Meditation to balance COVID-19

If you are feeling anxious, nervous, out of sorts since COVID-19 has entered the collective consciousness, this episode will provide the respite you seek.

Cory Muscara is an international speaker and teacher on the topics of presence and wellbeing. He has taught mindfulness-based leadership as faculty at Columbia University and currently serves as an instructor of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2012, Cory spent 6 months in silence living as a monk in Burma, meditating 14-20 hours per day, and now aims to bring these teachings to people in a practical and usable way. Named by Dr. Oz as one of the nation’s leading experts on mindfulness, his meditations have been heard more than 10 million times in over 100 countries. Cory is the #1 downloaded meditation expert on the Simple Habit app, host of the top-ranked podcast, Practicing Human, and is the author of the bestselling book, Stop Missing Your Life: How to Be Deeply Present in an Un-Present World. 

In this peaceful and actionable episode, Cory and Freddie take a deep look at meditation, the best way to manage your emotions, practical strategies to implement today, Freddie’s one lesson from 20 years of illness, one simple way to get started with meditation, and so much more. No matter if your life has changed a little or a lot since COVID-19, there are many gems to discover in this conversation.

Episode Highlights

1:54 - What Cory brings to the paradigm of self-wellness

5:00 - The power of mindfulness for health

8:17 - What led Cory to go on a 6-month silent retreat

14:50 - The one question all entrepreneurs need to ask themselves

17:13 - Bringing childlike curiosity to your work and practice

19:28 - How mindfulness can provide the tools to help us during lockdown and quarantine

24:41 - Wrestling with our illusion of control

28:02 - Practical strategies to release stress and anxiety during the current COVID-19 crisis

35:11 - The familiar patterns Cory sees now with COVID-19

40:05 - Why doesn't meditation make me happy?

44:18 - Getting started with your meditation practice

45:33 - A story of transformational healing

51:44 - Do you want to live in higher vibration and abundance?

55:43 - Getting started with meditation

58:31 - Cory's one wish for the human world

59:18 - What does it mean to be beautifully broken?

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (00:00.226)
feel the fear. It won't last forever. Its very nature is to pass. There's no single experience that anyone has ever had at any point in their life that sustains itself up until this moment. But we forget that in the moment. The nature of emotions is for us to think that they're going to last forever, especially difficult experiences. So it a moment to befriend the experience rather than transcend the experience and let that lead to a deeper sense of happiness and peace over time.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (00:32.003)
Welcome to the Beautifully Broken Podcast brought to you by AmpCoil. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on this show, we discuss the common thread survivors share after walking through the fire, the practitioners making a difference, and the treatment modalities that deliver healing back into the hands of the people who need it most. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes. Because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (01:06.115)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. I'm so happy you could join us today as we're all experiencing this very unique self quarantine. I hope you're doing that. I've had some amazing guests come into the lineup and one of them is Corey Muscara. Corey, welcome to the show. Thanks, Freddie. Great to be here. I'm honored. I'm so excited we got connected.

we were actually connected through one of my friends, Tori Dooby, who is a super media connector lady. And she said, you gotta talk to Corey, you gotta talk to Corey, he's amazing, he's making massive change in the planet. As a young human, he's using his power to his fullest potential. That's exactly what she said. She's very sweet. She said, great, let's get him on. So, and I watched, I actually watched a clip from Dr. Oz when you were on the Dr. Oz television show.

and you were talking about a little a five minute meditation. So, so Corey, can you tell us, can you give us like your elevator pitch on on the magic that you bring to the to the paradigm of self wellness, self health? Yeah, you know, that's the big thing I've struggled with over the years, the the elevator pitch. I've I'd say for the last 10 years, I've just been very interested in the simple question of what it means to live well.

The early access point into that inquiry came through meditation, which I didn't get into for any noble reasons. I was trying to impress a girl quickly became like this bigger interest for me. year after that, I was living in a monastery with a shaved head and did an extended six month silent meditation retreat and just took a deep dive into all of this work. Came back out into the world, was doing all these different mindfulness trainings, but saw that

while I still considered mindfulness and meditation to be at the heart of really big behavior change and growth and wellbeing, there were other things that needed to be filled in for a more comprehensive exploration of what it means to be fulfilled, especially outside of a monastic setting. And so, you know, the journey has continued and it's taken me into explorations of trauma through Bessel van der Kolk's work, yoga teacher training,

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (03:31.003)
Tai Chi, NLP, hypnosis, around like behavior change, big in the world of positive psychology. So I teach at the University of Pennsylvania for their master's program. So it's all been like one big exploration where I remain deeply curious about just what it means to live a good life, straddle the worlds of spirituality and academia. And I think it's best

kind of encapsulated through the title of my podcast, which is Practicing Human. By the way, I love the title of your podcast. thank you. I feel similar to like how I, when I say the title of my podcast, even though it's like a weird combination of words, practicing human, there's something about it that just feels like, yeah, this is it. It's like what I'm doing and it's what I'm trying to help other people do. Just get a little better at life each day on this like big human journey.

I know, I know it's this human experience with less pain and more joy. Yeah. You know, how do you do that? It's so easy to get caught. You can make it so complex as a human being. can make it so challenging for ourselves. Even in, what I've found is even in illness, you know, because which isn't an ideal place to live and be and exist for long periods of time, but there's probably not a better teacher that I've had is to go through some of the chronic illness.

and you know, basing your your joy on your day to day fluctuations in health. It's like that's what we're taught to do. And it's like, no, no, no, I can still be, you know, I could still be the reason somebody shows up and has restored faith in the planet. Even if I have cancer, even if I'm going through chemo, you know, it's the small things. And I think that's what the mindfulness it brings you back to. Yeah. The power. Right. And that that reminds me of the quote by Henry David Thoreau.

where he says something along the lines of, there can be as much peace and disease as there is in health, the mind always conforming to the nature of the body. And he said that not from a place of health, he said that on his deathbed with tuberculosis. And so like this idea of the mind conforming to the nature of the body, there's something about that that can like kind of come across as this passive resignation, where it's just like, I guess this is...

