[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast.
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This is episode 337.
Hi, Matteo. How are you? I'm so happy to see you.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: It is so good to see you, Bob.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: First, before we start our conversation, Matteo Pistono is an author, meditation teacher and conscious breathing guide. Breathing and I really love it. I feel guided in my breathing since I read his wonderful book. He's written numerous books, including the one which he'll speak about today.
Breathe how you want to feel your breathing toolkit for better health, restorative sleep and deeper connection.
His previous books include in the shadow of the Buddha, Fearless in Tibet, life of the mystic Tertan Sogel.
He just showed me a portrait of him, I think Sulak Sivaraksa on the path of socially engaged Buddhism, which is. I didn't know. I sort of knew you were into that, but I didn't know that much. And then meditation, coming to know your mind. Wonderful. I first met Matteo 25 years ago when he was working with the Smithsonian Institution on tibetan cultural programs, and later when Matteo worked on human rights issues in Tibet. That's what I really knew Matteo from, and I'm amazed at all these other dimensions that I discovered since I got this great breathing book. I read Matteo's first book, in the shadow of the Buddha, and I wrote, which I don't remember now, but I did it. A fabulous saga, a mystical tale of defending the land of Buddhadharma at the turn of the 20th century. That's what I remember him with, interwoven with the life and death struggle now going on at the turn of the 21st. Still, the genocide in Tibet is still going on. This moving account is written beautifully from the heart, and it lifts the heart to read it. It is both unearthly and powerfully real. I recommend it with the strongest enthusiasm, and I'm so pleased that I was wise enough to write that before Matteo. Thank you for putting that. Mateo began his study of meditation on breath over 30 years ago while living in Nepal and Tibet.
Informed by his study of Tibetan Buddhism and Hatha yoga, extensive periods of solitary meditation, and pilgrimages across the himalayan landscapes, Matteo offers an engaged approach to ancient wisdom traditions.
Matteo has a master's degree in indian philosophy from the University of London under professor Alexander Piotigorsky. Really also I'm amazed.
I met him briefly long ago. Matteo's writings about tibetan and himalayan culture, politics and spiritual landscape have appeared in the Washington Post, BBC Men's Journal and elsewhere. And Matteo sits on the executive council of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. That's amazing, Matteo. It's such an amazing thing. And what I want to say is what is amazing to me about this book, read how you want to feel. I was so amazed and delighted to receive it, is that it's sort of, it is a dharma book, but it's not a Dharma book. It's a more general thing for people who have ill health, who don't sleep well and actually, to their own amazement, will discover that they don't breathe well, or rather that they could breathe a lot better. And that's an amazing service to people in the sense that it's like the ultimate yoga thing, in the sense that you making life for yoga and then otherwise you just sort of breathe way, whatever you have a habit of breathing and mean, it's a major thing that your body does to keep alive. And so to learn to use it better for your own benefit is an amazing thing. And I think people from any tradition, any religion or no religion can use it extremely well. So I'm delighted and I believe it's going very well in spreading, you know, through Amazon and other things. And I think really wonderful. I think that's great. So how did you decide to do this kind of a book? Yeah, how did, how did you get the inspiration for that sort of more generally?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah. It's really clear where it came from. Bob, I was, had been teaching meditation and sharing meditation.
I mean, I started about 15 years ago, and what I found were the people who I was meditating with or I was teaching meditation to, they were coming with such elevated nervous systems that they were having difficulty coming into the practice of meditation because omnimes, the practice of meditation can be, or various contemplations can be very mental. But their systems, if we talked about this from the tibetan medical system, we would say that their lung was out of balance. The lung was very high, the wind energy was very, very high. So people were coming with this elevated nervous system. And then we were asking them to sort of practice shamatha, for example. But there was no calm, abiding happening because they were trying to use an anxious mind to overcome anxiety. And while it's possible, it's a heavy lift. And so I started using my background in pranayama and breathing science to downregulate their system. To create this perfect container, the body, so meditation then could arise. And that's where it started. And then when my publisher, when our mutual friend Patty gift, when she heard that I was doing this, she said, you should put this into a book. And as you mentioned, Bob, I purposefully didn't use a lot of jargon. I didn't use all of the Sanskrit from pranayama, or even my other study and practice of tsalung within the tibetan tradition. I used this map of understanding was. Was physio, was physiology.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: It's really, really, really useful. I think that's amazing. And you really did well. Like certain things. One of my favorite things is this old school boom box or music producers dial on a mixing board. Yeah.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: I was thinking Rick Rubin when I.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Wrote that, where you have three dials that you can do strength and pace and depth, and how did you. That's unique. I don't think I've ever seen that.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: And I think useful and usable. And it is.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: So it's so, it's so useful, you know? So, Bob, like, the. We can use the. The quickest way to intervene in our nervous system that we have access to. Like, I mean, you could. You could pray to Jason Kappa, please calm my mind right now, and it may happen in a heartbeat, but there's, you know, there's other depending factors, right? We could pray to the Virgin Mary, or we could do positive affirmations, or we could do a whole host of other things. And I think that all of those things are amazing, but nothing works as immediately as taking hold of your breath and doing something with it. And all we have to do is learn what to do. And it's not esoteric, and that's these dials. And this is one of the things that I present in the book is that there's these dials on our nervous system, excuse me. Dials on our breathing system that affect the nervous system. So, for example, if we take a longer breath on the exhale than we do on the inhale, it's deeply relaxing. It turns on our relaxation response. And the opposite, if we breathe in for longer than we breathe out, it brings energy into the body. And so my approach to this is, if we take it from a meditator standpoint, I use this all the time.
