Hey everyone. Welcome to this conversation with Rhonda Magee. My name's Cory Muscara, and you may have already seen me in the Mindfulness.com app as one of your guides, where I serve as a mindfulness coach here to walk by your side, helping you improve your mental and emotional health. And today I'm really thrilled to be hosting this conversation with Rhonda about her new seven day course entitled The Healing Power of Self-Compassion. And I'm particularly excited to bring Rhonda Magee into the Mindfulness.com family, because she has such a unique background, powerful story.

And her work is incredibly meaningful in the meditation space, but also on a very practical level for how we live our lives on a day-to-day basis, especially among others. Rhonda's a law professor at the University of San Francisco, a long-time mindfulness teacher and a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. She's also the author of the groundbreaking book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice, former chair of the board of directors for Search Inside Yourself and a member of the board of advisors of the Brown Center for Mindfulness. So yeah, Rhonda brings a lot of expertise and experience to the table here. And what I love about Rhonda's dedication to mindfulness is it really centers how we can heal ourselves and our broader world.

I'm sure maybe you've experienced how sometimes mindfulness can feel a bit like a self-oriented practice where, you know, we're doing our meditation and taking care of our own wellbeing. And sometimes if we're not paying careful attention, it, it can, there can be a disconnect between what we're doing here and how we're bringing it into the world. And Rhonda really creates that bridge for us. So I am super excited for you to get to experience her teachings and to experience this interview. I can't wait to dive in and without further ado, let's get started with Rhonda Magee.

All right, Rhonda. Well, it's a joy to be with you here and to really go in-depth into into your story and the exciting teachings that are coming out on the Mindfulness.com platform. As a way for people to get to know you and to also share in this excitement, I'd love for you to to just share as much as you'd like about your personal story and, and how you've come specifically to, to mindful self-compassion, why it means so much to you and, and the gift of being able to offer it to others. Thank you so much. Yeah.

So, you know, my, my story you know, often I begin the story talking about growing up in the South in the United States and, and, you know, in a, in a segregated black community. And while my experience really was filled with, you know, some of the painful consequences of, you know, being in a family where the structures of our society sort of embedded impoverishment. Right? We never had a lot of resources. Everybody worked outside of the home, including my grandmother, who, with whom I, I spent a lot of time when I was small. But I will say that one of the joyful aspects of that was that my, my grandmother, by the time I came along, you know, she was an elder, she was in her sixties and she was still working.

She had this unglamorous work of cleaning houses for other people, which is you know, quite typical of what women of that demographic and at that time were kind of relegated to. And so while she, that work was not easy, she had found a way to ground herself in her own worth and in the possibilities of every day through a devotional centering practice that she engaged in absolutely, you know, without fail. So before, every day, so before coming, leaving her room and getting us off and getting us kids on our way and then going to her work, you know, she would wake up before dawn and spend time centering and gathering herself. Gathering a sense of herself and engaging in a little bit of study and inspiration for how to be with that day. Now for her, the practices were grounded in a kind of Christianity, prophetic, very engaged with the experience of suffering, the black experience of suffering in America.

And so that was a particular kind of practice for her. But what I took away from it, right? Cause my own practice of course turned into my, turned me toward mindfulness. What I took away from watching her was just that the power of having a commitment to practices that could support us in seeing ourselves more through the lens of the gift of our own lives, irrespective of the circumstances that we find ourselves in, irrespective of the messages we might be getting from society about who we are. And so when many years later I had, in my own journey, had experienced some of the beautiful consequences of our society's efforts to open up opportunity for people like me. Right? And through which I was able to get an education, go to university and become a lawyer and all of that, and travel.

Right? So I was able to travel from North Carolina to California and start my own career as a lawyer. And I've trained so much and learn so much and studied at your great universities and done all these things, but it was also somehow quite clear to me that I needed it, something more, something, some way of really understanding how my own mind, how my own conditionings, how my own heartbreak might need to be tended to and how I might need to sort of, yeah, ground myself in that sense of possibility that I saw my grandmother being able to do. Like somehow I realized that despite all the great trainings I've had, I hadn't really been well prepared for navigating this world from the ground of my own broader than is on the resume kind of experience and being. And then I was hungry for that. And so I, I just started exploring on my own as many, many of us have through books and that sort of thing.