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (05:56.945)
my plot in life, or this is just how it's going to be, and I should like give up and surrender to it. And that would be, I think, a disempowered way to view that quote. Instead, I think there's a way to meet our moments with deep presence, acceptance, and embrace. And that's something that we do in mindfulness practice, or we're training ourselves to do, to radically meet what has arisen here, various thoughts, various emotions, the sensations in the body, whatever, that

conglomeration of experience is in this moment. And what is it like to be in relationship to it in such a way where we're not exerting so much effort pushing it and not exerting so much effort trying to grasp onto the particular arrangement, but just meeting this moment as it is. That sounds like a nice idea and simple, but it's like the hardest work in the world. And it's the hardest work in the world. It's also like the foundation for so much self-care, healing.

development, transformation, and even if you want to get into the spiritual stuff, like it's the foundation for cultivating deep enlightenment as well. A mind that is no longer caught on this cycle of like, when the moment is good, then I'm happy. When it's not good, then I'm not happy. And I think like the powerful work that we're doing here that you're exploring, that I try to explore my teachings, is what can a certain kind of fulfillment and happiness and contentment look like that's not solely contingent upon

the external world or even the internal world being perfectly manufactured to our liking. That's a big quest. It's a big quest. It's a big quest. I remember it's funny because I always think about, I remember sort of my first journey into health and wellness and I always tell people I was like, listen, I was grabbing like double egg cheese biscuit sandwiches on my way to chemo with a hash browns. Like I was not, it was just no awareness around the body.

And you know, was I was a fit 26 year old dude. So I was just like, whatever. I'm like, I'm I'm I have muscles. I'm healthy. So and then to to start looking at health and like spirituality and like a level of a level control of control on my thoughts. I remember always looking at it as a destination. Like when I'll when I'll do these three things, I'm going to get there. I'll be healthy guy. I'll be cancer free guy. I'll be this. And I think part of the one of the

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (08:21.016)
one of the benefits of relapsing or going back into surgery or pain has been it's always in the state of expansion and contraction and that there is, it's not a destination ever. that's been a, I mean, it seems so simple. That seems, I'm embarrassed that that's my lesson of like 20 years of illness, but like that is my lesson is that, is that it's never this like mountain top that we reach. Or when people say, when you get across the finish line,

you know, and you use this product or this supplement or eat this diet, you'll be this, you know, and it's like, you get there, you do that, you do the six months, you do the crash diet, you do the, you know, P90X, you go through this, you go through the monastery and now I'm this. Yes. And then what? Right. And then where? And then what tools? And then how do I keep going? How do I go deeper? So that's, I think that's what I would love for you to, to, I would love to dovetail and go back to the six month.

You said you did a six month silent retreat. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I've of people doing 10 days. Right. So it's, kind of like the 10 day, a lot of people are familiar with like 10 day Vipassana silent retreat. Yeah. You meditating like 10 to 12 hours a day, which is like very intense experience and props to anyone that does that. Cause you can transform through that. It's like that just on steroids just for, for six months and

And we in that monastery we were doing we had to do a minimum of 14 hours of practice a day So you wake up at 3 a.m And you're just going back and forth between sitting meditation and walking meditation all day long and what did your friends and family think? Did you have judgment from people being like Corey we lost them There was yeah, it's so fun to think that I haven't gotten that question in such a long time

So I went when I was 22 and I was just out of college. I'm 30 now, so this is about eight years ago. I was, I have a little bit of embarrassment around this, but like I was a frat boy in college, not like total douche, I was like, I was throwing parties, I was a social chair of my fraternity. And people knew me like through that lens.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (10:45.255)
And then like toward halfway through my college career, especially toward my senior year, I really started getting into the mindfulness and meditation stuff. And, I had friends that were like, is he just doing this to try to get girls? Which is kind of interesting because the beginning of my journey started because I was trying to impress my, my girlfriend at the time. but it wasn't that I was like,

I was genuinely interested in this practice and the deeper I would go into it, the more intrinsically drawn I was into it. yeah, and so by six months after I graduated, I did the six month silent retreat and my family was kind of getting warmed up to the idea of it. Like I told them, I was like, Hey, I think I'm going to take some time off to go deep into this work. I think I like, I don't know what it's going to be yet. I kind of want to go on a mountain top somewhere. It was just like a, like the eat, pray, love kind of idea I had.

And so I wrote this long blog post about it and kind of explained it for everyone. people were, I was very lucky and privileged to be supported in this. And I deferred a bunch of student loans. People were confused by it, but they were like, all right, man, sounds like something you need to do. So good luck. Can't wait to hear how it goes. it just the like inquisitive sense of wonderment or did you find some pearl in these initial experiments of going deep with meditation that you wanted to?

