Hi, and welcome to this conversation with Shamash Alidina. My name is Melli O'Brien and you may have already seen me around the Mindfulness.com app as one of the daily guides. And so my role within the app is to really be your daily mindfulness coach. But I think what that means, when it really comes down to it, is that I'm here to be a support and a friend to you ,on a daily basis to really help you live with a stronger, happier, and healthier mind. And so today I'm really thrilled to be introducing you to Shamash Alidina who is a dear friend of mine, as well as somebody I've always admired as a teacher.

So Shamash is a bestselling author of two books, The Mindful Way Through Stress, Mindfulness for Dummies. And he also has some other wonderful books. Shamash has trained extensively. He's trained at the University of Bangor. He's trained with the likes of John Kabat-Zinn and Ajahn Brahm.

He's trained at the Center for Mindfulness. And for the last 20 years or more, actually, he's been teaching mindfulness to people from all walks of life. From parents, to teachers, to children, to corporates, just all kinds of people. And he now dedicates most of his time to training mindfulness teachers. He also was the founder of the first Museum of Happiness in London.

And Shamash really, what I really appreciate about him is he has, there's an incredible knack for blending ancient wisdom with modern science and doing all of his teaching with a very, very lighthearted and really joyful approach. So it is my pleasure to warmly welcome Shamash to the Mindfulness.com family. And his teachings on transforming our relationship to anxiety really do have the power to bring new levels of ease and empowerment into all of our lives. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Shamash Alidina. I'd like to start by asking you a little bit about your own personal and how you came to mindfulness and, and how it has impacted your own life.

Sure. Wow. So my journey started when I was at university.School studying, So when I was at school studying, I was good at science. I was praised for that. And, you know, I guess I built my self esteem and my sense of self on my achievements at school.

And I was getting praised for that. A lot of, Ah yes, you know, I'm really good. I'm really good at science. And I went off to university where there were other people that were very good at science. And so there's this sense of building up my sense of self-esteem and my personality on achievement and goals.

And what happened is, my first shock came when I wasn't top of the class anymore, which was really good. Good, good hit for my ego. Cause you know, it was much more competitive. And so I ended up having to work harder and harder, which caused a lot more stress for me. But I was thinking, you know, I'm going to be happy once I get that dream job, once I get married in the future.

It's going to be amazing. So I just have to take this frustration and pain. And it was always this future that I was looking forward to. And I found that when I was trying it as a job in the summer, it was just so repetitive and so boring, this, this job, doing chemical engineering. I thought I need to do something different.

I need to do maybe the opposite of this. So I ended up going to a philosophy class where I learned about mindfulness. And loved it. Absolutely loved it. I loved this idea of being able to step back being the observer of my experience.

And I mean, me saying loved it is just like an under, under kind of statement as well. It was, it like completely flipped my world round. From me thinking it's all about the future, my happiness is going to come one day when I make this much money or when I get that right relationship or that right job. And it changed to actually I can find meaning, I could find purpose, I can find happiness in the here and now, a place that I'd never really knew or appreciated the importance of. So I started, I decided, you know, the only thing I want to do is teach children this stuff.

So I found a school where all the children did meditation and I taught there for 10 years. And what happened is that after getting towards the end of those 10 years, I started to look at the research because I was, you know, I was teaching physics as well as teaching meditation there. And I was just curious about the science. And there was this thing called mindfulness that kept popping up and the researcher called Jon Kabat-Zinn kept popping up. And I thought, why is there all this research, but no one seems to be talking about it or doing this.

So I found one teacher, I think there's one or two teachers in London teaching it. I thought this is such a great way of teaching it. And I started teaching it in my home. It was just, you know, I've trained with Jon Kabat Zinn in America, trained in, in, in the UK and Wales. And I started teaching it in my home and I loved it.

And I made, it's a bit of a funny story, but I, I was reading a book called CBT for Dummies, the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Dummies. Like, wow, this is actually a really good book. Finally, I understand what CBT is about. And I thought, I wonder if there's a Mindfulness for Dummies and there wasn't one. So I just went to the website and I just asked why there wasn't, and one thing led to another.

We got into conversations, I explained to them what it is and I ended up teaching it. So, so, I ended up getting into all these conversations. They asked me to write the first chapter for it. I did. They asked me to write Table of Contents, ended up getting this contract to write the book.

