Gelong Thubten: Practical Meditation, Training your Brain for Happiness, The Power of Breath & More

Sophie's got an event later today that she's very nervous about are you yeah I'm quite a nervous person you're nervous because you have to speak at the event I'm co-hosting it's an award service Christine is difficult yes because then you have to have total sort of control over the whole situation you're not filling me with questions no I appreciate why it's nerve-wracking but uh nobody wants you to fail that's the thing again not filling no no what I mean is you're supported by the uh yes people often think when they're in those situations or Everyone's Watching Me and waiting for me to show pop their nose they want you to do well so just absorb the love yeah I mean yeah that's a much better better way of looking at it yeah you've got to refocus here a little bit reframe it would you be my personal Mentor From This Moment forward um no luckily it's not just me so I've got a co-host that we can bounce it's not me but I will be there just to watch and giggle and you get it right I do feel actually more calm knowing you're going to be there though okay good I'm glad okay I was thinking you actually can make you more nervous no because if if I do mess up on I know that we'll be talking about it in the car yeah a lot more funny enough laughter is obviously a great thing I think we should you know if you're happy to start talking um obviously your books which are fantastic by the way and your new book out is I can see it behind us it's called handbook for hard times but on in both books you talk about happiness and I I wanted to start by asking what happiness means to you it's such a big word isn't it and I suppose yeah it is a major theme of my my writing um and I think I I basically see happiness as a skill that can be learned rather than a product that is given to us by the world around us you know what I mean I think quite often people think of we all think of Happiness as something that will happen to us when the things go well and I like to think of Happiness as something we can do in terms of a skill and I think it's kind of a moment-to-moment thing as well it's not some huge achievement at the end of a struggle but more a moment to moment ability to stay positive and stay calm and enjoy enjoy the here and now that's the skill isn't it it's a trainable skill that's interesting you're saying that about that because I was thinking about the fact that um we often look at things in a very much more binary way like we're over happy or we're sad but actually any given day though our fleeting moments of both those things um and that's something that we don't necessarily accept possibly we we're living in a cultural time where there's such an emphasis on Comfort feeling comfortable all the time and obviously externally as well in material comforts we want to feel everything's going our way and so it makes us harder for us to face hard times and face challenges we've become quite vulnerable haven't we as a species and feeling like we're lacking control I think as well I think what you're talking about gives you more ownership and control of your happiness owning your experience yeah you know if you're only if your happiness relies on everything happening around you and the way people talk to you or the way things go at work it's completely out of your control makes you very vulnerable absolutely we're incredibly vulnerable when we live a life that uh where our happiness is so dictated by things going our way because you I mean you can obviously make efforts to to make your life go the way you want it but there's so much that's out of our control particularly other people we can't make other people be nice to us can we and we we can't make the world suit us all the time so I think happiness has to be an independent skill of the mind and it is a mind thing that I think that's where I'm getting to is it's a state of mind and it's to do with our thoughts and emotions and reactions and that's something we can train and that's really what meditation is all about is is training how you react how you think how you feel you're talking a book about being hardwired for Bliss or to Bliss um and I was wondering how how that kind of works in the in the I feel like as a society and we've touched on this a little bit that we sometimes don't seek out happiness we might seek out like for example social media could be a good example where we we seek out conflict or Doom scrolling things like that yeah I think when I mentioned in the book about the sort of hard wiring I was talking about it quite quite a um profound sort of Buddhist concept that deep down inside we are hardwired to have total happiness maybe that's why the word bliss is used a lot but it really means a sort of total freedom total happiness that kind of inner Liberation that's our sort of um our Essence but we're we're so out of touch with that we're so caught up in in the waves of the Mind the thoughts the emotions the reactions and and like you say are we perhaps focusing a lot on the negative a doom scrolling such a horrible term it is it is yeah it's so apt isn't it where we just endlessly look through our phones for all the bad news and all the judgments and all the nasty comments and yeah the negativity seems to be quite uh persuasive and quite um invasive as well it kind of comes at us all the time through I'm not anti-technology at all I mean we're using it right now it can be used in a great way but I think technology is like food if you we have to eat and eating is good for us but you don't want to just eat sugar constantly all day you'll get ill and I think we don't really have enough discipline with how we use technology we're just kind of consuming it mindlessly often without thinking well shall I be a little bit more Discerning about what I consume or how I consume or how often I consume as we would do with food so interesting analogy isn't it it's consuming and the nourishment of it nourish the nourishment