Episode 8: Pain Pushes, Vision Pulls

Jeffrey Siegel on Values, Vision, and Getting Back Into Your Body

About This Episode

Today I had the opportunity to sit down with my friend and colleague Jeffrey Siegel (@jeffsiegelwellness). Jeff's holistic background in Mind and Brain Education from Harvard University and Buddhist Studies from The University of Hong Kong provides a way towards lasting wellbeing that feels as good as it looks. Jeff coaches clients to help integrate the deep inner work of personal transformation while developing a bold vision, clear goals, and healthy routines. In addition to wellness coaching, Jeff teaches mindfulness and mediation at Harvard and Tufts, and leads corporate wellness workshops and classes for innovative companies that care about making the office a place that supports people's health and happiness.  

In this episode we cover a ton of ground. As you can tell from the bio, Jeff’s expertise is wide ranging, and we zoom in on how to create lasting behavior change, how values and vision unite to draw us closer to our best self, and then we unpack a few practices you can use to build the connection with your body. This one is a long one, and it’s well worth the time. I hope you enjoy! 

Links and Resources

Jeff Siegel Wellness - Holistic Coaching

Internal Family Systems

Immunity to Change - Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Episode Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

body, mind, values, posture, embodied, pain

Jeffrey Siegel  00:00

Was your mind at least for just like a split second 100% just connected to your body. And it's those little moments of connection that build your capacity to do that at a larger scale. This is the importance of practice, practice builds capacity.

Pete Kadushin  00:29

Welcome to the mental training lab. I'm Pete Kadushin, your host, and my job is to have fun conversations that leave you with actionable tools, little experiments that will help you improve your mindset and mental skills so that you can do the things you love at a higher level. Today, I had the opportunity to sit down with my friend and colleague Jeffrey Siegal. Jeff's holistic background in mind and brain education from Harvard University, and Buddhist studies from the University of Hong Kong provides a way towards lasting well-being that feels as good as it looks. Jeff coaches clients to help integrate the deep inner work of personal transformation, while also developing a bold vision, clear goals and healthy routines. In addition to the wellness coaching that he does, Jeff teaches mindfulness and meditation at Harvard and Tufts, and leads corporate wellness workshops and classes for innovative companies that care about making the office a place that supports people's health, and happiness. In this episode, we cover a ton of ground. As you can tell from the bio, Jeff's expertise is wide ranging. And we zoom in on how to create lasting behavior change, how values and vision unite to draw us closer to our best self. And then we spend a lot of time unpacking a few practices that you can use to help build the connection between your body and your mind. This one's a little bit longer, and it's well worth the time. I hope you enjoy. Jeffrey Segal, welcome to the mental training lab, I'm super excited to have you. Just to get everybody up to speed on our history, we spend a lot of time doing this, right like getting a chance to dive into the deep end and explore and enjoy each other's the way our minds work. And so I'm just really excited that we got to hit record, and we'll get to share this. So thank you for being here. That's a long way of saying thank you.

Jeffrey Siegel  02:15

Thank you, Pete, for having me here. And I'm super excited to continue building upon the many conversations that we have had in private now in a public domain. And I hope they are equally as as fruitful and intriguing and exciting for other people to listen to as they are for each of us to get to, you know, explore so many different topics together.

Pete Kadushin  02:40

Yeah, and the only thing that maybe will be different is my job will be to keep us from going too far into outer space. But other than that,

Jeffrey Siegel  02:48

Man, I love I love blasting into outer space. But I respect I respect your role here as air traffic control, making sure we can actually land this this plane.

Pete Kadushin  03:00

Well if we go to outer space, we'll have our spacesuits and then what we'll make sure to come on back and land safely. To kick things off. You know, one of the conversations that comes up a lot in the world of mental training and mental performances around getting out of your own way. That phrasing comes up a lot. And you know, when things are going well don't mess with success, you know, when things start to go poorly, don't tinker too much overcorrect. And I've got kind of two questions. The first is what does getting out of your own way translate for you in terms of your language or your thought process? And you know either personally or then when you're working with clients, and you notice that maybe they're, they're in their own way? And so then I'll leave it there, and then we'll have a follow up question as well.

Jeffrey Siegel  03:46

Okay, getting out of your own way. This is a fantastic topic. And I and I, the thing that's coming up for me, Pete is that there's sort of two, there's two components to this. And I think one is sort of visible, and the other is invisible. And so the visible component is those times when we are aware of the ways in which we're effing ourselves, right. And that awareness could be very subtle, it could just be like a little bit of an inkling or a feeling, but there's some knowing there's some consciousness around it. Right? And we can and and this is often true of what you know, when we so many people come to me and I'm sure to you in terms of coaching and saying like, hey, like I have these patterns, I have these behaviors that I want to I want to kick to the curb. Right, like recognizing like, they keep repeating the same mistakes and so they're getting in their own way. They're doing something over and over. And so this is the visible piece. And for me, I like taking a really kind of parts and systems approach, very much born from the word internal family systems, but thinking about it there is, you know, the getting in our own way is we need to break that down. Because one, we are not unitary beings. We are composite, multifaceted, ever-changing beings. And so what does this really mean? It means is like we have different parts within us. You could consider them like sub personalities or pieces. I sometimes like to label them monsters or demons. Whatever you want to call them, right. So it's like, there's some part of you that showing up and causing problems, like that is the part of you that's getting in the way of guess what, another part of you. Another part of you that wants something different. And so you have these parts that are competing with each other and that creates so much of what we might call a self sabotage, or procrastination, and all of that stuff. And so learning how to turn towards those parts and work with them is really essential. So that's sort of the visible piece. But the invisible piece of getting in our own way, I think, is sort of the flip side of the coin, where we, because there's, you know, you phrase this question of like, if it's, if it's not broke, don't fix it, or if like, you know, if things are going well let them go well. Yes, and sometimes, we actually stop doing the things that are serving us because things are going well. And I'm gonna bring this back to the example of like medication, it's such a huge issue in the medical world of getting people to actually adhere to their like prescriptions, like to take their medicine, right. Or you can think of it in terms of vitamins, right? It's like, when you're in pain it's very obvious you're going to take your medication, because it's going to help you get out of pain. But when things are going well, and you're no longer in that acute pain, that you're like, oh, like, yeah, I don't really need to take that vitamin, like I'm doing fine, right? So like you actually stop doing the things that are actually serving you. Right, which then sets you up for future suffering. And so this is sort of the invisible way in which we sometimes get in our own way. Because we can't see far enough into the future and past that horizon to know how what we're doing, or what we're not doing today is actually setting us up for some future problems.

Pete Kadushin  07:18

Hmm. Yeah. And you know setting the rake on the floor, in the same exact spot that you stepped on it today, so that you can step on it and whack yourself in the face again, tomorrow. Not only do I see that a lot with clients, but I've certainly experienced that personally as well. And so, yeah, I recognize the the visible aspect of getting in our own way. I know this would be good for me, and I'm not going to make that choice. And actually, one of the things that we bonded over early was some of Robert Keegan's work around immunity to change and adult developmental theory. And and that idea that we can often see what we want to be doing differently, but it's really, really tough to do it anyway.

