Hi, welcome to this special conversation with Vidyamala Burch. My name is Cory Muscara. You may have already seen me in the Mindfulness.com app as one of your daily guides. My role in the app in particular is to be your daily mindfulness coach. I like to see it as a friend, someone who walks by your side on a daily basis, really helping you develop the habit of caring for your mental and emotional health.

And today, I'm really excited to be sharing this conversation with the Vidyamala Burch about her seven-day course entitled Finding Inner Peace. Vidyamala is, is many things, including an author, mindfulness teacher, but simply an extraordinary person. And you'll get to see that in, in this conversation. And you'll hear more of her story, but just some of the cliff notes is. For for more than 30 years, Vidyamala has lived with chronic pain and it's been due to congenital weakness, spinal injuries, and multiple surgeries that when you hear it, you could see how it could take a person potentially down a really dark path.

And what makes Vidyamala so special among, just in addition to this inherent goodness that she has, a purity that she has, is she's a living example of someone who has been through so much, so much physical pain and emotional pain, and still radiates this quality of, of peace and openness and love, that is so many of us are looking for in our lives, but often feel like it's not available because of the suffering that we might be going through. And she came to this work searching for way to cope with her, her chronic pain and mindfulness meditation was a refuge, which you'll get to hear more about. And she now lives a very full life inspite of, of still living with chronic pain. And she's one of the world's leading mindfulness teachers, not just for pain and illness, but really finding a depth of peace and well-being. She's written books like Living Well With Pain and Illness, Mindfulness for Health, You Are Not Your Pain, which is a really great title.

And she's also the co-founder of the very well-respected Breathworks organization, that's literally helped thousands of people find peace living with pain and stress. And here's what a few people have said about Vidyamala's work. Jon Kabat-Zinn who's often considered the grandfather of bringing mindfulness into Western medicine. He says, "I admire Vidyamala Burch, tremendously. Her approach could save your life and give it back to you." Best-selling author Sharon Salzberg.

She's said. "Vidyamala shares essential tools for harnessing the power of our minds and hearts to navigate all kinds of pain." And then Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post has said, "Vidyamala offers simple daily practices that anyone struggling with pain and stress can follow." Now I've personally known Vidyamala for more than five years. And it started as a attending one of her retreats. I was really interested in the intersection of mindfulness and chronic pain, and she was the leading voice in this space. And,it was just, it was such a powerful experience and it touched my heart in a really profound way.

And, and showed me more than I had already experienced through these practices just how deep you can take them. It was, it was like a beacon of light pointing to the potential of these practices, despite some of the most difficult and painful circumstances and has really inspired my work since. So it's been amazing to come full circle now and to be able to introduce her into the Mindfulness.com app to share this conversation with all of you. And I think you're going to see this goodness and radiance that comes from Vidyamala through this conversation. So really excited to share it with you.

Let's get started with this conversation with Vidyamala Burch. All right, Vidyamala. Well, it is really wonderful to be here with you. I'm very excited to take a dive into this conversation. And I've been truly inspired by your work ever since the first time I came across it on retreat and through your book that, You Are Not Your Pain, one of your books.

And so it's, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to, to talk to you virtually in person and to really just for you to get to bring these teachings to life for people. And one of the things that has always struck me about you and, and you as a teacher is just the journey that you've been on and how you've been able to integrate these teachings into your life in such a meaningful and, and freeing way. And so I'd love for you to maybe just share some of your personal story for folks that are new to you. Okay. Thanks very much, Cory.

Yeah. This has been absolutely central to my whole adult life. And as I'll tell in a minute, my life's not been easy. But one of the, the benefits of the way things have turned out is that working with my mind, working with my heart has become so central because it is so freeing. So let's just go right back to 1976 when I was a very sporty teenager and I seriously injured my spine.

In 1977, I had to have two major surgeries. And then in 1983, I was in a car accident and fractured another part of my spine. And then I was lucky enough to be taught to meditate by the hospital chaplain. The medical team had no solutions for me, but this really gorgeous man, a very, very kind man came and sat by my bed, took my hand and said, I want you to remember a time and a place when you were happy. And I took my mind back to the Southern Alps of New Zealand, where I'd spent ecstatic summers before my injuries.

I've just been absolutely, yeah, in ecstasy, in the mountains. Super-fit, utterly beautiful landscape. So I took my mind back there and then he brought me back. Maybe it might've been a 10 minute practice, I don't know. And I felt different.

Subjectively, I felt different. I was still the same girl lying in the same hospital bed, but I felt different because of what I'd done with my awareness, with my mind. And that blew my mind. That was the first glimpse I'd ever had that I had a mind that I could learn to train and I could train what I did with my attention. So I came out of hospital and I had a wonderful social worker and I said, I want to learn how to meditate properly.

And you've got to remember, I mean, this is way back in 1985 in New Zealand, when really nobody was meditating. It's not like the way it is now, but she, she found some tapes from me from the library, brought them around and I had months, pretty much bedbound, lying on my back, looking at the ceiling and training my mind, watching my mind. And that opened this door to mindfulness, compassion, awareness training, and that's very much guided my entire life ever since. My back's actually got worse over the years, I'm more disabled than I was. Then I've got a paralyzed bowel, paralyzed bladder, use a wheelchair or crutches for mobility.

But my quality of life has transformed beyond recognition. I still have pain. I still got disability, but generally speaking, I have a good quality of life. And at times I won't say always, but at times, deep peace, deep, inner peace inspite of challenges, whatever life throws at me. Wow.

Again, it's, it's, this is why it's an honor and a privilege to be with you. And, and if that's not a perfect segue into going into some of the core content of your course, I'm not sure what would be. One of the, one of the first ideas that you you talk about is breathing your way to peace. And you know, I think this is one of those that we could write it off as, or it could sound almost simplistic, but I know there's profundity here. And, and so I'd love to see here how you, how you bring this to life and why this is so meaningful.

Yeah. Thanks Cory. One of my motivations for this course of Finding Inner Peace was to bring real depth, of course, but to make it very simple and very accessible. I think that's very, very important. Mindfulness does not need to be complicated.

I think that the deeper I go into it, the simpler it becomes. So the first step in the course is really cultivating body awareness and breath awareness as a home base for the mind. For many of us, our minds are flying off, you know, going into the past, going into the future ,regrets about the past, worries about the future. But if we learn how to come into the body directly, like to refill the body, we're present, we're here. The only moment we can experience our body directly is now.