of what we're consuming yeah is it nourishing is it nourishing so so often it's not nourishing so often the the messaging that we're subject to is is is making us feel worse about ourselves and about each other and that's it's quite destructive I mean I suppose fear is very lucrative industry really isn't it in terms of you know the new cycles and what we're seeing in the media and um that's how they sell products often as well it's fair you know if you don't have this product then you're going to be left out and stuff and so yeah I feel like that's become a thing now we we are constantly living in fear and would you say that negative emotions are often fear-based fear it does seem to be at the root of so many things and as you say it's it's an easy way to get people to do what you want them to do whether it be through advertising also through politics use fear as the kind of mode of control and short through through advertising we are having our anxiety kind of provoked all the time even even in that subtle moment of being told hurry up while stocks last that's sort of plugging into that that part of ourselves that is designed to worry about scarcity that's a hunter-gatherer thing oh my goodness I might starve so I need to you know stock up and that's it sort of manipulated a lot through the messaging that we see in in the media as well as a feeling of um being told that we're incomplete all the time oh you can't possibly be complete without the product I'm trying to sell you surely you need this to feel okay and without it you won't feel okay so we're told with all still we are not okay without this product so I would say fear is is um fear anxiety even at a very subtle level is kind of driving our culture and um then as you say it becomes the source of so many of other negative emotions um our our constant hunger for things is based on a fear of not having enough and our constant um irritation with things even anger and hatred comes from a fear of being attacked a fear of being threatened yeah and then scrolling through social media you've got jealousy and envy and it's often fear of either losing something you've got or again like you say a fear of of scarcity so fascinating I was wondering if we could just going back a little bit talk a bit about you and your journey just for the listeners that don't don't know who you are how did you how did you get so wise I wasn't so calm look at you look amazing you're sat Charles and I are both got our legs crossed very defensive arms sat like you're in meditation I'm gonna change my my posture right I wouldn't say I'm particularly wise but I I um I'm very lucky to to have been taught so much about Buddhism and meditation and to be able to kind of share that and well you are wise to seek out that knowledge credit where credit's due I I I um I stumbled into this through through tremendous stress I was never you know you hear about these people who are kind of spiritual Seekers and they find monasteries and temples or whatever and that's great but in my case I just fell into a monastery because I was so desperate for help and I needed somewhere to go I was really burned out very young at 21 I was ready to just collapse I was I was living such a frenetic lifestyle and I was very unhappy and I didn't know how to deal with my emotions I was bottling everything up and and pushing everything down and trying to just stay busy so I wouldn't have to look at how unhappy I felt and this this combined with a very unhealthy kind of party lifestyle really drove me into a state of burnout a state of like a breakdown and um that's when I discovered meditation some sometimes in the darkness you find some light it's like it can be like that isn't it and so I discovered meditation firstly through um reading books my mother is a Buddhist and my father too and um but they'd never really sort of told me much about it it was just there in the family background and then when I was ill I was ill for about four or five months after this burnout my mum had all these books on meditation I was reading them and getting very inspired by what I was reading and then an old friend told me about a Buddhist Monastery in Scotland which had recently opened their doors to people wanting to be a monk or a nun for a year like a kind of training thing like a gap here like that and I thought oh that's that's that's something I want to do and and maybe would help me and I was only going to do it for a year I really had the plan to then go back to I was living in New York at the time go back to the States and carry on doing what I was doing so I went there and I became a monk and loved it and stayed that was 30 years ago so I did I did the one year and then I decided to do a second year and then the third year and then after I think three or four years like that I decided this is actually something that really feels right for me and I took lifelong vows but initially the the idea was just a short break and then it became my life Wow can you just talk about the lifelong vowels a little bit what vowels are you allowed they take a vow to be a monk for your life and the the monks rules are um I mean you are so so it's your celibate and you don't um take intoxicants of any kind and there are many other vowels too which will show around sort of ethical living they're not telling lies not harming others not stealing things these are sort of rules of ethical Behavior but I suppose the celibacy is the thing that's the most kind of Aliant one our normal culture um but people often uh when they meet me and they they know I'm a monk they're often sort of a little little bit uh fascinated by all the things I can't do oh you can't do this you can't do that and I think of it more as all the things that I can do as my life's opened up to give me more time to do Retreats and meditate and do all those things so I find it a very um a very freeing uh lifestyle um obviously when I started it was a shock to the system because I was living a life that was so the opposite of