I sit down and practice, and I just check in for a moment. How am I feeling? Am I lethargic, or am I up in my head? Am I thinking? And then I adjust my system through a two or three minute breathing intervention, right? I adjust the system and I do this also when I'm doing, if I'm doing Sadhana practice, you know, after an hour or two, when the mind starts to sink, I, if I need to, if I need to bring energy into the body, there is various ways. And these, this is one way that we can do it with these different dials on our system, with the strength of our breath. Right. If we breathe very powerfully, like the strength or super lightly.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: That's the strength of the breath, the pace of the breath. Or if we, if we, if we do this with sort of, like with cadences, if we inhale for four count and out for four count, or if we adjust that or the depth, like if we breathe very soft, like just very lightly with very small breaths or very big breaths. And all of these things, when we combine them, have an effect on how we feel. And once we know that, then we have agency over how we feel. We aren't so dependent upon external circumstances, the impact that they have on us.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: That's wonderful. It is really wonderful when you think that all of the people who do the wildly popular mindfulness meditation practice, they all end up counting their breath and breathing and focusing on the breath.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: And of course, it's the major thing in Buddhism at a super advanced level, then you're mixing mantas with breath and so forth, you know, at the Vajra repetition level. And, and nobody, until this book has brought that out as a separate discipline to be able to use, you know, me. And another thing I immediately thought, as I was reading about Thomas Jefferson's famous thing about how you take a deep breath or take ten deep breaths if you're dealing with some very angering and difficult situation. But meanwhile, whether you do deep or you do shallow or that makes a big difference.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: It has a huge difference. You know, oftentimes, Bob, people will say, right, like our loved ones or our partner or somebody will say, if we're, if we're stressed, they'll say, just take a deep breath. And what do most people do? If you, if you tried this, if you, I actually suggest this in the book, do a breathing experiment to your friend, say, hey, take a deep breath. And most people will go, they'll breathe in very forcefully through their nose and collapse, or they'll gasp as if a grizzly bear just came in through the door. And it's this very sharp breath. Right. And it's not deep at all. They use their upper chest and their neck muscles instead of to take a deep breath, we breathe light, slow, and with the diaphragm LSD breathing. That's why I talk about LSD breathing. Light, slow and deep breaths. And this is the way you take LSD breathing. Yeah, I figured you would like that. You know, based on your, like, the sixties.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: I also like the idea what you said. I never thought of that.
When you said that when you focus on the diaphragm, that it's sort of like, it's like an umbrella that opens and closes, and it sort of massages the upper organ, especially the liver and the spleen, and it can have a vivifying effect and a stimulating effect on your very important physical organs. I think people are aware of that.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: And, you know, Bob, when we're not doing that, if we aren't breathing in an anatomically optimal way through the nose and using this, just belly breathing, just lighten belly breathing. If we're breathing, say for with our mouth open all day and sort of taking these little guppy breaths or using our shoulders, what we end up doing is that we end up juicing our system all day and through the night, perhaps with adrenaline and cortisol and other stress hormones instead of having this more spacious, um, having this, having our, our rest and relaxation mode on for most of the day. Now, that's not to say, and that's the way that I present in the book, it's not to say that we don't want to be able to energize our system when we want to. Right? And so we have that. What I'm talking about here is having agency over our nervous system, right? So say, for example, if something comes up on our screen, on the news or something, and we sense we can feel that constriction in our system, we have that awareness, and then we have a choice, okay, I'm going to just sit there and be annoyed for the rest of the day or, no, I'm going to down regulate right there and then, right.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Especially some of the characters who come on television.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, we need this right now.
We totally need this right now. You know, coming into the next four months, four or five months with the political season, we need to be able to have some, like I said, agency over ourself. You know, if not, if not, we become. Because the only thing that we can, you know, the only thing that we really have control over is our reaction, these external situation. I mean, we can try to. We can try to have some impact, and we there, you know, I'm very involved with socially engaged Buddhism, right? I'm trying to affect the systems, but even so, things don't always work out. And what I would. I. But what I do have control over some agency overdose is my reaction. I quote Viktor Frankl, you know, at the beginning of the book, that between. It's a very buddhist approach, too. Between stimulation and reaction, there's a gap. And in that gap is where freedom is found.
And he wrote that in a nazi concentration camp.
Extraordinary amount of stimulation happening around him, and he found that he had some sort of freedom.
Yeah.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Very effective. It really is. And I love the idea of giving people, helping people find their own agency to manage their own behavior, their system, the way they feel. Even the title is very. In a way, the title is very unusual. Breathe how you want to feel. The combination of breathe. How did Patty help you with that? Or you came up with that entirely yourself?
[00:16:12] Speaker B: No, it came up while I was sleeping. And, you know, a lot of times when I write, Bob, when I'm. When I'm in the mode, things come up. And so I'll write down, like, I just have a notebook, and I'll just write down in the dark. And that that title was arrived like that. It doesn't always happen that way with me. Sometimes the writing process is like, it's a slog. But that title came because, you know, the. Because you breathe how you want to feel, because breath the other way that we thought. The other sort of idea I had for the title was a breath. As a state changer, we can change our state. Right. And that's very, very powerful. It's a very, very powerful. When we have that ability to change our state and we only have to know just like an old school boombox, right. We can pull these levers on it. And again, it's nothing. Something that's super complicated, but we just need to do it. Once we have the knowledge, we just need to do it.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Exactly. That's really. It's giving people freedom, sharing them freedom without.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Without making it sort of cloaked in any kind of religion or cloaked with anything, but just dealing with the actual reality of taking breath. That's just amazing, because we breathe, you.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Know, Bob, we breathe between 20 and 30,000 times a day.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: 21,600 times.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
If we have, you know, this is an interesting point. If our breathing is optimized, that's how many times we'd be breathing. But most of the people who I work with and meet and whatnot, who have some sort of dysfunctional breathing, they're breathing between 30 and 40,000 times a day.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Really?
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And why are they breathing that way? Because they're breathing through their mouth and they're had. They're over breathing. They're breathing too much. So when you walk around a day, look around at people and watch, people will have their mouth open. And especially when they're scrolling and they have their phone, their mouth has a gape and they're sort of like. They're, they. It becomes this. And what ends up happening is that when you're breathing in this way, your body senses some sort of struggle that is going, some sort of threat, like, why are you breathing this way? And so it is always on guard. There isn't this sort of spaciousness and relaxation that happens. It's always on guard. And when it's always on guard again, those stress hormones are released. So the way that people are breathing itself is stressing them out. Not to mention because we already have enough stressors. I mean, Lord knows that what is happening in our country right now is, is enough. Right? We don't need to be exacerbating it with the way that we're breathing. So.
Yeah. And, you know, the way that I present this is that in the beginning of the book, I have those five sort of five tools that we can hone their skills, their skills and then we apply those in.
Yeah, the five tools. The first, I mean, the first one actually isn't breathing. And it's not because I'm a Buddhist either, that I say that the first one is awareness.
We need to, we have to have this ability to recognize what is happening within our system and that this is sort of a particular kind of awareness called interoceptive awareness. So we have this interoceptive awareness. And then once we have that, then we can have these dials on our nervous system that you said that you talked about. Then the option between breathing through our nose or our mouth, how that affects the. How what that does. And then the fourth one is our short breath holds.
They're just sub, sub, maximal breath holds five to 10 seconds. And this is like a superpower, you know, it's amazing. If you want to, for all of the meditators who are listening, if you want to, if you want to stop thinking about what you're thinking about, hold.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Your breath absolutely immediately.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Your body says it turns away from the rumination.
From the rumination. It turns in. It's like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? So it turns that perception internally immediately. And when I say holding the breath, it's not like these, like it's not long, long breath. Holds. They're these short, short breath holds. And I sort of talk about in the book, like, why that is very effective. And the last tool is integration. Like, we. And I use that example. Have you ever heard the story the long road to the zafu?
