Light Watkins On Dispelling Meditation Myths — And Why You Should Adopt A Daily Practice

We all want to be happy. So why is it so elusive? The problem isn’t information. We all know our contentedness is linked to eating right, sleeping well and surrounding ourselves with those who elevate. We get the importance of confronting our emotional challenges. We're well aware that life is better when we cultivate gratitude and serve others. And yes, we know we should meditate. The science is clear. The evidence is in. And yet for so many, the gap between information and action is an impossibly untraversable canyon. Perhaps you resist the traditional trappings that swirl around the idea of meditation — the robes and incense a bridge too far. Maybe you can't get your legs to perfectly fold, monk-like, without cramping. You decided you just don't have the time. Or perchance you tried it, only to give up because you just couldn't get your looping mind to shut off, convinced meditation is just not for you. Relax. You're not alone. But today's guest poses an important question: What if the problem isn’t meditation itself, but your approach? In other words, what if it were easy? Meet Light Watkins. Beyond having the coolest name of all time, I would characterize Light as a generous, highly accessible and contemplative entrepreneur of mindfulness. Always convivial, impressively composed, and quick with a laugh, he has been practicing and teaching Vedic Meditation for twenty years. Among his thousands of students you will find bankers, artists, politicians, CEOs, care takers, educators, comedians, rock stars, soccer moms and seekers of all kinds. An active blogger and in demand public speaker (check out his TEDx Talk), he's also the founder of The Shine — a volunteer-based, pop-up traveling variety show that leverages music, film, philanthropy and storytelling to inspire people to do more, give more, and be more. In addition, Light recently penned a new book entitled, Bliss More* — an accessible primer that does a bang-up job of dispelling the many myths and misunderstandings that swirl around meditation with a very grounded approach and practical tools that will inspire you to finally adopt that daily practice that has to date, eluded you. So let's put all those myths and misunderstandings to bed, once and for all. Because we can all use a little more bliss in our lives. And we all deserve to be happy. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/lightwatkinsrrp I sincerely hope you enjoy this exchange with one of my very favorite people. One final note — for more on Light and his background, check out our first conversation, RRP #172 back in August 2015. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Light Watkins?

  You know, I think therapy is a great thing, but we end up talking about what happened when we were children for a lot of the time.

• 1:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12Light Watkins?

  And how it's still playing out in all of our relationships. And that just means the stress triggers are still very active in your body. And so what meditation does, probably more effectively than most other interventions, is it can neutralize those triggers. You don't forget what happened. You don't even forget how you felt when it happened, but it no longer dictates how you react today.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  That's Light Watkins, and yes, indeed, this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:50Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  Who doesn't want to be happy, or at least happier? I mean, raise your hand. We're all going to raise our hands, right? We all want to be happy. We all want less stress, less anxiety. And in exchange, we're looking for greater connection, more contentedness, more balance, more presence, really more joy, right? But why is this so elusive? Well, the problem isn't information. We all know that solutions can be found in what we put or decline to put into our bodies, how we eat, how we move, how we sleep, who we choose to interact with, how we interact

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  with others, the extent to which we're willing to confront and work through our issues, as Susan David so eloquently walked us through last week. And of course, the extent to which we are willing to practice mindfulness, meditation. That's right, meditation. That pesky thing, we all know that we should do. All the evidence is in, the anecdotal experiences of others is irrefutable. The science is clear on the many benefits. And yet, so many of us just can't get ourselves to actually do it. The gap between the knowing and the doing is like, it's like this giant canyon that we find almost impossible to traverse.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  And I include myself in this. It took me years to actually begin a practice, and I still struggle with continuity and with consistency. So maybe you just can't get into the whole incense and robes aspect of it. I get that. Or maybe you can't get your legs to fold properly like a monk without cramping. Or maybe you tried it, but you gave up because your mind just kept looping thoughts and you thought you were failing, thinking everyone else is just totally present and blissed out, and you're left thinking, well, this isn't working. It's just not for me. But, and this is a big but, what if the problem isn't meditation itself, but rather with your approach?

• 4:01Rich Roll?

  In other words, and to coin a phrase that came up in my podcast with Tim Ferriss, what if it was easy? My name is Rich Roll. This is a podcast. It's my podcast. Super glad you dropped by because today I sit down with my friend and longtime Vedic meditation teacher, Light Watkins, for a really great and quite candid conversation. Our second conversation, the first was back in August of 2015, way back in the day, episode 172. And it's an exchange that dispels the biggest myths and misunderstandings that seem to swirl around this ancient practice, this practice that you know you should adopt, but for whatever reason, you

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  just can't. And it includes some really grounded and accessible straight talk about meditation that I think will leave even the biggest skeptics amongst all of you looking forward to a daily practice. I've got a whole laundry list of things I still want to mention before Light and I dive in. But first, the new and revised updated version of Finding Ultra is now out in the world. Super proud and excited about it. It's 100-plus pages of brand-new material, about 30% to 40% new, in fact, and it's available in paperback, audiobook, totally new audiobook, and ebook or Kindle in the US on Amazon, Barnes & Noble,

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  Audible, and iBooks. Or if you're in Canada, check it out on Chapters. If you did purchase the original in ebook or Kindle form from either Amazon or iBooks, I am told by my publisher that it will update without purchasing the new version. So that's super awesome. And for those who are living internationally, and I know there's a lot of you out there, we are working diligently on making the book available in the US, I'm sorry, not the US, the UK and Australia. It's coming soon, I'm told. But if you want to get your hands on a copy sooner, the best way to do that is to order a signed copy through my site at ritual.com. We ship internationally all over the world. Even if you read the first

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  edition, I think you'll really get a lot out of this new one. If you want to know a little bit more about why I decided to rewrite it and what you can expect inside the new book, you can check out my most recent blog post on ritual.com, and I kind of explain everything. Secondly, our new cookbook, Plant Power Way Italia, is now available for pre-order.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  I'm laughing because I'm well aware that I'm doubling up on the promo. I know, I know, but I am excited about this book as well. You can reserve your copy now. And if you're a female, if you're a woman, please make sure to check out my second most recent blog post for a chance to win a free spot on our upcoming retreat in Tuscany. That's May 19th through 26th of this year. It's a $5,000 value. We're so proud and excited to be able to have this offering for you. So you can check that out on my site. Again, the contest is only open through April 24th. So try to jump on it sooner rather than later.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  Okay, Light Watkins. So in addition to having like the coolest name of all time, just being an all around amazing human being, Light has been practicing and teaching meditation for 20 years. He hosts retreats, he's an in-demand public speaker. I'll link his TEDx talk up in the show notes. And he's the founder of this thing called The Shine, which is this amazing and super inspirational sort of traveling variety show that features amazing speakers and bands and meditation and amazing food. And it happens like pop-up style in LA, New York and London every couple of months. He's also an active blogger and he's the author of a brand new book entitled Bliss

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  More, which is this very accessible primer that, as I hinted at the top of the show, does a great job of dispelling all these myths that swirl around meditation with a very grounded approach to the practice that I think whether you're a long time meditator or you're brand new, we can all learn from. So this is a conversation, well, it's about meditation. That's it. That's what we're talking about. Not sure I need to say anything more about it other than that and the fact that I think you will enjoy it very much. So this is me and Light Watkins.

• 8:33Rich Roll?

  Light Watkins, you come bearing gifts, my friend.

• 8:36Light Watkins?

  I did.

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  You brought me this beautiful meditation blanket.

• 8:40Light Watkins?

  Because I know you like to meditate.

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  We're burning your incense that you brought. I love it. And these cool promos for the book that you hang on your door saying meditation in progress. That's very clever. I love it, man. It's cool. Good to see you, man.

• 8:54Light Watkins?

  It's good to be back. I've had a lot of podcast interviews and this is by far one of my favorite ones. And I'm a big fan of the show in general and of you and the way you approach these interviews. And you're very kind of real and accessible, you know, tone.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  I appreciate that.

• 9:11Light Watkins?

  No BS. And I just, I just love it.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. You were on originally, had to be at least two years ago.

• 9:18Light Watkins?

  It was a couple of years ago.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  Definitely.

• 9:20Light Watkins?

  It was just after I had published my first book, The Inner Gym. And so we were talking about happiness and all of that.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  Right. Right, right, right. And now you're back. I'm in the midst of a little bit of a meditation jag.

• 9:32Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  I just put up my, my episode with Dan Harris and then yesterday I had Bob Roth in here.

• 9:38Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  And now you're here.

• 9:39Light Watkins?

  It's a sign of the times. You know, I think you see this in diet a lot, a lot of different types of diet books. And I think now people are really not just interested in meditation, but learning about different approaches to meditation. So you have a lot of, a lot of activity in the publishing world around this.

• 9:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. I asked this to Bob, but I'll ask it of you as well. Why now? Like, why do you think this is all, why is there this convergence, this confluence of conversation and dialogue and interest in meditation? Like, what's happening right now that you think is creating this desire and this interest?

• 10:17Light Watkins?

  I think just like how the pendulum is swinging politically in our country, you know, towards this kind of extremism. We're also swinging in a certain direction of comparison and, you know, social media and technology and and the digital age is is causing us to feel more isolated than ever before. That, in addition to, we're catching the tail end of the yoga comet, you know? And that, and that almost always leads to some form of meditation. Because we've gone through all the different iterations, the hip hop yoga and this yoga and hot yoga. And it's like, okay, so what, what, when you extrapolate all these different approaches, where is it actually leading to? It's leading to meditation.

• 11:02Light Watkins?

  And so it's only, it was only a matter of time before we started making meditation the forefront of the, of the conversation. And I think meditation today is still where yoga was probably 20 years ago.

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  I think that's probably right. I think what's interesting about yoga is that the true intention of yoga really is meditation at its core. The asana are all designed to still the mind and prepare you for the shavasana at the end. And that sort of gets lost in the conversation, you know?

• 11:33Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  It's really, they're all just a precursor to trying to achieve some, you know, sort of state of equanimity so that you can be still.

• 11:43Light Watkins?

  Also, though, with social media, I think that anything that is starting to feel, to, to, to hit critical mass in the wellness bubbles, it tends to spread a lot faster. And you also have people who are very masterful at marketing these kinds of things, you know, getting on board early and taking advantage of the marketing opportunities. So then you have a lot of competition between those different outfits. And people hear that, oh, this app got funded for this amount of money, let me create an app. And You know, and so I think that's also another reason why a lot of people are talking about it, just because it's in the marketing ethos as well.

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's being commodified.

• 12:27Light Watkins?

  Exactly, which is what happened to yoga.

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and there's, there's a good aspect to that, I think, as long as you're, you're not losing sight of what it is at its core, like what is, what it, what it's actually all about, rather than, you know, what are the tights that you're wearing, or, you know, what is the pillow that you're sitting on?

• 12:48Light Watkins?

  Which is why I think all these, all of us are writing these books, is because we want to try to preserve some semblance of, of history or tradition when it comes to these different approaches to the practice.

• 13:00Rich Roll?

  Right, what, what is your opinion on all the apps and all of that that's out there?

• 13:04Light Watkins?

  I'm, you know, honestly, I'm a big fan of anything that anyone does to onboard themselves in the practice of meditation. I think that people graduate from different platforms, you know, when they get more serious, and when they, when their natural curiosity kind of leads them to a deeper investment in themselves, and, and, you know, so there's, there's something for everybody at this point.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that we need it now more than ever. We're more stressed, we're more anxious, we're more depressed than we've ever been. And despite these technological tools that are supposed to unite us and bring us together, we've never been more divided as a culture. And I think the level of anxiety right now that people are experiencing just in their day-to-day lives, aside from just what it takes to get through the day, is at a, is at a peak that I haven't seen in my own life experience. And so where are you going to go from that, right? Like, you can medicate yourself, or you can begin to take care of yourself. And I think the discovery of meditation as this incredibly powerful tool.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  To combat, you know, what everyone is experiencing, you know, from a negative perspective in their life is unbelievably powerful. And you, my friend, play a large role in this movement.

• 14:30Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and it's largely a thankless.

• 14:35Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 14:36Light Watkins?

  Because.

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  I'll thank you right now.

• 14:38Light Watkins?

