(Ep. 68) A Roadmap to True Freedom – Science, Stillness, and the Compassion Method

What if the freedom you're searching for isn't found by doing more, but by learning how to be still?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Friese explore what they call a roadmap to true freedom, weaving together neuroscience, emotional healing, the Compassion Method, and faith to show why lasting transformation begins with slowing down instead of striving harder.

Laura explains that our brains are wired to stay busy, solve problems, and react automatically, making stillness feel uncomfortable, even threatening. 

But it's in those quiet moments that we notice what's actually happening inside us. Rather than rushing to fix our emotions, we can learn to observe them with compassion, reconnect with our true self, and discover the freedom that has been there all along.

The conversation offers both the science behind why stillness changes the brain and practical ways to incorporate it into everyday life. 

Whether you're constantly busy, struggling with emotional triggers, or longing to hear God's voice more clearly, this episode offers a simple but powerful invitation: stop striving, become present, and let healing unfold.

In this episode:

🔹 Why the brain naturally resists stillness—and how that keeps us trapped in old emotional patterns

🔹 The connection between neuroscience, emotional healing, and the Compassion Method

🔹 Why awareness begins with slowing down instead of trying to fix yourself

🔹 How stillness creates space to hear your emotions, reconnect with your true self, and experience God's presence more deeply

🔹 A practical daily exercise to help you become more aware of your body, your emotions, and the identity that's underneath them all

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hello and welcome to this episode of Triggered and True featuring renowned emotional health consultant Laura Duncan. Thank you for being here, and thank you for investing the time to learn how to take care of your soul. If this podcast sparks any questions, feel free to submit a question by going to triggeredandtrue.com, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking ask. If you would like to learn more about Laura Duncan, we encourage you to follow Laura on Instagram and Facebook. Also, a great resource for you to consider is the Compassion Method Master Course. The Compassion Method is a process that empowers you to learn to see and comfort your internal pain and to discover your true self. Your true self, that beautiful, wonderful part of you that has been there all along, but has simply been covered up. To obtain the master course, you go to compassionmethod.net and as a podcast listener, you qualify for a $50 discount that can be obtained by typing in the coupon code podcast50. Again, that's compassionmethod.net, coupon code podcast50. We hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Triggered and True. Hi Laura, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. How are you doing, Brian? I'm good. You know, we were talking a little bit uh beforehand, but I rushed right into business and didn't talk about like the small talk of like, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

How are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Are you okay? Is everything going well for you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I am doing well.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

I'm uh I'm kind of all business sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

It's focused.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

I'm focused. Well, we're gonna speak about focus today.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

So uh today the title of today's episode is uh a roadmap to true freedom, science, stillness, and the compassion method. And a little bit already, and a little bit of Bible in there too, of course. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Throw it all in there because that's a part of it. That's part of the roadmap to real true freedom.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

The true freedom, a roadmap to true freedom, science, stillness, and the compassion method. So uh the genesis of today's podcast came from another podcast that I listened to. Um, for those familiar, maybe you've ever heard of it, it's called the Huberman Podcast. And this was, uh we'll put it in the show notes, but this was from an episode they did uh March 11th, 2024, if anybody wants to go pick it up. So uh I'm just gonna give kind of a little summary of that, and then we're gonna tie this into why it's so important and has so much bearing to the compassion method. And that's where Laura's gonna come in to drive home.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

That's where I shine. That's where she's gonna shine, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:17

