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Embracing the Wisdom in Anxiety and Trauma

Today on the show, we speak with Galit Levin, founder of the Kaden Association and Kaden College.

Galit is a yoga teacher, yoga therapy expert, and teacher of meditation and the philosophy of yoga. She leads workshops and retreats both in Israel and around the world.

In our conversation, we explore her belief that labeling difficult emotions like anxiety or trauma as “bad” does a disservice to the deep and natural wisdom they hold. Galit shares her perspective on how to view these emotions in a different light and how that shift can impact our lives for the better.

She also reflects on the year since October 7 and why it awakened a profound connection to Judaism.

Listen now and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

  • Podcast Episode Jan 21 51 min Description Transcript This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary. 0:17 Intro This is something very important to understand, because we all the time fight our thoughts and our feelings and we always try to change them, but actually this is something that is beyond our control. When somebody says something to you and you become upset or happy, you don't control it. 0:35 This is a spontaneous feeling arises in you, part of the automatic way the mind works, and it is better to work with what is in our control, and what is in our control is the attention. 1:02 Speaker 1 Welcome to RAW, a podcast where we confront the complexities of war from the inside out. I'm Manuk, a journalist, author, yoga teacher, and meditation practitioner. RAW or War Spelled Backwards symbolizes how many of us feel in the face of the Israel Gaza conflict, exposed, vulnerable, and seeking understanding. 1:25 Here we don't just discuss the external battles, but dive deep into our internal struggles, examining how this violence has shaken our very core. Join me in conversations with philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual leaders as we explore how to navigate these painful times with wisdom and resilience, finding guidance for our own paths through this raw, unfiltered world. 1:57 Today on the show, I'm pleased to welcome Galit Levin, founder of the Kadan Association and Kadan College. Galit is a yoga teacher, yoga therapy practitioner, and expert in meditation and the philosophy of yoga. 2:13 She leads workshops and retreats both in Israel and around the world. In our conversation, we explore her belief that labeling difficult emotions like anxiety or even trauma as bad does a disservice to the wisdom they hold. 2:30 Khalid shares her perspective on how to view these emotions differently and how that can then impact our lives. She also reflects on her years since October 7th and how it has awakened a profound connection to Judaism. I hope you find this conversation as enlightening as I did. 2:53 Thank you for joining me from Portugal. Tell me a little bit for those who don't know you, tell me about yourself. Tell me about you know who you are and how you came to be this great yoga and yoga philosophy and yoga therapy teacher. 3:12 Speaker 2 Basically, I'm a yoga teacher and yoga therapist, but these days I mostly run my nonprofit organization, which is called the Caden. And so I manage this and I do most of my teaching today is actually online because I live in Portugal and all the activities in Israel. 3:32 But fortunately we have a lot of teachers that studied with me along the years and now they do all the activities in Israel, which is wonderful. So I'm, I, I cannot say I'm so much a yoga teacher today, but I still do a little bit of teaching. 3:50 And yeah, I grew up, you know, mostly interested in this, in the things that are not the maybe obvious things of life, you know, always asking questions. And I've been travelling a lot and I eventually ended up familiar with the yoga and then yoga therapy, and this is how I developed into this world. 4:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, I read that even as a child, you say you're you're you kind of realize that what you were looking for in life was, you know, self realization and that that's something you even, you know, realized as a child. And then I read that you traveled alone in the Himalayas for for a while in your 20s, I believe, and that, yeah, that was very eye opening. 4:42 And since then you you continued studying and and eventually teaching. I just want to kind of dive straight in here. You know, this podcast is about the kind of internal battles that we are all fighting within ourselves, within our own psyche, alongside the external battles, the external wars specifically, you know, October 7th and everything that's happened since. 5:10 But it's kind of like it's a, it's a very, it's an extreme example of modern world, which is in many ways very violent. And, and so I think, you know, even before then we were, we were battling many things For the person who's not a Yogi or a lifelong meditator, how do the principles and the teachings that you've kind of acquired in your life and that you share with people around you and you, your organization serves many, many people. 5:43 How can the principles of yoga serve the average person? How can it serve the kind of average person? 5:46 Speaker 2 It's interesting you talk about the battles we have because as a child, as when I was young and as an adult, like young adult, I was also battling a lot my mind and I remember how much suffering there was there, you know, with all the thoughts and the feelings and not knowing what to do with them. 6:05 And the most interesting thing about the yoga eventually that it teaches us the nature of these, these thoughts and feelings and all the mind patterns. And when we understand the nature of things, then the this battle stops because we understand there is nothing to battle, nothing to fight against. 