Jeffrey Siegel  08:06

Hmm. You know I'm a huge, I'm a huge Keegan fan. I'm a huge fan of theories of developmental change. And so like, I want to throw that at you, you know, you give the great example of the rake, right? Like stepping on it, getting whacked. And we've all experienced this in our lives of like, doing something over and over. And, you know, as they say, it's like expecting different results, and it still kicks us in the ass. And we're like, wait, why did I do that again? You know, like, and like, so how do you work with that with like, within yourself? How do you approach that?

Pete Kadushin  08:43

Yeah, it's there's two different things that I try and turn my eyes towards. And I think they can both be equally effective. It's really a question then of how much damage you're doing to yourself, as you're changing. And the two the two pieces are, does it hurt enough when I step on that proverbial rake, to never want to do that again? Right. And the other is, is there something that's tasty enough in terms of change, that I'm motivated to do that? And so those two things work together and sometimes against each other, right? Like either the pain of the thing I continue to do, right, I get in my own way. And I don't have as good a practice or I don't have as good a performance or maybe I don't connect as well to the people around me that I really want to connect with. Did it hurt enough to make me want to change my behavior? Or can I visualize a compelling enough future where the change has happened? Right, so there's this reward, punishment push-pull. And I think that using both levers wisely is tough. Because most of the time, we double down on punishment and that actually gets us stuck more. But being able to see the pain clearly and understand that I've had a role to play in it. And then at the same time, not getting stuck in the guilt or shame of I did this again, I literally put the rake right in front of me stepped on it whacked myself in the face, I'm probably going to do it again tomorrow. That instead of that being able to go like, well, there's a world where this doesn't happen every morning. There's a world where I can be different. And there is some value and some meaning to that. And so for me, it's it's the two of those together. And I wonder how that tracks for you?

Jeffrey Siegel  10:23

A few things like one is that a quote that I first heard from the teacher, Michael Beckwith, who said, pain pushes until vision pulls. And I think that's so beautifully lines up with exactly what you're saying, of like, the pain of that experience needs to be great enough. And it's often that's where we start. Like, that's where most change, you know, we're talking about mental training, physical training, personal development, self improvement, like all of this stuff, like why do we do any of it? Right? Like, why do we do any of it? Like, it almost always can be traced back to some some sort of pain, right? The pain is the initial thing that's getting us going and moving to do something. But the pain itself is not enough. Like, we need that vision of where we're going to pull and to concentrate to, to aim our energy and our effort at something that's valuable. And I like how you use this, you know, this frame of like, there's a world in which this doesn't happen. You know, and it makes me think of, you know, kind of multiverses and the quantum nature of reality that we're in, and you're like, yeah, maybe there is a world where like, everything's exactly the same, except this thing doesn't happen. Like and maybe actually I can access that world. If I allow my vision to be big enough. You know, the funny twist on all this is like my experience, there are times where, like, I know that a particular behavior is, is no good for me. Like, you know, it's gonna cause me some sort of pain. There are times where I'll go back and like, and I don't know what this is, I don't know if this is self sabotage, or masochism, or just curiosity, because like, there's a part of me that's like, wait, is like, that thing really suck as much as I thought it did. So like, I'll go back and I'll repeat the same behavior just to like, check to make sure it still hurts. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, that still is not good.

Pete Kadushin  12:20

Well, you know, you mentioned the the push and pull and running away from something, right, only being motivated, motivated by the pain of the experience I'm having, right doesn't tell you where to run to, run towards. And I think the interesting flip here is when you go back to an experience with some level of awareness, and say, well, I'm actually just curious, did that suck as much as I thought it would? Then there is there's really an approach. You're running, you're walking towards the experience. And so I wonder if that transforms the stepping on the rake when you're like, I'm just gonna really be present to the experience of stepping on this rake to figure out if it hurts as much as I thought it did.

Jeffrey Siegel  13:02

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you're describing the, the mindful way forward. You know, and we can unpack this word mindfulness, like, huge freakin thing. I know you've you've talked with some really great people on your podcast about it. It is an important part of my world, my practice, my life. But, yeah, what you're speaking to as the the, the entering into a situation deliberately, right, with intentionality completely transforms that. And I think that is often really the one of the best places we can begin with any of these things is like, take that one behavior, take that visible, getting in your way behavior, and repeat it, but repeat it from this place of being really intentional and curious about it, and trying to stay in that curiosity as you're doing it, which is not easy, because that takes skill and practice because it's often uncomfortable and there's a part of us that wants to maybe check out numb out, you know, dissociate, whatever it is. So like, that's, that's a really, really key component to like, I think, working on some of these more intractable habits and behaviors that tend to show up for people.

Pete Kadushin  14:22

And one of the things that I like to do in the work with clients is try and find ways to make this an acute experience. Right? Can we bring your attention to something right now that helps create a sense of this, the shift in state that takes place when you're curious as opposed to avoidant. And one of my favorite examples, and we actually talked a few episodes ago about cold water exposure. And I remember really vividly one of the first times that I got in an ice bath. It was at a workshop and so there's multiple people. It was a big ice bath that we could all climb into, and you could watch the folks who were avoidant that they were moving away from their experience as it was unfolding. And then you could see the folks who, I don't know if surrender is the right word or acceptance, it certainly wasn't complacence. And it wasn't, I love the cold water, right. But there was a certain curiosity that shifted the posture, and you could see the shift in shoulders. You could see how people's muscle tension and breathing rates changed. And so finding those moments, with the clients that I work with, where it's not an abstract, are you moving towards or moving away, but instead a, hey, unpleasant or discomfort is here. Right, let's let's actually work with it in the moment and see how that shift in state takes place.

Jeffrey Siegel  15:43

I love that description of watching these people in the water, you know, in the ice. And I can see this in myself, like we've talked about, I don't like cold water. I don't like most cold things like, you know, and there's, there's yeah, there's a change. And it's sometimes it's very obvious, as you said, there's like an obvious like withdrawing like run, like, as he like, the most obvious thing is the literally running away, you're like I am not going anywhere near that I'm gonna turn around and run in the other direction. You know, and as a culture like society, like where a lot of us are just running. We're running from pain. We're running from pain, without any like, real clear vision, or direction to like, where to go. You know, and it speaks to your point of like the ability to be in an experience, right and not run away from it. Because even if you're having it, we know, like you our attention, our mind can move very, very far away. Right to create distance from that experience, because it's safer, it's safer to retreat to these, you know, places in the minds that are disconnected from the body, because the body is experiencing maybe something that is is unfamiliar, and overwhelming. But that, you know, we can teach it, we can teach it, the mind to be more curious. And the curious is what brings the unfamiliar to the familiar, and it makes the unsafe safe.