So in this episode, they talked a lot about um how important it is for the brain to have downtime. And just like with the compassion method, when Laura was first explaining the brain science, it kind of drew me in. And when she was explaining the brain science behind a trigger, and you know, when when you were doing all those things, it really pulled me in to be like, you know, maybe there is something to this because my logical brain was firing, you know, my more developed side of my brain. And it helped, it helped me just kind of make sense of it. So this episode that they these guys were talking about, heavy science. This is heavy, extreme logic, extreme left brain, and we're gonna pull in the right brain, okay, after I go through a little bit more of the summary. But they talked about how important it was for the brain to have downtime for memory consolidation and learning. And if we don't give our brains a break, we really stifle our brain's ability to learn and to have memory. And they talked about this. Uh, the science behind it is um Huberman explains that brief periods of idle time or gaps, calls it gap time, uh, between focus efforts allow the hippocampus, which is a key part of our brain that's involved in memory, to replay recent experiences at an accelerated rate. So he says this is similar to what happens during deep sleep. And in deep sleep, the brain consolidates learning by strengthening, strengthening neural connections. And these effects, these gap effects, speed up learning, neuroplasticity. And uh his guest that he had on the show was a gentleman by the name of Cal Newport, who wrote a book called Deep Work, and he talks a lot about the importance of boredom and getting comfortable with boredom and how we live in a time that it where human beings are so hyper-stimulated because of the technology. Yeah well, it really kind of started with the advent of the light bulb, if you really want to go back.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

I was gonna say there wasn't actually the internet around when I was a kid, and I was definitely bored and struggled with it.

unknown 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Well, yeah, there you go. But um, but the but the point of it is that we live in a very hyper-stimulated time where we have so much access to technology, entertainment, all these things, that it's hard to give our brain the space, which and so a lot of what Cal Newport's book is about, about and he talks about how he trained himself to be just more comfortable with boredom. And I was thinking as I was listening to this, you know, even when I'm at a uh, you know, a doctor's office in a waiting room, like I feel like you got your phone with you, you're like, Oh, I'll just look on my phone. Like, just sitting and staring out the window, or even just flipping through a magazine or something, like it just isn't done. Like it feels like it almost feels awkward to even be on an elevator. Yeah. To not pull out your phone and look at it. It almost feels awkward just to stand there, you know. So this is definitely a society-wide thing, and and you know, and then they just talked about why this constant stimulation is so harmful because our brain wasn't meant to be on 24-7. It was meant to have these gap effects. It was meant to have that, and obviously, all of this hyper stimulation is affecting people's sleep as well. Yeah, having huge impacts. And uh, this connected to some stuff that I had read in in years past from um kind of one of my, you know, I read a lot, I like to read. So these people's books and stuff that I read, they become like my mentors. So I don't know them. Yeah, they don't know me, I don't know them, but I look at them kind of as mentors. And one of those mentors is uh Charlie Munger, who's more who's Warren Buffett's business partner who recently passed away. He just shy of his 100th birthday.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

He was he was still going strong, but he missed his, they were gonna have a big 100th birthday celebration for Charlie, but he he died a few months uh prior uh to them being able to do that. But but he has a quote that I read in a book about him called The Tau of Charlie Munger by David Clark. It says, Charlie says, I think people who multitask pay a huge price. They believe that when they multitask, they are being super productive. But in reality, that if you don't have time to think about something deeply, you are giving your competitors who might be thinking deeply a great advantage over you. So the book goes on to say Charlie's ability to focus intensely and really think about something has been his competitive edge in beating Wall Street at its own game. Uh another author that I read a lot is uh Morgan Housell. And um he's a he's a uh economist, a behavioral economical economist. And he says, I read a blog of his recently and he said how a lot of jobs in our world today are thought jobs, they're thinking jobs. And he said, but the bosses, of which I'm one of them, we don't really reward our people for the thinking. We reward them to be doing all the time.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, for the producer.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

So he's like, he's like, you know, just sitting at your desk and staring at a whiteboard for two hours, your boss is not gonna think you're being very productive. But he's like, but that's where true ideas happen. That's where the some of the best ideas strength you know come from. Yeah. And he said, like, how often do people go on vacation, come back and say, I got this great idea? Because they finally took the downtime. You know, the brain science was we let the brain rest, we let it consolidate thought, memories, thinking, and we did that. And and this is so true. Like, I think of my time, some of my best ideas happened sitting on a beach, you know, reading a book, staring at the water, or going for a walk. And going for walks is so so important. So here's where we're going with all this, and here's where you're gonna come in and shine. All right. So when I was listening to that Huberman podcast, um, it was uh uh the Cal Newport, Dr. Newport, who who shared that you know, he developed all this discipline around this. Like he doesn't use social media at all. Yeah, he he has a phone. I can't remember if it was a smartphone or if it was just one of the throwbacks. I think it is a smartphone yet, but he doesn't do social media, explain how he's all this discipline about email and all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

