EP # 2: Exploring Mindfulness and Meditation with Marilisa Lawless and Jeremy Wolf

Ever felt overwhelmed by stress and anxiety? Imagine if you could find a way to train your mind to focus, bringing about a sense of mental clarity and emotional stability. That's what we're tackling in our latest episode. Along with co-host Jeremy Wolf, I, Marilisa Lawless, share my personal journey with mindfulness and meditation, drawing from my practice of secular Buddhism and the learnings from my mentor, Dave Smith of Dave Smith Dharma. We're demystifying the world of meditation, giving you practical tips on how to start and ways to better train your attention.

The conversation doesn't stop at just understanding meditation. We're also looking at how mindfulness and silent retreats can be beneficial, backed by scientific research. We delve into real-life challenges such as encouraging children to practice meditation and suggest some effective one-minute meditations and guided exercises designed specifically for kids. We emphasize the importance of disconnecting from technology to truly listen to ourselves and find peace. Whether you're new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, this episode will equip you with valuable insights for your mindfulness journey. Tune in and discover a more peaceful, present you.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Exploring Meditation for Stress Reduction
• 14:05 Mindfulness Meditation and Silent Retreats Importance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Hemp Del Soul podcast. All health, no high. Here's your host, Maril isa Lawless.

Jeremy: 0:14

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number two of the Hemp Del Soul podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeremy Wolfe, and I'm joined with your host, Marilisa Lawless. It's good to see you again so soon.

Marilisa: 0:28

Absolutely. I really liked the first one, so let's do it again.

Jeremy: 0:32

Yeah, yeah, we just saw each other at the Chamber luncheon. That was a very nice event, as per usual, so it's good to see you again, absolutely.

Marilisa: 0:42

I love running into you.

Jeremy: 0:44

So, I know Hemp Del Soul is just one of the many things that you do. You also have the Transformation Project. You also have Crystals Del Soul, but it's really all everything that you do is centered around alternative healing and alternative medicine and that whole space. So I thought a great place to start would be to talk about meditation, and meditation, as defined by Wikipedia, is a practice in which an individual uses a technique such as mindfulness. We're focusing the mind on a particular object, thought or activity to train attention and awareness and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. Now, what is meditation? What is meditation to you?

Marilisa: 1:37

Meditation to me truly is just paying attention to what it is that's going on in our brain and not getting attached to it. So it's about focusing on our breath on one one way or another. I mean, it's cure-all , but it lets us know what's going on in our head and not having to go down so many rabbit holes. We're like, oh you know,ahhh, , ahhh, and getting so distracted. So it actually helps to create that space for me where I can be present, I can think, take note of what it is that's going on in my head without having to do anything about it at the moment.

Jeremy: 2:20

So yeah, one of the most interesting revelations that I had when it comes to mindfulness and meditation. It happened I don't know how many months ago. I think it was within a year ago. I had something that was plaguing me on my mind, as we often do, and where we have anxiety, we're worried about it and then all of a sudden, like nothing, I completely forgot. I lost my train of thought, I forgot why I was worried in the first place which often happens right, and at first, I got more worried. Oh my God, I need to find that thing that I was worried about. And I realized,

Jeremy: 2:59

It dawned on me how ridiculous that was and how we have the ability to train our attention anywhere, really, and it doesn't matter what's going on. I mean, obviously, with the recent, there's emergencies that come about, but something like that. The point, the simple fact of the matter is, if it's that important, it will come back to you when it's when it needs to come back to you, right? It doesn't require you to train your attention. So that was an insight that I had in my journey. But how do you feel that, I say somebody that that has heard about meditation before and just has never done it, and they're skeptical and they think it's woo woo if you will. How can meditation, in your opinion, contribute to reducing stress and anxiety in our daily lives?

Marilisa: 3:43

Oh, it decreases reactivity tremendously. It's, it's truly about just finding the type that works for you because, like, what I practice is actually a secular Buddhism, so it's not connected to any particular religious philosophy, it's just about how I focus my mind. I've been doing it for about 10 years and it's it has absolutely made a difference in my reactivity to things because you're right, worrying about things or things that have happened in the future, you don't have any control over that at this moment anyway. So don't go, you know, don't go chasing. You know, chasing things. It's just truly helped with reactivity.

