The Power of AWE - A Conversation with Jake Eagle

Welcome to the joyful journey podcast. If you're looking for more clarity in your life, clarity of purpose or how to activate that purpose, and you are someone who wants to operate from your highest self to be a force for good, you know this world craves, then this is the show for you. I'm Anita Adams, your host and guide to finding clarity and creating a life you love. Let's tap into our inner wisdom, access our highest self and unleash joy. As we do this, we raise our vibration and heighten the collective consciousness. And that, my friend, is the joyful journey. Let's dive in.

Hey, joyful journeyer and Anita Adams here your host and today I'm thrilled to introduce you to Jake Eagle, who is here to talk to us about his new book The Power of Awe which he co authored with Michael Amster. Jake is a psychotherapist, mindfulness instructor, fellow member trainer of the International Association of neuro linguistic programming, and co founder of life conscious after 30 years in private practice. Jake now works part time as a meta therapist working with people who want to go beyond the bounds of traditional therapy. Together, he and his wife Hannah, lead life changing small group retreats at all inspiring locations around the world. Welcome, Jake, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. I'm glad we finally connected. Me too.

Yeah, we got like a major timezone difference between us. So we thought that the fact that we were able to make this work, I'm just delighted. So thank you again. And I want to know, like, I got to start off by knowing what are some of the all inspiring retreats locations that you have gone to? Or what is the most What is your favorite destination to take people on an awe inspired retreat?

Well, we've done many different places. But probably my favorite is a location in Mexico called Playa Viva, which is right on the ocean. It's a private facility. With beach as far as you can see in any direction, no homes, no other people, it's really delightful. And then we've also done them at a retreat center in Kyoto in Japan, that's quite, very special, just a beautiful location in the wilderness. And being in Japan adds a different element to the experience

I've had. And I'm sure that the natural environment is what makes or contributes to that all inspiring environment, or,

yeah, that's a big part of it. And also having a sense of being in a contained group in a beautiful location creates something very special.

Yeah, absolutely beautiful. All right. Let's talk about your book, The full title of your book, The Power of all overcome burnout and anxiety, ease chronic pain, find clarity and purpose in less than one minute per day. Now, that sounds pretty awesome.

It's a little embarrassing.

And I love your approach, because it's the simplicity of what you are teaching people in your book that captures my interest. And I think is what is going to lead to it being profoundly successful. Because it is it is simple, that the simplicity of what you are offering is brilliant. So for before we get into all that, behind every incredible book, there is an incredible story. So tell us about what got you here what, how you came to write this book?