6:27 That actually our mind is a wonderful instrument that is only there to help us and we understand the, well, the difference between what we don't choose, like all the thoughts and the feelings that come spontaneous and what we can choose, like how to use our mind with a purpose. 6:46 And I think this is a very simple thing to understand and doesn't require lots of years of meditation or going to an ashram or something like this. Because it's all, all the suffering and all this battle, inner battle that we have is only caused because we don't have very correct knowledge about the nature of the mind, about the nature of feelings and thoughts. 7:12 And the moment we acquire a little bit more correct knowledge, then we understand there is nothing to fight. So it's a very easy way, very simple. And This is why, and I can say from my own experience that people can come for one lesson and it can change something very deep in them only by understanding that they, what they thought about the thoughts and the feelings so far is uncorrect and they learn something new. 7:40 Or in a short seminar of three days you can already understand how to work with the mind. And then all this inner struggle just vanishes and we get tools how to use the mind in a such a nice way. 7:55 Speaker 1 So, you know, three days is short to change the way we perceive our mind, but you know, I'm going to challenge you and, and suggest that you take 5 minutes to share. You know, what would you say is the most important knowledge that you feel that people are missing when it comes to this kind of very difficult fight that a lot of us feel we're we're fighting a lot of the time? 8:22 Speaker 2 So it's very easy in 5 minutes to to take a challenge like this. And I can show you something very interesting about your mind if you want, which I think is the basic idea that we have to understand. And this is that there is something that we can always control in the mind. 8:40 And this something is called our attention. And this is like a mental muscle that is always available for us to use when we need. And this is the key and I can give you, can I give you some instructions that that you. 8:56 Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah, absolutely. 8:58 Speaker 2 Yeah. OK. Then you can see that you already have this ability. You don't even have to develop it. You already have it. OK, So for example, move your attention to the ceiling. Can you do it? 9:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm looking at the ceiling. 9:14 Speaker 2 Good. Now move your attention to your feet. OK. And then move your attention to your breath. Yeah. Can you do it? 9:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, I can feel my breath. 9:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, and then move your attention to your the tongue in the mouth. Can you do it? Mm, hmm. Yeah, OK. Was it difficult to move your attention from one place to another? 9:41 Speaker 1 No. 9:42 Speaker 2 Did you need the special instructions of how to do it? 9:46 Speaker 1 No. 9:46 Speaker 2 No, it's very interesting because I never met a person that said that it was difficult and never met a person that said that he needed special instructions of how to do it. Everybody can do it like this. The take a child, he can do it and take a very old person, he can do it also. 10:04 And nobody needs instruction. And for no one it's difficult. Why? Because this is our very natural ability to control our attention. This is how we work with the mind. And now when we understand this, we understand that this is the key thing that we have to understand that we always have something that we control. 10:24 And then together with this, we have to understand all the things that we don't control. And then when we understand what we control and what we don't control, we can work with what we control and we can just, you know, not try to control things that are beyond our control. 10:40 Do you know what is not in our control? 10:42 What is not in our control? Do I know what's not in my control? 10:45 Speaker 2 Yeah, in the mind, when we talk about the mind. 10:47 Speaker 1 What's not in my control, in the mind? 10:51 Speaker 2 Do you control your feelings? Do you control your thoughts? 10:55 Speaker 1 No, I don't really control my thoughts or my feelings. They're kind of conditioned. 10:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. This is something very important to understand because we all the time fight our thoughts and our feelings and we always try to change them. But actually this is something that is beyond our control. For example, when somebody says something to you and you become upset or happy, you don't control it. 11:19 This is a spontaneous feeling arises in you. It's, you know, you cannot decide to be happy or decide to be sad. And the same when we sit on the couch and we have all these random thoughts, we don't choose them. They just come up like this. 11:35 So when we understand that it's not our choice what we feel, what we think, then it's not no, there is no point in trying to control it or trying to change it. It is better to just understand this is beyond our control. 11:51 This is part of the automatic way the mind works, and it is better to work with what is in our control. And what is in our control is that tension, just as we. So now and then the most amazing thing happened because we realized that together with all the thoughts and the feeling that we have, and maybe we don't like them, but they are beyond our control. 