Mindfulness 101

0:02 A listener production. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. Last episode we're talking about positive thinking and I'm already feeling much more positive. I hope you are too. Listener. Today we're talking mindfulness one oh one, the benefits of mindfulness and meditation, Cass. Mindfulness is such a buzzword, it's everywhere now mindfulness diaries mindfulness that mcmindfulness, Yes, mcmindfulness everywhere.

0:47 So can you break down what exactly is mindfulness? Yes? The definition that's most commonly used to describe what mindfulness is comes from John Kapertsin, who was a guy who responds for first bringing mindfulness to the West from Buddhists, from its Buddhist origins. He brought it into Western medicine back in the late seventies early eighties, and his definition was that it is a way of paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non judgmentally, so without judgment so, which is a very complicated way of saying. I think it's. Simply being aware of what's happening as it's happening. And I always say this is about being aware of what's happening around you. And also what is arising within you in response to that, your thoughts, your feelings, your body sensations without judgment. So in a way, it's really this turning off this autopilot and becoming more present. So when you're more present to what's happening outside of you and what's going on inside of you, you take back the power I guess to make a conscious choice about how you respond in that moment instead of what we normally do, which was we react very habitually emotionally. You know, we get caught up in our own bear these stories in our mind, and we pretty much live on autopilot. We do everything without really thinking. Much of what we do is mindless. So mindfulness is just trying to, I guess, turn on our attention a little bit so that we have more power to choose and to manage our thoughts, manage our feelings, manage how we react, be more present,

2:18 be more attentive, etc. It seems so simple when you say it, cas what mindfulness actually is. So can you take us through what are the benefits? Why do this? Yeah, so this is the reason why everybody wants to be more mindfulness, Because there's loads of stuff out there now talking about why it's good for you, and it goes beyond just you know, being more present. We all know that that's good if you're at work or if you with your partner, you know, you should be more present. That makes sense. But the science now, there's lots of stuff that's come out saying that mindfulness and meditation, for example, can reduce This is proven actually can reduce your experience of depression, anxiety, help you manage stress. There's evidence that it reduces your blood pressure, that it boosts your immune functioning, that it reduces your experience of pain for people with chronic pain.

3:14 So physiologically, physically, and mentally, there's a whole lot of benefits to mindfulness. So I guess there's all of this stuff out there and in the media. You'll read articles and in the mainstream media about the benefits of mindfulness, and it's almost like it has become this panacea, like it is the solution to all of the world's problems, that everybody just needs to be more mindful and so and everybody in our instant gratification world, everybody wants the quick mindfulness. You know, how can I get this mindfulness stuff? You know, in you know, less than five minutes. Yes. And my first when I was first learning from you how to do it, I thought you had to be sitting down and sort of in a meditative pose, and carve out half an hour where you could just sit in a room. The space issue, yes, and.

4:02 I thought I haven't got time for that gas No, And a lot of people don't have time for that. Because I think it's worth pointing out that there is a difference between mindfulness and meditation. Meditation is absolutely the formal practice of mindfulness. It is when you make the deliberate effort to sit. It doesn't have to be on the floor, and it doesn't have to be cross leg and it can be up in your bed, on the sofa, it can be in your chair at work anywhere that you can see, or it can be standing, or it can be lying down. And it is when you deliberately choose to focus your attention on, for example, your breath or your body physical sensations. You choose an object and you spend a period of time, whether it's ten minutes or twenty or thirty minutes or even just five minutes, and quiet in your mind and deliberately choose an object to focus your attention on. Most commonly people use the breath, But if you imagine fundamentally meditation, sitting bringing your awareness to the sensation of breathing and then just staying with that, and every time your mind wanders, you bring it back.

5:04 So that's meditation. But there's also informal mindfulness, which is where you just take opportunities throughout your day to be more present. If you're eating, you can actually focus on the sites and the smells and the taste and the texture of coughing exactly. Mostly we only taste the first mouthful of food and then wear off in our heads and we're not even aware that we're eating. When you're driving the car, you can actually drive and focus on the feeling of the steering wheel in your hand, and what you can see around you, and the feel of the air on your skin. It's bringing your awareness into the present moment instead of those times when when you normally your mind would be racing an off and somewhere else. So there's lots of ways that you can bring mindfulness into your everyday experiences, and we call that everyday mindfulness or informal mindfulness versus formal practice.