Pete Kadushin  17:05

Yeah, and this is something I want to zoom in on in just a little bit. Before we get there, right, because there's there's just a beautiful web to climb into around that relationship of mind and body and embodiment in general. Before we get there, I want to set the frame for myself a little bit by thinking a little bit about the unfolding of your story. And so the way I usually frame this is around somebody's performance journey. And I always use performance really loosely. Right? So the type of performance that you're thinking of may have evolved over time. But when you think about trying to bring your best self to the table, and if you were writing that story, what would a few of the chapter, key chapter headings or section headings look like for you?

Jeffrey Siegel  17:57

So like the, the answer that's coming up for me, I don't know, actually, if at all addresses the intention behind your question. But it's like, I don't think I, I don't think I was all that concerned with becoming my best self for a long time. You know, like, it's, it's funny to say that now, because right now that's embedded in everything that I do. It's embedded in my professional work. It's embedded in how I spend my free time. It's embedded in my relationships, like, you know, I've really tried to design a life that elicits the most, you know, virtuous and noble and strongest parts of myself because that's, you know, how I've seem to, if I want to level up, like, that's how to do it. But I, you know, I don't think that was always a pursuit that I had. I think it started to grow, probably, I'm sure the seeds were planted at a very, very young age. And, you know, we can go back to, you know, some early childhood educational experiences that were really transformative for me. And it definitely grew. But you know, it's like, it grows as we grow as our, and this goes back to develop developmental theory, right? Like, I didn't have the cognitive or emotional maturity as a teenager to say, like, yeah, like, I want to be my best self. Like, I think the way that manifested was, like, I got into weightlifting, I was like, I want to, like, I want to be strong, I wanna have muscles, like, I learned about nutrition, that, you know, it's like, I wanted to learn how to transform my body into something that was seemingly better. You know, and again, this is tricky, because my definition of better was sort of what the fashion and fitness industry was telling me was better, which was, you know, some jacked, lean, muscular dude, you know, who could crush it, you know, in the gym and whatever. So, but, that, you know, that was, that was the version of my best self, like, you know, as a 16 year old. And then, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting, it would be an interesting exercise like every year perhaps on your birthday, you sit and write down like your definition of your best self. And then to see how that would change and grow as you change and grow.

Pete Kadushin  20:11

I mean, this is right at the heart of adult development theory, right? The idea that our capacity for a complex self identity really evolves, hopefully evolves as we evolve, right. And there's the sense of authorship that you can take, right? So early on, you may be source, well, let's be clear, we're all sourcing some of that self identity, what we think our best self ought to look like from the things around us, whether it's media, whether it's parents, and coaches and friends, sibling, significant others, etc. And then you hope, I guess that the slider shifts over so that there's more self authorship, right. This is what I want and what I value as opposed to what other people tell me I ought to want and value. And then there's there's kind of a few levels, or maybe at least one level above that, where there's there's more of a looseness to the current identity with a trust that however you're bringing your best self right now is the appropriate self to bring.

Jeffrey Siegel  21:16

I like I like both this idea of looseness and trust. So Pete, like, tell me, I know a bit about your, your some of your journey from that kind of using Keegan's language, the socialized mind to the self authored mind, right? This, this developmental growth that we all go through of like, you know, basing our vision and values on these externally inherited things to more of having this internal sense of where I want to go and who I am and what my values are. But, like, and I'm happy if you want to share some of that. But I'm really curious, like, where's your growth edge now? Where do you see the parts of yourself that are still kind of stuck in some more of that socialized minds, that you're still kind of trying to like pull into this place of self authorship?

Pete Kadushin  22:09

Yeah, yeah. I think that, what I'm starting to recognize for the last decade plus, really going back to I think the transition from high school into college has been a deepening of my mind and my appreciation for but also my, my, maybe like, the best way to phrase it would be being trapped within is like, as I was building strength to be able to problem solve and think through things and you're getting all the drinking from a firehose in graduate school. And so now you have all these theories to go with it. So you sit down, and you're starting to talk to somebody and you're not in a counseling session, right, you're not coaching them. But you're sitting with a friend, and you're thinking with theory, and all of a sudden, you realize you weren't present to the moment. And so this strengthening of mind. And this doubling down on thinking, which was something that I was good at, I've been blessed with. And so there was a watching the sword get sharpened on both sides, without really knowing what to do in terms of breaking free of that being stuck above my neck. And so my growth edge now, really is finding a way to allow some of that looseness, right, that the mind doesn't always have the answers. In fact, going back to what we talked about getting in my own way, often my body's got this, right. And my mind now is like, the annoying younger brother in the backseat kicking the chair, the person driving and saying like, hey, look at me, look at me, you should probably think more about this. And so, you know, that for me, I think is, is the growth edge is learning how to be a little bit more loose and open with what could be a superpower. I think oftentimes, my capacity for problem solving helps. But recognizing that if you only have a hammer, everything becomes a nail. And that's that's super unproductive as well.

Jeffrey Siegel  24:08

You know it, there's so many there's so many beautiful things like bubbling up to the surface. One is I do you remember that value sorting exercise that we did together? So it was like a side, five-side tangent, like Pete and I went to this workshop. And like, you know, they they laid out like hundreds of like values on these little pieces of paper. And we were given like three minutes to basically sort through and like create a pile of maybe like 15 or something like that we thought were our core values, that ones that like we really want it like you know, the ones that were important to us, right. And then it's like that we had to like bubble that down from 15 to 10, and from 10 to five, you know, and you know. It was a great, it was a great exercise in making this concrete and tangible, this idea of like, yeah, I get to choose and select my values. Right, this like very much affirmation of self authorship, which as you're saying, like is completely embedded in, you know, this sense of individualism that we have here in America of like, well, these are my values as, as an individual, you know. And this is really interesting, because there is a certain break from the confines of your tribe and your traditions, right is like when you move from this place of socialized mind to self authored mind, but then it's like, how do you then balance that back within community, because as we've seen, like, you know, individualism taken to the extreme becomes narcissist and vain and incredibly egotistical and, and so there needs to be, then that balance is one thing that's like, huge, huge thing I think I've seen in my, in my personal journey, you know, the ways in which I've thinking about self care as a the other side of the coin of community care, you know, and this is something that I've really wrestled with in my own work as a, as a health and wellness and fitness coach, is this, this, you know, individual versus collective, you know, person versus community sort of thing. You know, and one is like, either getting caught up in trying to, like, make all of these changes as if people exist in a vacuum. You know, so it's like, yeah, like, you know, I value this, and like, I want to do this, but like, and not paying attention to the broader social collective context that we're all sitting in, like, because that's so tremendously powerful. And then because of that, then also recognizing, I'm asking myself, like, should I invest my energy and like helping this one person change this one habit so they stop, you know, stepping on that rake and whacking themselves in the face? Or should I invest my energy into trying to get rid of all the rakes, at the at the cultural level? Like, you know, and the answer is, is both and, and yes, and, and I need to be true to myself and figure out, you know, where I can be of greatest service. But thinking about it in all those lenses is important.

