Mastering The Mind With The Master of Meditation

Charlie Knoles is a visionary Vedic Meditation master teacher. And today he joins Julie and I to de-mystify this ancient practice and demonstrate just how powerful implementing a simple and consistent meditation practice can be as an unparalleled tool for total life transformation. Having taught thousands — everyone from A-list celebrities, to Fortune 500 CEO's, entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, nurses, athletes and underprivileged youth, Charlie has developed a unique expertise in distilling seemingly elusive and arcane Vedic traditions down to their essence so that the deepest concepts from spirituality and science may be expressed in simple, practical steps that are accessible, easily assimilated and, he would submit, absolutely necessary as a precedent to finding inner peace and happiness. Formally taught to meditate at age 4 by his father, the pre-eminent master (or “maharishi”) Vedic Meditation teacher Thom Knoles, Charlie followed in the footsteps of his father, developing a new curriculum for training meditation teachers and running deeply immersive courses in Vedic culture in the Himalayan mountains of India and on the northern coast of Bali. His background as a musician, his study of science and his experience as the father of three young children allow him to integrate many streams of knowledge and foster a deep understanding in his students. Today Charlie and Thom together run The Veda Center. Julie and I first had the pleasure of meeting Charlie through our involvement with MindBodyGreen. And what immediately struck me was just how grounded he is, particularly in comparison with other teachers I have encountered who tend to be, well let's just say more “ethereal”. No robes or holier than thou attitude, Charlie is very much a normal dude in the “world” — a husband, father of three young kids and even more of a photography and tech nerd than I am in fact. It's this relatable “normal guy” quality that distinguishes him and allows his vast knowledge to penetrate so many. Hence countless lives forever transformed. Enjoy! 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.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Welcome to episode 43 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Charlie Knowles.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody. Rich Roll here. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. We have a very exciting guest here today, Charlie Knowles. Say hello. Hi. We're going to dispense with the long introduction. I was getting some, I'm getting complaints because I was going on too long. I was doing like 15 minutes of introduction before the guest, so I'm being too long-winded.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  People don't like that?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  They're complaining?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, people are complaining. Like I said, people get demanding about their free content. You have to be careful, you know? So, well, we do have to do a little bit of intro stuff. What if, what if somebody's brand new to this podcast and they don't know anything about it?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  I think you just have to do your thing.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  All right. What is my thing?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Your thing is to spread the word.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Spread the word. So what do we do here? This is a health and wellness and fitness related podcast if you're new, but we're not really simply relegated to that. So if you're looking for like the top 10 tips to make you a faster marathoner, this might not be the podcast for you because we do more of a Charlie Rose style here. We go deep with our guests.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  We're not talking about that.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  We're not?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  No, today.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I mean, the marathon thing.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  No, today, we're not talking about marathoning. Well, we're going to talk about a different kind of marathoning.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  I think.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  But the point, you stepped on my point. You interrupted me.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  So we have all different kinds of people on the show. We have doctors and nutritionists and world-class athletes and entrepreneurs and spiritualists. And today, we have a world-class meditation teacher.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Meditation is a huge part, I think, of being optimally healthy, of optimizing your wellness. And it doesn't get, I don't think, I think it gets a raw deal. You know, a lot of people like to talk about health and diet and how many calories is this? And what are your percentage of protein, fat, carbs and low carb and all of that? But they completely overlook like this huge aspect of really functioning at your best, which is meditation. So we're going to get into that super deep today, right?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think all those things that you mentioned are really important, obviously, but the thing that people forget is that most, almost everyone knows what they're supposed to do, but they don't necessarily make the best decisions, you know? And how do you make a good decision? Well, you have to have your mind clear and have it be functioning properly.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  You mean that gap between like being well-intentioned, like I know I should do this, but not, but doing something else instead?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  It's not now.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  If you're, if you're faced with that challenge at 5:00 AM, do I get up and go for a run? Do I, you know, eat a healthy, proteinaceous breakfast? Or do I go and load up on Cheerios? You know, which one are you going to choose? Depends largely on how you feel and how well your mind is working. And if you're stressed and anxious and feeling. You know, insecure about your day, then you're not going to make the right decision. And so it feeds into all those things that you mentioned.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do that a lot. I wake up and I immediately, my mind gets swells with all the things that I have to do that day and I get anxious like immediately. And it takes a lot of will to like sort of say, I'm not going to entertain that right now. I'm going to sit down and be quiet. Like that's a battle for me. Like I wish I could tell you that I have a very consistent meditation practice on a daily basis.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  So do I.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  That's not the truth. Julie would be happier if I did.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's, that's what we'll fix today.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And the worst part is-

• 5:01Speaker 02

  The world would be happier. All of us. It affects all of us.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Here, maybe take that pop filter off because you're sounding all muffled.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I know. It's the, hold on. It's very odd. Like I'm underwater.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Here, try that.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Check. Hello. Oh, yes. Much better. Thanks.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Sorry about that. Um, yeah, you'd be happier if, uh, if I did that and I'd be happier. And the worst, the worst, now what I was going to say is the worst part is like, I know the difference. Like I know that my day is better and I function better and everything is smoother when I do it. And yet so often I still can't make it happen.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, people meet me and I mean, you know me a little bit and people who know me well often think I'm naturally just this really happy, buoyant person. And then I'm just this guy who's always happy all the time. I'm always that guy who's, you know, going up and saying, hey to everyone and introducing myself and having lots of jokes and having a good time. I'm not that person. You know, I, I, I wake up in the morning and I feel just as terrible as everyone else does.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  You know, I have this practice that I do, which just, you know, in the morning, it, it, it's a fight. You know, that, uh, when I'm, I'm speaking from experience when I say that, you know, when you, you wake up really early and you just can't think about, you know, the, the potential awfulness of the day ahead of you. And it just seems to, you know, come at you all at once. And it can be intimidating and overwhelming. And if you can just get over that little bit of a hump and say, you know what, I'm going to spend, you know, 10, 15 minutes on tuning my mind in the same way that you'd spend- You know, to brush your teeth, get your shower, get your, get your body clean, do a bit of exercise to tune your body, your mind deserves as much love. And from that basis, you know, it's as a result of doing that, you just, you know, you feel it.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  And I've been meditating since I was a little kid, you know, since I was four years old.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  I very rarely miss a meditation now because I know what a terrible jerk I am.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  So that's what's wrong with me.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Julie's saying, yes, that is what's wrong with you.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think that, you know, another way to put it would be because you know the amazing benefits and how, how it affects your life in a positive way, you know, and it really, you know, it really is. And, and I have to admit that, you know, I read, you know, many, many, many spiritual texts and books over the years and um, um, I read in many, many, many, many, many texts that meditation was essential and I didn't do it. And I would read about it again and go, oh, there's that thing about meditation. Mm hmm. And there it is again. And when I finally um, was able to sit down and actually begin, I never miss.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it changes your life. Once you start to get into it regularly, it's, it's, it changes you so much that you just, you can't imagine what life would be without that.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  What, what do you think the reason was that, that was holding you back originally though?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think I was uh, maybe still in um, just a, a process of my life where I was seeking, you know, I was still gathering information and sort of like, well, I'm going to get to that, but I'm not going to do it right now. And maybe it's because, um, you know, I don't know. I guess I just wasn't ready because before you're ready, you just don't sit.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  And then suddenly, you know, you do.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  There's, there's a lot of, I think there's also, there's a lot of mystification, weird factor around it for a lot of people as well. For some reason, it's, it's really interesting to think people. seem to be most scared of is facing their own mind.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  That's right. Like, I used to have some relatives when I started practicing yoga, they were like, okay, you know, go ahead and do the postures, but do not do the meditation.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I think, you know, there's this weird

• 8:58Speaker 01

  secular thing that comes in, you know, if somebody has a particular, you know, religious bent, or they were raised in this church or that church. It's, it's almost threatening because it's, it's like another kind of perspective coming in. And I think that creates a barrier that even though it's this thing that really should be non secular and completely non dogmatic.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  And non threatening and helpful to anybody, wherever you're at, or whatever your religious or spiritual conviction is, I think that that, you know, creates a, a thing that makes it difficult for a lot of people to embrace.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's an interesting thing that, you know, when, when I teach people to meditate, you know, there's stages people go through. Usually, for most people, they don't get it the first time, you know, that they, it takes a few days for them to really kind of sink into the experience and find the joy in it. But once they do, it's, it's revelatory to it. I mean, they have this moment where they begin to go beyond the more surface level of their mind, to the quieter levels of consciousness. They find that thoughts begin to get quiet and disappear, and they experience a more expansive aspect of their own consciousness.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  And almost every time that happens, people will say, you know what, I, I have experienced this before, and I've had this when I was a little kid. It's always when they're a little kid. So it's like when I was 10 or when I was 12, I just had this spontaneously happen to me where I felt like I was really connected to nature and my mind was really open. I felt this waves of bliss and joy coursing through my body. And I didn't really know what was happening. I just kind of went with it and. Felt really like my mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time and it just happened by itself. And what that's convinced me is that a meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  And that's, that's the, the key for me, that, that, you know, kind of the role that I play is reminding people, you know what, there actually is a technique or a set of techniques that you can use to, to just turn that switch in your brain and make that thing happen, that thing that should be spontaneous, that perhaps once was spontaneous for you to experience. And so, I mean, a lot of these different techniques and all the techniques I draw from did come from religious traditions. You know, they, there's, uh, meditation exists in Judaism, in Christianity, in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in shamanism and animism and all the, and all the different isms, they all have it. Um, and the reason is because it's a natural state, but

• 11:33Speaker 03

  when I teach and I think, I think the, the big revolution that's happening now with meditation, why it's becoming more accepted is you can teach the technique without the, you know, and by the way, you have to believe in Without the ism. The baggage. Yeah, you don't have to believe in this particular god or this particular philosophy or something.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  It's not meditation ism.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. That's right. You can have the experience, you know, you can have that natural experience, which is, I think, actually wired into our brains, built into our bodies to be able to have that. You probably know it, I mean, runners and stuff, the runner's high, you know, that

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  And that's, it's, it's, it's actually the same thing. You can, you can have that experience um, in other states as well. And it's, you know, it's when, when your mind and body becomes so attuned that everything just kind of feels perfect. You have this peak experience.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a big kind of value add of the training that I do, you know, I mean, to, to, to be able to tap into that. And it only happens when, you know, I don't have the earbuds in and I'm on the trail and I'm completely alone. And I've already been going for a couple hours. Like it takes a while to get to that state where my mind will finally start to slow down. And I can be present and like release the anxiety and the stress and really just be, you know. It's work, you know what I mean? It's a practice, just like anything else. And I think, you know, one of the things that I've talked about before on the podcast that I'd love to hear you kind of expound on a little bit more is this idea that, you

• 13:04Speaker 01

  know, we all walk around thinking that, you know, we are our mind and we are our thoughts and not really kind of understanding or really embracing this idea that our thinking mind and our higher state of consciousness are two different things. And it seems weird and like hard to wrap your brain around that. But, you know, a perfect example is, and I'm sure everybody has had this, where you observe yourself doing something or thinking a certain thing and you have kind of an outsider's perspective on it, like, why am I, you know, saying this to this person and feeling this right now? Well, there's all, so there's this, there's like this divide, right? This dichotomy between, you know, one part of you that is acting and thinking a certain

• 13:46Speaker 01

  way and another part of you that is observing that or placing a judgment on that or entertaining a different way of handling something.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a lot of meditation traditions, it's referred to as the silent witness or witnessing experience where you can sort of stand back and observe your life going on and not feel as overwhelmed by all of the, you know, the conditions that normally suck you into it. And to explain that, that sense of, of identity that you were talking about, I've got a nice easy way to think about it, which is, you know, when, when you interact with a little baby, if you get, get a little kid and you sort of look into its eyes, you don't look at that kid, you know, like when it smile, when the kid smiles back at you and gets all excited and starts, you know, wiggling around and everything, they're not looking at you and, and thinking, oh, man, he's really cool because he's got a cool car and a cool job

• 14:37Speaker 03

  and, you know, he's, he's got a great haircut and all that sort of stuff.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  You do have a great haircut.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. I try, I try.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  But the...

