Stephanie Nash - Mindfulness for Artist's Top Challenges

Actor and Mindfulness Teacher Stephanie Nash Explains how mindfulness can be used to help with common challenges professional artists face every day.
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Stephanie's links:
website: www.strategic-mindfulness.com
instagram: stephanie__nash
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieNash.MindfulnessArts
YouTube: https://youtu.be/r1Cpt2VSReo
You can also find Stephanie on ClubHouse!

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I'm your host, Tony Angelini. Thanks for listening. Find out more at www.creativemindset.org

Transcript

Stephanie Nash: 0:01

For an actor to play a character, you can't judge it. If you're playing Hitler, if you're playing, it doesn't matter who you're playing. You can't judge your character you have to go into the character and we're having an empathy shortage in our world right now. We're having a hard time with people having empathy with other people. And the craft of acting is empathy on steroids. It's not just having empathy with someone it's becoming, okay, internalizing them.

Tony Angelini: 0:32

You're listening to the creative mindset podcast. I'm Tony Angelini. Today I'm talking with Stephanie Nash about common challenges that artists face every day. This is part two of our series on the connection between spirituality and creativity. Now Stephanie is the founder of Strategic Mindfulness. She is a mindfulness meditation coach, and a body language expert and she also has a flourishing career as an actor. Television credits include Jane The Virgin, Snowfall, Weeds, Agents of SHIELD, Angel, NYPD Blue, and quite a bit more. You'll find her on insight timer, you'll find her on clubhouse, you'll find her on Facebook. And we're really excited to have her here on the Creative Mindset podcast. Hey, would you consider subscribing? Subscribing is free, and it helps the podcast grow and continue to provide good content. If you were to become one of us by subscribing, we'd be eternally grateful. Now Stephanie, and I spoke over the internet. Stephanie Nash, thank you for coming to talk with me.

Stephanie Nash: 1:38

It's a delight to be with you, Tony, thank you for inviting me.

Tony Angelini: 1:42

For those who don't know, Stephanie is a prolific actor, and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Stephanie Nash: 1:48

It was an amazing experience to be there.

Tony Angelini: 1:51

If you watch TV and movies, I guarantee you've seen Stephanie, and your a live theater actor. And you've had a smash hit one woman show. But that's not all. Stephanie is a mindfulness meditation coach, and expert. And the founder of strategic mindfulness, strategic-mindfulness.com where you can find a plethora of instruction and workshops and other great information to help you on your mindfulness practice. I wanted to talk about all these things and point out that all of this not just the acting, but all of this is creative; they are creative endeavors. You have workshops, you have instructions, don't you teach in the corporate arena?

Stephanie Nash: 2:39

Yes, I do. I teach corporate I teach. I go into educational institutions. I've spoken for psychologists six pointing you back went before mindfulness was a buzzword, I'd have to go in and or when it started, be a buzzword especially I'd go in and say okay, this is what mindfulness is. And this is how it can help what you do. Right now I'm being asked to do a lot of stuff, obviously, for frontline workers and medical community and people who are really burned out caretakers, that kind of stuff. Yeah, no, I work with all sorts in my nonprofit is Mindfulness Arts, where I started that just pretty much since art was what I knew. That was, I started with artists, and I worked a lot with performance anxiety. And so I teach what we now call presentation skills at UCLA arts and healing and their social emotional arts program. And, and I just slip mindfulness into everything I do,

Tony Angelini: 3:40

right. That's, that's awesome. In fact, earlier, I was thinking she was a mindfulness coach, when mindfulness coaching wasn't cool.

Stephanie Nash: 3:48

That's my line before it was cool. And it's cool now, in case you didn't know.

Tony Angelini: 3:52

Would you say there's... your mindfulness expertise, would you say that supports your creative endeavors? Or would you say the opposite is true? Or would you say it's all kind of holistic? Would you say they support each other?

Unknown: 4:07

Well, the word holistic to me applies to everything all the time. Specifically, we're talking about mindfulness. There's no question that mindfulness isn't just one skill. There are different skills that are that come in as part of mindfulness, but there's no question that it supports the creative process in the creative endeavors and helps you function better focus better, helps you have more relaxation. When you're doing create, like I talked about performance anxiety. I remember, Charlie Rose was interviewing Anthony Hopkins one time, and I'm dating myself if anyone still remembers Charlie Rose, he was my favorite show. But Charlie Rose turned to Anthony Hopkins and said, "I heard you say that the most important part about acting was remembering your lines." And Anthony Hopkins said,," Did I say that? No, no, the most important thing about acting is relaxation." He said if you're relaxed to remember your lines, and I remember when I started teaching, directing theater, in theater, directing actors, there's a point when actors get off script, you know, they're they're on script doing all their blocking. And then you take the scripts that were in there, like, they can't remember where they go. And they call for line meaning they're in a scene with their brother saying, Why did you do that, and then they can't remember the next line and they just say "line" and then the stage manager tells them what their next line is, well, I would say, "breathe" , I wouldn't give them the line, I would just say breathe, and they'd look at me like dogs tilting their head, but then they'd remember their line. And that was actually preparing them to be relaxed and present on stage, you know, in that way, and I talk about I was, I was just interviewed for something. And she pulled a quote out of what I said, like relaxation, something like everyone doesn't know how to relax or relaxation is an important skill, I can't remember what she said. But if you're not able to relax, regardless of your situation, it's something you can work on is a skill. And it's one of the skills of mindfulness that help you be present. So you can do your best work when you're just relaxed and present. And then your greatness comes through and the concentration keeps that other mind from going well, am I doing it right? What do they think you know, all that stuff, and you can just stay focused on what's important for that particular creative art, whether it's, you know, I tend to do ones that are in front of, like, I help people with one sit in front of people. I don't work a lot with artists. But I do have artists and writers that I'm helping them move into the like, when they're stuck. And they can't think of ideas, there are mindfulness tools that we can use to help them and body language tools to help them relax and allow the creative ideas to come through, like where are your best ideas? In the shower? Okay, why? Relax. So I, you know, when I was working with executives at Warner Brothers, and then they had all these creative people, and I said, "Everyone gets your ideas in the shower. So you got to create a shower for all your employees, you know?", And so how do we do that? So yes, So mindfulness is no question enhances, for me, and for people, I work with the creative process, it gives you very valuable tools for that.

