Strength in Stillness with Bob Roth | Rich Roll Podcast

I met Dan originally I would think that doobie would hit it off oh yeah for sure I met him at a conference several years ago and heard him tell his story and then I just reached out to him and I said I really want to share your story in my podcast so I went over to his office at ABC News a couple years ago did the podcast he didn't know who I was really but we just hit it off and we don't think I'm really hit it off so yeah I think I did his show then he came back from a show again you know and it's just it's cool that I mean you guys are very different people but in a certain respect you guys are both incredible ambassadors of this meditation movement that is exploding like crazy right now it's very interesting times it's like I mean I've been at for 45 years I've never seen anything like this right it's like all the resistance is all from everybody it's just Jim what do you what do you attribute I have an idea of what you're gonna say but I'm interested in your thoughts on what you attribute the timing to why now I think one generation died but what they say that science progresses one funeral at a time no I mean a generation that was very resistant is is passing but um I I think there's three reasons and the first reason is has to do with stress and the the understanding of the impact that what stress actually has on the brain and nervous system and the digestive system in the respiratory system and I remember 20 years ago someone said they were stressed that people made fun of them and to try and say that there was a link between stress and high blood pressure was just like false science but I think it's more than that I think there's this desire increasing desire that people want to and need to perform at higher levels the whole interest in brain potential of the brain and how you can optimize brain so that's the first thing and stress and on the other side optimization of potential the second is when it comes to stress where do we go you know medicine cabinet where do we go for ailments well there isn't any drug on the market or off the market that addresses that we mask it and manage it and the third is science science and more science and shows like yours talking about meditation making it more familiar lots of times just hearing about it just hearing about it mm-hmm what do you think is reason well I think stress is is probably number one I mean we're in an epidemic of stress right now it's a stress fueled culture most people when you ask them how they're doing they're gonna tell you they're stressed and I think that goes hand-in-hand with depression which is quickly becoming you know basically our number one disability yeah and people are starting to wake up to the fact that the pills that they're popping are really not working yeah that's they're temporarily masking symptoms that lead to side effects and other problems compound you know when you say stress do would you throw in anxiety is that yeah I would I would characterize that as a subset of stress because that's one thing that I was I was talking with some mother's parents and they said who more and more people are learning coming to learn to meditate as faint as a whole family not just the kid or the parent but the whole family and they they're very concerned about their kids because they're so anxious about everything which is insane the situation I know but they just they're just they're worried about school they're worried about how many clicks they have the interest everything they're just and I gave a talk in New Jersey that I was giving a talk to some teacher school teachers and they said we'll come into our second grade class secondary class if they brought 60 second graders together talk to them about meditation that's that's an interesting one and my first question was how many of you feel anxious every hand went up it's heartbreaking second graders how many who have difficulty sleeping half they second graders so we're I think genuinely were in danger danger of losing a generation I mean a generation spans from that all the way up to college kids and I think that's a reason that's fueling the interest in meditation because there's got to be something else right then than just medicine well it's got to be sort of not vindicating that's the wrong word has kind of a pejorative flair to it but sort of interesting for you as somebody who's been in this for 40 years we see this mushroom cloud you know sort of expanding awareness and and openness to these ideas that you've been talking about for so long and it cuts across all demographics it even cuts across put left or right politics mm-hmm nobody wants to be anxious nobody wants to be stressed and now we know when you have high levels of anxiety than your body did renals secrete cortisol and when you but cortisol is a stress hormone it floods the hippocampus in the brain which is a memory center so when that's the reason why if you're anxious about something you can't remember you know kid goes to school and they've studied hard and they go anxious and their hippocampus shuts down and then they can't remember anything and it's the same with the athlete you know whose can hit the jump shot over and over and over again when they're just there's no pressure but when they're pressure you you freeze so I think more we understand about the deadly impact of stress the more people are seriously looking at alternatives to just a pill yeah the cortisol reduction aspect of it is super interesting I was reading that sleep only reduces your levels 10 to 20 percent but meditation specifically TM can reduce at 30 to 40 is that yeah and this is backed up by the studies that you guys yeah published research and and now it used to be complicated to get cortisol levels you know you have to take saliva but you can get it from hair you can get it from a sample of where and so we're looking at with kids to see now we have a program going on in the Chicago Public Schools you should go into them yeah yeah so the University of Chicago crime lab which is a premier research institution three years ago or two years ago was very concerned about the number of the crime and the violence in these toughest schools in Chicago and so they put out what's called an RFP a request for proposals and to grassroots organizations in Chicago and we have offices David Lynch foundation has offices all over the country so 230 organizations submitted proposals gardening and all these different things and we submitted something called quiet time a proposal where you begin and end school day with 10 to 15 minutes of meditation and they accepted we were one of three so they gave us $300,000 for us a lot of money for something maybe not it was so successful last year they increased it to a million dollars and it was so successful this year they increased it to another 2.6 million dollars and the findings have been so marked in terms of reducing arrests among meditating school kids improving attendance and other school programs have found improved academic performance test scores closing of the achievement gap between people of color and the white population so huge