Why You're Always Half-Stressed — and How to Chill | Christiane Wolf

If you feel like you spend most of your day on edge — not totally panicked, but not exactly calm either — you're not alone. Most of us live in what meditation teacher Dr. Christiane Wolf https://www.christianewolf.com/ calls "yellow mode": a state of low-level vigilance that keeps us productive, but also keeps us anxious, reactive, and exhausted. In this conversation with DJ Cashmere, Christiane unpacks why our nervous systems get stuck in that yellow zone and what we can actually do to shift back into "green mode" — the state of calm alertness where we feel grounded, flexible, and capable of joy. They explore: Why our modern lives constantly trigger fight-or-flight The difference between "being chill" and being appropriately responsive Simple, science-backed ways to calm your nervous system in seconds How trauma and early conditioning make relaxation feel unsafe The role of community (sangha), right livelihood, and mindfulness in long-term regulation Christiane is our Teacher of the Month at DanHarris.com http://danharris.com/, where she's creating guided meditations to go along with many of our podcast episodes. Join us at DanHarris.com http://danharris.com/ to learn more. Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here https://www.nyimc.org/event/great-cosmic-joke/! Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here https://troutbeck.com/culture/luminaries-series-conversation-meditation-with-dan-harris-2025/ to buy your ticket! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsor: Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host http://airbnb.com/host.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Happy Sunday, everybody. Hope you're having a great weekend. Today, we're talking about something that most of us feel but rarely are able to put a name on. It's that subtle background static of tension that just kind of courses through your life. It's not full-blown panic, but it's just this kind of slightly on edge, always behind, never enough, that general sense of dis-ease. Our guest today, who's a mindfulness teacher and a physician and an ultra marathoner, Dr. Christiana Wolf, has a beautiful way of describing this phenomenon. She calls it being in yellow. You're not on red alert. You're not green. You're not grounded. But you're in that middle zone where we spend most of our lives, vigilant, hyperproductive,

• 1:04Dan Harris?

  or feeling guilty about not being productive enough, like basically a little fried. So what you're about to hear is a conversation with DJ Kashmir, who's the executive producer of this show, in which Christiana unpacks why so many of us live in this yellow zone, why it's not really our fault, and how we can train our nervous systems to spend more time in green, that state of openness, ease, being in the present moment, all the cliches, all the good stuff. Just to say, Christiana is the teacher of the month over at danharris.com. That means she's producing all of our guided meditations that go along with our Monday, Wednesday episodes here on the pod. She's also doing live meditation and Q&A sessions. As you know, we do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is coming up on November

• 1:49Dan Harris?

  18th at 4 Eastern. Christiana is doing that one solo. Quickly, if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got two events coming up. I'm doing a live taping of this podcast on November 18th in New York City. My guest will be the comedian Pete Holmes. It is a benefit for the New York Insight Meditation Center. Then, coming up on November 23rd, I'll be doing an intimate Sunday afternoon meditation and Q&A sesh at a lovely hotel in the Hudson Valley in New York called Trout Beck. I've put links to both events in the show notes if you want to get tickets. We'll get started with Christiana Wolf and DJ Kashmir right after this. If you care about supporting independent media,

• 2:31Dan Harris?

  and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission,

• 3:14Dan Harris?

  and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend.

• 3:56Dan Harris?

  This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission, and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Kristiana Wolf, welcome back. Thank you. Thanks. For having me back. The question I have for you today is about how we move through the day. Something you talked about on the show a while back and that others have talked about on the show also is this idea that we have a sort of red, yellow and green mode. If red is a very intense sort of fight or flight, meeting some kind of chaos or intense challenge. And if green is more grounded, more present, some ease. And yellow is somewhere in the middle. It's on edge, it's vigilant, it's a little bit stressed. And you've said, and others have said, that in your work, when you talk to people about this,

