Light Watkins on The Inner Gym: How Meditation Can Train Consciousness For Happiness

I want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. So why is it so hard to just be happy? Many self-help gurus present happiness as a choice. The idea that happiness can be produced whenever we want, irrespective of circumstance. Simply learn to flick a certain mental switch and voila! It's an intoxicating idea. But is this axiom actually true? Meet Light Watkins. Friend, teacher and expert on mindfulness and meditation, Light proffers some interesting and perhaps somewhat controversial counterpoint perspectives on a question that deeply concerns all of us: how to best cultivate happiness? First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Beyond his beguiling good looks, Light Watkins is pretty much the coolest name ever. Right? On a more earnest note, I would characterize Light as a generous, highly accessible and contemplative entrepreneur of mindfulness — always convivial, impressively composed, and quick with a laugh. He has been operating in the meditation space for over 15 years and has been teaching Vedic Meditation since 2003. He's personally taught nearly 2,000 people to meditate, including bankers, artists, politicians, CEOs, care takers, educators, comedians, rock stars, students, and seekers of all kinds. He is the author of The Inner Gym: A 30-day Workout for Strengthening Happiness*, a frequent blogger, TEDx speaker and founder of The Shine Movement. A mashup of TED, Hotel Café & The Self-Realization Fellowship, The Shine is an all volunteer organization that hosts periodic gatherings that use music, film, philanthropy and storytelling to inspire people to do more, give more, and be more. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including: * a primer on Vedic Meditation * training consciousness like we train the body * the importance of consistency in daily routines * the distinction between knowledge & understanding * Skepticism of new-age gurus & practices * the image problem with meditation * de-excitation of the mind through mantra * the relationship between consciousness & restfulness * the impact of meditation on insomnia * the difference between biological and chronological time * meditation impact on the fight or flight response; and * strategies for strengthening happiness Light inspires me. I love this guy. After listening, I think you will too. I sincerely hope you enjoy our exchange. How do you cultivate happiness? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Light Watkins?

  Previously, I thought that meditation was just about sitting there, thinking about my to-do list or conversations. And so, actually, there's a deeper place. But, you know, immediately after you come out of that, you definitely feel a sense of wholeness that wasn't there before. And you feel a sense of relaxation that you may not have had before. And once you have it so many times, those two things, wholeness and relaxation, start to stabilize. And you find that the gap in between something happening and you reacting to it starts getting wider and wider and wider. And things happen, like crazy things can happen.

• 1:45Light Watkins?

  And you find yourself just kind of sitting in it and being more responsive as opposed to reactive.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

  That's meditation and mindfulness teacher, Light Watkins. And this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  All right. What's up, everybody? How are you doing? Welcome to the show, or welcome back. If you're a longtime listener, my name is Rich Roll, and I am the host of the podcast that bears my name, the podcast where I sit down with the outliers, the paradigm breakers, the big forward thinkers. And in the case of this week's guest, the purveyors and the practitioners of the ancients across all categories of excellence and positive culture change to mine the tools, the insights, and the principles that ultimately can help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for subscribing to my weekly newsletter. If you want to support the show, it's simple. Do us a quick, solid, give us a review on iTunes.

• 2:57Rich Roll?

  Only takes a moment, helps us out a lot. And before your next Amazon purchase, first click through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. You can find it right there on the main podcast page. Will not cost you anything extra. Really doesn't take any extra time. And it's just a great, free way to support the mission. And it really does put some nice wind in our sails. So, thank you so much, everybody who has made that a practice. So, I just got back from a couple of days in Palo Alto. I was in and around Stanford University, my alma mater. Always great to be back there. And I did a couple of really cool podcasts. The first one was with a Stanford Biology professor by the name of Craig Heller. And he just so happened to be my Human Biology Professor

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  back in the day, I think it was around 1986. And he has been actively engaged in some really interesting research on human thermoregulation, specifically the impact of heat on peak athletic performance. And he's one of the minds behind some very... Compelling pioneering technology that's proven extraordinarily effective in helping athletes maintain optimal core temperatures with some pretty astonishing results. So pretty excited about that one. And the second one was with a Princeton Fulbright scholar, Cambridge educated young professor by the name of William McCaskill. He's only 28 years old and he's about to start a professorship in philosophy at Oxford in the fall. And

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  he's the main guy behind this new, very interesting social movement called Effective Altruism, which is essentially a scientific reason and logic-based approach to trying to determine how to use our time and our resources to create the most good in the world. He's a fascinating, brilliant young guy. And I'm really excited about both of these interviews. So you have both of those to look forward to in the near future.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  All right, but let's get to today. So I think that we can all agree that we all want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. And most of us perceive this quest for happiness as a choice. In other words, that we can simply choose to be happy whenever we want, wherever we find ourselves, irrespective of circumstances. But is this actually true? Well, today's guest, my friend and meditation and mindfulness teacher and expert, Light Watkins, he's got some pretty interesting, if not somewhat controversial, opinions on the subject. So who is Light Watkins? Well, beyond having perhaps the coolest name of all time, Light is a really awesome and thoughtful guy who has been operating in

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  the meditation space for about 15 years and has been teaching Vedic meditation since 2003. He's personally taught nearly 2,000 people how to meditate, including bankers, artists, politicians, CEOs, educators, comedians, rock stars, students, seekers of all types. And he's also a published author of a book called The Inner Gym: A 30-Day Workout for Strengthening Happiness. He's a blogger. He's a frequent contributor to Mind Body Green, where I also contribute. He's a TEDx speaker. And he's the founder of something called The Shine Movement, which has been described as sort of a mashup of TED Talk meets Hotel Cafe meets the Self-Realization Fellowship. The Shine is an all-volunteer organization that hosts periodic gatherings that use

• 6:26Rich Roll?

  music, film, philanthropy, and storytelling to inspire people to do more, give more, and be more. It's a really cool thing, and we're going to talk about that today. And in addition, we cover a lot of ground. Some of the things we talk about are the importance of consistency in daily routines, the difference between knowledge and understanding, skepticism in the yoga and meditation space, how to de-excite your mind and combat insomnia, and how you can strengthen happiness. So, I'm really proud of this conversation. I'm proud to be a friend of Light. He's a great guy. I hope you guys enjoy this. So, without further ado, you guys want to talk to Light? Let's talk to Light.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  Sorry, it's a little balmy. It's like 100 degrees out. We don't have air conditioning in this room, so...

• 7:21Light Watkins?

  But it's dry heat, so it's not like you're in Alabama, which is where I'm from.

• 7:24Rich Roll?

  It's a little humid out for LA, I think. You know, it's a little dank, but you know what?

• 7:30Light Watkins?

  Well, it's worth it to be here with you.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  Thank you for saying that. I was gonna say, in your third eye, we can just pretend we're in India, right? You're back in India, and we'll just set that stage. So, I thought a cool way to begin this would be if you could kind of set the energy for the interview, and we could do like a real quick kind of meditation to get the energy right. What do you think? Would you do that?

• 7:59Light Watkins?

  Yeah, we'd do that, sure. So, let's just make sure we're comfortable. I always like to be comfortable when I'm meditating. And we'll just close the eyes for a second, and we'll just kind of do a quick scan of the body, starting with the toes, and then going up the legs.

• 8:21Light Watkins?

  And just relaxing, you know, just relaxing and releasing anything that seems to be a little tight, tense, right? And get to the waist and the stomach and just kind of let that stomach just relax. You know, in LA, we have a tendency, or at least I have a tendency, to kind of flex the stomach a little bit too much. So, just let that, let that go, let the shoulders go. And take it down, the arms, just let the fingertips kind of soften. And then up through the neck and to the head. And just take a deep breath in through the nose, fill up the whole torso, and then open the mouth inside out.

• 9:06Light Watkins?

  And then open the eyes. And I think we're ready to go.

• 9:14Rich Roll?

  Good, man. I like it.

• 9:16Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  I feel better already.

• 9:18Light Watkins?

  Keep it simple.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's amazing what just a real brief reset like that can do.

• 9:22Light Watkins?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  I was driving back from my office, back to the house to do this, and, you know, I woke up this morning feeling pretty beat up, super tired, like we had, I put in two days of pretty hard run workouts, and then we had company over yesterday, and then I had to go to my office late last night to get a podcast up, so I didn't get to bed until like, I like to go to bed at like nine or 10, and I didn't go to bed until like 2:00. Woke up early, not feeling great, went to my office, preparing for this interview, and I'm driving back over here, and I'm like, man, I'm tired, you know, I'm tired, but I feel good now.

• 9:59Light Watkins?

  Where's your office?

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  It's just down, it's just a couple of exits down the highway. Well, I mean, there's so much, it's real quiet in our house right now, but that, that's not what usually. So like here, there's a lot of kids running around, there's a lot of action, a lot of activity, so it's hard for me to focus. So I just have, I just have a tiny little office where I can go and.

• 10:16Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I feel the same sometimes. You know, in LA, you drive so much, and there's, it's just kind of isolated in the car, and you can get a little bit sleepy, and so I'll often pull over to the side of a road, or go into some quiet neighborhood, and just park under a tree, and just close my eyes for like 10 minutes, and just meditate, and for a few, just as a reset.

• 10:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Light Watkins?

  It's amazing how much energy you can get from doing that.

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  It's great. My problem is I get, like, my thing is I'm wired and tired. You know, like, I have the anxiety that prevents me from being able to just spontaneously take a quick nap.

• 10:54Light Watkins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  And it also prevents me from taking that time to do the thing that will make me feel better. Because my mind is racing, right? Even though I'm tired. So I get into that cycle, which is hard for me to break. Of course, when my meditation practice is, you know, is happening, I don't experience that. But, you know, I'm in that thing where I go in and out of it, you know?

• 11:18Light Watkins?

  The ebb and the flow.

• 11:19Rich Roll?

  I'll do, I'll have, you know, I'll have, I'll have periods where I'm just killing it, you know? Every day and I'm feeling great. And then something intervenes and I fall out of it. It's just like anything else. It's like your eating habits or people who go to the gym for a while and fall off or what have you. So consistency is always the thing that I'm trying to get on top of.

• 11:39Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I'm going through a thing right now with my diet, just trying to eat a lot cleaner. I used to eat really clean for years and years and then I just kind of fell off. I didn't really fall off three years ago, but I just kind of made a decision to be a little more laxed with things. I started traveling a lot, you know? It's really hard to eat a good diet when you're always on the road.

• 12:00Rich Roll?

  Throws your rhythm off.

• 12:01Light Watkins?

  I was in, I was on the road every four weeks for about two weeks.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:06Light Watkins?

  And, uh, yeah, I just, I just got, it was just overwhelming to always pre-plan meals and take stuff on the airplane. And, you know, they make you throw half your stuff out when you get to the airport, which sucks.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Light Watkins?

  So, um, yeah, so I kind of let, let go of some of my restrictions and now I'm a lot more laxed about it. But I want to get back into, I want to get back to just being a little more aware of what I'm putting in my body.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I can help you with that.

• 12:36Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  If you can help me with the meditation part, how about that?

• 12:38Light Watkins?

  I figured something might turn in the right place.

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  It's that thing, it's that idea of self-knowledge will avail you nothing because I have all the tools I need. I know enough and, you know, I've done podcasts with our mutual friend Charlie. I did a podcast with Andy Pudicom from Headspace, which was great. You know, I've had, you know, I've had the opportunity, the good fortune of having amazing conversations with people that do what you do. So I get it, you know, I understand it. It's the implementation part, of course, that, that is the thing that, that I'm still attempting to master. And I think, you know, part of it, and I speak to this, but I'm also a victim of it, is this idea of perfection that always trips me up.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Like if I can't do it, if I'm not doing it all the time, every morning, and I set aside the time, then I shouldn't be doing it at all. You know what I mean? And that prevents me from progressing.

• 13:36Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I just posted something on social media the other day. It said, it said that meditating is not, is not meditating that requires all this discipline. It's breaking the habit of decades of not meditating that requires discipline. And, and it reminded me of this, you know, there was this video floating around on social media about the backwards bicycle. Did you see that video?

• 13:58Rich Roll?

  No, uh-uh.

• 13:59Light Watkins?

  So some engineer guy down in the south, he had a southern accent. He, he got hold of a backwards bicycle from some welder friends of his. And a backwards bicycle is basically a bicycle where when you turn the handlebars to the left, the wheels go, the wheel goes to the right. The front wheel goes to the right. And when you turn it to the right, the front wheel goes to the left. So his whole point was that having knowledge of how to ride a bike, even though it's a different orientation, is not enough. You have to have the consistent experience. And so when he tried to ride the bike initially, he could only get two or three feet before he ended up falling off the bike. And he practiced it every day and his main goal was just to be able to ride the bike from one end of the driveway to the other end of the driveway.

• 14:44Light Watkins?

  It took him eight months. Practicing it for five minutes every morning before he was able to finally go from one end to the other end of his driveway. And he said that something just clicked one day.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:54Light Watkins?

  And then, all of a sudden, he was able to ride it without stumbling and falling off.

• 14:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:58Light Watkins?

  And his two, his, uh, his seven-year-old son, it only took him two weeks to learn how to do the same thing.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  Uh, that's interesting.

• 15:04Light Watkins?

  So, yeah, it was, he's, his, his, uh, conclusion was that it's not about understanding, it's about, it's about, um, having the experience, the direct experience.

• 15:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, consistent, consistent behavior.

• 15:14Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and meditation's kind of the same thing.

• 15:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:17Light Watkins?

  Imagine, uh, eating properly is the same thing as well.

• 15:20Rich Roll?

  Well, any, any kind of habit that you're trying to, you know, create sustainable practices around, you know? But what happens when he goes to ride a normal bike now?

• 15:29Light Watkins?

  Well, that's, that was the next part of his videos. He tried to ride a normal bike, he couldn't ride it.

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Light Watkins?

  He kept falling off after like two feet, and then he had to keep practicing it, and then finally it clicked and he was able to ride the normal. So you basically can either go one direction or the other direction, you know?

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:43Light Watkins?

  Your body's gonna, your brain and your body are gonna habituate towards either riding the regular bike or the backwards bike. And same thing with meditation, either it's gonna habituate towards not meditating or meditating, and it's up to you to be consistent enough so that your body will start to habituate towards meditating, or whatever it is that you're trying to do.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  I like that. So, uh, I've been hearing your name for quite a while, and then we had the opportunity to, to meet, spend a little bit of time together at the Mind Body Green Revitalized Conference, which was pretty cool. Um, did you enjoy that? That was a pretty, it was a pretty cool event.

• 16:17Light Watkins?