And also when we're in the body, when we really come into the body, we're not lost. We're not lost in the mind. You can't be really embodied in the sense of experiencing your sensations directly or your feelings directly and lost at exactly the same moment. And that is such a great thing to know. It might be that, you know, you come into your body and then you bounce back into worry and fear and so on in the next moment,, and then you just call the mind back.

It bounces out, you call it back, bounces out, you call it back. And very gradually it becomes more and more of a new default setting to rest in the body and in the moment. So that's one of the things I go into in this first session. And we do a body scan as the meditation practice, a way to experience this embodiment and it's quite gentle and quite gradual. So a really lovely metaphor for body awareness developing is to imagine, is to imagine going for a walk on a misty day.

Yeah. And you start out dry. And you're walking through this mist and eventually you get home and you're completely drenched, you're completely saturated, but you don't know at what point you got wet. It wasn't like you were halfway around your walk and someone poured a bucket of water over you. But by just being in that environment, you've become drenched with water.

And likewise with the body scan practice, I like to say we become drenched or saturated in body awareness. But it's very invitational, very gentle. If you've got pain in your body, you don't want someone saying, okay, and now just turn towards your pain and be in your body. You're going to think, excuse me. No, thanks.

That's the last thing I'm going to do. But if someone says, okay have a lie down, are you comfortable or get, get as comfortable as you can. Follow along the meditation as best you can. That's that's appealing. And then you come out of the meditation and you are more embodied.

Now for those who are hearing this, that maybe live with chronic pain or maybe have just, they know what it's like to, to feel pain in their body and, and have had the experience of, you know what, when I bring my attention to my body, when I become more present to it, it hurts more. It's more intense. My mind starts spiraling off. The last thing I want to do is, is bring more awareness there. Like compassion or not, I don't, I don't get how compassionate presence is going to help me here.

It's just like, I want to get out of my body. I'm curious how, how you would respond. I feel like you might be the most qualified person on earth to respond to this. Hmm. Yeah.

Well, this actually comes in later in the course, but I'll bring it in now because it feels very pertinent and relevant. There's a model that we use of primary and secondary suffering or primary and secondary experience. So I'll, I'll describe my experience right now. I've got pain, painful sensations in my lower back, in my legs and in my feet. Yeah.

So I've got these, are what I would call unpleasant sensations. When I'm not aware or when I'm thinking, I just want to block that pain out. I don't want to experience it. What I'm doing is I'm very subtly pushing against it. Yeah.

So I'm, I'm resisting those sensations. As soon as I do that, in fact, even just doing this little gesture, I'm noticing there's a little bit of breath holding. So I'm trying to push against those sensations, resist them, block them out and straightaway I've got a little bit of breath holding. And as soon as I do that, I've got tension and straightaway my pain's worse because now I've got unpleasant sensations plus resistance, plus breath holding plus secondary tension. And then that means my sort of overall, what you might call, mass of pain has increased.

So what we, what we try to do in the body scan and other practices is just stay with that primary experience, which is if it's pain it's unpleasant sensations in the body. If it's something like fear or anxiety, you'd find where is that in my body. It might be a tight stomach, tight jaw. And then you can soften around that. Yeah.

So. I mean, this is the deal. It's very unfortunate, but if one's got pain, you've got pain. So trying to pretend you haven't got pain is not actually a very good long-term strategy if you've got chronic pain, because it will be there. And as soon, as, as soon as you start resisting it in this kind of, you know, pushing it away way, then you get all the secondary suffering of the breath holding, the tension, the mental events of, I don't want this.

It's not fair, the depression and anxiety. And you just get more and more strained, which means your pain gets worse. So it's a bit like the deal is you can have pain and a peaceful mind, or you can have pain and resistance and tension and struggle. And well, which one would you prefer? But I'm not saying in this moment that we can say we can make your pain go away. However, I have I've noticed over the years.

I mean, I did say my, my conditions got worse over the years, which is natural aging, but if I wasn't doing this work, my pain would be terrible. I'd probably be bedridden by now. So learning to pare away all that sort of secondary struggle and just stay with the primary experience is a doorway to greater peace and freedom for sure. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that.

It's just perfectly explained. And,,and to me, it just, it's a continual reminder that, that I think since a lot of your work has been in chronic pain, chronic illness, a lot of people might think, you know, I, this, this would only be relevant to me if I'm suffering in pain or illness and it's just we all go through pain in life, some form of pain, and even just the experience of life can be inherently painful. The agitation, the highs and lows, the inherent unsatisfactoriness of never being able to eat enough cake and be fully satisfied is like a very small form of suffering. But it can be just so easy to, to brace against life. Even the smallest stressor.

Exactly. I think what you're, you're speaking directly to the heart of, of not working with chronic pain, but the heart of finding inner peace, which is that like, this life is going to present to us what it's going to present, and it's going to have some good, it's going to have some pain, but it's here. And so we could fight and create more suffering or we could learn to relax into it and also see what is good. Yeah. I think it's important to really understand as well, we're not talking about a passive resignation.

It's much more of a creative dynamic acceptance in each moment because we're dealing with what's arrived in this moment, but there might be things you can do in this moment to create conditions where your suffering will be reduced in the future. Well, of course you would do that. You know, if you're sitting in an uncomfortable position, mindfulness isn't about enduring that. It's about intelligent choice. So you might think, Oh, well, this is a really an uncomfortable chair.

I'm going to get a different chair. And then you will ease your suffering. So, you know, of course we ease the suffering that we can, but there's always going to be things in life that we can't avoid. And of courseethe, the absolute heart of this work, as you will know, is that human beings suffer because we, we habitually push away the things that we don't like and we pull towards us the things that we do like. So it's this aversion and craving, you know, that's the absolute heart of the human predicament.

Like the chocolates. You're having a yummy chocolate. And while you're having your yummy chocolate, you're getting anxious about, well, will there be another one in the tin left for me, because you see other people circling the chocolate tin. So you're thinking, No, no, I want to another one. You're not enjoying your chocolate that's in your mouth because you've got craving for the next chocolate.

It's a very kind of silly example, but we'll all be able to recognize that. There's a few key things that I cover in the first session of the course, the breath and body awareness. And one of the things is to learn how to really let the out-breath go all the way out of the body. As I was saying earlier, when we're tense and pain challenged in some kind of way, we tend to hold the breath. So just really learning how to let the out-breath go all the way out is important.

