Mindfulness for Personal Growth: Cultivating Inner Strength with Amy Edelstein

Because we're always trying to control our emotions. We're always trying to fight with our egoic tendencies and it doesn't really work. When we can allow ourselves to calm and to center and to rest in our strengths, then we walk through and we make a different choice. I had that reaction. That's fine, That's a normal human response. But I'm choosing to do something different.

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast study dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani, who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the Squad.

Hey Happiness Squad. It's great to have you with Asha Schnei as we continue to discuss with our guests who are industry leaders helping individuals and organizations unlock their inner happiness and flourishing. Are you ready to explore why you should never give up seeking? Our next guest shares her story and how her practices help answer the questions and unlock flourishing within the lives of teen students in one of the poorest cities in the United States. Amy Edelstein is an author, educator and nonprofit leader and is a powerful communicator of ideas that can help us transform ourselves and the culture we live in. With over 40 years of experience, she's the founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Inner Strength Education, which has empowered more than 22,000 inner city high school students with mindfulness and systems thinking. In recognition of the impact of her work in Philadelphia, she was awarded a Philadelphia Social Innovators Award for Violence Reduction. She's the author of six books and a recipient of multiple awards. We had a beautiful conversation with Amy that flowed incredibly naturally and discussed her transformative experiences in her formative years and how those experiences are supporting inner city youth in Philadelphia, opening insights and our eyes to the challenges and opportunities that exist within our country and the impact that her contemplative work has had on these students. Stay tuned till the end as Amy not only shares her tips, but also guides us through a beautiful three minute meditation to center us and bring us calm curiosity and care in her own way. Please join Ashish and I as we welcome Amy to The Happiness Squad and Rewire for Happiness Together.

Hi, Amy. It is so amazing to have you with Anil and I. You know, getting to know you over the last six months and collaborating with you in the work that we're doing has just been such a gift. And I'm so excited to have our listeners learn from you, really benefit from the wisdom that you share, but more importantly, the love you hold in your heart and how you light up the world. So I want to start with the first question for you, Amy, which is all about happiness and flourishing. So what does happiness mean to you and how has that changed from your younger years to where you are now?

It's wonderful to be here. I'm really looking forward to unpacking all of this together. It's such a delight to share hearts and minds around this question of happiness. What brings happiness? What it is. I have to say, when I was young, the things that lit me up were very simple. I would talk to trees and shells and rocks. I remember when I was three, we pansies lining the road, our little apartment, they had faces. And I would be, I was, I was little, so I didn't have to bend down very far. And I would talk to them. They. They were animate to me. And that, that profound connection with all other living things, I think is at the heart of what brings happiness. When we really recognize that we're non separate. And when we really recognize that at the essential level of the fabric of life, we're all made up of the same stuff. We're part of the woof and woof of the same tapestry. And that is, I feel, so very important in this day and age where there's so much alienation, angst and existential fear and isolation and loneliness, which is on the surface. There are so many issues that contribute to that that we need to address and build better social structures and all of that, no doubt. And we can talk about that more as we move on. But fundamentally, I think what brings happiness is that sense of unity, that sense of one heart, that sense of the essence of love being what animates life.

You know, Amy, I've never heard it say that way, but your example of what you started just brought this up for me. You know, it is so true, isn't it? When we are, especially when you said you didn't have to bend that far right, which is when we are born, we literally are in touch. I mean, we couldn't be more in touch with Earth. You know, as little babies, we crawl. All four connected to Earth. We See, we are part of nature and it's literally, you know, and you said, you know, it was for you just bending a little bit and to be able to see, you know, the flowers being able to be connected. And as we grow up, we literally grow further and further away. Our heads, through which we make sense, grow further and further away. And all of a sudden, you know, the ego takes over. Nature becomes something to be controlled. I am separate, even though our feet are always touching the earth. Like our minds couldn't be further away and our hearts couldn't be further away. And so we literally grow apart from the sense of unity, the sense of connection, which holds the essence of happiness, which holds the essence of the fact that we are not separate, we are connected. There is a mystery and magic flowing through all of our lives and connecting us.

That's great. It's complicated because we need to grow our self identity. We need to grow in complexity. Yes, my, my three year old mind certainly couldn't think about or do so many things that the world needs. So we all need to go through those developmental levels. And as we do, we complexify. And at the same time, that essential nature hasn't disappeared. So our pathway as we develop and mature is to continually allow ourselves to be as multidimensional as adult human beings are while being animated by that profound sense of oneness.