Pete Kadushin  27:30

And something that's stood out to me is that I didn't want to phrase it as the self authorship or choosing your values consciously, is a bad thing. I think that too much of a good thing, though, can end up being counterproductive. And so I loved that value sort activity. And I actually have returned to it multiple times since we did it that first workshop, where I've tried to see how my values evolve, or how the factors of the day and the environment might influence the way I'm thinking about my values. And then, in terms of looseness, it's really thinking about, well, what are the values that guided my values? Right? If I look down at the cards that I selected, what were the things that allowed me to decide that those things were valuable compared to others and having some awareness of the capacity for those tectonic plates to shift and being very, okay, in fact, very excited about that, I think is the shift in posture for me, that allows me to be loose, while also feeling committed to the values that I that I have.

Jeffrey Siegel  28:39

And if you were to go back, and do some, some space time traveling right, to an alternative, parallel world where you could ask this question of like, wait, if Pete, you know, grew up in, you know, Arkansas, like, would would these values hold true? You know, or if Pete grew up in China, would these values hold true? Right, you know, or if Pete had, you know, you know, three sisters, you know, would these values hold true? You know, so it's like, you know, start thinking about, yeah, like, how did all these situational factors, so many of the things in our life that we had no control over, no choice over, right, obviously, impacting them. And I think they're, you know, there's, there's an interesting piece of questioning that but then also essentially, coming back to this topic that we spend a lot of time talking about, which is acceptance, that like, like, you know, there's a certain amount of like, oh, that acceptance and I'll use the word ownership. Like, I need to own the fact that I was born as a white male in a relatively economically privileged household in Center City, Philadelphia, and went and got a, you know, a very privileged education. Like, these are these are all things that have shaped my values and who I am, you know, and rather than getting caught up in in guilt and shame and like confusion about that, it's just just like accepting it and owning it. And then like asking like, how can I embody these values in a way that is going to help people reduce suffering, and to stop wasting human potential, like, these are the questions that are at the forefront of my mind.

Pete Kadushin  30:25

And what I love here is that you've, you've allowed acceptance and ownership to be a package deal. In that, I think often times, it becomes easy to go, well, if the environment has that much of an influence, or whatever really is going on for me right now. Like, if I accept it, then I'm absolved of responsibility. But it's really the acceptance is the precursor to, right, if I accept my present reality, I now have the opportunity to take ownership over the things that I can control. And so the empowerment piece, right, it's a one two punch. And I think if we disconnect, and we tried to take ownership before we accept, or if we accept without that second part of saying, okay, well, what buttons and dials and knobs do I have in front of me on the control panel? What can I do? Right, that they really do need to code together. And embodied embodiment now has come up a couple of times, and I pointed to my growth edge being, you know, dropping down below my neck more or less right to get back into my body. And I think we've been around this idea now for for the entire conversation. And so I'm wondering, when you think about that mind body connection, where do you notice the relationship first? Really, so the presupposition here is that there is a mind body connection. So I'm wondering, you know, if you had to point to the spot where it that connection's most strong for you, and then I think we're going to continue to travel further away from the, the eight inches between your ears, and we'll get further into the body, hopefully, as the rest of this conversation unfolds.

Jeffrey Siegel  32:06

And so, you know, as a side note, I know people listening can't hear me, but like I am, I am, like, massaging my foot and wiggling back and forth. And like, I'm always stretching, like, I'm always doing things in my body. And I think that's just because, you know, like, I struggled to figure out how to be in, in my body in a way that feels comfortable and connected and loving. And, you know, you might call that anxiety or something, you know, and I think there's a great deal of that. And I see that with people, you know, that I work with, as well. You know, I think a lot of a lot of anxiety manifests as, as sort of a restlessness or like a discomfort of being in the body. But then I begin to ask them, like, what if it was actually the discomfort of being in your body that's causing the anxiety? You know, like, we often think of anxiety as starting in the mind of like having some ambiguous future. You're like, oh, there's all this stuff looming over that it's unclear and it kind of makes me worried and uncertain. And yes, that is true. And that's certainly one source of anxiety. But I think there, there's almost this more fundamental source that I've experienced myself. And I see this is, you know, without blasting us too far into outer space, right of like, the, the, and I think this is a there's a spiritual teacher, forgetting his name, I think Sterling Bonder talks about, like, the, the fundamental source of friction, is that spirit is infinite, right? And that matter is finite. And so any embodied experience of spirit in matter is always going to be existing in tension. You know, and I experienced this is just like, being in a body is like, there's a part of me that feels so infinite and unconditioned and, and, you know, full of possibility, right? And then I'm stuck in this body that is very, right. My business, it is a it is a locator in space and time, and it is very finite, and there are things that it can do and can't do. And it's like, there's this, there's always this push and pull and this tension that I experience as a result of that. It's like and so you could call it as some sort of, you know, literally an existential anxiety. And so, I think that's, that is probably how I would address the question that you asked, Where does it show up for me first? It's like, it shows up for me in the morning, when I open my eyes, and there's this moment of like, oh, shit, like, my consciousness is back here in this body. And, you know, and it's and it's not a bad thing. Like it's, like, you know, this is a playground. That's the other piece, the least this is the the attitude that I like to take, and I like to just share with others is that like, you know, like, you know Earth is, is the playground is a playground for bodies to play with each other, you know, and to create more possibilities of playing in all these different beautiful ways. And although it can, you know, it can feel like a hell sometimes, you know, and there's no question that there's a ton of suffering and like, but like, that's part of that's part of the gameplay.

Pete Kadushin  35:30

So when, when thinking about what you just shared, it seems like the the answer to where is the mind body connection is really, where have you decided to look? And so for you, that that exists within the context of the the necessary tension, right, that there's an existential paradox between those two things that you laid out, right? The Infinite and the finite. And that when you look at that without getting too conceptual, because we just got very, very conceptual. That without getting too conceptual, that there is a bridge there somewhere. And what I found interesting was that there's, again, a fundamental collision here. As you're trying to describe the energetic experience that happens in your body, that your body language literally, is a different language than what exists within your ears, as the the formal verbal language that we understand. And so trying to put things into words that don't fit into words, can be a real challenge. And what I find interesting, is this happens with clients all the time, well, where in your body, are you feeling that emotion, or feeling that thought, and they just look at you like, wait, what? And so there's a certain like, you need to develop a universal translator. And the thing that can bridge the gap between what's existing in your body, and then what's existing between your ears, and I think one of the mistakes we make is that we default to our verbal language, because it's how we tend to understand everything around us. We're so mind dominant and thought dominant in general, that everything gets filtered through the majority language. And I think that finding a way to shift the balance and really allow for, you know, quite literally the translator is somebody who can some part of us going back to IFS that can help allow for the body to have more time and space and bandwidth. Maybe that I tell me what's popping off for you because I can see the wheels turning.

