Crazy Wisdom

Anders Jones is the CEO of Facet Wealth, a financial management company that works with financial advisors to grow practices, enhance service and plan responsible transitions. He is a daily meditator. Meditation helps him to find balance in the face of rapid change and knowing when to change based on the current circumstances. It also helps him make better decisions and be more empathetic to the people he is managing. You will like this episode if you want to learn more about empathetic or service based management, how to start something new which results in stress, or some really good tips for maintaining a daily meditation practice while living a busy life.

Ruben Harris: Founder of Breaking Into Startups

Demian Rosenblatt is a graphic designer who has done design work for both tech startups and larger organizations. He just recently helped the MTA find their core emotional value and put that into their new branding and design. He has some really interesting insights into how to protect the integrity of the design while interfacing with multiple stakeholders in large organizations. You will like this episode if you want to find out the difference between art and design, if you want insights into how to find your purpose, or if you just want to hear a voice full of joy and creativity (Demian has one of those voices). You will also like it if you are interested in the question: "What is the connection between stress and creativity?".

Why you should listen to this episode: Andy started taking pictures of yogis around the world in 2012. Anyone who spends time with people devoted to a yoga practice has a lot of interesting stories to share. Andy does not disappoint. The New York times even did a piece on his work. There is so much valuable info here in terms of yoga's growing popularity around the world. It's like a virus and Andy has a lot of insight into its spread. Andy's voice is so soothing and melodic. Seriously, listen to this episode just to hear his voice! If you want to check out more about Andy's work here is a link to his website, which features his new book, Serpent in the Wilderness. The book was recently published by Kehrer Verlag.

One of the most powerful lessons I learned from this interview is that Keith is a relentless self-experimenter. Everything he talks about in this interview he has tested on himself. What of the most effective ways to learn is to learn the hard lessons from other people so you don't have to learn them yourself the hard way. Keith offers a lot of wisdom here for you to absorb.Keith suggested the book "The Upside of Stress" to me on our twitter exchange. This book basically says that the conventional wisdom that stress is harmful is totally crazy. Instead, stress is an inevitable part of being human and that the stress response can be a huge tool for growth when you view stress not as a threat but as a challenge. We talk a lot about this.We also talk a lot about the evidence behind High Intensity Interval Training and how it can lead to feeling better throughout your life. Keith gives a lot of wisdom about his own HIIT practice and how it helps him to stay productive throughout the day.

Why you should listen to this episode: Julia has some really great techniques and tips for practicing mindfulness and meditation. She is an experienced teacher and has taught all around the world including in refugee camps. Julia offers some powerful wisdom about how to operate when surrounded by stress and friction. She does not sugar coat her wisdom and if you value truth you will find it here. I've found that many people are unaware when they meet truly compassionate and wise people. Julia is one of these people and I ask you to listen closely to the wisdom she has to offer as it is powerful.

Bill Tai is a very successful entrepreneur and investor. Not only is he successful according to external validators of success, but he is also humble and shares his knowledge and brilliance without expectation of reciprocation. It is a rare gift to be both successful and humble, and our conversation contains actionable wisdom to do this. Even though my podcast is primarily about meditation and its effect on creativity, we veered into talking about the history of work and how technology is contributing to a lot of change. A fundamental component of mindfulness training is the realization that everything is impermanent and change is the only constant. We are entering a period of rapid change. Bill gives some good insights on how to capitalize on this trend. I think the most valuable thing I got out of this conversation is that whether rich or poor, you have to find the thing that lights you up on the inside. For Bill, that activity is kitesurfing. It is the keystone activity for which the rest of his life is rejuvenated by. Listen to this episode if you want to find actionable insights into how to find joy in your life.