Exactly.

It's beautiful. Do you know, I also just want to say I've never heard of it put the way you did, Amy. We're all made up of the same stuff. We're part of that same tapestry, that sense of unity, that one heart, that essence of life. It's just, it got me to think as you both were talking, how it's so true, you know, everything is. We are as human beings. The Dalai Lama says this. We are very interdependent, you know, and as much as we think that happiness or our practices to invest in our internal happiness is all personal, it is still, you know, unified. It's still connected with others. And, you know, as I was getting to know you before today, Ashish mentioned that you've had some amazing experiences over your years. And your journey in the work that you do today started incredibly early. It took you overseas and back. I would love to hear, and I'm sure our audience would love to hear, the same maybe two or three transformational experiences in your life that you'd love to share with us, just to get us a bit of context of just what led you to where you are today.

That's a great question. And a big question, because transformational experiences come in so many different ways and styles and flavors. They're the transformational experiences that blow your socks off. And then there are the other transformational experiences where you go through dark night of the soul and come to realize what's really important and that changes your life. And they're the transformational experiences where you meet somebody and they say one thing and it goes right in and all of a sudden life looks different. What category do you want?

Choose one of your liking, Amy?

Oh, yeah.

Go with what has the most energy for you.

Yes, they all do. I think I'll start. I'll start with. I had very. I was always a seeker, I think, even when I was very young. My father was a particle physicist, so he talked to me about the nature of particles, and that was his job. He would blow apart the nuclei of atoms and look for little bits. And he would describe to me about how matter is really more space than solid.

Yes.

And so from a very young age, we would have these dinnertime conversations and I would press my hand into the dinner table and I would try to figure out where the table ended and my hand began, if it was mostly space. And why did I seem to have a hand and the table seemed to stay the table. Why didn't we get mixed up? So from a very early age, I was trying to figure out how to things worked. I went through high school in the 70s. It was post Watergate. It was a cynical time. The 60s hadn't really worked. The music was getting rougher. You know, you were starting to hear heavy metal, you know, not just this like flow and glow harmonies of the 60s. And I was really frustrated because I went to public school and my teachers really didn't have anything to offer. You know, they could teach subject matter. But I only had one teacher who taught Shakespeare. I only had one. And he was an alcoholic, so it wasn't a great example. But I had one teacher who was interested in really delving into human meaning, what makes meaning, what's the complexity? And he inspired me to write. And that kept going. I mean, I'd always written ever. I always kept a diary ever since I was little and learned how to write. So I think those spending my formative years searching and in a culture that didn't answer my deepest longing. So I looked for books. I studied Judaism, I studied Eastern. I read Autobiography of a Yogi. I read Ram Dass's Be Here Now. I learned how to do yoga From Richard Hiddleman's 28 Day Guide to Yoga. Some of your listeners may know all of these. They were seminal books. And in that day, there was no Internet. You couldn't look things up on YouTube. You just went to the bookstore, the used bookstore, and whatever you found is what influenced you because that's all there was.

Yep.

You couldn't stream radio, you couldn't stream music. You just had to go to the record store and flip through and go to the listening booth and get exposed, you know, get exposed to Jimi Hendrix for the first, first time and feel like you were transgressing. And those were the experiences that encouraged me and inspired me to never give up seeking. And I think that we all have those aspects where we bounce off of culture and it stimulates an inquiry, and sometimes we pay attention to it and sometimes we don't. But for any. Anyone who's listening to this, probably if you look back on your life, you'll find a thread that was continuous. You might not have listened to it, but it was there. And it's important for everyone to recognize that those experiences don't seem to come out of the blue. Those peak experiences when the veils part and, you know, some spiritual dawning happens, you recognize what life's purpose really is. You know, how we're meant to evolve in our capacity for higher forms of love and integration. We're meant to evolve in our ability to express nobility of character and purpose and care.