transformation that I really think and I never would have thought this a few years ago I think within a few years quiet time or the meditation is going to be it's a voluntary but it's gonna be offered in schools that's remarkable wow that's crazy what is the sort of onboarding process of trying to just acclimate kids in that scenario to just being open to the idea of even doing it to begin with well well I I have learned and I know you do what what type of it you do a mindfulness yes so there are and at some point we can talk about there's three basic after this conversation I'm probably gonna be signing up for my the thing is is there's three different according to research there's three basic types of meditation because we know that every experience changes the brain in a distinct way you listen to classical music has a different impact and if you listen to electronic music so or you watch a horror movie or a romantic comedy so they know now from research that the three basic types of meditation based on what you do one is called focused attention and that's a concentration form of meditation that's your classic clear your mind of thoughts or concentrate on it your breath or the mantra but it's a focus it's it's hard work and that creates something called thetaba let me excuse me gamma brainwaves and particularly the front left prefrontal cortex and that is this is too much detail now please 20 to 50 cycles per second means you're concentrating when your kid is studying hard for an exam a lot of gamma bran right you hope he's studying hard second is called open monitoring and their many mindfulness techniques in this and that an observational tool where you observe your thoughts you observe you do a body scan you observe sensations in your body you observe the environment you have a dispassionate stepping back witnessing and in that witnessing there's an equanimity you're not caught up in the moment that creates something called theta brainwaves which is a pre onset dream that's six to eight cycles per second and the third is transcend itself transcending and that is no effort completely effortless and that is accessing not minding the thoughts but accessing a field of calm that already exists within everyone then the hypothesis so perhaps this would be a good moment to just define Transcendental Meditation in the context of that and what it is about that practice that allows you to enter that self-transcendent stage so I like to use an example of an ocean we are stuck you're on a little boat and you're stuck on the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you get these humongous waves 30 40-foot high waves and you could think the whole ocean is enough people but if you could do a cross-section of the ocean out there you'd realize you got these little itty-bitty 30-foot waves but the ocean in reality is over a mile deep and while the surface of the ocean may be turbulent the depth of the ocean is by its nature silent and that's analogous to the mind so the surface of the mind is this active thinking mind got a got a got a monkey mind all that and every human being thinks that sometimes I'd like to have some inner calm submitter quiet some inner ease some inner silence some inter focus and the operative word there is inner and the question is is there such a thing as an inner and if so how do you get there so Rick when we talk about transcendental meditation as I said a moment ago we hypothesize because there's no belief there's no philosophy here the deep within you and your wife and every other person you know and everyone in the world right now there's a level of the mind deep within a transcendent level of the mind that is already calm quiet peaceful and yet the source of our creativity intelligence happiness and transcendental meditation gives effortless access to that how should I answer this yeah how because I'm thinking when you're describing the other the other methodology of kind of noticing your thoughts and being the dispassionate neutral observer of the meanderings of the mind that probably best describes my experience so what do we do so in that in that it's a cognitive process it's it's attending and adjusting to you could say the waves so focused attention is stop the waves the ideas and thoughts or you're on the surface you're on the surface and the same with this when you're stepping back and observing the thoughts or obtuse surface in Transcendental Meditation we recognize or we identified that there's a vertical dimension to the mind that we feel things deeply you love your wife deeply you don't want to do something profoundly there there's that there's that feeling of silently an athlete you're an athlete there must be moments of the zone sure that goes way beyond what's up here and there's just this pervasive silence and so that quiet calm that we access in during meditation Transcendental Meditation and I'll tell you how we do that effortlessly so other approaches to meditation see thoughts or the wandering mind is not the enemy but sort of the the obstacle to a calm mind so if you could control the mind it's always a monkey mind it just wanders and you've got to rein it in or you've got to give more space between thoughts or and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who was a physicist it became a great meditation teacher his insight was the mind is not wandering aimlessly your mind is not just a monkey mind your mind is in search of something more satisfying you sit in a room and you listen to some wretched music and some beautiful music comes on in the other room your attention is drawn to that music you bring two books on vacation and one book is terrible and you can't read it another book is great absorbed in it for hours it is not people say well it's an acquired skill to meditate to do this mindfulness it's not an acquired skill to listen to the most beautiful music you've heard in your life it's not an acquired skill to see the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen in your life you're drawn to that and the idea or the hypothesis again I use that term is that inside of everyone in that transcendent level of the mind is a field of satisfaction quiet bliss peace happiness all the people have talked about it forever in Transcendental Meditation you learn how to give the attention I know this is abstract but you learn how to give the attention of the mind in inward direction like you want to teach a child how to dive you say honey stand like this bend over like that rest is automatic there's no forcing gravity takes over so when you learn TM from a teacher you learn how to just allow the attention of your mind to be drawn inward and without any effort as a matter of fact any effort stops the process without any effort your mind is just gently settles down and when that happens then you have alpha-1 brainwaves completely different than mindfulness and I want to talk a little bit more of that some of the other brain research your body gains this deep state of rest cortisol levels are reduced and you feel rejuvenated do I think there's a role if for other do I think TM is the only way of course not mmm-hmm of course not but in TM so