Just exploring something that ended up being mindfulness. Like, you know, it started out with just looking at formal practices of meditation in a particular tradition and then ultimately led to finding a mindfulness community and teacher trainings and all of that. But it really was grounded in the urgent necessity of finding a more holistic way of, of of being in the world that would help me navigate these challenges. So it wasn't academic at all. It was very much like I'm going to be needing something here to be able to, even though I have all these opportunities that my grandmother didn't have, to be able to actually move through this world, which still embeds, you know, biases and, you know, I was still feeling some of the ways that ,that my identity would be met and that I would be challenged in the world, even today.

So for me, these practices really have been first, life support for me. And then from seeing that and feeling that, ultimately, I came to this sort of felt desire to be engaged and being able to offer them to others who I could see were also struggling. You know, I became a law professor and teaching classes around race and law, for example. Teaching classes about our American history and legal history of, of racism and the opportunity that law can provide to get, to have some justice or some way of redressing those wrongs. But also the pain of all of that was so obvious that I really started to want to offer these practices in the university setting just as a life support for my students as they had been for me.

And that's really what has motivated this journey of mine to bring together mindfulness in this engaged way to support us, first, from our own experience, but then together interpersonally as we try to study, know and change, and then ideally to help support collective broader systemic transformation in the world. Thanks, Rhonda. I find myself curious about the, that transition into the exploration of mindfulness and the mindfulness communities, because one of the really big transformative moments for me on this path of all the different dimensions of waking up, especially to my identity because on many levels, I am the poster child of all aspects of privilege. CIS straight, white, male, born in America, living in America. And, and I just remember one of my friends who was around the Dharma communities, you know, the, the meditation communities from like the seventies and eighties and nineties would go on retreats and she'd be one of, maybe two folks of color in a room of a hundred people, primarily white.

And and she made wonderful connections with them and they were great friends. And, and then she went on a retreat that was just for community of color. And she said for the first time, something in her system was able to rest and soften. And that was such big awakening for me of like, that is not something I've ever had to consider. And it made, it took like this person that I care deeply about, I was like that that's so interesting to know, and it brought everything more to life and made me challenge all these different things that I think I took for granted.

And so I'm curious like how the transition into the mindfulness community was for you, because I could see it potentially stirring up frustration when a lot of these social issues are not brought to the surface as readily which is changing big time now, which is so important. But could you speak to that experience? Yeah. So thank you for sharing about your friend and, and, and the way your relationship with this person has sort of opened you up to seeing some of these aspects that might not have been so visible for you before. Yeah. When I first started exploring mindfulness, I mean, first of all, I really wasn't calling it mindfulness.

As I said, I really just was looking for different ways of helping my own self deal with some stress, some things that, you know, I saw I'd need to work with. I was, you know, going to be the only black woman working at a law firm or in a particular office of this national, international firm. Right? So there'd be 70 attorneys there. I was going to be the only black woman. And so that has these all kinds of different dynamics that I kind of knew that I might need to be ready for.

And so it was really in consciousness of, you know, in the space of being aware of what it's like to be the only one in this way, right? In, in this context in the United States where our cultures trainings about who belongs and who doesn't and who belongs in law and where. Right? Don't necessarily have not, right, made it normal, frankly, or it certainly hadn't made it normal when I was entering into the profession in the 1990s, the mid nineties. That a person like me would come in, you know, representing corporate clients or would come in controlling the conversation about, about how to, you know, strategize in some, you know, conflict scenario. Instead, I typically ,under law, my identity, signaled to lots of people who have been in law, the type of person who's going to be controlled by law. So knowing that our culture embeds all of these trainings and they actually are impacting us.

It's something, you know, that I've been dealing with and had been dealing with all my life as I had, you know, often been in predominantly white institutional settings for my education. I went to a university that was traditionally not only predominantly white, but originally reserved for white men in the South. Right? So I've had a lot of experience being in the minoritized position in the world. And so when I entered into meditation spaces and found that once again, in the United States, in the Bay area of California where I was entering these spaces for the first time, finding myself being one of the only black women was something that was familiar to me and also discomforting. Right.

It wasn't comfortable. I didn't, it did not, it was, it was, I will say something of a barrier to me deepening sooner. I probably might've done more deep dives, gone on more retreats, et cetera, become more embedded in communities of practice if there weren't, if I didn't also feel like the, the painful sense of, you know, the way the body feels in, the way the black body feels in a majority white scenario in the United States. And I wish it was, I wish I could say that this is all different today as compared to, you know, the nineties, when I first started exploring these spaces in terms of, you know, the dynamics of what it feels like in a black body, surrounded by majority whites, but actually it's still difficult. And, and those difficulties are, are complex and complicated and, you know.