You know, Amy, you and I had, when we first connected, bonded over how, you know, you were seeking from a very, very young age and also very grounded in, you know, Eastern, Eastern traditions. Right. You went seeking for answers. You studied extensively. And I was sharing with you how I became a seeker, frankly, really only at 42 and 43. And then I dove in deep. I read many of these books, 500 others, and not just on the spiritual world, but also on the psychology, this neurosciences, and we're starting to see these connections. But I came to this much later, and you've been a seeker your life searching. And, you know, for me, you know, I would say, and it's so unfortunate, but in today's world, right. I am, you know, people like me, right. Are the norm. It's like most of us kind of get so quickly into this. Let's climb the mountain of success. Let's go execute. We become experts, or we learn. We want to learn how to kind of control the world and how to control our destinies outside. And we start executing. We stop seeking, and the answers all lie within. Right. Having now done the work myself, And I think connecting with so many others instead of seeking and searching within, either we seek futilely outside or we just say, you know what, I'm just going to dull that voice and I'm on a path and it seems to be kind of taking me along and I'm at least gaining external fame and money, etc. And we never really tune into that. The other part that also you mentioned, which is so powerful, and I'll echo, I'll repeat that back to our listeners. Oftentimes in our world, we hold the world of science and spirituality as two very distinct worlds. And oftentimes one is like we don't even give space for the other. And in all of our work at Happiness Squad, we see the science and spirituality as integration and just two lenses from which we are seeing the world. One, by the way, a lot more limited. And Amy, you mentioned, but I'll give the stat. So if you ask particle physicists, 99.9999% of an atom is empty space. 99.999999%. Right. And that is an amazing insight, by the way, that is at the heart of some of the Buddhist texts which say emptiness is space. Right. Full wholeness is emptiness and emptiness is wholeness that is at the heart of some of the Buddhist teachings. And when you start to kind of explore kind of really some of the deep wisdom traditions, you start to see the similarities. And that's kind of what, you know, Amy talked a bit about in her own journey and how her father, who was a particle physicist, who kind of explored and invited her to start Ridley at an early age, live into these questions of the reality of what is around us.

Fantastic. You said a lot. There are a lot of things I want to respond to, but please, first I just want to appreciate the irony of our globalized world that, you know, you who were born in, you know, a country that is steeped in a 7,000 year spiritual history that's still living and building, you know, uninterrupted building on each other, came to spirituality and exploring philosophy later in life. And me, who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the former steel capital of America, was studying in meditation centers and studying Vedanta Indian philosophy at 21 years old in North India. So go figure. That's the crazy world we live in, which I think the cross pollination in a lot of ways has been really fruitful. Of course, the need to reconnect with the great, great philosophical traditions and understand them and update them is. So you also brought up something about how there's one, the external seeking, and then two, there can be an overly focused internal seeking which comes out of the predominance of psychology, that psychology taught us, or at least Freud taught us, to look within. How am I feeling? What's happening? And that, of course, is very important. We were very cut off from our feelings starting in the Victorian age, or maybe before. And that recognition, what's happening, what am I feeling, what's it related to? Is all very important at the same time, without context or a goal. And I meet many people like this. They're looking for what they can fix in themselves when there's nothing really wrong except a lack of a greater purpose to throw themselves into and to care about the whole, that they're fine, life is good, they have a good family or they have good friends or they have good spouses or good children, they have a good job, they do good things, they're basically good people. And then they start looking for what they can fix. Yes, but the issue is really, well, where are we heading? What's life for? Let's explore these big questions, get inspired about what's possible. And, you know, as the master psychologist and one of our first real trauma therapists, Viktor Frankl, said, in Man's Search For Meaning, those people who were able to withstand the horrors of horrors of concentration camps in the Holocaust were those who had a greater purpose to live for. And whether it was to see there be reunited with loved ones, to see their child, or to see the end of the war, or to help another, or to live through this in order so that something like this would never happen again. That bigger purpose outside of oneself, extending oneself in a positive way towards a goal that inspires us to lift up, is what is gives us, gives our lives meaning. It gives us. Goes back to the first question, what is happiness? Us. It's that sense that we're reaching beyond ourselves for something which is both closer than close and is also stretching us to be something more. And so one of the things that I think is so important as we deal with the complexity of our times and the fears that a lot of people have, is also to let ourselves reflect on what a greater goal is. And it doesn't have to be now. I have to save the world. A lot of the teens say to me, look, I'm the valedictorian here and I'm the head of this team. And now everyone wants me to be like Greta Thunberg. And, yeah, I care about the environment, but I just want to live. I can't save the whole world. It's not that when we talk about greater good or greater context, it's not a burden. It's a vision that is inspirational and aspirational. When we care in that way, we also find balance and stability because part of reaching for a higher goal, we need to be stable. We need to be centered, we need to be happy, we need to be full. We need to have those reserves to extend to another. And that comes from that sense of passion and the igniting of our care, not the guilt and fear about what bad is going to happen if we don't. That's not going to help us.