Tony Angelini: 7:32

Reminding actors when you were directing to breathe. When an actor is on stage, I guess the goal is to be in the moment, right? And to be completely present in the character that they're portraying, and in going on the journey of the play, and and what's the difference between actually being in the moment and mindfulness? Would you say they're two sides of the same coin? Or totally unrelated?

Unknown: 8:00

Yeah, well, I'm just going to work with your phraseology there. You said being in the moment. So to me being in the moment and being present. For me those words mean the same thing. But I think you're asking, when an actor's doing a good job is is that mindfulness is that your question? many actors are very familiar with being in the moment. Is that akin to mindfulness? Okay good. I'll make that distinction. So the way I'll define mindfulness is tuning into your sensory experience, what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, your thoughts and feelings. Tuning into that in the present moment, without trying to control it, without judging it, with acceptance and clarity. So that would be mindfulness. That would also for me define presence. What an actor's doing would go, and mindfulness comes from, if we're going to go get Buddhist on you, It comes from Vipassana meditation. What actors do is more akin to ????????, where you're replacing your sense of what the words are in your head, you're replacing. So with actors, you're not just tuning into your sensory experience and being okay with it, you're actually creating and doing something with it and you're replacing your internal voice with that of the character. You're replacing how you hold your body with how the character holds their body. You're replacing the emotions that you have with that of the character. you're replacing the what you see around you as the world of the character in ??????, they replace it with deities and????? and various things like that with the notion that if you can, because all of that is your sense of self, and if you can replace your sense of self, then guess what, what is the self? So it gives you a little freedom from this, "oh, I'm attached to this sense of self." So it's a, it's a different spiritual path in that sense you're replacing with something else. But then you realize what you have isn't that solid in the first place anyway. And that's why actors often tend to get into spiritual experiences a lot, because they're giving up their sense of who they are, to go become someone else. I have a long thing I'm writing called Actors and Empathy. Because for an actor to play a character, you can't judge it. If you're playing Hitler, if you're playing, it doesn't matter who you're playing, you can't judge your character. You have to go into the character, and we're having an empathy shortage in our world right now. We're having a hard time with people having empathy with other people. And the craft of acting is empathy on steroids. It's not just having empathy with someone, it's becoming them, okay, internalizing them. And so I'm writing a thing about what we can learn from actors, for empathy. It's a whole thing I'm writing now, because I think it's really important. So my distinction between mindfulness is, I'm present in this moment, with acceptance.You feel your feet, you feel your breath, you feel your hands, you might have emotions in your body, that's okay. That's just what's happening. It's movement is an actor, I'm deliberately cultivating to let go of whatever I identify as me and become somebody else. And when I do that, when I do become that character, and I move like that character, and I think like that character, and I feel like that character, I am also wanting the practice of mindfulness of being in the present moment, I'm in the present moment as that character. And that's something that a lot of beginning actors have a hard time with, because they're so busy doing the character they're trying to show it, they want you to see it, they're not really resting in it, and resonating at it. That's where we want to go as actor. All actors don't go there but on film, sometimes you can get the one good take where they did. But in theater, you can't mess around. In theater, you got to really do it, because you're alone on that stage. So that's, that's my best description of the difference between distinct mindfulness versus acting and how mindfulness applies to acting. Does that make sense?

Tony Angelini: 12:29

Yes, that's very clear. So how would an actor in the theater who doesn't know anything about meditation or mindfulness, but they're acting? It seems to me it would be tough for that actor to actually start becoming self aware, right? Especially somebody who's been in the business for a while, right? So where would they begin?