• 14:48Speaker 03

  But the, you know, these kids, these little babies, they don't look at you in that way. They just, they just completely interact with that, that deeper level of your identity. And vice versa, when you look at the kid, you get so happy and so like the, this is pure sense of love and appreciation and joy and a moment of connectedness that you can, that you give yourself permission to have with a child.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Um, in seeing that little child and saying, I, you know, this kid, they don't have anything cool about them, you know, they don't have a cool job, they haven't, haven't gone to a cool school and have cool clothes or anything, but you look at them, you can't help but feel completely connected to them and compelled to just love them completely. And what is it that you're interacting with, that's a sort of deeper level of their identity that at that moment you, you can connect on.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  And as you, as that kid grows up, um, the unfortunate thing is that they're gonna learn, oh, that's not who you are actually, you know, that deeper level of you is not who you are, you're actually, you know, now you're gonna go to a school and you're a person who went to this school and then you're gonna get a job and you're gonna be a person who does this job. And you identify yourself over time more and more with, you know, if you ask someone, who are you, oh, you know, I came from Pensacola and I'm a plumber and, you know, I went to this university and, you know, that's, this is who I'm married to and so on. And, uh, there's a deeper level of yourself, all that stuff's fine, but it's not like any of that's bad, it's just that there's a deeper level of you that people are, they don't really know how to explore that or really know what that deeper aspect of themselves

• 16:16Speaker 03

  is beyond all of those surface levels of identity.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Um, and that's really what meditation is, it's learning to discover this sort of more boundless aspect of your consciousness and your identity where you can, um, you can just feel and you can, rather than saying, you know, I am, you know, this job and this place and this school and so on, just I am, you know, I'm here.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm, I'm present and it's a perfect, it's perfect stillness and perfect dynamism at the same time. A lovely experience, it's difficult to put into words actually, because it's one of those things that kind of goes beyond language a little bit, but everyone who's had it can, you know, they can all say, oh yeah, I am, yeah, yeah, that, that thing, yeah, I got that completely. It's much easier to teach someone how to actually do it than to explain it.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Right. Once you, have you experienced that?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  And what was that like?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  It's um, it's just a, an open state of kind of a lot of space and uh, you know, no thoughts and uh, really the pure, natural state of bliss and joy.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  That's really natural, that, that sort of, it's kind of holds all other things. And then we have all this external stimulus and events and memory and noises and everything coming at us all the time. But um, I've found by connecting a lot through the breath, um, and uh, you know, for me, the most powerful meditation times are, you know, four thirty in the morning. That's where the really good stuff happens.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  It's really great, yeah. It's good time to do it.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  But I will say, being a mom of four, um, I also learned to just bring that into my life.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  So sometimes it's when, you know, I was changing diapers or, you know, cleaning house or doing something very mundane.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Yeah, I think you, you touched on a really important point too, which is the joy aspect of that, you know, like it's uh, a part of the identity, that building of identity that happens as you grow older is that, you know, I'm happy because, you know, I'm happy because I got my degree, I'm happy because I got this new car, I got, I'm happy because the new iPhone's gonna come out in a month and a half. I'm actually looking forward to that one. But um, you know, it's all these things of, they're conditional happiness, you know, I'm happy because I got the girl, I'm happy because of this or that, you know, um, when, the problem with that of course is that when any, any one of those conditions is not met, you lose your happiness. And I think the beautiful thing about meditation is that you can find a source of happiness

• 18:52Speaker 03

  within yourself that's not dependent on any external circumstances. And so, I mean, I've, I've worked with people who are mega billionaires in their mega billion dollar mansions and uh, and taught them to meditate, they can experience it just fine. I've worked with people who are in prisons, in cell blocks, who are in what they call, what, what do they call it now? Punitive segregation, I think that's called.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Is that the politically correct term?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, euphemism for solitary confinement.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Never heard that before.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a, and so they, and they are literally in a, in a in a concrete cube with nothing, no possessions whatsoever and no freedom. And they can experience that same inner happiness as well. It's completely independent, you know, whether you're, you've got the best boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse in the world, you've got lots of money, or you've got none of those things, you can still find inner happiness when you meditate. And that's the real beauty of it. I think where it becomes really amazing.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. So usually on the podcast, I do a little introductory segment where I can say all sorts of things about the guest who's coming on. But since we skipped that, I should at least let the listeners know that, you know, Charlie really is one of the leading meditation teachers in the world. And he's got a really fascinating backstory. And like you said, you're, you're here, you're teaching, you travel all over the world doing workshops and retreats, and you're teaching celebrities and CEOs and average people and incarcerated people and underprivileged people and all sorts of different kinds of people. It's kind of amazing. And your backstory and kind of all this, how this whole thing began is fascinating as well. So I'd love to hear you relate a little bit of that.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, I was, I was really lucky that both of my parents, they were in this kind of early wave of hippies who went over to India and, and decided that in the 1960s and early 70s and decided that they were going to study all eastern knowledge. And they were very serious and very diligent about it. I mean, I think, I think for some people, it was a bit of recreation, but for them, it was a very serious study, quite intellectual. And they came back to Australia where I was born and just started teaching people, you know, they started become, they became meditation teachers themselves.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Right. So your dad, Tom, is he American or is he?

• 21:09Speaker 03

  He's, yeah, he's, he's the, he's the son of a US Air Force general. He was a military kid and he

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Like a great Santini was.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Exactly. And then he, I guess.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  He went flower power on his.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. He decided that when he was, you know, he was 17 or so, he was going to pack his surfboard and fly to Australia, partially, I think, because this Vietnam War thing was happening, and maybe that was a good idea. But also, you know, Australia was an appealing place to go and, and, and, and he met my mom over there. Um, and, uh, and so, but he, he's, he's now very well known, um, very well respected meditation teacher.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've taken, uh, I took some of his, uh, I don't know if I would call it courses, workshops.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  It was several years ago, many years before we met, um, and they were amazing.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's, he's so eloquent and so brilliant. I mean, I've been listening to him speaking about spiritual matters and scientific matters, philosophical matters, just about everything. He always has something amazing to say. Anyone, people ask him the most difficult questions of life, the universe and everything, and he comes back with the most profound, amazing answers. People ask him terrible idiotic questions as well. He still comes back with incredible stuff. He's so eloquent, so brilliant. And so, you know, I kind of grew up with, with this amazing spiritual teacher as a, as a father. And, um, so when I was four years old, he, that's the youngest he teaches people to meditate, but he taught me, I remember on my fourth birthday, it was very exciting, my fourth birthday.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  You're gonna finally learn how to meditate.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  I know.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  How exciting. Forget the Xbox.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  I know. Well, it was, it was Atari's back then.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  What was the technique?

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, oh, well, it was, it was a mantra based technique. I can't, I can't, it's the mantra that tops you.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  But, um, but I can, um, but yeah, it was, um, essentially, there was a, a simple mantra that I was supposed to repeat inside my mind without concentrating onto it or holding onto it. Just kind of let it kind of drift through my mind and follow it. Um, the analogy I use sometimes is it's like, uh, like if you were to drop a gold coin into the water and just kind of, you're diving in after it, you can sort of follow it down to these deeper layers of the ocean. And that's kind of the, the way it feels where you can sort of see this shimmering image of this sound, which is very beautiful and just kind of draws you in in this repetitive way. And all of a sudden you find yourself, and I found, I remember, my kids are very easy to teach to meditate. They have the experience

• 23:49Speaker 03

  very, very spontaneously. And I was, I was no exception to that rule. The first time I did it, I was just, you know, it's like it's mind expanding moment where um I just felt just full of joy and happiness and it was just kind of incredible. My mind kind of felt like it was expansive and huge. And then, you know, four minutes goes by because when you meditate, when you're four, you're supposed to only do it for four minutes. And so four minutes goes by and come out, it's like, you know, where was I? It's incredible. I felt for a moment, you know, I remember at four, I felt like I knew the secret to everything. I knew the entire universe. And then I came back and I'm like, oh, I'm a four year old again, darn it.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  That's amazing because I think, you know, for a child to sit still and be able to do that, I mean, you must have some predisposition, like on a different like level.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  It's a really, this is a really interesting preconception that a lot of adults have about, I teach kids and adults. And kids are much easier to teach than adults. Adults are the ones who have all of the preconceptions and all of the um, all of the uh, the the self-defeating thought patterns that they've built up over time. Whereas kids, you know, I give them a simple instruction, close your eyes, be aware of your breath. Or maybe it's a mantra or some, whatever simple technique is I'm teaching to kids, depending on how much time I've got with them, because there's different techniques that are appropriate for different amounts of time.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Then they will just follow the instruction and just have these amazing experiences. And you ask them afterwards, you know, what was your experience? And they will tell you the most amazing things. I mean, it's just, you know, and it's completely unscripted, unprompted. They don't even know what they're supposed to be saying.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Sure, but it lines up.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  It lines up and it's, you know, it's, it's mind blowing. It's, but when you teach an adult, on the other hand, you say something simple like, you know, close your eyes, sit still. Here's your mantra, repeat it. I'll be like, well, should I sit like this or should I sit like that? Should I be sitting in lotus position or should I be, you know, sitting like that? Close the eyes, I mean, fully close the eyes or just partially open the eyes? Am I supposed to be focusing on my breathing? The mantra is a little bit too loud. Am I thinking the mantra too much or what if other thoughts come in? Is that good or bad? And I have always thought. The mind goes in all the different places. It's actually the adults that are much more difficult.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why it takes it takes four days to teach an adult, I found. Takes half an hour to teach a kid.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  But I still, I think it's fascinating that you kind of followed your father in his footsteps. I mean, I would not have been surprised if you decided you were going to be an investment banker, you know what I mean? To just do the opposite, like, oh, my crazy dad with his meditation stuff. Like, I don't want any part of that.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  You're not, you're not rebelling.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  It would have been, yeah, it would have been more kind of predictable if you had kind of gone, gone left on that.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  I had my moments.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  There were some times, you know, when I was, when I was a teenager, you know, I did all the, all the things that teenagers do, you know, and you know, one of which was kind of rebel against my parents for a while and, you know, I hate my dad and this crazy stuff that they all do. Did the whole thing, you know, um, but I realized very quickly that there was immense value to it because, you know, I stopped meditating for a little while. I was like, oh, man, I feel crap, you know, this is not, this is not a good feeling. And so, you know, I actually came back to my dad and I was like, you know, I think maybe, and the other thing too, they were very good. And I, you know, really recommend this to any parents who are trying to get their kids to do anything in a sort of like health or just positive habits or anything. Don't push it on them and make it like a, a thing that they hate because

• 27:20Speaker 03

  my parents were really great about just saying, look, here's this thing that we do and we all do it, but they weren't, and they never forced me to do it. And so I got to choose it, you know, in the end, when I was about 16 or so, I really chose it. You know, it's like this thing, this legacy that they've built up is really valuable. And I went to my dad and I asked him, you know, how long should I give this? You know, if you give it three months, do it twice a day. Meditate in the morning, meditate in the evening for three months and then decide if you're going to stop doing this and never do it again, or you're going to keep on doing it for the rest of your life. And, you know, make a hard decision about it. Don't, don't be wishy washy. It's another good, really good thing to say to a 16 year old because they love certainty, you know, and it's, um.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  So I did that. I gave it a try and I did kind of ran this experiment. At the end of it, I was like, man, I feel like a Superman at the end of this is awesome. I couldn't imagine not doing my meditation.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  How would you, how would you be, be more specific about how different you felt after you had gone through that three month period?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  I mean, it was, it was, it was like I was, it's interesting because the changes are incremental. I mean, in very much the same way that like working out is the same, you know, you see changes every day, but it's really at the end of that period of time. And what I was mostly doing is comparing it to my friends. And, you know, when you're a teenager, I mean, I'm sure you remember high school. It's like, you see all these people just going through this psychodramas all the time and just really hurting themselves. Um, I, I just wasn't doing that. Like I wasn't, I wasn't panicking about social situations or, you know, I wasn't feeling like I was overwhelmed by school or the work that I had to do. I found my schoolwork really easy and everything was a kind of, my mind was flowing really fast. I could memorize things really well. So my schoolwork was, you know,

• 29:00Speaker 03

  I was acing tests even without, you know, doing my homework. And, you know, it was, it was, um, and I just kind of felt really good all the time. And I felt like my creativity was really flowing. And, and again, for teenagers, it's a really important thing. You know, you're kind of at a period in your life where you're,

• 29:18Speaker 03

  you're forging an identity and who you are in the world and what you want to do and what you want to be. And you have these, you know, teenagers tend to be very idealistic and I was very much that way. And so I was, you know, coming up with amazing music and art and thoughts and, you know, just finding myself feeling great. And, you know, interesting, it's the first, interestingly, it's the first time too that I experienced the runner's high as well. I, I was such to get myself into that state of mind so frequently that, um, I was actually, it was because, you know, again, I didn't have a driver's license at the time. So I wanted to get to my friend's house and actually just ran to his house. And it was like an hour run to get there.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  You must've been desperate to see your friend.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Oh, no, it was, it was just, I, I just kind of, I kind of felt this, like I kind of, kind of knew it was going to happen some, like on some sort of cellular level. I was just like, if I just do this, I'm going to feel great and I'll be fine. And I kind of got into this rhythm and then all of a sudden I was, I was. Running for like an hour or so to get to his place and and I had that experience of like the whole universe opening up and feeling connected and just in myself and my mind was really clear and I just felt super happy inside and it it was like all of the I'm not I'm not unlike you I'm not this you know super fit dude and definitely wasn't then at the time. Pretty fit. I'm all right, I'm all right, you know, but I don't I don't work on it to the same level that you do. Normally, running for an hour would I'd be having heart attacks at

• 30:39Speaker 03

  the end of it. But you know, I felt no exhaustion. I was just like kind of in this blissful mode and it was it was wonderful and it was like a very psychological state that I got into. And it was so so powerful that I was like, you know, this this stuff, this stuff has legs. I mean, in a real in a real sense, it's not just kind of going off and communing with the universe and convincing yourself of some sort of fake thing. It's something which really has a powerful effect.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  But to get back to your story, so so you have this experience when you're sixteen and you kind of make this commitment to yourself and and where does that lead you? I mean, I know you've traveled and, you know, studied and, you know, tell us a little bit about how you kind of developed your expertise.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, I I do travel a lot, actually. But, you know, at that time, I was living in Australia and, you know, one of the I was pretty lucky to be in this incredibly beautiful place. And, you know, I I actually, part of my rebellion, I wasn't really, didn't really quite have all the rebellion out of me at that point just yet. I actually ran away from home, fell in love and eloped, ran off with my girlfriend. And we, yeah, no, it was fun.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Where did you go? Would you why you where where would you go when you leave Australia to run away to?

• 32:03Speaker 03

  We actually, we actually didn't leave Australia, but it's kind of felt like we did though. We, you know, we're living, a lot of people have this idea of Australia and I get. I like to actually play tricks on Americans sometimes who will ask me, you know, like, oh, you know, did you ever see a crocodile or whatever? And I'll tell them, oh, you know, we used to, we used to ride kangaroos to school in the morning with our kids, you know, my mom would just put me in the pouch and send the kangaroo off to school and people actually believed me. But, you know, I actually grew up in, in, you know, Sydney is this amazing, you know, beautiful cosmopolitan city and it's, you know, it's a very, it's a very beautiful place. There is nature all around you, but it feels very urban. Um, and so I, um, I, uh, my girlfriend and I ultimately we ended up in, in far north Queensland, which is the, the northern tip

• 32:44Speaker 03

  of Australia, which is geographically and environmentally more like Papua New Guinea.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Right. Is that Cairns? Cairns is up there? Yeah, it's crocodile country.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  It really is. So it's like, it's that kind of classic Australia.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Like you can't just go swimming in a river or anything like that around there, right? Or even in the ocean, right?