You're like, want to do the six months. I want to really give myself space to explore. What led you to that? Yeah, it was a handful of things. First, I started going on some mini retreats before then, like five days here while I was in college. And when I was getting exposed to these meditation teachers, they just seemed to embody something that I hadn't seen before. It was this...

quality of peace and humility and an honesty and groundedness that I hadn't seen in any other teacher I ever had. It was like it existed someplace within themselves that wasn't being created or destroyed. And I would notice it in the way that they would respond to questions or on a retreat. Like a student would say something that was like really poking at what the teacher would say or pressing against it. And I was like, man, if I were to receive that question, I would be like,

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (13:08.162)
pissed off at that student and I would react in a certain way. And they just had this balance and compassion. I was like, I don't know what that is, but I want that. And the more I dug into their background, a lot of them were doing these extended silent retreats. So was, was, some of it was just like wanting to reverse engineer what I, what I saw and wanting to get that. But I had also

actually, this was the other key thing. Sorry, this is fun for me to think about. Like different things are coming to my mind. A lot of my early journey into the meditation work was inspired by this sense of like identity. I liked being the person that was into meditation. It was like a new thing that I could now latch onto, which you see a lot in the spiritual world. Like people transition from one thing into this and instead of the work that

the practice itself being the thing that's creating happiness, it's the idea of being the kind of person that's into this that is creating happiness. But that's a more superficial form. And so I was getting a lot of enthusiasm out of being like, the guy that's into meditation and the whole identity that comes with that. And the question was coming up of like, if nobody knew I was doing this, would I still be doing it? And I didn't know the answer to that question.

And I knew that I had enough insight to know like if I was going to go deep into this work and try and teach it, that answer had to shift. It couldn't be coming from a place of like wanting to have a nice website as a meditation teacher. So yeah, I wanted to sever myself from all of the comforts and the identity. That's a great, I wish every single entrepreneur out there, every single health coach, every single yoga teacher, you've got to ask yourself that question. Yeah, big time.

It's so important. It's so important because I don't want to get lost on this topic, but you know, there's there's especially now we're like all stuck at home, right? And people are like, what do I do to make money? What do I do to create? What do I do to, you know, I'm feeling so lost. Maybe if I help others, you know, I'll find this sense of like belonging and understanding. And you see a lot of platforms that are born out of that. And they're they're marred. They're like chained down to this weird weight because you

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (15:31.416)
You can tell, can feel it right away when somebody's coming from this place of like, man, you got a message and you're screaming it from the mountaintops. You just don't care. And then you hear the alternative. Exactly. Yeah. There ends up being a lot of disembodiment and unintegrated shadows when you start kind of teaching this work to others before you've really done it yourself.

And I'm not a believer that you need to do all of your healing before you can start working with other people. No, me neither. mean, as long as you're like owning where there are gaps and where you're still maybe teaching from wounds rather than scars, like all of that I think is important to acknowledge and hold in a healing relationship. So I don't believe everything needs to be healed, but we do need to be on that.

that journey and acknowledging that and making sure we're not caught up in projections and our own shadows. Yeah, I agree. I would say any of it. say as long as the humility piece is there, just be humble that like there's always more, that there's always more, like infinite, there's infinite number of lives and choices and we can just keep allowing them to unfold. But if you have that humility that, you you're always, it's like, you know, a child.

You're like, look at the joy they experience because everything is a game. Everything's everything. could be like a piece of chapstick. I'm like, wow, this chapstick's a lightsaber. And now it's like, I'm gonna draw with it. And it's like, there's 10 pieces of joy they could build out of this one thing. You're like, oh, it's a stick of chapstick. And we can, I think we can bring that sense of wonderment to what we do as teachers and collaborators and artists in this field.

I think it's limitless. It just feels so important to come back to that humility of like, this is just a big, constantly evolving journey that we're on and we're each walking our own unique paths with it. And anytime we think we're like at the end point is like the prime time to check yourself and probably start back at the beginning in some way or revisit the basics. And I think to, are you familiar with Ram Dass? Yeah. Yeah.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (17:54.085)
So I think it was Krishna Das that said this at like the funeral of Ram Das. He said in the final years leading up to Ram Das' death, Ram Das finally, he became the person we all thought he was when he first came back from India. And there's something to like, you know, when Ram Das first came back from India, obviously have a huge impact, Ropi here now, but like,

some of the really deep work where we're just like totally challenged to stretch into corners of our humanness can only come like in in the most vulnerable of our moments when we like no longer have the the podcast, the radio show, the identity. And it's like we're literally at death's door. And I can't really speak from personal experience there. I imagine you have a different experience with that with your own health.

But I just think it's important, like anytime we think that like we've got it, there's just, there's something bigger for us to lean into. And Ram Dass had that in his final years of life where he didn't have his wit anymore. didn't have his voice ever since the stroke. It was just like, now he had to do the real work and that required him to just soften and let go in a way that maybe he wasn't pressed to do, you know, in his thirties and forties when he was like ultra Mr. Spiritual.

So it all becomes just, yeah, big opportunity to be more humble. know I actually, it's so funny because, you know, I obviously you want to walk the walk when you talk the talk, when you in this health and wellness world, know, you want to do everything to be, you know, the absolute best version of yourself. And, and I always feel like I have a really good outlook. I feel like an internal light.

You know, but I'll be honest with you this last week, like I felt really dark. Like I felt, I had a massive, never had a panic attack in my life. I had a panic attack the other night at like two in the morning. And I, I thought, I mean, I thought I was dying. Like I felt this warm wave go over my body. was gasping for air. was shaking for like four hours. Luckily there was a friend at the house that I, I was, I said, let's go to the emergency room.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (20:19.877)
I'm having heart attackers and it was like I I was so humbled I was so humbled by like the power of my nervous system to be like why don't you just sit down and like I didn't know much about I didn't know what was happening really but I just had to breathe and just like Luckily she had seen someone go through a panic attack. I was like sure I'm like, what is this? my my whole body was like die die die die die

And I just had to let, had to lean into the fact that whatever was coming, I had no choice but to let it move through me. And when I did, when I said that out loud, I shook like, did you ever see two dogs in a fight and they'll go off and they'll shake? That's what my body did for like, and I felt it get lower and lower and lower and lower. It was like three and a half hours. Crazy, but I'm, I'm an empath. You know, I'm an empath and I got, I got sick initially.

