Finding Calm Amidst Chaos with Ann Swanson | Video

[00:01:19] Jay: Much better. Jesus. That's how you start out, right? . That's life. You sit here and deal with every single. technical problem you could possibly have at the last second. that's what
[00:01:30] Ann Swanson: This podcast episode is really about finding calm amidst the chaos.
[00:01:37] Jay: So I'm glad you said that, right? So welcome to the Tragedy Academy, a show created to bridge societal divides in a judgment-free zone using [00:01:45] candor and humor.
[00:01:46] Jay: My name is Jay, and today we are joined by author Anne Swanson. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. So, Anne is, excuse me, holds a Master of Science in Yoga Therapy, and you authored two books, Science of Yoga and Meditation for the Real World, correct? Awesome. Tell me a little about yourself, Anne, and then we can understand why what just happened is a really good segue into this episode.
[00:02:10] Ann Swanson: Yes. I myself feel like I'm pretty like a type A recovering perfectionist, tend toward anxiety, that sort, and trying to get everything right has always been a part of me. So I never thought I could do that. meditate. That wasn't something that I was drawn to, even though that's probably what I need the most.
[00:02:32] Ann Swanson: What I was drawn to initially was yoga, like the physical practice of yoga for my anxiety and my chronic pain. And I would, yeah, a lot of people are drawn to the physical practice first, the [00:02:45] poses and the yoga. Absolutely.
[00:02:47] Jay: It's easier to get in touch with. Yeah. And it's looked at as a fitness achievement in how you look, how you're able to stretch.
[00:02:58] Jay: It's a whole lifestyle. It is. At first. When you first enter into the practice, if you stay with it has a lot of other deep meanings once you get through that first hurdle. Yes, but
[00:03:09] Ann Swanson: I did not get that at first because by the time we'd get to the point of the yoga class where we'd be meditating or lying down and going through a guided meditation, I would be looking at my watch like eyes wide open.
[00:03:20] Ann Swanson: It is time to go. This is a waste of my time. Got a
[00:03:23] Jay: smoothie or you can smell the Chinese restaurant next door. You're like, I'm done. I'm thinking
[00:03:28] Ann Swanson: about my list of things
[00:03:29] Jay: to
[00:03:30] Ann Swanson: do. Like I'm like ready to go back to work. I feel energized. I'm like ready to get back to it. And so I didn't really get it. And I felt actually quite anxious during that time.
[00:03:41] Ann Swanson: But then every once in a while, a teacher would try a [00:03:45] different technique, and one would work. One in particular worked. It's silly. I now know the science of it so I can explain it. It's called progressive muscle relaxation, but I didn't know this at the time. We can do it really quickly right now as you're listening.
[00:03:59] Ann Swanson: You could do it. Oh,
[00:04:00] Jay: sure. Absolutely. Let's do this. So in a yoga
[00:04:02] Ann Swanson: class, you do it from head to toe. You squeeze each. body part. We're just going to do our shoulders because that's where most people hold a lot of tension. So take your shoulders and squeeze them up toward your ears. Like literally squeeze them as much as you can.
[00:04:14] Ann Swanson: Even squeeze your face, pucker your lips, squint your eyes and sigh it out. We're going to do it two more times to really get that tension out. Yes.
[00:04:23] Jay: Now that I've made a fool of myself on camera real quick. Let's do it two more times. I look like an angry toddler with a beard.
[00:04:30] Ann Swanson: squeeze, squeeze. And sigh it out.
[00:04:37] Ann Swanson: Last one. Inhale, squeeze.
[00:04:44] Ann Swanson: Let it [00:04:45] go. And then feel your shoulders drop. And actually, both of our shoulders are lower, like I can see it in the camera. They're physically lower. So you can feel this weight as if it's been taken off of your shoulders. It feels like a little lighter, your neck feels a little longer, and you feel a lightness in that area.
[00:05:05] Ann Swanson: A lot of times we're squeezing. areas of our body, but especially those upper trapezius muscles, the shoulders were like, as we're typing and texting and stressed out, we squeeze them, and we don't even know. So, number one, we're teaching our body the difference between tensing, tensing, and relaxation.
[00:05:22] Ann Swanson: And number two, the muscle fibers, if we zoom into them after they squeeze and get closer together, have a greater capacity to lengthen and release. So that's why they're physically longer, the, and dropped your shoulders. So if you do that head to toe, you're like, Oh, I feel so much better.
