Hey, everybody. Welcome or welcome back to "Rollback". "Rollback" is the very special version of the podcast where we share the best conversations from our pre-video catalog with you on YouTube for the very first time. And today's episode was a bit of a personal thrill for me. Because despite having a great appreciation for the benefits of meditation, consistency and momentum alluded me for many years. That is, until I discovered Headspace, which you're probably familiar is a mobile app prepackaged with an endless rotation of very accessible guided meditation programs voiced by the company's founder, and today's guest, Andy Puddicombe. Originally released in April of 2015, this is a thoughtful conversation that delves deep into the power of meditation practices, as well as Andy's quite fantastical personal story. It's a personal story that involves dropping out of university to study meditation in the Himalayas. Becoming ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, then training at Moscow State Circus, which is just wild. And eventually returning to London to draw up the plans for what would later become Headspace. And so with that, I sincerely hope you enjoy this exchange with the monk turned mainstream meditation maven, Andy Puddicombe. (graphics whooshing) In the booth at Headspace HQ. This is where the magic happens, right? Right here? That's what I'm told. I'm a little starstruck. All of that information coming into my head every morning happens right in this tiny room. A lot of hours in here. I know, how many, I mean, how does that work? Are you in here every day or do you have scheduled time once a week where you come in here? Not at the moment. So in the past we've done somewhere, we reckon it's probably been about 700 hours total in the studio. A lot of that was done in the London office actually, before we moved out to LA. But I tend to kind of schedule in a week at a time. So I'll spend like a week on a pack, on a 30 day pack. Yeah, and I'm in here most days. You come in, I mean, are these one takes? 'Cause I'm listening to it and I'm thinking, how much is this scripted, or is he just so good at this he just riffs it?
Do you know what? None of it's scripted. Really? So I go in, and I usually try and do maybe something like kind of five. Five days, in one go. I have one line for each day. And it's just an idea or a theme for that day that I've kind of worked out in advance. But other than that, it's not, and it's a funny one. I actually don't like to do any more than one take. So sometimes you'll hear me kind of tripping up over the words and we could, if we wanted, kind of go back and do another take. But the idea is that it's natural. And we kind of don't mess around with it once we've done it. Right, and you just do it, you do it in real time. Do it in real time.
So you just say it all and then space it out in the timeline?
No, so I sit down, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm doing the meditation with you at that time. I love it, that's pretty cool. And I infer from social media, Did you just get back from Necker Island? (Andy laughs) What's going... I did, I did.
Hang out with Sir Richard Branson, what's happening? I took one for the team. No one else wanted to go. Right. Yeah, I got invited down there to do a bit of work over the weekend, to lead a few meditations and that kind of thing. And got back, was it yesterday, I think? It was pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, you were only there for like a couple days, based on Instagram. From what I can infer.
(Andy laughs) My forensic analysis of your photos. I could only post so many tropical island sunsets in 48 hours, no, I was there for, yeah, for two days, I think it was six plane journeys and something like two, four boats in five days. It was a long way to go for a short amount of time. To lead some meditation for it. But amazing. The interesting thing in asking people to meditate there. It felt criminal to ask them to even close their eyes. You look out over the ocean and nature does it for you. It's an amazing thing.
Yeah. If you can't get some head space there, where are you gonna get it, right? Exactly. Well, you're a, I'm looking around your office space, you have all of these young, energetic people working here and you're expanding, they're doing construction. And there's some magic happening here. And what you've built is really powerful, and quite amazing. But your story is so fascinating because you're a most unlikely entrepreneur. I am, it's a complete accident. And I have to say it is a massive team, it's really important to say it's a massive team effort. I'm essentially the performing monkey in this circus. And everyone else is working extremely hard and I just get to go out and talk about it. Well, you're sort of the axle around which all of these spokes emanate, I would imagine.
That's another way of looking. But I kind of look at you. And I was trying to think as I was driving over here, like an appropriate analogy, but it's very much like this sort of postmodern Siddhartha story or this kind of modern take on autobiography of a yogi, where you're taking these principles that date back millennia and trying to find a way to translate them to a modern audience so that they can not only understand what you're saying, but actually implement them into their lives to create sustainable long term positive change. I think that for me is the most important thing. There's a whole world out there of books, and in back in the eighties of CDs and now kind of podcasts and talking about this stuff. Discussing it, and there's a lot of thinking about it. But there's very little kind of application of it. And for me with meditation, more than anything. It is only in the experience that we get to see the benefits. So finding a way to, I see it in three separate kind of camps. I see kind of awareness. So, understanding why we need to do it, the importance of it. Providing a really compelling invitation to try it, 'cause until we try it, we don't know it. And then engagement. How do we keep coming back day after day for the rest of our lives? And it's only with kind of consistent practice again that we kind of really deepen the practice. So at Headspace, the idea is to yeah, try and create some awareness and education around the importance of looking after the mind. To get people to come try it, and then to encourage people to keep trying it on a daily basis. So there's this gap, however, between the education, the knowledge, the information, and even the encouragement, and traversing that gap into actually implementation and action. And that's kind of where the magic starts. So you can get up and try to talk about how important this is to large groups, small groups, one on one for the rest of your life. Yeah. But how much power do you really have over whether somebody's gonna take what, even if they walk away from that conversation intrigued and interested, what is the engagement rate with them actually doing it? And I think what you're working on here and what I think is really starting to click in is you really are bridging that gap. For some reason, maybe it's deep rooted in something you're triggering in the human psyche is working. Like I, just on a personal level, I've been playing around with meditation for years, the better part of 16 years trying this, trying that, this technique, that technique. And I have fits and starts, and I could never create any kind of consistent momentum. And I started using Headspace not that long ago. 60, 70 days ago or something like that. And I've really found myself doing it every day. I don't know why it's making me do it, but I will tell you, I was gonna show you on my phone. Like I have, one thing I did do though, that I found effective is I put Headspace down in the dock.
Okay. So I can't escape looking at it every time I look at my phone. That's a good idea. I'd suggest that. So I guess. I don't even know if I asked you a question but I guess the question is, how do you break down that gap between information and action and try to bridge that, and what is Headspace doing differently than maybe your predecessors have? Yeah. That's a good question. There's part of me that says I haven't got a clue. And then there are things. So the first thing I'd say is authenticity. So this isn't that Rich and I kind of went away on a weekend meditation retreat and kind of came out and thought, hey, let's set up a company. So this was as a result of going away for a very long period of time and doing nothing but studying meditation. And I'm a big believer in lineage and tradition. Doesn't matter whether it's meditation or if it's in learning to play the piano or surfing, whatever it is. If something gets passed down in a very personal way, over, nevermind decades, but if we start talking about hundreds of years or even millennia, there's something really, is like a refinement and development that takes place, which is really powerful, I think. So I learned from my teacher who learned from their teacher and that goes back a long, long way. And I think a big part of this is a very kind of gradual approach. When you come to the app, you learn, and you come back the next day and you're building on the day before. So it's this step by step learning kind of process. I think there's something very valuable in that. In the past, back in the eighties, you buy a meditation CD or something, and you just sit there and listen to the same thing every day. So there's no real kind of development of the practice, it's quite kind of static in a way. So I think that's one thing. I think what Rich, the co-founder and my very good friend has brought to this project is a degree of creativity, which has never really existed. If you look back at meditation, it's fine for people who are interested in that kind of thing, and don't mind images of lotus leaves and people sitting cross legged under a waterfall with a sunset in the background. But for most people, that's not really kind of their thing, and it's another barrier, and Rich has this ability to create a whole kind of world, a visual world, which is immediately engaging, which is nonthreatening, and which is very approachable. So I think those things, authenticity, creativity, and I'm gonna add in a third one, which is science, have all helped bridge that gap. So if you look at the science in the last 20 years around meditation and mindfulness, it's astonishing. In the past, simply, there was no way of knowing what was happening to the brain. So now we're not only talking about what happens to the mind, but we're talking about the physiological impact on the brain itself. And seeing that parts of the brain actually change not only in the amount of blood flow they get, but they change in shape and size and strength depending on our meditation. That's an amazing thing, it's a really compelling, again, invitation to practice, I think. Right. I mean, it's really having a moment right now. There is a zeitgeist moment happening. I mean, you've devoted your life to this. This is a long time coming, but it's really a convergence of popular culture with your interest and your expertise and your authenticity to get to this place where now science is interested, and we're looking at neuroplasticity. And I think you had, read or heard you say that, mentioned that there's maybe 30 or 50,000, or 3000, or three to 5,000 peer reviewed studies on the impact of meditation.