I moved to the city like a month after 9-11. So you can imagine like what my body picked up and what it's picking up in this field of complete fear and loss of sense of self and life right now in this COVID-19. So I wanna put it back to you and how can we better navigate this time through some of the practices that you teach? I'd love to go deep on this because I think so many people out there are suffering

I mean, without getting into it too much, I hate when I say that, without getting into it too much. No, I'm gonna get into it, that's what I mean to say. What is that phrase? Without getting into it too much, I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say. Anyways, I'm annoying myself, slap on the wrist. It's like, I've had, we had, I've known two friends that have committed suicide. A friend of a friend and then another friend. This is from being locked down in New York. And then it's...

I know people are hurting. I've had friends that they won't even go outside. They won't open their windows for a breath of fresh air. There's so much paralyzation from the fear that it's never been a better time to explore the frontiers of the mind, which are limitless. It's like you did this for six months. I'm just saying, I'm like done with the interview for us. I'm like, you did this for six months. I'm like, why can't we take this time and like go deep? Yes.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (22:43.683)
scary. Yeah, it's very scary because it points to an existential truth, which is that we don't have nearly as much control as we think we do. And most of the time, what we're trying to do in life, and it's perfectly reasonable, is arrange the variables in such a way that it gives us the illusion of control. We get in the relationship,

get the house, you get the job and things kind of just get set up. And we should do that. Like that's how you work in the relative world. We don't need to totally just commit ourselves to distress and the pursuit of spiritual insight. But it is a bit of an illusion. And it's only when the rug gets pulled out from beneath us that we're forced to face this deeper vulnerability that we have as human beings. And so I'll start like,

I'll give like the bigger perspective of like maybe how to work with this and then I'll give some very practical tidbits. You know, what you did, Freddie, with the panic attack of like actually giving yourself permission to go through it and to let go and to just like feel it and the almost like the trauma response that comes from that, the releasing of energy in the same way that, you know, animals do that very...

with this very primal instinct, a bird will head into a window and then fall to the ground and then shake. It's discharging energy, which you seem to be familiar with and you got to experience firsthand. One of the worst things we can do in those experiences is to fight that or to just like even try to think positively through it or cover it up. This is the body's and the mind's way of processing these experiences. Or to medicate it. Yeah, or to medicate it.

And you can see how like you could kind of get by with some of that, but it's like- was so scary. Believe me, I thought about it. It was so scary. I mean, it was so scary that it felt like I was gonna die. I mean, it was that level. I'm not exaggerating. I was like, I'm gonna die. I should say my goodbyes. Like my heart is gonna stop. I can't get a breath.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (24:59.808)
Yes. So I understand medicating it and I understand wanting to have an emergency go to on my shelf that could be like, oh, oh, okay. This is why people take anti panic attack medication. get it. Yes. However, I'm like, okay, the body's doing this for a reason. There's some type of mechanism there to help me out. All right. And this is why COVID-19 everything going on right now is calling us into some deeper and bigger work.

That fear that you experience there of like, I might be dying right now is something that we all live with and as a possibility in every single moment, but try to stay far away from and not acknowledge until we're usually forced to acknowledge it. But it keeps us subconsciously enslaved to the illusion of having everything kind of put together, that that reality won't actually happen.

And there's something powerful that comes when we make peace with that reality on a deeper level. The inherent nature of what it means to be human, at least in bodily form, to arise and to pass away. Part of the bigger work in meditation is actually surrendering to that reality in each moment. And so I...

For those that may be starting to experience this, this vulnerability, this fear that arises, this uncertainty, the first invitation would be to, if you're inspired to do so, to actually go into that room and to feel that fear. The moment before release, the moment before letting go is often when we're going to hold on the tightest. And the ego, the smaller sense of self that

that has an idea of having control is not going to want to let go. It doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that it will die one day. Doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that this is a scary situation and it doesn't have control. any sense of that, like an empathic attack is, there's a great example of when that comes up and how much the ego like fights, what the hell is going on. The more we can feel that tightening and just relax into it.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (27:22.591)
the more we're meeting this existential reality of like not having as much control as we think we do in each moment and finding a little bit more peace within that flow. It's not the experience itself that's creating the distress. It's our relationship to the experience, which is the resistance, the gripping, the pushing. so like meditation one-on-one, if you could just define

the full experience or the full path to awakening. It's just progressive levels of letting go, letting go more and more and more and more. So on the deeper level, like this is the invitation to do that, letting go, to find some deeper peace and dis-ease. On the more practical level, like what are some strategies that we can use to navigate some of this? I'll go into that. The first thing would be when you're watching the news, you see that this might last a long time,

concern, you might not have your job anymore. First thing is just take a deep breath. Super basic, but tons of research to show that this is like highly connected to the nervous system and brings more of your brain online. And we did it at the beginning of our call as a way just to ground. When we're reacting out of that fear response, the more primal part of the brain, the amygdala.

We're not using rational thought as much. We're not connected to our more evolved part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which will help us reason. And then we'll get reactive. We'll say things we don't want to say, and we'll do things we don't want to do. So just taking a deep breath settles us in and also helps us make space for the experience that's here. That fear, when it arises, instead of suppressing it or shutting it down or trying to immediately go into something positive, the step two is to actually think.

the fear because the fear is like this guard dog protecting the front door of your house. It's barking. It sees something there that could potentially be dangerous. us saying like, okay, shut up, like, stop being fearful. It's kind of like being in the other room with the TV on and saying like, you know, stop annoying me dog. The dog is just going to bark louder and louder and louder because it wants to protect you. until the dog knows that you see the fear, the threat that it sees,

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (29:41.537)
it's going to continue to bark. So what we do is we meet the dog at the front door. We put our hand on its head and say, Hey, I see you. I see, I see what's there as well. It's okay. I'm here with you now. Only then can the guard dog go, okay, thank you. Like I'll settle down. So the meeting, the fear in that way doesn't necessarily mean it goes away entirely, but it becomes more of an ally rather than a perceived burden. And so we use that energy more skillfully. Like, okay, this is here. What is it trying to tell me?

