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10% Happier with Dan Harris
There's an Off-Switch for Stress. Here's How to Build It | Kelly Boys
01:02:21
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- [00:00]
Kelly Boys
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Sharon Salzberg
This is the 10% Happier podcast.
- [00:07]
Dan Harris
I'm Dan Harris.
- [00:19]
Sharon Salzberg
Hey, hey, how we doing everybody? Today we're going to take another run at something that is simultaneously a contemplative cliche and also a deeply desired psychological outcome. Getting out of your head and into your body. So many of us want an escape
- [00:35]
Dan Harris
route from the spinning, looping, fizzing stories
- [00:38]
Sharon Salzberg
in our head, and my guest today has some deeply practical suggestions. Said guest is Kelly Boies. She's a mindfulness trainer and coach. She has helped design and deliver mindfulness and resilience programs at the un, Google, and the San Quentin State Prison. She's also the author of a book called the Blind Spot Effect. Today we're going to talk specifically about a type of meditation that Kelly teaches called Yoga Nidra, which has been shown to help you sleep, improve your working memory, and decrease cravings. I will let Kelly describe the practice, but just to say from the outset,
- [01:12]
Dan Harris
you don't have to actually do the
- [01:14]
Sharon Salzberg
whole practice in order to benefit from what you're about to hear.
- [01:17]
Dan Harris
Kelly does a great job as you
- [01:18]
Sharon Salzberg
will hear of extracting the active ingredients
- [01:21]
Dan Harris
of Yoga Nidra and ways that you
- [01:23]
Sharon Salzberg
can integrate into your life immediately. I don't love adding stuff to your
- [01:26]
Dan Harris
to do list, so we won't just
- [01:29]
Sharon Salzberg
to say this episode originally aired back in December of 2022, but we're bringing it back a because it's awesome and B because we are in the middle in the 10% Happier cinematic universe of what we are calling Sleep Week. Specifically on the 10% app, we just added 10 new sleep meditations to the library. Sleep is so important if you want
- [01:49]
Dan Harris
to do life better and we're really excited because we think this new content
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Sharon Salzberg
can really help you up your sleep game. Also, by the way, if you sign up for the app on danharris. Com, you can get this podcast without ads. So head on over to danharris.com and sign up. While I'm at it, I should say that you can now actually give gift subscriptions to the app. If that's your kind of thing, you can just send an email to supportanharris with the subject line Gift and you can give the gift of sanity. Oh, one more thing. If you're in New York City on May 17, I'm going to be doing a live Talk at the 92nd Street Y. I'll guide a meditation, take your questions. It'll be fun.
- [02:27]
Dan Harris
There's a link in the show notes if you want to get a ticket.
- [02:29]
Sharon Salzberg
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- [05:14]
Dan Harris
Kelly boys, welcome to the show.
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Kelly Boys
Great to be here. Thank you.
- [05:18]
Dan Harris
Thank you. All right, so let's start at a very, very basic level, which is yoga nidra. What is it?
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Kelly Boys
Yoga nidra is the lying down guided meditation. And it comes from the non dual yoga tradition. It was formed as a practice not until the 50s, 60s and 70s, but the philosophy is rooted in kind of the Indian yoga teachings.
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Dan Harris
Non dual yoga tradition. Please define.
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Kelly Boys
Yes. So I'm referring specifically to Kashmiri Shaivism, which is a form of yoga philosophy. And, and it's rooted in the idea that we're not separate. So non dual means not two, not breaking the world up into me and you, self and world. That the ultimate understanding where I to go all the way with the meditation of yoga is to see that I'm not separate.
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Dan Harris
This seems very similar to the Buddhist practices we've talked about a million times on this show where you see that the self is an illusion, which is a very hard concept to grok. But the punchline is that you are not separate from the universe. That you are, to use the most cliched of all meditative cliches, one with the universe.
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Kelly Boys
That's right, yeah. That's the fundamental realization of this practice. And I was watching a documentary many years ago, the Dalai Lama went up to, I think it was a Hindu yogi in India, and he said, you say self, we say no self, same thing. And they started laughing and kind of smacked him on the back. So that's where I think these two philosophies coincide, that in seeing the intrinsic kind of emptiness of self and objects, you also are able to see the interconnectivity. And so in yoga, the philosophy would be my essential self, or the true self is deeply interconnected, and the false self, or that which I've misperceived to be who I am, is empty of construct.
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Dan Harris
So just to unpack that or clarify it a little bit, in yoga, there's a lot of talk about the self. I believe the term is atman. And that can be confusing or maybe even conflict provoking for Buddhists who are always yammering on about not self, that the self is an illusion. What you're saying and what the Dalai Lama and his Hindu yogi friend were saying, what we're all saying is that the Hindu notion of self includes union with everything, which is basically the same thing as saying you don't have a Self.
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Kelly Boys
That's right. And it's one thing to take that as a philosophy and then another thing to really explore that in your lived experience. And as you're in meditation, looking at how you hold the world together and as you look at what, whether it's an emotion or a thought, you see the intrinsic kind of passing nature of it or the intrinsic emptiness of it can also explore that. You know, when I've. I've looked at these emotions and thoughts, well, what am I left with here after seeing this emptiness? When I'm left with feeling this, it can happen interconnectivity with the world around me, that I see this kind of essential truth that who I am most deeply isn't what I thought it was. It's actually kind of a paradox to think that there's nobody here. But the yoga frame is that it's a self, it's the essential self.
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Dan Harris
I want to make one little clarification and then ask a question. The little clarification is longtime listeners will not be confused by Kelly's repeated use of the word emptiness, but just for any newbies or as my son says, noobs, I guess that's the term of art in one of his video games for newcomers. Emptiness in the Buddhist context is not in the pejorative like if in common English parlance, and we talk about emptiness, it's not necessarily a good thing. But in Buddhism, emptiness of self, meaning that you're not as solid as you think you are, that's a good thing because you don't have to take all of your thoughts and urges and impulses so personally you can see that they are not you, and therefore you don't have to be owned by them. So that's just a quick clarification, but here's my question, because, Kelly, you used an interesting phrase when you were talking about why any of this matters anyway. You talked about how in meditation you can see how you hold the world together. What did that mean?