[00:05:43] Jay: You're also [00:05:45] expressing a very mindful moment when you're scanning the body like that. That's actually a form of meditation that you're doing when you do that. just. I don't know if it is by coincidence, or it's also probably by design to a certain degree. It's forced mindfulness and allows you to scan the body and feel where things are stored.
[00:06:07] Jay: Where things are stored is something that we don't correlate with mental health and stress and things along that line because you're talking about being tense in a certain area, right? And we carry it in our shoulders, but it can be, a manifestation of something that you're going through in your daily life showing up in your right hip.
[00:06:25] Jay: Okay. a stress, a strain there because the muscles, even though they haven't been stretched are not incapable of being stretched. So they're sitting there in that state, and they're taking on stagnant energies from whatever you're feeling in your day-to-day life. It's going to sit somewhere, or it's going to be like, [00:06:45] that family guy episode where it's I'm a tumor, I'm a tumor, it's, that's what, it's becoming until you find methods like you're explaining to start.
[00:06:55] Jay: Yeah, it
[00:06:56] Ann Swanson: is like a forced body scan because it's very active and, the issues are in your tissues. So as you said, they're stored, the body keeps the score, it's whatever's going on physiologically, it's felt and we just used the word tension and tension is a word used in muscles, but it's also used in stress, right?
[00:07:16] Ann Swanson: But also the word feeling, I love that in the English language how we physically feel our body. But we also have emotional feelings. They're so intertwined that they're literally the same word.
[00:07:27] Jay: Absolutely are. I love to look at things with metaphors. and analogies and to break things into pieces. And one of the things that I like about yoga and meditation, I like to explain that if you and I had [00:07:45] started out life as a nice clean towel, probably, like one of those hand towels, and that was you, went out into your life and you were going to engage in all of the activities that it was to be a human, which we're going to use the analogy of cleaning.
[00:08:02] Jay: I'm going to run through life, and I'm going to clean things. I'm going to be active. I'm going to engage with people, places, and different areas. And then what do I do with that towel? That towel has to be cleaned. And it is not something that you can do with water because everything is in the fibers of that thing, which in inside of us, we're not capable of, storing it the same way.
[00:08:29] Jay: But what I'm trying to explain is that when you get the opportunity to do yoga, it's almost like taking that moment to squeeze that stress and energy out of you. That darkness that you've [00:08:45] picked up, in that rag. Just like you would wring out a rag, you're wringing out. your actual, metaphorical energy in your body.
[00:08:52] Jay: You're getting rid of it, and you're going back out clean again, or to the best of your ability, right? We've all rinsed a rag and gone back and used it again, but that didn't mean we put it in the washer, right? It's not like clean enough. We're not going to rub it on our face, but it'll do twice on a counter.
[00:09:09] Jay: It's a little better. Yeah. And that's those little meditation, those little yoga, those moments that you can take throughout the day. I know you're an expert in this, so I'd love to give you the opportunity to talk about how people can exercise those mindful moments in their day to give them that opportunity to really get in touch with themselves.
[00:09:30] Jay: Yeah, those
[00:09:31] Ann Swanson: powerful pauses. And I love your analogy because I think, looking back, A hundred years ago, they would have thought we were crazy for doing our [00:09:45] weekly exercises at the gym. see you running down the street, they would have been like, why are you running down the street? You're crazy.
[00:09:51] Ann Swanson: or even dental care, the level of dental care that we have now with flossing daily brushing, electric toothbrush, tongue scraping, all of these things that we have evidence to support that we're like, yes, That's something I do every day. It's an ingrained habit because it's so important, and dental care is important not only for your teeth and maintaining them but also for the inflammation of your gums, which affects the inflammation of your whole body and your cardiovascular system and your whole health, and we know that now.
[00:10:18] Ann Swanson: And so it's very much emphasized in public health. It's normal to just routinely do that. I think a hundred years from now, people will look back and they'll be like, you didn't do your yoga breaks. You didn't do your one-minute meditations. You didn't do your powerful pauses through the day to, to reset your nervous system, to get you back into focus.
[00:10:41] Ann Swanson: You didn't do your daily meditation practice. It's going to [00:10:45] be that sort of routine that has become more and more accepted because over the past. In two decades, there's been exponential growth and research on meditation and yoga. And now we see, we know it's good for us, just like mainstream.
[00:10:59] Ann Swanson: And we see the neuroscientists doing it, the top CEOs, like it's becoming more accepted because it works. It stood the test of time because it works.[00:11:45]
[00:12:04] Jay: They've been doing it since the dawn of humanity. it is one of the greatest ways to get in touch with yourself and to make Leaps and bounds in your mental health and your overall state of perception of reality. I also meditate. I've been meditating for about five years. I've, only missed one or two days.