But then they went on to share that he still struggles with insomnia. And I was thinking to myself, discipline alone will get you so far.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

But there's a very good chance insomnia could be connected to matters of the heart.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

And so kind of the point of this is that the science kind of got me in the door, like with your material.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yep. But it's not what brought the healing.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

No.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

You know, it brought some awareness and it and it really kind of opened me up because it was the ice, a bit of an icebreaker for me, because I kind of thought what you understand it and maybe trust it more. Yeah, exactly. I thought what you did was, Laura, I thought you were weird.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

No, I didn't really not at all. I didn't think what you're the probably the most normal person I know, to be honest. But anyway, the rest of us are got issues. But the I didn't think you were so much weird, just maybe some of the stuff you were talking about. Because it was so foreign.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

Well, and also, too, the irony of it is just a little brief snippet, is a lot of the things that I teach today, I used to think was weird too. Because I didn't understand the brain science behind it. I just thought people were just coming up with these like ideas about how we're supposed to connect with like our child self, for example. And it sounded very weird to me and sounded very like I didn't understand it at all. In fact, like when I'd hear people talk about it, I would actually like be resistant towards it because I didn't understand the science behind it. So I just thought it was just this like weird idea of connecting to your child self.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you thought it was weird too.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

I did. I totally did. I did not get it at all until the science. And the science is helpful, but like you said, understanding without application is not healing.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yes. Yes, right, right. And I kind of recognize in that podcast, they were able to really explain the science really well.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yes, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

At a level where we probably, you know, the average bear does not need to go that far. Yeah, exactly. Um, they all they kind of lost me, and and but yet, um, but I recognize that even though like the one gentleman was able to bring a tremendous amount of discipline, which I can relate to because I can be very, very disciplined.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

But like that discipline alone just doesn't bring the freedom.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

No, it doesn't. In fact, a lot of times discipline is suppression. So we are disciplined not to do something because of the negative characteristics of it, but that actually is suppressing why it's negative, negative for us in the first place. You know, social media is such a great one. People are always taking breaks on it. Yep. But then usually coming back to it, or even the people that decided to give it up completely haven't dealt with why did social media bother you in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Well, and whatever, you know, social media, whatever painful part of your inner world it was helping you deal with, yeah, you're probably just replacing it with something else.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah. But I remember what you told me, I don't know if you remember this, but um, you told me around social media, you said don't don't focus on stopping doing it. Instead, when you find yourself going to your phone, can you see my phone here? I don't I can't see myself, so I can't tell. But yeah, all right. So um, whenever you find yourself going to your phone, instead of just saying, slapping your hand and saying, bad Brian, what are you doing? Ask, get curious with it.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

And ask yourself, well, what what do I what is this? What am I feeling right now?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah. My one of my students, um, because we have an alumni group, and we were talking about a certain, I keep, I'm starting to put like questions on there to get people interacting more. And we had one question that we were talking about, and it was about our relationship with social media. And one of my students said she has started doing compassion scrolling, where she'll like sit with herself in compassion, connected to her true self, and go through scrolling as an opportunity to connect with herself, to understand what's hurting, to understand what's helping. What you know, like she would pay attention to what she's getting out of it and what is why does she go towards it? Because it's not just all bad, you know, we're actually getting needs met from it too, but we're not aware of it because we're just in the scrolling with no pause rest to actually pay attention to what we're doing. So, like what we're talking about today is so huge in the sense of until we pause and rest and connect, we're not going to be able to actually recognize why we're turning to social media in the first place. We just slap our hands and say social media is bad, takes your time, causes a lot of triggers, a lot of distress, instead of saying, hey, what is it inside of me that is actually getting a need met from social media?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of stopping doing stopping to feel it, use it as an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Yeah, because he just removed it, but there were still the same factors within his internal world that were still happening, regardless of the catalyst of social media.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Right. Right. Which reminds me of like something I've heard before, like forced abstinence is not freedom.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Like there's no freedom in that.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Exactly. And I often say like the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. So if we have an addiction and we become sober, that doesn't mean we actually got the connection that's needed to be the opposite of addiction.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and as I've revisited what you shared with me all those years ago and and thought through my relationship with social media or my phone. And for me, it's kind of even just really more my phone than is social media. Because it's for me, I'll tell you what drives me more than anything is email. My email inbox is what drives me.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

