Your Mental Body: From Monkey Brain To Mindful Living

What if your thoughts aren’t you—but weather moving through a wider sky? We dive into that gap between thinking and awareness with Jacky Fernandez, a mental health counselor and Zen teacher who bridges clinical tools and contemplative practice. Together we unpack how rumination fuels depression, worry feeds anxiety, and why fighting your mind rarely works. Instead, Jacky lays out simple, humane ways to begin: feet on the floor, breath in the belly, listening to birds, and mindful walking for restless bodies.

From trauma and addiction recovery to years of Zen training, Jacky’s path shows how small, steady choices shape the mind’s climate. We talk about modern distraction—phones, social feeds, and outrage cycles—that pour other people’s thoughts into our heads. Then we get practical: exercise before extra meds, watch how alcohol and sugar hijack mood, and use retreat lessons at home by stacking supportive conditions. Clarity isn’t just calm; it’s energy returning when mental noise drops.

A highlight is our deep look at self‑compassion. Jacky shares midbrain‑first practices that actually soothe: hand on heart, warmth, a shawl, tea, softening the jaw, and gentle touch. These gestures teach safety from the body up, so the mind can follow. We also explore koans and single‑point focus to slip past overthinking and touch direct insight, using the image “each branch of coral embraces the bright moon” as a guide to hold everyday mess and luminous clarity at once.

You’ll leave with a grounded playbook: meet yourself where you are, curate the conditions you can control, and practice short, repeatable moments of presence. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s stuck in worry or rumination, and leave a review telling us one small practice you’ll try this week.

Transcript

Host Introduction And Theme

Meet Jackie Fernandez

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Most of us believe we are our thoughts. We assume the voice in the mind is who we are. But what if the mind itself is something far more spacious? The mind, your mind, my mind, is a place in which thoughts exist. A subtle, high vibrational field of energy in which thoughts are capable of arising. They are not the mind itself, they exist within the mind, formed from the very substance of that field. And if this is true, then a profound question emerges. Who is the one who is observing the thoughts? Welcome to Stories. I'm your host, Delia Quigley. Today we enter the landscape of the mental body, the mysterious inner world where thoughts appear, disappear, and shape the way we experience life. In this episode, I explore this question and many others through a rich and wide-ranging conversation with Jackie Fernandez. Jackie is a mental health counselor specializing in mindfulness, addictions, grief, depression, anxiety, and life transitions. She is also a Zen teacher in the White Plum Lineage. Together we explore the nature of thinking, meditation, awareness, emotional patterns, addiction, and the possibility of cultivating a different relationship with your mind. Rather than trying to control thought, what happens when we learn to witness it? Rather than fighting the mind, what happens when we understand its nature? Today's conversation is an invitation to step back, to witness, and to listen inwardly. Because what is running you may not be what you think. Welcome, Jackie Fernandez. When I was considering who to ask to speak on the mental body, there was just one person I know who is really working to explore and encompass all these different aspects of the mental body. So you're working with addiction, you're working with depression, you're working with, you know, so many aspects as a counselor. And then you also have the moon cloud Zendo, in which you are a sensei and a Zen teacher, and you teach mindfulness. So here's my let's let's I'm gonna get a question right out the door here. All right. Okay. So in your counseling, so I'm knowing you you're bringing your your clients into an awareness of how meditation can support them. How do you approach all these different mental um imbalances with your meditation practice or teaching them about a meditation practice?

Stillness, Mindfulness, And First Steps

SPEAKER_00 3:22

That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think one of the first things um we want to do is get still, you know, and some people can't do that, so we have to meet people where they are. Um so if someone can't get still, then um maybe we want to walk, we do something like yoga, just start to slow down. Um, and we want to start to be able to see the thoughts that we have, because the thoughts that we have are often the genesis of a lot of our issues. You know, unless it's a biological depression, um, if it's a situational depression, most likely our thoughts, rumination is contributing, anxiety, thoughts of worry uh projecting into the future, and depression usually ruminating on the past. Um we get lost in our thoughts and we're not in our bodies. We're not in our um, we're not, you know, our mind is in our body, and we need to come into the body to start to look at the mind. So I I uh start with tiny little uh stillnesses, you know, just bringing someone into the awareness of their feet on the floor, um, into the feeling of the couch beneath their body and breathing, you know, connecting with the breath. Uh maybe listening, hearing trees, wind, birds. You know, just creating a sense of stillness and presence.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