Jeffrey Siegel  37:44

Pete has the privilege of looking at my face, and I don't actually I don't know what that look is. There is a look. There is a look of the wheels are spinning, and like ideas are popping off. And like I love that, you know, this is that this is the beauty of of having a wonderful conversation that engenders, new ideas to form new possibilities. You know, and I guess there's, there was three things that popped into my head. The first one was this idea that your body speaks for you, without you having to say anything. And this is in looking at the social lens. And this one is really tricky, because this speaks to the heart of why we care so much about how we look. You know, and not just like how we dress, but like, how is our body being labeled, and judged and assessed by others? Because our body speaks for us. We don't have to say anything, we just show up in a space. And our body says things about, again, whether we feel comfortable or uncomfortable in that space, right? It just in terms of our posture. It says things about, you know, do we spend a lot of time outdoors or inside in terms of, you know, relative sun exposure, you know? It says things about, you know, do we do we spend a lot of time lifting weights, you know, or taking, you know, steroids, like, you know, like, you know, depending on our musculature? Or like do we spend a lot of time playing a certain activity or an instrument? And you can look and you know, see particular body ways that have, you know, conformed to those activities that you know, so like, all of these things you can read, you know, and we were taught not to read a book, you know, judge a book by its cover, and obviously, I think you know, it, it becomes extremely problematic when we simply just judge someone based upon their looks, but we cannot deny that all of these assumptions happen, and for good evolutionary reasons of like finding a mate and you know, the whole mating game and attractiveness and looking for a healthy genetic composition, right, to procreate. Like all of that is sort of embedded in in that process. So that's sort of like the the first thing that popped into my head and I don't even remember the other two things that popped in my head. So like, we can just keep going from from wherever you are. What's what's, what's jumping off for you right now?

Pete Kadushin  40:18

The sign of a great conversation sometimes is that you get, you get so far down one rabbit hole that you're like, man, I know, there were others. They'll come back, they'll come back if they were important, or timely. So then the next thing in terms of kind of digging just a little bit deeper, right is to consider what somebody could do. And I'm really being self serving here. I'll call it what it is. What could somebody do to start to develop that universal translator? What if I'm trying to be a little less thought dominant and access. And the way I think about it is that like, when I was a little kid, before, a lot of my cognitive stuff was online. And before I'd really double down on verbal and and sort of intellectual intelligence, right, that we all have some of that physical intelligence, some more than others, right. But this is something that has existed and that is returning to, as opposed to like, you never knew this language, and you now have to learn it fresh from scratch. And so I'm wondering, what could I do starting today if I wanted to relearn that language, or just shake some of the rust off and get more into my body more often?

Jeffrey Siegel  41:39

Yeah. Do you want to do you want to give something a little try?

Pete Kadushin  41:46

Yeah, always.

Jeffrey Siegel  41:47

We can. We can practice this, right. And anybody listening in practice, as long as you are not doing. I love when people say like, don't operate a motor vehicle, like don't, you know, don't, don't be like, don't be doing heavy machinery. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, while doing something extremely dangerous, probably I can, you know, take a pause.

Pete Kadushin  42:07

Yes, my imaginary lawyer over my shoulder is telling me that, yeah, if you're if you're operating some really big farm machinery right now, and there's a potential for certain deaths, then whatever this next exercise is, save it for a moment, hit pause and come back.

Jeffrey Siegel  42:24

But if you're literally just sitting at your computer desk, or just going for a walk outside, then please, by all means, continue. You can do this activity right here, right now. You don't even have to close your eyes, all I'm going to invite you to do is take your hands. Alright, and take your fingertips, and just gently push your fingertips together. So you create some contacts at the pads of your fingers, and then start to sort of gently bouncing your fingers off of each other. So like you touch them, and then pull them away, touch them and pull them away. Right and notice that just that moment of contact, that first sensation, you can feel of just that instant of touching your fingertips with your other hand. And then I want you to pull the hands away. And notice like there's an energy there is literally electricity flowing through your neurons, right. There's a whole neural chemical process happening, enabling this sensory feedback to travel from your fingers to your brain and back. And you can play with it. You can play with how long you hold your fingers together. You can play with how hard you press your fingers into each other. And then if you want, I said you can do this with your eyes open. If you want to try this though, with your eyes closed, try with your eyes closed. And notice how that changes things. Right? Can you focus your attention just on the tips of your fingers playing around with that sensation? Another thing you can do is try pushing your fingers together, and then lifting one finger at a time. I'm not very good at this. I'm not a good pianist or instrument player, but you can just play with that. Notice then, how does that feel when you lift one finger right? And then just holding your hand steady, like alright, you're feeling this boundary, this connection of fingertip against fingertip. Now what if you tried to actually feel your entire finger? And not just the outside but can you feel the inside of your finger? Can you feel a little bit of the muscles and the tendons and just like what that might be like for the finger to be held in this position? You know and and just like does it feel a little tired? You can also feel like the temperature of your hands. Do they feel warm or cold? And you can feel the air around your hands. How does that feel? And so you can do all this exploration just right here with your fingertips. You know, eyes open or eyes closed. And then just smile. Take a breath. Let it go. Do whatever you want to do with your hands right now. Place them wherever you want to place them. It's that sort of practice of somatic sensing, of coming back into your body with a sense of curiosity and kindness. Right, the beautiful thing about our hands and working with the hands and the fingers is that, A, there's a ton of nerve endings and sensory receptors, so we get a lot of tactile feedback. So it's very easy to feel. I find often as you said, it's so hard to feel into our bodies. A, if you don't have practice in it, but B, there are certain parts of our body that are simply harder to feel because we actually have less nerve endings and things there. So the hands are very easy to feel something we're relatively comfortable with. The hands also tend to be very, like neutral. You know, I mean, you know, you could judge yourself, or maybe not moisturizing your, you know, your skin today or something, but like, you know, generally like, we're not super critical of our hands, whereas we can be so, so critical and judgmental about other parts of our body. You know, and, and it also helps to, you know, a lot of awareness practices, focus on the breath. And I love using the breath as a tool and an anchor and that sort of thing. But that's not right for everybody. And sometimes focusing on the breath can actually make you more anxious, or start to hyperventilate, or, you know, it can generate unwanted things for some people. And so again, the hands just provide an easier way to do that. So that's why I like that practice. But it's that same idea of just like starting to pay attention to the body. And that, you know, that those moments, where like, you're feeling that pressure, right? Where was your mind? You know, in that sense of, like, were you thinking about a million other things? Were you thinking about what you're gonna do later for dinner? Were you thinking about that other email you had to write or like was your mind at least for just like a split second, 100%, just connected to your body. And it's those little moments of connection, that build your capacity to do that at a larger scale. This is the importance of practice. Practice builds capacity. We all have the ability to be connected to our bodies in this mindful, curious, wonderfully collaborative way, just most of us haven't practiced it. So our capacity to do it on the regular, and especially to do it in moments when we're tense or activated is really, really low. And that's why I think developing this as a skill that you practice is so essential.