monasticism but I adapted and have found it very healthy for myself wow that's absolutely incredible and so young as well you were very young to you know because I feel like most people probably do if not quite the extreme of becoming you know Buddhist monk people discover like meditation for example later in life when they're sort of overworked or stressed or they've got kids and stuff like that so to get to that point at such a young age some might say that you're quite lucky I guess I think so yeah it's like diving in the deep end so young and then you have more time for the training I guess um yeah I'm lucky I'm lucky that suffering and burnout uh led me to this lifestyle I'm really lucky that that I found something positive in in the in that dark State and so when you say um the training can you talk us through a little bit what that looks like yeah I mean the training is ongoing it's it's always training learning meditating studying Buddhist philosophy learning more about meditation doing meditation and then you have these very intensive training periods where you do retreats so the the Retreats can be of any length but they're often several months or even years um the first Retreat I ever did was uh was nine months long and that was in my second year and that was really hard really difficult because you're just alone with your thoughts and and silence yeah you were pretty much silent and you are doing meditation all day um and then later on after being a monk for a few more years I tried uh a more um you could say extreme retreat was four years long and that was um in 2005 so these are examples of the kind of training yeah but then also the training is every day in all your life and right now in this moment in this moment training to try to work more on one's mind and work more on developing compassion and kindness in the moment whatever one is doing and the life's experiences become training you're working out here in the world I do a lot of work and I write books and give talks and all that stuff is also me learning as well as giving wow it's amazing I just think there's so much for people listening to learn from your lifestyle even in micro ways yeah I'm not uh here to try and sort of persuade people to all become monks or or even Buddhists but what I love to share with people is the beauty of meditation the benefits of meditation and how you can practice it in so many different situations whether you're a monk or whether you're a parent or somebody in the working or somebody who's in a hospital ill or a prisoner or all these different environments I've taught in prisons and hospitals and these kind of situations and I love to share with people the value of meditation especially in this climate now of stress and busyness and um this very very um hectic search for happiness that we're all trapped in and doesn't seem to be working it's not working is it it doesn't feel like it is we're the most materially comfortable we have ever been as a culture not in all situations but in certain areas of the world we are incredibly materially comfortable and yet totally uncomfortable emotionally and and stressed and it doesn't kind of match something hasn't added up we've struck we've strived for so much and so disconnected as well so disconnected and so unhappy and that's when the inner Journey Begins and it could be anything but meditations are really good in a journey yeah so the word meditation is thrown around a lot nowadays I think everyone's everyone's heard of it everyone has their own idea of what it is what for you how would you define meditation well it's a it's a training of the mind and you're learning how to work with your thoughts and your emotions and your reactions you're learning to train and transform your mind and I think it's all based on the the an understanding that your mind is the most important thing in your life because you experience everything through your mind it's like a filter so if you can clean the filter in some way if you can change the filter into something more positive what you experience will will be seen in a different way and your thoughts and your actions and your words will come from a wiser more calm place and you'll feel happier and more connected and you can develop compassion and empathy and forgiveness and all of all of those skills they're all states of mind uh but the the training of meditation is is it's like daily exercise it's like going for a run or going to the gym or doing something which we would do for our body but for our mind instead which is so important and so forgotten not often isn't it to think oh I should do something for my mind it's almost like we have that thought when we're really really falling apart oh I really need to sort my head out now but yep wouldn't wouldn't it be more effective to think of mental health as an optimization of who we are in each moment rather than waiting until we're really falling apart and then of course at that time too meditation can be helpful but right now meditation could be part of our work as human beings to to stay well in ourselves I think that comes down to a lot of things we've covered but in regards to that we are more reactive to situations of the world around us and you know obviously with meditation if you can take some ownership and be proactive so that you're not necessarily going to get to those periods where you will have to be reactive yeah yeah learning to stabilize the mind and and get more of a um I don't want to say control it's not that you're trying to control your thoughts but maybe to be less controlled by your thoughts I think it's all about being in the driving seat of your own mind because we're kind of driven rather than driving do you know what I mean so many thoughts and emotions that we have that we don't want to be having so what's that about who's in control it feels as if we're sort of in control of our lives but not our minds because our minds do all kinds of stuff that gets us into real trouble yeah why would anyone want to feel