12:15 With all of them, we can still freely act in the world because the action, the source of action, is always attention. For example, now we are talking. We have to use attention to be able to talk with each other, and then if we want to make a cup of coffee, we have to use attention to make the cup of coffee. 12:33 So attention is the beginning of every action we take, and then we can act freely together with everything we feel and think. But at least we can act, and the actions will decide our life afterwards, not the thoughts and the feelings. 12:48 Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's a lot of information to take in. It's simple in a way, in the extreme. And the hardest thing in the world on the other hand, right. It's like where I put my attention. I, you know, I can make a cup of coffee and put my attention on making the cup of coffee, or I can make the cup of coffee and not realize I'm making a cup of coffee and think about, you know, all the terrible things that are happening in the world or whatever. 13:16 I'm wondering with all these tools that you have acquired over the last 20 years, did you find that you were able to kind of navigate the last year and 2-3 months since the beginning of the war, since October 7th with that kind of very healthy attention and awareness? 13:42 Navigating the War with Healthy Attention and Awareness You know, that that you're mentioning without kind of being swept up in the, in the feelings and the thoughts and ruminating and getting caught up in, in that kind of fight flight freeze mode and that survival mode that a lot of Israeli society is living in? 13:59 Or did even you have moments where you lost the plot? 14:07 Speaker 2 Because of this knowledge and the way I practice it in daily life, when October 7th happened, I was freely experiencing everything. All the shock and the fear and the whatever. 14:23 Yeah, was there. I, I let myself experience it with all the feelings and all the thoughts that come with this experience because I knew that this is not my choice. You know, it's nothing under my control and all of this is OK to feel. 14:40 You know, it's no problem to feel anxiety, no problem to feel depressed, no problem to to feel fear from the future or whatever comes. You know, everything is OK or anger or sadness, all the things that people experience. 14:55 So on the one hand, I was OK with everything that I experienced and then on the other hand, I was concentrating of doing the action that was needed or the many actions that were needed. And then when we do this actions that are needed, maybe, maybe many times we think that it's only about being active. 15:17 But no, sometimes the action that is useful or needed is to stay in bed for one week and only watch the horrible videos and not do nothing. Why? Because this is the situation. Also, there is no point now to try and act outside in the world. 15:34 Maybe it's better just to go in the bed and come out after a week. It's OK, you know, to just stay with the feelings when something very dramatic happens. So for some time I was doing this, you know, just watching all the videos, following the news. 15:50 I was in Portugal, I was not in Israel. So it was a little bit different, of course, the experience. But I was doing this. And then after some time, when I said, OK, now it's time to act outside, then I started acting outside. And then, for example, I did useful things like starting a support group for all my students and doing things for the community, whatever I could. 16:15 And in my organizations, we started to do different activities to help whatever we could do. So on the one hand, the action was just to let the the whole system process all this experience and on the and when it was possible then to act outside. 16:33 And this is what I will always tell people, don't try to change the emotion or ignore it because you want to do useful action. Sometimes if I don't know if your heart is broken, you can go in the bed for one week, cry yourself out, and then when you're ready, go out to the world again. 16:51 That makes sense. 16:53 Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think it's very subtle. On the one hand, I think you're saying that there are no bad emotions. You know, they're pleasant and unpleasant emotions, but they're not good or bad. They're all part of the full spectrum of the, of this beautiful human ability to feel many things. 17:13 And so you're saying if, what comes up, if, if, if, if we're living through something horrible, it makes sense for the feelings that come up to be grief and rage. And, and we have this very kind of Western tendency to push things away and to, you know, go watch a pleasant program or to overeat or whatever, you know, some people do drugs or just to not feel those unpleasant feelings. 17:41 So on the one hand, I think I understand that you're saying that it's, it's not unhealthy. On the contrary, it's healthy to feel what it is that we're feeling, right? On the other hand, I know that, you know, a lot of scientists and mental health experts and evolutionary scientists talk about the this human negativity bias, which means that we have a tendency as humans because of millions of years of evolution, when we had to be more focused on the threat than on the kind of, you know, everyday pleasant experiences that we have a tendency to kind of go back, go back to the videos, go back to the horrible videos, go back to the horrible thoughts. 