310 Ariel Garten: Using Meditation & Neuroscience To Break Through Fear

I recognized that every time I was experiencing fear, it was really just my body generating a fear reaction, causing me to feel not confident, to not want to do something, to not talk to this person or get on stage or, you know, any of the things that causes fear. And I recognize so deeply that that is simply fear, and that fear is a thing that I, A, won't allow to rule me, and B, is just an emotional experience. And as a meditator, what you learn is emotional experiences rise, they fall, and they move. So as a non meditator, an emotional experience can feel very overwhelming. And so we try to not have emotional experiences because we don't want to be overwhelmed by them. As a meditator, what you learn is to sit with the physiological experience of a feeling without creating a dialogue around it.

That is Ariel Garten, and this is episode 310 of Wellness Force Radio. Wellness Force Radio, where we discover the.

Physical and emotional intelligence to live life.

Well, you can have the same brain states as someone who's done an hour of meditation every day for 40 years.

There's a lot of losses that we go through.

So the ability to be able to.

Cope with those losses is very important to build skill in it, because loss will happen. You know, you have to have spiritual courage, to really grow spiritually, because if you really want to take guidance from your soul, you have to be ready to realize that many of the things that you're asking for guidance on your ego has some kind of an addiction to or an investment in. Hey, what's up, my friends? It's Josh Trent. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Wellness Force. This obviously is where we explore physical and emotional intelligence. But what exactly does intelligence mean? Intelligence is not how smart you are. Intelligence is your ability as a powerful human to gather information, to apply that information, to try it on, to. To work it out, to practice it, to do the thing. And then lastly, what we're all working towards is embodiment. You know, embodiment feels different than gathering and applying. People get lost in the gathering and applying phase. And in this podcast, we're gonna talk about all three. We're gonna talk about the gathering, we're gonna talk about the applying, and most importantly, we're gonna talk about the embodiment with Arielle Garten. Now, this is a amazing woman. That's the only way I can describe it. Amazing. She came on the podcast our very first year. She was episode number 11. Episode number 11.

Wow.

We've come a long way since July 2015, and Ariel is The co founder of Muse. If you don't know, Muse is a brain sensing headband. I used it for the first two years when I started meditating. And this device gives you feedback, basically real, tangible feedback. If you are an aspiring meditator, if you're somebody who's had trouble meditating, you're going to love this podcast. But really what this podcast is centered around is this conversation of meditating and neuroscience so we can break through our fear. Fear, false evidence, appearing real. Forget everything and run whatever lens you look through fear at or through. If fear is a component in your life that you're in the process of changing, this podcast is gold. Listen to it twice. Listen to it three times. Ariel is a mom, a CEO, a neuroscientist, a businesswoman. Like she's covered the bases here on how much stress could go on in someone's life. Yet she also does everything from a heart centered place. And look what she does to serve the world. She was a therapist in private practice. She is running this Muse organization. She is a voice of safety for people that struggle with being calm, being still. And really what you're gonna get the most out of this podcast is this question. Are the thoughts that you're thinking, are the feelings that you're feeling, are they real? Are they actually yours? Are they actually yours? Let that sink in. We have thoughts, they're like leaves in the wind. We have feelings, they're like breezes that blow by. Ariel's work is centered around this. She keynotes around the world with technology and mindfulness and entrepreneurship. She's an advisor, but she also has been facing her own adventure in facing fears and finding what she calls unparalleled freedom. She is going to resonate deep with you today. And if you are curious about meditation, if you're interested in getting through your own personal blocks, this is your podcast. Share this podcast with people in your life that need to break through their fear. That get to break through their fear. We'll talk about systematic desensitization. We'll talk about metacognition, the Default Mode network, and why 85% of the world now has low self esteem. This podcast is brought to you by our friends, your friends, my friends, the homies, the great people at Organifi. And I say this because you know, I know the founder, Drew, I know my friend Shauna who works with us closely to make sure that everybody's getting their green juice and their red juice and their gold juice. But these products, they're the only products I stand behind when it comes to adaptogenic delivery. What does that mean, Adaptogenic? Adaptogens are almost like healthy robots. You drink the juice, the robots go inside your cells, and scientifically what happens is the mitochondria in your cells get activated. That's what adaptogens do. If you need energy for your job, if you need more energy in the afternoon, if you've been kind of struggling with maybe too much caffeine or stimulants, give organifi a go. Give them a college try. That's such a funny phrase, isn't it? Give them a college try. Where did that come from? Write me on Instagram if you know where that phrase came from. However, give organifi a test drive. Give them a college try because they are going to deliver. I promise you. I stand behind them. You're going to get the adaptogens and energy that taste amazing, and you get 20% off. 2, 0. Like, who gives 20% off? WellnessForce does. You can get that through Organifi.com WellnessForce use the code WellnessForce to get 20% off your Organifi juice and also everything else that they sell. That's Organifi.com WellnessForce use code WellnessForce to get 20% off and share the code with somebody that you love, somebody in your life that needs some juice, needs some energy. If you like this podcast, it means a lot to share it, because when you share it, itunes gives us more love. We basically get to climb up the ladder so people can see us in the algorithm. And all it takes is you win. 60 seconds. 60 seconds over@wellnessforce.com review. And by the way, every month we pick a winner who's lucky. If you're feeling it right now, just raise your hand. It's gonna be you. We'll look at your itunes name. We'll send you 90 days of Organifi. And that's wellnessforce.com review. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Thank you for with me and with Arielle. I really have a lot of appreciation for the time you spend with us. This path of physical and emotional intelligence, this is my lifelong path. And if you're here and if you resonate, it's yours too. We're happy you're here. Let's drop in now with the one and only Arielle Garten.

