Corpul spune ADEVĂRUL: Cum să te reconectezi cu CORPUL tău | BOABE DE CUNOAȘTERE | cu Luke Sniewski

He who does not embrace fear on a daily basis has not discovered the secret of life. Forget the time, because time is for the mind. The mind is what creates time. Time doesn't exist for the body. For the body, everything is just now. And that's important.

You make such a beautiful separation about the pain and the suffering.

Why I behaved a certain way. Why is my body being chronically stressed and moving into chronic pain in this way? When I'm sitting in a very safe environment of a cubicle, a desk, there's something happening in the body that's driving us towards that we think we're making decisions about. But in actuality they're just triggered, habitual reactions. I was taking my clients goals on my own shoulders and when that happens, burnout happens. Because then I'm being responsible for something that is completely outside of my control.

Do you think that we are too much in our mind these days and we forgot about our body? And if yes, then why that happens.

When we don't allow ourselves to feel all the emotions, what we're actually doing, we're not just cutting ourselves off from the things we want to avoid. Because most people don't want to feel fear, they don't want to feel it. Anxiety or sadness or anger. So they say no to these emotions. They're also saying no to the other side of the spectrum, the peace, the joy, the ecstasy, the happiness. They're saying no to that as a consequence of saying no to the other stuff.

How can we approach Fear. Month? Sheer compassionate inquiry. For example, Luke, welcome to our podcast.

It's absolutely lovely to be here. A few moments in my life, I really wish I understood Romanian. That was one of those moments. Thank you. The passion, the energy. I really appreciated it.

Yeah. Basically I said the things about you and about your book and how much I loved the book. I was selling this to you before we started, but I will say it again. This is one of those books that makes you feel better even if you just read it and don't practice what is in the book. And I can't wait to start practicing that like this. Coming back to the body is something so like. I don't know how we get away from this idea because this is something so natural. But before we get there, can you share a bit about your life journey? What happened during your life that you got here in the studio talking about this book?

Well, I think it starts with the question why? I think I've always had a inquisitive mind in terms of trying to figure out why certain Things work the way they worked. And at some point the why turned inward and I started getting really curious about why I behaved a certain way and why my body responded in certain way, in certain ways in certain situations. So that that curiosity just really invited me to continue going inward, getting closer and closer to an understanding that would be both helpful to myself as well as those around me. And luckily it was a unique progression professionally. Right. Because I started as an accountant. Yes, I know. Strangely, and I knew very quickly that that pathway wasn't for me. I was thankful for the skills I learned, but at the same time this wasn't fulfilling for me. For others it may have been. So that led to me working as a personal trainer because I had been a professional athlete and I knew that I loved a taking care of my health. But I also realized as an accountant, when I was getting injured, sitting at a desk like this, working at a computer, and anyone listening would understand or watching would understand this. Sometimes these aches and pains emerge other the elbow, the neck or the back, whatever it may be. And I got curious. I said I played professional football and I didn't get this injured. Why is my body being chronically stressed and moving into chronic pain in this way when I'm sitting in a very safe environment of a cubicle, a desk and a computer?

Yeah.

So I realized that I actually didn't learn in the maybe eight, nine, ten years that I was playing football. Even though my body transformed, I never learned how that happened, why that happened, and I didn't understand how to take care of my own body. So that curiosity led me through the beginning phases of really respecting and understanding the body. So I became a personal trainer. That wasn't enough. It wasn't enough knowledge to really help people. Became a massage therapist, nutrition coach. I was just collecting certifications and collecting knowledge that would allow me to help others, not just myself. And guess what happened? It was always never enough. Because primarily as a personal trainer, working in the gym, whatever it may be, I had a gym in Santa Monica. I was seeing my clients between one and four hours a week. That leaves 160something hours that they are on their own. And as soon as they left that environment, that relationship with me, whether it was a therapeutic relationship or some kind of coaching relationship, what happened is that they would fall back into automatic habits and patterns. Of course at the time I was unaware of this. I didn't realize the true strength of not just my clients conditioning, but my own conditioning. This was still foreign territory for me. But as a coach I was Taking my clients goals on my own shoulders. And when that happens, burnout happens. Because my clients goals can't be my goals. Because then I'm being responsible for something that is completely outside of my control. And so I burned out. I said I'd never work with people again. One on one. I closed my gym, I sold everything off. And this is when I did that documentary that I talk about in the book. I traveled around the world thinking that I can have a bigger impact working with systems and sharing a message of a bigger scale rather than individual one on one work. During that trip I actually discovered my biggest why or my biggest how. It was Vipassana. So in Thailand I stumbled upon these 10 day silent meditations. I did my first 10 day sit and on the third day the light bulb comes on. The light bulb comes on. After years of practicing meditation and not understanding the benefits and not really experiencing the benefits, here comes the light bulb. Holy shit, I get it now. This practice, this thing that I'm doing right now instantly became my focal point. I knew in that moment this practice would never leave me for the rest of my life. And I knew I would be studying it, I knew I'd integrate it into my professional world. I just knew that all of a sudden this fit everything. And in fact, again, my PhD research not only focused on pornography addiction, it focused on using meditation specifically as an intervention for men with pornography addiction. And the way my mind works, as soon as it starts asking why and how, whatever it may be, as soon as I'm in these deep states of meditation, I was really trying to figure out what's actually happening here, what am I seeing, what am I perceiving, whatever it may be. And the first thing, the first benefit that I really achieved or experienced from meditation was a boundary. I finally learned how to hold and contain my experience and what was my responsibility. And I realized this stuff isn't mine. And the creation of that boundary is actually what shaped me as a therapist. And it was what I knew in that moment. I can work with people again because I realized I didn't have to take their stuff onto my shoulders anymore. And I had established that. Again, I call it a semi permeable boundary. And this is what Gabor talks about as well. We can't have a firm boundary where we don't have any empathy for the person in front of us, but we can hold their experience, see their experience, have empathy for that experience, but not take responsibility for that experience, not let it impact us to the point that it dysregulates us. So meditation, quite honestly, is the reason why I'm sitting here today. Because it began, firstly, the differentiation between myself and the world and the learning process of learning, well, what makes me tick. And then, of course, that same curiosity then turns outward and says, I wonder what makes this person tick and helping that person understand themselves in a deeper way. And as we'll be talking about today, I'm sure that requires a journey back into the body. Because if we really want to understand what is driving and dictating our behaviors on both a subconscious and a conscious level, and hopefully conscious level, eventually, actually, I'll add, that is a connection to the body. There's something happening in the body that's driving us towards things that we think we're making decisions about. But in actuality, they're just triggered habitual reactions. That's why I'm here.

Yeah, you talk about meditation, but, like, let me be honest, I'm really bored of people talking about meditation like how great it is. Like, nobody until now convince me to practice meditation. I did it a few times.

But.

Nothing more than like 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, I know. I feel more relaxed sometimes. I feel. Actually, a lot of the times I feel that state is not really for me. Like, I'm. I feel like I'm a doer. I like to do a lot of things. I love to be productive. So meditation feels like waste of time for me and the fact that I have to work with my mind into the meditation. What's wrong with my mind? My mind is okay, leave me alone. I don't want to meditate. But when I read your perspective about meditation, that it's actually work with your body, not with your mind, it starts to get, like, interesting. So what can you tell me more about? Your view about meditation was different in your view in practicing that meditation?

You know, I had the same exact experience as you, and I think it's a shared experience. Whereas there's this preconceived notion about what meditation is, that it's a mental activity, a mental exercise most of the time. It's also attached to some spiritual dogma or some airy fairy words that people don't understand and they don't resonate with. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wrote about it in the way that I did. I wanted meditation to be more accessible, more practical and more real so people understand that they're actually practicing a skill in the meditation practice that is useful and beneficial for them in everyday life, not just. Again, it's not just about feeling Relaxed or getting a good night's sleep. Meditation has the power, potential to transform someone's life because of what it's doing. When we look at it from the meditation from the perspective of the body, not the mind. Right. So that's what you said that was interesting for you, is that before we go to that, let's talk about a massage and sleep. When you go get a massage, how does your mind feel afterwards? What's the state of your mind after a massage?

I had one yesterday because I've read about it in the book, how important it is. Yeah. And I actually just like a small info before I answer to your question. Like when I was reading the book I started about three days ago, I just finished it like half an hour before we met. I was never really paying attention to my body and I started to make like more intense sport in the past months. And just by reading the book, I, I felt that I have a lot of tension points in my body. And I've read about the benefits of massage and like the tissue massage. And I was like, hey, but maybe that's what I need. So I had the massage yesterday.

That's, that's, that's your first moment of being soma wise and connecting to your body and understanding its needs. That's beautiful.

Yeah. I just felt that those points need to be really relaxed. And I had a really, really great massage. So yesterday I had this massage. So I can speak like it's. It was like 12 hours ago. So I can speak from 12 hours ago experience. I had this massage and I like, my body felt really relaxed. Like the body felt relaxed and the mind felt really relaxed.

