folks, I guess, like, do you have any, a website or place people could find out more about your work or your, anything that you wanted to share that you've published and anything like that, that people can connect with you or however you'd like them to interact with your work?

1:45:37oh well i you know i have a website for my business that my email is connected to that i'm happy to hear from people um talk like like that i i don't have a business or website for meditation teaching though i do talk to people when they want to um like that so what's your website? What's your address? Yeah. Neighborhood naturopathic.com. Yeah. And so, yeah, you just write it info at neighborhood naturopathic and I'll get it. Yeah. Thanks so much. Thank you for your time. Yeah. It's fun to talk. Hey, thank you for checking out the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. This is part of the FitMind nonprofit and our goal is to make science and deep meditation accessible to everybody.

1:46:30You can support us on fitmind.org and also by rating and subscribing to the podcast. We believe that mental fitness and mental health are one of the most important things for the world, and it's also a major public health crisis. So by getting these tools out there and making them available, we can really help people and deeply impact their minds and their lives. Thank you.

1:47:00Thanh Post Kim Tuesday Tuesday u