I love that. Don't do it out of guilt, but do it out of the care. Right? This is not meant to be a guilt trip. I love that.

Are you enjoying the show so far? Let me ask you a few questions before going back. Have you ever wondered why so many of us struggle with stress, anxiety and burnout and feel stuck in life? Heck, maybe you're going through this right now. Well, the reason for this lies in the evolutionary biology of our brains, which are hardwired for fear. It's part of the reason why our team named this podcast Happiness Squad. It serves as a reminder that happiness is what really matters and that we are in this together. And that is why we are so excited to share with you a resource to help you on your journey. One of our hosts, Ashish Katari, launched a book, Hardwired for Happiness, and it is a 1Amazon bestseller. When you get access to this book, you will discover nine secular practices that can change your life and are backed by scientific evidence from psychology and neuroscience. Learn how you can integrate Hardwired for Happiness practices in every part of your life to unlock your best self, regardless of how busy you are. Shift from knowing to doing to being with a range of journaling, meditation and group coaching exercises and so much more. Go to www.happinesssquad.combook to get access. Right now. We also have bonuses on the page that you don't want to miss. Once again, www.happinessquad.com book and now back to the show.

There is so much pressure that, you know, teenagers put on themselves. We put on ourselves. There's so much pressure on, like, you have to become something more. It has to be something more. Sometimes we look, we start looking for problems when they aren't, when there aren't any. Right? And there's a different way for us to kind of lean into that service.

And just to say, like parents, one second, Neil, sorry, teenagers Sometimes take time to find themselves.

Yes.

And allowing our kids, our students, the neighbors, kids, that space to grow up and that space to be dull for a period, not depressed, not withdrawn. You know, obviously we need to watch for concerning signs of, you know, mental health decline. But this pressure to always be on, to always be pushing, to always be growing, to always be interested is not natural in a growth cycle. And as adults too, sometimes we need to let ourselves be dormant. We need to allow ourselves some periods of wintering so that we can rest, so that we can renew, so that we can make space for new ideas, that we can allow ourselves to be, be as being wants to express itself, not just the way we think it's supposed to look. And if we can allow ourselves to pay attention to the rhythm of our own ongoing awakening and self actualization, we'll see natural ebbs and flows. We'll come to appreciate the down cycles and be patient and learn from that process and, and trust and recognize that this is all part of evolution's unfolding and it can relieve a certain kind of unnecessary concern.

Angst.

Yeah.

Do you know, and that's where I think at first I was going to disagree with you slightly, Amy, and then you use the word growth cycle because I actually on that note would agree with you in that I think when I think of my sister and my nephew, right, he's 13, it's like, let him grow up, like take the pressure off, let him be a kid, let him grow, let him learn, let him experience, let him explore. Especially in this day and age where everything is nearly at his fingertips. At the same time, I feel adults, we should also have that opportunity too because I can imagine individuals going through life transitions every decade of their life. And for me, when I think about the work that you're doing with teenagers, I think it's absolutely incredible. And the work that we're doing with let's say adults, you know, from, let's say anywhere from their 30s into their 60s, you know, the practices are quite similar in terms of how can you unlock, you know, compassion, purpose, awareness, connectivity, you know what I mean? So this is, I think it's quite beautiful, which is why I now want to ask you more about the work that you're doing with those inner city kids. This is so for our listeners who don't know, Inner Strength works with teens in some of the most under resourced schools in Philadelphia and to help them manage their stress and anxiety. Inner Strength leverages, I think its three approaches to unlock basically calm, curiosity and care. Could you Just maybe describe this to us to our listeners because I can imagine thinking, wait a minute, you're teaching these kids these. How does that work? How is that possible? How is that received? Please tell us more.

