#789: Ease Into Stillness — Guided Meditation with Zen Master Henry Shukman

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

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:40Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:10Henry Shukman?

  Welcome to Meditation Monday. It's a joy to be back with you. Thanks for hopping on. So, many of us come to meditation to help us with stress, and rightly so. Meditation is a great vehicle for dialing down our nervous systems, coming back into homeostasis, into more of a balanced state. But I've noticed, over 15 years of teaching meditation, that it's not uncommon for people to get stressed about meditation. There's good reason for that. In meditation, we're still, we're quiet, and for many of us, we just don't do that in the course of our day. We're busy all the time, engaged in activities. We also

• 1:55Henry Shukman?

  don't have distractions. If we're feeling uncomfortable, we, you know, we can't reach for the phone while we're meditating, or whatever our favorite distractions might be. So it's perfectly natural. But there's even a bigger reason, I think, where people get stressed around it, which is that we commonly think, I did it myself for years, that there's something that I'm supposed to kind of measure up to. There's some way my meditation is supposed to be. And one of the common misconceptions right there is about thinking, thinking that we're supposed to have no thoughts when we meditate. Basically, it's rubbish. We are developing a different relationship with thoughts, it's true.

• 2:38Henry Shukman?

  But our brains naturally secrete thought, as some people put it. So we're not aspiring to have total, you know, radio silence within when we meditate, not at all. So in this sit, we're going to deal with and address some of this meditation stress, i.e. stress around meditation itself, particularly when it comes to thinking. So let's come into our comfortable seated position. Get yourself set up, seated in a way that feels good for you. We want to be comfortable. We want to be able to relax.

• 3:23Henry Shukman?

  So right now, we can close the eyes or lower them if you prefer, keeping them open but lowered. Just give yourself a moment to come back to you. This is really about you. It's about you as you are right now. And, you know, sometimes we also get inklings that it's about coming back to some sort of deeper sense of myself, something that in a way has been here all my life and that I may have journeyed far from.

• 4:06Henry Shukman?

  But now, we can start coming back. And it begins with being here, just as we are right now.

• 4:26Henry Shukman?

  So let's again check how much tension we're holding in our jaw and release the jaw. Imagine there's a little sling right under your chin that your jaw can rest in.

• 4:43Henry Shukman?

  And let it rest.

• 4:49Henry Shukman?

  Let your arms hang like the sleeves of an old coat.

• 4:56Henry Shukman?

  Totally relaxed.

• 5:03Henry Shukman?

  See if you can find a certain sense of warmth and softness in the chest, in the belly,

• 5:15Henry Shukman?

  in the hips.

• 5:19Henry Shukman?

  And letting legs and feet also be relaxed, at rest.

• 5:30Henry Shukman?

  We're really just coming home to ourselves, to this our life, just like this.

• 5:45Henry Shukman?

  Now, as we're resting and being a bit more present, very commonly, thoughts will come up. And before we know it, we're off on a train of thought. And then we realize, oh, whoa, I've been far away in another time and place, thinking, great, we've recognized that that's happened. We congratulate ourselves. We've come back. And what we're gonna do is just check where we were in our thinking, just enough to be able to file the thinking we were just in, in one of three files.

• 6:31Henry Shukman?

  Memories, plans, imaginings. So just check what kind of thinking it was, file in either memories, planning, or imagining.

• 6:50Henry Shukman?

  Thank the thoughts for showing up and come back.

• 6:59Henry Shukman?

  So as we go, I'll offer a few little prompts.

• 7:04Henry Shukman?

  Sitting here in a restful state.

• 7:10Henry Shukman?

  Present.

• 7:13Henry Shukman?

  Not needing to do anything. Just noticing when thoughts have come up.

• 7:23Henry Shukman?

  When we've been carried off by thinking.

• 7:46Henry Shukman?

  So anytime thoughts have arisen, note them, welcome them, and file them in one of those three folders: Memories,

• 8:01Henry Shukman?

  Planning, Imagining.

• 8:09Henry Shukman?

  And when there's no thoughts, just rest in being present right here.

• 8:22Henry Shukman?

  Sensing your calm, relaxed body.

• 8:30Henry Shukman?

  You might notice some sounds around you.

• 8:43Henry Shukman?

  Resting

• 8:47Henry Shukman?

  in the here and now.

• 8:52Henry Shukman?

  Just this, as it is.

• 9:11Henry Shukman?

  And recognizing that thoughts will arise, and filing them according to their little scheme, memories, plans, imaginings, when we notice they have arisen.

• 9:43Henry Shukman?

  So we're not trying to have no thoughts.

• 9:47Henry Shukman?

  We're just seeing if we can notice thoughts when they arise.

• 9:59Henry Shukman?

  We acknowledge them and we file them away in one of those three folders. And come back

• 10:11Henry Shukman?

  to not really doing very much.

• 10:20Henry Shukman?

  Basically, a kind of wakeful rest.

• 10:32Henry Shukman?

  And attentive not doing.

• 10:44Henry Shukman?

  Just being with our experience as it is right now.

• 10:52Henry Shukman?

  Soft body.

• 10:59Henry Shukman?

  Some amount of sounds around us.

• 11:07Henry Shukman?

  And sometimes thoughts.

• 11:17Henry Shukman?

  Okay. Let's gently bring a little movement back into the body. Whatever might feel good for you. Some people like to sway. Some people like to move fingers and toes, just coming back, raising the eyes. Great. Now, one thing that I just want to say as we conclude here is that the most important thing, I'm quite sure of this actually with meditation, is not sort of how well we think we do it, or how good a time we might have doing it. And we will sometimes have blissful, peaceful experiences and so on. But actually, the most important thing is just that we spend a little portion of our day being quiet and still,

• 12:03Henry Shukman?

  and not reaching for common distractions. Just that stillness impacts our unconscious. Just the fact of being quiet, as quiet as we are in our minds, doesn't matter so much that we are actually just not talking for that period of time. Quiet and still. It impacts, it feeds into our own consciousness. And it gradually changes us over time in beautiful ways that we can really come to appreciate more and more as we go. Thank you very much for joining me. See you next time.