Once we've met that fear, we could go a little bit more cognitive. And this is where we work with our what ifs and our what is. So step three, shifting what if to what is. The what ifs are all the cognitive loops we get into of like, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? In the context of this or any perceived crisis, the what if mind can be extremely useful. It helps us take action. It helps us think ahead.

I was abroad when this was starting to spread, but didn't really hit the states. And I remember thinking like, what if this does hit the states in a significant way? I have family members that are on the front line in healthcare. What if they're not aware of this? I should make sure that I'm back there in case there is more of a shutdown like is happening in China. So that what if mind, even though it created some stress was useful. It helped me take some intentional action, but too much what if.

And we get paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Why? That's why we want to balance it with what is and the what is is just what is here right now. And anyone listening, you could do it as you're sitting here. Notice what is actually here for me. My feet are on the ground. There's a roof over my head. I feel my body breathing. I feel a little cold, but I started dropping into the actual sensory experience and it takes me out of the story of my mind.

And usually what happens when you shift what if to what is, is you see that this moment is a little less of a catastrophe than a mind is making it out to be. So too much time spent in the what is, and we won't take action for the future. Too much time spent in the what if, and we'll be paralyzed with the prospect of something that might not necessarily even happen. So we want to dance between these two, the what ifs to what is, and see them working in harmony to inform what should our next step be.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (32:01.292)
which is step four, like what can I actually do? We're gonna be consumed with all of these ideas of like everything that has to get done. Start very basically of like with all of that at hand, what is one thing that I can influence and one thing I can control in this moment? The control thing is a little complicated because on one level we're talking about letting go of control and on another level we're talking about like

exercising some form of agency. So that's two ends of the polarity that we're always working with in each moment, like letting go of control and having some control. And the brain does very well in terms of like settling itself when it feels like it can influence something in the moment. So just what is one thing I can do with all of this going on? Is it a phone call I need to make?

Is it an email I need to send? Is it I need to meditate to calm myself down? Or I need to take a step in letting go of not having any control. Just something in that direction takes us out of a state of helplessness of not being able to do anything to feeling like a little bit more empowered with what's going on. And then the last step, step five is to ask, can I take that action? Or what is the minimum effective dose of stress required to take that action?

So this one's a little more interesting. If you imagine a number line from one to 10, where one is total Zen and 10 is like total hot mess, you get to ask yourself, where on that number line do I need to be in order to take intentional useful action? And the phrasing of that is important because we want to be intentional. We want to be useful and we want to be effective. So if being at a two,

kind of allows us to take the action, not to do it well and like we wait a while before we do it, then that might not be useful in the time of crisis. We need to be quick. We need to be productive. But at what level on that number line do I have to be at in order to do that? And you might get the answer six. It's like six feels good. But if it is a six, then ask, what does a six do that I can't get out of five? And when I do go down to a five with a little less stress,

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (34:15.215)
what is lost in my ability to be productive? And that sort of challenging of yourself is helpful because we're often subconsciously anchored to our idea that we need to be in a state of stress and in a state of fear in order to be productive or to get something done in a time of crisis. So just checking yourself in that way, usually what you'll find is that we don't need nearly as much stress in order to accomplish the things that we were trying to accomplish.

And so walking through those five steps, which can happen in over the course of a minute, taking a deep breath, thanking the fear, working with the what if to what is saying, what is one thing I can control right now? And then can I do that thing with a little less stress than my mind is perceiving is a very practical outline for kind of navigating moment by moment, the realities of the stress that are arising right now. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. That's amazing to have that walkthrough. mean, what are you so so with the I would say with your community that you're working with right now, what are some of the similar patterns that are showing up with those undergoing just the cumulative stress or, you know, they're falling into the, you know, this collective consciousness that we're all everybody in the world where, know, we're feeling this has never happened in my lifetime and your lifetime.

It's so unique. mean, what do you think's unique that keeps showing up as patterns right now that you're seeing? Well, it's obviously different for different people. And there are two general camps where people seem to fall into and then a continuum between the one camp seems to be those folks that are really suffering from this and are deeply impacted. And they're

concerned, they're fearful, they're anxious, they're connected to family members that might be sick, they themselves might be sick. And so just so this is a very distressful time on like anything they've seen. And there's another camp of people that and this tends to be like a lot of my entrepreneurship friends that tend to work from home already anyway. This is can be like a potential business opportunity and not a good way to put it but like they're they're rearranging their business to meet these times. And so

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (36:39.526)
there's some excitement for them, there's some opportunity there, and they actually feel like life isn't too different. And so I want to first like make space for anyone, anywhere in those camps and along that continuum, where it's okay to not be totally caught up in fear, even if those around you are, you might be having a different experience of this right now. And I don't think we need to be subconsciously anchored to a state of distress just because maybe the media is telling us that or

those around us are telling us that. We do want to be concerned, but we don't need to take on suffering if it's not immediately here for us. Within that continuum, and to get more to your point, your question of like, what's unique that's showing up, I'm finding a lot of people that are doing some denying of the reality of what's here, like so some disconnecting from it, which

you know, caught in their own thoughts of just like, okay, let me just go throughout my day as usual, not actually feeling some of the bigger potential of what this could be for them in their lives. And when they do start to open up to that, there's a lot of fear. And so they just try to think positively. And there's a role for the thinking positively. I'm a fan of it and optimism.