And that brings online the parasympathetic wing of the autonomic nervous system, which is the aspect of the nervous system to do with calm. That's a very, very simple, easy way to bring online greater calm. Just let the out-breath go all the way out. We don't need to worry about the in-breath, that will flow in, in its own time. And then related to that is learning to live with gravity.

I really, really love this, that we've got this force pulling us down all the time, allowing us to rest on the chair, rest on the bed, rest on the floor. And I think when we're tense, agitated in any kind of way, we, again, we tend to pull away from gravity, which creates lots of secondary tension. So just learning how to let the out-breath go all the way out and as we do that release, surrender the body into gravity. That in itself can be an amazing skill to bring into your life. Yeah.

That's a super interesting point as well, that when things are off, we tend to push against gravity, this bracing. But it does feel like resisting that force that kind of can, it has this quality of relaxing us into it if we allow it to. We're relaxing us into ourselves. Yeah. So I've got another little slogan that I use in this first, first session, which is stop, breathe, settle, and we can, you know, bring that into our day.

Just stop wherever you're doing, breathe out, settle into gravity. And these can be very, very helpful tips and tools for your life. Beautiful. Oh, this is great. And, and even as you're talking, I notice my whole body relaxing.

It's like, I'm going through the course right now. Then why don't we just all do it together for a moment. Yeah. Everyone who's listening as well. Let's take a deep breath in.

And then breathing out through the mouth, if you can. And rest down into gravity. And just let's do a couple of cycles together. Dropping down into the bottom on the chair, the feet on the floor with the out-breath. Yeah.

Straight away. I feel calmer. Oh, totally. Thank you. So the, the, I want to stay on this point forever, but the second idea, well there's so many good nuggets in this, this course.

And the second one is healing shame and finding forgiveness. This feels juicy. So I'd love to hear more about this one. Hmm, very, very important isn't it? You know, culture where so many of us feel bad about feeling bad. And then we pile along feelings of shame, low self worth, all these kinds of things.

And how can we be more forgiving towards our humanness, if you like? You know, it's just being who we are, none of us are perfect. And how can we be more forgiving and open around that? Hmm. So I've already touched on some of the, the aspects of this, about the, the secondary suffering, the secondary layers that we pile on to our experience. And then we end up getting more and more sort of wound up. Lots of unhelpful thinking, difficult emotions, secondary physical tension.

And it's all about, you know, coming back to your primary experience and knowing what it is and being kindly and forgiving around that. Yeah. And there's a very, very nice saying, another little slogan, which is what we resist, persists. What we resist persists. So, you know, if you've got habits of just avoiding things, pushing them away, they will just keep going, because that's the nature of things.

So it's, it's about, I like this language of unwinding. So we're unwinding these habits of winding ourselves up. We can learn how to wind ourselves down again. So, so it's, it's fair to say that shame is a form of resistance against our experience or at the very least a form of secondary pain. I would say so.

Yeah. I mean, I think what many of us are up against in the modern world is very unrealistic expectations, even just around how we look. We're bombarded by all these airbrushed images. We've got social media now, you know, we're continually comparing ourselves with other people and coming up short. And I know a big insight for myself, some years ago now, when I realized that I'd, I had habit of always feeling I was failing, always feeling.

I wasn't good enough, I should be more clever, more successful. All these kinds of things that I would lay on to my experience. Never good enough. I got, I should be trying harder. So much secondary tension.

And then eventually I, I really examined. Okay. So what is it you're comparing yourself with, Vidyamala? You know, who is it? Who is this person that you think you should be like? And I realized that I had this fantasy in a figure that was an amalgam of about 20 people's really fantastic qualities. So I'd taken all these other good qualities from 20 people, turn them into one inner fantasy that I thought I should be like, And I think many of us do this. When I talk about this, I get a lot of recognition that this, this, this sort of inner tyrant of this fantasy person, that's driving us on, doesn't even exist.

It's a complete fiction, a complete fantasy. There's nobody as perfect as this inner person that I was always coming up short against. So that was a very important insight. And I just stopped doing it. It was like that, that, that, that fantasy person, that didn't really even have an image.

It was more just a sort of dream figure, if you like. It just kind of dissolved away. And I made my practice about being who I am. How can I be comfortable in my own skin? How can I be more accepting of who I am? Yes, my qualities and my weaknesses, and I can work on my weaknesses, but I'm never going to be perfect. I mean, I don't even want to be perfect.

Just kind of, kind of learning how to, how to be me, how to be comfortable in my own skin more and more. I think so many people, I know so many people can resonate with this and, and I'd, I'd love if we could even get a little more granular with it, like, or, or the steps. So like in a moment of feeling, like, I, I have this ideal of this inner being that I'm trying to chase and we see it for the first time of like, Oh, I have these unrealistic expectations. What, what would you do over the course of 30 seconds or a minute to work with that? Well, again, it's awareness is the magic key to the door. Because as soon as you notice, ah, this is what I'm doing again.

My thoughts, you become aware of your thoughts. You know, I'm having this thought that I'm not good enough and I should, should be more like this fantasy. As soon as you are aware, that's what you're doing, to some extent you've unhooked from that process, because normally we're just lost, aren't we? We're doing these things with no awareness and they're driving us all and we're getting tense and uptight. But as soon as think, Oh, I'm just doing that thing again, I'm comparing in an unhelpful way. And then you, you stop, you breathe, you settle.

You come back to those steps from the first session. Just stop, stop doing that, come into the body, breathe, release into gravity, settle, sort of recenter, recalibrate, unhook the mind from that fantasy. So awareness is the key. Awareness is the key and intention. You know, if your intention is, is you've recognized you've got this habit of unhelpful comparison.

In that recognition, there can be an intention, I really want to stop being so enslaved to this. Yeah. It's mind created. It's not real. I'm doing it in my own mind.

I have a choice. And if you come back into your body, you're present and you can't be caught up in that fantasy, at exactly the same moment that you're aware of your bottom on the chair, resting into gravity. You might bounce back, but then just come back to the moment. Beautiful. Yeah, I think the stop, breathe settle is is one of those takeaways for everyone listening, is like, in those moments where you find yourself caught in that comparison to the, the fictional you that you've created, or just anything that, that feels like it's really pulling at you, it's just like, I almost, I, I kind of like the, the, I don't want to say forcefulness of the stop, but just like a very clear, just like stop, stop.