Yes. And this is because the mind is responding to the state of the body. If the body is full of tension, the mind will respond with, where is the source of this tension? How do I figure this out? Where do I solve this problem? Because the mind is picking up on this tension, this distress, this agitation, whatever it may be. So it's a reflection of the state of the body. So when you get a massage and someone manually removes massages away this tension, physical removal of the tension, the mind responds with, ah, I'm a little more focused, I'm a little more calm. Life's problems don't go away, but it's a little easier to face them and stay focused. And here's the bigger thing. Your mind doesn't take credit for the massage, does it? After the massage, your mind doesn't say, oh, I did that. I did a good job. Yeah. No, but in meditation, most People think that meditation is an activity for the mind. So after meditation, someone's mind might say, oh, I practiced focus and now I'm more calm. I think something different is happening. I think there's plenty of studies and scientific studies to prove it, that when we're meditating, we're actually lowering the inflammatory burden on the body. In other words, when we close our eyes and sit still and pay attention to our inner experience in our breath for periods of time, we are reducing stress, we are reducing inflammation. And as a result of that reduced tension and stress, the mind also benefits. But it starts with the physiological changes that are happening here in the body. Another example of taking care of the body and the mind, reaping the benefits, and again, reflecting the state of the body. Not just massage, but it's also sleep. In sleep, the mind is not even there, right? We go into deep sleep. The conscious mind isn't there. The time doesn't exist. We are simply the body's recovering. What happens when we wake up from a night of restful sleep? The body feels great, but the mind is calm, mind is relaxed, and now we have the capacity to face the day with less stress. Why does that happen? Because the body is given again, an activity, in this case sleep, that reduces stress, that reduces inflammation. So for me, this connection back to the body, the bridge for me was stress and inflammation. Because the more that we are caring for the body and its needs in terms of an inflammatory load, in terms of a stress load, the more that our mind begins to mirror that state of body. And this also means imagine someone living a lifestyle where they're eating primarily junk food, fast food, not exercising, not sleeping, working long hours at a job that they may not like, staying in relationships that might be toxic for them. That entire stress load, guess where that's being carried and held? That's all going here. And if we're not paying attention to that, that's expressing itself in different ways, that's going to express itself with mental health challenges, maybe mental health diagnosis. It may be addictions, it may be substances that we need to turn to. Or the mind is trying to figure out, how do I solve this? How do I solve this? So it's trying anything to numb, soothe, sedate, and get rid of this experience, where in actuality, that's not the problem. The problem and the solution certainly isn't out there. The problem is, hey, the body is sending distress signals. The body saying, help me, help me, help me. And we have to listen to that. We have to listen to that. Rather than ignoring it. Oftentimes people think, oh, I have this problem with anger and I'm trying to figure out my anger and why is it expressing this way? Actually, one way to conceptualize anger is, hey, if your body or if your reaction is rooted in this energetic outburst of anger in an outward direction, that might be a sign that your body is stressed and triggered. Because my guess is after someone gets a massage, they might be a little less angry. Which points to the fact, well, maybe the source of this wasn't someone or some context out there. Maybe this was here the whole time and I can go in and take care of what's happening here.

Why do you think that happens? I mean, do you think that we are too much in our mind these days and we forgot about our body? And if yes, then why that happens?

Oh, that's a really beautiful question and I'm going to give you three answers. The first is related to a present day context. We live in a world that is mentally based. Ideas, theories, concepts are put on a pedestal. Everyone is pursuing mastery of the mind. The body is almost viewed as simply this thing that's carrying around our brain, this mechanical object. No one's many aren't appreciating that. The body is a process. It's not static. There's nothing static in our body. It's constantly changing from moment to moment. Constantly in, constantly in contact and in relationship with the environment around it. So the first thing is, yes, we live in a mental world that requires us to live predominantly in the mind. This is where we survive. This is where we find material stability, material success, material survival. In a sense, let's go back a little bit bigger, let's go back farther in time. Why do we live in our mind? Because as children, and this is of course rooted in the work of Gabor Mate. When we're children, our authentic expression, our authenticity is suppressed in order to maintain attachment. To maintain attachment. So imagine early on as children, our emotions and someone says, stop, stop crying, don't have that reaction or everything about us begins to be numbed. And our response in that environment is to conform to our environment, we need to survive. So we need to maintain attachments to our caregivers at the expense of what? Our connection to ourself and our body. So in order to survive a childhood, we actually have to go here, we have to stay here. Because what's happening here is unacceptable based on what our environment is telling us. Yeah, let's take another step back into history. And this is from a Buddhist teacher. I forget his name, I think is Reginald Ray and he wrote a book, Touching Enlightenment. And his theory about the reason the disconnect from the body happened goes back way farther than that. His reasoning is related to the transition from living primarily as hunter gatherers to living primarily in the world of agriculture. So as hunter gatherers, we had to be intimately connected to our body and the environment. We had to sense, track animals, understand exactly what's happening in our environment in order to survive. All of a sudden we have this advent, this new technology of farming and modern day agriculture, the beginning stages of modern day agriculture. And all of a sudden the shift of dependence and productivity goes to here, where we have a single plot of land and we are simply calculating and using our mind how to best take advantage of this. So we start using our mind to solve our problems rather than again being connected to our body so our body can navigate nature and the natural world. So to me that's fascinating. He also points to something very interesting, that if it was related to a cultural shift in the way that we live, that cultural shift isn't that old, right? Agriculture, what, 10,000 years, that kind of way of living, predominant way of living, or the beginning stages of that. How long has it taken the human body to evolve into this form? Hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years. However long you want to go back in time, the hardware for maintaining connection to self and the natural world is still there. The only thing that's changed over the last 10,000 years slowly and steadily is the software. Which means that if the hardware is still there, we still have the capacity to reconnect. We still have the capacity to come back to our bodies, to reconnect with our intuition, so that we can actually use our bodies as a way of navigating the world. Because Soma wise, as you've read, is not a series of practices. It's not like, hey, do this and you'll feel better. Somoise is a different way of living your life. Somoise is a completely different way of relating to the present moment. Because instead of assessing a present moment based on this is what I think about the situation, this is what I'm thinking, are the strategies or what beliefs, or this is what my mind thinks is the best solution. It goes to the body and says, what is my body telling me about this? Is my body open in response to this, or is my body closed as an example? Since again, this journey back to the body, now my body is my teacher, my barometer and my compass. There's certainly many Decisions, hey, do I take that business decision? Do I take that client? Do I take this thing? Of course my mind says, hey, the money's good. Hey, productivity is good. The mind has its own usual things it might be concerned about. But if my body is constricting and tensing all of a sudden, hey, you know what? This doesn't feel right. This relationship doesn't feel right. This context doesn't feel right. Someone asked me to go on a lunch date or have some kind of plans. You know what? It doesn't feel right to go there. And all of a sudden my body is starting to sense and share with me what is actually in alignment in that moment from an intuitive sense rather than just a logical sense. And I'm not saying to disregard the logic, but I'm saying it's really nice to have two points of reference when making a decision rather than just one, which is usually based on fear, anxiety.

Yeah. Fear, anxiety and a body that if you're not connected to, can lead you into the wrong decisions. Yeah.

Yes.

And I have some remarks to make. So you've talked about the child that tries to obey to like, to the their parents to be like socially integrated. So we disconnect from our bodies in the childhood. Also you said about the hunter and the gator. Like hypothesis that. Yeah. That we have the hardware to be connected, like in the woods, to hunt, to feel things.

Yes.

The software has changed. The problem is that we, to be healthy, we have to use the hardware that we have. Like, it's like the car. If you don't ride it for two years, it's not going to start. So the problem is that we have to use the hardware. We cannot leave it there. Yes. And like in neuroscience, even neuroscience can explain that because in our brain, in our brains, we still have like the biggest area of the brain is the one that is responsible for using our hands. Like the, like the biggest power of our brain is to use our hands. And we stopped using the hands. So probably our brains are going to evolve in time and we are going to replace this area. Yeah. That that is, is made for using hands. We're going to replace it to think more.

Yeah.

But it's going to take a lot of years.

Yes.

Still right now to be healthy, we have to use our hands.

Yes.

And like, we cannot change our childhood.

Yeah.

It's impossible. We can understand it. We, I think we cannot go and hunt. Like not, not all of us. We cannot go and, and get our food and hunt to be connected to our bodies. Then like all the things that you said are a very good explanation to, like, to the reason why we lost contact to our bodies. But how can we then regain contact to our bodies? What have we do to connect back?

It's. It's a. It's a process. I like the way the analogy that used in relation to a car that's broken down, because once a car is broken down, there are certain steps that you have to do to get it operating correctly. It's not just simply starting it. It takes time, it takes care. Different aspects of the vehicle, different functionalities of the vehicle have to be addressed before it's drivable again. And then, of course, once it's driving, of course, maintenance is important, the right fuel, all these things. And it's a beautiful analogy that you used. If you drive it too fast, it breaks down a car. Right. Especially if you just drive it full speed all the time. Yeah. Again, I'm really liking that analogy. But in order to come back to the body, it has to be done gently and slowly because there's a reason we live in here. It helps us survive. And so coming back to the body is going to be uncomfortable at first. It might even be painful for some. Why? Because imagine if we've been ignoring. Because most people lift from here, from the neck up, and they don't feel from the neck down. And that's again, a normal adaptation, a normal survival strategy that we have to do in order to maintain the necessity of connection to our caregivers. It's biologically essential for us to stay connected because our nervous systems are regulated through the nervous system of our caretakers, oxytocin, all the other things that our nervous system needs to develop as a child. So coming back to this body, this thing we call our body, at first it's going to be like, whoa, what's that? And how does the mind react to something that is unknown or unfamiliar with fear? It's like, what is this? So many times people start connecting to the body and I witness this and I watch and they're like, I had to go to the doctor because I felt pins and needles on my hands and arms. And I've never felt these sensations. I'm like, yeah, you're feeling yourself. But at first the mind is frightened because it doesn't understand that this is the language that the body speaks. Imagine traveling to a country. Let's say you travel to China. Do you speak Mandarin? No. Okay, so imagine someone just lands and they don't speak a word of English or a word of Romanian. And they just start telling you things in Mandarin, like commands and start saying stuff to you. How might you react to someone essentially you might perceive as yelling at you in a foreign language?

I would be anxious.

You'd be anxious, Exactly. And here's a foreign land. Here's someone yelling a foreign language at me. You wouldn't know what to do.

This is the body of the language of our body.

Correct. So that when we come back to the body, it's like landing in a foreign land. Because, hey, I haven't been here for a long time. I disconnected a long time ago. And all of a sudden this is all new. It's unfamiliar. And we don't understand that. What the body's actually yelling and screaming at us. It's not really yelling and screaming. It's just saying, hey, welcome back. I've been waiting for you for so long. I want to show you something. We need your support. Can you help out over here? And here? We're just confusing these signals. We're confusing these signals as signs and symptoms. That is wrong with us. Right. A great example is shaking. Right. So shaking and tremoring is one of the natural ways that every mammal releases stress and tension.

Yeah.

