4.17 Exploring Mindfulness in Academia with Dr. Steve Haberlin

In this episode of The Mindful Academy, host Jennifer Askey speaks with Dr. Steve Haberlin from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Haberlin discusses his extensive background in meditation and mindfulness, beginning with his martial arts training in the 1980s, and how these practices have influenced his academic journey. The conversation delves into the integration of mindfulness into educational settings, specifically how Dr. Haberlin incorporates meditation into his classroom to help students manage stress and enhance learning. They also explore the connection between mindfulness and the body, and touch on Dr. Haberlin upcoming book, 'Meta-Meditation,' which addresses the intersection of meditation with modern technologies such as neurofeedback, virtual reality, and AI. This episode offers valuable insights for educators and leaders interested in incorporating mindfulness practices into their personal and professional lives.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction

00:48 Steve's Journey into Meditation

03:54 The Benefits of Meditation

12:59 Teaching Meditation in the Classroom

18:15 Embodiment and Mind-Body Connection

26:43 Upcoming Book and Future Insights

27:34 Exploring Digital Mindfulness Tools

27:47 Neural Feedback and Meditation

28:46 Virtual Reality Meditation

29:19 Navigating Meditation Technology

30:00 Pedal Assist Bikes and Meditation

31:19 E-Bikes and Meditation Practice

33:31 The Evolution of Meditation Practices

34:09 Challenges in Sustaining Meditation Practices

37:42 Personalizing Meditation Practices

41:56 Meditation for Academics and Professionals

43:46 The Timelessness of Meditation

50:34 Conclusion and Resources

Resources: 

Deepak Chopra’s meditation training

Emily Fletcher and Ziva Meditation

Muse neural feedback headband

Steve Haberlin’s books and articles

Transcript

 Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Mindful Academy. I am Jennifer Askey, your coach, and today I am here with Dr. Steve Haberly from the University of Central Florida. And this is a rare treat because I'm meeting with a researcher who researches. Meditation and mindfulness, a as a practitioner, as a teacher, as a scholar.

So today we're gonna talk about different lenses in his experience on where meditation and mindfulness in the academy intersect productively. But I'm gonna let Steve introduce himself more thoroughly to get us grounded in who he is and where he's at right now. Steve. Hi. Thanks for having me.

As you said, I'm a assistant professor at the University of Central Florida. I work in the college of Education, actually the College of Community Innovation and Education, and the Department of Learning Science and Educational Research. So I work with doctoral students. I teach doctoral students research methods, but my own research agenda looks at mind, body practices with.

Higher ed students, so both undergrads and grads. And I look at meditation and mindfulness and publish some studies on yoga, and we're looking at breath work and really looking at it from two lenses, what are the mental health outcomes? And then also how do you facilitate these kind of practices in the classroom if you want to teach them in like a classroom setting or a workshop setting.

So that's what I do. Personally my personal meditation practice goes all the way back to at least 30, 30 years, three decades. But I learned Jennifer through martial arts. I was in the eighties of the, I'm an eighties kid, so I was in the. Karate Kid, teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle era, where all my friends joined the mor, the mogul martial arts studio, at least for a couple weeks.

But I stuck with it and my sensei, the teacher, the sensei would come and he'd have us meditate and he had us kneel against the wall and he would say, block everything out, just concentrate and block everything out. I always tell that there was a. Aerobic studio next door to the car, to the martial arts studio, and it would vibrate the walls, at the eighties, music and Gloria es, Stefan, that kind of thing. And I'm sitting there trying to black out the music and my thoughts and it wasn't, it just wasn't a great experience, but it. It was it got me curious, it, it piqued my interest and I continued to like, read about meditation and the kind of in the context of martial arts and Buddhism the Samurai Zen meditation, that kind of thing.

And then finally by about early twenties. Heard a cassette tape. Remember cassette tape? I heard a cassette tape in the car. Vague, right? Vaguely in the car. And it was Deepak Chopra who's still teaching meditation today. Meditation. He mentioned something called Mantra Meditation. He called it transcendent into meditation 'cause he was with that organization at the time.

And so what is that? So I opened the, here's another one, yellow Pages. Some people will know that. So open the Yellow Pages and I, scroll down with my finger to meditation schools. And sure enough, there was, or meditation there was. A transcendental meditation school. I went there, it was like a four day training.

You go back, four consecutive days and they give you a mantra, which is like a sound, and they coach you through how to use it right away. It got benefits. People were like, 'cause that was a pretty intense guy and. Pretty type A and people were like, oh, you're more relaxed. Like you, you're more focused, but you seem calmer, and you're not as like agitated, those kind of things.

And so I stuck with it and then learned other forms. I was interested in mindfulness meditation, Zen me, joined a Zen group, me Zen meditation learned contemplative Buddhist practices like love and kindness formula and all that. And, just expanding the repertoire and my practice has evolved.

As I've just learned more, thank you for that. So entering this as a human being who meditates and then winds up in graduate school and then becomes a professor and works at a couple different institutions I think that offers a really interesting window onto how we as academics can approach meditation and mindfulness, both as oh, these are really interesting ancient practices that increasingly have.

