Stress is a Trance You Can Wake Up From

Episode Transcript

[00:00] Debra: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I am Debra Maldonado,

[00:04] Dr. Rob: Dr. Rob.

[00:05] Debra: We’re glad to be back, and we have a special episode today. We are going to talk about stress and the spiritual approach to managing and transcending stress, actually, and how to really not just deal with it and cope with it, but how to really overcome it and really get to the roots. So that’s what we’re going into today. Before I begin, I do want to remind you: please subscribe to our channel if you’re watching us on YouTube or if you’re listening to us on Spotify or iTunes. Make sure you click that subscribe button so you can get every episode of Jung on Purpose. So let me just say this: stress is a trance that you can wake up from.

[00:43] Dr. Rob: I love that.

[00:44] Debra: And so, I want to also start with a quote or a famous saying that Mark Twain said, and I think I’m going to botch it a little bit. He said, “There’s a lot of terrible things that happen in my life. Most of it never came true.” And it is this kind of how our mind creates these terrible, terrible states and experiences that aren’t reality. And how do we discern things that we should take care of, and things that are just our mind putting us in a trance? But you talk about that stress is important from, you know, a survival standpoint.

[01:18] Dr. Rob: Yeah, we need to have stress. It’s needed to kind of put pressure on us to motivate us. In other words, we need that kind of fire under our seat, right, to get going.

[01:33] Debra: Yeah, so most people aren’t motivated until they’re in fear, and then they’re motivated. You know, right?

[01:38] Dr. Rob: The stress kind of, you know, ramping up the nervous system a little bit is good. It’s a bell curve. So if you think of a bell, the shape of a bell, at the very top, as stress increases, our performance goes up, but only to a certain point. Once the stress begins to get overwhelming, then our performance starts to drop. So that’s the bell curve: it rises as we’re getting stressed and revved up to meet the challenge. But then, if it becomes chronic or overwhelming, too much stress, then we start to drop.

[02:15] Debra: Well, when I first started doing speaking, I hired a coach, and she was teaching me how to speak. She was a speech coach, and she said that when she would do performances, she was in New York City, that if none of them were stressed or nervous before the performance, they knew it would be a terrible performance, because the stress actually brought the passion and the creativity of that experience. And she said, when we don’t have stress, it’s almost like flat, and people can feel it. So I think that’s what you’re talking about, is that it can enhance performance, but not too much. And then you get people that are overly stressed, and they fall apart when they’re doing a talk, or they’re, you know, shaking or nervous, or their voice gets different, or they shake. I watched a couple TED talks, and people swing back and forth to soothe the stress, and so there’s a lot of ways people cope with it. But yeah, I think it’s important. We need to be motivated in a way. If nothing motivated us, we’d be blah, but I think we’re overstimulated right now. You also talked about animals, and we were talking before the show that we really like the animals. You know, they deal with stress a lot differently. I mean, they need it to survive. They need a little stress if a predator’s after them.

[03:37] Dr. Rob: Absolutely. The research by Sapolsky, who’s on YouTube all the time, or he’s all over the place, but really good researcher on stress. He wrote a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. That makes sense, and the reason why they don’t get ulcers is because they use stress in the moment. When the lion is chasing them, they are ready to fight, fight or flight, right? The fight or flight response, and we’ll talk about that. But as soon as the threat passes, they drop it. They relax instantly. Now, what humans do with our big brains is we ruminate on the incident, right? We tell ourselves a story about it and how terrible it was, or how brave we were, or something. But we keep that story running in our mind instead of just forgetting about it. Now it’s past. The danger’s gone. But when we ruminate upon it, it’s almost like the stress is still present with us, and so our nervous system revs up a little bit.

[04:48] Debra: And isn’t that like what people have with PTSD? They kind of are reliving it in their mind, and their body thinks it’s still happening. Is that what PTSD is?