Well, it was really not something that we expected to do. I was teaching a course online and in that course, I was asking people to meditate 10 minutes a day and about half the people said they didn't have time to do that. And so I felt a little stuck like well, if you won't meditate 10 minutes a day, what what can you do? Well, would you meditate for 30 seconds, would you meditate for a minute, so people agreed they could meditate for a short, very short amount of time. And I call them micro meditations. And people did that. And my colleague, Michael Amster was actually in that class. He was taking the class because he was curious about what I was teaching. And at the end of the course, I always do a survey to see how people have progressed from the beginning to the end, it was just a 21 day course. And at the end, the people who had been meditating or doing micro meditations for 30 seconds to a minute, got the same results were better than the people that had been meditating for 10 Then it's a day, which was very surprising both to me and to Michael. And so we got together and we decided that we wanted to try and understand what was going on, how could it be that meditating for 30 seconds was giving you the same benefits. So we decided we would both run pilot projects. Michael is a pain specialist. So he worked with a group of 15 pain clients. And I at the time was in practice as a psychotherapist. And so I worked with a group of 20 of my patients. And we did this three week course, where we taught people what we then called micro dosing, mindfulness. And we introduced them to the odd technique, which we'll talk about later. And one more time, but but this time, we actually did psychological surveys before and after, we did a very thorough analysis of where people were at in terms of their psychological state, physical pain and discomfort, relationships, loneliness, and at the end of the 21 days, again, people had these remarkable results. So Michael took our results to UC Berkeley, which is the center that has done most of the research around, or it's been done by a gentleman named Decker Keltner. At the Greater Good Science Center. And they were so excited, they said, this is fantastic. We'd like to do a study with you. Well, that was just about a week before the pandemic broke out. So then the pandemic takes place. And now people are really, as you know, stressed and anxious and overworked. And so we decided to do our study with frontline health care workers, because we knew they were the people that were really having a tough time doctors, nurses, administrators in hospital. So we did two studies, one with frontline health care workers, and one with patients. And same program three weeks, 21 days. And at the end of it, the results were just remarkable. I mean, to the point that we had publishers asking us to write a book about something which we never intended to do. But when you have multiple publishers saying, Would you write a book, you know, it's pretty exciting, ending. And so we decided to go ahead, we then took the next couple of years, wrote the book, which also involved a lot of research into exactly what we think was happening when people access the emotion of awe. And it turns out, it's a very powerful emotion, but it's not been talked about a whole lot. And what was unique about our approach is that we asked people to find awe, in the ordinary, in other words, not having some remarkable, magnificent experience, but just in your everyday life, when you wake up in the morning, just the fact that you wake up before anything happens. Could you experience a moment of awe, maybe it's because you woke up? Maybe it's because of the person you're sleeping next to, and you feel so grateful, maybe it's because you have a cat or a dog on the bed, and they're they're greeting you in the morning? Maybe it's because of the way your first cup of coffee smells or tastes. So these very normal things. And the question is, can you stimulate the emotion of the law? And that's how it started. And it turned into a much, much bigger project than I ever expected.

It's so cool. I love that story. So is that the meditative? You call it the micro meditation? Is that micro meditation? Is that looking for that moment of all like finding, finding all that surrounds you? Is that what you mean? Like, are they one of the same thing?

Yes. So micro dosing on mindfulness, or micro meditation is the process of experiencing ah, and what we did is we took the word on we turned in a web into an acronym, and each letter stands for the steps in the method.

Can we go through that now? Yeah, absolutely.

So the first one is attention. And that is a matter of placing your attention on something that you appreciate, or am great are grateful for or fine to be absolutely amazing. And if you look around your room, or wherever people are, right now, if you look around, can you find something that you value appreciate or think is just amazing. And then you

actually have to physically see or is it can be me thinking of my children, for instance, that are in another country?

Absolutely could be in your own mind. It could be a memory, it could be a piece of music you've heard or it could be a piece of music you're listening to right now

anything doesn't matter where you are, you can do this anywhere.

Anywhere. Yes. Even in very difficult trying circumstances. Yeah. So you find what it is you give your complete undivided attention to it. And we say this is tip clearly about a breath cycle or breath cycle is usually about 10 seconds. So you're inhaling, you're giving your attention to this object or this thought. And then you just wait, that's the wu wei, you pause where you just give all of your attention to whatever this is. And you experience the sensations associated with it. And then when you exhale, we ask you to have a slightly longer exhale than normal. Because at the end of an exhalation, if it's deep, you activate the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve without going into a lot of detail about it. Basically, it induces a parasympathetic state, a state of deep relaxation, it's a really healthy thing to have this deep exhalation and whatever sensations are in your body will be amplified. And the sensations that were in your body were positive, because we had you focus on something that was something you valued or find to be amazing.

Right, awesome. So attention, weight, and the weight is with deep, deep breathing deep breaths, and the E is exhale, and allow it to exhale all the way.