[00:20:45] Speaker A: No.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: So, you know, the zafu is sort of, in Zen, we have this sort of meditation cushion. And, you know, when we learn to meditate, we're all super stoked. We're super excited, and we want to. And so we're, like, meditating 2 hours a day, and our guru told us to do whatever, and everything is all set up, and we're always returning to the Zafu for the first two or three weeks, and then the honeymoon starts to sort of, like, set in a little bit, and you know that you should be doing it. And you look over at your zafu, and your zafu is looking back at you, and there's sort of this longing to go back there. And then pretty soon after a few weeks, it's. You just. It's. You look down to the. To it, but you don't quite go and sit on it. You do everything before you do it. You light some incense. You go clean your water bowls. You sweep the room. You do. It's the long road to the zafu.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: It is.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: And that's what I mean by integration. We have to actually do it. You know, it's one thing to know that if you extend your exhale, it's relaxing. It's another thing to do it. When you go onto the interstate to actually do it.
You know, it's another thing that. When your partner says that thing that annoys you, whatever. To extend your exhale rather than just fall prey to our habitual reactions. All of the Klesha. Because this I had in mind the whole time I'm writing this book about Klesha, about our habitual reactions. Yes. Yeah. I don't talk. I don't use the word klesha in it. I don't use it. I don't use any Sanskrit. I don't think I use. Oh, no, actually, kevalam kumbaka. I think I used that one phrase, but that's it.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, I was breathing. Klesha is people wrongly translated as affliction. It should be addiction, actually.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Addiction is such. Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Such a group like emotional addiction mentality. Because the reason it's difficult to get rid of Klesha is that it seems to. People get deceived and think it's helping them get angry. They think they're becoming powerful. And when they get greedy and obsessed, they think that gives them energy, but it seems to. But it's like an addictive thing.
It wears you out, and it ruins you. And then you explain very well, using neuroscience terms, hormones and things. I think that's really the way you use that language, I think is excellent. I wanted to ask you something in that light. I'm dying to ask you this. You. You mentioned that when you breathe through the nose nostril that you get more nitric oxide in your system.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Why. Where does it come from? Because of this. Does it come from the sinuses or the brain or, like.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Where does. Where does the nitric oxide come from? When you. As you breathe, do more nose breathing, which I think is a big insight for people. I think people were very interested in that.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So when we. So. And just to say nitric oxide is a vasodilator and a bronchial dilator. Right. So it opens up. It opens us up, both sort of literally in space, but it also creates more blood flow and it creates more oxygen delivery where we want oxygen to go to. But the question you say is, like, why is it in the. I write in there about that. It's the. We create nitric oxide within our system, and the place that is highest concentration is within the. Within the turbinates, within the perinasal passageway. So as we breathe in through the nose, when it's not just like a. It's not just like a hallway that goes down our esophagus. It goes through. It goes through, like, a maze, almost like a conch cell. If you look at a bisection of a conch cell, that it goes through these alleyways and little, little. And. And that hole within there, if you take your fist, that's about the size of the perinasal passageway as it moves through it, as we breathe in. And within that perinasial passageway, it's lined with a hair with, like this. It's called psili. And within that hair is mucus, and that mucus is very, very beneficial. It is antimicrobial and antibacterial. And within that mucus is where nitric oxide is produced.
Right. So really, so great.
So that nitric oxide is produced, and nitric oxide is very beneficial for us to inhale. Right. And so when we.
So if you're continually breathing in and out of your nose. And this is only one of the reasons. There's many reasons that included moisturizing the air, purifying the air, warming the air before it moves into our lungs, which have very low defense mode, our lungs do. So if we breathe into our mouth, then we don't get all of the benefit. When we breathe into the nose, as the air passes through, it carries that nitric oxide into our lungs.
Amazingly, the practice of humming.
Hum.
Humming increases nitric oxide production in the paranasal passageway between 15 and 20%.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: So if we hum or if we ohm.
Right.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Ohm.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: It's the same.
Right. I took a step back. I'm like, what is actually happening when, if you remove, if you remove the narrative behind what om means? Okay, let's just set that aside for a moment. What is physiologically happening when we say om? Om, you can feel the vibration that's happening below your eyes and behind your eyebrows. It's the same thing that if you om or if you hum or if you om, ahh, you're still vibrating this. Right. So you're creating all of this nitric oxide. And then, importantly, Bob, that after you ohm or after you hum, if you inhale through your nose, then you're collecting all of that higher concentration of nitric oxide and you breathe that into your lungs and has all kinds of benefits.
That's a little bit of long answer to what happens with nitric oxide. Yeah. Not nitrous oxide. Not, not nitrous oxide. Nitric oxide, yes.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: No, I know. And people should know that the weightlifters in Venice beach and stuff, they are pumping themselves up with nitric oxide because it is a vasodilator and helps you build muscle and so forth. And they take huge amounts of pills to take nitric oxide. And then the other thing that im sure you know, but I think the basic reader doesnt know is that tibetans, because of living at high altitude, with a low oxygen level, 47% oxygen level at around 1011 12,000ft, that they have a hundred times more production of nitric oxide in their system than a sea level person. And that's what gives them their ability to do a lot of things at high altitude, which we, which we can't, you know, like.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Carrying a heavy pack and then some tibetan guys with you, helping you, and then your pack is so heavy, then he just picks it up, hikes ahead of you, and then you feel kind of embarrassed, you know, because we, we don't make that much nitric oxide that easily. So that's how they get the oxygen to the extremities in their circulatory system.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: So people are giving themselves a huge flavor that relates to the other thing. Since I read the book, I've been mouth taping at night or trying to.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Oh, you have been wonderful.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: And I think it helps, but unfortunately, sometimes I take it off while asleep and I wake up and it's over on the table next, which I didn't realize, so. But I'm working at it, you know, and I think it. I think it's helping my sleep, actually.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And the reason that. And the reason that we mouth tape, Bob, is that. So there's all of these. The mantra of this book, if you had a mantra, is keep it nasal. Right. Like, we want to be breathing through our nose. Yeah, keep it nasal. We should have it. We should have a men la men la t shirt that says hashtag keep it nasal.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: And would be great to have a. Yeah. Then you put a face on it with the two conch shells because it's on two sides, right?
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Perinatal chamber, perinasal passageway.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Passageways. And, like, looking like a. Like a nautilus or something. Or like a conchal. Right.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, Bob, it's amazing if you have one of these long, like, q tips, like a medical Q tip, and you were to put it into your nose, because when we breathe on, as we think that we're breathing, the air is going straight down, but in fact, the air is going to the back of our head. We breathe, like, right now, if you breathe in through the nose, we're breathing horizontally backwards to the back of your head, and then it goes down the esophagus. And if you put this q tip, you can put it all the way to the back. It's amazing how far it goes in. And that's all of this space that we have in the paranasal passageway that we benefit from when we breathe through the nose. But we also want to be breathing through the nose when we sleep.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: It might also make people more. Less vulnerable to flus and things if they learn to really check.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Exactly. And children as well.