• 33:02Speaker 03

  Well, the ocean's usually, well, you know, it's depends, you know, the ocean's usually okay part of the year, but there's these stinging jellyfish. I can actually see, I mean, the podcast listeners can't see, but I have this gnarly scar on my arm, which is.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  It's like raised up and everything.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Jellyfish. Yeah. It's a jellyfish tentacle.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Remind me to take a picture of that.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  That is wild.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, you know, these jellyfish that'll, that'll kill you. I was actually lucky that, that, that they, if they, if they sting you badly, they can, you can die within minutes from those things.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Why is everything in Australia so dangerous? Like all the nature, spiders.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  All of that stuff is just in the north of Australia.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  It's north. Yeah. But it's intense up there.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  It is. It's super intense. You've got all these deadly snakes and, and you've got these jellyfish and you've got crocodiles and like cassowaries, these birds that can like rip your guts open if they see you.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  It's, uh, it's pretty crazy.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  But, and it's also extraordinarily beautiful.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  It's ridiculously beautiful. I mean, it is just the most amazing place. And once, and, you know, Queenslanders, people who live up there, they're, first of all, everyone in the rest of Australia thinks Queenslanders are all crazy and mad as cut snakes, as they say, but they.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Like they're all crocodile dung to eat up there?

• 34:13Speaker 03

  They're just nuts. But in actual fact, it's kind of, it's, it's kind of a, a bit of a myth that they put on to try to get rid of the southerners. But, um, but the, uh, you, but when you're up there, you just get used to it, you know, you kind of get used to what the rhythms of the land are. And after a while, you can start to really appreciate the area. One of the things that was, was really, really fortunate to have while I was there, um, I was near. One thing that's that's that's different to Northern Australia compared to Sydney is that there's a an Aboriginal population there, the Indigenous Australians who haven't been weren't moved off their land, you know, they're they're pretty much in the same place that they were and to a much greater extent had maintained their culture and traditions.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  And I got to spend some time with some really incredible Aboriginal leaders who um the the the kind of the when you're talking about sort of meditation and action and being aware of your environment, it was a real lesson. I mean, it's like they're they're kind of some of these guys, they seem to never switch out of that mode. They're always present. They always had this kind of awareness about them, which was phenomenal. I remember one experience I had particularly, you know, I went to this amazing river called Mossman Gorge, which if you're in Australia, oh, my God, go to Mossman Gorge, so beautiful. And I was walking there with with an Aboriginal friend and and just as he was walking through

• 35:36Speaker 03

  this rainforest, which to me was sort of impenetrable sea of green, he was just picking fruit and food and medicinal plants from all around him, like his constant awareness. And I was so focused on the path ahead of me that I couldn't see any of that stuff around me. And as soon as you start to open up your peripheral vision and your awareness, your brain actually changes, you know, and it's this, it's actually one of the simplest meditation methods that I like to teach people is just being aware of your peripheral vision, extending your arms out and just kind of wiggling your fingers so that you can see, you know, what's in in your periphery and start to have that sort of, it was something I learned from from from him. And, you know, it's like little experiences like that, like

• 36:19Speaker 03

  I'd sort of pick up on that kind of appreciation, that being in the place. It wasn't like These guys, I mean, I was, you know, not an Aboriginal person, so they're not going to initiate me or give me any, you know, of their really deep knowledge. But it was interesting hanging out with them and kind of seeing these people and how they've still got this kind of vestigial awareness that hasn't been taken away from them, despite the fact that they've been, you know, treated pretty poorly. And it was, that was, that was a big lesson for me in growing up.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Is, is that an outgrowth, like a conscious practice or tradition on their part? Do they have things that foster that? Or is that just a byproduct of the way they live their life, like closer to nature?

• 37:05Speaker 03

  In this case, it was very, you know, this particular guy Norman, he, he was teaching young kids. And so they, they would actually take kids away, take young Aboriginal kids away and, you know, train them in the old techniques and show them traditional methods of hunting and food gathering and all these different things to give them that sense of awareness. He had a very strong sense of continuity with the old culture. But it very much was also just, you know, part of being on the land. And when you, when you hang out with people who are living that more traditional lifestyle anywhere in the world, you do see that level of connectedness that we miss out on. It's, it's still present for us, but we just kind of miss out on it because we're not tuned into it.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  You know, we tend to be more tuned into our electronics and so on and being so focused on single points that we just can't see it. You know, I see the same thing when I travel to places like Haiti or Bali or India, you know, people who, they have spiritual experiences that if we were to have them in our culture, we'd be institutionalized for, for having them. But that's like every other Tuesday at their temple, you know? They get, it's like, you know, literally, you know, you talk.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  So give an example of something like that.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  So, you know, you, you, you'll, if like I'm, I'm going to Haiti in two weeks. I'm doing some, there's a long-term project I'm involved in down there, an environmental project and.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  And you go to like the voodoo dances that they do and voodoo is very, you know, very misunderstood, not, not really like this whole voodoo doll kind of devil worship stuff that you hear about here. It's a very, very legit kind of shamanistic religion. And people will do these dances, they'll get the drums going and they'll suddenly get possessed. You know, they'll, they'll have like a spirit take over their body. And you can see this change in their eyes and they start dancing differently and it's, they have, it's, it's, um, you know, and, and they're, they take on a new persona and a different, you know, whole different thing. Now, if you or I were to have that happen to us, like we would, you know, go down to some cafe and someone's playing a bongo drum and all of a sudden you started to, you know, you sort of.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but if you were, if you were at a Kurtown in Venice, it would be just fine.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. Yeah. And, and you know, it's, um, it, it, but it's, you know, so there are these little emerging, emerging pockets where we say, you know, these sorts of experiences are okay. And if you go down in the south in some of these, in the charismatic Christian churches.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Right. It's like speaking tongues.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, they'll, they'll have these sorts of experiences. Um, but it's, you know, for, for most people in, in Western culture, we get, we get really freaked out by stuff like that. Now, I talk to people all the time, you know, they'll, we'll come to a meditation class and they'll have some really powerful, beautiful, overwhelming experience. It's not like, you know, possessed by spirit, but it's like.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that one's kind of extreme.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  It is, but you know, it's, well, it's extreme for us. It's extreme for, because we have this idea of like, you know, the exorcist or whatever, but, um, you know, it can be just like energy moving through their body in different ways or feeling like overwhelming sensations or, you know, beautiful visions that come to them or something. And they, they'll have that during the meditation class and all of a sudden they have permission to talk about it, you know, in, in, in that setting. And, you know, they'll have these people who are like, you know, some, and they have very straight people, you know, people who are like accountants and financial industry, you know, hedge fund managers and. You know, really like not the kind of people you'd think would be talking about this stuff, but they'll, you know, they'll start saying, oh, I just kind of felt this golden light come into me and I felt it quivering through my heart and coursing through my limbs.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden, I felt like this incredible blissful, almost sexual energy coming through me and I was overwhelmed by ecstasy and, and you're like, uh huh. Um, but, and, and there's actually, you know, this is, it's not an uncommon experience at all. It's something that most people can have spontaneously and, and can cultivate. And it doesn't have to be this kind of big weird thing that, you know, it can, it can actually be quite a normal thing. And it's, it's, scientists can look at it in the brain and say, you know, there's this stuff going on in the brain and, you know, this, this is, this is what's occurring here. Um, but, you know, unfortunately in our culture, we, we've tend to stigmatize that behavior.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Right. It's not safe. And we were talking about this when we had dinner in New York and you were saying, you know, you do these workshops and then afterwards people come up and they tell you these, you know, these incredibly elaborate and very specific visions that they have and they confide in you and say, I've never had anything like this. And but they feel comfortable telling you and nobody else. It's kind of a confidential thing that you have, which is kind of amazing. And it goes to, um, this idea, it, it makes me think about kind of what the true self is versus the self that you hold out to the world, the mask that you portray and the disconnect between those two things and how meditation can help you become more comfortable bridging that gap, sort of expressing who you really are to the world and being okay with that, I guess.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Definitely. Yeah. I think that, um, the, that's also another one of the big myths about meditation is that when you do it, you're going to become this, you know, sort of, uh, you're going to lose yourself. But I've never seen that. People who meditate all the time, they become more of who they are. You know, you lose that layer of anxiety and stress. And people identify with their stress, you know, especially in New York, speaking of New York, people, I get people all the time will say, you know, there's like, I'm an anxious New Yorker. And I was like, God, that's a, that's a strange self-identity to have. Um.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  You know, people get, people identify like I'm an angry person, you know, I'm, I'm an anxious person, I can't sleep at night and they have all these ideas about who they are. Once you lose all of that, you find out who you really are, you know, and it's, um, it's a lot more liberating to have, uh, have, have your sense of self based on inner happiness and bliss. And, you know, when I speak about these kind of more far out experiences, they'll happen every now and then. And it's not something that like happens every time I meditate or anytime someone meditates, but every now and again, they'll happen. And that should be normal as well. We should be able to talk about that and, and be able to say, you know, that there's, there's a way that you can understand these things, you know, there's a way to, to, uh, to, to make it, you know, to, for it to be totally normal. I mean, you, you had this one experience

• 43:13Speaker 03

  you mentioned to me in, in New York.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Well, I had, actually I remembered after we, after we spoke about it, I remember, because I was trying to grab it and it wasn't quite in my, in my, uh, in my consciousness. But anyway, I was asking you because I had this one experience, I actually wasn't even meditating. I was up in my bedroom on my bed and I was just sitting in an open state and I felt my hands were huge, like King Kong

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  sized hands. And I was laughing because it was such a strange experience.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  And so I asked you when we were at dinner if he, if he knew what that state was.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Right. And, and this is actually a really common meditation experience of when people, it's, it's one of the signs that you're, um, beginning to go really, really deep and, uh, your, your mind has settled down and gotten quieter and quieter. At a certain point, you begin to transcend your senses. You start to go beyond your sense of touch and this other sense that we have called proprioception, which is the knowledge of where the body is in space. And so suddenly your brain is not receiving.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  So suddenly your brain isn't receiving the information that's normally used to getting about where your body is, where your hands are particularly. It's usually hands, feet or head that people have this. And all of a sudden, your brain sort of starts to search. You know, it's like, where are my hands? Are they out here, out here, out here? And such that, and it's, the sensation, subjectively, that you have when that's happening is that my head is getting really huge or my hands are getting really, really huge. And so you'll swear up and down that you've just got these enormous hands all of a sudden. It's what we call early stage transcendence, where it's just that first stage before you fully go beyond the ego and the intellect, you just start to have these like transcending

• 45:03Speaker 03

  specific senses, which transcending just means to go beyond, you know, going beyond the specific senses. And you can go beyond your sense of touch, beyond your sense of sight, smell, taste, the last one, you go beyond your sense of hearing. And so at a certain point, even I've had people who have very, very deep meditations, they haven't fallen asleep, they're sitting there and perfectly upright, but they've, but I even had one person, one student who I taught, who had this experience the very first time she meditated, within 30 seconds of learning.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  She had huge hands in 30 seconds?

• 45:36Speaker 03

  It was actually going even a level beyond that, where she was, I gave her mantra, her sound that she was supposed to repeat in her mind. I told her to close her eyes and then I was like, after 30 seconds, I said, okay, stop, open your eyes now and, open your eyes, open your, seriously, open your eyes, like it's time. And she, oh, where was I? You know, and she was just-

• 46:01Speaker 01

  She had transcended her hearing-

• 46:02Speaker 03

  She transcended, she transcended all of her senses and kind of gone beyond everything, you know, and, and she had this huge grin on her face because she'd kind of touched this very blissful state of consciousness. It's about 1 in 100 people who have that experience the first time. Most people have it after about, you know, a few days of practice, they'll start to have that. But it's a, it's a, it's kind of a really beautiful-

• 46:25Speaker 03

  But also thoroughly normal experience.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think most people, you know, we're, you know, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. So we're, we're all spiritual. It's not like Charlie's more spiritual than anybody else because he's a meditation teacher. So if we switch that way that we perceive ourselves, and you just think back in your childhood, or think back in your life, I can almost guarantee that every single person has had some form of some communication with something beyond, you know, where they're at, your physical body, or...

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, or it's so common, and it's, it's sometimes people don't remember it until they have it again. You know, that's, that's one of the beauties of teaching the classes that I teach, is that, you know, they, they're reminded, they're like, "Oh, this is something I've had before." And then it doesn't feel so weird to them anymore. People often have this, there is this weird factor about coming to a meditation class and learning to meditate. And people think, maybe it's something that only hippies do, or maybe it's something that only other kinds of people, those relaxed people, "I'm uniquely type A and anxious, and my mind races." I could never do that. That's only those, only those happy people meditate. It's like, yeah, they're happy because they meditate, definitely in my case.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  And it's, but they still have this misconception. And so suddenly, when they, when they remember, "Oh, yeah, I've had this before," they just, it's like, it's almost like you've forgotten how to go to sleep, or something. And I'm just kind of teaching you, like, "Oh, here's this method. You can go, you just put pajamas on and lie down."

• 47:58Speaker 02

  And then you're like, "Oh, yeah."

• 47:59Speaker 03

  "Oh, yeah, that makes me go to sleep."

