THE BEST OF: How to Conquer Anxiety With Meditation

Published May 7, 2019, 4:01 AM

Bob Roth is one of the most skilled and sought-after meditation leaders in the world. In this episode, Bob explains to everyone (even skeptics) the easiest way to start practicing TM and how finding strength in stillness will help combat stress. From finding your mantra to the best time of day to practice, it’s one of Bob’s most revealing interviews yet!

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You're handsomely dressed. You could easily be walking out of an investment bank office, you could be an a legal firm. You would never pick Bob Roth as a transliental meditation leader. So I don't like to name drop, but I'm gonna name drop. I got a call from Tom Hanks to go over to his house. He was interested in hearing about t M. I was in the neighborhood, so I was dressed like this, and so rang the doorbell and he opened the door and he was visibly shocked and a visit like stunned. And I said what And he said, uh, I thought you were gonna be wearing yoga pants and have one of these man buns. Hey everyone, I'm Doctors and this is the doctor Os podcast. One of my favorite people on the planet is joining us today on the podcast and he's hosted a bunch of stuff. When you hear his voice, you're probab recognize it. But I wanted to have a mom because he taught me to do something that was transformative. Taught Lisa, taught Daphney, taught about She's been working way through the family. But he's not a lot of people that that you may know of and people you don't know. He won't know and won't don't need to know because he's so passionate about getting us to think differently about the power of meditation. He's also a Success Without Stress directs the Center for Leadership Performance. He's a CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, which addresses the epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at risk populations, especially children. It's Bob Roth's so happy to have you here, really happy to be here with both of you, to two of my faiths. Love both very much. We love you. You didn't mention his new book, The book can't give it all away in the beginning, don't go away. There's just a surprise. Wait a commercial right now. It's a surprise, a book by a guy you've never heard of. It's a really transformative book. It is. It's called Strength and Stillness, The Power of Transtill Meditation. He's written before, but this is a beautiful book, elegance, simple, straightforward. In the York Times bestseller Right hosted Bob on the On My TV show and did very well for us, which always to me indicates, I mean people do well on the show because there's a charismatic which you are too, but sometimes the topic is just so compelling that people tune into to see it. So I wanted to have you on the podcast because it's actually a wonderful medium to talk about. Meditation is conducive to people taking a few seconds, take a step back and just look at what's out there and what the opportunities are. So that the phenomenon of transital meditation, let's just start with that. And for the average person listening out there who doesn't know much about it, who thinks it's a religious cult or Harry Christians, people gonn start chanting or they have to dress in saffron robes. What is transcendental meditation? You're both wearing saffron rooms. Turn the inciens up pleased later on um transcendentally you can just say that he just it means deep. So transcendental meditation just deep meditation, and it's in uh. When I talk about what meditation is, I like to use an analogy which you've heard many times. If you're on a little boat and you're in the middle of the ocean, and all of a sudden you get these dirty foot high waves and you could think, oh my god, that's two three stories high. The whole ocean is an upheaval. But if you could do a cross section of the ocean out there, you'd realize you've got these little bitty bitty waves. And in reality, the ocean is over a mile deep. And while the surface may be turbulent, the depth of the ocean by its nature of silence. So we use that as an analogy. Surface of our mind is the monkey mind to the God, to God, to God in mind, and we hypothesize no belief here. We hypothesize the deep within every human being, all of you who are listening moment, and Lisa myself, everybody. There's a level of our mind right now that is already calm, settled, wide awake. It's there. We've lost access to it. And in transient elementitation is a simple, effortless technique that requires no belief, that just allows the active thinking mind as if settled down or sink in and experienced deeper, quieter levels of the mind towards what they call that source of thought that if I may say, if we want to be a skeptic for a moment, WHOA, that sounds nice, but it could be you know it sounds poetic, but it says who yeah, well science, It's interesting that you come at it from a science pspective for folks and one to subscribe me. He's wearing a beautifully pressed shirt with with bespoke cuff links. What it bespoken? They just beat up. Well, you know it's you know, pinstripe suit. I mean, you're you're handsomely dressed. You could easily be walking out of an investment bank office. You could be an a legal firm that could be doing a state planning. Uh. You would never pick Bob Roth as a translatoral meditation leader, and yet that's what you really are for the nation. And it's partly that surprising aspect of how you approach so many people that allows them to lower their defenses and start to listen to what you're saying. So let's talk