  No, but I think meditation is, obviously, I think it's wonderful, but it's still, it's, I'm in the root cause business. And it's like the Band-Aid guys are getting all the attention.

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, you know, yeah.

• 14:49Light Watkins?

  They go all the attention.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for the same reason, people would rather, you know, pop a Viagra than clean up their diet.

• 14:55Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 14:55Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Everyone wants the quick fix. Everyone wants the life hack. Everyone wants the pill or the Band-Aid. And our system, our society, our culture is structured around prioritizing those over the root cause and the genesis that is giving rise to these conditions to begin with.

• 15:16Light Watkins?

  Yeah, so, but it feels a little, selling meditation, which is what essentially all of us are doing, right? If you're a meditation teacher, to some extent, you're selling people on the idea that their life would be better if they meditated. It's still kind of like you're, you're a dentist living in a land where nobody brushes their teeth. And you're trying to tell people with this toothbrush, if you just use the toothbrush, all of your dental problems would just, you wouldn't have them anymore. And it's, it's, it's a hard sell sometimes to some people whose eyes kind of gloss over when you.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I was talking about this with Bob yesterday. I mean, he's been doing it for 45 years. You know what I mean? But now there's an awareness that, that, you know, is reaching this peak level that he's never seen in his experience as somebody who's been teaching since the late 1960s, right? And you've been at it for a while. It's not like you're Johnny Come Lightly.

• 16:08Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I've been in it for about 20 years now.

• 16:09Rich Roll?

  So it has to be cool and gratifying for you as well to see this level of interest in something that you've been passionate about and practicing for so long.

• 16:18Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And what I like about what Bob Roth and David Lynch and those guys are doing is they're being very active about taking it into inner cities and taking it into the veterans hospitals and things like that.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 16:29Light Watkins?

  Helping people on the front lines, people who really need it. And that's one of the, that was one of the motivations behind me writing the book that I did, because, you know, I think that there are certain populations of people who aren't necessarily, you know, in school or haven't necessarily served in the military, but. They're out there struggling. They may be blue collar. They may be driving trucks or flipping burgers and they don't, they couldn't afford to come and sit with someone like me for four days and have me train them in, and how to become a self-sufficient meditator, but these principles would still apply to them wherever they are. And I wanted to, I wanted to, to access those people and give them some of this knowledge so that they can benefit from it in real world ways.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it begs a larger question around what wellness means in general and, and, and the effort required to kind of rebut or overcome this presumption that it is the purview of the well-heeled, that it is, you know, this elitist thing that, you know, only, you know, people with six, six-figure incomes can afford to indulge themselves with. And when you look at, you know, what Bob and the David Lynch Foundation are doing with inmates in prisons and veterans with PTSD and going into inner city schools and teaching these at-risk youths how to do this. I mean, it's, it's really cool. I mean, you know, Bob gets a lot of attention for all the fancy people that he

• 17:55Rich Roll?

  teaches, and I know you teach fancy people as well, but really, that's what it's about, right? It's about how can we raise the bar of consciousness across the board?

• 18:03Light Watkins?

  And, you know, if I'm being honest, there is a bit of a trickle-down effect because, you know, a lot of the people who are big proponents of meditation are in the wellness bubbles on the coasts in LA and New York. And these are the people who are writing and producing the movies and the television shows and the articles that people will read. Yeah, like my brother, who used to be a parole officer, prison guard, actually, in Alabama. He said he started medit, he's known, I've taught meditation for many, many years, but he never meditated. And he said he read about it in Newsweek one day and he started meditating.

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  That like infuriate you like, look, I've been talking about this forever. You had to read this thing in Newsweek in order for you to click in?

• 18:46Light Watkins?

  That's how it works, you know?

• 18:47Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 18:48Light Watkins?

  In that, in certain parts of the country, people don't believe unless they see it on the news or unless they see it on the morning shows and things like that. And that's where it finally hit home.

• 18:57Rich Roll?

  He's like my crazy brother that lives in Venice. You know, he's like this fringe character.

• 19:01Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  Right? So, since it's been a couple of years since you've been on the show, it's probably worth recapping like your journey into this world. Like, what got you interested at the beginning?

• 19:11Light Watkins?

  Well, to start from the very, very beginning, I grew up in the South in Alabama and as far away from meditation as you could possibly get. And was, had a pretty nice childhood. You know, nothing traumatic happened. And went to college, graduated from college and started working in advertising. And interestingly, I looked around the office and it was a great job. It was in the creative department. And I just didn't really, I didn't have the language for it at the time, but I looked around and I didn't see anybody who was, I felt like was happy. And I looked at the people who had been there the longest, the most senior people, the ones making all the money. And they didn't strike me as being particularly fulfilled.

• 19:56Light Watkins?

  And like I said, I didn't know the language for all that at the time. I just, there was something that felt a bit off. And for me, for me personally, and for where I felt like I was going. And so I decided to leave that situation and I just started traveling around and I got, started dabbling in the fashion industry. I started modeling a bit and did that for about six or seven years. That took me literally around the world and got a taste of a lot of different societies and cultures and people. And then after that, I kind of decided that, you know, I wanted to use more of my gifts and talents. I didn't want to just stand in front of a camera posing for pictures and then spend a month hoping someone calls me to tell me I won the beauty pageant that day.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:41Light Watkins?

  And, and I wanted to, I'd been dabbling in yoga. I was living in New York and I started doing meditation circles. And I didn't know anyone else who was doing this. I just, everyone in yoga talked about meditation. And this was back, this is back in the mid 90s. When even in the gym yoga classes, it was very serious. There was no music, there was no, you know, the people who were teaching were people who had been trained in yoga retreats and yoga centers. And so we were meditating in a very serious way, you know, we were sitting in circles and everything was very traditional, legs crossed.

• 21:24Light Watkins?

  And my secret was that I was never feeling anything. I never felt like anything was happening. I just thought, you know, okay, I'm assuming the position. Maybe just thinking about thinking was what you're supposed to do. And then you're just supposed to pretend like it was this profound experience.

• 21:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Everyone's just faking it.

• 21:47Light Watkins?

  Right. And I would peek and look around and see and everyone was just kind of sitting there with their, you know, and I didn't know what they were experiencing. I just knew what I was experiencing. And so I tried different variations of that, of meditation and still nothing quite felt like I wasn't using my imagination. And this went on for two or three years. And I finally, after I left the fashion industry, I moved to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a yoga teacher. And within about a month, I met this other yoga teacher who, there was something about him. He had a level of contentedness that I hadn't really seen before in anyone else. So we started hanging out and he would always bring up meditation.

• 22:31Light Watkins?

  And again, I didn't know anyone else who was meditating. I knew a lot of people who were doing yoga, but back then, nobody in yoga was necessarily taking time to meditate. Outside of maybe, you know, two minutes at the end of the yoga class where you're sitting there with your legs crossed, back straight, hoping something was gonna happen. So he always brings up meditation and I reluctantly agree to meditate with him. And we do it in every kind of situation, before we go to the movies, before we go to hike, before we go to lunch. Still, nothing's happening. I had received no instruction at all. Meanwhile, I'm leading-

• 23:06Rich Roll?

  You're showing like a lot of persistence for like hanging in there for somebody who's like not getting anything out of it.

• 23:10Light Watkins?

  Well, here's the deal, I'm leading meditations in my yoga classes. So at the end of the class, I'm telling everybody, we're gonna, because that's what you're supposed to do. I didn't know. Meanwhile, I hadn't received any meditation instruction at all. And then finally, this guy, this friend of mine says, hey, my meditation teacher is coming to town in a month. I want you to come and meet him. And this completely blew my mind. I didn't even know meditation teachers existed because I'd never heard of one or met one before. And so I met this guy at his apartment a month later. And this guy ended up being the happiest person I'd ever seen in my entire life.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  Was that Tom Knowles?

• 23:46Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this last time.

• 23:48Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and I knew within about 10 minutes, I wanted, that's what I want to do. I want to, I want what he has and I want to do what he does for a living.

• 23:57Rich Roll?

  Was it at that apartment that was like off Fountain?

• 24:00Light Watkins?

  On Laurel Avenue. Yeah, yeah. Did you go there?

• 24:02Rich Roll?

  Well, I went to one, I had a friend who brought me to one of those in a similar fashion. He's like, come and, you know, Tom's doing this thing, meet this guy. And there were maybe 30 people there. I had a couple of friends that were there. I remember Anna David was there, my friend.

• 24:16Light Watkins?

  Anna David?

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  Do you know Anna?

• 24:17Light Watkins?

  Yeah, she actually, I think she went and learned with Tom.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And I remember, I mean, this was a long time ago.

• 24:25Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  For whatever reason.

• 24:27Light Watkins?

  Like the early, the, the, the early 2000s.

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. It was probably 2001 or two or something like that. And I remember being impacted by it, but I was like broke at the time. I couldn't afford it. Like I just, it didn't stick with me at that moment, but I was moved by the presentation that he made. Like, I was like, this is clearly working for these people. And because I knew some of the people there, it wasn't like, oh, I walked into some weird cult.

• 24:52Light Watkins?

  I was probably there.

• 24:53Rich Roll?

  You might have been there.

• 24:54Light Watkins?

  Because after I learned, I was in the first wave of students. And then after that, I just wanted to hang out as much as I could.

• 25:00Rich Roll?

  Do you know, did you know Andrew Wheeler?

• 25:02Light Watkins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  He's the one, he's the one who brought me.

• 25:04Light Watkins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course I know Andrew. Yeah, he was around a lot. And I was there setting up chairs and ushering people in.

• 25:09Rich Roll?

  You must have been there then.

• 25:10Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I was, I was probably there because I, I just, I was shadowing Tom around for years because I just wanted, I just wanted to be around when he was teaching new people. And then eventually he, about three years after we met, he Proposed taking some of his proteges, I'm sure Andrew was in that conversation, over to India and training us to become teachers. And so I did that. And then after that, I started teaching people meditation.

• 25:38Rich Roll?

  Right. That's crazy. Wow. And now, of course, Charlie Knowles is our mutual friend.

• 25:44Light Watkins?

  Yeah, Tom's son.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Who is a well-known meditation teacher.

• 25:48Light Watkins?

  Tom is directly or indirectly trained about 150 people in the last 15, 16 years.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, for those that are listening, Tom Knowles is one of the great legendary teachers of meditation of all time, of our generation, I should say.

• 26:01Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  So, cool. So that was the Vedic tradition, right?

• 26:06Light Watkins?

  Correct.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  Vedic meditation.

• 26:08Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  And since I had Bob here yesterday, perhaps it's worth sort of discussing the differences, if there are any, like, what are the differences between Vedic meditation and TM?

• 26:19Light Watkins?

  So Tom used to be associated with the Transcendental Meditation Organization. And from what I understand, a lot of those teachers went independent in the 80s and 90s. I think, I'm not sure.

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  There was like a political bifurcation.

• 26:31Light Watkins?

  It was like some kind of, yeah. They got involved. They were running, they were running a candidate for president.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  They were?

• 26:37Light Watkins?

  For the National Law Party, yeah, back in the 80s, I think. And, and I think a lot of the teachers decided that that wasn't really what they wanted to be a part of. And, you know, and then, you know, when you get into politics, the other politicians are going to start trying to paint you as, you know, you're trying to take advantage of people. And they started getting all, they started attracting all this negative attention. And I think they started seeing a decline in their, in their, in the number of people they were teaching, and then they needed to raise more money. So that's where they jacked up the prices. I mean, this, I don't know firsthand.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. There was a controversy.

• 27:13Light Watkins?

  I'm sure Bob could have.

• 27:14Rich Roll?

  That created a split. Yeah, I didn't really get into this with him. But, but essentially, at the end of the day, Vedic meditation and TM are essentially the same thing.

• 27:22Light Watkins?

  Well, TM reached out to Tom and said, look, you know, you can't call this TM.

• 27:26Rich Roll?

  You can't call it this.

• 27:26Light Watkins?

  Because this is a trademark.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:28Light Watkins?

  Only people who teach under our umbrella can call it transcendental meditation. So Tom said, okay, we'll call it Vedic meditation.

• 27:33Rich Roll?

  Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. Right.

• 27:36Rich Roll?