And when I wrote that book, I decided to quit being a school teacher and full-time went into teaching mindfulness, which was a bit of a weird profession to choose at that time. But fortunately the, the interest just kept growing and growing at that time, that was in the 2010 or something like that, 2009. And yeah, since, you know, it's really, I'm so grateful for finding mindfulness, because up to that point, that point I don't think, I really felt a lack of meaning, lack of purpose. I got stressed very easily. And when I felt that stress and anxiety, I didn't really know what to do with that.

ut with mindfulness, there was this whole new world of approaches, ways, techniques, exercises, this whole community of people that were interested in the same things that I was. And so I'm really, really grateful to discover that and extremely grateful to have the opportunity to share it with others. It's an amazing privilege. And I feel very grateful for that. Hmm.

I really, I really noticed that I personally really relate to when you were speaking about, it's hard to put into words what, what, in the initial discovery of mindfulness and the kind of flip that it has the potential to do in your life. The same thing happened to me, where it was like, Oh wow, I'm seeing a whole new possibility, a whole new reality. It's just yeah, it kind of lights a fire inside you. So you know, really get that and, and also since your journey began, you know, when you're talking about teaching back in 2010 and now gosh, in the decade since then, the world has changed so much and the pressures of the world have really come bearing down on us all. And so this course that you've created on using mindfulness to help us transform anxiety is so of the times right now.

And so I, I just personally did your, your whole course and it's, so there's so much value, so much, so much valuable insights in there about anxiety and how we transform it and how mindfulness can be the catalyst for that. And one of them, one of the things I really appreciated about your course is you kind of,right in the beginning, you speak about understanding anxiety. And the reason I appreciate that so much is because I think when you understand the causes and conditions of something, it becomes so much easier to, to work with it and just kind of relax with it. You know what I mean? So I found that really valuable, understanding why we experience anxiety, why the human mind does, that because so many of us do struggle with anxiety. So could you speak a little bit to that, Shamash, about why does anxiety arise in the human mind? Why do so many of us end up struggling with it? Hmm, that's a great question.So anxiety is part of, part of a natural response.

You know, we have a whole range of emotions as human. You know, excitement, joy, happiness, you know, all these kinds of wonderful positive emotions. And then we have emotions that we sometimes end up classifying as negative. We judge them. And anxiety is often put into that category.

So it's a natural feeling that we have. And the feelings of anxiety can go from, you know, you can think of it almost like a wedge. And at one end of the wedge, you know, when you've got an exam coming up, you've got an interview coming up, you start feeling that, that tingling in that stomach, that, that sense of maybe a cold sweat or something before you do that challenge. So, first of all, it's a natural emotion that all human beings experience. There's not a person on the planet, I believe, that has not felt anxiety.

It's part of the rainbow of emotions that we experience. But where does it come from and why do, why do we actually get it? Well, if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, it's coming from our stress response. And what they've found is that we've actually got these two systems in our bodies, the stress response and the relaxation response.The technical names are like sympathetic and the parasympathetic system, but they're simply the stress and the relaxation. And they're always both kind of balancing each other out. They're part of our nervous system.

And if we didn't have this stress response, we'd be in a lot of trouble. I wouldn't be able to do this conversation right now because, you know, my heart needs to be a bit faster to be able to have enough oxygen, to, to have the enthusiasm, to have the attention, you need to have a certain amount of stress there. To be able to go for a walk or a jog, your stress response needs to be triggered. . So it's a very important and natural part of our system.

And it's part of not just us as human beings, but all mammals have this stress response in them. And the relaxation response. And why do we have it? Well, on the, on the low levels, we need that balance of stress to give us energy. It gets us, gets our heart beating. It gets us moving and energize us, energizes us.

But we also know that feeling of anxiety or high levels of stress that caused that feeling of anxiety when we meet a big challenge. And this has evolved over hundreds and thousands of years. So imagine if you go back a hundred thousand years and you know, we're living in, in tribes or in groups. And there's certain dangers that we face. There's the dangerous animals that that are around.

There's maybe the threat of other tribes that are around. Now, if you're the kind of person who, you know, Oh, there's some tigers around there, but I'm pretty chilled guy. I'm pretty mindful in the sense of a relaxed guy. I'm sure I'll be fine. I won't get eaten by the tiger.

And you know, if the tiger is approaching you and your heartbeat doesn't start to race, you don't have that stress response, you're not going to be able to fight it. You're not going to be able to run away from it. You're not going to be able to do anything from it. But those that have the stress response working well have got a much better chance of either fighting it or fleeing it. Or sometimes it's called the fight or flight response.