Ariel, welcome back to Wellness Force.

My sincere pleasure to be here.

Josh, I was so excited to reconnect with you at the Awakened Futures conference. And we were talking before recorded 2015, Arielle. 2015, you. You came on Wellness Force this is like episode 11. Okay. We're at episode 300 plus now. We're gonna explore so much. You have been doing so much, not just in wellness, technology and meditation, but Muse has literally quintupled with its reach, its success. And I'm just so excited to be with you again. And just after seeing you in person and reconnecting, we kept getting pulled away from each other at the conference. So today is gonna be two things. It's gonna be a podcast where we're talking about meditation and neuroscience and how those can actually allow through our fears how the thoughts that we think a lot really aren't even ours or definitely aren't true. But then also it's going to be you and I just talking about our personal things around what we're breaking through and fears in our lives. So, just so exceptionally excited to have you back.

Let's. Let's do this.

As a jumping off point in preparation for our interview, I was doing some research. I found that if you look at most of the research for self esteem, I believe it's 80 to 85% of adults, people in the entire world, they have low self esteem. You were a therapist in private practices for, I think, over 10 years. About 10 years. Let's start here with self esteem. How would you define self esteem? And why do you think so much of our population is dealing with chronic low self esteem?

Oh, you've touched on a topic that is so near and dear to my heart. So first of all, thank you for raising it, because it's an important one. Self esteem is how we feel about ourselves. And the honest truth is that most of us, us, feel pretty shitty about ourselves much of the time. I mean, if you look at that stat that suggests that 85% of the world has low self esteem, that means that 85% of us, most of us, at many points, feel unworthy, unloved, unappreciated. Like what we're doing is wrong. Like the people around us may be judging us for what we're doing. Like we may not be perfectly good. And that just leads to all of us feeling kind of a little bit shitty about ourselves most of the time.

Yeah.

And frankly, there's no reason for it. I mean, fundamentally, really fundamentally, each of us are amazing, capable, powerful, beautiful, smart, whole and complete human beings. Yet we have these internal systems that refuse to allow ourselves to recognize those facts. And so we end up living really kind of slightly unhappy, slightly unfulfilled lives.

The unfulfillment piece too. With the population growing and so many societal and even consciousness shifts happening right now. Do you get the sense from not just a clinical perspective, with your background in therapy, but just a mother, a professional, that we are being shooken from the roots as far as how we treat each other? Economic policies, I mean, it was the core tenets of what was explored at the Awakened Futures Conference. Do you see this in your industry, where people are not just, quote, waking up, but people are really taking a deeper inventory about how they treat themselves?

We're seeing it. We're also seeing a backlash against it. So, I mean, we're seeing the, you know, desire to push, you know, forward thinking social policy forward, which is one of inclusion and support and support of one another. And then, you know, it feels like we have an economic backlash that's suggesting that, no, you know, we, we shouldn't be doing these things. So, you know, we're at a time of extreme tension, and we're also at a time of extreme divide. And often we can see those divides even within ourselves, that there's a part of us that wants to move forward to love and acceptance, and then there's a part of us that wants to move backwards and says, no, actually, I don't think I deserve it, or I don't think, you know, I don't think this is correct or right.

Yeah.

And so it's, you know, it's not uncommon to have, you know, parts of a social system or even parts of the self in conflict with one another. And it's when you're able to hear each side accept, love and support the view of each party, whether it's within the body or within a social system, and then come to holistic acceptance that you're able to heal and move forward.

I'm smiling over here. And this is why I love having people like you on the show. Because you, Ariel, are a true embodiment of intelligence. A lot of people hear this word, intelligence, and we know it's like, it's not how smart you are. Intelligence has three phases, in my experience. It's our ability to gather information, you know, get the books, understand the curriculum. Curriculum. Then, you know, try it on. We gotta apply it.

Apply it.

Do the meditations, wear the brain sensing headband, go to the different workshops. And then lastly, I think what every human being is working towards is the embodiment. The embodiment of what we've been gathering and applying. This is what led you from going in fashion. Your mother was an artist. We talked about this on episode 11. And then after that, going into Academia and understanding the power of meditation throughout this whole almost crescendo for you being here at 2019. Can you look back and see that what happened for you as a child with art actually transferred into how you use art in your meditation and in the wellness technology?

Totally. I can completely see how my childhood upbringing and the things that were inculcated in me as a child have become, you know, useful and important tools as an adult. I can also see some of the misperceptions of myself that I had as a child and how those were not useful to me when I became an adult. If we're getting super personal here, I recently had like pretty significant breakthrough. So as somebody who, you know, is a psychotherapist, have worked with lots of clients and super well versed in meditation, meditate like mad, have, you know, done all this personal evolution. I recently came to the recognition myself that I didn't actually feel fully, completely loved. And this is like, this is like a two week old revelation. I think you're literally. Thank you for sharing as well as everybody who's now listening now.

We appreciate it.

I recognize here's some vulnerability. I recognized that although my mother is unconditionally loving and you know, amazingly unconditionally loving, I continued to try to seek love in other places and feel like love was a bucket that needed to be filled and only like just now. And I'm somebody who is super loving and like always feeling filled with love. I just came to the realization that even I myself didn't feel fully and completely loved. And I had to really go back and like, look at my childhood self and recognize that, you know, every time my parents yelled at me, they still loved me, that every time I did something that was wrong, they still loved me. Like as a little girl, it's very easy to create this good girl perfectionistic complex that suggests that every time you're not a perfectly good girl or every time you didn't do something perfect that you were somehow less n and therefore potentially unworthy of love. This is actually a very common story that many women don't realize exists deeply, deeply within us. And as little boys, there's, you know, a similar story about being naughty and when. What does it mean to be naughty versus, you know, a good boy? And what does it mean about the love that's available to you when you are in those actions? And do you have something you want to.