  It reminded me that I need to do more of those kinds of things in my life. I tend to be a bit of an isolationist and, you know, just kind of get into my own little world and my girlfriend and the stuff that I like to do, and I don't really network a lot and hang out with other people a lot. And that was such an amazing experience, just being with everybody and everyone was so, was so cool and humble and open, and yeah, I was just like, yeah, I gotta do this again, you know? This is your second year, right?

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  Uh, it was a se, yeah, it was the second time that I've done it. Um, I probably do too many of those kinds of events, but that one's really special. Uh, but kind of poking around, I would've thought the opposite because like suddenly, like it wasn't that long ago that I first, I think Charlie was the one who, who said, oh, you should check Light out, and Charlie was posting Snapchats of your Shine event, and he was kind of telling me about it. And we're going to talk a little bit about that more in a minute. But then suddenly I started hearing your name everywhere and you're like popping up all over the place.

• 17:16Light Watkins?

  That's a good thing, right?

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're definitely out there if you think you're, you know, hibernating. I think the internet would say otherwise. But it was cool to spend time with you. And then funny enough, we were both in New York and just randomly ran into each other.

• 17:32Light Watkins?

  How crazy was that?

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  So that is, you know, it's, it's those, you know, it's the universe conspiring to make what is now happening right now.

• 17:40Light Watkins?

  Exactly. And here we are. We were both in tune enough to say yes to the opportunity.

• 17:45Rich Roll?

  Of course, man. Literally what happened was I had to get a podcast up. Julie wanted to go to bed. It was another late night, late Sunday night, which is when I usually put them up. And I was like, there's no wifi in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. And I didn't want to keep her up in the room. So I'm like, where can I find like 24 hour wifi in New York? So I just Googled it and they're like, oh, Ace Hotel, go to the lobby. It's super groovy and tons of, you know, desks and stuff to set up. So I just, it was just down the street from where I was staying. So there I was, there's like a DJ playing. It's like a whole party thing going on, but I have my headphones on, I'm trying to work and then I just hear Rich.

• 18:20Light Watkins?

  Right. I had stumbled in that hotel a couple of months before that when I was in New York on a teaching trip. And that performer who had performed that night, I can't remember her name now, but I just really liked her music. And I went up to her and I said, can you please put me on your list so when you perform again and I'm in town, I can come by and check you out? And she sent me a Facebook message before I went to New York this past, that past week and said, I'll be at the Ace Hotel on Sunday night at 10 o'clock. You should come. And I said, absolutely. So I put it on my schedule and it was the one thing outside of teaching that I had planned to do. And I came out there and I had a bunch of work to do as well. So I was doing my emails and as soon as I was done, it was like midnight and I look over and I see you over there.

• 19:03Light Watkins?

  There were basically two of us at the table.

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. Very cool. Well, what you were doing in New York was pretty interesting. You were partaking in, what was it called? It was this huge-

• 19:13Light Watkins?

  The Big Quiet.

• 19:13Rich Roll?

  Right, this massive group meditation in Central Park. So, like, tell me a little bit about that.

• 19:18Light Watkins?

  So, a guy by the name of Jesse Israel, he came and took my meditation training about four years ago. And, uh, and he's a really influential guy. He's from the music business. He used to manage- He's familiar. He used to be the manager or producer for MGMT. Uh, back in the day when they first came out. They basically launched out of their NYU dorm room.

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:39Light Watkins?

  And, um, and so that became his sort of entree to the music world. And he had a company called Kantor for a little while. Anyway, once he started meditating, he, uh, he became quite taken by the whole thing and, um, just got really involved with the practice and wanted to spread it around. And he probably introduced sixty people to me personally to come and learn how to meditate with me and with other teachers in, uh, New York. And so about three or, uh, no, probably about six months ago, he started this social club called The Meddi Club, where they meet about once a month. People who already have a meditation practice, any practice, they come together, um, at

• 20:20Light Watkins?

  some loft down in, uh, Soho and, uh, and they just, they listen to a little talk about, you know, different things that people who are young and entrepreneurs and meditating are dealing with in life. And then they meditate together. And so this Big Quiet event kind of was born out of that group. And, um, and so he put a call out to all of his friends and a bunch of the teachers that he knew. And, uh, and he's also connected with the Board of Directors of, uh, Central Park Summer Stage. And, uh, and so, yeah, it all just kind of came together and, uh, and he- Got them to agree to do a group meditation before one of the acts eBay and Jungle performed at Summer Stage on, last couple of weeks ago.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. So how many people were there?

• 21:07Light Watkins?

  We had about four or 500 people there, which was good. It was raining that day.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  I know, I remember. I was, I was gonna come, but I was speaking at an event that, at the same time, so I could make it. But it looked really cool.

• 21:18Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it was nice. And Summer Stage isn't as big as I thought it was. It was pretty full. The grounds was pretty full with people sitting on the ground meditating. So it was nice.

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  Well, next year, Sheep's Meadow.

• 21:29Light Watkins?

  Exactly.

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  Blanket that thing, right? So what is the, like, experience when you're with that many people doing a group meditation? I mean, there's gotta be like an energy or a vibration that comes with that, that you can, that you can feel.

• 21:43Light Watkins?

  There is, and what's more is many of us sit back to back. And there's something to that, you know, when you sit back to back with someone and you're both meditating. It's a different quality of experience than when you're doing it by yourself, or you're just trying to kinda sit up straight in the middle of someplace by yourself. And it was actually, you know, I, it's funny because that week, right before I went to New York, I got an email from a guy in Chicago telling me that he doesn't know where he can meditate during his workday because he doesn't want his office mates to think he's sleeping on the job. So he's, he's kind of embarrassed to find places around his job to meditate.

• 22:24Light Watkins?

  So I took a personal challenge to meditate in public during my New York tour. And every day in the afternoon, I'd find a new place out in the public to meditate. And I wanted to do it indoors because, you know, the weather's not always the best in New York. So I went to Whole Foods one day in Union Square, went upstairs to the mezzanine and meditated in there for 20 minutes, sitting at one of the tables. I went into Jiva Mukti Yoga Studio over on, also on Union Square and meditated in there.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  In the cafe there?

• 23:02Light Watkins?

  In the cafe. Actually, no. I, I just went up to the front desk and I said, hey, I, I need to meditate. Can I use one of your empty rooms? And they said, "We don't have any empty rooms, but you can meditate in the hallway if you like." Which I thought was pretty cool. They were acting like, you know, it was the most normal thing in the world.

• 23:18Rich Roll?

  Right, I'm gonna, yeah, you're kind of going to the places where it's not gonna get, raise an eyebrow.

• 23:23Light Watkins?

  Yeah, well, that's the idea, you know, and then, and then I went to, you know, the best place I've meditated was at Barnes and Noble, up in the, um, Union Square, the very top floor. They have that book. Have you done any book, uh, things up there?

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  I've been in that store. I haven't done an event there, but...

• 23:36Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that was perfect. It was quiet, tons of chairs, and, uh, you can sit undisturbed. I went to a church one time and meditated up in midtown. So anyway, my point was, the big quiet was one of my deepest experiences, for whatever reason. Maybe it was because we were sitting all in a group, maybe it's because I was back to back with someone, but it was one of my deeper experiences that week in New York.

• 23:57Rich Roll?

  That's cool. Is he gonna do it, make it an annual event?

• 24:00Light Watkins?

  I think he may even try to make it more regular than that. I think it'd be kind of interesting if they did just pop-ups, you know, different places.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  Like, uh, like the Love Mob kind of thing?

• 24:09Light Watkins?

  Like the Love Mob, yeah, the meditation mob.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that. That's cool.

• 24:13Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  Well, let's, uh, let's take it back a little bit. I wanna hear, like, how this all began for you and, and, you know, kind of, you know, how you kind of grew up and got into meditation. I mean, you've got a, you have a pretty interesting background story. I mean, it's not like you were raised with this kind of, you know, ideology.

• 24:31Light Watkins?

  Right, I grew up in the Bible Belt and, um, you know, down in Alabama where there have been more snowstorms than people meditating.

• 24:41Light Watkins?

  And, uh, yeah, no one, I never even knew anything about meditation growing up. I'd probably never even heard the word meditation.

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  Were you, uh, like a church-going family? I mean, did you grow up with religion?

• 24:51Light Watkins?

  Yeah, we went to church. I wasn't, I personally wasn't religious. Um, it was interesting, you know, we, I went to an all-black church and I remember thinking something was very off when I, we would, there was this, the picture of the blonde Jesus on the wall and I remember just kind of staring at it and just kind of thinking to myself, "This doesn't..." It doesn't feel, and we had a white preacher. We had an all black church.

• 25:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 25:13Light Watkins?

  With a white preacher.

• 25:14Rich Roll?

  Like, was it like Baptist fire and brimstone kind of church?

• 25:17Light Watkins?

  No, it wasn't one of those kinds of churches. It was a Methodist church. It was very, very calm. Everyone was very sedated, actually. And it's very, it's the most boring two hours of my entire existence.

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  That's no fun.

• 25:27Light Watkins?

  Every, every week.

• 25:29Rich Roll?

  You're in the Bible Belt.

• 25:30Light Watkins?

  So I never, exactly.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  Church where they're raising the roof a little.

• 25:33Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that would have been more interesting at least. So I dread it going to church, but if I could, if I didn't go to church, I couldn't do anything else that day. And you know, Saturday, Sunday, that's prime time when you're a kid. So I, I was a reluctant churchgoer.

• 25:47Rich Roll?

  But were your parents, I mean, were they super into it? Or was it just, this is what you do?

• 25:51Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it's just, that's, that's, yeah.

• 25:52Rich Roll?

  That's what everybody does.

• 25:53Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that's just what, it was like a social event.

• 25:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:55Light Watkins?

  You know, that's where they found social connections and things like that. And, uh, my dad didn't really go, but my mom went pretty religiously up on it. And my brothers and all, we, I had three brothers and we all went to church and we were all in the choir and, you know, we did that whole thing, but none of us could sing at all.

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 26:13Light Watkins?

  And, uh, so it's just.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna make, I should make you sing.

• 26:16Light Watkins?

  No, it was just a comedy of errors, you know, you just go there and you just laugh at people and, and then you get out and you can then really do what you really wanted to do that day. And because you'd already paid the, it was like a, it was like a, basically you had to pay the price to be able to enjoy yourself. So. Um, anyway, uh, when I left there, I moved around quite a bit. I went to college in DC at Howard University and then graduated there and got into advertising for about five minutes. And living in Chicago and then realized right away, I don't want to work at a real job. Although it was a great job, you know, it was very creative and I really.

• 26:53Rich Roll?

  You were one of the big agencies there?

• 26:55Light Watkins?

  I was with, uh, it was a kind of more of a boutique agency, um, called Burrell. And, but yeah, so it was, it was, it was cool, but I just knew I didn't want to be, I looked around and I saw all these people, you know, the vice presidents and the creative directors and everybody, and they just kind of seemed a bit too attached and too serious to what they were doing. And I didn't want, I just kind of saw for myself that this is where this goes, you know?

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:20Light Watkins?

  I'll find myself in a situation.

• 27:22Rich Roll?

  Liquid, come on.

• 27:23Light Watkins?

  Yeah, yeah. And then, and you can't leave because after a certain time, you have your 401K and you have this and that. And I didn't want that kind of false sense of security. Um, and I wanted to be a little more adventurous. So. I had done a little bit of amateur modeling in college.

• 27:41Rich Roll?

  Now it's gonna get good.

• 27:42Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Light Watkins?

  And it's funny because I remember a conversation that two people were having. I was eavesdropping on them at a fashion show in college. And they were talking about how Miami had this emerging fashion scene. And so I had this idea from years ago about going to Miami to become a model.

• 28:01Light Watkins?

  So I started to, I gave my notice at the job and I started to try to get some pictures together. And I went around Chicago looking for an agent to represent me. No one, no one wanted to represent me. And then I met another model who was a photographer and she took some pictures of me and I realized I didn't have the right pictures. And then she shopped those pictures around and found someone to represent me. And that's how all that started. And then they sent me down to Miami and then from Miami I went to New York and then I went to Paris and then Milan and then back to New York.

• 28:37Rich Roll?

  So you did the whole deal?

• 28:38Light Watkins?

  I did the whole deal. I wasn't like a supermodel ever, but I eventually became a working model. You know, I was waiting tables for my first couple of years in New York. And then I had this big Gap campaign and that was fun. And then I started to just work and, you know, making a decent salary. And then it just, it wasn't fun anymore after about five or six years.

• 29:00Rich Roll?

  Do any like underwear models on the sides of buses?

• 29:03Light Watkins?

  All of that, yeah. Did some of that. Yeah. But then, you know, I realized I wasn't really tapping into my full potential. And I started getting into yoga. So I started questioning things more. I started reading conversations with God.

• 29:14Rich Roll?

  But what led you to the yoga?

• 29:17Light Watkins?

  I was working out at the gym one night and I saw all these hot girls standing outside of the yoga room. And they started filing in and they, you know, it was a different quality of hot girl. They look, they look radiant and they look, you know, just healthy.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:32Light Watkins?

  And so I-

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  They got something going on.

• 29:35Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And I couldn't even help myself. I just, next thing I knew, I was, I was in one of the yoga poses.

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:41Light Watkins?

  And-

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  This is in New York?

• 29:42Light Watkins?

  In New York, yeah. In the Upper West Side. And it was a horrible yoga class because I was the only guy in the class.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  That's not horrible.

• 29:49Light Watkins?

  No, that's, that part's not horrible, but the teacher gave me all of the attention for some reason. And I was like so stiff. And I just, I didn't feel like I was that good at it, but- Being the only guy in the class was benefit enough to come back and try it again. And after a while, I started to really get into it. And that's where I was first introduced to meditation is through the yoga practice. So I went to this one class, my girlfriend in New York drug me to this class on the Upper East Side, which I was very reluctant about going to because going from the West Side to the East Side is just such a hassle at rush hour. And I go and this is really amazing classes.

• 30:29Light Watkins?

  It was at the time, the most amazing yoga class I'd ever been to, taught by this Australian guy. And then I never went back because it was just too much of a hassle to get to. So two, three years later, we break up, I moved to Los Angeles. And about a month after moving to Los Angeles, I go up to Crunch Gym to go to take a yoga class. Cause at that point, I had retired myself from modeling and I wanted to start teaching yoga.

• 30:53Rich Roll?

  Is that why you moved to LA?

• 30:55Light Watkins?

  I moved to LA just to get out of New York and get away from that relationship that I was in. It was just too much. And yeah, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I just kinda, I had a-

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  It was like a fresh start thing?

• 31:05Light Watkins?