Breathe. And then, and then settle. It's, there's something about like that, the structure of that, and just a clear, like, we're not going to do that right now. And if it happens again, you know, we forgive ourselves, which I love this, the part of this, because that we're just, we're, we're falling down constantly and, and that becomes ground for forgiveness. But then it's just another opportunity, another opportunity.

Exactly. That's the thing. Every moment is a new chance. That's really, really important. Yeah.

And another little phrase I sometimes say to myself when I'm caught up in something, I just say, Not now, Vidyamala. Not now, Vidyamala. Now's not the time. What does that do for you internally? What, what does it shift for you? I'm trying to feel into if I were to say like, Not now, Cory. Yeah.

Like, well, what do you feel when you do that? It's got humor and that's really important in these practices. Like I said, at the very beginning. oNe of the fruits for myself has been becoming more lighthearted, which I was not expecting. I think I used to think mindfulness is all very serious and earnest. But actually I'm able to hold ,take life very seriously, but hold it more lightly, including my constant falling down from the ideal.

When nobody lives up to the ideal. So, not now, Vidyamala, if I'm caught up in something. It's said with humor. It said with kindness. So it's not sort of stop in a, in a, in a harsh sense, but it's kind of stop not now.

Yeah. So I think, I think it's very interesting this word stop. You know, what you were bringing in earlier, because it could be, STOP IT! Now that that's not the attitude we're wanting, of course. But I think with mindfulness, yeah, this is very interesting that it can seem quite soft, like a lot of my teaching. I'm talking about softening the body, softening the breath, you know, softening the mind, but it's a very strong quality.

Mindfulness is very, very strong. It helps us become strong. So quite often I described the journey as becoming a warrior with a soft heart. A warrior. So it's a warrior training.

So the stop. It's, it's kind of bold and it's, you can do this, you know, not now, you can do this. Just stop, breathe, settle. And we can all do that. We can all stop.

We can all breathe. We can settle. That is achievable in this moment. It's not some really demanding difficult instruction. Yes.

You know, we can all just feel our bum on the chair right now and take a couple of breaths. Anyone can do that. Yeah. So I think this kind of courageous side of mindfulness, I really like to draw that out and by calling on the best in ourselves. You know, when we're caught up in something, it's like, let's stop it, breathe, settle, recalibrate, reset, come back to the moment, come back to balance.

Yeah, this is, I think this is such an important nuance for, for everyone listening. You know, one of the things I think that can happen that, or one of the compelling things about mindfulness teachings early on is that there is this really soft quality, inviting quality, relaxing into it. And it can be perceived as just like, okay, just go with the flow of whatever's here right now. And yeah. There's some wisdom to that, but at the same time, there's wisdom to a boundary, says no, whether it's, it's to yourself.

And I see this as like a boundary for your own mind of just like, not now, not now Vidyamala. Not now, Cory. In the same way for another person, it's just like, yeah, I can be with you, but actually in this moment, not now I need some time. And that's not being unmindful. It's, it's being aware of your needs and respecting those needs.

So this is, I really appreciate you bringing this in and naming it in that way. I think that's why I liked something about the stop that it didn't, that's why I didn't like the word forceful, but it's just like a, it's a clear statement of your need in that moment. Yeah. And, and it's very achievable. Yes.

That's important. It's very achievable. Great. You know, I'm not saying stand on your head. I just say stop.

Just stop. Not now. Let go of the fantasy, come back to what you know, what's actually happening rather than all your ideas and fantasies about what you would rather be happening or would like to be happening. This is what's happening, be with it and let go of all the secondary suffering that comes from resistance. Hmm.

I think that's a good segue potentially into the next,idea that you have here of releasing negativity. Yeah. So they're very connected obviously. And I'll just, I'll just give you some stats. This is really fascinating and kind of reassuring.

So if you, if you're listening and do you feel like your mind is completely out of control, like a wild animal? Full of lots and lots of thoughts.? Well, you're not alone. So the average human being has between 20,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day. Wow. So that is a lot of thoughts. We've just got the stuff pouring through the mind.

And more, even more interestingly, when we haven't trained ourselves in mindfulness or compassion training, or any kind of mind training, about 75% of those thoughts are negative. Wow. So that means we've got tens of thousands of negative thoughts pouring through the mind every day. Very, very interesting. Yeah.

And this, this is called the negativity bias. So the way we've evolved as a species is, we're very threat, vigilant. So we're very good at noticing threats. We're very quick to go towards something that is a threat to our very existence or a threat to our identity or a threat to our persona, whatever it might be. And this goes back to when we were hunter-gatherers, you know, many, many, many years ago.

And we would be in a, in an environment where we were, we were literally very vulnerable. So you might be around the campfire with your family. And you've got saber tooth tigers roaming around, around you. And you're hearing the growls. You need to really be very good at picking up those growls so that you can protect your family.

Whereas the beautiful sunset, that's optional. From a survival point of view, that's optional. So we're much, much better at paying attention to threatening things or unpleasant things than we are to beautiful things. So in this session, I go into some of that information cause it's kind of reassuring, but then I say, well, we can change that. We can change our default settings through training so we can dial back the threat dominance and dial up the ability to really appreciate beauty, pleasure, positive qualities within ourselves and positive qualities in others.

And this in itself is a very important training. Wow. Yeah. I like thinking of it as, as dials and that there's two aspects to it. There's dialing down the threat vigilance and then, and then dialing up this appreciation of what is good.

I wonder if you could speak a little more to the role of that, that, that particular dial in your journey, because one of the things that stood out to me in your, your story was that the first meditation that the chaplain walked you through, wasn't a mindfulness of the body. It was actually like go to your happy place, for lack of a better word. And how transformative that was. How does that still play into your, your teachings or your own personal journey in, in combination with mindfulness? Yeah, that's a really great question and very astute to have observed that because obviously that was more what we'd call a visualization practice. Whereas what I'm teaching in this course is much more about being in the body and being present.

And that opened a door, obviously that experience with the chaplain, opened the door about the fact that I had a mind. I'd never really considered that before, but I had a mind that I could, I could do different things with. Yeah. But then when I kept on doing those kinds of practices for awhile, but they became quite escapist. So became quite good at going to my happy place, but then I would crash land back in my body and be full of tension because there'll be strain around, Oh, I just want to be in the happy place.