Stephanie Nash: 12:53

Well, I will say all my acting training happened before I had a clue about mindfulness or spiritual path or anything like that. All my training was before any of it. What I found when I moved into, and then I'll answer your question, but when I moved into the mindfulness communities, and I came in in a different way, I had an experience at an acting retreat that shifted everything. And then I went, "Oh, I got to look this up" But what happened to me tends to happen a lot to actors, because the tools that people use in a mindfulness meditation practice are tools that actors already cultivate. They just don't think too often point them in this direction, or use them this way, or get out of them in this way. So I find actors slide into this quite quickly and easily because they've already cultivated the tools, they just haven't thought to kind of turn the light that way. I started mindfulness for actors classes 20 years ago, and I couldn't, oh, I can only get a handful of actors to come because they weren't interested in that they wanted to be famous. They just wanted to know if a casting director was going to be in the room. Now I was in LA. And this was not a theater crowd. Although I did do some for some theater groups and then everyone really did come and got a lot out of it. So in answer to your question of where do actors go to find this? Luckily, we're in a time now where you can just open your computer and find a plethora of mindfulness for anyone to try to get mindfulness for actors, I have a mindfulness for actors group on clubhouse on Thursdays at 11am. If anybody wants to join that, yeah, it's a it's a mindfulness for actors and I do some exercises, but we discuss practical applications of mindfulness for actors because what I do in that room, it's not just what actors are doing on stage, I'm in LA now, there isn't a lot of theater here. This is TV film, commercial land, but a big part of being an actor, if you're a professional actor, and I've been a professional - that's been my main income for 35, almost 40 years - is there's the craft, the skill that we develop, where you have to be open and emotionally available in the business of it beats that out of you. The business of it is rejection, not support and judgment, and oh my god. So I offered that class for the unique stress that professional actors have to balance this business side. You've got to be able to cry on cue, but don't cry if you don't get that audition. So I want to help actors as the human being be balanced, so that they're able to be open and do the creative part, and able to handle the business without becoming a puddle.

Tony Angelini: 15:57

Any advice on how to do that? I actually have a list of things that creative people have told me that they deal with and financial worry and rejection, the business side of it is a major, major affectation for their for their work. Any advice on some things they can do to deal with that?

Stephanie Nash: 16:20

Yeah, well, that goes into for me in the starving artists, like some of us take that seriously, or take that as a memo. I've logged in, out of my four decades of acting, I've probably had two of them that weren't in the starving category, but definitely weren't in the wealthy category. Let's put it that put it that way. Until I started doing commercials, TV commercials as you know, I've been a TV Mom. I'm more known more than the TV shows, Although some people watch all those TV shows like Snowfall and Jane The Virgin, ones that have like followings. People see me on those but I've been a mom on TV commercials for so long, that people come up to me on the street and hand me their children. Okay. And they don't know why. They don't know why they just go, "You're familiar when you watch my kid?" and I'll sit there and say, "You know, people take children." And they'll say, "I'll be right back." You know, I'm like, now I'm joking. It's not on the street. But if I'm sitting somewhere people will. They'll just trust and I swear to God, and before the pandemic, I can't say this now.

Tony Angelini: 17:32

Get out of town! I thought you were joking.

Stephanie Nash: 17:34

No, I literally have had people leave something and we're sitting somewhere and they say, "Will you watch my child?" I've had people do that a lot.

Tony Angelini: 17:43

Wow.

Stephanie Nash: 17:44

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm shopping in a store, people come up to me and ask me what to buy all the time. And I think it's because subliminally the commercials, that's when you were supposed to go to the bathroom, or they're busy. Now most people fast forward to them, but I was on before everyone was fast forwarding through commercials. So I'm in this unconscious level on people's psyche. And I swear I could have gone up to people and licked my thumb and wiped their face the way mother does. And they probably would have let me and as a director, it was very helpful because I just had that mom vibe, you know, now you can't touch people. And it's you know, it's a different world.

Tony Angelini: 18:22

I would like to watch you walk down the street and just tell people "Straighten up! Tuck in your shirt! Pull up your pants!"

