Welcome to the JoyLab Podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self.
Your host, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Amy Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and
scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark.
When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full JoyLab
program over at joylab.coach.
Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to JoyLab.
And I'm Amy Prasek.
So here at JoyLab, we impute science with soul to help you uncover joy.
To do that, we focus on building the elements of joy.
Those are the positive emotions and interstates that become the building blocks for joyful life.
The element for this episode is curiosity, and we're working on presence,
P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E, the first aspect of deep listening, and also a great tool to cultivate curiosity.
So Henry laid out these aspects in one of his books, a chemistry of calm.
So being present is the practice and state of holding our attention to what's around
us, and to sum up some of the relevant research here on Presence.
Being more present is associated with better mood, reduced stress, and experiencing less
anger and fear.
So it's helpful.
And it seems like a simple concept to grasp.
We've heard it all before.
Be here now.
Be present.
But in practice, it's not easy.
So Henry, can you define Presence a bit more and explain why it's so flipping hard?
Please.
Well, as a starting point, I think it's hard to stay present because our minds drift all the time.
And most of us, including myself in this, we haven't trained ourselves to be able to stay
very focused for very long.
And there is so much to distract us.
I think today more than ever, we live in a world of distractions.
But at a deeper level, I'm actually not sure this really is such a simple concept.
It certainly doesn't seem easy to achieve Presence, but I'm not even sure it's that easy
to understand it.
I think we vaguely associate Presence with being in the moment, but really what does that
actually mean?
So let me refer to this quote that is pretty famous.
It's from James Joyce.
And it's actually the opening line to his novel called Dubliners.
And here's how it reads, Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.
So the book goes on to describe Mr. Duffy as kind of a dull bureaucrat.
He was emotionally flat.
He was kind of disconnected both from his body and from his feelings.
You might say he's kind of living a half life.
Now in the book, of course, Mr. Duffy, he gets a very vivid portrayal.
And he is at one end of the spectrum.
But he's a pretty good example of not being present to your life, at least not in a really
complete way.
I see his central problem as being cut off from life.
It's like he has shut himself down.
And I seriously doubt that Mr. Duffy set off with the intention of keeping life away
because none of us really do that on purpose.
Most of the time we're just not even aware that we're doing it.
And yet we do it.
And I do think there's a pretty simple reason for that.
And it's another reason, frankly, why being present is so hard.
And I think it's because we don't want to hurt.
We don't want to feel emotional pain.
We don't want sadness.
Some of us might want to feel angry from time to time.
But I think that's only because we don't really want whatever the painful feeling is that's
beneath the anger.
So of course, we all want to be present for the good stuff, for whatever makes us happy.
But presence, genuine presence, means that we're here for all of it, the joys and the sorrows.
We don't shut anything out.
And that can be really hard.
It is really hard, just this weekend, actually, I had such a punch in the gut experience
with this.
I'll tell a story.
I was at a fundraising event and they had a bingo thing, but there are all these complicated
ways to win.
So it wasn't just a straight line or like, it's like geometry, bingo geometry.
And so I got really into it and super competitive as I like to do no matter what's happening.
And we were in this far corner, so it was really hard to hear.
So I had to be really present to hear the numbers and like figure out what was a bingo
or not, with all these shapes you had to make to win.
So that was hard.
But then someone came over to me and wanted a chat and I mean like have a deep conversation.
This person knew I worked in mental health and I could tell that they wanted to have a
conversation about mental health like right there in the middle of that bingo competition.
And so there's this bingo collar calling out these numbers that I have to strain to
hear.
And then there's this other person wanting to talk and I was trying to do both at the
same time and it was making me feel super uneasy.
This story seemed to make me sound like a real jerk, but I'm going to tell you what.
And it's embarrassing.
That's okay.
So I was feeling extremely guilty that I wasn't giving this person my full attention.
And at the same time, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I did not want to miss the bingo numbers
that were being called.