And when they come to you first, so they they come in and you discern what it is that I mean not diagnose, but in the conversation, discern what it is that's that's um.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, we create a history, um, you know, ask what's bothering somebody, try to figure out what brought you know what brought you into counseling, why are you here? You know, it's usually some suffering of some kind, right? Yeah, right. Wanting things to be different than they are, not accepting what's happening in their lives. And so um we you know, we start there. Where are you? Yeah, where are you in this moment? Yeah, and most people are not here, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

They're somewhere else. Right. Okay, so and is that different than someone coming in with uh addictive disorder or addiction?

Addiction, Rumination, And Monkey Mind

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah, addiction is usually uh come you know, compounds any other problems. So where you see addiction, you're probably also seeing depression, anxiety, trauma, most likely trauma. Um, so it's so it's a little more complicated, yeah. And um, you know, addiction is uh not dealing with what is, it's trying to escape. So we have many layers to get through there before we could get anywhere near stillness, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

So in yoga they call it the monkey mind, but I've also heard it referred to in Buddhism as the monkey mind. Yes. Um yoga takes a little further and calls it the drunken monkey mind. That's good. So, how what does that mean? What does it mean to have a monkey mind?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

It means uh freight train brain, um, constant thinking, constant ruminating, uh looking for distractions everywhere, uh having a very hard time um realizing that the thoughts aren't reality, you know, thoughts aren't the world.

Distraction Culture And Conditioned Thinking

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Okay, so we're talking about the mental body, right? Okay, so what is it about our minds that is so difficult to keep them still? Is it um all the external stimulus that we've created in the world, or is this just from the beginning of time?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Uh I think it's from the beginning of time, but I certainly think it's worse. You know, we have so many distractions with our phone, with social media, with television, with news. There's just so much to distract us from, uh, in addition to our own thoughts, you know, then we have other people's thoughts in our minds. And um it can be um and we're so and think in the West, we're so attached to our intellect, we're so attached to thinking. You know, we believe that our thoughts are the world. I think, therefore I am, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And we don't realize that the thoughts are largely not true, you know. Often, most often when we're thinking, we're thinking things based on uh conditioning, the way we have learned to see things instead of the way things are. So when we slow down thoughts, we have an opportunity to see how things actually are.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

So this podcast is called Stories. And so I'd love to hear the stories of women. How did you come into this work? Right? You came into these Zen, right, Buddhist sits before you became a counselor. Is that correct? Could you tell us your story? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

I actually uh had some trauma in my early years, and in order to cope with that trauma, I came from a British family, so it was very much um uh not dealing with things to some degree, and so uh my trauma was not dealt with, and so I turned to alcohol and drugs. Uh it was the 70s, you know, so there was an abundance of alcohol and drugs at the time. And I had developed an alcohol problem. And by the time I was 30, it was fairly significant. In my effort to avoid my trauma, I was using substances, and so I got sober. And when I got sober, I became very interested in meditation. About a couple years into my sobriety, I realized I was still unhappy, and I ran and I was actually working in publishing, and I ran into some um Buddhist books, and I started to read about suffering, and I became interested in Zen. And so in my early 30s, I started sitting Zen, became a part of Zen group, found a Zen teacher, and became very interested in this path. And as I continued on, um I worked in the community in my um in my recovery. I met women, I worked as a mentor to many women, and one of uh uh another fellow uh traveler on the sober path told me that I should uh I would make a really great counselor. And he worked in a local rehab, it was called Alina Lodge, and it was a rehab that dealt with um addicts who are chronic relapsers. And he uh he he suggested that I might want to go back to school, and and what happened was I was given a sum of money that enabled me to go back to grad school. I was very fortunate and very grateful. And I went uh back to grad school and I became a licensed professional counselor, and my interest in um in counseling really uh became focused on how meditation could help. And so I started doing a lot of research and working with the effects of meditation on mental health and uh eventually uh took a deep dive into mindfulness and zen and mental health, and opened the counseling and mindfulness group with my partner Dan Massey and started doing a lot of mindfulness work and uh Zen is my personal practice.