The Western approach pathologizes shaking. There's a modality and approach called tre, which invites the body to tremor and shake. So you're talking about different practices. One of those practices is shaking and tremoring. Right. Have you ever shaked or tremored? Maybe when I've seen. Or how do animals relieve stress? They might shake or tremor and release something. When a human tremors, something must be wrong with this person. We must sedate this person. We must control this experience for the body. The body's like, let me shake. Why does the body need to shake if the body has a natural process? In fact, maybe you can demonstrate it visually for me. How does the body protect itself when it goes into a physical posture? What is the physical. Thank you. It braces, it goes inward, it creates tension, and the body moves into. Towards and into this fetal position. In order to do what? What is it actually doing when it does this? It's protecting the vital organs.

Yeah.

So I don't want this damage because this keeps me alive, this part of my body, very vulnerable part of the body. And so if the body has built in defenses to protect and go into tension, that means there have to be the opposite processes developed into the body as well. In other words, the body has to have ways of coming out of that tension too. Shaking, tremoring is one of the ways that Tension is dispersed and integrated and processed and removed from the body. What happens after earthquakes or after big natural disasters? People are shaking again. It's not a pathology, it's how their body's processing and reducing stress. I've seen videos of prey animals that a predator is about to kill them, or then the predator is scared off. The body of the prey animal, like a deer, will go into freeze, which is a biological gift, because then the animal doesn't experience the pain of being eaten. But let's say the body freezes. Their body freezes, their nervous system goes into shutdown. All the core temperature drops, the heartbeat drops in preparation for death, and then the body, and then the predator is chased off. If you watch that animal over time, it doesn't die slowly and surely, the heartbeat starts going again. All of a sudden, the jaw may start tremoring, the body starts shaking. The prey animal begins to process that experience by shaking it out of their system. And then the animal gets up and trots off as if nothing happened. And that's because there is no thought, conscious thought, or person saying, stop the shaking, stop the shaking, stop the shaking. No, no, no. The body knows exactly what to do with that tension. So this is one of the ways that the body's natural processes, this foreign concept to the mind, is stopped and thwarted. And shaking doesn't just happen with stress and trauma. Right. Shaking also happens and pleasureful experiences. Have you ever witnessed, or maybe yourself, you're laughing so hard that you're shaking with joy or an orgasm, Right. What happens when many people orgasm? There might be a shaking involved in that orgasmic release. So shaking and tremoring is a very natural part and a very natural process of the human body. But again, the mind misunderstands it, so it stops it.

You said that when we start to come back to our body.

Yes.

We gonna hear like this foreign language that our body speaks and we gonna start to feel the fear. And I think this is the first point when somebody can say, hey, you know what, I want to come back to the mind. So how can we approach fear? And you talk about the fear in your book. How can we approach fear? And maybe we can talk about the pain. Because you have, you make such a beautiful separation about the pain and the suffering. Let me give you an example how I use this to explain this to my wife. Because we, before coming to the podcast, we left our child, 2 years old daughter, to the kindergarten. This is her first week. So we left her like we've been with her to the kindergarten for the past Month. So she just played there for a. For one hour outside. She knows like her friends, the people that are going to care about her there. So she got used to that. But now when we left her in the kindergarten and it's raining outside and she cannot go outside, she started like, when we were leaving, she started to yell like, mama, don't leave me, stuff like that. So she's in pain. And what I explained to my wife and what I understand, like reading your book, is to make the difference between the pain and the suffering. Because we made sure she's not suffering. She knows the people over there, she knows we're gonna come back like we managed to, to make her not suffer. But she feels pain because we're living. We're living. And to be a human is. It means we gonna feel pain. But how can we get away from suffering? Sorry, I, I've made the half of the explanation because I read the book. But what, what, what? To get back to my question, people are going to. When people are connecting to their body, they are going to feel the fear and to feel the pain.

Yeah.

How to, what can you explain to those people watching now? What can they do to not suffer but still feel those things?

Right. Those are two questions, and I'm going to start with the first one that. And I like that you said around being a human that you're going to experience pain. In fact, being a human, I think to really fully embody the experience of being a human, we have to feel everything. And in fact, when we don't allow ourselves to feel all the emotions, the full spectrum of sensations and experiences within the body, what we're actually doing, we're not just cutting ourselves off from the things we want to avoid. Because most people don't want to feel fear. They don't want to feel anxiety or sadness or anger. So they say no to these emotions, like, no, thank you. But then as a consequence, they're also saying no to the other side of the spectrum. The peace, the joy, the ecstasy, the happiness. They're saying no to that as a consequence of saying no to the other stuff. So they begin to limit their life experience to something that is in this very narrow window. This is why many people experience being stuck, being numb, not having a lot of joy in life because they're so busy and wasting so much energy avoiding the things that their mind labels as uncomfortable or painful, that they also prevent themselves from feeling the things that actually gives them the truest joys. And so when I say pain in life is essential, suffering is optional. It means that what we can do because all the, let's put it this way, all of the intentions that you may have that are friends, our family members, whoever their intentions for change, Anyone listening to this probably wants to change some aspect for life. The only deterrent, the thing that's actually getting in the way of that process of change is fear, is discomfort. So if we don't get comfortable facing that experience, we're not going to be able to create change. If we can sum up our daily life, our everyday living, as a series of conditioned reactions, in other words, I behave in this way because I've developed a routine, because this is my life and it's sort of automatic. There's an automatic way of being that many people have adopted as soon as we wish to break away from that. Because at some point, for many people there comes a moment where they say, you know what? This doesn't work for me anymore. I want to create change. I want a different relationship, I want a different job, I want a different state of health, a different state of well being. And now they're like, okay, this is what I want. Here's my goal. In order to move away from something that's been conditioned into our body, into our nervous system. Neurons that wire together, fire together, right? We've heard that if we're moving away from something that's been conditioned into our body, that's going to be painful, that's going to be something new. It's going to be again, the body's going to say, what's this? The mind is going to react to that. If we don't know, understand how to relate to that, we're going to keep coming back to our conditioned, habitual way of being. And this is where practices come in. Because you said, how do I deal with fear? How do I work with this stuff? Through gentle, consistent practice. And this is why we talked about meditation or stillness. We talked about meditation. You can take the same principle, the same principles of meditation, which is, can I be focused on my inward experience? Can I stay connected to my breath? Can I be still and observe that experience without reacting? You can take those same three principles and apply them to situations and contexts that are uncomfortable. And why would we want to do that? So do you like cold showers? Do you like cold exposure? Do you like taking ice baths?

Well, I do that often. And I love the feeling after that.

Yes, you love the feeling after that and you are now well practiced in it. My guess is that most of the people watching or listening this may think of an ice bath or a cold shower and say, no, thank you. That's not going to be a great experience. However, if we consciously embrace practices and exercises that invite discomfort into our everyday life, we get better at facing fear and discomfort. Because I've been doing cold exposure for years, and I can guarantee you one thing. There's still the most uncomfortable part of a cold shower or an ice bath is guess, guess. When it's before getting in, it's always the same. And I'm sure you're having a similar experience because you're now well seasoned and well practiced. Before you get in, the mind says, no, thank you, because you know that it's not going to be pleasureful, but you remind yourself, actually, I know how I feel after. I know how my body feels after. I know how much easier life is. Imagine this. If the hardest part of your day happens in the morning when you wake up, it makes the rest of your life easier. So if you have intentions for change and you are not challenging yourself through discomfort, the likelihood of change is very small. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson or Edgar Allan Poe or some other American literature, American literary poet or whatever it may be. He had a really beautiful quote, and his quote was, he who has not. He who, who does not. He who does not embrace fear on a daily basis has not discovered the secret of life. And I just. I love that quote. It's in the book. I mean, it's. It's probably. You can probably read it in Romanian because it's there. In Romanian.

It's full of quotes, actually. Yeah. I love it. They're so, so diverse and so, so nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can always learn from. From the experience of others. And I think that I remember when I was writing the book and I shared it with a friend, and I said, how many quotes should I have at each chapter? She said, just one. I'm like, no, no. I want three quotes at the beginning of every chapter is just to have that variety of learning.

Yeah. But coming back to fear, I think this is the first instrument or one of the first instruments that are like our people that are watching now can take away from this podcast. And this is, this is what I, I told from the beginning when I was talking in Romanian, that you come here with a completely different perspective of the things that we are preaching. And it seems to be like the most, like the, the easiest and the, The.

The.

The best one. This is like the common sense, like coming to this example of cold showers, like, we are preaching cold showers for a Long time. And cold bats have a lot of physical benefits. It makes you, it's, it grows your, your, your strength. Yeah. But now watching is this way. This is like, it makes me want to go and take a cold shower right now because this is the first thing you can do in the morning to embrace your fear and to stay with your pain and the feeling. Yeah, yeah. The pain and the fear before going to the shower are so big. But when you get inside and you say, you know what, I have to stay here for one minute or two minutes and it's painful. There's nothing else to do. Just to be still. Like to breathe. Yeah. To be still inside and to feel that pain and to get used to that. And it makes you so powerful just for that day. Like.

