Dayana

James Pierce

Junaid Dawud

Exploring: Inhabiting our human vessels + grounding mind & spirit in the body

https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1647972127260426240?s=46&t=iZjnXvunDg2m4Frcg0dTnw

 James, welcome to the room. Thank you for accepting my invitation. One line of

 thought that I would like to explore together is your take or understanding

 of how to move emotions through the body in our path to mastery of the emotions.

 I've read a little bit of your content about this and emotional mastery is a

 topic that I'm fascinated with and I wonder what is the role that the body

 plays in this and can we use embodiment as a 

 pathway to master our emotions in your experience?

 One thing that I'm noticing is that over the last few months especially, the highest and

 the lowest points of my emotional landscape have changed.

 And something that used to make me feel 

 euphoric or very, very sad doesn't have that power

 over me anymore. And I spend a lot more time in this place in the 

 middle and I can receive what's coming without spiking up or down.

 I never had a deliberate way of moving emotions through the body. My 

 approach was very focused on the mind and how the emotions are generated and 

 perpetuated and how they get out of control purely through mental conditioning.

 And one of the things I've found is that when your mind is steady and 

 unmoving, the body just finds its own natural rhythm. You don't have to do 

 anything specific from the standpoint of your body to deal with your emotions.

 Thank you, James. I agree that that is definitely a very effective way. I'm

 thinking though that it's a learned way because looking at how the innocence in

 the child, for example, processes emotions, we see that they don't

 necessarily arrive at a place of stillness of the mind first. It seems to

 be that developmentally there's an expression of the emotions that takes

 place through the body to get out of the 

 system, for them to get out of the system.

 I'm picturing this child getting really upset because something is not right and

 out of control. And yet when you see a child moving through that emotion and

 then the next minute is happily playing again, it makes me wonder if that is a

 built-in mechanism that we have. And the learned mechanism is that of stillness.

 question, what about those that cannot hold the

 mind still? Because holding the mind still or arriving at a place of

 stillness of the mind also comes from certain body stillness or repetitive

 movement such as a trance state that you get when you're swimming or when you're

 rowing for a long time or running is that steady rhythm, right? Otherwise

 through stillness of the body in for example meditation or contemplation

 I think the ability children have to let go of 

 their emotions after they've passed is incredible.

 And that's something that a lot of adults have 

 trouble with, that they need to relearn how to do.

 But that said, I wouldn't describe children as masters of their emotions.

 Children are still very emotional on average.

 I mean, maybe you have the rare child that isn't, but most children are.

 When you master your emotions, one thing that 

 happens is you just become a lot less emotional.

 Anger, for example, doesn't continue to arise.

 I'll also say I didn't mean to imply with the comment 

 I made before that a proper way to deal with your 

 emotions once they arise is to try and keep your mind still.

 What I was really getting at is when you resolve a lot of 

 the internal things you have going on that lead you to become 

 emotional in the first place, then those emotions don't arise.

 When your mind does not move in the same patterns it used to, not 

 through any effort of your own to keep it still, but just because 

 there's no longer the motivation for it to go through those movements,

 so where there once was the emotional reaction, it has been replaced by an unmoving mind.

 I agree completely. Children are highly emotional, even though they express it in very different ways.

 I have two daughters. One of them is so transparent 

 with her emotions that you can see them from miles away,

 and it has been that way since she's a baby.

 And my youngest one, though she feels emotions deeply, you don't really see them as much.

 You have to be way more observant to notice what she's feeling or how she's reacting.

 And she's more empathic, by the way, so there's something to that.

 This is my experience as well. Yeah, I've been calling it low emotional variance,

 noticing that something that used to generate a reaction before now doesn't

 there's a response it's very nuanced and

 for the most part there is no response by except noticing it comes with

 emotional responsibility I guess or noticing that we are in control of our

 emotional response. I think that's what you're creating, what you're naming

 resolving the what the mind was doing before perhaps if we can unpack that a

 little bit how would you describe that in my experience that that resolving

 hurt when you do that or say that and I don't necessarily agree with that as

 reality I don't think it's true I notice that certain things that people may do

 or say are inaccurate but not taking them personally they don't say anything

 about me or move any emotion out of me except noticing that I don't agree with

 that I don't accept that and I feel that as emotional responsibility and it does

 come from a state of owning my own emotional state.

 It's probably easiest if I explain it with an example.

 there is a reason anxiety arises in one person and does not arise in another person,

 even though they might be in the exact same circumstances.

 The illusion is that anxiety is caused by external things, when in reality it's caused by

 your own perspective on these things. So if you look into 

 what it is about your mind that causes you to feel anxiety,

 you can have very deep realizations about your own thought patterns, about your own belief systems,

 and these realizations can lead you to a place where anxiety no longer arises.

 People feel anxiety because they're worried about what 

 is going to happen. They're fearful about the end result

 Maybe you had a fight with a business partner or a lover and

 You were not sure what's gonna happen. You 

 know if they're gonna leave you if they're gonna

 breach their contract or whatever might happen and

 The reason you feel anxiety is not because of

 the conflict The reason is that the result is very important to you

 It weighs heavily upon your mind. So the way to 

 overcome anxiety the way to resolve that within yourself

 Yes, that's very simple as much easier said than done

 But that's still the way to overcome it Still the way to overcome it

 This conversation went in an interesting direction.