• 5:06Speaker 01

  you find that most of us spend most of our time in yellow most of the day.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  It's definitely true for me. And I'm just curious if you can tell us a bit about, why is that? What do you make of that? What can we do about it?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for that question. So I think we're just live pretty crazy lives, first of all. And then we have not really learned how to drop back into green. If we think like back to how we used to live. We used to live like in smaller groups, in a village or something, and we would be out in nature. Yeah, so there might be like intense work periods or intense family periods. But then you had a chance to maybe walk to another house and you would be in nature and it would be calm. And you look at green and you're out in daylight. So all the things that we know now are really healthy and help us to regulate.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  We're not doing that, like we're in like buildings all day long. We don't get out so much. And also, I think part of it, we have not learned, but also we have kind of forgotten how valuable that is to rest and to take breaks and to allow ourselves to take breaks. And it's very interesting. So I'm thinking about, I remember a student told me once that she, I think, went to New Zealand for a year to work there. So she worked at a company there and she said, the weirdest thing was that they had like a long tea break in the afternoon. So they would just go out at three or four for an hour and have a break. And when she said like, oh, let me just finish, I'm working on this project, she would be looked at weirdly.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Just like, no, we're taking a break. For her, that was such an amazing reminder of we don't have to work 12 hours a day. That's not natural. Not everybody does that. Not every culture does that. And so just to look at the bigger picture a little bit more, so what culture am I living in? And then how can I reclaim for myself? And of course, that is this kind of unfair thing that we see, that it is kind of put on us as individuals to regulate, to be in green, to not be so crazy, to turn our phones off. Can we all turn our phones off? Yes, we can, right?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  But then we have this whole army of psychologists and everybody who actually made the phone in a way that we do not want to take it or turn it off. So it's a kind of not fear. Yeah, so I just want to keep that in mind. There's also really the bigger society level of like, what society do we live in? How would we like to live? And I know some people are doing that. And I know my friend Cara Jewell, she talks about that recently on the show here, about the intentional communities. We have to decide for ourselves and then to find like-minded people, which in our practice, we call a sangha. Yeah, so I want to encourage everybody who's listening to this is to,

• 8:16Speaker 02

  don't just do it by yourself. Find community, find a sangha, like, yeah, intentional community around that. Especially when you're raising children and you look at like, what do you want them to learn? But again, like for me, it's what we're learning is we have to know that the more in red our nervous system is, the less flexibility is actually there. So we have to remember the fight, flight or freeze modes, they come from the brain stem. They're very primitive in a way. There's not a lot of flexibility because the role of fight, flight or freeze is just to get us survive through the next few minutes. So very rigid.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  And what we want, actually, and what feels good is to be actually mostly in green, be relaxed, be open, open vision, visual field. Talked about on the show here, right? The peripheral vision. And we want to be able to then engage in what we feel passionate about, right? In our work or in communication. So we're moving from green to yellow and then back. And there's a lot of flexibility there because when we're in that part of the nervous system, we're not locked in the rigidity of fight, flight or freeze. Right? And then we have to all individually get to know our own nervous system.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Our nervous system is just uniquely shaped by what happened to me, what happened to my ancestors, what made me be here in this moment. And so to really be curious and learn tools, what does actually work for me? Which might not work for you? Yeah? So it's a lot and mindfulness is so fantastic for that because we're bringing this open-minded curiosity to exactly that. So like, what is helpful for me? How can I, what we call down-regulate? How can I open up again and become more flexible again?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  You talked last time you were here on the show, you and I, a couple of weeks ago, about the Buddha as the first physician and the first noble truths as a kind of prescription. And I was just struck listening to you, the way in which you sort of used that structure. If I'm hearing you right, it's sort of like, first noble truth, we're in yellow. Second noble truth, there are reasons why we're in yellow, right? We have these ancient brains, they're completely mismatched with modern times. There's no personal level of responsibility that we can or should really take for the fact that that is happening. It just is happening, right? It's like we have the right brain, but it's in the wrong century.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  And then, third noble truth, there's a way out of yellow. That path, the fourth noble truth, like, is highly idiosyncratic. And it's a little unfair that it's so idiosyncratic and that we are so...

