Why a Relaxed Body Is More Powerful Than a Tense One | Prentis Hemphill

Key Takeaway

Embodiment isn't just a practice—it's how you live your life. Most of us think we're doing one thing, but our bodies are actually doing another. We walk around tensing muscles that have nothing to do with walking because we're responding to something else in our mind. The path forward: practice centering at least five times daily. Drop into a body scan, connect with your center (pelvic bowl), and breathe into your length, width, and depth. Movement is your body's natural state—allow it instead of fighting it.

Episode Overview

Francis Hemphill, a somatic practitioner with 15 years of experience, explores embodiment beyond the cliché—defining it as the habits, behaviors, and physical patterns we've learned over time that shape how we show up in the world. The conversation covers practical somatic practices including centering, body scanning, and the head-heart-gut framework. Hemphill emphasizes that true wellness cannot be achieved individually; it requires collective healing and genuine human connection. The discussion bridges mindfulness traditions with somatic awareness, offering concrete practices for those feeling disconnected from their bodies and communities.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why a Relaxed Body Is More Powerful Than a Tense One | Prentis Hemphill from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Francis Hempill, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. having me. having me. It's a pleasure. So, one of one of the major areas of focus for you is this term embodiment. Um, Um, Um, in in the worlds in which you and I operate, the word embodiment can get thrown around a lot and often by people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Um, you are not in that category. So, I'd be interested to hear what you actually mean by embodiment like beyond the cliche.

I'm gonna give you a definition and I will say that it is I've been doing this for 15 years and it is hard to put language around but this is the way that I usually talk about it with people that I meet which is that embodiment is a couple things. It is all the habits, behaviors, practices, a little bit of the way beliefs live inside of us that we've learned over the years that we've been trained into over the years. So part of embodiment is understanding, I learned how to be a certain way.

And it's asking the question, what did I learn how to be? So it's the developing awareness of what it is you've learned. And sometimes it's practices that help you reclaim things you've forgotten or learn how to do things you never learned how to do in the first place. H So is the operating the there's a lot to unpack there. Is the operating thesis there that we may have some understanding cognitively, understanding cognitively, understanding cognitively, intellectually at the level of the discursive thinking mind what's going on with us, but there's so much that and now I'm venturing into cliche territory that the body knows, right?

right? right? Yes. In a way that's that's how you could talk about it. There is, you know, I say when I work with people or do a workshop, most of us think we're doing one thing, but our bodies are actually doing another. So, I'll give an example. Years ago when I first started doing this work, I was probably in my mid20s or something like that. And I would go to parties. I was like really I lived in the Bay Area. I was trying to be social and go out and I had a hard time meeting people.

I would go to parties and I would leave without having met anyone new. And I had the story that it was because of who I was and you know no one liked me and I was awkward and all these things. And as I started doing sematics I noticed the way that my body showed up in social environments that when I actually encountered people I got protective. I would fold my shoulders in. I would move away. I would pull back. And so I started to to get the skill of actually observing myself in these social situations.

and I notice myself at parties and I would say, "Well, actually, I'm going to a party, but I'm seeking safety by standing against the wall." Or if someone talks to me, I look down or I pull away that my body is actually communicating that I'm not available, that I'm either afraid or not interested or however someone else might interpret it. But my body was doing something that was different than what I thought I was doing because I was not aware. And I would say most people, the vast, vast, vast majority of people are actually just not aware of what their bodies are doing.

most of the time. Well, what that's making me think of for myself is that I have uh and many people on my staff have observed this and I've coped to this on the on this show before, but I have a really pronounced resting [ __ ] face. And uh so podcast guests and people on my staff, my wife are often reading into my facial expressions stuff that's not that I'm not aware of that's going on in my brain. brain. brain. That's right. Exactly that. And also I'm a part of that club too.

I um that's what I mean. Most of us don't understand our bodies in space and don't understand the subtleties of habits, ways that we learn to hold the muscles in our body, the tissues, how the tissues are in our body. We are not aware on that level of subtlety what's happening at any given point in time and how it's showing up either through our facial expressions or through our movements or how well we listen or how open we are to connection that those are not just ideas or concepts those are actually expressed bodily um in the world.

So, a lot of my work is helping people understand what their bodies do in the world and maybe where that came from, maybe why they do that or maybe there's a pattern that they're stuck in recreating over and over, but what is it that they they want to experience now? What is it that they want to live now? And that's really the question. And a lot of us have to practice new ways of being that get us closer to either what we value or what we want in our lives.