  And that kind of tracks back to, I mean, the root of that really is that these traditions, if you want to differentiate them, are really rooted in the importance of the teacher-student relationship, which I think really distinguishes this tradition or these traditions from other forms of meditation that are a little bit looser about that restriction or that requirement. It's like this reverence for how important that is. And in your own experience, clearly, this was an important thing. Like, you'd been exposed to meditation, you know, for a number of years until you actually had formal instruction with a teacher. And that was really the defining thing that changed your life experience.

• 28:19Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that's right. I think one of the ways that we talk about it is that, you know, there are obviously going to be some obstacles and some pitfalls in anyone's meditation trajectory. And being a teacher and having been through that path, you kind of know where those pitfalls are going to be, what the phases are, what the cycles are. And you can help someone maintain a level of self-sufficiency in their own practice so that it can continue to be mobile and accessible, no matter where someone is, no matter what's around them. They can still sit down and drop into this meditative state as often as they choose to. So having a teacher is really one of the more invaluable

• 29:03Light Watkins?

  aspects of this particular approach to meditation. But like I said, it's, you know, it's just one approach. All the approaches of meditation are definitely taking the practitioner in the same direction, which is towards accessing their true self. And if you have a teacher, what I've experienced is that the road tends to be a little bit easier, you know? And, but they would also, my colleagues would also argue that you can't learn how to meditate from a book. You can't get what you get from a teacher in a book. So it was an interesting opportunity for me in writing a book and presenting some of these mechanics and principles

• 29:48Light Watkins?

  in such a way that someone who doesn't necessarily have contact with a teacher directly can still glean some insight and hopefully improve their experiences through what they read in that book, Bliss More.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  You make it very clear in the book, like, look, you know, there's no replacement for the teacher and, and, you know, clearly, you know, I'm not trying to replace that, but here's a couple of guideposts, you know, to light your path. And, and, you know, as an introductory kind of text for somebody, should that connect with them, then they have the opportunity at some point in the future to, you know, explore the teacher-student relationship a little bit more in depth. But when you were writing the book, did that, was there like, just the idea of writing the book in and of itself, conceptually, did that create some kind of dissonance with you, knowing how sacrosanct that teacher-student relationship is? Like, I know this, this is what worked for me, and now I'm going

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  to write a book, which is, you know, kind of at odds with that principle?

• 30:54Light Watkins?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I was grappling with that the entire time. I still am to some extent. It's hard to separate what you know so intimately, and that's all I've been doing, is shepherding people through this process for the last 11 years. But at the same time, there's a level of frustration when you overhear conversations about meditation, where people are basically taking the symptom of, of not knowing what they're doing and making it into a best practice for-

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, there's no barrier to entry.

• 31:28Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like-

• 31:29Light Watkins?

  For teaching or practicing.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, you can't, you can't teach Vedic or TM without being certified in a very specific manner, but anybody can call themselves a meditation teacher-

• 31:38Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 31:38Rich Roll?

  And just get up and pontificate. So when somebody, when you overhear somebody saying, "There's no wrong way to meditate."

• 31:44Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  Like, what is your, you're probably like, "Actually, there is."

• 31:48Light Watkins?

  Well, it's like saying, "There's no wrong way to swim."

• 31:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:51Light Watkins?

  I mean, you know, sure, you can get in there and just kind of mess around, but if you want to be able to go-

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  If you're not drowning, I guess you're swimming.

• 31:58Light Watkins?

  If you want to glide back and forth and do kick turns, and they're practiced, they're mechanics that everyone who's-

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  And you use that, you use that analogy in the book, which I love, because as a swimmer myself, like, I know very well the difference between somebody who really understands how to swim-

• 32:13Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Rich Roll?

  Who to the untrained eye kind of looks like they're swimming, but when I look at them, I'm like, you're fighting the water.

• 32:20Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 32:20Rich Roll?

  The whole principle with swimming is trying to make the water work for you.

• 32:24Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 32:24Rich Roll?

  And the way that you kind of...

• 32:25Light Watkins?

  It's moving in concert with the water.

• 32:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like this beautiful symphony where everything, all the movements that you're making with your body are in concert to make you go forward and you have to like leverage the principles of fluid dynamics to propel yourself forward. And you draw in that analogy to like, look, this is the same way it works with meditation. Rather than fighting the mind, it's about finding a way to get the mind to work with you so that you can create this beautiful... Whoops, somebody's FaceTiming me right now. What is going on? I didn't even turn... Oh, God, my daughter. Sorry about that. I was making such a beautiful speech monologue right there, too. But yeah, the idea that, that, that rather than, you know, this, this idea that I think

• 33:08Rich Roll?

  a lot of people mistakenly, mistakenly believe that you have to kind of fight the, fight the impulses of the monkey mind.

• 33:17Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  That it's in fact the opposite of that.

• 33:20Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and it's, you know, and you're not, just because you know that doesn't mean it is going to happen the first few times. It's like swimming, you know? You have to practice it and keep integrating those mechanics over and over. And then you end up being able to do less and accomplish more, do least and accomplish most, and ultimately do nothing. Where it feels like I'm in complete flow right now. And you can swim for however, however long you swim and it doesn't feel like this big effort where it's wearing you out and you're going to drown. And, and so then someone like you can look at a pool or a lake or an ocean and you just see joy. Whereas someone like me, when I was in my early 30s and I couldn't swim, I would look

• 34:03Light Watkins?

  at the same body of water and just be completely terrified. And wondering how deep is it and how cold is it? And how rough is it? And you know, because I knew that once I got in, if I didn't have an exit strategy, then there was going to be problems. And that's how people feel about meditation.

• 34:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And to extend that metaphor even a little bit further, when I look at people in the pool now, specifically like triathletes, they're so focused on like getting fit, like they just, they need to get their yardage in, like they gotta knock that workout out and they're just in there battling the water. And I'm like, listen, you should just forget about your fitness and go back to fundamentals. Like if you just, if I gave you these principles to work on and you just forgot about how fit you were and just worked on your technique for three or four months, a year from now, you'll be 10 times the swimmer that, that you will be going down this path, right? So it's like about mistaken allocation of, of your priorities.

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  So to, to kind of further that example, in the context of meditation, rather than like, I gotta get my 20 minutes in twice a day, if you're doing it wrong, like, okay, let's step back and like, let me explain to you actually how to do this properly so that you can leverage the most out of it for your experience. So this is something that you, you walk through in the course of this book, you have this easy technique that you talk about, so maybe we can kind of dive into that.

• 35:28Light Watkins?

  Yeah, the easy technique. So, you know, I, I've met a lot of people through the meditation, teaching and the scene and literally thousands of people, and not one time has anyone ever shown some sort of rejoice over having a busy mind. Not once.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  My mind is so busy, it's awesome.

• 35:49Light Watkins?

  Yeah. It's never happened. Everybody, without exception, complains that their mind is too busy or, you know, monkey mind and.

• 35:59Light Watkins?

  Again, that's the symptom. That's not the problem. That's the symptom of the real problem, which is you have a monkey body. Your body has been accumulating all this stress, not getting nearly enough sleep, probably not even, probably malnourished. And, and when you sit down to meditate, three things are happening. Number one, you're going to start forming this new relationship with your mind, right? With your thoughts. And probably you had an antagonistic relationship with your thoughts before. So now you're gonna have to kinda reframe that for yourself. So that's happening. Number two, your body, under the influence of the meditation, is going to start achieving profound states of rest. And that's gonna cause the body

• 36:44Light Watkins?

  to start doing what bodies do when they get rest, which is they rehabilitate themselves. So the rehabilitation of stress from the body is going to create a degree of physical activity. Physical activity is going to cause your mind to be more active. And also, it's gonna cause you to have thoughts and emotions and sensations and experiences that may be related to old past stress that is now leaving your body. Now, there are no scientific studies that document that this is exactly what's happening. So you're gonna have to go with, go on my word with this. But, you know, you hear this in almost every approach to meditation. I was listening to your Sharon Salzberg interview,

• 37:28Light Watkins?

  and she was talking about, you know, how meditation, people expect to be happy and all that in meditation. And they end up confronting their old demons and things like that. And that's another kind of way of describing something that is leaving you. And as a result of that, once you come out of the meditation later on, you're no longer gonna have the same intensity of triggers that you had before you sat down to meditate. So that's happening. And then the third thing that's happening is that you're breaking this old habit of not meditating for however long you've not been meditating, which could, for some people, be 30, 40, 50 years. So then there's a calcification that is set, that's been taking place, where the brain Fires and wires in certain directions. And if you've only been experiencing surface level mental activity,

• 38:13Light Watkins?

  and now the meditation is taking you down into this deeper level of awareness, that is creating the kind of soreness feeling that you get when you work out after having never worked out before. So all those things are kind of happening at the same time. And that's what causes people to think, I have a monkey mind. But really, you don't have a monkey mind. It doesn't mean meditation wasn't working. Any more than having sore muscles means that, oh, I, the gym didn't work yesterday because my muscles are sore. I can barely sit down.

• 38:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it can begin to reveal to you the things that you need to work on in your life, which can be unpleasant and painful. It's sort of like people that get sober and think, well, I solved my problem and now life's going to be awesome. But they overlook the fact that they're then left with their emotions, without their best friend, their best, you know, their reliable tool for managing that. And they have to figure out a new, healthier way of grappling with painful past trauma and the like. And I think it's similar, like the way you describe it, the way that it brings to the surface all of these things that you then have to confront and create these new neural pathways. And it's super interesting.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, one of the things that stuck out, like in your book, you also have, you said there's no scientific studies on these specific, particular things, but you have all these kind of anecdotal stories of people who have had these experiences. And one of them that stuck out for me was the woman who started smelling cigarette smoke every time she was meditating, even though there was nobody smoking and she had never smoked.

• 39:43Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 39:43Rich Roll?

  You know, explain that because that was like, is that real? Like, that's crazy.

• 39:47Light Watkins?

  Yeah, no, I taught this woman to meditate. She was in her mid 60s. She described herself as a health nut, vegetarian, yogi, you know, the whole nine. She starts meditating and then she said for the first couple of weeks, all she's smelling and tasting and experiencing in her meditations is this really intense cigarette. Sentation. And it went on for, it lasted for a couple of weeks. Literally, every time she sat down to meditate, she would stop meditating and open her eyes, and then it would go away. She would close her eyes and it would come back. She went and meditated in her car because she wasn't sure if it was something about her house. And she said the same thing happened in her car, and she wasn't a smoker. And so when she told me about this, I suspected what it was,

• 40:31Light Watkins?

  but I wanted her to make the connection. So we started investigating. I started asking her questions. Have you ever dated someone who smoked? Were you married to someone who smoked? Did you live around smokers? No, no, no, no, no. Come to find out, when she was in her early twenties, she was, she had moved from Alabama to New York City, and she was there for a few years, and she had dabbled in smoking. But she said it couldn't be that because that was 40 years ago. And I've been so healthy since then, you know? And that's what the body is really good about doing. Whenever it receives an opportunity to rest at very deep levels, is it goes into the back of the closet and it starts pulling out all stress and triggers

• 41:14Light Watkins?

  that have been living in there for a very long time. And it comes out through the mind. So the mind is sort of like the exhaust pipe. It's the speaker of whatever's being projected out as a result of the meditation. And the same thing happens when we're sleeping at night. You know, you go to sleep. Usually when people start meditating in this way, they report having better sleep at night. But they also sometimes report having more vivid dreams and sometimes even nightmares. Anytime the body is resting deeply, it has a tendency to release. And that releasing can wake the mind up. And when it gets woken up in the middle of the sleep, it's experiencing a dream. And in the meditation, you're experiencing vivid thoughts

• 41:59Light Watkins?

  or sensations or emotions about things that happened in the past that you haven't thought about or experienced in a very long time. And I see this all the time. I mean, I've been having these conversations in living rooms for the last 11 years with thousands of people, but not very many people understand this. And the first place they go to when they have the busy mind experiences, there's something wrong with my mind. And they start disqualifying themselves from thinking that they can meditate when, in fact, they're meditating perfectly.

• 42:29Rich Roll?