 And I guess bringing it back to kind of where it started,

 I think something that happens is when feelings rise up

 like literally I don't want to feel this emotion right now,

 it's super inconvenient for me, or whatever the thought is.

 We resist it. And through that resistance, keep ourselves in this tension

 between us and this emotion that we don't want to feel.

 And that actually can be a positive emotion too.

 It's not just negative emotion, anger, sadness, grief, whatever.

 It can also be like excitement and joy and love.

 Obviously, there's a ton of resistance to love.

 So by resisting the emotion, we just keep ourselves actually much more tied to it.

 i.e. to let it pass through us, is to surrender to it.

 So I do think this idea of not having anger arise,

 it's not necessarily the ideal end state.

 It's just to notice when an emotion arises,

 let it pass through you, observing it, not identifying with it,

 because it only becomes tucked in and knitted into our identity or ego

 when we resist this emotion and identify too strongly with it,

 when we realize it's just like some response to something that has happened,

 and we observe it and we let it pass and we don't resist it

 and we surrender to the emotion, it comes and it goes,

 And the way that you see children not be possessed by their emotions,

 they're really happy, really sad, crying, laughing, surprised, excited,

 can go through like the entire spectrum of emotions,

 but they never identify with them. Once they've cried and had their tantrum,

 they've moved on and now they're playing again and they're happy.

 Versus you can see an adult who has furrowed brows

 and has clearly been angry for many years.

 Net. So I just think that there's an interesting lens here

 around surrendering to emotions and not viewing the end state as like basically being stoic.

 And as it relates to the original topic of this room, which 

 is like to what limit to what extent do we accept our bodies 

 versus try to alter them and optimize our entire state of being?

 I think one sort of nugget or mindset that I like is that we are 

 not our bodies, like I am not my body, but we are given this body 

 and it's our responsibility to do as right by it as we possibly can..

 And ultimately, it's just so evident that the quality of your life hinges on your health.

 And to be very proactive about taking care of your vessel, 

 think, is the only really responsible way to treat yourself.

 And like, not to treat yourself as in like having a treat, but to 

 basically show love to yourself, to show good treatment and respect to the self.

 And so I think the way that is ideal to relate to 

 body is to just nurture it and take care of it as if 

 it's something you are responsible for taking care of.

 Because you are, we all are, and nobody else really can do it.

 It's actually a job that only we can do ourselves, and 

 we will pay the consequences for if we don't do ourselves.

 your view on this as it relates to the body.

 I have exactly the same view as it relates to emotions.

 I call it emotional responsibility and it's based on this idea that you are responsible

 for the response that you have. You have the ability to 

 respond and it is your job to own and to be sovereign when it

 comes to the feelings and the emotions that you can to an extent control.

 And there might be a very short response time sometimes between the trigger and a possible

 feeling emerging or reaction. And it is up to us to extend that response time.

 There's many ways to do that. James was pointing at some 

 of them coming from controlling your mind or acknowledging

 to see this as no one can really hurt us.

 No one can, no thing that happens in the world can have that power over us.

 When I say hurt, you can replace hurt with joy, love, anger.

 What I'm noticing too is that the more that 

 I let go of that identification with external

 circumstances, the less my emotions spike. So it's as if 

 everything is met with acceptance and understanding or not understanding but

 looking for more understanding, curiosity, interest. And with 

 comes certain mastery of one's internal state and remaining calm.

 I guess it takes a little bit of the ups 

 and downs out of it, which sometimes it could

 be fun to feel real high, real euphoric.

 And I would say same as you said, taking 

 care of your body, taking care of your emotions

 and being responsible for them gives you, I guess, greater freedom and longevity than

 if you don't. Nobody else can do it for you either.

 i resonate with the idea of not taking things personally, i think 

 that is one of the main tethers to a psychologically free and well life.

 i do think the idea of emotional responsibility is right, in that we are responsible 

 for our reactions and how we exude or like basically transmute our emotion into actions.

 but i don't necessarily think we are responsible for the feelings that rise up 

 our body, because those are just things that are happening to us and through us.

 and when we take responsibility, it's almost like we're attaching ourselves to 

 the cause of these feelings, when sometimes we are not the cause of these feelings.

 like external environmental factors can cause feelings, and we can just notice feelings 

 and observe them and let them pass and not reflect them out or pour them into anyone else.

 because that we are responsible for, which is our actions.

 but yeah, there's something about just like detaching yourself from 

 the responsibility of feelings rising in your body that is very freeing.

 and realizing it's not your fault that you're sad or you're angry or 

 you're grieving or you're happy or you're excited and someone else isn't.

 it's just the sensations that's happening in your body.

 and you can recognize that and accept it without attaching so much significance to it.

 and i think at least for me, this helps me just be more neutral with respect to 

 my emotional state and be willing to let my feelings pass through and occupy me.

 because i think releasing emotion is super important and when we don't, it can get stored 

 and we just create this weird relationship with certain emotions that doesn't need to be there.

 so yeah, really appreciate the reply and like the direction we're going in.

 Hey Isabel, thank you for the message. I appreciate the conversation and yeah the

 clarification is valid. I didn't mean to say that we have control over some

 sensations that might arise or feelings. There's a huge spectrum when it comes to