5:53 Which is this actual meditation can start with the mindfulness. That's a great start, isn't it. I would say that is a great start, and that really that's what you want as your goal. But you practice meditation to build the skill to be able to take that skill throughout your day. When people start talking about bringing being more mindful, yeah, great, be more mindful, be more aware of and in the present moment, hop out of your busy head and bring your focus back into just what's. In front of you, what you're doing. When you start talking about wanting to repull of these benefits, and we'll get into I'd love to tell you about the benefits that are proven. Then you need to actually be spending some time in meditation. Like with anything you have, you have to train in it a little bit.

6:36 Yeah, it's a training and muscle. It's training going to be attentional muscle, and it's training your brain. And you can't expect to do that with the shortcuts. And they're great, they're helpful. It's like taking the stairs instead of the lift, But you want to do more than that if you want to get the real benefits from it. That makes sense, I guess. So can you talk us through some of. The benefits recently, some of the prominent researchers in this area. You would have heard of Daniel Goleman. He wrote the Emotional intelligence books. So he's been a meditator for a long long time. He's mates with John Cappertsin and he's mates with all of those people who've been in the meditation mindfulness arena for the last thirty forty years, probably fifty years now. Showing my age, I always think like the nineteen eighties is twenty years ago.

7:17 No, yes, it's amazing. So and Richie Davidson one of his good mates who is a neuroscientist, so he's responsible for a lot of the brain imaging studies that are showing the brain benefits of mindfulness now. So together the two of them, So these guys have been actually doing the research for a long long time and they've now come together and they've written a book which is where they've gone through and actually ripped all of the research apart and really said, well, how much of this actually holds up to proper validity, proper scientific rigor. So they found that the blood pressure one, well actually that's a bit flimsy, yes, And they've found that you know, some of the stuff that's been dated has perhaps been overstated, Okay, but what they have found so.

8:04 There is still lots of really good stuff. So what they have found is that people who meditate do definitely recover faster from stress and stressful events. Okay, So in terms of stress, are amigdala a fighter flight center like goes off. People who experience chronic stress, which a lot of people do, they do have enlarged a migdala. Migdala is actually enlarged, and there is a reduce I'm going to get into brain science a bit, but there is a reduced connection between the prefrontal cortex. So that's the part of your brain behind you in your forehead, right behind you up here, that's the part of your brain that puts the brakes on the stress response. Yes, that's like the one that calms you down.

8:45 And so meditation strengthens the connection between that part of the brain and the amygdala, which is the stress part of your brain, so you calm down quicker. Wow, it's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. So people who are chronically stressed, they have a weakened connection, so they tend to be jacked up with the fight or flight with a diminished capacity to calm down. So meditation strengthens that connection and actually reduces that activity in the amygdal which is really really interesting. The thing about pain zen meditators they have found have a pain threshold that is for heat, for temperature, like when exposed to they do they test people's pain thresholds, but bring this burning plates on that which doesn't actually burn them, but it's designed to monitor the body's pain response. They have a pain threshold two degrees centigrade higher. Wow, which doesn't sound like much, but it's amazing when it comes to pain that two degrees higher. So people's response to pain.

9:49 What it does is they still feel the pain. But this is the thing with mindfulness, is the thoughts and the feelings, the oh this hurts, I have to get out of here, this is awful, which is our normal. Thought feeling reaction that calms down. So the body they experience the sensory part of the pain, but they don't have the same emotional reaction and the same automatic phenomenal rejection. Yeah. So that speaks a lot to just our capacity to handle pain and discomfort and stress and all sorts of things that we perceive as difficult. Yeah, and I've heard I don't know if this is a myth or not, that meditation can make your brain bigger. Oh yeah, yeah. So again this is one that they say, well, let's you know, really unpack this and see if this holds up.