There's over 5,000. I mean, that's crazy there's that many
It's huge. studies out there. And it's happened so quickly. The early studies kind of go back maybe 35 years, but really sort of the ones involving FMRI machines where we can actually see what's going on in the brain during meditation, it's only in the last like 12, 15 years. So it's really kind of recent. But I do think that's sped up kind of this acceptance of it. Yeah well, it makes it palatable. Like oh, well if that guy said so, or, you know?
Exactly. And even in the corporate partnerships that you guys have done with Virgin Atlantic, it sort of gives it this perimeter of acceptability with the mainstream that allows people to sort of embrace it a little more readily, I think. I think it just gives you that stamp of approval and people trust big brands like Virgin, and they get on the plane and man, Virgin is saying it's okay, I'll give it a go. Right, right, right. And then you get to occasionally go to Necker Island. Yeah, I mean, there has to be an upside to sitting in this studio. You gotta get something out of this. That's so funny. Well, I wanna talk about your story, I know that you've told your story many, many times, but hopefully you'll indulge me a little bit because it's so interesting and so unique, this path to where you are right now. If it's of interest, to go, I'm happy to.
It's certainly of interest. You're always deflating, or deflecting this, But I think you, maybe because you've told it so many times, but I think for the average person to even have the opportunity to speak to somebody who's had this kind of unique experience that you've had, it's really fascinating. I genuinely believe, this isn't deflection. And I will come onto the story. I genuinely believe we all have a story to tell. It doesn't sound extraordinary to ourselves because we've lived it. And so we're used to it. And so it doesn't kind of sound unusual in any way. And that's what I love about people, and want to speak to other people. Everyone has a story, and even if people have stayed in one place their entire life, and been around the same people, there is an incredible story to tell. And mine just happens to have been, I guess it's quite varied. And it's been in a number of different places. But it starts with your mom being interested in meditation. It does, it does.
Encouraging you as a young lad. Yeah, actually, yeah. It actually starts with my folks getting divorced, going through quite a difficult period of time. My mom looking for a way to cope. And she decided to sign up for a course in meditation. It was actually TM back then. And my sister was going along and I was a bit put out that I hadn't been invited, I said, can I come along too? And that was the beginning of it. The very first time, I remember well, the very first time. I don't think I'd ever experienced a quiet mind before then. I don't think I did. Even as a kid, I had quite a busy mind. I was very active. I don't remember kind of experiencing that kind of silence before. And it left a real mark. From that one experience, or were you going back? Did this become a practice? Yeah, so it was a course. I forget, it was like about three months or something like that, the course. And we'd go back each week. I have to say, and this is very typical in meditation. I went along and I had such an amazing kind of first experience that I went back the next week, assuming that it would happen again and almost chasing the experience. And of course it didn't happen, 'cause I was thinking too much about trying to recreate the experience rather than allowing the experience to happen. So it took a little while to kind of find the sweet spot there. But I kind of played around with it on and off for a good few years, I would say between like 10 and 13, something like that. And then you had this sort of rapid fire series of kind of unfortunate occurrences that kind of changed the trajectory of where you were headed.
Yeah. So it was actually quite a bit later, That was probably like more when I was like 18 or something. 18, 19. Yeah, I would definitely attribute part of why I went away to this. And I was talking to a friend actually, who was there at the time, just earlier today. And we were just, it was Christmas Eve. We were stood outside of an old rugby club where we used to kind of play and we'd had a party there that night and everyone had had a few drinks, and we were just standing on the sidewalk. And a drunk driver came down the hill. At the time, myself and two friends just stepped away from the group, just to relieve ourselves against the wall. And the car with a guy, they say he was a drunk driver, he lost control and just plowed into the group. Killing two people and putting, I don't know, I think like 12 people in intensive care. It was heavy. That's intense. And, you know. In terms of the imprint it leaves on the memory. Not only the sight of it, but the sound of it. It's almost like, it's like, camera, like frames of a video or something, kind of shot. Everything is just, time is a very malleable thing. And in that moment, everything was seen and heard, in such a kind of shocking way that everyone dealt with it, I guess, in different ways. And for me, I just never really felt like I processed that. So I just carried it around with me instead for a number of years, until it kind of bubbled to the surface, wanting to be dealt with. Dealt with in a different way. And then you had, your stepsister was also hit by... Yeah, right after, about three months later, something like that, she was... On a bicycle?
A van, yeah, she was out cycling and a van driver fell asleep at the wheel, and very sadly she died. Right, so you're dealing with some compounded, heavy grief. Yeah, it was, and all mixed in with that still kind of growing up, trying to find kind of your place in life, and be accepted by peers and all the usual kind of stuff. Young man, a lot of hormones. Yeah. (Andy and Rich laughing) All that stuff. Yeah. And you're starting university, nonetheless,
Yes. and you're studying sports science? That's right, yeah. I took a few years away. In retrospect I see it was not only through a sense of adventure, it was probably also trying to get away a little bit. I went and worked a ski season in the Alps. Did a summer season in (indistinct), I came over here and worked in America a little bit, doing some summer camps. Oh, this is all before university?
This is all before university. So you have this wanderlust. This is already...
Official. Yeah, from a very, very early age. And then I went back to the UK and started a sports science degree. And I was about, I finished the first year, I was just into my second year when I had this moment of, why am I doing this? I'm not happy. It's a really funny thing 'cause, I was having a really good time. Student life is fun. It's a good time. And we were going out and we were doing all the things you do when you're a student. But it wasn't happiness at a deep level. There was no kind of sense of fulfillment. It was just kind of temporary sort of fun. So you wake up the next morning and if you're lucky, you can remember what happened the night before, but you're back where you were before, which is, wow. Back here again. And for me that was something that was kind of unsustainable. But that's a pretty heavy level of maturity to have at that age to be so introspective. I mean, sort of the typical... (Andy laughing) Like looking back, I could have that same dawning realization about my experience, but I certainly wasn't about to sort of wrestle with that at that time. So what do you think it was about you that you were really the one who actually was willing to look at it and actually take a contrary action? Well rarely in life have I been accused of being mature. (Rich laughing) But I'll take it. I mean, that is pretty mature. I do think I grew up in an environment where that wasn't considered kind of alien. Mom was, she was trained as as a counselor, as a hypnotherapist.