18:24 How, you know, what is it like? How could things have been different? And I think that's when maybe just saying feeling what we are feeling might start getting into trouble because it's easy for, I think a human to just get into that loop of negative thinking and rumination. 18:48 And that's kind of what leads to anxiety, right? It's like, I I have all these feelings. I can't stop them. I have all these thoughts. So at which point do you say, OK, you know you have grief and fear, be with it or bring your attention because you're talking about our ability to control our attention. 19:08 At what point do you say bring your attention to your feet or to the ceiling, or to the birds in the sky? 19:15 Speaker 2 Our thoughts and feelings, they are like, how do you say like in a lake that you have this, you know, if you throw a stone and then you have all these ripples. So they happen like this, a big event happens and then there are all these ripples. But after some time, even if you don't do nothing, this movement is slowly starting to subside until it's it becomes a weaker and weaker. 19:41 This is by nature. This is what will happen in a lake or a pool when you throw a stone. The same happens in our mind when you meet a very stressful event in the beginning, everything will explode inside you. You know, there will be all the fear and the anger and the sadness and everything will be very, very strong. 20:00 But. If you just wait and watch. And when we watch, we are aware, like we are aware that these are movements in the mind. And we watch it and we see the sadness and we see the anger and we see everything happening in the mind and we keep watching. 20:16 And if we watch it, we see many things or we discover many things. For example, we see how it changes, how one minute it's fear and then it's anger and then it's sadness, and then it's that. It's not only one emotion or one thought, it's a lot of little waves there. 20:33 And then if we continue watching, we will see that slowly it changes and become maybe weaker or subtle or like this. And then we will see maybe that in between also comes other things. Because maybe I got a nice phone call from my friend or you know, some good news happened. 20:52 And then there is a lot of different things happen in the mind. But as long as we are aware of what is happening, it doesn't take us to automatic actions that take us too deep down, you know, like not to ever go out of the house again, because we are aware. 21:13 There is always like a stable ground that we stand on. But it's not like we are going to feel stable. We're not going to feel stable. We're going to feel all this movement in the mind. But we know that we are watching it. So we know that we are OK. But the mind is now very disturbed. 21:30 So when it's very strong, we cannot act, we cannot do nothing. We cannot even move the attention. If you try to do it too soon, you will see that you cannot because your mind goes back and back to the to the, to the videos or to the all these thoughts. 21:47 So trying to do it with force, moving the attention now in the middle of all this mess is it's not a good idea. It's better to wait a little bit, you know, do what you need to do, like what your automatic system wants, wants to do. And then you will see that one day suddenly you can maybe go out of bed, maybe you can go shower or do something else or watch something or call somebody. 22:12 And when when I say move the mind, move the attention, move it to an action to do something in the world, this is a first, easier and more benefit because you need to eventually act in the world. So go take care of your children, clean the house, do something like this. 22:29 And then slowly, slowly, with all the muscle in the mine, we can start to do the actions and get back to life. If we try to do it too early, we will be in a problem. But if we know that we need to wait, then we wait, and then we are OK in this waiting, you know, we don't lose it there, you understand? 22:51 Speaker 1 I do. And at the same time, I know that when you're waiting there for a lot of people and for myself included, it's sometimes very, very, very hard to be there and to stay with it and to feel safe enough to stay with it. 23:10 So I used to wake up in the middle of the night, you know, at 3:00 AM and kind of relive things and feel this huge wave of heart racing and anxiety and thoughts that I can't stop and just this feeling of being caught in something. 23:33 So I think if you told me just just be with it and just just wait for it to pass, it might not be that easy because it is so uncomfortable, you know, and because we have such a tendency to want to get rid at whatever cost of what is deeply uncomfortable. 23:56 And again, that comes back to this kind of conditioned society and, and, you know, generations of, of, of people telling us at any cost, just get away from what's not comfortable. And so when something deeply uncomfortable happens, it's, it's hard to be with it. 24:13 How can the kind of someone be in that space of of being in bed not feeling absolutely disintegrated from being alone with very difficult emotions 2. 