Julia Plevin is an author and entrepreneur. She is the founder of the Forest Bathing Club in San Francisco. She started studying the mental health consequences that people suffer from when they don't get enough time in nature. After this she decided to dedicate her life to getting people back to a state of nature and thus the Forest Bathing Club was born. (0-10 minutes) Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address We respect your privacy. Thank you! What is Forest Bathing? She explains how it comes from a Japanese practice called Shinren Roku which literally means luxuriating in nature. It is essentially a practice where you go into nature and do nothing but attend to the present moment. It comes from a period where the Japanese started doing lots of research in the 1980s into the health effects of being in nature and how it lowers the heart rate, levels of cortisol and stress. When did you first start Forest Bathing? Julia says she has always loved being in nature, but it was only when she started living in New York that she became aware of the lack of nature and how that would affect her mental health. She started doing her graduate work on the mental health effects of being disconnected from nature in 2015. The forest bathing club was born out of this research. Is the Forest Bathing club a business? Forest Bathing is a community organization. They usually do an event that is a co-creative event where people bring something to share with the whole group, an offering back to nature. Sometimes they do charge, but usually it is to ensure that they can afford to make the experience a supportive one for all participants. When did you first start getting into mindfulness and how does that relate to your love of nature? Julia says she has been doing yoga since she was 15 years old and was aware of mindfulness, but didn't really know what was. She never wanted to do the meditation at the end of the class. She loved being in nature but she would always be running through. She then started to realize the importance of slowing down and finding that more mindful state of being. How does it feel to go from spending a lot of time in nature and then back into the city with all its frantic energy? Julia explains a story of how one day she was running through Sutro park in San Francisco and a guy stopped her and asked her "Do you know why there all these ribbons around the trees here?"She was like "I'm just trying to run here. Don't bother me". He responded by saying that "These ribbons mean they are about to cut down these trees". She became aware of what was going on and realized that someone had to shout at her in order to really pay attention. She says that this man told her about how they planted Eucalyptus in the park 140 years ago and now UCSF (who owns the land) is trying to cut them down. It is feared that they might be looking to build more housing there under the guise of reforestation. She talks about how in order to write her book about Forest Bathing she found a small cabin by Stinson beach and spent time deep in nature every day. As new communities form new cities or we restore old cities, how do we ensure proper access to nature as a byproduct of living in cities? Julia says that its important to make space in new cities for nature, but Forest Bathing is actually practiced where the city meets nature. Its the integration of urban and wilderness areas. She brings up an important point that as humans we usually separate nature from urban environments, but we forget that human beings are a part of nature and so is everything we create. The streets and buildings are all part of nature as well. While in your cabin in Stinson beach, how long would you spend in between times in nature and time spent with other people?Stinson Beach is a beach town in the summer, but Julia was living there during the winter so she didn't have much contact with other people