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Kelly Boys
So how I organize self and world, and if I'm in meditation practice, and this can be in mindfulness meditation, this can be in yoga nidra practice, I start to recognize if I'm able to explore my experience. So sensations in the body, the breath as it comes and goes, emotions and thoughts as they come and go, I start to get underneath and see, oh, you know, there's this subtle way, or it might be actually very overt for some of us, where I'm holding the world and my self view together in such a way that I'm actually completely fused with what it is that I'm experiencing. So if it's an emotion and I'm inquiring with it in meditation or yoga dittra, then I can start to see, oh, wow, I've been organizing around, going through the world that this is me and this is who I am. And as I inquire into that and it releases a little bit, I start to feel more of this spaciousness and perhaps interconnectivity. I mean, we're not trying to push for that. It's an insight that can arise in meditation. It's not necessarily a belief to be taken on. But as we inquire in the practice of yoga nidra, you begin to see that the way that we've held self and world or constructed it isn't quite as solid as we had taken it to be. Similar to what you mentioned before, I
- [11:23]
Dan Harris
have a million questions about that, but I think the answers might emerge if we stay on the thread of the history of this yoga nidra practice. You were starting to explain that it comes out of this Hindu non dual tradition, and then you explained what that was. Can you say a little bit more about the roots of the practice and then maybe explain to us what the practice entails?
- [11:49]
Kelly Boys
Sure. So yoga nidra in the texts from like 8 to 12th century used to just be a phrase that described this kind of conscious awareness where we're deeply interconnected and we see that things aren't separate. So it used to just be a phrase to describe a state. But Swami Satyananda Saraswati in the 50s and 60s began to take the phrase yoga nidra. Nidra means sleep. And to have people be in the corpse pose, near the savasana pose at the very end of yoga, where you're just lying down on your back. And he created this process that people would go through that incorporated some of these yogic techniques, but had at its root this kind of fundamental philosophy. So the practice that he created looked like starting with an intention and then moving to do a body scan and then breathing practices. And the way he taught it was working with kind of visualizations, archetypal images, and that kind of a thing. And he found that people were feeling more relaxed, they were learning better. He was getting some really good effect from his teaching. And so it kind of spread like wildfire. There was also another person. His name's Dennis Boys. We share the last name, except for he had an E between the Y and the S. And he's a French person who also wrote a book on yoga nidra before Swami Satinanda Saraswati did. So who knows if he studied with him or how that all happened. But both of those people at the same time in the 70s wrote books on Yoga Nidra. And then from there in the yoga community it just kind of took off and, and people were practicing it either at the end of a yoga practice or separately. And it was then taken by the person I studied with was a clinical psychologist, Richard Miller. And he built a model around it called Integrative Restoration or irest. And this was like a ten step model that you go through that can work with trauma and heal your psyche and help you connect with these meditative states. And so you'll see different forms of Yoga Nidra out there, but mostly it's a lying down practice and it's guided. It's usually relaxing, it's really good for sleep.
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Dan Harris
It's interesting the relationship between meditation and sleep because the word Buddha means awake. So it wasn't, at least for him, the intended use case. So what is the connection between Yoga nidra and sleep?
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Kelly Boys
Yeah, it's kind of like being as awake as you can while you are going into states of sleep. So it's maintaining that awareness, if you think even of the om symbol. So that's like the three and then the little curlicue on side of it. So the three is the waking state, the curlicue beside it is the dreaming state, and then the kind of half moon above it is the dreamless state. So deep sleep and then the dot is called turiya. It's the non state or the awareness in which all states are coming and going. And so the practice with sleep, in terms of Yoga nidra, you're actually invited if you fall asleep, it's totally fine, no problem at all. In fact, some people simply only use Yoga nidra to fall asleep. So it can be very effective for that. But the idea is to try to remain kind of consciously aware as your body is going in and out of different states.
- [15:13]
Dan Harris
And so at its basic level, if we wanted to practice Yoga nidra, we would need to download an app or get, find some guidance on YouTube, like how does one do this thing?
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Kelly Boys
Yeah, there are a lot of Yoga nidra sessions on YouTube that you could find. And the place where I used to work and study was the IREST Institute. And then there are other forms of Yoga nidra out there. So it's really just kind of like when you're just getting into meditation, you go, oh wait, okay, there's tm, there's mindfulness there's everything. How do I start? And you kind of do the same thing with Yoga Nidra, where you start, start to look at what teachers are saying. Does that resonate with you? The form I teach is more mindfulness based. So I'm interested in merging the field work that I've done with mindfulness with Yoga Nidra. So that, like taking kind of some of the woo woo, for lack of a better word out of it and making it really accessible and being able to articulate the mechanism behind like this is why the body scan works, because it's an insula workout. And you know, the insula is the part of the brain that's responsible for interoceptive awareness. We just get in touch with what's actually happening in our body as sensation. So that's my preferred method to teach it in a way that's really practical and relatable and kind of pulls out any feeling of a religious or philosophical kind of underpinning, but just says this is wisdom that all of us can access. Were we to inquire in meditation, what's
- [16:42]
Dan Harris
the difference between mindfulness meditation and Yoga Nidra? What are the primary differences and how do you combine them?