Exhale, and expand, exhale

and expand. I like that word expand, I often talk about your heart expanding and how that's how we can tap into an inner wisdom with greater knowing and understanding a deeper sense of love by allowing our heart to expand and, and I love that you are talking about the same thing in a different in a slightly different way. And it's, it's very cool, very cool, where

you might find interesting model that we developed called three levels of consciousness. And we and the reason I bring this up is because it very much is about what you just described, where we have that sense of our heart opening and expanding, we call that the second level of consciousness, which is heart consciousness, the first level of consciousness we refer to as safety, and that's where we're living our lives. 99% of the time, we're being productive, we're being focused on some future outcome, we're taking care of business, we're doing what we have to do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, all of our daily activity is mostly in safety consciousness, we can raise our consciousness to go to heart, which is that expanded state of appreciation, where we can raise it even further. And we go into something called spacious consciousness. And in spacious consciousness, that's where we find Ah, now, what happens in spaciousness, it's different than heart consciousness is, it's non verbal, and non temporal. There's no no thinking, there's no relationship to time, we are just fully immersed in the experience of the moment. And this is not something new. This is not something we discovered. It's been taught for 1000s of years. But what the arm method does is it allows us to access this state of spaciousness in five seconds, 10 seconds. And that's, you know, when we began and you said the title of the book, and I said, it's a little embarrassing. It's embarrassing to promise so much to say, in a minute, a day, you can change your life. But I really do believe if people would practice this multiple times a day, they would experience themselves as a very different person, because every time you practice as you reset your nervous system, it's as if you uncoil the tension in a spring. And that has all sorts of tremendous benefits, some of which we'll get into.

Yeah, it's fascinating, something that I teach my clients and I can't claim this is not something I've come up with, but it's called Joy spotting. And when I read your book, I thought oh, there's there's some similarities with this idea of stopping in all it taking that moment to find our enjoy spotting is taking a moment to notice what brings you joy in in your life. I feel like you're the art is a heightened way. It's a sort of a level up if you will, and I think it's something that can just really help us find that that spaciousness, that grounding in such a short period of time. And I just love I love the simplicity of it. I keep coming back to that the simplicity of it, which is really, really beautiful. And

I think that Joyce spotting is very similar gratitude practices are very similar. There's an interesting study that was done, I believe in 2015 that talked about positive emotions and how they affect our physiology. Yeah, and of all the positive emotion This joy love are always the one that decreased inflammation in the body the most. So it inhibits the process of inflammation. And as you know, inflammation is associated with all disease, whenever there's disease, there's going to be inflammation. So if we can find a way to break that cycle and reduce inflammation, we're helping ourselves in all sorts of ways. You remember years ago, Norman Cousins wrote that book about laughing? Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I hadn't thought about it for a long time. But he, I believe, I don't remember perfectly, but I believe he had cancer. And he ended up creating a therapy for himself where he would laugh, like 30 minutes every day, watch funny movies. And it really helped him. In hindsight, I think part of what's happening is he was accessing a positive emotion, which reduced inflammation and tension in his body. And so what we're doing is similar. But we're asking people to do it multiple times today. And the fascinating thing about it is that where people have resistance to doing many things that they're asked to do that are good for them. The main reason they resist is because they don't have time. But if I can say to you, I have something for you to do, that would be really great. And you say, Well, I'm really busy. I got this will take 10 seconds, this will take 10 seconds, 15 seconds at the most. It seems like that eliminates the resistance that people have. Yeah, that's that's part of why I think it's so powerful. In other words, people say, Well, I'll meditate 10 minutes a day, but then they don't. But if they say I'll do this, extremely simple practice three times a day, because it only takes 15 seconds, they actually do it. Okay, I was

just going to ask you, how many times a day do they need to do it to get the benefit, and is three,

let's say the minimum is three, but what we saw is called a dose response. And what that means is, the more you do it, the better the result, right, which is not surprising. But again, we're asking you to do something that takes 10 or 15 seconds. So I would say that at this stage in my life, I've been doing it now for three years, I probably do it a couple times in an hour,

a couple of times an hour, okay,

I'll finish a meeting, I'll get ready to go to another meeting, I'll take a moment out of breath cycle, right into a moment of awe going into my next meeting. And also this can be used preventatively. And this I find to be fascinating. Let's say that you need to have an argument or I'm sorry, you have a conversation with your spouse, you want to have a conversation, you want to clear the air. So we normally approach that in safety consciousness somewhat concerned about how it's going to go and we don't want to create conflict. So we are in safety consciousness, and that influences the tone of the conversation. But if you take a moment to access spaciousness by using the armed method, before you have that conversation, it changes the whole tone of the conversation. Yeah, and then if you're, if your partner knows it, as well, you can say, hey, why don't we both take a moment? Access? Ah, and then let's talk about whatever it is that we want to talk about. Right?