Tons of scientific research supporting their benefits from mental and physical and emotional and social wellbeing. And also are like a tool that we can use with ourselves, with our students with our colleagues but primarily with ourselves to, what I wanna say here is be more effective, but then that gives me the ick because.

The notion that like our purpose in life is to just be more effective today than we were yesterday, is maybe not the point, but, so maybe I'll toss that question to you. Why did you stick with it? I think IS stuck with it. I don't, people do it for spiritual reasons and I think that's great.

I think I stuck with it 'cause I just felt like it helped me grow as a human. It just helped me evolve and develop as a human. Whereas maybe more set, I had more of a self-interest and it was harder maybe to see what other people needed around me and how to help other people around me.

Connect with others, connect with the environment. Take care of my physical health. I think it just helps me grow or evolve. It's a tool for me that helps me grow and evolve as a human and just. I don't know if efficiency is the right word. I think cap I like from one of my mentors teaches pro prowess or capability, like capability or competence.

Yeah. Because as you grow, if these practices are really working for you, then you feel like you're growing in your competence. You're growing in your ability as a human. Yeah. It was, have you heard of em? Emily Fletcher? She wrote a book called Stressless, or have you met. Yeah. Yeah she's really good at articulating meditation and teaching it, and she wrote a book called, I think it was Stressless or something, but she says or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And so her phrase I always remembered was the purpose of meditation wasn't like to get better at meditation. It was to get better at. And I love that because my, one of my mentors teaches the same thing. It's like you're to grow in your competence or capability, so then your life gets better, right?

Because you are more whatever centered com calm, you're more energetic, you're more compassionate as those things grow, right? Your day, your daily experience like should grow or I should get better. Yeah. And you're more able to access your best self, right? So I have done as, as similarly to you, I have done a variety of meditation training programs.

My, my first meditation training program was definitely jumping into the deep end. It was a 10 day silent meditation retreat like of Apostle Retreat Foundation and wherever you live, there is a ANA foundation locale within driving distance of you. Yeah, that will let you sit in silence for 10 days and experience physical and emotional pain.

Yes. And work through it. In your mind. Yeah, I did that right before, like a month before the pandemic locked everything down. So yeah, it was probably critical in me making it through those initial months of forced family isolation, solitude, with my mental and physical wellbeing intact because I did have that practice.

And Vipasana or Insight Meditation is like a body scan. The protocol is an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening. I'm not sure real humans do that. Yeah, what Emily Fletcher teaches in Ziva meditation is very much in line with what Deepak Chopra teaches and what TM Transcendental Meditation teaches.

So it's mantra-based, or I think Chopra now calls it Primal Sound. Meditation. Yes. Trademarking, you can't call it. So transcendental, it's mantra, primal sound. It's all the same thing, and it's just yeah. 15, 20 minutes, twice a day. And if so, this notion of being able to access my best self finding the practice that. Didn't feel like I'm staring at a wall trying to block everything out. Yeah. There's a way to do it wrong, like that. I didn't need a practice that was going to. Up my stress levels around. Are you doing it right? That's right. So mantra-based meditation works for me.

And it is like thoughts come and go. It does everything that every other meditation modality does. But there is something about the rhythmic nature of breathing and internally chanting a mantra that just. It's like a power wash for the system or, taking out the mental trash is occasionally what I like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Those thoughts I'm gonna have today, like a shower for the brain or the mind, right? Yeah. Yeah. I would like to, if I could chime in on the tend tree, I don't have anything against that kind of practice, but I compare it to a good analogy would be like exercise. And not everybody is maybe designed to run a marathon, and not everybody has the time or you don't need to run. I don't run a marathon, but I think like physically I've got some fitness. I don't, I just found ways in my day that don't take as long, right? Or just fit my lifestyle, but then I get the benefit back of. Whatever. Cardiovascular. Yeah. Physical strength, flexibility without running a marathon.

Yeah. So I don't know if there's doing the marathon training, that is a part-time job. All those hours. Yeah. Integrating in your life, and I don't necessarily, there's a dosage, I think there is a dosage effect to some extent. Like the long you do it, you might get more result, but there's also, what is that diminishing returns, I think for a lot of people.

They don't have time to do it two hours a day or even an hour a day. And if they can work different practices in, and there's not just my practice evolved to, I don't see it and meditate for that long. It's short amounts. And I do these, they're called energy practices. I do these physical, they look like maybe q go almost like tai chi ish.

And I incorporate those during, throughout the day, along with the breathing exercise. And you, the breathing exercise might just be in the morning for 10 minutes, afternoon. And I found by just weaving it into my day and getting more skillful with that, I get more benefit throughout my day than if I. Try to find time to sit for an hour or something and fight with my thoughts.

So I think you really have to understand that our mind body system, most people are not designed to just sit there and suffer through all of that. You're not a Buddhist monk. It's not your profession. You're trying to find, you're trying to find mind-body tools that just improve the quality of your life.

That that make your life better. Like Emily Fletcher said you get better at life or more competence. Yeah, so I'm, I just don't go sit in 10 day retreats 'cause I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna get the benefit back from that amount of time. I'd rather go travel or something.

Enjoy, enjoy, oh, go to another country and try the food over there for 10 days. I, and I did this in, Southern Albert in February and yeah, it was a monastic experience. Yes. Days. And I, I. So the marathon analogy is really quite good. 'cause I also used to run marathons and Wow.

