Mindfulness & Heartfulness for Anxiety & Depression (Depression and Anxiety Coping Skills Podcourse) [ep 91]

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. Welcome to JoyLab, so we not only focus on our elements of joy here, we also are focusing now on our podcast. We are moving now out of our more body-focused content and diving into the mind and heart. This is really transformative stuff, truly. I hope you listen to each lesson, and also there'll be several meditations as well that will come along to support you in practicing the strategies that Henry will note. So often we'll have a lesson with Henry, and then the following episode will be a meditation. If you are with us in the resilient community, you'll get those meditations a bit earlier when they match up with the episode. So join us there if you haven't, and now before I pass it over to Henry, I do want to note the only rule, this is a firm rule as well. As you move into this mind and heart, and just as it was with the body, apply a lot of self-compassion. That's it. That's the rule. So here's Henry to introduce this next section of our podcast. We are going to shift gears a bit now. I even have to sit down for this. We're going to shift from talking mostly about the body, as we've been doing in the first parts of the course, to talking about two other really important aspects of who we are as human beings, which also has a huge bearing on mood. And that is the mind and the heart. So I know that human beings are not really divided up neatly in two body, mind and heart. And yet we need some kind of language, that we need something that we can share that gives us an understanding of both who we are and also where our problems arise and what we can do to shore ourselves up or to focus really where the need is greatest. Some of you might have already found what you really needed in working with the body. You might have come through diet or maybe a supplement or the exercise part, certainly could have come through sleep. But for most people who are struggling with their mood, we also have to address these important parts of who we are. So I want to start this section by sharing a story. I don't really know the origins of it. But in the story, there is a little boy about three or four years old whose grandfather is a wise elder, a sage. And the boy adores his grandfather. So he follows him like a shadow and he was staying with his grandfather for a couple of weeks. So he had lots of time to observe him. And the little boy noticed within just a few days that his grandfather had a pattern to his days. Every morning at about sunrise, he would go to a little altar that he had made in his living room and the grandfather would sit down and take off a necklace and place it on the altar. And then he would just close his eyes and be quiet for a few minutes. Then he would put the necklace back on and go about his day. And then every evening at about sunset, he would do the same thing. So after a couple of days of this, the boy was so curious and he just said to his grandfather, what is it that you're doing when you sit with your eyes closed and what is your necklace that you take off and put on again? So the grandfather took the necklace off again, held it out in his hand for the boy to see. And it was a silver medallion with two wolf heads on it. So the grandfather shows it to him and he says, this is to remind me that inside of me, just like every other person, there are these two wolves. One of them is angry and selfish and really cares mostly about himself, but the other one is kind and generous and cares at least as much about others as about himself. And the two wolves, the grandfather said, are fighting a great battle. The little boy says, with his eyes wide open, he's imagining this quite literally. He says, grandfather, which one will win? And the grandfather says, it is the one we feed the most. It's the one we feed the most. So I want you to remember that story. I think the story is true on many different levels as we go through this material because you'll see it coming up again and again that there are different aspects to us. And we talk about good and bad, good wolf, bad wolf. It's not really that simple, at least in my view. I think that in some ways, some of the aspects of the ad wolf are necessary and important. Sometimes we need to protect ourselves. We need to shut down or push things away. But we will get in trouble if we do that repeatedly. And so I want to talk a little bit about how I think of the psychology of mindfulness. That's a term that I used to refer to some of the broad lessons and understandings about the human condition that come out of mindfulness practice and literature. And also how we can use that insight to feel better, to take better care of ourselves and perhaps even to become a better person. So there are two very different aspects to this practice. One of them is what's usually referred to as mindfulness. And the other one is what I refer to as heartfulness. So mindfulness is what most people think of when if they take any kind of meditative practice training or Buddhist training, they're familiar with the word mindfulness. No doubt you've heard it now because it's a term that's out there so widely. Mindfulness in my view refers to the ability that we all have but it helps to practice and refine it. And that is the ability to see things as they really are, to see what is. So that means that we can cut through delusion or cut through the way that we color things with our own thoughts and ideas. And this is really helpful if we can learn how to do this because it reduces the ways in which we cause harm to ourselves. So more about that in a little bit. The second aspect is at least as important. It's not something that as many people are familiar with. It's sometimes referred to as meta or again, hard or hurtfulness practice. And my view of this is that when we work on the heart, which we'll do a little bit later, we are really working to open ourselves up to create the capacity to love better. It goes beyond reducing our suffering or doing no harm. It goes to creating a greater capacity, a greater container, if you will. So that even if there are still our stresses and challenges in our lives, we can approach it differently because we've created a different inner state. So these are very different approaches to the same kind of problem which is the nature of suffering. So let's talk a little bit about that. This is from the mindfulness way of understanding what causes suffering and what is it really. So one of the things to remember is that everybody experiences suffering. Nobody is exempt from this. If you're a human being, you are going to be hurt. You're going to be wounded. You're going to suffer from time to time. But what can really make that more harmful is when we add to the things that have happened with our own thoughts or our own emotions. So we can get to the point of really exaggerating the problems that might be real, that might be there and making things much, much worse for ourselves. So learning to see that suffering is everywhere, that everybody experiences it is a good place to start. But then the question is, what do we do about it? We're going to talk about them in the next lesson. Thank you for listening to the JoyLab podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, visit joylab.coach to learn more about the full JoyLab program. Be sure to write and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please remember that this content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice and is not a replacement for advice and treatment from a medical professional. Please consult your doctor or other qualified health professional before beginning any diet change, supplement or lifestyle program. Please see our terms for more information.