Sometimes it's also called the fight, flight or freeze response. Sometimes people find when they get stressed, they freeze. They don't know what to do. But that's actually a form of protection too because if when there's a dangerous animal or a danger around, if we can freeze, then it's not, it's likely not to catch you. So it's actually very healthy.

Or you know the fact that we get stressed and we feel the stress response is a really, really healthy thing. It's the, it's the physical thing that happens in our body. It happens so often. Every time we breathe in, the stress responses is triggered. Every time we breathe out, our relaxation response is triggered.

You can actually measure it. Your heartbeat goes a little bit faster on the in-breath, a little bit slower on the out-breath now. The stress response is linked to the anxiety, the feelings of anxiety. And it's really interesting. Think about what you go through when you have that feeling of anxiety.

First of all, most people talk about sweating or cold sweat. Well, the stress response makes you sweat because of it's thinking you're going to have to fight, you're going to have to run, and so you need to make sure that your body systems cool. So you start sweating. That's why you have that response. Another classic one.

When you're giving a speech or you're nervous about giving a talk and your mouth goes dry. And quite often, people need to have a bottle of water or a glass of water nearby when they're giving a talk because their mouth goes dry. Why is your mouth getting dry? That's part of your digestive system. The saliva is an important first step. When you, when you, when you eat food, you need to chew it and the saliva has got certain enzymes in it that starts the digestion process, but it takes some energy.

And if you're in a dangerous situation, you don't want to waste energy on that first part of your digestive system. So your mouth goes dry. Another classic one. People feel tingling in their stomach, because your stomach tingling is part of the digestive system. And again, you don't want to, the classic thing they say is that there's no point you digesting your own breakfast when you're about to be breakfast for a tiger or lion or something else, you need to stop wasting energy doing that.

So that's why you feel that tingling in the stomach sometimes. Why does you, why do you feel tense? Why do your shoulders feel tense, your muscles feel tense?Again, the blood starts going and the oxygen goes more to your muscles preparing you to run or to fight or to get rid of, get ready for this battle. And so all these physical feelings that you experience, you know, your heartbeat racing, why does your heartbeat go faster? Because your, your muscles need more energy to run or fight. And so it's preparing you for the situation. Another interesting thing that happens is that your attention narrows in.

When, when your stress response goes on, your attention narrows, becomes very focused. And so if you're in a workplace or a work situation, you're not able to have an open attention to see the opportunities around you. And in fact, police drivers, they're taught this because if they get too stressed, their attention narrows too much, and they don't actually notice the dangers around them, like someone's about to cross a road or something. So they need to purposely ensure they don't get too stressed to keep that attention open. Even our pupils dilate to bring in more light so you can notice more.

So when a person's stress response is triggered, the pupils dilate. There's so many, it's fascinating, all the different physical changes that take place. Even our, you know, reproductive system, it needs to, you don't need to spend so much energy there because if you're in a stress, stressful situation and so you're thinking this is a dangerous situation. This is another thing I don't want to expend my energy on. So actually in the short term, it can even boost your immune system because if you're in a dangerous situation and if you're going to get injured or, or, you know an animal is going to bite you or something, you're going to need to have a good immune system.

So in the short term, they've actually measured this. They give someone a little bit of extra stress and they find that their immune system is boosted for a little while. But the problem is when it's chronic, when it lasts for a long time and you don't get a break from it, that's when it starts causing some issues. But little bursts of stress, little challenges are actually good for you. So this gives you a bit of an idea of how the feeling of anxiety is associated with the stress response and how the stress response is very natural, and in short burst is actually a very healthy thing for us.

Mmm. I love, I love when you explain all of that, like from an evolutionary perspective, because I feel like so many of us, when we're experiencing anxiety, we relate to it as if it's wrong or as if there's something wrong with us because we, we shouldn't, you know, we should, I think there's this strange idea that so many of us have that we're supposed to be in this pervasive state of happiness all the time. Yeah. And yeah, we relate to anxiety as if something's gone terribly wrong. And I just love, I just, I just love the kind of permissiveness and, and, and the understanding of just like, this is a completely normal and natural thing for us to be feeling.

And especially today, in today's world where we're just experiencing a whole new levels of, of, of stress. All is coming at us. So many of us are feeling much more anxious. The other thing I really really appreciated in your, your course as a kind of next step to this kind of understanding of anxiety is that you speak about the difference between having the feeling of anxiety, but then also kind of knowing that you are not your anxiety. Can you tell us about why this is such an important thing to understand in, in kind of transforming your relationship to anxiety? Yeah.