So you're you're coming at life from this higher state of being really like, Yes. Yep. Very cool.

Exactly. And it's really, it's really central to this work and the way I work with people now, which is instead of trying to look at your behavior after the fact and say, How could I change my behavior, what I'm encouraging people to do is look at your state of consciousness, which is just your state of mind, your state of being, look at that before you engage in whatever it is you're going to engage in. Because as you shift your state of consciousness, you shift the way you experience and make meaning of everything that happens. It's completely different way of being.

Absolutely our world would be a completely different place if we all did that. Or even if, even with a small percentage of us started to do that more. Awesome. So tell us about

the mind that you and I were going to. Yeah, I just the short story, you You and I were going to talk a week ago and I goofed up, I got the time wrong. And I sent you an apology. And you were so gracious about it. You know, there wasn't an ounce of annoyance that I picked up on, you're very gracious and you just said hey, no problem. These things happen. And you even took some responsibility even said, I could have done such and such to make it clear. And the reason I bring it up is because you approached me from a state of mind and consciousness that was so refreshing, was so pleasant because I felt terrible that I goofed up our time and then you were so gracious about it. And it's just an example about In our state of consciousness and how it affects other people.

Hmm. That's really, that makes me feel good. That's awesome. Very cool. So I'd like to hear a little bit more about how this method works with the brain, the body, like, what's the Yeah, just how does that how does that work?

Well, on the on the first step A, where we put our attention, of course, has a huge impact on how we experience the world. So you know, we can look at the fact that our partner made dinner for us and left a mess, and we can focus on the mouse, they didn't clean up the dishes, or we can put our attention on the fact that they made dinner for us. So where we put our attention really affects us and other people. And then the wait is the most interesting to me. Because when we have this moment of waiting, that internal monkey mind, which is, which is referred to as the default mode network, it's a variety of areas of the brain that are particularly busy, when we are not doing anything. So here we are, we're just waiting. And because our attention is focused, that those busy areas of the brain, why it down, the default mode network actually becomes quiet. And when that happens, we have an experience of spaciousness, then we exhale, activating vagus nerve, which amplifies this quiet, spacious experience. It's very unique, it's not what most of us experience most of the time, it's very unique.

Could you not get there with just good breathing exercises? Or is they the thinking of something that that raises your vibration? Is that an important part of the formula?

It accelerates it? So yes, you could get there with with breathing, breath therapy, breath work is incredibly powerful. You could get to the same place, but it would take longer. And if you're in a bad mood, or you're fearful or something happened, that you're ruminating about, that would inhibit you from moving forward. Where if you start by putting your attention on something that you appreciate value, or find to be amazing, you've just accelerated the process significantly. You ever played pool? Yeah. Yeah. belong? Well. Yeah, I haven't, I don't play well, either. But there's an idea, you put a little spin on the ball a little English. Yeah, that's what we're doing. We're putting a little spin, we're encouraging our mind to go in the direction of positivity.

Right? I love that. I can see how this technique can be used to not only help calm you, but it can potentially get you into a creative mindset as well to advance with whatever projects you're you're working on, just to to clear the space. So you can be you can operate at your your best.

Absolutely, I think of it as I just had this image come when you were saying that it's as if you're erasing a blackboard, it's got all sorts of things on it, and it's busy. And you erase the Blackboard or the whiteboard. And all of a sudden there's all this space, which I think does promote creativity. Yeah,

absolutely. That's a great visual. Love it. All right. In your book, you talk about the all spectrum. And there are three types of all Can you tell us a little bit about about that?