Yeah. And my knees and my hips are no longer on board with that level of intensity. But I remember maybe at about the halfway point of this 10 day silent retreat, we had the opportunity to schedule a talk with the lead instructor. And so I did, and I had my slot with her and I said, is the purpose of all of this to just learn how to endure pain?

And she just looked at me and she said what do you think? And I was like, oh shit. It gave you a zen rhetorical question. And learning how to live with pain is. Valuable. Sure, sure. But people do that every day. But that isn't a magnetizing daily. That's right. It doesn't mean people are growing.

Yeah. A lot of people endure, emotional and physical point every day, but it doesn't mean they're going on a Yeah they're not growing maybe in different areas of their lives. So I, it just, philosophical differences, you have to find what really. Works for you as a human.

Yeah. You've been practicing both meditation and various physical practices like martial arts or something like Qigong or Tai chi and breath work, all of these I think today the kids would call them modalities, right? For decades. And when you became an academic, you brought these into your research and teaching.

Let's, I wanna talk a little bit about teaching and what you've done in the classroom and what you've noticed with students, and then we'll move into research and your upcoming book. But start out a little bit about the classroom and what you've experimented with there, and what you've learned about meditation or mindfulness in classroom settings.

Sure. So that story starts about six, six or seven years ago when I. After I graduated from doctoral school with my PhD, I went into my first academic job and it was at a small private college and it was all women's private college. And when I started teaching, I was teaching all undergrad, mostly undergrad classes, four or five classes.

It was a teaching college. And they would come in, the students would come in, and they just looked really stressed. They did not look happy. They did not look relaxed. They did not look ready for learning. They weren't in that space for learning or that mental state. And I taught for a little while and finally thought to myself, I don't feel like I can just start teaching them content.

I gotta do something like a segue. I have to do something between, when I start teaching, when they come in the door and sit down and then I start teaching and I just draw. My experiences had been meditating, writing for a couple decades and. Mindfulness had, had become all the rage.

So I said, let me try something. So they came in one day, I held up the. Meditation bowl, like the metallic bowl. And I said, I just said, listen to this sound, don't do anything. If you wanna close your eyes, that's fine. Listen to the sound. And I rang the bold, Don, and they, and I said, just kinda listen to it like music.

And they're looking at me really? They probably thought I was even stranger than when they first met me. And they said, this is, I knew they were thinking, this is weird. And so I rang it. It's just fine, and they listen and then they started getting used to that. So every time they come across, I would just ring it.

Then I just added something. I said, once the sound dissipates, just become aware of your breath. I don't even think I said mindfulness. I said just tune in into your breath. Like where is it coming in? Where is it coming out? And they would do that for another minute. And it just became a routine, like a tradition.

There was a few, there was one here or there that just didn't participate. And I said. It was fine. I said, this is an invitation. This I'm inviting you to the practice. If you want to, do something else. As long as it's quiet, as long as you're not, disturbing the rest of the activity.

It's quiet. So read a book, take a nap, put your head down, do your own prayer, do your own practice. And they would do that. And then most of them would follow me. And then we just gradually, then I started saying they're doing the breath practice. Let me show them body awareness. So skin, the body, and then.

They're getting that down. And so then maybe the next semester I start introducing love and kindness where I would have them, generate emotions or cultivate compassion and love from the heart and send it out. So I, it just evolved. And then other faculty caught wins, like from, I guess it was the students or something, said, oh, Dr.

Lin's doing this meditation thing in class when we come in. And so they started asking me and they said, what are you doing? And I said. I'll show you what I'm doing. Do you wanna get involved? And then about six or seven faculty, were doing it around the campus and we just started collecting some data, asking, qualitative, asking students for their experience.

And then we would meet like maybe every month or two and we would compare notes on the facilitation aspect. What's working, what words don't work, should we call it mindfulness? Should we call meditation? Of how long should we do it? So we just started comparing notes and I haven't seen. Anything like that.

So I ended up publishing a book called Meditation in the College Classroom because I was writing basically a book I wish I could find. Like for myself, it was just a guidebook and I was trying to put all these ideas down and I know there's not a huge percentage of faculty who are gonna say, oh, I'm gonna put meditation into the start of my class.

But they're out there. I know some, I have some friends and colleagues, like they'll start every class with a, maybe breathing, like a breath work type exercise. 'cause they also believe that unless students are in the right mental space, emotional space, when they come in, then the content you're delivering to them is just, it's going right through the menu, over their head. They're not retaining it anyway. So that's how it evolved. The teaching it in the classroom. And I, I think, writing the book that you wish you had is points to the fact that, and I'm thinking as you're saying that, that. The practices that you and your colleagues were using?

So in high school I did a lot of singing and drama, and all of those classes started with breath work. We would call it breath work today, or a body scan or some sort of check-in. Oh, wow. Because they're, they're, you're using your body as an instrument, either as an actor or as a singer, write your, and so this notion of.

Embodiment is what was twigging for me as you were talking about that. And you and I in previous conversations have also talked a little bit about embodiment as an aspect of. Meditation practice. And I think if people are not familiar with meditation or mindfulness or don't have a practice, that might not sound congruent.

