transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, party people, how are we doing today? Today we're gonna talk about how to deal with shame, what to do when your mind won't stop ruminating, a technique for managing strong negative emotions, an ancient Buddhist practice for getting out of your head and into your body, and how to handle it when you feel like you cannot meditate on your breath. There is also in this conversation a fairly extended detour into colonoscopy prep that I did not see coming, but you'll understand when we get there. My guest is the meditation teacher and author Sebene Selassie. Seb and I recently co-wrote and co-recorded an Audible Original, so an audio book that you can get over on Audible. It's called Even You Can Meditate. You should go check it out over on Audible. What you're about to hear though is a live Q&A that Seb and I did with subscribers to my newish meditation app, Ten Percent with Dan Harris. If you haven't done it already, you can sign up for the app over at danharris.com. Also, heads up, if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got two events coming up on May 17th. I'll be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. I'll guide a meditation and take your questions. Then on October 16th through 18th, Sebene and I, along with our friend Jeff Warren, will be doing our annual Meditation Party retreat. It's a weekend thing up at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. Links for both events are in the show notes. All right, we'll get started with Sebene Selassie, right after this. Hello, Sebene Selassie, how are we doing?

Speaker 2:
[01:49] Hey, Dan Harris, I'm good.

Speaker 1:
[01:51] We had a lot of questions about meditating on the breath. This is an issue I've had myself, so I'll just read some of the questions and then, Seb, you can respond on the back end. This first one's from Tom. I've been doing one form of meditation or another for 50 years, almost daily. One form that has always eluded me is breath. I find it impossible to both pay attention to my breath and breathe normally at the same time. Any suggestions? I'll read one more from Vana. I always find breath meditation hard. I'm one to focus on hands or feet because when I focus on breath, it often becomes restricted or manipulated. Bringing my attention to my belly as it rises and falls is helpful, but even still, paying attention to all the parts of the breath really makes my breath feel unnatural. Seb, what say you?

Speaker 2:
[02:41] I was thinking about it and I feel like there's two parts to this because there's the technical part, which really is whatever works. There's nothing saying that you have to do breath meditation and if someone's been practicing for decades and it's going well, and breath is not a part of it, that's fine really. There are a lot of reasons to be more practical, technical about it. I think a lot of us are not comfortable with being with the breath or observing the breath, and that has to do with the fact that many of us are mouth-breathers. There's a whole systems of well-being in, for example, the yogic tradition and pranayama and breath work that help us to really be with our breath in a healthier way. Most of us are very shallow-breathers, many of us mouth-breathe, and there's a lot to the relaxing and other health benefits of just breathing in a relaxed way through the nose. There's a lot of ways to learn that. Again, yoga being one of them, but there are other breath work forms that help us to just learn to settle our nervous system through breathing. And if we're not accustomed to that and it's not part of our practice, then putting attention on the breath is just going to emphasize the fact that we're breathing shallow in a shallow way, or our breathing might be constricted. That's why we meditation teachers often give the instruction to open the chest and not collapse. So it's not about sitting ramrod straight, it's really allowing the breath to move. And the breath is one of those systems in the body that is so powerful. It's both parasympathetic and sympathetic and conscious and unconscious. And it has all sorts of regulating properties. And there's a lot of benefit to breathing through the nose specifically. It's much easier to regulate. There's nitric oxide. I think it's nitric oxide that is produced. We get it from other things that we eat, but it's produced through the nasal passages and is directly related to some sort of relaxation response in the nervous system, the vascular system. And so, yeah, there's a lot of benefits to breath. And we can also just be with other things like the hands and feet. And if we're not deeply involved in that relaxation process yet, or we're just on that journey, I encourage it for everyone to learn to be with the breath more. But we can also still be mindful and meditate, even if the breath is not our object. I also find a big proselytizer for lying down meditation, that it's easier to be with the breath often when we're lying down, because we're just generally more relaxed. And so you might want to try that. Maybe as part of a body scan to see if that makes it any easier. There was also another question in this, that someone was sort of paying attention at the belly, the breath of the belly, as if that was almost inferior. And there's something very intimate about watching the breath of the nostrils, and there are different experiences that might come from that, depending, you know, all of us have different breathing. But it's not like you get brownie points for being with the breath of the nostrils or in the lungs, like, we're just being with the breath, however, we can be with the breath, and that's sometimes through the whole body. So that's my technical answer, which is kind of rambling and maybe long. But I think this is also getting to a deeper issue, which is around relaxation. Cameron Bahut, the Dharma teacher, who said that awakening is just a deepening process of relaxation. And I'm sure you could verify this, Dan, like the most awake teachers or even people, they don't have to be Dharma teachers, they know they're relaxed people. And it doesn't mean that they don't have their quirks, but there's a sense of ease. And that is a lot about the breath too. That I think when we're bringing that same, am I getting it right? Am I getting it wrong? Some achievement idea of where we should be in our practice. Like there's a lot of tension in that. And that's driving actually gets in the way of our success, if we could call it that. And I think this is a metaphor for life too. Like, you know, we think like the tension is gonna get us somewhere, but it's actually the ease and the relaxation. And we see that in, you know, Alyssa Liu or like any great athlete or dancer or artist or I'm gonna shut up now.