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Kelly Boys
So I would say the primary differences are mindfulness. If you look at the four foundations of mindfulness, or just being able to sit in a moment and follow the breath in, notice sensations in the body, be aware of, as I've mentioned before, kind of emotions, thoughts, mind states. You're doing the same thing in the Yoga Nidra practice, but you start with an intention. And you know, your intention could be to work with a challenging emotion, or it could be to have some kind of meditative insight that you're looking for. Or it could be just to fall asleep and relax. It can be that broad. And then you check in at the end of the practice. How's that intention now? So I would say that's one difference. I'm sure in some mindfulness practices you do set intentions. Another is Yoga Nidra can be really great for trauma sensitivity because you begin the practice by feeling a sense of safety and ease in your body. And so you're kind of starting from wholeness and the feeling of, I can be here and I have a sense of ease and rest in my body. And then as I go through the practice, I might meet something that's challenging, but it's held within that context of safety and ease. And I think that is one differentiator as well. And it's very somatic focused, which I know meditation is as well. But it's everything, even a belief that you're holding. You look for the, the correlate in your body of how you feel when you believe that to be true.
- [18:28]
Dan Harris
But that sounds very different from mindfulness which is you're definitely not sleeping. There should be some relaxation but it's not deep rest because you, it's quite active. You're investigating your experience as it's, as it happens in the moment. So how do you mix that quality of mindfulness, this kind of warm journalistic interrogation of your own experience into this practice that's been called non sleep deep rest.
- [18:55]
Kelly Boys
Yeah, well, you know, I think once our bodies get enough rest and we're not just exhausted doing yoga Nidra to sleep, then you're simply meditating but you're in a lying down position. So what this does is it takes a little bit of the doer out of it. You know, when you're sitting you have a really strong feeling. I'm meditating. When you're lying down there's a little bit more of a feeling of a receptivity. And especially because it's a guided practice, you're able to still inquire into your experience. But there's more of a sense of being than you know, I'm doing this practice and I think that is pretty powerful especially for working with the unconscious and the things that drive us unconsciously that can emerge to the surface when we're in a liminal, in between relaxed state. What Andrew Huberman calls a conscious nap.
- [19:47]
Dan Harris
So these two can work together even if on some level they seem like they might clash?
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Kelly Boys
Yeah, absolutely. I've seen that because I started with my meditation practice with yoga Nidra and I actually got a little precious with it. I thought that it was the deepest form of meditation. It was really the only way to do it as one does I think when you get really excited about something. And then I got sort of introduced to Google's whole world of search inside yourself at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And at that point I started to just a beginning of an understanding of what kind of a modern day articulation of mindfulness is. After doing tons and tons of retreats in this other method and I began doing more meditation retreats and the mindfulness and I discovered the similarities between the two. They're more similar than different. It's just that the posture is quite different. And I would say Yoga Nidra focuses more on the contents of consciousness and says hey, all right, I have this thing, anger has been coming around for 30 years. I'm actually going to engage with it in the practice. And the guidance is asking me to invite anger in. Like what would anger look like if it just came in the door right now? This is a little bit like parts work that you're doing right in the middle of your meditation, all of a sudden you're engaging with anger and you just see it's your 8 year old self and you kneel down on the floor and ask it what it wants and it says, I want you to listen to me. You know, I have a message for you here. And so it's using almost active imagination practices in Jungian, you know, kind of practices to look at bringing the unconscious to light and then interacting with these parts in a way that integrates them into the wholeness of who I am. So that then when I get to those deeper insights of meditation, they can land instead of. You know, sometimes it's like if you are sitting in retreat and you have this deep insight into the nature of emptiness, for instance, but you've carried a depression inwardly your whole life and never worked with it. Well, the amount to which kind of there's an unintegration or disintegration is the amount to which you might get stuck there in that thinking. Emptiness starts to feel a little bit like depression because this part hasn't been welcomed. But were I to in meditation turn towards the sad 12 year old or 4 year old or whatever it is and welcome it in and learn what it needs and have it be an ally and be a part of who I am, then when I have these spiritual kind of or meditative recognitions, they can point me back toward my wholeness rather than having some kind of part of my psychology just take it and run with it.
- [22:38]
Dan Harris
I apologize to listeners for what I'm about to say because it is something I've said before in the show. So you can fast forward through this or bear with it or you know, send me an angry note on Twitter. But for me, the biggest development of late of my contemplative career, short and unspectacular as it is, but the biggest development for me was moving from just a pure mindfulness mode where I would see whatever came up in my mind and not try to engage with it or entangle with it or bring in my 8 year old self or anything like that, just deconstruct it through mindfulness, you know, see, oh, I see that anger's arising. Maybe I can just name it as anger. I can see how it's manifesting in my body. I can therefore see that what heretofore seemed like a non negotiable, unmanageable juggernaut of an emotion that was intrinsically part of me is actually this kind of impersonal multifactorial force moving through that I don't need to be completely owned by. I did my best to do that
- [23:47]
Sharon Salzberg
for many years and then after a
- [23:49]
Dan Harris
while I started to integrate more of I don't like this term, but what some people call like the heart practices or loving kindness M e T T a meta practices where you can consciously develop a sense of friendliness toward other people and yourself. And then I started to, when I saw my anger arise, actually send it warmth and realize it's trying to help me, this thing that I was so ashamed of, my capacity for rage so
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Sharon Salzberg
is all of the yammering I've just
- [24:21]
Dan Harris
done relevant to the process you are describing?
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Kelly Boys
Absolutely. In the beginning, it's so powerful to be the observer to what before you've been fused with and to be able to do that for a long while, to get fully in your body the truth that these passing states aren't who you are, and then to move further and to be able to be compassionate with these parts is exactly the work that I'm describing.
- [24:56]
Dan Harris
After the break, Kelly talks about parts
- [24:58]
Sharon Salzberg
work deconstructing your core beliefs, and she lays out a simple exercise for physically
- [25:04]
Dan Harris
centering yourself throughout the day. Keep it here.
- [25:08]
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- [26:46]
Dan Harris
You've made several references to parts or parts work. We talked about this on the show before. But just in case people miss those episodes or are unfamiliar with parts work,
- [26:57]
Sharon Salzberg
can you define that?