Marilisa: 4:27

You know, and I practice what's called a meta vipassana, and vipassana is what they call the Pali word for mindfulness. It loosely gets translated into mindfulness and then meta is again loosely translated into loving kindness. So it's about pulling that loving kindness towards myself and then, basically, the world around me and one level or another. And the vipassana is about just knowing what it is that's going on up here (pointing to head)and figuring out what do I need to do about it. Come back to the breath.. That's all truly it is. Come back to your breath. Come back to your breath, so, whether it's focusing on your nose, your chest or your abdomen, or, wherever you are aware of your breath. That's how you start. I tell people to start with one minute because when I've told people to start with five minutes, I think I'm crazy.

Jeremy: 5:28

For five minutes I said I'm supposed to sit here and just do nothing and just be for five minutes, come on.

Marilisa: 5:36

Yeah. So it's interesting because then I'll tell people how to do it. I'll tell them what it's about. I have an actual. I have a mentor that I seek counsel from and meet with on a monthly basis. And then there's a group that's called a Sangha. It's just a meditation group. It's actually online, but there's local Sanghas in almost every community and Sangha just means group basically, but it's a meditation group. They're free, they're there for the community because we know that when we do things in groups it works better. I went to in California, with Dave Smith of Dave Smith Dharma. I have known him for about 10 years but he's been my mentor for about six years.

Jeremy: 6:27

That was the retreat you went on recently, right?

Marilisa: 6:30

Yeah.

Jeremy: 6:31

I think that was seven days of silence, eight, something like that. Eight days, yeah, eight days.

Marilisa: 6:36

We're a big bear retreat center in California and it's my fifth one that I've done with him, with Dave Smith, and again I was drawn to him because he teaches secular Dharma, so, and Dharma just means teachings and just teaching the basics of what it is, and I mean there's a lot of lists that the Buddhism has. So I mean, but you can apply any of it to just regular life Am I being a good person? Am I doing right? Am I, you know, what am I doing to make my life okay and the people around me having compassion for the people around me? It truly is just a simple, simple practice.

Jeremy: 7:17

One minute Go ahead. I was going to say for somebody that's just starting off. Would you recommend any particular apps? I know for myself I use Sam Harris's Waking Up when I do meditation. I think it's helpful to have a guide if you will somebody there to kind of walk you through the process. Do you have any that you would recommend to any listeners?

Marilisa: 7:39

that are just starting, if you haven't listened to a Dan Harris's book, the 10% Happier the revised edition is actually better than his first one. I just finished that as well. His app 10% Happier it's a paid for app, but there's some ways. There's coupons and there's things like that online. He actually just started a course on there. He's got a bunch of courses and a bunch of different things. One of the courses he's got going right now is called One Minute Meditation.

Marilisa: 8:11

It's literally about teaching you to do one minute of meditation. Some people do better with silence, some people do better guided. There's all different ways. There's concentration meditation, where you just concentrate on a particular item or object. There's the mindfulness, where you're just aware of what's going on in your head, taking a breath. When you find that you've gone off, what am I having for lunch? Oh man, I shouldn't have said that. Oh, I got to get that done. I got to remember to do this. Oh, what's going on with my kids? That's what happens to everybody. There is no such thing as a clear mind. It just is an impossibility. Yeah, when you notice that you're like off everywhere, come back to your breath. For me, focusing on my breath right here is the most helpful. I don't always pay attention to what's here my abdomen or my chest, but I know that I can pay attention to the air coming in and out of my nose.

Jeremy: 9:13

I have the same. You get that feeling. How do you describe it when you focus on the breath?

Marilisa: 9:18

coming in Like a coolness, like a cool sensation in the nose.

Jeremy: 9:21

It's very calming, it's very centering.

Marilisa: 9:23

So when you come back every time, you realize that you've gone off on a thought. Come back to your breath and, before you know it, I try to sit for an hour every morning. Oh, wow, it's one of the things I just do for me. It starts my day, it centers me, and it helps not just with you know how I plan my day. It also helps to keep me centered and my my own mental health helps to keep me in a place. The eight days of silence was challenging, but it was the first one that I went to. That was like there was no major awakenings. It was just like this I'm present, I'm here and it's just for me, because when you go to a silent retreat, there's no eye contact, there's no talking, there's nothing. You are just in your head. So it can be a very noisy place.

Jeremy: 10:17

Right Now are you able to. I think you mentioned you can't even write anything down right during the Right. No writing no reading right.