[04:57] Dr. Rob: I mean, it’s a little bit more complex than that, but PTSD is, yeah, going through a threatening situation, a life-threatening or a threat of injury, that you never have time to really metabolize and really process. And so the mind holds on to it, because that’s its nature, and then it starts to show up in dreams, nightmares, and visions, or the startle response, to where anything that reminds you of that incident will activate the same response over.

[05:34] Debra: And you’re right back there again.

[05:36] Dr. Rob: You’re right back there to that experience. So I have an ulcer story to tell you.

[05:42] Debra: Nice.

[05:44] Dr. Rob: Because zebras don’t get ulcers, but humans do get ulcers. Yeah, and an ulcer, we can think of it as a symptom of chronic stress, right? When the stress doesn’t go away, it’s there day after day after day. So I was in my early 20s, and it was one of my first serious jobs. I was working my way through college, working at this hospital, and I did all kinds of things. And eventually, I ended up doing respiratory therapy, which was a pretty good job, but very stressful. I had to go to the emergency room. I had to go to emergency codes, right, where a person is in trouble, and they call a code, and everybody runs there to help the person. So I wasn’t used to that, and I started to feel this burning sensation at the pit of my stomach, and I asked a couple of doctors there, “What do you think that is?” And they said, “You’re developing an ulcer. You better get it checked out.” And an ulcer is when there’s too much acid in the stomach, and it starts to burn a hole through the lining of your stomach. Pretty serious stuff if untreated.

[07:05] Debra: When you’re 21, you’re a young person, right?

[07:07] Dr. Rob: Yeah, I was a young person. I had never really been exposed to that kind of stress. And so I started looking at the literature, and I kind of started to understand: it’s just my overreaction, my over-worrying about doing a good job in this stressful situation. So I started to look at meditation, yoga, but one book that really helped me, that we still use today, is Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

[07:43] Debra: That’s a great book.

[07:44] Dr. Rob: That book just helped me understand how to relax, how to drop the situation, and it was something like this. The idea was: think of yourself as a mirror. When you’re in a situation, you’re reflecting that image of that experience perfectly, just like a mirror does. But when that situation passes, you drop it, just like the mirror. It doesn’t hold on to the images that it reflects, right? It doesn’t ruminate on “I was reflecting somebody’s image, and now I recall it constantly.” It doesn’t do that. So that was the practice, the way the Zen teacher explained it, and it was very effective. I immediately started to get better, and my ulcer went away.

[08:39] Debra: So that is really interesting. So, what did you do to resolve your stress?

[08:46] Dr. Rob: Yeah, that’s a good question, right? Because insight is not enough. So, I got the insight through looking at the literature and talking to professionals. But it wasn’t until I started to do something about it, which was meditation and relaxation. This goes back to the work of Herbert Benson at Harvard in the 1960s. He was a physiologist studying blood pressure and physiological responses in humans, when these Transcendental Meditation students came to him and asked him to study them while they were meditating, and he hooked them up to his machines, of course. And what he found, later on he called it the relaxation response, which is a wakeful hypometabolic state. Hypo means low; metabolic means all your metabolic states go down or are suppressed. And this relaxation response is incompatible with anxiety or the fight or flight response. In other words, they can’t coexist. So the more you practice getting into a relaxed state, the better off you’ll be. And if you can create that state of mind, or state of body, consciously, at will, you’re in pretty good shape, because that means when you feel stress coming on, you can kind of induce the relaxation response, and it’s incompatible with stress and anxiety.

[10:29] Debra: Well, when I was doing hypnosis, that’s exactly what we learned: the relaxation response and that research. And one of the things that we were told, too, is that when you’re in that relaxation response, not only do you reduce stress and anxiety, but also your body goes back to homeostasis. Like instantly, it finds a way to reset. So it’s almost like resetting your whole biological system as well. Your heart rate slows, blood pressure goes down, all these other physiological things that the stress causes, it alleviates. And they told us that when we did hypnosis on people for any kind of illness, you know, I would do a lot of post-cancer hypnosis and childbirth hypnosis, which is funny, because it sounds like, oh, that can’t be possible, but it works. They think the relaxation response has a lot to do with the healing, versus just thinking. The words, “you’re getting better and better, and you’re healthier,” those are great, but it’s the actual relaxation response that has a healing effect.