You know, because it's like constantly something's coming in for me to do.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

To read, to address, some of it to reply to, some of it not. But like what I'm really doing is I'm medicating with doing. That's the dopamine hits I'm getting is I'm doing something.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Keeping that machine going, like the email machine, which is connected to your business, to you personally, whatever you have your email connected to, you're keeping that machine going so that you can have that feeling, that medication of performance and producing.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah. And so when I recognize when I'm doing that, if I really am okay with you know getting connected with what I'm feeling, I'm anxious. And really it's kind of that's there's a scared, you know, there's a scaredness in there that I'm trying to assage with it. And yes, I'm getting the dopamine hits, but ultimately it's it's not really very helpful. And I actually shared something with my wife last night. I'm in a very busy season of work, it's very, very exciting. We're gonna have our largest growth year as a company since we started 27 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

It looks awesome. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

It could still get derailed, but it's still, it looks like that's what's gonna happen. That's amazing, and it's just so it's it's exciting, but like in that excitement creates this energy that's very similar to anxiety. So excitement and anxiety are kind of like we know all these things travel the same tracks, right? You know, but um, but then you start thinking about you know, getting it all done and what can go wrong. But so I told her last night, I said, I feel kind of emotionally unstable, you know, and um and she shared with me this morning something that uh she picked up from I think a student in one of her yoga classes. She um the student said, um sometimes when you have those feelings, you you feel like, oh, I thought I had some victory here, right? And I think as someone that's been like myself, that's been through the compassion method for a long time, sometimes I think, well, I should have, you know, we've talked about this before, but like I feel like I should be past this now. Yeah. And and this uh this person that's a counselor that's in in her yoga class, uh, that person said, he said, um, think of it like this that you're revisiting an old feeling, but with a new skill.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

That's a really great way to say it.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

These feelings we've had that have been with us for as long as we can remember.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

And we've had these systems and ways of taking care of it, that a lot of them are not horribly productive.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

But now we have new skills. And this is what we're learning. Everybody listening to this podcast, that's whether you're listening for the first time today or you've been a listener for a while, yeah. Every time you listen, you're learning new skills.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

You're learning new ways to approach things, new ways ultimately to take care of your heart, to take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

That makes so much sense because if you think about it, we've been triggering our whole entire lives.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

We just weren't aware that we were triggering until some point in our life we became aware of it.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

And then we became aware of tools or resources that can help us with that. But we've been feeling these feelings the whole time. That's not new. But it how we are approaching it and how we're seeing it and what we're doing with it, that's what's new.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Right. Right. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, because you're right. I mean, um, most of us are very unaware unless our trigger rises to a state where like the police have to be called or we got to- Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Or it becomes so uncomfortable or unbearable, we won't face it.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

And it's connected with what we're talking about in this podcast. Yeah, we won't stop and face it. It's nothing new. It's been with us forever, but we won't stop and face it because we don't want to feel that boredom, that emptiness, that void. And so a big part of why we do stay in that perpetual place, whether it's social media, email, working out your career, whatever it might be, we stay in that constant engagement because we don't want to face what we felt before, because we didn't know what to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah. Boredom is so uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yes, it's it is so uncomfortable. Well, boredom mimics um disconnection, specifically in early childhood development. One of the things I talk about with boredom is boredom is actually a need for connection, connection with self or connection with others.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

So boredom, we think, is to do more. If we do more, we won't be bored. But we actually have to be more connected to ourself and others for boredom to feel feel peaceful, to feel content.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Well, but here's the other side of this. This gets kind of deep, maybe a little heady.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Yeah, no, I like it.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

But perhaps boredom is never supposed to exist.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Hmm. That's true, because if you were fully connected, you wouldn't be yourself.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

You're always with yourself.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