except for a friend who lived up the road. Its also only 45 minutes away from San Francisco so she could also come back pretty quickly.Stewart mentions that the most difficult thing for him when practicing in nature for long periods of time was coming back into an urban environment and being hit by the wave of frantic energy that most people spend their lives in. Most people who live in cities are always on, always under a sympathetic nervous system response. How do you deal with coming back into the city and the hustle and bustle? Whenever Julia would find herself coming back to the city and getting stuck in traffic she would look at a tree on the side of the road and this would remind her that she still can find an avenue of relaxation when surrounded by urban chaos.She also mentions that when humans look at nature we go into a soft focus which calms us down as opposed to a hard focus when scanning the environment for danger which many of us are doing all the time. Just looking at nature lowers stress. She would reminder herself that every breath she is taking is nature and all the people surrounding her are part of nature. In times of stress she would continuously repeat this. (10-20 minutes) In your meditation practice do you use mantra? Yes she has picked up various practices like this over the years studying with various teachers. One in particular she picked up from Llyn Roberts when working with her for five days in the Hoh rainforest which is the largest temperate rainforest in the world. Llyn wrote a book with Sandra Ingerman. Julia was called to live in the Hoh forest with llyn. She reached out to Llyn about research for the book. There was a synchronicity where Llyn had reserved the dates that Julia wanted to come see her in the Hoh for another client, but that client couldn't actually make it so it worked out perfectly. While in the Hoh rainforest, Llyn gave Julia a few simple mantras. One is "Out of my head, into my body, my heart and the earth". This can be done while putting your forehead into the ground and letting go of thoughts. She has another one that she uses. She went to Japan and lived with a shegendu monk. Shegendu buddhism is a lineage of Buddhism that holds that nature holds the ultimate truth. If you want to learn you have to go out into nature. The monk asked her "do you feel a connection with the universe?"She said "somedays, but somedays not". This guy also gave her a mantra that she uses with certain hand positions. She says her name out loud and says the date. She says "I'm grateful to be born in a human body. Today I connect to the universe and I aim to use my connection to serve the highest good."This reminds Stewart about the traditional understanding of mantra and how many teachers will argue that you need a mantra in Sanskrit because Sanskrit is a holy language that is able to make all the sounds that a human is capable of making which other languages cannot. Stewart says he doesn't buy into this, but the idea behind mantra was that you connect to a deity through Mantra and Julia's mantra fits this purpose. Can you describe the feeling you get when you are in nature? She says she can try and will do so through a story. When she first started writing the book, she was really stressed out about the process of writing and deadlines. She started getting imposter syndrome and questioned who she was to be writing a book about nature when stress was still a constant struggle for her. This feeling of stress became a sort of bullshit meter. She started to use it as a trigger to practice all the techniques she was learning from these people. She learned that its great to learn all these techniques but there is no point where the anxiety will somehow stop for good. It always comes back. Even today when she has a big decision to make she had to go to a redwood grove and just sit on the earth and let it take all the stress. When s...