24:25 How to be with difficult emotions Things about this first, if you are in bed experiencing all this the anxiety heart racing and you know you know that everything is OK that this is very natural and everything is completely OK with you and you are your system is acting completely normal as normal as can be. 24:45 This is perfect condition. If you know that this is good, does it change something I. 24:51 Speaker 1 Think let's go back a little bit just by way of example I, I I experienced trauma. I have post trauma. I I might have PTSD. The thing that happens is that you feel that it's not OK. 25:07 Something is happening when you're in those states, when you're alone and you have either flashbacks or, or your body is triggered and you don't know why and your heart is racing. There is this very deep terror that something is wrong, something is not OK. 25:23 And, and it, it becomes very abstract. You can't really put your finger on what is not OK, but it's just becomes, it's very terrifying big monster. So of course, if I could believe that this is OK, you know, this is my body just reacting to what happens and, and what happened. 25:41 And you know, a thank you body you're doing, you're doing what you're supposed to do. I, I think it would help, but I think that I have a very strong conditioning against that again, because it's hard to stay with what's uncomfortable. 25:56 I'd rather, you know, go eat chocolate. 26:01 Speaker 2 No problem, eat chocolate. I never say don't eat because this would I. 26:04 Speaker 1 Mean it's the middle of the night. So I'm kind of, you know, I want to sleep, I want to sleep. That's for example I want to sleep. 26:10 Speaker 2 Yeah, but I would say if people didn't sleep for one month after the 7th of October, it's completely fine. Don't sleep, eat chocolate, watch Netflix, no problem. After one month, your system is going to be tired of this. Is it? You're going to be able to start to do other things. 26:26 Nothing, nothing is wrong. But I want to go back to the beginning of our conversation. 26:32 The key ideas to overcome post-traumatic stress You asked me like, what is the key ideas? So the key here is to understand that we have wrong knowledge when we say that this this symptoms of what we call post trauma are are bad and they are not good for our system. 26:50 The yoga, the yoga therapy says On the contrary, all these symptoms just show how well our system works because we are supposed to have memories. OK, the system, the human mind holds memories. 27:06 So if I have a memory of a place or a memory of a video I I saw and then I remember it in the middle of the night, it only means that the mind is working very good because it's supposed to store memories. So what will be the memories? 27:22 Whatever I'm exposed to. So if I'm exposed to videos, this is what I'm going to be to see in my memory when the memory comes up. If I was in the in fighting in Gaza, then I'm going to have memories of the smell of and the bullets around and all the destruction around. 27:40 This is what is going to be stored in my memories and this is what is going to come up in the mind. So this is completely natural. If there was no memory and no remembering, I would say the mind is not working well. But as long as it brings up the memory, it's OK. 27:57 And then if the body can put the heart rate higher and blood pressure higher or they change temperature and stuff, I say this is very much OK because the body is supposed to do it, to do it. When it has the memory of something bad or that threaten us, then everything should be activated like this. 28:20 In the fear mechanism, this means that the body is working great and the mind and the body are working together wonderfully. So it's only about changing our knowledge. We were taught, the whole humanity was taught for so long that many things that happen in the mind and in the body are wrong. 28:38 For example, even when the body, if we are ill and the body raises the temperature, they say this is bad. But today we know that the body raises temperature when we are ill so it can fight the disease. So this is not something bad that the temperature goes higher. 28:56 It's something actually very natural to the body. But so many things in the mind and in the body, we were taught that they're bad, but actually they're great. They're they show only that everything works very well. And then this is what we have to change the knowledge. And if we change the knowledge, and it's not because I say, it's because we start to investigate in our mind, in our body, and we start to realize how the things work. 29:20 And then our knowledge changes and we understand that all these activities of the mind and the body are very much OK. Then we can be in bed experiencing anxiety and to know this is OK, just do what is needed then. And when we can, we act again in the world. 29:40 Speaker 1 If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to Raw on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review and share it with someone who might find it meaningful. You can also explore more about the show and subscribe to my newsletter and with anuke.com. 30:00 I think the word maybe instead of knowledge is perception or alongside it, you know, the perception of it as being good or bad because it's, it's, you know, the way we perceive things really effects how we experience it. 30:17 The power of perception So I can imagine that for for most people, if they're having, let's say, a panic attack and they perceive it or they internalize it as something, and this really sucks. This is highly unpleasant. I want it to go away, but it's normal. 30:33 It's normal in this circumstance with what just happened, with what I experienced with my history that I'm having a panic attack right now. Then it goes from this kind of, you know what I what I told you that I that I experienced a lot. This kind of big, abstract, unknown, terrifying force that is wrong and that is bad and that is threatening you somehow to just something that your body is going through for very understandable reasons. 