Marilisa: 10:25

There's no external input. I mean, you're in a beautiful setting and you're in nature, but and I've done the Southern Dharma Retreat Center up in North Carolina a couple of times I did Valle Sito's, which is in northern New Mexico, which is beautiful, and then Big Bear. So it's every environment is different but they're all in nature and that's really important for us. It's not just the meditation it's about, because one of the things I did in North Carolina this summer was Japanese forest bathing which sounds interesting.

Marilisa: 11:02

It's a form of meditation and you actually go into the woods that are encouraged to hug trees and ask permission to be there. It's a really interesting experience and we are taught all these different techniques for being able to focus our mind. And the Japanese forest bathing encourages fox feet, which means you're moving super, as if you're sneaking up on prey, encouraged to move like super slow so that you're paying attention to every single movement. Or deer hearing, where you put your ears here so that it really amplifies the way deers hear things, because you'll notice a deer will move their ears and it's to amplify whatever's around them, so it amplifies. And then he did this thing where we did this exercise with our eyes, the guide that we were for, and it was like amazing because you were taught to look peripherally with both eyes, so it crosses your eyes, but it opened up all these.

Jeremy: 12:09

Yeah, it's a very wild. I'm trying it now.

Marilisa: 12:12

No, no, no, no. Yeah, it takes a minute, but in the woods it just it creates a whole different visual experience, but all of it is about being present. So in my store we have different meditation things. I try to do mindful Monday here in the store so that the area where you walk in the waiting room area, I encourage people to just come in. You know the door's open, just come, sit and we do those kinds of things.

Marilisa: 12:41

Like I said, I meditate every day or almost every day. I'm not perfect and it's just something that helps to focus. Part of what people will use are the singing bowls. People use sounds like I have Buddhas and the Shiva's and all the different statues that are more of the religious side of it or the spiritual side of it, and some people like those Ganesh, you know, the elephant, the Hindu elephant, you know. Those are some of the things that we also have in the store, but you don't need any special equipment to meditate Sit, lay down, walk, stand and there's even laying meditation. Laying down it's just about focusing on your breath and noticing, not trying to do anything to change it, but noticing what it is that's going on, what's around you. What do I need to do. Focus on my breath. That's all.

Jeremy: 13:39

What would you say to somebody like me who is not a beginner? I guess I'm kind of a beginner, but I've been meditating now for several years but it's not consistent, right, it's off and on. I've done it at times daily, but like many other things in my life, it's just not something that's stuck. What would you say to somebody like me to get me to that next level, so I can continue my journey and progress to that? You know that next phase.

Marilisa: 14:05

Well, one of the things that's truly helpful is finding a silent retreat. Yeah, I absolutely recommend doing a three or four day retreat. It's really fascinating what happens in our brains. I can't explain the first. It took me about two days, maybe three days, to actually get present in my own head. The first silent retreat I went to and it allowed me to do some grieving, to notice things that I hadn't paid attention to in my own heart, my own head. So a silent retreat would definitely be something I'd recommend. The other piece is is with mindfulness meditation, you don't need to do it every single morning in a certain way. As you're finishing or between podcasts, sit and set a timer for one minute. You can do that every day, just one minute. I do that often here in my office. People will see me go into the bathroom and I just go into the bathroom to do one minute.

Jeremy: 15:04

Just reset, just breathe, exactly.

Marilisa: 15:07

That's all mindfulness is. It's basically a reset.

Jeremy: 15:10

Alright, so it doesn't have to be a perfectly structured science, it just has to be something important Exactly.

Marilisa: 15:16

But they've noticed the science behind it is amazing. There's so many, so many studies that are coming out now. Harvard is actually doing all the MRI studies where they've noticed that the gray matter in the back you know what this, this shrinks, and our prefrontal cortex here, or the cortices here, grow with a mindfulness practice. They're doing the MRIs of people that meditate and they're seeing the challenges. So this part of the brain is where all of our you know our base functions. You know they call it like our lizard state, our reptilian brain, the reptilian brain.

Marilisa: 15:49

Yeah, the reptilian brain. They notice it that shrinks, they notice that this grows, which is where all of our impulse control is about. So there's all these different components to meditation. That is, it's got a whole science base now. They know what helps with anxiety, they know what helps with depression. They know what helps with post trauma. They do it with vets. They're doing it in large corporations. They're doing it in spiritual circles. They're doing it in schools. Yeah, everybody's doing it. It works.

Jeremy: 16:17

They should write shit like speaking of doing that type of stuff in the schools. That should be like the quintessential part of early educate from very, very early on Yep, and should be. Kids should learn how to implement these practices from a young age because it is so useful.