• 48:01Speaker 02

  And I mean, I like also what you were saying about, about, you know, how your father had you commit to the practice, you know, and in a very committed way, for three months, I think you said. And when I'm teaching meditation, or I'm sharing my process, you know, I say 40 days, or at least 21, you know, if not 40. But the idea is, is that it's important that you don't judge it, and you don't look for the experience, because the second you look for the experience, it's not coming.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  That's right. And, you know, the experience is very often something that you don't expect. And so when people are thinking, "Okay, what are..." People always have this misconception, you know, I get it, and I get it all the time when I go to a yoga class, and I, you know, I love my yoga classes, and I love my yoga teachers, but they'll often do the little lip service to meditation at the end, you know, and they'll... You know, we'll be in shavasana, lying down and they'll say, now, close your eyes and clear your mind of all thoughts. And I feel like sort of saying, you're putting my hand up and saying, look, as a fellow professional in the industry, let me just point out, that's step 10, not step 1, you know? And if you're expecting that that's what's gonna happen, the day that you, the first time you meditate, it'll be something different, actually. And

• 49:14Speaker 03

  the different experience that you don't expect will usually be the more profound one that you, because by definition, it's something that you haven't experienced within your memory, anyway. You know, you might not remember having had that experience before. And so, when it happens, people are really surprised, like, the hands.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Oh, the hands, yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Who would have guessed that one? But that's one of the really common, early-stage, you know, transcendence experiences that people have. And it's, and it's, and so, people will often bring that one up in a class, like, I thought my hands were going huge. What was that all about? I was expecting to like commune with a golden light and have it talk to me and give me holy wisdom.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Instead, I had elephantitis.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Huge hands.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  I didn't want that one.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  But actually, it's one of, it's one of the little checkmarks. I go, oh, that was actually a good meditation you just had now.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Right. And I think the more open you can be, and the more just innocent, and, and, you know, I always, I always advise, like, don't, don't judge it. Like, don't, you're, you just do the time, you sign up and you do the time with no attachment and no judgment on what's going on.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think, yeah, a couple of things. I mean, first, I think the, the big stumbling block with a lot of people is, you know, well, how do I, I don't know how to do it. I don't know, how do I start? Or what am I supposed to do? And they go to a yoga class and that, and like you said, somebody just says, you know, free your mind of thought. And it's like, well, I don't know how to do that, you know? As opposed to give somebody a task, like, repeat a mantra, or hum, or whatever, something that they, that they can focus on that will actually serve to quiet the mind. So, can you talk a little bit about somebody who's interested in this, but just needs like a little kick to get going, or something that they can think about, that they can implement?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the, you know, what you're speaking about here is that there are these traditions from around the world where people have actually thought about how to get into that state. And that's where, you know, where I can actually bring some, bring some knowledge to this. You know, there's, later on in my life, after I After I was living in Australia, I traveled to India, studied over there, did further study with my father, who's a great teacher. I know, you just skipped right over India, but we gotta talk about that. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, but you, I learned a lot from the Vedic tradition, which is the tradition from northern India, which is where yoga comes from. It's where Ayurveda comes from, if you know Ayurvedic medicine.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  And a lot of the, a lot of the knowledge that we have about, when you trace back the lineages of Buddhism and Zen and all these things, they all actually come from the Vedic tradition from northern India. It's literally as old as the hills. It comes from the hills of the hill, the mountains of northern India.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  So how, how many thousands of years would you say? Six thousand?

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Well, it's debatable. Depends on, it depends on who you believe. If the Western, the Western historians will say, you know, sort of maximum 3,000 years, because that's when you can trace back the written accounts of it. The written Vedas? Yeah, the written Vedas, which are these, you know, amazing, incredibly circuitous, but brilliant Sanskrit epics. But of course Sanskrit, the language was an oral tradition prior to that. So it probably goes back thousands of years prior to that. And the, the Vedic Indians will tell you that it goes back, you know, tens of thousands of years and even more sometimes. So it depends on who you ask. Predating the existence of humans.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  They have, they have a different chronology of the universe. But, you know, they've been right about a lot of things. So, you know, I'd certainly give them, you know, I'm open minded about it.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  So anyway, there are these, these traditions and techniques. And some of the really simple ones that they have, you know, there's basically four methods of meditation that exist. If you look at all the thousands of traditions from around the world and the different variants, you're either bringing yourself into a present state of awareness by bringing, bringing your, your mind to your breath and just being aware of the present moment in some way. Usually breathing is, is the thing that you bring your mind to. You are, the other method is to be focusing on something, to be, whether it's prayer beads, a prayer, a visualization, some sort of contemplative thing of being in a special

• 53:42Speaker 03

  place, or a shrine, or a god, or whatever it is, but focusing on something. The third method is to repeat a mantra that will quiet the ego and the intellect and allow you to experience these subtle states of consciousness.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  And I want, can you, can you speak to that a little bit? I think that, you know, the mantra idea, a lot of people struggle with that. Like, what is it, you know, what is it about repeating this word? And what's so special about the word that you're given and this word versus that word?

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there's, there's literally thousands of mantras. I mean, they're, you know, and in actual fact, there's been some interesting research on just using kind of generic sounds. Like, there's a guy named Herbert Benson who did some really interesting research, where he said, okay, right, let's just get rid of all the mantras and just use the word one and just repeat that, you know, use an English word and just repeat that. And it actually led to some pretty amazing results. So even that will work. It can just be the repetition of a sound that'll have really powerful effects. But what's really-

• 54:35Speaker 01

  And does it have to be out loud? Could it be in your mind?

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, in your mind is, seems to be the, the best way to do it, just to silently repeat it mentally. And he's, he's an interesting, is it, Herbert, if you're listening, you're, you could improve your writing techniques. He's a terrible writer, but his, but his ideas are good and his research is really good. His, his books are worth reading, just if you can kind of get through the slightly pompous writing style. The, the, the ideas are very good, some good methods there.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  We love you, Herbert.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  He's, he's a great researcher. He's done some great research. He's a science, serious scientist. He could use a ghostwriter. The, the, but the, the mantras that come from northern India are really interesting. They're, they seem to be these sort of primordial sounds that, that exist at the root of consciousness. And there's nothing terribly strange about that. There's actually, linguists know now that there are certain words that exist in every culture, around the, almost, almost every language, they'll have the same word for the same thing. Like mama is a, is a standard one that, you know, almost every culture, that means mother, the same thing. Babies say it spontaneously. And it turns out to not be a coincidence.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  It seems to be kind of written into our brains that that word has that significance. And what's really interesting is that these mantras, the mantras that I use from the Vedic tradition, I also find them, when I talk to like Kabbalistic meditation teachers from, who are from, you know, from Judaism, they'll have very similar or the same sounds that they use. They turn up all over the world in whatever culture you look at.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  It is really wild. And, and what's even more interesting, I run a teacher training course, we take people away for three months and have them do really intensive meditation. At the very end of the three-month course, we'll tell them, I hear all the mantras. And very, very often, they'll say, when we, when we give them to them, like, oh, that's what those sounds were. They kept coming to me during my meditation. And it seems to be that these particular set of sounds, and this is the story of their origin, by the way, when you, when you trace back the story of it, there are these sages who lived in the mountains of India, and they just spent a lot of time meditating, doing very, very difficult practices, much more difficult than the ones that we do, because they didn't know the mantras back then. And over time, they started to just have these sounds spring

• 56:58Speaker 03

  into their mind, like, oh, that's interesting, you know, write that one down. And, and to also notice that when people repeated these sounds, it sort of brought them into the state of mind from which the sounds came from, which is this quieter state of consciousness. And so it's like a mental trigger, which just has this kind of soothing, calming effect on, on the ego and the intellect. And so I've found, there's, there's, there's a whole science and art to teaching them and giving the right one to the right person that comes from the Vedic tradition. And I've found that when I've given the correct ones to people, it's had really powerful effects. When I've done a sort of my own research study, where I've deliberately and with, with people's consent, you know.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  So I'm going to give you the wrong one?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  I don't tell them whether I'm going to give them the wrong one or the right one. But I've actually done a little, done, done my own sort of research study on it to see. And it's really interesting to see that the ones that, that are the legitimate mantras have a much more powerful effect of bringing people into this very quiet, deep state of consciousness.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  So what are the, when you're working with somebody and teaching them, and you're ready to give them their mantra, what are the variables that are running through your mind that help you, what's the calculus in making that decision?

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Well, it basically, it kind of comes down to some of the things that we were talking about earlier, the, you know, these powerful spiritual experiences that people have sometimes spontaneously.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  You know, you can think of it, just think of it in terms of, you know, if there was a little baby and that baby was to have, you know, when, when I see my, my little son, for example, I've got a, a seven month old baby boy. When I see him, sometimes he just kind of goes crazy when he looks at me, like it, like just seeing me and having that powerful kind of love for father kind of thing will just overwhelm him so much, he kind of shakes his hands and his feet and he kind of wriggles all around, goes nuts. Now, I have that same happiness when I see someone sometimes, but my nervous system has evolved to the point where I can experience that, but not shake my arms and feet around when that happens, um, usually. And, uh, and so there's sort of a, an evolution of the nervous system that goes on over time. Um, and the same is true for these powerful spiritual experiences that people have.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  Some, some experiences can kind, you can have and you'd be like, oh yeah, that's all right. But then you go and get your cup of coffee and you're perfectly fine afterwards. Other ones, if you were to have it, would kind of freak you out a little bit, you know, and, and, and blow your mind a bit. And I think that if you hang around in kind of spiritual communities, everyone knows at least one person, it seems like this kind of spiritual casualty. Their mind's been blown out a little bit by some overwhelming experience they've never been quite able to metabolize. Um, now, basically over the span of thousands of years, these Vedic sages, they've kind of figured out the right mantra, you know, for each different stage of development, you know, like if you, if you can, if you can handle this kind of level of spiritual experience,

• 59:48Speaker 03

  then this mantra is right for you and this one is the right one here later on in life and so on.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  So your mantra can change, it's not something you take with you.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so o- over, over time, um, you know, in an ideal society, if we, if we live kind of a healthy, good lifestyle and we had a well-balanced society, what you'd hope is that over time, you'd become more and more evolved and able to experience deeper and more powerful things. But ha, ha, ha, ha, we don't live in that kind of society. People wreck themselves in all sorts of different ways, through drugs or bad lifestyle or just hanging out with horrible people or whatever. And so their growth is slowed down. And so there are specific signs that a trained teacher, um, is trained to look for, to be able to give away whether a person is at the right. They, they might have accelerated their growth or held it back in certain ways and the right match would be appropriate for them at that time.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  Now, interestingly, uh, you can learn your mantra.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  And you know, keep using it for decades and it will still work for you because over time it becomes almost like a Pavlovian response. You know, you start to repeat it and you're and it has that effect of bringing you into this quieter state of consciousness enough times that your mind knows how to get there regardless of whether it has the mantra to guide it or not. It's a little bit like if you go to a new city, at first you need the GPS to guide you around everywhere, but after you've driven a certain route enough times, you're like, okay, I can I can do this without the guide. And so, you know, the at that point, after a few years of practice, you just kind of you sit there and you're thinking mantra a few times and you're you just, you know, you go into this deep state of consciousness very quickly and easily. And so it's still effective, but just in

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  a different way. But yeah, it can change as well over time. Like you, there are advanced techniques that you can learn that would change the mantra and have really, it's like the qualitative aspect, the qualitative experience that you have is very different when you practice some of these advanced techniques compared to some of the beginner ones. And so, yeah, it's, it's powerful. It's really interesting stuff.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  And when you were learning these techniques, when you went to the, when you went to northern India, I mean, were you studying under masters and sitting in the caves of, you know, in the mountains? Like, what was that like?

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  So it's a bit of all of the above. You know, I've, of course, spent my life studying the stuff because I had a master teacher for a father, but it's been a really nice thing to go to. I go to India regularly, actually, and I study more. And so various different masters, I have, you know, sat in the caves and sat for long periods of time. And sometimes it's a matter of just really going and metabolizing the experience. And so, you know, you go up into the mountains of northern India and there is this kind of, when you, when you go there, you realize it's not an accident that this incredible philosophical, spiritual tradition came from here. It's a place that kind of is infused with that energy. And so as soon as you're there, you just kind of you feel it, you

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  know, and it's, so that's, that's a big part of it as well. But it's, it's really nice to go and sit with some of these masters who have been. Keeping consistent with the tradition for thousands of years. And you know, the interesting thing, you know, I was saying earlier about how all cultures and traditions have a form of meditation within them, and it's true. But some, but in India, you have this great confluence of, um, it's also a tradition which has, um, the culture has been around for a long time, unbroken. So you have this unbroken lineage. They have, um, some cultures don't have, like, for example, the Aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal culture, they don't have, you know, writing. Um, they have other ways of memorizing knowledge, have songs

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  and so on, and rituals. But, um, in India, they have Sanskrit, which is this incredibly, incredibly rich and detailed language with these epics and stuff like that. And there's, it's like a code, it has a lot of the knowledge that was transmitted from thousands of years ago, and recontextualized by, it's a scholarly tradition that, that, that has developed over thousands of years. So they've developed a lot of these, um, concepts and traditions, uh, really in, so deeply, much more deeply than many other cultures have. And so it's, um, when you sit with some of these people who are the, the descendants of these long lineages, you're literally just, you know, drinking, drinking from the source. You're getting, getting this great knowledge. It's, it's, uh, coming down from thousands of years

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  of work.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you hear these, uh, well, first of all, you, so it's this confluence of this incredibly ancient language, the most ancient language.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Mixed with this geography, mixed with this tradition, this unbroken chain. And actually, a culture, it's a cultural priority, like, sort of spiritual expansion, spiritual growth, spiritual searching is, is like a cultural mandate there.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? In a way that it just doesn't exist anywhere else. I mean, I've never been to India, so it's all, I mean, Julie, you went to Rinachala.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, the spirituality is supported in India. I mean, so it's, uh, it's sort of the most important thing.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, I, I've met these, you know, you met these, these guys and women too, but it happened to be guys in this case, um, who, you know, have kind of given up everything to wander the earth, and they wear robes, and they kind of, you know,