What do you mean? I thought it was like all in your head and, but it's not. And so I'm gonna a, again, toss the ball to you around. Embodiment practices as part and parcel of this. If we ground this and our discussion of meditation in the notion of we are our instruments, we're doing this to become better at life.

How does a mindfulness practice, however, or a meditation practice, however, defined what is its relationship to our bodies? I think we thought years ago maybe the mind, the brain and the body were separate. But as the science advanced and as the technology advanced, we know now that there's so many different ways that the mind and body are integrated.

They're connected. You can't really have one without the other. So there's constant communication going on from the brain cells right down through the brainstem through the nerves and even from the stomach going back up to the brain, there's constant communication. So those are just examples, but you could take the emotions, you could take the thoughts and the emotions and the breath.

And I always tell students that even physiologically you can change your breath if you just lengthen or deepen your breath, it will change your mental state. So your thoughts will begin to also slow down and write and your emotions. Maybe will calm. So there's a direct link. It's a very simple exercise.

Just sit there and maybe lengthen your breath to say four seconds, and go out. Or you could do what's called box breathing. A colleague of mine teaches box breath, so you could breathe in for four, hold it for four, breathe out for four, pause for four. So any kind of elongating of the breath will change the physiology, but then we'll also start to change the brain.

It will change the mindset. And your outlook and your perception, all of those things are linked. So that's a very sim simple example. Students come in and you're like, if you're stressed out, like just pay attention to your body. You're most likely tense. There's probably pain may right tension, maybe pain aches.

You might be breathing shallow. Think of a time you got real. Oh, watch a child when a child, 'cause they don't hold their emotions back. So when a child gets upset and cry, whatever, they go, you know how they pan? They go, yeah, like that. When they're upset or afraid, that's just a direct indication of the mind body systems in place.

So if they, once they calm down, you see the breathing also calms down when the emotions subside. So you can just watch a. You just watch a child and you see the mind body integration and action. So how, I don't know. It's hard to separate the two to think that you can just think your way through everything.

And the body's not involved. It's, it is the instrument that's carrying body is the instrument, and it's the instrument from my perspective, working with academic leaders as a coach. If you're disconnected from the knowledge that your body is offering you here are the emotions I am currently feeling.

Can you recognize and name those emotions? Do you know how you're holding your body when you experience that emotion? That has to do with presence and communication, and I think we ignore that somatic intelligence at our peril. Yes, when it comes to our personal effectiveness and also like being in touch with your body and recognizing that like I can use my body to impact my mental state and my emotional state, I can tune into my mental and emotional state to learn things about my body, right this two way street.

You become, again, more capable of accessing more of yourself when you need that part of yourself. When do I need to find flexibility? When do I need to find a backbone? And we have all of these linguistic metaphors for what our body offers us. And yet in academic training it, we tend to neglect our physical.

The physical realm entirely. All in favor of the mental realm, in intellectual realm, so that once you're a professor and you're standing in front of the classroom or you're a department chair, whatever, you may be completely disconnected from that kind of intelligence. I agree. I think it's really important is that embodiment of that bo bodily intelligence.

That's why practices like yoga, Tai Chi they're essentially sensory, they're like sensory development, training, or practice because you you start to realize that you have sensor that you can sense in different areas of the body. You literally can sense right in the legs and the arms as you stretch or as you breathe and you start realizing, wait a minute.

I have feeling back here in my back and almost can sense behind me. Yeah. You know those martial art films when you see like the kung fu films and all of that. Where the person almost detects someone from behind them, right? Or they have that they blind you ever notice, say blindfold the karate student a lot of times and whatever.

I think that has a deep tradition. There's a deep tradition in the training that you do use the body as a sensory. Piece of equipment. So in other words, by taking away the site, now you're opening up the body and other sensory experiences to energy. So it sounds in some ways people said, sounds woo-hoo, but not really.

If you do these kind of practices where you're moving the body with mindfulness and breath you'll start to be more in tune with the body and then you'll have things like intuition. Intuition, right? Develops more. You might be more in tune with your emotion. Your thoughts and this instrument now becomes more fine tuned.

I would say to academics, the intellectual part, the academic part is your training and that's great. Like to sharpen the intellect and to have that key intellect and to be able to, whatever it is, like decipher research or literature or make an all critical analysis argument. There's nothing wrong.

That's fantastic. You should continue to sharpen the intellect. Isn't it even better if you sharpen the other a dimensions or aspects like with the sensory or the body and you sharpen that as well, that MINDBODY connection. So now you have an instrument that's fine tuned, right? That's holding this per this intellect.

That's fine tuned. Then you're like a do you know you're double danger. Even more powerful in my opinion, I think, than someone who can just use the intellect in front of a group of students or whatever it is. You have a physicality that supports the inte, that supports the, that makes sense, Jennifer?

Yeah. Yeah. That supports the supercomputer. That is your brain. This is reminding me of the work of Amanda Blake and I imagine that by now she is done with her PhD at Case Western Reserve. But she came to academia late and she came to it through somatic coaching. And she came to that from being a massage therapist, right?

So she entered academia via the body. Okay. And she has a book prior to her dissertation. She has a book called Your Body Is Your Brain. Wow. And so she gets into the research around our, we all know that our skin is our largest organ and it's covered in tiny little hairs. And they actually do pick up on things in our environment, and that doesn't they sensory.