Choosing A Practice: Mindfulness Vs Zen

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Okay, so yes, let's take a moment because we hear about mindfulness meditation, and we hear about zen meditation, we hear about yoga meditation. I mean, there's so many different ways now to meditate. Yes, right, and to me it's personal, you know, you find what works for you, I guess. I mean, but there's also ones that really don't work, right? So you have to be careful. So, how would you how would you advise people?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Because then's pretty tough. It is tough. And so there's many different approaches to meditation. You know, it can be very casual, it can be very serious, very uh committed. Um, and I think it's people finding their own levels and see what opens up for them. So in my uh therapy practice, we use mindfulness for mental health basically. So we meet people where they are, and it can be um as little or as deep as they want to go. Um we we often run eight-week groups, um, just teaching people basic mindfulness skills and and see, and some people stay and continue to come to uh weekly groups.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

So please be a little more specific on mindfulness. I mean, it it's becoming that kind of catch-all word, mindful.

What Mindfulness Is And Isn’t

SPEAKER_00 11:16

All right. So let's go a little deeper. Okay, mindfulness is paying attention to what's happening in the present moment with no judgment and some compassion, some open open heartedness. So you could think, um, well, it sounds like a sniper, you know, except for the compassion, a compassionate awareness piece. So a sniper can pay incredible attention to what's happening in the present moment, but it's not with this open-heartedness, it's very focused on a specific task. So um, mindfulness, so we could have mindfulness of breath, paying attention to the breath in our body, coming back to the breath over and over. But we could also do mindfulness of sound with just listening. Yeah, and then uh when our mind wants to go to labeling, we just go back to pure listening. Um, we could m mindfully walk, paying attention to our footsteps. Um and so with things like um, you know, depending on someone has ADHD, you might want to get them to try and walk, you know, if they have some hyperactivity in their body and can't sit still, or maybe something like gentle stretching yoga.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So is this a way to retrain the brain?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

It is. So, you know, we pay so much attention to our bodies, how they look, how fit we are, and very little attention to our mind. So, you know, we pay more attention to our cars and take better care of our cars than we do our own minds. And I think it's very important to have good mental hygiene, you know, to uh work with your own mind, work with be able to even notice what you're thinking when you're thinking it, which is transformative because sometimes we notice what we're thinking is not true.

Mind–Body–Energy Links

SPEAKER_01 12:52

So, do you do you notice how the mental body or the the way the mind works affects the physical and the energetic bodies? Absolutely, yeah. Okay, could you elaborate a little on that?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, if I'm thinking um anxious thoughts about the future, worried that I won't be able to pay my mortgage, the tension usually arises in my body. You know, and sometimes it's hard to tell which comes first, right? You know, the tension in your body can cause um thoughts, and the thoughts can cause tension in the body. Um, you know, I used to have uh when I was uh younger, I had terrible um irritable bowel syndrome, you know. And when I started meditating, all when I got clear, all of these things cleared up. Oh, really? Oh stress reduced a lot of the somatic symptoms that I had reduced, you know. Okay, and how about energy? Uh well, you know, it's interesting. I do a lot of retreats, and sometimes on the first day of retreat, you start to feel exhausted. And then as your mind clears, you have this unlimited energy. So it's amazing. Four or five days into retreat, I can't sleep, and I'm not tired, and I just feel so energetic. So I think absolutely a clear mind, a free mind, it just is such a beautiful energy to carry around.

Retreat Practice And Preparation

SPEAKER_01 14:04

So in this retreat, are you sitting? Is this the whole time you're sitting in meditation?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah, it would be often um sitting um, say 25-30 minutes at a time, interspersed with walking meditation, perhaps a work practice, breaks for meals, but it's probably it's the 12 to 15 hours of seated meditation a day. And it's exhausting and it takes a while to build up to that, but it is absolutely freeing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

And to prepare for it, do you do anything for the physical body, like you know, yoga? Well, that's part of what yoga poses are about, is to prepare the lungs to be able to breathe deeper and to prepare the body to be able to sit in meditation.