No, no. I'm just, I'm just sitting over here just thinking about how powerful it is that someone who has your Stature and what you represent for the wellness, technology and consciousness world is able to share this kind of a story. So I'm just feeling grateful.

Aw, thank you. Yeah. So, like, I was doing some very deep introspective work and came to that recognition and. And that there was, you know, still this underlying unmet need for approval and desire for love. And as I went back and recognized that in all of those moments, despite what I was doing, despite the lack of approval I might have been getting from my parents, I was still nonetheless fully loved, it was like, I'm going to make some guttural noises right now, because that was like, that was the moment when something inside of me shifted and this. This experience of understanding that I actually am fully loved and fully worthy of love finally, finally, finally fully shifted into place. I mean, who knows? Fully, there's maybe new heights that I. That I will continue to achieve. But, you know, when I look at the experience that so many of us, even, you know, me, somebody who came from a very secure attachment childhood, from a, you know, mom that was unconditionally loving and yet still came up with these misconceptions about who I was in the world and, you know, how my parents were responding to me and, you know, that love still felt like a limited resource.

Yeah.

And so I know there's so many people who, you know, existed in situations that may not have been so supportive to them yet it does not mean that you are not fully worthy of love. Yet it does not mean that you are not fully loved and lovable. And I know for so many people, it can be hard to hear that and hard to feel that, but I just ask that you make space for the fact that that is true. And as you begin to step into and experience the fullness of your ability to be loved and the fullness of the fact that, you know, you are worthy as a human being, period. De facto, it doesn't matter what you did and it doesn't matter who yelled at you. Then the healing of the fears and the anxiety that always keep you looking out for, you know, the next person is going to yell at you or the next shoe to drop or, you know, the constant need for approval or desire for love, then those sorts of things can begin to dissolve away and you can begin to feel the completeness that is you, that that fundamentally is you at its core.

And it's always been there. And there's just. I think it was like a roomy quote, removing all the things that allow the light to shine that was always shining like it's always been there, it's just there's certain things that get in the way and I'm curious for you, like what, what was getting in the way? Because now I can feel viscerally like a sense that you're embodying this self love right now. And like you had said, especially from practice and just so many people that write to me and that want to listen to wellness force, to discover physical and emotional intelligence at the bottom of it all. All roads lead to self love and self worth. I'm curious for you, like what was getting in the way? Because the love was always there.

The love was always there. This is a good question. I have to now reflect on what the question was, on what the answer is. What was getting in the way? I mean, what was getting in the way? From one psychotherapeutic lens I would answer that what was getting in the way is the hurt 4 year old who didn't realize it or the hurt 2 year old or whatever age I may have been, the hurt child who had internalized what I had perceived that point with my very limited perceived perceiving abilities to, to be the truth of the scenario, which is that because I had done something wrong and my parents were pissed, I therefore was wrong, bad, unworthy of love. And it's, you know, so incredibly simple. And by returning to that period in my time with my new, you know, newfound wisdom and sense of love and also my abilities now as a parent to understand how easy it is to love a child even when they were doing something wrong, to be able to return back and parent my younger self with that love and give her that knowledge and understanding was a massive key to release.

I just had a huge download and I'm sorry to interrupt you. It seems like you becoming a mother actually opened up even more massive healing and up leveling for you so you.

Could parent the self completely.

Completely. And it's actually one of the skills I love teaching mothers. You know, as you become a mother, there's this new sense of capability that arises because yes, you are underslept and sprung out and frustrated and you have a little thing screaming all the time.

One one hour sleep.

On the other hand, you rise to this new sense of capacity for love and capacity for love in the face of frustrations and problems and you know, disc and you beginning to understand the ability to use that love joyously to help heal all of the discord that might be happening in a child at that moment. Like you can see a little child freaking out and scared because it's dark, or they think that their shadow on the wall is a spider and you can know that they are fully safe, that it is fully okay that you're, you know, fully in your warm, nice home and there's literally nothing wrong. And you can see them freaking out and you can have compassion and love and care for them and, and know that even though the feeling of scared is so true for them, the reality of safety is what is going on. And then if you're able to take that paradigm and you know, and map it to your own experience every time that you are scared and freaked out, and then be able to jump a level above yourself and say, hey, you know, I see you're scared, but when I actually look at the reality of the situation, I can see that really it's fine. Really, this is just a fear response. You know, really, we are okay. Really. We can wrap ourselves in our own, you know, arms of safety and love and quietly whisper, shh. It's okay. Everything's fine.