I'm not going to fully unpack them here, but again, it's, put simply, we have all been formed through these social embedded, socially embedded relationships where our culture has trained us in self, in creating a sense of ourselves, in creating a sense of our identities that has been fully infused with a lot of stuff about differential human value tied to this idea of race, the idea of gender. And the intersections of that race, gender, class, perhaps all of that are, are, are not just intellectual ideas. They are, they are in us and they show up in how we are and where we are. And they show up in the spaces we've created for gathering and who's there and who isn't, how we form the, the space, what it feels like, the quality of it. And so, yeah, I mean, to me, mindfulness has been really important in helping create capacity to, to figure out how to experience the gift of the practices, the gift of these communities, while also minimizing some of the way that being in, embedded again in majority white spaces could trigger some of the prior traumas that I always carry in my own, from my own life, but also the intergenerational traumas that are part of what the legacy of this means for us.

Yeah, so really then navigating all of that has not been easy. And it's actually been one of the reasons why I have been part of this effort within mindfulness to raise awareness, to offer teachings that have really been helping all of, you know, many different institutions look at the way that, you know, the dominant racial identities, whiteness, in particular, in the United States have infused mindfulness itself, have infused the communities of practice that we've developed, in the way we practice. And you know, how we might bring awareness to that as a way of making these practices more accessible and more nurturing, frankly, for broader and broader and more diverse communities and, and, and human beings as we go. Thanks, Rhonda. I appreciate the, yeah, the commitment to more beloved communities and the invitation and for all of us into that.

And yeah, so I actually think everything you've shared here is a really good transition into the core contents of what you're going to be offering and what we'll get to dive into on this call of five of the key topics you explore in the course that you're sharing in this platform. Because I imagine some of them map to how you navigated your own experience and have navigated your experience in life, also just as a human being, dealing with complexity that I know all of us can, can resonate with. And the first one, I always love this phrasing, but being your own best friend. Could you speak to that and the importance of that? Yeah. And, and thank you for just, you know, saying that you love this phrasing.

I do too. Right? This idea that as we move through the world and, and, and certainly when we're feeling the feelings of some, you know, some of what I've just alluded to. The way that folks meet us, size us up assumptions, that we can sense being you know, brought to bear on how folks engage us. You know, that's not easy. None of that is easy.

We can easily find ourselves triggered into reactivity. We can find ourselves, I have found myself, right, needing to, to notice some of the ways that, that my experiences might be a source of not just momentary discomfort or seeing something happening, but, you know, I could hold on to that, or attach to it, ruminate on it. It could become a new narrative about how things are, how I am, how the world is. And that happens. It happens.

It can happen to any one of us. It's sort of part of what we do. Right? And what human brains can do with experience. But. I, you know, at a certain point, so I just started to, to really be curious about how I might, again, support my own self and minimizing the legacy, the kind of legacies of the histories of oppression, but also the consequences of contemporary, you know, what's called microaggressions, these momentary stunning incidents in which we might feel someone's meeting us with a stereotype, for example, or you know, times when we might feel like someone's biases are impinging on our, our freedom or our sense of welcome in a space.

For me, realizing that, that these are real wounds, first of all. These are not in my head. Like this is, this all, this hurts on a daily, can hurt on a daily basis. And and I can either kind of, sort of latch onto some of those instances in a way that can deepen the pain. Some of the teachings of mindfulness consider this sort of, this idea of like the two arrows.

Like the first arrow being, right, that, that incident, that phew, wounds us. And that second arrow being just how we may be tempted to attach to and grab onto that incident and sort of add to the suffering by the way we relate to what happens. And so to me, bringing in compassion for myself, and seeing that, that is like to me, the first approximation of what mindfulness is about. It's about bringing that, being this compassionate inner friend, for being in relationship to the difficulty inherent in human life, including difficulties that come up through our identities, but really the whole range. And so having this view of mindfulness as a support for being our own, my own best friend has been real for me.