what I gather from this description is that on some level it's about attenuating that effort right because the mind is always searching - do you give it something more satisfying to go for if if you if you're going if you're sitting in front of a TV and you've got 20 horrible shows you're just clicking you can but if there's a great and someone says oh my god you're lost can you get you terrible you can't stop so that's the mind with nothing satisfying on that horizontal level nothing is that satisfying but you transcendent just beneath the waves and increasingly so there's just that calm that silence that is very attractive and how do you access that and that's where the the personal instruction TM is never taught in just out of a book because if I teach you or a teacher teaches you it's how do you have that innocence how do you just let your attention turn within and then afterwards people go oh my god I had no idea mm-hmm and 20 minutes goes by quickly not like painfully so then how what is your perspective then on on all of these apps that are popping up that are introducing people to meditation they do that the you know see yeah but on some level I mean I would imagine there's good in that right you're sort of co-opting this device of distraction and and and I think people to use it in a more volatile and I teach a lot of people who've done headspace or calm or these things and it was a big help and then they did it for awhile and they said well is there something more because mine looks for something more right so I think their entry entry and for if it works for a person it works for a person but but there's something about that transcendence yeah and even we've tried teaching it online or something like that there's something about you're in the room with the teacher one-to-one for that first hour and then I'm with it and there's nobody else in the room it's and then when I'm with that person and it can be yourself it could be CEO of a company it could be a professor it could be a homeless kid and they have the same experience that every one of them can transcend equally well right and and the distinguishing thing here or one of the distinguishing things here is that rather than focusing on your breath or noticing your thoughts as they come and go your intention is on this mantra that you with you it's actually the mantra is the vehicle the difference is you're sitting in that you're sitting in Los Angeles and it's hot and horrible mantras like a car that takes you to the beach so the car is not the end in itself concentrating on a mantra the mantra is a vehicle that takes you to the ocean the mantra is a vehicle that takes you to your inner calm so the transformations that take place in TM and the changes in brain is not from the repetition of the mantra is from accessing those realms within those calm settled levels of the mind which we occasionally rarely access you know again when you're running or when you're listening to music or you hold a newborn baby in your arms and time slips away or you're with your partner and there's just a moment of unity it's got nothing to do with breath thought anything it's just silence so let's uh that's interesting let's track back to how you got into this to begin with how it goes back there like no flowerpower age in 1968 at Berkeley right well the funny thing is is I tell people when you think of what a meditation teacher would be traditional I ain't that guy no I know that's why we were talking about Dan Harris like how iconic huge sort of like him yeah so I grew up I was born in Washington DC I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area my father didn't this won't be long when I was 2 years okay he goes long as you want by the way so my father will for you're putting your audience to sleep my father was in World War two he was injured war veteran he got a job in San Francisco at the VA hospital fort Miley so we moved out at the age of three and I had a very political family my parents talked politics all the time and I you know debated issues and I tell people that when I was growing up I knew I was a Democrat before I knew I was Jewish yeah that's we just talked about that all the time now I vote for the person not to party but and I had I remember in high school I worked for Bobby Kennedy 50 years ago today I was working for Bobby Kennedy to be to get the Democratic National you know the the part presidential nomination and I had a column in my high school newspaper in Marin County and in what redwood high school and it was I was a co-editor of my paper and that column was called the gripes of Roth uh-huh so that was his sixty that was 68 he was complaining about everything so Bobby Kennedy he was assassinated and it like destroyed my life well I I he was my hero he was he was whatever as a 17 year old kitten I went to Berkeley in October September 1968 with the intention of going to law school to become a u.s. senator like Bobby Kennedy I want to change the world I was interested in social transformation I was interested in equal access you know just everybody should have an equal shot it shouldn't matter what gender what color you get an equal what you do with is your own doing so I go to Berkeley and it's insane right and how to just be but in a sane and I wasn't crazy person I wasn't a druggie I was just a guy who when activists who wanted to do good and suddenly I realized that politics wasn't gonna heal the soul of the country just gonna be more divisive so then I thought what am I gonna do and my mother was an educator so I thought all right educational curriculum and work with kindergarteners and and build up from there it's interesting that you had that reaction because it could have gone the other way and just confirmed your resolve to get even deeper into politics it was too much compromise by that time there was this thing of I had to be absolutely true to myself you know what was most important was authenticity and I was already I saw on both sides left and right too much violence too much destruction on the left destruction towards women on the I mean just destructive behavior and so I parallels with what's going on right now yeah and we have an office in on Capitol Hill the foundation who I teach people on Capitol Hill we can talk about that yeah but so I'm I'm stressed and I had a friend who was like a normal guy who said you should learn Transcendental Meditation and I said first of all wasn't it word in my vocabulary and I also said I got enough issues of my own religion and he said no you don't have to believe in anything cuz I'm a skeptical pretty enough to believe in anything try it and I learned it and it was so marked it was because I tried other things and it was such a deep relaxation in such a transcendent moment completely awake I didn't go anywhere and one of my first thoughts was oh I'd like to teach this to inner-city school kids wasn't I want to get enlightened yeah I mean from from the way you described it in the book which I love by the way I just got I'm just started it but I skip to the last chapter to read you know where you can tell your personal story it seemed like you had that response right