So, what would that look like? the practicing of what what I believe you earlier called sematics. Yeah, sematics. And I'll just briefly say sematics is a term that was coined by Thomas Hannah who is a doctor practitioner and who looked at really the tissues in the body and how old stories or old traumas could get stuck and and the way that we thought about aging in the body for example actually a lot of times was just a pattern that got stuck that we couldn't let go of.

So the the term sematics means the body and its wholeness. Cuz the body is not just the tissue, the flesh and bone. The body is our experience. The body is where we take action, where we feel our lives. The body is much more dynamic than how we've been taught to relate to our bodies or to ourselves. And so sematics is saying, let's think about the body in a much more robust, vast way. um not just this medical way, not just this flat way, but a much more dynamic way.

So that's where the term comes from. And yeah, sorry, I forgot the question. Damn, Damn, Damn, and the explanation. It's like, what did you you you I'm curious about uh by the way, that's totally cool. I think it's hilarious when people usually bec It's usually because I've asked too many things at once. once. once. So I'll take the responsibility for that. What I was trying to get at is the how, you know, like what if if I believe many people listening to your words right now are thinking, okay, that just sounds intuitively true and then wondering what do what do I do about it?

about it? about it? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Before I get to the practices that you can do, I would just say that the mood of it is curiosity. That a lot of us come to our bodies with a mood of control, like how do I get my body in order? How do I get my body to perform the thing I need it to do? Um, how do I control my body? And a lot of us, we're much less practiced in curiosity. What does my body want to do, want to express?

What are the impulses? So, I would say first is figuring out how to bring a mood of curiosity to your being, to your body. And the second thing I would say is that there are practices that we do. We do a practice called centering. That's one of the things that we do. We also do one called head, heart, gut. But both of these practices are about getting um curious about a certain part of your body. And you might notice as you get curious about it that there's actually tension there and do you know how to let go of that tension?

Do you know how to just settle into that part of your body? So we try to create with people a kind of baseline and this can take a long time of relaxation almost in the body. Not sort of I'm taking a nap relaxation, but a lot of times people are walking around just walking in the world tensing up muscles that have nothing to do with walking because they're responding to something else in their mind. So we work with people to scan your body, what's here, and do you have the kind of relationship with your muscles, with your body to let go in the places that you're holding?

And that creates a kind of baseline that we then can return to as we do other practices which might activate people in any number of ways but we have a kind of centered presence a ground that people can feel that then allows them to explore from there. So I would say first curiosity and then second uh a kind of centering practice where you actually let go. Can you get even more granular on the centering practice itself like the how of it? of it? of it? Yeah.

I try to be in that zone without fully facilitating you through the practice, Dan. But um I would start with a body scan. So I would ask people just to uh be here with their body and notice temperature. temperature. temperature. You might notice tension. You might notice your stomach digesting food. food. food. You might notice your eyes moving around or um I have one cold hand right now and one warm hand oddly. Um you might notice yourself in the room and in space and just kind of get familiar with this body.

That's the first part. The second part and the way that I learned sematics is that then I would invite people into what we call a center. The center of your body and this has some relationship to like a center of gravity. It's the kind of anchoring part of our body. In in our tradition, we talk about it, you know, the the pelvic bowl of the body that kind of there's almost a weightiness and we make the relationship between that center and the center of the earth.

It's kind of like pulls you down, connects you to gravity. And I invite people to just bring their presence there presence there presence there and their breath. So when you do belly breathing or something like that, it's also an invitation to live a little bit lower in your body. Not kind of up here pulling yourself away from the ground, but dropping in and inviting your breath there. We're not going to force it, but inviting it. Most of us don't exhale fully. So exhale is a great way to get in touch with the center and with that core of you.

And that's really when I do practice, I'm inviting people to live in that place more. All of us has a perspective. There's a place where you're coming from. Can your perspective be more rooted in that central place in you? So, we bring people there. And then I have people breathe and explore their self in dimensions. So, length, feel yourself top to bottom. Are there places where you're folding in? Places where maybe you're overcompensating or pushing out proving proving proving and try to find the way your body fills up space when you're not trying to hide.

And we do that lengthwise, we do that widthwise, we do that depthwise. And we kind of breathe into and reclaim those parts of ourselves that we may have habitually vacated um because of some story that is running. And we learn to relax. Relax in our breath. Relax in our bodies. One of my teachers would say, "A relaxed body is the most powerful body that you have. It's more powerful than a tense body. It can do more." I hope that was grand without without without leading you to a practice.