  I had a vague idea about maybe teaching yoga because I was kind of into yoga at the time. Yeah, so I go to this class at Crunch and I'm in Down Dog. And I hear this teacher counting off in this strong Aussie accent. And I go, is that the same guy from that class I took in New York? And I go up to him at the end of the class, cause in New York, the class was dark. It was at night and this one was during the day. So I didn't really see the guy. I just knew I liked his class. And we, and he turned out, turned out it was the same guy. He had just moved to LA as well. And he remembered me because he was attracted to my girlfriend.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  What, a yoga teacher?

• 31:44Light Watkins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  Imagine that.

• 31:47Light Watkins?

  And we, we started, we became fast friends. And then three or four months later, he goes, I want you to meet this guy. This is my meditation teacher. And I show up at his apartment one night in West Hollywood and it's like a February 2003. Charlie Knowles' dad comes out of the back room and sits down and gives us an introductory to meditation lecture, which I found to be the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. And I thought he was the most smartest, he was the smartest guy I'd ever met. And he was, he seemed to be the happiest person I'd ever been around.

• 32:23Rich Roll?

  I might, where, uh, do you remember where the apartment was?

• 32:26Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it was on Laurel Avenue, between Fountain and Sunset. Thirteen thirty-eight Laurel Avenue.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  I might have been there.

• 32:31Light Watkins?

  Were you there?

• 32:32Rich Roll?

  Well.

• 32:32Light Watkins?

  For one of his intro talks?

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  This is years before, like, two thousand and three? Cause I was, I know that that's how you met him.

• 32:38Light Watkins?

  That was his first class when Tom, when Tom Knowles came to.

• 32:40Rich Roll?

  I went to one of those sessions. My buddy, Andrew Wheeler, was super into it. And he was studying with Tom. And.

• 32:49Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I know Andrew. He was, he was there back during that time.

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He was super into it.

• 32:53Light Watkins?

  Yep.

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  He's a very good friend of mine. Um, and he's like, you gotta come and check it out. And this is like before, it might've been earlier than that, though. Cause I think I just started dating Julie. We weren't, I don't think we were, no, we weren't married yet. It might've been two thousand and two or something. I, I can't remember, but I remember.

• 33:09Light Watkins?

  Well, this would've been the first time Tom was at that apartment. Because that was the first time Will brought him there.

• 33:14Rich Roll?

  Right. So it was at that apartment, but I think it might've been later on.

• 33:18Light Watkins?

  Did you end up studying with Tom?

• 33:19Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't. You know, I, I wasn't, I was into it and I got a lot out of it. But I think I just, I wasn't, like, I was doing yoga, but I wasn't ready.

• 33:27Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 33:27Rich Roll?

  You know, I wasn't ready. And I saw a lot of committed people. And I think I was intimidated a little bit. Like, I wasn't ready to make that commitment at that time. But I remember looking around the room and there were a lot of people that I knew. Like, a lot of people from recovery.

• 33:38Light Watkins?

  Hmm.

• 33:39Rich Roll?

  Active in the recovery community here in LA. And there was, I was like, oh, I know like ten people sitting here. Which was interesting. Um, and, you know, I remember very well, uh, that he had, you know, he had an amazing presence.

• 33:52Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that was a fun time, too. Cause that was the, you know, that was my introduction to meditation, like, proper meditation. And I got all my friends doing it. My mom came to town to visit me and Tom happened to be in town again, teaching. And I got her to do it and she loved it. And so, um, it became sort of like this, this filter. If you didn't take the meditation course, then I knew that we weren't probably gonna have a future together. As a girlfriend, as a friend.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  The litmus test.

• 34:21Light Watkins?

  Yeah. Because it was just so, I don't know, it was just so great.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  If you're on a path, you know, and, and the person that you wanna be with is on a different path, it's not gonna work.

• 34:29Light Watkins?

  But it was the same thing, too, with like veganism. Like, I was a vegan back then and. And I just, it was hard to associate with people who weren't embracing that, at least who weren't vegan friendly, you know? And I found that the friends of mine who weren't into it, I just didn't really hang out with that that often. And it was maybe a little bit too extreme. I'm definitely not that extreme these days. In fact, I hang out with people who don't even meditate.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:52Light Watkins?

  Um, you know.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  God forbid.

• 34:53Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And I didn't do that before, so.

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  Well, otherwise you're just preaching to the choir.

• 34:59Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 35:00Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Rich Roll?

  Like, you gotta, you gotta take the message to the masses.

• 35:03Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Rich Roll?

  So that's cool. So that's the, that's the starting point. And I loved in, in, uh, in your book, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that in a little bit as well, but you kind of described that first experience of meeting Tom and, and how he had made this kind of profound impact on you. And you gave this really kind of beautiful example about how he tapped his ring on a glass and, and, you know, kind of explained the, the physics behind that. That kind of blew your mind a little bit. So what was that about?

• 35:28Light Watkins?

  Well, he does his thing, you know, he doesn't do it in every talk, but in those days, he would, he would always start with the talk, uh, he would start to talk, his talk about quantum mechanics concepts such as, you know, and that subatomic particle, particular nature of reality. Things are so small that there's all this space in between and they don't touch, even though on the sort of gross level of reality, it looks like things are touching and sounds are being made, but they're not. And his whole point was that there are things that we can't see. And there's this ocean of consciousness that we can tap into where those particles come from and where happiness comes from and where thoughts come from.

• 36:09Light Watkins?

  And, um, you know, in the West, we have this idea that if we can't see it, it doesn't exist. And it's just kind of a way to kind of pierce through that indoctrination right away. And it got my attention. And, uh, and I imagine it got a lot of other people's attention as well. So I kind of liked that example because it's so simple.

• 36:27Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, basically he was tapping, he's, he's clinking his ring on the glass, but he's saying there's actually no contact being made here.

• 36:34Light Watkins?

  Exactly. Because there's so much space in between the ring and the glass on a, on a, on an atomic level.

• 36:40Rich Roll?

  So what do you think it is about Tom that just clicked in with you? Like, what was specific about that? I mean, you know, obviously the teacher shows up when the student is ready and you were ready to hear what he had to offer, but.

• 36:52Light Watkins?

  He was the, his, his whole thing, his whole being, his presentation, it was the first time I'd ever experienced meditation in a relatable way.

• 37:02Light Watkins?

  Where it didn't feel airy fairy, because I'm not, I'm not that kind of person, even though I may hang out with those people, that groups from time to time. But I'm a very salt of the earth, kind of meat and potatoes type of guy when it comes to things like spirituality. I think I have a healthy level of skepticism, and Tom spoke to all of that. And it didn't sound like he was selling anything. It sounded like he was just kind of informing me of a point of view that exists, and if I wanted to explore it more, then there's an opportunity to do that. If not, then that's fine as well.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So what is some of that skepticism? Because I'm sure there's people listening who are skeptics, or kind of dance around the edges. Maybe they're a little bit interested, but you know, something's preventing them from kind of really embracing it.

• 37:45Light Watkins?

  Well, I had, as I mentioned before, in yoga, I was really stiff. You know, my hamstrings were like bridge cables. And I never was really that, all that physically active growing up. And so I didn't start lifting weights and things like that until I was an adult. But you know, stretching wasn't the first priority in those days. And so I could barely touch my toes, even though at that time, I was teaching yoga. I was probably the stiffest yoga teacher in all of LA. But sitting, sitting in meditation, in the sort of traditional way that we think about meditation, on the floor, on a cushion with your legs crossed, was like torture for me. You know, I'd rather be waterboarded by Dick Cheney than sit in meditation for five minutes.

• 38:26Light Watkins?

  And so my previous meditation experiences were just, they just weren't all that great. And I was one of those people who said to themselves, you know, meditation's not really for me.

• 38:39Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, the interesting kind of irony in that is that, is this demarcation line between yoga and meditation? Like, you're doing yoga, you're into it, you're teaching yoga. But you're saying, yeah, meditation's not my thing. Which is so bizarre, because this westernized, kind of bastardized version of yoga is really just about, you know, oh, perfecting the pose, and kind of getting lean and slim, and getting a workout, where, you know, the sutras, these postures are just about...

• 39:12Rich Roll?

  Moving your body so that you can quiet your mind so that when you're in, you know, shavasana at the end, you enter that meditative state. It's preparation of the body and mind to enter a meditative state.

• 39:24Light Watkins?

  And people would say that, and I would say that as well, you know, but it just wasn't my direct experience.

• 39:29Rich Roll?

  But you weren't, right, right.

• 39:30Light Watkins?

  I wasn't having a direct experience. So it, either meditation was really hard and you just had to deal with it, or I wasn't doing it properly. And, you know, what, what got my attention with Tom was not only what he was saying, but what he was exuding. Like, he just had this radiance. Have you, you've met Tom before?

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Light Watkins?

  To me, he just had this radiance and he had this sense of relaxation that I just, that just wasn't very common. And, uh, and I remember when he was talking, he didn't use any fillers, you know, he was so eloquent. He was funny, he would like chuckle, he'd make his, have all these inside jokes going on. I just, I don't know, I just thought that was really interesting. I, I think it's probably, I didn't have any expectations either, you know, before I met him. I wasn't really looking forward to it. I didn't, I was actually doing my friend a favor, cause he invited me and I, you know, I liked how he moved through the world, but I didn't think I needed a meditation teacher to show me anything. Because I'd read all the, you know, the popular spiritual books and I was doing the, um, the,

• 40:34Light Watkins?

  uh, what's it, the paramahanta yoginanda lessons, the self-realization fellowship lessons.

• 40:40Rich Roll?

  The kriya yoga.

• 40:42Light Watkins?

  The kriya yoga, exactly. And I kind of realized that was leading me towards more of a monastic path and I knew I wasn't a monk, uh, for various purposes, various reasons. So, yeah, it just seemed, you know, when Tom mentioned that this is a householder technique, you can sit comfortably and you don't have to control the mind or the breath, that was all, that was just amazing for me to hear. It was liberating, actually. And then when I started practicing it, I started having tangible experiences and I thought, okay, well, this is it.

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:11Light Watkins?

  I've arrived.

• 41:12Rich Roll?

  So how long did you study with him and, and practice with him before you kind of had that, um, you know, we can call it a lightbulb moment, or, you know, really kind of a, a, a, you know, brush up, a brush up with, uh, an enlightened state, I suppose you could call it?

• 41:27Light Watkins?

  I, it's funny, I knew, and I knew pretty much right, right away that I wanted to become a teacher of meditation, right after I met him. And...

• 41:41Light Watkins?

  I started training with Tom. The training lasts about four days. And then I would say, I mean, it's hard to remember. It's been 12 years now, but I would guesstimate that maybe within the first month, I had a moment of, I had that first taste of the bliss in meditation.

• 42:03Rich Roll?

  Of the no mind.

• 42:04Light Watkins?

  The no thought, yeah.

• 42:06Rich Roll?

  How can you, how would you describe that?

• 42:09Light Watkins?

  It feels like you're in a void that's filling up with pure energy. And you only know that it's happening after it happened, type of a thing. So it's like you're falling, but it doesn't feel like you're, you've got the vertical effect of actual falling. It's just kind of like you're, you're dropping into something and expanding at the same time. And there's a lightness of being, combined with the forgetfulness of thinking. And yeah, it's just kind of one of those weird things, you know? It's like trying to describe what a watermelon tastes like to somebody who's never had a...

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  But in terms of, you know, what you, what do you take from that experience that then informs kind of your daily life? You know what I mean? As opposed to like, oh, I had a drug experience. It was amazing. And then you go back to your normal day life or what have you. You're like, how does that, like, you take that and you're like, that was amazing, but what does that mean?

• 43:08Light Watkins?

  Yeah. Well, first of all, there's a cool factor around it. Like, wow, I was able to do this. And, you know, previously I thought that meditation was just about sitting there thinking about my to-do list or conversations. And so actually there's a deeper place. But, you know, immediately after you come out of that, you definitely feel a sense of wholeness that wasn't there before. And you feel a sense of relaxation that you may not have had before. And once you have it so many times, those two things, wholeness and relaxation, start to stabilize and you find that...

• 43:47Light Watkins?

  The gap in between something happening and you reacting to it starts getting wider and wider and wider and things happen, like crazy things can happen and you find yourself just kind of sitting in it and being more responsive as opposed to reactive. So that's, I noticed a lot of that going on in meditation.

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  And, and this kind of meditation is Vedic meditation, right? So for somebody who's listening, can you explain what that means specifically?

• 44:15Light Watkins?

  So Vedic meditation is, is a form of meditation using a mantra and, you know, normally when we think about mantra, we think of it in terms of chanting and focusing, but when you use a mantra in Vedic meditation, you're using it very passively and the whole purpose of the mantra is to trigger a, an experience of mental de-excitation. So the mind de-excites from gross level thinking into subtle thinking and ultimately into no thinking. And the longest you can sustain that kind of mental state is about 20 minutes.

• 44:55Light Watkins?

  So during the 20 minutes in a typical meditation, you know, you start off thinking the mantra softly for maybe a minute or two and then your mind de-excites and you forget about the mantra and then a gap of time goes by and then you may remember, oh, I'm meditating and which, at which point you come back to the mantra for another 30 seconds or maybe a minute and then you, you get lost again, you de-excite again and then another gap of time goes by. So you're only on the mantra for little pockets here and there, maybe, maybe three or four times at the most in an, in an average meditation, but for the most part, your, your mind is getting lost in other more subtle experiences and that's what causes the time

• 45:39Light Watkins?

  to feel like it's going by super fast and that's what also leads to a sense of.

• 45:46Light Watkins?

  Energy and wholeness at the end of the meditation. And what is it about the mantra that distinguishes this type of practice from, say, focusing on the breath? Yeah, so the mantra has this property of being charming to the mind, right? And what people don't often realize is that their minds are, in fact, being controlled by charm. Or, to put it more specifically, there's a principle known as traction that sort of governs which direction the mind goes in. So whenever your mind is presented with two thoughts, one thought may be to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,

• 46:29Light Watkins?

  and the other thought may be to text my good friend who I have plans with later on tonight. Whichever thought seems most charming, your mind is naturally going to kind of go in that direction, and then that's going to dictate your action after that. So when we're talking about traction, traction is when you have another thought, a new thought that can trump those regular surface thoughts. And that's where the mantra comes in. And think of it like this, all right? You're playing music that you consider to be average, and then you hear music that you consider to be very beautiful. As soon as you detect something more beautiful than what you are currently experiencing, it doesn't take any effort for the mind to go from, "Oh, that's just okay," to, "Oh, my God, that's amazing." All right, so when we like it happening,

• 47:14Light Watkins?

  we call it attraction. The mind is attracted. You're attracted to something. So attraction is not a choice. So the mantra becomes the beautiful music to the average music, which would be texting your friend or making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or, you know, watching television or something like that. So you're sitting there meditating, and you're having these regular, normal, mundane, routine thoughts. And then you introduce the sound of this mantra, which has no meaning, by the way, which is one of the reasons why it works so well is because it doesn't have the same sort of association as the other thoughts you're already having. And the mind can't resist it any more than it can resist liking the certain music that you consider to be very charming.