You ask great questions. So I don't know if any of any, any of the people who are listening to this have listened to Eckhart tollTolle. A very famous book that he wrote it's called, The Power of Now. And one of the main things, the main insights that this guy had was that he was feeling overwhelmed with depression, I believe. And he had all these negative thoughts, really dark, negative thoughts that he was experiencing.

And suddenly he realized. That I am observing those thoughts. I'm watching those thoughts popping up. So I am not those thoughts. And if I'm not those thoughts, then I don't need to believe them to be true.

I've got some space there to relate to them in a different way. There's, there's another part of me. And so this is really, really important. This is a really important first step. If we're going to talk about, about how we can relate to something differently, there needs to be a space between us and what have we were relating to.

Like, if that's the anxiety, that's you and we're just completely fused in, then, you know, you go wherever your anxiety goes. If your anxiety tells you to do this, you do that. If your anxiety tells you to go there, you need to go there. There's no space to relate to it. So the first step that we try to do, after coming into the present moment, is to say that, okay, there's me and there's the anxiety that I'm experiencing.

There's some space between me or me and it, and then I can start to cultivate a different relationship. Okay. Just imagine like you're having a relationship with someone else or you're, you're relating to someone. You want to talk to them. There's obviously a space between you and them.

And so in that space is where you can bring different attitudes. And one attitude I'd really kind of recommend and, and encourage, beautiful one, which maybe people don't talk about so much is curiosity. When there's a space, you can start cultivating a sense of curiosity.And curiosity is such a wonderful quality. It's natural in our human beings. You know, you don't need to take, tell a child like, as you grow up, just keep asking why, why, why with everything that you see, and that's a great way for you to learn.

It just naturally comes out of every child. Like, why do we need to do this? Why do we need to go there? Why are we doing this? Why is the sky blue? Why does the sun go up? It just, they're just filled with natural questions. In fact, I just remembered having a memory that I haven't had for ages. I used to have a series of books on my bookshelf and they were called, Tell Me Why, More Tell Me Why, Even More Tell Me Why. Just cause of that natural curiosity that we have.

So, so we just want to know more. And so if we think of, of anxiety immediately as an enemy, as bad, as it's something wrong with me, then, then there's no space for curiosity. But if you think of anxiety as something separate from you, you can start saying, okay, where is this anxiety? Where do I feel it in my body? What are the thoughts associated with it? That you can start you can start cultivating a different relationship and actually learning from it. Maybe it could even be a teacher. So that's the idea, creating that space.

I'm reminded by a wonderful story. I'm not sure if I shared this in the, in the course. And it's a story from one of my teachers, Ajahn Brahm.And he had a student that came along and she was feeling really anxious.. She was so anxious, she was practically bedridden. She couldn't go anywhere.

And she couldn't do her studies. She went to study.. And so he was very busy because he was teaching all over and she called him up. She said, you know, I've got this anxiety, what should I do? He said, where do you feel it? And she's like, I'm not sure somewhere in my body. He's like, call me back tomorrow.

Tell me where it is. And so the next time she called, the next day, she calls him up and says, Oh, it's in my stomach area. Where in your stomach area? She's, I don't know. It's just generally in the stomach area. He said, tell me exactly where.

And every day he kept asking, like, what color is it? What shape is it? What's the size of it? What happens when you breathe with it? And over a series of maybe just a couple of weeks, because she started to become curious, it became smaller and smaller and smaller. And she said, and she said some days she was trying to find the anxiety in the body, she couldn't find it. The curiosity had started to transform it. She was transforming her relationships to it by being curious. And then the next step, he said, you know, place your hand on it and let that hand be the hand of kindness and compassion.

Be friendly towards your anxiety. You relate to it in that friendly way. And the lovely story is that, you know, she got better. She managed to finish her studies. And because of, he's a monk and she was with her boyfriend at the time, he actually ended up marrying those two together as well.

And, and her boyfriend helped her through that journey. So it's a really, really nice story of, of the power of, of curiosity and kindness actually on something like that. Mmm. This reminds me that another, another thing that you speak about in the course is the, not only about curiosity and kindness but also the role of acceptance in, in this way that we can transform our, our, our way of being with anxiety. And I'd love to, I'd love to have you speak a little bit about acceptance and the role that it plays in all these.

ure. So acceptance. It is, it takes a while to understand about what we mean by acceptance and mindfulness. Sometimes I draw a lot from an approach called ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Training or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Sometimes they don't call it acceptance.