  That's fascinating. You know, it speaks to... The kind of default human tendency to compartmentalize unpleasant thoughts and past experiences, and we want to believe when something like that happens, that we push it into the recesses of our unconscious mind, and we compartmentalize it, and we want to believe it didn't happen, or we just want to move on. And we think it's, we're done with it, right?

• 42:59Light Watkins?

  Yep.

• 42:59Rich Roll?

  And it's interesting how-

• 43:01Light Watkins?

  I worked through it last week.

• 43:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Light Watkins?

  I worked through my addiction. It's like that Tony Robbins, I'm not your guru, and he's like, helping people like, on the spot, work through their whole problems.

• 43:11Rich Roll?

  Right, and it's done.

• 43:12Light Watkins?

  And I'm thinking, I want to see what these people are like in six months.

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:16Light Watkins?

  Because if that was the case, why isn't everyone in AA going to the, I mean, I'm not taking anything away from, I'm sure Tony's very powerful, and that the event is very powerful, but it just seems like that's, at least that's what they're portraying, that this is like, an overnight thing, and-

• 43:29Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Who did I have on? I had a guy on who was talking about tapping. Do you know about tapping?

• 43:36Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you do this technique, and then like, you're just done with it, you know, and it's like, alright. And he's like, all these people, I've cured them of all this thing. And I was like, well, in my life experience, maybe there's some temporary relief, but without some kind of diligent practice to continue to, you know, kind of focus on keeping that at bay, it's going to resurface.

• 43:58Light Watkins?

  That's right. And that's why you still exercise every day, you know, and that's why people still meditate, even though, you know, I've been meditating for 16 years in this particular technique, and I still do it every single day like clockwork, because stress isn't taking any days off. And insomnia, you know, when people, we all live busy lives, I'm traveling, you're traveling, and you get sleep deprived and jet lagged here and there, and it's still, you still have to have these sort of, these breaks-

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:25Light Watkins?

  -in the nervous system in order to keep functioning. And it's never really about getting to a place where you can rest on your laurels, it's all healed, it's all sorted out, you know. A lot of this is just about, going back to your earlier point- Stabilizing a level of awareness where you can make connections so that when you are encountering problems in your life, you can have more clarity when you're coming up with the solution, you know? So if you're sick, or you're experiencing cancer, or something like that, and you start meditating, meditation isn't necessarily going to heal the cancer, right? It may, but it's probably, it may not. But you may have a level of awareness that gives you a better idea of what the course of action is, and you participating in your own healing process, empowering yourself,

• 45:10Light Watkins?

  and these kinds of things. So I really wanted to humanize that practice, and take it out of the ethers, right? Where people very easily let themselves off the hook, "Oh, it's not for me, it's for those people over there," and bring it down to the kitchen table, and show that, you know, while there may be studies, I know people who start smoking cigarettes after they started meditating. I know people started drinking coffee, myself included, years after I started meditating. You know, we're quick to say, "Oh, I stopped drinking coffee, and I don't get angry anymore, this and that."

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's this panacea that's just gonna solve all of your problems.

• 45:44Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but that's not, that's not the reality of meditation. But it's also hard to describe that reality if you've never tasted it for yourself, because it's still very beautiful and profound, and you get this spaciousness inside that gives you ability to step back when, when otherwise you'd be very reactive. And you can't really put a price on those kinds of experiences either. You just have to have the experience. Otherwise, it's like trying to tell someone what a watermelon tastes like, who's never even had fruit before.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  Right, there's no, there's no experiential context in order to really evaluate that. You know, and this is one, this is something that I talked about with Dan Harris as well. Like, there is copious science to support the fact that meditation is going to lower your blood pressure, and reduce your anxiety, and there's evidence to suggest that it can combat depression. There are all these physiological benefits as a result of it, but it tends to get overhyped, right? For the sake of views and clicks and things like that.

• 46:45Light Watkins?

  Not eating sugar is good for you, not smoking cigarettes is very clear what the science says, but people still do it, because we're addicted, you know? No one's even talking about that as a part of the equation, you know? A part of what you're experiencing is you're breaking down some of these addictions, and it's gonna be, you know, you may have some of that come up in the practice itself. And so it's, it's a... I think it's very, very important for us to, us as proponents of this kind of, these kinds of practices, to be as real as possible when we're talking about it. Because people may put me up on a pedestal and think, well, Light, you know, you're Light, you know, and I can't be like Light.

• 47:27Rich Roll?

  You're immune from the human condition.

• 47:29Light Watkins?

  So that's why I threw in a couple of stories about my drama that I've gone through in relationships and stuff. And I talked about how the one important thing when you're assessing how it's working for you is you can never measure prevention. You don't know what you would have been experiencing. Sure, it got bad, but it could have gotten a lot worse if you hadn't been meditating.

• 47:47Rich Roll?

  Sure, of course.

• 47:47Light Watkins?

  So at the end of the day, the question, the only question is, in my opinion, and as far as what I've seen in this space, is how hard do you want to work? Because when things tend to be challenging to execute, we don't do it. When things feel easy, we love to do it, you know? No one has to tell you to run. I follow your Instagram.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Sometimes they do.

• 48:11Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but compared to the average, that's because your runs are like, you know, 25 miles, so you probably...

• 48:15Rich Roll?

  But that's the thing, like, you see, that's my version of people projecting onto you that you must be, you know, free of any dissent in your relationship. And, you know, you live this anxiety-stress-free life, right? Because of the practice that you do and the things that you teach. People do the same thing to me. They say, oh, well, you just, you know, you can just go do all these things and it's effortless for you. That's not true. You know, there's plenty of days where I wake up and I don't feel like doing this or that. And more often than not, I do it anyway, and I share that. But there are times where I don't, you know? I'm not perfect in that regard.

• 48:47Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but there's still, you're still inclined to move your body in some way. Whereas some other guy may be sitting on a couch.

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  Through diligent practice over decades.

• 48:55Light Watkins?

  Right. And you've pretty much gotten addicted to it at this point. Meaning if you don't work out, something in your body is going to say, Rich, you should probably get up and go for a little swim today or something like that. Or go eat some, you know, nut cheese or something like that. And that's where we need to get meditation. We need to get addicted to the biochemistry of the practice, which purely happens from exposure, repeated exposure. And in order to get to that point, to some extent, I think you have to enjoy the practice. And that's, that's my mission in the world, is to help people who sincerely want to meditate. Learn how to enjoy it enough so that they can be consistent enough so that they can get the real benefits of the practice. Because if you're only doing it once a week, I don't care what study you read, you're not going to get those benefits.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Yeah, you have to, in order to connect with that addiction, this healthy addiction, if you want to call it that, I mean, that has-

• 49:47Light Watkins?

  Or dependency, or whatever you want to call it.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it has such a pejorative dent to it. But you have to first confront and overcome your addiction to your, your identity, for lack of a better word, like your attachment to the story you tell yourself about yourself, to, you know, your default behavior patterns and perspectives that are, A, preventing you from even, you know, sort of embarking on a meditation journey to begin with, but also are sending you those self-defeating signals that, you know, it's not going to work, or you're not worth it, or whatever, right?

• 50:29Rich Roll?

  So it becomes about this journey to unpacking all of that before you can even begin to avail yourself of what you can receive by virtue of this practice.

• 50:40Light Watkins?

  And that's what I put in the breaking the old habit category. Like, all of those things you just named are a part of that experience, and that is to be expected. And you need to understand that it's going to happen. And it's going to get intense because, you know, those, those old ways and those old neural patterns and they're not, they've been in there for a very long time. They're not, they don't plan on going away anytime soon because they're working to keep you safe. That's the, that's the environment you've basically told your body that you're living in. And so it's a survival, it's in large part is a survival mechanism. And, and it's, it's made to shut down your, your broader

• 51:21Light Watkins?

  perceptual ability where you can step back and say, oh, no, this is just a, you know, this is good for me, or that's not good for me. You're not able to make that sort of discernment. And so that's, that's its job, is to keep you locked into the certain states that you can survive. I told a story in the book about this woman in my yoga class who-

• 51:43Light Watkins?

  Came to my class one night, back when I was teaching yoga, and I played this song, "Over the Rainbow", and she jumped up and she ran out of the room. And she was a lawyer, very well-read spiritually, and one of my regular students. And I didn't know why she ran out of the room. This was at the end of the class. We only had 10 minutes left in the class, but she literally, it was like she saw a ghost. She grabbed all of her stuff in a haste and she just ran out of the room. And she came back a month later, and she came up to me. I was cueing up the music at the beginning of the class, and she apologized. She said, "I'm so sorry. I ran out of the room so abruptly the other day, but you played that song, 'Over the Rainbow', you know, "Over the Rainbow" by the Hawaiian guy." Beautiful song.

• 52:28Light Watkins?

  And she told me the backstory. The backstory was, earlier that morning of the class, she had had a run-in with her husband. And apparently, she found some receipt. It looked like he had been possibly cheating on her. She wasn't sure. But it created this big argument and confusion, and she was processing all day long. And she decided she was gonna go to the class to try to cool off and wind down. And she said, "Over the Rainbow" was their wedding song. Oh, my goodness. As soon as I played their wedding song, she said, "I don't know what came over me. I just had to get out of the class. So could you please not play that song again today?" And when she told me the backstory, knowing what I knew about meditation and stress,

• 53:12Light Watkins?

  everything made sense. Because when you're being triggered in that way, and that's become a big buzzword nowadays, "trigger", when you're triggered, what's really happening is, everything in your body is telling you you're being attacked. And in her case, the bear, or the tiger, or whatever the attacker was, was that song. Now, really, it was tied to her husband and everything associated with him as a result of whatever they experienced that morning. A song that previously was a very beautiful, nice memory, now conjured up the memory of danger. And it's a song about butterflies and lullabies and blue jays. But the part of the brain that gives her the ability to see that connection, that this is just a two-minute song, I'm in a yoga class, nothing bad is happening,

• 53:57Light Watkins?

  it gets shut down. And everything inside of her says, "You have two options. You can run away as quickly as possible, or you can fight." And she chose to run away. And that's it. That's how you know you're under the influence of the stress. And so... When we talk about meditation, releasing this stuff, if she started sitting down and meditating, she may spend the first three or four meditations thinking about crazy thoughts related to her husband, or crazy thoughts related to her marriage, or how much she wants to get a divorce, or how she doesn't like being single, not realizing that that represents the stress that was already inside of her, because that's what locked it up in the first place. It was inside of her already. Now it's leaving,

• 54:40Light Watkins?

  and now she's being liberated from her past. So how do you know the meditation is working? Not based on the fact that you're having thoughts about some crazy thing related to your husband. Can you hear that song again and stay in the room? That's how you know it's working. And so measuring progress needs to be properly understood as well, because I think people are missing the gold because they're too fixated on whatever's coming out of the exhaust pipe.

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's an extreme example, but it makes me think about how much we're all impulse on a lower level throughout our daily experience by stimuli that we're not even consciously aware is triggering us.

• 55:25Light Watkins?

  Hundreds of thousands.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We don't even know. Yeah, like that's activating something inside of us that's getting us to be reactive, or aggressive, or irritable. And we don't even know what's happening.

• 55:38Light Watkins?

  And most of them are from childhood. So we're very much a slave to our stress. And the stress dictates how well we sleep at night. It dictates how effectively we communicate. It dictates how adaptable we are, how generous we are, how compassionate we are. Because we all want these things. You read The Four Agreements, and you think, okay, fantastic. I'm gonna start never taking anything personally, and always being impeccable, and this and that. And what's the first thing that goes out the window when, you know, someone cuts you off or you leave your podcast equipment back?

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  All impulse control goes, goes out the window. And I think when you say it goes back to childhood, it's important to point out for somebody who's listening, it doesn't imply that you were abused as a child or that you had some sort of terrible experience as a kid. Like, this is something I've wrestled with because I had a normal childhood. Like, I can't think of any specific, you know, extreme trauma that I suffered from, but I had pains, like things, no matter who you are, like throughout your childhood, you're going to suffer from one time or another. And because of the plasticity of your, your mind and your life experience at that point, those things get cemented.

• 56:47Light Watkins?