But here’s the thing: when we get into stress, there’s an opportunity here, because we have normal stresses in life. Everyone has normal stresses, but there’s something else. There is a famous Buddhist story about two arrows. A man gets shot with one arrow, and then he gets shot with a second arrow. The first arrow is the pain of the world, the pains of being alive: the suffering, sickness, heartache, death, getting older. The events of life happen to all of us, regardless of how spiritual we are and how enlightened we are. We still have these things that happen. The second arrow represents our mind and the story we tell ourselves about that stress. And actually, the second arrow is the one that causes most of the pain. Like you said, the wild animal has a stressful situation, but they soon forget it. And the reason why humans have such a hard time with stress is because they love to make stories and ruminate on it and stay there. And I think the source of that second arrow is the idea that we believe we’re the ego. I think every problem in our life goes down to that one thing. I always tell our clients that there’s only one problem you’re trying to solve: that you believe you’re the ego. If you believe you’re the ego, this little I in the little boat on the river, like we talk about, trying to survive, it’s going to be a very stressful existence to live in this world. So we have to find a spiritual solution to stress.

And most of the time, people now seek respite from the stress, and one of the ways is taking yoga. “I’m going to do my yoga class. I feel so relaxed afterwards.” Awesome! It’s so great for your body. It’s great for your mind. Doing rituals, like going to get massages or doing breathwork, and having some kind of relaxation ritual. Those are really wonderful, but if we keep having to go back to those things to deal with the stress, maybe we can also work with the stress itself. And I call that rumination a negative feedback loop. Like I said in the beginning of the podcast, it’s a trance we’re in. Like hypnosis, we’re hypnotizing ourselves into believing our life is terrible, and we’re just on this autopilot of thinking. And even in neuroscience, they talk about the default mode network and that kind of automatic thinking, and we get into habits of worrying about the same things: worrying about what people think of us, what’s going to happen next week? Am I going to be able to pay my bills? Am I going to get that promotion? Am I going to find the right person? Is my husband going to leave me? My wife going to leave me? Are they cheating on me? Are my kids going to grow up to be okay? You know, there’s so much in life to worry about, and we can spend our life there, ruminating.

[14:47] Dr. Rob: Absolutely, yeah. I love that story that the Buddha tells, and in general, Eastern philosophy has this idea that a disciplined mind will be like your guardian angel, essentially, and your genie. It will give you everything you want. But an undisciplined mind can hurt you more than your worst enemy. And that is so true, because if you let the mind run on its own nature, and just experience the world directly without ever considering “what is my mind doing, and how is it doing this,” the mind tends toward the negative aspect. It has a negative bias. This is very easy to observe. If in the morning nine people say good morning to you and make you feel good, but one person disses you and doesn’t acknowledge you, the rest of the day you’re going to focus on that one person. Regardless of how many people give you positive affirmation, the one that doesn’t is the one that sticks in the mind. So that way of thinking, it’s natural. It’s in all of us. We have a negative bias, and I think it’s primarily for survival purposes, so that we focus on the problem and try to solve it. But if we don’t train the mind, then it becomes a habit that we tend to focus on the negative things, on the problems, on and on, and that is the second arrow. It’s what causes most of our suffering. We all experience difficulties in life, but we can get through them most of the time. And to ruminate on them, to think in negative terms about them, and then to identify with them, which is the big real culprit of our suffering, that we start to identify, to become one with that suffering, to become the sufferer of the story, the main victim of the story.