Not only airborne illnesses, but also for the health of your teeth and of your jaw and whatnot. Because what ends up happening when you breathe through your mouth is that you're one. You're over breathing. So you're breathing. You're ventilating too much. And while it might not be what we call hyperventilation, mouth breathing leads to things like brain fog and lack of ability to concentrate, lack of ability to stay focused when you're meditating. Right. Let alone focusing on a screen or when we're working all day, we also, when we breathe through the mouth, all the time is that we end up expelling more h two o and we dry the mouth out. We dry the lips out and we end up having less moisture within the system than we want. Right? Yeah.
So we want to be able to breathe through the nose while we're sleeping. But many people have a challenge with this. And so then if you're snoring, you're definitely breathing through your mouth at night.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: And I don't. But people have apnea even by breathing.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Obstructive sleep. If you have obstructive sleep apnea, for sure that's happening. If you wake up with a dry mouth, if you're, if you have to get up many times during the night to pee. All of these, all of these are indicators that you're a mouth breather at nighttime.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: And how do you mouth with a massage?
[00:31:35] Speaker B: It totally works. It totally works. Yeah, it totally works. So, so when we say tape our.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Mouth, I have a tiny little tape only in the middle. Shouldn't it be a little broader type? No.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: So let's, let's talk about. So, so, you know, listeners do not use duct tape or any household tape. Right. You want to use, you want to use a medical tape, like a very, very porous, that, that kind of paper tape that you can get any pharmacy at CV's, and I. Okay, and when you, when the idea here isn't to seal your lips, so you can't. The idea isn't to seal it shut. The idea is to train the lips, the jaw and the tongue to be in the optimal position for breathing. Right. So, so it's a very gentle, it's a, it's, it's very gentle. And so when we put, when we, when we tape the mouth closed, people do it different ways that you could tape the whole mouth. But I just do it like a stamp size piece, a little bit larger than a stamp size piece of this micro tape, of this porous paper tape. And then it's just right in the middle. Almost looks like a garoucho Marx mustache, but just moved down over the top. Over the top of your lips. Right.
And it's very interesting because I do the same thing. What I recommend is the same thing that Mingyurum Che recommended to me when I was asking him about, we were doing this sort of dream practice, and he had this, you know, this thing is that when you're lying down, is that you remind yourself to remember your dream as soon as the dream starts to recall I'm dreaming. And then just to observe that, adopt that witnessing mode of attention. And then if you want to actually do things within the dream. Well, I took that and I apply it to this mouth taping is that you take your mouth and you just remind yourself, I'm going to breathe through my nose all night. And then. And I have a little protocol in there, so. And then you just roll over to your side and go to sleep. Have you, you kissed your loved ones good night? Because you probably aren't going to talk a whole lot now. The tape is so. Is. Is weak enough that should you need to force your mouth open, it's totally fine. And as you said, sometimes you wake up and it's like in your hair or it's on the side of your. On your pillow. Sometimes it comes off or sometimes you open your mouth, but after that is so cool.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: So, so in daytime. But by now, having done that for some time yourself, you, you probably naturally keep your lips closing out, even if you don't absolute tape it every night.
Trained yourself, right?
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just. It's just a habit. And, you know, the good thing about habits is that it can be. Is that they can be trained and that we can. We can, we can change them. And this is, this is the thing about breathing is if we are mouth breathing, if we're doing other forms of dysfunctional breathing, then we can. All it takes is a bit of mindfulness awareness to bring attention to it, and then we change it. There are certain things that are a little bit easier to alter than others, but it's. All.
The consequences of not doing it are dire because it affects our physical health, it affects ourselves cognitively, and especially if you want to then do anything onto the path, it affects our dharma practice, you know, so. And I was thinking about this this morning, Bob, before we got on, is that when I'm. If I'm chanting, you know, often when we're chanting, right, we will, we will do this thing where we take this like, big mouth breath. So we get done with like a four lines, like a shloka or something. We get done and then we're like. And we keep it going. And I've observed that when people are doing this, it seems as though they're almost hyperventilating. And so myself, I actually pause, like, when I need it at the end, I will take then, you know, slow inhale through the nose. And then I chant. And the. And the chanting is kind of long, and it's this extended exhale, essentially, and it's with the mouth open because we're voicing which is totally fine, but then when we need to inhale rather than we, instead of that, just closing the lips and inhaling through the nose. And this has changed. Like, it has brought so much more freshness and it doesn't have the mind sink after that, like longer Sadhana practice.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Very good solution, actually. When I attempt, when I recite long mantras on a retreat, I inhale the mantra. In other words, I do use the mouth, but I do.
So I inhale by, with the mantra. I do that. Yeah, you murmur a low voice when you don't sing loudly. But it would be ideal to be able to actually inhale while still mouthing. You know, if you're saying that's. But the idea of pausing and inhaling with, through the nostrils and then going on with it, I think that's a very good idea.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, just give it a go and the listeners just give it a go and, and just like Izalia says, like, if it works, but use it, and if it doesn't work, just keep it on the shelf, you know.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Totally cool. And I wonder, you know, like people who do running and things like that, but they don't breathe through the nose. They probably.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: No, I train. I breathe through my nose when I, when I run and when I cycle. Unless you move into, unless you move.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Into the runners, are they aware of this? Professional runners?
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. The, the top hundred meter and 200 meters woman, what's her on the US Olympic team. She's a total nasal breather. You watch. It's amazing. Yeah. And so there's a number of these.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Athletes that they then cultivate that habit.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: They cultivate. They cultivate this. Yeah, they cultivate this. And so that's what I do in the book. I have these like five tools. And then second part of the book, I have it sort of applying it to our day to day breathing, to sleeping, to exercise, before and during and after to meditation flow states. And so those, that's the, that's the first part and the second part of the book is sort of applying these to our, to our everyday and we can begin to train. It's not like it has to be separate. It's just like the dharma, it's not like our dharma practice associate, you know, just when we're on the cushion reciting so we can do this when we're carrying groceries in, is keep it nasal. And when you arrive in there and you want to take that big deep breath, just slow down and keeping the breath nasal, and we'll begin to slowly train our, begins to train ourselves to be able to breathe in this light, slow and deep manner throughout the day.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
May my breath, breathe light practice benefit my body and mind so that I can be of service to my family and community.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: You know, Bob, you know, the reason I, so that's, that's the buddhist part in all of the guided practices. There's lots of guided practices in the book.