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Kelly Boys
Sure. In the context of yoga, Nidra, parts work would be, say there's an emotion that you've had in your life for most of your life. So mind's anxiety. I got into meditation because I had major panic attacks. So we share that in common. And so if I were to consider that anxiety isn't just something to be gotten rid of and were to look in meditation at the anxiety, notice it feel in my body, I might also, especially if it's a recurring emotion, notice, okay, like if a door opened and anxiety came in the room, what does it look like? And when I do that, I'm kind of objectifying an experience in order to interact with it. And when I begin to notice. So maybe myself at 8 years old, when the mosquito, you know, in the cabin was like my traumatizing event and so bless my mom and dad's heart, but wasn't enough mirroring or something that happened in that moment where it just stuck in my system, this feeling of anxiety and then started to play itself out. So when I say part, I mean if there's an emotion and you start to see that it's connected with an aspect of yourself that you haven't actually gone back for and you just keep quiet or you keep trying to push it down or get rid of it, but it's something that actually has a message and needs something like connection or something else like caring or acceptance. Then as I interact with that part, the next time I have anxiety, I know there's something to pay attention to that I'm not, I'm not accepting. Or let me turn towards that part and be an ally and then accept that into the wholeness of who I am. Same with core beliefs that we hold. So, you know, I'm not worthy to be here. Whether it's lack or deficiency, we all have something like I don't have what I need or I'm not worthy to be here basically, or I'm not worthy of love. And if we can personify those beliefs into parts, then we can actively kind of work to welcome all of these aspects of who we are and see then that there's an awareness of all of who I am. And then the task in meditation, were we interested to take it, would be to turn attention then towards the awareness that's aware of everything that's here. And as I do that, then that's where I start to have these meditative insights into what you're talking about with Buddhism and emptiness or with yoga and this sense of oneness or interconnectivity, right.
- [29:40]
Dan Harris
There are like levels. You go down first, you just think of yourself as I'm going to use this word again, this sort of undifferentiated juggernaut, this core entity that's moving through the world. I'm just all Kelly, all the way down. And then at the. Maybe the next level for some people is seeing, oh, Kelly's got parts, the scared part, the feeling insufficient part, whatever other parts are there. And then you can work with these ancient neurotic programs in a friendlier way so that they're not just, you know, owning you every time they achieve salience in the magic eight ball of your mind. And then the level deeper is to see that there's some unnamable, barely knowable aspect of your mind that is simply aware of, of the whole pageant and that's emptiness. That's when you see that that awareness you can't claim is yours. And that's where things get very weird and very interesting and very, like, to use a loaded phrase, liberating.
- [30:42]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely. For me, some of those insights came earlier on out of the blue. And so then I got into meditation because I was trying to understand what it was that I had recognized. And it was deeply liberating. But also the integration and the living that out into a human life takes time and took me about a decade. I'm still 15 years in, in process, but it took me about a decade of a lot of intense practice to look at these essential insights of meditation and what it looks like to actually embody that all the way down. And as you're saying, you know, from a level of mind to emotion to how does it live out when something happens at work or in relationship, all of it. And then it's an ongoing journey. But I did have a about decade long time period where it was kind of 247 for me.
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Dan Harris
247 what?
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Kelly Boys
Doing the work of meditation. I couldn't turn it off. And you know, I would say that's still true, but it feels more kind of like a calm background operation rather than what was before. A lot of intensity for Me, because I had to really work with anxiety and different things that I was experiencing that were a challenging marriage I'd gotten out of and that kind of thing. And it took time to be able to integrate these meditative insights into my life and into the lived experience of who I am.
- [32:13]
Dan Harris
You said the meditation was sort of 24 7. What aspect of it was most salient for you? Was it the I contain multitudes part? The Walt Whitman, like, seeing, oh, yeah, there's a lot of different parts of me. Or was it the level, deeper of, yeah, what is it? Who is it that's even aware of all of these parts? And that can be kind of a shattering insight because then these. This cohesive self that we are clinging to has no ground to stand on. What was the active ingredient of this 247 Ness?
- [32:47]
Kelly Boys
It was mostly the second one, but had to apply to the first. And so, I mean, I remember when I had my first kind of meditative insight out of nowhere, just looking at kind of a calendar on the wall. And I've never done psychedelics. And so I called my at the time boyfriend and I said, none of this is personal. It's amazing. You know, it just was this clear as day to me. And then I started getting into going to retreats and trying to understand what it is I just kind of seen out of the blue. And so for me, I reverse engineered it. Whereas typically people would do practice and then come towards these insights. And I just stumbled upon the insights and then have spent time understanding what that means as a lived. Like, how do I live this out? Like, okay, all right, none of this is personal. What does that mean? No, I went way too far to the side of nothing's personal. And then I've kind of come back more to the middle that, okay, it's personal and not. And I think also the other thing I couldn't get away from the awareness that I was suddenly in touch with. And it's interesting not to be able to sleepwalk or when you're sleepwalking, you see it immediately, like where you get lost in something and it's just seen. And the process of that, I don't mind it, but it's like it couldn't turn off. And so it was both the working with my life part and the focusing on the awareness and all of the kind of meditative insights that come from
- [34:14]
Dan Harris
that I'm not quite sure I understand. Would you say this awareness that you couldn't turn off even though you don't mind it, what does that mean? That like, you couldn't daydream anymore.
- [34:26]
Kelly Boys
Well, I did go through a time period where that was hard for me to do. But what I mean by I couldn't turn it off. Like, it's as if I got in touch with that and then couldn't forget it. Including when the moments come in my life when I'm like completely fused with an emotion, I still, there's some part of me that still deeply knows. And so it's almost like that part turned on and hasn't turned off, if that makes sense. It sounds weird when I say it,
- [34:57]
Dan Harris
but okay, I'm going to say something that you're probably not going to want to comment on, but just in case listeners are new to all this and thinking, oh, it's Kelly nuts. This maps onto my very weak understanding of what in the oldest of old school Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism is sometimes referred to as stream entry. It's often considered the first and earliest stage of enlightenment. Pretty accessible to mere mortals. You don't have to have spent your whole life in a cave in order to achieve stream entry. Again, this is my very rough understanding, so Buddhist scholars, please go easy on me. But it roughly is this waking up to the illusion of the self in a way that is an upgrade of the software that doesn't revert. And once you've entered the stream, you are in this lifetime or the next, or the next, or the next, inexorably headed toward full awakening. Now, again, this is not me making this argument. This is me explaining the way it's viewed in this ancient tradition. The thing about stream entry is in some traditions you're not supposed to say I'm a stream enterer. So I said all of that. You don't have to comment on it, but I will stop talking in case you have something you want to say.