[00:12:28] Jay: The first time it happened, I, I wanted to cry. Because I had made a commitment to never miss a day meditating, which is super contradictory to what meditation is supposed to teach me. I had this weird little spot of ego that needed to do. [00:12:45] Yeah, I was attached to the fact that I hadn't missed it.
[00:12:48] Jay: Not to be able to say I did it, the fact that I had committed to something greater than myself at the time, and I was able to maintain it for that long. That being said, meditation allowed me to have, a moment to figure out my perspective on my own mental health. it allowed me to start to see that I was making choices to be in anxious moments.
[00:13:18] Jay: And it was conscious moments where I was grabbing on to things that had happened and creating and spinning alternate realities within my own mind, doing that anxiety and depression thing and living outside of the space that is now. And to me, I think that it's the human condition. When you say the human condition, it alludes to the fact that there's something incorrect about it, that it's got a malady of some sort.
[00:13:43] Jay: And for me, I [00:13:45] believe that malady is time. I think it's that we look through lenses at different things and hold on to them and create scenarios and fret in a moment that it doesn't exist. If you go into a waiting room nowadays, and you look around, nobody's in that room. Rolling. It's a very easy place that they're all in another place, not just scrolling.
[00:14:08] Jay: If you even took the phones out of their hands, they still wouldn't be in the room. We will fight everything to stay out of the now. The moment that you make somebody uncomfortable and sit there with themselves, they start to question shit. People don't like to question reality, right? I know I didn't. I would have never done this.
[00:14:30] Jay: it just took the. I think, you have to, I use the analogy, you have to hit your knees to plant a tree in order to grow into something new. I had to hit my knees just like I know that every other person will have their moment in time where they [00:14:45] get, they finally get their breaking point.
[00:14:48] Jay: Maybe they won't. Some people will and they'll find that there's a greater purpose like yourself, right? And what you're doing, you're making meditation and Eastern philosophy palatable to the Western mind. It's been given such a, it's not been given the respect it deserves. It's been tossed into a, it's been explained
[00:15:13] Ann Swanson: as being really like, something that you have to have chanting on in the background and sit on the floor, cross-legged on a cushion.
[00:15:21] Ann Swanson: It's gotta be perfect. Silence. It's got to have incense. You got to have this whole image. Just try to like. For me, with my business, I'm constantly looking up stock images to try to use them. And they're all so cliche, that's not what,
[00:15:36] Jay: I never thought about that. It's like, you're doing AI and you're like, show me a meditator and it's always in front of a pagoda.
[00:15:42] Jay: Yes, exactly. [00:15:45] It's, There's a lotus flower, there's a, it's always like this weird moment. It's not the stockbroker that's dude, I'm done for the day. I need this. sit. This is ridiculous. And I'm, pulled the curtains on my office, my glass that's normally or you're a construction worker, right? And you're on the forklift, spin it around backwards, look away from the site and take a minute
[00:16:12] Ann Swanson: or on the cover of meditation for the real world.
[00:16:15] Ann Swanson: There's a woman sitting on a subway or a bus and she looks like she's Chill. She's sitting tall. She's got headphones on. Everybody around her is hunched over their phones, right? Or their computers. They're so distracted. They're elsewhere. Instead of scrolling while you wait, meditate while you wait. You have these little moments in the doctor's office or at in the in commute, or you have these like moments where we immediately pick up our phone and [00:16:45] we start scrolling or we immediately start Going somewhere else, as you mentioned, like to the past or future, worrying about the future, and the past.
[00:16:54] Ann Swanson: Why did I say that thing ten years ago? Is Susie still mad at me? Whatever it may be.
[00:17:00] Jay: That's a mental illness.
[00:17:02] Ann Swanson: It is. Time traveling. Other creatures don't have this problem. Yeah, we don't know that actually. Other creatures on the planet watch us. But we don't think they do. We don't think the cat does, but I don't know.
[00:17:13] Ann Swanson: Maybe the house cat does because nowadays they all get anxiety pills like we do, too. So who knows? But,
[00:17:21] Jay: that's because they're a direct reflection of their own. Yes,
[00:17:23] Ann Swanson: they're mimicking their owner. Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:27] Jay: It's an energy. You can't drop something into boiling water and not expect it to get
[00:17:32] Ann Swanson: It's the energies are contagious, whether it's anxiety or calm, is contagious.