I always begin it with a motivation and a dedication. And on many different podcasts, people who don't have any association with Buddhism, they're sort of in the wellness. They ask me, why do you do that?
[00:38:50] Speaker A: I remember it doesn't have to be associated with Buddhism. Actually.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: It doesn't, it doesn't.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: The concept is all Buddhism or some sort of religion. And then they get all tangled up in the, and actually Buddhism is actually into dealing with reality.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Consider Buddhism more educational and scientific than religious? Actually.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
It was about twelve, about twelve years ago, Bob, I was, I was so I've been teaching to some university professors and whatnot and Matthew Ricard came to one of the events.
They had him and they had me there as well. And Matthew was sitting next to me and one of the professors says, matteo Pastono, he's our meditation teacher. And Matthieu sort of gave me this sort of funny look and he leaned over, he says, oh, so you're teaching meditation now? And I sort of laughed and he said, always begin with the motivation and always end with a dedication.
And it was really, it was, you know, it was like this Kalyanamitra. It was like the older spiritual friend was reminding me. And that's one reason I still do this. Always, you know, always begin with it. Always begin that and bookend our practice with it. Yeah.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: It's amazing.
Alternate, or you have alternate nostril breathing. I didn't get to this one. It looks very, did you get to.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: The last part, Bob? Part three.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: I looked at it, but not, not enough.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Because, you know, when my breath practice started, when I, when I first moved, before I met you, I lived in Nepal. And when I first went to, to Kathmandu, I was at Kopan monastery. I was, I was sort of studying at Copan because Lamazopa was my first teacher and I was studying Lamazopa. Lamazopa Rinpoche.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And there was a, and, but there, there was a nun at Copan named Ani Karen and she was really my first teacher. I could say that she was my, she was the first one that sort of taught me what to do and I was living down in Kathmandu. Next to the Bagmati river is a tributary to the Ganges and so on.
Yeah, pashupati. Right next to Pashupati. And there, where I lived every day, I saw them carrying these bodies down to the river, these corpses, and, you know, I was fresh off the boat. Like, I'm just an american kid from wyoming, having arrived in NEpaL in my twenties, and I had never even seen death.
And so it was very powerful for me to see this. And Ani Karen had taught me about this Anam Pandasati. Right. Just a breath awareness practice. This was the first thing she taught me, was just breath awareness. And the second THIng SHe said is Just go down and sit on the riverside and Just observe these bodies being cremated. They would set them on these wooden pyres, and they would take the shroud off of them and put the marigolds and anoint the body and circumambulate a bit, and then they would light it on fire. And Then three or 4 hours later, everything would be Dust, and they would brush everything into the river. So for about six months, this was my main practice. I would have do my Breathing Meditation in the morning, and then I would go and sit by the riverside and just watch these bodies being burned. So my breath practice was sort of. It started with this practice of impermanence, or contemplating impermanence. And that's why this last part of the book is a practice of which I titled breathe how you want to die, because, you know, this. I had this under, like this.
I don't know if it was not really realization, but just kind of an awareness of. I remember it's very powerful. The strongest thing I took away from there is that, is that when I was sitting there, I was just thinking, you know, whatever I do today might be the last time I do it.
Like, there's no saying, like, this cappuccino in front of me. It could be the very last cappuccino I ever have.
And that's what that practice brought was. And I thought then it extended towards the exhale. Like, when I exhale, there is no guarantee that I'm going to Inhale. It might be the. Because that that's the only guarantee in life that at some point, we're going to exhale and we're not going to inhale.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Not in this body.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah, in this body.
Right. And. And so that's why I end up. You. You know, with this book, is that they're sure we use breathing to. To live fully and seize the day and use it for, like, optimal breathing and exercise and flow states and all the rest. But, you know, news break, we're gonna die, and we can. And this breath is going to be for me, like, having, I hope to carry the blessings of my teachers and the Buddhists and bodhisattvas with me. But still, the agency that I have in this life is going to be, is going to ride on the breath. And that's why I share these practices, because it's been the main practice since that time, since 30 years ago, of these. Of the sort of contemplating death and the death rehearsal practices.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah. You're doing all the eight solutions and everything here.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I had that in there. Geshitashi at Jamyang. I studied that with Geshitashi at Jamyang Buddhist center in London.
We would go through those death rehearsals again and again and again.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
That's wonderful.
Really wonderful. Wonderful.
It makes it. You know, I'm always thinking of Yun man. Did you ever read Tom Cleary's blue Cliff record translation?
[00:44:47] Speaker B: No.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: It's really quite marvelous. You would love it. There's a. There's a. One of the koans, you know, public cases, as he calls it, of the famous Yun men in Chinese. Yun man, oman in Japanese, but Yun man in Chinese. And somebody asked him, what is it when the.
The tree withers and the leaves fall and Yun man says, body exposed in the golden wind?
I was like that. I like that very much.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Death rehearsal meditation, you know, that's very good. People shouldn't worry about that, though, because, in fact, the more you're aware of death, then the more vital you feel alive.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:45:41] Speaker A: You know, the more cool you are about living. And, in fact, when it's the last cappuccino, boy, do you enjoy that cappuccino.
Just don't ask an italian waiter for a cappuccino in the evening.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, after 1130 even.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: They look at you like you're not quite human.
You know, what life is, it's only espresso in the evening.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Never cappuccino.
I like cappuccino more because I don't like coffee that much. So I always do that. And I always dare. I dare to do that.
So do you, do you have any roots in Italy, Mateo, the name Mateo.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: I do, I do. Up near Torino, in a small village called Ozenia.
It's a small village is where the pistono family's from. And I went there. I went to high school for a year in Italy, and I went back and saw my relatives.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: Where is it? In which part of Italy?
[00:46:42] Speaker B: In the northwest, just about 60 miles south of the french border.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: Oh, okay, cool.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Right. So up in the, right in the foothills of the mountains there above Torino and, yeah, so, and I remember my grandfather used to, my grandfather used to, when he would tell us, like, we'd come in and he would say, sala la porte. Sala la porte. He would say that, which is essentially french for close the door. He said, que de la porta? He would say. He would be, and so he spoke, my grandfather spoke this dialect. It had a very, very strong french influence on it.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: That's really nice. Last year I was at Mandali, you know, some retreat place up over one lake, not como, but a lake further west, I think, near that you have to go up. It's like a road was like in Bhutan. It was such a narrow road and winding up a hill. Then you got to the top of the hill, you look down this lake. Really, it's beautiful. Italy is wonderful. Really, really wonderful.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: And, Bob, can I ask you a.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Question here about relating back to what we're, so are you doing like, you've been, I mean, you've been such a, you've been practicing the dharma for, like, 65, 65 years, I suppose, or something, right?