10:33 And they did a big meta analysis or metera analysis where they get all the studies in and they review everything. So famously, this article came out in all the science magazines and everywhere saying that mindfulness meditation increases the gray matter and your brain thickens the gray matter in your brain, and all these different areas to do with different capacities and functions, but also that the brains of fifty year old meditators were like physically young, so our brains atrify they shrink with age, so brains of meditators are larger than brains of non meditators. Essentially, like the brains of fifty year olds were on average seven and a half years younger than what a fifty.

11:15 Year old brain would normally wow look like. But that's come under review because they're saying, well, that's well and good. But these this meta analysis they threw in there all different types of meditation, all different types of meditators, like, they couldn't pull apart, well, how long had they been meditating? What kind of meditation? For? How many hours? You know? Yes, so it's very hard to narrow that down. So yes, there are definitely brain benefits, yes, but we're still not really clear about exactly what how long do you need to be doing to have those benefits? I understand certainly as. A general rule, i'd say get meditating, because. You get meditating, and you just mentioned there are different types of meditation. What are the different types? What sort of meditation should people start with?

11:57 Well, I'm trained in mindfulness meditation, which is what I said. It's just being aware of what's happening as it's happening. So that's otherwise known as insight meditation. For passion and meditation, that's all sort of the same tradition. Okay, So zen meditation is another kind of meditation. I'm not really familiar. I know a lot of people who do mindfulness also have done zen. It seems to be a lot more hardcore. Okay, we'll do. Pretty hard Okay. Transcendental meditation also has evidence, so that's where you do twenty minutes twice a day and you focus on a mantra, so whereas mindfulness you focus on your breath or sounds or physical sensations. Key to transcendental meditation or TM, which easier to say, is the mantra and it's this defined twenty minute kind of period.

12:45 And then there's more sort. Of spiritual people, you know, do more higher self you know, connection type of meditations, spiritual traditions. But so in terms of what is really researched in our western science and a Western psychology, then mindfulness is. Okay, is probably the main one. Well, thus where I've started, yeah, with my husband, and we've tried really hard since meeting you, and you came into our lives with mindfulness meditation and setting aside time where we end up sort of doing it together because the baby's you know, asleep or you know, it just works out that way. So I emailed you a couple of weeks ago, Gas, and I said, Gas, we've been doing our mindfulness meditation but driving us crazy. We don't know if we're getting better at it. We don't know if we're improving. We don't know how do we get better at this? Like this is me wanting my gold.

13:35 Bettle in Classic Star Driving. Yeah, striving and ed and I We're over it. All we do is we sit there and we get distracted, we bring our thoughts back to our breath. But how do we get better? Is it about time like going from ten minutes to fifteen minutes? Or is it how can we get better? And you wrote back to me, and I've got your email here. You said, the important part of this TIF is the non judgment tool, part of mindfulness. You're judging yourself. Yes, I'm not doing it right, I'm not yet good. So the very fact that I was asking you how to get better is the wrong question. It's like not even. But common, right, because that's it. That's the world we live in.

14:16 We live in where we're rewarded for effort, and we want to see evidence of our progress. We want to know we're doing it wrong. You just do it, cash, You just do it. You don't get better at it. You know you're not bad at it. You just have to do it. Is that right? Yeah? Pretty much? That? Yeah. The striving thing is the trickiest part because I just told you some of not even all of, but I just told you some of the benefits of mindfulness, meditation. So naturally people go, okay, great, well I want some of these benefits, so I'm going to go and do this thing. So we're doing this thing to get this result. And then when you start doing it, the teacher says, forget result, just forget reward, just doing the practice, just do it for the sake of doing it. And you go, well, but I go to be but there's got to be a.

14:59 Reason otherwise why would I bother to be doing it? So, yes, it's kind of paradox. I do understand it because in my taekwondo practice in martial arts, there's two sides of it. It's a sport in the Olympics, and you can do it that side of it, or it is a practice, and taekwondo means tay foot kwan foot fist arts taekwondo, and the art part is the practice. You just do it. There's no striving there, you just as part of your day. So I was like, oh, it's sort of like taekwondo. It's the dough part. But you know, I struggle with that even in taekwondo more about the sport part. So it's been really hard for me to just sit back and to just do it. And Ed say, how did you go?