Yeah. So the spectrum is a valuable thing for people to realize, because sometimes you'll have a moment of awe and it's really very subtle. It's just a sweet softening. It's just a kind of a pleasant experience. And that's great. And then you can have moments that are even more intense and the most intense we refer to as orgasmic. Right. And that's, that's, yeah, exactly. But body tingling, energy release, energy travels up the back of your spine and often comes in you have a release in your neck or your head. That's how I experienced it. And it's really captivating when that happens. Now, there's not a good or a bad way to experience or they're just simply different and different people experience are in their own unique ways. There are three primary sources of awe. The first one is what we call sin sorial. And that's where we're exposing ourselves to things that stimulate our senses. smell, taste, touch, sound sight. So we're experiencing something or taking in something that stimulates our senses, and we can have a moment of awe. The second one is conceptual awe. And that would be where you have a thought you think of something that's just beyond your comprehension, it just kind of stretches your mind takes you someplace remarkable. I kind of do it with my conversation with you, because we're on different sides of the world, here we are having this conversation, it's just kind of remarkable that we can do this, right. That's sort of an awe inducing moment. And then the third one, which I'm also having with you is called interconnected. And that's where you're connecting with another being person, pet, whatever it is. And you just feel the energy and the the depth of what it means to connect with another human being or another animal and other sentient beings. And when that happens, it's it's a rich experience.

Yeah. Right. That's what life is about, I think. Yeah,

I think it is. I think it is. Yeah. And it doesn't happen all the time. I don't know how many podcasts I've done since we wrote the book. But I have this experience with you. I don't know exactly why I have it with you. And I haven't had it, let's say with other podcasters. But there's something there. There's something about the connection that just is stimulating and engaging. And I find myself,

yeah, I feel that too. I've got this, like, super crazy grin on my face is everything you're saying? I'm like, Yeah, I'd love it really resonates with me. So and I feel like I'm getting a deeper awareness myself for some of the things that I'm trying to help people with as well. But I'm coming at it with a different language. And you're giving me more tools to share with my audience. And I'm so excited to let people know about your book, because it's it's so important and simple. I love the simplicity. I keep coming back to that. And I think you're, you're so smart and make it as simple for people as possible.

So yeah, it is really simple. I mean, at first, I didn't even know how it would turn into an entire book. But one of the things we did is we talked about the study, we talked about the method. And then in the back of the book, my wife wrote, I think there's about 30 of them that we call experiments. And those are actual examples of how to induce a state of awe. And so there's one per page, they're very sweet. They're very simple. But there are a nice set of training wheels to help people get started with this process.

Well, that leads into the next question I was gonna ask you, how do we build our muscle.

And that's what it is, it is a muscle and the more we do it, the easier it gets. And eventually, we start to have what are known as spontaneous moments of awe, where we actually feel our body or our body has an experience of law, and we didn't even try to induce it. Yeah, we just have it. And that's really exciting when that starts to happen. But in the beginning, my recommendation to people is to get up in the morning and have an intentional aha moment. And you and I talked earlier could be it could be just the fact that you woke up or it could be who you wake up with, it could be noticing the beauty around you, it could be anything, but do that first thing in the morning. And then somewhere mid day, take a moment, take a break, and go have a moment of awe, whether that's stepping outside, or whether it's looking at a photograph on the wall, or whether it's enjoying your lunch and really savoring the flavors. And then when you go to bed, one more moment to buy and this to me would be the minimum in terms of developing the on muscle. It's a really nice thing to do before going to bed. Because it's a way of releasing tension from the day. Yeah, so I go out every night and I look at the stars and I do a moment of awe. Yeah,

my all practice which I'll call it now I actually call it My My God walks I go for walks in nature to do that every single day. And that's where I feel that sense of all in my just being very present in my environment. And it's I yeah, it's just such a an important part of my day. But I like what you're saying is the intention. You know, I think that that's a really key word that we're you set the intention to notice to find to be aware and find the all and I imagine is maybe a question. Note, the noticing part of all is how you can build that muscle by being aware and noticing those moments of all that happens spontaneously. And those moments where you're Setting the intention to, to find the jaw.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. What I what I imagined as I listened to you is that each one of these moments is like a little wake up call to our consciousness. So a wake up call. Yeah. And the other work that I do with my wife, that work is called Live conscious. And it's all about how to live our lives more consciously. And the on method is one way one step in that direction. Because each time I have a moment of awe, I bring myself into the present moment fully.