[00:17:39] Ann Swanson: So if you can cultivate calm amidst the chaos, it's going to be contagious to other [00:17:45] people around you, your family and your household. Or, if you're in a meeting or business thing and you're like, Frustrated because the other person's frustrated, but can you cultivate calm in that moment?
[00:17:57] Ann Swanson: Because it's going to be contagious. Now they're going to be more receptive. They're going to be more open. So it's a skill that also just helps you in life as well as helping you personally, right? It's going to help you have lower blood pressure, less risk for heart disease. Your genes are going to express in a better way.
[00:18:14] Ann Swanson: We see all of these things in the research. We can, do. research on the genetic expression. We see that it is improving with meditation. We see that your telomeres lengthen. So you live, you, can live longer in essence, or your cells are acting younger is basically what that means. So you're able to be more efficient and effective.
[00:18:38] Ann Swanson: So it's really, For your own health, but also you're going to [00:18:45] notice it affects your relationships and the people around you. I bet this woman on the cover of Meditation for the Real World, she's actually somebody looks up from their phone, they're like, wow, she looks really relaxed.
[00:18:57] Ann Swanson: I wonder what she's taking. I'll have that. That's what they're thinking. Whatever she has.
[00:19:05] Jay: Absolutely. energies are transferable. we'd be fools not to recognize that. And it works in just like you're saying, in calm situations, as when you were saying that one of the first things that popped into my head was in, when we're all in a heightened state of stress, there's something happening, some kind of an emergency, we're drawn to the stoic, calm, demeanored human immediately.
[00:19:35] Jay: We take our commands from that one. We're, going to, we want it, we need our blood pressure to come [00:19:45] down. It's co
[00:19:45] Ann Swanson: regulation, that's what it's called scientifically, it's a concept I talk about in the book. I like
[00:19:50] Jay: that, it's a yin and yang.
[00:19:52] Ann Swanson: It's, contagious. It's like
[00:19:53] Jay: squeezing a water balloon. On either side, right?
[00:19:58] Jay: If you squeeze one side, the other side's gonna blow up. It's still there though. If you're in a relationship with somebody in a house, know that you are transferring energy back and forth until you let your stress go on both sides. And then and only then will you have a fluid relationship between the two of you.
[00:20:18] Jay: It's super hard when you're analyzing everything around you, your past, your future, all these different states, and you're in this hyper vigilant scenario, but Again, like you're saying, it's transferable. So if you are the one in your group, you're going to give off an energy that's going to bring peace to your surroundings, or people are going to resent [00:20:45] you because you're doing something they can't do.
[00:20:47] Jay: They're going to move on with their lives until they figure it out. And you're going to attract people that like, exactly, I'll change. I want to be around those people. They may come back. that's the cool thing. If you continue to do what you're doing, which is the best thing you can do. If you continue to do that.
[00:21:06] Jay: Then they're going to take their cues. You become a solid fixture in their life. Even when they're not connected to you, they know, Oh, they're still meditating. Why are they doing that? Maybe this is the time I should go back and talk to him. So screw what they think about you. It's all about them.
[00:21:25] Jay: They're not, they're afraid to take a step out of whatever victim chair they're in, right? Because it's safe. It's comfortable. When you open your mind to meditation, you must face your demons. You have to look at them eye to eye. And then you find out [00:21:45] they're not real. We
[00:21:46] Ann Swanson: made it all up. Our mind makes it all up because our mind has a negativity bias and it has it for a reason, right?
[00:21:52] Ann Swanson: To keep us safe. I think it's the human condition and you can look at that as a malady as you mentioned, but I actually think it's a wonderful thing that my mind's doing. evolved to keep me safe. And so if I can view it in that way, I can be like, okay, the reason I'm worried about what I said 10 years ago or what I'm going to eat later is because my mind wants to make sure that I'm fed and I have social connection, but I do.
[00:22:16] Ann Swanson: So it's fine. And the thing about This is that meditation is self-empowering, so you can become that, that calm amidst the chaos. It's within you. It's within each of us. It's not like you have to spend a million dollars to get this skill. You don't have to take some fancy course. You can get a book. You can listen to meditations.
[00:22:34] Ann Swanson: I have them at meditation for the real world.com. You can get the book and then I have a free challenge For your listeners, it's five days less than 10 minutes a day, sweet with music that has been engineered to optimize your [00:22:45] brainwaves.
[00:22:45] Jay: Why is that so hard? Yeah, just
[00:22:46] Ann Swanson: ten minutes a day. Why
[00:22:47] Jay: is, why do people look at it, and I used to as well, Ten minutes?