Right experience. So there is it may sound woowoo that you can sense somebody behind you, but you can, because your body is picking up on that, right? And if you are in tune to, you know what your skin is telling you, what your gut is telling you, what your heart and lungs are telling you. Because all of those have nerve endings that are communicating to your brain, right?

There are more, there's more neural communication from your gut and your heart. To your brain than the other direction. That's, that is correct. If you're tune to that then you're accessing all of your intelligence and not just your prodigious intellectual intelligence. So that's a great way of putting it.

And that and that, that's justifies potential. That shows okay, so if I'm only using the intellect, it's a piece of my potential, but what you just broke it down was right. If you're using. The embodiment and the whole body with the brain, then to me that is the gateway to potential because now you are, now you're 360.

Now you are, you're whole. Oh, I love that. The gateway to potential. I really like that. And so here we are talking about the body, and I have a note about your forthcoming book, which seems to leave the body completely behind. But my guess is that it doesn't. So your forthcoming book is Meta Meditation, neuroscience, virtual Reality ai, and we will.

I'll have a link to where to find all of Dr. Haber's stuff. But Ledge hasn't given you the link or the pub date maybe by the time? No, it's it's due out in spring, likely like about May, but I can get a link once we have a Okay. May 26th for pre-orders by about May? Yes. Okay. So maybe by the time this episode comes out, we'll have it, and if not, we'll make sure that it gets back updated and whatnot.

But tell us a little bit about what. What you're learning there that you're excited about when it comes to meditation and and the future? So I've done some research with colleagues at the university with what we might call digital mindfulness or digital mindfulness tools. And these are just enhancements.

These are technology or enhancements for meditation, for mindfulness. And one is where you have these neural feedback headbands. And we just piloted, we've done two pilots now where. We've had undergrads wear these headbands, and the way it works is with neural feedback. Meditation is they'll, if the audience is not familiar it'll pick up brainwave activity.

And then using that brainwave activity as you're sitting there and, trying to meditate, it will send audio cues to you in the form of the particular meditation session we used was weather. So you'll hear rain. Increase if your brain waves are in a more, what we'd say, beta state, where it's just a more active state and as you learn to calm down and chill out, so to speak, then your brainwaves will slow and then it will send the audio queue of like slow.

The rain will slow and even almost stop. So it's real time feedback training you to do that. So we've done a couple pilots. With those, and as I have read more about those and in my own personal practice, I've tried that. I've tried virtual reality meditation and using, there's one virtual reality app that has an AI bot, AI avatar that actually coaches you and.

Personalizes meditation. So those things got me really thinking. I said this is where it's evolving. Meditation and mindfulness practices become infused with, think of like calm and headspace and all those apps. That's how a lot of people now are learning or being, they're having access to meditation or mindfulness.

So it's really quickly evolving in that direction. The problem is. How do we make sense of that? How do we navigate all the tools? What if we've never meditated before? Do we jump on an A, a VR device? What if we already meditate? What if we're like a 20, a 30 year meditator? And then do we start this stuff?

Is it better than traditional meditation? So I wanted to do the book again, almost like writing for myself, but I thought. Hey, this is technology driven. A lot of people will probably be interested in this. How do we navigate what's out there? What's the research say as far as the benefits, but also what are the downsides of to using these devices?

And I even have a protocol where I say, try it, but maybe don't become too dependent on, and I use the. I use the metaphor of pedal assist bikes. Have you ever used or seen a pedal? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Assist bike. So we ride, right? Traditionally I love to mountain bike and we ride and we get the benefits of, cardiovascular, stronger legs, agility.

And then I see these guys and gals fly by me on Pedal Assist bike. I said, what are they doing? What are they? Yeah. And then I realized, my nephew says they're cheating. I'll go because they are using Pedal Assist. There's a electronic, there's a motor. And when they press down and they could either just let that thing, like a motorcycle, just take them or they can just, press partially down and then it does the rest of the work for you.

Yeah. So I think that's very comparable to say, Hey, I'm gonna put on a neurofeedback device, or I'm gonna use a guide, a meditation app or something. You have to decide what pressure you use, how much, in other words, how much support are you gonna get from these things? And are you gonna be become dependent?

Because I think there might be a threshold where now you're using so much of the technology that you're losing, the benefits and the positives that come along with the traditional. Methods, right? These ancient the traditional, very human, very embodied. Very analog experience of meditation.

Very analog. Yeah. I love the comparison to e-bikes though, because I am, my, my husband is an avid commuter cyclist. We've been together for over 31 years and we did some math recently and we think he can count on fingers and toes the numbers of, number of times he has driven a car to work.

In the time we had been together. So he That's fantastic though. Physical, either riding his bike, fitness wise. Yeah. Or on public transit. And this has impacted, where we buy houses and Right. So it's, it is a huge part of his life. And when E-Bikes came out, his first inclination was, yeah. Bunch of cheaters.

Fast forward a few years. The e-bike scene is getting a little bit more sophisticated and diversified, and he's talked to other cyclists and shop owners and his take and the take of a lot of ex pro cyclists, current pro cyclists, a lot of shop owners is anything that gets more people on a bike is a good thing.

