#793: How to Calm Your Inner Storm — A Guided Meditation to Tame Restlessness with Zen Master Henry Shukman

This episode is part of a new experiment called Meditation Monday. The teacher, Henry Shukman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach Sanbo Zen, and now, he’ll be your teacher. In addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday I’ll bring you a short 10-minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four-episode series, you’ll develop a Zen toolkit to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. Henry’s app, The Way https://thewayapp.com/tim, has changed my life since I first started using it. Unlike other meditation apps, where you’re overwhelmed with a thousand choices, The Way is a clear step-by-step training program guided entirely by Henry. Through a logical progression, you’ll develop real skills that stick with you. I’ve been using it daily, often twice a day, and it’s lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of my podcast, you can get 30 free sessions by visiting https://thewayapp.com/tim and downloading the app. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is a brand-new experiment called Meditation Monday. That means, in addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday, I will be bringing you a short 10-minute-or-so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four-episode series, you'll develop a Zen toolkit specifically to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. The teacher, Henry Schukman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach what is called Sambo Zen, and I have found this particularly interesting and effective, and now he'll be your teacher. I've been using Henry's

• 0:40Tim Ferriss?

  app, The Way, once, often twice, a day for the last few months, and it has lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of the show, you yourself can get 30 free sessions by visiting thewayapp.com/tim. So if you like what you hear in these meditations, which will be valuable in and of themselves, you can get 30 free sessions by going to thewayapp.com/tim. And for the time being, please enjoy this Meditation Monday with Henry Schukman.

• 1:10Henry Shukman?

  Welcome back to Meditation Monday. Many of us, of course, have difficult emotions at times, and meditation might seem to exacerbate them sometimes because we're, as it were, more exposed to them. We haven't got distractions, other things we can turn to. We're just sitting still and doing nothing, so if a difficult emotion comes up, there's kind of nowhere to hide. Now, in early Buddhism, these kinds of emotions, things like worry, regret, frustration, craving, aversion, or dislike, strong dislike, were viewed, actually,

• 1:53Henry Shukman?

  as hindrances to meditation, that they would make us not want to meditate. They'd make it harder to meditate. And I think it's quite a helpful lens to recognize that difficult emotions are a problem, as it were, in meditation, in that they will discourage us from doing it. So fortunately, we have tools for being with difficult emotion. And actually, what they often lead to is a kind of restlessness. Get me out of here, you know, when we're trying to meditate. So I want to, I want to do a sit now that offers a tool for working with restlessness

• 2:36Henry Shukman?

  and emotions that might be associated with it. So I hope you find this helpful. Let's, let's come into our seated, comfortable position. And just a footnote, if you want to recline, you, you go right ahead. We just want to be comfortable. That's the main thing. Because when we're comfortable, it's easier to relax. And when we start relaxing, it's easier to be still. And in some ways, it might be that the most powerful agent in meditation is simply being still.

• 3:22Henry Shukman?

  That all the lessons and learnings and shifts and transformations that meditation can offer simply come from stillness.

• 3:35Henry Shukman?

  So let's give ourselves time to, to be comfortable,

• 3:44Henry Shukman?

  to arrive here,

• 3:48Henry Shukman?

  to come into being here,

• 3:54Henry Shukman?

  into this space where nothing is asked of us,

• 4:02Henry Shukman?

  nothing we need to do.

• 4:06Henry Shukman?

  We're really getting to put down the burden of doing. All the responsibilities, the to-do lists,

• 4:17Henry Shukman?

  leave them outside the door, just for now.

• 4:23Henry Shukman?

  This is really a time just for you.

• 4:29Henry Shukman?

  So, again, checking that your body is comfortable. And a little bit of progressive relaxation, letting your shoulders go, letting them sink and settle, and letting your arms be limp like old rope.

• 4:52Henry Shukman?

  Letting the face soften.

• 4:57Henry Shukman?

  And it just sort of hang like a curtain.

• 5:01Henry Shukman?

  No tension in it. Let it go.

• 5:12Henry Shukman?

  Let there be a warmth in the chest, a warmth in the belly. Softness in chest, softness in belly. Let your hips go.

• 5:29Henry Shukman?

  Let your legs relax, and your feet.

• 5:37Henry Shukman?

  So, in this space of meditation,

• 5:43Henry Shukman?

  we're gonna explore how we might allow restlessness if it comes up.