15:42 I don't know, because if you go, I don't know, like and we're emailing you saying. There's no how did you There's no good or bad meditation. That's right, there is no such thing. So if your mind wanders, because Ed saying my mind keeps wandering, I. Can't because he's got a normal human mind. Yeah, so he's like, I'm failing. I said no. The point is that your mind does wander, and you bring it back. It's meant to. That's what your mind does. Your mind secretes thoughts the way your stomach secretes digestive enzymes like that is what your mind's job is to do is to secrete thoughts. So that's a good way of thinking about it. You can't stop that from happening. So with mindfulness, what you're aiming to do is to be able to notice that a thought has come up, which it will inevitably no judgment.

16:26 Remember, yes, it's not oh crap, there's another thought. I'm so bad at this. This is the other thing is, so you notice that a thought has come and as soon as you notice it, let it go. Come back to the breath, or whatever it is you're focusing on. And in fact, that's the point where you could congratulate yourself if you chose to, for being mindful, because the very fact that you've noticed you were thinking is being mindful. So the aim is to not to think like you shouldn't have just a blank na your mind. You'd be dead if you did. Yeah, like right, yeah, So you're not looking at just blank getting rid of thoughts, so you notice them and you. Can come back. You notice, and you come back, and sometimes you have to.

17:07 Sometimes you have to come back eight hundred thousand times. Like that's what it feels like. It feels like you barely get too breadth. One thought can get stuck. That's okay, one thought, and we know how thoughts work. One thought leads to another thought, leads to another thought. Before you know it, you've gone down this whole thought path and maybe you've been two minutes off in thinking before you realize. But that's okay. Then you just say, oh, there I go again, and you just unhook is the word that I like, unhooked from that thinking, Bring that down and come back to the breath again. There'll be other days when maybe you're. Feeling really calm, and maybe your mind's not as busy and maybe it is a little bit quieter, but it doesn't mean to say that that was a good meditation.

17:48 And then now the days of bad meditation. It's just all meditation, okay. And so if you're doing it cash and you start thinking about things you have to do and you bring your mind back, but that thing that you have to do just won't leave you, and you stop and you write it down? Is that bad? Is that bad? Listen to you with the judgmental language, but like you shouldn't stop the meditation to like, shouldn't write something down or get it out of your head? Or I would say what do you look? Some people say, look, I just have to write it down and then I can come back. Yeah, so me. So what you're observing in that is when I have a thought, I worry, right, then it creates what a feeling, and that creates an urge.

18:31 This is the loop. A thought creates a feeling, That feeling prompts an urge to act, and that's what we do all day long. So what we're aiming to do with mindfulness as we sit on that couch is to notice I've had the thought, notice that I've had a feeling that I'm feeling a bit anxious. I'm thinking worried, I'm going to forget that thing, and I have the strong urge to write that down so that I can get it off my mind, same as I might have a strong urge to go and press the start button on that washing machine because I forgot to do it, or to you know, to turn my phone on silence because. I forgot to do that. We have all of these urges to do things, and what we want to do with mindfulness is to be able to notice that urge, but not react to it, not give in to it, to just stay put. And it's hard sometimes, but that's the practice. That's what it's called a practice. You sit and you notice all of these urges. And I always say to people, what happens on that meditation cushion If you're sitting on a cushion, I have a cushion. You might be on the couch.

19:27 Other what happens on the meditation cushion is a metaphor for life, because in your life, all day long, you are driven by thoughts and feelings and urges to react, but you're practicing this skill in meditation of noticing that urge and not having to give in to it comfortable so uncomfortable, tolerating the discomfort and letting it go and coming back to the breath again. And it's like you know from experience, that's hard, that's a skill, but it is such an important skill. So you go into life and you notice that you have a thought and you have a feeling normally what's happening, you're just reacting, reacting, reacting, reacting. And then it can cycle into if you're just reacting to those urges during the mindfulness meditation, then in life you can just be saying yes everything. You're not saying no, you're not carving out self care.