  Right. It's not fully developed. You're not socially mature enough to deal with rejection, abandonment, things, things like I got lost one time in the mall with my mom. I was eight years old and to me, I was, I might as well have been left in Afghanistan and she was in America.

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  And now today, we're still talking about it.

• 57:03Light Watkins?

  Right. That's how it felt. But yeah, obviously now, looking back, it's like, oh, she was probably one store over. But to me, it felt like, you know, I had lost her forever. And so, and, and a lot of times, people are still coping with abandonment or loss or breakups or getting fired in the same way that they were dealing with it when they were seven, eight years old, which qualifies as an overreaction, which means that those same brain connections that led to you feeling like you were lost forever when you were eight are now being hardwired still when you're 28 or 38 or 48, which means that, you know, you end up overreacting or maladapting to that change as it occurs to you when you're an adult and not able to tap into in a more mature way of dealing.

• 57:48Rich Roll?

  Right. Like, so when you're part, when you call your partner and you really need to talk to that person and they're like, I can't talk right now and they like hang up, you're that kid in the mall.

• 57:56Light Watkins?

  Yeah, you're calling back.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  You've been abandoned again, you know, and you're going to have an extreme reaction to that.

• 58:00Light Watkins?

  That's right. That's right. That's usually where extreme reactions, that's why when you go to therapy, which is great, you know, I think therapy is a great thing, but we end up talking about. What happened when we were children for a lot of the time.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:13Light Watkins?

  And how it's still playing out in all of our relationships. And that just means the stress triggers are still very active in your body. And so what meditation does, probably more effectively than most other interventions, is it can neutralize those triggers. You don't forget what happened. You don't even forget how you felt when it happened. But it no longer dictates how you react today. And that's, that's the measure of, of, you know, is this meditation working or not?

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  Right, even if it just gives you that extra moment of pause before you, you're about to, and then you catch yourself and you're like, oh, I have a choice here.

• 58:49Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  I can respond differently. And that white space, even if it's a nanosecond, can make the difference between ending up in a huge fight with your spouse or just diffusing the entire thing.

• 59:01Light Watkins?

  And sometimes, you know, you may still have depression. You may still have other kinds of disorders, even though you've been meditating for 10 or 15 years, and that could be, there could be a higher purpose to that, you know? You have, if you're a guy like a Dan Harris or somebody who's like, you know, got a big platform and, and he's, what I love about Dan is he's so relatable, you know? And people see him and they think, oh, he can do it, I can do it, you know? And people see someone like me and they hear about my name and all that and they may not necessarily relate to me as much. So I love it when people come up to me and they say, you know, I've been meditating for five, six years and I'm still grappling with this thing. And I say, well, that's, that's just because, you know, nature needs you to be more relatable.

• 59:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:45Light Watkins?

  And people are gonna come to this practice because they can identify with what you're going through and they can also probably recognize that spaciousness within you more than you recognize it within yourself. And I tell this other story in the book about this woman that I taught, this lawyer, who got into a big fight with her husband. This is after coming and, and complaining to me that after a year of meditating, nothing, it's, nothing was happening. And so now she's at dinner three months later with her husband, they're having this huge argument. Apparently this was their pattern, having these huge arguments. She said, I was right, he was wrong, the usual. And, and then she said, okay, after the argument was dead and buried, she kept eating and he started looking at her like she was a ghost. And then finally.

• 1:00:30Light Watkins?

  She couldn't take it anymore. She goes, "Why are you staring at me like that?" He said, "Because six months ago, you would have left me in the restaurant after an argument like that." "That's what we do. We argue, you leave." "But you're just able to just let it go?" "He said, "I think that meditation is working."

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, to her, on the surface, it felt like it's not working because she still had the fight, but her response and her ability to get over it, you know, it's like the half-life of the negative emotions.

• 1:00:58Light Watkins?

  Because we don't realize how deeply rooted some of this stuff is, and it may take a thousand meditations in a row before it's finally liberated. And, you know, a year in meditation is nothing.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:11Light Watkins?

  As a lot of long-term meditators experience, a year is nothing, you know? 10 years is really not that much. And when we're talking about major progress, I mean, progress is incremental, but it's steady, provided that your practice is steady.

• 1:01:31Rich Roll?

  One of the things that I struggle with, despite having, you know, hours and hours of conversations with people like yourself, look, I'm completely sold on the benefits of this, and I've experienced the benefits myself, but I still struggle with a consistent practice. Like, I can't say that I do it every single day, certainly not twice a day. Sustainability, you know, I know, in my own life experience with anything that I've succeeded at, sustainability is the most important quality, you know, bar none, when it comes to trying to advance yourself in any practice or pursuit. And I still, I still continue to like, struggle with prioritizing this.

• 1:02:12Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  So, I would imagine this is something that you come up against with the students that you teach. How do you wrap your head around getting people to understand the importance of the sustainable aspect of doing it consistently?

• 1:02:26Light Watkins?

  Well, I subtitled my book, "How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying." And I know some people may think, you know, using success in the same sentence with meditation is, is a, you know, you shouldn't do that. And in the book, the way I define success, very specifically, is meditating in a way that you...

• 1:02:49Light Watkins?

  Enjoy and look forward to doing. Because that's really the only way you're going to maintain the consistency that's necessary is if you look forward to doing it. And I, I, there's, it's no exaggeration to say that I wake up in the morning and I can't wait to meditate. And when I'm meditating, I don't want to stop. I oftentimes have to stop because I just, you know, I have stuff to do, but I would just keep going over. I just, I can't wait in the afternoon to meditate again. And there's nothing special about me. I don't, I wasn't born, I was from Alabama. I wasn't born, you know, enlightened or I wasn't born with this knowledge. I just learned mechanics and those mechanics weren't very complicated, you know, in the same way that for someone who has two arms and two legs and you've learned how to swim,

• 1:03:34Light Watkins?

  it's not complicated. But if someone says, you know, swimming is too hard, you may think to yourself, well, you just don't understand it well enough yet. You know, you just need to learn how to do it and then it will work for you. And so I think the same thing is true for meditation in that when people understand certain mechanics and what the mechanics I'm talking about really are very simple, like body position. There's this idea that in order for meditation to be most effective, you have to sit up straight and you have to cross your legs. That hasn't been my experience, you know? I was taught the first day I met my teacher, you should actually sit like you're watching television. And that frees up your mind to get lost in an experience, right?

• 1:04:17Light Watkins?

  And the way you, you interact with your mind, you know, you focus on this, focus on that, visualize this, that wasn't my experience. I was taught you let your mind roam free and that's getting back to the EASY approach. EASY is an acronym for how you, how you handle your, your mental and sensational experiences. E stands for embrace, A stands for accept, S for surrender, Y and yield to. So what are you embracing, accepting, surrendering to and yielding to? All of your mental, emotional, even physical experiences during the meditation. So if you have an itch, you scratch it. If you get uncomfortable, you switch your position so that you remain comfortable. If you have thoughts about work, that's amazing.

• 1:05:02Light Watkins?

  It's not just, I'm just gonna accept it. No, no, you look at it, you celebrate it. This is amazing. I can't, it's the best thing that could be happening right now is me thinking about this work problem. Or me thinking about how I don't like myself.

• 1:05:15Rich Roll?

  Right, that goes back to that, that overcoming this urge or this idea that you have to combat the monkey mind.

• 1:05:22Light Watkins?

  Right, and you stop looking at it as a monkey mind, you start looking at it as a noble mind. The mind is, it's like taking, it's like if your radio station was tuned into a music you don't like, you take the speaker and you throw it against the wall because you don't like. It's not the speaker, the speaker is just projecting what's coming out of the channel. And the mind is just projecting what's coming out of the body. It's not a bad mind, it's just showing you what's leaving the body. So it requires a complete reframing of the experience, which over time is gonna allow the practitioner to start to have a completely different relationship with their mind. And then that's gonna create a little bit of space in the meditation, which allows you to sit there and enjoy it more and more.

• 1:06:04Light Watkins?

  And then the irony of all of this is that when you are seeing your mind as an ally and not the enemy of the practice, that place you wanna go to, the place where everybody wants to go to, the calmness, the quietness, the deepness, that's where you go.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:19Light Watkins?

  It's, it's literally-

• 1:06:21Rich Roll?

  How long is it gonna take?

• 1:06:22Light Watkins?

  I've seen people get there-

• 1:06:23Rich Roll?

  How can I, how can I get there quickly?

• 1:06:25Light Watkins?

  I've seen people get there and literally within an hour-

• 1:06:28Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:06:28Light Watkins?

  Of practicing, absolutely, yeah. I mean, this is, I wanna make a disclaimer, this is working with me one-on-one, and that's what I'm suggesting anyone needs to do. But I did the very best I could to put those principles in this book, so that, you know, if you are, take it seriously enough and you follow the instructions as written, then you're gonna have that experience pretty quickly. And we started doing this 21-day challenge, which is a companion to the book. And people have been, after four days, people have been reporting having that same experience. It's not complicated. That's the thing. I feel almost guilty walking around, knowing that I've been having these wonderful.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  We want to overcomplicate it, though.

• 1:07:10Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 1:07:10Rich Roll?

  You know, I think as human beings, we're like, okay, like, you taught me that, but like, take me behind the velvet rope. Like, now tell me the real, like, it's like in, uh, in, uh, in recovery, when people are struggling or they're, they're dealing with some uncomfortable emotion, the answer is always the same. It's like, are you working with newcomers? Are you going to meetings? Where are you with the steps? Like, like, uh, have you, have you reached out to help somebody else? Like, and it's like, come on, that again? Like, there's gotta be another, like, there's gotta be another solution for my super complicated, unique problem that you can't understand.

• 1:07:46Light Watkins?

  Same with swimming, man. You know, there's no way to, you just gotta practice it. You just gotta take the techniques and practice, practice those techniques over and over. And then before you know it, it's gonna click and you'll be having a wonderful time. But one of the things that we don't talk about a lot in meditation, I wanted to talk about this, is the idea of the exchange. You know, you mentioned that it was too expensive when you first came. And obviously, a lot of people feel like that. And some people even feel you shouldn't charge anything to learn how to teach someone to meditate and that kind of thing. But, um, what you do see as a teacher is that having some sort of energetic or meaningful exchange, doesn't have to be money, could be anything. It definitely translates to having a deeper relationship with your practice.

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no question about that.

• 1:08:29Light Watkins?

  And, you know, when it comes to you waking up and not feeling like meditating one day, even though it's a great thing to do, just remind, remembering, oh, that's right, I made that big exchange.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  I paid fifteen hundred bucks for this.

• 1:08:42Light Watkins?

  I'm gonna sit down and do this thing. I'm gonna get my money's worth out of it. And so it does, it, it, it affects, it affects things in a really nice way. And, uh, and I talk about that in the book as well. And that's one of the ways I kind of, I, I came to terms with the dissonance that you were saying earlier about putting all this in a book is I also included what I consider to be probably one of the most important elements in the, in the technique, which is, which has nothing to do with actually sitting down and meditating and everything to do with sacrificing something. You know, I was telling a friend of mine the other day about these, what I wanted my life to become in 2018 and 19. And she asked me a really profound question. She says, what are you willing to give up?

• 1:09:24Light Watkins?

  Because you can't be an author, as you know, and watch all the Netflix shows. You know, you have to sacrifice time and things you'd rather probably be doing to sit down by yourself and write and or go run or, you know, everything requires a sacrifice. And if you look at all meditation styles, they're all, there's a sacrificial element to all of it, except when people learn from a book or, you know, go online and do a YouTube video or something like that. You're sacrificing the five minutes you're watching the video, but there needs to be some sort of bigger sacrifice. And this is what you see when you go to India. People will give up their whole lives to go and study with a master of something like this.

• 1:10:09Light Watkins?

  And no one's ever really mastered meditation without having some sort of intimate relationship with a practice. And that intimacy does not happen intellectually. It happens, it happens through you kind of opening up yourself in a way that humbles you to what you're about to receive, right? Which is to say, you're, you're, when you give a sacrifice of something, it could be time, could be money, could be gifts, could be mentoring someone. When you, when you put yourself in that position, you're basically saying, I don't know everything there is to know about everything. Whatever I knew got me to the point where I'm now seeking out some other help. And even though we don't have a great appreciation for this in the West,

• 1:10:54Light Watkins?

  because again, there's no scientific studies that demonstrate the power of this. But it, in the East, they look at it as it's opening up your consciousness to receive the knowledge that already exists and it's now coming into you and through you. And it's not yours as though you own it. It's just, it's now channeling through you and it allows you to have better experiences, deeper experiences and that more profound relationship with your practice.