You had a hippie mom. A little bit. And we went and kind of, we went along to meditation classes and all that sort of stuff. I think it was there in the background. So in that sense, there was permission, even if it wasn't permission for my peers who thought I was completely mad. There was at least some permission from my family that this was an okay kind of thing to do. And at that particular time I was going out with a lovely girl at university who was heavily into Buddhism. Had just been telling me all about kind of these monks and nuns in the Himalayas. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, that's a really good idea. And it was just, something kind of happened. It was one afternoon. Just something, I say something snapped, but something changed. And it changed with such a degree of clarity, uncertainty, that I just knew. I quit college that afternoon and left. That's amazing. Do you know Sam Harris? Yeah. Yeah, it's what Sam Harris did, kind of. When he was a freshman, and we were, I didn't know him, but we were in the same class in college. And he took off after freshman year on a similar sort of search. And now look at the two of you being sort of leading minds in this arena. Yeah I don't know Sam personally. I know of him and I know his story and yeah. A lot of similarities. So you head east. You head to India. I did. You went to a bunch of places. Yeah, I was actually gonna fly. The original plan was to go to Thailand and just straight to a particular monastery that I knew of there. And then I met someone who kind of said, oh yeah, my friend's just come back from this place in Northern India, the Dalai Lama lives there, it's an amazing place. And I thought, great. Sounds like a good place to start. So I went there first. Dharamshala? Yeah, Dharamshala, yeah, that's right. These days it's quite kind of touristy. Back then, it was a little less so, I would say. And I went there thinking, okay, well I'll find a Tibetan monastery, and I found the whole Tibetan thing completely overwhelming. It's so rich. There's so much stuff going on. Visually, rituals, and at the time, I just didn't understand it. And I was so complicated in my own mind. I was just really... I just wanted simplicity, Whether it's like that idea of Zen, where you just sit there and there's nothing. There's nothing. Or whether the more traditional types of Buddhism in Asia. So I ended up starting there, then I did, I studied about five years in the Burmese school. Not just in Burma, but with a teacher in Australia as well. And back in the UK. And I would say the Burmese tradition is quite strict. But it's a really good foundation. Strict in terms of the practice, and the sort of ascetic lifestyle? Yeah, everything. (Andy and Rich laughing) Everything. I actually found it quite challenging. There was I guess the adventurous part of me that had this idea of what it was, and I really loved the idea of it. But being in it, wow. It's quite hard. Is that when you're practicing to be ordained, or once you are ordained?
Yeah, So that was when I was a lay person and as a novice monk. I see. And so what's a day in the life like that? So it varies. As a lay person, it's a lot more varied. And you might not even be in the monastery. In the monastery as a novice monk. It's quite... It's quite full on, I'd say. So typically in Burma itself, if you're in retreat. The day starts at about 2:30. The meditation begins at 3:00. And in the particular one that I trained in, it was about 18 hours a day. So nine hours sitting, nine hours walking. One hour of food. Breakfast, five o'clock in the morning, one hour of food, lunch at 11 in the morning. And then about three and a half hours for sleep. And that was it. Wow. Nine hours of sitting and nine hours
Nine hours of walking. of walking meditation. So there's one big room. So very different from the Tibetan. So in the Burmese retreats, there's one big room, and everybody practices together. And you all sit down one side of the temple. And under little mosquito nets. And you do your hour. The gong goes. The mosquito nets come up, and you then walk just backwards and forwards, very slowly, doing walking meditation for an hour. And then the gong goes again, you sit down. So you're alternating hour, hour, hour. Exactly, whereas in the Tibetan retreats, the longer term retreats. It's maybe a little less, more like kind of 16 hours, but it might be sort of like four blocks of four hours throughout the day, just sitting and no walking. And no sort of like acclimation period. You go from sort of British school boy to 16, 18 hours a day. Yeah. And I kind of, I think that was part of the challenge. It's a bit kind of all or nothing, just kind of jumping in at the deep end. And when I look back now, I would, often now people will write in and ask me about it. They're keen to go off. And I advise people in a very different way. I'm like, look. Start off with a weekend retreat. Then try a week. If you're up for it, go away and do a month. If after a month or three months, you feel like that's the way to go, great. Jump in. But I wouldn't kind of jump straight in at the deep end. Right, and so how long were you doing, were you adhering to this rigorous of a... So again, that's kind of retreat. So living in the monastery is different from retreat. Living in a monastery, you might do six to eight hours of meditation a day. And then alongside that you're doing cooking and cleaning and that kind of thing. And then you'll go into retreat for a certain amount of time. The longest retreat that I did was a year. And you do that all day every day for a year. And is it silent retreat? That particular one. That particular one wasn't. I would say about five to six months of it was in silence. So depending on the techniques you're doing at the time, you might be in silence or not. But even when you're not silent, it's not like there's loads of spare time to just hang out and chat about the, and what are you gonna talk about? The latest movie that you didn't see? Are you writing letters back to your friends in England? How are they processing what you're doing? It sounds like your mom's all on board, but what about the rest of your family and your friends? Do they think you've gone off the deep end or are they, sort of, do they have your back? Are they encouraging you? I think mom was on board until it suddenly dawned on her that she may not have any grandchildren from me. And you didn't even talk about the celibacy. Then she was less on board. My dad was kind of getting on board. It took him a little longer, I would say, to, he was supportive always, but took him a lot longer to get on board. My friends. I think they were just genuinely bemused. Because they'd been going out drinking with this guy, like a few months earlier. And they're like, what is he doing? My lecturer at college probably summed it up. He was, when I went and told him, he was like, yeah, you should just go get some Prozac from the doctor. I think there was that kind of response, like oh, he's having a breakdown. He's lost it. Let's just let him go and do it sort of thing. Right, but at some point, maybe there's a little bit graver concern. We better go get him 'cause he might not come back. They never sent out any kind of intervention parties or anything like that. Maybe they talked about it and couldn't afford it. I don't know. But I have to say, my friends, I was writing back. Not loads from the monastery, but the times in between different monasteries, I definitely kept in touch. And I've gotta say my friends were incredibly supportive, and the longer the journey went along, the more supportive they became. Interesting. Interesting. So how long does it take for you to get officially ordained? So that was probably about five, maybe even six years into that journey to take full ordination in the Tibetan tradition. Yeah. And once you're ordained, how does that, does your lifestyle change or it's just, what happens now? It does change, it feels... Although it's all about impermanence, there's a greater feeling of permanence in the sense that, you've taken a commitment. And it's not necessarily for life. In the Tibetan tradition, typically you'll go along and they'll say, okay, do you want to take a commitment for three years, for five years, or life? And so you can do three years. And at the end of the three years, if you're like, hmm, I'd like to carry on, then you might do five years. So there's no kind of feeling of regret when you walk away. It's kind of, you've completed your period of training. Yeah, I've found it a real sense of relief actually. Making that commitment. There was no uncertainty. You know often when you're not sure which way to go in life? Like once you've made the decision, there's a sense of relief that comes with that. And I just felt, I felt really content and kind of happy in my direction in life. And that was, you made a three year commitment or the five year? Yeah, so I made, well, first I went and did a year in retreat. And then I did three, I did three years. Got you. And at this point, are you in Moscow already? How do you find your way there? So I took ordination in northern India, but then I went and spent some time in Moscow. So Moscow. But hold on a second. So, sorry.