[17:06] Debra: Well, can I also suggest that we learn how to think by listening to our parents, too, and our families? Like, part of my family was very negative. My nana was kind of negative, complaining a lot. So as a kid, you’re picking that up, and you’re just learning how to think through your family. So if your parents were negative and complaining a lot, and also genetically, I think there is some kind of genetic component to having a sunny disposition or a negative disposition. I mean, we all have a negative bias, but it can be more extreme. If you’re around a lot of negativity and not a lot of possibility, it could affect your ability to really lift yourself out of the dark cloud.

[17:59] Dr. Rob: Yeah.

[18:00] Debra: And so, what does the Gita say about this? The Bhagavad Gita, and Eastern philosophy? We already know that some of the really wonderful rituals in Eastern philosophy, like yoga and breathwork and those types of modalities, give us a temporary relief. But what else can people do when they’re stressed, for more of a lasting transcendence of the stress?

[18:30] Dr. Rob: Yeah. Well, first of all, yoga in the Gita is considered a psycho-spiritual discipline, not just a physical one. The asanas, the physicality of it, is one aspect of it. But the primary yoga was disciplining the mind so that one could tap into consciousness, pure consciousness, which is a very different way of practicing, right? So from that perspective, there are various practices that are really powerful, and now they’re being studied psychologically in labs all around the world. One of them is equanimity. Equanimity simply means remaining steady while the external world goes up and down. In other words, you’re having a good time, then you’re having a bad time. You’re having a good time, then you have a bad time. And we know the world turns in cycles, and that’s the nature of our human experience. Whatever goes up comes down. And so the practice of holding the mind steady, meaning that you are in charge of your mental state, you’re not handing it over to external circumstances, that’s a very powerful practice.

[20:00] Debra: Well, some people would say, “Well, does that mean I can’t be happy when I enjoy the happy parts of my life?”

[20:07] Dr. Rob: On the contrary, it means you can be happy, yeah, regardless of what’s going on. That’s the key.

[20:15] Debra: Yeah, be happier, because it’s not to counter the darkness. “Oh, I was in the doldrums for a while. Now I’m happy.” I hear this all the time: “The other shoe’s going to drop.” We still have that attachment and think it’s not going to last. So it’s not true happiness. Even when good things happen to us, on some level we feel like it’s not going to last, because we’re not in a state of equanimity, and we’re buoyed by the ups and downs of life.

[20:46] Dr. Rob: Yeah, that’s right. And so it means that you can determine your state of mind regardless of the ups and downs of the external world. We know the external world will go up and down, but do I have to go on that roller coaster ride, or can I determine my mindset consciously? “Today I’m going to be happy. I choose to be happy.” So it’s a choice. That’s equanimity, and of course, it requires practice.

[21:21] Debra: But that’s hard. It’s really hard.

[21:23] Dr. Rob: It’s really hard, because our senses are tuned outward, and we’re constantly looking at the environment to get clues as to whether I should be happy or sad.

[21:34] Debra: Also, the ego is attached, so the ego has a hard time letting go of these external events, because we misunderstand. We think that when good things happen, they’re happening to this ego, and when bad things happen, they’re happening to this ego. But the ego is not even real. That’s the mind-blowing part of it. There’s no I. It feels like there’s an I. It seems like there’s a Debra or there’s a Rob, but ultimately, and this blows people’s minds, even if you can’t accept it yet, think about it: there’s no solid you. We’re just having a temporary experience of an individual self in different moments. So it’s like, what is it hanging on to? What is it clinging to? It’s a misperception, right?

[22:29] Dr. Rob: Yeah, that might cause more anxiety to people.

[22:32] Debra: Okay. Oh my God! Sorry. Okay. Let’s just say there is a you, but it’s not the you you think it is. How about that?

[22:39] Dr. Rob: Yeah. Okay.

[22:40] Debra: There is a you. It doesn’t mean you don’t exist, but the ego I, this little tiny powerless self, does not exist. The only thing that exists is your true self. Does that seem better for you? Okay.