I don't want to be here. And then I'd crash land back in my body and it will be really unpleasant. So there was a very crucial point in my training. Probably after I'd been meditating for at least 10 years, where I realized that I was using meditation to escape. And I needed, the next step was to use meditation to be whole, you know, to be integrated, to be present, to save a life as it is in its richness, you know, unpleasant, pleasant, the whole range.

And having said that, you know, the mindfulness is about being with what is, but it's been very important to me to, in my own practice and my teaching, that being with what is, isn't just the unpleasant. Yes. In my teaching, we are dealing with pain, but getting people and myself to raise our gaze and well, what else is there as well? So you're not pushing the pain away. So we've done this work on the course up to this point of being present, being embodied, being with the breath, being with gravity, releasing shame, finding forgiveness, all that kind of thing. And now it's like, and what else is there as well? We're not pushing away the unwanted, we're holding it gently.

And now we're looking around. So let's all do this together just for a minute to pause and come into your body and drop into gravity, breathing out. And then look around your environment, and see what you can see that you would call pleasant. And if you can't see for any reason, if you're visually impaired, you could use another sense. Waht can you hear that you would call pleasant? What can you smell? Can you taste anything pleasant if you've got a cup of tea or anything? And really let that in.

Let that land through your senses. Let that land in your mind and in your heart and in your body. And notice if that has an effect. So why don't you let us know what you've experienced, Cory? Cool. There's a water bottle here and it has some red writing on it and this like mountains and a pink background.

And there's something about the colors that were just so alluring and pleasant in this moment. It wasn't what I was expecting. I noticed it actually took me a little bit of time to settle in. I was like, okay, computer screen, wall, other wall, light. But and then this water bottle just caught my attention.

And I was like, Oh, there's something really enjoyable about that. And immediately signaled to me of like, how many, how many things like that am I, am I missing that I could actually be satiated by in a moment? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's a fantastic example, the writing on the water bottle, because that's really ordinary. Yes.

You know, it isn't like you looked out the window and saw beautiful mountains. You looked at a water bottle on your desk and you thought, wow, that red writing is really alluring. Yeah. So we're learning how to just appreciate all the little ordinary things that are around us all the time. And that's a really great training.

And then we do see a sunset. That's like, oh wow, look at that sunset. That is so beautiful. And we let that into this embodied, present awareness. So it's not like, Oh, I don't want my pain, but I do want the sunset.

Because then you've got tension and you've got breath holding. But it's, yeah, I've got my pain or whatever, my discomfort, my anxiety, whatever it might be. I'm holding that kindly. I'm holding that gently and then, wow, look at that sunset. And you let that in.

And it's, one of the things I've noticed is to really take in a sunset or to take in an experience of joy or love or, or even just the writing on this water bottle, like there's a vulnerability required in that. Something in us needs to decompensate, just like really feel it fully. And, and if there's so much bracing against the, the potential negative or the actual negative in our life, it actually puts a dam up to a lot of the other goodness that's there without, at the very least, we can't experience as fully. Was that part of your experience as well, your journey? Definitely. Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's very much part of the process that I take people through now in teaching, is that we do need to, you know, this process of softening the bracing and softening the resistance that's absolutely central. That's really, really important because if we've got, if we've got, if we're bracing against the unwanted, we're closing our hearts down, and then we can't open to the beautiful and we can't love fully. So unfortunately, you know, that, that you can't just get rid of the unpleasant, just push it away and then just have lovely things in your life. Unfortunately, it doesn't work because as soon as you're doing that, you're shutting down your heart, you're shutting down your emotions, your, your breath. I think bracing is a really great word that you're using.

So on the Breathworks courses and in my teaching, we, we go through this very intentional process, which is what we're doing in this course. Coming into the body, coming into the breath, turning towards the difficult, acknowledging it, accepting it, softening around it, forgiving around it, and then, Hey, look, there's this whole other side of life. Let's let that in as well. And then we have this sense of wonder, openness and life becomes much richer. Wow.

The last question I'll ask around this point is for those that maybe identify with what you said of like, you know, I spent 10 years of my meditation practice escaping. It was a form of escapism and perhaps some of us are listening and are like, Oh yeah, I, I, I can feel that. What would be your suggestion to them? You know, if they're still using the same meditations on, on Mindfulness.com, like what's a slight shift in orientation they might make to, to start to, to change things? Well, I think the first thing is forgiveness. If they're just thinking, Oh my God, that's what I'm doing, to acknowledge. Well, of course, you know, of course we're going to, that's going to be the first desire.

I want to use meditation just to avoid all the difficult things in my life and to go to a happy place. That's really intuitive, really understandable. So to be forgiving around that, if you notice that's what I'm doing. And the sign is when you come out of the meditation, you come into a lot of tension in your body. That's usually a sign that you've been, you know, sort of pushing things down and going into fantasy.

And then what I would suggest is lots of body scanning. I think body scanning is the practice if you're wanting to learn how to edge into being more embodied, more present, more whole. Wow, beautiful. Yeah. I always recommend body scanning.

Yeah. And, and you could find these practices with Vidyamala as well. So great. So idea number four is building confidence and strength. Okay.

So I really love this one. And again, we've touched on quite a few things already, but I use a phrase from a Zen teacher called Dogen, from the 13th Century, and the phrase goes like this. "Body like a mountain heart, like the ocean, mind like the sky." Body like a mountain, heart like the ocean, mind like the sky. It's so gorgeous. That's really good.

Like I'm telling you, you have these, the tweetable take aways. Well, I can't can't claim authorship of that one. I'm not sure if that is actually from Dogen, but it's drawing on his teachings and very, very beautiful. So this, the course is progressive. So, you know, we've had coming into the body, the breath, forgiveness, turning towards the difficult gently, kindly, embracing it.

Oh, look this is pleasant as well. Wow. Amazing. Let that in. Pleasant in the world, around us, we've got our own qualities within us.

And then in this session we broaden right out. So we go into a broad, open, receptive awareness and we see into the nature of experience and we see that everything is flowing and changing all the time. So we're learning to rest back into very broad, stable awareness. This body that's just like a mountain, really rooted and stable and grounded. And then our emotions are taking place in this vast deep ocean.

And then our mind is like a clear blue sky and our thoughts are just coming and going across the clear blue sky, like clouds. And we're seeing into the fluid and changing nature of everything. So it's, it's, it's very, very beautiful, this session. And we're letting go of these impulses that I mentioned earlier of pushing away the things we don't like. We're kind of strange really, because, because the nature of everything is change.