Food, Meds, And Mood Hygiene

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Absolutely, yeah. So I I stretch, I walk, I take care of uh my body, I do gentle yoga. Uh and uh because you can get stiff also sitting so long. So we often have a yoga break or a stretching break within a retreat as well. And retreats take a while to work up to. It's just um you can never go on retreat, or you can go on retreat several times a year, whatever works for you. How about food to feed the mind? Absolutely. Actually, I learned that from you many, many years ago. I was doing a body scan with you, and I think at the time I was um on uh an uh I was on amatryptalin, which it was for for nerves and depression. I had a ner a nerve pain issue, and I I had done a body cleanse with you, not a body scan, a body cleanse with you. Um it was your wonderful book on body cleanses, and um and you and I wasn't losing weight over the body cleanse, and everybody else was. And you actually said to me, Can I ask you a question? And I said, Of course. And you said, Are you want any psychotropic medications? And he said, Well, yeah, I'm on the Samitryplin. And you said, Would you be willing to go off the medication to see what happens and see if you this weight started to move? And um, and I I um I went off the um MH. Oh no, no, it wasn't weight, it was weight and depression. I mean, it was the this mood I was having. And you said, um, go off. It's I went off and we redid the body cleanse, and um the depression left, you know, and I never went back. I haven't been on medication since that time. It was probably um, I don't know, 30 years ago. Yeah, 30 years at least.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Exactly. Yeah, and that was amazing. And I also remember, I now that you've said that, I also remember, I think it was you because I think it was supplements or something else. And I said, you know, you're a small, young, you know, small woman, cut everything in half. Yeah, exactly. Don't take the full dose because they're they're just generally prescribing what they would do for a man and then for a little gal like you. And it, yeah, and that never made sense to me. I said, girls can cut it, you know.

Daily Choices And Slipping Back

SPEAKER_00 16:51

No, it's so helpful. And I actually still use that story today with my clients. You know, the most over-prescribed medication for depression is food. People use food for depression, and the most under-prescribed is exercise. You know, so before any medication, I would ask people to look at what they're eating and look at what they're the how they're moving.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And also alcohol, right? For depression, but that's what but alcohol can make you more depressed. Yes, um, it's a depressant, yeah. It's a depressant, and yet people for that moment they have a little ease, and then they get it just crashes them. Well, a lot of the stimulants, coffee, chocolate, eat too much of it, it's just gonna, it's just gonna knock you down.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Absolutely. And what's really important too, I think, is it's never too late to adjust. So sometimes, you know, we start to feel good. This happens all the time with people. They start to feel great, they start to feel less depressed, they're more energetic, and so they start doing what they used to do because they miss it, you know. And then we start eating poorly, we stop exercising, we start using, we maybe have a few glasses of wine again, and then all of it comes back. So everything we're doing is also in the day, you know, it's in this day that we have to do it. It we don't sort of build up this collective where we could go back to our old ways and not have any um any impact from that.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Okay, so that's an interesting, that's a really good point because um and it's kind of this uh we talk about the ego in terms of we get to this point feeling really great, and then we like, oh, okay, I can go back and I can I can handle another drink, or I could handle you know, overeating this one time. And it's like this little voice is like encouraging that.

Conditions, Control, And Empowerment

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yeah, yeah, you can. Yeah, yeah. It's fine, it'll be fine, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. Go ahead. This time I'll be fine. This time you can handle it.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, and I sometimes I think you know, we get the seasonal effective disorder, which is sad, which is a real thing, but it also happens to come after the holidays, where a lot of people are eating a lot of sugar and and stuff that's not so good for them, you know, staying up later, not resting, not exercising. So it's interesting. I think these forces really contribute to making winter hard for people. But when you give these things up, it's just beautiful, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