Pete Kadushin  47:37

When it speaks to me about this idea of the difference between fluency and fitness. Right, that we need to build or rebuild that fluency through practice in order to have the fitness to go to my body and embody myself embody myself right drop into my body, when, when it's important to be there. And so I'm always thinking about for performers, that often your best performance emerges when you're in your body. It doesn't mean that you're not thinking but the balance gets shifted dramatically from I'm thinking about what I'm doing to I'm doing it and my mind is just there to help with the tactical, the strategic. I think a couple other things that you pointed out as I went through this, the things that I noticed, I wasn't thinking about the experience, predominantly. Right, so my awareness was in my fingers. It wasn't that I was projecting my thoughts down to my fingers. And I think that this is a really tough when when folks first start to do some of this embodiment work, or do you do any sort of autogenic training progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and what we did was a meditation right now. Just a unique form of right is that you're not thinking about right, your your mind isn't projected. It's really about your awareness being inside of that space. And so being able to point out, like, what does it feel like inside your fingers as opposed to how do your fingers feel, given the words that you normally use to apply to these situations? So that was all very elegant and it's like again, long way of saying thank you because you know how I feel about whenever we get together I like to have a little bit of a practice and I love that you were able to share that.

Jeffrey Siegel  49:29

And I appreciate you always inviting me to guide and lead a practice because I never know what I'm gonna do. I have no idea. Like I just made that up.

Pete Kadushin  49:43

Well I'm gonna I'm gonna call I'm gonna call bullshit though. Because, maybe your conscious mind, right, I think this is speaks directly to what we're talking about. Right like your your conscious mind didn't know what was going to come next and as your energetic and physical experience was unfolding your mind was along for the ride and knew how to take the next step as opposed to having to know all 10 steps in advance.

Jeffrey Siegel  50:08

So, so beautiful. Because it ties all these, ties all the strings together, in the sense that you're right, my conscious mind didn't know deliberately that like, yeah, like, we're going to do a practice and I'm going to do this thing with hands and fingertips. But an unconscious part of my mind. And, and again, a lot of people say like, what is the unconscious mind? Like, the body. The body is in many ways, our storehouse of the unconscious, right? The the, the place in which past memories and learnings live in our nervous system, right? They live in our tissues, in our body. And our body is constantly receiving this stream of new incoming information via our senses, you know, and there's an immense amount of processing obviously happening below the level of our conscious awareness that our body is constantly integrating. And there's, there's a lot of wisdom in that, right. And I think the, what you're talking about is this idea that like, we can't always think our way through everything. Or we can, but it often comes at the cost.

Pete Kadushin  51:18

Yeah, we try.

Jeffrey Siegel  51:21

You know, and it comes at the cost of overlooking the bodily wisdom, and the bodily intelligence that we could be bringing into it, because we're looking at it purely from this sort of cognitive, intellectual stance. And something that we talk about a lot is, you know, what got you here isn't necessarily what's going to get you to where you want to go next. That's right, right. And, you know, so this is the challenge of like, almost all of us universally have been taught that like thinking and being logical in you know, and putting that energy and attention into thought is the way forward. And guess what it is like a goddess here. It uplifted us out of this very crude way of sort of being totally enmeshed in nature. However, we need to go that next step of then reintegrating the thought back with the body, to regain access to the wisdom of the body, in collaboration with the wisdom of the mind. And that's where this whole idea of mind body comes really to fruition as as like the next step in our, in our evolution. And, and it's really hard, you know, and, you know, because you talked about, like, there's, there's so many, there's so much resistance around it. You know, and so many of us have been have been living our lives in a way that like, you know, you know, the mind body relationship like that presupposes that there is a relationship. Like a lot of us are in mind body divorce, or, like, you know, like, or I like to think of it like there is separation, right, a lot of times, there's domination, and it's like, it can be pretty tyrannical, you know, the things that the minds, you know, imposes on the body. And this is where a lot of harm gets done at the physical level, in terms of, you know, addictions and compulsive behaviors and bad habits that really destroy the body. And so helping restore that relationship like is so essential. Like, I see that being the core of of not only like my own personal healing and journey towards well-being, but at the core of what I try to do and teach other people to do.

Pete Kadushin  53:46

So it wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that what you do is couples counseling for the mind and body. And to drive this, just for a moment, back into the performance lane, this became really up front and center for me. I was working with a long jumper. And this was early on in my career. And the mantra that we eventually developed was your body knows. Because every time she was the type of long jumper type of athlete that put in a ton of work and training. And when the stakes were low, it was easier to allow for balance between mind and body. So think through the your strategy, think through your approach, get yourself set up. And then when she was on the runway, it was just pull the ripcord. Her body knew and she'd go and she'd do it. And so she performed really well in training. And then as soon as there was any sort of pressure within the context of performance, the mind became tyrannical. In that it kept you know the little brother kick in the back of the seat but like insistent and non stop in a way that made it impossible for her to not think her way down the runway. And the work that we were doing then was under stress and under pressure, can we allow for that balance to exist? And how can you cultivate that balance in training more purposefully, as opposed to just kind of letting it show up when it is, and when it does. And so what, what the mantra that we arrived at was the body knows. And it sounds like a simplification. And for folks like myself, who don't spend as much time in their body as you could, right, there's that wisdom that when you suddenly have access to you're like, oh, yeah, my body does know. Right? what's going to help me feel more safe, more relaxed and more engaged, more plugged in? That there is wisdom that we are leaving under the table unlooked at an unexamined and unused. And that you're going back to what the practice that you just shared, that it's simple and not easy, right? In that you shift your attention to the bodily, the embodied experience you're having right now. And that's the first step. And then to come return to that first step over and over again, as we get distracted or pulled back up into our mind that it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And it's also not to make it sound easy. I have I wish.

Jeffrey Siegel  56:19

Yeah. I just was like I love I love the idea of montra. I'll let you throw your throw your question.

Pete Kadushin  56:24

Well because I want to follow up on that. For folks who have experienced trauma or are in severe physical pain, one of the challenges around meditation is that it as soon as you return to the present moment, particularly with that quality of being embodied, right, connecting to your breath, there's something else, that it feels fundamentally unsafe. And you pointed to this earlier that there's a sense of safety or comfort, being far away from our bodily experience sometimes, and so I'm wondering, where do you start with, with someone who's having that experience?