Marilisa: 16:36

It really is Do it with my kids and my grandkids.

Jeremy: 16:40

I tried it with my kids. It's hard. It's the problem is it's hard, it's hard to get them to sit still. I actually taken the kids both of them to that Botanica organica, the ice bath, sound, healing meditation. Okay, they don't sit for two or three hours, but they've come, they. They jump in the ice, they.

Marilisa: 16:54

They do sit for a little while, they play by the fire, but they're at least they're in that space, right getting exposed to it which is right, and part of what you do with the kids is you just do it for a minute and you do this. I Do that with kids when they're having temper tantrums. I'll look at them and I'll go and they just look at me, yeah, and now they've started doing it. The kids around me have started doing it. When they start and they look at me, look off. So it's kind of funny and it is. It's. There's no harm. And With anything I do, with any of the alternative healing that I offer, any of the you know the different products, the different Crystals, the CBD, all of these other things. It's core. It does no harm, you know, and people will have comments about every side of it. But what does it hurt? It doesn't hurt to try it.

Jeremy: 17:49

Yeah.

Marilisa: 17:51

Again, start with a minute and with the kids there's actual meditations on the insight timer and the insight timer is free and they have meditations for children. They're guided meditations and they're a couple minutes long, but it speaks specifically to children. If you're interested in doing that, some of the teachers I work with they do it in their classrooms with the kids. They'll do it as part of their circle time.

Jeremy: 18:12

Good for them.

Marilisa: 18:13

So I'm excited to see it happening in bits and pieces around the world. But there's enough science now to know that this is something that's truly effective for decreasing aggressive behavior, decreasing violence, decreasing all of the Negative things that are going out, going on around the world. You know it's let's. Let's just find things that are a little bit more peaceful, more calming, you know, and start with one minute. That's all it takes, one minute.

Jeremy: 18:42

Yeah for sure, certainly need some peacefulness and calming in our lives, in the society we live in, because everything is Running a mile a minute and everybody's so consumed and we live in a fast-paced society and I've always say instinct, gratification Society, looking for quick fixes, absolutely sometimes. The answer, more often than not, the answer lies within and that can be cheap through meditation.

Marilisa: 19:07

All the time.

Marilisa: 19:07

The answer lies within we have to start listening to ourselves instead of listening to everything else that goes on around us. We are definitely connected, and one of the reasons I recommend silent retreats is because you are disconnected. You are off the grid, you do not have your phone, you don't have the computer, you don't have anything. Described at this last time it's like being dead, because you absolutely have no control over what's going on outside of the meditation retreat center. You have no control over what your family is doing, your kids are doing with grandkids. You don't, you, your house, nothing. They give you a phone number in case there's an emergency so that your family or somebody could reach out to you, but other than that you are out of control.

Jeremy: 19:48

You have nothing. Yeah, no, definitely. Let me know when the next one comes up. I am interested in exploring that more, for sure.

Marilisa: 19:58

Well, I would. I would absolutely recommend checking out online. Dave Smith Dharma.

Speaker 1: 20:03

He he's.

Marilisa: 20:03

He's got a ton of different courses and teaches you from the basis you know, from the basic all the way up, all the way up through the most advanced. He's been doing it for a really long time. He started with some of the greats as a teenager. I guess his story was like part of the stuff how he got into meditation was all of his friends. His childhood friends were like the kids of all these famous meditation teachers. I know so it's always been a part of him.

Jeremy: 20:30

But I like the method, the way that he teaches, so I'll have to check it out and I'm taking I'm taking a lot of tidbits out of this. I'm going to not be so focused on Making sure that I'm on a strict schedule and I do this at a specific time, and not beating myself up for not adhering to the schedule, but exactly paying attention throughout the day. If I'm having a stressful moment, just back off for a minute.

Marilisa: 20:54

Yeah, 30 seconds 3d breath yeah, yep, 3d breaths will pull you back into focus. That's all this is about just pulling yourself back off the ledge.

Jeremy: 21:07

Oh good, it's something we can talk about meditation forever. We'll definitely I'm sure will probably this will come up again in future conversations. So, Maril isa, always a pleasure, good to see you again.

Marilisa: 21:20

Same here. Same here, Jeremy, all right.

Jeremy: 21:23

Yeah, everyone, take care, we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1: 21:29

Thank you for listening to the Hemp del Soul podcast. Explore our wide range of organic products at Hemp del Soul. com. That's H E M P D E L S O U L dot com, or contact 954 854 1039.