Yeah, we have these attachment styles and I want to go back because you said that you had a secure attachment style. And one of the resources I'm going to link in the show notes today is called Attached. I learned about this from Mark Groves. The author of this book is called Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. And in Attached, they explore this styles, right, secure, avoidant, and then also the anxious. And, and a lot of times as adults, we will attract a partner that can help us heal the childhood wounds that are still there. And I think for everyone listening, whether they know it or not, we're all being run by this programming. And I love this Ariel that you talked about. Hey, there was something that occurred for me when I was 4 that wasn't actually able to see and to bring the healing element of love to. Until I became a mother myself. For people that, that are interested in cultivating children, I want to share this quick 20 second story and I think it's really contextual. I've never actually ever talked about this, but like, you've brought it out of me today. I had something happen this year that I'm going to be talking about later on Wellness Force and it was very anxiety based. And when I went to go see my mentor Paul, check at his home, he said, josh, when you can parent effectively and turn to the child inside of yourself, the universe will put one in your arms. And when he said that, yeah, when he said that, like all the hair on my body stood up and I realized, like, this is my journey, you know, If I want to be a father, then I get to powerfully, lovingly turn to the child inside of myself and parent that child with the most care and presence and power. And that's when the universe, higher intelligence, God, whatever you want to believe in, that's when children are delivered to people. And my question for you with that as a, as a pre frame is, what about your work in neuroscience and meditation and Muse and just even what you're doing now? What about that prepared you most to be a mother? Like, what skill set, emotional intelligence skill set have you brought to being a mother?

So, first of all, I want to acknowledge how emotional I am after your story. That is so sweet.

So, yeah, it was powerful.

Yeah, I was almost crying there.

Okay, I did cry that day, FYI. I cried.

Yes, that's really sweet. So, I mean, like most humans, I've had the opportunity to acquire a whole set of skill sets through my growth and development that luckily prepare me for child rearing. And I'm sure there's another set of skill sets that I have yet to acquire that I will hopefully at some point learn as I continue on this lifelong journey of parenting. Definitely, meditation has been incredibly helpful skill to me in my parenting journey because it's allowed me to make the space between my sensation and my reaction. So when you have a child who is upset, crying, frustrated, it's very tempting to reply back with the same energy that they're giving you. Not a hippie way, but just if somebody's coming at you screaming, yelling, and really want something and throwing a tantrum, and they don't want to listen to you, the temptation is to raise your voice, to scream and yell, and to become louder or bigger than they are, you know, using the same set of tactics. And that is absolutely unhelpful in every.

Case, especially with children, I would assume.

Yes, yes.

It perpetuates.

Yeah, Only leads to a ramping up. And so the ability to self calm, to recognize any way in which their emotions may be triggering my emotions in an unhelpful whole scenario, the ability to see my own emotions happening, you know, rise and fall, and then to be able to bring to myself a sense of calm and groundedness, and then approach them from, you know, really a sense of metacognition, the ability to rise above the scenario and see what's going on, the dynamics in it, another meditation skill you learn, and then to be able to just meet them lovingly and calmly and continue to hold space for what they need has been tremendous.

Can you talk a little bit more about metacognition and holding space. Because in the spiritual community that phrase is kind of thrown around, right? Like, I'm gonna hold space, I'm gonna hold space. We all know what that feels like. But what actually maybe scientifically is going on when people quote, hold space for one another.

Oh, that's cool. I haven't considered that question.

Neither have I. I mean, you make, you, Being you makes me think of curious things that excite me. So I'm just thinking, you know, in a brain state or in a physiological state of what's happening for us when we're present, when we're, we're breathing, when we're in our bodies, we're out of our heads, we're in our hearts and we're holding space for one another. Like what's going on there in our bodies and in our brains.

Okay, There's a ton of different dynamics and you've said many different things, so let me try to unpack as I go. So first of all, metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to essentially rise above and see what's happening within a scenario without actually being in it. And so the skill of metacognition can be associated with a few different areas of the brain. One is the prefrontal cortex. So the prefrontal cortex is the attentional control center of the brain. So it directs where we're putting our attention. And the prefrontal cortex, through a meditation practice, for example, is able to manage and modulate the amygdala. So the amygdala is the fight or flight response, the thing that just wants to react and go like, eh, yeah. So in a meditation practice, what we do is we, you know, we have a wandering thought or an emotion. We observe it using in part or prefrontal cortex. And then we're able to manage physiological response by the prefrontal cortex's downregulation of the amygdala. So you are not in a freaked out state with the person who's with you. You are able to shift into a different state. So the prefrontal cortex sort of works on the. Is very serotonin driven. We know serotonin both gives us this ability to like critically think and logically process as well as serotonin is, you know, beautiful and calming. When we are able to gain perspective and empathy. Take empathy and perspective taking. There's a part of our brain called the tpj, the temporal parietal junction, that's activated. And the temporal parietal junction is an area of the brain that we see as being more active than long term meditators. And that I think is involved in both the ability to take somebody else's perspective and to rise above and take your own perspective. And as a cool side note, when you're having an out of body experience experience, you also see activation of the tpj, the one you have experience of like literally rising above and seeing yourself back in bed.

Sure.

Wow. Very cool. Same areas activated. So holding space for somebody, you know, requires us to take ourselves out of the, you know, emotional embroilment of the moment of being inside of that experience with someone else and instead create a sort of, you know, cool and calm disconnection from their emotional state, yet be with them in empathy. So, you know, we are not, we are not dragged down the rabbit hole, but we are able to be lovingly and empathetically with them. So from, you know, physiological perspective, you know, we're probably seeing some nice vagal activation so that we are in a state that is closer to rest and digest and repair, like in high vagal tone, whereas they may be in a state of, of anxiety and low vagal tone and difficulty, emotional difficulty and physiological dysregulation.

What I heard from you too there is that we're also down regulating potentially. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, the default mode network. I mean, this is the thing where we're scanning all the time. I watched a video of Michael Pollan talking, I think it's called dissolving the default mode network. And he talked about how powerful meditation is for this. Because what's happening is that you're actually down regulating the search for danger mechanism within the brain. Is that also what's being turned off when we're holding space for other people or when we're just being still?