Sometimes they call it willingness because people think of acceptance as a sense of giving up. They think of it like, let's say you're a little child and your teacher says, you know, you've, you, haven't done your homework. You're in detention or you're in trouble. And you say, no, no, no, no. You know, my dog ate it.

And the teacher would say, no, you just have to accept it. It's this, it's this kind of passive like, Oh no, I give up. Like resignation. Resignation, yeah, that's, that's the word. Yeah.

And so it's the sense of, I just give up, like, you know, I can't do anything about it. It's a passive, passive acceptance. What we're talking about with the acceptance here is an active acceptance. It's a sense of like, it's quite good to do it in terms of postures. So, you know, a resignation acceptance would be like, you know.

And in fact, the people watching or listening, if you're not driving cars and that you could actually do the posture, like what would be your posture of resignation. You know, there's a physical, physicality to it. Yeah. Looking, looking down. Yeah, we probably wouldn't be laughing.

We'd be really frustrated. But the acceptance we're talking about is, think of a time where you had a challenge, you had a difficult challenge. But you stood up to it and you managed to get through it and you achieved something from it. And that acceptance is a sense of, you know, your chest opens up your body, postures opens up and there's a sense of an inner there's an inner yes there. That yes, yeah, this is how, this is a challenge.

It's not easy. But the very fact that it wasn't easy and I opened up to it and I moved through it is just really empowering. If it was just too easy and you just managed to just do something very simple, it wouldn't have been a big deal. I think of some situations in the past where, you know, Oh, well, I'm proud of that. I managed to do that.

It was a difficult time, but I managed to get through it. And just think about the posture that you would pose when you do that. Interestingly, they've done this exact research on people and then also different cultures. So they've done, they've done it on a wide range of different people. And almost always, when it's the, you know, when people felt overwhelmed, when there's a sense of resignation, just like you did, there's a sense of turning inwards, closing up, protecting the body, looking downwards.

But when you ask people, you know, this positive acceptance, when you achieved a challenge, when you opened up to it, when you, it felt you kind of traveled through that challenge in a way that you are proud of. Can you share the posture for that? And it's always open, the eyes open. So they're more mindful. Their ears are open. They're kind of facing forwards.

The shoulders are a bit more open. And you can actually start cultivating some acceptance just through your body posture, actually. And I'm sure, you know, practices like Qigong and yoga and these things, they, they've got a physicality to it, which can help people to start cultivating a certain attitude and emotion too. Yeah. But that, this kind of gives you some ideas of acceptance.

And as I said, it does take some time and different stories and analogies work, which I've shared in the, in the course. One of them is of rain. This is a classic one where it's pouring down with rain and you have to walk from, you know, from your, home, let's say, to the station and there's two attitudes you can take. One of them is that sense of, Oh God, it's raining, I'm getting soaked. And you feel very frustrated.

Or the other one is that acceptance, positive acceptance. Like, yeah, it's raining. I've got no other choice today. I have to walk through the rain. There's no other way of doing it.

I just have to accept it. I don't like getting totally soaked, but I have to accept it and we walk through. And then there's a possibility of maybe spotting the, the rainbow that may come up or the chance that someone's selling an umbrella over there, or some other thing that can happen. There's there's that possibility and chance. Whereas when you're closed down, that, that possibility is not there.

So it's a really powerful, soothing thing. It takes time to cultivate, acceptance. And the last thing you want to do is accept, when you're feeling really anxious or some other really difficult emotion, I can totally understand that you don't want to accept it because it feels so uncomfortable. The natural, it's the fight or flight response is getting triggered when you feel this difficult emotion, because your body's thinking it's an actual physical, it's like an actual physical lion and tiger, and say it wants to run away or fight from it. But that's, what's keeping it going.

It's fueling it. It's being fueled into that fire. And so you need to do something, the opposite of what you've already been doing if it hasn't been working for you. And so it takes a little bit of trust, but to try to open up. Allow it to be there.

And what, what can help is that observer perspective that I touched upon, that you are not your anxiety. You're going to be observing it. You're going to be getting curious about it. And these all kind of weave into each other. You know, I talked about the kindness that cultivates acceptance.

I talked about the curiosity, that also cultivates acceptance. So it's quite nice cause they work with each other and that one, one can help support the other. So acceptance is a really key part of this. And the, and the other thing I want to mention, which is important, it's not accepting some external situation that's harmful for you. You know, there's a certain situation you're in where someone's doing something wrong towards you, or there's an injustice.