20:16 You wouldn't known any about that, tifoot, you know nothing about. Because that's what I'm working on with Castan is learning to say no and trying to manage that urge of like being there for everyone and giving everything and you know, actually having to give to yourself too. Yeah, exactly. And I just say it's if you can, if you can manage, and it can. It doesn't have to be twenty thirty minutes an hour like back in the day that it used to be that, you know, you'd have to sit for forty five minutes. These days were saying, you know, if you can start with five, go to fifteen, twenty minutes. Great. But everything that you notice, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about your habitual ways of thinking and reacting. And that's in.

20:57 Value, the most important work you can do. Yeah, And the other thing is that you're training your brain. Your brain is being hijacked. There's parts of your brain that light up when you have that urge to write that thing down or to go and do that thing. Parts of your brain are lighting up, and you're training it to come back to breathing. And that's rewiring your brain. So it's not just teaching you the behavioral skill. It's actually changing you neuro biologically, like it's changing the structure and the function of your brain. And it's you know, so over time, over eight weeks, sometimes as little as ten minutes. Actually, there's some studies that have shown ten minutes is enough to reduce mind wandering.

21:37 And in fact, can I tell you. This just what I think of it, please? There was one study where they taught people, high school students actually ten minutes of meditation. Slowed down their mind wandering. We all know how bad we are with mind wandering and multitasking, So this is another way that we're training our brains to sustain attention and focus. Then what they did with those students is they gave them ten. Hours of practice for two weeks, so you know, thirty minutes a day for example. And they found that not only did it strengthen their attention and improve their working memory, which is something they weren't even looking for, and it increased their GRE scores which is their graduate entry schorores for university, by thirty percent. Oh, they improved their scores by thirty percent after two weeks.

22:20 Phenomenal of learning mindfulness meditation. See, I wish I had have learned this when I was doing my VCE and my final year at school. Even didn't you get like at the top, Yeah, I did, But imagine imagine what you couldn't. Imagine what I could have done. But university was very difficult. It was very hard, and I wish I had known about me to meditation to get me through my studies and through my exams. Me too, I'm just dying to get into my daughter's high school she's just started high school and teach it to everybody. Yeah, for students, it should be something. And I know with my brother when he recently did his exams, he was so stressed now and I was saying, try some mindfulness meditation. He was listening to classical music whilst he's studying and trying different things, but it was just so unknown to him. Yeah, so foreign.

23:08 Yeah, and it is I think for a lot of people it is. But so yeah, So that's what we're doing with the meditation practice, and then of course there's all of these benefits in that filter out into our lives. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about more benefits for mindfulness meditation and some easy steps to get started. Welcome back to Crappy to Happy. We're talking mindfulness and meditation, Cass. I can't get enough of these benefits. Do you have any others? There are lots of other benefits to meditation, And one of the ones that I find so interesting is the effect on your DNA actually, so it actually can change the genes in your body. So, for example, one study founded after three days, people who meditated experienced a decrease in the molecules associated with inflammation in the body. So basically it reduces inflammation in the body. If you think about the role that inflammation has in so many diseases.

24:09 Gutszes and everything, weight loss. And so and after only if with experienced meditators, So people who had a long term practice, after only one day, they noticed a down regulation in the genes or so. One day one day. Yeah, So the people who have the longest meditation practice, they tend to when they go into an intense meditation, it's like their body and their brain just reacts, just switches on. They just know what's going on, and so they experience very quick and very profound changes in the activity in their brain and in the expression of you know, the genes in their body. So teleomerase is the It's an enzyme at the end of your DNA strands. Now I'm no biologists, so just bear with me on this, But essentially it protects the telomeres, which are the caps at the end of your DNA strands, and the tello me is shortened with illness and aging. Okay, so people who meditate show an increase in the telomerase, so they tell me, is stay longer for longer. So it actually essentially it doesn't reverse the aging process, but it definitely slows down cellular aging.