from the get-go like this was from the very very first experience with it and I don't it was an innocent sort of thought it wasn't like oh now in my five-year plan for my life I was in this gap politic I wanted to make a difference in the world that was classic ventures 68 behavior politics wasn't it education I thought okay instead of sweeping reform I'll do one at a time and then I thought the thought was oh I'd like to kids little kids could use this they could they could use this so it was one of my first thoughts people learn to meditate oh I want to get enlightened what am i thought right it's interesting how the light switch just went on and in that moment you just you just knew immediately June 1969 so it's like all those years later yeah 49 years later and it began with it you were working in an ice-cream shop seems pretty chill no no there was a guy was working it if anybody your listeners know Berkeley on the north side of Berkeley is a Swensons ice cream is still there probably it is yeah and on the south side they had one near the dorm and a top dog they had so I'm work I used to work there and there was this guy named Peter Stevens who was the one chill guy who was normal who wasn't crazy and it was a kind person and he was working on a master I mean he had a master's anyway I went to see him one night at 10 o'clock in the middle of studying to get ice cream which only a kid can do I think and ice cream at 10 for helping my studies and I said where's Peter he's in the back meditating and it was like what what because a meditation if I'd even heard it was just kind of strange when he was not that way so I asked him about it and he said I'm not gonna tell you if you want it there's a TM Center across town so I went to a lecture and I remember at the end of the lecture was made sense and I said to the woman how much of this stuff do I have to believe in for it to work because I'm very skeptical and she held up a piece of chalk and she said you don't have to believe in gravity for the chalk to fall right opted same with meditation was this before the white album white album was is very interesting that was October 68 right right now this is being recorded February 11 12 yeah and and the Beatles had just arrived or just arriving in India to be with Maharshi mm-hmm and so 50 years ago they were there writing the White Album and then they recorded it and I think there came out in September oh right right as you're being introduced to this and then fast-forward to you going to spend time with him in Spain and 72 all right became a teacher loved it Maharishi was uh had been trained as a physicist in in college and unlike how he was portrayed in the press he was he was just a wise man who had smart new physics and he was surrounded by Nobel laureates and he was talking about there's this field inside that anyone doesn't matter what your religion or philosophy it's there and one of the first things he did when he came to the United States as he went to UCLA and Harvard Medical School and said you gotta study this the effects because look at me no one's gonna trust me I'm a guy from India wearing a dhoti right but he became a mainstream cultural figure after the Beatles went and visited visited with him and then there's all this controversy swirling around whatever may or may not have happened there but my understanding is that you know this guy learned how to do this from the great guru dev yeah and you know this comes from the Vedas and the Upanishads and it was sort of bestowed upon him by Gurudev like look go forth into the world and and you know be amongst the people and you know propagate this message for the betterment of all and you know it's kind of when you think of 1958 and 59 you had Sputnik II I mean you had just the world was so materialistic it was none of this there was no yoga there was this Matic Time magazine read recently did some retrospective and said ma Hershey was responsible not only for bringing meditation but yoga and even organic for all that stuff that came out at that time came from that period and he built up a huge organization nonprofit organization and one of the most amazing things is I meet a lot of interesting people who I'm not we don't mean celebrity types but I got to no Paul and Ringo quite well and I taught member of their kids and that was quite a yeah tell me about that well okay so was I had to tell you either stay with me so there was all this talk about John Lennon and you know he didn't like right there was a little bit of a falling out that's right right turned out it was like for an hour but it got in the press because I was teaching I was in Sam I was in New York City and I got a phone call one afternoon about four or five years ago and it was his young man on the phone and he said I'd like to learn to meditate and he didn't give me his name is fine so we just thought what why do you want to learn he said well you know I'm I'm a little anxious and my friends thought it would be very good for me and they were talking and he said well actually the reason I want to learn is I grew up in my both my parents meditated from when I was born my whole life twice a day they meditated and it was great for them and I think it'd be good for me and I said oh do I know them and he said John and Lennon and my mom Yoko right I said yeah kind of know them yeah but at the point that they meditated they meditated together so what was in the press was just sort of nonsense and Paul and Ringo continued to meditate and trying to support maharshi's work they've been big big I run this foundation which is brought it we're gonna talk about yeah but but George was like the main guy George leaves all in yeah from the beginning and he brought the others and George was also very close I mean they just saw Maharshi for who he was a person who was a simple man not a self aggrandizing but had learned from his teacher this meditation technique of effortless transcending it was very annoying when he started traveling in India saying that this was good for everyone there's no caste just everyone some people like the hierarchy and the elites and he built it until it's now thousands of centers all over the world and what was it like when you were studying underneath him and in that guy's presence there was one time I remember to this day it was like 1975 and I was in a meeting where you had Maharshi was in the middle and he was sort of overseeing this conference on religion he had all these great religious leaders on one side and all these great Nobel laureates on the other and they were just talking about these universal principles of and it struck a chord and I thought this is a conversation you could have had during the times of Plato or if you don't allow to anybody anytime wise people without an agenda wise people who are just interested in exploring and plumbing the deepest truths of life whether it's from perspective of science or religion or philosophy or art or music and very universal feeling timeless yeah is there is there something specific that you think you gleaned from from learning from him directly that you could have not learned from you know reading his teachings