I'm not saying accept that. Do something about it, please. Especially if you can. I'm talking about maybe the internal emotions, internal thoughts or external situations where in that moment, there's nothing else that you can do. You need to accept it before you can move forwards.

So that's what I mean by this acceptance. I love that. And I love the analogy of of walking in the rain. Like, I really get that when you speak about that analogy, I really get the difference. And I'm just thinking of my co-host, Cory Muscara.

He, he has you know, just this, you know, he speaks about just kind of mentally saying to yourself in those moments where you need to cultivate acceptance, just, you know, saying, just right now, it's like this. You know, just having a little mental mantra or something that you can say to yourself, or even just say to yourself, okay. Okay. Right now it's like this. So I love that.

And so my actual favorite part of the course was the part on unhooking from unhelpful thoughts, because who doesn't want to know how to unhook from unhelpful thoughts. Right? I mean, I could be doing this practice for the rest of my life. It's just, there's so much value in it. And you had some really interesting techniques for helping people to unhook from, from thoughts. And yeah.

Could you, could you share even just, just one of those practices for unhooking, from unhelpful thoughts? That would be wonderful. Sure. So first of all to explain, we get, we get hooked and intuitively we kind of get, you know, that we get hooked to our thoughts. We have a certain thought and it's like, it's hooking onto us and it's taking us away. And what happens with anxiety is, is that the hook is the worry.

So you worry about something that could happen in the future. And that fear that worry may be very real, or it may be a very imaginary, but one worry leads to another and another. And it's quite often the same thoughts that are actually cycling around again and again. Sometimes we don't even realize that until we have a certain level of mindfulness. So you start to become more aware.

And when you become more aware and mindful of your thoughts, you notice, Oh my God, I've got all these thoughts and I can't shut my mind up. And it keeps thinking these negative thoughts. And I feel as if mindfulness isn't working in a way, because if I'm just hearing more and more of these negative thoughts. Actually, it's a good sign, you're starting to notice. Remember mindfulness is about awareness and you're starting to notice what's going on.

And now you're kind of ready for the next stage in a sense, or ready to start unhooking from those thoughts. So it's good to just take a little bit of a, a break and notice. What are the particular thoughts there? What are the underlying thoughts? And these unhooking skills is actually a form of mindfulness. Like this is part of Mindfulness.com and you know, one way of cultivating mindfulness is through meditation where you stop for a few minutes or longer, and you just cultivate mindfulness. Another way is everyday mindfulness where, you know, you're brushing your teeth or you're going for a walk, you're feeling your feet on the floor.

That's a form of mindfulness. Another way is actually using these unhooking skills because of the ability to unhook from your thoughts is a mindful skill. And this also comes from acceptance and commitment training and they call it sometimes diffusion. So you think of, like we talked about before fusion, when things are fused. They're stuck together, aren't they? And unhooking, so it's like a diffusion.

So that's what we're going to be doing. So there's loads of them, but one of them that, that I found really powerful actually, and it's actually a bit of a funny one, is when I started to look at what are the underlying kind of difficult thoughts that come up for me. And the one that I found that was underlying for me, and actually for a lot of my clients, is I'm not good enough. So, you know, I'd be worried about something like, why am I worried about giving that talk? And that's because of, you know, it might go wrong. Why are you worried about that? Oh, it's probably because I'm not good enough.

And so that was the underlying thought there. And I thought about how long have I had that thought? I thought probably for decades. It's been there for a long time, but I haven't really wanted to even think about it. And so one suggestion that was given is that the way of reprogramming that thought is to actually put it to the sound of a tune. And you can use any tune, but the tune that's often suggested is the Happy Birthday tune.

So I thought, Oh my God. So I need to actually say the thought, I'm not good enough to the tune of Happy Birthday. And, you know, the, the, the teacher said, yeah, that's, that's how it works. So that's what I did .Just so you know, I started singing. I am not good enough, I'm not good enough.

And then I just sang it out a few times. And I did it two or three times. It made me laugh, but it may not necessarily make you laugh, but it made me laugh. But interestingly, after I did it for a few days, when I had that thought in my head, it just had no emotional tone to it. It was, it was very strange.

But something that had been there for decades, suddenly the emotional stick to it had been removed because of, I'm guessing, the, the pathways that had been going on for so many years had suddenly stopped. In a way, I was scared of even thinking that thought, because I thought if I have that negative thought, that's going to make me even more, not good enough. So I must not even think it or consider it. But this was the opposite. So it felt a bit scary at first.