If you had that connection, especially early childhood development and then connection with ourselves, you wouldn't be bored. And that's actually true because I used to be so bored that it was like a common feeling that I felt. I can look back through my childhood and see bored. Yep, all along the way. And I like to have fun and I like adventure and I like those things. And so when nothing was going on, I re can specifically remember feeling that as a common thread throughout my whole life. But I when I now as an adult, I'm way more content on my own. I know that I'm not gonna miss out, I'm gonna be okay, and I can actually enjoy just myself. I just went and did a weekend um or day and a half by myself. And I loved it. Like I like wasn't bored.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Because I'm more full now. Because I know I'm more connected to myself. My needs are met. I'm more, you know, aware of myself. It doesn't feel boring anymore. It actually feels very like satisfying and content.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Right. Right. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

That's that's really good. And I and I think in that um in that episode where they were getting really deep into the science, that that podcast I was mentioning, the Huberman one, they did talk about how boredom was, if you think about it, boredom is not supposed to not really supposed to be somewhere where you live, because you know, to some degree we need to stay productive to survive.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Yeah. You know, so it's kind of like growing and producing is important.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

But I think that what we're talking about is that if we were really comfortable being at home with ourself, like like boredom's like not really gonna exist.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Mm-mm. No, I can totally see that in my life. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yeah. Well, and I always I always get a kick out of how you have these, you know, like going away and like part of your homework that you had given yourself once was to go away like on a camping trip. Like you you would try to do this once a year just by yourself and face that.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Face yourself boring. Yes, boring would be the biggest thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

But like forcing yourself to be with yourself a little bit, you know, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

And it was very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Whereas sometimes I feel like I might enjoy something like that too much.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

That's probably true.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Because my trigger is a little different, and where my pain is is because not growing up, not feeling like I'm enough, being around people is exhausting because you're constantly trying to show it, you know, compensate for your feelings of not being enough. Say the right things, do the right things, and just not being around people can be like, yeah, I can relax, you know. So I'm almost the opposite where I've got to force myself into the chaos, the chaotic environments.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Being because you're a little bit more introverted, I'm a little bit more extroverted, whatever name you want to put on it. And I can see how I got a lot of my needs met from being around other people. So I did not want to be by myself. And you got more needs met being by yourself than being with other people, and so it's safer to you to be by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Nobody to pick on you, no boys, you know.

unknown 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Which is also why I've always enjoyed, like, um, you know, I like so when I like being by myself, I like the outdoors, love it, yeah, you know, like snowshoeing, hikes, all those things. And sometimes they're like, Well, you want to have so-and-so go with you. I'm like, no, no, I really kind of like go by myself, you know. So I really enjoy those things, but I also enjoy big cities. Even though there's a lot of people around, it's so easy to be anonymous.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

You're gonna go to really cool places, but nothing's required of you, and you don't have to participate. You just get a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

And you are not gonna bump into people you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Nope, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Now, in a big city, you're like the odds of you bumping into somebody you know is so much less, and you can just be anonymous, which is why some of the loneliest people in the world live in the big cities.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Exactly. You can be around people but not be with people.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yep. But the key to both of ours issues is yours is how do you be with yourself when there aren't people around.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Mine is how do I be with myself when there are people around?

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yes, exactly. That's so good.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Because you told me once, I remember I have this in my notes too. You said you can be your own best friend at the party.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

And I remember that one time I went to like a, I can't remember if it was like a, I think it was a birthday party for one of my wife's friends. And it was at a bar, there was a lot of people drinking. They had the benefit of having something to take the edge off, you know, and then buddy duddy me had to quit drinking, so I don't get to enjoy that edge taking off thing, you know. So, and I remember thinking to myself, while I was there, I'm like, you know what? I don't have to impress them, I can just be with me. Yeah, you know, and um and I might not be as gregarious and outgoing as all of these people that especially have this benefit of, you know, having a six pack in them, but I can still be with me, and I remember that being very freeing.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

So the solution is the same.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