I have never looked at an MRI of somebody holding space. So at this point, you know, we're spitballing. These are theories, these are concepts, you know, but as best guesses, you know, it's a cool way to think about what's going on. So the default mode network is the part of your brain. It's the connection between your PCC or posterior cingulate cortex and your PFC or prefrontal cortex. And it's the loop that you have going on inside of your brain when there's nothing else going on. If you put somebody in an MRI and you say, just relax, you're still going to see activity of the default mode network. But when you put a advanced meditator into an FMRI and you ask them to do the same thing, you see a decrease in activation. You don't see the same default mode activity. And so the default mode is often described as our internal dialogue, which some people see as the ego. It's also the thing that is constantly just chattering away in your brain. So we talk about in meditation, the monkey mind decreases. Well, there is actually a neural correlate for that which is a decrease in the default mode network. So when you are holding space for somebody, you are focused on them, your breathing is regulated, you're slow, and you're literally present with them. You're not sitting there thinking about your laundry list or yourself and what difficulty you're having in this situation. The sense of I really dissolves in that place where you are holding space for another. So I think it could be fair to assume that we're actually seeing a decrease in the default mode network as the subjective experience is a dissolution of the eye, the ego, a calming and a being present with another.

This is so powerful. I'm going to ask you in just a couple minutes here about the presence of seeing the brainwaves on the app and understanding what the news devices. But before the that, there was a NCBI resource page. Meditation leads to reduced default mode network activity beyond an active task. So this is on PubMed. We'll link it in the show notes. If you could describe for somebody that's never meditated before and they do have that shortness of breath, they have that monkey mind where their thoughts are looping, why is meditation something that can actually help them immediately? Especially when we look at people who aren't even aware that those thoughts are looping.

Cool. So meditation helps on multiple levels. So when you're doing a simple focused attention on the breath exercise, what you do is you focus your attention on your breath, your mind wanders, you notice it and you return back to your breath. So most of us go through the world our whole life with just our thoughts looping, with shit going on in our mind that's not really helpful. It's often repetitive, negative, frustrating, and often causes us stress and causes excessive physiological arousal, AKA stress, shortness of breath, you know, beating heart, feelings of frustration, etc. So when you do a meditation practice, what you're doing is you're learning to disengage from those frustrating, negative, repetitive thoughts and bring your mind to a neutral object. And often that neutral object is your breath. So you're breathing deeply, you're letting your breath out and you're focusing simply on the act of breathing. So you're literally getting yourself out of your mind and into your body. And as you do that, you're able to slow your own physiology, slow your breath, slow your heart rate because you're not having those negative racing thoughts that are continuing to feed the, you know, firing physiology, the fight or flight. You're now able to intervene in your own, you know, neural mechanisms. You're able to intervene in your own thoughts, take your mind away from them and calm so it's even a three minute meditation is incredibly powerful to be able to shift where your mind and your body is at. And then as you practice meditation, it becomes simply a way of being and you spend less of your life in your not conscious, negative, frustrating thoughts and more in the shift storm moment.

In the shift storm. And this is a personal Moment for me, 2015 is when I got to meet you and it was down at Fort Mason when there was still the quantified self technology conferences. And I remember I bought the Muse and I went home. It was two years. And I really want to thank you for the this because it allowed me to just have some mirror of mindfulness. Right? Like a lot of times when people start meditating, they either don't have the right guidance or they can't stop the monkey mind, or they're not cued properly with their breathing or their posture hurts. There's all these different factors that we can talk about. But for me, the one thing that I loved is that when I actually heard the music change, I knew that I had lost my focus. And sometimes for most, well, for most of us actually just having one thing, thing that we can focus on, like maybe it's our breath or maybe it's just like letting thoughts come and go. Just focus on letting the thoughts come and go. Those two years for me actually made meditation possible. Now I consider Muse to be almost like the teacher that showed me the path. And there's been a lot of changes at Muse. Let's talk about Muse right now. From 2015 to now, what's been the biggest change at Muse and, and share with people what Muse actually is, is.

First of all, that's amazing. I hear from a lot of people that Muse is the thing that like helps them get meditation. And I actually know that was true.

For me, something clicked.

I was a terrible meditator prior to that. And building the tool was the thing that let me know, like, oh, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. Okay, now I get it. And then, you know, 2,000 years of wisdom and practice opened up to me. So thank you.

2000 years.

Powerful for me to hear.

Yeah, no, and it's true for me because I can remember looking back on wanting to be a meditator, but just not having the presence. And honestly, it's a skill set which we can talk about.

So, okay, so what is Muse for people who have no idea what we're talking about. So MUSE is a brain sensing headband that helps you meditate. It's a EEG that tracks your brain during meditation. And what it does is it actually acts as a mirror to your mind and it lets you know when your mind is wandering and it guides you back to focused attention. So as I mentioned a few minutes ago, in a focused attention practice, which is the most basic meditation that we all kind of learned, first, you focus your attention on your breath, your mind begins to wander, you notice it, and you return your attention back to your breath instead of following your wandering thought. Well, what Muse does is it actually lets you hear that whole process. It lets you hear when your mind is wandering, right? There's a soundscape. And when your mind wanders, the sound picks up and that becomes your cue to let you know that your mind has wandered to guide you back to focused attention on your body breath. So it's really like, you know, having a coach inside your brain during your meditation, showing you when your mind's off track and guiding you back into the focused meditation state. And it's a super simple exercise that just really lets you get your meditation practice. So we have lots of beginners that use it to begin their practice. And then, you know, some people have never meditated for first time. Learn with muse. And then lots of expert meditators use it as a new lens into your practice, because as a meditator, you know, you're a conscious explorer. So it becomes a thing that lets you actually know what goes on inside your brain from a new angle.