(Andy laughing) In Northern India, I mean, were you in the Himalayas? Are you in the caves and having that kind of sort of experience that you hear about? Yeah, I wasn't in any cave, I was lucky there was a very nice Tibetan Buddhist monastery there, which was incredible. It's not, I wouldn't say it's set up for Westerners, but it's definitely a lot easier for Westerners to be there, and there's not too much cave dwelling that goes on these days. Yeah, I mean, you hear these, this is an interesting question. You hear these sort of mythic stories of these legendary sadhus who are in meditation for just incredibly long protracted periods of time where they're either not eating or they're being tended to by sort of people, and I'm wondering. Or, once they pass and leave their body, their bodies remain preserved. And I'm always trying to figure out the demarcation line between sort of truth and exaggeration here. And as someone who's lived there, what is your perspective on that? It's a really tricky one, I would say. I think there's a lot we don't understand about the mind. And I think a monastery is an incredible environment in which to go and understand more about the mind. I think there are definitely levels of understanding of consciousness, whatever you wanna call it. And I would say it's nothing kind of terribly mystical about it. I just, increasingly, the more time we spend in the present. Not only do the more calm do we feel, but the greater clarity there is, the greater the insight into the mind is. And with insight comes a different perspective and a different experience of life. As to some of those stories. I've never witnessed anyone having kind of passed on and their body being, I've certainly heard plenty of stories like that. All I would say is I met people there who had spent their entire life in meditation. Like their entire life. And they were extraordinary on every single level. I would be no more impressed were they able to do that after they died than if they were simply what they were when they were alive. I can remember walking into, there's one particular kind of, it's kinda like the SAS of meditators. The Seals.
Seal Team Six. Exactly. And they're taken out, they're chosen at a very early age, having a particular aptitude for meditation. And they're taken away. Of their own choice, but they're taken away from the monastery, away from the retreats, they live up in the mountains. And they spend their life dedicating it to meditation. And I went out of, very unusual, I had the very good fortune to go and meet the man who kind of runs this school up in the mountains. And it was just extraordinary. There was someone there. He was there, he was sat on the kind of couch as we went in the room, but it was as though no one was there. It was as though the entire room was just pure kind of compassion or love or space, whatever you wanna call it, it kind of doesn't matter. There was something otherworldly about it. It was quite extraordinary. And I'm a very down to earth bloke. I'm not big on kind of mystical kind of stuff, and hopefully that comes through in Headspace as a journey. But I have to say some of the people I met there were quite extraordinary and I've never met anyone like it in the West. Yeah, I can imagine. I think that, yeah, everything that you do is so grounded and relatable that maybe there's a reticence to even (laughs) go there. I just don't. I just don't. But I would imagine that surrounding yourself with that level of consciousness would make you start to kind of embrace a broader concept of our limited perspective of reality and how that relates to our abilities and our perceptions and all of that. I think what I saw in those teachers was a willingness to let go of self. They just weren't caught up in their own stuff, which meant there was just space for others. And that space, again, you can call it empathy, you can call it compassion. Doesn't really matter what we call it. But they were just always present for others. And in doing that, they seemed to always bring happiness and benefit to those around them. It was the extraordinary thing. Right. That's very cool. All right, so Moscow. (Andy and Rich laughing) Moscow, next on the map.
Yes. Yeah, Moscow came about, there was one particular teacher who fascinated me. He was an Irishman who had spent 12 years in cloistered retreat. So cloistered, no contact outside. And he'd done it at Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Scotland. And I was just fascinated by his journey, and I think very inspired by his journey, and it was a journey that I wanted to kind of recreate, I suppose. And I heard that he was living in Moscow and teaching in Moscow. And, so I moved to Moscow. It was really just seeking this guy out. Yeah. To get some teachings from him. And in the end we ended up, yeah, I stayed in Moscow, and then we went together to India and I took ordination as as a monk there. And then eventually kind of went back to Moscow and taught in the meditation center in Moscow. And what was that like living the life? I mean, it's a juxtaposition of so many bizarre things at once, you know? Just a monk alone, no matter where, but then a monk in Moscow, I can't imagine. That was, even now when I look back, I there's a part of me that goes, what were you doing? Seriously. I can remember, it was a time. Moscow's always a challenging place. I have to say, I love it as a city. It still kind of feels like home to me now. But I can remember walking down the street, I'd regularly get stopped by the police. They're not big fans of religious expression in Russia. And they'd be asking for papers and things. I can remember walking through the metro station one day, and a guy just running, charging at me and just rugby tackling me. He thought I was a Hare Krishna. So break down the attire though, are you wearing like a red skirt? Think the Dalai Lama kind of type outfit. So a maroon kind of/ And so essentially for people who aren't familiar with that, it's a bald headed guy in a purple skirt. For people walking up and down the streets in Moscow, that's what they saw. They just saw a bald-headed guy in a purple skirt. And it was alien. And alien things tend to kind of freak us out a bit. It's so funny looking at you now, 'cause you have your very trendy trainers on and you're very dapper and bespoke and all these things. Except for the bald head. Then I can see the trappings of the attire. But that's interesting. So how long were you in Moscow then? So I guess you were there twice, but the second time. Yeah, all together. I stayed thereafter then for probably about another two and a half years, something like that. But is that where you kind of, the end of your tenure as a monk sort of wound down?
Exactly. And I was undecided. I was genuinely not sure whether I was gonna keep doing what I was doing, or whether I was gonna change. And I actually went to see one of my teachers in India. And it was someone I had a huge amount of trust in. And I actually handed over the responsibility of the decision to him and I said, look, if you think I should do this for life, I'll do it for life. If you don't, I won't. And he said, well... That's a pretty big decision to suddenly sort of deputize somebody else to make on your behalf.
Yeah! (Andy and Rich laughing) Here, you can decide what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. Some may say that's just avoiding the responsibility of making the decision. It's very hard to describe, but if you're in that practice every single day, and you have a particular teacher and a feeling of devotion or whatever towards that person, I genuinely believe that he knew better than I did in that moment. So I trusted him and his advice was to maybe not take life ordination just yet. And I went back to Moscow, and I was coming to the end of my sort of commitment there. And there were a number of people coming along to the meditation center. And a lot of them were lay people. Some of them were expats, some of them were Russian. And increasingly I saw that the way I was living my life was so often a obstacle in kind of presenting those teachings that I was trying to present. People would say, oh, it's easy for you, you're a monk. Wait until you've got a wife and screaming kids at home. Or, it's easy, you don't have any responsibilities, you don't have anything to kind of worry about. Or it might be the dress. And it's like, yeah. There are some people who find that a bit challenging to accept someone dressed like that, or the fact that I smelled of incense, whatever it might be. There were a number of potential obstacles. And the more I thought about it, the more I kind of thought, yeah, you know, maybe, just maybe if it was taken out of this setting, this could be so much more accessible. Yeah, I mean, I think that clearly this is your dharma. It's sort of ordained that you're meant to be doing what you're doing. But I wouldn't say that you're the first person who's come up with this idea of trying to translate these concepts for a mainstream society. So in that regard, how do you conceptualize what has made what you're doing successful? And if somebody were to ask me my opinion of that for you, I would say that you're an extraordinary communicator. You have an ability and agility and adeptness to be able to convey these principles, distill them down to their very core essence in a way that's sort of palatable. Not, palatable is the wrong word, but understandable and embraceable I suppose, by anybody. Well, that's really nice to hear, and thank you. I genuinely, I don't know, is the truth. I think there is something in the experience. People have asked me to look at other people's kind of apps and material and things and say what do you think? And everything, we all, different things appeal to different people. But for me personally, I believe it's the authenticity of the experience. I couldn't do what I'm doing unless I had done what I'd done. In this sort of Malcolm Gladwell-esque 10,000 hours, you've trumped that and then some with the amount of hours that you put into this.