in a book or I think the way is good because I was around him at different times for over 40 years so I saw him in 1970 at a course in Humboldt State College and then trained with him in 1972 to become a teacher with thousands of other people and then periodically over the years for meetings and conferences and the way he was the the way when I was around in the way he sort of managed me is like a lot of room a lot of space use your own creativity figured out never told me what to do you know though I went to my guru and he took never just use your common sense be true to yourself those lessons be true to yourself listen to yourself and there was one lesson that I heard that I've never forgotten where a person a reporter one time asked Maharishi they said what's the single most important quality any person needs to have in order to live healthy have a better chance of living a healthy successful happy life and you know I'm thinking love compassion and he said discernment hmm the ability you have to have a quiet intellect and a good intellect and a good intuition how do I spend about my choices who do I spend my life with what do i what do I eat where do I invest my time because those choices are what brings back happiness those deep simple choices so I never forgot that yeah it's interesting I mean I think discernment goes hand-in-hand and with intentionality yes and sort of sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from reactivity which is the sort of function of the monkey mind you know we're all living our lives reflexively reactively and it's that white space in between you know what's going on in your head and the behaviors that you choose to engage that define what your life is going to look like right and discernment means that that that moment that moment of pause and and perhaps deeper reflection that allows you to make a better choice for yourself on the ancient meditation texts they call the bhagavad-gita they call about like a flame in a windless place so the intellect is just nothing outside you know you're not emotion you're just like calm and clear and you just see into the reality of things and they also used to say an enlightened person he defined as a cool mind and a warm heart uh-huh and I like that so you have that you know when LED intellect that just sees into the reality is not swayed but also has a huge compassion and kindness and loving kindness for others mm-hmm yeah I've noticed in people that have well honed discernment that they almost appear omniscient you know like they can see so clearly where they need to go and what they need to do and what's right and what's wrong like there's no hesitation in their in their perspective and a truly you know I mean the purpose of meditation or Transcendental Meditation is not just to get rid of the stress that you get from driving on the FDR the 405 it was always full you know self-realization I mean they talked about that or enlightenment and now today when you're looking at the research on people who've been meditating for five years 10 years 20 years 30 40 50 years you start seeing connections in the brain that start in meditation but because of the neuro plasticity of the brain those connections that communication between the front of the brain and the back of the brain and left and right hemispheres lasting in activity so you don't lose resolute intellect you don't lose that that kindness and compassion you're not overshadowed by anything small outside it's that's why I mean originally Transcendental Meditation was the domain of the warrior classes because you couldn't fight with anger revenge pettiness any of those things and you didn't want to fight it was a failure if you fall right yeah that's super interesting as a natural skeptic how do you personally reconcile you know on the one hand the kind of you know the Vedic traditions that are steeped in Hinduism and and the like and whatever you know you may have learned from Maharishi directly versus the scientific studies and the kind of predicament of the modern human and what they're trying to deal with as a communicator of this well first of all Maharshi repeatedly emphasized that vedic knowledge predates him into vincent's like 2500 years old that vedic knowledge has no geography has no culture has no it's just knowledge it's just like the theory of relativity is not a german-jewish reality because Einstein discovered it Einstein was a voice in a culture at a time who cognized that and I think that Vedic that when you talk about Ayurveda that's not a religious thing that if I eat this food it strengthens my immune system or if I take that herb it's just or if I bend this way and Bend that way so he really went out of his way to really say I've been someone used the example if you saw a catholics girl school kids doing jumping jacks jumping jacks aren't catholic it's just being used so I would say that Hinduism or Buddhism adopted these practices but in their essence they're devoid of all that philosophy all that sort of cultural baggage and I think and Maura she also said that every single thing if it's true from Ayurveda or step out you know sapota Veda which is like Fung Shui it will be able to be documented by modern science there's not a division right so you so I'll that rezulin resonated with me yeah yeah I get it I get it so you you start experiencing the benefits of this immediately and what what I think is interesting about you is you know there's a lot of hype about all the fancy people that you teach you know like that that makes for good clickbait or what-have-you and there's some super interesting people that you've had the opportunity to teach meditation to but I think what's really cool about about what you do is that your heart is really in trying to help people that fall outside of this elitist rubric and it's something that you did immediately like your dad was volunteering at San Quentin right and that was kind of like the first place that you took this yeah I don't know it's just whether it's just sort of a hopeless sixties idealist or something but I've never been from the beginning when I learned this I always thought this is something that should be made available to everyone there should be no obstacle whether money or access or time this is something that should be every human beings birthright and particularly since the way I was brought up with my parents all whether it's prisons or working in the schools in Marin City which was such a diversion where you have Sausalito on the one side which is this fancy-schmancy and then just across the highway Marin City which was the at the time used the term ghetto you know in 1968 and I was always drawn ended to that to bring to those kids and not because I'm this do-gooder who has to work out something and I want praise it's like here's a tool use it on your own you know it takes me an hour a day over four days to teach it to you it's yours buddy or whoever take it make what you want of it and that's always has been my interest in and the funny thing is all these different people because I get asked well how about this person I thought okay let's say I taught thirty well-known people I've taught