- [36:17]
Kelly Boys
Yeah, I started at that meditative insight. And so it was very much a waking up for me. And then since then, it's been, I think, what some people call waking down, where you get integrated all the way back down into every nook, corner and cranny. Meaning absolutely does not mean that anyone is perfect. You know, I don't believe anyone has ever been perfect, but just there is a feeling like you can't go back to a more fused way of being in the world, including when there's fusion that occurs.
- [36:54]
Dan Harris
Yes, you can get confused momentarily about the fact that your anger is not actually your anger. It's a impersonal coming together of psychic ingredients, just the way a hurricane is an Impersonal coming together of atmospheric ingredients, you can get momentarily confused, but it's only momentary. Whereas for most people, the untrained mind, we are walking around with this illusion that that all the stuff that's happening between our ears is ours, is us.
- [37:28]
Kelly Boys
Great way to say it.
- [37:30]
Dan Harris
Okay, so we've achieved two things at this point in the interview. One is, I think we've given people a decent understanding of Yoga Nidra and its history and its current iterations. And we've also, I think really established a little bit more about your background and why this practice and others have been so useful to you. What, what I would love to have us move to is this, since Yoga Nidra does require guidance and we're not going to do that right now, what can listeners learn through your description of the practice that they can take into their lives immediately without actually doing this whole thing?
- [38:08]
Kelly Boys
One thing to take away would be what would it be like to kind of rest back into a quality of awareness. So you could even right now, as I'm speaking, feel in the entire backside of your body and allow a sense of rest as you're aware of whatever it is that's in your experience right now. This is really, it's the same process of the mindfulness meditation, but just bringing attention to the whole backside of the body and also being aware of what's present. And then what would it be like, you know, if you were to kind of move through your day in that way where there's this kind of resting or holding presence, your own, that's here, aware of the coming and going, so not needing to hold yourself separate from what you're observing. So there's this kind of relaxation in the body that happens when that kind of refusal of what's here is dropped. And one quick way to do that would be to consistently throughout the day kind of check in return back to this felt sense of awareness and let it be something that isn't necessarily so directed from the mind, but that is a felt sense exploration as you go through the day that can be game changing for sure.
- [39:40]
Dan Harris
So we can every once in a while in the hurly burly of the day, drop out of our spinning stories and into just this very simple awareness of the back of our body, back of our head, neck, our back, back of our legs.
- [39:58]
Sharon Salzberg
That makes a lot of sense to
- [39:59]
Dan Harris
me in that I get how that getting out of your head and into your body just in this very simple accessible way, can cut short the overthinking and fretting that we're often doing where you lost me a little bit. And I blame myself, not you, for this is how that pertains to allowing everything to arise and pass in our experience without either clinging or refusing.
- [40:29]
Kelly Boys
So if you consider that in some sense, awareness would be like the background to what's coming and going, and what's coming and going is in the foreground. So it's almost just the somatic correlate of that. So I'm just going to feel this whole backside of my body and that there's something that, as I do that, there's like a nervous system downregulation, kind of someone's got my back or I've got my back, or life has my back, you know. And as the nervous system can downregulate, then much more likely to be open and curious to whatever it is that is arising, much less likely to get lost or confused or when I do have that just immediate kind of kindness and rested awareness that receives that. So it disrupts this idea that, you know, I have to go through my day being perfectly mindful, but rather what would it be like to go through my day just like deeply rested and aware of what's here and also taking a spontaneous action to whatever it is that I do see. So no doormat. This is not a doormat practice. It's very active and engaged, but it lets our nervous system know I don't have to do this. I don't have to be in control. Actually, I'm not. Anyway, it's kind of an illusion. So it just cuts through that mind illusion and brings your attention to the body and might be a practice to try for some people and it might not resonate with others.
- [41:55]
Dan Harris
Yeah, and we'll give people a menu, but just to stay with this one, there was a metaphor you were using there that's not uncommon in contemplative circles, which is the stage. If you watch a play, there's a stage and then there are all these actors and the scenery, the set, the props on the stage. We tend to get totally lost in the actors and the dialogue and the scenery and forget that it's all playing out against a backdrop. And when you can get in touch with the backdrop, then you can see. Yeah, this is all a play of light and sound. It's real on some level, but on another level, I don't need to be as fused with it or entangled with it or confused by it. And if I'm hearing you correctly, with this practice, you're kind of getting our body to do that. Work for us.
- [42:44]
Kelly Boys
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the neat thing is when you do that, then you have more choice and agency on the things that you do want to focus on in that play, you know, and it's like, hey, okay, I've noticed that I'm really noodling on this meeting I had last week and I can't let it go. And there's something going on here. I'm going to zoom in on that in meditation practice and really work with what's here and what that brings up for me. But it's all in the context of being in touch with this background awareness. And so when our nervous systems are settled, we're way more curious about our actual experience and we're way more likely to see clearly. You know, it's kind of common. We've all gotten triggered and then totally misperceived. Right. And I think of meditation as helping us see where there is misperception and rest more in the clear perception and let that guide our actions and behaviors and how we live into the world.
- [43:44]
Sharon Salzberg
Coming up, Kelly Boyes on how to create and cultivate a reliable inner resource.