Seeing mindfulness itself is kind of like a friend, the inner friend to be right there. You know, giving me that, that that moment of who's pausing and creating some spaciousness around the difficulties that I experience, through which I can also see and literally feel that while that was, for example, truly a difficult moment in which I recognize that, you know, bias was in the air, or that was a stereotypical statement, that was a racist statement or sexist statement or whatever it is. So yes, these things are part of social reality, but they're, they're not all of my reality. So that deeper, deepening engagement with complicated, complex social reality and human life is, you know, is for me what mindfulness can support. But compassion, it really needs to be a part of that.

That will to be with the suffering, to not bypass it, to not deny it, but also then from that place to open up to what else is there in a way that can help, almost in an alchemical way. Like transform that suffering into really just a sense of joy for being alive. And maybe also, if we're lucky, a doorway into connecting with the suffering of others through, you know, through that ability to see that, you know, we're not, we're not alone in our suffering. Everyone is feeling different versions of the pain of being alive together. And so if I can, from my own genuine appreciation of the difficulty I face and meeting that with kindness and care and the will to alleviate my own suffering, which is another way of thinking about what we mean by compassion, then I might be able to, from that place, be able to engage with others from a more empathic place, deeper understanding of what they might be going through, but also that will to alleviate some of that.

Mm, yeah. Yeah. It, you're making me reflect on just how fundamental this, and difficult this journey of stepping into friendship with yourself can be, especially if the cards have been stacked against you. And, and I think a lot of people can also resonate with points in their life where it's, where it's felt like I had to fight for love for myself, whether it's childhood trauma, developmental trauma. But this seems especially poignant for minoritized communities where it's just that the ecosystem that I entered into made it less than okay.

It was less than the ideal to be me. And so there's, there's something about like that particular journey that I don't really know what to say about it, just reflecting on how powerful I think that is to, to develop that relationship oneself. Yeah. As a threat of liberation, stepping into liberation against so many odds. Especially as social creatures where it's just like so much of our sense of self and love and worthiness is contingent upon the external world.

Yes. Yeah. Right. And so thank you. Thank you so much for amplifying that.

Right. Because in fact, I love what, you know, you're basically pointing toward, on the one hand, and I, I always hesitate with the phrase universality. Because, you know. Right. We've learned so much about how, how presumptions of the universal have been wounding for, you know, folks who are outside of the norm of whatever framework we've embedded into, right, our, you know, our thinking about how things are.

So, right, so understanding that lived realities are, are different. And are different in meaning meaningful ways. Right. And being open to the possibility that my particular framework is really, you know, and the base of my experience has presented me with knowing lived experience and an orientation in the world that opens me up and makes certain other kind of ways of being resonant and easily kind of accessible to me. And at the same time, has embedded, you know, sort of biases that I have to work to disrupt if I want to make sure that I'm not presuming, assuming the way it is for me is the way it is for everybody.

So again, you know, this, there, and so there is kind of that arc, that sort of from the radical engagement with our own unique experience, from that place, seeing the common humanity, the thread that all of us are radically engaging with our own unique experience. And there is something universal, again. Maybe? That's the question, but something deeply human, let's say to use that concept, about the struggle to feel our way into a sense of belonging, a sense of worth in the world, so to speak. And so all of us have some flavor, some aspect of this that we're working with. And in our context and in our embodiments it shows up quite, it can show up quite differently.

But the question for me always is how can we from really engaging with the, the uniqueness of that struggle for us, you know, and all of our communities and cultures embed different aspects and flavors of it. I'll say that, for example, it seems to me that in capitalist oriented societies, you know, no matter what our identity, we can really be struggling with a sense of worth. Right? Because we're constantly invited to think of ourselves as worthy only in so far as we produce certain things that have been valued by others and created wealth somehow, I mean, there's all this. And then you add to that, the way that in, let's say a capitalist society where everybody's sort of, you know struggling with notions of who matters and who doesn't and who's worthy and who isn't. The competition element is really real.

On top of that, these different ways we've embedded narratives of identity-based value and worth. And capitalism is not neutral around race. It's got us, always had historically a racial con, almost driver in the United States. Right? If you think about capitalism being embedded in enslavement and clique, you know, frankly, genocidal kind of clearing of the land before we could, you know, as we were developing our industries and our practices of, of, of wealth accumulation in the United States. Deep embedded myths and racial constructs about who gets to be wealthy and by what, by what practices and at whose expense.