about the science first. I want to tell you a quick story, please, So I don't like to name drop, but I'm gonna name drop. I got a call from Tom Hanks to go over to his house. He was interested in hearing about t M. I was in the neighborhood, so I was dressed like this, and so rang the doorbell, and he opened the door and he was visibly shocked and a visit like stunted. And I said what And he said, uh, I thought you were gonna be wearing yoga pants and have one of these man buns. And I said to him, was he disappointed? Don't just shocked? You know? And maybe? And I said, if your cardiologist was coming over, you wouldn't think that. So it's all branding. And my whole thing is meditation. It does not have to be strange. It gives a knowledge that's accessible for everybody. So I just dressed you know, the Iron Tream persona. That makes you so intriguing to me, but I'm certainly many others. Why do you do this? You could be You're highly intelligent, effective individual. You could do a lot of things. You could organize rock concerts because hang out on nash Room. Why spend your life teaching TM? Yes, your teach t M to all the famous people, but you teach I'll do it for exactly, teach t M to school kids around the country in trouble neighborhood. You spend your life doing stuff that is God's work, but you don't call it that. So then I'll come back to the science. The thing is, I grew up in a very, very very political household where we talked politics all the time, and you have to sort of be in the fifties and sixties in the bear No, no one's actually loving, but we were very concerned about politics, and you know, Kennedy and Nixon and Johnson and Goldwater. But that was like our religion almost. And I worked for Senator Bobby Kennedy as a high school senior, and I wasn't a Republican or Democrat. I just wanted to make a better world. And I thought, oh, this is an activist guy. I'm an activist. And I saw him speak on June one, nine four days later he was and for us a seventeen year old kid, devastating. So I went to college. I went to university in October with the desire the intention of becoming a lawyer, go to law school and be a U S senator like Bobby Kennedy, to change the world. So my my trajectory was I wanted social transformation in a fair minded, middle of the road sort of thing, and um along the way that fell aside because I didn't think you could heal the nation soul in the nation through politics. And my dad was a doctor, so I sort of felt like a healer, and step step step, I become. I decided to become. I learned to meditate, and my first while I'm at college, and my first experience after learning, after settling down, was not after meditating. The first time, oh, I want to get enlightened. It was, oh, I'd like to teach this to inner city school kids. And that was June nineteen. Why did you get exposed to meditation before l s D. I was never no. I was never into that stuff. I was not into drugs. I was not into radical politics, radical religion. I just was a kid, normal kid who just love sports, love life, you know, just wanted to make a better world. And I was going to school full time, working full time. And the summer, I mean in the sixty nine they were like rioting in the streets over Vietnam, so I was pretty stressed out. Someone told me about meditation. I said, not on your life. I'm a skeptic. I don't even know what it means. But I trusted this guy. He was he was down to earth, he was normal, and he said, try it if you don't like it quit and I liked it. I'll ge get a quick break when we come back. But Bob says, the skeptics probably like you. The science of transplant meditation is what got me interested in it, because there has been because it is a way of doing it that's pre reproducible. There's been a fair amount of research on it. And I'd love if you can walk us through, not in a rapid fire away, but you know, slow it down force we can all grasp. But how profoundly this is important? This is it. If we had a drug that did this, it would be a blockbuster. Norman Rosenthal said, did you see he said on the Dr Norman Rosenthal wrote book Transcendence. He said, Uh, if TM were a pill, it would be a billion dollar for just the effects it has on the cardiovascular system. Would be a billion dollar blockbuster. So why is it? They explained that, Well, we know there's an end you talk about both of you talk about it all the time on your shows. We know there's an intimate connection between your mind and your body. If you're anxious in your mind, your body is tense. I'm just gonna keeps this very simple. So during transcendental meditation on that cross section analogy cross section, analogy of the cross section of the ocean. As your mind just settles down from a more heated, agitated level of the mind to cooler, calmer level of the mind. As your mind settles down, your body gains a state of rest in many regards, actually deeper than sleep. So you have a reduction and oxygen oxygen consumption. You have a reduction in cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone by you have an increase in serotonin, which is the happiness neurotransmitter. You have an increase in galvanic skin resistance, which shows that you're calmer. A whole constellation of changes just because of the connection between your mind and your body. It's not surprising whatsoever. The amazing thing to me is what takes place in the brain. There's a u a spreading of what they call alpha one. Alpha one is eight to ten cycles per second of the brain brain wave pattern, and it's a state of deep inner reflection and wakefulness, and the whole brain