- [43:48]
Dan Harris
How to work with opposites as a way to get unstuck the value of setting intentions and how cheesy it sounds and why we might want to do
- [43:55]
Sharon Salzberg
it anyway and what she calls the
- [43:57]
Dan Harris
blind spot effect after this.
- [44:01]
Sharon Salzberg
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- [46:46]
Dan Harris
A few minutes ago I interrupted you as you were trying to move on to another practice as we tease out some of the active ingredients of yoga. Nidra, I apologize again for that interruption. Where were you trying to take us?
- [46:58]
Kelly Boys
Well, there are two more. Okay, we'll do one. This relates to the feeling into the backside of your body and it also relates to the downregulation of your nervous system. And it, I think it's coming to me to share this because some of these practices aren't necessarily embedded in straight up mindfulness and there are in some places. I'm sure Tar Brock works with this where you create an inner resource or a place internally where you feel safe and secure and a sense of well being. And I mean I've taught this in prisons and jails and un humanitarian workers. And it's pretty universal that we all share a need to access quickly a sense of safety and ease in the body so that when we're triggered we can more quickly downregulate back to kind of like a baseline of ease and well being. So a practice that you could consider would be, you know, what memory do I have? Or you know, maybe it's a place in nature. It's a place I build in my mind and my imagination that when I'm here I feel truly at ease, like I can completely be myself. No social face, I'm just me. And words may come to you like safety and security, or it may be just like okayness or peacefulness. But that when I have this image and usually one or two images pop up, I have worked with people where it's been harder and then we have to really ask a lot of questions to get to what would feel like a good image to use. But then you feel the correlate of that in your body remembering how you felt when you were there. Eventually in time, you let the image go and you just stay with the felt sense of that. And so this is a really important practice as well. Because if I can embody this kind of ease and well being and safety and I know that it's accessible to me at any moment, then perhaps when I'm facing life's toughest challenges, this might co arise with the challenge because I've done so much practice and that I'm not necessarily faking myself out with it. But my mind doesn't know the difference between when I was in that experience and when I'm bringing it to mind now. And so just the power of being able to connect with the sense of inner resource. And that's a part of the yoga Nidra training that I did with the IREST method where they use that. And that's very effective for people like veterans that have ptsd. But really anyone you know, because we're all going to face life's hardest moments if we haven't already. And this gives a sense of resource and resilience to face what comes.
- [49:40]
Dan Harris
So I'm trying to think about how. Well, first of all, just to say that, you know, I mean the thing that has excited me from day one as I've gotten interested in meditation is the notion that, that all of these mental states that we want and need to do life better are skills and that you can really get better at them. And so what you're talking about here is a sense of o okayness as a skill so that when things get turbulent, you have the okayness as a refuge. I like that. So I'm just trying to think how would I practice it. For me, the place where I think okayness is easily most easily accessed on a day to day level is I have a seven year old son, homey, gives great Hugs. So hugging my son feels like for me, like the epitome of, okay, so if I could just a couple times during the day, or maybe even as a formal part of my meditation practice, conjure that and see how long I can abide in it, then I'm doing what you're describing.
- [50:41]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely. It's a great example. It's a great example. And I would say if you can incorporate it into your meditation practice, and if not, then, yeah, a couple times during the day, if we don't return back to it again and again and get that body feeling of it, it won't be as likely to arise when something challenging happens. But when the next challenging thing happens and you go, oh, yeah, that's right, my son's hugs. And immediately you have a different felt sense in your body. Now the work with Yoga Nidra, you can do opposites. So you go back to the original trigger. Feel that. And then you go back to your son's hug, feel that. And then you kind of go back and forth. And as you kind of titrate back and forth between the challenge and the resource, then it brings you more back into that quality that we were talking about of the compassionate awareness.
- [51:33]
Dan Harris
You mentioned there was a third practice that we can extract from overall Yoga Nidra and apply sort of in a free range context.
- [51:43]
Kelly Boys
Yes, opposites. So that was actually a good segue into it. So I think it was Jung that said there wouldn't be sadness without happiness. Or maybe he said there wouldn't be happiness without sadness. Everything co arises with an opposite. But what happens is we just get fused with one end of the spectrum. And so if I could give a tool around opposites, and this again is going to have a body correlate. So if you could just consider kind of your left hand and the maybe squeezing and releasing your left fist and then feeling any tingly or sensation, whatever's present in your left hand, and then gently bring attention to your right hand, maybe squeezing, releasing your right fist, noticing like all of your attention absorbed in your right hand. Okay, now both simultaneously, both hands. We've just done kind of an opposites practice. So consider doing this with something that you're experiencing during the day. So disappointment. And you would consider the emotion of disappointment. Maybe consider your left hand as if you're holding disappointment. Well, what would be in the opposite hand? What would be in your right hand? If you weren't disappointed, what would be there? And this isn't kind of trying to delete your experience and replace it with a positive one. You're just reminding yourself that there's this whole spectrum of emotion and on the opposite lives something called satisfaction or pleasure or whatever your opposite is, doesn't have to be the right opposite. And so if you're experiencing the disappointment and you're kind of stuck in it, you would kind of hold it in your left hand and then consider your right hand holding the opposite of satisfaction and then do the same thing, go back and forth between the two and then holding them both simultaneously. The interesting thing about holding opposites simultaneously is that your mind can't very easily be on two objects at once. So often there can be like a relaxation or even an insight, like a third more true insight. Like, yeah, I'm disappointed and I'm starting to see this other person's perspective or whatever it is just kind of helps us get unstuck. It could be with a thought, it could be with an emotion, or it could be just with the palms of your hands. But opposites can be really powerful to help us realize that whatever it is that we're experiencing isn't the only thing
- [53:59]
Dan Harris
going, yeah, I can see how that would be kryptonite for stuckness. It could just be a pretty healthy dose of perspective.
- [54:09]
Kelly Boys
Yes. Inducing cognitive perspective taking. Yes.