thousands of inners know no inner cities young kids veterans you know regular moms and dads but it's just one of those things but I don't mind because those people that I get to teach well they become mouthpieces they become ambassador in their own right and they're good people Tom Hanks is a really good person you know Jerry Seinfeld very good person and they on their own I don't ask them on their own they say how can I help and so they help raise the fund so that we can bring this to people who need it so you you have this opportunity then to begin to really scale this when when you end up connecting with David Lynch right who I would imagine some of you probably know for a long time but you guys formalize your relationship in this foundation that you created when in 2005 5005 yeah uh-huh so tell me a little bit I mean like I'm obsessed with this guy like what one of the most unique creative voices walking planet Earth I mean what in what a what an original human being David Lynch is so how did this is more true to himself than anybody I've ever met more true to himself most self-referral I look to him as a as a sort of a reference point he's an original I mean all those things are just sort of but the best thing about him is he has a huge heart yeah you know he started a lot of people start foundations and they disappear and they put their name you know David traveled around the world he's been meditating since 1973 the beginning of a racer hit he traveled around the world many times in support of meditation and he wrote a book and he did a a catching the big catching the big fish you should listen to on audio the only ways it is like yeah don't read it no no I hear him breathe it it is priceless unbelievable so what I've learned from him is originality and he always says in life you have to have final cut you've got final cut yeah his conviction his conviction for his own creative voice is unparalleled no there's no pun like Vermont yeah yeah completely no and he it's just final cut you just can't he said if the painter was painting something and at the very end some guy in a suit came in and said I want some blue in there you didn't get out of here right well why can somebody do that when you're working on a film and he said his only biggest mistake that he ever made was in with the movie dune where he gave up final cut to Dino De Laurentiis man and he said a disaster yeah disaster and he said you died two deaths when you give up he said if it fails and you did your best fine but if it fails and you weren't true to yourself it's impossible to deal with so what do you think is what is it about him that that makes him such a powerful fearless he's fearless he's fearless in his life like all he loves and is fascinated by let's just say a hamster this great little baby hamster growing up to his full life and he's just as fascinated by the laws of nature to watch that wolf that dead hamster decay know it sounds crazy I saw a video once where he took like a raw piece of meat and put it on the floor in his garage and he just filmed it or you know I wanted to talk about it well he says its laws of nature its laws of nature that create and the laws of nature that destroy but there's those are laws of nature with that little hamster than is dead and so why is it okay oh you know there's light in a day there's light and darkness that's a full day why is it that I'll only look at this and not look at that and so when some people have called him on you know his films and he's a meditation guy in who what's mr. bliss doing making films like this he said first of all an artist reflects the world around him or her and we changed the world I'll change my art and the other thing that is great that he says is you don't have to suffer to show suffering you know like you don't have to die to do a death scene just have to be empathetic and intuitive and be able to show scenes but he's not he's fearless I'll be watching a film with him and my natural inclination when something really horrible comes on this is just sort of like glam away and he's just and not in a weird way he just loves the whole thing right and one thing he said someone was on him about his films and he said have you read the Old Testament you know a million times worse than everything I'm doing well he's funny yeah he's really funny I'd love to get him on your show somehow I would I would kill for that that would be amazing and what I loved about the way you described how you created this foundation was how easy it was like you just said hey let's do this and he was like okay and then it just kind of happened without any grand design or plan it was like it had been my desire for a very long time you know I've worked in businesses and I worked in schools but always for 30 years teaching TM I've taught TM for 45 46 almost 46 years doing all this but always was kids kids kids kids kids and so at one point is just I was reading about the horrors that children face in schools and you can focus on the under-resourced schools but it's really across the board we're losing a generation and so I just had built up and I just said David I really want to start it we should really start this foundation and he said fine and I said I want to put it in your name I don't think he thought anything was gonna come from he said fine and then I said can I write a press release about it and he said fine and then two days later was like in papers all over the world and I say in the book he called what he called him he said what's a 501c3 so now today you guys are I mean you have millions of dollars in grant money that are being allocated to not only helping kids but what I love is you're helping you're helping inmates and prisons and also specifically veterans with PTSD I think it's super interesting so can you talk a little bit about this program I mean when you look at at veterans and I've taught many I mean when you took it look at the inmates and they've done research and across the board almost every one of them has suffered some trauma in their sustained or moments of huge trauma in their life nobody just kills somebody for no good reason but if you grow up in a violent community and they call it AC E which is acute childhood experiences which means some traumatic experience and if a child has three or four of them at an early age they see the father beat the mother they witnessing then they are on a pipeline to prison because it just skews them and when we bring the meted Transcendental Meditation again because the body gets this deep rest it heals the body in a profound way it uh knots those stresses and there's research that shows a 50% reduction in recidivism rates with when inmates leave prison eighty percent of all crimes are repeat offenders because they some kid at the age of eighteen ends up in an adult prison its penitentiary for doing something bad and then it's like a college for criminals you know criminal behavior so fifty percent reduction in recidivism rates when it comes to veterans my dad was a veteran I grew up around veterans those are a completely different story a lot of these were just kids 17 years old 18 years old they go off to Iraq or