Yes, yes. And can I expand on that? Because I think there's so much gold in this discussion on a cold shower because we can actually discover more aspects of ourselves. And the first aspect I want to refer to is actually what you shared. One way of doing a cold shower is to time yourself. Okay, I'm going to be here for a minute. I want to be here for two minutes. I want to be here for 10 breaths, whatever it may be. And then as a consequence of that goal or that intention, we take something that is a very somatic exercise and we infuse a cognitive element. So now we're making it a little more of a mental exercise. So one invitation to deepen the connection to the body is to say, forget the time, because time is for the mind. The mind is what creates time. Time doesn't exist for the body. For the body, everything is just now. And that's important. So what we might say is I'm going to stay in the cold and I'm going to stay until my body has adapted. I'm going to stay until my breath stops beating so fast. I'm going to wait till the tension in my shoulders drops and I'm going to wait until my body accepts the cold. And then what that does is it takes your attention away from a thought and thought based goal and it takes your attention into your body and you become more connected to yourself as a result. So now not only are you getting the physical benefits of a cold shower, but you're also saying, okay, wow, I'm now listening to my body. I'm noticing the changes. I'm seeing if I'm tensing and I'm seeing if I can fully relax into the experience. And in fact, for you or anyone listening or watching, I invite you to do two things. The next time you do a cold shower or the first time you do a cold shower, go in the cold shower and tense against the cold and then go into that same cold shower and see if you can relax into the cold and notice the way. And notice the difference in which the body experiences the cold, the cold water, because it will be different when we allow the experience. So isn't it's fascinating what you can do with cold water. You can really learn how to listen to the body and learn how to connect to the body. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay, great. So there's a second aspect that I think is even more important. We have to ask ourselves, why am I doing this? Because for some, because conscious discomfort isn't feeling pain for the sake of pain. It isn't feeling discomfort because we deserve it, because we're not good enough or whatever it may be. Because then a conscious discomfort practice can become a form of self flagellation. And there's a very thin line between conscious discomfort and self flagellation. Punishing oneself.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like fasting. Fasting can be an immensely beautiful practice for connecting to self, connecting to emotions, connecting and understanding our relationship with food or fasting can be something that is very self destructive and, and even lead to very catastrophic cases of eating disorders. Yeah, so it's a very thin line. We have to be very honest with ourselves. So when we do these conscious discomfort practices, we have to start with one understanding. Yes, a conscious discomfort practice might be taking a nail and hammering it into my hand. Yes, that would be uncomfortable and painful. I can practice observing my pain. But the thing that makes conscious discomfort practices different than simply inflicting pain on oneself is that there's a lot of science and proof that these practices are actually healthy and beneficial for our physiology, for our psychology, for our genetics, everything. And so be curious, why am I doing this? Am I doing this because I know this is a gift to my body? Or am I doing it because some other, again, some mind based goal that if I do this, then I'll have this because I won't be good enough until I have this, so I have to do this. Do you see how it becomes a subtle form of punishment if we're doing it to attain some future state rather than saying, hey, you know what? I know my body thrives because of this and I'm going to give my body the gift of this cold water, knowing that at the end of it it's going to have reactions that actually support its health and longevity and maybe even Play around with that, see how different you experience it or anyone listening how differently you might experience this conscious discomfort practice or any conscious discomfort practice when you infuse an element of self compassion, of kindness and saying, hey, you know what, this is good for me rather than I need to do this for this future experience or this future state.

Yeah, I think that the, the, the main difference between those two ways of doing that is that the second one is much easier to do.

Yes.

I mean I can go to sport because I have to go to sport because I have to be healthy. I can eat salads because that's make me healthy. And I have this willpower to do that. I can make cold showers because it makes me feel good after that. But you get tired of all of that. I mean, I always get tired and I go away from these practices and then I come back. But then if I, I think that, I hope that if I just wake up and I ask myself what is good for my body today? Is it to take weights, lift weights, Is it to run, is it to swim? Is it to go to hot shower, hot sauna? Is it do my body needs a boost with, with a cold shower? And if I ask, I even like, I want to get to the food and the binge eating or like the cravings that we have. And it's hard for me to stay away from chocolate. Let's say if I have chocolate in my house, it's hard for me to stay away. And I say, yeah, I have the willpower, I will not eat that. It's not healthy for me. But if I have your perspective and I say, look, it's 10:00pm Is this chocolate good for my body? Oh, it's definitely, definitely not. So I gonna get away from, from the craving because it's not good for my body. I mean, I mean just this perspective for the same things makes them much easier to do.

Yes. And you can even take it a step bigger, a step deeper, because you can ask yourself, why am I craving this chocolate at 10pm for me, my behavior wasn't binge eating, it was pornography. So for me, when I was moving away from pornography, I tried willpower. Through my 20s, even my early 20s, I already began to realize that my relationship with porn wasn't healthy. In other words, there was something about it that let me know this isn't for me. In the same way that my body lets me know that caffeine and coffee isn't great for me. Even though I enjoy the taste, I try not to indulge in it. Too often with pornography, I knew that, hey, you know what? Some aspect of me is trying to move away from porn for a reason. And willpower always failed. In other words, I would go abstinent for six months, then I'd come back to it, absent for nine months, go back to it, absence for a few weeks, come back to it. There was always. It was always, eventually a moment in time where the stress or the stress in my life or I became unconscious and disconnected. And all of a sudden, bam, I found myself back into porn consumption. It wasn't until I asked myself, why. So in those moments of craving. Yes. To understand, you know what? This isn't healthy for me. This isn't healthy for my body. That is a really important question and a very important reflection. But there was. There were other questions that were very interesting for me to explore. What am I feeling right now that's making me want to want this Consumption?

Yeah.

What am I angry about? What am I sad about? What am I not confronting? What am I stressed about? When I began asking myself those kinds of questions, what happened was two things. Firstly, I was able to stay with the craving without reacting to it, which is very important so that the craving can pass. But then what I always found was a sensation or an emotion that triggered some kind of release. Then, and this is the most important thing, I stopped focusing on stopping to watch porn. Because when I was focusing on stopping, I was still focusing on it. It was still a dominant narrative in my mind. I was still saying, not this instead of this, this, this. It was not this, not this, not this. But it was still there in my mind when I brought my focus to the circumstances beneath the surface of the behavior, all of a sudden, the behavior didn't matter. It's like, well, that's not important. What's important is why I'm going there and focusing on the why empowered me to surrender to something that was beyond the behavior. And as I was able to solve the need that the behavior was fulfilling, guess what happened to the behavior?

Vanished.

Vanished without trying. There was no willpower. Zero. It just stopped. Yeah.

Yeah, that. That's amazing. And yeah, I, like, I have few questions here. First of all, what is. You said you had unhealthy relationship with porn. What can you define psychologically? What is. What is healthy relationship with porn? What is unhealthy?

Great, that's. That's a great question. Because I don't think that those questions are only applicable to pornography. Yeah, they're applicable to every substance, every behavior, whether it's gambling, Whether it's smoking, whether it's alcohol, whether it's sugar, whether it's whatever. We all have different relationships with consumptions and behaviors in our life. And it's up to us to reflect and explore that relationship. You cannot tell an addiction that they are an addict. The only person that can tell the addict they're an addict is themselves. And you know what happens when you try to tell someone they're addicted to something? What's going to happen? They're going to reject that argument and they're going to defend against you. So for me, my individual context I explored again, when I got curious about my porn use, I realized actually, this has had a unique place in my life. It started when I was only five years old. And unfortunately, there's kids that are starting pornography use that young. I stumbled upon it and I realized that it was actually filling a gap of connection and emotional need that I wasn't getting from my environment. So it gave me a false sense of connection that. That I needed. That I. That I needed to survive a very isolated, socially isolated childhood, or at least the experience. That's the way I experienced my childhood. What's important, though, is that with every behavior that becomes unconscious and repetitive, there are certain consequences that we can reasonably predict. In other words, with cigarettes, if someone becomes a habitual smoker, there are certain consequences that we can reasonably predict, right? Maybe a discoloration of teeth, maybe damaging of the lungs, a respiratory problem, whatever it may be, we know that these are the predictable things. Same thing with alcohol and the liver. With pornography, those predictable outcomes aren't necessarily physical. So we don't carry the evidence of porn use on our body. Where we might carry the evidence of porn use is through our sexual behavior. So at five years old, if that was my first exposure of sex and that became my sex education through my adolescence, guess what? Those become the sexual scripts that my mind believes is defines sex and my expectations of women and my objectification of women. So for me, the reflection that happened in my 20s was, you know what? I don't have any female friends. Every female in my life has actually been a source or a place of either mental sexual object, objective objectification, mental sexual objectification, or actual sexual objectification. So for me, it was a very important turning point of saying, well, do I want to have close intimate friendships with women, or do I want to continue to have a very limited expression or relationship with women? And I chose that, you know what? I actually want to be friends with women. It was actually shocking to see men being Friends with women because I didn't think it was possible. It made no sense. And so when I began questioning the narratives that have been taught to me by mainstream porn pornography, I also began to see, well, wait a second, has this impacted other aspects of my life? Of course, it was impacting my sexual expression. That was obvious. The way that I was having sex was, was again heavily influenced by mainstream porn. And certainly today that doesn't align with the way that I embrace and I, and I engage in sexual connection and sexual intimacy. And I needed to question that conditioning. Is this, is this an equal partnership? Is this an equal expression? Is this an equal exchange? Am I giving as much as am I receiving? What am I focused on? All of these things came into question when I began to vulnerably explore my own sexuality in the way that I was expressing myself sexually with partners. The third thing that happened was I began reflecting on my own intimate relationships and I realized there was a pattern. So when I, when I asked myself why the porn use, you take a step back, you start reflecting. And what I saw was a two year cycle in my relationships and I went through a series, and almost thankfully it was a series of two year relationships I couldn't break past two years. And it was a very similar pattern. There was euphoria at the beginning, right, because that's when the endorphins are high. You meet someone, there's sexual connection and passion and energy. And after a few months, whether it's three months, six months, nine months, you know, that's usually the window, the honeymoon phase, but begins to drop down. And all of a sudden, here comes the invitation to be real human beings where you connect vulnerably, you express emotions, you're able to connect on some other, in some other way other than the deep, immense physical passion. And I had zero skills in emotional vulnerability. I didn't know how to express my needs, I didn't know I had needs. I didn't know how to communicate. And all of a sudden when I'm, when I'm here, when I'm, when I stop pleasing the person in front of me and I'm subconsciously avoiding my own needs, all of a sudden when I don't get what I want, and here's this established dynamic because of this relationship that has been developed without an understanding of how to communicate my needs, what do I do instead?

Go back to porn?

Go back to porn? I passive aggressively go back to porn.

But porn is not the reason why you didn't know how to express your needs of Course not. This is just like you just when you have a problem and instead of solving it, you go to porn.