The solution is the same. But as with many things in science, as with pretty much all things, like the Bible was ahead of it. So um there's a verse that's always impressed upon me that's very related to what we're talking about here, which is Psalm 46, 10.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Um it says, Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. If we can't be still, there's a lack of knowing.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Yeah. There's a lack of experiencing experiencing, yeah, because knowing is experiencing. And if you can't be still, you can't experience.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yes, right, right. So all this stuff about giving your hippocampus a break and da-da-da-da-da, all these things, you know, that we figured out and we found this part of our brain, we decided to name the hippocampus. Um, you know, the Bible was, you know, centuries ahead of Ottawa, yeah, telling us, yeah, you need these things, you need this time. And um, you know, I think early in my Christian life, I would be like, okay, how do I force myself to do this? And I'm realizing um I cannot force myself to do anything.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah, ultimately. Like we can for a little while. It works, it works for a little while.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

But forcing yourself is like trying to do something for somebody else. You know, it's like, you know, you want somebody else, like your spouse, to be okay, to be fixed, to be changed. That's kind of the same thing that we do towards ourself in that same way, where we're trying to force ourselves without actually connecting to ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Right.

unknown 29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

I know it's interesting how you can't even force yourself at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

So I I did a little word study uh in that verse, and so I think like when I hear the word be still, you know, the first thing I think about is um physical quietness. But if you kind of do a word study here and look at more of what the Hebrew means, uh, it's a little bit more than that. So I was just gonna share that because I thought it was very interesting. So the phrase be still from the Hebrew Rafa, Rafa, Rafa. So the phrase be still from the Hebrew Rafa meaning to sink down, relax, let go, cease striving, or even have leisure. Or even just go have fun. Well, I wouldn't have thought of that in the be still part, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Be still sounds boring and no fun.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't fun. You can have leisure. So it goes on to say it's not just about physical quietness. In the context of Psalm 46, a psalm written amid chaos, war threats, and upheaval, it's a divine command to stop fighting, striving, or controlling in our own strength, and instead surrender to God's sovereignty. God is speaking here, often interpreting, often interpreted as addressing both his people and their enemies, urging them to cease their frantic efforts because he alone is God, exalted above all the turmoil. Yeah, so the stillness uh involves releasing the need to fix everything. Oh boy. I'm kind of I'm a fixer. I'm a fixer.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Uh oh, that stillness is looking less inviting all the time. The more you go down these descriptive uh words, it's getting worse.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Now I'm just using it Yeah, well, and like what you were talking about, it creates space for that experiential awareness of God's presence.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Exactly. And it that only comes from that stillness. Just like in the compassion method, when we pause for a minute and we and we pause circumstances and we go inward, that's that stillness.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah. Yep. Oh, that's really good. And I I connect it back to um um John 8, 23 through 24, which I just reread this in the message Bible the other day, and it so hit home. Uh the verse says, Jesus said you're tied down to the mundane, but I'm in touch with what is beyond your horizons. This is the message translation, which he does such a great job with this. But he says, Jesus says, I'm in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch, I'm living on other terms. Because he knew how to be still.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

And the Bible talks about that repeatedly. He went off by himself. He went off, he was able to be talk about a lot of chaos going on around him.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah. He was able to connect with himself in that stillness, which is so valuable.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

And that got him in touch with what you know, you're all tied down by the mundane. This is this is the human experience. Yeah, we are tied down to the mundane.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

We don't rec we don't recognize that the mundane is the matrix. For those of you familiar with the movie The Matrix, the mundane is the matrix.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Elon Musk always jokes about like, we live in a matrix. I'm like, yeah, we do. You know, he's like, he's like, you know, he theorizes like, I wonder if we live in a matrix. I'm like, yeah, we do. We a thousand percent do. We are tied down to the mundane. We we think we think this world is like the end all be all when really it's fading and disappearing and going away. And the true reality is what Jesus is talking about here. I'm in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I'm living on other terms.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yeah, which is ultimately one of the core components of the compassion method is that superpower kind of feeling of your external worlds, your external world does not have to determine your inner world. That's what he's really saying. He's saying, I live beyond circumstances having more power over me. And he's inviting us into being able to say the mundane external circumstances don't have to have the same power over us if we're connected internally. We can live and even scientifically, our brain can think and create outside of our experiences, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Or it can mine from those experiences the truth. Yeah with the 10 gifts.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Like, hey, I didn't get the gift of enough when I was a child from my parents, but where did I get it?