wherever they go and then one day there's a there on a tank and everybody gets killed but them and they come back like a shell of a human being and they can't sleep for months because of nightmares and cold sweats and then they learn to meditate and it's not an exaggeration to say that within a few days the first thing that happens is because they've gotten as deep rest they start sleeping through the night and we have a stud the Department of Defense just to lock this down to some science the Department of Defense several years ago gave us 2.4 million dollars to do a study on the effects of TM on post-traumatic stress on post 9-11 veterans comparing it to what's called prolonged exposure which is the gold standard of treatment and the study showed that TM was as good if not a lot better than prolonged exposure for healing reducing symptoms and one of the big differences is prolonged exposure is they show videos or films of people get tanks blown-up me and that they don't the veterans don't like doing that and they love meditating long answer to a short quiz on board who's seeing this and is willing to fund it to the tune of millions of dollars which is huge progress especially in the face of the opioid crisis that we're looking at right now and how many of these poor veterans who come back and are suffering are just hopelessly addicted to these pills that are just you know creating wreaking havoc well I think one reason why a Doran's like TM like anybody does is a year and a half ago they were healthy they were like it's not like they've been living and brightening up some they were just normal kids and then all of a sudden they're not and they know it and they're embarrassed because they are weakened and they're taught as a you know a military personnel to be tough and not to show any weakness and so rather than seek out help it was internalized and they try suicide you know 21 veterans commits because they can't admit and when they go to the VA if they get diagnosed and people don't notice if they get diagnosed with post-traumatic stress it's like a black mark on their record they can't get a job as a police as a security guard they can't even get a job as a crossing guard at a public school so a chilling effect on even resurrecting it to begin with and the Orioles they're given a handful of drugs and they're drugged out in their mind that's not what they want they remember still two years ago and they were fine and the beauty about TM is they learn a technique and they just go you never see them again they just meditate on their own they can't come back for follow-up but they don't need to yeah I think I read also in the prison context at some prison you taught TM and the the prison guard or the warden said to you I've never seen these guys sit together in the same room quietly like with their eyes shut like he just couldn't even believe it yeah that was at San Quentin prison where I was there when we were working with men on death row and men who were in shackles you know so when they came till you learned one to one from a teacher and so one to one in order to do that he was in Chains and shackles because a violent person and every one of them because it's not hard it's the navin that guy it's his nature of the mind to be drawn to something more satisfying and so they go for it so people say well why they take a drug because for that moment there's a relief from the pain it doesn't say afterwards but there's a relief for the pain and so they have that experience you don't it's not an acquired skill and you teach them to turn the attention within and effortlessly everything happens the transcendence takes place on its own size don't and it doesn't require a belief system it works whether you're skeptical of it or not no you don't have to be I don't have what if I didn't believe in gravity I'm still sitting here I don't have to believe in electricity I can turn on a light switch yeah that's like how the 12 steps work whether you are dismissive of them or not if you do them they will work I actually like it when you know it's often one person in a partnership one person learns to meditate and then oh I really want my husband to learn I really want my wife to learn but she's so negative and she's so skeptical and you know she won't believe it and I say I don't care right if they want to come and and take four days and I say to them do the four days hour a day if you don't like it after the four days don't do it you know there's no there's no it's there's no loss here try it and if people say well I do mindfulness or I do be pasta and I say we have to stop siloing you know I do this and therefore I don't do that there's many tools in a toolbox and these three different approaches focused attention open monitoring mindfulness and transcending they have different outcomes they have different purposes you don't say well i'm i eat protein so I don't eat leafy greens right it's like it's a balanced life yeah what if has there been long-term studies on the impact of this on people that struggle with addiction there was a study that just came out big problem with addiction is relapse so they go away for a 30 day 8 zillion dollar something but they go away they get off alcohol or drugs or any other addiction food sex and then it was a hyper proportion relapse and so they're just a study just came out it was conducted at Avery Road which is a alcohol treatment facility in Bethesda and the findings showed that in a control group that the people who were not meditating every one of them relapsed and the people who did who were meditating regularly there was like a 60% reduction they didn't relapse wow that's amazing like that the house big was the control group it was it was at phase 1 clinical trials like 40 and 40 now we're going for a phase 2 clinical trial which will be 200 and then the third which we really want to do is a thousand yeah my goal is highest best toughest most rigorous research so you can with largest numbers independent so you can we can change public policies and it goes back to my desire from the beginning was the effect public policy and if if the VA is paying gazillions of dollars for medication will why not pay a fraction of that for meditation right yes in their economic interest yeah invest in that as a viable alternative yeah I mean I'm I'm in recovery I'm in silver for a while but um you love this yeah no yeah I do and I think you know as somebody whose life has been transformed by the 12 steps of which meditation is one my perspective as a member of that community is that that step which involves meditation kinda gets the it kind of doesn't get the attention that it deserves it's part of it but the meditation there isn't really any kind of folk you don't know what to do yeah do it actually do it 60-seconds yeah no one tells them how to do it and so it doesn't really stick and so it doesn't really become an integral practice in that recovery equation for most people you wouldn't just if you had a physically I mean wouldn't I'll just go online and see what they tell me to do you know you go to an expert you go to a person who's a proper diagnostician who could prescribe something