[00:22:53] Jay: Ugh, sitting there with myself? It is said that
[00:22:57] Ann Swanson: if we all could just sit alone in a room with our thoughts, that would be the answer to world peace. We resist it. a guided meditation, don't worry, you're not going to just be facing all your demons and alone with your thoughts, you're going to be guided into what to focus on.
[00:23:13] Ann Swanson: So it's going to help you stay present and get into that brainwave state. that's where I recommend to start as well as in the book, I have these like one minute meditations, you can meditate while you read, so it's self empowering. It's something you can Learn, it's like, reading.
[00:23:31] Ann Swanson: We learn how to read. It's a skill. It's not something we're born with, but we learn it and then the whole world opens up, doesn't all these possibilities expand once you learn how to read. Same thing with meditation. Once you [00:23:45] learn the skill, then you're getting that boot camp for your focus.
[00:23:48] Ann Swanson: Think you're not focused enough to meditate. Guess what? This is boot camp for your focus. That's why you meditate. So you get better and better at it. and it's self empowering. You have it with you.[00:24:45]
[00:25:28] Ann Swanson: I want to tell a funny story that I haven't been able to share anywhere. I was on a podcast. Two days ago, I've been on like 100 podcasts now and this podcast was totally threw me for a loop. She told me she wanted me to talk about the neuroscience. So I start talking about the neuroscience and then she says, [00:25:45] I don't believe that.
[00:25:47] Ann Swanson: I think the negativity bias isn't from what you just explained. It's from demons and spirits that are convincing us against it. And I don't believe that meditation. is the way to get out of it. I'm just jaw to the floor, trying to hold my composure because this is a YouTube thing. And she's I don't believe meditation is the best way.
[00:26:10] Ann Swanson: What I believe is that I, you can, use what I have this skill to create a force field, an astral force field between your thoughts and your like this moment. So I can do it to you want me to do it to you. And I go, Sure. Okay.
[00:26:32] Jay: Knock yourself out. Let's do
[00:26:33] Ann Swanson: it. and she's I don't know, sending, having her hands out, sending this astral force field to me.
[00:26:40] Jay: Bless her heart. And,
[00:26:41] Ann Swanson: I felt more relaxed just because. I had a minute to like [00:26:45] pause after that loops that was thrown to me and I know how to meditate so I'm able to like, yeah,
[00:26:49] Jay: after even internal is sometimes you find yourself in those moments in life. I like to do those like cutaways. Where I find myself looking at myself in a moment and amused at the scenario that I'm in.
[00:27:05] Jay: Once you start becoming mindful, you're like, what? You're like, what the? How am I going to handle this? is this happening? But you don't want to be disrespectful. And
[00:27:14] Ann Swanson: she asked me to be on, too. We're laughing right now. She should have done some research on me. I teach about the science of these practices.
[00:27:20] Ann Swanson: This is absolutely crazy. although placebo effect, if you believe it's going to work, it's going to work, but the idea of being alone in silence, maybe that's good, but the problem that I have with it is that you have to pay somebody to do this. Send you an astral force field. That is absolute BS. I don't like that.
[00:27:38] Ann Swanson: No, it's within you. I'm going to teach you the skill, like reading, and then you do it on your own.
[00:27:44] Jay: This is [00:27:45] the tragedy. Yeah, it's a tragedy. So you can imagine the number of people that apply to be on the show that are looking affect change, right? And those people usually come with a set of steps and books and change your life things and the whole sales pitch.
[00:28:13] Jay: And. Our job is to remove that before it hits this situation, right? And doing that, I subscribe to the theory that if you donate to charity, regardless of whether or not It was philanthropic or from the kindness of your heart that if you continue this gesture, eventually there will be a moment because [00:28:45] you're closer to it than anybody else, that you will find the reward when you see that it has a positive effect on something.
[00:28:55] Jay: When you're supposed to. So if you want to twist a mustache and chuck money at adoption agencies, whatever, eventually you're going to see tiny Tim or whatever, and I think this is the same thing. If you continue to do it, eventually it's going to set in. You're going to find your way. Right?
[00:29:16] Jay: That's how I like to look at it. It's
[00:29:18] Ann Swanson: an investment. Yes. And it's an investment of your attention. And it doesn't take much. You don't have to do for meditation. You don't have to do 20 minutes a day, even. You could do five minute meditations, the 10 minute, you could do one minute meditations, that powerful pause.