Probably. So you're speaking not only from direct experience, but just a vast amount of that. Yeah, I think there's something in that journey, almost kind of cyclical. It starts off very simple. It gets quite kind of complicated at some stage. And then it comes back around to being very simple again. But there is an experience. And without that experience in it, without having kind of walked that, it's very difficult to make it feel and sound simple again. So when I read books, sometimes it just feels so kind of complicated and unnecessarily complicated, because we are only talking about the present moment, and there is nothing complicated about the present moment. But finding a way to approach that and talk about that, I think, yeah, I just think that comes about from experience. Right And so you return to the UK from Moscow intent upon teaching. Certainly, at first, initially one on one, is that... It is.
Well, we skipped over the whole circus thing. Yeah, there was... (Andy laughing) Part of every monk's journey is the circus thing. There was a bit of a segue, and it may sound really random. And it may sound completely unrelated, but it has become an integral part of what I'm doing now. So I was in Moscow. I had six months left to run of my time in Moscow, but I wasn't a monk. As a monk, you can't do kind of physical exercise, you can't go and play games and things. And yet before I was a monk, I competed as a gymnast and I was a very kind of active person. And a guy in Moscow I knew was going along to Moscow State Circus and doing a degree in circus arts. And he said, look, why don't you come along with me? And so I went along and I was just hooked. I absolutely loved it. I'd been very quiet and very, for such a long period of time, very introverted. And all of a sudden there was an opportunity to express something physically again. And as a monk, I had nothing. I'd given everything away. Even my clothes I'd given away. So I was thinking, okay, how am I gonna go back to England and start this thing that I want to do? Where am I gonna live? How am I gonna pay for it? And someone mentioned to me that you could go back to, in London, you could do a degree in circus arts. And as I'd be classed as a mature student, I'd get a grant, I'd get a loan from the government. I thought, this ticks all the boxes. I can go and do something that makes me feel a bit more kind of worldly again. I can find a way to express this stuff. And at the same time, on a very practical level, I could afford to go back to England and live there. Right. And did the circus art thing though, kind of began in, that was sort of swirling about you in Moscow, right?
In Moscow, yeah. 'Cause that's kind of a big thing there, isn't it?
It's massive. So I probably spent about six months having one to one classes at Moscow State Circus, and then went and did a degree in London. And your friends are now saying what? They're like, well, he came back, but... I think, my poor parents. They just started to accept the fact that, okay, he's chosen this path in life. They suddenly started to feel kind of proud and telling their friends, yeah, this is what, and then it was, oh no, he's now a clown in London.
He's really lost the thread. So there was definitely, my friends just laughed about it, by that stage, I think they were just like, that's just his life. They didn't think much about it. And so you're learning to juggle and tight rope walk, and trapeze, all that stuff.
And trapeze, the whole, everything you can.
That's so cool. Just swinging around like a monkey for nine hours a day, five days a week. Right. And this is kind of like where you go, if you want to be in Cirque du Soleil or the traditional circus, I suppose. Yeah, it was not so much traditional, it was a bit more contemporary, so the emphasis was on physical theater. So a lot of dance and a lot of theater. And for me, this is where it becomes relevant. If I'd have gone straight from the monastery, there is no way in the world that I would feel comfortable standing up in front of big audiences and doing what we do. In the circus it was amazing. 'Cause you had to get up on the stage and they'd just say, okay, make us laugh. No material. You can't tell any jokes. Just physical, just make us laugh. And often, it wouldn't work. Sometimes it would, and that feeling's amazing when it does, but often it wouldn't work. And they'd just be okay, go. Until it kind of got to a point where you are no longer afraid to fail. And again, that's a really liberating place to be, to be able to go out there and do what you need to do in front of other people, but no longer be constrained by fear. Instead just doing what you do because you're doing what you're doing, and being okay with that. And I have found that just an incredibly useful thing in what we do at Headspace. This plays into my great communicator theory. I think when you're,
I'm sure it's part of it. if you watch your Ted talk or any of your talks, it's the comfort level that you have is noticeable. Yeah, and I really enjoy it. I really enjoy the conversation. What's also interesting is that it's this juxtaposition of the interior and the exterior. Because you had this life that was so focused on the interior for so long, and then you step into this very physical world to kind of, and there's a, I would imagine that in that sort of looking in the rear view mirror, that was the counterbalance in this yin yang kind of dance. a Absolutely. That makes you a more well formed person, I would imagine, to be able to kind of be in the world. I really needed something to kind of, to make me feel more grounded and to find a sense of humor again. I wouldn't say I lost it in the monastery, but there's not a lot of fooling around laughing. Cracking jokes. There's not. I wish there was more. There was a little bit.
It's pretty funny. (Andy laughing) There was some, there was some, but, it did, it just balanced everything out. And while I was there studying, I used to get up at 4:00, 4:30 every morning. And I would write. So you slept in. 'Cause this is, you're getting to sleep, you get two extra hours of sleep. It's true, it's like a lie-in. It's like a lie-in, you're right. You're right, but I was writing content. And I was writing the content which is now Headspace. So weekends, mornings, evenings, I would just be writing. And so there was never an idea that you were going to try to be a professional circus performer, this was just something that was interesting to you, but the intention was always to teach these principles that you had learned. Absolutely. I think there was a time, maybe like a year in, where I was just enjoying it so much. I kind of thought, let's see, I suppose a little bit of work wouldn't be a bad thing. But it was never, I was far too old to be a... At this at this stage, I was 32 when I started the degree. They even made me sign a special form to say, look, I'm probably gonna get injured, if I do, it's not your fault. The rest of the kids were like, they were 18 years old. What is the application process? Do you have to go in and perform? You do. But I was in Moscow, so they let me do a video audition. So I had some friends in Moscow with a video. And we... So you're juggling while like walking on a bouncing ball or something like that? That kind of thing. That kind of thing. It's very interesting. All right, so you're beginning to teach. And my understanding is that it's sort of something that goes from the one on one to small groups, to larger groups. And ultimately to kind of through your partner, Rich. Yeah. Beginning to embrace the idea of using the web to kind of scale what you're doing. Yeah, so I was actually doing one to one in a clinic. So it was a mainstream kind of clinic where people would go if they were struggling with sleeping or high blood pressure or anxiety, and often it would be alongside traditional kind of medical treatment. Sometimes people self referred and would come along. And I met Rich. Rich was just burnt out from working in advertising. Just completely burnt out, and wanted to learn how to meditate. And at the time I knew I wanted to do something more than one to one, but I didn't know how to do it. So we did a skill swap, and Rich would come along for an hour at the clinic. We'd do a session. And then we'd pop across the road to the coffee shop, and he'd give me marketing 101. And after meeting up, repeat about three or four months, we both knew that there was something there, and he was really excited about the opportunity, I was. And so we started to talk about, okay, what does it look like? We spent probably about a year working on just the brand. So what does the brand do? What does it feel like? How does it talk? 'Cause brands hadn't really existed in meditation before. And your idea was, well, we must have this orange ball. That was the main idea. I think that was that was the principal. This is what you're bringing to the equation. Actually, that would make more sense than, our original idea was this, our brief for it was, how do we create something that we could talk about to our mates in the pub, without them laughing about it? Now that was the brief for Headspace. And, maybe there's still a little bit of that in there now as well. And where does the orange ball come from? Is that from the juggling? It should be, right? That was a complete coincidence I think. Originally, I don't know if you saw the old logo, it was actually a person sitting on a chair, and it was just how, like a feeling of Headspace. So the ball was actually their head, and it was sitting on top of the body, and we had about four different colors for it. And eventually as usually happens, it just gets distilled and simplified, and yeah, and it became just the orange dot. Interesting. I think that, back to this idea of kind of the postmodern autobiography of a yogi, you look at Yogananda's life, and he emigrates to the United States with this idea of trying to translate these principles of yoga and teach them to a Western audience. And so what does he do? Well, he creates a bit of a following, and then he starts to construct these edifices, these ashrams, these giant, they're beautiful. In some of the best surf spots in the world. Exactly, Swami's in Encinitas. Exactly. That's why it's called Swami's. Seriously. If he hadn't built on there, there might be a Headspace construction going on down there right now.