angry or jealous or any other negative thing yeah and yet it happens yeah and we have control over it but we kind of don't and so so meditation is where you learn how to to gain more Authority and power over yourself in a good way um but it's a it's a regular training it's a daily training it's not just a one-off experience here or there it's it's how to how to really keep working on the Mind both sitting down and also when you're moving around because meditation is also to do with your daily life and being mindful in different situations okay so for those people like me for example who dabbled Dabble I have to admit when I I've for years I've been off and on trying to meditate I have to be honest whenever it comes to it I always weather consciously or subconsciously see it as a waste of time because I live this busy life where I'm working constantly and I have emails to respond to and what to do and then sitting and doing nothing feels like a waste of you know I use that in inverted commas a waste of time what advice would you give to somebody that has never met a basically this podcast is basically just a therapy session I mean it always is I always turn it around what advice would you give to somebody who doesn't meditate at all has never meditated and has a busy life kids husband wife whatever and is overwhelmed with the idea of meditating I I hear you I understand that people would sit down and think I don't have time for this that's too many other things to do and I uh if would this be a waste of my time I should be busy doing those emails and doing those other things but if you can understand that taking time out to meditate will help you to function in the world better and more efficiently then you would feel it's not a waste of time but it's doing something that will help you to use your time in the right way I mean there are many studies that show that this endless multitasking doesn't actually work it makes us just more confused and more stressed and we never get anything done fully but if you meditate you can live your life more fully and I don't know if we I don't know if we really enjoy our lives that much because we're so busy with the past and the future and not really present and so if you understand that training in being present will help you to live a fuller life you wouldn't necessarily feel it's a waste of time you'd feel it's giving you something that will enhance and optimize your experience of reality in a positive way and and help you to suffer less because we we do suffer and yeah you could be having a really busy time and you could feel really productive and that you're on top of everything and then life hits you in certain ways that just make you fall apart and we don't have the resilience and that's when our meditation training would have really helped us in those moments yeah because like there's also um evidence that meditation is good for your physical health as well and help because of stress I think we all know that stress is toxic for our body and so if if there's something like meditation that can help us to reduce stress that will of course help us on a physical level and um we could see it as uh um a really healthy lifestyle we nowadays we're much more switched on to Healthy Lifestyles we we know about you're drinking water there you know about hydration you know that we know to dehydrate we know to exercise we know to eat the right foods and not eat junk food with quite on top of it in that way and yet so so we could have a sort of toxin-free life but what a toxic mind I'm not I'm not saying we've all got toxic Minds necessarily but if we don't think of detoxing the mind as well as the body we're only doing half the job aren't we well yeah if you think of the phrase Mind Over Matter you know these um symptoms that are kind of psychosomatic the brain and the thoughts have a huge impact over how we're feeling physically everything in our life is dependent on how we think about it you know if if if I asked you to write a list of the 10 things that are most troubling you in Life or five things I mean we'd probably write a list of 50 things wouldn't we there's so many things that are we we feel we're suffering because of this because of this because of this or struggling because of this this and this and then if I asked you to look at that list and ask yourself am I suffering because of those things or because of my thoughts about those things um that's quite a revelation isn't it it's a simple shift of attention where you think well yeah it's the how I think about how I feel about this and and thoughts and feelings you can change you can learn to be less driven by negative reactions you can learn it wouldn't make you passive it doesn't mean you kind of switch off any kind of reactivity and just sort of become a blank canvas it more means that you can learn to handle life differently because you'll have a better handle on your thoughts and emotions yeah I suppose your your Baseline is at a healthier level I suppose most people tend to be operating at quite a low Vibe bass level so then when you do get those kind of mildly stressful situations I mean I just now I was talking about when you're already quite stressed and then you accidentally stub your toe or like your you know your drawstring gets caught on the door handle it's just just absolutely lose it because you're already in such a state of stress we're all living a lives where we're sort of running on cortisol and adrenaline those stress hormones and we're in this kind of mini experience of fight or flight throughout the day as if we've been chased by miniature tigers all the time yeah you know small little moments of fight or flight throughout the day and that just builds up and we especially in cities people who live in cities are kind of more in that frantic stream of things um although you know I went away to a four-year long retreat on a Scottish Island and I was stressed in the retreat because I I was then facing my own inner world of anxiety and I had a lot of