And after like three or so minutes of this, the person left, which just like hit me
in the stomach.
Of course they left.
I was not paying attention.
So actually in some ways, it seems like an attention problem I was having.
But the issue for me I realized was not attention per se, but I was hanging on to this one thought
which was I'm not going to hear some numbers and then I'm going to miss my chance at winning.
But it pulled me along this future focus thought, just pulled me along and it kept me worried
about that future of missing like my sweet bingo victory.
And I know as wild, I can't, I mean, I should have figured this out.
But if I would have just paused, like come back to the present moment, I could have decided
to like take a break from the game because it really wasn't that big of a deal.
I mean, the prizes were not great.
Let's be honest.
But I didn't care.
I was just this, this was pulling me this future of missing out.
You know, I could have, if I would have paused, I could have passed my card to someone else
to pay, you know, play for me.
I would have said like, you know, we're splitting the prize or tell the person I could have
paused and told the person, hey, I really want to be present with you.
Can we chat after the game?
Right.
I mean, which is probably not the kindest for someone who is seeking out an ear.
But at least I would have been more respectful and clear, less agitated about the whole situation.
So weird experience.
But back to what he said earlier, Henry, this can be really hard and in strange ways that
throw us off our game, like literally threw me off my bingo game, you know?
I couldn't, I was caught in the future.
I couldn't come back to the present moment to assess, which was a pretty obvious decision
to just like pause the bingo game for myself.
You know, there's more to explore here.
So let's get into that complexity a bit more and talk about the neuroscience of present
moment awareness.
Do you want to try to explain all that, Henry?
I do, but I just have to ask first, did you go home with any prize?
I didn't win a thing, which made me even more mad at myself for not listening to that
person and then not winning.
I mean, I had to really go through our aspects of deep listening and just practice
some self-compassion and then I realized, oh, here's what happened.
So no, it was an epic feel in all ends.
Mixed for a very good story.
Well, if it's hard to define what presence is, I think it's even harder to understand
the neuroscience of presence.
So what is it about the brains of really present people that allows them to be that way?
I don't think anybody knows for sure.
I think the jury's still out, but there are a few things that I think are bringing us
closer to understanding this.
First, there are what I think of as these attentional circuits within the brain, so the things
that really do help us to just to pay mental attention.
There's this massive amount of sensory information that we take in and we have to filter that
and decide what's important and what isn't.
So there's a lot going on that's actually going on below the surface of our awareness.
We're actually going to talk a little more about that in our next episode on attention,
so I'm not going to get into that more right now.
There are three other aspects of neuroscience that I think are worth talking about right
now.
First is the ever-present stress response, which was happening for you and me in your story.
And in this case, stress kind of cuts both ways.
So when you feel threatened by something, you might actually become even more alert, hyper-alert,
hyper-focused, but the problem is it's in a very narrow range.
For you, I mean, all you could see was your bingo card in the numbers, you know what I mean?
You were able to kind of get the bigger picture.
So it can literally even happen with your vision, like a horse when they put blinders on it.
Now, that sort of narrowed focus might help you get away from an attacker,
but it does not help you to be more present.
Some of us, when we go into fight or flight mode, we don't even get narrowly focused.
It's like our brain just shuts down.
It's more like we freeze rather than we get focused.
But even if you are able to get more focused at first, if stress goes on for very long,
almost always, it makes it very, very hard, increasingly hard to stay in the present moment
with our awareness.
One way to understand that, I think, is refers to the second part of neuroscience that I want to
mention, and that is the sheer speed of brain activity.
The different parts of our brain are constantly talking with one another,
and they need to do that in order for us to stay functional and even to stay present.
So energy is always flowing through these different brain circuits,
and they're sharing information like from one node or one center to another,
and they're connected by this very complicated, elegant web of activity.
It literally produces electrical energy, and that can be measured by something like an EEG,
which people will seizure disorders, for example, or it's a test that people get.