Great, I'd be happy to. And just to give people a sense both of the scale and the challenges is Philadelphia is one of the 10 largest cities in America. It's the poorest of the 10 largest cities. The level of poverty is defined differently in different cities. In Philadelphia, it's defined for a family of four as $24,000 a year. That's $6,000 a person a year. For a family of four, that's the poverty level. Now, as you know, everything still costs what it costs. Just because people are more poor doesn't lower the cost of basic goods. And about 70% of the students we serve come from families in poverty. It's a very under resourced school district. So at the same time, kids are kids. So they grow up in the environment that they grow up in. And they go through highs and they go through lows and they have their first romances and they come of age and they love the prom and they try out for sports teams. They're teenagers, they're normal teenagers. And yet many of them bear the burden of what it is to go to schools that the water has lead poisoning, so you can't actually drink the water. In some of the schools I go to, there are signs in the washrooms, do not drink the water. It's not potable water. This is America and we're not talking about. Yeah. So anyway, that's the background. So there are many structural issues that are deeply entrenched. I don't have a solution to it. There are people who are working on that, which I think is great. But we have to hold both that we have the tremendous potential of all our students and the tremendous challenge.

Amy, as you talked about that context and that background share also a little bit, you talked a bit around the physical structures in which they're operating at school. But I was blown away also by how hard of conditions mentally and at home many of the kids are having to navigate at such a young age, you know, so I think it's. We can talk about. I want you to share the program you've designed and the scale at which you're doing it. But I want you to also help because that, you know, what they're going through in their own personal lives and in kind of the mental space is an important one for our listeners to know as well.

Absolutely. I just Wanted everyone to get that because I feel that it's very easy to other, you know, when, when we hear of the hardships, but when we just get kind of what like just can stop a moment and consider what, how would we feel, what would be our reality if we lived in that economic reality? How would that feel? How would it feel if I was sending my kids to that kind of school? So I just want to. Before we get to the other human burdens, it's, it's, it's sometimes good just to. If we're listening to this from relative security, it's good to reflect. Our program is we have multiple programs and deliveries, but our primary program is a three month in school program where we meet the same class of students, live with a live instructor once a week for a class period. So basically an hour, a little bit less. And they learn all about. They learn seven evidence based mindfulness tools, they learn about 300 million years of brain science, they learn compassion building tools and they learn about how the shift in culture affects them. Now the students that we're working with, many of them have experienced gun violence firsthand. I was teaching a class last semester of IB English 12th graders and many people know the International Baccalaureate program is a universal. It's a global program, same curriculum, really smart kids. I was having them write essays about survival instinct because we were learning about the parts of the brain. And five of them wrote about firsthand experience with gun violence, including one student seeing when her older brother was going to the promotion and was being picked up by some friends. One friend was shot and killed on their doorstep. One girl spoke about her work in a, you know, she works, goes to school, does the IB program and works. She had been held up by gunpoint in the shop that she worked at.5 out of 26 in an honors program.

Wow. Wow. Let's let that stat sink in. Right of the context. What so many are going through, to be able to meet them and to be able to support them from that place. It's something so many don't often think about. And as I ground back to, by the way, this is America. And we're talking about in many cases when it comes to gun violence, we almost want to say this is America. We're talking about. This doesn't exist in most other parts of the world. Right. This is our own lived reality. We are dying under the weight of our own prosperity, under the, you know, and unable to kind of take action against these. But share with us, Amy, the transformation that the program that you take them through the real evidence based, evidence based interventions and the real transformative impact of these in these kids lives.

I mean, I see amazing things in these students. Some of them are guarded, some of them don't like it, some of them, it's not for everyone. I just always put that caveat out. It is not a silver bullet. Mindfulness practices need to be approached with great respect. They've been around for thousands of years for a reason, because they're potent and powerful. If you've experienced trauma, you may need different types of approaches. So I caution all the listeners to, you know, approach rolling these tools out for others with respect and delicacy and understanding of trauma. As you can tell the students, you know, you never know who's in front of you and you never know what they experienced. If you walked into that class, you'd say, oh, they're a bunch of smart kids doing well.

Yeah.

And then you read the essays and then you're like, I had no idea. And you're carrying that. So you want to be very sensitive. I just wanted to always like to put that caveat in.

Yeah. This is not a call for any teacher or anybody out there to just take this and say, oh, wonderful, let me start a calm journey or a headspace journey or a mind, Mindfulness journey with the kids. You know, I think these are not things to be toyed with, you know?