• 47:57Light Watkins?

  So it just naturally starts to move in this direction. And then as it moves towards the mantra... The mantra starts to become more subtle, which increases its attraction. So you never, it never quite catches up to the mantra. But as it's, as it's de-exciting, it's starting to become increasingly more forgetful. And then at some point, it just kind of gets sucked into one of those gaps in between the thoughts.

• 48:25Rich Roll?

  All right, so this is getting pretty erudite, but like I'm trying to wrap my head around this. So what if your mantra is not that charming to you? You know, is it, is it, I mean, I, I know that in the, in the kind of tradition of, of Vedic, that the teacher provides the student with the mantra, right? Sort of a custom mantra for each person, and it's sort of bequeathed, right? And the idea behind that is this is sort of suited for, for you, whoever you are. But how is it that like this mantra becomes, gets these superpowers that your mind will inherently find to be more attractive or charming than, you know, the idea of, you know, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

• 49:07Light Watkins?

  Uh, two reasons. Number one, because it's meaningless, right? Whereas eating a peanut butter sandwich means a lot of things. But number two, it, it's, it's operating via vibration. So you may not personally, intellectually, you may not like the mantra. You may think, oh, the mantra sounds like, you know, my-

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  Why'd you give me that mantra?

• 49:26Light Watkins?

  My ex-wife or something like that.

• 49:30Light Watkins?

  But it's, it's affecting you on a more subtle frequency, on your, on your vibratory frequency. And that's why, you know, I tell people, you don't want to actually go into a book or go online and try to find a mantra, because when you look at the mantra, just by you looking at it, you're gonna end up giving it an association, which is gonna dilute the effectiveness of it.

• 49:53Rich Roll?

  So you're never supposed to write it down?

• 49:55Light Watkins?

  No, you never write it down. You don't even think about it. You don't think about how it's spelled. You don't think about what words it sounds like. You know, how we do the word association game. You don't do anything with it other than use it for meditation. So when you first get your mantra, your teacher whispers it to you. So it's already being transmitted in a very vague way. And you, it may take you a little while before you can work out the enunciation. And then when you start whispering it back- It kind of stays at that subtle level, even as a whisper. And then you start taking it down, lower and lower and lower. And then you're just told to think the mantra. And as you're thinking it, you start to think it even quieter, right? So, everything is happening very subtly.

• 50:38Light Watkins?

  And when you, when you write it down, or when you look at it spelled out, you're gonna naturally give it an association. So, it's not, it's not good to do that. And, and that's why the mind will, will not be able to resist it. Because it's a subtle sound. And subtle sounds inherently are more attractive than surface sounds.

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 50:57Light Watkins?

  And it's, and they're primordial sounds in nature. Meaning, you know, they're, they're, they're basically the equivalent of, say, like, rain sounds, or the wind, or the tide ebbing and flowing. If you could, if you could enunciate those kinds of sounds using Sanskrit enunciation, then it would give you that primordial quality. And, I don't, you're old enough to know, you know, CDs and records and things like that. But back in the day, when, when they would have nature sound CDs, there would usually be a disclaimer on the CD case. Do you know what the disclaimer might have said?

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  No, I don't know.

• 51:31Light Watkins?

  "Don't listen to this while you're driving."

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 51:34Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And, you know, why would they, why would they warn you not to listen to a really beautiful rain CD while you're driving? It's ridiculous, right? The reason is because it makes you fall asleep. So, there's something about natural sounds that has an innate ability to de-excite the mind, which is basically what sleeping is. Sleeping is a de-exciting process. So, meditation can also be in the same category with sleep, in the sense that your mind is de-exciting, except when you're resting in the meditation, your body's actually been shown to rest deeper than sleep, which also helps it pass that "so what" test you mentioned earlier. You know, why, how is this valuable?

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, but it's also, I mean, it's distinguished from sleep in the sense that you are, you're de-exciting, but you're also awakening.

• 52:24Light Watkins?

  Yeah, there's, it's a, it's a mixture of consciousness and restfulness at the same time, which is a very unique physiological signature.

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Well, I think that's a- That's a, that's a great point and it kind of gets into one of your, one of, one of your primary points or, or benefits of meditation that you speak to quite often, which is this idea of restfulness, you know, that, that so much of disease right now, Western disease is related, I mean, you know, I talk about its relationship to diet quite often, but, but really so much of it also boils down to the fact that we're not well rested beyond our sleep. Like you can sleep eight hours, but you wake up, you don't feel well because you're not de-excited, you're overly excited. And, and you know, we're living in this, you

• 53:14Rich Roll?

  know, world where we're overstressed and we're anxious all the time and our minds are cycling and, and, and so sleep isn't enough.

• 53:22Light Watkins?

  Right, yeah. And, and what we also know, speaking of diet, is that one of the first systems to get compromised if you're highly stressed and you know, you're not getting enough rest is your digestive system, you know. So you could be eating the cleanest foods, but if you're a stressed out person, your body isn't going to be able to assimilate those minerals and nutrients as efficiently as they would if you were less stressed, more rest, rested.

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  But that's, we can't see that light. I don't want to hear about that.

• 53:55Light Watkins?

  I had a guy come see me in New York, whose Ayurvedic doctor told him, he, he went to go see this doctor because he had these gastrointestinal issues and this doctor says, you know, "I can give you all these remedies and herbal treatments and things, but it's not going to do anything until you start meditating because your digestive system is not working properly. That's one of the reasons why you have these GI problems." So,

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:16Light Watkins?

  So I get that a lot too. People come for those purposes, you know, just to kind of, so meditation in that sense can be like a foundational practice.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, in its broader sense, basically, we're talking about the fact that, that you have to approach health in a holistic way in the sense that you have to, it's a balance. In the Ayurvedic tradition, it's, it's balancing your doshas, it's all of your energy systems and that, you can eat kale all day long, but if you're bananas and you know, you're in a abusive relationship, you're not healthy and, and you're not balanced. And so I loved how you addressed it. You know, completely non-verbally in that beautiful little YouTube flick where you have the Rubik's Cube.

• 54:58Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  There's just subtitles and it really kind of illustrates that point. I'll put that, I'll embed that on the episode page for this podcast because it's super cool. But basically, you know, every side of the cube has to have its color intact for you to be balanced. And when you spin it, you know, and you get out of balance, like meditate, and each side had, you know, what was it like digestion?

• 55:20Light Watkins?

  Digestion, immunity, reproduction, happiness, sleep, and hormonal balancing. Those are the major systems that can get out of whack when we are stressed.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And then meditation is really kind of solving the Rubik's Cube.

• 55:35Light Watkins?

  Yeah, well, starting with rest. Rest has to be the foundation. If you're not resting properly, then nothing else is going to stay balanced. You may be able to have peak moments where something gets balanced for a second or two, but yeah, it'll go back out of balance pretty easily if you're not resting. We can go longer from no food and water than we can from no.

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  No rest.

• 55:54Light Watkins?

  No rest. We have to rest. And, you know, we're a society that pushes ourselves so much that it's become almost pandemic, sleep deprivation. Most of us are suffering from sleep deprivation. I think the latest statistic from 2013 is that only one in 10 people are sleeping in the way the body is designed to rest at night, which is crazy. You know? So it's easy to get into a situation where your rest levels are being outweighed by your stress levels.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:27Light Watkins?

  And that just takes you on a completely different trajectory towards places you don't really want to go.

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  I mean, not only is it a pandemic, I mean, we pride ourselves on it. It's like, I don't need sleep.

• 56:36Light Watkins?

  You can sleep when you're dead and all that.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  All that kind of stuff.

• 56:39Light Watkins?

  You'll find out pretty quickly.

• 56:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, you know, that's right up there with like no fear, you know? I think that's not helping us really. But I think it is interesting to kind of bring that into perspective and, you know, put that into a microscope because.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, sleep, I just can't, you know, I can't function, you know, and so sleep for me, and I've had issues with it, like I've had, you know, issues with sleep problems and, you know, restfulness and, um, you know, one of the benefits of kind of doing what I do is, I don't have, you know, generally, I don't have to be anywhere super early in the morning, and I, I sleep until I wake up, like, I don't, you know, and if I'm, if I'm, if everything is balanced, I naturally wake up quite early and I feel great, you know, but if I'm out of balance, I allow myself to, to sleep in and get the rest that I need because I just can't, I can't function, I can't be of service to other people unless I take care of that first.

• 57:31Light Watkins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:32Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I need to work on the consistent meditation aspect of that.

• 57:36Light Watkins?

  Hey, you know, it's, uh, it's one of the biggest things that leads to people being able to sleep better, I find, in meditation. It's almost so common that I can predict it, you know, I've had people who are complete insomniacs for years on all kinds of sleep medications, they start meditating, and literally within days, they're sleeping like babies at night.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 57:58Light Watkins?

  There's one woman who is, um, who told me she didn't get to sleep until 5:30 in the morning, every morning, for the last four years, and she had to be up at 7:30 to go to work. This is every day. Can you imagine?

• 58:07Rich Roll?

  That sounds like a nightmare.

• 58:08Light Watkins?

  And, uh, and so, of course, the people who, the insomniacs are the most skeptical people that I end up coming across, and I love it because I know that once they start practicing, they're gonna have that wonderful delight of being able to finally sleep at night, and it took her two days after starting a meditation practice before she started sleeping at 11:30 at night and through the night and every night, uh, from then on, and, and, um, it was, it was amazing to watch, every time, you know?

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  And, and, and that, I trust, involved doing the, the, the meditation practice 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night?

• 58:44Light Watkins?

  Ideally, yeah. If you want to get the biggest bang for the buck, yeah, I do it twice a day.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:48Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but there have been some pretty remarkable changes that people have reported from just doing it once a day.

• 58:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the twice a day thing trips me up. Like, the morning I can get, I can do it. But then at night, like.

• 59:01Light Watkins?

  I think it's more about structured than anything else. Like, let's say you do the same thing, the same practice, but you do it five times a week versus doing five different types of meditation in one week. You're gonna get a lot more benefit from doing it consistently, the same thing, even though you don't do it every single day, twice a day, versus kind of jumping around the board and, you know, because there are a lot of that. The whole notion of there's no right way to meditate, and you listen to your body, and one day you do a walking meditation, the next day you do a seated meditation, the next day you do mala beats. That doesn't really, it's not gonna lead to anything tangible as quickly as having some structure.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  Right, locking in, like, just, this is, you're doing it this one way, like, whatever that one way is for you, but just committing to that.

• 59:47Light Watkins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I like that. I mean, I work well with structure, but I think what happens to me is I get intimidated by the, like, if you say, "Well, you gotta do it every day, twice a day," then I get freaked out, you know? So, it's easier if you say, "Well, you know, doing it sometimes is better than nothing," but I think that idea of, like, creating structure where you're like, it's really just a matter of priorities, right? How important is it to you? So, if it's important enough to you, then you're gonna move other stuff around and make the time.

• 1:00:15Light Watkins?

  And you also may need a little reverse psychology, you know? Rich, your program is five times a day for an hour each time.

• 1:00:23Light Watkins?

  And all of a sudden, 20 minutes twice a day doesn't seem like that long.

• 1:00:26Rich Roll?

  Well, the great irony is that if I did that, like, I know that I would, my life would improve dramatically, you know, but there's that reluctance, even, and I know it, you know?

• 1:00:35Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  But there's still that, that, like, thing that I gotta get to in order to incorporate it and implement it. And once I do, then it creates its own propulsion and momentum.

• 1:00:45Light Watkins?

  Exactly.

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  But it's about, you have to excite that momentum. You have to, like, light that spark and actually do it.

• 1:00:50Light Watkins?

  I tell my, I tell my meditators, I say, "Imagine you're a Boeing 747 at the end of a runway, and you gotta build up enough momentum." To get liftoff. And then, once you go fast enough, the laws of nature, the laws of aerodynamics are gonna take you up into the air. But if you stop, if you start and then you stop halfway down the runway.

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  Planes never get off.

• 1:01:12Light Watkins?

  You're not gonna get off the ground. You have to turn around and do it again. It's gonna take all this energy and you have to go back and refuel and, you know, so you're actually saving yourself time by being very rigid in the beginning and just giving yourself that window of three or four months, non-negotiable practice. And then you get liftoff and you don't have to think about it anymore. You know, you liberated yourself from the need to barter and negotiate for the rest of your life, every day about meditation.

• 1:01:46Rich Roll?

  Well, I like that idea of saving time and that's another thing that you speak to. And I want to get into the book, The Inner Gym, and also your TED Talk, which I loved, which was cool. It just went up. I really enjoyed that. You did a great job with that.

• 1:01:56Light Watkins?

  Thank you.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  But one of the, you kind of addressed these misconceptions about, you have like your, and you wrote like a piece for, I think, Mind Body Green about like common misconceptions about, about meditation. And one of those, just to kind of take a cue from what you were just saying is, you know, I don't have enough time, takes up too much time. But you have this really cool way of articulating how there's actually this inverse relationship with time, because there's biological time.

• 1:02:21Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 1:02:22Rich Roll?

  And chronological time.

• 1:02:23Light Watkins?

  Right. And chronological time, of course, advances once every 12 months, one year every 12 months. Biological time fluctuates depending on your stress levels. And, you know, if you're doing everything you're supposed to do, you can actually reverse your biological clock. And this has been proven in many studies. And what's been shown with meditation, and this one was specific to transcendental meditation. This was a TM study.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Right. And let's just camp out there for one second to take a quick tangent before you get into that. So what's the difference between TM and Vedic?

• 1:02:59Light Watkins?

  So Transcendental Meditation is an organization. And TM is the trademark name of that organization. My teacher, Tom, taught for Transcendental Meditation for many years. And then he started teaching independently. And of course, when he left the organization, you can no longer call your brand of meditation in the same name as the trademarked brand. So he started to call it Vedic Meditation instead.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:25Light Watkins?

  And...

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  But the principles and the traditions are...

• 1:03:29Light Watkins?

  The style of meditation is remarkably similar to the Transcendental. Although, they probably wouldn't agree with that or say that. But because they have certain standards and things that they have implemented recently. And Tom learned back in the 1970s. So however Tom is teaching now and how he's taught us to teach is however they were teaching back in the 1970s.

• 1:03:49Rich Roll?