So stress is one thing that can speed up these circuits of activity.
There are some other things as well, so taming the stress response and slowing down brain activity
are both important foundations for being more present.
Now, I'm going to just put in another plug for the full joy lab program here,
because I think it can be so helpful at practicing this.
The third thing I'll mention is even more complex, and I think it goes
beyond our current understanding of the brain.
And for this, we have to talk about the mind.
As I understand this, the mind includes the brain, but it is more than the brain.
It includes consciousness as well.
There are some fascinating theories about this, and one of them that really appeals to me
involves kind of a layer of energetic activity.
It's like I might think of it like an elegant net or a web that is overlaying and surrounding the brain.
I imagine it as being sort of like an aura, and I know that might sound a little bit wacky.
However, we conceptualize this.
The conscious mind is different from the thinking mind, and it's really crucial
to understand this, to create more presence.
It also helps us to deal with the problem that we talked about earlier,
the thing that makes presence so hard, because this gives us the ability to see
what is really going on, and not be so affected by it.
This conscious awareness, it's like it's able to keep us above the fray.
We can be more present because we don't feel such a need to avoid emotional pain.
I like that getting above the fray, it's a helpful cue.
We want to offer a little practice to help you take action and practice presence.
You may be familiar with the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 practice, where usually when you're feeling
anxiety-rise, you can bring your attention to five things you see, four things you feel,
three things you hear, two things you smell, and then one grounding were affirmative thought
you have about yourself. I like that practice, but sometimes I get cut up in the numbers
in the order of it all, especially when I'm feeling a little stressed.
If I'm trying to come back to the present moment, it sometimes is a little cumbersome for me.
It can take too long. For maybe the more mild moments of discomfort where you want to come back
to the present moment, or maybe when you're caught in a quicker game time decision,
like, is this bingo game really that important? No, it's not any. I think simple fighting can
be helpful. I like to call it eye sense, so this is a little nod back to our last episode on the
flavors of curiosity, that flavor of interest. All you need to do is go through all or most of your
senses and identify just one thing you notice for each of those in the present moment.
So, I feel I see I hear I smell, maybe I taste. Go in any order. You can go back around as many
times as you need. So using my story from before, I should have done it. I know it. I'll do it next
time. I'm still practicing as we all are. Here's what it might have sounded like. I feel tight in my
stomach. I see someone speaking to me. I hear that bingo number. I smell old carpet. I'm still
feeling distracted. So I'm going to go around again. I kind of feel flush. I see the person talking.
I hear b16 and some of that person talking to me. I smell that spaghetti. They're serving. I feel
more open, less frustrated. I see their hands on their lap. The person speaking to me. I hear them
talking to me and they seem to be having a hard time. Now I'm back in the moment and I can make a
decision because I'm out of my future thought loop of worrying about missing out on winning.
And now I'm back. I have a better sense of what's going on and I can make a choice.
Love it, Amy. And I love how you simplified it. It just cuts right through the complexity we've
been talking about when it comes to presence. Yeah. I think your eye sense practice works because
it loosens the grip of thought. It helps us bypass the thinking mind at least for a few moments.
And it just brings us right back to the here and now. What am I experiencing right now?
I think that's a pretty good definition of presence. What is happening right now in this
particular moment? And can I stay with it? Can I just stay with it? You know, maybe presence is
pretty simple after all. Yeah. It just takes a lot of practice to undo what we've built up over
the years. I think there's something there we are built to be in the present moment. So to close,
I want to look to a thinker, author, teacher who I like to quote quite a bit Alan Watts. He's got two
quotes I love and that can help us tie up our conversation and maybe inspire some more practice
for our present moment awareness. Here's this first. Instant coffee, for example, is a well-deserved
punishment for being in a hurry to reach the future. I like that. I love it. It's true. Here's another one.
The art of living is neither careless drifting on the one hand, nor fearful clinging to the past
on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment in regarding it as utterly new and unique
in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
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