If you really examine your experience, you won't find anything that is independently stable in this world. Everything is a flow of conditions and changes, and even mountains eventually will become sand at the bottom of the ocean. And yet what we do is we see something unpleasant and we push it away as if it's going to last forever. We build it up in our minds as a solid sort of enemy. And then we get into fighting with it.

And something pleasant comes along, we pull it towards us because we want it to last forever. And then of course it doesn't and we get disappointed because it fades away. So we're tortured by these twin responses of turning the unpleasant as something solid and it's going to last forever. And I hate it. It's ruining my life.

Whereas actually we can just see it as a flow of sensations or a flow experiences. And then the pleasant things, we kill those off because we're so desperate for them to last that we don't enjoy them while they're happening. Like the chocolate that I mentioned earlier. You know, you've got a yummy chocolate in your mouth. Straight away you're worried about, am I going to get another one? Yeah.

Whereas wouldn't it be amazing just to enjoy that chocolate, all the different flavors, all different tastes, let them be there fully and then just let it fade away when the chocolate's finished. There there's something about the granularity of this, of, of the flowing of sensations, but like taking, taking this perspective of feeling the impermanence on a moment to moment basis. That, that feels like one of the keys here because, and, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Like when someone like with, with the pain in your body, right, it, it might arise, pass, but then, you know, it's coming up again. Right? In perhaps a minute or less than a minute late.

And so for someone that might be in a similar experience, or just going through a lot of pain in their life and like, yeah, it's, it's ebbing and flowing, but it's, it's still there. Like I still feel it. And it, it just feels like it's always lingering. I'm curious what the, what feels like the teaching would be for them. Hmm.

Yeah. Fantastic. Great question, Cory. Well, one of my big insights as well, way back when I was in hospital, when I was 25, was that this thing I call pain, which was completely torturing me. You know, I nearly went mad in the middle of the night in an intensive care ward.

I honestly thought I was going to go insane because it was, so it was breaking me for sure. And I was very obsessed about how I could get through to the morning, because in the morning, for various reasons, I was going to be able to change my position. But until the morning, I was stuck in this position and it was complete and utter torture, mental, emotional, physical torture. And I had this whole thing going on of, Oh my God, I can't get through to the morning. I'm going to go crazy.

And then another part of my mind was saying, no, you're not. Oh, I can't bear it. I'm going crazy. No, you're not. I'm going crazy.

I can't stand it. No you're not. And it was just getting tighter and tighter. And then another voice came in that said very, very clearly. You don't have to get through till the morning, you just have to live this moment, and this one, and this one, and this one, and you can do that.

And that completely changed my life as well. I had the experience with the chaplain, but also this experience of realizing very directly that this whole story of the morning, you know, that was all just in my mind. And the all I actually knew was now and now, and now, and now, and I could bear that. It was very, very unpleasant. I don't want to say.

Oh, and it was all lovely. It was awful. Yeah. Hugely unpleasant, but I was no longer broken by the layers and layers and layers of sort of mental torture. And then when the second physical torture, it was like, Oh yeah, it's okay.

I can just be with it moment by moment. And then when you really go into your experience of pain moment, by moment, you realize that this thing you call pain, it's not actually static. It's not actually static. The sensations are changing and it's not, it's often not quite what you think it is. So I might have a story, you know, Oh, my back is killing me.

That will be the phrase. My back is killing me. Oh, that's awful. My back is killing me. But then when I go towards it and examine it, Oh, actually it's just my lower back.Oh, it's the left side of my lower back that's a bit more intense than the right side.

What are the sensations? Are they burning, they stabbing? No, there's a bit of tingling. Actualy that's quite, that's quite pleasant, the tingling. Hmm. So you just start to examine it all. And again, unwind all these secondary layers, but it's still unpleasant.

That's a really important point. You know, it's still horrible. It's still really hard to live with.But what we're doing in this stage of the course, is we're placing it all in a very, very big container. So we have the, you know, your body's not, it's not your body isn't just this little bit of pain. It's as if it's a huge mountain.

And yeah, there's pain within the mountain, but there's other parts of the body that might not be hurting. So you let them be there as well. And then all the emotions about the pain, they're in an enormous ocean. And again, it's lovely image here thatt if you imagine a difficult emotion say like, anger about the pain, is a teaspoon of salt and you put that in a glass of water and the water will get really, really salty. Hmm.

And you put that same teaspoon of salt in a beautiful, big, clear lake, and you just won't taste that salt at all because it's put into a huge, huge perspective. And then to have your mind like a clear, blue sky. Yes. You might have thoughts passing through the mind that are, you know, I hate my pain and it's horrible and it's not fair. You might have those thoughts.

Hmm. But rather than sort of jumping on the thoughts and getting carried away by them and making them your truth, it's not you, you identify with the sky and you just let those thoughts come and go. So you're shifting where you place your reference point, as it were, from the content of your thoughts to awareness itself. Yeah. Oh, beautiful.

The imagery of all of this, I find very settling to my system and just allows me to access that innate awareness. There was one question that came up around it, which was, what do you perceive as the role of, of hope in relationship to, to pain, all forms of pain? Where we can often think of hope as, as a future orientation or like in the night, in the hospital where your body's just in pain, maybe this thought of like, this could get better in a couple of weeks or in the morning. How do you reconcile that with some of the holding the experience as it is, if there's a place for it? Gosh, that's a really interesting question. Hmm. How would you define hope? That's a good, that's a good follow up question.

My friend wrote a book called Learned Hopefulness, Dan Tomasulo. And, and so he describes faith as the belief that something outside of us can have an impact on our life and hope as the experienced that we, that we can have an impact and we have the resources to impact our life and what will unfold. Yeah. I mean, really, really interesting. I think we can have naive hope and that's not helpful because that takes us away into some sort of fantasy.

And we can have pragmatic, sort of experiential hope, which I think is very important. One of the things I've touched on in our conversation is that when we're mindful and present, we can choose our response. So we're no longer a victim of just our habitual automatic reactions. So rather than choosing to contract against the pain, we can choose to release around it. Now, if you do that again and again and again and again and again, and that becomes your default setting, you will move towards a much more strength-based future, and you're creating that through your present moment responses.

Hmm. Yes. So if your hope is I want to be able to manage my pain better, and I believe I can through training my mind, training my heart, learning how to be with my experience with much more tenderness and care, that's realistic hope. Because, because you will, it's not even a fantasy. That will happen because that's the nature of things.