Right, Exactly. That's so important. Porn wasn't the problem, it was the solution. It was how I avoided the pain of, of my needs not being met. Instead of knowing, instead of having a vulnerable conversation which might be painful and uncomfortable. I didn't know how to have that. I didn't have that skill set. I didn't know what an emotion even was. Then I could passive aggressively go and find the connection that I, that I needed through porn. So porn was the, Porn was the solution. And when I started treating porn as the solution rather than the problem is when it disappeared because I stopped judging him. Because that's the stigma. The stigma is on the behavior. There's something wrong with this. There's something wrong with this. You shouldn't do this. This is so bad. This is disgusting. Whatever it may be, that's what perpetuates it. When I started realizing, holy shit, porn has been helping me solve a problem for a really long time. Let's go find out what that problem was. Right. So let's go find out the pain that this porn was attempting to help me avoid. And when I was able to integrate and explore that pain, well, why do I need the protection anymore?

Yeah, this is such a nice perspective. So for, let's say for people that are watching now, if they use porn. Yeah. From time to time or on a daily basis. What, what they have to pay attention on to find out if they use porn just for, I mean, how can you do that? Because you're right. If you go to somebody and say, hey, you have an alcohol addiction, they are going to say, no, I'm drinking because I like it.

That's it.

If you say you have nicotine addiction, they're going to say, no, I just like it. If you say you have gambling addiction, they say, no, this is how I have fun. I make my money, I have fun there. So the, the realization of the addiction have to come from inside of us.

Right.

So what, how can you. And what I hear from you is that porn is just another addiction like any else addictions.

It can be.

Yes, it can be. Yeah. So it can be or it, it can be not. So what are the questions? What have people to pay attention to to find out if the porn, it's just pleasure or it solves a problem?

Great question. Let's start with this. This is not meant to be a demonization of porn. I am not an anti porn advocate. I just Know that my relationship with porn has pointed my life in a specific direction. Because there, there for certain others, I can imagine context around the world, around certain, maybe certain settings where a person was so sexually repressed that watching porn actually was the key to their liberation and the key to opening their sexual expression. So here's. Here's a context where porn may have actually helped someone come out of a very repressed state. So let's start with that, and let's start with the next part, which is reflecting on one's own porn use. You might ask yourself certain questions. To what degree do I control this? So if you find that you start doing it habitually, even though you don't want to, that might be the first sign that, hey, has this become an unconscious way that I'm. That I'm navigating life? And what am I avoiding through this? That might be the first question. Am I in full control of this and can I actually stop? That might be the first question. The second question is, what happens in your body before, during, and after? Is there any guilt and shame? We have to be really honest. Again, does my body open towards the experience, or is there closure? Right? Is there a little shame? Something that we have to be really connected to and notice?

What's the difference if I. If. If I'm closing when I watching porn? That means it is.

Pay attention. After.

After, okay?

Because during. During is. It's the protector. It's getting rid of something. It's giving us something. It's giving us pleasure, soothing, whatever it may be. Afterwards, it may give us a little more evidence and feedback as to whether or not this aligns with who we are. Am I keeping it secret? Am I sharing it with my partner? Does my partner know that I'm watching porn? Is there an open, vulnerable, honest discussion around the needs that porn might be giving us or why we watch it? So again, if we're hiding it from the world, if there might be tension in the experience afterwards, if we're not able to share it openly, those are the kinds of questions that may begin to reveal to us, hey, do I actually have a healthy relationship with this experience? Or is it actually a band aid or maybe emotional intimacy? The last thing to pay attention to is, is it impacting the rest of my life in some way? And for me, it was because I noticed that whenever I was at the beginning of a relationship and there was no porn, eventually porn came back in because of stress, because of lack of communication, whatever it may, whatever it may have been. And then what happened after Porn use was then I began to lose interest in having sex with my actual partner. And I started to have preferences or expectations or imagine my imagination would take over. And all of a sudden my. The human being that I was in sexual bond with and sexual connection with all of a sudden began to be lesser than what was happening on the screen. So the visual stimulation began to take priority rather than the holistic connection that sex can give through mental, physical, emotional. And of course, ultimately the reason I moved fully away from it was when I actually discovered emotional vulnerability and how to speak and, and speak about pain and hold emotion and hold the emotion of another. I realize that actually the deepest sexual intimacy and sexual connection happens when we are fully ourselves in relationship and the other person receives us fully. And that vulnerability is what caused the deepening and the completely full body experience of sex. Rather than sex being isolated only in the sexual organs in the penis, all of a sudden it's a full body experience where everything gets to enjoy the ride.

Yeah, that's so nice. And actually. Yeah, now I get it. And when you're lacking that, when you don't have that emotional connection, like full body emotional connection, you need like a stronger stimuli. Yes. To feel that. And that's why a lot of people think that is a problem nowadays. That a lot of people are watching porn and they are bringing those experience as a standard into their relationship not because they see that there, but because they are lacking that connection that they need to.

Yes.

So the question is if you, if you have this standard already in your life, if you're, if you're seeing a sexual experience through the lenses of porn, because you were, you, you were exposed to porn from young age. And I think everyone of our age have been in a way of another. Exposed to porn through like magazines and stuff like that. So I mean you said you have, you had your first exposure to porn at 5 years old. I think I was, I think I was about 7 years old. 6. 7 years old when I was going with my mother to gross grocery shop. And there was like a refrigerator and behind that refrigerator there was a big, I don't know, like a magazine poster with naked woman. And that was the first time I was seeing naked woman. And I love to go to the grocery store every day and, and my mother was like shopping and I was just sitting there and watching and I was like, really? That was my first contact with a very young age with say that's what was nudity, let's say not really porn. But I think everybody for age was Young exposed to porn. So how can we change this standard? What, what should we do to change this standard?

I think that answer revealed itself to me in my PhD research and there's a reason, you know, when, when PhD researchers choose a pathway that they're interested in, it's usually not by accident that they do something that they themselves are working on within themselves.

PhD. Me.

Right, yeah, me search. PhD. Me search.

PhD. Me.

Search. Yeah, Instead of research.

Yeah, instead of research.

Yeah, of course. And one of the primary. I'll just give the summary and then I'll go into the important bit. The summary is that I was seeing if meditation, the way that it impacted me and helped me, could help other porn addicts or, or individuals that identified as having a problematic relationship.

Yeah.

With porn. Because porn addiction doesn't actually exist.

It does. It exists now.

It doesn't exist in the literature still.

I think that it, it's used like you don't even use in medicine. You don't think, you don't use alcohol addiction. Addiction, you say like a person with problem with alcohol use. Yeah. Problematic use of something. Yeah.

And that's, that's how we avoided the label. We just said, hey, do you identify with having a problematic relationship with porn? Yes. Then you can do this research. Yeah. Okay. And, and the, I'll give you the summary. The summary. The results are inconclusive. And the reason that is is because the research was supposed to be that meditation was the intervention. Right. That was supposed to be the primary intervention. What we didn't realize during the planning of the research until obviously we collected the data was that two interventions happened way before the meditation was given to the participants. And the first one was a tracking sheet. So right at the beginning of the research, they were supposed to track their use and then be invited to do meditation after a certain amount of time. Yeah. Well, guess what happens when a person starts tracking their use? They become more consciously aware of it. And so now all of a sudden, we have our first intervention. It was an accidental intervention. Yeah. Where as a matter, this is again, a great exercise for anyone watching or listening. Why don't you start tracking yours to see how often and how long you're watching porn. That may reveal something to you about, again, your porn use. So that was accidental. It wasn't intentional. But then something happened even before the tracking sheet. And this is the important one, after the pre study interviews, which is essentially the first interview with all the participants that was aimed at understanding, hey, how did this all start for you? Let's understand where you grew up, how you grew up, what your first porn use was, how you think about it, how it's impacted your relationships. So we really wanted to understand the story that each of these men had around their porn use. And for most of the men, I think all but one or two, this was the first time they had spoken to anyone about their porn use. Some of the men after the interview, it wasn't meant to be a therapy session. I wasn't a therapist. I was just asking academic questions. I was being objective, as objective as I could. Obviously. Here's the thing, I can't be completely objective because my energy is of. I see you, I know your challenge, I know you can do this. And that's the way I was relating to them. So maybe they felt that, who knows? Yeah, but after the, after the interviews, they would shake my hand and say, oh my God, I feel like I finally have a way out of porn use. I've never been able to share that. I feel so much better. I'm not carrying the shame anymore. And I'm like. My first reaction was great, but then I thought about, I'm like, shit, this ruins my research. This ruins my research. Because they're not supposed to experience benefit.

How can you do that otherwise? Because, yeah, it's like even like accepting the subjects to the study as from like the first two interventions are directly therapeutical for them.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So you couldn't separate it. So the results were inconclusive. Of course. Of course there were very obvious benefits that emerged from the meditation. But the reason I brought all of this up is to hone in on your question. How do you do this? If someone is beginning to reflect on their own porn use and say, well, what do I do? How do I begin moving away from this? I think we can take the lessons of those pre study interviews for my PhD research, and that is speak to someone. As long as it's in here, as long as we're ruminating on it, as long as we're holding it here, we're keeping the tension and we're keeping the experience in our body. And that's not how we're designed to manage stress. As a collective, communal species, we are a social animal. There are tribes that when someone is sick, they assemble. And the person that's sick goes in the middle and say, express what you're not communicating. Express what you're holding in. Communicate what you're holding back. And so I think when we're able to share vulnerably what's happening for us, In a safe container. Right. We don't want to maybe speak it to someone that's going to judge us. Maybe if your challenge is pornography use, maybe don't go to a Catholic priest. Maybe, maybe not. And, you know, I say that in joke, but as a joke. But here's what happened. One of the participants in the research said they had only spoken about it once. They went to a Catholic counselor. And that Catholic counselor was telling, well, you need to move away from that because that's really bad. So they were judging him, and then he's like, well, I'm never speaking to anyone about this again, because I'm just going to be judged. Because again, there's a lack of understanding and there's stigma. There's a lack of understanding. This is a protection. This behavior exists for a reason. It's protecting us from something. And if we're able to begin expressing this and receive it without shame, all of a sudden we feel lighter. We're not the asshole we think we are. Right. Because we have this judgmental voice in our head that's constantly judging ourselves. All of a sudden, when someone receives our vulnerability and says, you're okay, I understand. I see you. I can see why this is so painful. All of a sudden, it's lighter and we have a little more space to choose something new and maybe reflect on it and speak about it. Because the more someone is able to reflect on the context of this behavior, whatever this behavior may be, all of a sudden their capacity for choice grows and grows and grows. And choice is what it's all about. We want to be able to have a capacity to choose rather than living in this narrow way.

