There's No Part of Your Life You Can't Make More Awesome | Jeff Warren
Jeff Warren, meditation teacher and co-host of The Consciousness Explorers Podcast, discusses transforming your entire life into a practice, extending beyond formal meditation to encompass movement, work, and sleep. He also shares insights on practicing with ADHD and becoming your own teacher.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction: Turning Your Whole Life into a Practice
Jeff Warren's Broad Understanding of Practice
Examples of Daily Life Practices
The 'Many Volcanoes' Analogy for Practice
Feldenkrais: A Mindful Movement Practice
The Role of Seated Meditation in Fueling Other Practices
Connecting to Baseline Okayness and the Sense of Being
Koan Practice and Non-Conceptual Seeing
Transforming Running into a Mindful Practice
The Concept of Being Your Own Teacher
Making Practice Social and the 'One Nervous System' Idea
Practicing with ADHD Challenges and Strengths
Jeff's Personal Experience with ADHD and Practice
Dan's Current Meditation Practice and Insights
7 Key Concepts
Turning Your Whole Life into a Practice
This means intentionally approaching every activity, not just formal meditation, with curiosity and a desire to remove suffering, increase insight, and joy. It's about making every part of life more intentional and illuminating, like creating an 'archipelago of tiny separate islands' that eventually become a 'single unified landmass of more awesomeness.'
Baseline Okayness / Sense of Being
A fundamental state of existence that is complete, centered, sane, and available, prior to any content or worries of the mind. It's the feeling of simply existing as a body creature, which can be reconnected to by panning back the camera from worry streams to this broader sense of being.
Koan Practice
A Zen tradition involving posing impossible questions, like 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?', which have no intellectual answer. The goal is to connect to the open feeling of not knowing, a yearning or wonderment, which can erode mental structures and lead to deep breakthrough moments.
Non-Conceptual Seeing
A practice of seeing without imposing labels or thoughts onto what is observed. It involves deliberately returning attention to the act of seeing itself, allowing objects to be themselves, which can erode the membrane between the ego and the world, making things appear more shimmery and beautiful.
Being Your Own Teacher
An approach to mental health where individuals take an active interest in caring for themselves, learning what works, and sharing those insights with others. It involves recognizing one's own mental health needs stewardship, knowing when to consult experts, and fostering a horizontal, peer-to-peer transmission of practice.
One Nervous System (Community)
A framework for living where individuals and communities distribute functions based on each person's strengths and weaknesses, like parts of a single nervous system. It encourages specialization, offering one's unique skills, and receiving support in areas where one is not as strong, fostering an interconnected world of service and activation.
Mammalian Care System (Self-Compassion)
A biological system in mammals that promotes care for young and self-soothing. Activating this system, for example by placing a hand on one's chest, can settle the nervous system, provide a sense of grounding, and empower individuals to draw on their own internal resources.
8 Questions Answered
It means intentionally approaching every activity with curiosity to remove suffering and increase insight and joy, rather than limiting practice to formal meditation.
By panning back the camera from worries and connecting to the fundamental sense of simply existing as a body, realizing that the feeling of being is more fundamental than any content within it.
It's a system of mindful movement developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, designed to reverse engineer unhelpful movement patterns through tiny adjustments and additions to simple movements, helping to discover healthier paths for the body.
By setting an intention to pay attention to specific sensations like breath, movement, or soundscape, and by cultivating equanimity, allowing oneself to let go and get into a 'zone' where there's just the running, not the runner.
Because the world's challenges are intense, and we cannot solely rely on experts; individuals need to be proactive in caring for their own mental health, learning what works, and sharing that knowledge horizontally with others.
Sharing mental health challenges and insights with others accelerates learning, helps individuals clarify their own experiences, and fosters a sense of common cause and connection, as 'the community is the teacher.'
It's helpful to explore different practices as not all ADHD individuals are the same; some may find concentration practices challenging, while others might benefit from hyperfocus (learning to release the fixation part), and non-dual practices focusing on present moment awareness can be very profound.
Placing a hand on one's chest or another part of the body can hack into the mammalian care system, providing a sense of grounding and empowering one to draw on internal resources without needing external help.
44 Actionable Insights
1. Formal Meditation Fuels All
Maintain a regular formal seated meditation practice, as it serves as a foundational “dojo” for training mindfulness, concentration, calmness, and equanimity, which then fuels all other practices in life.
2. Be Your Own Mental Health Teacher
Take an active interest in caring for your own mental health from the outset, recognizing it as something to be stewarded, rather than solely relying on experts when problems arise.
3. Cultivate Multiple Practices
Instead of relying solely on a single formal meditation practice, intentionally engage in various “little volcanoes” of practice across different life domains to foster holistic growth and integration.
4. Identify Life’s Pain Points
Use suffering, pain points, or a sense of unlived depth in any area of your life as a cue to explore and implement specific practices within that domain.