So so all of that does mean that as we, you know, get up every day and move through the world, the particular challenges that we face may be very different. But and this, but we're all in some ways, struggling to feel a sense of belonging and, and a sense of ,I would say, just that that capability to kind of keep bearing up, despite what can feel like sometimes, you know just waves of new ways that we're confronted with challenge to our mattering. Yeah. I, I think the honest inquiry, I'm just reflecting on how important I think it is for us to have space to really honestly inquire about these parts within ourselves that kind of served the foundation for so many of the different aspects of systemic oppression, but also just general destruction. I think to Robert Sapolsky who does a lot of work around, he wrote the book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, and just around like hierarchical systems.

And he says, it's, it's not being rich that's important. He says, it's, it's being richer than your neighbor. And, and just, I was, and I remember reflecting on that and I was like, wow, I can totally feel into that for myself. I've just like this, this part of me that is comparing or even wants to grow and to accumulate. And when I look at it lovingly, like in the context of like really developing a friendship, it feels like it must include befriending all of those different dimensions in us so that we can at least have a collaborative relationship with them rather than let them run the show in the background.

And I think that's another big thing I've just always appreciated about your work is it's led with a tremendous amount of love for the full human condition, not for the purpose of, of just purely suppressing, but like let's actually have a conversation about what's here so that we can meet it and work with it and move toward these deeper needs, which are mattering and belonging and connection and love. Right. That can just get muddied when we have these other complicated tendencies to other and feel safe and fall into hierarchy. Yes. Yeah.

And right and so at the heart of it developing more and more of capacity to see where we're getting caught, to see when we've like unconsciously imbibed these habits and patterns and assumptions and, you know, just ways of, of making ourselves feel more in control. Or more like, yeah, mattering a little bit more. We're wealthier than our neighbor, whatever, than our neighbor. Right? Just seeing that and then inquiring into, right. Yeah.

Being interested in curious about investing, investigating, will, willing to investigate. What are we doing and why? And what is real wealth? And what is real ease? And developing more of that ability to sense in the way in which we have enough, we are enough and that, you know, true wealth comes from that, knowing that. This is what I think, for me, is at the heart of this idea of being a friend along the way, because, this for me, in my own experience is an ongoing struggle. And, you know, I can, like anybody, else get caught in some conceit of oh, well I've already gotten there. And then I can be reminded, oh no, I too am, you know, afraid of not having enough someday or, you know, I too can be drawn into some fearful imagery about what, you know, what my retirement will look like and how can I, right or, or any of that stuff.

This is like constant in our culture. And it's really doing us a lot, I think, of harm, both in our own personal communities, maybe sometimes in our own families, that comparing mind. But certainly, if we're thinking about this one beautiful planet that we're sharing, if we haven't, you know, awakened to the need to completely reimagine the narratives of what it means to be successful, what it means to yeah, sort of legitimately accumulate. It, we have to rethink all of this and not just rethink it, but start to live in ways that make manifest all of that. And none of that is going to be easy because we've all gotten used to and comfortable with the way things are.

And so this is why having mindfulness as that friend, of that compassionate ally and then developing a way of being our own compassionate ally as we move through these moments of, you know, the call to change, I think is really, really important for these times. Yeah. Amen. Now I know a lot of times some of our deeper wounds can cause us to really grasp at forms of control or some of these patterns that we see in ourselves that, that actually can create destruction for our relationships, our communities, our world. And one of the topics that you're going to be addressing is, is meeting our wounds with kindness, which I feel like we might have drifted into some of that territory in the becoming your own friend.

But could you maybe speak a little bit more to, to that and the importance of that. Even what that, what that can look like? Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, I think again, creating that freedom and giving ourselves permission to acknowledge that, you know, we carry wounds is really important part of it for me. You know, for me, if I think of mindfulness as fundamentally about how we relate to all aspects of our experience, how we notice the temptation to pick and choose parts of our experience that we want to identify and wrap around an identity around.

Right? And the things we kind of don't want to acknowledge, but that are, that are there. You know, so for me, mindfulness is this constant like prod, you know, like, you know, wake up to this, see this too. But also, you know, seeing the things that are, that are hard and that are sometimes actually even really painful. But doing that, engaging with all of these things in more and more skillful ways. So for me, you know, I, I will say that in my own journey, I've recognized that mindfulness can be a support for my own work to really look at the kind of healing I've needed.