Yeah, right. And of course the beautiful one in the Palisades, which are wonderful, but in 2015, that's kind of an outdated modality. So it's sort of, what was once the ashram is now the app. Because the app is the forum around which groups can congregate, and that can be done, liberated from geography. The app is your ashram, really. Yeah. Not to use that term, because I know that you don't wanna, you're trying to avoid that kind of thing. But I think it's an apt analogy. I think for most people, realistically, given the amount of commitments and responsibilities they have in their life, it's highly unusual to be able to kind of disappear off to some mountaintop and learn meditation. And there's no need to. I kind of would never have believed that before I went. But genuinely. The present moment is with us wherever we are in the world, we don't need to go to the Himalayas to experience the present moment. So if there is a way of bringing those teachings from the Himalayas, and kind of making them accessible to somebody when they, I don't know, they're sitting in the car park at work before they go in at the morning, or they're sitting on the train going into work in the morning, or they're at home after the kids have just gone to sleep for their morning nap, whatever it might be. It just seems like such an incredible precious opportunity. Or people often say there's a paradox. Meditation on a phone? Does that make sense? And absolutely it makes sense. That's where people are right now. So that's the place to kind of meet them I think. Yeah, I mean, there is that sort of inherent irony because it's about getting off your phone, but it's using your phone to be more mindful about your use of the phone, I suppose. I mean, it's just a tool. Whether you're using it for self-improvement or other things. Yeah. Yeah. But it's this idea, in the same way that your logo was distilled down from a head with a balloon on it or whatever, getting distilled down just the circle, it's this distillation of these principles and these teachings down to their very sort of core essence, and then trying to relate those to a Western audience. Is there sort of a, what is the reception in a more traditional, like what are your fellow monks or people that know what you're doing, I mean, do they say, oh, you're bastardizing this. I mean, when authenticity is everything. What is, is there some level of de minimus sacrifice that takes place by not doing it the way that you were actually taught? That is the risk I think. And I would say that's what's kind of kept us honest in a way. Kind of recognizing that there is that risk. And working really hard to maintain that authenticity. When I first set about doing it, I would say the fear level was quite high in that community of, oh my god, what's he doing? And definitely when Rich and I started. All the stuff we would get, like negative stuff, would always be from people in the Buddhist community. Always. Even when we just ran events in London. How dare you charge people to come to an event? Not recognizing that actually, if you go to any Buddhist center anywhere these days, they charge you, they have to. Because otherwise they can't afford to keep the place open. So definitely there was some kind of concern. And it's changed over the years. And I have to say, for me that's a really, personally, that's a really important thing, to have the support of my teachers. That's a really important thing. And I've chatted to a couple of people recently, there was a researcher we were talking to. And he said that a friend of his who's been, he was a monk and he'd been meditating for about 30 years, runs a meditation center. And now whenever anyone goes there, he gets them away from the weekly session. He gets them to use Headspace. Somebody came back from Nepal, and they'd gone to a monastery where a lot of Westerners go to. And when they go there, before they do any kind of the longer meditations, they're advised to use Headspace. So I don't know if that kind of says anything or not, but there's a sense, at least internally here, that we are not misrepresenting the teachings and have somehow managed to maintain that sense of lineage or authenticity. Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, that's gotta be kind of a tight rope walk, right? Yeah, it's delicate. It's really delicate.
Yeah, for sure. And I think it's always open to this idea that if somebody wants to go deeper, the resources are there to do that. a And that was always our thing. There are teachers out there who are far more qualified and experienced than I am. And there are so many different places you can go and learn about this stuff. But they will only ever attract a certain number of people. And we're probably talking less than 5% of the world's population. So what about the other 95% who have never even heard of meditation or looked at it or have thought about it, and thought it wasn't for them or tried it, and felt they couldn't do it. Or automatically turned off to it. Exactly.
Because of sort of reasons that have nothing to do with the value of it, because of what somebody's wearing or something. Exactly. And that's what excites me. Putting meditation in front of people who've never even thought about it or putting it in places where it's never existed. That's I think what kind of drives the passion. Well, let's talk about the science and the benefits. Let's talk about neuroplasticity. Let's talk about focus, all of these things. Let's assume that I'm a listener, I'm listening to this, and this is my first introduction to meditate. I mean, of course I've heard of meditation, but I'm not convinced that this is something that I really need to spend any time on. Yeah. So, number one, I would say, I never tell anyone they should meditate. I would just say from a scientific point of view, look. There are these research studies that have been done. And in these research studies, there have been many, many benefits that have been discovered. I would recommend that you have a look at those. If you're inspired to try, give it a go. Base it on, don't do it because someone else tells you to do it. Do it because you feel motivated to do it, and then continue to do it because you recognize the benefit yourself. In terms of the medicine, internally, they're not obviously with us in the recording studio today. I would always defer. We have a chief medical officer. Dr. David Cox, and we also have a neuroscientist, Claudia. And both of them are far more adept in talking about this stuff. But as you mentioned earlier, there are over 5,000 papers. Peer reviewed, published studies. Showing that meditation mindfulness can help us with everything from reducing anxiety, reducing depression and the relapse of depression. Decreasing the incidence of insomnia, improving heart health, decreasing our cholesterol levels. All the way through to, I mean, there's sort of stuff around chronic pain. There's increasing levels of empathy. And sometimes you look at the spread of this, and it's like, how is this even possible? How can one thing have this impact on so many different things? And I think we just underestimate the power of the mind. The body and mind aren't separate. We know when we get stressed in the mind that we feel it. We experience it in the body. We know when we are really relaxed and happy, we feel that in the body. So it's maybe not such a surprise that we see these kind of benefits arise. Well, when we look at the amount of time, energy, and money spent on sort of taking care of other things that are less important. Whether it's shampoo for your hair, or brushing your teeth. Speak for yourself. Yeah, right, right. What do we do to tend to our mental health? Yeah, well we, oh, I guess, when we get home, we pour ourselves a cocktail and we watch "Dancing with the Stars", and that's our way of relaxing. Or watch a football game or something like that. And that's not tending to, that's not doing sort of mental pushups. Not at all. And there's different ways. Some people, it's interesting, when I look at, we work with professional sports people and sports teams, and corporations, and for them, it's more about focus, productivity. And for them, it is about, it's like training the mind. Like you say it's almost mental pushups. For a very specific purpose. Exactly.
