#787: How to Be in The Present Moment — Guided Meditation with Zen Master Henry Shukman

Tim Ferriss (0:00)

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. This episode is a brand new experiment called Meditation Monday. That means in addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday, I will be bringing you a short 10-minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four-episode series, you'll develop a Zen toolkit specifically to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. The teacher, Henry Shukman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach what is called Sanbo Zen. I have found this particularly interesting and effective, and now he'll be your teacher. I've been using Henry's app, The Way, once, often twice a day for the last few months, and it has lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of the show, you yourself can get 30 free sessions by visiting thewayapp.com/tim. So if you like what you hear in these meditations, which will be valuable in and of themselves, you can get 30 free sessions by going to thewayapp.com/tim.

And for the time being, please enjoy this Meditation Monday with Henry Shukman.

Henry Shukman (1:10)

Hello, welcome to Meditation Monday. I'm Henry Shukman. I'm a Zen master, a meditation teacher, a poet, an author. I've been meditating a long time since my mid-twenties, and it's been the most important thread in my life in terms of not just sort of self-care and maintenance and generally being much happier than I might otherwise have been, it's also been a journey of incredible discovery. I think the most crucial, vital, beautiful discovery of a lifetime in a certain sense, because it can show us stuff about who and what we really are and what our true relationship with this world actually is. But the most important initial, foundational function of meditation for most of us is going to be just in getting more present, more grounded, more centered and less stressed. It's a great intervention for nervous system regulation. And you know, the whole modern mindfulness, exponential spread of meditation as a practice has been centered around that stress reduction. And that's great. That's definitely great. And it is what we all need to start with and regularly come back to. But I do want to just note that there is the other side too, that it can be such an extraordinary journey of existential discovery. In this little series, we're going to be exploring both sides, but we're going to begin again and again with arriving, getting grounded, getting centered, more balanced, more present. And in this first meditation that we're about to go into, I'm going to be basically teaching a way that we can again and again come back to the here and now through getting more aware of our body, of our body sensation and the experience that our body is actually having right now. They say the mind is a time traveler, goes to the past, goes to the future quite often, a lot, but the body doesn't do time travel. And if we can just get connected with our body again, we come back into the present moment, into right here, right now, and in a slightly unexpected way, when we're really here, present, somehow it always seems to dial down our stress, our suffering, it just takes the edge off it, just to be more immediately present now. And weirdly, that even works when we're in a stressful present. There's something about being present with this body here and now, that seems to give us more of a sense of peace and safety automatically, even when things are tough. Okay, so, let's go into our first meditation. I'm gonna suggest that you get seated comfortably. In this process of coming into our body experience, it's really helpful that you can find your way to a set up with your body, a posture, where you can be comfortable. You know, the 99% of meditation teaching suggests sitting. There's good reasons for that, which I won't go into now. But you can, of course, recline, if that's what you would rather do. But I'm gonna assume that most of us are sitting. And if you're sitting with your back being supported, then really relax into that support. If you're sitting like I am with your back unsupported, then it's important to be balanced. We want the ears over the shoulders, the shoulders over the hips. As we come into body experience, we wanna be coming into this comfort in the body that allows the body to relax. Okay, so now I'm gonna invite you to either close your eyes or if you prefer, you can just lower your gaze. But no need to be looking at anything. If you're lowering your gaze, don't be looking particularly at anything. Just kind of switch off the pointer in the eyes, the looker. Just let that go. If your eyes are closed, gaze into the kind of gray scale behind the closed eyelids. Let's just allow ourselves to let go just briefly, just for this little period of time of whatever's come before, whatever our cares and concerns are this day, just for now, you can put them on the shelf and just come into the experience of being here quietly, somewhat still, and not needing to do anything right now. You can actually leave the tasks, the to-do list outside the door just for a moment, just for now. And think of this as a time of coming back to you, coming back to something a bit more essential about you and your life. I'm going to give some pointers now around experience of the body and relaxing the body. Let your jaw relax. Let your jaw actually sink a millimeter or two. And feel what it's like to let the jaw go. Many of us carry tension in the jaw. Just let it become slack. Now let the throat relax. Be soft. Let your shoulders settle. Let your arms and hands and fingers become limp. Let them go slack like old rope.