[00:29:37] Ann Swanson: And we can do one right now to, if you would like to experience a little one minute meditation. [00:29:45]
[00:29:45] Jay: Absolutely.
[00:29:45] Ann Swanson: Yeah. So this is one you can memorize. You can do on your own. You don't have to pay me to have an astral force field, but if you want a longer version of it, for free, it's at meditationfortherealworld.
[00:29:55] Ann Swanson: com. But all you have to do is remember the five senses. Okay, so first thing you'll do, let's say the scenario is you have a stressful email, you have some wackadoodle person trying to send you astral force fields, somebody comes on your podcast that's trying to pitch and sell something bogus, I don't know, whatever the scenario is, you need a powerful pause, okay?
[00:30:19] Ann Swanson: So you turn away from your computer, that stressful email, and take a moment and look out a window if you can. So allow your vision to expand. If you can't look out a window, just look further. So you're not looking at a screen. Our eyes don't like those little screens. They like to relax. Your brain likes to see an expansive space and vision.
[00:30:39] Ann Swanson: So notice the lights, the colors. even if you're driving, you can do this one minute [00:30:45] meditation, but just don't close your eyes. If you'd like to now, you're welcome to close your eyes if that helps you. So it's all optional. And then you'll still notice lights and colors, textures, notice what and then notice what you hear from far away to up close.
[00:31:13] Ann Swanson: Hearing my voice. Maybe even hearing the sound of your own breath.
[00:31:20] Ann Swanson: Take a deep breath in through the nose. Notice what you smell
[00:31:27] Ann Swanson: and then notice any tastes as you exhale,
[00:31:34] Ann Swanson: bringing the attention to the physical body. Notice what you physically feel internally, deep to your skin.
[00:31:44] Ann Swanson: What [00:31:45] feelings are felt? How are your emotions involved in that? You might even feel compelled to move, change your posture, do a little stretch. That's totally fine. Listen to your body and what it's asking you to do. Processing the physical and emotional feelings.
[00:32:08] Ann Swanson: And then notice all your senses simultaneously, what you feel, taste, smell, hear, and feel. Your eyes are closed, you can flutter your eyelashes to slowly open your eyes and what Take it all in. Notice the effects just from taking that powerful pause, that one minute meditation. As you continue to listen to our conversation, you might have that sense of clarity you can bring with you.
[00:32:39] Ann Swanson: Now you're becoming more mindful and present.
[00:32:43] Jay: I appreciate that. I think [00:32:45] everybody's going to benefit from how that feels. having the ability to scan yourself is something that you should practice for the simple fact that you owe it to yourself. We don't give our own experience enough respect and validity and honor.
[00:33:12] Ann Swanson: Intuition, too.
[00:33:13] Jay: Because to be, right. Part of it's that
[00:33:14] Ann Swanson: intuition you're giving the honor to. The inner knowing. That inner wisdom.
[00:33:21] Jay: you're a hundred percent correct. and I like that, that you had, so for me, and, I'm wanna figure out how to approach this correctly. So I was listening to an interview with Terrence Howard the other day, pops up on my radar just like everybody else has seen as of late.
[00:33:42] Jay: He's a brilliant man. which was [00:33:45] not just because of the visibility to analyze the physics and, the different states of reality. but for the simple fact that he recognizes that foundationally, we're not expressing ourselves with each other correctly. And one of the things that he had said was that if everybody act acted like Jesus for a day, how would that impact the world?
[00:34:17] Ann Swanson: The same day?
[00:34:18] Jay: Yeah, if everybody took that moment to act as he did. Not. Religiously, if we put ourselves in the figure of the man that expresses himself with love to each other unconditionally, no judgment, you have to set that aside, right? And then you have to take things at face value. You've got to give everybody a hug equally.
[00:34:42] Jay: You've got to wash the other man's feet, that [00:34:45] kind of thing. And I'm not a religious dude. I respect the fact that he meditated. That's prayer. So for those people out there that are religious and hear the word meditate and think that they're being taken into a woo scenario, you might want to go back, listen to a couple of episodes that we've had.
[00:35:08] Jay: We spoke with a, nun that was also a monk, right? And we talked about. What it was to be what is it a monastic nun or monastic nun? so and like I think Mount Carmel something anyway, so cool So they do prayer the same way that we would do Meditation and still reach the same transcendental states I always like to point out that religion and spirituality and all the flavors of it are like a pizza, [00:35:45] right?
[00:35:45] Jay: We're all the same thing, we just have different toppings. We're still all pizza. We're all still pointing to the same shit. We're describing the same thing. It's just got some seasonings throughout it, right? Meditation is, it's not about some bald guy sitting with a whole bunch of other bald guys.