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

You know, so I love it. I mean, it's just so good. And like you said, the superpower, and if you think about it, that superpower is available to every single one of us. I used to think flying was the best superpower.

SPEAKER_03 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Um I I just remember I wrote about this in the book, but it's coming out, you know, sometime this year. But I wrote about how as a little kid I would fly around from in the haymow from one stack of hay bales to another like I was Superman, because I thought flying was the greatest superpower. I don't think that anymore. I think that learning to be okay in this chaotic world where very oftentimes it's not okay all around me.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

That's a superpower.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

I fully agree. Because anything is possible. That's where faith lives, that's where you know, belief, hope, everything lives in that knowing that we're okay, even if our external world is not okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yeah. So, like, what advice, Laura, would you give, you know, for someone to getting very, very practical? The remote control exercise is a great, I mean, it starts with the pause. But what other advice would you give to someone as they're hearing this and they're trying to like, okay, how do I incorporate what they're talking about in my life in a like super practical way that doesn't require me to go read a book or listen to podcasts? Like, what could I do today from this information that I could just go and implement?

SPEAKER_02 35:45

So I don't I don't know if we've posted this before, but I know we've talked about it. But I have that um five-minute attunement exercise. I think you mentioned it in um the book too. Um, that is just such a powerful way to be able to be still and be connected. Because if we're just still but we're not connected, the stillness is just a void. But if we're still and we're connected, then we're able to actually hear. We're able to feel, we're able to experience. And so being able to five minutes exercises, a minute of silence. I mean, there's different ways of doing it, but kind of the gist of it is a minute of silence, which I highly recommend doing like three minutes of silence. Three minutes of silence. And it one minute feels so long and you're not used to stillness. It's stillness is so loud and it feels so long to do one minute. But I recommend doing two or three minutes of just silence. It's what you're talking about, how our brain can even in a micro-dosing be able to recharge in that three minutes because you're just not thinking or doing anything for three minutes. And then it's being connected to your body and how your body is feeling, how your mind is thinking, and how your emotions are feeling. And then I like to end it with connecting with one word that's like our true self that feel that kind of anchors us in and helps us come back to ourselves in the stillness. So, you know, one minute to three minutes of quiet, connecting with how your body feels, how your mind is thinking, how your heart is feeling, and then bringing it back to a word that feels like true to who you are. And as we're connecting to ourselves in that, that's just five minutes. But if you did that five minutes every single day for one week, you would start to be able to have the practice, the training of stillness. And then from there you could expand it. Now you could do 10 minutes every day, 15 minutes every day, and not just as a discipline, but as a rewiring of the brain.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

And you might even look forward to it.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Exactly. Like at first, it'll probably feel like a little overwhelming because we're not used to it, but then as your brain starts to feel the like reward and the filling up and the connection, your brain is gonna start to crave it. Just like you would crave social media. You're gonna crave stillness. And when I say do five minutes every day, I don't mean it as a discipline, I mean it as a practice.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah. Yeah. That the the second part, the the being silent, I think people can grasp that, but the second part you talked about, the connecting part to like what explain as I'm hearing that, I kind of know now that what you're what you're saying there is is let yourself feel what there is to feel.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Yes. Without fixing it, without trying to change it. You know, maybe after you could go to the remote control exercise, but for that five minutes, all you're doing is paying attention.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Like taking an inventory.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Yeah, just like taking an inventory. You're quiet enough to pay attention. So you're just observing, you know, a lot of people will recognize, oh wow, like I feel all this weight on my shoulders, you know, and they haven't even been aware of it. All of a sudden, once you're aware of it, without doing anything, you can feel your body go just because you put attention on it in the stillness. Yeah, that's key. That's what we're talking about today, is so key for the brain science and the emotional connection, connecting to yourself without doing or fixing or changing, just being aware and observing and feeling in the stillness.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Yeah. And then the true self-word.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

So the yeah, true self-word is sometimes we can complicate that, especially as we're getting to know ourselves. We want it to be like this big word. But all it is is being able to say, if there's one word that could describe how I see who I am. I've already observed how I feel, I've already sat in quiet, and then from the stillness, what's one word that feels true to who I am in this moment? And sometimes it can be repetitious, sometimes it'll be a new word, sometimes it'll be a word that we've always known, but we've just never articulated. But that helps us come back to our true self in that moment so that we're present, we observe, we're we're still, we observe, and then we're present with ourselves through that word.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Do you think the word is always an adjective?