[22:54] Dr. Rob: Yeah. Let’s just say we’re talking about practices that are easily adapted in today’s world, okay. So equanimity is certainly something we can work with. The idea is simply to take back the power from the external circumstances, because when we depend on the external world to give us happiness, what we’re saying is, “I will only be happy if the external world is arranged in a particular pattern that I agree with and that I desire.” Now, what are we doing there? We’re handing over our power to external circumstances, and we know the external circumstances are always changing and very volatile.

[23:42] Debra: Well, even look at money. How many times have you worried about paying the bills, and then it worked out fine, but you spent so many weeks or days freaking out about a bill that came in that was unexpected? Or getting that promotion, and you want to get that dream house, but you’re not there yet. Or you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re trying to make it to the next level, and you’re not there yet. And it’s that need and that attachment to money. You’re giving it so much power, and it’s like putting it on a pedestal. Anything external that causes stress, you’re putting it up on a pedestal. And what equanimity does is bring it down. You’re taking it off the pedestal and saying, the lump of clay and the lump of gold are equal, and it’s just our mind that makes it different.

And again, we don’t know why things show up for us. Many times people think, “Oh, this is a terrible thing,” but then it turns out to be a good thing. There’s a famous story of a farmer. I won’t tell the whole story, because we told a lot of stories today. But he says, “Could be good, could be bad.” I’m sure you’ve all heard that story. There were good things that happened, and the townspeople said, “You’re so lucky,” and then bad things happened: “Oh, you have such bad luck.” And he was like, “Could be good. Could be bad.” And everything always unfolded to the next step for him. The bad things actually turned out good, and the good things actually turned out bad. It’s to let go of that judgment, to know that whether this event or this result is bad or good is up for debate. So that’s equanimity. It’s not about ignoring bad things, like “Oh, I have cancer, it’s equal,” or “I have a financial crisis, that’s equal,” or “I lost my job.” It’s not to not pay attention to those things, but to understand we don’t know what this means yet. We aren’t reading the future. We’re just looking at what is right now. But in that moment when there’s equanimity, there’s 100% possibility. When there’s no equanimity, we are really just reinforcing “that’s good and that’s bad,” and kind of stuck in what they call karma in Eastern philosophy, the cycle of karma where you’re repeating the same pattern. So equanimity gives you freedom in that moment from being attached to that thing, so that you can be open to a possibility, instead of collapsing it into “this is bad, and that’s what it’s going to be.” And then you decide you’re upset, and you need to go get a massage, and maybe I’ll go to yoga now and escape from this tension. But when we start practicing these tools, then we don’t feel like we have to go to yoga for survival and release. We can go to yoga because it’s something that puts us in tune with ourselves, and it’s actually probably more enjoyable and more beneficial if you’re not doing it just for stress relief.

[26:49] Dr. Rob: The other powerful practice that is discussed in the Gita and the Upanishads is the witness mind. The witness mind is a little bit trickier, but there’s actually research being done now in the West. In the West, it’s called metacognition. Not quite the same as the witness mind as it’s described in the ancient wisdom traditions, but fairly close. The witness mind is something like this: if you’re suffering, let’s say you’re experiencing a loss and you feel sad, your own awareness is experiencing that sadness, but it knows that you feel sad, which means there’s an observer in your mind observing you being sad. So you have to do a little bit of mental gymnastics here, which we’re not used to. Most of us are not trained to think about our mind this way. We think about our mind as this awareness in me looking out through my eyes and experiencing the world, period. But no, the mind is dynamic, and it has parts to it. There’s a part that observes our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, on and on. In this higher knowledge, in this wisdom tradition, the witness is unaffected by the experience. In other words, it’s completely free.

[28:33] Debra: It’s like someone watching a movie. You’re watching the drama play out, but you’re not personally affected. You may feel some of the feelings that the main character has, and the tragedies and the ups and downs, but you’re not the character. There’s a part of you that knows you’re not that character. That’s a way to think about it.