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Renunciants.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Renunciants, who've given up all their possessions and. And they've gone to follow a tradition, find a master and study. And I was talking to this one guy who just, he really looked the part, you know, straight out of Central Casting for a spiritual kind of Indian guy, long beard, orange robes, the painted symbol on his forehead and, you know, the long hair and everything, the beads and the staff and the whole, like, you know, this Obi-Wan Kenobi of India.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  In orange.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Great orange, yes, great guy. And so we're sitting on the banks of the Ganges River, the holy river in India and talking. And I was kind of soaking up all of his incredible knowledge, you know, he was really like quite brilliant. And at the end of sitting and talking to him for a couple of hours and just, you know, writing everything down. And it's like, this guy's like, he must have just lived in Himalayas his whole life in some monastery or something. And I find out that, you know, five years ago, he was actually an advertising executive living in Mumbai. And, you know, and that's actually the story of a lot of these people is that they get to a certain point. They're like, okay, cool. I've done the whole materialist thing now. And now I'm going to go off and just sit in the mountain and meditate in robes for the rest of my life.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  And in India, you can do that and it's, it's okay. Whereas in America, you're just a bum, you know, like a homeless bum.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And it's actually, it's a, it's a real shame, you know, I see a lot of people. I know a lot of people come in, especially here in LA, a lot of people who come to learn with me are people who've gone through 12 step programs and people who are trying to get off drugs. And the consistent experience that I see there is that people were actually looking for spiritual, spiritual release and absolution and kind of like some, something that takes them beyond themselves. And you'll use the best tools available to you from your culture. And it's unfortunate that in our culture, the only tools we have are, you know, drugs and, um, and, you know, if you.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Sex.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  Sex as well. Yeah, sure.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Gambling. Well, the big one, shopping.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Consumerism, you know, is the ultimate opiate of, you know, our culture, I think.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Completely. And so people, people will draw on these things and, and what they want is to have something which, which takes them beyond, you know, and so. It's just in, in, in these cultures in India, you know, they, they've just got something. They've got this other thing which actually works much better, you know, and it's, and it will give you this deeper experience. It's really nice, you know, teaching here and beginning to have this little seed of culture where people are, you know, just sitting in a room, closing their eyes and finding that sense of absolution. You know, it's, it's, it's a really powerful thing. And, you know, it allows you to say, oh, well, you know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll choose this rather than those unhealthy habits which would have taken me somewhere else. And that's what most, that's what most of these guys who are doing this in India have got that we don't.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Right. But I think in, in, in you relating that, you know, it brings up another kind of fear or barrier that, that someone might have, which is this idea that if you start doing this, then you're going to be a renunciant, you're going to lose your house and you're going to be, you know, wandering around Venice and sleeping in a dumpster.

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Whereas I remember years ago, Russell Simmons used to go to this yoga class that we went to and he would tell Steve, the teacher, he's like, man, if I keep meditating and coming to yoga, I'm going to lose all my business, you know, I'm going to go broke, you know, and, and he doubled down on his meditation and yoga and like, you know, doubled his business or whatever the next year or whatever. So it's not about like, you know, I think there's that idea, this idea that if you do it, you're going to change who you are or, you know, lose what you have. You know, how do you approach that for somebody who's new and has harbors that kind of sentiment?

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  Well, luckily there are all these counter examples that you can instantly quote. You can look at like your Steve Jobs type of guy is a meditator, is serious Zen meditator who has, you know, started one of the most successful technology companies in the world, one of the most highly valued companies in the world. Investors like Ray Dalio, who's like, investors look at him like he's a god, you know, but he's a guy who credits all of his success to meditation. And, you know, there's a lot of people like that who You can point to and just say, well, you know, these guys didn't lose their billions. And, you know, Richard Branson is another guy, you know, is another meditator.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  There was a big article in, I think it was the New York Times, a couple of months ago, about how it's really become the rage in Silicon Valley. It's almost like a must do thing for the, the sort of successful entrepreneur on the rise.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And, you know, in, in India, you know, again, because, you know, this isn't, no, for us, this is the first time we're asking this question. For them, they've been asking this question for thousands of years. They actually have some good answers to it. They actually have two different traditions. You know, they've got one tradition, which is for renunciates, and one which is for what they call householders, which are people who have possessions and, and stresses, basically, that come with possessions. And you're teaching the householders? I'm teaching the household technique. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, and that's, you know, if, if a monk were to come to me and want to learn to meditate, I have to teach them a whole different set of techniques to what I normally teach in a regular class. Because it's just, it's, it's actually not for them. There's a lot of assumptions you can make. If someone's a monk, then you can assume that they actually can close their eyes and clear their mind of all thoughts. You know, they only eat brown rice and live on a mountain somewhere and don't have any

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  sexual relationships or anything.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Right. If that, like, I wanted to ask you about these, you hear these stories about these sadhus who sit in meditation for, you know, six months and they have people that kind of tend to them and they don't move. And, and the idea of the breathitarian who sort of transcended this need to eat food. Or, I mean, have you witnessed any, have you witnessed this kind of thing? Or where, where does the truth lie on these?

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  That's, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, in terms of the breathitarian, you'd have to actually sit and watch someone for, you know, nonstop for six months. I've never had the patience to do that yet, so I, I can't give you a definitive answer on that one. But there really are people who sit, you know, for months at a time. And they do, and they'll have people come and bring them a little handful of rice or something like that. And they'll subsist on very little and just sit in one place for, for months at a time. It's quite amazing to see. There are stories of people doing it for years.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Right. And you develop the ability to control your metabolism. You lower your heart rate, you lower your respiratory rate, like, all these sort of things are, are actually under your control to somebody who is a master.

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And so, you know, now, when we think of something like yoga, we think of something that's actually pretty much. It's more like aerobics now in the West, but in India, there when if you're referred to as a yogi, you're a person who's mastered your nervous system, mastered your body. And they'll do things like, you know, hike up into the mountains and they'll find a frozen pond up in the mountains and they'll crack a hole in the ice and sit in the freezing water for eight hours in meditation. And they do this by intense body control. Now you asked, you know, the standard of Yoga Works yogi, if they could do that and they couldn't.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Of course not. It has nothing to do with how you do your down dog.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. Now, there's a whole set of different techniques and the but the important thing to understand here is that the expertise and mastery of that comes first. Someone who's doing that, they're not suffering in that state. And if we look at that and go, oh, my God, that must be so painful. But that person, if you ask them like, no, man, I'm in this kind of blissful, ecstatic state inside. I've just kind of gone beyond this that ultimate, the thing that you was talking about earlier of like going beyond the senses. They go beyond their sense of touch and pain and everything.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  And you know what, when we talked at dinner in New York, you were talking about these additional senses and I'd never heard anybody explain that in that way. Do you remember? You remember?

• 1:12:46Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we're told that we have five senses. Some people say we have a six, but they're all wrong. You actually.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  M. Night Shyamalan.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  That was a bad joke, sorry.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  But there's, I mean, and I'm not talking like, you know, some sort of spiritual mumbo jumbo, like just straight up science. You know, you have, you know, your sense of, first of all, your sense of smell and your sense of taste are actually just one sense. Just through your nose, it's more sensitive.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Really? That's one thing?

• 1:13:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just one thing. It's chemical sensitivity. It's ability to determine different chemicals through your senses. So most if people who lose their sense of smell, lose their sense of taste as well. Most of taste is actually smell.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  Then, but then if you, if you look at your sense of balance, for example, that's a sense. We don't talk about that very much, but that's another one of your senses. Then you have, if you, then what we call touch is actually broken up into several different things. So you have your pressure sensitivity, pain sensitivity, hot and cold sensitivity,

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  proprioception, which is the knowledge of where the body is in space.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  I think that's most of them, but that, that one's, it's actually like-

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, that's, that has to do with the hand thing, right?

• 1:14:03Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  When you sort of go into meditation and you lose that sense, or you transcend that sense, that's when you don't know how big your hand is, or where it is in space.

• 1:14:12Speaker 03

  You, you might even feel like you don't have a body. Sometimes people just feel like, my, my whole body just disappeared, you know? Which is kind of a cool experience to have. But you know, the proprioception is, like if you, if you close your eyes and try to bring your hands together, you can do it without looking, and you can do it over, behind your head, or in front of your, in front of you, or behind your back, whatever. Because you just have this innate sense of where your body is. That's actually one of your senses. It's very useful for gymnasts and dancers and yoga people and stuff like that. And so when you meditate, you, you go, you go beyond all of these senses. And each one can actually kind of turn off independently. And so for example, there are techniques I teach for pain management. And I've taught, you know, people with stage four cancer,

• 1:14:53Speaker 03

  who have, you know, on a morphine drip and just taking huge amounts of painkillers. And I'll teach them these pain management techniques and they'll manage to, and you know, morphine's terrible. You know, if you're on high, high dosages of it, you're just off in space. You're like, you can't communicate with some, with, you know, people, maybe someone's final days and they can't communicate or be with their family. It's a terrible tragedy.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  But you know, obviously they should do it if that's the only option that they have. But as soon as you, people have practiced these pain techniques, and they've, they can decrease their morphine usage by, and be able to like, sort of be there and be present much more because they're using a meditation technique. I had a person who was allergic to painkillers, who had to get major dental surgery. And I taught him the same techniques. And he could, he could go beyond his sense of pain. And he managed to have this dental surgery without any, without any painkillers and be perfectly comfortable during the process. And so, you know, these, these are actually really useful things that we can do and use for specific things.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Interesting. That's amazing.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  It's hot in here, right?

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  It's getting warm.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  We're baking in the podcast studio today.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  But I was gonna ask you, can you share one of your pain management techniques? I have one that I use, but I wonder if it's a similar one. I use one where I take my awareness into the center of the pain. And then I describe it very, very viscerally, like qualities like, okay, does it have a color? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it rough? Is it smooth? Does it have an emotion? Is there a memory there? And by the time I get through all of that, then you go, where's the pain? And the pain will move. It'll go somewhere else.

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  So if I found for my own self, the thing is, it needs a facilitator to actually guide you. So if I have a willing facilitator, in about 45 minutes, I can have somebody do that with a migraine-level headache and completely dissolve it. The challenge is that you have to have a facilitator in 45 minutes. I can do it fairly well with myself, but not as good as if someone's facilitating. Is it similar?

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  It's different to that. That sounds like a fascinating technique. I'm very curious to know more about that. But the technique for managing pain, it's a little difficult to teach it over a podcast just because it assumes the ability to meditate already, to be able to transcend. And so, but I can describe what you do.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  You will simply bring your awareness to the palms of the hands, palms facing up. I'll actually get someone to run their fingernail over the palm of their hands, they can feel, like to basically kind of scratch the palm of their hand with their fingernail, so they can feel the sensation. If you kind of do it at home right now, just scratch the palm of your hand, you can feel, you actually feel it for quite a while afterwards. You can feel the sensation in the palms of your hands. So then you close your eyes and you begin thinking your mantra, or whatever technique you happen to be using at the time. And you start to just feel the sensation, the palms of the hands fading away, and fading away, and fading away, and fading away. And at a certain point, that sensation will continue to fade away. And beyond the point, when the sensation of the palms of the hands fades away, then

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  the mantra will begin to take you deeper and deeper and deeper. And at a certain point, you'll even start to go even... Further past your sense of touch and you're such a really have this clear sense of wow, I'm not feeling anything anymore. Then all of a sudden, when you realize that you've actually come out of the state again.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  You'll feel it.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  So the pain will come back.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:33Speaker 03

  Then you begin the process again. You you you run your fingernail over the palms of your hands again and and feel the sensation fade away and fade away and fade away. Come to your mantra, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, begin to transcend your sense of touch again. And you keep doing this over and over again. What it what this does is it actually trains your brain to be able to go beyond your sense of touch and your sense of pain because this is the direction that you go. This this is the actual mechanism, the sequence that you the brain has to go through to be able to experience this sensation beyond pain. And it it's such a simple technique.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  It's powerful.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  It's really powerful. Now, it does require that you've you've you've already gotten some expertise in in in transcending and kind of going beyond the senses. But again, that can be trained in like a matter of like a day or two. And so, um, you know, I I I give myself four days just to be safe, but you know, really like two days is sufficient. And someone, you know, people will usually start to experience that. And so it can be a really helpful thing, especially for chronic pain as well. A lot of chronic pain that people have, but doctors don't even, they can't even tell what's wrong with you. You know, just this weird pain.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  And and you know, they're like, well, there's nothing wrong with you that we can see. You shouldn't be feeling this pain. Like, well, I am. Not terribly.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  So now what do I do?

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  So you know, you can either dose yourself up on on horrible drugs that have side effects or you can start to train your brain to go beyond the pain. I've worked with people with with terrible back spasms and knee problems and all sorts of things.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  What about migraines?

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, migraines, definitely. Meditation's super helpful for migraines. I have a theory about migraines. I don't know if it's actually true, but.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  I think Julie would like to hear that.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  You know, Julie's, you know, she's struggled with migraines and has been able to kind of master them when they come up, but it's still something that you live with.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  I actually have a great protocol right now that's been working really well, but tell me.

• 1:20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I what I think migraines are caused, you know, your body's doing this constant synchrony between two different halves of the nervous system, the the the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, which are basically responsible for relaxation or stress. And and.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  You know, literally every, every time you inhale, you're using one half of it. Every time you exhale, using the other half. Um, and there's a lot of things like, um, like sex, for example, requires synchrony between the two halves in really interesting ways. You have to, the, the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for relaxation. And to become sexually aroused, you have to be more in the parasympathetic mode. But to have an orgasm, you have to be more in the sympathetic mode. So it's the part responsible for stress. Um, and so, which is really interesting, but your body's got, there's a lot of tasks that your body does. It requires this constant back and forth between switching this half on and switching that half on. And I think that migraines are caused by mistiming between these two different halves being fired at the same time.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Um, which, uh, and so basically what you, to, to be able to manage migraines, what I, what I teach people to do is to switch back and forth in a very deliberate way between, um, parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. When they're not having a migraine, you know, when they're just sitting, sitting there. So there's different breathing patterns you can use. If you, one of the simplest meditation techniques you can practice actually is, uh, just counting your exhale for four counts and counting your inhale for two counts. And what that does is the exhale is, um, parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated. The inhale is sympathetic nervous system.