Yeah, that's interesting. Oh, something that I encourage my clients to do is at the end of each day, to write out what were their moments of spotting joy? Do you recommend doing that as well to take a moment to reflect on the day? Or is it more about just noticing in the moment?

That's really good, good question. is very interesting. So when you have a moment of awe, if you then try to reduce it to words, you will decrease the intensity of the experience. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Now, I'm talking very specifically about because I is nonverbal, what happens with aw is something called cognitive accommodation, where we cannot cognitively accommodate, we cannot make full sense of the experience we're having. Maybe we feel so much love, or what we see has so much beauty, that we cannot put it into words. And our mind is is slightly disoriented because we have a tendency to try to label things right. Yeah. What I say to people don't label it, don't don't even try to label it just simply have the experience. So that's the first part is don't try to reduce it to words. But the second part that was so interesting to me, is you said, trying to remember the words you use, but what it made me think of was how we want this to go from being a state a temporary state, to becoming a trait. Yeah. And what that means is it really becomes part of us, it becomes the way that we go through the world. Oh, I know the word you used reflection. So what we encourage people to do to take something from state to trade, we need to reflect on it. That's one of the keys, but reflect on it non verbally. In other words, more of the

feeling you're feeling not trying to articulate? Yeah,

exactly. So have your moment of awe, and then afterwards, just reflect back on the sensation of that moment, the visceral experience. That's what begins to turn a state into a trait?

And is that something that you can do daily on a regular basis? Or does it become? Does it become rote and that and then therefore, you kind of lose the off? Do you know what I mean? I don't know if I'm articulating what I'm

no, very good, very clear. Absolutely. If you allow this to become habituated, it loses some of its intensity. And so what we want to do is we want to take that moment to really, and this is kind of fun, but to appreciate what it was we just experienced. And that is that moment of reflection that you're talking about. Right? So I do that at the end of the day, not only do I go outside and look at the stars and have a moment of awe, but also reflect back on the moments of I had during the day,

right? Okay. Okay, so the best scenarios to do both is to not try to put words to anything, just the experience, allow the feeling the sensation of that moment, be it and then at the end of the day, maybe before you're going to bed reflecting back on what were those moments.

Think of think of a person in your life that when you focus on you are likely to go into a state of awe. You have somebody in mind. Yeah, yeah. And so just take a moment, give that give them your full attention. Just wait with that for a second and then have a longer than normal exhalation when you're ready.

And what I want you to do is just imagine if you were to try and describe that to me by describing the sensation, not the person or the story or the details. What's the sensation?

It's something I said earlier, actually It's an expansion of the heart center, this feeling that just go is going like this.

Exactly. So if you refer to your aha moments, as in this case in expansion of the heart, that's a beautiful way to summarize, as opposed to saying, like I was, I was doing it when I was asking you to do it. And I was thinking of my mother, when she and I were repairing a roof, and she was about 75. And she's up on the roof working with me, and I just love this memory of my mother. So me giving you the details is fun. And it's one way to do it. But it's not nearly as powerful. As if I just think about the physiological state. I go into when I think about being up on the roof with my mom. Yeah. I can't put it into words. I can't explain to you just how wonderful it was. Yeah, but I can hold that experience. That's what I want to do.

Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. Love it.

Thank you. And this, by the way, it goes a little bit in the direction of metta therapy, which is what I do with people when I work with them now, instead of using so many words, and instead of deconstructing our lives and looking at our pasts and asking why and who did what and who do I need to forgive all of that work? It's more of the kind of conversation you and I are having now about connecting with ourselves at what I believe is a more a deeper level. And soul level. Yes, yeah. Yeah. And what I find interesting is it's also very grounded. Yeah, it doesn't feel woowoo to me, or you're in any way just feels deeply grounding. Yeah.