And, you know, mindfulness doesn't do it all. Sometimes I've had the support of therapists. Fortunately for me, I've had therapists who know something about mindfulness, so we can work with that in the sessions. You know, so, but in a prior part of my life, when I really did need the help, but I'm not currently in therapy, but I certainly have been. And, you know, so I think that how we deal with our own wounds, how we first at least acknowledge that we have them and then how we give ourselves permission and support for healing and working with them is really, really again, that's part of the journey and part of that journey that can enable us to be there for others more effectively.

And so I think it's really, really important, especially if we have any aspirations for being out there helping others, to really create this capacity to work with healing our own wounds. And all of that, you know, there's that in and of itself is complex territory, but just recognizing that we have them and not being ashamed that we have work to do. And then creating, yeah, that way of lovingly meeting what it is that we're, we need to heal from. And so we've spoken a little bit in this conversation about how some of the woundedness that I carry has been about social identity. We haven't spoken as much, for example, about other traumas that I've had to heal from.

You know, I've been, like others, a victim of, of sexual abuse. I've had to deal with, again, family-based abuse and trauma. So there's, there's just been a number of different ways that any one of us in our own unique journey may have really dealt with some stuff. Right? And I, for me have seen how these practices can be a support in just saying, you know, you deserve to heal. You know, you deserve support and healing.

And you know, it's not that you have to do this before you can help other folks because we can be wounded healers. We can be working on our, you know, the way in which we need to heal as we help heal others. But we deserve, you know, to get to a point where we're not carrying that cloud. That's what it felt like for me, for much of my earlier part of my life, before I did much of my own healing work. It felt like I was like, always had my own personal rain, rainforest above me.

Right? And then ultimately this sees that I had some ability to clear that and to feel the sunlight and to move through the world from that place. Really, I mean, none of this happened overnight. This is years and years in the work for me. But I, I speak to you now from the other side of that. And so I can draw, I draw on that in, when I talk about working to heal our own wounds.

Yeah, yeah. I feel it. And I think an, this is important, an opportunity for an important point, which is that mindfulness, a lot of people coming to mindfulness and maybe a number of folks listening right now that are very new to the practice, it can, it, it can often be a way where we avoid our wounds. We can use meditation as a form of redirecting our attention from the very thing that actually needs compassion and love. And I think that, you know, in the spirit of just the depth that we, we were curious about creating here, I think that's an important point that you've already touched on and just, yeah, that, that we're opening our heart to these parts of ourselves.

And to notice that tendency to maybe want to heal by avoiding the very thing that actually needs to be seen more clearly. Exactly. And the, What the psychologist John Welwood called bypassing in the psychological world. And many of us in these communities as a practice have been thinking about that dynamic of bypassing. Right? And not wanting our mindfulness practice to be a vehicle for going around the things we need to work with, but actually seeing it as this support for going through to the other side.

Right. It's not about this sort of, you know, re embedding a sense of ourselves that's about the suffering, but it's about the journey through, Yeah. As opposed to around. Yeah. Well, one of the things you also talk about is working with the critical self-talk.

And, and my sense is that that's, probably part of that at the very least, of like how we meet ourselves as we're going through that territory. Could you share some more about that? Yeah, I mean, I have I've, I certainly have had some engagement with my little inner critic. And, and the way that I've embedded some of these sort of, you know, messages from the world, tapes or, or snippets of tape, that I've had to work to bring mindfulness, to, to like right size and get off of my shoulder. Right. I have the image, right, of that critics sort of being right there to give me a hard time.

And so yeah. You know, practicing in ways that, you know, you can see I'm bringing this lightness to it, because that's been part of the practice for me. You know, recognize when that's happening and seeing how I'm not the only one that has the, it has to work with this voice of somebody telling me something negative or judgment or criticism directed at myself. That's really my own whatever that is. You know, there are many different ways to work with the inner critic.

Right. And, you know, sometimes imagery helps. Right? Like I was just saying that image of the critic on the shoulder and then blowing it off. Yeah. You know.

Giving myself a break from it. But yeah, being in that sort of almost playful relationship, cause it might come back. Right? Flicking it off the shoulder doesn't mean you don't have that voice that comes up. And I just also want to say that you know, it's not that we don't sometimes benefit or haven't benefited from all, all. I often think that the major thrust of what I'm trying to say here is that, you know, whatever practices and habits we've developed that got us here, we might be trying to work to disrupt and work with them a little bit differently and liberate ourselves even more, if you will.