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  So the sympathetic nervous system, remember, is for, for stress and anxiety. So you're basically teaching your body to be more on the relaxation side. Um, if you were to do the opposite though, and take long, like long inhales and short exhales, then you are triggering the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for stress and anxiety. Um, so what you can do is do two minutes of each. You do two minutes of, of counting, doing like a, like an exhale, one, two, three, four. An inhale, one, two, exhale, one, two, three, four. Inhale, one, two. Then two minutes later, you do the exact opposite pattern. And you switch, you, you do this, maybe you switch back and forth maybe three or four times.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  So it might take like eight, eight minutes or so. To do this and what you're doing is is sort of triggering each different half to go at the right times. And I've taught this to several people who have just like horrendous chronic migraines based on a theory that I had and it seems to be really, really effective.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:23:08Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  So, so like in my Kriya practice, so I'm doing very, I'm doing even inhales and exhales, but spinal breathing. So you're saying one of those should be shortened?

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  Well, I say that that you should that.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it'd be a different practice.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Like, different techniques are really good for different things. I would actually devote some time specifically to this, to just doing like, and you don't have to worry too much about like, am I breathing to my abdomen or to my spine or any of those different things? Just breathing in and breathing out and just keep it really simple because you try to think about too many things at once. And you could probably handle it just fine, but for the average person, it's going to be like mental, mental juggling too much. So you just like breathe in for out for two. Oh, sorry. So breathe out for out for four, in for two, then switch the other one. And you switch back and forth and you basically try, again, sort of training your brain, saying like, this is the way you're going to work. And it's literally just doing kind of like, you know, sort of circuit training.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're basically facilitating better communication between these two systems and kind of rebooting the system around it.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  So what, but what led you to this theory? This is what is leading to migraines?

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  So interesting. So I had a girlfriend who, this may, this may be, I don't know what, what, what rating this podcast has, but.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  You can say whatever you want.

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  Whatever you want.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  So I had this girlfriend who was just, she was actually the one that I ran away from home with, my, my, my, my looping love.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:24:42Speaker 03

  And she had a terrible, terrible migraines and she was just, she would have them so bad she'd begin to hallucinate and just like, be like a whole day she'd just spend in this year. She'd have the auras come on beforehand and it was, she could, would start like, oh no, migraine's coming. And she found out, though, that if, when she got these early signs of it, where the auras started to come, if she went and masturbated, it would prevent the migraine from coming on.

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's lots of studies that that's, that that works.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  That sounds a lot more fun than the breathing technique. Well, it's, it's, it can be socially awkward. I need to go right now. Well, that would happen.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  You could also have sex. You don't have to masturbate.

• 1:25:24Speaker 03

  Well, yes, but again, that requires another person to be there.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Another person. That's what's with it.

• 1:25:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Which is, you know, it's, it's fine for me. It was like, it was like, oh, you're gonna have a migraine. Awesome. But, um, but you know, there would be situations where we'd be like at dinner and, and she'd be like, oh, I've got to go, I've got to go in the, in the bathroom for two minutes. Only two minutes. Uh, yeah, she was, she was. She was a master. She was efficient. Yeah. Um, but the, uh, but then, so I started to think about this and think about, you know, the way, the, the way that sexual arousal and orgasm are linked to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the way there's a choreography between the two. And maybe that what was going on is that was kind of just rebooting the system.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  You know, it's kind of like turning your computer off and turning it back on again. And suddenly the system is reboot and you can start to have this kind of, you can have proper functioning again. Interesting. And so what I wanted to do, and the other problem with that technique is it didn't seem to be, no matter how much she did that technique, it didn't seem to be training her to not have the orgasm, the migraines. So it wasn't, it wasn't curing them. Yeah, it was just, it was just kind of.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  It's not real healing.

• 1:26:33Speaker 03

  Right. It was, it was sort of Band-Aid solution kind of thing. And, you know, and a good one. But this, uh, so I started to think about this over years, actually, and having a lot of people come to me and learn to meditate and having migraines and so on. And I just started to experiment with it, you know, and I knew that breathing was the simplest way to interface with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. And bing bada boom, it all seemed to work and seemed to actually train, seems to train people to not have the migraines in the first place, which is the more important thing. Wow. Yeah, super simple. That's crazy.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  You might try that, absolutely.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot of times when I get them, I'm, it's, uh, when I'm coming back into my body after being out somewhere.

• 1:27:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Who knows where.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  And I can feel it, I don't get the, the flashing things.

• 1:27:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  And I call them migraines, but they're not really regu, they're not, you know, diagnosed migraines.

• 1:27:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  Um, but I can feel all this kind of funny, you know, it's like I'm not in my body, my energy's not in.

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  So that would be, um, that would be really super helpful. I've, I've actually, um, come across an amazing protocol that's been working just miraculously. And, uh, it is the water enema.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Seriously. And the thing, I mean, it's, it's just, um, it's miraculous because it works so powerfully. And it's just, you know, two quarts of, of warm water, no herbs. And, um, you just do it, you can do it like, um, until the migraine subsides, but it's literally like within, uh, 10 minutes, there's relief.

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  And then I can be good for like two hours or three hours and then I might have to repeat it. But when you're a migraine sufferer, you have to take medication or you feel weird the next day and then the next day. This has been helping me tremendously and it's, it's, it's amazing. My friend, um, I have a girlfriend who's a master gardener and she turned me on to it and I was resistant at first, you know, just sort of exhausted, people telling me, you know, try this or do this, you know? You get kind of worn down.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  But, um, you know, I trusted her and, and I don't have an issue with it at all. Um, so anyway, it's, it's awesome. It's been amazingly helpful.

• 1:28:55Speaker 03

  It's, it's, I especially like it because it stays within my theory because the gut is the, is the, is like the punching bag for the autonomic nervous system.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  And so, you know, generally when people get, get, get really stressed, the first thing that they will get affected is their bowels and their stomach. That's why I see a stomach ulcer as an irritable bowel syndrome, get really affected by stress and anxiety. And so it seems to be that's another way where you're kind of, you're basically tricking your body into thinking that it's going into the other mode of the, of the nervous system.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:29:23Speaker 03

  And, you know, because normally what would happen when you relax, you'd be able to, you know,

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  to expel, to expel your feces.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, to release.

• 1:29:30Speaker 03

  To release, yeah.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  Um, so yeah, but it's, it's, it's, I like that. It's like a little body hack for,

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  It really.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  For, for sort of getting, getting your brain into that, or your nervous system into that right mode.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely. But I'll, I mean, I'm gonna experiment with the breathing and I'll add that in and then see like how long between, because I just, I think I am this kind of being, I'm just sensitive on these other levels and so it just shows up.

• 1:29:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  So I just have to be able to manage it. And, you know, pranayama and all the breathing, you know, when I teach yoga, I teach, um, I'm always drawing the attention back to the body, like whole body breathes, whole body breathes, like the whole time.

• 1:30:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  So the breath is powerful and balancing, you know, both channels. And so I think you're on to something.

• 1:30:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  It'd be amazing.

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, uh, and I find that simplicity works really well to, you know, if you can give someone a simple solution that's 80% effective, they're more likely to do it than a complex solution, which is 100% effective, you know? And this one seems to be that perfect sweet spot where it takes like eight minutes. But you have to, you have to do it. It's like training.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  To do it every day. The good thing is actually feels pretty good when you do it.

• 1:30:36Speaker 02

  Right, sure.

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  Um, you actually, and you, you feel like you've kind of conditioned your nervous system in a very real way.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  Um, I just, I just recommend end, begin and end on the relaxation version of that cycle, which is the long exhales and short inhales. So that afterwards you feel relaxed.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  So land, end on the long exhale.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you'll, you'll feel a really distinct difference. When you switch over to the other mode, you'll go, oh man, I feel kind of anxious and excitable, you know, and like you're ready to go, to, to jump up. But then when you do the other one, you're like, oh, that's really relaxing and nice. You're just triggering,

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  You can feel it.

• 1:31:07Speaker 03

  You're triggering your nervous system in a really real way. Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, awesome.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you used the word, or the phrase, body hack.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  But I mean, meditation really is a, it's a, it's a mental hack.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  It's a body, it's a physical hack, it's a mental hack, it's an emotional hack.

• 1:31:24Speaker 03

  It's both, you know, and I think when people ask me what meditation is, I just define it as any method where you're using, you're changing your state of consciousness using only your body or your mind. And, you know, so it excludes like using drugs and so on. But it's, but it really is, there's so many different methods that you can use, you know. And they all have, basically, you know, the, the people who've studied this stuff and both the scientists in the modern age and also the sages from Japan and India and China and so on. They basically catalog these different methods for triggering the body and mind in different

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  ways. And that's, on one level, that's all it is. And you can just keep it simple. It's, it's like a, it's just a really systematic body and mind hack, you know, that you can do.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I mean, I think it's important also to say that, you know, meditation is going to reveal more of who you are.

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  And we're all different.

• 1:32:27Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  So I mean, there's a reason that, you know, we incarnated into, you know, this part of the world.

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  And that, you know, you're not living in a cave somewhere. So there should be no fear or no projection over like if you meditate, then you're going to be, you're not going to be pulled off your course. You're going to be totally aligned on your course.

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  And, you know, you as a soul, you know, designed your life, like your life is for your unfoldment, it's for your evolution. And so all of us, you know, want to get aligned to that which we really are. So it's really, meditation is aligning to your authentic self. There's no, there's no tricks or, you know, or, you know. Some danger that you're gonna, you know, fall into someone else's life.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's, I can tell you that everyone who's taken my meditation classes have all been very unique individuals and they've, they've all maintained their amazing, unique and wonderful qualities. It's just made them stronger in fact, in, in, in every way. And you see these, people are so different, you know, and it's, it's actually beautiful when you see, when you get rid of, like, I think of the stress and anxiety as being the muck that covers up the window, so that you can't actually see what that, see inside and see who that person really is. Once you clear that off, then it's amazing. You have this incredible clarity, and they have this incredible clarity too, like they can actually see out, you know, and

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:33:53Speaker 03

  And it's, and it's, it's, it's an amazing thing to watch and it's, it's the unfoldment of the self. And I, you know, I think of it, it's just, you know, it's like, people get up in the morning, they brush their teeth. You know, you clean your mouth and you should pay the same amount of attention to your brain. You know, as you get up and clean your brain.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  It's a little dusty in there.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  I don't know, man, it's very threatening. You know, I think that, that if there's one sort of consistent theme with this podcast, it's really about bringing a diversity of people to the listener to empower them, to create greater self empowerment over your life, right? And there really isn't anything more powerful than developing a mastery over your conscious self. If you can master that, or at least take steps towards that mastery, then the kingdom is yours.

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  And if you're, you know, if you're stuck in life, if you don't like your job, if you, if you're not sure, you know, who you are, how you want to express yourself, if you, you know, are feeling aimless or misguided or, you know, unanchored, honestly, like, you know, the greatest gift you could give to yourself is to begin some form of meditation practice with a technique that resonates with you.

• 1:35:06Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  And you will develop a greater connection with who you are, who you're meant to be. At a very minimum, you'll, you'll be more expressive in your creativity, you'll feel more grounded in who you are, more comfortable in yourself, more self-assured. I mean, there's really no limit.

• 1:35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's absolutely true. And you know, as a, as a, as a quick plug and shout out too, I mean, we, I've just spent a lot of time working on these online courses.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  I was gonna get to that. Go for it.

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  Well, you know, the, um, with the, the idea of that, I mean, I, I teach a lot in, in, uh, where I live in Venice. And that's Venice Beach, not Venice, Italy.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Right. And you're carrying on a great tradition of having Australians who live in Venice on the podcast. I think, I think every other guest we have is from Australia, becoming ridiculous. You know, I should just, we should just move the show to Australia.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  We have to go to Australia and podcast from Australia. We absolutely do.

• 1:36:00Speaker 03

  Venice is, it's little Sydney. It's, it's really, it's just full of people from Sydney. It's very, it's very much like Sydney. But then, uh, so then, yeah, uh, where was I?

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Your online courses.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  Online courses. Well, you know, I, I teach in Venice. I, I teach a lot in, in Manhattan as well, um, sometimes in San Francisco and Miami. But there's like, that's basically my, my four places in America that I teach. And what do you know, there's actually people that live in other places. Might actually benefit from learning and, and especially people in smaller towns where it's just, it's just harder to make it make economic sense to go and to, you know, to fly into a place and stay for a week and teach meditation classes in, in these small towns, you know, and, um, or just places where there's just not, not as much, um, momentum behind it as there is obviously on the beach in California and places like, like New York. So, you know, I made these courses that are really super accessible and I, I've gone through

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  kind of trying to really demystify the practice and make it really easy for anyone, uh, to be able to learn. And I'm, I'm really happy with the way they came out. They're really, they're great, they're great courses. And I, I actually started, I started playing some of them back and, um, you know, I'm very self-critical, actually.

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  We all are.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Bit of a perfectionist and, um, and it was. And so I was actually quite pleasantly surprised when I was listening back to them and going, man, these are actually, you know, it's actually, actually kind of nice. I'm actually feeling more meditative just from listening to it.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  That's good. Now, the courses are, it is amazing. You did an incredible job. You know, Julie and I have viewed all the videos and obviously that's how we met. We didn't know each other before this opportunity came up where we both did these online courses with Mind Body Green. And you had shot yours, I want to talk about this a little bit. You did yours in New York and you did it like two months or so before we shot ours. And then, and you had shot yours and then Jason from Mind Body Green came to LA and we all had this big dinner at Cafe Gratitude where we met you. And you were, we were asking you all these questions about like, how did the shoot go? And what did you do? And how did you get ready? Because I was all nervous about how we were going to do ours. And you had a lot of great input

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  and feedback. And you did, and we used a lot of your advice in doing ours. Yours is, it's incredible. And, you know, look, Charlie is a world renowned teacher. And, you know, personal access to him is not cheap.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Not free, certainly. And, you know, you are, I mean, if somebody wants to hire you to coach them or to teach them, you're available to that, right? But it's not, you know, it's not a cheap thing.