It's beautiful, and I think so. I think coming off of the uh excess it in the holidays, and even if you just start, okay, I'm just gonna cut, you know, cut nuts so some of it because I'm not partying, but you have to detox. And I think people don't realize the effects of detoxifying from the excess, powerful, really powerful, right? Okay, so then they've been away from you and they come back to meditation and they're you know, they come to sit and they haven't been sitting for a while, everybody's squirming around.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Yeah, usually sore, right? Really sore and you can get excited. Exactly. So, how do you how do you address that with them?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Uh really pointing out noticing how you feel, noticing how you might have felt before, noticing how you're feeling now, noticing the conditions that caused how you're feeling. I like to point out um everything arises in conditions, and we have a lot of control over certain conditions. We can control what we eat, who we spend time with, you know, what we're doing physically, mentally, spiritually a lot of the time. And these conditions are very important. So when someone comes back and they all of a sudden it's harder to sit still, all of a sudden I feel a little depressed, I feel bloated, I'm not happy, noticing the conditions that gave rise to those things and that we can change them. So I like to be empowering with this with clients, you know, we have a lot of control. We don't have control over the world. We see, you know, the world is on fire right now, it can be very difficult, but we can control our small world surrounding us and our bodies and work on our minds and our bodies and our emotions.

Self‑Compassion Over Self‑Critique

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Okay, so but let's take that in from a different angle, okay? And that is loving ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

So, all right, so this is a really huge um topic to ask people who now are coming back bloated and sore and you know, hung over and right, and they had a fight in the family dynamic or whatever, and now they're beating themselves up. Okay. And maybe this is, you know, it's a core issue that they never loved each themselves because of trauma in their childhood. All right. So this goes deep now, Jackie. So where do where do you go? I mean, it's kind of like you these small steps you're talking about are just a surface steps to work your way gradually down the stairway, you know, to these deeper issues. Is that what happens?

Why Affirmations Often Backfire

Koans, Focus, And Insight

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah, in the West, I remember the Dalai Lama. I think when he first came over here, um, someone mentioned hating themselves, and the Dalai Lama said something like, What are you talking about? You know, never had heard about self hatred and was amazed by it, you know. But it seems to be a particularly Western construct, self hatred. And we separate it with women, you know. We sort of, oh, I'm so fat, and you know, we put ourselves down. Often. So noticing, first of all, we have to notice that how we treat ourselves and that we bring some mindful awareness to that. And then I just have people try and soften around that experience, even like softening the body, noticing how it makes them feel, and start to dial into the self-talk that we have. And then we have mindful self-compassion practices, which are very effective but very uncomfortable. And I think the most important thing with people is like lifting weights. You know, you don't expect to go to the gym and start lifting your max weight immediately. You don't expect to run 13 miles out of the gate. You know, and the same is with any kind of change like this. It's slow and it can need some consistency. And so when we initially try and work with a self-compassion practice, which is softening toward ourselves our own experience, perhaps um giving ourselves a gesture of compassion. I'm putting my hands on my heart at the moment. You know, covering, uh putting your hands on your skin right above your breastbone. And uh it's sort of like uh feeling your heart and softening towards your own experience. These things don't work immediately, you know. They start to feel um, you start some people, someone might feel silly, or uh they might feel the opposite. They might feel um uncomfortable, angry, um that the self-hatred might arise. And we just do this over and over, just small gestures of self-compassion, sort of holding your own arms, rubbing your legs. And then for compassion for ourselves, it's not um it's not thinking, because if we tend toward um negative thinking about ourselves, if we try and meet that with positivity, it usually strengthens the negativity. So positive affirmations only work with people who tend to think positively about themselves. They don't often work with people who don't. So we're not gonna go to thoughts, we're gonna go to that mid-brain um activity, which is usually gesture. So um warmth. You know, if you want to be compassionate, you can take, like I always have a Pashmina scarf, you wrap yourself up, have a cup of tea, a warm cup of tea, which I have right here with me. Um, you might have a little uh blanket, sit by a fire, uh, you know, soften your body, uh caress yourself gently, put on some lotion. You know, you're really going to what you would do with a baby. You swaddle a baby, you talk to a baby gently, you know, you're very gentle with a baby. These are the kind of compassionate actions we want to take toward ourselves. And as you know from yoga, when the body moves, the mind can follow.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Right. No, that's interesting. I was gonna ask you that question about affirmations. Um, and maybe affirmations, um, verses, verses, I don't know if that's the word, uh, mantra.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