5. Suffering as Mindfulness Cue
Recognize suffering as a crucial indicator light, signaling that there is something you are not mindful of, prompting you to investigate and bring awareness to that area.
6. Reconnect to Baseline Being
When caught in worry, pan back your awareness from the content of your thoughts to the fundamental sense of being a body in a chair, allowing worries to dissipate within this broader perspective.
7. Ask “What Do I Need?”
Frequently ask yourself, “What do I need right now?” as a central question for self-compassion, balancing it with “What does the world need right now?”
8. Clear Away to Bring Forth
Understand that the core purpose of practice is to clear away mental “junk” and obscurations, allowing your inherent availability, freshness, and spontaneity to shine forth.
9. Awareness as a Solvent
Trust in the power of bare awareness, understanding that simply sitting and being aware can, over time, act as a solvent to dissolve mental constructs and difficulties.
10. Frame Curiosity as Practice
Reframe your natural curiosity about various topics into an interest in how to make those topics or activities liberating practices, especially if you struggle with attention.
11. Practice Active Listening
Start daily conversations, especially with loved ones, by actively listening and allowing the other person to speak fully, avoiding reactive responses to improve communication.
12. Practice Mindful Seeing
Deliberately bring awareness to the act of seeing, tuning into the “weirdness” of taking in the world, which can help erode the boundary between your ego and the larger environment.
13. Practice Non-Conceptual Seeing
Cultivate non-conceptual seeing by observing objects without labeling or intellectualizing them, allowing them to appear in their raw, shimmery, and beautiful essence.
14. Return to Direct Seeing
While walking, repeatedly remind yourself to simply “see” without getting lost in thoughts about what you are seeing, gently returning your attention to the direct visual experience.
15. Engage in Koan Inquiry
Practice koan-like inquiry by pausing and feeling into impossible questions like “What is this?” or “Who am I?” with your whole body, without seeking an intellectual answer, to quiet thoughts and erode mental frameworks.
16. Drop Technique, Just Be
Occasionally drop all specific meditation techniques and simply acknowledge that “this is all just happening right now,” fostering a quality of acceptance and letting go of fixation.
17. Use Touch to Settle
Place a hand on your chest or perform another simple, settling touch gesture to hack into the mammalian care system and calm your nervous system, which can be used even when comforting others.
18. Start with Loving-Kindness
Begin your meditation practice with loving-kindness to settle the mind, then transition to a more open awareness.
19. Inquire “Are You Aware?”
As a meditation practice, instead of traditional breath focus or noting, repeatedly ask yourself “Are you aware?” and gently return to this inquiry when your mind drifts.
20. Share Mental Health Challenges
Make sharing your mental health challenges a practice, as it connects you to resources, clarifies your experience, and helps you find common cause, ultimately improving your life.
21. Join a Practice Group
Participate in a practice group where members share insights and struggles, as this collective learning environment can significantly accelerate your personal growth.
22. Practice Mindful Sharing
Approach sharing as an equanimity practice, checking in with yourself about what feels appropriate to share, being present to the other person, and noticing when you might be oversharing.
23. Be Honest, Trauma-Informed
When sharing or guiding practice, be honest about your level of experience, do not pretend to know what you don’t, and understand the basics of trauma-informed mindfulness.
24. Consult Experts When Needed
As your own teacher, recognize your limitations and know when to seek out and learn from experts who possess greater knowledge in specific practice areas.
25. Guide Friends in Simple Practice
Feel empowered to guide friends in simple practices, such as a few minutes of breath awareness, even if you are not an expert, to offer immediate support when they are struggling.
26. Make ADHD a Virtue
Reframe ADHD as a virtue by intentionally turning every aspect of your life into a practice, leveraging your natural curiosity and energy.
27. Cultivate Self-Compassion for ADHD
Engage in self-compassion practices to counter the pattern of letting people down due to overcommitment and organizational challenges often associated with ADHD.
28. Experiment with ADHD Practices
If you have an ADHD diagnosis, experiment with various meditation practices, as some may find concentration difficult while others with hyperfocus might benefit from it.
29. Release Hyperfocus Fixation
If using hyperfocus in concentration practice, learn to release the desperate, fixated grip on attention, allowing for a more relaxed and open focus.
30. Utilize Non-Dual Awareness for ADHD
Engage in non-dual practices that emphasize present moment awareness, making a virtue of the natural “popping back” into the present that often occurs with ADHD.
31. Pop Back Without Fear
When your attention returns to the present moment (common with ADHD), consciously avoid activating circuits of fear and self-loathing, instead embracing the refreshment of the present.
32. Find Practice in Challenges
View every mental health challenge as a unique window into a specific style of practice or direction of inquiry, remembering that awareness and openness are the binding glue.
33. Structure Life for ADHD
Cultivate compassion for your attentional style, allowing the “virtue” of jumping around to exist, and create life structures that accommodate and support your ADHD.