Stephanie Nash: 18:33

Yeah, I wasn't that kind of mom. I was the cool mom. I'm like "It's okay, come on, let's do this." I was that mom. So So I made a living being the cool, funny mom. I've logged in a lot of years, you can just go to stephanienash.com and watch a bunch of moms on there. In the last 10 to 20 years now I'm aging out of mom and now I'm the other person I do other things. So the issues that artists have a lot of them and I talked about this mindfulness for actors for this specific stress of actors, but artists in general, you know, screenwriters, composers, directors, and I taught film directors for 15 years, I taught them how to work with actors. And, you know, they don't they don't graduate and get million dollar jobs, you know what I mean? They're struggling, and they're struggling to do a straight job and then try to do their art on the side. And if they have kids, sometimes they give up their art to become a corporate person so that they raise their kids, and this, what you're talking about in terms of getting making money and all that kind of stuff. For me, that that goes in the category of stress. And, unfortunately, that's not just limited to actors. And especially now with the pandemic. A lot of people have lost their jobs and homes and various things. So the worry about money in and what's your next job going to be and that different with actors as you're always in a state of unemployment, you get a job and then the job is going to be one day or a week and then you're unemployed again, So you're employed most the time, so that like, what will my next job be that there's that anxiety, but the stress you're talking about is the financial stress is one that I don't think is limited to artists. I think a lot of people have that especially. And I think it's fueled by, also, expectations. We expect to live in have a different kind of living than in Thailand, okay. or someplace else where, there, I could just have a hut, and I can sit there, you know. Here, we need our cell phone, and we need our HBO and we have other expenses and things that we want. And in addition to not having that, we have self judgment, as we compare ourselves to other people who have things we don't have. So in answer to your question, "what to do about that", that would be for me, like I have various meditations, I teach that I have, "oh, this is a good one to help you get concentration quickly. This is a good one to help unplug the spinning mind" But for stress, meditation in general, even if it's not a mindfulness practice, just anytime you're just sitting still with an intention to just not do something, even if your mind's going, "Oh, my God, oh, my God", the deep mind sorts itself, when you just get still. It's kind of like a snow globe and it goes to the bottom. And so if you can do some kind of daily practice, because remember, with Anthony Hopkins, relaxation is a skill. So that relaxation skill is the one that helps with stress. And remember, my definition of mindfulness was tuning into your sensory experience with acceptance. So if you're feeling anxiety, we go, "I don't want to accept that." Well, what if you did? What if you went, "I have a feeling here in my chest. It's like a knot. It's going like this." And usually we go, let me have a drink. Let me go for a walk. Let me let me yell at the waves. Let me do something to distract myself. With mindfulness, we can say, Okay, I've got that there, and rather than saying "That's a horrible thing, and I should not have that!", you're in a human body. God bless you that you have that. And tune in to where are you feeling that sensation, detach it from the story that you're saying over and over and over to yourself in your head that's putting logs in the fire. Like, why do you need to think of thought five times or 20 times? You got it the first time, right? When you repeat the thought. It just makes this get bigger and bigger and tighter. And, you know, we're like, we're like a mess. So when you turn all of your attention just to the body - this is just one way to go, by the way - but when you turn all the attention and say"this is here", and treat it like "What if that was a puppy on the side of the road?" Okay, let me just look at it. Let me breathe around it. "Is there something I can relax? Oh, yeah, my shoulders are above my ears. Can I move the shoulder down? Ah, oh, yeah. Oh, can I drop my jaw? Okay, let me breathe around it okay begins to dissipate. It's still there. It's beginning to dissipate, right? Let me breathe around it. Let me kind of get to know it." Welcome it, you know, because then what we do is emotions are there to motivate and direct our behavior. It's part of being a human being, when we resist them or judge them or say they're bad, yhat works the way of setting holds a jewel. It's the only analogy I have, and I know we think of jewels as good things. I think of emotions as good things. But if a setting holds a jewel, you only need like five little things there to hold that friggin expensive diamond people buy. And if only one or two fall away in the diamond falls out. So that's what we want to do with our emotions. The minute we judge it, the minute we tend to round it, that holds it in place and make sure it's going to stay there. And if we can just relax around it, what happens is it starts to move on through and I call that processing emotions. And I liken it to digestion. Because when we digest food, we get the nutrients, part of it becomes us, but we get the nutrients and we get rid of the waste, right? So emotions are there to give us information to go "Ah, I'm alive!" Feel it fully, allow it to flow on through like weather like clouds, and it goes on through and then you get rid of the part you don't need anymore. And you have that wisdom from it. You learned something from that experience. You're a richer human being, a wiser human being from having felt that full., Probably a more compassionate one, too.

Tony Angelini: 25:04

That's amazing. Good advice. So basically, don't resist it. Don't pretend It's not there. Don't hang on to it. Don't ruminate with it, right?

Stephanie Nash: 25:16

And then you learn these skills.

Tony Angelini: 25:17

Just accept it.

Stephanie Nash: 25:18

Yeah. And with mindfulness, I'm going to use - my teacher Shinzen Young talks about three core skills that anything that has these three core skills is meditation. And some things you wouldn't think of. And some meditations don't have those three core skills. And he says they're really not, but one is concentration. And I already mentioned that. the ability to put your focus where you want it when you want it on whatever you deem relevant for as long as you want without distraction. Hmm. Would that helps you do the things you want in your life better? I think so. The second one is equanimity, which is where the relaxation is the acceptance, that's where the presence comes in. The third one, and this is just for mindfulness, is sensory clarity, where you start... I've haven't mentioned that much. But like the tuning into where the emotion is. That's sensory clarity, you've been having emotions a long time, but you probably weren't tuning in to exactly where it was in the body. But sensory clarity. I help people taste their food, it's a specialty of mine, helping people with compulsive issues with food, you know, you close your eyes, and you really taste your food, you're incredibly satisfied after 10 bites. They say why used to eat the whole gallon of that now after.. some people go, "You have to turn by time satisfied, like that's in problem." I go,"That's not a problem." But you know, you get this richer experience of everything you see everything you hear everything you feel in the body, it's it's much richer. And the clarity comes in, in a positive way for richness in it comes in.. is a strategy for working with issues, in that you're really seeing all the components that are actually present in the moment. Not what you think should be, not what was there last time, not what you're afraid is there. The equanimity helps you accept it's there, the concentration helps you stay with it. With the sensory clarity, then it's like you can see what's going on. And I use the analogy of it's like, we're all driving around with really dirty cars, and the windshield is so dirty, we can't see. And we wonder why we're running into things. You know, and sensory clarity, cleans your windshield, and you go, "oh, there's a bicyclist. Oh, okay. Don't want to hit them. Oh, there's traffic coming on the other side. Okay, I didn't know why I kept running into things all the time." And the sensory clarity helps you see all the ingredients that are present, all the components, it also helps you in a deeper level, as you get deeper in your practice, see through. See that we're more than just the body, we have a deeper, richer experience that transcends what we normally think of is, "this is me, this is my world." You go"Oh, wait, there's a whole nother", if I think of it, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, it's like you open the door, there's color. Oooh,

Tony Angelini: 28:18

Love it, Love it. Oh, and all this is very powerful. You know, another issue that artists seem to be dealing with - and recently the general population - is isolation. You know, painter may spend six hours and sometimes six weeks on a masterpiece, or writer. In fact, acting is really one of the only collaborative arts I can think of right?