  It would be, an analogy would be if you were to open up a yoga studio and start teaching the Bikram method of yoga without permission from... Yeah, and calling it hot yoga. Or calling it Bikram yoga without getting the license or something like that, right?

• 1:04:04Light Watkins?

  You'd have a lawyer coming, knocking on your door at some point. But you know, you'd call it rich yoga, or light yoga, or hot yoga all day long.

• 1:04:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:13Light Watkins?

  But you know, nobody can patent or trademark yoga or sequences and all of this.

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  Don't tell Bikram that. He actually did it, didn't he?

• 1:04:21Light Watkins?

  Well, he tried to. He kinda, you know, I guess he figured he had to. And he had the money to do it, so. And he lives in America, and that's what we do in America. So, you know, he did what he had to do. But I don't think he was successful in patenting his sequence. But you know, in meditation, whether it's TM or VM or whatever M, everybody agrees that it's a very old tradition. It comes from sources back in India. And there's no way you can own that. All you can own is your name. And... And your organization. And what's interesting is that most of the studies that were conducted on TM were done back in the 1970s, back when Tom was teaching and learning how to meditate.

• 1:05:01Light Watkins?

  So, you know, the benefits, if people need scientific studies to be convinced of the benefits of meditating, the benefits still are applicable to whatever it is that he's teaching and that I'm teaching.

• 1:05:13Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:05:13Light Watkins?

  Today.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  All right, so biological time.

• 1:05:16Light Watkins?

  Yeah, so one of the studies showed that if you were 30 years old at the time that you started meditating and you happened to have a biological age of a 30-year-old, which means your skin elasticity and your vision and your hearing and all of that was that of an average 30-year-old, and you meditated for five years on a regular basis, meaning, you know, mostly on a daily basis, that over those five years, as your chronological age continued building until you were 35, your biological age on average would become that of a 23-year-old, which

• 1:05:58Light Watkins?

  means that you would be seven years younger than you were when you first started meditating after five years of meditating.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  Got it.

• 1:06:08Light Watkins?

  And that didn't mean you were going to turn into the Curious Case of Benjamin Button and end up in diapers. What happens is after that first five years, you start aging at the rate of about six months for every calendar year. So evidently, that's normal. Average is about aging about 1.1 to 1.2 years biologically for every chronological year. So, most people on average are getting a little bit older biologically than they are chronologically every year, just based on the number, the amount of stress that we take.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  Right, right. All you have to do is look at, you know, any president.

• 1:06:42Light Watkins?

  Presidents.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, they always do that before they went into office and after, and they aged dramatically. And so, you know, that's self-evident. But what's really fascinating to me is that the body produces

• 1:06:54Light Watkins?

  Elastin.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:56Light Watkins?

  You know, when you go buy a stretchy shirt that has elastin in it, that's what your body also has in it, and that can keep your skin able, having the ability to pop right back into place. And when you're, when you're under a lot of stress, that elastin, although it's in your body, it can't penetrate through the cells because the stress chemistry forms these casings around your cells to keep your body in stress mode. So it's almost like a, you know, that, it's like a bulletproof vest around your cells that your, your body's hormones and peptides can't penetrate. So you, that can also apply to food. You know, the nutrients and minerals from food can't be metabolized properly because they can't penetrate those cells. Um, synovial fluid, which keeps our joints oiled.

• 1:07:41Light Watkins?

  You know, people start complaining about back pains and knee pains and arthritis and all that. If you look at all of those symptoms, pretty much any symptom, uh, that we suffer from today as a society, particularly the lifestyle symptoms, the non-genetic symptoms, and you compare them with the symptoms of the fight or flight reaction, you'll see an undeniable connection.

• 1:08:02Light Watkins?

  And you can do that on, online. You can just Google fight or flight, and you see a ton of symptoms. Oh, there it is. That's the thing I've been, my skin problem is right there. And, you know, that thing that's happening, my eye twitch is right there. It's all there. It's crazy.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. That's amazing. You know, that's pretty interesting, and I think it, it begs a larger question of just understanding that we have more control over these processes than, than we think.

• 1:08:24Light Watkins?

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:24Rich Roll?

  Right? If you can master.

• 1:08:25Light Watkins?

  It's an inside job.

• 1:08:26Rich Roll?

  Right. It's an inside.

• 1:08:27Light Watkins?

  It's an inside job. All that stuff that's happening has nothing to do with the economy, nothing to do with what your grandmother said or didn't say to you.

• 1:08:33Rich Roll?

  It's your reaction to all of those things.

• 1:08:34Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it's your, it's how you individually are personally responding to every single situation in your life.

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Uh, the sort of extreme converse example to the president's aging are these stories that you hear of, you know, the great, uh, you know, meditating mystics high in the Himalayas. And, you know, you hear these stories like, you know, you read autobiography of a yogi, and then you hear about how, you know, after Paramahansa Yogananda died, like his body did not decompose for like an extremely long period of time, or these guys that go into these caves and they meditate for. Eons without aging and you know, all this kinds of stuff. I mean, what do you, what do you make of all of that? Cause some of the stories are, they get, they get insane.

• 1:09:14Light Watkins?

  Yeah. So you have-

• 1:09:15Rich Roll?

  People stop eating, you know, for years and all kinds of stuff.

• 1:09:18Light Watkins?

  A lot of those stories are related to monastic practitioners.

• 1:09:23Rich Roll?

  Well, almost exclusively.

• 1:09:25Light Watkins?

  Yeah. So-

• 1:09:25Rich Roll?

  Like these are the great sadhus.

• 1:09:27Light Watkins?

  So one of the things Charlie has said before that I really like, he says, those guys are kind of like the Olympian athletes.

• 1:09:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:33Light Watkins?

  And we're just like the regular people, you know, and those things are nice if you want to put that kind of time into, into the practice, which most people don't because although you want to be able to sleep better and be a little bit happier, it's not outweighing your priority to have a family and to have children and to, you know, go and make your ends meet.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  They're the ultra endurance athletes of the-

• 1:09:54Light Watkins?

  They, they don't care about families and watching the game and, you know, going to see Jurassic World and these kinds of recreational activities that we make a priority in our, in our life. And that's fine. And so they can dedicate hours and hours and hours in the same way that a Michael Phelps can dedicate hours to his swimming regimen. And, um, and that's what ends up happening when you dedicate that kind of time to consciousness activities is you can do really amazing things.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  But when you hear those stories, I mean, do you, I mean, sometimes they strain the, you know, boundaries of possibility, at least in the logical, in the logical three dimensional plane.

• 1:10:31Light Watkins?

  Well, there's, uh, there's been proof that the body can heal itself of pretty much anything. Somebody's done that in somewhere in the world. And you know, the whole idea of mind over matter is so, so common, it's become cliche and you can just, you know, there are all kinds of stories out there. Have I personally seen people disappear and reappear and all of that? No, not really. But that's just not where I am in my life, you know, I'm sure if I wanted to dedicate some time to going out and, kind of like what Pranamahansa Yogananda did, where you go on that tour to all those different gurus and saints. If you're sincere enough and reverent enough, I'm sure you can be taken into those kinds of circles and, and be shown some things. I've had friends who've been to India and they've seen some pretty amazing things.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I think, you know, even on a very base level, you, you know, it's pretty well documented that some of these guys can lower their heart rate down to like almost nothing, you know, like one beat per minute, things like that. And, you know, they don't have to breathe. I mean, there, there's plenty of like documentation on that kind of stuff. So it's, it's super fascinating. And I think it's- It's so interesting, like, what is it about, like, right now that meditation is becoming so much of a zeitgeist-y kind of, you know, mainstream, accepted practice? Like, it's certainly been around for thousands of years, but there's something about right

• 1:11:55Rich Roll?

  now where it really is coming into its own in Western culture in a way that is unprecedented.

• 1:12:02Light Watkins?

  I think we've gotten to the point now where, as a culture, we've done enough research in this idea that happiness is coming in the future. You know, as soon as I achieve the thing, or as soon as I make enough money, as soon as I fall in love, I'm gonna be happy. And I think people now are waking up to the idea that, and looking around and noticing people who've achieved everything, and they're not particularly any happier than anyone else. And so, it's gotta be, there's gotta be something else to it. And you have more people now who have been exposed to things like meditation and yoga. And there was only a natural, you know, bridge from yoga. There's been a big yoga sensation happening in the last 30 years.

• 1:12:47Light Watkins?

  And I would say meditation is probably where yoga was 10 or 15 years ago. So, it was coming the entire time.

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on the heels of yoga.

• 1:12:55Light Watkins?

  And now, it's here, and, or, yeah, it's just about here. And I think people like me, you know, young, black guy from Alabama, talking about it, and people like you, the vegan guy, talking about it, and, you know, people like-

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  Well, less the vegan guy. Like, that's predictable.

• 1:13:12Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but you're not, you're not, you were sitting here in your house, it was like this beautiful, modern house, you know, being the vegan guy, you'd expect you halfway to be in a yurt somewhere with no shoes on.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you have to, you have to, yeah, you have to invert the paradigm. And, yeah, and meditation comes, you know, when it comes in your physical corpus, like, that's unexpected. You know, that's interesting, and that's provocative, and fresh, and modern, like, you're a super handsome, black dude, you know, like, you can, it's not what you, you know, you're not wearing a, you're not wearing a sari or anything like that, you're not wearing sandals.

• 1:13:43Light Watkins?

  And you have guys like Russell Simmons, you know, David Lynch has done a really big, had a big influence on meditation, because he's gotten so many celebrities doing it. Guys like Big Sean, the rapper, talking about meditation, and 50 Cent, and, so, I think, you know, I think it's seeping more and more into pop culture, and it's just a matter of- Of a time before more people start doing, but you know, I, my, my guess is that in the next five or 10 years, they'll be selling meditation cushions in 7-Elevens and, and places like Tennessee and Alabama.

• 1:14:14Rich Roll?

  I, I love it.

• 1:14:15Light Watkins?

  It's going in that direction. The problem is, you know, once things hit critical mass, they start getting saturated and everybody and their mother, you know, because there's no, unlike yoga, with yoga, usually there's a certification process, you know, you do your 200 hour certification and you become a yoga teacher. With meditation, there's no certification process. It's just anybody and their mother can say, I'm a medita-, I'm a meditation teacher. Anybody can come up with a meditation app. And most of what's happening out there now is, I think, it's a case of the blind leading the blind. People don't fully understand the mechanics of meditation. And maybe they'll even say, I don't understand the mechanics of meditation because it's different from what they do.

• 1:14:59Light Watkins?

  But I'm, I'm hoping that enough people can at least try it in a way that makes sense to them, that, that inspires them to continue on and not preclude that they can't meditate like I, I used to say, because it was so difficult, because somebody who didn't understand it introduced them to the meditation. But you know, just the fact that meditation is even in the conversation is a good thing.

• 1:15:22Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, ultimately, that has to play out, right? And, and the quality will rise to the top over time. But yeah, there's, there'll be a period of time where every snake, snake oil salesman is going to try to sell you something, but you know, you, you, the market will weed that out, I would imagine, over time. But we have to weather that.

• 1:15:40Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  But you brought up something really interesting, which is, you know, this idea that, you know, people are struggling with their happiness quotient, you know, and, and really understanding on a, on a deep level that Perhaps it's not related to my status in the community, or my bank account, or the car that I'm driving. And that brings up kind of a theme, another theme that's, you know, kind of front and center in your book, The Inner Gym, which is this idea that happiness is not a choice. And that's a very counterintuitive concept, because a lot of self-help gurus will tell you that happiness is indeed a choice. You have to make this choice to be happy. It's available to you. You can access it at any time. And you're taking a different tack with this.

• 1:16:26Rich Roll?

  So kind of elaborate on that.

• 1:16:28Light Watkins?

  Well, I think telling people that happiness is a choice sets them up for disappointment and failure. Because of course, we all want to be happy. And if you think that it's just as easy as choosing to be happy, and you try to choose to be happy, and you find that you're not able to be happy, then it's going to make you feel like, well, something's wrong with me. And what I'm saying, the premise of my book, The Inner Gym, is that happiness is more of a byproduct of building an inner strength, so that once you cultivate this inner strength, you can just be happy effortlessly, without even having to think about being happy. And I compare it to pull-ups.

• 1:17:13Light Watkins?

  You know, if you have never done a pull-up before, and someone asks you to jump up to a bar and pull yourself up, and you know, your arms are weak, and you jump up there, and you can't pull yourself up, you're not going to be frustrated, because you understand, look, I've never done this before, but you know, what will it take for me to be able to do that? Exercise. I'll get up there, and I'll practice whatever movements are required in order for me to eventually pull myself up. And then I'll keep practicing, and keep practicing. And then at some point, I can do two of them, and then I can do three of them. And then, you know, you work your way up to doing 10 of them. And then if someone says, someone challenges you, or you're in a situation where you have to pull yourself up a few times, doing it three or four times is no big deal.

• 1:17:58Light Watkins?

  You can do it 10 times, right? And so I'm saying happiness is like that.

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  Happiness, happiness isn't a choice. Happiness is a practice.

• 1:18:05Light Watkins?

  Yeah, you practice, you do the, you do the inner exercises that will strengthen your happiness muscles. So then, when you're in a situation that... Could potentially destroy you emotionally or psychologically. And you've already been cultivating the happiness muscle. Your happiness will just protrude and will stabilize in those kinds of situations. So you'll find yourself surprisingly content and even feeling a sense of fulfillment despite the fact that things didn't go your way in that situation. You know, it's not the end of the world.

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. So the Buddha said, as you quote in your book, "There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way."

• 1:18:51Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 1:18:51Rich Roll?

  Right, and you can like do mental gymnastics with that all day long and try to wrap your head around what that means. But what's great about your book is you, it's very practical. Like you just, you take this idea that happiness is a practice and then you create basically this roadmap. It's like six tools that are very kind of, you know, macro tools to incorporate into your life and practice as part of this practice of accessing happiness for yourself. And it's cool, man. Like I like how you begin each chapter with basically a personal story, a personal experience of yours that kind of illustrates the point. And then you have kind of very tangible tactile things like here's what you can do and kind

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  of workbook and you analogize it to the physical gym, right? Like this is like foam rolling or this is like pull-ups or what have you. That makes it very relatable. But I want to just like run through some of these. I mean, the first one is be still, then be thankful, receive freely, slow down, be patient, and give freely. Now, these are like, these concepts are as old as humankind, you know? And on some level self-evident and yet completely, you know, elude us in our, in the gestalt of our modern lives.

• 1:20:08Light Watkins?

  Which is interesting. I was looking at the contents the other day and I thought to myself, this is what we tell our kids.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:15Light Watkins?