25:19 Wow. So again you think about the diseases that come with age, as those tell me is shortened with age and with stress, and we start experiencing all of these illnesses, we can. Actually hold that off. Long term meditation actually can can slow down that process. That is amazing and that is the most important thing. Isn't it I want to talk about. Yeah, well it is. It is. I mean, there's there's changes to your mood, and there's changes to your attention and your focus and decision making and improve the quality of the relationships. But this is like it's making young in your genes. In terms of yeah, well not younger as in younger, but younger as inoclock though. Yeah. Yeah. I did read one study and I don't know if this has ever been published or if it was in the pre stage of being published, but I heard the author speak and she was saying that the Loving Kindness meditation, which is a very particular meditation which focuses on cultivating love and kindness. Clearly it's a Buddhist practice, that she found that it actually switched off the genetic expression of certain diseases. So for example, you can have genes you can have in your DNA a predisposition to cancer or diabetes.

26:30 That's whether they switch on. So whether they switch on and its environmental facts often that will switch on the DNA which decides whether you get the illness or not. And loving kindness meditation was being shown to switch off to reduce the possibility of that that disease would be expressed. It's incredible, it's amazing, so awesome because one of the things that I think so important from going from crappy to happy is about you know, looking after your self, self care and at the end of the day, reversing your biological age, which is different to your chronological age. So I'm thirty four years old, but I'm hoping that due to good lifestyle choices like I don't smoke, I don't drink, I eat well, I exercise, I meditate, that it shaves off years off your life. And last time I did my bioage it was in my twenties, fig, So you know, that's very important. And I think a lot of people do address the diet, the exercise, but a huge hole is looking after your mental health and meditation to reverse that biological age and your genes.

27:41 Meditation and sleep. Yes, sleep, And that brings me back to something I was going to say before. With the mindfulness meditation, it can improve your sleep, can't it? Yeah? For sure? Yeah, because that's how I started to do it because obviously new mum baby baby awake a lot during the night. When I was when I did have time to sleep, I wasn't sleeping very well. Yeah, so I thought, if I can improve the quality of the little sleep that I do have, that's going to help. So that's why I really started to focus on. This meditation, Like right before bed will definitely improve the quality of your sleep. I know if I meditate right before bed, I will sleep a whole lot longer and deeper than I normally would.

28:23 But any meditation. Will help, Okay. And is it the best time to meditate before sleep? Is that the most look at me trying to get the tell me the magic formula. Yeah, the magic formula and the best way to do it and how to achieve. I don't know that there actually is a best time. I think that most people who meditate regularly do it first. Thing in the morning. Okay, you first wake up, your mind's usually the most clear, and if you can wake up and do some meditation number one, it's out of the way. It sets you up for the day. You start already having that more open mind, that you start to have those benefits about not reacting to every thought you know immediately hijacked as you normally would be by your phone. You know all the incoming alerts and messages.

29:08 So you just start the day I think on a better foot. If you do it first thing in the morning, do you tend to be your mind's more open and receptive? Okay, And it's it's a good way. It sets the intention. I suppose to be more mindful throughout the day. Of the day. So if you find that time, you have found that time, then find someonere comfortable to sit. Yes, then what's the next dedicated space? I always say, try to dedicate a space. Okay, what that and a dedicated time? So you said time, then space, So I think that that what that does is like we respond toques and we'll talk and. Another episode about habits. Actually, but we our body responds and our brain responds toques and to habits and to routines So so if you can allocate a space and allocator time, then as soon as you go into that space, at that time, you start to your mind and body starts to respond like it's oh, meditation time.

30:01 Sense. That's like with little babies. Sorry, I'm in the baby world at the moment. But having those sleep cues. For example, Arnold sleeps in a little sleeping bag. You may, you know, give them a dummy as a sleep aide. You may have the roomly dark, or a sound machine, and all these little sleep cues. The little baby who knows nothing knows, oh it's time to sleep. Yes, So it works the same way. We all do. Yeah, we all do. All of our life is driven by habit. So setting up those habits around meditation will help to make that practice more regular and routine. Yeah, like anything. Okay, And then I think I always say to people there's lots and lots of mindfulness apps. People say, oh, where do I start? What would you recommend?