But when there's legitimate fear that's arising and it's knocking at the door of like this existential new exploration that we're all engaged in, and that's not being met in some way, that's when it becomes a little bit more toxic. So I see some intense compartmentalization happening that is leading to disintegration rather than like positive integration. That seems to be a big one. The rest is just like people navigating new uncertainty and fear.

learning to make space for that. Some people giving themselves permission to feel, to cry. A lot of people in that camp. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. seeing in my immediate field, I've had a lot of people come down with some very serious physical symptoms in the last week that are just these emergency room visits, onset conditions.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (39:03.53)
You know viral outbreaks Bell's palsy, you know, all of a sudden they're they're they're a 1c their blood sugar level, which has always been normal is spiking. They're seeing all these chemical changes in the body these disease states where they're just like waking up with it and you know my I'm always trying to remind you know, I'll remind my friends it's a it's such multifactorial there's so many inputs coming into the body and

It's not like that thing, it's not like you got hit with a thing. The thing was there and now it's out of check and out of balance because of what we're going through. So it's, you know, and I love, think spirituality, breath work, meditation, I think it's just, I don't think the emphasis is, I don't think it gets the emphasis it deserves. It's like a side hobby. People are like, yeah, I tried meditating. It didn't work for me.

You know, yeah, I do it once in a while and it's like, it's like brushing your teeth. It's like walking. It's like breathing. You you said something really interesting in an interview. You were talking about, you were talking about judgment and how, how judgment comes up in, the midst of a meditation practice and, and what you, you know, because, again, in my head, I always imagined I would meditate to like, to transcendence or to a place of bliss.

Right, I was trying to meditate to get happy. And now through evolution, more time spent in the practice, it's like, I witness like all these things that come up, you know, and that's, it's actually, you know what, it's more fun. It's a better ride. Cause some weird shit comes up. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like your view on meditation? Because, you know, I think

I think it's E, you look at it, you're like, yeah, I'm to sit down, I'm going to breathe, I'm going to be happier. App, there's an app 10 % happier, like meditate, get me happy, which has never worked for me. I've never had that. It's never worked like that. It's never been a linear shot. There's always like a lot of dark stuff that comes up. Sure. And that's a great paradox in the practice as well, like in order to get anywhere with it, in order to get the happiness that we want out of it, we have to let go of trying to get that happiness.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (41:27.846)
Because of course there's some end point. We're not doing the practice to create more suffering or to create more stress. And we're not even doing the practice to just be like, okay, with stress. There is the promise that this can transform, alchemize these different experiences so that we live our lives much more wholeheartedly, fully and with less suffering. But when we go into the practice with the intention of transcendence,

or like rising above it or just being happy, it actually gets in the way of the mechanisms that would create this deeper happiness. Because at least in the meditation context, the kind of happiness we're developing is not coming from getting to a particular state that we're experiencing. It's a deep balance and equanimity with the flow of different states and experiences that arise. So one thing I tend to encourage is,

Practice befriending rather than transcending. Befriending rather than transcending. And the befriending is something that we can bring into every aspect of our experience. It's not just like befriending ourselves, but befriending thoughts, befriending emotions, befriending the pain that shows up in your knee while you're sitting in meditation, rather than trying to like focus on the breath in spite of that so that you can get to some happy place.

The happiness comes from meeting the experience and letting go of the resistance to the experience. That kind of letting go and openness and spaciousness is rooted in a place much deeper within us and takes us off of that continuum of like pleasure pain. And when we're high on the pleasure, then things are good. When we're high on the pain, then things are bad.

That's how animals live their life and that's actually how most humans live their life in terms of trying to find like a life well lived. But it's a roller coaster ride and there's no permanent refuge to be found on that. The positive experiences are always going to shift and painful experiences are always going to shift. Even like chronic pain, if you look at it on a moment to moment level, it's ebbing and flowing in intensity.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (43:49.076)
So these, these painful experiences that we're going through now are opportunities to work with that deep conditioning of like pushing and pulling, pushing away the things we don't want, pulling close to things we do want, which is an exhausting, never ending treadmill. And to see like, can I actually just rest in the experience that is here without fighting it so much, take some deep breaths into it and practice letting go or letting be is a better way to put it.

And that would be my encouragement to anyone wanting to explore like a meditation practice right now. Just like take a few minutes to forget about the breath. Forget about getting anywhere with it. Forget about trying to use it to overcome stress and be happy. Just use it as a way to sit and relax into your experience. If there's fear, what's it like to feel it? What's it like to let yourself have that human experience? Feel the fear. It won't last forever.

its very nature is to pass. There's no single experience that anyone has ever had at any point in their life that sustains itself up until this moment. But we forget that in the moment. The nature of emotions is for us to think that they're going to last forever, especially difficult experiences. We're wired to latch onto that, to ruminate about that, to associate as much pain to it as possible so that it causes us to take some sort of action.

In these cases, we're stuck in more like a chronic long-term fear that is not going to be serving us to be in that space. So it a moment to befriend the experience rather than transcend the experience and let that lead to a deeper sense of happiness and peace over time. Yeah. That's really amazing, Corey. Corey, can you give me like an example or like your favorite story of like a profound transformation healing experience you've witnessed through someone doing this type of work?