• 11:16Speaker 01

  That we have all these structures that we're up against, but there are actually ways to spend more time in green. And it has to do with getting to know our nervous system.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  That's correct. Yes. And then, of course, and if we're looking at what the Buddha actually prescribed, he said, so the fourth noble chooses the noble eightfold path, where he just said, you have to look at every aspect of your life. So if you want to be more in green, if we use that as like, that's where we want to be, is we have to look at, how do we work? What do we earn our money with? How do we act? How are we speaking? And do we make time for meditation? Yeah, and so meditation, not just time where I just sit there with my eyes closed and go over my to do list. That's not meditation.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Were you in my head this morning?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  I know, yes.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  The problem is not the to do list. Yeah, but the problem is actually, and that's something I'm actually very, very curious about, is the amount of intention that we bring to meditation. Yeah, so sometimes we can just be like, yeah, meditate and I just sit down, but I'm not really present. I'm not really engaged. It's just like, just the thing I need to check off my to do list before I get on with the other stuff. And, right, so we can be totally meditating on autopilot, which is like, one of the reasons why people start meditating, because they want to get out of autopilot. And then they find themselves a year later and they're sitting on their cushion, exactly just going, what do I have to do?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you pointing us to the noble eightfold path and how holistic it is, right? And also earlier referencing seeking out sangha and seeking out community, practicing together as a part of the sort of prescription here. What else do you recommend to folks who feel like they are just always in yellow?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, again, like sometimes doing some more healing work, honestly.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  It can be tricky because sometimes also actually engaging more in healing work is a privilege, a privilege of time and of resources, and not everybody has that. But if we do have that to just see there are so many different healing modalities out there, and so to see like, really experiment with yourself, like after you've done something, do you feel more in green? Yeah, and then of course, sometimes I don't always have time to take a yoga class, obviously, right? Or to take a dance class, or whatever that is that might regulate me more. But first to know, like, these things help me. That's great to have something that you know is helpful.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  And then to really, I'm really, like, oh, this last year, I have gotten, fallen really in love with like, really brief practices, like brief, what we call nervous system regulation tools, like have been made very popular by like, healing modalities like SE, somatic experiencing, or EMDR, or sensory motor, like, so there are a lot of like, really body-based practices to work with, let's just put it, nervous system activation or hyperactivation. And some of them are surprisingly effective. I teach a weekly in-person class here in LA, and we will often really start with something like, people love that one, so that's why I mention it, it's called the butterfly hug.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  So for the butterfly hug, we cross our hands and hook our thumbs, and then place the hands on the collarbones.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, so you've got your right hand up real high on the left side of your chest, and then your left hand up real high on the right side of your chest, palms sort of touching your body, and then your thumbs are hooked, you know? It looks almost like you're making a butterfly shadow puppet?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  A little bit higher, yeah. And then we just tap left, right. So bilateral stimulation, we can flutter the fingers a little bit, and that is very soothing.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Okay, and now you're just sort of tapping your fingertips on your collarbones.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  This is nice.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  And then we can add a little bit of swaying. A lot of bodies like swaying.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so now you and I are swaying a little bit, side to side.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  And then we can add a little bit of longer exhalations. Right, exhalations, longer exhalations, they activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Or really also, like, fan favorite is humming. Think about like how many spiritual traditions, they hum, they sing, they dance, yeah? And it all helps us to just go, oh, I have a body, I'm here, right now, I'm okay. I can feel that, just doing this a little bit with you, my body goes like, oh, thank you.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so something like that. And to know and to feel it is like, oh, my body likes that, or my brain likes that. So, awesome. Write that down. Do that during the day when you feel really stressed. Do that before a meeting. I did something actually before we started recording. Yeah, just as a way, I want to be as present and as flexible, as much in green as possible. And I'll do it also after we're done. Yeah, because of course, like, recording is stressful for my nervous system.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  What did you do right before we recorded? Was it the butterfly hug or something else?

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Actually, no, what I did is something I love that it's called air hunger. Really important thing, like, has this still to do with mindfulness and meditation? No, no, it hasn't. It hasn't come in. So, air hunger, so what our brain needs to fully function is two things. It needs oxygen and it needs glucose. So, I made sure I ate something before we came on. And the other thing is air hunger. And air hunger is a way to get a little bit more oxygen into your brain. And what I did, I won't demonstrate that because otherwise my whole setup like here will topple over.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Like this microphone phone is like very precarious.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Right, right. Crash loudly, yes.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I can describe that. What I did is exhale completely. Then you take a deep inhale, you hold your breath. And then you start doing a movement. So I did some squats. People can march in place or just like do something with their arms. Basically, you burn oxygen. And the point is not how long can you hold your breath? But the point is, can you notice that moment? When your brain goes like, oop, it would be nice to get some air. That's air hunger. And then we stop and then we take a deep breath in, deep breath out. And then what I feel is I feel more brighter in my brain. So the mechanism behind that is so we're basically the carbon dioxide level in our blood rises