SPEAKER_02 41:12

No, and that's what I've actually elaborated on. I think it starts out that way because that's the best form that we can identify as. But um, our true self, when we connect to our true self, it can be an experience as well. I just think that sometimes it's easier for us to put a word on the feeling to connect with it. But if you have just the feeling but you're not even sure exactly what that word is, that's okay too. Especially as you're getting to know yourself more, you'll be more comfortable without having to have words to describe who you are.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think that's a very, very powerful launching point.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Yeah. And again, it's not five minutes of discipline each day, it's five minutes of rewiring and practicing helping our brain.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

It's five minutes of eating dessert.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

Yes, it pretty much is. Yeah. And and like you said, once initially it might be uncomfortable and awkward and weird because you haven't. Yeah. I remember sitting there going, like, what is supposed to be like it feels strange in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

But then like you're broccoli that's not cooked or seasoned or it's just exactly, you know.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

But once you're connected, once you've had it, you know, and you you've had that taste and you're like, wow, this is actually really good, you want to keep going back to it. And just like, you know, like a vegetable that you're like, oh, I don't ever want to do that. Once you do, you feel better too. Your health feels better. So even if it is uncomfortable, you're actually helping yourself in the process.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

And you're learning how to feel what you're feeling, physically and emotionally, which is which is really great. And it's really, it's just rewiring the brain to bring awareness, which is really no different than very similar to what I said last night to my wife that I feel really emotionally unstable.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Five years ago, I wouldn't, or 10 years ago for sure, I would not have been able to like even recognize that I was emotionally unstable.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Like I knew that there was something going on. Like I'm not myself right now. Yeah. Like I know there's something going on. I know why it's going on. I know there's something going on. So uh, but the reason I was able to do that is because I've practice feeling.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

Yep, exactly. And that practice helps our brain create neural pathways that we can get from A to B so much easier and quicker because we've developed, we've, you know, we've had we've either had those pathways and they've become overgrown, or we were never taught we don't even have the pathways. Either way, you are forming a pathway to awareness. You're forming a pathway to self-connection. You're you're doing a pathway to receiving love.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Well, you know what I think? I think that Andrew Huberman should have you on his podcast.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

That would be amazing. Because I love all the science of it. I just still feel like if we could just throw a couple little different ingredients in the mix, it would just he could sleep, and that would be beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Science plus the compassion method plus the word of God. That is a winning combination, right there.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

That's definitely a winning combination. And they all go hand in hand.

unknown 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Well, as always, Laura, thank you for sharing your insights and your wisdom. And I hope everybody uh takes some time to practice self-attunement and follow Laura's three simple steps of taking a minute or three or more of silence. Um, taking the time to feel what your body's feeling physically and emotionally, just taking an inventory, not to try to fix or bring in gift givers or do the remote control exercise, all these things that we've learned, right? That's not what we're doing with this exercise. We're just taking an inventory and then connecting to a word that describes you, or that you feel is who you are. So, like when I when you were doing that and I was thinking it and kind of doing it as you were going, why I asked about the adjective is the word I felt like was father.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Yep, exactly. Like I love that it's not just like you know, confined, you know, like it is father, and that is part of who you are.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

Yeah. Yeah, very good. Well, thank you again, and thank you everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

And yeah, thank you everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Enjoy your journey.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

We'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Thank you again for joining us for this episode of Triggered and True. We hope that you enjoyed it. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, go to triggeredandtrue.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click ask. And if you would like to learn more about the compassion method, be sure to check out the compassion method master course, which can be purchased at compassionmethod.net. And as a podcast listener, you qualify for a $50 discount, which can be obtained by typing in the coupon code podcast50. Again, that's compassionmethod.net, coupon code podcast50. Thank you again. Goodbye.