It's the nature of, if you take certain actions, you're going to get certain consequences. Yeah. And I think that can rebuild confidence and that's part of the session is about building confidence and strength. Hmm, that's a brilliant response. And because hope is complicated because we do often perceive it as I think what you were saying, naive hope of just like, it'll get better.

It'll get better. And like, we don't know what will come. But if we take that perspective of like having a sense of agency in relationship to our experience, that's exactly what you're doing when you tune into the moment with an expansive heart, a mind that is present that is attuning to the sensations and you're learning like, Oh, how I relate to this impacts the experience, which is going to give us this confidence in the future and, and sense that it will change. Yeah. And I think, and I think to really chunk that down to something that we've, I imagine we've all experienced it during the session.

Earlier on, when I was saying to breathe out, drop into the body, drop into gravity. I'm imagining most of us will have had it, even if it's just a tiny, tiny little change. Hmm. And that's agency. You know, you made a choice and you did something that had a consequence, what you could have done.

I could, I could have said, okay, everybody grit your teeth, hold your breath and tense against your pain. That would have had another consequence. Yeah. So we just made a choice. I invited you all to look around or to listen or taste or smell.

You were doing something with your awareness and that will have had a consequence. So we're not, I'm not talking about magic. That's a wonderful thing about mindfulness and these, these deep wisdom trainings, it's not magic. It's, you know, what we do with our awareness will have consequences and we can choose to harness that. I think this idea of agency is a lovely way of putting it.

And yet I can't control, you know, what happens to me in my life. Like, I don't know what's going to happen with my body. You know, I've had metalwork in my spine now for 20 years, it will probably wear out at some point. I really don't know what's going to come down the road. I'm guessing it won't be pretty at some point, but I can have hope, realistic hope, that I'll be able to meet that with as much strength as possible based on the training.

Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. Thanks for indulging in that question. Yeah.

That was good. It was good. We're, we're, we're wrapping up soon. And I feel like this last idea we we've talked a lot about, but anything else you'd like to say about just this notion of relaxing with life, which is beautiful itself? Yeah. So this is very, very important part of the course, because this is where we broaden out to take in other people, take in the world around us.

So the training so far has been pretty much focused on well, how can I cultivate more inner peace, you know, for myself so I can manage my life better. All the stamps that I've already recounted and what we do in this last step, I find very, very beautiful. It's like we relax into humanity. We take our place in the collective. And we shift our stance from seeing other people through the lens of difference to seeing other people through the lens of commonality.

There's 7 billion human beings on the planet. Yes, we are all different. We all look different. We got different circumstances and so on, but we're pretty much all on the same mission, which is trying to avoid pain and cultivate happiness. And a lot of us go about it in highly dysfunctional ways, but that's the driver behind everyone's behavior.

There's a lovely story of when the Dalai Lama first came to the West, many decades ago now. And he had a translator who had worked with him in India. And in India, he had heard the Dalai Lama give these highly technical, advanced metaphysical, philosophical teachings that were going for days. And then the Dalai Lama came to the West and basically had one thing to say. All the different interviews, he said, one thing, "Nobody wants to suffer and we all want to be happy.

Nobody wants to suffer and we all want to be happy." And the translator was quite confused at first. I thought, God, you know, is that all? You know, what is wrong with the guy? Why is he only saying that one thing? But when he reflected, it was like, well, that is it. If we could all understand that we're all on the same basic mission, nobody wants to suffer, we all want to be happy, then that will build enormous empathy and commonality. So when someone's doing something that you find strange or you don't like, they're just on that same mission, trying to avoid suffering and to be happy. That's what drives me.

That's what will drive you deep down, if we're really honest, that will be driving us all. So in this session, we rest back using our own self-awareness that we've cultivated through the course as a point of empathy with humanity. And we do a connection meditation practice, where we just recognize how much we've got in common with other people. And we can build imaginative connection. Very, very important.

Wow. The woird, the phrase that's still standing out to me is, relax into humanity. Yeah. Is profound. Yeah, relax into humanity.

It's very, very beautiful. So our self-awareness becomes this gateway, because I know me.I know you. Right. Deep down, I know you. I don't know all the details of your life, but because the extent to which I really, really know myself, then I can know something of what it means for you to be you and all these other people who are listening to be them.

That point, yeah, that feels good. I think so many people, and I've, I've had this journey of myself, can just see these practices, as, as selfish or self-oriented or navel gazing. And, and, and I think it's just an important reminder that the, the work that we're doing to connect with ourselves and understand our own experience is the work of understanding more of another human's experience. What if, the closer we come to understanding our own despair. The more we can see that and empathize with that and feel compassion toward another person that's going through it.

And so while a lot of attention can be put here at first, it, it provides the, the, well from which we draw water when we go outward and to hold others and to be inspired to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for myself, I'm very clear about this. If I was just practicing mindfulness to ease my pain and have an easier life, that would not be enough.

It wouldn't be enough. But I'm practicing mindfulness in order to take my place in humanity, to take my place in the human condition and to be a safer person to be around, a less reactive person to be around, a kinder person to be around, in the knowledge that to the extent, which I'm kind and open and loving, that's going to affect the people I come in contact with. And then they might be a little bit changed that will affect the people they come in contact with. And it's like ripples on a ake of goodness, flowing out into the world. And this recognition that deep down we are all so very, very alike because we can feel so isolated and separate, particularly in the modern world, which was strange because we're so digitally connected.

Yeah. But you know, we are social creatures. Human beings are social creatures and loneliness is really, really bad for us. Yeah. Loneliness is worse for your health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

It's astonishing. Yeah. And there's also evidence that the kind of meditation we're doing in this session, the connection practice, imagined connection is really good for our health. That imagining connection has the health benefits of actual connection. That's fascinating.

Yeah. And it's particularly relevant, I think, during these times of COVID and peopl, self isolating, and so on, that doing these connection practices are really, really important. Wow. Oh, I'm so glad that the course sort of punctuates with that. And I hope everyone's feeling the excitement to go deeper into this.

There's so much here, Vidyamala. I'd love for us to give people a micro-practice before we go as a, as a preview. The one, the one you're going to share is the soothing breath. Would you like to say more about that? Great. Yeah, it'll be a real privilege to do that with people, just a few minutes.