I love having these kinds of conversations, because I feel the conversation itself is heart expanding. And I think it's important for us to have these kinds of conversations and share those moments and the, the realization of, of what is happening and inside of us, that's gonna say that, I think for me anyways, it helps to articulate, at least at a beginning, when I when I started this kind of work, trying to express what's going on. And I feel different, and I didn't understand what exactly it was, until I was able to say it feels like my heart is expanding. And now that I've got the words for that, I feel I feel it's so much quicker. Yeah, if that makes any sense. So I feel like the two kind of go hand in hand for me anyways, I like to explore the why and the how, and understand the words behind it and really reflect and then I can drop them, I can let go with the words and just allow the beingness to emerge,

I guess a good way to describe it. Because when I talk about meta therapy, I talk about going beyond traditional therapy beyond the bounds of it not the traditional therapy is not valuable, it's very valuable. And I think it's a little bit of what you just said that we start with words and asking the why and the how and the details. And eventually, we get to a point where we don't need to use so many words. And the words can dilute the deep experiences we have of being human. There is something about this that I don't think we want to reduce to words. For what for two reasons. One is everybody has different interpretation of a word.

Absolutely. So limiting words are so limiting. Yeah.

And, and the other is that once we put a label on something, it's as if we put it in a little box. And I really am encouraging, for example, the states of consciousness, the idea is not to live in one or the other. The idea is fluidity. The whole point is to be able to move fluidly from one state to another depending on what's going on. Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, there are there are a lot of people in the world right now that are hugely suffering with anxiety with anxiety and stress. So can we talk a little bit about how practicing all can help them move beyond being trapped in this and I do feel like anxiety is is a trap. We get trapped in it and it's so hard to break out. So how does practicing all help?

I'd say two things about it. One is that Victor Frankel's book Man's Search for Meaning is pretty well known book that's beautifully written about his experience. Being in the concentration camps and World War Two. And he ends up writing about his experience. And while in the concentration camp, he's describing moments of awe. And he is seeing the depth of humanity in the people he's with and finding our and love and beauty. So I think the first thing to remember is that really no matter where we are, there is beauty around us and within us, if we know how to find it. Yeah. So just recognizing that in the worst of situations, there is beauty. If we look for it, yeah. And the second part is, it's a choice. It's a choice at any moment we can stop doesn't mean that our suffering goes away, it doesn't mean that we're not sad, it doesn't mean we're not scared doesn't mean we're not unhappy. But we can access AWS as a way to ameliorate some of the challenges in difficult emotions, we go through AWS a very unique emotion in that it can coexist with negative emotions, I can be anxious, and experience ah, I can be depressed and experience, ah, it's very unique in this way. And it's not the solution. It's not like it solves the problem. But what it does is it gives me a moment of relief. And it reminds me of a much larger context.

That's beautiful. Wonderful,

I do something called and I think it's on our website, I do something called the auto Canvas meditation. And I asked people, I take people into a mild trance and ask them to essentially look throughout their lives and find the moments of awe. And, and the reason I'm sharing it with you is because those moments are there for all of us. It's a matter of whether we take the time to reflect on them. But even even when we're going through a hard time, those moments of awe and beauty are still there.

Yeah. So I imagine there are many, many, many different ways you can practice all. Either, do you have a few favorite ways that you practice? This all,

the main thing I do is I pay attention to my physiology. And when I feel myself tensing, when I feel myself anxious, then I look for a moment of awe to break that cycle. This is the same thing I would say for people who are dealing with anxiety, which is, as you become aware of that sensation, whatever, however you refer to it, where you begin to notice, gosh, I'm anxious. Just take a moment, literally 10 seconds, and release some of that pressure, release some of that tension by finding something that you appreciate, value or find amazing. And go through these three steps, doesn't solve all your problems. But it's very empowering. And it is incredibly constructive to reset our nervous system. Every time I reset my nervous system. It's like I go back to a baseline where I have some choice. As opposed to getting wound up and feeling like I'm just running on autopilot. Yeah.