is sort of bathed with the spreading of alpha one. And that's uh. You're a unique state of RESTful alertness during TM that you don't find in sleep you don't find in in mindful to other mindfulness practices, and that experience moment is the basis of all the changes. I mean, you talk about the benefits to heart heals better than I do. Let's get into this time. But so your your brain exhibits waves that we believe our healing waves. And we're not quite sure why it happens. But the reason that I like it is because it changes my mindfulness for the rest of the day. And I'm curious if some of the plasticity, neural plasticity, so your your brain, like if you actuallyize your biceps, get your biceps, get some big and manly your brain get We don't want no, no, just I think what you have is when you're stressed. The prefrontal cortex are the frontal lobes, which is executive functioning. It's the size of your fist behind your forehead. When you're stressed, the prefinal cortex goes offline and sort of what dominates, and you can add to this is the amygdala, which is the reactivity center. And um, so what happens when you settle down or transcenduring transcendental meditations, you can actually see connections between the prefrontal cortex and the back of the brain, come back online, connections within the prefrontal cortex, calming of the amygdala. There's even something you know the default mode network, which is also called the imagination network. That's sort of creativity center of the brain that gets enliven during t M. So there's a whole integrated brain reaction, completely different than napping, completely different than sleeping, completely differently hypnosis or anything else. And through the word neuroplasticity, they say when the neurons fire together in meditation, they wire together out of meditation, and that's what we see in schools. So strength is stillness. Your new book gets into details, It gets into some of the details of how you make this practical. Just a puss of numbers on it. I know that there's data that shows that things is varied as psoriasis and your skin can be treated to blood pressures. Numbers in hypertensive African Americans in the inner city. So I mean, how far part can you get from in conditions? And you can probably listen, please do a couple more areas where you're really competent. The science has arrived, so they have school they've done staies in schools with graduation with soldiers. The Department of Defense UM provided two and a half million dollars for a phase two clinical trial with two hundred post not eleven veterans who suffered from postraumatic stresses sort. It was a randomized control trial and it UH compared TM with just standard care and something called prolonged exposure, which is you show the veteran films of truck tanks being blown up and that's supposed to numb them to their past trauma and IF and the research from that RCT randomized control trial was the TM was as effective, not more effective than randomize and then prolonged exposure, and far better than standard care. And so now the v A is now offering TM for treatment of opioid addiction. They're paying for that. So there's that area. There's areas in education with this reduced suspensions and expulsions and improved graduation rates. The HOSE TM affected you. I'm dealing with the PTSD of having to live with you cop with recovery. Talk about that first recovery members a strength in stillness that still parts the operative time. I have to just I just have to stay interrupt here because it was many years ago and I have taught many people, but getting to do no he was remember we were sitting in that in a living room and it was like I have not forgotten that for an instant, and then we all went out for Japanese because the best time, the best time. Um. No, you know, I I loved learning t M. I have to admit I am not a regular TOM practitioner. I do meditate, and I actually want you to talk a little bit about the different types of meditation. Um because this is like really bad for me to say. I'm gonna just say it on the Army tide right now. I didn't love my mantra, and that's not bad. It's not because it's nothing bad. I felt really guilty because I just had a kind of like a negative response to mantra. So I'll meditate. I'll do the meditation, but I won't always use the mantre you gave me. And sometimes I'll be like ten minutes into the montre you gave me and I'm like, I don't like this one. I'm glad you are just a different person. Two things. Here, it's a free world, so you get to do whatever you want. And the second thing is, I would love to and I've done this with Memo, and I'd love to get together with you for half an hour sometime and just do a little refresher and see how you feel after that. Because the transcendentlementation is effortless, and if we make any effort, or if there's a resentment to resistance, then it's not TM and it's a horrible experience. It's that delicate because the ability to transcend, transcend means to settle down or to go beyond the noise and the excitation and heat to that tender, tender, calm, peaceful level within. And if there's any effort in doing that, then we can be very resentful of the mantra any mantra any sound. So let's just I think I'm really glad you brought that up. You can say anything, but but let's let's get to the much because strengthen this illness. You you point out that the importance of it. I happen to love by mantra. I have the perfect mantra. I can remember it almost designed for me, although I'm sure that there's millions of other people more than that have