Speaker 1:
[07:16] No, it's great. I mean, it reminds me of something Joseph says all the time, which is one way to think about enlightenment is lightening up.

Speaker 2:
[07:23] Yes, that's great. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[07:26] Just a few questions come in over there or comments and questions. Actually, these are two comments that came in over the transom from subscribers while you were talking Seb. Mike says, I got my nose waxed yesterday and breathing is amazing.

Speaker 2:
[07:39] Yeah. That's an advanced meditation technique.

Speaker 1:
[07:43] Yes, it's a contract. Mary Lou says, when focusing on the breath is hard, I focus on the heartbeat.

Speaker 2:
[07:53] Nice.

Speaker 1:
[07:54] All right. Let's see. There are some other questions that have come in in advance.

Speaker 2:
[08:00] Dan, if you all have any questions about anything I said, please drop them.

Speaker 1:
[08:05] Yes, and I will keep an eye on those. But let me just ask you some questions that came in in advance. This one's from Danny. Can you talk more about how you work with feelings of shame in your meditation practice?

Speaker 2:
[08:17] That's interesting because I don't know if they mean like shame in different parts of my life or shame about the meditation practice.

Speaker 1:
[08:28] I assume shame writ large, not just about the meditation practice.

Speaker 2:
[08:34] Yeah. When we're talking about our mind states, of course, we can have a perspective on different mind states. I think one of the challenges of shame is that, what do they say? It's like guilt is I did something wrong, shame is I am wrong. There can be a place for regret and feelings of guilt or remorse, and also atonement. Those are all, I think, healthy responses depending on circumstances. Shame has this tinge of like, I'm not supposed to make mistakes, I'm not supposed to have hardship, I'm fundamentally bad. I haven't heard anyone give me an argument that it's useful. I think it's good to have that perspective, it's helped me to have that perspective on shame. But then working with mind states is the same regardless of the mind state. If it's coming as a thought and lots of looped thinking, then we engage in the practice that we set out to do in the first place. We hike the trail that we got on, we don't start going off trail and then getting lost in the woods, somebody else to like extract us, you know. It's like we just stay on task. So if you were there to be with the body, then be with the body. And if you're there to have open awareness, then you have open awareness and the shame moves with that too. But if the shame comes on hot, and we've talked about this almost every week with this group as an emotion, then you can work with it in the body with rain or other practices that kind of help the emotion dissipate naturally, which they should in a couple of minutes. I wouldn't necessarily work with shame any differently than any other mind state, but it's helpful to have perspective on it, I think. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:
[10:15] It does make sense. You mentioned RAIN. Can you just recapitulate RAIN for people who are new to it?