Yeah. And if we have the shame in this narrow way and we hide it, it's so hard to. To go and see what's the problem?

What. What.

What are we treating with this behavior? And I think that usually guys are having, like, you can sense this. This way of joking about porn. Like, hey, man, if you want, I. I'm gonna give you my porn library. Stuff like that. They think when, like, I want to like to put the. Maybe this is a starting point to talk about porn, but not the right one. Yeah, I mean, you mean that we have to find somebody that we can open to and say, look, I think I have this porn addiction. I have this porn use that. I don't talk to anybody. And yeah, that's what we have to do. Well, should it be with a friend, male friend, female friend, what's best, or it doesn't matter.

The specific form of the person in front of you is less important than the qualities that that person or that environment might give you. It might be a men's group, it might be a therapist, it might be a wife or a friend. Yeah, but it has to be someone who. And this is hard to. And this is why it's so hard for it to be a partner. Right. Because if you go to a partner and share porn use, that's a very challenging experience for the partner to receive because they may take it as an indication that they're not good enough. Oh, why is my husband or partner choosing porn over me? And the hardest thing in the world is for that partner not to take it personally because it's not about them. There's other reasons that that porn is being utilized. Again, stress reduction, whatever it may be, avoidance, emotional avoidance, emotional pain, whatever it may be, it's not, it's not because of the partner, but it's also very challenging for the partner to understand that. So we want to make sure that we're within a context where the person is safe, where the person is not judged, where the opening doesn't lead to an immediate closing. Because if we get the immediate closing again, what are we going to do? You said it, you said hide the shame. We're going to continue to hide the shame. And this is not just true. This is especially true for men because how are men conditioned? Men are conditioned to hide, to isolate, to be strong, to not share these emotional challenges or mental health challenges. Because what does that indicate culturally? That indicates weakness. Certainly in eastern European cultures like myself, in Poland and in Romania, it's the long standing social narrative for men that crying is weak. Quit being a baby, quit being a boy, harden up, whatever it may be. So this is why finding a context, a therapeutic context, most often, sometimes it's unfortunate that a therapeutic context is the first choice because it indicates that our capacity to listen to our friends and having a listening container has diminished so much that we need professionals. In fact, if everyone learned how to listen more deeply, more and more in tune with the person in front of them, the need for therapists would plummet. Because then all of a sudden we have a container with which we can share and release rather than always holding it in. Holding it in because we're ashamed. Holding it in that. A fear that if we share this aspect of ourselves, we will be rejected, we will be isolated, we will be abandoned. Because that's ultimately why we don't share ourselves, because there's this fear of something will be wrong with me. Maybe something's wrong with me or I don't want to lose this person because if I hurt this person, they'll leave me. Otherwise, what else, what else, what else would be preventing us from sharing?

You said that if we will be able to hear others, like the need for therapy is going to drop. And you talk about this in your book about hitting somebody and listening without coming in with your point. It's so hard for me at this point. I mean, and. But I started to feel it. Like I see somebody telling something to me and I feel the urge to explain to him, to interrupt him and to explain what I feel about that. Was it, what is it about? How can I control what, what this urge is telling to me? Like, I know I don't have to suppress it, but why do I have it and have to solve that?

Well, that's a really good question. And it actually will circle back to the practices that we've been speaking about all of today. Because most of the time that we are giving advice or trying to calm someone down or change their emotional state, what we're actually trying to do is calm ourselves down because we don't like the way we feel. So we're like, hey, don't feel that. It's okay, it's okay, you don't have to do that. And then now we have relief. So it's really not about them when we're doing that, it's about us. And so one of the things that I think that makes the somawise approach different and unique in comparison to other modalities or other approaches is that the ultimate intention is not self mastery. For me, it's not about weight loss or anything like that. For me, it's how do you take all these skills? Like, I want my body to be strong, resilient, stress free and tension free. So that way when I bring this body into relationship with other people, I can see them, I can be with them, I can be open to them, rather than being dominated by an agitated, tense internal state. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah. So now if my body is stressed and guess what happens when I'm listening to my son or my wife, there's more reactivity here. And it's easier to react with maybe some advice or impatience or a quick temper, whatever it is, because my body's not ready for that interaction. But if I'm after a massage, we spoke about a massage a few times, all of a sudden I finish the massage, I stay in connection with my son or my wife, all of a sudden it's so easy to be there. And we can also take that meditation practice and bring it into relationship. Right. Because ultimately the goal of meditation is that life becomes a meditation. It's not just where you sit and you meditate. It's that the rest of your life is a meditation where you're paying attention, you're noticing what happens. And then here comes, oh, look, here's an impulse to say something. I won't say something. Here's an impulse to do something. Let's just wait and see. Let's see what this person actually wants. Because maybe this moment is exactly as it's meant to be. And I don't need to fix it. I don't need to give my advice. I can, this is completely fine. And maybe I can ask first. Right. Ultimately, one tip about relationships that maybe every viewer can take away, one general tip is ask more questions than stating more statements. So is it okay? And in fact, asking permission is so important, not just in therapy, but in relationship. Maybe you do have something valid to share. Let me ask you this, and this is a little somatic exercise we can do together. I'm going to ask you a question, you tell me how your body responds. Yeah. Can I share something with you? Yeah. What happened when you said yeah and I asked you that question?

I took my fits up.

Yeah. And you. Was there an opening or a closing?

Opening gap.

Exactly. Why? Because I asked you permission. Because if I ask you permission and you say yes, I've prepared your nervous system to receive something I want to give you which might be advice. So if you're in relationship with a wife or a child, try that technique. Try it once, just to see. Ask them, hey, I've, you know, I have something, I have something came up for me and I'm curious if I could share it with you, would you be, would you want to hear it? Yeah. Because what are they going to say? They're going to say, yeah, they're going to be curious. So immediately you open their nervous system towards you instead of just coming out of nowhere and saying, hey, I think you should do that, or whatever it may be. And all of a sudden what's going to happen to their nervous system? Closed.

Yeah. But we somehow feel entitled to comment, like to say what they say.

We feel entitled, but it's not a feeling of entitlement. Where is it coming from? Our own agitation and tension. So it's not an entitlement, it's a self protection. It's how do I control this environment by saying what I think and Trying to control it with my opinion. And if we're able to sit with that and say, hmm, this is my agitation, my tension, maybe my words might be helpful to this relationship. Let's find out. Hey, can I share something with you that's coming up for me? That permission seeking, that kind of communication, that kind of asking and honoring the other person as an equal is so important. And it doesn't happen unless we start with the individual practices. Right. To tell my clients, hey, so you want to be more embodied in your relationships? Great. Well, let's start figuring out how to navigate relationships that will fail. Because what happens as soon as we're triggered and we're not connected? Habitual reactions and habitual ways of relating to someone. If, however, we start cultivating stillness, we start cultivating a capacity to be present with our uncomfortable emotions, all of a sudden, I come into a relationship with someone who is a separate universe. You are a separate universe to me. You have different beliefs, experiences, sensations, personalities, memories. Everything about your world is different than mine. And all of a sudden, these two universes are coming into contact with each other. If I'm not able to hold my experience in my body, I will not be able to see you, and I will not be able to understand your universe.

I love how it comes back all the time to the body.

To the body.

And I love how it explains like. Or a lot of like techniques and books of self help are like, if you see it from this perspective, they are trying to teach you how to ride a car with broken engine. You have a broken engine, so you have to start, you have to keep it more to get warm. You know it's still broken.

Yes.

Like the, the. The main goal is to fix that engine. And that's, that's what explains the. The thing that I told in the beginning, in the Romanian, that all of this, these things that we are doing in the end, like sports, good food, solving the addictions, finding the problems, staying with yourself, going to the meditation trip, all of these things, if you see them from these lenses, they are not egoistic anymore. You are doing that for others. Yes. For your like. And when you say others, I mean your life partner, your kids. You're becoming a better you for them.

Oh, shivers down my spine. Because you just, you just arrived at the most important part of this whole thing. Self care isn't. Isn't. Self care is about giving the best of you rather than what's left of you. And people don't realize that if they focus on taking care of this, they'll have so much more to give the world and the relationships that matter. I love that you arrived there. Right there. That's beautiful.

Yeah, I love this conversation so much so far. Like when you talk, when you talk with somebody, it's better to like to open and to ask permission and maybe to ask more questions than to come with your. Or if you feel that's the most important thing, if you feel the need to come with your opinion and to give an advice, like, take a step back and ask yourself, why do you feel that? What is inside your body? Yeah, it's so nice. I mean, yeah, like the time is running up. We have like 1/2 an hour left. And again, I wanted to tell to the people that. Oh, like what we talk about, like the techniques to come back to your body and the understanding of the techniques are in these books. And this, this is like one of the, one of, like, I, I don't, I don't know. Like, this is one of the top books I've read this this year and I, I'm so glad that I, I have this. Like, I'm going to keep that and to, to, to check it and to practice what, what's inside. Because we cannot cover all of the things that you come, you can do to reconnect to your body.

It's.

Everything is here.

And it's also about honoring the body's wisdom. That the body has an ancient wisdom that it's constantly expressing through sensation, through intuition. If we're not tapping into that wisdom, we're missing out on one of the most authoritative figures that can guide our life, which is our direct felt sense. Rather than relying on something that is external to us, someone else's words, someone else's opinions. Instead, what we're actually being guided by is an internal experience that is true to us and always accessible to us. That's powerful. That's a powerful way of navigating the world that we're missing out on. In fact, you read the book, it's like, I think it's one of life's cruelest jokes. It's like if there's powers that be there, laughing, saying, look, there's the answer. It's all there. And they're constantly looking out here. We're constantly trying to find the answers out there, not realizing it's here and it's been here the whole time.