It was It was awesome. Um, and I I can't help but see a lot of overlap with overlap with overlap with mindfulness and meditation. Specifically, you use the term body scan. You know, in my tradition, we we do these body scan meditations where we bring our attention to the starting at the top of the head and then just kind of move south systematically, forehead, eyes, jaw, throat, onward uh uh depending on which body parts you have and and and yeah. So I So am I am I correct to see that that connection?

Absolutely. There are in the lineage of sematics there's certainly an often unnamed um Buddhist uh strain in there that I think deeply informs a lot of sematic work. So and informs my practice personally. Absolutely. I believe you also use the term head, heart, gut. Wh what's that about? Is that worth unpacking further? Yeah, we can um you know um there are theories that our bodies don't just have one brain. You know, we have multiple brains. I'm sure you've talked about this on the podcast, but the brain in the gut, the brain in the heart, and the brain in the head.

And we know that in each of those places, you have clusters of neurons and a lot of decisions that are being made. there's a lot of um assessment about the world and then um assessment about how we respond to it in the body and changes that can happen based on essentially decisions that get made at those places. So when I teach this practice, it's really like what can what do we know at the the sight of the head? What do we know at the sight of the heart?

And what do we know at the sight of the gut? And there's uh you know overlays that we can put on those. I think the the brain and thought is really important for just imagining what could be and sometimes it is not is not always body bound what we can imagine. It's not always bound to our own flesh in a way. It's we can dream and imagine and scheme and do all of these things. And I like to bring my thinking back into my body like grounded in my own being being being so that I don't end up, you know, in a way biting off more than I can chew.

Like I should be able to do this or I should, you know, should should should I like to think in in in accordance with the rest of my body. This also go to my heart and for me my heart represents and I think some of polyagal theory aspects of that relate to this but this is where this center is one of the places that I can experience and assess connection and there can be care there can also be boundaries there there can be grief there etc and so I support people to become aware of what is felt here at this at this center at this site.

And then gut, which um a couple teachers I work with were actually in an active debate around what constitutes the gut because some of them are very much like it's the digestive center. Um I include the digestive and a little bit of the reproductive in there, that whole area. Um but I think the thing that we kind of come together on is that there is something something something um there's like a deeper wisdom that is you know I think if we even look at the digestive part it's like taking in the world and letting the world out.

It's not just your singular body. It's like this relationship to the world. And then the reproductive piece it it connects you across time to to other people. So what do you know in the wisest part of you? What do you know in that part that is not bound by time? What what what what is that trying to let you know? And can you take a moment to listen at each of those centers those centers those centers and let them speak to each other? So is your practice and what you would teach and recommend to just make it a habit throughout the day to be doing this what you call centering practice so that you're getting out of your head into your body and making or at least informing your decisions with that information.

At least, you know, when when I started, it was at least five times a day. Center. At least five times a day. Stop what you're doing and take a moment to drop into a body scan. Drop into your center. Experience your length. Experience your width. Experience your depth. Remind yourself of your commitment is what we call it. And that really is like what are you here? What's your life about? What are you here to do? and reorganize around that because we can get brought into other people's commitments.

So I would do that five times a day and at some point you do it enough and it kind of becomes a state that you can access access access without making it a kind of official ritual. It's just something you can find. Um but I would recommend taking a moment five times a day to find it again cuz we get knocked off all the time. I would I found myself kind of taken aback in a in a provocative but productive way when you said something to the effect of like when you're not doing that you're biting off more than you can chew.

And I was like h that is that is one of my big problems. And I've been, you know, it's it's kind of embarrassing to admit it because I, you know, have been meditating and hosting this podcast for, you know, a minute and um I still really struggle with rushing, overcommitting, overcommitting, overcommitting, living in the centers of discursive discursivity and uh thinking and planning and plotting and regretting and comparing as opposed to in the sort of wiser wiser wiser uh aspects of the body. Yeah. So, it it just strikes me as something that would be personally useful is what I'm trying to say.

Uh thanks for sharing that and it's something I relate to cuz it's I mean I think we have to give ourselves compassion here because most of the world is pulled in front of their centers. you know, the way we hold our phones, the way we're intended to do work or relate to each other, we're all being kind of yanked forward. And even if even when we practice, we enter the world. world. world. And it's pulling it's it's saying come come in front of your center. Move a little bit faster than you feel.