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And so how are, how, um, are you, how do you work with, with death and dying practices? You have, you sort of said the awareness, but with the, with death rehearsal or, or about, like, the dissolution practices after your. I, Sadhanar, how do you work with all the time?
[00:48:20] Speaker A: I'm always working with that. I like working very much. I do join things often with Andrew Holocheck, who's very good at that. And he deals with some aspects of death, and I go through the book of the Dead with that and totally am into that. I think it's very, very important. We do two or three retreats a year together on that. And I like to do it with him because he takes care of all kinds of practical matters about death. Now, lately he's gotten old gaga about dark retreats. Yeah, things like that. And he's even, he's very, I think he, I don't know. He had a three year retreat in the past, but maybe he didn't do much psychedelics, and so he's very into ketamine now, which I'm not that followed, but it's useful because you have to let go completely, you know?
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: And so he's, he's experimenting with all those sort of things. Andrew, he's a Kaio, you know, had a 3.3 year retreat, and I like to do that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, among my books, I think the death one book of the Dead, which I didn't want to do. I only did it because Keiji Wangel made me do it in a funny way. And I thought, well, Trumba has won. And there's the old revenge went and so on.
But then I did it, and it has been by far my most popular book. Absolutely. But very slowly. But I. I mean, 800,000, something like that, and then 18 languages or something like that really long, because I made it where I kept breaking and having notes in the middle of it, where now, if you don't want to see Virotchena, try the virgin Mary or Jesus or Moses or somebody, you know, Isaac, you know, in other words, use somebody in your own tradition, because this is something everybody does. It's not a matter. Only buddhists die, you know?
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: This way. This is a. This is a report back from people who lucidly died.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: So I do that.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: I did that in the beginning of the death rehearsal. Practice in breathe how you want to feel.
I took your cue on that where placing the head. And if you want to place an image of the virgin, of the Buddha or of your teacher or the Virgin Mary or Jesus, whatever, is the embodiment of. Of truth and peace.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Absolutely. And it's so liberating. You know, death is.
Death is really fun. You know, I have a. I have an audio that, that's on the place in Boulder, whatever it's called.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: That Chautauqua.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: No, no. You know, it's an audio that's sold, you know.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: You know, the. I can't remember names when any two of my agenda. But anyway, that audio is so much fun that it was recorded from a live thing. And one lady who has since died, but luckily didn't die, then she said to me at lunchtime during that, she said, oh, Bob, you make this sound like so much fun. I can't wait to try it.
Because letting go like that is, of course, a release. It's like an orgasmic release, you know?
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Yes. And, and naturally, if you're not. If you're not fighting it, of course, if you're. If you're able to let go. So training, that is very, very important to go and be calm and go. Cool. It's a clear light. It's very, very cool.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the reason that I is exactly the reason why in this, the preliminary practice that I suggest in here is this letting go, awe practice of this aspirating.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: I think it's very good breathing your last breath. That's your chapter 13.
Good, auspicious number and it's really, really good. I think it's great that you come up with this and you just, you do it as a reality thing. You mentioned the Buddhist, which is okay, but you do it as a reality thing, which is the way it should be done, you know.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: His Holiness is, I'll never forget his Holiness in Harvard divinity School in one of his first trips to America, where I happened to be translating that time. And he's telling the, all the theologians there that he wants them to know right away they just met him, but he wants them to know he doesn't believe in God.
And I'm like saying in Tibetan, you don't have to say that right away.
Come on, don't shock them like you can, you know, you have a different idea about it, all this and so on. No, I want them to know right away. He then just doesn't respond to me in Tibet. And he says in English and then he says to them, I want you to know that I don't right away because you might get to like me if you didn't know that. And then later you would decide and then you would think I was a great person and a good person. And then later you would find out, I don't believe in God and you might faint.
But he's always saying then he was going on about how he was correcting the buddhist view that he had had himself, that without Buddhism you probably can't really get enlightened. And he said since he met Merton and some saints in Spain and some other people, he decided Christianity, you could definitely become enlightened. And he's met Muslims and so forth and he was going on like that.
It's necessary not just to tolerate other religions, but to really consider that whatever your goal is, they can reach it in their own way. He thinks that's very, very important. Yeah, and I'm very much into that. I'm totally, yeah, follow that. It took me a while, my 1st 30 years, I would say I was quite enthusiastic in a way where I thought, well, without the Dharma, you had, you had it, you know.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: You know, Bob, I was the same way. Uh, there was, but there was, yeah, yeah. Sort of kind of a buddhist chauvinist almost.
[00:54:13] Speaker A: Yeah, well, buddhist or chauvinist, you know, normally and, you know, like, everybody has a little chauvinism about themselves. But actually the Buddha did not, you know, and even Buddha, there was no Buddhism when Buddha was teaching. Yeah, it was just his teaching, you know, and then you did. They used Buddha about Pacheca, Buddha about other things, you know, Buddha means. But I'm very annoyed, though, with people. Translators know, it's not just awakening. You know, the. The Tibetans had the best translation. Sang ye. Right. Sang is awakening, but gay means expanding to know everything about life. So it's much more enlightenment. We really need enlightenment. I was doing an audio of my book with your publisher, our publisher today, and I realized that we're very. I finally appreciated his holiness, his gratitude to materialist scientists. And I was telling them in the audio that I. In commentary on something I was writing in the book. I wrote in the book. But I was. I always get after them about their materialism because it's so dogmatic and it's unscientific.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: But actually, their analysis of matter, even where they've now gotten down, where they've totally lost in dark matter and dark energy going into black holes and what have you, they're completely beside themselves and they don't know what's going on and they've sort of hit that point and. But the fact that they've analyzed it like that, like when you do mindfulness or you do Madhyamaka analysis, seeing through things, so to speak, there, when you can use in your thought experiment, which is what that kind of meditation of meditation is, it's thought experiment, and you combine with some one pointless. And when you use that there, taking a part of the atom and they're probing the mystery of the quantum foam and all this kind of thing is really helpful. Yeah, it's very, very helpful. And the fact that they still insist on dogmatically trying to say there's no mind and reifying nothingness into the ultimate is a shame. But in a way, it's good that they did that because that saved them from being oppressed by the church as they were terrorized and burnt, even occasionally by the church, like Giordano Bruno, your fellow Italian there.
And then they were able to really investigate everything. And then now that's bringing them around full blast, where they're meeting the inner science from the. From the dharma, the indian inner science, as it's all it likes to call it. I'll just put it. And that will be the. That will create the new age. That really will. But they're still resisting it and they can't quite get it. And they think they have to stick to their material.
A good friend of mine who is works with me, but I did. I was shocked. I heard him today and is promoting his book. He was saying about how, oh, near Monica. That's crazy. You can have all many bodies. That's crazy. Well, even Daniel Dennett and house. Dutter and Dennett.