[00:36:06] Jay: No, it's not that. It's you honoring yourself with the moment and respecting the now. And you
[00:36:14] Ann Swanson: choose the flavor in the
[00:36:16] Jay: present
[00:36:17] Ann Swanson: that works for you. We all have different tastes. And that's even within the meditation world. There's the gurus that are like, my meditation is better than your meditation. My meditation is the best.
[00:36:28] Ann Swanson: Hey, for my program, right? And for me, I'm like, cut the crap. It depends on the person. And it depends on the situation. So some of your listeners out there might have done a meditation before where they didn't feel like it worked for them, or maybe even they felt more anxious [00:36:45] afterwards. And I would say to them, that doesn't mean you're bad at meditating.
[00:36:49] Ann Swanson: That just means you're doing the wrong meditation for you, or for that situation, right? I'd give it very different meditation if you're anxious versus depressed, or if you're trying to focus for a work project and get into flow, a meditation to do before that, compared to you're trying to wind down for sleep.
[00:37:07] Ann Swanson: Those are totally different meditations. That's one thing I was like, really aiming to do was, is show the array of options and prayer, is an option to combine them. but as you mentioned, some types of prayer are basically, Meditation. Carmelite
[00:37:28] Jay: Nun. Sorry, that just popped in my head.
[00:37:30] Jay: Keep going. Carmelite Nun. That just popped in my head. I completely forgot for a second there. Sorry. I was still listening. It just popped in my head. Carmelite Nun. Yes. Anyway, please. prayer,
[00:37:40] Ann Swanson: like the way we think of, prayer. I don't know the way I was [00:37:45] raised, Christian Methodist prayer was speaking to God.
[00:37:48] Ann Swanson: Thank you. This is what I want. It was that sort of prayer. There's other types of prayer. the Buddhist prayers were even, there are types of like mala beads and Catholicism that are, they're not mala beads, but the rosary beads that are similar to the mala beads and Buddhism.
[00:38:06] Jay: Mantra Hail Mary our father. You tell me the repetition of the same thing to get to a certain mental state of purity where you've wrung out your mental rag and your heart, whatever it is, you've given yourself that moment to be clean again. I think this is also one of the reasons why religion sticks around, that redemption scenario.
[00:38:29] Jay: I feel like we sniff around the fact that it's always now. So that means that there's a permanent reset button. So no matter what is going wrong in your life, you have the ability to be a new human at [00:38:45] any given moment. And if you do get the chance to meditate, you do get to sit down, look at the child in the corner.
[00:38:58] Jay: There's a child in the corner and that's the one that you should pay attention to when you have that longer moment to meditate. because 99 percent of the time, the things that we've taken on in our lives are just weights that we've accumulated since we had our natural childlike selves, right?
[00:39:21] Jay: We've picked up all these different personalities, problems, and situations, and we carry them and we hunch forward, we look over a phone, it's a sack, right? But that redemption for me and what I believe is that you can let that go at any given moment. It's like carrying around helium balloons with shit on them and then complaining that [00:39:45] everything stinks when all you have to do is what?
[00:39:49] Ann Swanson: Let it go. Or that weight taken off our shoulders. You'll tell your friends. We experienced earlier, like literally it feels like a weight has been taken off of your shoulders when you're able to let go and release and be in the now.[00:40:45]
[00:41:03] Jay: Truly love what you're doing and how you're doing it. I believe, that we should act like a lighthouse. And that what we do is our job and what we're naturally inclined to do and we repeat it every day. If we feel that is our passion, then that is what we're supposed to be doing. And other people will take their cues from you.
[00:41:26] Jay: Doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do exactly what you do. But you're giving them a license to be themselves to their fullest potential without judgment. The moment you don't judge them, then you get to reflect who that type of person is. You get to pick up that [00:41:45] authenticity off of someone else.
[00:41:46] Jay: And you devoting yourself and your time to giving people those little micro moments or longer moments that they can relieve stress. Or become, a better father or better mother or a better friend because, We're taking care of ourself. You can't give to anybody else. If you have not taken care of yourself first, otherwise you're giving away a shitty product, right?
[00:42:12] Jay: My cup runneth over. You don't get shit until my cup gets there because otherwise I'm not worth a damn when it's running over it's time. It's time to go give back, right? But in the meantime, you have to respect yourself first because nobody loves somebody that doesn't love themselves. You're not really showing anything.