That's, and so if I take that, yeah, that's interesting that adage right? Like more people on bikes. Is not bad because it's not a bad thing. It's for people. Single drivers of two ton vehicles getting from point A to point B, right? So better for the planet, better for our bodies. It might not be quite the rigorous workout that, that my husband gets.

But if I wanna take my bikes in place, if I have to show up and look presentable, I'm a chick. What if I'm wearing pumps? What if I have makeup and I get all sweaty? Like my needs are different than his. I just called myself a chick. That's really strange. I do that very often. That just slipped out.

But so to take this notion of the more people who are practicing meditation in some way, the better, and there are new and evolving entry points to that practice. That could be super exciting for some people. Yeah, that's an interesting adage. The more people that are on bikes.

So you could say the more people that are meditating or exposed to meditation may be a better thing, right? A better world. But I think there's some nuances to it. So they're being expo, the exposure is exploded. Yes, there was some kind of statistics I read where in the past, like in the seventies, the eighties, probably even the nineties, you would have to go to an in-person meditation workshop, right?

Or like you did of a Postum retreat. And there might be a couple hundred thousand people in the US that are exposed to that, to meditation and mindfulness practice. Now you have that in that amount of time. Say in a year there, there's millions. There's just millions and it's world. It's global, that are exposed mainly through app.

Smartphone apps. Yeah. Maybe they see it on TikTok or something like that. Or they have YouTube videos of a guided me. So there's, it's exploded, the exposure. But what's interesting is, and the real question is how many people though are actually practicing? Because the amount that drop out of a smartphone app after the first month most people do not continue a meditation app using the app.

After the first month, it drops off incredibly hot. Most don't use it. So then you say they, even they were exposed to it, but did they learn to develop a practice and is it working for them? Are they actually benefiting from it? Yeah. And that word practice is so important in this context because, people who have a meditation practice will call it a practice, just like people who have a yoga practice will call it a practice or a Tai chi practice or a martial arts practice where we are not perfecting anything.

We are showing up every day. That's right. And keeping ourselves where we are and seeing what's possible today. And. I just as we were talking about the neural feedback headband, I couldn't, I knew it started with an m and I couldn't remember the name of it. So I quickly looked it up. It's the one I'm familiar with is the Muse Headband, and I know, yeah, that's the one we've piloted a couple times.

It came across my field maybe oh, quite a while ago, like eight or nine years ago when somebody. And at the university was offering these to students either through library checkout or student services checkout. It was this little pilot program like, can we offer students these headbands for neurofeedback around stress reduction, sleep improvement, mindfulness, whatever.

And like the cheapest one is almost $300 us. Yes. So a gazillion dollars Canadian. That's right. And your Headspace subscription is X number of dollars a month. Then your column subscription is X number of dollars a month. And don't get me started on what an Oculus costs. If you wanna do VR medic.

Yeah, all of this technology pricey, especially for students or someone that's, on lower income, they're, these gadgets are not cheap. And the, and what we know from research that has been done by you in the classroom and in your own life and by centers. And if people are familiar with John Cabot zinn's mindfulness based stress reduction.

That dates back to the eighties. There's the healthy Minds Institute at the University of Wisconsin. Yeah. They've been putting monks in functional MRIs since there were functional MRIs to put Mons into. So like we know that the very analog sit and breathe has amazing benefits, but it requires a practice.

Correct. It is like practicing the violin. Or a piano. You probably could get. Some kind of supplement or maybe something that helps you, like a guitar. You can get something that now tunes the guitar or maybe teaches you a little faster and maybe enhance it. But you still gotta string that guitar.

You still gotta play it every day. And you, and learn different songs. And I practice, that's the thing where people fall short. It's very similar to exercise or going to the gym. You should do it. But you don't do, you can't get yourself to do it. Or you say, I lack time.

There's a lot of mental, there's a lot of perceived barriers, right? Yeah. And a month long bootcamp or a six week bootcamp might be really great for some initial body recomposition, but if you don't stick with that, all of that body recomposition, the benefits. That's right. You're just gonna revert to the mean.

Yeah. That's why I think technology or traditional, I think you have to find, you have to really. Research and evolve your practice so that it really works for you. Because when you're seeing benefits though, when you're experiencing benefits and life is getting better, or like you're getting better at life and more competent and your health is improving and your relationships are strong, then it makes you want you say, it's gotta be, it is probably this, right? It's this practice, or at least this practice is foundational to these things happening in my life. So I'm gonna keep doing it. That's what makes me, I don't think I'd keep doing it if I did. 'cause I have tried some meditation methods where I didn't really feel like it was impacting my life.

It was just taking up time or it was stressing me out. Yeah. And I evolved to the point where I'm like, I gotta find things that work for me personally. Yeah. And the journey between like access point, what might inspire somebody to say, I keep hearing that meditation is really good for stress and sleep and cognitive function and accessing my best self.

I should maybe do it to like having the practice that supports, supports their potential like that does need to be personalized. What I really am appreciating about this conversation is that there are a gazillion access points out there. And and in the show notes, I will list all of the ones that Steven and I have talked about, right?