• 18:20Speaker 02

  because we're not exhaling it. And that actually allows the vessels to dilate. So when I then take air in, there is actually a bigger intake of oxygen. People will often say it's like, it's almost like the light has turned on a little bit. You feel like brighter, more sparkly, more life. So that's what I did before.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  So you said it's an exhale, inhale, hold breath, do a movement. And watch for that moment where your brain's like, okay, no, it's time now. And then when that happens, take the breath and notice what happens when you take the breath.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Deep breath in, deep breath out, give your nervous system a moment to integrate that.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And what's really, really beautiful, and I just want to say that because this is so important, is our nervous system responds instantaneously.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Right? So when we're thinking like, oh, I need to do a yoga class or a dance class, which again, like is nice, I'm not saying that. But if I just need a quick kind of change and I just feel really stressed, right? Or a little bit, I want to be more present, I want to be a little bit more in green. Your nervous system responds instantaneously. In both directions, of course. Yeah. So if we feel threatened, we feel that immediately. But we can also really learn some tools that we can just sprinkle throughout our day. Basically, we want to keep our overall stress load more down.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  There are always things coming in, stress load goes up. Yeah, and at some point, the stress load is so high that I will have like what we call some outputs. Outputs could be like, oh, I really need some sweets. I get cranky or, I mean, whatever our outputs are, I need a glass of wine, right? Or like, it's just something that sometimes is okay, sometimes it's not so okay. And so, but what we want is to be basically over the course of the day or over the course of life, just keep an eye on our stress levels.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  So I think you've offered us a pretty wide ranging menu here on a more zoomed out level. There's things like really taking a look at the whole breadth of the Eightfold Path and thinking about things like right livelihood. You know, essentially, am I structuring my life in such a way that's likely to lead to happiness in the first place? Seeking out community, meditating with a group. And then on the slightly more individual level, although this could still be done collectively, things like dance classes, yoga classes, other kinds of healing modality. I imagine that could range from therapy to massage and beyond.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And then in kind of micro moments, there are all these little exercises, many of them somatic exercises. You named two really helpful ones where we can just take five, 10, 30 seconds and get an immediate sort of nervous system reset or nervous system move from yellow down to green, or at least from yellow towards green. Really, really helpful. As you were talking, I was thinking about a conversation I had the other day with some teachers that I thought might be useful to share. We were going through kind of a similar exercise, like a kind of somatic reset exercise. And it was about grounding and being present.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And they were sort of walking me through, what does it feel like for you when your presence is at like a 10? Right? And then what are the cues that you can just turn on when you need to, to help get yourself there? And we were practicing that and I was feeling myself move. I was like, oh, I was at a six, like now I'm at an eight, like I'm a little more present. I'm a little more chill, I'm a little more grounded. But then they said this thing I didn't expect them to say, which was really helpful, which was like, The goal isn't always just to move towards a 10. Like, sometimes you don't need to be completely regulated and completely chill and completely present. Sometimes you might want to move from a nine to a seven, and that's okay, too. And I just, I found that really, there's like a spaciousness in that, so, yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Beautiful, yeah. And again, it speaks to the, like, what we want. And this is really important, because sometimes people think like, oh, the goal is to be chill all the time.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  To me, that sounds like I'm flatlining. It's just like, I don't want to flatline life.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what we're actually after is that we have an appropriate response to what is happening right now. That's flexibility.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and sometimes we need more energy, and sometimes we don't. Again, like mindfulness really helps us with that, to say, so, what's going on right now? Am I here with too much engagement, too little? And which is like, actually, one of the meditations that I recorded about, like, what's the right amount of effort? That's needed for what I'm doing right now? Which is, might be different again, like, even like in five minutes, or definitely tomorrow.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Just want to highlight one last thing before I let you go. You were talking us through these exercises, the, was it called the butterfly hug, the first one?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Butterfly hug.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And then air hunger, that was the one where we're exhaling, inhaling, holding the breath, moving around, waiting for that moment, and then deep breath in, deep breath out. And you said something over the course of that, where you, a couple of times where you were like, "Don't just try these things, see which ones work." And don't just see which ones work, but like, write down the ones that do. And there was something, again, very, very sort of M D about this, but I really appreciated it, because...