- [54:14]
Sharon Salzberg
So we just went through three practices
- [54:16]
Dan Harris
that we can do, but it strikes me that there might possibly be a few more. You talked about a key ingredient of yoga Nidra, being setting intentions, and now I want to own that. For people like me who are incurably skeptical that the term, even just the terminology, setting intentions might sound a little, I don't know, twee. But I believe actually there's quite a bit of evidence both in, you know, contemplative traditions and, and now I'm a little over my skis here, but I think also in, in the research that setting intentions can actually really be quite helpful. So what say you about intention setting? Even if we take it out of the context of Yoga Nidra, it's very powerful.
- [55:00]
Kelly Boys
I definitely have felt like you, I. The cheese factor, you know, when I think of setting intentions, it's like, you know, for me, when I first came to the practice and I actually didn't really do it that much, I just skipped that part of the practice and then I came to see the power of it. So I think what's important about setting intentions is it's kind of building. It's like if you look at it like you're building self trust. So set an intention to do this or to practice in a certain way or to be more mindful when I'm talking to my partner or whatever it is. And then I get to check in with that and see how am I doing. It does set me up for behavior change and for self awareness. And when I do the thing that I set the intention for, it builds a self trust loop. Like oh okay, I actually set that intention and did it. That means I can do it again. And so I think it could be applied to many different situations. But if you're wondering where to apply the setting of intentions it would be what is it that's most important to you and how can you set intentions around that? Because it's so easy to get distracted these days and it can really help especially when you self critic doesn't check in for you. But you're just curious how did that go? Oof, I didn't do that at all. Or that intention was actually not really aligned with what I'm wanting. Or I find that I've just ignored my intention because I want to keep doing that thing that is feeling good to me. And so it's just an inquiry like a lived inquiry that we make. And so I think it would be really powerful to do. I like setting intentions in the morning. I'm a journaler. I got that from the Search Inside Yourself program at Google. That was the first time I journaled. I think that was eight years ago or more. And I've journaled almost every day since then. And I set intentions and I better believe that I definitely do more follow through than I would have prior to the Setting Intentions days for sure. And it can go all the way to setting an intention to inquire into some aspect of meditation that I'm really
- [57:13]
Dan Harris
curious about plus one ing you. I when I can remember try to set an attention first thing in the morning. And yeah, it's helpful. It's a North star. And I might forget to set my intention for weeks. It's always the same intention. Just like to do good work and not be an. But I can forget to do it for weeks. I can forget to touch base with it but it comes back and actually thinking about getting it tattooed on my arm because you know, remembering is the hardest part of this whole thing.
- [57:47]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And I think what you're speaking to actually there is one aspect of the intention setting where you work with what's my heartfelt intention? Like what is it that's actually going to be kind of my same daily intention for a long period of time. And you might phrase that differently or it might be just exactly as you phrased it, but that's getting to the core of really what you're here about and your purpose. All of these words wade into a territory that for me, I'm uncomfortable with because they can sound cheesy, but I feel like they're so powerful in the application. So I'm a convert to setting intentions for sure as well.
- [58:23]
Dan Harris
One of the chapters in this book that I've been writing is called Embrace the Cheese. Get over yourself.
- [58:30]
Kelly Boys
I look forward to reading that.
- [58:32]
Dan Harris
I look forward to being done with it. Speaking of books, you wrote a book called the Blind Spot Effect.
- [58:37]
Sharon Salzberg
What do you mean by that term
- [58:38]
Dan Harris
and how does it relate to everything we've been talking about today?
- [58:43]
Kelly Boys
Yeah, I think of the term as kind of the impact of these unconscious impulses that we have that are related to core beliefs that we're holding or attendant emotions that are driving us unconsciously and that make kind of messes in our lives where we're kind of living out these patterns that we don't even consciously see. Other people around us can see, or maybe we see some of the effect, but we don't quite know the core. And so I do think it relates to yoga, Nidra, and the practice of meditation, what we're talking about today. Because for me, meditation is being able to kind of illuminate where we're misperceiving. And as we do so, we can kind of integrate these different impulses and beliefs and core ways of holding the world together that weren't totally true. As we do that, we get more whole. And I think that matters for how we are in the world. And there's. I don't have to tell you, there's so much happening in the world right now that the invitation for us would be to get out of our own way more and more. And so the blind spot effect is exploring how can I get out of my own way? How am I in my way that I don't even see and know? I wrote it because I was uncovering my own. And I feel like it's been a helpful process for me. So I wrote a book with being able to look at some of these emotions and beliefs and the core blind spot of me at the center of my world, that's the core one that if you hack that one, then, you know, it kind of filters up.
- [60:16]
Dan Harris
And yet, as we discussed earlier, you can hack that core belief, but it needs a lot of integration. It could be confusing.
- [60:22]
Sharon Salzberg
Scary.
- [60:23]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely.
- [60:24]
Dan Harris
Yeah. I have often talked about being a 14 year old kids having just smoked a joint and the bleachers of Newton South High School freshman basketball game and realizing that the self is an illusion and it being distinctly uncomfortable. So ease into this stuff, people.
- [60:43]
Kelly Boys
Yeah, absolutely. So there you go. I think it's beautiful. You know, when you look, you look back on that moment. Probably it was so uncomfortable at the time, but how amazing that that was elicited in you and where you are now. I think it's amazing, yes.
- [60:57]
Dan Harris
But now I. My brain has gotten very good at panic, unfortunately, so there's that to deal with. In any event, I want to get to a phrase that you've used a lot in the course of this conversation and see if there's a practice that you can recommend for us. Even if we're not going to do Yoga Nidra, just to say, before I let you go, we're going to go through in detail ways for people to access yoga Nidra practices from you and others. But just say somebody's listening to this and, you know, they either don't have time for it or they, you know, they want to get a little taste of it right now before they go explore it, or they know they're never going to explore whatever. You've talked a lot in this conversation about core beliefs. I might have just articulated one when I said my brain is very good at panic.
- [61:42]
Sharon Salzberg
Right.