Stephanie Nash: 28:47

Dancing, acting. Yeah, those would all be collaborative. And so you're asking about the isolation?

Tony Angelini: 28:57

Yeah. How do you deal with the isolation? What are some ways people can continue to work effectively and deal with the pain of isolation?

Stephanie Nash: 29:05

For some people, isolation is a refuge. For other people isolation, you just used the word pain. So there's a kind of spectrum. Like I go off by myself for one to three weeks at a time where I'm alone on a mountain with no human beings. And for me, that's just I call it my people fast because everything I do with acting and teaching I'm so engaged and so present with people and I go,"okay, unplug." And some people become artists because they're - not become artists... But in fact, it goes both ways. I have a dear, dear friend who is a professional artist, and I noticed this too. I lived with models in New York, beautiful women. I mean, you would just come out the kitchen and go "oh my god, you're just so beautiful." And what I learned and this is in my 20s These women were so beautiful that there were certain skills they never developed, because everyone was doing things for them all the time, because they were so beautiful. And they never had to learn to do certain things, you know, because people would just do things for them. And they go, "okay, you know, that's just what happens." And I found that with the artists, I knew, certain social skills never got developed, because they were spending more time alone, they weren't spending as much time with other people. And or you could maybe argue that the people who don't have social skills might be the ones who are drawn to things that are alone, I knew I was going to be an artist. At one point, I just didn't want that much time alone, then. So I just wanted to mention all that. It's just an all artists aren't suffering because they're alone, but some are and, and with the pandemic, I addressed this a lot. Everyone's come out. Now. It's like everyone's come out. But I am. And I'm going to show you something I use because there's something called oxytocin, which is called the hugging hormone. And it's the hormone that helps us feel socially connected and engaged, and it's released during sex, it's released when mothers have babies, you know, it's a bonding, it's a bonding hormone. People weren't getting hugged enough before the pandemic, okay, no one was getting hugged enough before the pandemic. And during the pandemic, people were literally going into crisis over it. And so I learned this now that I didn't come up, well, I came up with part of this, and I can't remember, you know, whenever I learned something from someone, or started giving them credit, and go, Okay, I got this from this person. You know, after a couple decades, you just can't remember who you got it from anymore. So whoever I got it from, I'm thanking you. But there are three ways. And I used this a lot. In the pandemic, in my teaching, the two things I use most were this, and laughing As much, if not more than even mindfulness just to kind of help people. But one was ways we can touch our own body to release oxytocin to help us feel connected. And one is you take, the way I do it is you take the hand you write with, and you put it on the opposite upper arm below the shoulder above the elbow. And you can do I believe the study on this had a stroking down. I have also discovered that squeezing the way you would squeeze someone going "I gotcha." You know, someone's got you. And just kind of doing a gentle stroke there can be very soothing and comforting for people. I have a lot of people do this before going on stage. Some people do this at various times. And you know, I sometimes go back and forth between the squeeze and the stroke. And that literally releases the oxytocin that helps us feel more connected with the world. The second one is one that we is more socially kind of known and accepted. And it's touching on your chest, below your clavicle and above your breast. I believe that the study that I learned this from, there was a gentle kind of stroke that's like a soothing thing there. I find that press is similar to this, I added the squeeze here, the presses this, this is a common thing. We'll do that someone's talking, we go, oh, oh, I feel this. And so we think of this as I feel with my heart kind of thing. But this is known to be. And a lot of people it's very common. When I'm teaching this, a lot of women say oh, I do that all the time. That's my self soothing, right? And so that one's No. The third one is my favorite. And it's not known. And I've got an older gentleman in Norway who had pain in his back and I was working with him. And we discovered that the pain in his back was connected with fear so that when we just, you know, when we worked through and let go of the fear the pain in his back went away and it was just really great. And then we had something else come up and I taught him this one and I watched this man do this. So we have more nerve endings in our hands and face and the rest of the body. Okay, that's why lips, sir, you know, where we have intimacy. Romeo and Juliet's first touch was a touching a kiss with the touching of palms. Okay. And so, and we holding hands, that's an intimacy here. So if you take your hand and you place it on your cheek in a very light tender way. And I believe again, the study I got this from it, it was a gentle soft stroke. But I have found in teaching this for years, that some people just place their hand there and they just kind of place their head there. And they do this gentle stroke. Now this is not commonly used, we might come up with someone and do this, we might do this to ourselves, but not this is what we do when we cherish someone. Mothers do this with babies. When young lovers are first falling in love, they just look in each other's eyes and in touch the cheeks, right? It's this cherished, gentle touch. And whenever I guide people in these, I'd say, okay, feel what it's like to be the person extending the care. you're squeezing someone, you're the one saying it's okay, you're the one cherishing. Now let yourself be the one being cherished, being held, being stroked. And these, I worked with these three in various ways with people during the pandemic, I use these a lot with people. Now I also teach presentation skills. And I ended up one time I was teaching presentation skills in the class and somebody asked me about self compassion or self judgment. And I happen to have shown this, and everyone - and this is at UCLA arts and healing. Anything at UCLA, everything you do, like right after they give, there's a rating, there's like they get these forms where they judge you, oh, "what did you think of this class scale of one to 10?" And the feedback on that for everybody It was like, "oh, passion, one was so good." And I didn't even intend that for presentation skills. But I incorporate that into the work because of what people said of how that really helped them. So that's, that's my main answer to that question of isolation. Another one is, and we can do it now without masks. If you're feeling isolated. And you can feel isolate if you're in an office building with a lot of other people, you don't have to be alone to feel isolated, right. But even if you go outside and walk down the street. It's great for isolation, it's especially good for depression. Make somebody else smile, Just and do that and tell me what happened. Their response literally gives a wave of "Oh", back to you. And your goal was just to make them smile. And you get a full out of you know, oxytocin, serotonin, it's, it's a joy. Is that fun?