depression at that time and it really made me think it's not really anything to do with the outer world it's all about what's going on in your head whether you're in a city or in a retreat as a monk it's all about the mind and if we can learn to train our minds that that's the answer to so many things if not everything yeah I am would encourage people I used to do this thing called uh it was my day of nothing and I started off as like telling everyone I'm going to do it every every once a month or once a week or whatever it was where you don't do anything you know no no devices you're not allowed to even go for a walk you're not allowed to do chores around the house you literally sit and do nothing for an entire day the only thing you do is eat and drink um I did it once and it was so hard I haven't done it and it became from a weekly to a monthly thing it became like maybe I'll do it annually and that's I'll do every few years 10 years ago do you remember when I did this it was the whole big thing I was telling everyone about it it's gonna change my life honestly but I would encourage everybody to do that at least once in their life to to understand like how powerful the mind is and how uncomfortable it is sitting with your thoughts also so to appreciate the difference between doing and being so so we're always doing doing doing and there's very little time just to sit and be um but yeah it can be quite challenging to sit there with your thoughts but then you then you start to understand the need to do some work on your mind and you feel kind of encouraged to do that um but I do find many people struggle to meditate okay so there's this the the situation you mentioned where we've got the busy life and we think I don't have time for this and I'm wasting my time if I do this that's one one area where people they don't want to meditate because of that way of thinking and then the other thing that happens is people say oh I tried meditation but I couldn't do it because my mind was too busy I I failed I was rubbish at that or some people sort of Define themselves as not qualified to meditate because they've got a particularly busy mind it's like saying oh I can't play tennis because I've got like a wrist injury or something well the thing about this busy mind is this very interesting topic is is do we think meditation means you're supposed to have no thoughts I think many people do yeah when I started I thought oh you're supposed to clear your mind and I sat down and I thought okay clear the mind clear the mind clear the mind am I as it is it gone yet am I am I meditating yet my thoughts gone yet it's just a constant monologue isn't there well and also I'd argue that the more you're telling yourself to clear them your mind the more thoughts that are pouring in there totally the louder they shout yeah and then when you get that Split Second of Silence then the inner trying to look jumps in it's like I did it oh now let's come back again and and so so I would question that I would say do do we sit down thinking I need to clear my mind what is a is that possible and B is there any point to it it's not possible we know it's not possible the more we try to still the mind the busier it gets and the second question is what's the point what what would the point be of sitting down for 10 or 15 minutes and just going blank and then you carry on with your day okay you had a holiday for your from your thoughts for 15 minutes but you're back you're back in the drama again so how did it help so that's not meditation and it's it's fighting a losing battle to try and meditate like that so so I think when people understand what meditation is and what it isn't that clarifies a lot they they stop struggling so much so instead of trying to clear the mind you think more in terms of focusing the mind and that's what I guess some people then have a mantra am I writing Mantra or breath or anything really simple in in in the moment of this present moment breath is a really good one or any any physical sensation even just sitting and feeling the chair under your body the reason why this is so effective is because um the the the wandering distracted mind is sort of one thing and then you've got the sensing of the breath is another thing and they they can't happen at the same time so you have to move from one to the other so you move into the breath and you're kind of away from the from the racing mine but you're not trying to stop the thoughts you're just diverting your attention changing changing your focus and focusing on your breath for a few seconds and then the mind starts up again and then you come back it's all about returning to the breath or Mantra or whatever your practice is but every time you return you're getting strong yeah I mean you hear this word like grounding quite a lot um and again I think it's quite a vague word that people use you know if they're feeling heightened or anxious or whatever it might be and then they ground themselves like what is actually the definition of that what is what are you doing when you're ground you're feeling grounded or you're grounding yourself you're moving from rumination to interception so you're moving from the the wandering distracted kind of gabbling mind into interception is where you sense the sense the sensing the feeling of the ground under your feet or you're using the sense perception rather than the thinking mind so you move into that sensing of the floor under your feet or the chair under your body and the reason it's so grounding as in you know bringing you into the here and now and feeling stable and feeling strong is because the part of the brain that deals with um rumination and mental chatter and the part of the brain that senses the breath or the body are called competing brain networks you can't you can't be in the two at the same time it's one or the other so you move from one to the other and that takes you away from that frenetic thought pattern oh I didn't know that that makes a lot of sense it's really interesting