Talk about the breathing aspect. We've been going very deep into breathwork. We've interviewed Pavel Stuclic from Noah Ayaan, also Dan Brulee from Breath Mastery. We've really been understanding more and more the physical and emotional component when it comes to being still, training the brain to be at rest, to be calm and breath. Can you talk about how you've integrated breathing into the process? Now, this is new that I'm seeing on the site.

Sure. So the original muse, which is the one that you would have gotten back in 2015, gave you real time feedback on your Brain. And that's where we started. And then Muse 2, which is the device that came out last year, has sensors for your heart, your breath, and your body in addition to your mind. So with Muse 2, there's a heart rate sensor. So it tracks the beating of your heart, and you can actually hear it like the beating of a drum. And there's this tight relationship between your breath and your heart. So as you breathe in, your heart rate increases. As you breathe out, your heart rate decreases. And that's why breathing patterns that allow you to spend more time in a long exhale actually lead to greater relaxation, because you're spending more time in this lowering heart rate state, which then becomes a cue to your body and your vagal nerve to shift yourself further into rest and digest. So there's this tight relationship between your breath and your heart rate. And so as you begin to focus on your breath and slow down as you breathe, breathe in and out. Your vagal nerve, which is the thing that I've mentioned many times, it regulates your autonomic nervous system, and it is the thing that allows you to move into your rest and digest. Your vagal nerve is actually mechanically attached around your diaphragm. So as you do deep breaths, you are physically tugging on your vagal nerve, which allows you to increase your sense of relaxation and calm and your body's signals to bring yourself into that calm relaxation state. So there's this really tight feedback loop that happens between your active brain activity, the slowing of your thoughts and brain activity, the moving into slower brainwave states, the lowering of your heart rate, the deepening of your breath, which triggers your vagal nerve, which reinforces the whole system.

So what I'm hearing from you is.

That the deeper we breathe, because you.

Talked about the vagal nerve literally being tugged on through the diaphragm. Connection. Connection.

The deeper we breathe, the deeper we.

Can be present and relax.

Yep.

Yeah. And it's not just hippies around a circle. This is science. This is actually very well proven science. And we're going to link this about the vagal nerve in the show notes as well, because I'm thinking about the way that you've integrated breath and the actual brain sensing. It's clinical grade. This is the thing that I want people to know. It's not as if you're just wearing a wire on your head. It's the same clinical grade science that you would get in an EEG in a medical office, right?

Yes. And there are by now 200 papers written using Muse.

200 papers. How did that happen?

Yeah, so 200 published papers. So somehow over the last five years, news has been used both by consumers. Like hundreds of thousands of people use it to meditate regularly. And then thousands of clinicians, doctors, psychiatrists, life coaches, meditation teachers, people who would normally recommend meditation and practice, and then hospital systems. So Mayo Clinic just did a paper with breast cancer patients awaiting surgery using Muse, demonstrating that using Muse improves their quality of life and decrease their stress and fatigue during their cancer care process. And it's also been used by researchers, neuroscience researchers, meditation researchers. And out of that, there have now been about 200 published journal articles that literally had nothing to do with us that we didn't write from independent researchers.

That's got to feel so good. Not that you need the validation, but it's got to feel so validating to see people take this and run with it.

It's pretty crazy, I must admit. I mean, when we set out, our intention was to teach more people to meditate, and we knew that would be a good thing. I honestly couldn't have imagined it was going to. To get to this. You know, if we had five papers, I would have been overwhelmed. There's. There's a point where the numbers become almost meaningless because they're like, so beyond what you could crock. So it's. Yeah, it's a. It's a little overwhelming.

Well, if somebody is wanting to be a meditator, they are feeling frustrated about maybe not having the skill set. Just go to wellnessforce.com mymut use. You can get 10% off. So thank you, Arielle, for the discount there. I want to shift, and I want to ask about embodiment, because we talked about gathering, we talked about applying. You know, a lot of people are doing the meditations, but as far as embodying the practice of meditation, where, you know, when we're around people and we can just feel their calmness, we can feel their presence, and we can feel how they're just in their bodies, they're out of their heads. Can you talk to us personally about how you've used meditation to embody this? Really, what I'm asking you is embodying confidence. You know, we're doing this show, we're talking about fear, breaking through fear. Can you tell us how you've embodied this skill set of breaking through fear and meditation's role in that?