She explains how she first got into mindfulness. She says that originally she didn't know what mindfulness was and thought it wasn't that cool. After quitting PayPal she started to look inward. She didn't know what mindfulness was but she did know how to practice self-love and self-care. She used to be really busy all the time when working. Once she quit she loved having the time to practice self-love and a more simple lifestyle compared to the working life. She would learn from people around her. Her friends served as the teachers instead of trying to find a formal teacher. She went on a retreat once to a center called Sunburst in Lompoc, California near Santa Barbara. The center was run by the organization of Sivananda.  How do you practice mindfulness? She lets her mind wander. She doesn't really have any formal practice. She essentially drops thoughts of future and past and hangs out in the current moment. So you don't have a formal sitting practice where you reserve a set time each day and focus on the breath or another object of meditation? She usually spends about 5-10 minutes in the morning before doing anything and just lets her mind wander. She practices free association meditation which is a different technique which most people associate with mindfulness where you focus on an object of meditation. Do you teach mindfulness as well? Michelle describes the backstory of how she got into sharing mindfulness. She wanted to start a company called Artificial Soul which is a way of automating therapeutic counseling. She applied to Singularity University.  Michelle wanted to help people make better decision by having a non-judgemental robot voice that could guide people. She says that she got distracted by only working on the robot angle of spreading mindfulness. She also needed to spread this stuff to other human beings. That's how she first got into sharing mindfulness on Facebook live sessions with her friends. She started weekly sessions covering everything from beliefs, relationships, and inner child work. She said only the brave people among her friends would do this work. Michelle says that mindfulness is an inner work. It's not only positive. A lot of people in the mindfulness world only see the positive side. They are stuck in duality. Its necessary to go beyond duality and recognize that the bad leads to the good and vice versa. (10-20 minutes) What is your most used technique when leading people to access their inner child in a safe way? Michelle uses dialogue and also vision boards to help people do this. She would have people work with visualization and using the symbolism and metaphors of those visualizations to help people to see deeper into their subconscious patterns. For Michelle, her visualizations would include lots of scenes of nature so her vision board was full of camping and nature. How does your mindfulness or meditation practice contribute to your ability to create? In order to create it's important to be original and not care about what people will think. To create you have to own your actions. To create means that you are no longer a victim. You are responsible for the things you are putting out into the world. Michelle says that when she is creating she seems to find people who will help. An important part of creating is collaboration with other people. They just find her and they are often weird but it works out. She says that faith helps her because she believes that what is best for the world will happen of its own accord. Everything will happen exactly as it needs to and creation just kind of happens. What is something you recently created or that was created as a byproduct of your faith? Michelle explains who she gave up a high paying job and a lot of stock options so that she could be free to create. She created Robotics for Good. She was rejected by Singularity university after pitching them, Artificial Soul. Shortly after this she was at a conference and started talking with an astronaut about getting rejected. He told her about some investors who wanted to invest in consciousness and then she met the investors. She lost touch with them for a year after this. During this year Michelle started working with the Loving AI project. They are building robots that help humans become more loving. At some point, the investor mentioned above responds to an email thread saying that they invested in the Loving AI project as well. It seemed synchronous and Michelle finds that synchronicities are a divine gift that must be received with open arms. What is the Loving AI project? Michelle explains how the loving AI project just made it through level 1 of the X-prize competition. They teamed up with Hanson Robotics which built an actual robot named Sofia. They are trying to build a robot that learns how to love people better than humans can. They have started trials with human beings testing these robots. One person who underwent this test says that he found transcendence from talking with Sofia. This interaction reminds Stewart about the novels by Philip K. Dick and the virtual therapists that Philip created in his fictional universes. Do you think that robots can serve as more effective therapists than human beings can? Do you think a robot can love us better than a human can? Yes because there is no judgment. She saw this directly with Sofia. She says that AI can support humans 24/7 days a week which in-person teachers or therapists can't compete with. It just makes sense that robots will love us better than we can do ourselves. (20-30 minutes) What is Hack Temple and what is your involvement with them? It is a church in San Francisco that was turned into an incubator. Michelle says she is a mentor for the entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping them with legal issues. Negotiations and contract law. This brings Stewart to a topic he really wants to discuss further. How do you bring mindfulness into negotiations? She says that as an attorney she has always been really calm and present. Even though lawyers generally get upset and angry, she is known for remaining calm when others are crazy. She says that mindfulness also gives her the ability to see into people's true intentions and know what they are looking for which is a very important skill in negotiation. Is anger ever an effective tool in negotiations? Michelle says that she can appear angry on the outside, but would be equanimous on the inside. She is used to lawyers around her yelling and screaming. There are a lot of time pressures and people are stressed. She says that mindfulness helps her to stay calm and collected. This doesn't mean that she doesn't question or be assertive. Stewart mentions that this constant returning to presence and equanimity can help in situations that are supercharged and particularly when other people involved are not present. He notices that when he is in these situations, his ability to return to the present moment influences those around him to also remain calm and collected. Stewart asks Michelle whether she notices the same thing. She says that she always has had the gift to read people really well. She notices that now she can tell beforehand what someone's intentions are and this helps her to filter the people who are really clear about their intentions and can be clear with those around her. This leads her to explain how she is now prioritizing working with people who are conscio...