Yeah, but we don't have any more places where we can hunt to connect to the body. We don't have the places where we can work with the hands. So we have to. We have to come back to the body with these special techniques. And we. I like the meditation is one of them. Yeah. Like the exposure to cold or hot environments, this hormetic pain that makes. Yeah, that is healthy for us is another way to come back to your body. Like simply. Like you have an example that they didn't try yet, but I want to mention about it. Or maybe you can. Maybe you can tell us about it. The washing your hand, your face, and let it dry without scratching. What? What? How can we use that as an instrument?

Well, I think there's a lot of lessons to be garnered from that very simple exercise. So Somoise talks about a unique little exercise. I don't think I invented it, but it came to me. Actually, it came to me because I would go into meditations and I would realize that after I washed my face, the first 15 minutes as the water was drying, it was so uncomfortable because it was these tiny sensations and it was itchy. And as you don't scratch it, the sensation grew in intensity. And eventually it always passed because the water dried or I got used to it and I could drop into deeper states of meditation. So I thought this would be like, wow, what a beautiful illustration. Example of our own reactivity to show someone, hey, do you want to see how reactive you are? Do you want to see how strong your impulse to react is? Let's do this. Let's wet your face and close your eyes and just sit still and don't move. And for many people, they're like, oh, my God, that was so annoying, so uncomfortable. It was such a big sensation. Not true for everyone, but for many. And what this does is two things. Firstly, it's a bit of a humbling experience because we realize, wow, this is water drying on the face. That's not a significant experience. And this is how strong the reactivity is when I'm paying attention to it. Imagine how strong the reactivity is. That's connected to our trauma, that's connected to our addictions. So that reactivity is probably a lot stronger. We're just not paying attention to it. We're not paying attention to that craving, our impulse to scratch an itch. In this case, scratching an itch might be reaching for a substance or an addiction. So what a beautiful environment to start practicing that. Hey, you know what? I can be more respectful of this process of change because I know that what I'm up against isn't just a small goal. Just because I write down a goal doesn't mean that my change is Guaranteed. What I'm actually up against is circuitry in my body that has been conditioned in a certain way for my entire life. And that's not easy to do. And I can be more kind to myself when I fall back into the pattern. I can be more kind to myself if I find myself straying. Because the worst thing that happens to us in the process of change, guess what? It's the self judgment and the shame. That's the part that keeps the next cycle of reactivity going. Because guess what people use when they're feeling guilty and ashamed? Their addiction. So it becomes a cycle. As soon as we start infusing understanding and kindness and compassion, all of a sudden we say, hey, I know how hard it is. Even water drying on my face is challenging. So let's respect this process and have a little more respect for my body. Because I know that if I take care of my body more, there'll be less reactivity in it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Yeah. But it is a useful exercise. Yeah. To stay still, to put the water on your face and still. Stay still to 10 minutes and feel the need, the urge to itch and not itching.

Yeah. So to not scratch the itch and just notice, wet the face, don't dry it completely and just go and sit still and just wait, see what happens and you'll notice that wow, there's sensations there, there's something happening there. You begin to connect to the language of the body, which is through the felt sense, through sensations.

Can you tell me more about the stillness? You, you've practiced Vipassana. What is vipassana and what, who can go there? I mean, and what's the purpose? It's like sitting retreat. Like it's a ten day sitting meditation, right?

Yeah, it's a ten day silent meditation retreat. Anyone can go. It's a beautiful environment. It's like jumping into the deep end of meditation. Right. So some people may want to try meditation by going into, into the shallow waters, experimenting a little bit, maybe putting on some flotation devices and trying to survive if you do have a passana. And surprisingly and shockingly, some people I've met that do vipassana for the first time there at the retreat, have never meditated before. And I'm always like, wow, how could you do this? Because it's so challenging. It's like jumping into the deep end and not knowing how to swim. So good luck. It's a challenging experience. I think it's very beneficial experience. But what's beautiful about vipassana it's a very, you're there and all of the usual routines and demands of the mind are taken away. So you have a place to sleep, they give you food, there's no time, all the time. You don't even need to know the timetable, you don't even need to know the time. All you need to do is hear the gongs and the gongs tell you where to go next. So essentially everything that the mind is usually doing is taken away. That's a very challenging experience for the mind to be stripped away of stimulation. Because when you go to a vipassana, you're asked not to bring any books or reading material. You're asked not to exercise or do any movement other than walking. So you're just there to walk and meditate and listen to the discourses. And in this environment where nothing is there to distract you from the practice of meditation, you actually experience the benefits of meditation. Because oftentimes again, for me, even before Vipassana, meditation was just an activity like, oh, I guess it helps. They told, you know, they tell me to brush my teeth every day, so I'll do it. But you know, a single brushing, you don't feel a difference. Yeah, just like when you meditate for 10, 15 minutes, like, okay, I feel a little better, but is it really doing anything? And then you go to a vipassana and you're like, holy shit. Like I'm, I'm having consciousness altering experience, I'm having ego transcending experiences. I'm experiencing things that for me it was unique. What was great is that a few months prior to my vipassana experience, I had done ayahuasca in South America. So here's the strongest psychedelic on earth. And of course it was a powerful experience. I can experience a lot of benefit from ayahuasca, including the being able to touch and actually embody unconditional love for the first time. Like, wow, this is what it feels like to be unconditionally loved. But the thing about psychedelics, which are powerful medicines or can be powerful medicines depending on set, setting, context, everything else is that the medicine is only the beginning. It's really the integration that matters. So for me, being a naive journeyer and a naive meditator, I had that experience and it disappeared. The lessons of it, the clarity of it, everything that happened on it, slowly diffused as I engaged in my everyday life and normal conditioning kicked in again. So it wasn't until I arrived at vipassana, where it's slow, gradual, 10 days deepening throughout the day where all of a sudden this was the first practice in my life and I hadn't done many where I'm like, oh, this is permanent change. Because after Vipassana, I emerged back into my life and yes, there was a bit of a rebound and like, whoa, whoa. It's strange to be back in everyday life. But after six months and after the first one, by the way, after the first one I said I'm never going back because I thought I had figured it out. I thought I had everything I needed. So I'm like, okay, I don't need to go anymore. Six months later I'm like, wow, my life is different. I'm a different person. I'm relating to myself and others differently. And then it dawned on me, like, I need to go back. And so then I started going back every year. And every year there was a deepening. Every year there's a new understanding and every, every year there is a subtle yet permanent shift. The beautiful part of Vipassana now is that, and I'm assessing this or assuming that this is a. What's the word I'm looking for? This is a way that it's working, right? This is my confirmation and evidence that maybe I'm moving in the right direction with this whole practice is that before my first Vipassana compared to my everyday life was like night and day. Like this was an enlightening awakening experience. And when I got back into my everyday life, it was chaos that eventually stayed chaotic. Maybe. Of course, like I said, there was shifts, but it wasn't a big shift. And then the next time I went, and each successive time I went, I noticed that the space or the experience between the meditation and my life was getting closer and closer. So I'm like, this is great. That means that what I'm experiencing and what I'm practicing there is beginning to become actually what my everyday life experience is like. And that to me is fantastic. It means that I'm staying more calm in everyday life and I'm taking some of those qualities and skills and now they are highlighting, accenting, and maybe even infusing all of the context of my everyday life.

How did that change your everyday life? Because like, the first assumption is that maybe you're more calm or maybe you're more meditative and daily life. But when in a daily life we need fast reactions, right? We need to think like, what's how, how did this impact your life?

The thing is, not only my reactions are fewer, but the speed has improved because now I know what to react to, and I'm more present for the reaction. I think that's the common myth, is that if I meditate, you're going to do nothing, you're going to lose your productivity. And that was my fear. Right? My fear was if I go too deep into this way, I'm not going to be productive, I'm not going to make any money. How am I going to have goals? Who's going to earn a living? How are you going to do all this? An interesting thing happened. I chose the path of meditation, so I had to risk from a moment to moment basis. There were moments where there was a part of me, that impulse that said, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this or this thing won't get done. And in that moment, I was recognizing, you know what, that part of me believes that my worth is based on this thing. And I don't want to believe that anymore. So I'm going to choose meditation. It was uncomfortable to choose meditation and stillness and not reaction rather than choosing the same old productive ways of being. What I found over time was, well, what would happen if you dedicated yourself fully and completely to the task in front of you without worry of whether it was going to succeed or not? And you just said, you know what, I'm going to do the best I can right now. What would happen if you did that moment to moment?

Where would you end up without worrying to goals?

Yeah, I'm not worried about goals. All I'm doing is saying, hey, this is what's in front of me and I'm just going to do the absolute best I can. You're in a podcast with me. You're just focused. I'm just going to do the absolute best I can on being attentive with this guest, and I'm doing the absolute best I can to be present and attentive to this interview. What might happen as a result if I'm not worried about the consequences, worried about what might happen if it goes wrong, what happens?

Yeah, I know. I know where you're going with this idea. Because when I'm in the podcast, I'm 100% here.

Exactly.

And it's going well, as we can see now. I feel it. But when I'm in other places, I think in other directions. So how can we, how can I keep this focus and this presence in everyday live activities?