Transform them somehow, to use a big old fancy word. But at the same time, we want to embed a certain kind of awe and respect for whatever it was that got us here. Hmm. So if we had to, you know, embed ourselves in critical talk for a bit to kind of navigate a world, which wasn't safe enough for us to stop that, that's what we did. And it got us to this moment.

And so we might add, you know, another practice, or a practice too is to just sort of bow in a way to like, okay, critical narrative, whatever it might be, thank you. I don't really need you. Maybe you're overexpressing yourself in my life right now. Maybe I don't need you anymore. But yeah, but it's not about kind of shaming that part of us that's trying to prod us in ways that seem unhelpful.

But it is be, about opening up to that, seeing if it's unhelpful. Also discerning, is that inner message unhelpful or is it maybe something you actually do need to listen to. Right. Yeah. We sometimes have inner promptings that suggest you might need to do something differently for your own wellbeing here.

So turning that difference between this unhelpful critic of, for example, for me, I had embedded this critical voice of like, you can't be sick. Like of all the things, right? Imagine, and I would never do this to anybody I loved, any friend, any person I had to take care of. Your sick and therefore, this is the time for me to criticize you and you need to get up and you don't deserve to be sick. But when I, I found myself. For a good part of my, my life having this reactivity to my own being tired, feeling the onset of illness, feeling illness itself, instead of just being like, oh, I'm ill.

I actually do need to take a break. Whew, this inner critic would just be like, you know, on my case about how you don't get to. And it was worse than you don't get to be sick, you know,. There was really like stuff I'm just ashamed to even say that I would say to myself when I would be, when I actually would need it the most. And of course, like I said, if this were happening with a friend, I would never, ever say such mean things.

There's a mean voice. So that kind of voice is not helpful. And, but on the other hand, a voice that's sort of trying to give us a sense of you know, maybe we are pushing ourselves too hard and we do need to take a break. So mindfulness, to me, can help us discern when we are, you know, not being served by some of the messages that come from our own, you know, embedded in an, embeddedness in the world where we carry inside of ourselves just sort of messages about who we are and what we should be doing . Discerning when that's helpful and when it isn't.

And so that negative self-talk that some of us have, and I've heard it in myself, I've actually witnessed it in others when they didn't know I was around. I can think of a time when I was at work and just walking into a big office, open office airspace with folks, staff members involved in work and hearing a staff member berating herself in really harsh terms for some kind of error. I just thought to myself, such pain. So if we can start to stop that, disrupt that, we can, I think, do ourselves a great service and mindfulness can help. Wow.

Thanks, Rhonda. Yeah. And for those interested in that know that you could go more in depth in all of this in, in Rhonda's course on the app. So we're giving you a little touch points here, but the much bigger than touchpoints, we're going deep. And the, the last idea that we could touch on before we go into one of your micro-practices, Rhonda, is be like medicine.

I think if there's one phrase I love even more than being your own best friend, it's be like medicine. So please tell us more about that. Yeah. And I think I've already alluded to it a bit. So from recognizing that critical self-talk, berating ourselves when we need a little bit of kind support for the moment we're in, recognizing that and accepting how, this is one of those moments.

Inquiring, investigating, what can I, how, how, how can I meet myself with kindness? In that moment, we are, you know, accessing what I'm calling in the course, a way of being like medicine. Recognizing our ability to tend to our own wounds and also from that again, to help others. But it really is about, I mean, I, I tend to think about the connections between the idea of medicine and meditation and the root that joins them. You know, one of my teachers and friends, of course, in this work, Jon Kabat Zinn's talked about medicine as having its roots, root, roots in this idea of like, right inward measure. Right? So we're trying to bring the kind of right response to, you know, some disregulation, regulation in our body and be.

Right. So what is the, how do we right something that's gone a little bit awry? And meditation being that practice for helping us discern what we need to help facilitate shifting into right relationship with what's gone awry, help, what we need to help bring about health, bring about wellbeing. And so being our own medicine, and then seeing that our lives have, what I call, like an original medicine. This is one of the ways that I think reflecting on what we have lived and what others have lived and how we need each other to see more of the truth of the whole cloth that we're up against. So there's a way in which this idea of mindfulness helping us access our own highest and best for ourselves, what we need to heal.