• 23:51Speaker 02

  This is your prescription, right?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  But just this idea that, like, you actually, there is some work necessary to find out what works for you. And then it is helpful to, like, to write it down, to have a reminder. I actually have, it's funny, in my line of sight right now, I have a little post-it. Literally, it's just a list of things to do if a meeting runs short. And it's things like stretch, take a short walk, water the plants. Because sometimes when a meeting runs short, I'm just like, okay, gotta get back on Slack immediately. You know, and I, I literally can't remember what a better idea would be. So I write it down, you know?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yes. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Still gotta get better at actually doing what's on the note, but one step at a time. Awesome. Anything else to say here before we wrap up around this idea of spending less time in, in yellow?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And again, it's just something like, don't blame yourself for that. I mean, that's not your fault. We like to say it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility. Yeah. Because nobody will get you out of it, except for yourself. Yeah. So don't drop the blame game and do something about it. And then I also want to say, and sometimes actually not being able to do something about it, that is a, can be a sign of trauma. Because we're also, what we have to remember is that for some nervous systems, actually going into green is threatening. Because their associations with like being in green, being relaxed is not safe.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  And so when people find a lot of resistance against like being more relaxed or doing things that are good for you, or that actually make you feel better, to again, like not blaming, but saying like, there's probably a good reason for that. Right? So always assume what your brain is doing, what your nervous system is doing makes sense to your nervous system. When its main job was and is to keep you safe. And instead, asking yourself, from the perspective of my nervous system, could what I'm doing be a way for it to try to keep me safe? Maybe in an outdated way, but the way when I, what I know about myself, growing up, maybe, would that make sense? Yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  And again, and then with mindfulness, we can get really curious and say like, wow, that is really interesting. Let me dig a little bit deeper into that at some point when I'm ready.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  So if maybe there were times as a kid when I did have my guard down and bad stuff happened, there might be a reason that I'm a little reluctant to let it down now, right?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Yes, yeah, I have heard that so many times from people saying like, oh, just lounging around, that was punished in our house.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Or doing something for myself was punished. That was seen as selfish.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  So now I try to do something for myself and it's just like my nervous system goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, not safe, not safe.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  If there is some block there, that's yet another opportunity to, instead of blaming ourselves or beating ourselves up, or this is a failure, another opportunity to get curious and in some cases, maybe another opportunity to seek out other resources and other support. We don't have to do it alone.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yes. And then just the last thing, and in those moments, when you notice that and you feel like I would like to go to yoga class, I'm not going to yoga class because I have so much resistance against it. I'm procrastinating until the yoga class is over. I mean, all the things that we do or the snacking, right? I mean, like just overeating things that we do. So see what happens if you can make yourself do one of those tools that I suggested.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  So you could say to yourself, okay, I'll get that bag of chips or I get the ice cream from the freezer, whatever. But first I do this for 30 seconds and then I see. And it's like, from my own experience in working with people, it's like often just just getting your nervous system a little bit more regulated loosens that grip of like, oh, actually, I maybe don't need that right now.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  I love that. Yeah. In those moments where we're going to the thing that's gonna, essentially the self-medicating thing.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Just don't deny yourself. Just one small intervention first, just to see.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  One small thing, and remember, so, right? Because if we're saying like, the urge to do that is an output, that means your stress level has just reached a certain threshold. And if you're inserting a tool here that helps to lower the threshold, does that change the urge? Totally fascinating.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's almost like that reaching for the bag of chips when you just ate and you're not hungry or something, like, sort of making that into a mindfulness bell moment.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Wow. Incredibly helpful. I'm gonna go back and listen to this for myself, at the very least, but I think it'll be helpful to many beings. Yeah. Thanks again for doing this.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

• 29:18Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to DJ and Christiana Wolf. Christiana will be leading the next live meditation and Q and A session over on danharris.com on November 18th. We do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. She'll be doing the next one solo. If you sign up over at danharris.com, you get these live meditation sessions, you get access to them, and you also get the companion meditations for all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. So that's cool. Sign up, danharris.com. And as I mentioned, I've got a couple of live events coming up. I'm doing a live taping of this podcast on the 18th of November with Pete Holmes, the comedian and spiritual seeker. There's a link in the show note if you want to sign up. I'm also doing an event at a lovely little hotel in the Hudson Valley called Trout Beck on November

• 30:02Dan Harris?

  23rd. That's a Sunday afternoon thing. There's also a link in the show notes for that. Finally, thanks so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 30:34Speaker 03

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