30:43 And there are many. The one that I recommend the most often is insight Timer, and only because it started off it was a free app. It still is free. I think there's a paid version now. It is just a timer. If you can meditate with no instruction. You can just set a for however long you want to start, and you know, start with five minutefits if that's all you can manage. But I would say try to build up to fifteen or twenty, okay. And then it. Also has a whole lot of guided meditations on it, so and I mean five thousand different guided meditations, which. Can be a bit overwhelming for people. But I say, we'll just go to the top twenty and just pick a ten minute meditation and just start, just start somewhere, like, just start.

31:23 Just start. The hardest part is always getting started. Yeah, And a lot of people I find, you know, I've recommended that in the TIFX so commuting so often and people will come and say, oh, yeah, I've found this particular teacher or this particular instructor that I really like. And somebody else, oh, I know like this one. So people will respond to a particular style of meditation or a voice or an accent. And that's the problem with most of those apps is they tend to just be the one voice, you know, so if you don't like it or you get very bored with it. Yeah, So there's a broad variety there on that app. That's not the only one, but it's one. It's so powerful, and I'm looking forward to doing your eight week mindfulness course online. I'm looking you can do it online. You know you have to go anywhere. You can do it online.

32:07 It's so easy. Ca. Yeah, I can't wait for you to do that course to you. Yeah. So I created an eight week online meditation course for this very reason. I've been teaching meditation to people like individually and in groups, and it's challenging. To get to an eight week class. You have to find a venue. People don't have time to meditate a class. And then you've got a juggle family commandments, and you've got to drive and park and all for me as being instructors for people, but I would have to hire find a venue. Finding a venue that's available at the same time every week challenging. So I put it online. It's an adaptation of the Mindfulness Bace Cognitive Therapy course. It's all audio so people can just it's called Mindfulness for Busy People and so it's just you can just listen to there ten minutes long, the little lessons. It's got all the meditations there, it's got worksheets that you can do when we have a little Facebook group.

32:59 It's awesome and it's so exciting. Yeah, it's really it's the first round. We've done one round on your website. Yeah, I'll put a link in the description. I've run it through once on one platform of shifting to a new custom platform, so I'll have that url ready and I'll put it in there. And yeah, the first round who went through called it life changing. They got so much benefit out of it, the improvements. I know that we're not about striving, but we do get people. I do get people to do an assessment at the beginning and assess a self assessment at the end to self rate their levels of mindfulness and self compassion. And people really notice really big improvements and which you know, the most important thing is that those scores on paper actually reflect the changes that they feel within themselves. They're less reactive, they're more positive. You know, they're having better relationships with their kids and with their partners. They use this what we call the three minute breathing space. So that's fundamental to just manage life and manage stresses. And it's amazing. So I'm really excited about that So TIV, do you think that that discussion has helped you to go back to meditation with a different expectation or a different attitude to make that more.

34:15 Yeah. Absolutely, it's really helped me because now I see that the meditation is the training and the mindfulness is the practice, So I can relate to that. And I just have to take the judgment away because sometimes Ed will be meditating and he'll open his eyes. I'm staring at him and he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I just can't get it right. So I'm just going to lie down and relax and just you know, understand that the wandering is part more. It's completely normal, and there's no gold stars, there's no medals. There's no gold stars. No the inside time I has a gold star function, I turned it off because I was becoming too attached to the stars. Actually, I don't think I should even be timing myself because if I get ten minutes today or want to get twelve minutes tomorrow, I'm just going to take all pressure off.

35:02 So Sharon Solzberg, who is quite a prominent mindfulness meditation teacher globally, she has a saying that the healing is in the return, not in the mind, never having wandered, So that's a great thing to remember. It's in the return, in the unhooking as you say, yeah, I love it. Well. We hope that helped you, listener, it definitely helped me. In the next episode, we're going to be talking about changing habits and the motivational myth. We'll speak to you soon. Thanks so much for tuning in. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cash Dunn, produced by Davis Lelenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson.

35:48 Listener