  Be still, be thankful. And this is exactly what we need to hear more ourselves because, you know, as you get old, you, older, you get disappointed.

• 1:20:26Light Watkins?

  So many times in life and get rejected so many times that we started that whole indoctrination of happiness is coming in the future starts to seep in even though we may not want it to be there or intellectually we understand that that's not the answer but we still live our lives as if it is and it takes repetition it takes repetition in order to overcome that indoctrination because it's very it's much stronger than we give it credit for and um and so yeah the the whole idea of the book is to to have micro practices where you're not thinking about I'm exercising my happiness or anything like that you're just meditating for five minutes a day and then you're adding on

• 1:21:08Light Watkins?

  you know writing down five things you're grateful for every day and these little things

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  gratitude list is so powerful

• 1:21:14Light Watkins?

  it's little things yeah and then all these things have been shown scientifically if people need that it's been shown scientifically to enhance our self-described sense of happiness you know slowing down and enjoying the moment being more patient

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  yeah yeah yeah

• 1:21:31Light Watkins?

  yeah

• 1:21:31Rich Roll?

  you know

• 1:21:32Light Watkins?

  exactly we say that yeah yeah yeah but you know it that's that's what it comes down to it's not there's no big moment that is gonna occur that's gonna make us happy and that's the cold hard reality

• 1:21:46Rich Roll?

  we hold on to that

• 1:21:47Light Watkins?

  life

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  our whole society is structured around that idea and that's we're just pummeled with that message through Madison Avenue constantly

• 1:21:56Light Watkins?

  movies you know you complete me and all of that all the songs on the radio as soon as you meet the right person you're gonna be happy ever after and it's all BS

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  I mean I hear the the refrain in recovery constantly like we're in Los Angeles there's a lot of really successful prosperous people and I can't tell you how many people I know that are you know very very wealthy you know money is not a concern for them and they're unhappy and it's like they almost have to get to that and even even with that it's still the next thing because there's always somebody who's doing a little bit better than you

• 1:22:29Light Watkins?

  yeah

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  and you're always like fomenting that resentment like if well that guy's got that like I don't care if you're you know head of a studio or what have you there's always somebody else that's like you're angling for it's like if I just get that then if I just get that and it's like it's a it's a habit trail to crazy town

• 1:22:48Light Watkins?

  yeah my teacher used to say once you get to the one mountain top now it allows you to see all the other mountain tops you don't have

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Right, and that is the peril of the human condition, right? So it is the reconditioning, it is the practice. And the practice, it's almost, it's funny, you were saying, well, this is, you know, this is what we tell our kids and we find it so difficult to master in our own lives. The answer is always the same and, and with that comes sort of a level of annoyance. Like, really? It's the same answer? Be grateful? Give freely? Give freely and privately without, without, you know, conditions? Really, that's the answer again?

• 1:23:32Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:33Rich Roll?

  But it is.

• 1:23:34Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, how can I get beyond the velvet rope to the super secret answer that you're not telling anyone? It's like, no, it's the same thing.

• 1:23:42Light Watkins?

  And that's what all the internet marketers are hoping you're gonna buy into.

• 1:23:45Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:23:46Light Watkins?

  That there's some super secret thing and you have to take the mastermind, this and that in order to figure it all out.

• 1:23:51Rich Roll?

  Don't get me started on that. I go insane. Like, I subscribe to a lot of those, just because I like to see the emails and I'm like, just because I like to study it.

• 1:24:01Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Rich Roll?

  And I just get these emails and I'm like, really, man? Does anyone buy into this? Like, it's like, here's the super secret 10 things that no one's telling you that I just discovered, you know? Like, I'm like, come on, man.

• 1:24:13Light Watkins?

  There's a market for that.

• 1:24:15Rich Roll?

  People buy into it, you know? They really do because, because there's a trick, there's a mental trick.

• 1:24:21Light Watkins?

  It's called magical thinking. They think that there's some secret to things that, you know, they, that someone, some guy has figured out in his Hollywood Hills office and he's gonna share it with you now.

• 1:24:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Light Watkins?

  Cause he's driving around in a Lamborghini or whatever. It's the acquisitive approach to happiness. So, um, yeah, and it's, you know, the funny thing about the inner gem is that's just... The whole idea, I'm gonna tell you my secret now.

• 1:24:49Rich Roll?

  All right, yeah, you've never told anyone, right?

• 1:24:51Light Watkins?

  That I've never told anyone before.

• 1:24:53Rich Roll?

  Finally, you've decided that you're gonna impart this wisdom.

• 1:24:56Light Watkins?

  The whole idea is just to introduce people to meditation. And I knew that if it was a meditation book, nobody would read it. But if it's a book about happiness and, you know, you sprinkle some other things around it that people may at least entertain the idea of thumbing through it. And, but meditation is really one of the key habits. Once you do meditation, it's easier to be grateful, it's easier to give, it's easier to be patient and slow down and all the other things. But you can't be patient and slow down and do all those other things with any sort of authenticity if you're not practicing some sort of inner quiet, quietude.

• 1:25:36Light Watkins?

  And this is part one of a four-volume series. Where I'm using it as the metaphor for working out. So I basically, the story behind the whole gym metaphor is I, I used to, when I was a vegan, when I was a strict vegan, which I was for 12 years.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  We're gonna get you back there, by the way.

• 1:26:00Light Watkins?

  I'm open to that. When I was a strict vegan, I was about 172 pounds wet. And, and I was just-

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  Are you like 210 now or something?

• 1:26:10Light Watkins?

  I'm 205 now, yeah. And I had been working out my entire adult life and I just could never put on any weight. And what I realized was the way I was working out was not the best way for putting on weight. I didn't even realize that there are different styles of working out for different purposes. And I came across this book called Scrawny to Bronny about four years ago.

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  That sounds like a book that would be advertised in the back of a comic book.

• 1:26:43Light Watkins?

  Yeah, it is. It's a total internet marketing book. The secret to gaining muscle mass for ectomorphs. And I realized, oh yeah, I'm an ectomorph. I'm a skinny guy who has problem putting on weight. I've always had problem putting on weight. If I skipped a meal, I would lose a pound. No, actually not. It would have been better to be a little bit bigger. So I studied this guy's, his name is John Berardi. I studied his program from scrawny to brony. And- And realized that instead of, I was doing the long runs every day. I was doing like three mile runs. Up Runyon Canyon every morning. And I was doing a hundred pushups and fifty pullups and I was doing that every single day, all these crunches.

• 1:27:27Light Watkins?

  And I was doing the same thing every day. And I realized that in order to build muscle, you can't do the same thing every day. Yeah, and you gotta mix it up. More weight, lower reps, don't work out as much, gotta mix it up. Don't do hardly any cardio.

• 1:27:41Light Watkins?

  And so I switched everything and I started to just, I put on literally like thirty pounds in six months. And, you know, as a skinny guy, as a former skinny guy, it was just the most amazing thing in the world. I just loved it. Cause I, you know, the thing is with skinny women,

• 1:28:01Light Watkins?

  it's, it's perfectly acceptable to say, oh, you know, you, you look, you lost weight, you know? What you, what the cardinal sin is saying, you look, you look like you gained weight to a woman. Right. You can never say that, no matter how much weight she's gained. But to a guy, people have no problem saying, you look too skinny and, you know, are you eating and that kind of thing? And it was just, you know, I'd be walking down the street feeling really good about myself and then somebody would come up to me and go, Jesus Christ, are you eating? Are you, you look too skinny? And it would just, you know, it would mess me up for a little bit. And so I always kind of was self-conscious about my weight and not being able to feel like I could put on any mass.

• 1:28:41Light Watkins?

  So I was over the moon that I had this experience. And then it occurred to me that being happy was kind of the same thing, you know, like you think happiness is the byproduct of this thing, but actually you're putting the cart before the horse. You want to actually put happiness in the forefront. You want to get, put yourself in a position to cultivate happiness within because it is an inside job. And then if you, um, if you do that, then you're going to find that happiness comes up. And then you're going to make decisions based on the happiness you have inside instead of based on the emptiness you have inside, which are going to be two completely different choices.

• 1:29:19Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Just to play out the analogy, basically what you're saying is, is you were doing the wrong kind of workout to access the result. Like if you're, if you're chasing happiness through material possessions or status or whatever, that's like doing the running up and running canyon to put weight on, right?

• 1:29:34Light Watkins?

  Exactly. It's not gonna happen. There's no way it's gonna happen. So the first book is the foundational, which is more like corrective exercises. The second volume, which is in the process of being published now, is the bulking. That's where we do the really heavy lifting and less reps. So it's gonna bring in practices like saying no and figuring out your life's purpose and same kind of format, you know, six new exercises. The next one is gonna be called ripping, which is where you trim away the fat. And then the next one is gonna be the stabilization. And it sort of culminates 26 exercises from, 24 exercises from now. Each one is gonna have a more elaborate meditation program. So by the last volume, you're meditating for 20 minutes instead of just five minutes. So

• 1:30:19Light Watkins?

  it's a, it's a plan. It's like my Star Wars. You know, I have the whole thing written out. I know who's whose father, how it all ends.

• 1:30:33Rich Roll?

  Throughout this first book, um, speaking of Star Wars, like I love how you use, you know, the force analogy and you kind of bring Star Wars into it. And it really is, you know, basically saying this is a superpower that you can cultivate in the same way that Luke has to like develop his skillset with the force and learn how to kind of channel that. And, and when you watch the movies and you see his initial resistance to it and how he grapples with it, it's so similar to how we kind of perceive meditation. Like, yeah, that's not for me. I'm too busy.

• 1:31:00Light Watkins?

  You can't see it. You can't hold it in your hands. So you just feel like, ah, I don't have time for this.

• 1:31:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and the truth is, you know, not to get too mystical, you know, but when you are kind of, you know, vibrating with that resonance, when you're really kind of like tapped in and you're doing it, like, it's almost like...

• 1:31:21Rich Roll?

  And I've experienced this, probably not to the level that you have. But, you know, stuff just shows up. Like, your life is in sync in a way where things are functioning on a different level. So, for example, like, a very simple example would be running into you at the Ace Hotel. Like, there's the synchronicities that happen that create this kind of flow in your life that creates this propulsion that pushes you forward on the best trajectory for you, like, with your highest consciousness in mind.

• 1:31:51Light Watkins?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you've had crazy experiences with that.

• 1:31:55Light Watkins?

  That becomes, yeah, and those crazy experiences become just the norm.

• 1:31:58Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, you just, it just, that's what's going on all the time. Like, you're paying attention and it's showing up.

• 1:32:04Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Without, it's an effortless thing, though. Like, there's not, it's not, you're not trying to make anything happen.

• 1:32:09Light Watkins?

  Right. And it gets to the point where you can be in a traffic jam, your flight can get canceled, and you, your immediate response is, "Okay, something amazing is about to happen."

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Light Watkins?

  There's a story of, you know, about, I think it was 2009, I told the story in the book as well, about the traffic jam that I was in on my way to teach yoga. And it was a completely phantom, crazy traffic jam that never happened on that stretch of road on the way to teach my class. And so I ended up being 10 minutes late, which was quite a big deal for me, because I don't, I don't like being late to things.

• 1:32:46Rich Roll?

  And that creates a lot of anxiety.

• 1:32:48Light Watkins?

  It does.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  For me, it does.

• 1:32:49Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And, uh, and so I showed up 10 minutes late, because I could, just couldn't help it. And turned out, the big mirror on the wall of the yoga room, right in front of the place where I would have been sitting, dislodged and came crashing down 10 minutes before I walked into the room. And I would have been set up and ready to go when that happened.

• 1:33:12Rich Roll?

  Would have fell on your head.

• 1:33:13Light Watkins?

  Would have fell on my head and whoever was around me. So, it saved all of us from having a very bad start to our day, that day. That traffic jam that I was cursing 10 minutes before was saving my life.

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:33:23Light Watkins?

  And after having so many experiences like that, you know... You start to see them as blessings.

• 1:33:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you know you're being guided. And, you know, I think that, that, look, we're hardwired to judge whatever situation we're in, in this kind of dualistic way. This is bad, this is good, I'm stuck in a traffic jam, this is bad. And we just don't have the information. We, we, there's no way that we have enough evidence to make that kind of adjudication for ourselves. We snap to it immediately, it's our nature. But in truth, you know, we don't know. And most of the things that I look back on my life and at the time I thought were like the worst things to ever happen to me, turn out to be the most gigantic blessings in retrospect.

• 1:34:03Light Watkins?

  And that's, I think that's the power of having a teacher, a mentor, a guru, you know. Back in India, you would never dream of teaching yourself something like meditation, or trying to work it out yourself. You'd always try to find a teacher to help you see the way. And, uh, because that's the stuff that my teacher used to say to us all the time. You know, everything that happens to you is, is happening for all reasons. And there's no point in trying to figure it out. Just relax and just stay in the present moment and go with it. And you're gonna see that it's gonna turn out better than you ever imagined for yourself. And he would just say that all the time. And I feel like if I didn't have that, it would still take me a lot longer to get to that place versus having someone who you already admire, who you see is exuding those principles and properties that you want.

• 1:34:48Light Watkins?

  And it just makes it that much easier, you know, because you have, you have someone who's been there before you.

• 1:34:52Rich Roll?

  Right, well, we're in Los Angeles, I mean, you know, or if you're in New York, it's not a problem to find a qualified meditation teacher. But what if somebody's listening, you know, in a place where that's not accessible?

• 1:35:05Light Watkins?

  You can get a, you get a book. That can be your teacher, you know, that's one of the things.

• 1:35:09Rich Roll?

  So it doesn't have to be the, but for Vedic, it kinda does, right?

• 1:35:13Light Watkins?

  Well, to, to, to, to learn the technique properly, yes, you would need a teacher. And yes, you, that may require you to travel somewhere, but it will be well worth, whenever it takes for you to get to some person alive to teach you. I mean, the good news is you don't have to go to India anymore. You know, 50 years ago, the only place you could have gone to learn any of this stuff related to meditation was India. And that would have been a much more expensive. Comprehensive trip for anyone. Now you just got to go to LA or New York or Chicago or, you know, somewhere like that. And everybody lives within three hours flying of any one of those places in the States.

• 1:35:50Rich Roll?

  So then it just, it comes, it comes back to establishing priorities around it.

• 1:35:54Light Watkins?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, okay, so you have your $2,000 or your $1,000 is going to take you to make the trip and all that. What else are you spending it on? Right? And is that thing going to lead you to have better sleep at night? Is that going to refund you back your biological time? Probably not. You know, so you may have to save money. I've had people fly across the country to train with me and it's impressive and it makes me a little bit less tolerant when someone doesn't want to drive across town to come to the training.