31:08 How to control your attention For me, you mentioned looking at the ceiling, and this is a tool that I can't believe I only discovered like a year or two ago. But it's that when this used to happen to me, or sometimes still does in the middle of the night to just notice objects that are around me because, you know, as you explained, we can control our attention and I can choose to put my attention on the Oh no, Oh no, Oh no, my heart is racing. 31:36 This is not going to stop. When am I going to sleep again? I'm going to have a terrible day tomorrow and I won't be able to take care of the kids. Or I can look at the air conditioner, you know, and say like, huh, you know, air conditioner. Or I can look at my hand and suddenly the, you know, the place where I'm putting my attention changes. 31:59 But how does that kind of square with what you're saying of, you know, just being with the feelings that are coming up? Because if what is coming up is anxiety, do I need to stay with the anxiety? Or can it sometimes be wise to say, you know, I'm going to be focusing on something else? 32:16 Yeah. 32:17 Speaker 2 OK, let me challenge you. Imagine you have this anxiety attack, OK? And now imagine that you look at it and you see your heart racing and everything and the thoughts coming and all these horrible feelings and how you fight it and how you want it to go away and how you think there is something wrong with you and all of this. 32:34 And now imagine that you continue watching it and then you say, oh, actually, this is very much OK. OK. Do you still need to take your attention away from it? Imagine you doing it in bed when you wake up in 3:00 in the morning. 32:51 What did I learn? I learned that this is this is how it works the mind. This is how it works the body. This is how they influence each other. This is very much OK. One of the things that we learn is that anxiety is is only a result of the fact that we love things. 33:08 We are anxious about the life of our children. We're anxious about the life of us, of ourselves. We are anxious about the life of our country, our people. We are anxious only about things that we care about. So if we want to stop being anxious in life, we have to stop caring about things. 33:27 Is this possible? Of course not. So anxiety is the result of love, OK? It's the result of the thing of the fact that we love and we care about things. So now imagine yourself again in bed experiencing anxiety, looking at it and saying, oh, this is only because I love my children so much that I'm now so anxious. 33:49 This is because I love my house and my country and myself and life itself that I'm so anxious. How do you feel now in bed? I would start crying. Crying in what way? 34:04 Speaker 1 I think the tears would just come out, you know, for this, this life inside that is suffering, for the suffering, for my suffering, for, for, for this world that is suffering. 34:17 Speaker 2 Let me challenge you again. Why do you care about the suffering of the world? Why? 34:23 Speaker 1 Yeah, because I think I care very much. 34:27 Speaker 2 Because you love the world. Because you love the life. And now imagine yourself in bed realizing this, that you suffer so much and you cry so much. Because you love life so much. What happens now? Just imagine. 34:44 Speaker 1 Yeah, like I said, I think the tears would start streaming, you know? Yeah, tinged with a smile. 34:50 Speaker 2 With a smile. Exactly. 34:53 Speaker 1 Exactly this. 34:54 Speaker 2 Is the little thing not because we tried to change for a smile, It's because we realized the source of suffering, the source of anxiety, that it is all a result of the fact that we love and we cannot take love out of our our life. 35:12 So we will always be anxious. We will always, yeah, we will always be sad when we see suffering because we love and we care. And then immediately it connects us to here, to our love. And now think of the action. The minute you realize you're only anxious because you love, what are you going to do next? 35:34 Speaker 1 This is something that I'm sometimes embarrassed to talk about, but when I when I do get to that state where I have compassion for for, for my suffering and for that of the world, I I kind of feel where my body needs a sense of touch. 35:51 And I might put, you know, this, this all sounds very kind of gooey to a lot of people, but I will put a hand on my heart or I will put a hand on my face or, yeah, I'll kind of give my arms a deep massage because I feel the tension that's in there. 36:11 And and I might actually get up in the middle of the night and go eat chocolate and then hopefully brush my teeth again and then go back to bed and tell myself it's OK, I eat the chocolate. 36:23 Speaker 2 Yeah, you will start caring in your actions, if I can put it. In other words, because when you put a hand on your heart or on your face, it's because you want to treat them nicely. Or when you will go eat chocolate is because you want to treat yourself nightly. But if you imagine yourself waking up in the morning, then how are you going to treat your children after you realized in the night that all your anxiety is because you love them so much? 36:47 How are you going to treat your husband or the people in your building? Are you going to do something different? 