And then knowing that there's no accidents in the past we've led to getting here and that there might be some medicine that we are meant to be and bring into the broader world. If we can courageously again, be engaged with, with humility, knowing you got to heal ourselves. And as we do that, yeah, being medicine for ourselves and for the world in this time. This to me is another way of thinking about the value of mindfulness. Do you think there is truth to the sometimes trite saying that your cup needs to be filled, full in order to offer something to others? I can see myself wanting to look at that through various lenses.

Yeah. Because, you know, there's also that teaching story about the limits of being able to learn and grow from a full cup. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Some emptiness, some, some capacity to sort of not always be full.

Yeah. So, so I think that really mindfulness is helping us with deepening skillfulness around what's called for now. Yeah. And you know, we, we need to take care of ourselves. Yes.

Put that oxygen mask on ourselves when we need it. And we know we need it during these times, like on the daily. Yeah. And at the same time, ha, from that place, be able to be engaged in practices which open up space for growth, for learning, for emptying out, like of all the things we know so well, and being open to learning from each other, from this moment of our lives that we've never lived before, this unrepeatable moment that's right here, right now, always. How can we do that if we're so full? So yeah, full of that will and commitment to sort of being lovingly open to what's here to be seen, embraced and worked with.

But also open to emptying of what is no longer needed for this journey right here, right now. I had a feeling you would bring some delicious nuance to that. So Rhonda, we have a, we have a few minutes left. I want to respect your time. I do want folks to get one of your micro-practices, a moment of self-compassion.

Is that something you could just share before we transition? Yes, definitely. So just with the moment of self compassion, this is a practice and there are different ways that this can be engaged. But for right here, right now, imagine a moment, and it may have come up for you in this conversation, where you've needed, ha, just a moment of just noticing you've recognized some way in which you too are struggling or have struggled. And the moment of self-compassion practice is for those moments. So noticing, yes, right here, right now I'm feeling fear.

I'm feeling anxiety. I'm feeling I'm being triggered by the memory of some trauma that I didn't even know I was carrying. Really that was so just beneath the surface, but right here, right now, I can feel it. The moment of self compassion practice is about letting those moments be an opportunity to right them right here, right now. That acknowledge this is a moment where I'm feeling some pain, some difficulty, some challenge.

Right now I've already placed my hands over my heart because the practice invites, can invite placing one hand or both over the heart or one hand over the heart, one hand just beneath the belly button. Taking a deep breath. And acknowledging, yes, this is a moment of, of challenge, of difficulty. As I experience this, I'm not alone. People around the world have felt moments like this.

People, human beings throughout history have suffered through moments like this, but have made it through. And I too deserve compassion for the difficult moments of my life. And I open in this moment to bring in kindness right in. Haa. Hmm.

It's so it, yeah, I'm always struck by just sometimes how short, simple, poignant practices can really expand and open something in us. And It's one of the reasons I am just really excited for everyone listening here to get to see, to see what you've put together, because there is an incredible seven day course here that goes into all of these ideas in more detail with practical application. And then we have the micro-practices like the, this moment of self-compassion that you can take into your life. And so for those who have been listening and are like me, just like, I want more of what Rhonda is offering, was emanating from her heart. She's packaged it up and she's offering it to us and, and you can just get it by clicking below.

The integration of commercial with mindfulness. So it's there, it's there for you all. And this was just a taste, but a beautiful one. And Rhonda, before we go, is there, is there anything else you'd like to add or just share with folks before we transition? I just really want to say how much I, I appreciate all of you. And you my dear friend, Cory, I just thank you all for your practice.

And I'm so grateful to be in this community of practice with you at this time. I can't imagine a better place to be than right here with you. Yeah, thank you, Rhonda. Thank you again. This was it was just such a ,joy to, to, to really dive in to your teachings in this way.

This is the first time we've really gotten to do this. And I just continue to be, to hold great admiration for you. All that you've endured and over your life and the, the yeah, the way there's a certain blossoming in you that is always apparent every time I'm with you. And I'm just grateful there are people like you doing this work in the world. So a the big appreciation and respect.

And everyone, again, if you want access to Rhonda's course, sign up for a free seven day trial. All of it's there. Try it out. Don't wait. Just go into it now, especially if you're feeling the momentum.

It's so easy to push, put a lot of this off. And we hope to, we hope to hear your feedback. So thanks everyone. Thanks for being here. Thank you all for your practice.

And Rhonda, again, thank you so much. Take care.