• 1:11:17Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. I, I never have thought of it in such specific terms, but it's definitely true.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  You know, it's definitely true that if you just are given something for free, you're not going to be emotionally invested in it. And the chances of it sticking are not going to be that high, right? But when you have sacrificed yourself in any way, it doesn't have to be financial, then you're creating that, you're creating that emotional investment in, in the long term kind of viability of whatever it is you're seeking.

• 1:11:51Light Watkins?

  Even going to the Vipassana retreat, which, you know, they bill as a free retreat, you're still spending 10 days.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Light Watkins?

  That you're not working. That's, that's more than paying the $1,000, you know, depending on what you do for a living. And, and then they hit you up for donation at the end of it. So then there's that kind of obligation, energetic obligation. I should give something because I did, you know, they gave me food and, you know, you know how we are. And so, you know, people will say, well, I do Vipassana, that's free. That's not free, actually. And, and if, if you're not willing to sacrifice something, then you're not willing to be a student.

• 1:12:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:26Light Watkins?

  Because you're basically now dictating to the teacher, you know more than they know. And this is how, this is how it's going to happen. And no teacher worth their salt is going to want to teach someone like that. You want to teach someone who you know is going to follow the instructions and they're going to have at least enough consistency to get through the baseline instruction so that you can have a foundation for your practice.

• 1:12:46Rich Roll?

  What would you say is the biggest benefit that you've experienced from meditation?

• 1:12:54Light Watkins?

  I would say, first of all, I want to just clarify this. It's hard for me to know what.

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  Well, you don't, yeah, you would have to see yourself in another dimension, living a different life, I guess, in order to gauge that.

• 1:13:05Light Watkins?

  Like you, I had a really good childhood. You know, it's funny, I was being interviewed last night and this woman was saying, what's the biggest challenge you've had to overcome? And this is someone who had experienced genocide in Rwanda, who was asking me this question. So then I'm automatically thinking, well, I haven't had any real problems sexually. I didn't see my whole family get executed and, you know, and I was only five years old and that kind of thing. And there's, you know, sometimes there's, there can be a little bit of shame around.

• 1:13:35Light Watkins?

  You know, in this vulnerability obsessed culture about not having, not having more traumatic

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:41Light Watkins?

  Experiences that you suffered from.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  Also, in the kind of health and wellness and in a quote unquote like inspirational space, like it's this thing, like you have to tell everyone this horrible thing that happened to you and how you overcame it and all of that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of that gets trumped up and

• 1:13:58Light Watkins?

  It's supposed to qualify you to be an expert in this thing. And it's like, well, you know, I do agree that we're all, we all experience challenges in our own way. Like I could say, I could make the argument that as an African American, growing up in America, that's challenging, you know, in ways that people who aren't African American will never quite understand. But to answer your question, I didn't feel like I was a big stressed out, you know, anxiety ridden, you know, person before I started meditating.

• 1:14:27Rich Roll?

  And you had this huge crisis.

• 1:14:28Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 1:14:29Rich Roll?

  That you had to

• 1:14:29Light Watkins?

  I was really curious and for whatever good fortune, I was, I had always had a healthy relationship with my intuition. My intuition would say, quit that job. No one's happy there. And I listened to it. I just quit the job. My intuition says, travel to this destination one way. You don't know anyone. I would just, and once you start doing that kind of thing over and over, you start to become callous to the resistance that inevitably will try to persuade you to stay in the status quo. And so when I came across meditation, it was another thing that said, I mean, when Tom told me, you know, the exchange for this instruction is a week's salary, you'd get to determine what that is for yourself.

• 1:15:11Light Watkins?

  I don't need to see your tax returns or anything like that. I saw that as an amazing opportunity. I don't know why, but I just did. I just thought, and I wasn't making any money at the time. I was teaching about, you know, four or five yoga classes, mostly for free or for very little money. But I said, you know what? I have an opportunity here to dictate how much I want to make. And so I know by putting, giving this amount, it was like $400 or something like that. That was half my net worth at the time. I probably got $800 in the bank account. Then that's a big, you know, knowing about the law of attraction before the law, the secret came out and all of that. I just felt like I was triggering something very powerful. And so I did that and that's how I started it.

• 1:15:56Light Watkins?

  And I tell people all the time, the way you start anything, you know, it was going to dictate how that relationship unfolds. And you have a very powerful opportunity to either, and this is with anything, whether, I don't care what it is. You know, if I'm joining a running club, if I'm gonna start crocheting or something. The way you invest in it in the very beginning, you can determine that for yourself. You have an opportunity to determine that for yourself. If you don't determine it, if you feel like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get more than I leave behind. Then it gets determined for you later in some way. And that's usually not, it doesn't feel like a very positive thing. Someone else is kind of giving you the cost.

• 1:16:40Light Watkins?

  And just a practical situation is, you know, you have something your heart really wants to do. You don't do it and it was going to cost you $800 that you had, but you just didn't want to spend it. And then later on, your car breaks down and guess how much it cost to fix? $800. Is there a connection? I don't know, but I've had a lot of experiences where it's uncanny. How I'll bypass something that I feel in my heart I should be doing because I just, I'm being a cheapskate. And, and then later on down the line, I'm blowing in on something completely unrelated. Right. And so, you know, the way we start these practices is going to dictate how, how the thing unfolds.

• 1:17:21Light Watkins?

  And we can end up creating for ourselves very, very powerful experiences. And so with me, with meditation, my powerful experience was having a level of clarity that I don't think I would have. And having the still small voice inside turn into a loud, annoying voice. Right? So that intuition, which we all have.

• 1:17:44Rich Roll?

  It's very quiet.

• 1:17:45Light Watkins?

  And so we miss it a lot of the time, or we second guess it, or we think, ah, you know, the ego voice is very much louder. But when you meditate, meditate, meditate, the voice gets louder and louder and louder. And then you just can't ignore it.

• 1:17:56Rich Roll?

  I think, I think a lot of people's intuition is compromised, though, because it's impulso by reactivity or addiction, all these other things.

• 1:18:04Light Watkins?

  Stress is like the Trojan horse on your computer that gets in there and messes everything up.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like it has a virus, you know, and it's, it becomes untrustworthy. And when people rely upon it, it leads them astray because they don't have that clarity.

• 1:18:17Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and they don't know, is this my body talking to me, telling me to go get Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or is this my intuition?

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yes, I need this. My body is telling me that I need that.

• 1:18:27Light Watkins?

  They need to clarify it. And that's why I say meditation is like a spam filter for your mind. If you didn't have the spam filter on your email, it's going to take you forever to go through and sort through all the Viagra emails and the Inkjet emails and the guy in Nigeria who wants money and get to the important stuff. And so when you filter that out, you don't even have to deal with that nonsense. And that's what, that's what I would say it's done for me. It says, allowed me to rise above the nonsense. So, you know, you get trolled and when you're a public figure and you're putting work out into the public, people are going to criticize you, they're going to troll you, they're going to say, you know, this and that about you. And I don't, I would imagine this is from my meditation, but it doesn't, it doesn't really affect me. I don't personalize these things anymore in the way that I used to and miss sleep because of it.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  I'm sitting here thinking, after you gave me the big speech about how you made the decision to take the class with Tom, I'm thinking, man, I guess I should have done that. I was like, I wonder what would have happened if like light was in my shoes and said, no, I can't afford it. And I was the one who like said, I'm going to do this. Like if, like our lives could, you know, be potentially very different right now.

• 1:19:31Light Watkins?

  We could also make the argument that it was meant, this was the intersection that was supposed to motivate you.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  Right. We had different journeys towards this moment where we get to sit down and talk to each other, but.

• 1:19:40Light Watkins?

  And then the listener wouldn't have the benefit of the colorful dialogue had you not had that experience.

• 1:19:47Rich Roll?

  And, and my intuition is telling me, all right, well, I've had two guys in a row on the podcast talking about Vedic meditation, like what is the universe trying to say to me?

• 1:19:56Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I would be happy to show you everything I know, Rich. It takes us four days.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  You dangle this carrot in front of me right now. Do you think about, like, do you, do you consider yourself to have a role in the, in the? In the conversation around

• 1:20:19Rich Roll?

  the lower socioeconomic class being African American, like, do you, you know, how, because there aren't that, there can't be that many African American meditation teachers, right? Do you think about that? Or do you just?

• 1:20:29Light Watkins?

  I haven't met any others that teach in the way that I teach.

• 1:20:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Light Watkins?

  That's something that I think we definitely need more of. But that was, again, it was a big motivation for me in, in that a lot of people who grew up in the way that I grew up

• 1:20:45Light Watkins?

  and who don't have access to these kind, this kind of knowledge, I wanted to, I wanted to change the conversation and I wanted to get that in, in their hands and scale the knowledge as much as possible without, without sacrificing the quality of the knowledge. And I don't think, it may not happen in, in my lifetime to the extent that I would love for it to happen, but you know, it's got to start somewhere and, and hopefully, you know, young black kids look at me and, and think to themselves, well, he can, you know, he can be a meditation teacher, I can be a meditation teacher, or I should start meditating like him. And, and really, what I want to do is I want to get this into the pop culture a little bit more because that's really where, you know, they have that trickle down effect in, in, in the black community,

• 1:21:30Light Watkins?

  you know, when, when Jay-Z starts talking about meditation and Kanye and Drake and these guys, then I think that's where it's going to really hit critical mass for us.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's happening, you know.

• 1:21:42Light Watkins?

  It is, it's in the process.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  It could happen more quickly, but I think.

• 1:21:44Light Watkins?

  J. Cole is a meditator. You know, there are a lot of guys like that who, who I think maybe Bob Roth taught some of these guys.

• 1:21:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right.

• 1:21:53Light Watkins?

  He's a meditator.

• 1:21:56Rich Roll?

  What's next for you? You're going to New York, right? Are you doing, let's talk about The Shine a little bit.

• 1:22:01Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:22:02Light Watkins?

  So, you know, The Shine is one of the big reasons, I think, why some of the publishers were looking at me as the person to write this book. And The Shine is a nonprofit that I started a few years ago in Los Angeles as a means of, of introducing people to the practices like meditation around other things that they're already excited about, which is, you know, TED Talk-like experiences, live music. And then it was also an outlet for me because

• 1:22:33Light Watkins?

  I stopped drinking for the most part in my mid twenties. And, you know, as you know, it changes the social dynamic.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  A little bit.

• 1:22:44Light Watkins?

  When you don't drink. And, uh, and, you know, I still like having fun and going out and, but I don't really enjoy being around a lot of people who are tipsy and, you know, having those kinds of conversations. So I wanted to create an environment where people who had the same, the same sort of sensitivities and interests could come together on a Friday night or Saturday night, have a great time. But also have a natural high instead of an artificial high. And so we started every event with a meditation. Then that leads us into some story where we listen to someone who's a real person. You've spoken at The Shine before. Get up and tell their story of how they, um, what their hero's journey has been and how they're

• 1:23:26Light Watkins?

  out there helping people, you know, helping spread positivity in the world. And, uh, so it's been, it's been going really well and we've done, you know, probably close to a hundred events at this point. We're in New York, we're in London now. It's gotten to the point where there was an event that I wasn't at, which was my first one, not, not being there, that happened in London last week. And so that's an exciting sign of the time, sign of the times, because it forces me to have to let go a little bit and just kind of let it, let it fly. See this thing is going to fly. And so, you know.

• 1:24:00Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So you start, how long, you know, you started four or five years ago?

• 1:24:03Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I started in, in June of two thousand and fifth, two thousand and fourteen.