• 5:54Henry Shukman?

  And I invite you, actually, to imagine that you are feeling just a little bit of restlessness.

• 6:06Henry Shukman?

  It's a familiar feeling for pretty much all of us, I think. That, "Ah, enough of this. I wanna go and do something else." "Or I wanna move. Or get me out of here."

• 6:20Henry Shukman?

  Now, instead of doing what it says, we're gonna be still.

• 6:29Henry Shukman?

  And we're gonna see if we can find it, find the restlessness in your body. What actually is it?

• 6:42Henry Shukman?

  Könnte es sein, dass es nur ein Art von Energie ist? Vielleicht wie ein kleines, miniaturen Schleimdämon oder etwas ähnliches? Aus Energie?

• 6:56Henry Shukman?

  Irgendwo in der Knochen, vielleicht im Bauch, vielleicht im Bauch, vielleicht im Mund?

• 7:06Henry Shukman?

  Kannst du irgendeine Spur finden von einer Energie der Ruhe

• 7:15Henry Shukman?

  innerhalb deiner Knochen?

• 7:32Henry Shukman?

  Was auch immer du findest, oder wenn du wirklich nichts findest,

• 7:39Henry Shukman?

  werden wir es lassen, dass Dinge so sind, wie sie sind.

• 7:46Henry Shukman?

  Wir werden es erlauben, jede Energie der Ruhe, all die Abwesenheit davon, zu sein, wie sie ist.

• 8:05Henry Shukman?

  Was wenn wir nichts gegen sie tun müssen?

• 8:11Henry Shukman?

  Was wenn wir es in uns haben, einfach es dort zu lassen?

• 8:19Henry Shukman?

  Lassen es hier sein?

• 8:24Henry Shukman?

  Keine Notwendigkeit, es zu ändern.

• 8:28Henry Shukman?

  Willkommen mit ihm.

• 8:32Henry Shukman?

  Erlauben es.

• 8:36Henry Shukman?

  Lassen es tatsächlich ein Teil deiner Erfahrung sein.

• 8:54Henry Shukman?

  Rest with it.

• 9:08Henry Shukman?

  If you are tasting restlessness, you can name it in your own mind. Restlessness is present. Say it to yourself.

• 9:32Henry Shukman?

  Restlessness is welcome.

• 9:39Henry Shukman?

  Try saying that to yourself in your own mind.

• 9:55Henry Shukman?

  It may be that you're sensing some other emotion that might be uncomfortable.

• 10:03Henry Shukman?

  If so, see if you can find the sensory correlates of it, the actual sensation in probably the chest area or perhaps the belly that associates with it.

• 10:25Henry Shukman?

  And let them be present.

• 10:35Henry Shukman?

  Let your shoulders be soft. Let your flanks be soft.

• 10:42Henry Shukman?

  Let your back be soft.

• 10:50Henry Shukman?

  And let the whole front of your torso, the front, the skin and dermis of your torso, let it also be soft, like a kind of drapery,

• 11:07Henry Shukman?

  hanging loose.

• 11:12Henry Shukman?

  And let the softness in your body allow any discomfort of restlessness or emotion.

• 11:25Henry Shukman?

  Let the softness welcome

• 11:30Henry Shukman?

  any trace of discomfort.

• 11:39Henry Shukman?

  Let yourself just be with it.

• 11:48Henry Shukman?

  Being still,

• 11:52Henry Shukman?

  being quiet,

• 11:56Henry Shukman?

  resting with your own heart, your own emotion center.

• 12:09Henry Shukman?

  And letting it be.

• 12:30Henry Shukman?

  Yeah, so part of this homecoming, we might say, that meditation can be, is also coming back to, you know, our feeling self. It's a beautiful thing, actually, that we feel. Like many, like all other mammals, we have we have emotions.

• 12:56Henry Shukman?

  They're part of our makeup. And learning to allow them is a real form of growth.

• 13:09Henry Shukman?

  Okay, so let's come out of this sit. Bring movement back into the body. You might do an inhale and an exhale.

• 13:22Henry Shukman?

  Move around anywhere you feel you'd like to.

• 13:26Henry Shukman?

  Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me in this little exploration of a perhaps unexpected kind of tool that will help us with our difficulties and sort of defuse them for our pathway into meditation and along the great journey of meditation. Thanks so much. See you next week.