36:56 Speaker 1 I'm just giving you all the right answers. And I feel like I should be giving you a wrong answers every now and then. But I think anybody would answer this correctly. I think I would wake up in the morning and I would hug my children and hug my husband and, and yeah, really smile and kind of take them in. 37:17 This is. 37:17 Speaker 2 Exactly, the thing and all of us is the same. It's we have the same systems. So we can have wrong knowledge and then fight our anxiety and our feelings and our thoughts, all the uncomfortable ones. Or we can bring more correct knowledge and then understand that all of this, what we feel, all our suffering, our sadness, our anxieties, only because we love. 37:41 And then we can connect to our love and from there we can act. We cannot stop anxiety. We cannot stop memories. If we were, we were in the battlefield, we are going to always remember it. But we can always connect to why we were there, why we suffer so much, because we want to be OK, because we care about other people, about our nation or whatever. 38:05 And then from there we can act. And this is the the choice we always have. We cannot choose what to feel, but we can choose what to connect to and how to act. 38:15 Speaker 1 So we can say that whatever we're feeling and experiencing is, is OK and is normal, which is already, you know, it's huge. If only we could, we could feel that. On the other hand, I want to go back to that kind of negativity bias, that kind of conditioned automatic response that a lot of people have to, to go watch the news, you know, to go see what's happening even though we can't change it. 38:44 How to balance negativity bias with good practices So how do you kind of square that with good practices? Because I, I do think that in this life there is also an ability to, to practice things or to do things in a way that will be more conducive for us to be in that kind of compassionate heart space. 39:03 And for example, being on social media or consuming a lot of news can be a practice that that takes us away from good action. Because ultimately, you know, if I'm on social media, if I'm consuming, etcetera, I will act maybe from a place of aggression or mistrust. 39:24 Whereas I don't know if I meditate, if I do yoga, if I do something nice for myself or someone else, I might act from a more loving place. So do you also tell people you know what to try not to do or to do? 39:42 Speaker 2 OK, I want to distinguish between two situation 1A case of emergency and one the daily life. Because in case of emergency like we had after the 7th of October, I would tell people be on the news for one month, nothing will happen. 39:59 You know it's unavoidable to want to know everything. Let yourself do it, don't struggle with it. If this is what you want to do, do it. After some time, your system is going to get tired of it anyway, and then slowly you can go back to daily life and start to do more useful action. 40:18 But like, if a person lost somebody and now you're grieving, it's no point now trying to do meditation or going back to practice one day after you buried your loved one. Stay in bed for one month. Stay in bed for six months. Nothing will happen afterwards. 40:34 Go back to life. No, but let the system first digest the things of the unnatural or the, you know, very difficult things that happen. I will say the same, even for if you broke up with your boyfriend and you're very upset, stay in bed for one week, It's OK. 40:51 Cry your heart out. It's OK. Nothing will happen. No, then we'll go back. So this is emergency, but in the daily life, of course, there is a lot of importance to which actions we do and how we how we navigate through the different actions that we like. 41:08 And I always say that we have to work with our mind like it's a little child and the little child, you can not only demand things from the child you demand, but you also have to give treats and then you have a cooperation. It's the same for a three-year old and a 90 year old. 41:26 The mind doesn't change. It's always like a little child because it always say I want this, I don't want this, I want this, I don't want this. This is how the mind talks. I want this, I don't want this, this is nice, this is not nice. So this doesn't change. So you have to act towards it like a child. 41:43 And then the instructions I give myself in my life. And also students choose the useful actions that you want to do on a daily basis. 5 minutes of meditation every day, little bit of movement, 10 minutes of movement doesn't need to be an hour and a half practice. 42:02 And then I'll walk the dog once a day, eat mostly healthy this on a daily basis, do this useful actions and then sometimes give your mind the treat or your body the treat that it once. 42:18 So if you had a very good day, like you did a lot of useful things in the night, watch 2 hours of Netflix, be 3 hours on the social media. I don't care you did such good actions during the day, the whole day. Then you can treat the mind with something it likes. 42:33 But when you treat the mind, you treat it with, with boundaries, not unlimited joy. Yeah, like 2 hours of what you want or 1 pack of chocolate, not ten. And also one slice of cake, not all of it. 42:50 So you do useful things and you treat the mind for a little bit of something you like and then you have this cooperation and then we can do very nice life actually that is not too rigid and and not too flexible. It goes like very natural. 43:09 Speaker 1 I feel like I have another confession to make, but you've just made it kind of less shameful in my daily life. 43:18 The power of letting go of shame I, you know, I deal a lot with this content and with mindfulness and meditation and spirituality and, and at night, just before I go to bed, the last thing I want to do is read a book about mental health or Buddhism, even though I think I should, what I really want to do before I go to bed is to read celebrity news. 43:40 And it's been like that forever. That's my, you know, it's, I don't, I don't, I don't want to watch Netflix or go to social media. I want to read the most, the silliest, most inconsequential celebrity news. And I've always had quite a lot of shame around that and thinking, you know, I'm not a good enough meditator if I'm not reading, you know, Jack Kornfield or Tara Brock's or whoever meditators books. 