[00:42:34] Jay: So I think that you're also teaching people how to love themselves in small moments into longer moments and become more comfortable with themselves. [00:42:45] You should be your best friend. If you expect everybody else to be yours. Then you should be yours as well. And if you're not, then maybe you should be looking inside yourself first before the expectations of others.
[00:43:02] Jay: Absolutely. So I think that you're giving people a window into their capabilities. You're giving them a better opportunity to live in this reality and enjoy the fact that we are in what the present, and it's aptly called that it's a gift. The more you meditate, the more you get to enjoy the gift that is the present.
[00:43:23] Jay: Yes,
[00:43:23] Ann Swanson: absolutely.
[00:43:24] Jay: I wanna thank you for that. Yes,
[00:43:25] Ann Swanson: thanks for having me on.
[00:43:27] Jay: If you want to, please tell me where, tell everybody where they can find you, if there's anything you want to wrap up with. And I want to give you an open door to come back. I think that we just scratched the surface of lots of different meditations.
[00:43:41] Jay: I'd love to get you on with some of our other guests that we've had in the past because [00:43:45] I like your approach to it. You have a very modern approach, not Western, but a less in-your-face approach. It is a fusion, and I think that it would help people who walk on that side that people call to see that there are other ways to have this conversation.
[00:44:10] Jay: Because this young woman, or this woman that was singing, Oh, no. Oh, wow. There's Horsfield, right? Yes. 100 percent believes and loves you with all her heart and thinks that she did something for you. But
[00:44:24] Ann Swanson: I can do it for myself.
[00:44:26] Jay: And that, and that is just something we just have to accept. And then eventually, she'll find her time, her way, the right way, or maybe it worked.
[00:44:44] Ann Swanson: I'm open. [00:44:45]
[00:44:47] Jay: I'm open. Oh, the placebo effect, had you been ready, maybe you would've gotten it all wrong. No, I'm kidding. my goal is to See, now I'm blaming you. I'm like, had you been open to it, you could have been in, you drank the Kool Aid then you could have been.
[00:45:04] Jay: She did too,
[00:45:05] Ann Swanson: actually. She said, and if it didn't work for you, you weren't receptive. And it's and she said that to all the YouTube listeners too. So she blamed us too. but yeah, my goal is to combine the East and the West, right? I studied yoga in India and Tai Chi, Qi Gong in China and meditation throughout the world.
[00:45:22] Ann Swanson: And then I, yeah. did my masters of science and yoga therapy to get that Western perspective as well as going to pre med course load, working in a cadaver lab, exploring the human body from that perspective. But it's ultimately, it's led me to this like spiritual perspective. When you combine the East and the West, the science and the [00:45:45] spirituality, they align.
[00:45:47] Ann Swanson: And so that's,
[00:45:48] Jay: I think it defines unknown things in the Western mind. I think that we skirt around feelings and intentions, intuition, interactions that involve energetic exchanges between two humans. We don't have names for them in our side of the world. They do. And they have a definition for the gaps that we have on the Western side, and vice versa.
[00:46:14] Jay: But isn't the scientific
[00:46:14] Ann Swanson: method about asking why, inquiring, continuing to inquire, and deep curiosity. And so that's why I teamed with Dr. Sarah Lazar, Harvard neuroscientist, to write and integrate the most cutting edge research into meditation for the real world. So that it has that science, but it also has the step by step practices that are great for beginners if you want to learn to meditate.
[00:46:37] Ann Swanson: long term practitioners to get, there's 83 different meditations in here for different situations. So to expand your horizons or [00:46:45] that gift for somebody who, you know, your mother-in-law that was told to meditate by their doctor, but can't get into it or thinks it's too woo. this is a good gift, giving this to Gary.
[00:46:57] Jay: My co-host has trouble with meditation, so he's gonna get good. I'll tell you what. Here's what we'll do. We'll wrap up today. And I'm going to get airy. I'm going to ask him to read it, and I'm going to have him come on the next time with you, and we can all discuss it. He can talk about how it helped him.
[00:47:20] Jay: So tell everybody where your website is. You can go
[00:47:23] Ann Swanson: to MeditationForTheRealWorld. com. You'll find out about this book as well as, you'll get information about my other book, Science of Yoga, but you'll also join the meditation challenge. Less than 10 minutes a day, five days, and it's super accessible.
[00:47:39] Ann Swanson: So definitely go to meditationfortheverrealworld. com.
[00:47:44] Jay: [00:47:45] You are the best. I genuinely appreciate you. Remember everybody, be cool and keep learning.