Transcendental meditation. And primal sound meditation mantra, zis, mindfulness. There's a lot of options. Ziva with Emily Fletcher. The apps, the headbands the there are a gazillion entry points and maybe one of these appeals to you and then at from experienced meditators, it's like you can't doing it for a week.

You might notice something. But you need to keep the dosing the up, don't it? It's a practice and most people no I seem to go to meetings and see most people have a smart watch on, and if you have an Apple watch and I think a Pixel watch, I don't know, a Fitbit, they all have here's a two minute.

Mindful check-in thing, like there are so many ways that you can with your phone or your WI wristwatch, tap into somebody's technical technological version of a mindfulness minute. Yes, you can do it. And so if that has appealed to you, there are ways to deepen your practice. There are ways to commit to a practice that don't have to be sitting in intense physical discomfort for 10 days.

And scary. Yeah I agree. It's just like people that there, there are people that maybe take a walk around the neighborhood and that works for them. They're right. There's people that do a little yoga watching a YouTube video, but then there's the person that goes to the gym for two hours a day and there's like different tiers.

I think meditation, these mind, my practice I think is similar. You don't have to. Be like a diehard, super committed and you spend two hours a day in yoga and meditation to get benefits. That might be your personality, right? That might be your lifestyle. But then there are people that, yeah, just, the research shows 10, I think the magic number out of University of Miami was like 12 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation.

If that works 12 minutes a day, you can't find that. Find 12 minutes. You're probably you. You need to work on your schedule of time management because. I always would say to students, I say they, they go, I don't have time. I go, okay, open up your phone and go to your screen time. And then they come a little guilty, but you open up screen time and they're going from myself too.

You go from five hours, six hours or some of 'em had 10, 13 hours of screen time and I go you just don't want to you're just not doing the things maybe that could be beneficial to you. Because you're saying you don't have time. It's more of a what do you value? What do you prioritize?

What do you value? And if that's what you value, fine but don't say you don't have time. That's not true. You might not value it, or you might see mindfulness as a waste of time, but don't, I don't really buy, you don't have time. For most people. Maybe there's a mom with two.

Two newborns or little ones, and doesn't have much help. That might be a situation where you barely have the time. But college students I think they can find the time. Okay, so if college and university students have that 12 minutes a day or 12 minutes, twice a day let's talk about faculty members and leaders, because that's who's, that's who's listening.

And that's who you work with every day. That's who I work with every day. What. This can be from your personal experience or from talking to colleagues who are also working in this space or practicing in this space. Why might a faculty member or a university leader say, okay I know all the things, or at least I have access to all the information that helps me know all the things, research, do my job well, and something.

I keep hearing that maybe meditation would be good for me. What would you tell them? I would tell 'em to just try it. Start with, give them a practice and give them a physical, a breath a breathing exercise, and maybe one physical practice and try it for five minutes a day, five to seven minutes a day.

Because I think once you experience it and you feel maybe a little calmer or some stretch reduction some benefit, then you might. Want to dive into it a little deeper, maybe extend the time, right? Learn more or learn more about that method. So I would probably just say, try it, like just do it and just see what happens in your day, and then let your day, the rest of your day be the pilot, right?

Let the rest of your day be the measure and see what happens. Because you can, I'm sure they can access all the research and everything. I'm sure they've read. They're academics, so they're probably fairly familiar with some of the research and they know empirically it has a lot of benefits.

But until you feel something firsthand, we talked about embodiment, until you have the firsthand experience of something, then you go, ah, it's just another thing. I don't have time. It's another gimm, it's another trend. But try it. And here's the other thing. I, here's a, here's an argument I say to academics and these really intelligent people, I say.

Okay. If something's been around for 2000 years, in some cases even more but at least probably 2000 in some of these practices, mine supposedly goes four or 5,000 years old. Some of my practices. Okay, why is that? Why has something stayed around? Most. Nothing. What else? Movies and songs. You're lucky if a song stays around for 50 years, right?

Or a book. Yeah, maybe a hundred years. But what else has lasted, a thousand years, 2000 years or something. There has to be a reason. There has to be a reason that it's passed down. It used to be passed down orally or verbally. Now it's, and then book, then teachings in books, and then now, through digital and through video.

But there has to be a reason that this ancient method. It's not only stuck around, but it has resurfaced. It has become so prevalent in our lives. It's in our face all the time. Now as we're facing, all of this fast-paced life and distractions and all this noise, there has to be a reason this thing has stuck around.

Aren't you into it? Don't you wanna see why it stuck around 2000 years? I must, I might say something like that to, yeah. Yeah. And I, that is, that also occurs to me a lot. Like people have been doing this for thousands of years. Yeah. And what current research into the brain and the brain on meditation, right?

What happens to your prefrontal cortex? What happens to your amygdala, happens to your ability to emotionally regulate like all of these things. They reflect what the Vedic scriptures say about meditation. Thousands of years ago, they reflect. Then science simply caught up with what these masters, what these ancients teachers were saying, right?

All these thousands of years or hundreds of years, was science just simply caught up to be able to start to substantiate it. But they were saying these same things about awareness and about growth and about the ability of the mind and body that, that these are. These are not new concepts, it's just now we can test them.