Speaker 2:
[10:20] Yes. It's a great acronym that was created by Dharma teacher, Michelle McDonald and popularized by Tara Brock. RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nurture. Each step is a process of what's happening right now, can I allow it, and then going a little bit deeper into it when we're able to.

Speaker 1:
[10:41] RAIN is really helpful because it's something you can do in your meditation practice if you notice a big emotion like shame or anger or whatever it is. But you could also do it free-range as you're moving around the world, and you get hammered by some unpleasant experience. There's actually one question coming in on RAIN, so let me do that before we move to the other shame comments. Heather says, I know the N in RAIN as non-identification. I think sometimes people say nurture, sometimes people say non-identification. What's your take on that, Seb?

Speaker 2:
[11:17] It was originally non-identification, and that's going into the deeper territory, so the deep end of the pool, and who's thinking these thoughts or who's having this emotion and the teachings of not self. That's not always necessary. Sometimes it's not helpful because it can get us in our head. We're not necessarily experiencing it, we're thinking about it. So nurture is just a way to actually make space for whatever is here and not trying to go looking for a sense of not self.

Speaker 1:
[11:51] I think Joseph has some ways to play with non-identification or not self that are to me at least reasonably comprehensible. One is to just move from I am feeling shame to there is shame. Just as a grammatical tweak that puts you in a different relationship to it. And then the other is just the passive voice of, I am aware of shame to, shame is being known. And then you get a question and then you can ask like known by what. So as I always say, just play with this stuff. If it doesn't land for you, that doesn't matter. There are thousands of tools in meditation. Some will work, some won't. Let's just get back to shame because a lot of people have a lot to say about this. Carol wrote, I have trouble letting go of past events, which I regret and ruminate about suggestions.

Speaker 2:
[12:44] I've said it every week because apparently I'm a broken record that Pema Chodron quote, feel your feelings drop the story. And there are many ways, and Dan just highlighted some working with thoughts as these ephemeral objects. And I find for myself, this is true for people like me who tend to be in their heads, that coming back to the body is a way to cut that constant storytelling that we're in. So there's some rumination because there's some feeling. So let yourself feel that feeling, but let go of the stories. You don't need to pick them apart. You don't need to categorize them. You don't need to not find yourself in them in some way. You just come back to the body as this present moment. And that is, I have said for many years, I could just teach the same meditation over and over again. The words just kind of shift a little bit, but that first foundation of the body is so rich, and there are many ways into it. The breath, sensations, movement, the elements practice, the body parts practice. Like if you go into the teachings of mindfulness of the body, there are actually a lot of tools in there. And I think that's a really good remedy for our culture. It's hard for us to hear the call to embodiment in the teachings because we are so out of our bodies. So that's what I would say for Revenation.

Speaker 1:
[14:13] If time will come back to the elements practice because I think it's worth unpacking that. But I do have to say that the chat is on fire, Seb, over colonoscopy prep.

Speaker 2:
[14:26] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[14:28] This is showing that we have a lot of people over age, what is it, 40 when you have to start doing colonoscopy. But Andrea wrote, I can't think because I have to drink a colonoscopy prep after this and my heart is racing with anxiety, hard to focus on my breath, I just start to cry. For anybody who has the benefit of being young enough not to need colonoscopies yet, it involves this very unpleasant process for many of us where you have to drink this disgusting stuff that makes you poop a lot so that they can go in there and have a look the next day. Andrea, I'm sorry, this is so unpleasant for you. There are like so many comments coming in of encouragement and comfort for Andrea. Seb, you have endured so many medical procedures, way more painful and uncomfortable than colonoscopy prep, although colonoscopy prep definitely sucks. Given your experience in the medical realm, what would you recommend for somebody in this type of situation?

Speaker 2:
[15:31] Okay. First of all, I've had so many procedures, many surgeries, I've been hospitalized numerous times. I've never had a colonoscopy.

Speaker 1:
[15:41] What?