You know, because I in Zen, you don't do a mantra, do you?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

No, you it's the counting or um, well, Zen, we we have koan practice, that's K-O-A-N, which sometimes you can repeat uh a phrase or a word, but it's more that that's about a single point of focus. So whether it's your breath or a mantra, it we're getting to uh concentrating on a single point, which increases the Jo Ricky, we would say, in Zen, the uh power, the energy uh of that single point of focus in your body, which allows for insight.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

So and an affirmation is just words that make you are supposed to make you feel good about yourself.

Culture, Divisiveness, And Craving Peace

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yes, but I suppose if you use an affirmation more like a mantra, you didn't attach to the meaning, but we're just focused on the words, it could be very helpful. But when we're saying I'm pretty, you know, and we put in the mirror and we don't think we are, usually we don't suddenly become pretty to ourselves, right? Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Or I love you looking in the mirror and say that's that's uh what is it pasted up on the the mirror that I love you? Yeah, and and yet we haven't really dealt with the trauma that right goes along with you know not loving yourself.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yeah, and the deep existential questions who is it that is not lovable? Who is it that is lovable?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Right, which is one of my favorite questions is uh who am I who asks and looking at those two, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really don't try to answer it.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Just look at those two. Right, yeah, exactly. And that's everybody's gonna want to try and answer it.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

It's like and maybe you'll notice the mind can go a little blank when you have those confounding questions.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Right, right. Because Cohen, so uh what's a Cohen that really, I don't know, befuddled you or spoke to you a Zen Cohen?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Um, most of the Zen Coens befuddle you initially. I know. That's their that's their point. They actually frustrate the minds because you can't use your intellect to answer them. You have to go deeper into another part of uh yourself and your awareness in order to answer it. So it's actually getting away from uh discursive thinking that we usually engage in.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Is there one that you uh you want to share?

Simplicity, Joy, And What We Miss

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Um oh, there's so many. Um there's one that I love that goes um all branches of the bright coral embrace the moon, um, which is a beautiful image that people could work with. That the picturing coral under a blue sea, you know, with its arms reaching up and the moon shining brightly, you know, each branch of the coral embraces the bright moon.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

You know. Oh, that is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Isn't it beautiful? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I don't remember, I don't know if you remember this, and maybe I shouldn't even say it, but it was one of the the sun setting as the moon rises, um, caught between the sun setting and the moon rising. Then and I had it was interesting because one day I had just read that cohen and I went out to the beach with some friends of mine, and and I looked up and the sun was setting and the moon was rising. And I was like, I know, it's beautiful. It was just in one of those moments where caught between the two. Yeah, I think I'm still trying to figure out that cohen, but whatever.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

And just that experience, that moment.

unknown 28:14

Yeah, right.

A Closing Koan: Coral And Moon

SPEAKER_01 28:15

That moment, exactly. So, all right, so tell me about our culture today and what you're seeing in terms of what's happening to people, you know, and I'm I'm just gonna throw a few things in because not only are you dealing with the addictions of pleasure and pain, but you're also dealing with people who are on a lot of uh medications.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

We are, yeah, and there's uh an enormous impact of opinion news uh that's riling up this divisiveness that is causing so much harm and so much discontent and uh unhappiness, you know. So people are very attached to views, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:59

They're very attached to views, and yet, so it's really interesting to see the yin and the yang with what's happening in Minnesota, and then I've been following because they've come through my neighborhood, these uh Buddhist monks who are walking through. Oh, wonderful! Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So here they are doing 2300 mile through the south, and they specifically picked towns that had were wounded, you know, the south is some serious history. Okay, and thousands of people are turning up and crying, and flowers, and you know, in and and you really see this is not um, yeah, they're educated America, but also the rural America, the Christian America coming forward. It's really amazing to see what's happening. So, what is that we're seeking mentally, this peace? How do you how do you work with that?