Right. It's going to be. And isn't it beautiful how it's always stemming back to the practices? It's going to stem Back to conscious discomfort, it's going to stem, back to stillness, because we are choosing a habitual way of busyness because of what we believe about ourselves and the world, that in order to survive, in order to survive, we have to work hard and we are not worth anything if we don't believe, if we don't do this all of a sudden, if we choose something else and say, you know what? I'm going to choose a different belief. I'm going to choose that if I show up to the moment, present and attentive, and I'll still find meaning, success and life and whatever that means for me in this world, that's going to be so uncomfortable for the part of you that really believes that. And so I had to do that. And that was my experiment because I said, you know what? It's worth the risk. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens if I commit to this. And what happened shocked me because I was more productive, because I wasn't worrying so much. Everything, everything that I thought was going to happen. The opposite happened. Because I had spent so much time worrying about the future, worrying about the past, stressing about these things, being a perfectionist because of these beliefs, it actually prevented me from simply doing, being and engaging. So now, actually what happened accidentally was my bandwidth for productivity hugely improved because I was spending less time on tasks, because I wasn't ruminating about it, I wasn't worrying about it. I'd do the task in that moment and I'd put it down. So things like planning, things like talks, oh, my God. Public speaking is probably the best example from my own life, because many people have a challenge with that they're stuck in their head. I would prepare presentations word for word. This is what it's going to be like. And this is my body during talks. Now, even this, I know that this is widely viewed. And of course, at the beginning, there's an experience of, look, there's the nerves, there's the fear. There it is. I used to react to that experience by trying to numb it, trying to fix it, trying to get away from it. No, no, I don't feel this. No, no, I don't feel this now. It's different now. It's. There it is. I'll stay with it, notice it. I'll feel it. Okay, I see you. Let's just. Let's hold it and let's just show up and be present and see what happens. So it turns into curiosity and, hey, let's see what happens in this interview. Rather Than holy shit, I'm going to look stupid. I'm going to say something stupid. I can't feel this. I look again. What happens then? I get sweaty palms. I have a red face. It's so different how we respond to our inner experience when we're paying attention to it and not judging it or trying to avoid it. I didn't have to stress myself out or worry about what I'm answering you or all those different worries that my mind would have had had I been trying to resist this experience. Instead, meditation has taught me to open to this experience. And what happens to the. What happens when we open to the experience that we are avoiding? It dissolves. It tends to dissolve quite quickly, quite easily. So when we hold it at a certain moment during this interview, that experience disappeared. It hasn't been present since it was present at the beginning. I held it, it was there for a little bit of time and then it dissolved. And then we just stayed in relationship. And you said it beautifully. You're here 100% and you said you can feel it. And my guess is that what you're feeling is actually the lack of tension, that there's an openness. There isn't this constriction, that constriction is indicative that something else is happening. But this episode feels good to you because guess what? There's an openness and a relaxation. And I agree with that.

Yeah, it's so beautiful. But still, like for somebody that cannot go for 10 days retreat to for meditation and for somebody that is very like productive workaholic has like a big to do list that adds more and more things to do that stays like productive and keeps like his job like that. What would be the starting point? To relax. Because what I understand is that when we keep the productivity like, like that it's stuck. When we relax and we let it go and we work in the present, then we became much more productive and we have much more free time for ourselves and good time to be productive. Where to start from?

That's a good question. And the starting points are numerous. The intentions, the single intention of all of those starting points is the same. And that is connection to body. How do I begin to connect to the body? So you might do that informally if you don't want to do stillness practice, because there's absolutely no time in the day. There are different ways of inviting somatic connection. And the first way might be paying attention because we're all going to eat, right. Even if you're hyper productive, you're going to eat so maybe paying attention, what am I feeling before this meal? What am I feeling in my body? What am I feeling in my body as I eat this meal? And then most importantly, what am I feeling in my body after I finish this meal? You can invite that same kinetic somatic connection for different aspects of everyday life. There's another one, and I call this the reset switch. This is my number one favorite practice for many reasons, and that is cold exposure because we're already showering every day. So again, notice the state of your mind. Maybe this person is productive. Maybe this person is overwhelmed with busyness. Notice what happens to the state of mind. Notice what happens to your clarity. Notice what happens to your concentration as soon as you emerge from a cold shower. As soon as you emerge from an ice bath. For me it's ice bath because maybe I've graduated to that level of intensity. And I quite enjoy diving into my little at home ice bath. But again, for me as well, when I find myself overwhelmed, the ice bath doesn't make my stress or challenges go away. It doesn't mean I have less responsibilities. But what it does is all of a sudden I'm not overwhelmed by an overwhelming amount of tasks to do or this chaos in my mind. All of a sudden, boom, I'm here. And I'm like, okay, well, let's just do it one at a time. I'm here. Let's fully commit to just finishing this first task. And then what happens is we find ourselves in a flow where we're not in here anymore, we're actually creating and doing. Because I think that work is an inherent part of this journey, not just the productive work. Of course, the work that we're speaking of, somatic work is work. This shit is not easy, right? This is inner work. It's called inner work for a reason. We have to go there. It's not done for us. The best analogy, I might leave you with the best analogy for this whole journey is, and I'll start with this, this interview, what we've been discussing in somawise is not an attack on the mind. It's not saying the mind is bad, because the mind has a purpose in all of this. There's an important part, in fact, when the mind isn't worrying about a body full of tension. The mind is free to create. The mind is free to express its unlimited potential, right? So for me, this takeaway is. It's like turning on a light in a dark room, right? So we turn on the light in the dark room. That's your understanding that's your mind saying, oh, I get it. I understand. This is what's been the problem. I understand. This is why I do things. I understand. This is where my behaviors come from. I understand. I understand. Right. I understand. It's so important. But once you turn on the light in a dark room and you see the mess that's there, you still have to clean up the mess. The mess doesn't clean itself up. And that's feeling, that's doing the work. That's the practices, that's taking your internal state, taking responsibility for your internal state so that the mess in the room gets cleaned up. After the light of awareness turns the light in the room on.

I think the most of us, we are stressed. Yeah, we are in stress, daily stress, chronic stress. And you talk very beautifully in your book about the acute stress, which, like, it's very good. When you practice sports is acute stress. You recover from it, and that's when the healing appears. That's when your body is better, becomes better. But we nowadays are in chronic stress, and we just want to relax. And then Luke comes here and said, look, you have more. Turn on the light and there's more job to do.

Mm.

So how could. How. How could we. Or how can you convince somebody to start this work and to suppress, eliminate, resolve this chronic stress?

Ultimately, the source of our stress is. There are many sources of stress in our life. Start with whatever is accessible and attainable for you. You have to start small and most importantly, pay attention. Because if we have an. A habitual feedback loop in our life, that, this is my life when I do this, this is what happens. When I do this, this is what happens. If I start making small changes to this feedback loop. And I say, okay, I'm going to eat veggies and fruit or healthy meats rather than this fast food. And I'm going to do that. And now let's see what happens. Does it change my lived experience? Because ultimately, there's only one barometer of progress. Does it make my life easier? If it doesn't make my everyday life easier, I don't want to do it. So for me, this journey, you're going in the right direction. If you're finding that, hey, you know what? I'm experiencing less stress, I'm managing my stress better. There's more happiness, connection, and peace in my relationships. Good, let's keep going. Let's see what happens. So my invitation is it doesn't matter which aspect you start with. Is it churning off one of the faucets of stress Maybe that's it. Is it adding a practice that is anti stress. Maybe that's it. You have to start with what makes sense to you in somawise, the whole journey doesn't start with these big practices. It doesn't start with, hey, you should focus on your relationships. Because like I said, when you're in relationship with someone, that's two separate universes. Soma wise. The invitation of connecting back to the body, the invitation of coming back to health starts with lifestyle choices. So you have to choose which are the lifestyle choices that I have most control over in this moment that I can change most easily right now. And the three big rocks, the three big lifestyle choices that impact our stress load most significantly is the food that we eat, the movement that we partake in on a daily basis, and the sleep and the rest that we have. One of those three. And if you can get all three of those, your life is completely different. If you change your food, you move more often, and you sleep well, your entire lived experience will transform. If that's not accessible to you, pick the one that is. But here's the thing, we're already doing all those three. Any excuse that someone comes up with as to I can't do this, you're already doing those three on a daily basis. You're already eating, you're already sleeping or attempting to sleep. And well, the movement strategy, well, that's easy to do. I'm a bigger proponent of natural movement than I am of going to the gym. So when I see stairs, I'm taking stairs. I don't take elevators. When I see a parking lot, I might park farther away so I can walk. So for me, that daily movement is what promotes circulation and flow and metabolic healing. Because for me, movement isn't about muscle gain. Movement is about actually healing the body.

Yeah. And that's what we promote all the time. And I'm so happy that you came here today and you took your time to show us this perspective that comes from the body. Eat the food that is good for your body and feel your body make the move that is good for your body and feel how, how your body feels. Let it recover. Go back to the movement, sleep and think about how your body feels like sleep for your body. This is such a beautiful perspective. And like, before ending, my last question is like, in short terms, what did you learn from connecting to your body? What is like the most valuable thing that you learned?

I learned to trust an authority. That is all that always has my best interest in mind. Right. There was a time in human history, where four generations of people lived in the same home. And so the wisdom from each generation was passed down. So family recipes, family traditions. It's not surprising that the blue zones on this planet where the highest percentage of people live to be a hundred years old are traditional cultures, traditional societies that have ancient ways of being that have been passed down and passed down and passed down. All of a sudden, our authorities for how to live, how to sleep, how to do everything, all of a sudden might be a watch or an external authority or an external opinion. Those interests may not have my health as their priority. Maybe they have something else that they're prioritizing first and foremost before they're saying, is this good for you and for me? When we start listening to our body and trusting the intuition that emerges from it, all of a sudden we're tapping into a teacher, a guru, let's say a guru that is always focusing on our health and well being. And this is why one of the sort of takeaway points at the conclusion of the book is be your own guru. Like every person has the capacity. Maybe not at the very beginning, because there's practice and discernment. It's not something you can just do right away. It takes. Because how do you know the difference between a reaction and intuition? That takes practice. How do you know when it's an addiction? Is this a craving or is this an authentic need? That takes practice. That takes understanding your body's language. Language. But over time, when you connect to your body, this becomes your teacher, this becomes your guru, and that's powerful because this always has your best interest in mind. Do you know how I know that for a hundred percent? Because every cell in your body has the same exact intention and programming. Every cell in your body is moving towards healing, moving towards balance, moving towards thriving. That's the only intention that every cell in your body has. So if we learn how to trust your body, if we learn how to trust our bodies and understand that message and we say, hey, I know the body's taking me that way, so I'm going to trust it because I know that it's moving towards healing regardless. Yes.

Coming back to your body, listening to. Look, thank you so much for making, making me summarize. I think I'm becoming somewhat. And that's what I wish the people that are looking to this podcast. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Hope to have you back again maybe in a year when you come back here to share your experience. Yeah, thank you. So I'm going to switch to Romanian to thank our our. Unicredit bank. Instrument.