Tony Angelini: 37:39

Love it. I love it. I want to go back to when you were teaching presentation skills, you included some talk about self judgment and self doubt. And actually negative self talk is one of the things on the list that I was going to ask you about. So how do you - how would you deal with - I mean, that's very prevalent, especially with artists,

Stephanie Nash: 38:00

I could say negative self judgment, I could say is especially prevalent with women. I could say negative self judgment is especially prevalent with anyone who's speaking in front of other people or something like that. I have a course on letting go of negative thinking and judgment, I have a 10 week course on it. Because I think it's so prevalent, you know, you've probably heard this people say if somebody else said to you what you say to yourself in your head, you can tell them to go take a flying leap. We're very unkind. We're very unkind to ourselves. And, and it's a habit pattern that goes deep and it usually goes into when the brain was forming, you know, when when were young when the clay was soft. And that how we internalized. Not necessarily - people think, "Oh, yeah, cuz my parents told..." your parents could have said, You were the best thing since sliced bread. But you could have had, "Oh, I didn't do that. Right. So I'm wrong." You know, you could have internalized negative self talk, it doesn't mean your parents were talking negative to you. But I, it's very few people I've met in my life who don't have some negative self talk with artists. The difference with artists is, it can - well with a lot of people it can get in the way of you performing functioning well in what you do. The differences with artists, and especially actors. The self talk needs to be self talk or the character. And if it's not the self talk or the character, you left the scene you left being present, because the self talk isn't in the present moment. It's in the past or the future. And so if our goal is to be present, you've got to be as the character thinking, and so I have a whole 10 week or 10..., And you do go about your own pace course on it, that I realized I could have probably done twenty.

Tony Angelini: 40:07

Really?

Stephanie Nash: 40:08

Yeah, I broke it down the first five of unplugging the talk of learning to get the freedom of unplugging it to get a moment of rest from it. And that's where we use the mindfulness a lot. And then the last five was about "Okay, now, what are we putting in?" What new seeds are we doing? What new plants are we planting in there? Yeah, first we tilled the soil. And that's the pulling it out. That's a tilling soil of sorts. And also, it's very empowering. I'll give you just an example. One of the first things I do in the course - well first I teach people how to relax. We want to learn how to chill in the body, okay, learn to let things go and really identify where kuantan is, and go Let it go. And it's not like tension is bad. You go, Oh, it's another opportunity to let go. But the second thing I have people tune into is notice what happens in your body when you have a negative thought. So have a positive thought. And I used to have this adorable puppy here. I keep them over my desk. You can I know if you can see him.

Tony Angelini: 41:17

I know he has his own Facebook page!

Stephanie Nash: 41:21

He does he does he see he's not living anymore, but he's still making people smile. He lived to be 16. I want to go like he goes, you know, it's like, he made people smile after he was gone. So I'll say look at the puppy, and everyone goes, "Oh,look at the puppy!" What are you feeling? Because we don't notice pleasant feelings in the body. So part of it is tuning into when you go,"Oh, I love that." And but then our focus is on what we love. And the conscious brain isn't noticing the positive feelings in the body. That's how the part of the rewiring happens. The other thing is when you have a negative thought, what's happening in the body? Remember before I said the process, it turned to the body? "Oh, every time I think that, oh, I get something here, I get something here." So you start to notice what happens with negative thinking. And because the first thing I teach him is to relax, I say "okay, you have negative thinking. Is there something you can let go of? Is there something you can relax?" Sometimes just releasing your jaw and your shoulders can help the negative thought go. So that's the second thing I teach them. The third thing I teach him is to and I picked this sequence, because I've done it for 20 years, and I found it really helpful. But the third thing I teach people is, "okay, you're walking down the street. And this negative thought comes up. And it's coming again, and it's coming again." What can you do in that moment to unplug it? Well, the same part of the brain, one part of the brain processes auditory thinking. So the same part of the brain that processes that voice in your head, that's saying all the negative things, processes, the sound of the traffic and the birds and the kids playing in the dogs. So in that moment, when you're hearing it, listen out and hear whatever sound is there. It's like you haven't eaten food, and you're just going to really like, Listen to the tick of a clock. Listen to right now I've got some traffic outside, say I've closed the door. So it's a little quiet in here. But like sometimes I've listened to I said, this 100 before him, I had 120 pound dog, and you would just listen to him breathe, you know, just listen to some sound outside of you. And that unplugs the thought in your head and you get a little moment of awe, there's a moment without it. I just needed to be able to rest on the side of the pool without that thought there. Because we go have gotten we think the thoughts like it's everywhere, you know, it's not, it's in one little part of the brain. So that's like the third thing I do. Then I get into more mindfulness techniques like see, hear feel and stuff like that. But that's an example of the unplugging of the negative or of any thinking but especially negative in noticing what happens. Relaxing around it unplugging and then you can work with "Where would I like my thought to go and why?"