But then when I did it, I thought, Oh my God, this is amazing. And so, you know, I tried it with other things. Another quick one that I don't think I've put into the course, but I could share, is actually repeating a word quickly that is a difficult thought for us. And you actually repeat it. So like let's say if you have the thought, I'm an idiot.

What they found is that if you do it for 30 seconds. You need to have a timer. So you need to have a timer. I probably won't do it now. But if you just have a thought like I'm an idiot.

You just say idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot. And you do that for 30 seconds and you say it really, really fast. What happens is that by the end of the 30 seconds, you just saying ed, ed, ed, ed. You're kind of smiling and, and the word, the, the emotional attachment to the word again. So if someone says I'm an idiot, or you say to yourself, I'm an idiot, you're like, it's just another, it's just another sound.

It becomes what it really is. It's just a sound, it's something that someone may have said to you a long, long, long time ago, and it just got stuck in, in your brain in there. And then there's this, all this fear about it and avoidance of it and thinking of it as real, but it's just a thought, it's just a sound. Right. And with, with that particular technique, would you just take the one key word out of the sentence, and repeat it, 30 seconds or would you repeat the whole sentence? So if I said to myself, let's say I screw something up and I go, Oh, I'm such a failure, or something like that, so would I just take the word failure and just go failure, failure, failure, failure.

It's like, I can't even say that.I can't even say full the word five times. So you just take the key word, and and repeat it for 30 seconds as quickly as you can. It doesn't, it doesn't have to. If the keyword itself is not meaningful for you, then take the whole mini sentence, but you need to say as fast as you can, and you have to use the stopwatch for 30 seconds. They tried it for 10 seconds.

Wasn't enough. They tried it for a minute and they, you didn't need to do it for a minute. They found after repeated tests, 30 seconds works well. And it just kind of flushes your system out of the meaning behind the word, which is not helpful. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter.

It's not helpful for us. It's fascinating. That is fascinating. I'm so curious to try that. Yeah, and the, the singing, the singing technique, I've used that before.

And in, in various ways. And I, I have to say for me personally as well, I have been quite surprised at the impact of it because it's like when I have the similar thought again, I kind of, I I'm kind of smirking at myself just going, huh, there you go again. It's a really, it's a really beautiful thing. And it's really surprising that, that you can change something that felt so stuck with something so simple. It's like, really that's going to work? But yeah, I have to say personally for me.

And if I could just add, see what people normally think is you have to think the positive. So, you know, if, if you know, I'm not good enough, is that underlying thought. You have, you have to keep putting all your certificates around on the wall everywhere and just keep saying to yourself, I am good enough. I'm good enough. But why your mind is is smarter than that And it knows, you're saying I'm good enough, because really you think you're not good enough.

And the opposites connect with each other. Yeah, you can't fool yourself. So it's the opposites that connect with each other. So that's why going to the root of it and diffusing or unhooking from it in these different ways is really powerful. Wow.

Thank you so much for sharing that. And I would also like to invite you to share, you give quite a few very practical kind of micro mindfulness practices throughout your course, and I'd love if you could guide us through a short practice just to give people a taste of, of what that can be like. Sure, sure. I'd love to guide a little exercise that I made up called the zoom exercise actually. And it's the four letters, Z O O M.

And by coincidence, you know, people are using a lot of Zoom at the moment. So it's easy to remember.But it's the idea of zooming out from our challenges and seeing things from a bigger picture. And it's actually got a lot of science behind all the different elements of it. So I'll guide us through that, if that's okay? I'd love that. Awesome.

So first of all, get yourself in a position that feels comfortable for you. So just notice your body posture right now. And if you need to move your legs around, you need to have a little mini stretch, then feel free to do so. And for this exercise, you can either have your eyes open, just kind of looking downwards, or if you're okay with it, you can just gently close your eyes for this. Now beginning by taking a nice deep breath in.

And as I said before, a nice slow out-breath helps to engage the relaxation response. So nice, slow out-breath. Maybe one more deep breath in, right into the base of your lungs. And a slow, smooth breath out. So now just feeling the sensations in your body.

And I want you to just consider any small challenge that you're going through at the moment, some small difficulty. Maybe there's some stress or anxiety about a certain challenge that you have right now. And the first step in the process, Z stands for zoom, and I invite you to just take a bit of a bigger picture. So imagine zooming out from yourself. Seeing yourself sitting here as part of a bigger whole.