Yeah. So interesting. Yeah, I know that. When we moved to Portugal, I mentioned earlier and when I first moved here, I was you know, I went from living in an island of 5000 people to being in a city of 1.3 million people and I and I wasn't having the same access to my my forest, the nature and that was where I was practicing. Although that was not my terminology for being in in nature. But reading your book and hearing you talk, I realized that's exactly what I was doing. I was that was my practicing all and a bunch of time past where I was not. I was not doing that I was not getting out on my regular time out in nature. And I really noticed I was anxious more I was tense I was easily aggravated. And I was having a hard time focusing on completing my book, and that's what I'm working on right now is my book. And and I was like, oh Anita, you're not doing what you tell people to do. You need to get outside and just connect with your environment to help you settle into your body and your system is a really beautiful one that you can do just like it step on my my deck for 30 seconds. and help me find that that space, although I'm not going to give up going out into nature, because to me, that's the, you know, sacred portal to your highest self is being in nature. I think you talk a little bit about nature in your book, too, don't you? Am I?

And yes, we did a research study done on all walks. Yeah, it's done, I think in 2020, about people taking all walks, 15 minutes once a week, I think for six or eight weeks, and the results were comparable to a mindfulness. A traditional mindfulness practice where people were meditating 10 or 15 minutes a day,

once a week would be the same as 10 minutes a day? Well,

I believe you'd like I'll find the study and send it to you. And you can include it in the show notes. Yeah, that'd be really great. I don't want to I don't want to mislead people. I do know that the results were really impressive. I just don't remember if they make a note. Right. The other thing I wanted to say about being in a city versus in nature, I used to work in Tokyo every year. And it first I found it very difficult to find the beauty and to relax, because I too, was coming from a place where I was going out and finding a patch of grass, a tree, a stunning piece of architecture of a building that just blew my mind. Right. And I started to use those things as the source of or joy or celebration, right. And I found that very capable. Yeah, awesome. I actually did it in Tokyo. One year, I did it watching people in a homeless encampment across the street from the hotel I was in, and I would watch in the morning, and this gentleman would come out of his tent, homeless, put on his suit, put on his shoes, put on his tie, kind of brush himself off and get ready to go off on his day. And I just thought it was this beautiful moment. Wow, of this man who had so much self respect that regardless of where he was living, he really cared how he presented himself. And I just thought his beautiful, very simple example.

Yeah, that is fascinating. Wow. All right, I've got one or two more questions for you. You start and end your book about the all method being a shortcut to transcendence. Can you explain what you mean by this?

Yeah, I think that's what I meant when I said I find the title embarrassing, because we're basically saying you can experience a state of transcendence in 510 15 seconds, which sounds a little bit unrealistic. But it actually is true, it actually is possible. And it's not that we can stay in that transcendent state, but we can access it really anytime we choose to by using the odd method. And then at the end of the book, we talk about how this is more than a self help technique. That if you actually use this methodology, it changes the way you live your life, because when you're in awe of another person, you realistically can't treat that person poorly or harm them. Yeah. And if you're in awe of nature, you can't destroy it. All right. Very powerful. So if people would access more often, it would change the way they relate with other people. It would change the way they see the world.

Absolutely. Yes. Very powerful stuff. Beautiful book. And thank you again, for giving us your time to share more with us about about your work. I highly encourage people to pick this book up where can people get it now as it's Amazon, I'm assuming the usual the usual suspects. Yes. Yeah,

it's I think it's pretty much everywhere. And I will say that, if you have a hard time finding it, our website is the power of odd.com. And on there, there's a list of all the places that have the book. There's also a page on our website that gives people I think, a dozen experiences where they can practice moments of awe, and they can even post images or experiences they have have their moments of awe and share them with the rest of the world.

That's part of the arm muscle building, isn't it?

Yes. Right. And when you look at for example, when I go to the website and I look at the things other people post I end up having my moments of all because