isn't it and I've been doing it while you've been talking every now and then I'll just sort of focus on my breath and yeah it does it takes you away from like whatever brings you into a state of emotion you're feeling yeah and it's not about blocking the emotions it's not about blocking the thoughts but it's about training yourself to be less sucked in by it all and then you can start to step back and have greater choice in terms of how you think and feel breathing is incredible and actually we probably don't breathe properly a lot of the time I think and I've heard stories and we might have discussed this that even like for example we've talked about this so earlier social media you might be going to post something you actually you're not breathing you've stopped breathing or you might be reading something and you stop breathing um in those moments which again would heighten that's when I'm ironing things oh really you can imagine these robes require a bit of ironing they only do otherwise they look like a kind of tea towel and I find that sometimes when I'm ironing I catch myself holding my breath and I think remember to breathe sometimes when we're really focused on something like you say a computer with writing and you realize you haven't been breathing it's not healthy is it so I I do think that we we maybe need to think more about how we're breathing and and let that become a training yeah you talk a lot in the book um your new book about compassion and I wondered how that works for meditation how we can learn to be more compassionate through the practice of meditation and what is compassion as well because again I feel like a lot of these are words that I hear all the time but I'm not sure I could actually give a proper definition of it to be honest and it means something different to everybody doesn't it I think in the world of meditation and Buddhism um compassion is very very important and emphasized a lot and I think it's it's described as a skill of the Mind a trait a trainable skill and something that works both ways in terms of having more compassion towards oneself and towards others and the self part is is very much to do with Modern Life and how in this modern world we're so down on ourselves more than ever I think particularly because of the inputs from the media and from social media all of that so telling us we're too fat or too thin or to this or to that and and there's a sort of constant feeling of I'm not good enough or there's something wrong with me or everyone else is doing better so we're quite hard on ourselves and compassion is very much about self-acceptance and being okay with yourself and feeling good about yourself and also letting that expand out to others to to accept others to accept others how they are we live in a world of such judgment judging others they shouldn't be like this they shouldn't be like that and sure people are doing and have throughout history done really terrible things to each other and it's of course we can stand there and say that's a really terrible thing that happened sure but there's another level where we are just constantly um finding it hard to see the good in anybody and just seeing bad all the time and finding it hard to connect to others compassion is a connection with others and a wish to help them a wish to be of help to the world compassion can make your life feel very different because the more you try to more you train and compassion the more you think of your yourself as somebody who wants to do good and not not in a kind of Goody Two-Shoes kind of polishing the Halo type way you know being but more real more just real real kindness in in in everyday life being very sort of um focused on that as you go through your life but I think that the source of all of this is um how you treat your own thoughts and your own emotions we're very tend to be very hard on ourselves internally when we have a thought or emotion we don't like we feel ashamed of that or bad about that and we want to get rid of it and when you can have this kind of resolving of your inner landscape inside yourself then that can spread externally as well and there are techniques for this and in my books I I talk about those techniques and explain them in quite a lot of details so they can become practical tools hmm yeah I guess we're talking about um judgment and viewing others in a negative light it it's often it goes hand in hand with self-judgment anyway isn't it because often the way we view the world and the way we look at others and judge others is a reflection of how we see ourselves or stuff within ourselves that we've rejected and so in being more compassionate to yourself you actually probably do end up becoming more compassionate to others yeah I think how we treat ourselves how we treat others they're kind of interrelated aren't they and meditation is an amazing tool for training in acceptance and loving kindness both internally and externally um and I talk about this in two ways in in my book I talk about um how the meditation itself is going to to work with that because just working with accepting your thoughts and also working on compassion practices that help you to engender that sense of kindness towards yourself and others that's one area but then I also talk about intention and motivation and build building that into your practice so that you actually start and end each meditation session with a moment of setting the intention to be of benefit to others you start your session by thinking now now I'm going to meditate for my own benefit and the benefit of others and you end your session by mentally dedicating the practice to your own spiritual growth but also the benefit of others so you're constantly training in that intention to be of service and be of help and that becomes more and more of a reality as you go along so if yeah it's a very powerful way of framing the meditation as well that you know that like you say it's not just for your benefit and that is obviously tenfold but for the benefit of