Speaker 2:
[15:41] I know. Because I get so many scans, they don't have to do that. Yeah. So I'm sorry for all of you who have to experience that. Whatever works, because I think depending on our temperament, but I think many of us in this culture tend to beat ourselves up. About how we do anything, and so we're getting pain and suffering wrong too, because we think we have to be mindful with it, and somehow at ease, and it's like, no, you can cry if it sucks. There are so many tips I'm learning. If I never need to do a colonoscopy, I need to come back to this chat. There are things to help us bring ease to ourselves. If we're having pain, there are certain pain meds that help some pain or not. We don't have to sit through it. We can move, we can rock, we can bring comfort to ourselves and our bodies. And then we can also practice mindfulness. How do we be with what is and not the story of what is? Are we really with the experience? It sounds like the drink is really gross. Cut it with Sprite or do the things to make it a little more easy to go down. But how awful is it? Are you in the experience or are you just like pushing it away? It's that menopause teaching, which I know many of you are in that or experienced that master class of menopause and hot flashes. And it's like we hate the experience of hot flashes, but many of us will go in a sauna. And so what are you, what are you not liking about the experience? And can you bring some ease to what's happening? If it's not causing you harm, you could probably be with it. You know, can I be with it? It's not a yes or no question actually. It's like a dare.

Speaker 1:
[17:38] Mambo writes with regard to the colonoscopy thread that is dominating the chat today. Mambo writes, okay, in my experience, the colonoscopy has fantastic drugs. So enjoy that part of the experience. That's a reference to the fact that they knock you out in order to do a colonoscopy. They usually use a drug like Propofol or Versed.

Speaker 2:
[17:59] You know the drugs.

Speaker 1:
[18:01] Well, you know, I have a certain taste for drugs. It's what got me into the whole meditation thing in the first place. I have a funny story, which is that the first time I got a colonoscopy, must have been in my early 40s when you're supposed to start doing these things, I woke up in the recovery area and I heard myself saying involuntarily, I just kind of heard the words escape my mouth. These drugs are amazing and the nurse didn't even turn around and she said, that's the third time you're telling me.

Speaker 2:
[18:32] Oh, that's hilarious. Oh my God. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[18:39] Anyway, I'm getting a lot of laughing emojis as a result of that one. Let's go back to terra firma, pun intended and talk a little bit about the elements because you referenced them earlier and one of the big refrains in all of your teaching is getting out of the head and into the body and elements practice can be a great way to do that. So, can you break it down?

Speaker 2:
[19:01] Yeah. So, I love this practice. It's one of my favorites and I love how it connects to so many traditions because as I've, I'm not an elements scholar, but from what I can tell, elements in some form exist in every culture and every continent, from ancient Greece to Ayurveda, to Chinese medicine, to North American indigenous practices, African. They might be five, they might be six, they might have different names, but it exists as a metaphor for relating to the inside and outside of the physical world, which is one in the absolute sense, there's no separation, we're just vibrating energy patterns, and then we're also separate. And so that breaks it down into just four in the Buddhist practice. And there is a practice of mindfulness of the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. And you're really just practicing feeling the solidity of earth, the fluidity of water, the energetic temperature of fire, and then the ephemeral connecting nature of air and the breath. And it's such a grounding practice. It's a really beautiful practice. It's a wonderful way to sort of recognize the connection of inside and outside. And it really, without getting into complicated physics, because we can't understand the math anyways, like it really helps you touch into the truth of our interconnection. Like we're mostly water, and the world is mostly water. Like how is that possible? We feel so solid, you know? And air travels around the each hemisphere within six months, and I think the entire planet within a couple of years. So we're literally breathing each other. And throughout time and space, because air molecules barely change, you know, since the Big Bang or since the Earth's atmosphere probably was created. It's just a kind of fascinating practice also for that feeling of like, you know, there's a refrain in mindfulness teachings that we're being aware internally, we're being aware externally, and we're being aware internally and externally. I'm always like puzzled by that, both internally and externally. And that refrain is said over and over and over and over again. It's the thing that's repeated the most along with then paying attention to impermanence and paying attention to the arising and passing nature of experience and phenomena. So it's baby steps into the deep pool. You're jumping straight into like, there's no self. Like you're kind of walking into the deep end.