Almost like, you know, one of those online maps, when you can zoom out and see the bigger picture, So just trying to see your challenge in the context of our community, our whole planet. You may like to see it from the perspective of a wise and kind person looking upon you in the challenge that you're going through right now. What would they say? How would they see it? Now O, this next letter, O stands for observe. So as you bring this challenge to mind, what thoughts are popping into your head? And imagine that there's clouds floating along in the sky and just placing your thoughts on those clouds. If, as you think about this challenge or this anxiety and there's a certain thought there, you can step back by it by saying, I notice I'm having the thought and then whatever your thought is.

Again, you're stepping back. The next O stands for opening up. So I invite you to open up as best you can today, as much as you can today, to the feelings that are there for you. So as you bring up this challenge, what's the feeling that's arising within you? Can you make space, internal space for it? Can you make room for it? Just like a cloud has plenty of space, has the whole sky to exist in it. In the same way, see if you can create this inner space for this feeling to be there as part of the bigger whole.

Bringing the spirit of all the things that we've been talking about today. Meeting it with curiosity. Noticing where the feeling is in your body. What's the shape? If you can even gently smiling towards it. And finally, the last step in this process is M.

M stands for meaningful action. The whole point and purpose of doing all this is to help you to lead a more fulfilling life, a more meaningful life, in line with your values, whatever's important for you. Is it important for you to be kind, to be curious, to be creative, to connect with others? What's important to you? And I invite you, having done this exercise and maybe after this session today, to take some meaningful action. It could be an act of kindness for yourself. It could be sending a message to a friend.

It could be doing an act of creativity, maybe doing some mindful drawing. Maybe it's a mindful walk that you go on. Well, thank you so much for that, having engaged in that little zoom reflection. And you can practice it again anytime you wish and practice it for as long as you wish to. Thank you so much for that You zoomed out.

Yeah, I was moving back in. So I was about to zoom us back in. We're still in outer space. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And yeah, and I also just want to say again, you know, really a heartfelt thank you on behalf of all of us at Mindfulness.com and the Mindfulness.com community for making the content that you've created.

And for those who are listening, I hope these insights that Shamash has shared today have been really, really helpful for you. And I just want to encourage you if you feel like you really want to dive deeper into, what we're talking about here, transforming your relationship with anxiety, I really want to encourage you to dive into Shamash's content. So again, Shamash has got a, he's got a beautiful seven day course called Transforming Your Relationship with Anxiety. And it's really succinct and practical and and powerful. And then we have these micro practices that are one to two minutes each, and they're really designed to be there in that moment where you need support when you're reaching out for a lifeline.

And I think that's one of the wonderful thing about the app these days is like in your moment of need, when you are feeling anxious and you need some support, the micro-practices, you can just pick up, plug in your earphones and they're there for you. And then Shamash has also answered a whole range of commonly asked questions about anxiety. So you can kind of dip in and out of those and just learn little bits and pieces there. So yeah, if you feel like this would be valuable for you, I really encourage you to take a look at the content. There's so much more in there.

Shamash, is there anything else you want to add before we, before we close? No, I just want to say thank you to you, Melli, for creating the space for all this. And also thank you to all those that are watching and listening. I'm sure for many of you, you're going through anxiety right now and being overwhelmed with anxiety is really hard. So just remember you're certainly not alone. It's one of the most common of all challenges that we face as humans in our larger human family.

And I do hope that you can take even a few moments to try some of these exercises out and, and find a little bit peace of mind there. But yeah. Do, do you just try even small amounts and do remember to just praise yourself for your little steps. Even if you manage to just do one micro-practice out of the whole thing, praise yourself, and encourage yourself and just take things step by step from that. So thanks again, Shamash.

And so to get access to all, all of Shamash's materials, if you haven't already, you can simply sign up for the seven day free trial of Mindfulness.com. And so when you do that, you'll get access to all of Shamash's materials and you'll also get access to everything else that's on Mindfulness.com. So you'll get personalized daily video coaching, a huge library of meditations that are going to be there, meditations and talks that are kind of designed to suit your every mood and need on any particular day. Then we have the sleep section. So there's a whole section about helping you wind down for the night, helping you get a good night's sleep.

We all know how important that is these days. And so much more. So you know, we really designed Mindfulness.com to be a support system for daily living to help you live with more strengths, more calm, more purpose, and more awareness. So and with an investment, we've designed everything to be quite succinct and practical as Shamash's material is as well. So with an investment of just, you know, 10 minutes a day, we really believe that you'll see a huge improvement in the quality of your life.

So dive in, enjoy everything that we've, we've provided there for you. And thank you for your practice and take care.