And it would be following up a lot of the themes that we've discussed in the session. So I'll just get my bell, a little bell. So I'll ring a bell at the beginning and the end to mark the transition. First of all, let's just settle into our posture. And you can do this sitting, or you can do it standing.

You can do it lying down. You can do it walking. It really is completely up to you, Cory and are going to do it sitting. And closing your eyes, if that's comfortable. Otherwise lowering your gaze.

Having the hands resting on your lap or your legs, if you're sitting. On your body or at the side of the body, if you're lying down. And beginning to settle into your posture. [bell rings] The soothing breath meditation practice. This is based on the teaching I gave earlier, gave earlier of stopping and breathing and settling.

So we've stopped moving the body, coming into this position. And let's take a deep breath in breath. And on the out-breath, allowing the breath to flow all the way out of the body. And do that a few more times. And as you breathe out, have a sense of releasing your way down into the position that you've chosen.

And giving the weight of the body up to gravity. Particularly with each out-breath. And now allowing your breathing to find its own natural rhythm. Letting the out-breath flow all the way out and the in-breath flow in naturally in its own time. And what's that like to surrender the weight of the body up to the surface that you're resting upon? We're yielding the weight of the body rather than collapsing.

So there's a sense of vitality and yet rest. Softening the buttocks. Softening the belly. Letting the jaw be soft and the face soft. The arms and the hands soft, the legs and the feet soft.

Gathering our awareness inside breathing in the whole torso. Swelling and subsiding of the belly with each in-breath and each out-breath. Rise and fall of the chest. And dropping our awareness inside the movements and sensations of breathing in the back of the body. If you're breathing is feeling, if your breathing is feeling agitated in anyway, dropping your awareness inside the lower back, Seeing if you can feel any movements and sensations of breathing in the lower back.

MAybe a broadening on the in-breath, subsiding on the out-breath. Bringing the breathing in the whole back of the body. Opening phase on the in-breath subsiding phase on the out-breath. Maybe getting a sense, maybe getting a sense of the volume of the whole torso, expanding a little bit in all directions on the in-breath, subsiding a little bit in all directions on the out-breath. Allowing the breathing to be effortless and natural, finding its own rhythm for you at this time.

If at any point, the breathing feels a little bit overwhelming or disturbing, you could take your awareness into your hands and your feet. Feeling the contact of the body or the floor resting in gravity, the stability of gravity. Is there any discomfort in your experience mentally, emotionally, or physically, allowing it to be soothed by the natural breath. Softening on the in-breath, softening on the out-breath as we release in to gravity again and again. So begin to bring their meditation to a close.

Perhaps forming an intention to take this quality of awareness with you into whatever's coming next. [bell rings] And then open your eyes, when you feel ready. Moving the body, however you want to, I just, I want to stretch. And see if you can keep your breathing soft as you move. Very often, we grip as soon as we move.

So just staying in the body, in the breath, in gravity. Thanks. Vidyamala. That was really settling. And what I love about the guidance is it's like I let myself be saturated by the breath, like fully soothed.

And I think, like for those who just want to take this, you know, it could be 30 seconds, a minute, and, and you feel that groundedness, relaxing into gravity. That really did a lot for me, really letting the body relax into gravity. And just the idea of being soothed by the, the breath and all these different ways, like the guidance around areas of the body, like the back, intention holding there, just bringing attention there and letting the breath touch them like a light hand and being soft is something. Good, Good. It was great.

Yeah. Beautiful practice. Yeah. Before we go into to final, final shares. I just want to give people an update on, on everything that is to come.

People might be asking, you know, how do I, how can I bring this more into my life right now? I'm really interested in exploring inner peace. I think all of us, this is something that, we're, we're, we're searching for. And everything here at Mindfulness.com is just, is designed to hold a quality of depth, but also a certain practicality, like there's a strong belief that this needs to be relatable and accessible to be integrated, which you do so brilliantly, Vidyamala. And so a handful of ways that you can interact with Vidyamala's, teachings here. The first is just that the seven-day meditation course, and this is entitled Finding Inner Peace.

And this is designed for implementing the ideas that we've, we've talked about here together and more. And then we have these short micro-practices, which are just simple on the spot practices that you can use when you need more immediate support and might only have a couple minutes to spare. And then as Vidyamala mentioned earlier that there'll be a range of commonly asked questions. So we, we did some research. What are, what are the questions that you're most asking around this topic? And so we have a handful of those and Vidyamala will just go right into that.

And this, you could seeas more like tailored content to you. So those are always really exciting. Yeah, I I've, I feel like we've been on a journey,Vidyamala over, over this session and it's just felt so rich, like layers of richness have revealed themselves as we, as we've gone into these ideas. Is there anything else that you'd like to, to add? Anything we didn't get to explore? Or any final words? I don't think so. It's felt very comprehensive.

I think, yeah, maybe this, this phrase, which it actually isn't in the course, but I really love it ,is to become a warrior with a soft heart. This idea that inner peace is, it's courageous and it's strong, and it's confident and it's soft and it's yielding and it's kindly. It's all of those things. So to bring both that kind of robust, strong quality and also soft and yielding. And a beautiful image for that is if you've got earth and water, water will always win.

Oh yeah, that's great. Yeah. If you, if you have, you know, water, you think of a canyon where the water has just worn down the canyon. I really love that, that water, water is stronger than earth from that point of view. Yeah.

So it's yielding and it's flowing and it's incredibly strong. So that's the kind of quality that I'm inviting in this course. Amazing. Well, as I've said at the beginning, just you, you embody these, these teachings through and through. Your journey has truly inspired me.

I remember when I sat retreat with you, however many years ago it was now, I was like, you're doing a lot of MBSR teacher training and I was just like, man, every mindfulness teacher needs to experience this. You just added a layer of depth and nuance to the conversation that felt rich and poignant and necessary. And a warrior with a soft heart. That, that's what I see when I see you. So thank you so much.

For everyone listening in to get lifetime access to all these materials, you can sign up for the free seven day trial, and that'll let you test drive these features, including the, also the video coaching and all of our other library of meditations and sleep meditations. But all of these, these resources by Vidyamala are here for you. We're so excited for you to get to dive in. And, and we thank you all immensely. Vidyamala, thank you so much again for sharing your heart.

Thank you so much, Cory. It's been, yeah, it's been such a joy to spend this time with you and I do feel such a kindred spirit in you. Wonderful. Thank you. Thanks everyone.

Lots of love and take care.