Sure, I'd love to. So I think I've always been a pretty confident individual throughout my life. I didn't have a very strong inner critic, and so that allowed Me to be confident. I didn't have a lot of negative dialogue in my head, despite, you know, what I shared earlier, that there was always this lingering sense. And so I went through the world very confidently. And then I had actually had some health concerns that caused me to come to a place of greater fear. And I recognized that every time I was experiencing fear, it was really just my body generating a fear reaction, causing me to, you know, feel not confident, to not want to do something, to not, you know, want to talk to this person or get on stage or, you know, any of the things that causes fear. And I recognize so deeply that that is simply fear and that fear is a thing that I A, won't allow to rule me and B, is just an emotional experience. And as a meditator, what you learn is emotional experiences rise, they fall and they move. So, you know, as a non meditator, an emotional experience can feel very overwhelming. And so we try to not have emotional experiences because we don't want to be overwhelmed by them. You know, you can have something upsetting or disappointing that happens. It become feels very overwhelming. It triggers a set of thoughts about fear and disappointment, which are then like, unpleasant to have, which then trigger more physiology around feelings of sadness. And it can be a whole downward thing. So we often tend to avoid our feelings because we don't want to feel them and we don't want to think about them because they feel shitty. As a meditator, what you learn is to sit with the physiological experience of a feeling with the creating a dialogue around it. So you can feel a sense of sadness, but then intervene around all of the thoughts of like, oh, this is awful, this will never happen again. You know, life is going to be worse. All of the things that then pull us down the spiral. So what you learn is to have these like, physiological sensations of emotion, really have them not ramp them forward with the, with the thoughts and then let them fall. So I recognize that I can could apply that to this fear that I was experiencing. And rather than, you know, like most of us approach something that's scary and then pull back because we don't want to feel fear, that's really what it is. Like, fear becomes like this barrier to experience because you like, you're like, oh, I should, you know, talk to that interesting lurking person over there. Oh, that seems scary to me. Okay, I'm just gonna pull back and go talk to somebody I already know.

Can I pause you right there? Because the story that's created. I love that you said meditation allows you to sit with the feeling but not create the story around it. That's big. A lot of people have social anxiety not because of the feeling, but because of the story they create. When the feeling comes up, for sure.

Which then reinforces the feeling, which reinforces the story, which then pulls everyone back. And then you just don't go up and talk to that person. So, you know, I recognize that I could have the feeling of fear. Experience the feeling of fear fully. Like, fucking experience. Pardon my language.

No, no worries. That's how people feel. We all feel like that, Arielle.

Yeah. And when you experience it, it's really scary. It feels intense. There's a lot of sensation going on. There's a lot of things, you know, body and mind screaming, no, don't do that. This feels bad. I could just like, sit with all of those feelings. Feelings, have them rise, have them fall, and then realize that I was still okay. And then easily do the thing that was on the other side. Now talk to the person, stand up on stage, write the document, whatever it is. And so, so many of us don't do the things in life that we want to do because the barrier of fear is so big, because we just don't want to feel the fear. And I went through this tremendous lesson of. Of making myself do things that I was afraid of and feeling the fear associated with it and knowing that after fear washes away, you're still fine. It's just fear. And when you do that, fear has no power over you.

I just got really excited there.

Yeah. Yeah. Fear is no longer like the, you know, the villain that's gonna damage you or poison you or do something awful.

Yeah.

Fear is just a feeling, and it rises and it falls, and you realize you're fine and you can do it. And on the other side of fear, every single time, is freedom.

This brought up something in me that I've heard Jordan Peterson talk about. And it's systematic desensitization. So for those who aren't familiar with this, it's going to the thing that scares you in a progressive manner. So if it's an elevator that scares you, you might just go to the building one day, then the next day you touch the elevator, the next day you stand in the elevator, and then the next day you go one floor. So it's systematically desensitizing ourselves. And this is what people with OCD deal with. I'm sure in your clinical practice, where people have a variety of obsessive compulsive disorders, that ocd, what actually causes that and how does meditation help people that have ocd? Because essentially, it's the story they're telling themselves.

I have to just sideline for one second. Lots of people talk about this, not just Jordan Peterson. Regardless of how you feel about him, by chance, he was actually my university pop.

Prof. Small world.

We're not going to go down the Jordan Peterson rabbit hole.

Yes.

So that aside, so you're absolutely right. This is a basic concept that you learn in exposure therapy, AKA behavioral therapy, AKA systematic desensitization, and it's at play in ocd. It's also at play in so many of the experiences that we have in our life. My little kid, he's now three, the other day, told me that he was afraid of spider webs. And that was kind of funny because the week before, he was not afraid of spider webs. So I don't know where he got that from. And so I immediately said, would it help if you touched a spider web? And he said, well, that would be really scary. And I said, well, what if I'm there with you? So we went and we found a spider web. He looked at it. I held his hand so that, you know, he could feel that sense of calm and safety. And then he touched it. And then I said, how was that? And he was like, fine. And I said, are you scared? Scared of spider webs anymore? And he said, no, because he was able to approach the thing that he was afraid of and dismantle the intellectual fear that had been built around it, dismantle the, you know, amygdala conditioning that had created this association between this thing and fear and created a sense of fear anytime he thought about it. And when you come in contact with the actual agent, you can discover that all of the imaginal fear that you had actually bears no weight. So, specifically in ocd, if you're curious about that, what happens in OCD is we are trying to manage fear and anxiety. So if somebody has ocd, you know, we'll just take the most common example that people often think of an ocd, which is excessive hand washing, because you're afraid of contamination. So. So somebody with OCD may have this sensation that their hand is contaminated. You know, most people will look at it and say, well, there's clearly nothing there. It's totally normal. You're fine. What's the big deal? But for somebody, there's this intense sensation that there is contamination on their hand, which brings up intense sensations of anxiety and fear, and that anxiety and fear can only be released when they do the appropriate action that calms them, which is, you know, washing your hand to remove the perceived contamination. So you end up in this cycle that becomes reinforced with this rise in anxiety because of a perceived contaminant, and then the action that helps you mitigate or release the anxiety. Every time I say anxiety, it's actually synonymous with fear. Anxiety and fear are the same thing in most respects. So you end up in a cycle where you think you cannot handle the fear associated with it. So you have to do the action to break the fear, to calm the fear. And every time you wash your hands and you feel better, you are reinforcing the story that, oh, there was something on your hand because washing it made it feel better. Therefore, that whole story was true, and you have to consistently wash. And so you end up in these OCD cycles. And the way to break that cycle is to have somebody sit with the fear of a contaminant on their hand. Allow anxiety to rise as far as it needs to without washing your hand, which feels like the worst thing in the entire world to somebody with anxiety. Let it eventually come down, which it always does. Anxiety rises and falls. You know, you might have to go through a lot through it, and then recognize that once the anxiety falls, you still haven't washed your hand, you feel better. And it's possible, just possible, that it's not the hand washing that's making it feel better. And if you do that over and over, you ultimately desensitize from the thing that you had built fear around, and your body settles and accepts the fact that this imaginary construct that you created in reality is actually fine.