Practical Stillness And Everyday Nature

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Well, I think it's instinctive. I think we know on some level that things aren't right and that we're missing something. And when we get still, I think we start to tap into that which that sense of wholeness that we feel like we're missing. And the I think the monks represent that they're so authentic, they've done this work and they're so authentically themselves. They accept the world as it is and themselves as they are, and they're just walking and they're happy. And we crave that so much because we're so unhappy. And we have face that we have everything. With all this going on, when it feels like our our country could literally collapse, I think we have had everything. We are so rich in everything. And look, we would risk it. We really could lose it. And it's so sad, you know. And particularly for people more our age, we grew up in heaven. There, you know, it was just we had so much as before. Cell phones were much of our life, you know, we were outside till 10 at night. We could come home whenever we had freedom, you know, freedom of our minds. We were creative and fun and playful. And I think you know, children work so hard now, and um, there's just this sense of play, doesn't seem as pervasive. Everyone's always on their devices, you know, devices, divisiveness, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Oh, good one, yes. And and entitlement. So it's kind of like this um macrocosmic example of having it all doesn't necessarily bring you peace and happiness.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

No, in fact, when I went to Nepal many years ago, I went uh went on a walking trip through Nepal, and they had nothing, but they were so happy, you know. I have seen that too.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

It's just just in in what they created in their lives, yeah. There is this happiness. Simplicity is this joy, simplicity, yeah, right. Okay, so would you could you leave us with um something, um uh meditation or some kind of breath or something that uh listeners could can do with you? Shall we do something right now, or something they can take away and sit with, you know, in their meditation?

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Um let's see. Well, I'll say this. I mentioned the koan. Each branch of the choral embraces the bright moon, right? So in zen, the moon is sort of like um enlightened mind, you know. And it's what we all want. We all want to live in nirvana, we want to live in heaven, we want our minds to be open and bright and shiny, we want to experience all this. And yet this koan is saying, it's not saying the moon embraces the coral. It's saying the coral embraces the moon. So the coral symbolizes the earth, you know, this um unenlightened world. Uh the coral is us, you know, the coral is the relative world of this and that, of right and wrong, these lives we live. You know, and the unified, enlightened mind is the mind of unity where everything is one. But it doesn't say that the moon embraces the coral, it says the coral embraces the moon, which means that we all have this capacity to wake up. You know, we all have the capacity to experience unity and wholeness, to be authentically ourselves, you know. And I think that's so important because we we feel unworthy, but each of us has this, you know, we have this ability for insight, for kindness, for compassion, for wholeness, for authenticity. And we all it is is working at it as much as we would lift weights or clean our homes. It's taking care of our our mental body, as you can say.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Right, exactly. And that's what uh they're not to shamelessly promote, but um my mindful mandala cards were about. Beautify, I love your cards and I use them. I do. I too. Yeah, good. Yeah, I do too. I know, because it's like, okay, I have this this part of myself uh that's bringing me into depression, and you know, and this, and but I can move out of it. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

And I can look at the conditions that the depression is arising in, and I can address each one of them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

So I would you suggest that one of the uh the cure, but can I say cure for our present mental state, a mind, our mental bodies, is to adopt a meditation practice?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

I'd say it could be extraordinarily helpful, but it really to get some stillness and quiet, to get off the phone, to get off the TV, to get outside, to live in our world, to be in our environment, to do these things, to pay attention to birds. I saw this funny meme. It was like you turn 60 and birds, you know. All of a sudden you love birds, you know. But these this is our home, you know, and to pay, and if we can't sit on a cushion, then go out and listen to the world, you know, to the birds and the trees and the wind and notice the flowers, notice this beautiful place in which we live that we do not want to lose, you know, and just quiet your inner life, quiet it down, because we all have that wisdom that knows the way out of depression. And my job is to empower people to do this themselves. I don't have any secrets. We all have this ability, you know. We just have to be willing to practice.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

You've been listening to my interview with Jackie Fernandez here on Stories. I'm your host, Delia Quigley. You can find Jackie's contact information in this episode's show description. But there's a whole lot more, including a link to the mindful Mandala cards that Jackie and I talked about. Check it out on DeliaQuigley dot substack.com. Thanks so much for joining us until next time.