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  You must have like the entitled, like, you gotta come to my house. I'm not driving to you.

• 1:36:26Light Watkins?

  I'll come to your house if you make it worth my while.

• 1:36:30Light Watkins?

  But I'm not going to pay you to come to your house to teach you how to meditate.

• 1:36:34Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, well, in order to get people over the hump to kind of wrap their heads around like something like that being worth their, you know, their hard-earned paycheck, you know, it might be worth kind of exploring some of these misconceptions about meditation that I think kind of prevent people from embracing it. And you've done like a pretty nice rundown. I mean, we talked already about the time thing with the biological clock, but, you know, what are some of the other things that you see are common impediments, but are kind of misplaced ideas?

• 1:37:05Light Watkins?

  The idea that there's no correct way to meditate. And as we said earlier, you know, there's, I'm not saying that there's only one style that's best for everybody, but we're saying you just need to pick something and stick to it. Pick something that has some structure to it. Ideally, that someone else has kind of already done the research on. And so they're just going to show you how it's done. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  Right. But, you know, like I had Charlie on the show and he's, he always says, meditation is failure-proof. But I think that's speaking to something different. That's the idea that simply by doing it, there's not a value judgment on whether you did it well or right. That just doing it, whether your mind is rebelling while you're doing it, you are succeeding because that is the process. But that's different from the idea of...

• 1:37:53Rich Roll?

  There are better ways to meditate than others. Is that what you're saying?

• 1:37:58Light Watkins?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, once you pick your method that works for you, then it is failure-proof. You just, it's just a matter of how, how

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  Stay in your lane.

• 1:38:05Light Watkins?

  Doing it enough time, yeah. If you do it and over enough time, you're gonna succeed. It's like the gym is failure-proof, right? There's no such thing as the gym didn't work for me.

• 1:38:12Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:13Light Watkins?

  Right? It just means you didn't go to the gym, or

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:15Light Watkins?

  maybe you didn't exercise in a way that was the best for whatever your personal goals were. But, um, but yeah, the gym itself is just a tool. And meditation like that is just a tool, you know? And if you use it properly, then it's gonna work for you.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:33Light Watkins?

  So, it's just a matter of doing it properly. And so, you know, another big misconception is that people, you have to, you have to sit like a monk in order to have an effective meditation practice. And I know we have this idea, and it comes from our conditioning, you know, we're Americans and we're always taught since we were children that the harder you work, the more successful you're gonna be. And so, there's a element of hard work that is, um, necessary in order to succeed at meditation. And nothing could be further from the truth. It's actually the opposite. It's the lazier, in my experience, the lazier you are mentally, uh, the better it's gonna work. And, and in terms of achieving a level of, uh,

• 1:39:16Light Watkins?

  of inner quietness that I think people want when they think about meditation, you know? Everybody who meditates, nobody's meditating to have a busier mind, right? You wanna meditate so that you can actually feel like you're able to quiet all the anxiety and whatever else you're experiencing on a mental level. And, uh, and so, if you're just sitting comfortably, that in and of itself can position your mind to, to achieve a level of, of rest that it wouldn't be able to get otherwise. And just a really easy thought, thought experiment on this is if I were to say to you, Rich,

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:51Light Watkins?

  um, to go and lean against the wall behind you and go to sleep, right? So, you can go lean up against the wall, and it doesn't matter how, what angle you're leaning at, you're not going to fall asleep. We all know that.

• 1:40:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:05Light Watkins?

  Because you're not in the position for sleeping. You're in the position for being awake. And you may be able to get a little bit relaxed, but not nearly as relaxed as you could get if you were lying on your couch over here. If you lie down on your back on your couch, you go to sleep right away. You don't even have to think about it. You just slip into that state. And so by sitting comfortably, you keep yourself better positioned to slip into that state than you would if you were sitting with your back straight and your fingers together and in a way where you're having to exert all of this physical activity, which is more of a monastic approach to meditation.

• 1:40:37Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, that's sort of part and parcel of kind of moving, moving beyond kind of the, the trappings that you see. If you go to the like the attire that people wear, like some people are wearing, you know, kind of all kinds of weird clothes and, and they'll greet you with an embrace that they kind of, they're hugging you a little bit too long. You know what I mean?

• 1:40:57Light Watkins?

  And gazing, gazing a little bit too long.

• 1:40:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like a little bit too intently without blinking, looking into your eyes and all that kind of stuff that freaks people out. Um, you know what I mean?

• 1:41:06Light Watkins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  And it, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 1:41:08Light Watkins?

  And their voice is a little bit too soft.

• 1:41:10Rich Roll?

  A little bit, yeah, a little bit too precious. And, and with that, for me, when I experienced that, I'm like, this is not authentic. Like this is not who this guy really is. He's affecting this personality for a, you know, for a purpose, or he's created an identity around this that doesn't feel real to me.

• 1:41:29Light Watkins?

  And I think that, and you don't want to be that person.

• 1:41:31Rich Roll?

  No, of course. No, I don't aspire to that. You know, I don't aspire to that. Like, I'd much rather, like with you and with Charlie and, and with Andy, it's like, these are just, like I relate to you as a human being, like I'm getting the real person. There's no affect to it.

• 1:41:46Light Watkins?

  And that's what I love about guys like Howard Stern, who are out there and Jerry Seinfeld and these kinds of guys who have been meditating for decades. You know, and you don't look at them and think to yourself, oh, they're the poster child for meditation, you know, but there are guys who are operating at the top of their game and. They happen to meditate at the same time.

• 1:42:05Rich Roll?

  Howard Stern started doing TM like in the seventies, I think.

• 1:42:08Light Watkins?

  Yeah, yeah. He said, I think his story is his sister was depressed and started meditating and he noticed such a difference in her that even though he was skeptical at first, he gave it a shot and he hasn't missed a meditation in over twenty or thirty years.

• 1:42:21Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:42:22Light Watkins?

  Yeah, but that's not an uncommon story with

• 1:42:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:26Light Watkins?

  with these sort of householder styles of meditation.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Light Watkins?

  When people start doing it in a way that feels good and it starts to become this experience that's very similar, even better sometimes than taking a nap or going to sleep. I mean, no one ever says, "I don't look forward to sleeping at night," right? That's, you look, you want to sleep. You want to be able to get in the bed and just slip into that nice, thick, blackout sleeping state. And imagine if you can meditate in a way that felt like that, like a tangible, authentic feeling of deep rest. I mean, you would love it. You wouldn't be able to wait until you meditated. It'd be easy to rearrange your whole day around your meditation. And that's what I've been enjoying for the last ten years, that I've been teaching it.

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  There's something frightening about that as well, though, and I think this is another misconception that I'm interested in your thoughts in, which is that if you are somebody who is type A or a high performer, there is this idea that your performance or your success is tied to that edge. You know, it's like, like my work ethic is what is propelling me forward. And the idea that you would teach me a practice that perhaps would erode that or, you know, would translate into me not performing as well. And I remember, like, Russell Simmons used to go to this yoga class that we used to go to and

• 1:43:54Light Watkins?

  At Maha?

• 1:43:55Rich Roll?

  At Maha, yeah. So Steve Ross, you know Steve.

• 1:43:58Light Watkins?

  I used to teach at Maha.

• 1:43:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:44:00Light Watkins?

  Russell came to a couple of classes.

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow, cool.

• 1:44:02Light Watkins?

  I think that's where I recognized you from.

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  Maybe, yeah. I mean, that's, I met Julie at Maha Yoga in like nineteen ninety-nine, two thousand.

• 1:44:09Light Watkins?

  Right.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  Somewhere around that time. And we used to do yoga retreats with Steve in Italy. So I don't know if you were around No, no. But I wasn't around till the And I love Steve. Steve gets a lot of shit, but I think he's one of the happiest Steve is awesome. People I've ever, like, he walks the walk more than any other yoga teacher I've ever met. And he just exudes happiness. He's, he is so happy, you know, it's amazing. Yeah, he's the one teacher that doesn't take himself seriously at all. No, like, he's, he's beyond it. And I, and I remember, like, going to his class and it's like, this guy doesn't teach. He's not really teaching. And, and I was like, why isn't he, why isn't he teaching anyone yoga? Like, I want, I actually want to learn. And I think it's almost a, an advanced perspective where he's like,

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  that doesn't really matter. Right. I'm, I'm beyond that. He's teaching you how to be. Yeah. And, and he takes a lot of grief because there would be all these sort of beautiful starlets in his class. And he's playing hip hop music, like, oh, this is beginner yoga. This isn't the real yoga. But on some level, it's almost past that because he's like creating the safe place for people to begin that journey and, and, and allow them to have their own experience with it without any judgment. And you have to be, yeah, you have to be judgment free in that kind of environment. Right. And, and his, like, just sheer childish joy for what he does. And, you know, we spent a lot of time with him, been at his house. And he, I mean, when he's not teaching, he's meditating

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  basically all the time. And he was an original point of entry for Russell. I think one of his first teachers. And I remember Russell said one day, man, if I keep doing this, I'm going to lose all my money. You know, like, he had that fear, that misconception, to bring it back to this misconception. And the inverse happened, like, he, like, tripled his income or something like that. So this idea that, you know, not only can you find time, but in that restful state, you can, you can amplify your prosperity by finding that patience and that, more importantly, kind of, you know, tapping the vein of intuition where you can rely on your instincts and it comes without that effort.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, I hold on to that, like, if I'm not in pain and feeling it, then, you know, I'm not doing everything I can. And for me, the mental, um, challenge is to get over that and realize that that's an illusion. That there is a better way of being in a, in that kind of, um, synergistic flow state to allow ease to rise to the surface as opposed to effort.

• 1:46:40Light Watkins?

  Yeah, and that's what I tell people too. You know, that edge that they refer to is not the same kind of edge that I'm talking about when I'm saying meditation helps you get rid of the edge. You know, it's like that Buddhist, actually, it's a quote that was attributed to Buddha, but I don't think it was, that's accurate. But it's the quote that says, you know, "What'd you get from meditation? I didn't gain anything from meditation. But I'll tell you what I lost. I lost fear, I lost my anxiety, I lost my need to compete, you know, with people who are not even in my arena. I lost, you know, all the things that are basically holding you back from being your most authentic self. And it's not about, it's not about trying to go into it

• 1:47:24Light Watkins?

  and maintaining any sense of pressure and demand. I mean, that's gonna be there anyway. If you're living life on planet Earth, you're gonna be under pressure situations, you're gonna have demands. But where we tend to trip up the most and make the most mistakes is when we are attached to the outcome. We're too attached to the outcome. And that's where we wanna start controlling things, and that's where we start to hurt ourselves and maybe even hurt other people. And so meditation just kinda gives us the quick release to let go of that attachment and to be able to pull back the lens and see the bigger picture and see that, okay, well, this thing here isn't happening in the way that I thought it was gonna happen.

• 1:48:07Light Watkins?

  But look, there are ten other things, ten other possibilities, and they're all very interesting. And I even have a level of consciousness that gives me the ability to see in the moment that this thing here, that's one of the ten, this is gonna be the best course of action right now. If I decide right now that this is what needs to happen, then this is the best course of action. If I wait ten minutes, then this will be the best course of action. So that consciousness that you acquire from your meditation

• 1:48:40Light Watkins?

  Is gonna give you the ultimate freedom. You know, we have this idea that freedom comes from having choices. But actually, as it's been shown in many studies now and in this very famous TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, choice actually makes you paralyzed because you don't want to make the wrong choice. And in the East, it's the opposite. Freedom doesn't come from choice. Freedom comes from having a consciousness to know which direction is the best one for you in the moment.

• 1:49:05Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah, it's related to kind of that stoic idea of,

• 1:49:14Rich Roll?

  you know, the more that we can kind of remove these trappings from our life and this decision tree and the decision fatigue and live more simply, you know, in the essence of, you know, how we were created, then that increases the happiness quotient.

• 1:49:30Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Rich Roll?

  And it directs us, I think, too.

• 1:49:33Light Watkins?

  And I tell people, you meditate, doesn't mean you're gonna be a millionaire, doesn't mean you're gonna have a successful startup, doesn't mean you're gonna get married and fall in love.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:49:40Light Watkins?

  But what happens, what changes is your-

• 1:49:42Rich Roll?

  Can't make that guarantee? What kind of meditation teacher are you? You need to re-draft that email that you're sending out.

• 1:49:49Light Watkins?

  I'm the meat and potatoes meditation teacher. No, but what happens is-

• 1:49:51Rich Roll?

  Who cares how to make a million dollars and yeah.

• 1:49:53Light Watkins?

  Your perception changes so much that you can accept, you can accept where you are and what's happening. And it's really about coming from a level of acceptance that gives you the greatest ability to be able to move forward in a way that's sustainable.

• 1:50:08Rich Roll?

  Right. I like that, man. I think that's a good place to wrap it up.

• 1:50:13Light Watkins?

  Fantastic.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  I love it, dude.

• 1:50:15Light Watkins?

  I love the interview. Thanks for your questions.

• 1:50:16Rich Roll?

  That was beautiful. No, I really enjoyed that. Come back on when your next book comes out. When is it coming out?

• 1:50:23Light Watkins?

  Uh, it was supposed to come out in April, but you know how that goes.

• 1:50:26Rich Roll?

  Are you self-publishing?

• 1:50:27Light Watkins?

  I am.

• 1:50:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:28Light Watkins?

  I'm doing both. I've self-published The Inner Gym, just because I wanted to just do it for myself and get it out. And I didn't want to be one of those people in LA, you know, I had a book idea and, you know, and then but never really, nothing, nothing ever really happening. So, just for me, I didn't even think about approaching a publisher.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  At least not a screenplay.

• 1:50:47Light Watkins?

  No, no screenplay. There's no movie coming out for The Inner Gym. But now I'm talking to a publisher and we're working on the next project, not related to The Inner Gym.

• 1:50:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:50:57Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:58Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man. I love it.

• 1:51:02Rich Roll?

  We didn't even talk about The Shine. We gotta talk about that for a minute.

• 1:51:06Light Watkins?

  Let's talk about The Shine.

• 1:51:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I forgot about that.

• 1:51:07Light Watkins?

  You gotta come to The Shine.

• 1:51:08Rich Roll?

  I know, I wanna come. So, when's the next one?

• 1:51:11Light Watkins?

  July 29th. It's the last Wednesday of the month. And you should come and bring your wife and it'll be amazing experience. It's a great community. Again, we kinda sneak meditation into this really wonderful social event, which is really a variety show, based around inspiration.

• 1:51:30Rich Roll?

  Right, so you created this event with the idea of kind of, you know, introducing meditation, but it's really, it's so much more than that. It's like this cultivated, you know...