that's proven and I think the same way is with mine we we shouldn't be so casual we should do research you know meditation there's a lot of hippie dippie stuff there's some cheap stuff but there's also some substantive stuff and learn from a teacher who knows what she or he is doing you know you have a certified teacher one of the big problems and I have a lot of friends in the mindfulness field and Sharon Salzberg was telling me that she said problem with mindfulness now is they lost their brand anybody can say they're doing whatever and so science doesn't know what it is if you do a mindfulness program at a school in Spokane what are you doing in same circle yeah there's no control whereas with TM it's specific it's it's absolutely precise and the training program is high level of certification right and it involves doing 20 minutes of this practice twice a day yes actually once in the morning for 20 minutes you get up 20 minutes earlier and you people say I'm not gonna give up my time right my sleep and say no no it's better than sleep it's deeper than sleep and then sometime in the afternoon or early evening before dinner so the morning is like rejuvenating and you have a high level of energy that takes you sustained so you don't need multiple cups of coffee and that sort of thing and makes you more resilient and then you do it at the end of the day to sort of wash off the stresses of the day whatever you've picked up and be more present with your partner with what you're doing in the evening and sleep much better at night so traditionally for thousands of years it used to be Dawn had done at dawn and dusk but it was first thing morning and afternoon do you ever miss yeah of course yeah I mean it I try not to and while you're human most people say I don't have time or I don't know how I'm gonna make the time but like myself like a good alcoholic I'm like will more must be better right when I was talking to Dan Harris he told me that he's experimenting right now with meditating 2 hours a day because he wants to just see you know like he wants to like he wants to come to you you do yeah well I would imagine would just to see like what that what would happen if he does he must be missing his wife I was actually no we can close but I was actually talking to this businessman and in New York who was with his 12 year old son and they were sent by his wife was meditating and I think the wife took this son aside and gave him some tips on what to say so the husband was saying you know I'd like to learn how to do it I don't think I can do it because my mind is so busy but I don't have the time I just don't have the time 20 minutes - I sit down all the time so the kid said dad there's 1440 minutes in a day you don't have 40 minutes and then this is where the mom came in for self-care uh-huh so and the fact is it has to be a priority the trick the trajectory the trajectory that we are all on as a society as a culture as individuals is not sustainable it's just not sustainable we're falling apart and so this is an intervention this is my own intervention I'm going to take 20 minutes from my morning find it get up earlier I'm going to take 20 minutes in the afternoon for myself and then the rest of the world will adjust and the nice thing about this is so many people who come say I could never close my eyes for two minutes much less twenty and because this meditation is so enjoyable the experience is so satisfying 20 minutes flies by just flies by I think even beyond that there is a weird spiritual equation that takes place where time bends in on it on itself and because by virtue of doing a practice like this you suddenly have more time because you're more efficient under day under more focused you get more things done there's no procrastination and suddenly that list of to do's shrinks precipitously compared to what it looked like when you're not practicing this sort of and can I close by just giving to the brain research on this so everybody wants to be more creative everybody nobody wants to feel there's your stag they want to grow they don't want to feel they're stagnant or stuck in a relationship in their own feeling inside and their job they want to grow and so a lot of very creative people I teach a lot of very creative people and so I was curious what's the brain mechanism of a creative what's a creative brain and they say that there's three they used to think that there was regions of the brain which govern creativity oh the right hemisphere that's the creative side and then though they are the sciences it's not it's not regions its networks its connections and there's three networks that are involved in the creative process the first is called the prefrontal cortex which is the executive network the executive control center that's focused concentration judgment planning that's attention focus then the other element opposite of that is called the imagination network or the clunky name default mode Network and that part of your brain gets awakened when you take a hot shower go for a run we're not like in front of the computer typing and figuring it out then there's a third part of the brain called just say it's the what navigates it shuts down when you need to focus it shuts down the the imagination center and when you are sort of blue skying it shuts that down the the attention sorry this is complicated but a creative person and meditation develops this has both networks functioning at the same time because those neural pathways are communicating it's right increased if that's rising so that means you can focus but not lose the right the wandering to open the imagination and you can have the imagination but not lose the ability to make it real huh I'm sold Bob Roth loves with unity oh yes next I'd be honored to teach you no it'd be great all right I would love to take you up on that Irish when I come back and I'm gonna spend more time in LA I would like to teach you all right well thank you sir I know you got to get going Lynch yeah well say hello to him for me I'm going to the invitation is wide open for him to come on the podcast anytime the new book is great strength and soul in stillness so just came out February 8th right are very sick so brand new on the shelf so it's very accessible you can read this and like two days not only cool our to out yeah it's super easy and the best way the best place for people to find out a little bit more about you and your work David Lynch foundation org or TMZ org okay yeah great an excellent man thank you so much for your time appreciate this a lot okay really great peace [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 58,846

Keywords: rich roll, health, fitness, athlete, podcast, inspiration, motivation, wellness, spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, self-help, self-improvement, transcendental meditation, TM, bob roth, david lynch, david lynch foundation, russell brand, maharishi mahesh yogi, strength in stillness, stress, mental health, anxiety, sleep, ptsd, veterans, veteran health, brain health, creativity, author, education

Id: etzAIzwGYgI

Length: 60min 28sec (3628 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2018