[00:57:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Dennett just passed away, I think, didn't he?
[00:57:24] Speaker A: Yeah, he did. He did. He was a classmate. Well, he was one class below me at high school, you know, prep school, so I knew him and. But he was, he wouldn't be. I argued with him, but he, he wouldn't ever entertain the idea of the mind really being a force in nature, like energy, you know. He wouldn't. He was.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Yeah, he didn't even. I don't. I think Dennett didn't even sort of give to the idea that mind or consciousness was an emergent property of the physical.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: He just said he did sort of think that. But then they did have these thought experiments themselves where they. By thinking of how you could occupy a robot and so a single consciousness could be in many bodies by occupying many robots and directing their activities simultaneously. It would be quite possible. So why on earth do they think that a near monarchya is so impossible for someone who can be on the inside sorts of things? You know, I have to be open minded. I'm gonna have to get after that dear friend of mine. I didn't realize that it was going all wacky about the Nirmanakaya, you know, and, you know, they just.
People just can't manage the infinite framework. But anyway, that's another conversation. We have to do that again. But I'm so thrilled by your breathing books. I really am. I think it's just totally awesome and everyone should buy it and read it and work with it. I'm trying to. I haven't. I never finish anything nowadays. I'm much too busy to finish anything. But I'm enjoying it enormously and I learned so much from it already.
And really look at this. Expelling too much carbon dioxide when you breathe through the mouth. This is really great. Increasing the tidal volume of air that causes imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, stimulating your sympathetic nervous system, keeping you constantly on guard and paranoid, increasing upper chest movement that weakens your core stability, causing back pain.
[00:59:19] Speaker B: These are all the downfalls, to use buddhist term, all the downfalls of mouth breathing.
[00:59:23] Speaker A: That's right. Constricting your smooth muscles, surrounding blood vessels and airways. Wow.
Limited physical. You know, people with high blood pressure. They really need this.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: Don't teach this. They should teach this.
[00:59:38] Speaker B: Yeah, my mother, my mother uh, she took this to this book, she has COPD and she took it to her, her physician and he said you should be doing all of these things. And she said, well, why haven't you told me to do them before?
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Exactly, because. Why? Because the incentives are skewed in a for profit medicine system.
[01:00:00] Speaker B: Yeah, this there, this is the most cost effective. The breath is so cost effective you.
[01:00:05] Speaker A: Don'T want them to have agency about their own health. In fact, fighting yoga and you're fighting chiropractic and you're firing nutritionists and you're fighting all this stuff because you want to be the one who moderates, that monitors their health. I mean it isn't just greed, it's just the way the system is set up. You know, limiting physical capacity and enjoyment for sports and exercising, setting you up for poor sleep quality and promoting over breathing. I mean that list is fantastic. I mean you did a lot of medical research. You said your mother is a physician.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: No, no, she's not, she's not a physician. But I did dive deeply the last few years into respiratory science. And it's like, in the field, it's sort of like, it's huge right now and because there are, because there's many different fields, not only in like sort of athletics and whatnot and, but all across the board. But it's not as though this should just be left at a kind of theoretical or for the Djokovic's and LeBron James of the world, we can apply these. Even just right before this podcast, Bob, I wanted to soak my brain with more energy, with more oxygen. So just two minutes I just stood right here and I did what I talk about in the book. I just did sub maximal breath holds and I would feel this, I just felt this rising energy.
And it's not like one thing that in breathe how you want to feel. I'm not pushing any kind of belief.
I don't want anybody to just take it and just try it on for size. And one won't be able to deny because they actually feel, because we're just talking about physiology here.
And most of the time it's general. I mean if, if some people are like very, very very stressed out, anxious, if they're already in some sort of.
Keep it there. You found my, you found the, uh.
[01:02:02] Speaker A: The mantra is outstanding. And then when you were twelve, my dentist noticed my dysfunctional breathing pattern due to tongue thrusting.
[01:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:13] Speaker A: Swallowed which all of us do about 1200 times a day. My tongue pushed forward against my bottom teeth, causing me to swallow with my mouth open. Additionally, my tongue habitually rested on the bottom of my mouth, which led to slouch shoulders and a head position that jutted forward. And I didn't even have smartphone viewing to blame. When I look at old photos from this age, I see my mouth agape in many of them. It's so outstanding, Matthew. Yeah, it's marvelous. Talk about mindfulness.
And then you quote doctor Stephen Lin, the dental diet. That's really good.
[01:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: I think people should really wake up and really take charge of their life and this is a beautiful way of helping them do it. You know, I have to put a reading in now.
Haven't finished the whole thing. I'm going to definitely finish it. Absolutely.
[01:03:08] Speaker B: I appreciate that, Bob. I mean, when you told me that you had it and that you were reading it, like, I was so overjoyed that one of my own, like, I consider you one of my teachers, you know. You know, the first book I read was. What's it called? Cool revolution or inner revolution in a revolution. Yeah.
That book blew my mind.
[01:03:27] Speaker A: Oh, good. Wonderful.
[01:03:28] Speaker B: And you know why? Because I had been studying the Dharma already.
[01:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:33] Speaker B: But it was just, I had just, I'd been, I had been about four years into reading a liberation in the palm of your hand. I was studying Pabongka Rinpoche's commentary on it. And your book was like. Because it. Yeah, it just spoke so directly to me because I think mainly because of the language, you know, you were like, you had this language that could just.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Cut through, make it real for people and also. But I don't know, I'm sure I haven't done an audible of that book because of whatever the press, but I should probably. But although that, the next one I wrote called infinite Life, I did an audible and I really liked all of it. That one I might want to correct and smooth out a little bit if I did it now.
[01:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: But I'm still learning a lot. You know, there's an infinite amount to learn, so that's okay.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Isn't that true?
[01:04:26] Speaker A: This is a great year for me, though. It's the wood dragon year. The last one was 1964, which is the year I first met his holiness. Personally, I'd seen him in 62, in the hare year, you know, in the earth hair year.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: But I saw him in 1962, where you must have been in Dharamsala or in.
[01:04:46] Speaker A: Met him in Delhi. I went there in 62. 61 62, I dropped out of Harvard and went here and, and, but, and, but I, but I saw him, you know, in a large setting, you know, crowd setting, so I didn't really meet him, but then I met him personally in 64. So that was a wood dragon year. So it's been a 60 year cycle, you know, and I'm so blessed, we're so blessed to have met these wonderful people. They really are.