• 1:51:38Light Watkins?

  It's a curated, you know, we have music. We have really soulful music, we have comedy, we have short film.

• 1:51:46Rich Roll?

  You had Kyle Sees, right?

• 1:51:47Light Watkins?

  Kyle Sees recently.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  I just met him at a, we both presented at the, in Sun Valley at this wellness festival. And I see him at Erawan down the street all the time.

• 1:51:54Light Watkins?

  Hopefully, you didn't have to go after him when you presented.

• 1:51:58Rich Roll?

  No, no, thank God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we presented at different times. I actually haven't, I couldn't see his act. I didn't see, so I still haven't seen him. But he gave me his DVD.

• 1:52:05Light Watkins?

  Yeah, he's great. It was the second time he's been at The Shine.

• 1:52:09Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:09Light Watkins?

  And hoping to have him back again soon.

• 1:52:12Rich Roll?

  And you got music. You had Magic Giant, right?

• 1:52:14Light Watkins?

  Magic Giant came and performed when Charlie was there. Charlie led the meditation. So, you know, it's like a bizarre, different, interesting things that people, you know, that will just hopefully inspire people. And I wanna introduce people to various styles of meditation and people who are out there with, walking their own hero's journey and who've done amazing things with not a lot of resources, just to kinda show that you don't need a whole lot to change, to enact change in the world. One of the best parts about it is called The Shine On Challenge, where we basically take a portion of the proceeds from the last event and we give it to someone from the audience in the next event. And we charge them with the mission of going out into the world and spending the money

• 1:52:58Light Watkins?

  in any way that feels right to them to better humanity. So, we've had people...

• 1:53:02Rich Roll?

  That's super cool.

• 1:53:03Light Watkins?

  We've had people go out and buy, you know, food for veterans and give stuff to homeless people and the last woman who won, she, she made signs with positive quotes and put them all up around Inglewood and she's painted a mural down in the Crenshaw Corridor.

• 1:53:21Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:53:22Light Watkins?

  And, you know, so amazing because we get to contribute to this and we get to see how it gets enacted through the individual. And so it's a, it's a, it's a really specific way of sort of micro charity, you know?

• 1:53:36Rich Roll?

  What was cool, you wrote this kind of article on how you conceptualized this whole thing that, that you put up on Medium. And what I loved about that is you basically chronicle the entire evolution, you know, from seed of idea all the way to what it's become today. And you kind of show pictures of where it started and, and where it's arrived. And it's really a beautiful testament to, you know, what is truly the power of, you know, grassroots idea and movement.

• 1:54:04Light Watkins?

  Exactly.

• 1:54:04Rich Roll?

  Because you didn't try to come out of the gate with, you know, renting some gigantic hall and let's go big or go home. Like you're just like, no, I'm doing this from the heart. We'll start with a few people in somebody's living room.

• 1:54:14Light Watkins?

  Yep.

• 1:54:15Rich Roll?

  And next week, we'll get a few more people and then, you know, fast forward to the next one. And you keep getting bigger venues and more people and a higher caliber of, you know, performers.

• 1:54:24Light Watkins?

  Performer.

• 1:54:24Rich Roll?

  Speaker and all that kind of stuff. And to kind of just, it's beautiful how it's kind of, you know, been this flower that's just, you know, blossomed like this.

• 1:54:32Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And it's, and I'm not unique, you know?

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:34Light Watkins?

  Part of that article, part of the intention behind writing the article was to, which is called the Evolution of the Shine, if anybody wants to look it up.

• 1:54:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes on the, for that episode.

• 1:54:42Light Watkins?

  Is to inspire, because, you know, we all have these ideas. The Shine was an idea in my head for two years, two or three years, before I ever did anything with it. And we all have these ideas about doing, I should write this book, or I should start up this nonprofit, or I should drive around, drive across country on a motorcycle. And we don't do it, you know? And really, and because, it's because we overwhelm ourselves by thinking about the big picture.

• 1:55:06Rich Roll?

  Right. Or it has to be a big success right away, or I'm a failure.

• 1:55:09Light Watkins?

  Instead of the next step. And the success comes in taking just the next step and seeing what happens, you know? And, and before you know it, you'll be in a situation where, yeah, you're getting... You're getting a lot of support, non-natured support for what you're doing. So it's exciting.

• 1:55:27Rich Roll?

  So, one of the things that you did with the Shine, didn't you have like, when you register, you have to like, answer a question or something like that?

• 1:55:34Light Watkins?

  To get into the Shine now, you have to answer the question of the month.

• 1:55:38Rich Roll?

  So what was the question last time?

• 1:55:39Light Watkins?

  The last question of the month was, we just did a Shine last week. If you were offered a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

• 1:55:47Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:55:48Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:48Rich Roll?

  And then what do you do with those responses?

• 1:55:50Light Watkins?

  People, so we have stickers. We have these little black, cool-looking stickers, and we have this copper, these copper Sharpies. So, we were using regular like, sort of staples, you know, name tags that just kind of looked cheesy and tacky, and we found that people were reluctant to wear them on their cool clothes.

• 1:56:08Rich Roll?

  Right. Because you're in Venice, and that's not going to go with the outfit.

• 1:56:12Light Watkins?

  So we got these black stickers with this gold and copper pins, and now everybody loves them. And so you just write your answer, and it looks like you're wearing a little button with this weird answer on them. And we use them, people use them as a conversation starter. So you can go up to people, and you instantly have something you can talk about. "Oh wow, you want to go to Ireland?" You know, "I was just in Ireland last month," or whatever like that.

• 1:56:35Rich Roll?

  So is that in, without name? It's just?

• 1:56:37Light Watkins?

  No name.

• 1:56:38Rich Roll?

  So there's no names, it's just, this is your destination?

• 1:56:40Light Watkins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's really cool. Wow. So for the one, July 29th, who's speaking and who's performing?

• 1:56:47Light Watkins?

  For July 29th, we haven't booked the performer yet. We're still reaching out to some people. And it's normally like, a last-minute thing, like literally three or two weeks beforehand, we'll solidify the lineup. But the speaker is going to be a guy by the name of Steve Glenn, who's one of the-

• 1:57:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, I know Steve.

• 1:57:03Light Watkins?

  You know Steve?

• 1:57:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:04Light Watkins?

  Yes. I didn't realize how big of a deal Steve was until I started doing some research into his background.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  With his lead houses and all of that?

• 1:57:12Light Watkins?

  With his lead houses, and he was one of the co-founders of the Idea Lab, and you know, he's done a lot of stuff with the Clinton Foundation.

• 1:57:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's a pretty impressive guy.

• 1:57:19Light Watkins?

  Yeah. And I've been knowing Steve for years. He lives right around the corner from me. And I was at a dinner party, talking to someone who's on his foundation, the Sustainable Council in Santa Monica.

• 1:57:33Light Watkins?

  And, uh, and you know, Steve does these things called Fred Talks. Have you been to a Fred Talk?

• 1:57:37Rich Roll?

  I haven't. I'm familiar with it, but I haven't been.

• 1:57:39Light Watkins?

  So that was one of my inspirations for starting The Shine. So Steve will have people come to his house, which is a LEED house. And, um.

• 1:57:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he has this business where he builds, like, he works with an amazing architect and creates these beautiful, modern homes that are all LEED approved, in other words, completely sustainable.

• 1:57:56Light Watkins?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:56Rich Roll?

  I forget what the name of the business is.

• 1:57:57Light Watkins?

  Pre-frabicated homes.

• 1:57:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:59Light Watkins?

  Living homes is what it's called.

• 1:58:01Rich Roll?

  Living homes, that's right, yeah.

• 1:58:01Light Watkins?

  And, um, so he'll have these events, Fred Talks, and there'll be maybe seven or eight people who give mini little TED Talks. And, um, and he's been doing this for years. Friends, uh, sharing ideas, and I forget what it all stands for, but. So, yeah, I was talking to my, this girl at this dinner party about Steve. She was saying, I was telling her about The Shine, and she was saying, oh, you should have Steve come and give a Shine Talk. And I go, oh, yeah, tell me more about that. And she just told me a little bit more about his, everything he's doing. And I was like, wow, that is pretty impressive. So he's kind of like the archetypal presenter, someone who's like a regular person, who's been doing amazing things. You know, maybe even under the radar.

• 1:58:44Light Watkins?

  And, uh, and I think he'll have some inspiring, and he's a great presenter, too. You know, he's a very natural speaker, and he's funny, and that's what we want. We want, we don't want any heaviness, we don't want any seriousness, we want people to be light and, you know, kind of funny and interesting, so. But we'll have a, we'll have a pretty amazing lineup. It's really just like, you know, okay, well, I'll just, I'll see some short film somewhere, I think, oh, we should do that. Or, or I'll hear somebody do like a stand-up routine, and I'll try to get them. And so you never really know who's gonna come together.

• 1:59:14Rich Roll?

  Right, it all just kind of comes together.

• 1:59:15Light Watkins?

  It all just kind of comes together.

• 1:59:16Rich Roll?

  Right, right, I love it. And so are you doing this monthly?

• 1:59:19Light Watkins?

  We are doing it month, we've been doing it monthly, and, uh, we're gonna start going to every other month. Cause it's just a lot of freaking work. And we're all volunteering with it, even though we're charging for it, but all that money goes to pay for the event costs. And it's, it's expensive to throw an event in LA, in Venice particularly. So, uh, just to kind of maintain the quality control, I think we have to space them out a little bit more.

• 1:59:41Rich Roll?

  Right, and where is, what's the venue for this one?

• 1:59:43Light Watkins?

  This one is gonna be held at Full Circle, which is the venue on Rose Avenue and Hampton. And you'll put the website, shineboobin.org.

• 1:59:52Rich Roll?

  Very cool, but it's not sold out yet, right?

• 1:59:54Light Watkins?

  Not yet, no, but the last six have sold out, so don't wait till the last minute.

• 1:59:59Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:59:59Light Watkins?

  People can't get enough of this thing for some reason.

• 2:00:02Rich Roll?

  Right on. All right, man. I love it. So it's called, the website for that is shine, it's

• 2:00:06Light Watkins?

  TheShineMovement.org

• 2:00:08Rich Roll?

  TheShineMovement.org. And if you're digging on light and you want to connect with him, maybe you want to

• 2:00:14Light Watkins?

  LightWatkins.com

• 2:00:15Rich Roll?

  Get on airplanes and fly out here and hire him to teach you Vedic meditation. Yeah, LightWatkins.com. But you also have BeginMeditating.com, right?

• 2:00:22Light Watkins?

  Yeah, that's the dedicated meditation. But since I've been doing all this other stuff, I kind of needed an umbrella site. So Light Watkins, you can get to me through meditation or through the Shine or for speaking all through LightWatkins.com.

• 2:00:36Rich Roll?

  And @LightWatkins on Twitter.

• 2:00:38Light Watkins?

  @LightWatkins on Twitter.

• 2:00:40Rich Roll?

  Yep. And the book is The Inner Gym. You can get it on Amazon. Click through the Amazon banner at ritual.com and everybody wins with that. And the TED Talk, the TEDx Venice Beach, which is pretty cool, which just went live, I'll embed that on the episode page. You guys should check that out, too. Right?

• 2:00:59Light Watkins?

  Thank you.

• 2:00:59Rich Roll?

  Anything else? That's all?

• 2:01:00Light Watkins?

  I think that's enough for them right now.

• 2:01:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do we do it?

• 2:01:04Light Watkins?

  I'm a typical Gemini. I get my hands in too many things and it's good to kind of be a little more focused. So I'm gonna, even if there are other things, I'm not gonna talk about anything else.

• 2:01:14Rich Roll?

  There's plenty of other things. So you'll just have to come back on and we'll talk more about it.

• 2:01:18Light Watkins?

  Yeah, we gotta talk about vegan food.

• 2:01:20Rich Roll?

  We could talk about that. We can get more into the Shine stuff, too.

• 2:01:23Light Watkins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:01:23Rich Roll?

  And everything that you're doing, man. So other than the Shine, is there anything else coming up? Are you traveling?

• 2:01:28Light Watkins?

  I'm going to Tulum for a retreat this weekend and that will probably, that will have happened, I think, by the time this comes out. So, but yeah, we're gonna go to Costa Rica over the new year. We're gonna do a meditation retreat, you know, learn how to meditate, get out of the rigmarole of your daily life and come in and learn on a tropical beach. So that should be kind of fun if anybody wants to join for that.

• 2:01:53Rich Roll?

  Nice, man. All right. So they can find more about that out at LightWatkins.com.

• 2:01:56Light Watkins?

  Exactly.

• 2:01:57Rich Roll?

  All right, dude. How do you feel? You feel good?

• 2:01:59Light Watkins?

  I feel perfect. Yeah, I'm a little hot, but I feel great.

• 2:02:01Rich Roll?

  I know it's a little hot here, but it's okay. We got through it.

• 2:02:03Light Watkins?

  Exactly.

• 2:02:04Rich Roll?

  Good, man. Thanks so much.

• 2:02:05Light Watkins?

  All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 2:02:08Rich Roll?

  Platts.

• 2:02:13Rich Roll?

  Excellent. I hope you guys enjoyed the compelling, dynamic, and ever-debonyer Light Watkins. If you're digging on him, make sure you check out his book, The Inner Gym. Also, I think it's worth pointing out, maybe because I don't do this enough, but I spend a ton of time creating pretty comprehensive show notes for each of my episodes with copious relevant articles, and books, and references, and links to interesting things about people mentioned during the episode, other podcasts that might interest you, and tons of more stuff. So please, don't forget to visit the episode page for each podcast at richroll.com. And that way, you can take your learning opportunity presented by each

• 2:02:54Rich Roll?

  show further. For all your plant power needs, also go to richroll.com. We've got tons of great stuff there. Julie's guided meditation program has been a hot item lately, but we've got nutrition products, we've got signed copies of Finding Ultra, we've got 100% organic cotton garments, we have plant power tech tees, we've got sticker packs, we have fine art prints, lots of cool stuff there. Basically, everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. We've got your bases covered at richroll.com. Keep sending in your questions for future Q&A podcasts to [email protected]. You know the deal. We're doing more of those, so we want to hear from you guys. What do you want us to talk about? Also, check out my online courses at mindbodygreen.com, The Ultimate Guide

• 2:03:37Rich Roll?

  to Plant-Based Nutrition, and The Art of Living with Purpose. Thank you for supporting the show, you guys. Keep telling your friends, sharing it on social media. I love it. Keep using the banner at Rich Roll, the Amazon banner at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. And I will see you guys in a couple days. So have a great one, and I look forward to our next experience, our next podcast experience together. Peace. Plants.