Hey friends. I'm really excited today to be bringing my dear friend and a teacher that I've admired for a very long time, Shamash Alidina. We're bringing Shamash into the Mindfulness.com family officially. And Shamash is a best-selling author. He wrote The Mindfulness for Dummies book as well as The Mindful Way Through Stress.

And Shamash has trained extensively at the University of Bangor, at the Center for Mindfulness. He's trained with Jon Kabat Zinn and Ajahn Brahm. And he's been teaching mindfulness for a very, very long time. And I'm dedicating most of his time, these days to mindfulness teacher training as well as doing live and online events as well. So.

Shamash thank you so much for joining the Mindfulness.com family. And I'd love to give people a sneak peek inside of your content today. So first of all, I'd love to invite you to share a little bit about your personal journey into mindfulness and, and you know, perhaps touching on how it affects anxiety in your life or how you deal with anxiety in your life. Hmm, well, the way, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to this. It's so nice to see you again and real pleasure to work with you, Melli.

So, in terms of my journey into mindfulness, in a nutshell, I guess it was to do, to do with kind of stress and frustration when I was at university, I was, I was just studying for a degree in chemical engineering. I was quite good at science. I didn't really know what else to do. And I had an internship in the summer, so I tried it as a job. And I just really didn't like it.

I thought this is so boring. I felt frustrated that I was doing the wrong degree and I felt stressed. And so I thought what's the opposite of chemical engineering and it turns out it's philosophy. So I saw a poster for a philosophy class and I thought, okay, let me try that. So I went along to this philosophy class, and that was when we, Ihad this kind of mind blowing experience in a mindfulness exercise.

It was just a five minute exercise. They didn't even call it mindfulness. I think they just called it the exercise and they got us connecting to our senses and then stepping back from our thoughts and emotions. And it was the first time in my life that I had this idea that I am not necessarily my thoughts and I just felt so much more free. And then also always had this idea of, you know, setting goals, thinking about the future.

I never stopped to look at a tree or the sky or grass or connects. The present moment wasn't really a concept that I was kind of interested in connecting with. And suddenly they said that the present moment can be the most amazing experience. In fact, it's the very purpose of life, to live fully in the here and now. It's the only moment we really have.

And it just all just made so much sense and I was hooked onto mindfulness ever since then. Hmm. Wow. And those those realizations that you had back then with mindfulness and what it makes available in your life, when you think about the world that we're living in today, which is a probably a different world than, than back then. So much has changed.

And so how do you feel like these practices, these mindfulness practices, these ways of transforming our relationship, especially with anxiety, how can they, how can they help us navigate what we're all going through now in these more difficult days? Hmm. So it's a great question. I mean, I've read studies that say that what was considered clinical anxiety about 50, 60 odd years ago is now normal ways of anxiety. And you know, when you look at all the statistics, mental health and mental health challenges and anxiety disorders, as they call them, are just rising and rising all the time. And it's due to all sorts of different challenges that we face.

But we face the modern world, which is full of so much information where we spend, you know, hours and hours of the day on screens, where we connect to each other through screens rather than in person, far much more. And you know, just a few decades ago that just didn't, hardly happen at all. So there's huge amounts of changes that are happening at the moment. And our brains, the way that they've evolved, we're animals ultimately, and we, we're just not ready for this level of change. And so we're meeting a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress at the moment.

And I think mindfulness can really it help because it gives us a little bit of a space, a little bit of choice. If we just let our attention be grabbed by media, by advertising, by the various, you know, social media apps, for example, they're all designed to catch our attention and to hold our attention. So we need something to be able to counter that. And I think mindfulness is, in some sense, the perfect antidote to that, because it gives you an opportunity to step back, to look at the big picture and to start relating to these feelings in a different way, and not necessarily thinking them as, as a bad thing, as something we need to get rid of, but starting to explore a relationship to connect with it in a different way. So that it's not something that we need to avoid or get rid of, or run away from, but starting to understand it, seeing it as a part of what it means to be human, to experience stress and anxiety.

And to, as I say, connect within in a different relationship to it. So that rather than it being an enemy, maybe it can be a friend or if not at least a friend, something that you can learn from and grow from. So that's that's one taste of one way of looking at mindfulness. Hmm. And what I really, what I really appreciate about the content that you've created to help people transform their relationship with anxiety is that there's, there's the course, and then there's the micro practices, and then there's also these the Q and A, the commonly asked questions about anxiety that you've answered for people.

Why do you think those different formats are all helpful? Well, I think it's just a wonderful flexibility that's available there, you know. Actually a lot of what I've been sharing in this program is about mental flexibility. Some people define mental health, good mental health as the ability to have a sense of flexibility. And so this is a great example of flexibility. First of all, you've got the course which is not too long, seven days I think is just right.

And even if you don't have time to do all the sessions every single day, you could maybe catch up on the day that you missed. So it's possible to do that. So seven days is very doable and I'm a big advocate of keeping things short and simple and getting straight to the point. So I think that makes things really flexible and accessible. So the course is great.

Also a seven day course, since it's achievable, and if you can listen to each of the sessions for the seven days, there's that sense of achievement. And when you get that sense of achievement, you start to build confidence, you start building self-esteem, you start feeling good about yourself. And I really want to encourage that to all the people that engage in the course, if you managed to get through it. So that's the first thing. Micro-practices, absolutely love them, for several, reasons.

First of all, you can actually use these micro-practices, this short few minutes exercises in mindfulness when you actually feel you need it. If you feel overwhelmed by an emotion such as anxiety, or you feel too stressed, straight away you can get the app, you can listen to that short exercise and you can try them out. And there may be some that you like and some that you really don't like. And so you can focus on using the ones that are useful for you. So there's that flexibility there.

Also, you know, everyone always talks about time and being under pressure for time. Well, the micro exercises are perfect. They don't take too long, just a few minutes. And if you can't even do the whole micro practice, that's fine. I'm quite happy for you to do the first 10 seconds or 30 seconds.

Just do whatever you can. That's fine. And then finally, the Q and A that you mentioned, and the Q and A is kind of a bit more relaxed. It's a bit more me sharing a bit more about my stories. It's not quite a podcast, but it's a little bit like that.

A bit more you can step back and relax and listen to it. And I share a few stories in there and it also goes into a bit more depth. There are some kind of key practices I go into a bit more detail, some other strategies and ideas, and I'm answering questions, common questions that come up. So there may be some questions there that you've been wondering, Oh, I wonder what the answer to that is? Or you may be able to find it there. And so go to those first and then if you want to learn more, then you can listen to the answers to all the other questions too.

So flexibility is the name of the game and that's available through these three approaches. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shamash and thank you for creating this amazing body of content and it's, it's so high value and practical and accessible. So and thanks everyone for joining us. And please, I encourage you.

If this resonates with you, this desire to transform your relationship with anxiety, go ahead and dive into Shamash's content below and we really look forward to hearing how it impacts your life.