I'm sure you got a couple. Yeah, yeah, there's one I talk about in my book at the beginning of chapter two. It's about this woman, Naomi, who came on one of my retreats. I run this five day retreat in upstate New York each year for a small number of my students, about like 12 to 16. And we really go deep in a five day period. One of the exercises, practices we do is called a birthday circle.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (46:13.738)
and a person has the opportunity to sit in front of the group and the rest of the group huddles around them. And we just practice bringing our full presence to that person and that person receives that presence. For some people, this is easier than others. And for those that have...

had struggles with relationships, especially being seen, this can be a profoundly difficult experience because they've spent their entire life not taking in that kind of presence or deflecting it. And so Naomi was one of those people. She had a lot of trauma, childhood of like children shouldn't be seen or heard. And her protective mechanism was to not get close to people because when she had in the past, it just led to more pain.

So she, nobody has to go in the birthday circle, but once she saw it, she knew like, if I'm going to come here for something, this is it. and so, so she went in and we all settled in and immediately like we could feel the pain for her. Like she was bracing, she was making jokes to deflect it. Her body was kind of shaking. And, with this stuff, you want to be very sensitive to like the trauma in the space and never want to push someone beyond. It's this balance between like being safe.

feeling deep safety and like stepping slightly toward the edges of your window of tolerance. So her eyes would deflect because everyone's making eye contact and she would stay with one person, but it would get a little too uncomfortable. She'd shift to another shift to another. So at one point in the birthday circle, said, Naomi, if it feels okay, like I'd like for us just to stay in eye contact for a bit. And she did. and so we just, we just stayed fixed and the rest of the room kind of fell away.

And it was just me and her holding that space together. And I could see like her jaw was clenching and I'd invite her to soften her arms would go like this. And I'd notice it. And I invite her to relax her body. was this very subtle dance of like openings and closings. And we stayed like that for about 45 minutes, kind of talking back and forth, but just holding that space of presence. And then eventually something started to shift. And I saw something in her chest was vibrating.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (48:31.439)
or just like just started to move. And I said, I noticed something happening in your chest. What's going on right now? She said, it feels, it's vibrating. It's like something feels like it's changing, shifting. And she had described like a wall in her chest at the beginning of this. She said, I feel like that's changing. And so I said, well, do know what happens when ice starts to melt? So it starts to vibrate.

It seems like that wall might be vibrating. And she said, it's scary. Like, I don't think I can be with this. And I said, anytime you can step out of it, but we stayed in presence. She wanted to stay with it. We kept holding the intensity of that experience and it started vibrating faster. then something completely let go in our whole body. Her face changed, her shoulders changed, her chest changed, her whole body relaxed and like just gave way to this deep.

peace and stillness in the space, also in Naomi. And at the end of it, was just me and her resting in this full unguarded presence. And she just whispered, wow. And I said, yeah, wow. What just happened? She said, I let go. Like, I'm okay with you seeing me. I said, it's very nice to see you, Naomi. She said, it's nice to be seen.

And it was just such a beautiful example of someone meeting this deeply ingrained wall in them, what I call these pain walls that keep us guarded from the things we most, we don't want to experience more than anything. And the only way through those walls is not by jumping over them or turning away or trying to find another way in. Like we actually have to meet it with presence.

to see that we can be with it and to give it the opportunity to soften. Yeah. So that was profound. And you know, I don't like selling romantic healing stories because it's not like that happens and then the fear is purged from her body of ever being seen again. Yeah. These are neurocircuits and they have to be continued to be conditioned even with like big psychedelic experiences as well. But I saw her a year later on another retreat, a bigger retreat with like a hundred people.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (50:50.956)
And I saw her and she was she was a completely different person. And I don't say that lightly. I rarely say that about any transformation the students I see. But this was a different human being in terms of how she held herself, her quality of peace or contentment. And I just couldn't stop looking into her eyes. said, Naomi, like you what what has happened? You've transformed. And she said that experience was a catalyst for some big change.

But what she had been doing over the next year was loving kindness meditation, like 10 minutes to 20 minutes each day, just sending herself well wishes, may I be happy, may I be safe, may I be healthy. And she reconditioned her relationship to herself and her ability to be open to other people, herself. That was just profoundly healing. And so many other physical things adjusted in the way and healed themselves in the way.

Yeah, it's incredible to think that when the body is compartmentalizing those emotions that it goes hand in hand, that there would be some lines of communication that are broken down within the human body. Organs and organ systems not talking to each other. And I'm of the firm believer that that emotional component, you know, I wish it's something that went into oncology training that aside from of cutting out these tumors or blasting us with medicine,

that there was, you know, that that is part of it. You know, we, and you see people, you see people, it's always like, what tools do you have when you go into your cancer journey or chronic illness, whatever we want to say, because you're to be left on the other side sometimes with like, you know, some missing body parts or like, you know, you're going to be surgically changed and there's nothing given.

you know, to these, many 80 million people that are going through this all over the planet, they're left with the scar they're left with the wound and you know, that body is, like, you're like Naomi. It's like that behind her heart was hidden. This hurt this pain and releasing the flood gates. How many, how many chemical changes happened downstream? I mean, I know we can measure it. can measure these. know we can measure these. but it's just for people at home listening to this, like

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (53:10.597)
It's like the one most powerful thing that, you know, everybody talks about, but I feel like very, a small percentage of the population commits to and does. know I only, I speak from true experience. It's like the one thing that, that lacks, you know, I'll do movement, I'll do yoga, I'll do walks in nature, but there is something to be said for sitting down and breathing with yourself. You know,