that. But why is the manchest so important? And just to get this issue of because you brought up of the emotional response. Meditation is not about getting rid of the emotions. So and you talk about in the book, so please walk us through that. Well again, let's use that analogy of the ocean. You know how you say, oh, that little kid is a hothead and he's boiling over with rage, and the poor little kid's body is tense. And now we say, oh, that little kid is cool, calm and collected, and we say, cooler minds will prevail and the body is more fluid. So we know the mind is a system that can be heated and can be calm. And the purpose of a mantra a sound in TM as a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it. It's not a doesn't mean anything, and you're taught how to use it effortlessly, and it serves as a vehicle for the mind to just dip in. Now, if you're repeating it too clearly, they'll hate it. If you're using it with any force, you'll hate it. And it's not the mantra's fault. It's my fault because I didn't teach you well enough so that's why I want to do that. Does it perfectly? Would you do? Could we do that? Absolutely? When we come back more questions with Bob or the most skilled is sought out to meditation leaders in the world. He has answers. So there are other ways of meditating. People will do the same. I don't know, like with a mandala is it the same type? So what you have is there's this idea of transcendence, which is that if you look up the word transcendence, it means to go beyond ordinary human limitations. And some people look for transcendence to go beyond. Oh, I want to jump higher, I want to write a motorcycle faster, I want to change my you know, like, but those are just different things than the extraordinary becomes ordinary because their surface. Real transcendence is accessing that timelessness that you feel within and you can have that with your partner at some moments, you know, just time slips away when you hold a baby in your arms, newborn baby, time slips away sometimes in sports or music or listening to music. Is that inner calm and so the purpose of all these different approaches are to access that inner calm. And that's why I said, it's not one or the other, it's yes. And because you can approach it from different directions. So for listeners who don't have access to you, or of course who may be in a remote area, is there something they can do as a bridge until they can get to a t M course, something that so that could dip into meditations like a t M light that would help. I personally think there are many meditations that actually cause people more frustration because they're told don't think thoughts, clear your mind of thoughts, or imagine something, and those things can be actually more stressful. I just tell people, listen to some beautiful music, go for a walk, be kind to yourself for twenty minutes, don't judge yourself. Oh I'm no good at this, and pressure. Just take time out and then go online tm dot org it's a nonprofit organization and see if there's not a teacher in your area or a teacher coming to your area. But but investigated and strength and stillness is a really good question. I gave it to her. I know all the good ideas of getting to do the show with these two. This is like a blissful experience this week trying to cornb we're all weekend strengthen s Illness has a quoting it that it's it's profoundly important. I'm gonna read it to you and get your response. It's a vehicle to lead the mind to the source of the thought. And you've explained that elegantly and almost purpose hemded pedestrian. But there's an incredible depth to what it feels like to do TM, and I'd love if you could explain what the source of the thought is and how it gets us there and in that I'm gonna challenge you because you're a skeptic initially, and I want to understand how you got past that to appreciate this pass it from direct experience, I liked that I could be skeptical. I like that I could be a hundred percent skeptical and I could learn the meditation. I like that. And as I said before, I thought I'd try it. If I didn't like it, stop and so, and I trusted that my friend who was doing it, he seemed like a normal person. I didn't want to get anything weird, and so I got over it. From experience, I'm still a very skeptical person. I'm not into new age. I'm not into womb. I'm my father's son. You know. My father's son used to tell me to be a little lightened up. And he was a real skeptic, you know, from Detroit radiologists and physicist. You know, it's like so and and the idea of a source of thought. The beautiful thing is you read literature and there's this beautiful whether it's the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, or be still and know that I am God, or aloud to the great Chinese philosopher said, um, the universe surrenders to the quiet mind. So it's just throughout the literature that there's levels within everyone that you can access. I was never into philosophizing about it. I wanted to let me experience it. If if I experience, then I got it. And it's not that I believe in it. It's my experience. So that's got You've just heard from one of the most skilled and sought off the meditation leaders in the world. Bob rob has to be a very good friend as well. Just to mention, you can hear lots more of what he has to say, and they've beautifully crapp the book Strength and Stillness, Dear Time's best seller for a good reason. The Power o TM translal Meditation. God bless you, God bless you both, and I really love you both

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