44:05 But I'm going to give myself the permission if I'm having a good day to freely read about Kim Kardashian. My God, completely. 44:15 Speaker 2 Completely, but do it like 1/2 an hour, one hour. 44:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it puts it puts me to sleep. I I couldn't do it for longer. That's what gets me into sleep mode. You're. 44:25 Speaker 2 Not going to, you know, lose nothing because of this. It's going to be very nice because it will give the mind more motivation the next day to be a very nice mind and to cooperate with you with everything that you want to do. We live in a society that we're not. 44:40 We don't live in an ashram, so we cannot be and we don't need to be 100% pure. And I think it's not the point. Point is to be flexible with life. 44:52 Speaker 1 So what are what are the things that you cheat with? 44:57 Speaker 2 Well, I can drink. I can smoke. 45:01 Speaker 1 Sometimes, yes. As an Israeli since October 7th and in the year since, and the devastation that is happening in Gaza and the kind of many existential threats that Israel is facing, have you kind of struggled both with your place in the world as a Jew and with, you know, your role as an Israeli? 45:28 Being an Israeli For May October 7th open the door to realizing that I am Jewish, because I realized suddenly the time Jewish and then I started to explore more about the Judaism and I discovered how wonderful it is. 45:45 And I think that when we meet with this 7th of October, it woke up many people, not only me. Suddenly we can see this movement in Israel happening. More people are starting to explore our history and our religion. 46:04 It's. 46:04 Speaker 1 It's extraordinary and, and I experienced the same thing and it's, it's it's both kind of tragic and and curious that that that's what there needs to be for, for, for me at least to to kind of take on that, that mantle and that realization and that identity as as a Jewish person. 46:25 What inspired him to become a rabbi What are some of the places or texts or inspirations that you've turned to? 46:33 Speaker 2 There is a one text is the Torah, of course I started to read it on the weekly, you know, Para Chata Chevoir. And this first of all tells us the history of our people and they tells us all the moral principles, how how to live according to them what they are and how to live according to them. 46:53 And then other than this, there is all the, the whole Bible, Naveem and Tuvim, all of it. And then they're all, of course, the, all the Jewish thinkers. It's wonderful because when you start reading it, you realise they only talk about how to live according to truth and justice and welfare and all the things that we all wish to have, you know, to be a good society. 47:23 All of this is written there if you. 47:27 Speaker 1 Wanted to leave our listeners with kind of a quote or a thought or a suggestion for something that inspires you or a book or what would it be? 47:40 Speaker 2 I will I will say two things well for the for our own self development as a person to go beyond the suffering. Then I would recommend to go and read the the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and to understand their what is the process that we have to do and to understand. 48:00 It is not so difficult to to do the way of who we are and to understand the, the mind and the thoughts and the feelings and that there is a very easy way that it is possible to live in this life without suffering. 48:17 And I just want to say, it's not that we're not going to have difficult times and to be upset and sad and all this. We're going to to have all of it. But we will find a stable ground, conscious and aware place inside of us from where we can view life and from where we can act. 48:37 But I think that in these times it is actually more important not to just handle our own suffering, because the yoga handles our own suffering, but actually to become more familiar with our Jewish tradition. 48:53 And for this, I would recommend to read the Torah and to realize that as a nation, we have such a long history and we've been through so many, so many horrible things. 49:09 But we are the oldest nation that has a book that we recorded all of our history. And if we only give a little bit of time to explore this, we will realize all our strength. 49:25 So I think we should connect there a little bit. This is my advice. 49:30 Speaker 1 What what you mentioned about having a kind of stable ground also reminds me of this image of, of, of a tree, imagining this ourselves as, as these ancient, deeply rooted trees and how, you know, storms and weather patterns might shake our leaves or shake our branches, but, you know, there is this deep rootedness that we can return to. 49:55 And. And that's an image I, I really like. Yeah. 49:59 Speaker 2 This is very good and this is true for us as individuals, but for us also as Israelis, because our roots go 4000 years back in history. So we should be proud of it and we should explore it and to understand our strengths from there. 50:17 That comes from our roots. 50:20 Speaker 1 And to never forget our morality. Thank you so much Ghalid for taking the time for connecting all the way from Portugal. I wish you all the best. Thank you very. 50:31 Speaker 2 Much for having me and it was a pleasant talking to you.

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