And they know how to breathe because they live where there's only 47% of the oxygen. And they must do a lot without knowing it. They must. I don't think that the scientist who wrote that, I read somewhere about how they produce hundred times more nitric oxide than we do, and it's a mixture of nitric oxide with the half of the oxygen that we have at sea level that enables them, but enables women to produce placenta in the womb, which is why chinese women cannot very well produce babies when they get pregnant. And chinese officials, they send them down to Chengdu or xining somewhere, because at the high altitude, with the less oxygen, they can't produce enough center. So there's danger of miscarriage at the high altitude. Only tibetan women can do that. It's a, and they, but they never associate it with maybe involuntarily because they probably never examine. But the tibetan people naturally may do nasal breathing, may be keeping it nasal. Yeah, I bet, you know, look into it. You might find that they more. Keep it nasal, you know. Yeah, we gotta do that t shirt. I'm gonna, if you don't do it, I'll do it. I really will.
[01:06:27] Speaker B: Let's do it together. No, Bob, we totally, let's do it together.
[01:06:30] Speaker A: I always attribute this. Keep it nasal, page 114. That's, that's you.
And that's what we have to do. We have to ground things in reality and in a scientific way. You know, that's what his Holiness is teaching us.
[01:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, really great.
And Bob, I hope that you'll get to see his holiness, you know, because he's in New York City right now, because his holiness is in New York, and I hope you get to see him soon.
[01:06:59] Speaker A: I think he's going upstage somewhere to hide, does more rehab, and he's not been seeing anybody. You know, sometimes they don't always write me back when I demand. Isn't that because I'm so an old hand with them all? But this time they actually wrote me back and they said, well, Bob, if you somehow could manifest as Joe Biden, you might get it. We might break the rules because we're not seeing otherwise anybody.
But I'm very glad he's here since we're in this total crisis, you know.
[01:07:31] Speaker B: Right. There's, yeah, there's, yeah, there's.
[01:07:33] Speaker A: It's a real crisis. Talk about breathing.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: Oh, it's a proper crisis. Yeah, crisis.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: And the new, all they can talk about is Biden dying or something.
They don't talk about Biden's program of keeping the government alive and your Social Security and fixing the immigration and doing this and doing that and the other guy taking everything away and giving rich people another tax cut and then giving Ukraine to Putin and destroying the world, basically. I mean, I think personally, I think it should be insurrection, you know, what do you call it? Insurrection? Yeah, I think Biden should do that. Actually, personally, I wrote a thing. I don't know if it'll be published, otherwise I'll put it on my substac. Nobody's pulling that trigger. They're writing all these disaster, can't happen, mustn't happen. Stephanopoulos told him what would happen if you lose. Oh, I'll say I did my best. Biden says we can't have that. It's not doing our best. We have to assure that this doesn't happen or we're betraying everybody because then all the dictators and all the conquerors are going to be fighting and it'll be world war in Europe again, for sure.
He'll go after Poland and he'll swallow the Baltics in 1 minute if Trump hands him to Ukraine as he wants to do it, you know.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:00] Speaker A: So it's not just inside this country, you know.
So anyway, keep it nasal.
[01:09:07] Speaker B: Keep it nasal. Exactly. But see, Bob, this is exactly the times, like when, you know, when we are flooded by the news or like, whatever, like on when the election comes, it is all the more important to be, to be doing these things because we can have some impact, our vote can have some impact, but then we need to be able to regulate our nervous system.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. People, all agency, it's important. It's like, could go on forever. Yeah, this is probably what people expect in a podcast. Maybe we'll have to do another one. I'm going to read further and maybe we can do a different one.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: But we can do one on, maybe on part three on death and dying and the breath and your understanding, you could.
[01:09:54] Speaker A: Yes, we do one. Especially on the dead, dying, breathing thing, you know? Yeah, maybe when you do that last exhalation, now that you think about, I wonder.
I love a thing. Just in conclusion, I want to say I love the scene in the first matrix where Morpheus is training Neo and they're doing martial arts and neo is winded at one point. And then he says to him, you think you're breathing air there because they're in the matrix, right? Yeah, but they're doing that. And, and he's kind of, he was crashed against the wall or something. And then he says, you think you're winded or something? And do you really think you're breathing air there? Is that what you're doing? So I wonder if then in the Bardo, you immediately think you're inhaling and you're, in other words, you have exhaled and you leave the body.
[01:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:44] Speaker A: And do you, in the barter, do you think you need to inhale? Well, of course you have that. And at first you have a body like your body, like in a dream.
[01:10:53] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: And then when we think about, have you ever done lucid dreaming?
[01:10:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:10:57] Speaker A: Did you inhale in the dream?
[01:10:59] Speaker B: You know, I notice if you inhale. Yeah. I did not notice that. I've never focused on breathing in the dream.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: Normally don't focus on having a body, actually, we're just a point of awareness.
Right. And I don't think I've never seen a tibetan instruction like Don Juan used to give to Carlos Castaneda long ago. I'm sure you remember that. I think you're old enough where he said the way to lucidly dream is to look at your hands in the dream. Try to program yourself to look at your hands to become aware of your own body. Sometimes you are naturally aware of your body in a dream, but mostly, and, but one way of being lucid is to look at your body and realize, we're in a dream and then are you breathing in the dream, then that would, that would be an interesting thing to do in a lucid dreaming practice.
[01:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:50] Speaker A: I really think it's very important not only the impermanence thing, but also for people to recognize that death is like a doorway into another life. Immediate, immediate other life. There may be a little pass out for a day or two, but then you don't notice the time when you're completely passed out. Like you count hours while you're sleeping. If you're really asleep, you immediately wake up even 8 hours later because you don't have any sense of time when you're not having any cognitive activity going on. So that's really, I think that's an interesting, interesting topic. So your whole thing about gaining agency and not just noticing your breath and counting it, but becoming mindful of even how it affects your entire nervous system, how the mechanism is it connects. When I was dropped off in Darmshall in 1964 in the wood dragon year by Geshe Wangel, he dragged a tibetan Amji, a doctor, to my, the room we were staying in, and he said, you study medicine, you have to learn tibetan medicine. And that was the first time I had an idea, after a supposedly privileged education, that I had a lung and a liver and a kidney and a spleen. Yeah, everyone knows a little bit about their brain, but I never had a bunch of organs in there. So what do they do? You know? And suddenly they are connected to your tongue because connects to your heart, you know, eyes and liver. I mean, your senses connect. Those are all very intuitive and very powerful, actually.
[01:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:25] Speaker A: And your imagination and your neural system connects to your diaphragm. You are working that way. You're working that territory. And I congratulate you 100%.
[01:13:37] Speaker B: Thank you very much, Bob.
[01:13:39] Speaker A: We'll broadcast as soon as we can. I will cut out that part we have to leave in the middle and see you. See you soon.
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[01:14:38] Speaker A: Tashi Delick and thanks for tuning in.