- [61:42]
Dan Harris
So that's maybe one of my core beliefs that could be limiting or could be a blind spot for me. Do you have any thoughts on how we can work with these core beliefs as they float up through our mind through the day?
- [61:56]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely. Yeah. I have a chapter or two in my book about some ways to do it. But I would say it's similar to what we described where when you hear yourself kind of saying some similar things again and again, and as you said, you were kind of catching yourself going, oh, my brain's really good at panic. And then you might inquire, how is that related? Back to a core belief I might be holding to be true about myself, about who I am, and notice throughout the day what are the other kind of beliefs or thoughts that you have that seem to have a signature to them of, well, who knows what it is in your case, but of something that kind of leads itself back to a core belief that says, I am this or I'm not this or I need this, I'm not that. And the way to work with it is gently to inquire what feels most salient, most true when I believe it. So if it's something like I Use mine. There's some way that in a core way. And I don't always feel this, I don't feel this right now, but I can feel this way. So that's another key is it's not that you always feel it, but that when you believe it, it's very believable. So for me is I'm not safe. I'm not safe going back to the mosquito in the cabin. And what you want to do is get to the core. So say it in one sentence if you can and then start to welcome it in just as you would anything else in meditation and emotion, whatever is present, the movement of the breath. So, oh, there's this thing here, I'm not safe. And if I do that parts practice. What'd she say? Oh, yeah, she said like, open the door and see what comes in. Okay, if I open the door and see what comes in, it's myself at this age that felt this way. And then I just do that same practice where I'm encountering this core belief. But the key with that is it usually has a message. And so you want to ask, what is it that you want? What is it that you need? And is there an action I can take to give you what you need? So you're really interacting with this personified core belief in a way that is getting to the root of the misperception in the belief. And so you don't just go to the opposite. I'm safe everywhere. That's not true. I won't be able to believe that. But, oh, maybe mine is I'm safe with myself. And I start to discover, okay, when I feel unsafe, that's a message for me to know I'm safe with myself and to welcome this part in more. It's a little tricky. Our core beliefs can kind of hide. They usually have to do with lack or deficiency, one or the other, sometimes both. And when we're able to name them and welcome them and then really get them messages and interact with them, they become these allies. So that would be what I would say. Kind of overhear yourself as you go throughout the day. What are the ways that you express about yourself that might be related to a core belief?
- [64:48]
Dan Harris
And it could be helpful to have people in your life who are willing to point that out. I remember being in a one on one session for many years. I went through. I was a volunteer in a hospice and it was part of a Zen program. And I was having a one on one session with one of the teachers, a guy who's been on the show many times, Koshin Paley Ellison, and he asked me a question about why I had done something and I just said, because I'm an asshole. And he said, that's shtick. And I was like, oh yeah. And. And then I've had other people point out, like you, you rely on that. You know, my wife will point out that I often make a joke when she complains about my behavior. I'll say, I can't help it, I'm a bad person. Which, you know, is like me making a joke and trying to deflect. But it is actually something, a story that I was telling myself and having that pointed out to me led me to interrogate it. And clearly, I mean, yes, I have the capacity to be a schmuck, but I. It's not always true. And so I can see through the lie as soon as I interrogate it.
- [65:51]
Kelly Boys
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great example. And then going, where did I first pick that up? And is that an internalized voice from someone else or did I just do that as a defense like you say, you start to do all of that inquiry and then you get more clear on where it's coming from and on what message and how it can be an ally. So it's like, oh, when I do that thing, this is actually what I'm wanting or feeling underneath. And as I get in touch with that, then that action that I take out of that insight can change things.
- [66:24]
Dan Harris
Yes, the brain, as Dr. Judson Brewer points out all the time, is a pleasure seeking machine. So if we're doing something our brain thinks we're getting a benefit out of it, it serves some purpose. So, you know, the brain is not always right. In other words, you might be doing something that feels pleasurable to your brain in some twisted way, but it's actually totally stupid. But it's worth interrogating it so you can be less stupid.
- [66:48]
Kelly Boys
I love that.
- [66:49]
Dan Harris
Can you hold forth on for those who are interested in Yoga Nidra, how we can access it? And please start with your resources that you've put out into the world.
- [67:01]
Kelly Boys
Sure. So I have a YouTube page that has some guided Yoga Nidra practices on it that are audio. And then I also teach a class every week through the Alembic in Berkeley and it's online. And so then those classes are put onto my YouTube page as well. So every single week there's a new video of me doing a teaching and then a Yoga Nidra practice. I'm also on a bunch of apps and the Oura ring and I think people are falling asleep to my voice in a lot of different places with the Yoga Nidra. And yeah, there are other resources so you can check out. As I mentioned, I had worked previously with the IREST Institute and one of the teachers there I would recommend is Fuyuko Sawamura Toyoda, who's quite amazing. And then there are other teachers out there that teach Yoga Nidra that Kamini Desai is a woman in the States, Ann Douglas in Canada, James Reeves in in the uk. So these are some names of people I recommend but also I would say, you know, just get into it and see what voice resonates with you and the style and there's plenty to be found out there for sure.
- [68:01]
Dan Harris
We will put the links in the show notes everybody so you don't have to have your pen out, especially if you're driving. Kelly, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
- [68:09]
Kelly Boys
Thank you. It's really nice to be here with you.
- [68:16]
Sharon Salzberg
Thanks again to Kelly Boys. Since this episode originally aired back in 2022, Kelly has partnered with Professor John Kao at Yale to create Deep Rest practices for his creativity class. She also co designed a mindfulness and stoicism program with a few former congresspeople and delivered it to public employees in New York. And Kelly is going to break down the science for better sleep and rest in her upcoming book which is called Deep Rest and that will be out in 2027.
- [68:46]
Dan Harris
You can find much more on all
- [68:47]
Sharon Salzberg
things kelly boys@kellyboyz.org finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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Progressive Insurance Announcer
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