others yeah I think it's very important because we don't want our meditation to become a kind of um selfish process or sort of just um trying to kind of feed the ego and feed the sense of self and the sense of what I want and what I don't want we want to kind of move more into a compassionate state which is a win-win situation because if we're compassionate we ourselves will feel better it's the only way to actually feel good we know that don't we it's when we're really connected to others and being kind we feel healthier inside when we're very wrapped up in self-interest we don't actually feel that happy we feel kind of desperate and uh needy and vulnerable and even threatened so compassions are win-win situation rather than some kind of sacrifice I was going to ask you um about Community as well and the function of community and how that can be um beneficial for our functioning in life around Community can you talk about like community and how obviously using compassionate practices is obviously useful if you've got a tribe around that yeah we we have fallen out of that culturally so much haven't we the the the the idea of um large extended families communities tribe all of that we've become much more isolated especially in cities where we live in maybe in in streets with houses the house touches the next house but and you you don't know who's on the other side of the wall in blocks of flats where we're all next to each other but not next to each other unconnected and then we're sort of are connected through social media but on a very different level with many friends we don't even know friends and then there's a kind of digital relationship where we're very very um intentional about what we share of ourselves and it's not really it's not a real relationship is it authentic is it too it can be but it's not always and so we have become very connected but very unconnected and so in terms of community it's really helpful when one can find a community and so communities of meditators groups where you join a meditation group or work together for a charity there's a group exercise of trying to do something positive in the world but then at a deeper level especially if we can't find that physically uh compassion meditation turns the whole world into your community because you're trying to um establish compassion for all sentient beings which includes animals and insects and every life form and that becomes your family and you you can practice meditations where you connect from the heart with all of existence and start to spread that idea of loving kindness and connection and then you are in a huge tribe and that can be enormously fulfilling I need to cough I'm sorry I had a tickle in my throat no worries um before we finish I was going to ask you for anybody listening who wants to who has enjoyed this conversation and wants to kind of have a go at meditation if it's their first time of trying it is there a simple kind of practice that they could do to start that process that they could learn from going forward well I I do think breathing is a great place to start um and that's that's a very um traditional and well-known meditation technique that everybody practices when they want to learn meditation and then they might Branch out from there or they might stay with that and it's not really about breathing in any particular way it's not about deep breathing or slow breathing it's just normal breathing but bringing your mind into Focus using the breath as your anchor is really effective because you can actually do that anywhere I mean we're breathing 24 7 aren't we so it means that you have access to meditation wherever you go it's very different from things like yoga where you need a yoga studio or yoga mat or doing certain poses which is great yoga is great but meditation is incredibly portable you can take it anywhere you can be sitting on a park bench because you're not making yourself breathe you're just noticing the breath that's happening already but the reason why the breath is so is so helpful is because it's a constant thing that's there under the surface of your life and when you bring your attention to your breath you're really present and also you're going beneath the storyline of your life and into the reality of this moment and so then yeah you're focused on your breath and then your mind wonders of course it goes into distraction that's normal it doesn't mean you failed but then you gently come back to the breath with the breath again and your mind wanders you come back that constant returning to the breath it might be a five minute session it might be a ten minute session and you're just coming back to the breath gently again and again that makes you strong over time it's an exercise that strengthens your ability to be present it strengthens your ability to let go of the thoughts and emotions that are um causing you trouble in the meditation session you might not be having Troublesome thoughts but you're just working with thought as a reality and working with how to change your relationship with thought so breathing is a good practice to start with but it's so so important to Just Breathe normally no tension not trying to breathe deeply or slowly but just normal breathing very natural and I think that's a great place to start but I think also um to to practice tiny microscopic moments of mindful awareness in in your daily life is very important how can you going back to what we discussed at the beginning of this episode we're talking about happiness and how we are in control of our happiness how could you then once you've started doing meditation and becoming more centered and present what advice would you give to have more of a handle on your happiness if particularly for those people who are probably in a place in their life where they're quite stressed or overwhelmed or you know feeling feeling like they're drowning in work or relationship issues or whatever it might be how can you start to get a handle on that before it's too late well I think