Tony Angelini: 44:22

Hmm, man, I love that I can relate to that as a sound designer, you know, listening critical listening all day long. Before I say this, I want to ask you can I find that course on strategic-mindfulness.com?

Stephanie Nash: 44:36

Yes.

Tony Angelini: 44:37

Or where would I find that course?

Stephanie Nash: 44:39

My website is strategic-mindfulness.com I just wnt you to know I've got a dash in there. That its strategic-mindfulness.com. And if you go there on the front page, it'll say link to that course and you can go there and I've got a stripped down version of it. On the insight timer app, I'm all over the insight timer app. And I've got a stripped down version of it that's like, each little, it's like 15 minutes here, the one that I've made has got videos, it's not just like little 15 minute guided meditations, it's got videos of "okay. Today, we learned relaxation. Now, here's a video of how to incorporate that practically into your daily life." So after each lesson, there's a video about "Okay, now, realistically...", I really I really love practical application of mindfulness. People said, No, I just want to become enlightened, I say, well, what's getting in the way of you being enlightened is where all your problems are. So whatever, whatever is, your issue is what you need to work through. So let's just bring me your issues. And let's do practical applications of it. And you're going to see your life getting easier and better, because this isn't about being good meditators. This is about your life being better. And so meditation is just the gym to work out the muscles for your life to be better. And you might get enlightened along the way. The term my teacher Shinzen uses is purification, where you're getting the gunk out of the way that gets in the way of the natural bliss and joy and clarity. And his greatest compliment, is, "You have done a lot of purification." He doesn't say you're enlightened.

Tony Angelini: 46:24

He's an amazing man. I don't know him personally, I did go through the you know, I'm a member of unified mindfulness. I went through that first course, the see hear feel was very powerful. But what really clinched it for me, and every day I do this, is the concept of gone, where you were talking about listening to the traffic, you know, and I'll purposely listen to a bird or a car and just pay attention til that car passes what I call the threshold of silence. And something about that is just quite relaxing. And it works for me. Different things work for different people.

Stephanie Nash: 47:02

In all the interviews I've done, no one's ever brought up Gone. Gone is like a secret, golden event. And and let me just describe it so that people listening know what we're talking about. My teacher developed - he's developed a lot of techniques and tools that are now just part of how I see the world. But one of them and this is it kind of a magical thing. We tend to as human beings notice the moment something arises, "oh, there's a sound. Oh there's a feeling. Oh, there's.." you know, and we go and we all it monkey mind a little bit We go, "oh, there's the light" And we're constantly like a c ild like a little kid going,"Oh, look at that. Look at that" And we don't tend to notic when something leaves, li e for example, that anxiety we alked about, "It's here. It' here. It's terrible." And e often don't notice when it lea es, because we just went off in o something else. We're lik, "Oh, yeah, where was that anxi ty? Yeah, it was gone a hile ago." So noticing the the ending of something is kind of important. what he's done her with gone is you don't go," it as there. It's not there." It s not like it's the absence of the thing. With gone, somethin you're looking at something new are tuning into in that momen, you just, Tony just descr Yeah, it certainly enriched my practice. Sometimes I'll sit out bed a sound. And sounds are usually where we start. I start people with external s unds and with the breath becaus we know when the breath is g ne. And if you're right th re for the instant of vanishin, not like it's there. It's not there, the instant it makes a transition from being there. ctivity to nothing. That instant of vanishing it's an in tant. It's you can't like hang out in it. It's just an instant. By turning in - I'll quote Shi zen here, by noticing the nstant of vanishing you are, ere's the quote, "turning you attention like a vector toward he source." Now what does t at mean? You can think of he source is being where everyth ng comes from and everyth ng returns to. you can thin of people abiding in the sour es, kind of an enlightened st te, and we actually kind of are getting little hit of enlightenment all day long we dismiss it. And by tuning nto those moments that - my f vorite thing for Gone is takin people out to fountains and h ve them watch bubbles, because y u know, the bubbles gonna pop. And the minute the bubble po s, it's almost like there's thi moment where you kind of fall n for a second. It's just an nstant. It's a falling in. It's micro moment of no self. It's a micro moment of just lettin go. And so the way you descri ed it, what did you say, divin? I can't remember what word ou used for it but deli ious or something. It is supp ies this amazing - and people g, "what do you mean watch the nstant gone? At first, it's lik a video game like that's gone But when you really do it, i starts to kind of pervade you being in a certain kind of way And then you start realizing th porousness of everything. An there's Gone everywhere. But just wanted to explain what Gon was. And why it's a key mom nt to notice that instead of van shing. That was brilliant of hi to come up with that. It's something for us to tune into. And I have seen so many people that change their whole practice. When they started adding that to it, it added a richness and they didn't know why. So See now that's an advanced see that shows you've been doing it on the porch here, and I have an evening cigar, and I watched the leaves move in the wind, the breeze, you know, wind is often constant, but a breeze comes and goes, I notice when the leaves change from movement to stillness. And it's just a while. That's harder for a lot of people, but like you've been doing it a while you start seeing it all over the place. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

Tony Angelini: 51:23

Well, thanks to Sinzen for thinking of it, you know, but I do want to hit on resistance. So do you have any advice or input or tips maybe for artists who might be experiencing some pretty severe resistance towards their masterpiece, or writing or, or even acting. Anything, resistance can be pretty tough to overcome.