[28:54] Dr. Rob: Yes, and we’re oversimplifying it, but this is essentially the practice: when you’re experiencing something difficult, like a difficult emotion or a difficult experience, separate your witness mind from that experience. Now, you’re not repressing the experience. In other words, you’re not trying to get rid of it, push it away, or deny it in any way. You’re letting it arise in the mind, but you’re also letting the witness mind be very present and observe that experience. So here’s a simple mental experiment that you can practice right now. Imagine a giraffe. We’ve all seen giraffes in the zoo or on film. Take a moment to visualize it: long legs, strange body, long neck, strange head with little horns, long tongue, all that stuff, big eyes. Now I’m going to ask you a second question, or request: do you see that giraffe in your mind? Yes or no? I do. The one that looked into your mind to observe if indeed the giraffe was there, that’s the witness mind. Very subtle, but it’s there. It’s able to observe, “Am I seeing that giraffe in my imagination?” And it can verify yes or no. That is the witness mind. With practice, you can cultivate this aspect of the mind to where it becomes very powerful, and you start to identify with the witness instead of the person or the experience of loss, or grief, or sadness, or anything. Now, it doesn’t diminish the power of the emotions. The emotions are still there. We’re letting them arise, but we’re not identifying with them.

[31:03] Debra: So what happens to the witness when we’re in stress? It’s there, but we’re not aware of it. The witness is always aware, because awareness is always there. It’s just that we’re so absorbed in our thinking that we don’t realize the witness is there. We believe we’re the thoughts, we believe we’re the I, we believe these things are real, like a trance. And then the witness is like waking up and stepping back and being more conscious of ourselves. Would you say?

[31:41] Dr. Rob: Yes, it has to do with identification.

[31:44] Debra: Okay.

[31:46] Dr. Rob: So when we identify with our mind-body, we identify with the experiences of the mind-body. In other words, we think, “I am the one that is experiencing these things,” and therefore our awareness is channeled into that thought that I am the one experiencing this, whether it be happy or sad.

[32:10] Debra: And it makes it real, too, because now it’s real, and I have to worry, and it’s solid, and I need to deal with it, be afraid of it.

[32:21] Dr. Rob: When we identify with the witness, like you said, it’s like watching a movie. We’re not trying to stop the movie or trying to control it, but we’re experiencing it from the point of view of the witness. We’re identifying with the witness, not the actor that’s taking the actions and experiencing the experience. That’s a very different sensation in the mind-body. “Okay, I’m witnessing my mind experiencing sadness, happiness, delight,” on and on, “but I’m not caught up in it.” So we’re not interfering with the experience, but we’re observing it.

[33:10] Debra: So that’s awesome for stress. People are like, “Yes, please sign me up. I want to be the witness. I want to separate myself from this noise.” But the same thing happens in a different way when we’re so excited about something that happened to us in our lives: we got a promotion, or had a big deal come through in our business, or we found the love of our life. We are still in that same trance. It’s the same mechanism, even though it’s more positive. We’re still caught up in “this thing is happening to me.” Even in those states, we want to swim in those happy times. Remember to use the witness mind there as well, because that’s going to train us for when the dark times come. We’re trained in both, and that’s equanimity again, right? It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it, but remember the witness: “Okay, I’m having this great success.” I sometimes talk in third person, like, “Debra’s having this great success in her life, this character.” You lose that direct identity that creates the attachment. So that’s something you can do as well. Just talk to yourself in third person. “Look at Debra, she got a promotion this week. I’m so proud of her. She’s so happy, and that’s great. But I’m the witness. I’m not the character, but I get to play this character, and it’s wonderful. But it’s not all who I am.”

And I think that’s the beauty of Eastern philosophy compared to most Western psychologies. Western psychology is all about: you are this person, and this is you, and everything happened to you, and we’ve got to fix you. The Eastern way of thinking of it is this: “you” is just a tiny, tiny little piece. All the things that happen in your life are like a pinprick compared to the vastness and grandeur of who you really are, and the power that you hold. So it’s about giving your mind a new perspective on how to look at problems, and then you’re able to look at them with equanimity. You’re able to find creative solutions that you wouldn’t if you’re all caught up in fear. When people are caught up in fear, they keep running from it and making more mistakes, and then they create more fear, because they’re in that trance again: the stress trance, or the joy trance, the joy delusion.

