#850: The Peace That's Always Within You — Guided Meditation by Zen Master Henry Shukman

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

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:40Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:08Henry Shukman?

  Welcome to this meditation with me, Henry Schukman. In this little set of meditations so far, we've looked at doing a body scan, we've explored the practice of doing less, or even not doing anything at all, as a fantastic way to reset the nervous system. We've also explored how to be with stress in a way that we're not kind of opposing it and fighting it, but we're including it, and how helpful that can actually be in bringing us to a more patient and compassionate approach to our own stresses. In this meditation, we're going to be exploring an old Zen teaching, which runs like this: "Take the backward

• 1:52Henry Shukman?

  step that shines the light inward." What on earth does this really mean? It means...

• 1:59Henry Shukman?

  Finding a way to rest back into the sort of heart of our experience, into the very condition of our own awareness, as it were, into the fabric of awareness that underlies all our experience. That's a bit of a mouthful, but I'm going to be guiding us through the use of this little directive from Zen, and I think showing how useful and helpful it can be in the midst of any ordinary life, just taking a moment to disengage, to come back into an intrinsic well-being, a kind of unconditional well-being that the great traditions of meditation such as Zen know is available to us.

• 2:44Henry Shukman?

  Okay, let's get into a comfortable seated position. Close your eyes or lower your gaze. Have your hands where feels good for you, could be in the lap, could be on the thighs. Let your arms go completely slack. Let them just kind of dangle like old ropes.

• 3:08Henry Shukman?

  And actually let the whole body become floppy.

• 3:17Henry Shukman?

  It doesn't matter if you're sitting upright with no support other than the seat. As long as you're somewhat balanced, you can still go floppy.

• 3:29Henry Shukman?

  And of course, if you're reclining or your back is supported, it might be easier. Just let everything become like a rag doll. Head, throat, shoulders, arms, hands, floppy. Chest, belly, seat, legs, floppy.

• 3:54Henry Shukman?

  So the whole body is kind of doing nothing.

• 4:01Henry Shukman?

  Really releasing any need to activate any part of the body.

• 4:12Henry Shukman?

  Rest, coming into body-wide rest.

• 4:23Henry Shukman?

  Now, it's a hidden secret of rest, actually, that in rest, a different quality of awareness can emerge by itself. It's akin to the deeply creative possibilities of rest. That within rest and restfulness, another flavour of awareness can emerge by itself,

• 5:04Henry Shukman?

  where we're simply aware of being here, aware of our surroundings, and we might find that there's a quality of quiet and stillness in the space around us that we might not have noticed. So Zen says, "Take the backward step. Just give yourself a little window of time right now,

• 5:49Henry Shukman?

  when you can disengage." So much of our life, we're kind of forward-facing, engaging with the world before us. That's just fine, but we can have a break from that that can be profoundly restorative. We just take a little micro-step backward, disengage from the world, from activities, from your life, just for a moment. Recede just a little bit

• 6:33Henry Shukman?

  from the world before you. Come back into yourself.

• 6:43Henry Shukman?

  And this backward step can, as it were, illuminate

• 6:51Henry Shukman?

  a quality of awareness,

• 6:55Henry Shukman?

  a peaceful nature

• 7:00Henry Shukman?

  in ourselves

• 7:03Henry Shukman?

  that's always already here.

• 7:11Henry Shukman?

  A wider sense of peace,

• 7:18Henry Shukman?

  of calm,

• 7:22Henry Shukman?

  ease,

• 7:27Henry Shukman?

  that almost seems to spread through our life when we give ourselves a chance to notice it.

• 7:40Henry Shukman?

  Simply by disengaging, taking this half-step backwards, this a little bit of a falling back, receding

• 7:56Henry Shukman?

  back into ourselves, into

• 8:02Henry Shukman?

  some part of us, some part of our nature

• 8:09Henry Shukman?

  that's always been here,

• 8:13Henry Shukman?

  as if it's really always been present

• 8:18Henry Shukman?

  throughout our lives,

• 8:21Henry Shukman?

  somehow almost holding our life experience.

• 8:29Henry Shukman?

  A broader awareness,

• 8:36Henry Shukman?

  a wider lens,

• 8:41Henry Shukman?

  wider aperture,

• 8:47Henry Shukman?

  wider field of vision.

• 8:57Henry Shukman?

  It's not some special accomplishment to find this. It's simply always been with us.

• 9:09Henry Shukman?

  A restful

• 9:13Henry Shukman?

  awareness.

• 9:18Henry Shukman?

  Just allow yourself to rest with it, to be in it.

• 9:27Henry Shukman?

  Just a moment more.

• 9:32Henry Shukman?

  Highly restorative.

• 9:37Henry Shukman?

  Very refreshing this awareness can be for us.

• 9:51Henry Shukman?

  Both a state of rest and a condition of awareness at once.

• 10:05Henry Shukman?

  Almost like there's a different perspective on life here. A different vantage, a broader view.

• 10:17Henry Shukman?

  Somehow a little less bound by time.

• 10:23Henry Shukman?

  A little taste of a certain flavor of timelessness might show up.

• 10:34Henry Shukman?

  As if we've just stepped back from the stream of time. Just for a moment, from the stream of clock time.

• 10:49Henry Shukman?

  Being with ourselves more intimately.

• 11:05Henry Shukman?

  Yeah, thank you. So, let's gently come out of the meditation. Let yourself move a little bit, perhaps swaying the upper body, wiggling fingers and toes, opening the eyes, raising the gaze. Have a deeper inhale, and exhale, and look around you. And let's, yeah, close this meditation now. I hope you find this, or any of the other meditations, a really helpful intervention to deploy

• 11:49Henry Shukman?

  at any time in the course of your daily life, at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, or any point in the course of the day. Thank you very, very much indeed for joining me, and I wish you a very fine rest of your day. Thank you.