I can see someone sitting in meditation, and out of nowhere, a OCD thought pops in. And like you had said, it's just letting it be there. The power is actually sometimes in doing nothing and just sitting with the discomfort. And for people that do have looping thoughts or ocd, or maybe they're doing CBT therapy and things like this. Sitting with a consistent meditation practice is literally. I mean, you're building new synapses, new grooves in the brain that allow these old thoughts that don't serve to be given the gift of goodbye.

Yes. And our brain, in some ways, is very simple. The thing that we continue to reinforce is the neural pathway that a thought will go down. And the thing we no longer give thought or attention or energy to is a neural pathway that will, over time, disconnect, shrink, be less likely to fire again. So as we continue to put our attention to the present moment, because in the present moment, you don't have anxious thoughts. As we continue to put our attention to, you know, loving support. As we continue to put our attention to the things that we care about and the directions we want to go in, we continue to build the neural resources, the actual neural shifts required to take ourselves out of the those unpleasant places.

This is the most intelligent conversation I think I've ever had about meditation. Like, we can go woo, woo, and we do that a lot on Wellness Force, but we've definitely covered the gamut on with the science, you know, the science of what really happens for us in meditation. And quite frankly, I think if we look at all the things that are out there, you know, people running spartan races, people are doing things that scare them, they're skydiving and all this, this stuff, those have limitations because those kind of high electricity things, they only happen a couple times a year or maybe just a handful of times a quarter. Meditation can be done every day, multiple times per day. So I can see if somebody really wanted to address their mental health and getting rid of thoughts that don't serve them. It's sitting in that discomfort. And sitting in that discomfort, for me, has popped up quite a bit in meditation. This has been an incredible conversation. I know we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything that you think you could leave our audience with when we look at using the neuroscience of meditation to allow them to break through fear? To give them permission to break through their fears?

Sure. So I would just, you know, for some people, they might hear sitting discomfort and get really scared. So meditation practice doesn't need to mean sitting discomfort. You can start a meditation practice and simply work with moving away from your thoughts and just coming back to your breath. Sitting with discomfort is an advanced movement move. When you feel like you're ready for that advanced move, there's lots of resources that are available. If you don't want to get there, that's cool. If you do want to break through the fear, you can. And I think ultimately all of us actually want to break through the fear that's in our lives. And as you start to do it, you realize it's really not scary at all. We just built up a bunch of stories around that.

It just feels so much scary beforehand because we're attaching the story to how scary it's be to.

Going.

Going to be.

Yeah, I've really learned that, you know, we have these physiological experiences and then we make really big deals about them and create a whole lot of meaning and stuff around it. And it's really just physiology, it's just feelings in your body and thoughts in your mind. And when, when you can accept that everything that's happening is just a feeling in your body and a thought in your mind and you don't have to make a big deal about either of those. Whoa, that becomes really free. Yeah, you can just go through life and not get caught up in the feelings in your body and your thoughts and your mind and be able to exist with them, have them, not be afraid of them, not make a big deal about them, not be worried about them, and just do the things you care about. Unbelievably liberating.

I remember I heard Tony Robbins say something once. Someone in the audience raised their hand. They said, what's the ultimate definition of freedom? Like, what is freedom? He said, freedom is me being able to say no to anything I want at any time. And I feel like in this conversation freedom is saying no to thoughts that don't serve us, saying no to thoughts that aren't ours. And instead of fighting them and trying to white knuckle them to get them out of our head, it's just sitting with the discomfort. So they breeze on by. Ariel, thank you so much for the work that you do in the world. Again, you guys go to wellnessforce.com my muse, Ariel gave us 10% off. Get this brain sensing head. If you are having struggles around meditation, it'll teach you to breathe. There's guided pieces there. Ariel, can you leave us with this one last impact answer. What do you see as wellness? Like, what's your definition of wellness now compared to 2015?

My definition of wellness is knowing that you are whole and full and complete and that the thoughts in your mind don't ever need to take you away.

From that mic drop. We're done. Thank you for coming on the show.

We'll see you guys soon.

And until we do, we're wishing you love and well, wellness.

Much love. Thank you.

Hey, thanks for listening to the show my friend. Everything you learned on this podcast starts with your morning practices. So from over 300 world class guests, we pulled together six simple yet powerful morning practices down into a 21 minute system guaranteed to increase your vibration and the way that you feel every day. Get this free powerful guide over@wellnessforce.comm and if you love this show, share it with somebody. Share it with somebody that you love or that you care about. You can support the show easily by leaving us a five star review on iTunes. Just go to wellnessforce.com review or if you're on your phone Just tap it. Hit the link in purple that says, review this podcast. And the journey does not stop here. We're continuing this discovering process in our private Facebook group over@wellnessforce.com group. You can be a part of it. You're already are. All you have to do is join us@wellnessforce.com group and I will welcome you at the door. Now go out into your life and live your life well. And until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.