Also, when we get overwhelmed… When I first started out, I worked with a lot of kids, and it was really hard to get them to relax. They’d relax a little bit when I was doing hypnosis, but they loved this one thing. And I actually told it to my boss, who was stressed out at one point. When a child had a lot of anxiety and stress, I’d say, “Okay, I want you to picture a big red balloon in front of you, and I want you to put all those thoughts and all those worries into that balloon, and I want you to watch that balloon slowly move away.” So it’s sort of the witness mind, but it gives them something to do with the thought. Sometimes people need something a little bit more mechanical. I told it to my boss, and he came back the next day, and he’s like, “I love that balloon exercise.” He was the CEO of the company, and he was like, “This is awesome.” So you can do simple things like that, too, to remind yourself: don’t get caught up. Wake up! Wake up! Interrupt that pattern. It’s called a pattern interrupt, because if we don’t interrupt the pattern, we tend to stay in it. So, anything we can do to interrupt the pattern, and again, finding those long-term solutions, so that when you do those beautiful rituals and techniques, and go do your yoga, it’s actually more enjoyable than if you’re just doing it to get out of a stressful state. You can actually enter a more enlightened state and maybe go to higher states. So practice that as well, to get yourself to higher states.

[37:17] Dr. Rob: Since we’re here and we’re talking about it, can you guide us through a visualization or meditation to relax us?

[37:25] Debra: Sure. This is something really simple that you can do, and I used to do this when I was in the corporate world, because I didn’t have 15 minutes to meditate. You can actually do this in the shower. It’s a progressive relaxation, and it could take one minute to do, and you can go as long as you want. I’m going to talk through the whole thing, because we don’t want dead air on audio where people think something happened, but I would love for you to just enjoy it. If you’re driving or operating heavy machinery, please pull over, or pause until you’re in a place where you can enjoy this.

So imagine just sitting in your chair, putting your feet flat on the floor if you can, and just close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Just nice, slow, deep breaths in and out. And with every exhale, just feel your body sinking deeper into the chair. Feel the weight lifted off of you already. And at the top of your head, imagine a warm, beautiful, glowing light. Imagine this light is calm and peace, moving into your scalp, relaxing your scalp and your forehead, moving through all the bones and muscles of your cheeks and face, relaxing your face. Allow it to drop your jaw. Soothing, relaxing light, moving down the back of your head into your neck, moving down your shoulders. Feel your shoulders relax. Notice any tension in your shoulders and just let it go. Moving down your arms and out your fingertips. You may even feel a tingling in your palms as this warm light penetrates your palms, feeling activated and relaxed. Opening your hands, just relaxing. Moving down your back. Keep your back straight, but feel that light move through the muscles of your back and all through your core, your upper chest, and your lower body. Really start to feel that breath go in and out as this warm light fills your lungs, moves through all of your internal organs, purifying and bringing them to perfect health, dropping into your hips. Feel your hips just let go as that warm, relaxing light moves down your legs, past your knees, down into your lower legs, down into your feet. Feel your toes relaxing, the bones of your feet relaxing, and feel that light move out of your feet and down into the earth, through the floorboards of your house into the earth beneath you, anchoring you in. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to do. Just be here and now in this moment, and allow yourself to experience this moment of peace. And open your eyes.

Hello, Rob. Rob almost fell asleep.

Dr. Rob: Yeah, I don’t want to go.

Debra: Well, this is a really wonderful thing, too. If someone’s sick, please do this with your family members. This brings that relaxation response and helps their body heal faster. Really amazing stuff. And if you have trouble going to sleep, do this head-to-toe relaxation, and just name the body parts as you relax, going down. Very, very simple. It’s a very common technique. Many might have heard it before.