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, I run, I run the classes that are a bit more affordable. You know, for, to take my four day class, it's about $500 unless you're a student, or military where it's $275. But, you know, they, we wanted to price these Mind Body Green courses more, more accessibly. I'd say, I think my price is actually pretty reasonable. But to make it more accessible to a broader range of people, so it's like $99 to take it.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And how many hours of content is it?

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  It's about six and a half hours, broken up into 10 to 15 minute, some are as short as five minutes. The idea is that you'd spread, you can spread this out over about three months of study. And I go through, I mentioned earlier, you know, four different basic schools of meditation, everything, four different categories that all meditation techniques fall into. And I go through techniques in all four different categories. And so it's really sort of made to be, you know, how can someone approach this? Whatever kind of person you are, there's one of the techniques in there is going to work for you. And so it gives you this capacity to try out different things. If you wanted to then study more and learn more about a specific tradition, it's a great jumping off point,

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  but it's also completely self-contained. Like you could, you could just study that and get a lifetime of benefit from it.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  Right. You could be somebody who's never meditated one day in their life and doesn't know anything about it. And you could take the course and it would tell you everything you need to know to get going. Or you could be an experienced person and maybe you're coming from a different tradition, or maybe the same tradition, but just to go deeper and learn more.

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've had several people actually who've written to me and said that, you know, they, they, they were students of Zen or students of some other technique. And, um, and you know, even Vedic meditation, which I, which is the, the technique that I typically teach the most. And, uh, and they've, um, they've then taken these courses. And it's just, you know, there's these other methods that they've never encountered with different ways, different, it's like, you know, think of a different gears, you know, first gear is great for parking, but fourth gear is the best metaphor highway driving, you know? And so if you're always driving around in fourth gear before, you probably weren't as maneuverable as you could have been when you're at slow speeds. And, you know, there's a different gear for the mind that works better in different circumstances. And so

• 1:40:52Speaker 03

  in this, I kind of go through all different phases that the mind can, can be in and give you a way to sort of integrate that into your life and make it feel like you can bring it into action.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Right. And, and like our program, you have the online community aspect of it where people can ask questions and interact with you.

• 1:41:10Speaker 03

  It's been really fun.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  You get your own private Charlie in your home, right?

• 1:41:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been really nice. I've been.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  You're getting a lot of good questions?

• 1:41:16Speaker 03

  I am, actually. Yeah, really good ones. I've been, been, been answering, being pretty active on that and answering a lot of questions. And it's, it's nice to have that. And, um, and then what's been really cool too, is to see some of the other community members who've stepped up and started to answer questions as well.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  That's the idea. Yeah, that's great.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  Kind of expert. And, and I, I've encouraged certain people who consistently, you know, really kind of get it, you know, and say like, man, you give good, good answers. You know, go for it, you know?

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

  Um, sometimes, sometimes the answers other people give are, are as good or better than anything I could say. And I've been really happy with that.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  It's a great aspect of those message boards.

• 1:41:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  You know, just being able to share together with the community is great.

• 1:41:57Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  But this is great. I'm really, really glad that you did this program because it is greatly needed. And you know, how much easier than to just have it in your, in your house or wherever you are.

• 1:42:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  You know, even if you do live in New York or you live in these cities, but basically it's available anywhere.

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think there's anything else like it that exists, right?

• 1:42:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  And a lot of people, you know, they're new to it. They don't, you know, maybe they're like, I don't want to show up at some loft and, you know, go see it like they're not comfortable enough with it yet to take that step. And so this is a really safe way to like explore it in a very unthreatening way.

• 1:42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, like maybe, maybe the guy's going to be really weird when there's creepy guru people.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  He's gonna be barefoot and wearing a robe and, you know.

• 1:42:41Speaker 03

  And I'm gonna be surrounded by weirdos. Everyone else in my class is gonna be some weird person. I'm gonna feel uncomfortable.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  Which is almost never the case, but no.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Actually, if you do that in LA, you probably meet a lot of celebrities that way.

• 1:42:53Speaker 03

  That's, oh, right.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Probably better than like going to a fancy restaurant.

• 1:42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's definitely, definitely true in my classes. Yeah.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  I know. I'm not gonna ask you to spill secrets.

• 1:43:05Speaker 03

  I've got, I've got a fair few non-disclosure agreements.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  I'm not even gonna ask you as much as I would like to.

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  So Charlie, let's talk about your, your childhood a little bit more. Can we go back a little bit?

• 1:43:17Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  And I mean, I've been, I've been accused of hosting some pretty alternative healers over here.

• 1:43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  And when you spoke on the, on the panel at Apple, I kind of giggled because I thought you said that you had grown up with these hippie parents and kind of a

• 1:43:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, well.

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  interesting environment.

• 1:43:37Speaker 03

  I, you know, most of my life was spent in these, my parents set up these meditation centers and, you know, so I've spent most of my life essentially kind of surrounded by, we'd have these foreign dignitaries arriving at our house. We'd have, I remember, you know, I remember when I was a little kid before he was famous, Deepak Chopra came and stayed at our place and, you know, it's kind of like, oh, it's Uncle Deepak, you know, no big deal. And then, and, but we had, you know, beyond, beyond him and more well-known people, we just had like these Indian sages just kind of turning up at our house and staying with us for months at a time and. You know, all sorts of colorful characters, you know, people, we had, you know, heads of state,

• 1:44:20Speaker 03

  foreign dignitaries arriving and, you know, all and I get phone calls at three in the morning from, you know, some person speaking Hindi to pick up the phone or like leery eyed as a kid and like, what's going on? You know, is it someone speaking in Hindi to me at 3am? And, you know, sort of like, it was a really interesting environment to grow up in. And then, you know, at that time, I mean, yoga hadn't hit its huge popularity. Vegetarianism was, I remember the first time I went to a restaurant that served tofu. That was like, it's, oh my God, you know, it's actually a restaurant that has a vegetarian menu. I mean, it was amazing. You know, there are all these, it was, it was very cutting edge. People think of the 60s and 70s as being a very freewheeling time, but for most people

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  in most places, it was a time of great conservatism. And so, you know, this interesting household that I have full of all these like bizarro characters was, you know, it was fascinating. And, you know, when I, as a kid, I got to get exposed to that nonstop. It was amazing.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a little bit like what Julie likes to do here.

• 1:45:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  They don't stay for months, though.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  They don't stay for months. My family wouldn't let me do that.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Quite a few characters passing through. Like, when I come home, I never know who's gonna be sitting in the living room.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  But actually, not really anymore, because I'm sort of complete and all that. But it was going on until, yeah, I still hosted somebody last year. Now, now it's not from a seeking point. It would just be to laugh.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  I had a.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  It would just be, if, yeah, if you want to come. Oh, there's a guru right now. Somebody wants to introduce me to him and he's Saraswati lineage. And I said, I said, great, if he's Saraswati, bring him to Jai.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Because it's, you know, creativity and it's for him.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  And then she called me back and said, oh, well, there's a protocol and you have to come. And I said, no, I said, I don't do any protocol. But if he wants to come, he's welcome, but I'm not doing any of that.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  There was a, there's something I wanted to mention. When we had Paramhansa Nityananda came to the house, who's like this, you know, Indian master guru dude. He's pretty cool. He's young and, you know, he's really kind of an amazing guy with great wisdom. And he talked about something that you touched on earlier when you were talking about, you know, you have people that come to you and they say, "I'm a stressed out New Yorker," or, you know, "I have all this anxiety." And, you know, they have this story that they tell about who they are, that they have an attachment to an identity that they repeat and reinforce over time. And Swamiji talked about that. And he said, "It's like, uh, you use the analogy of a stick, right? Like, or a branch. And you have these notches on a

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  branch that are these stories that you tell yourself. And because they're so, they're repeated so often and so kind of reinforced over time, that they become real to you when in reality, they're, they're not real at all. They're completely illusory." Right. But to get somebody to transcend that and say, "You're, you're not this identity, or you're not this person that you think you are, this story. It's just a story you're telling, right? Am I, am I describing that accurately? Do you remember what he was talking about?"

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was a, it was a chain. He was saying that, you know,

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the links on that chain.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  Basically, you, as a human, you, you, you pick up events in your lifetime. And, you know, some people pick up events of suffering. And most people pick up events of suffering.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  And you hold on to that.

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  And they say, "Oh, I was teased as a little child. Oh, I'm, you know, I'm a stressed out New Yorker." You know, they create this chain of stress, and that's their identity. And then he says also, uh, some people do the opposite, and they make a happy chain. And they say, you know, "I'm so happy, and, you know, everything always goes great for me, and I always win." And they create that chain.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  And he was saying that neither, both are lies. Like, neither are the truth, because there's nothing but the present moment.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  If you just drop that whole story, you can go beyond that and touch the consciousness of who you are, which is much more than those. And that's like polarity in this dimension. It's the highs and the lows. And, you know, I call it the seesaw of like running over here like, this is great, you know, then, oh, shoot, run over here, this is really bad.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  It's the way the human mind works. You're always looking for something to hold on to. You know what I mean? You're always, your mind is grabbing for something, whether, you know, you're driving on the road, where's the road sign and the stoplight? And that's all you're focused on. Like, that's just the way we're wired. So to be able to kind of get to a place where you can let go of that.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Like you said, expand your peripheral vision, or, you know, think twice, or let go of this story that you've been telling yourself your whole life about how Billy beat me up in the schoolyard, or whatever it is, right?

• 1:49:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and I think it's important, I think, I'm, you know, I can't really speak for him, but I'm pretty sure that this teacher, what he was saying too, is the importance of experiencing that, rather than just convincing yourself philosophically of the idea. There's a lot of books, and so, you know, self-help books, it'll tell you, things like that, like, get beyond your story.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Like, read about it. It's not gonna work.

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  Okay. How, you know? And, you know, or, you know, they'll say things like, you know, experience yourself as being universal. It's like, well, I'm here in a room, I'm gonna be eating a sandwich. So how, you know? And, and that's really what the meditative process is, is, is direct experience, rather than philosophy. Like, I don't, I've spent very little time, when I'm teaching, trying to convince people that, oh yeah, this is what you're gonna have. In fact, I prefer to give them this technique and not say too much about it. Let them come back to me and say, wow, I just kind of had this moment where I went beyond everything. Like, yep, that's an expected result, you know? And, and have them be the one that tells me about it, and then confirm. Because it's, it's

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  really cool to see that spontaneously happen in every kind of person, too. People come with all these different things and say, you know, I, every single person that comes, when they come to like an introductory talk or something, they'll come up to me and like, I can't do this. There's no way that I I'm unique. I'm the one person who's too stressed, who's too type A, who's too, you know, too, too, my mind is too busy. I won't be able to, everyone else can.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  In recovery, they call that terminally, uh, terminally exceptional.

• 1:50:37Speaker 03

  Right. I love that. That's a good term. Um, and you know, it's just like every single, and then the next person comes and says the exact same story, you know, and it's, it's like,

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  No, you're just a human being.

• 1:50:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're a human being.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Your plumbing is pretty much the same as my health.

• 1:50:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, we all, we've all got the same stuff inside our heads, you know, and so, and we're all raised in a similar culture too, you know, it's, we all have the same background assumptions. And so, um, it's really fun to see like this, these techniques that just work.

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:04Speaker 03

  You know, um.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  They worked, they don't discriminate. Yeah, it's sort of like they work regardless of your opinion of them.

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  Exactly. Which is, which is kind of like what's, and it's, it becomes very scientific at that point, you know, like whatever you believe.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter what your opinion of this is if you do it.

• 1:51:18Speaker 03

  People come in who are like spiritualists and like really, really into like almost far out concepts of everything. And there are people who are like dyed in the wool atheists and agnostics who come in and take the class. They have the exact same experience, you know, and I actually, it almost, it's almost more fun to teach someone who doesn't believe that it's gonna work. I have this phenomenon, I often teach, you know, like, like in a lot of wellness kind of communities, it's very heavily like female dominant, dominated. And so when I teach for two, like I would teach two weeks in one place and I'll teach one course one week and then second course the next week. The first week will often be like eighty-five percent women, which is typical for yoga classes and so on. In the second week, they drag their boyfriends and husbands along. So the second week is just.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Who don't want to be there.

• 1:52:04Speaker 03

  Completely unwilling. And they're like, and you know, their girlfriend or their, their wife is less.

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  They're just like, if I gotta, if I want to hang on to this girl, I'm gonna have to do this.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  Exactly. And then sometimes they literally will say like, if you don't go to this thing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break up with you. So they're just sitting there like. The final moment. The first day, they just hate me. Like, oh, who is this, who is this guy, who is this asshole that I've got to listen to, you know, right? And, uh, and so I have this experience a lot of teaching these really skeptical guys who are just like completely dead set that like this isn't gonna work. They're actually emotionally involved, invested in the idea that it's not gonna work. They want to prove their girl wrong, you know? Um, and so it's really fun actually to see like day two, they're like, whoa.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Charlie, can I talk to you for a minute?

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  Privately, yeah, that wasn't privately away from everyone else. They don't have to lose face.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  I love that. That's hilarious.