Speaker 1:
[21:46] Maybe worth saying a little bit more, Seb, about exactly how to apply this in your meditation practice. I'll describe how I do it because I'm not even sure I'm doing it correctly. And then maybe you can jump in on that. How does that sound?

Speaker 2:
[21:59] Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 1:
[22:01] So for me, if I'm in open awareness practice, especially if I'm doing walking meditation, eyes open, walking through space, and I'm just using a little bit of mental noting to help me stay attuned to whatever's happening right now. Instead of, say if I'm walking through a cold room, instead of noting cold, I will just notice fire because that is the fire element which describes all sorts of temperatures. So I walk you through a hot room or a cold room, it's fire. If I'm feeling my feet on the ground, earth, because earth is solidity. If I notice the breath while I'm moving, while I'm sitting, that's the air element, I think. I've never quite known what water refers to really. The way I've heard the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein describe it is actually there's a connection between the elements practice and this hard to rock notion of not self or the self being an illusion because instead of noticing things as somehow being yours, well, they're part of the elements.

Speaker 2:
[23:09] So they're metaphor for the nature of reality. That's why they exist in all of these traditions. And the fifth element is in Vedic teachings and in other traditions is ether, which some people believe is consciousness or some sense of space, like in an esoteric sense. And I love that, Dan, because I love bringing the elements practice into life. We don't have to go out to wild nature to experience the elements, like heating water is the fire element and your tea is the water element, and the table I'm sitting at is the earth elements. So the world around us is giving us kind of an entryway into this practice. So I love like being able to kind of identify the things you were saying, Dan. And it also can be helpful to actually practice it as a meditation, where you go through earth, water, fire, air. Meditations online that you can find that will, you know, guide you through these four elements step-by-step. So you can learn what it feels like in the body. So you can sort of practice with feeling the solidity of the body, feeling the fluidity of the body, which is really just feeling the saliva or maybe the moistness behind our eyelids. For some people, they can feel the blood. There was someone who said that, you know, they can feel their heartbeat. Not everyone has access to that, but you sometimes can feel fluid in your belly. And the temperature of the body is fire and then the air element, the breath, obviously. So yeah, it can be helpful to kind of do the scales of it before you sort of play the music of practicing the elements out in the world.

Speaker 1:
[24:52] If I'm feeling my legs moving, that's air, not water. Water would be more like saliva or sweat or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[25:00] You know, this is where, like, this is not the periodic table. Like we don't have a lot of elements to work with. So what is water? What is earth? What is, like, it's all mixed up, right? Like we would say like trees and mountains are earth, but they're filled with air and water and other elements too, so.

Speaker 1:
[25:23] As we come to a close here, just want to say that if you enjoy listening to Seb, Seb and I will be doing our annual Meditation Party event with our third friend, Jeff Warren, coming up in October at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, which is an awesome chance for us to hang out. And you should go, if you go to eomega.com or eomega.org, actually, and poke around, you can find Meditation Party. I'll put a link in the show notes for people who are listening to this on the podcast. Actually, I think my weekly newsletter on Monday had a link to it as well.

Speaker 2:
[26:00] And this time they're bringing back the online.

Speaker 1:
[26:03] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[26:03] So we didn't have it last year, but it's back for this one.

Speaker 1:
[26:08] Yeah. Lots of folks in the chat. Stacey says, Highly recommend. Mike says, Best party ever. Seb, thanks for today. Thanks for being you.

Speaker 2:
[26:17] Thanks for having me, everyone.

Speaker 1:
[26:21] Thanks again to Seb. Don't forget to check out my new Meditation App or new-ish Meditation App. If you sign up, you'll get to come to our weekly live sessions like the one you just heard, where we meditate together and then take your questions. It's a great way to support your practice, to do with other people and to get your questions answered. Also, if you sign up, you get a growing library of meditations from amazing teachers, ad-free versions of this podcast. It's awesome. Join the party, danharris.com. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.