And people don't, they it's hard to refute them now and say this is woohoo, this is right. Crystals or this is, yeah. So if people in your environment are saying, oh, this is just woohoo stuff, it's like, Nope, nope. Actually those now you can't. Maybe in the sixties you can say that.

Maybe in the sixties. It's caught up. Now it's. We know that it's too hard to say that there's just too much, there's too larger a body of evidence now that continues to show these promising results. And the other thing I would just say comparatively, if you say this is 2000 years old, if you look, a lot of even psychology is, if you look relatively in history, it's fairly new.

Pop psych, positive psychology, feeling fear. Very new. I met the guy who, who father I've shaken his hand. He's still around. Yeah. Even like mass, like these are fairly new. These are good, important concepts and techniques that we're learning from positive psychology.

But these, and even all of the self-help stuff that came out in the last a hundred years, all relatively new. They're babies as far as methodologies, they're just infants compared to. These ancient practices that have come from, mainly Eastern traditions, but they've been in Christianity.

You can find them in religions and traditions all around the world. These ancient practices. Yeah, in some form or no, there's a coach I follow who she's based in Winnipeg. Her name's Carrie Twig and she call, she groups them as, she's a meditation teacher, but she calls them contemplative practices.

Yeah. And I know other people use that too, but like whatever tradition you have an affinity with will have a contemplative practice. And given that fewer and fewer people are going to church. On Sunday or synagogue or mosque on Saturday. Having access to a secular practice. 'cause there is, you can be a Buddhist, that's fine, but you don't have to be a Buddhist to meditate there.

They're not one in the same just you don't have to be a monk to meditate, right? So having access to a research-based secular practice can also be really appealing. And, and I, I say that Vipassana got me through COVID because I, all of us, like I was, after 10 days of silent meditation, nothing scared me.

Like I had, you had a resilience, you had that mental resilience. Yeah. Like I had met all my you ran the meditation marathon, so you were right. I ran the meditation marathon. Yeah. You're mentally in great shape. I was bored out of my mind with myself. No, nothing about me was gonna surprise me ever again.

And that, that isn't the case, right? 'cause we continue to grow and evolve or maybe peel away a layer of the onion, but like the benefits. Are there, and even though that isn't the meditation practice I have today, like that fundamentally showed me. Oh, if you commit to this you can really rewire how you are capable of approaching daily stressors.

And also like for people in higher education, we take on big projects. Big worthy projects, yeah. That are challenging. And so we set ourselves challenges and then experience, difficulties meeting them. This is a practice that supports setting those goals. Hitting the goals. And maybe not making yourself miserable along the way. Yeah. That's another good point with the academics, is it really goes for any profession though, is you have to be able to sustain yourself. So you have different practices in your life for. For not only growth, but you once you get to a certain level and you're doing a certain, an admin moves up and now they have a whole department they have to manage or department chair you now have to sustain that new level of energy and focus.

And so you need some practice that can sustain you, right? That you like a research that can draw on your resources. And the MINDBODY system. I say that to doc students when they're at their orientation, I say, I'm not gonna lie to you. You now, you have to gap up. You now need more energy. You need more intellect, you need more of your brain power, and you have to be better at managing your time because most of 'em are working full time, right?

So I'm not gonna lie to you, so you better if you wanna talk to me after the orientation, but you need to establish a practice that, that delivers your, that brings out your inner energy that helps you focus because. You can't go backwards now you can you have to gap up and people don't want to hear that.

They want to say, oh, it, you can be the person. Yeah. I can just purse it all differently and make it all work. No, it doesn't work that way up here, friends. You have to step into that thing and what fuels that? You need to practice to fuel that. I love that practice as fuel.

So as we wrap up here today, I want to let people know like where they can find you and and the name of your first book is Meditation In the Classroom. Yeah, me. Meditation in the college classroom. A pedagogical tool to help students de-stress learn and connect. It's been a little while that was with Roman and Littlefield publishers they can find me in just if they go to Amazon and just.

Put in Steve Berland and search Amazon or Google they'll find, links to different podcasts and things, but the books, yeah, if they just go to Amazon, they can find a my page and find the books and then, yeah, possibly I can give you the link when we get that for the meta meditation. So forthcoming in spring of 20, spring of 26 6.

From ledge meta meditation, how neuroscience, virtual reality and AI are radically changing practice and how you can benefit or something like that. Yes. Yeah. We'll help people figure out all this technological advances and what do you do with this stuff and whether or not you spend the hundreds of dollars on a music.

Yeah. Do you wanna drop all of this money on the latest gadgets? If that's your thing. If you're an early adopter, go for it. But if you have 10 minutes just to sit and see just to That's right. Maybe do that. Just be with yourself. That's right. Thank you so much, Steve, for coming today.

Thank you, Justin. It's been so much fun. I really appreciate the work that you're doing in the classroom and in research and and out there, being an example of what a practice can do for us as people who are, working in the knowledge and teaching space because we all need to level up.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it, Jennifer. Thank you. Alright, take care. And to everybody listening the show notes will have links to the things not only Steven's research, but to the apps and the whatnot that we've talked about. If you're interested in exploring the wide world of meditation online because it's all out there and some of it's free, most of it's not.

Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for spending your time with us today, and I will be back with another episode in a couple weeks. Talk to you all soon. I.