#848: From Stress to Stillness — 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, 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. 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.
For the time being, please enjoy this Meditation Monday with Henry Shukman.

**Henry Shukman** (1:09)
Welcome to this meditation with me, Henry Shukman, on working with stress. Stress is a universal human phenomenon, and it's terribly widespread today in the way we are conditioned and socialized, and the way we lead our lives with a constant pursuit of productivity, et cetera. Many pressures on us all the time. I personally grew up with a lot of stress from a very difficult chronic illness throughout my childhood that was highly stressful. And the moment I started to meditate around the age of 25, it made a massive difference to how I dealt with stress. So I hope to share something of that right now. We might think of stress as a thing that we want to kind of eliminate. And there's a lot of research that meditation can greatly help with that. But it's a counterintuitive way. The way to reduce stress is not to fight it. It's actually to learn to allow it and include it. That is the meditative approach. So let's come into a comfortable seated position and we'll see how this can work. Yeah, get yourself settled. Find a comfortable position. Close the eyes or lower the gaze with the eyes open if you prefer that. Make any micro adjustments of the body that will help you settle in. Just be in a position that feels good to you right now.
Let's take a deeper inhale, fill the lungs, and slowly let it out. Let the breath turn and once again fill the lungs. Hold it a moment and slowly exhale. And one more time, filling the lungs, holding a moment and releasing. And letting the breath return to its natural rhythm. So we're going to begin by becoming aware of the body. Feel your feet on the floor or whatever surface is beneath them. Just sense the contact that they're making. Feel your seat below your buttocks and whatever they're resting on. Feel that contact and perhaps some pressure. And be aware of your head now. Just sense your head and let it be in a restful position.
Now, let your shoulders, arms and hands relax. Let them go slack. Let them hang like old ropes.
Let your legs also be completely relaxed, loose. So both arms and both legs are really at ease. They're not doing anything.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:39)
Slack.

**Henry Shukman** (4:43)
And let the whole torso, the chest area, the belly area, and the whole back of the body, let it all be relaxed, at ease. So just see if you can get a quick sense of the whole body. May almost be like a mental image of the whole body. Just sitting here, being still, and coming into its own state of rest.
So, stress shows up as a physical sensation in the chest. Some research suggests 94% of people experience stress in the chest area, if they look for it as a physical sensation. So just see now, how's your stress level right now? Can you sense any kind of sensation in the chest that might be associated with it? Perhaps a certain kind of tightness, or a certain heat, or sense of activation in the chest, or weight, or density? Then just back off from that and bring your awareness to the surface of your whole ribcage, the skin around your ribcage. Let that sheath around the ribcage become soft and warm, like warm wax. Let it be warm. And notice that in its softness and its warmth, it can contain and allow any other energies that are within the chest area. So whatever other kinds of energy may be subtly arising in the upper torso, this softness encircling them, softness of our ribcage and of the sheath around the ribcage that's warm and soft, it can hold all energies. It can allow them. So we're not actually trying to get rid of anything. We're developing or rediscovering our capacity to allow any sensations that are uncomfortable or uneasy. There's a way in which we can already be able to allow them and include them. It's as if there's a part of us that has an inbuilt capacity for patience, for a certain flavor of kindness, of compassion for ourselves.