Jeffrey Siegel  57:07

The body knows. And, and the mind knows, too, you know. I think this is, this is, is just an important caveat here is like, I'm not advocating for less mind. I'm advocating for more body with mind. You know, because the body knows things that the mind doesn't know. And the mind knows things that the body doesn't know, right? And it's like, then you end up with this asymmetric information, and withholding and power battles. Right? Like, what what, like, wait, what if we could share what we know and actually arrive at a better decision because of it. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually go a next step deeper. Like, I think it's important to say that when I say the body, I really think it's, it's both the, you know, the, the body and the heart. Right, and I want to bring the heart element in as as, you know, the, this the heart as the symbolic center for this, this really like, inclusive, nurturing, caring, compassionate energy that we all have. You know, I think what's, and I'll get, I'll kind of come come back full circle, to your, to your question in a moment of, like, where do we begin, when it's so hard to be in the body? You know, and it's often it is, it is it feels safer to be in the mind. You know, I think, for me, in my personal journal, I actually have like, a very, in some ways, an easy time being in my body. If, if I'm moving my body and stretching it, like there are things I can do to access my body in a way that actually makes it feel more comfortable and more familiar. And so that's, that's one piece of this story is like, I think movement is a huge, huge piece of this. And you could go even bigger to say expression. I think to to help people feel safe in their body is actually learning how to allow your body to express its fundamental nature in a way that feels fulfilling and satisfying to you. Like, again, you know, it's like our bodies are meant to express. You know, they transform energy into expression, that expression comes out in movement. But like that movement and can can be expression of so many different things, you know, and like, the obvious thing comes to mind is sort of like, you know, is something like a dance, you know, is the embodied expression of your nature. And so to you know, if you're, if you're in a lot of pain and a lot of discomfort and being in your body is hard, it's like finding a different way of being in your body by allowing your body to move into a different posture. And this goes back to this idea of posture being so important, you know. We often think of posture is just like, oh, you know, is your spine aligned. You know, and how tall are you standing? Right? But posture, I think of much more is just posture is an embodied attitude. Like posture, again, is your is your body speaking what your mind is thinking without you saying anything. And we can then create these powerful shifts in our mind by shifting our posture into something that feels different, that then invites the mind back into the body to come there and feel that too, right. And so if you were to like, bend over, and just let your arms dangle and let your head dangle and take a deep breath, right, very different posture, right. And at first, it's like, it does feel unfamiliar, maybe if you've never done that ever before, but it also acts as an invitation for your attention to come back into your body and be like, oh, what is going on here? You know, and like, can I be here for just a little bit longer? I think teaching your mind to linger a little bit longer. And this is where the dose becomes so important. You know, like, I think a lot of people try to go too hard, too fast, too soon, right? Where it's like, focus on the little micro moments. I'm like, you know, if being in your body is really hard, right? Don't try, don't sign up for a week long meditation retreat, like you're here, right? Like that is going to be a terrible experience, right? But what you can do is like, notice those times where like you're feeling and you're connected to your body, and just try to linger there for just like one breath more than you normally would, and then go back. Go back to the place that feels safe and comfortable. Right, and in embodied practices is often called like, titration. Right, this idea of, you know, we need to adjust the dosage so we don't overwhelm the system, right, we can dip our toes in just a little bit, begin to feel that out, right, and then go back to what feels better. And having somebody by your side to like hold your hand and encourage you really does help with this, right and makes you feel safe here as you're doing it. Because none of us are meant to do this alone.

Pete Kadushin  1:02:18

Yes. So for somebody listening, and I'm always using myself as this example, because I'm gonna now, when we finish up here, I'm gonna go spend some time getting embodied, again. That it's, it's about starting, where you have an easy access point. And this is to your point that you don't have to follow your breath in order to meditate. And that meditation is really the expansion of our awareness outside of our mind. The mind is still a part of the experience, but the what it translates to me usually is then I'm just noticing my body more and my body in space and my posture, my relationship to my immediate surroundings in the moment. And the, you just gave us all permission. And I think we need that permission. You gave us all permission to start where it makes sense to us. Right that to have the conversation with our bodies where we feel it, and there isn't a block. We don't have to go straight to the the part of our body that's giving us trouble or is hurting, or the place that feels unsafe. And the image that I always have is of starting a fire. Right that we inherently understand that you start a fire by creating a spark and then nurturing that spark so that it can grow, and feeding it carefully because you can overfeed a fire and kill it before it even gets off the ground. But the way that we usually approach these types of experiences is to like yell at all the sticks and go like, why aren't you already a bonfire yet? And so finding that spot, if it's your fingertips, if it's the bottoms of your feet, for a lot of like the runners I work with, when we're getting into our bodies, it's it's noticing each footfall as an bodily sensation, not as a hey, is my cadence, right and all of that, right. It's getting back into the soles of the feet. So starting where it's easy and then growing from there in both time and then also location, as opposed to being like, well, if I can't do a 45 minute body scan right now, something's terribly wrong. And I'm never coming back.

Jeffrey Siegel  1:04:29

Yeah. This has been a theme, you know, of many of our conversations, this idea of start start where it's easy, you know, because a lot of us and I think this is one of the pitfalls of the whole personal development realm is you know, we we've identified often that you know, the the obstacle is the way and so we freakin put on our armor, and we like we get all our weapons and we're ready to just go attack the obstacle headfirst. And that in and of itself, like, is a huge battle. Like we're we're waging war, you know, and and often that ends up being too heavy handed of an approach. And if we can take this gentler approach. I find in myself and for most people tends to be so much more sustainable. You know, so like, don't start paying attention to like the most horrible thing, that pain that you've had that chronic pain in your back that you've had for years. Start by paying attention to the part of your body that feels good, you know, to find something inside that actually feels pleasant. And you can do this even just like during your day when something positive happens when, when you're like when there's a moment of like, oh, like this was this is really nice. Those are equally as important, if not more important, moments to drop into your body and absorb that feeling of like, yeah, this feels really nice. Like, what does that actually feel like for me? Because a lot of times, we completely miss the pleasant and the pleasurable parts of our experience, because we weren't paying attention to them. We let them go. And of course, they're they like they do go like so becomes another, you know, there's another pitfall of trying to cling to them, right, but like, if we can, if we can notice them in the moment, and then and then kiss them as they fly away, then then at least that that leaves an imprint. Right? And it allows us then to appreciate and notice the good the next time. All right, um, yeah, and this, this is this is essential.

Pete Kadushin  1:06:29

And to extend that just for a moment. If there was someone who said, well, there is no part of my bodily experience that feels pleasurable, then it's really about starting with safe. Is there a part of your body where you can recognize safety? And then again, we grow the fire from there, right, but it doesn't have to be inherently pleasurable first. And then we may come to find that there was some pleasure or some positivity that we weren't noticing, but that safety is is step zero, when it comes to this whole process.

Jeffrey Siegel  1:07:05

Safety is step is 100%, step, step zero. Right, and how do you feel safe? You know, huge topic, Pete, you know. I think we're gonna have to create a whole series on you know, how to feel safe in in your body. And I know, for some people, you know, they might be listening to this, like, no, like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't know, like, I don't feel particularly unsafe in my body. I don't feel particularly safe in my body. It's just sort of like, it just kind of is what it is, you know. I think some people might just have that experience of like, this, you know, this is my body. And it's just sort of it is what it is like.  What would you say to that?