Stephanie Nash: 51:52

Resistance is a combination of thoughts that are often - a lot of them are subliminal below the threshold of consciousness. The conscious one might be "Oh, yeah, but look over there, I can be online." you know, that conscious one, what might be going to the distraction, but there's, there's, it's a combination of thought. It's a combination of body sensations. And there might be mental images there too. Now, my teacher Shinzen will say,"well, when you have resistance, look at the resistance, you know, where is it in the body? What are the thoughts? What are the feelings?And and he has a whole story about how he did that one time. However, I find that's not practical for a lot of people. You need a level of sensory clarity, to really go"Oh, resistance, why I don't want to do that, oh, let me turn in and look at that." Because resistance is often a, "I don't want to do it" So if you don't want to do that, you don't want to look at what the feelings are, that are keeping you from doing that either. Right? So that's it's kind of a mole cycle there of like, I'm going to resist look and get the feelings to, but I do want to mention what he would say would be looking at how the resistance is manifesting. So he would say in in the same way, we talked about processing emotions earlier, when the resistance comes up, the first probably tangible thing to do is say, "What are you feeling in the body? Can you relax around it and let it flow?" What I do when I'm working with artists, and this is especially for writers and composers, or people who are what I call Genesis artists, where you're creating the thing in the first place, and, and there isn't a deadline, there isn't accountability, you know, you're kind of on your own. And other people have other things they do. But one of the things I do is you can look at what the feelings are, but then have a - how do I want to say this? I used to say if you can't get concentrated, get fascinated. Like a four year old with a ladybug, you know, it's like, like here, I've got a little blue ball microphone and go look, it's got all like I could go "Oh, yeah, that's a microphone" or I could look at it and go, "Oh, look, it's got all these little things." And the kid just kind of comes in and gets kind of fascinated. So what I do for myself and help others is say, the minute we go,"it's that thing. It's this huge thing. I don't want to take it on, it's too much." What part of it is the coolest, the neatest, the most fun for you? Do that first. I did it with meditation too. When I'm starting people in a practice. I find a meditation that I know is going to have good results for them. But I find what people like because if they've got juice they'll do it. If I give him a meditation they don't like that's like the vitamins don't do any good in the bottle. You got to take them, right. And so if I want somebody to do something, and Shinzen says that to me all the time, he says, "Oh, I see you're making it fun." I say "I think that helps." He's like, "Oh, I don't I make it academic. I want it to be scientifically precise." And I said, "I know. And that's kind of why I like to add fun." So we can have a good time. So I do I in like, when I'm guiding meditations, I think it should be a party, I think it would be a good time. So and art should be that way, too. So that whole middle section of your book, you're going, Oh, I got to start at the beginning. Who says? Pick the part you like, What's an interesting thing in there that really engages you? You go, oh, what's the story you want to tell? What? If I'm dealing with a composer, I say, what's the theme? What's the riff you want to go in there?Just play with that go to the thing you like, where you go, Oh, I love that. Because when we talk about high concentration that we're developing in meditation, everyone has experienced what we would call heightened concentration. And that means you were working on something and you did not realize hours went by you were really getting something done. And you didn't know that children and dogs and things were happening, you were just so focused, right? That's a state of heightened concentration. That's what we cultivate in meditation. Well, that happens when you're fascinated when you're interested. It happens naturally. So I say, get interested, get fascinated, find something in there that you're interested in. And if it's your creative art, there's got to be something in there you're interested in? Who says it has to be at the beginning of that huge middle section. It could be just something there. And then you can continue from there. Oh, yeah. Let me go back before there. And then once you're hooked in, in the zone, you're hooked in in the zone, your creative artistry comes. So that's kind of the end, that's a strategy. That's not like mindfulness would be look at the feelings, let them flow, then find something fascinating. So that's kind of a sequence. That's one sequence. I do a lot for resistance.

Tony Angelini: 57:16

I love it. Well, thank you very much. You've been so generous with your time it's been so fun. You you do put the fun in, is I was gonna ask you if there's anything that you do that you're not very good at? Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

Stephanie Nash: 57:35

Yeah. I'm not good at taxes. Yeah, I'm good at creative, fun. And You know, we're not on the planet that long. So I think enjoying the ride is important. James Taylor has a song, THE SECRET OF LIFE. And Shinzen at the end of his, at the end of his retreat, Sometimes he'll read Ts Eliot's THE FOUR QUARTETS. And he reads these poems. And I lead a retreat now. And I'm going to lead a great poet and I read the lyrics to James Taylor's THE SECRET OF LIFE. And he says, The Secret of Life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it. There ain't nothing to it. You know, who knows how we got to the top of the hill, but we might as well enjoy the ride, right? And so I think of mindfulness as a way of getting the suffering out of the way so we can enjoy the ride. And if we're gifted and privileged enough to be creative artists, we have been given a privilege to be able to offer to other people, ways for them to enjoy the ride. And so I thank you for doing this podcast on creativity, and I hope something we said here today helps people enjoy their ride.