Yeah. At the same time, you know, what I, what I see, you know, I have. And it's a, it's a full range, you know, so, you know, I had one girl who was a ninth grader and she was really, she's one of those ninth graders who's very vocal, kind of squirting out of the edges. And she came in one period. She basically was so excited and so proud of herself. She squirmed up and was sitting on top of her desk. She said, I want to tell you. Didn't matter what else was going on. I want to tell you that. She described an incident where her boyfriend broke up with her. She was really mad, and she was about to go on a big vendetta online and she was going to decimate him. And I'm sure she could have because oftentimes in ninth grade, the girls are much more mature than the boys said. And you know what I did? I walked up to my room and I sat on my bed and I did those breathing exercises I learned. And you know what? After that I thought, I don't have to say anything. I'm moving on.

Wow.

Now she went on from Somebody who could barely focus in class to becoming a leader. In the high school she was a mentor to others. She's the first in her family to go to college. She got a scholarship to a two year associate's degree and was planning to after she finished the associate's degree, go on to four years of college. Her recognition of her own ability to center in herself and not be a victim to her feelings and not be a victim to other people and what they thought of her opened a door that she just kept walking through. She literally became a light in the high school. She was amazing.

Wow, what a powerful story and what a powerful application of these into our day to day lives because we all go through those experiences. I can imagine there's so many adult listeners who could listen to this and go, wow, I remember that moment when I was so angry at my whoever, boss, supplier, et cetera, where I could have gone and kind of raged a full on taken, taken all of my things out. But I didn't do that. And that can be the power of mindfulness, that can be the power of emotional regulation super strengths that we, that we can connect to. That can be the power of self awareness. Right. And our own meaning making and our own roles sometimes in, in what's playing out.

Exactly. And when we do it from this sense of empowerment, not the sense of control because we're always trying to control our emotions, we're always trying to fight with our egoic tendencies. It doesn't really work. When we can allow ourselves to calm and to center and to rest in our strengths, then we walk through, we make a different choice. We said, oh, I had that reaction, that's fine, that's a normal human response. My boss did X, Y and Z, of course I was mad. Or my spouse, my partner did X, Y and Z. But I'm choosing to do something different. And that choice is that positive empowerment choice versus the desire I have to control myself. And I can't do that and I can't lash out and I have to be good. That's not going to help liberate our higher natures. And so I love that example because I have a lot of powerful examples from the kids that are heartbreaking and make you cry. But sometimes I just like to tell that story because it's something we can all relate to.

Yes, I agree.

You know, it's, it's a, I think about peers, adults who question mindfulness. At least they understand it, they know it. You can actually argue whether they understand it or not. And I hear this story and I just ask our listeners, for those of you that have thought about contemplated mindfulness and whether or not it can make a difference in your life. You can already see how these kids are reacting and how it's actually changing their lives given the circumstances that you so kindly laid out for us, Amy, I mean, it's almost, I'm sitting here, I'm humbled. You know, it's the work that you're doing and the way that you're able to reach these kids, these students, these teens, and be able to share that back with us. I can only hope that if there's anything we can do to obviously help, you know, I know we're not in Philadelphia, but whatever we can do to help adults and kids, you know, in our respective areas. But I do ask our listeners to contemplate how mindfulness and practices like this can actually help you. You know, there's so much more that we can talk about and what I would actually maybe take a sidestep and instead of maybe going into more questions, I think there may be an opportunity for us to do special something special with you while we're together. And I'm imagining that you likely do guided meditations with your students. Would you be kind enough to maybe walk our listeners through a two minute guided meditation as part of this podcast right now?

Sure, I'd be happy to. So first thing, if you are driving, please don't do the meditation. And you know, you can just switch the channel, put it on pause and listen to it when you get home. We want everyone to stay safe. And then if you're in a nice place where you can just allow yourself to let go for a little bit, allow yourself to just come into a posture. You can close your eyes or find a spot in the room with a beautiful color shape and just rest your eyes there. Be easy and imagine just sitting back ever so gently into yourself. So like sitting back in the comfortable couch or the easy chair on your porch in the summer, notice that little bit of extra give and release. Any need to have a cosmic, mind blowing awakening experience which you might and release the need to have everything on your mind vanish because it doesn't need to, and allow yourself to instead just shift your attention ever so gently, noticing the contact of yourself with whatever you're sitting on, noticing gravity pulling you down, notice how your spine rises up, Feeling how solid the floor is under your feet, the chair is underneath you, gravity holding you, The earth staple. And then allow your attention to turn towards yourself and imagine you were a twin, a Perfect twin of yourself that knew exactly the encouragement, support that you'd like to hear in this moment and surround yourself with a sense of good wishes. They can be verbal or nonverbal, but imagine you are encasing yourself with good wishes from your perfect twin, caring for yourself and allowing yourself in this moment to have nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing you need to become and nothing you need to overcome. Now take that sense, that intimation of already whole, already complete, and allow that to center in your heart, planting it as a tiny but infinitely powerful seed that's always present, always accessible through every situation, through every emotion, through every state of encouragement or the opposite. And as you bring your attention back to your surroundings, allow yourself to. To carry with you that little bit of sense that that seed of wholeness will always be there. You can bring your attention back.