34. Be Transparent About ADHD
Be clear and transparent with friends and family about your ADHD and how it impacts you, fostering acceptance and understanding in your relationships.
35. Recognize & Structure Hypomania
Develop awareness to recognize the early signs of hypomanic shifts, then implement structures like earlier sleep and exercise to allow the energy to play out without feeding it.
36. Reframe Lows as Nurturing
During periods of low mood, reframe the experience as a natural, even nurturing, process, allowing yourself to “be in the dark” rather than fighting it.
37. Visualize Sleep Protection
Before falling asleep, visualize protective imagery like a cedar tree, a powerful figure, or other protectors around you to cultivate a sense of safety and ease neurotic thoughts.
38. Parent with Equanimity
Approach parenting by relaxing and intentionally viewing your child as a wondrous mystery, cultivating equanimity to respond calmly to situations.
39. Ground Before Work
Before starting focused work like writing, perform a short grounding practice to settle your mind and then allow ideas to flow without overthinking.
40. Improve Vocal Expression
Seek guidance from a voice coach to learn techniques for speaking from different parts of your body, enhancing vocal range and addressing specific vocal habits.
41. Explore Mindful Movement
Engage in mindful movement practices like Feldenkrais, starting with simple movements and making tiny adjustments to discover healthier and more efficient patterns, especially for working with injuries.
42. Intentional Running Focus
Before running, set an intention to focus your attention deliberately on aspects like breath, body movement, or the soundscape, rather than getting lost in worries, to deepen the practice.
43. Cultivate Equanimity in Running
Integrate equanimity into your running by not fighting with yourself or your body, aiming to “get out of your own way” and let go of the “runner” so there is only the experience of running.
44. Assess Music for Running
If you listen to music while running, assess whether it supports your practice or acts as a distraction, and adjust based on your personal exploration.
10 Key Quotes
It's very easy to think about your meditation practice as being kind of quarantined to those minutes when you're dutifully sitting down with your eyes closed. But actually, the point is to turn your whole life into a practice.
Dan Harris
There's no area of your life that you can't make more intentional and awesome by just learning some key practice rules or orientations around it.
Jeff Warren
If I'm suffering, there's something I'm not mindful of.
Dan Harris (quoting Joseph Goldstein)
What's coming between me and everything just being fine?
Jeff Warren
This life is incredible. That's to take a breath right now, and just to stop right in the middle of it. Like, how did he even get here? What is this?
Jeff Warren
The world we're in now is that we don't have that luxury and it didn't work anyway. It's like you kind of have to be interested in caring for yourself from the get go and recognize that your own mental health is something that needs to be kind of cared for and stewarded along with your physical health.
Jeff Warren
The community is the teacher.
Jeff Warren
What is more dangerous to lead a practice badly or in an amateur way or to be guided in an amateur way in a practice or to not have access to practice at all in the big picture?
Jeff Warren
Every mental health challenge, you could say, is also a kind of window into a particular style of practice or a particular direction of inquiry.
Jeff Warren
If you just can clear away the junk, then the good stuff underneath this availability can shine forth.
Dan Harris
5 Protocols
Sleep Protection Practice
Charlie Morley (via Jeff Warren)- Lay down and begin to half-doze.
- Visualize protective imagery around you, such as a cedar tree, the Incredible Hulk, or the Buddha.
- Feel into a sense of safety.
- Allow this visualization to put you at ease, help you sleep better, and reduce neurotic thoughts at sleep onset.
Self-Inquiry Practice for Reconnecting to Baseline Okayness
Jeff Warren- Ask yourself: 'What's coming between me and everything just being fine?'
- Pan back the camera from any worry stream.
- Connect to the fundamental sense of being a body creature sitting in a chair.
- Notice that the thing you were worried about is just a small part of this bigger tableau of being.
- Allow worries to dissipate as awareness broadens and the energy of fixation drops away.
Non-Conceptual Seeing Practice
Jeff Warren- Walk around and remind yourself to simply 'see.'
- Notice when you drift into thinking about what you're seeing (e.g., 'that's a tree').
- Gently remind yourself to come back to just the act of seeing, without labeling or conceptualizing.
- Allow the object to just be itself, eroding the label and making it appear more shimmery and interesting.
ADHD Practice for Present Moment Awareness
Jeff Warren- When you 'pop back' into the present moment, notice it.
- Instead of activating fear and loathing about what you forgot or should have been doing, simply allow yourself to be in the refreshment of the present moment.
- Use this as a profound space of inquiry into 'What is this present moment awareness?' or 'Who am I?'
Self-Compassion Practice
Jeff Warren (referencing Kristen Neff)- Place a hand on your chest (or another part of your body).
- Allow this physical touch to settle your nervous system.
- Feel your ground underneath you.
- Stand up from inside your own resources, without needing to reach outside of yourself.