• 1:24:07Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. It's a pretty special thing. I mean, for people that are listening, it's sort of like a large dinner party meets meditation class with like a TED Talk sort of, you know, inspirational story, but there's food and there's fun. And the, my experience is that the people that attend are all like, everybody you meet is like doing something cool and like everybody's super engaged and interesting. And the fact that there isn't alcohol, like it, it sort of attracts a certain type of person who's looking for a more uplifting type of experience on a Friday or a Saturday night as opposed to going to the bar or the party. And they're just, there, there's something really unique and cool about the environment that you create with these events. It's really cool.

• 1:24:52Light Watkins?

  And one of the best parts of the experience, I think, is when we, you know, we, we charge thirty bucks, which, and all the money goes to pay for the venue and, you know, the. Cost of food and that kind of thing. And then we take, we try to budget it so there's about $400 left over and we give it to someone that we randomly select in the audience and we, we, we tell them to go out and spend it in any way that inspires them to help other people. And we've collected so many stories and videos and

• 1:25:22Rich Roll?

  Right, then they come back and they share about what they did with it.

• 1:25:25Light Watkins?

  Yeah, which is amazing. It's amazing what you can do with $400. And you know, the idea behind it was we wanted to inspire other people who aren't, you know, millionaires and billionaires that you can, you can make a difference. You don't have to wait until you

• 1:25:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:41Light Watkins?

  You hit it big to be able to be philanthropic. You can take whatever, you can take $200 and go out and do something that can change someone's life. And that's how, that's how change is gonna happen is from every one of us, you know, being the change we want to see.

• 1:25:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when I was in my twenties, living in New York City, there was nothing like that. But you're seeing, like, I don't know whether it's just the millennial generation, but an influx of events like The Shine

• 1:26:08Light Watkins?

  Absolutely.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  That are popping up, whether it's Wanderlust or Daybreaker, where you

• 1:26:12Light Watkins?

  A bit quiet in New York.

• 1:26:13Rich Roll?

  You're dancing at seven o'clock in the morning, like all these sorts of things that are, that are becoming, you know, part of like mainstream culture, like, oh, let's go do this, like alternatives to the traditional, let's go to the bar and get hammered.

• 1:26:25Light Watkins?

  Right, yeah. It's, it's, it's an exciting time to be in this space because I think it's still very much being formulated and, and I don't think people in, you know, in a lot of parts of middle America, or maybe even around the world, are having these conversations yet, but I think it's coming and what's happening here in LA, I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be making a very big impact in what's gonna be happening throughout the rest of the country in the, in the coming 10 or 15 years.

• 1:26:54Rich Roll?

  When you look around right now, you know, clearly we're in a very divisive, critical moment in our culture. Tempers are running hot and, you know, there's a divisiveness that I haven't seen in my lifetime. So Are you somebody who is optimistic about the future? Like, how do you kind of process current events?

• 1:27:15Light Watkins?

  I think we're seeing, you know, the pendulum swing from one direction to the other. I mean, you can make the argument that if there was no Barack Obama, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in right now. But if there wasn't a President Bush, we wouldn't be in the Barack, we wouldn't have had the Barack Obama situation. So I just think this is a natural reflection of the shifting that takes, that natural, that just takes place in general. It's going to swing back in the other direction. But, you know, the great thing about it is that it's creating these kinds of conversations. You know, you're probably getting more podcasts nowadays than ever before. You're getting more people talking about sexual harassment, racism, more people learning about politics.

• 1:27:58Light Watkins?

  I have a friend the other day just announced he's going to run for Congress. I mean, you know, these things wouldn't be happening to the extent that they're happening if they weren't getting so crazy on the other end. And I think this is a beautiful catalyst for that. And I'm not saying we should accept it, but we should do what we can do to make the situation better. And that's the call. This is a dog whistle for everybody to listen to what's in their heart and start taking action. Because there's not enough, you know, Einstein has this wonderful, or no, Mark Twain has this wonderful quote, "The two most important days of your life, the day you're born and the day you figure out why." And I would argue that there's a third most important day, which is the day you take action on your why. You know, it's not enough just to know what your why is.

• 1:28:43Light Watkins?

  You've got to take some steps in that direction so that you're not depriving the world anymore of the gift that you're here to bestow.

• 1:28:51Rich Roll?

  And I would imagine you would say to the question that most people don't know their why, that if you're struggling with what your why is.

• 1:28:59Light Watkins?

  Meditation will sort that out.

• 1:29:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Because I think that is, that is true. I think most people don't know their why, and part of that is because they are living their life reflexively and reactively.

• 1:29:11Light Watkins?

  And externally.

• 1:29:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:13Light Watkins?

  Yeah, there's got to be some internal experiences in order to really, truly...

• 1:29:18Light Watkins?

  Feel your intuition. You have to feel it because just even knowing it is not enough. You have to feel that you're going to be safe if you move in that direction. And the interesting thing about it, and they've been talking about this in wisdom traditions for a very long time, but moving in the direction of your intuition is going to take you to a layer of uncertainty, right? We are obsessed with control and certainty. So, moving towards uncertainty is usually the last place we want to go. We'd rather stay, well, just the better the devil you know. We'd rather stay in the status quo, even though it's not great, because we're familiar with it, than move towards the unknown. But if you want to thrive, if you really want to live your Dharma, you have to move

• 1:30:03Light Watkins?

  in the direction of the unknown. And that's how you know it's your intuition talking to you. So, you need to feel that because when you feel it in every core of your being, you won't be able to ignore it anymore. And that's, that's how I've identified my lane. I'm not going to be the guy out there, you know, with the picket signs on the front line, but I'll help you tap into that place inside where you may be the one running for president, or, you know, pushing this new initiative through Congress, or inspiring a generation of women to stand up for themselves, and, you know, all of these things. And, and, you know, there's no such thing as the happy serial killer.

• 1:30:43Light Watkins?

  So, happy people, they typically do things that are creative, that are inspirational, and that reflect the level of leadership that I think is very attractive. And I think that's what the world needs more of.

• 1:30:55Rich Roll?

  Beautifully said. When you think about happiness, how do you define that for yourself?

• 1:31:00Light Watkins?

  I define happiness as having a state of fulfillment and contentedness in what you, in where you are and what you're doing. So, that means in any moment, whether you're stuck in traffic, locked in an elevator, you know, and I'm picking very extreme situations, in the post office, in a long line. There's a, there's a level of contentedness. You may not like it where you are, but you know that you're right where you're supposed to be. And if you stay, if you, if you kind of dance with that knowingness, that you're right where you're supposed to be, it leaves you open to spotting whatever available opportunities are, are present.

• 1:31:40Light Watkins?

  If you are operating under the assumption that you're supposed to be over there, but you're over here, and this thing that you're experiencing is a big obstacle, keeping you from getting to your true path, then you're going to miss those opportunities. And the opportunities that you need in order to stay on your path are only going to be available to you in that present moment, right? So that's what people, you know, when we say we're in flow, that's what, in my interpretation, that's what that means, is that you're, you're hopping from one opportunity to the next, to the next, to the next. You're not seeing anything as an obstacle. You're seeing everything as a gateway to the next opportunity. And so that's, that encapsulates my idea of happiness.

• 1:32:25Light Watkins?

  Because you're no longer wishing you were somewhere other than where you currently are.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  Right, stop resisting what is.

• 1:32:30Light Watkins?

  To some extent, yes.

• 1:32:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And being present for what is right in front of you to experience is the, it's the only, it's the only path.

• 1:32:39Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but you know, I, I would even say, you know, because I, I don't want people letting themselves off the hook. Resistance, resistance can be there. We can, you can resist all you want, but as long as you know that within that resistance, you're still on the path, you know? And so if the resistance is there 40%, you need to have your, your intuition, your clarity, and those perceptual acuity powers there 50%. If it's just a little bit higher than the resistance, then you can still, you can still make your way. It's great if the resistance isn't there at all. That's, that's, you know, best, best case scenario, but that's not reality. Even for me, I have resistance. You know, when I release this book, I want the book to do well. I want it to sell. I want to go on all the podcasts.

• 1:33:21Light Watkins?

  I want to, you know, feel like everyone's talking about this book, but that's not the reality of the situation. So if I'm going to wake up every day and be excited about this path that I'm finding myself on, I need to understand that part of that reality is nobody really cares. Except for a very small, except for a very small group of people.

• 1:33:41Rich Roll?

  I care like.

• 1:33:43Light Watkins?

  And you still have to, you know, if you have to take your cues from your heart, not from being validated by society. Yeah, because if you're not, you're not going to get that most of the time. And you're going to interpret that as resistance.

• 1:33:57Rich Roll?

  As soon as you get it, you'll be looking, it won't satisfy you. So you're looking for, well, but that guy hasn't yet given me the validation.

• 1:34:02Light Watkins?

  Exactly. And how did they get a best seller? And I, you know, so if that's your, if that's what you're relying on, it's a really crazy roller coaster ride. And, and, you know, I've done enough of that. And I just like to keep reflecting, becoming more and more self referrals. So I can stay true to my path. And if my path happens to lead to this or that, or wherever it goes, perfect. That's, and you know, you can't practice that inside. And this is what I talk about in the easy technique. That's essentially what you're practicing is you're reframing the mental experience. And if you do that enough times, it's not possible for it not to carry over into your external experiences.

• 1:34:41Rich Roll?

  But if you find yourself in the clutches of a reactive moment like that, or an unhealthy attachment, or an extreme emotional reaction, you know, how do you break that? Like, I guess with practice, with meditation, you suddenly have an inkling of awareness where you can go, oh, wait. And then you can step outside of it.

• 1:35:02Light Watkins?

  Well, I mean, that's where having a teacher really comes in handy. Because you can go and you can say to your teacher, hey, look, I'm feeling like I'm backsliding here. And your teacher, who's going to be able to see the whole picture? You know, it's going to say, well, you're still moving forward, you know, and just remind you, re-inspire you and all of the things that teachers do. And you still may have to go through that a little bit longer. But now you have some assurance from someone who's been there before you to remind you of what's actually happening. And that's, that can really, that's really the big value of having a teacher. Because otherwise, in order to reconcile, you have to be very, a very strong person. And you have to have a lot of experiences to be able to see that the next thing you hop to was the better, you ended up in a better place than you imagined for yourself.

• 1:35:47Light Watkins?

  So I think a lot of people tend to give up in the process of facing that resistance and, you know, go in the other direction towards what we think is safety, because it's what we're familiar with.

• 1:36:01Light Watkins?

  Even within that, you're still, you can't, you can't devolve. You only, you're only ever evolving, but your, your resistance just creates the feeling of swimming upstream, but the stream is still, it's still, you know, causing you to float down, you're just not floating down as quickly as maybe you could if you just relaxed a little bit and just let it, let it take you where it's going.

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  Right. It's that relaxation, that, that, that release, I think that's so counterintuitive because we want to just, we want to will it to happen, right? We, we believe that the exertion of force or some kind of purposeful, you know, kind of aggressive intentionality is the solution, whereas it's quite the opposite, right?

• 1:36:47Light Watkins?

  One of the most beautiful quotes I've seen comes from conversations with God, Neil Donald Walsh, and I can't remember if it's God talking or him asking a question, but someone says in the book, "You can relax to the extent that you trust in life." I just love that.

• 1:37:03Rich Roll?

  There's a lot packed into that.

• 1:37:05Light Watkins?

  Yeah. If your anxious and tense, you're probably not trusting that something is happening for your highest and best good.

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  And you're under the delusion that you have control over so many things that you have no control over.

• 1:37:16Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:37:17Light Watkins?

  So yeah, I would say meditation just kind of helps you become more friendly with the unknown and, and comfortable with not being in control, not, not giving yourself the illusion that you're in control and just being actually kind of excited about not being in control of anything and seeing where this thing is taking me. I mean, imagine that. Imagine you woke up every day and you didn't know what the hell was gonna happen.

• 1:37:40Rich Roll?

  It was terrifying for most people.

• 1:37:41Light Watkins?

  This is amazing.

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:37:42Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, you have to, I mean, I've, I've had some amazing experiences. Like, I couldn't get sober until I surrendered, until I really, you know, reckoned with that delusion of control, you know? That's what kept me in the grips of a lot of unhealthy behaviors and, you know, I don't do it perfectly, but there's a, there's such a relief when you can like, release that and realize like, you don't have to be holding on like that. And in fact, it's preventing you from moving forward in the best way possible.