Wow, that was amazing. The sense of calm I feel. The sense of fullness I feel. Amy. And that was about three minutes, dear friends. So hopefully you can keep coming back to this podcast and allow yourself those three minutes. Three minutes that can have such a big impact on our lives, on where we give attention, how we feel, on being able to regulate our emotions. You know, I will have this on a saved one, Amy. I will. I will come to this again and again, I think.

And this is something that. Ashish, I know it's a bit of a. Bit of a broken record when I share this with our listeners, but for those that haven't heard it from me yet, those three minutes were beautiful. For those of you that carry stress, anxiety, burnout, resentment, anger, any of those negative feelings, we know they pass. They pass eventually. But if you can replace that, if it lasts for an hour, three hours or a day, with that three minutes of mindfulness, just imagine how it can change your life. It's changing the lives of these teens in these areas in Philly. And I just want to say, for those of us that have it better, this is an opportunity for you to take a practice like that and bring it into your life and share it with others, share that light with others for just those three minutes, if not longer. So, no. Ashish, back to you, my friend.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. And listen, we did an episode with Manish Chopra on mindfulness a lot earlier in the very early parts of this podcast, so I would go check that out as well. Meditation and mindfulness are good to start at three minutes, but let's be clear, three minutes is not enough. True. You know, and the experiences that the kids are having are not three minute meditations. We live too much in this culture of quick fixes. Three minutes is a good place to start because without that, habits don't form. But really, I think this ability to engage with the same, you know, giving it the same effort as we sometimes give to physical exercise is an important, important way to integrate this powerful practice into our lives. But as we bring this to a close, Amy, we can go on and on talking with you and learning, and we'd love to have you back again on our podcast. You know, in parting, what might be two to three tips that you could share with our listeners that they could actually start to implement right away that would have a big impact on their lives.

So the first one is trust yourself. Trust your longing, trust your sense of curiosity and discovery and allow yourself to pursue answers and meet people and read books out of the expected, you know, browse and look for something that you're like, I don't know why I'm picking this up, but wow, her face looks amazing. I'm going to check this out. No, it's not on the New York Times list, but okay. Allow yourself to really pursue that. That's what I did when I was young and it led me to 35 years of intensive practice. So you never know where it's going to take you. And I think the other two pieces of advice I give to people is allow yourself to share love. We often want to wait for others to give us love, sometimes sharing love. And if you have too many difficult people in your lives or you're feeling too alone, find that pansy that I found when I was a child or, you know, everyone can find, you know, or the beautiful sky or the trees and just let yourself experience it. Allow yourself to go into a place where you don't have to fix it, anything about yourself. But just as you are broken, as we are incomplete, as we are egoic, as we are, we can still love. And that will also fill us with potential and possibility. And I think those two are enough.

I love those. Trust yourself and share love. Amy. Thank you. Thank you. Such a beautiful conversation. There is so much I'm taking away and I hope our listeners are too. Really appreciate you, really appreciate the work you're doing in the world. We'll have links in our show, notes on how they can learn more about and support you on your mission. But I leave with utmost gratitude and a level of calm in my heart and in my mind. Thank you.

Thank you both. Total pleasure to be here.

Thank you, Amy. Appreciate you. Keep doing what you're doing.

Appreciate you have an amazing rest of your day. Amy Bye.

I hope you enjoyed the episode today on the Happiness Squad podcast. Make sure to hit subscribe on your chosen platform that you listen to us on. If this episode made you think of someone, take a screenshot and share this podcast episode with them. Go to www.happinesssquad.com where you can catch the show notes for this episode and learn more about us and the community we are building. The community is where we gather weekly to practice and connect with other learners, teachers and practitioners working together to unlock our best selves. Lastly, follow along on Instagram yhappinesssquad for tons of behind the scenes as well as short videos designed just for you and and it's where we hang out in between episodes once again. Www.happinesssquad.com all links can be found in the description below. Until next.