Right. And then I think for, I actually believe for a bigger demographic, it's more like, how can I sleep better at night? How can I feel a little less stressed? How can I have better relationships with those around me? And those things, they're huge. Make even a small shift in one of those areas in life, and that is a life that's transformed right away. So I take it that, although your doctor, before you left on your adventure to become a monk had suggested that you take Prozac, that Prozac at some point did not become necessary. I never took Prozac. You seem like an affable, happy guy. Yeah. I never went down that route. Well, it's very tempting sometimes, when a doctor or a person of authority tells us to do something, it can be tempting to go down there. I mean, when you look at, at sort of the state of mental health and the extent to which we, we're so quick to medicate people to deal with their sort of happiness issues, depression, et cetera. What do you make of that? I'm definitely not anti-medication. I feel that there are times when it's extremely important, and very, very helpful. So I don't think it's meditation versus medication. But I do think we have a tendency, and I would say this is especially true in the US, having lived in a lot of different countries, to over medicate, and to medicate a little too quickly. Someone joked to me when I said I was moving to LA, and they said, wow, over there, you can hear people rattle as they walk down the street, the pills in their pockets kind of shaking around. And I am constantly astonished not only how many people self medicate, but also how openly people talk about it. There's no stigma. There's no stigma whatsoever, and there is in some countries I would say. So I would love to see a shift. I'd love to see a shift in terms of prevention. So I think far too often in our society, we wait until something happens until trying to kind of fix it. And that's what the medication kind of thing is. There's already a problem. If we can get into a pattern in society, whether it's ourselves, the next generation, preferably both, where we're taking preventative care of the mind, where we're actually carving out, prioritizing, whether it's 10, 15 minutes in a day, wherever it might be, to look after, to clean the mind each day. We don't even need to get to the point where we have to decide whether to medicate or not. That's I think the potential. That's beautifully put. And to me, that's the future of medicine. Functional medicine, preventive medicine. In the physical realm as well. And it's no coincidence. We have 54 research studies on the table right now, 34 are in motion. And these are all reverse engineered. So these are hospitals, clinics, universities, coming to us and saying, we believe that mindfulness and meditation can be a meaningful intervention with these types of symptoms. Can we test it? And we are seeing time and time again, it makes a difference. And the more the medical community embrace that, the more I think we'll see it move from, right now, it's being seen more of a treatment. Management, treatment. But I think over time, it'll move from treatment to management to prevention. We're talking about the health impacts, we're talking about the improved ability to focus, we're talking about the impact on happiness. But for me, in my personal experience, the most profound impact that meditation has had on me is, well, first, sort of the watershed moment of truly sort of beginning to understand that there's a difference between who I am and what my brain is saying. The mental chatter of my mind. And then kind of tangentially to that, this idea of story. You talked about the power of story, your story, how everybody has a story. And we all tell ourselves a story about ourselves. And generally, unless you're an incredibly well adjusted person, you're usually not telling the greatest story about yourself. And you're hanging your hat on certain things that may have happened to you when you were younger. Yeah. And you use those as reasons to do or not do things. Yeah. And what meditation has given me is, first, just a greater awareness of that simple fact, and then tools and the sort of acuity and ability to reframe that story, to tell a new story. Yeah. To empower me to understand that I have control over that. Yeah. And I don't have to be a passive, I don't have to be a passenger on that bus where this is just, I'm assuming that this is just what it is. Yeah, that's a beautiful way of describing it, I think. So often words like freedom and liberation are used around meditation. Well, sometimes it can sound a bit kind of much to sort of liberation, but there is. It's a sense of being liberated. We let go. We put down our baggage from the past. We let go of our expectations for the future. And in that moment we're free. There is freedom. And when we are not free, it's almost self-imposed, but we don't realize what it is we're doing that is causing this sense of being constrained, and then when we discover that sense of freedom, I just think, yeah, life has changed. Speaking of life changing, you're a father now. I am. I am.
So how does this color your experience as meditator, as a business person? Well, I mean, compared to you, Rich, I'm a very, very inexperienced father. Yes, but you're in the young years where it's most, you know, it's pretty intense. It is. And I think we're almost six months in. Wow. So we have a baby boy called Harley. And he's a joy. Like every new parent will say, I'm sure it is both a joy, but also incredibly hard work. And definitely, look. Juggling Headspace and Harley is tricky, as it is for any kind of, I was gonna say working parent, doesn't matter whether you're working or not. Looking after a baby, a kid, that's a full-time job right there. And I think the demands of Headspace insomuch as kind of traveling a lot make it quite quite difficult. But at the same time, it just makes me really kind of cherish the time when I am at home with my wife and Harley, just makes me enjoy it that much more. Have you found that you need to increase your meditation game? Or have you found that now you understand why people give you the excuse of... I don't have any time. Yes. Yeah. I do. I have a much better understanding. I still believe, and at the moment, I mean, I only have one. So at the moment I am able to find the time. And I carve out the time. What is your routine now? Well, before Harley was born, I would get up very early. I would do my meditation, usually around- Very early is a sliding, is a very relative term with you. (Andy laughing) Are we talking 2:30? Not that early, no. Shocking, I suppose it's not that early. I'd probably get up at like 5:00. I'd meditate for about an hour, and then I'd go surfing with Richie, and then we'd have some breakfast and come into work. Where do you like to surf? If it's a working morning, so during the week, we just go local. So OP, or Venice, somewhere like that. But if it's the weekend, we'll go a bit further, further afield north or south. But obviously now, that's changed a little bit. My wife is up during the night. And so my kind of shift, if you like, is the morning shift, 'cause I'm up early anyway. I do that while she kind of gets some more sleep. So I tend to spend that time now between sort of 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning looking after Harley, we hang out a bit, we play a bit. Sometimes I'll do a bit of meditation. If he's settled, and quite kind of content, then I'll do a bit of meditation, and he just kind of hangs out. Very cool. Well, Andy, listen. I tried this meditation thing. I can't get my brain to shut off. It just doesn't work for me. Really? No, I'm saying, I'm not talking about me, I'm just saying, you must have people say that to you all the time. How do you respond to that lament?