the the deepest um the deepest kind of happiness comes from learning what to do with your unhappiness how to work with that and that that's the real theme of my new book is um how to learn to be Fearless in times of fear how to learn to be um how to use hard times to help yourself grow and it's very much about using meditation to um meet challenges with a compassionate mind to bring compassion into those situations I think very often people want their meditation to be very nice and tidy and everything to be beautiful and lovely and that's not that's that's a very kind of Escapist fantasy but to be able to meditate in the stress of our Lives means that we can meet that stress with a calm mind and the stress will change because it is a state of mind it's an attitude in one sense you could say suffering only is there because of the resistance to the situation with resistance changes the situation changes um I suppose also worrying is focusing on the future and absolutely Sadness the past but when you're breathing in your ground you're you can't help but be in that present in that present moment and then you could say okay you're you're telling me to be present but what if in this present moment I'm in terrible pain don't tell me to be present I'm in pain that's a very um very uh understandable statement to make but the beauty of these techniques is that you can be in the present in pain and you can learn to be okay with that pain sure you may need to go to the doctor you seek treatment all of those things I'm not saying just be passive and give up but we're living with pain sometimes we're living with stress we're living with discomfort and can we live harmoniously with that can we use that as meditation in the book I I talk about techniques where you you breathe in the pain and and breathe joy out and you transform the pain through meditation so the present moment can be incredibly uncomfortable but it can be a doorway into something much deeper in terms of real happiness through working into working into the pain with meditation yeah I'm glad that you said that and it's I think it's quite um common as well for people once they've decided that they're going to get a handle on their pain or their suffering and seek out happiness that almost then becomes this idea of like I should never feel any discomfort or unhappiness and I should always be happy and whenever something happens that makes me unhappy I should just lock it away you know pretend it hasn't happened and you end up suppressing stuff don't you yeah exactly but you know there's I think there's power in learning to sit with an uncomfortable definition to sit with the discomfort and be okay with it and realize that you've been telling yourself a lot of stories about this this discomfort or this unhappiness and when you go beneath the stories you can find genuine peace even in the storm gotcha totally so if for example if someone was gonna co-host an award ceremony and they had all of these stories about you know everyone's going to judge me and I'm going to forget my my lines and stuff there's there's Comfort there's you know you can get comfort in that actually it doesn't really it doesn't really matter and you can use mindfulness in the moment to really like you mentioned earlier be grounded I used to find public speaking quite terrifying but now I find it very relaxing really because I've brought the meditation into that scenario by feeling the ground under my feet as I stand there on the stage or as I'm walking on really walk mindfully and really try to embody this present moment and that takes you beneath your fears into just the reality of you just standing in a room speaking because that's all that's really happening yeah of course have you been meditating throughout this chat no it's not like I'm sort of you know in the zone it's more that I learn how to bring little moments of mindfulness into is becoming more of a habit bringing mindful awareness into little little micro moments throughout the day I love to practice those I've been doing it I've been have you yeah yeah I guess I'm just better no but it is like do you know what the the breathing thing has blown my mind a little bit because it's so simple and yet yeah so many times throughout the day I just stopped breathing and um never really think about my breathing but even while we've been chatting I've been every every surfing like just taking a breath in and and focusing on it conscious yeah and I'm in a conscious life instead of an unconscious life right that's what it's about isn't it yeah we live so unconsciously so often and we just kind of float through life and then something hits us and we're not ready for it but the more consciously we can live the more we can really um be in charge of our own happiness and in charge of our own uh path and have more um Power in a good way good power Concepts and thank you so much for being with us today it's been so great I a great admirer of your work your books are fantastic I I listen to Santander at your app regularly so I'm used to hearing your voice it sues me greatly and I I've done quite a few meditations with my youngest son as well and um yeah it's always been very helpful and useful so thank you so much for your time and where can people find you because I'm sure so many people listening will want to obviously download your app Sam Sam 10. buy your books but also just hear more from you um so if you look me up online then then the the talks I give are usually advertised there and I I go around giving talks give workshops retreats everything's online these days you can find out find me somewhere I've got a website get alongtubton.com and on there it's it's all there thank you so much for your time really appreciate it thank you thank you

Channel: Unquestionable

Views: 6,359

Keywords: self-development, self-help, mental health, business, relationships, creatives, celebrities, psychology

Id: CEi2UEx0QsU

Length: 53min 28sec (3208 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2023