(0-10 minutes) Aldric is a serial entrepreneur from Portugal who owns a 3D printing company which builds 3D printers for designers all over Europe. They also make scans and designs which are all open source and come up with new concepts for 3D printable objects. Its kind of like a research and development company for 3D printing. How did Aldric first get into yoga and mindfulness? Aldric is originally from Mozambique where his mother first introduced him to Yoga. He went to the yoga teachers house every day after school. He wasn't really aware what he was doing for the 3 years. He didn't recognize the significance of the practice at the time. He says that now when he practices yoga he has a whole different recognition of what the practice is and his awareness is much more focused. HIs practice has evolved. Does that have more to do with you maturing as a human being or as a natural by-product of spiritual practice? He says that, as a man, he matured later than most. He was a late bloomer. As his awareness slowly evolved he noticed his reactions to life-changing significantly. He's not sure how to answer the question. Do you have a daily practice? He continues talking about how his yoga practice evolved. After leaving Mozambique for Portugal, he found a yoga teacher at the university and he practiced 2-3 times a week. He normally practices meditation on weekends. He says that he can only meditate after running or walking. Stewart explains how Aldric's experience of needing to move before meditating is consistent with the historical evolution of yoga as a spiritual practice. Thousands of years ago it was developed in order to calm the body and mind and release neurotic energy before sitting silently. The practice of movement or Yoga asana can be from running just like moving the body in more traditional poses in a yoga studio. Aldric says that he most enjoys running into the forest until he finds a tree he likes and then sits underneath the tree for 3-4 hours of meditation. He says he did a maximum of 6 hours. He likes to meditate at night and stays until midnight at his special tree spot. What techniques do you use for meditation? He says that he uses music, in the beginning, to get him in the zone and then slowly transitions to zazen. He says that he likes to sit in half lotus as well. He says he can sit in half lotus for about four hours without pain or tension. He starts off with a guided meditation mixed with music by Alana Fairchild. He focuses on the breath and tries to relax. Sometimes he gets sleepy and he wakes himself up. He says its a struggle, but not a violent. It is a peaceful struggle. He says that afterward he finds himself singing often. Aldric says that many of his worries seem to dissolve, but often times they come back shortly. How do you bring the practice of meditation into your daily life? He explains how he is pretty busy with an important project at the moment so it's hard to fit it into his daily life as he used to. He says that he has to devote more energy to this project and less to wellness. This brings Stewart to interject with the idea that meditation is the practice of heightening and focusing an awareness that is already present every waking moment of the day. Thus it's important to see that the real juice of a meditative practice is to actually meditate when things are crazy and hectic. To bring the practice into everyday life. (10-20 minutes) How does mindfulness or meditation help you do your job better? Aldric says that it helps him for sure, at least indirectly. Meditation gives allows him to conserve energy and to face the day with more energy reserves. He says that he also struggles with insomnia and meditation helps him to rest. He says that right now because of a big project he can only meditate on the weekends. What is this big project that you are working on? Aldric gives a little backstory. He explains how he found Ajahn Brahm and the theory behind meditation. He was so inspired by Ajahn Brahm that he decided he wanted to do something to help spread Buddhism, meditation, and mindfulness around the world. He didn't find anything at the beginning and started his 3D printing company instead. Shortly after this, his girlfriend broke up with him and he fell into a depression. He was sitting in the same chair as he is sitting in the interview in his office in Portugal and he tried to meditate. It was very difficult so he put some music on. His suffering was so great and he just started spinning in the chair in circles. As he continued to spin in circles he noticed a meditative state start to unfold naturally. He felt calm and connected. All of a sudden his depression lifted and he felt in the zone. This is where the idea for Zenvow, his new project, came to him. He wanted to find out how to find external markers for the same meditative state he found spinning in his chair. He decided to build a sensor that could sense movement, respiration, and where the body is in space and time. These things could help track whether people were meditating or doing yoga. He also started working with blockchain technology and realized that he could allow people to get paid in cryptocurrency to meditate and do yoga. This is what Zenvow is trying to do. ZenVow will release two products that will help people earn cryptocurrency for practicing yoga and meditation: A meditation pad that senses whether you are sitting upright and a chest sensor that monitors breathing and body movement. (20-30 minutes) Is it possible to give accurate feedback into the meditative state? Isn't meditation in someway immeasurable? Are there external validators of an internal practice such as meditation? Aldric says that its true that meditation is difficult, but as long as you are sitting there with the intent to practice it is enough to get people into the practice. It is aimed at beginners. (30-40 minutes) Stewart explains the Sufi practice of Whirling Dervishes and how they spin in order to connect with a meditative state or an experiential understanding of God. Kids spin a lot. Kids move around. Can you explain the state that occurs after practicing the spinning or other movement practices that bring on this experiential understanding of God or ecstasy? Aldric explains how when he is floating in the water he gets an experience of spinning. This is how he usually finds this state and spinning in circles also brings this on. He explains how awareness is drawn to practices like this. What breathing exercises do you practice on a daily or weekly basis? Aldric brings up the app Prana Breathe which gives him instruction in breathing with a ratio of inhales, exhales and holding your breath. He also uses Wim Hof breathing. How would you describe your creative process? He says that its impossible to accurately indicate who had the amazing idea or why the idea became available to you instead of another. You can say that the neurons themselves and the connections between them created the idea, but then you have to dig further. Why did those neurons form in that way? What was the influence? Likely the idea is an interaction between you and your environment. Aldric goes onto say that when you say that I am an inventor or I invented something, that isn't quite accurate. Each inventor is influenced by their environment so it impossible to say that the inventor had any more responsibility for the idea than the results of the environment around her. He also states that modern physics and science still cannot accurately describe reality. It wou...