• 1:52:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  That's awesome. Well, cool, man. Well, we've been going almost two hours, but I do, before we close it up, I want to ask you about one other thing that, something that, that, that I have an issue with is, is, is sleep. And I know that a lot of the techniques that you teach and you're, you're, you sort of help people enhance their sleep.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  And improve their sleep. And for me, I struggle with that. Like when I'm training, it's a non-issue. But sometimes like when I'm not training as vigorously or, or my diet isn't completely dialed in that day. Like I have really, you know, I have issues with restless sleep.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Right, right. Well, I mean, that's, that's probably the number one reason why people come to learn, to meditate, actually, is because of sleep issues. That's really helpful. I mean, I, I don't have much more to say other than, other than you need to set up a daily meditation practice. You don't have to do it, I, I think twice a day is the, is the, is the ideal before your breakfast. And then sometime before your evening meal. And you set up a daily meditation practice because what typically happens, the experience most people have when they're having rest, having trouble getting to sleep is, you know, you can be absolutely exhausted, completely wiped out and feel like your eyes are like, you can barely keep your eyes open. And then, but then as soon as your head hits the pillow, all of a sudden your mind has to race with thoughts and their thoughts keep you awake.

• 1:54:16Speaker 03

  And the, what's behind that phenomenon is that anytime your body relaxes, you begin to release stress. And stress release is always accompanied by rapid thoughts. And so this is the benefit, when people have a meditation session where they sit there and all they're doing is thinking really, really fast. Sometimes people have these, this thing where they'll, they'll sit there and they're just, they start to relax and they're just like, their, but their mind starts to like blaze with thoughts even faster than it would normally go. What's happening is that they're pre-processing all of that stress release. And then they'll, they'll come out of like, oh, that meditation really sucked, you know, there was nothing, nothing happened to me. But then that night, they'll just fall asleep.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Because they got it out of their system.

• 1:54:56Speaker 03

  They've got it out of their system in the meditation session. Now that's about fifty percent of the meditation sessions will be what we call stress release meditations, a thought filled meditation like that. And the other half, once you've released the stress, the other meditation sessions will you'll go deep. And so it's kind of tick tock pattern that goes back and forth between them. And that's why the twice a day is really nice because it gives you one stress release meditation and one really deep one in the same day. And and then that evening, when you, you know, lie down, you're just like, oh, it's much, much easier to go to sleep and your sleep quality improves too. That's a really important thing because when you have high levels of stress, you you won't go through the the six phases of sleep that you need to go through to get to feel like you've had a full night's rest.

• 1:55:41Speaker 03

  And so that's caused by elevated cortisol levels in your bloodstream, which is another thing, the stress chemical, which makes you feel anxious. And and, you know, by the way, you know, running and doing these things actually decreases your levels of it. It's one of the great ways of doing it, doing any sort of exercise. But meditation will do the same thing. So it makes a lot of sense that when you're training, you don't, you don't have that problem so much because actually the the decreased levels of cortisol. But you can meditate and have the same effect. And there are specific techniques, kind of, again, that sort of Band-Aid method of like, you know, getting into a deeper state right before sleep, which are helpful. But what I'd really recommend is just, you know, setting up a daily practice because I I've worked with people who've, one of, one of the extreme cases, a good friend of

• 1:56:26Speaker 03

  mine who had, she, she learned to meditate when she was in her early thirties and she'd had chronic insomnia since age eleven. And she's what she claimed, I don't know how this could possibly be true, but she claimed that she had not slept since she was eleven. Like she, she just lies there every night awake. And, you know, she looked pretty haggard when she came in, like she was really like super sleep deprived. And then three months after learning to meditate, she was just, you know, for the first time in her life, after being through therapy, drugs, everything, she was falling asleep and sleeping really well every night. Wow. And I mean, it can be as be that effective. And then, you know, a year later, she calls me up and says, my meditations have stopped working. All I'm doing is sitting here thinking. And so I'm gonna stop.

• 1:57:10Speaker 03

  And I wrote back to her, I said, well, you're probably not, because you wouldn't have written to me if you were actually gonna stop, you know. And but give it a try, see what happens. Cry for help. Yeah, yeah. I told her, just give it a try, you know, stop meditating, see what happens, you know. And then she did and. Predictably, two days later, the insomnia returned.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:57:26Speaker 03

  And it's because those meditation sessions, she was doing that pre-processing. It's a really important thing to do.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:57:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  So Charlie, do you do, you recommend then like sunset hour?

• 1:57:41Speaker 03

  Oh, look, here's the thing, I do, I love the time in the morning, right around dawn, and the time right around sunset for meditation. And there's all sorts of stuff written up, you know, all different traditions saying that's just this perfect time to meditate. However, when I say that, people get very caught up in that, they miss those times, like, oh, well, I can't do it now, you know? So I don't like to set up dependencies for people. And I find that you can meditate really well under all sorts of circumstances. And so those are really good times, for sure. And they just happen to line up really nicely with the sort of before breakfast and before evening times as well. So it's when your body is most tuned and ready. And it's these transitional points in the day where your body's also going through a transition.

• 1:58:25Speaker 03

  It's nice to ease that transition a little bit with a meditation session.

• 1:58:28Speaker 02

  What about before bed?

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  I, well, it depends on the technique that you're doing. For most of the techniques that I teach, I don't recommend it, actually, because it can mess with your sleeping cycles. And so, you know, if people meditate right before sleep, what they'll often find is that they'll have one night's sleep, which is, they'll fall asleep while they're meditating, and they'll kind of stay in this really deep state throughout their whole sleep, and they'll have the best night's sleep of their life, wake up, feel fantastic, and think, I'm gonna do that again tomorrow! And they try it again, and it doesn't work. And it's because they've actually rested so deeply that they're now super energized, and it'll throw off your sleep cycle sometimes for several days.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  That happens to me. Like, I'll have a night where I don't sleep well, or maybe two nights in a row where I don't sleep well, and then I'm just so exhausted that I just sleep super deep.

• 1:59:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:18Speaker 01

  And then the cycle repeats itself.

• 1:59:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  Because I slept so hard that unless I go out and train all day and exhaust myself, I can't go to sleep then.

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I think it's gonna be awesome for you to do that.

• 1:59:30Speaker 01

  I'm in.

• 1:59:31Speaker 03

  Sort of like, yeah, just to...

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Hallelujah.

• 1:59:35Speaker 03

  Are you committing to three months now on air?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  There you go. It's here at Rich Roll.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  I think I will commit to three months. I don't, I don't believe in committing anything for less than three months. I think that in my experience, anytime I've ever tried to change anything in my life, it's required a 90 day minimum.

• 1:59:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Transition period. I think, I think you need 90 days to implement a change in your life.

• 1:59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, if I'm gonna do it, why, you know, what, do it for a week, whatever. If you're gonna do it, like, do it for 90 days.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I'll commit. And I'll share, I'll share my, uh, my experience on the podcast.

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  That'll be great.

• 2:00:09Speaker 03

  Awesome. Awesome.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Cool. All right, man. Well, we gotta wrap it up.

• 2:00:13Speaker 03

  Sounds good.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty good. So.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  Is there anything else you want to share, Charlie? You good? You think you're good?

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  My brain is empty.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Well, we could go, we could go all day. I don't think your brain is empty. I think you could continue for many hours on this.

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  Probably could.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I'm not worried about that because I will have you back on the show for sure.

• 2:00:31Speaker 03

  Great.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Cause you're a wealth of information. So, so thank you.

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  Let's do this again, for sure.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Thank you for coming by.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  And we love

• 2:00:39Speaker 03

  My pleasure.

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  Having your beautiful wife and your beautiful children.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The whole family is here.

• 2:00:44Speaker 02

  Gorgeous, all of them.

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  I like them a lot.

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see why.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  So for sure. So definitely check out Charlie's meditation program. Just go to Mind Body Green, MindBodyGreen.com. It's on the homepage. Scroll down. You'll see it right there. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And if you want to learn more about Charlie, you can go to the website for the, the, uh, the Veda Center, right? It's just thevedacenter.com?

• 2:01:10Speaker 03

  T H E V E D A center.com.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh. And you're currently redoing Charlie Knowles.com, right?

• 2:01:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And CharlieKnowles.com and thevedacenter.com both have a lovely refresh, hopefully by the time this, uh, this podcast airs, but we'll see.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  It's gonna air tonight.

• 2:01:25Speaker 03

  I know, I'm working.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  You're gonna go home and, well, we'll be erased. Like, I'll be trying to get this podcast done and you'll be trying to get your website done.

• 2:01:32Speaker 03

  I'm almost there. I'm 90% there.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  At this point, I think it'll be, it'll probably post at like 1am or something like that. So, that's your, that's your deadline.

• 2:01:38Speaker 03

  That's my deadline. Cool.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  But then nobody listens to the show for, I mean, it takes people a day or two.

• 2:01:43Speaker 03

  All the Australians will be.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that's right. It'll be their morning.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  You can do it, man. Just channel all that like really focused mental energy that you have.

• 2:01:54Speaker 03

  So far, so good. Seems to be working out well, okay.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  And Charlie's on Twitter at Charlie Knoles, K-N-O-L-E-S.

• 2:02:02Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  No W in there, right?

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  Well, I found if you Google the other one, it still ends up with me now.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's, that's, that's how powerful you are.

• 2:02:08Speaker 03

  Bam.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  You misspell it and it still goes to you. That's real power in the digital age, right?

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  It is, yeah.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  And Instagram too. Anywhere else you want, Instagram is Charlie Knoles also?

• 2:02:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I've kept the Twitter and the Instagram the same, yeah.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Anywhere else you want people to find you?

• 2:02:25Speaker 03

  Instagram's my favorite method. I actually don't, don't, I, I enjoy.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not big on the Twitter.

• 2:02:30Speaker 03

  No, I, I enjoy Instagram. Twitter is kind of work, but, but I'll, I'll do it. I'm beginning to find some joy in it, but Instagram I love. So, so if you want, if you want to find, find me in a place that I, that where I, that I love it, then Instagram's the place.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Cool. And you have a couple, you have a couple of retreats coming up, right?

• 2:02:48Speaker 03

  I do.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  One in New York and one in Malibu.

• 2:02:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, one, one in September 13 to 16 in New York and then October 11, 12 ish, somewhere in Malibu. Yeah.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  And there's still openings for that?

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  There are, there are. We actually haven't, we've, we've put the link up on the website, but haven't sent anything out yet. They will sell out super fast. So if you're interested in, in, in getting on them, get it, get on it now before we make the, the big announcement.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the, the details are, are at the, the Vedas Center.

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  The Vedas Center, yeah.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  And you're going to do those with your dad too, or those just you?

• 2:03:18Speaker 03

  Those ones will be not just me, but, but I will be the main teacher at those ones, yeah.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  Gotcha. And do you have any other, are you traveling around doing stuff where, I mean, for people that are in different cities, are you going to be appearing anywhere where people might want to know where you're at?

• 2:03:33Speaker 03

  At the moment, the only, the only thing on the calendar is New York and, and LA at the moment. But yeah, I'll, if, if people follow me on, on any of those media that we've mentioned before, they'll, they'll hear all about it for sure.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  All right, man, righteous brother.

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  All right.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  Thanks again for coming by.

• 2:03:48Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  If you want to, if you want to support the show, the best way to do that is to use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. A lot of people have been using it. I get emails, people like, hey, I bought, you know, this or that, and I use the banner ad. And I always reply like, you're a hero. It doesn't cost you anything extra.

• 2:04:09Speaker 02

  You are a hero.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  You are a hero. Yeah, you're supporting this show. It's awesome.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  It's cool because it doesn't cost anybody anything to do it, but they're still like going out of their way to like, say, hey, I'm going to support this guy like what he's doing. So I'm going to make my, you know, Amazon purchase by clicking here first. It's like, it's awesome. So thank you, everybody who's doing that.

• 2:04:27Speaker 03

  Especially if you're going to buy a new MacBook Pro.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. If you're going to be like, yeah, you're going to be buying really expensive items, then you're, then you're not just a hero, you're a superhero.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  I'm a superhero.

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  All right. And you can also donate to the show. There's a support the podcast banner ad. You can donate whatever you like. You can donate weekly, monthly, or one time. And thank you so much to everybody that's been doing that. It really helps us keep the lights on. And we got some fun new announcements we're going to make about the podcast soon.

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:04:58Speaker 01

  I don't think we're going to do it today.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  Are we going to do it now?

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  No, we're not going to do it now. No, it's like, yeah, but it's pretty cool. Some good stuff coming up. Lots of amazing guests. Thank you, everybody, to know more about what we're doing. We, hey, we have a plant-based nutrition course at mindbodygreen.com too. So you want to get more plants in your life? I don't care if you're vegan, or you're hardcore standard American diet Burger King guy. Everybody needs more plants in their diet. Mindbodygreen.com. Check out our course. Tara Stiles, a yoga, yoga course as well. And Julie, you have your meditation program, right?

• 2:05:29Speaker 02

  I do. I have my meditation program.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Humming program.

• 2:05:31Speaker 02

  It's, it's based on a, on a humming mantra. And it's the meditation technique that transformed my life more than any other technique. So I only share one with you. Charlie shares many, many, many, many. But anyway, this is dear to me and. It also has an amazing visualization which connects you with your soul purpose so that you can be more your authentic self. So that's Jai Release. It's at richroll.com.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just click on products. You'll find it there. Simple. Got a bunch of stuff there. We've got a lot of new products coming that everybody's been asking about. The Plant Power t-shirts, they're coming. We're working on it. We just, you know, this website stuff just takes time, you know, right? I know that one.

• 2:06:19Speaker 02

  And if you don't have our cookbook and you're not going to get the Plant Powered Program, you can download that also at richroll.com.

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  And you can find my music at srimatimusic.com. S-R-I-M-A-T-I music.com. If you're interested to know what a Sanskrit mantra sounds like, you can go to track eight, which is the Aditya mantra. Very, very powerful sun mantra. It's the one that I channeled the music for. And so it's original and you can check it out there.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Awesome. All right, we're done, right?

• 2:06:57Speaker 02

  I think we did it.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Cool. Thanks, Charlie.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  Thanks, Charlie.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Feel good?

• 2:07:00Speaker 02

  Namaste.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  You all right? Awesome. You're all good? Yeah, totally. All right. Thanks, Julie.

• 2:07:04Speaker 02

  See you soon. Thanks, Rich Roll.

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  All right. Peace.

• 2:07:07Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  Plants.

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  Namaste.