• 1:38:13Light Watkins?

  Right. And, and I think, you know, as a long-term meditator, what you experience is it's a gradual, gradual transition into that where you don't even realize how much...

• 1:38:28Light Watkins?

  You're okay with not being in control until something big happens. You have a big loss or some big stark change. And then someone else says to you, you know, like that lawyer client of mine. My God, the way you handled that was just amazing.

• 1:38:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because you can't see the growth in yourself. It has to be reflected back to you through others.

• 1:38:47Light Watkins?

  Because the other, the other option is you try to force it. You try to like, you know, okay, I'm going to accept this because I listened to some positive thought CD and I'm gonna, now I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna be positive all the time.

• 1:39:00Rich Roll?

  You're like white knuckling, though. You're still trying to control it.

• 1:39:02Light Watkins?

  That's right. And inside, there's still that friction and it's, it's, it's, it's unattractive. People can kind of read that in, in you. If it's not authentic, if it's not coming from an authentic place. And I've had that, you can have that experience as a meditator where you kind of go just beyond your evolution.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:21Light Watkins?

  And you end up, you know, thinking, well, I'm meditating. I should be okay with my best friend, you know, dating my ex-girlfriend that I just broke up with. And you're really not okay with that. But you don't know it until you kind of, you know, you're, so you're basically dancing on that line, the, the fringe of, or the edge, I should say, of being, of being in the unknown and kind of having some familiarity as well. And I think that's where all the magic happens in life.

• 1:39:49Rich Roll?

  So as you pull the layers back on your own personal growth, like what is it that you're confronting right now or that you struggle with the most?

• 1:39:58Light Watkins?

  It's a very interesting question. So.

• 1:40:02Rich Roll?

  You don't have to answer.

• 1:40:03Light Watkins?

  No, no, no, I think it's important to keep it 100 here with you, Rich. I, you know, I still, I still have thoughts about having a family. I have thoughts about having kids and it hasn't appeared as though my life has been going in that direction. And, you know, I wouldn't say I struggle with it, but I do wonder sometimes, like, am I doing enough? But then when I, when I pull the lens back and I see the effort that I'm applying to all the other things and how everything seems to be flowing, it reminds me that, oh yeah,

• 1:40:43Light Watkins?

  I'm still in the flow in this area and where I am is an opportunity for, you know, whatever is happening to continue happening. So I think there's, there's got to be this understanding that.

• 1:40:56Light Watkins?

  The need that you think you have individually is not really your need. It's really nature's need or a bigger need, right? And when I look back at the relationships that didn't work out for whatever reason,

• 1:41:13Light Watkins?

  it's funny, at the heel of all of those relationships, that's where I started to shine.

• 1:41:19Light Watkins?

  That's where I started, that's where I became a meditation teacher. That's where I started writing my daily dose of inspiration emails that I send out every morning at 6 o'clock Pacific time. I send out these inspirational emails, which has been going on for almost two years now. And it all happened after a relationship ended. So, you know, I don't know if there's causation or correlation here, but there's something about, about the lack of, or at least appearing as, "I'm not moving in that direction," and birthing these things that are, I think, are having a really positive effect in the world.

• 1:41:59Rich Roll?

  And the reservation of self-judgment.

• 1:42:01Light Watkins?

  Right. I mean, it's all, it's all there. And I think that's what's wonderful about it, you know? You gotta be relatable in some way. You can't have a perfect existence, meditation or not. And, uh, and so it's all there. And, yeah, and I'm still, and the camera's still rolling, so I haven't called cut yet.

• 1:42:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Speaking of calling cut, we gotta call cut in a minute here. But let's take us out with perhaps some, some words of wisdom to the person out there who, who struggles with the idea of meditation, not sure how to start, or perhaps tried it, but it didn't stick. What could you impart to that person?

• 1:42:38Light Watkins?

  Well, I'm a little biased. I would say, you know, this book that I wrote, Bliss More, is the book I wish I would have had back when I was living in New York, sincerely wanting to start meditating, being completely confused by what I was experiencing.

• 1:42:55Light Watkins?

  And I think that that would be a good primer for anyone who does not enjoy meditation. Now, there's certain people out there that enjoy their meditation practice, and this book wasn't written for them. But if you're wanting to meditate, and you already agree that meditation is a great thing, and you read all those studies, and yet you just can't quite find a path that you feel excited about, not just you're okay with, you're excited about it, then you can start with that. Otherwise, I would just say, start with anything, even if it's just 10 minutes, even if it's just five minutes. Start with anything that you can do consistently. Consistency is everything when it comes to meditation. If you're not doing it every day, then you try something else

• 1:43:40Light Watkins?

  until you get to something that you find that you can do every day. And once you start doing it every day, then you're gonna start to see some changes inside. And it may not necessarily show up in the way that you think it should show up. For instance, just last story I'll tell here is, I taught this guy who came to me because he had gastrointestinal problems, and his Ayurvedic doctor told him, "You have to start meditating first, because when you're stressed, your digestive system is not gonna work in the way that it should work when I give you these herbs and other remedies." So he comes, he learns how to meditate. And when he shows up, he's got these big clunky shoes on. And we told him we had to take his shoes off, because that's what you do when you learn to meditate, you take your shoes off. It's an old tradition.

• 1:44:24Light Watkins?

  And he said, "I can't take my shoes off." So we made an exception. We let him sit down first, then he took his shoes off. The reason why he couldn't remove his shoes was because he had some metatarsal problems. And he was wearing corrective shoes. And he said, "I can't even take one step without these shoes on." So he learns how to meditate, sends me an email a year later.

• 1:44:46Light Watkins?

  Says like, "You're not gonna believe this, but I found myself vacuuming my apartment the other day and I wasn't wearing my shoes. There was no pain in my feet anymore. And the only thing I've been doing since I met you was I started meditating. And I wasn't even looking for that to happen. I just figured I'd have to, you know, wear these shoes for the rest of my life and I've been spending a fortune on these things. And, you know, I see that kind of thing all the time where people think one thing should be happening as a result of the practice, and yet they end up getting something completely unexpected, but even more amazing than what they originally were going for. And it happens from consistency, though. That guy, he was in his 60s, never meditated a day in his life. He was meditating every day. And, and it wasn't unusual to hear that kind of report from someone like

• 1:45:29Light Watkins?

  that. So I would just say, you know, try to be as consistent as you can and be open to whatever happens.

• 1:45:35Rich Roll?

  I love that example. And that is also, that also perfectly encapsulates Ayurveda, right?

• 1:45:42Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  It's about bringing mind, body, and spirit into harmony. And this guy has GI issues, which he's probably not connecting to the feet problem.

• 1:45:52Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 1:45:52Rich Roll?

  And, and the doctor says, "Start meditating," understanding that it's a, it's a first step towards enhancing that harmony.

• 1:46:01Light Watkins?

  That's right.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  And that ends up being the thing that like, sort of sets everything in motion for his body to heal itself.

• 1:46:07Light Watkins?

  Yep.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's incredible.

• 1:46:09Light Watkins?

  Yeah. But yeah, it's hard to, you know, give someone suggestions about improving their life without meditation being a part of that conversation.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:17Light Watkins?

  Just again, knowing what I know and seeing what I've seen. And it's just, if there was a pill that could do what meditation could do, you know, whoever invented that pill would become a trillionaire in about a week. Because there's literally no side effects, aside from you sitting there having some, you know, rocky thoughts in the beginning of your meditation practice. But then, after a while, even that starts to subside. And everyone's mind technically is busy.

• 1:46:45Rich Roll?

  The side effect is that you end up going to parties and telling all your friends how great meditation is and annoying them.

• 1:46:52Light Watkins?

  That's right. That's right. That's right. And you learn how to stop doing that, too. I went through that when I was a vegan. I was vegan before anybody in my circle was vegan. And so you learn pretty quickly. You can't, can't force that on anybody.

• 1:47:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not a good idea. All right, man. Well, that was awesome. Bliss More is the book. I really enjoyed it. You did a great job, man. So everybody, please pick up the book and check it out. It's an easy read. It's very accessible and I love all the stories, like the story you just told, it's all in there. And I think it will take anybody through the process of acclimating to what is required of you to step into this new lifestyle that is clearly transformational. So I appreciate the work that you do and much love, brother.

• 1:47:36Light Watkins?

  Thank you. Thank you again for having me back on the podcast.

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  It's been good. And if you want to connect with Light, @lightwatkins on Twitter and Instagram, lightwatkins.com. And if you want to sign up for his inspirational daily emails, is it Light Watkins? You also have beginmeditating.com, right? So what's going on there?

• 1:47:53Light Watkins?

  That's a meditation thing. Light Watkins is just everything else, books and the, and the talks and things like that.

• 1:48:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And you're headed to New York. Is there a Shine happening in New York?

• 1:48:03Light Watkins?

  There's a Shine happening in New York next week.

• 1:48:05Rich Roll?

  Nice. Who's speaking?

• 1:48:06Light Watkins?

  Will this be out by then?

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  Uh, probably not. Okay. But if you want to, if you want to attend a future Shine, what's the Shine website?

• 1:48:13Light Watkins?

  Theshinemovement.org.

• 1:48:15Rich Roll?

  Shinemovement.org. Cool. Who's speaking at the one in New York?

• 1:48:17Light Watkins?

  Um, we've got a woman who, uh, who was a genocide survivor in Rwanda. And she ended up contracting HIV and all that. She was 13 years old when the genocide happened and saw her brother and her, her two brothers and her father get killed. And she survived that. And so she gives talks about no matter how dark things get, there's always hope.

• 1:48:39Rich Roll?

  Wow. That's crazy, man. What is the, uh, what venue?

• 1:48:43Light Watkins?

  That's gonna be at WeWork in Bryant Park. It's beautiful, like sort of Renaissance looking, um, ballroom.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Awesome dude.

• 1:48:51Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it's exciting.

• 1:48:53Rich Roll?

  All right. Excellent, man.

• 1:48:54Light Watkins?

  And I have retreats that I do a couple of times a year and, you know, meditate. If you ever want to learn with me in person, there's ways to do that as well. But I would say start with Bliss More.

• 1:49:02Rich Roll?

  Good, man. We'll come back and let's talk more.

• 1:49:04Light Watkins?

  Absolutely. Thank you.

• 1:49:06Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace, Blance. Namaste. Start meditating, everybody.

• 1:49:14Rich Roll?

  All right. You can't tell me that you don't feel calmer now. I mean, I just feel so blissed out after talking to that guy, so grounded. There's just something about him, just being in his presence, that just makes you feel better. And I think that speaks to what happens when you sit down with somebody who is the real deal. So I hope you guys enjoyed that. Hit Light up on Instagram or Twitter, @lightwakens, and show them some love. Check out the show notes for links and resources related to today's conversation on the episode page at richroll.com. And be sure to pick up Bliss More, and you can sign up for Light's popular email newsletter. It's called Light's Daily Dose of Inspiration. You can find that at lightwakens.com. It's great. And if you do happen to live in LA, New York, or London,

• 1:49:57Rich Roll?

  please try to hit up The Shine. It really is an amazing event. The schedule and all the information can be found at theshinemovement.org. Again, brand new and revised edition of Finding Ultra is now available. Pick it up where you buy books. If you can't find it in your nation, in your country, we have signed copies available at richroll.com, and we do ship worldwide. And Plant Power Way Italia comes out soon, April 24. It would mean so much if you would preorder your copy today. And if you are a woman, please make sure to check out the second most recent blog post on my site for a chance to win a free spot on our upcoming retreat in Tuscany, May 19 through 26, 2018, a $5,000 value. It's amazing. Contest

• 1:50:42Rich Roll?

  is only open through April 24, so try to act as soon as possible. If you would like to support my work, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Only takes a second. It's free, or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. It really does help us out tremendously. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. And I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, because I do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, and all kinds of miscellaneous tasks that I bug him about in the middle of the night. Michael Gibson for videography. Blake Curtis, who edited today's video, which is available on YouTube. He's also handling graphics from now on. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love,

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  you guys. See you back here in a few days with MMA fighter Frank Shamrock. It's a good one. And you know what? Try to meditate between now and then, okay? Can we make that deal? All right, cool.