Well, I get very excited. I get very excited about it. Because I know there is an opportunity for transformation right there. Because there is nobody who cannot meditate. And what excites me about it is that person hasn't yet found or hasn't yet been shown the way to approach it in such a way that they get to experience what they think it might be. And so it's helping them find that approach. 'Cause thoughts are thoughts. That underlying sense of stillness and calm is always with us. It's not unique to one individual. Some people find it easier to let go of thoughts and experience that calm. But everybody has the potential to do it. Some people experience it the moment they first sit down. For others, it can take a number of days, for others it can take a number of weeks. But helping people understand that it's not about switching off thoughts. It's not about clearing the mind. If that's the way you approach meditation, then of course you're gonna feel terrible about it, because it is the nature of the mind to think. So if we can kind of flip that on its head and say, okay. Instead, meditation is actually about, how can we learn to step back out of the traffic, out of the stream of thought, and simply be present? Then it doesn't matter, actually. if we can really feel confident and comfortable with that, doesn't matter if the mind is busy, whether it's quiet. So you can have the busiest mind in the world, and you're okay with it. My friend, Charlie, do you know Charlie Knowles? Meditation teacher?
I know the name, yeah, I know the name. Do you know Tom Knowles? He's a well known Vedic. Familiar. Yeah, Charlie's his son, and Charlie does a lot of stuff around Venice. He started this thing called The Path that they're doing. Yes, I have heard about that. With Dina, is that with... Yeah, I don't know her, but yeah. He has a partner.
Yeah, I think so, that's right.
Right, right. So they have it in New York. Yes, that's right. And Charlie famously says that meditation is failure proof. You cannot fail at meditation. Simply by virtue of the fact that you're doing it, you are succeeding at it. Because when that thought enters, and then you develop an awareness that you're having that, you can always bring it back. And that is the practice. Yeah. Right? Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. My teacher kind of used to sum it up like this. He used to say, there is no such thing as good or bad meditation. There is only awareness, or non awareness. And that's it. You can't fail. I love that. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Sounds good. But I do want to know what's in store, if you're willing to share for the future, for version three. Yeah.
Headspace, where are you taking this global domination of meditation? (Andy laughing) Well, in a very physical, tangible sense, We are taking it to English speaking territory. So very excited, we're heading off to Canada this coming week, then we're off to Hong Kong and Singapore. Scandinavia, Holland. So lots of countries around the world where English language is widely spoken. In terms of the development of V3, we're gonna do it in exactly the same way as we did V2. So V1, we built, and then we just listened. And we listened to feedback. And we listened to what the user wanted. And we put that together in a plan, and we built V2. And when we built V2, kind of, we are a lot further along the line now, we're closer to what we originally intended, what we wanted to build. We are not there yet. I think there are certain elements that are very obvious, the community is one. I don't think we've even begun with the community. At the moment it's the buddy system where you can have up to kind of five friends or family, it's like a gym buddy, and you can check in on them, they can check in on you. I think we'd like to develop this sense of community. So traditionally, meditation, there was always a teacher, and there was a set of techniques, and then there was a community, and those three things sit together, kind of supporting one another, like three legs of a stool. So we're really keen to kind of make the community a bigger part of it. But yeah, most of all, we'll listen to the community, even in terms of the packs. Right now, it's very democratic. We have a list of suggested packs. Once a month it goes out to the community. They get to vote on it. And whatever they vote on, that gets recorded as the next pack. Interesting. There's so many cool things happening in the kind of health space, in the app health space with these apps getting smarter and smarter about reading your behavior patterns. and kind of what you do and anticipating. There's gotta be a way to kind of build that in to sort of have, whether it's something as basic as reminders, but also, hey, here's the part of the day when your heart rate starts to go up, or these kinds of things.
Yeah. There's definitely stuff like calendar integration and all that sort of thing that we'll have in there for sure. And together with kind of reminders and things. In fact, there's even, it's fairly rudimentary, but there's a reminder sort of function in there now. I think one interesting area is wearables. And we've not really kind of talked about it. I've really mixed feelings about it. I think there is something interesting there in that there is the potential, again, for, it's a conversation to take place. So let's just say it's a watch. And the watch recognizes that your heart rate is spiking. Okay. It's kind of interesting, if your watch, in recognizing that can then suggest to you and serve you up a little exercise, a Headspace exercise to do. That's a really nice conversation to be able to have. It's a nice intervention to be able to have. The tricky thing with wearables is, meditation is not kind of goal orientated. It's about kind of letting go. And so it's a tricky balance of not getting people too obsessed in the data. So we're just playing around with that at the moment, just trying to find the optimum kind of balance. Yeah, that's very interesting. Very interesting. Because the typical Westerner needs that goal. They love, yeah.
They're like, hey, I gotta get through. And the app is sort of orchestrated around catering to that in the sense that like, hey, here's your first 10 days. Get to get to 30 days. Exactly. And so...
Exactly. There is some recognition of that. We tried to do it in such a way that it's still, it's sensitive of that need to want to kind of progress and go on a journey. And yet at the same time, there's still a sense of sort of freedom and letting go, and not trying to be too focused on the future, instead being more sort of concerned with the present moment. Very cool. Well, I'll be excited to see how that develops. Thanks, man. And maybe any final thoughts for the new meditator, some words of encouragement, or maybe just a tip or two that people could take away?
Sure. Number one, it only works if you do it. You can think about it all day long. But unless you actually do it. I met people and they've said, oh, it's not really working for me. And I said, how often do you do it? Eh, well maybe sort of once a month or something. Okay. Think about going to the gym once a month. Are we really gonna see any kind of improvement? Probably not. So prioritizing it. Unless you do it first thing in the morning, there is a very good chance that it's gonna slip down your to-do list. And you're gonna find yourself in the evening, in bed, tired, thinking, oh no, I haven't done my meditation again. And even feeling stressed or guilty about this thing that you started doing to feel less stressed about. So do it first thing in the day. Kind of almost attach it to something. So it's like, okay, shower and meditate. Or breakfast and meditate. So it almost becomes part of your routine in the same way as you brush your teeth or whatever else you do in the morning. But be flexible, if you can't do it in the morning, find another time of the day. Start off realistic. You're a runner, Rich. You'd never, I'm sure have never have attempted a marathon without starting at a slightly kind of shorter sort of period, right? Right, of course. And for some reason, I dunno why it is, but there's this idea that in order to get any benefit out of meditation, we have do it a long time, right? We have to sit there for an hour. We don't. Science has shown us that the benefits are felt and experienced within five minutes. And now do you look back on your 19 hours a day, going, what was that all about? (Andy laughing) Well, that's different. I guess like anything, there's subtleties. So be realistic. 10 minutes a day is fine. Download the app. It's free to download. And the Take 10, that 10 minute thing. You can use that for the rest of your life. We've had people use the free bit for two years. And they never subscribe?
And they never subscribe. And honestly, and I really mean this genuinely. We put it out there so that people who didn't want to subscribe or couldn't afford to subscribe were still able to use it, to feel part of the community. I'm happy if people use it in that way. So download the app, try Take 10. Prioritize it in your day and know that it only works if you do it. Right on. Thanks for talking to me. Hey, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So if you're digging on Andy, and you wanna learn more about him, you can find him on social media. You're on Instagram and Twitter. I am indeed. On Twitter, it's Get_Headspace, right? On Twitter, it's Andy_Headspace. We have the Headspace account, which is Get_Headspace, and I'm Andy_Headspace. And then on Instagram, it's just your name. Just my name.
Andy Puddicombe. That's it. And there is the podcast that which I was honored to be a guest. Headspace Radio, or Radio Headspace? So we're doing a little swap here. I know.
We're doing a little exchange. Awesome, man. I really appreciate it. Cool.
That was fantastic. Thanks.
Pleasure, no, thank you so much. Peace. Plants. (relaxing music)