[40:51] Dr. Rob: Okay.

[40:52] Debra: But really just a quick thing. And if you’re in a rush, go in the shower and imagine the shower is golden light, and you can watch all your worries drain out the drain. Just let your worries go down the drain, no pun intended. You’re just feeling that release in the morning, especially before you go to work, when people are thinking of that day. Just give yourself that moment. And what we realize is that when we know how to work with our mind, we don’t let our mind work us. I think a lot of us let our mind work us, and let our mind drive us. But we have the reins, so we can get the reins of our mind back and be able to direct it where we want it to go.

[41:36] Dr. Rob: Yeah, yeah, it’s so important, especially these days. I recently read a headline in the New York Times. It said something like, “Our nervous system was never designed to manage this kind of world situation.” It’s very chaotic. A lot of changes.

[41:58] Debra: The last time we had this kind of upheaval was World War II, where the whole geopolitical system changed, with Germany invading different countries and different alliances forming, and we’re seeing this happen now. The alliances are shifting because of the U.S. and the different players, and it’s like a restructuring, and it makes people unhappy, uneasy. We don’t like change, especially uncertainty. And COVID didn’t do much for us. It created stress initially, and we’re still lingering from that. Young people especially are still lingering from COVID, and social media. We had 24/7 cable news in the ’80s and ’90s, but now we have it on our phone. Every moment we can look and see news. We can see people being upset, and social media and the social networks are constantly getting you agitated on purpose so you stay engaged. The algorithm is all designed for stress. So we have to really be careful of our mind. It’s like Pema Chödrön. I love her. She used to say that if we had a broken arm and we went into a crowd, we would probably wear a cast and make sure our arm is protected. But we never think of protecting our mind. We never think, “Oh, I have to watch my mind in this place,” or “I have to watch my mind when I’m watching a network series or documentary.” Everyone’s into the true crime documentaries: I’ve got to watch my mind. I’ve got to watch my mind when I’m reading the news, or talking to people that are negative about the end of the world, doom and gloom. And of course, it doesn’t mean that we ignore those things, but we have to watch our mind. We can’t let our mind go to catastrophizing and make us miserable. They say there are the things you can change and the things you can’t, and knowing the difference. That idea is really powerful. What can we do? We can always work with our mind.

[43:58] Dr. Rob: I love the message of the Gita, to take the reins of your mind, right? You have to drive the mind, like you said, instead of letting the mind drive you. And that’s a very powerful image of us being able to take the reins of our own mind, which essentially means take the reins of our life, because everything we experience, everything we do, arises from the mind, from this phenomenon we call consciousness. So thank you for that beautiful meditation.

[44:34] Debra: So we hope this helped today, and I think the message is to think about the stress and what the opportunity is here. Our friend James Hollis says, “The thing is not the thing.” So what we’re worried about is not what we’re worried about. And so the key is to get to the root of what is really bugging us. What’s the cause? Not just the thoughts, but the underlying cause. And we always recommend coaching, depth coaching, with people that work with the unconscious, like our coaches and us. You really get to the root of what’s happening and why you’re stressed, because once you become conscious of it and aware of it, you’re able to deal with it. It’s almost like we’re stressed, but we’re dealing with this nefarious figure that’s pulling the strings behind the scenes, and we don’t know who that figure is or why they’re doing this. So we see that part of ourselves that’s driving this, and we become more conscious, and then we can deal with it just like anything else. And we have our Second Horizon coaching program starting at the beginning of November. If you haven’t checked it out, we do have a little commercial that we are so excited about, for people who don’t want to be coaches, but want to learn the work, and want to grow with us. So, just a little plug for Second Horizon coaching. It’s a great community of people looking to find their purpose, individuate, do the deeper work, and be happier in life. Truly happy, from a deep place.

[45:57] Dr. Rob: I love it.

[45:58] Debra: All right. Well, take care, everyone. We’ll see you next week on Jung on Purpose. See you soon. Bye bye.