Pete Kadushin  1:07:48

Well, I think that this is actually was brought to my attention really recently. I have a friend and she's a phenomenal counselor, as well. And she pointed out that doing this on purpose makes all the difference, because generally, we're stuck in between our ears. And we're worrying about and this isn't everybody this is a lot of people though, is that we're worrying about what has happened or what will happen. And we're scheming and we're trying to think about things and we have this low level activation of our sympathetic nervous system. So we've got that fight or flight. So there's itty bitty thoughts, saber toothed tigers floating around in our mind making us in the moment feel unsafe, even though we might not call it that. And so what she recommended is that there's there is simply a grounding practice. You look around the room and ask yourself, is there anything in this space that makes me feel unsafe? And you know, if there's an actual saber toothed tiger you should probably run or fight it, right? But generally what we arrive at purposefully now is that no, right now there is not any physical danger. And I think that the point the question that you asked you somebody goes, well I don't feel necessarily unsafe is to really be purposeful about pointing out that there is safety. And even though this might sound unrevolutionary, right. The opportunity to do that right now to pause and look around your space and recognize that there is no physical threat. Like I can feel my shoulders drop just a little bit in having paused just now to do that.

Jeffrey Siegel  1:09:29

This is this is bringing up interesting examples and I don't know how much time we we have to delve into things but you know, I this idea that our body and maybe you know, I'll say our brain, which which really is is you know is embedded in our body. You can say our brain our central nervous system, right? Like it's constantly making predictions about the future. Right like that's its job is to predict the future and then to keep all of our bodily functions in balance. And I think they're, you know, there comes a challenge when it predicts that the future is going to be unsafe. And so now we start to feel anxious or nervous, right, that that constriction of unsafety begins to take root. But the challenge is, sometimes those predictions are misguided, as you're saying, right? Like, you know, it, the body has perceived something that it is interpreting based upon past experiences to be unsafe, even if you know in the environment right now that like, oh, actually, that's not true, right. But there's a mismatch, there's a mismatch between the prediction, and then what you're actually experiencing in that moment.

Pete Kadushin  1:10:52

Well, let's make, let's make this concrete, right. So an athlete has a championship performance tomorrow, and they're laying in bed tonight. And they're activated. Right? And it doesn't necessarily have to be anxiety or excitement, right. But there's some part of their body's sympathetic nervous system that's turned up, and they're having a hard time going to sleep. And so the uncertainty around what's going to happen, right. There's good stuff that could happen if I win. There's what feels like terrible stuff that could happen if I lose. But if you pause for a moment, and you look around the room, and you go, is there anything in here that makes me feel unsafe right now? And if the answer is yes, then like, go address that thing. And if the answer is no, there's been a now purposeful, explicit statement of right that that race, that game, that performance, that conversation, that interview, whatever it might be, that's not here, right now. I've now anchored myself back to the present moment in the physical space. It's that type of permission that I think makes the difference, right?

Jeffrey Siegel  1:11:59

Yes, totally. The anchoring, the grounding the orienting of your attention on the cues that reaffirm safety is really helpful. There's other techniques of like physical touch and stroking that can be helpful. Things that you can do with your eyes in terms of shifting your gaze that can be helpful. Something that we've talked a lot about, of, you know, using breath work and specific types of breath patterns can be helpful. And, and I'm going to throw a total wrench in the system of sometimes, there's nothing you can do. Sometimes the body is just going to freak out. And you can't disrupt or change that fight or flight sort of response. But once you are aware of it, and you know, you're like, okay, like my body is just sort of freaking out because it perceives some like something it thinks something is at risk, or at jeopardy or something is unsafe, you know, whether it's the championship that's at risk, or my own safety that's at risk, right, it has perceived that threat. And once once that is in motion, I kind of just have to let it play its course. Right? And so you still might be experiencing that nervousness, that jitter, that fluttering of your heart rate, that little bit of sweating and palpitation, like that whole embodied physical reaction might actually just need to play itself through your system. But there's the question of like, can you be with that? And can you take the necessary precautions? You know, maybe you sit down or lie down, you grab some water, right? But you just sort of like, let you know you're with your body through that experience in the same way that like if a child was having a difficult thing, you would just sit by their side, right? You can't take away that child's pain, but you can sit by their side, and just let them know that you're there for them if you need them. And then guess what, 10 minutes later, like they're doing fine, and they're back to playing around. I think if we can learn to do that with our bodies during those times where maybe our bodies is having a response that we don't have any control over. Like then it really does open up a new way of caring for ourselves.

Pete Kadushin  1:14:18

This was a perfect way for us to wrap it up. I have one more question. But in terms of the depth that we we entered in terms of going to outer space, right, this point that it's not always about flexing ourselves, self authorship muscles. I don't get to erase and rewrite the experience I'm having in the moment. It's there's a time and a place to let the experience unfold as its as it's going to. And I think you pointed the fact that having somebody at your side quite literally, whether it's a therapist or a trainer or someone who can be with you to help guide you through that experience. That that can be critical because doing on your own, particularly if there's severe pain, if there's trauma, if there's there's things like that, that this is a team effort.

Jeffrey Siegel  1:15:11

It's so, so true. And I'm all about collaboration and teamwork at every level. And I love the framing that you said of like couples counseling for the mind and body. Right? Because it's like, yeah, like I want, I want your mind to be right there with your body next to it, right like, so that your body learns that, hey, I can trust, I can trust that my mind will be there, when I need it, in the same way that I want a person right by my side that I can trust that will be there when I need him or her. Right, like there is nothing more empowering in our world than that sense of trust, that we're not going through this on our own, that somebody's got our back and is by our side. And, and so when we can do that, not only with each other, but for ourselves internally, I believe that's really what unlocks this higher level of well being. And I like I want to create that. And we need to do that. Like this needs to be co created together. Like I don't believe that all of us can go and sort of do that on our own without each other. And I'll say like Pete, like, you have been an important part of that journey for me in the conversations that we've had and the activities that we've done and the things that we've created together. And so like, I just want to encourage everybody listening to like, just like, go find those people and bring them into your life. You know, the ones that you know, that are there to support you, and that you can support them.

Pete Kadushin  1:16:49

Yeah, any question that asked after that would dilute the power of the moment. So the last thing I'll say is, likewise, but I just the opportunity to share this experience with you not just this conversation, but all of the experience has been wonderful. And there'll be a link to Jeff Siegal Wellness, so that if people are looking for a partner as they move through this journey, they can look you up and I think they know what you're about given the conversation that we had today. But they can they can check out more about you and certainly connect with you if they have more questions around to the how to approach holistic well being and health. And certainly that interfaces with performance. And so thank you so much for being generous with your time and your wisdom. And this is certainly not the last conversation that we'll have. So thank you again.

Jeffrey Siegel  1:17:40

Thank you Pete.

Pete Kadushin  1:17:42

All right. That's it for today. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe to the show. And don't forget to rate and leave a review. If you want to dive deeper into the concepts and concrete practices from today. I'm talking access to show notes and the transcript for the episode and a whole bunch of other mental training goodies head over to MTL dot Academy. That's MTL dot Academy. Each week, after the episode goes live, I'll also be sharing a worksheet that's going to help you level up your mindset and mental skills. And the only way to get access is through our weekly newsletter. So when you hit the bottom of the webpage, don't forget to sign up for that too. Until next time, be well.