It's just, so powerful. It's so powerful. The great example I like to give people, like, you know, when you go on vacation and like the first few days of vacation, you're like, this is amazing. I could live here. These people are amazing. Stay there for like three weeks. You're like, because you're still there. You're stuck with yourself. You know, you're stuck with the best and the worst parts, but I feel like meditation, it allows you to live in a place of like,

more abundance, more wellness, higher vibration, all those things. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, when they just think of like, do I want to start a meditation practice or not? They think of primarily like the health benefits or like, okay, I sit down, I focus on my breath or I try to transcend something. And it can feel like a little mechanical or just like, okay, it's just like something I add to my repertoire of like, now I have good focus, now I'm more productive, now I'm like more relaxed. And it's all of that, but like,

something so much deeper. you were talking about like the deepest work of befriending yourself on the most radical level. And you have to go through this life alone. You can have all the all the great physical healing. You can have the best friends, you can have the car, the great everything can be manufactured perfectly. But if you haven't done that work, to find some ease within yourself, then it's still going to be some form of a prison. And

And that's like the big stuff and usually like the last thing we want to do because it can be the hardest. So, and, and this isn't like a plug for my work or like any form of meditation, just like take some time for yourself, anyone listening to just like be still drop in and just see what is it like to be with yourself? What is it like to be still? And if you feel resistance to that, then chances are

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (55:30.846)
there's something profound on the other side of that resistance that can give you most of the things that you're probably looking for. And if there's some ease with that, cool, continue to nurture it, because it could always go deeper. Corey, where can people dip their toe in the water or that are there looking, they're like, wow, this sounds like something I really need to go deeper on, or it's something I've attempted and failed. Do you have a place to meet and receive people? Yeah, the best.

Well, if people want resources, have a number you can text your email address to and get all these free resources. So that's just, if you're out of the country, it's plus one and then six three one four zero five four six three one. So you text your email address to that and you'll get about 10 meditations. I have a mindfulness starter kit that will kind of walk people through everything, book recommendations.

My book came out at the end of December. It's called, Missing Your Life, How to Be Deeply Present in an Unpresent World. That will take someone's hand through this journey from beginning, well, beginning not to end, but beginning to a place where you're ready to start. And then my podcast is just a great way for people to kind of dip their toes into this and go deeper. And that's a daily podcast, 10 to 12 minute episodes called Practicing Human. Practicing Human.

Amazing. Well, Corey, I want to be respectful of time. So I just want to do a couple more questions if that's okay with you. Let's go into it. Amazing. Amazing. So if you could if you could give one if you could give one piece of advice to our audience out there who is who is having this they're finding this podcast in a time where they do have extra time on their hands. What is what is the invitation to to begin a practice like this? What would you say to that person?

who's just right on the fence. They just need a little nudge. Yeah. Just start with one minute. One minute. The reason one minute is so powerful, like sitting down, focusing on your breath, that's because it's just very hard to argue yourself out of one minute. If you start saying, I don't have a minute to do this, then we have to evaluate like what's going on in your life. Everyone can find one minute, even if it's an extra minute on the toilet. The beauty of one minute is that it's, it's a low enough investment.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (57:47.751)
that you can't argue yourself out of it, but it's long enough that once you get to like that 55 second mark, you're just settled in enough that the mind goes, maybe I'll try two minutes. And then you do two, it's like, maybe I'll do three. And you start arguing yourself into it rather than arguing yourself out of it. So if you're on the fence, you kind of want to explore, but you're not looking to do like a 10, 20 minute investment in this work, just start with one minute, be still, make the practice simple, put your hand on your belly, one hand on your heart if you want.

and just feel the body breathing and make the whole thing just every time that my wanders, just bringing it back to this breath, moment, my wanders back to this breath. Do that for a minute. And if you feel inspired to go beyond that, then you can and let it build from there. Amazing. And if you could have a magic wand and wave it and gift one thing to the human race, what would it be? well, it would be the quality of Mudita.

So mudita is a Buddhist term that translates into sympathetic joy. So rejoicing in the joy of others. I think if there's one thing that could catalyze huge shift in our whole species is like, if we actually felt genuine happiness hormones running through our body when we saw another person being happy, I think that would transform everything. So I would love to give to everyone some more mudita.

I think, yeah, I think they can pick up that vibration. And then my last one is so beautifully broken podcasts, you know, putting the putting the pieces back together. What does it mean to you to be beautifully broken? I think it means to rest in your wholeness to see these. When I when I think of meditation, I think of it as resting in wholeness. All the many parts of me.

parts that feel fractured, the parts that are embraced, the parts that I'm trying to bring out of the shadows and into the light, recognizing the full dimensions of what it means to be human and how easy it is for some of those to break off and just practicing welcoming them all in. To me, that's embracing the beautiful brokenness of all of us. so giving space for all of it, allowing your sense of self.

Freddie Kimmel and Cory Muscara (01:00:11.481)
to expand enough to include all of these many dimensions and the multitudes within you. Amazing. Well, Corey, it was such a treat to have you on the show. Thank you, Freddie. I hope we can do it again. we could, I'm sure we could do like 10 hours of, there's limitless, as you know, areas we could go into the mind and the spirit and the body and where they cross over and interact. So I hope you'll entertain that idea in the future. And thank you for being such a gracious

a guest with your time and your energy. Thank you. You're doing great work, man. Appreciate it. Namaste. Namaste. Ladies and gentlemen, you made it to the end of the podcast. Now in a world where the average attention span is less than 10 seconds, we just spent almost an hour together. And I think this is the beginning of something really beautiful. Now, one way to support the podcast is to head over to freddysetgo.com and check out my newly launched page.

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all over the world. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show, head over to iTunes and leave a five star review. Grabbing a download is like giving this virtual thumbs up that we're doing it right. And if you want to connect with me, shoot me a message on Instagram at freddysetgo.com or at freddysetgo. That's all for today. Our closing, our closing, the world is hurting. We need you at your very best. So take the steps today to always be upgrading, whatever it takes to move the needle. Remember, while life is pain, putting those fractured pieces back together is a beautiful process. I'm your host, love you, namaste, have a wonderful day.