And I I think that's a sentiment that's probably shared by most by most people, certainly by me. Yeah. the the way my meditation teacher Joseph Goldenstein talks about it a lot is this kind of toppling forward state. Uh and I I yeah I really um resonate with that more than I care to admit or I guess I've already admitted it but I don't care to do it. Uh I don't like doing it. Um yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you I will I I said this in the intro um you've you've written a book um uh which is called what it takes to heal and I do want to get to some of some of the key ideas in that but if it's cool with you I want to stay and and embodiment and sematics that that it's central to the book but um before I you know ask about some of the you know uh specific chapters in in that book I I'd like to spend a little bit more time on this very compelling idea of embodiment and sematics.

Are you cool with that? with that? with that? I'd love to. Yeah. Some of the other practices I've seen you recommend um in this zone uh uh uh include include include um singing um singing um singing and um micro interdependence and identifying your lighthouse commitment. So, I' I'd like to just dive into some of them because I as I was reading about them, I found them personally helpful. Uh, so let's just start with singing. Um, what's going on with that? What's not going on with that?

I want to add dancing in here cuz I danced just before we started recording. Um, but singing, you know, there's so much that can happen with singing, especially with our veagal tone. um being able to to reset our nervous systems through sound, through vibration. I mean, this is I many years ago I was like, you know, I would never talk about these. It seemed too woo and abstract to me. But, you know, there's absolutely um a quality of sound and tone that can settle our systems or sounds and tones that can activate us that on a on a real evolutionary level feel and sound threatening to us.

But there's also ways that we can kind of bring in a certain vibratory turn tone that settles our bodies. Um so I think singing is part of that. I think singing with people is especially potent and powerful. the um experience of harmonizing, not the idea of harmonizing, but the experience of harmonizing or singing in relationship to other people, creating a collective sound um contributing in a way to to a sound that's much bigger than you, I think, settles the system even more profoundly sometimes than our individual voice.

And our voices can you know this is one of the places where we can become tight over time if we perpetually had to I don't even mean it metaphorically but kind of swallow our our words which is you know if I have to hold something down if I have the impulse to speak how am I going to stop it I'm going to tighten I'm going to pull back I'm going to clamp down on my jaw whatever it might be might be might be but singing and allowing your voice to move truly through freely and the expression that comes authentically to you.

Um there's absolutely something clearing about about that that I think is important for so many people to just hear their voice, to explore their voice. Um I love singing. I'm not good at it. I come from a family of singers, but I I do it every day. So, I think what you're saying is making or moving to music fits right into this idea of getting out of your head and into your body as a source of relaxation, information, wisdom. wisdom. wisdom. Dan, your body is movement.

That's what I want people to understand that your body is movement. You are designed to move. move. move. Your voice is movement. Dance is movement. You are moving at all times. Even when I'm talking about embodiment and becoming aware, that is becoming aware of the movement that is happening without you having to think about it. Your body is movement. And a lot of us are spending most of our lives trying to stop the movement of the body rather than than than become actually allow it to happen because we know that that's our expression.

We know that's how we stay grounded is through movement. But we spent a lot of time trying to be as robotic and still as we possibly can. And I actually think movement is the way towards a a more free life. I just got back from Paris. And if you've been to Paris before, you know that when you try to speak French with people, they often just answer you in English. But I have to say it was really fun to just dust off my French skills, even if it didn't always go down well.

And even when people answered me in English, I could still hear conversations in all the cafes we were in. and it was interesting to be able to try to understand comprehend the language. Once again, I I took French from 7th grade all the way up through senior year in college. So, it's it's kind of fun. Anyway, a long wind up to one of our sponsors today, Rosetta Stone. If you've got travel coming up, spring break, summer vacations, weddings, international work trips, imagine arriving actually understanding the language.

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Embodiment is how you live your life. What you allow and what you don't allow. So, do I allow connection? Do I allow surprises and spontaneity? Do I allow myself to be touched by the kindness of someone that I didn't know? A lot of us can be guarded to these experiences. They may feel dangerous for whatever reason. And that's not just a thought. That is there's a physical a physical part of that that happens. A tightening, a shutting down, a pulling back. This is what I want people to understand is that everything that we think about ourselves that we think is happening, these are physical.

They're in the body. They're happening in real time. It is happening. So micro interdependence for me is like getting more familiar with just the the ways that we are always in exchange. To me, relationship is the reality of life. Relationship is the reality. I am in relationship and I'm going to sound woo for a minute, but I'm in relationship with the trees in my yard. I breathe out uh carbon dioxide. They let out some oxygen. We're in a relationship. I'm aware of that. I my my wife sent our neighbors cookies for the holidays and it's just little moments of exchange of touching in.

And now we're going to ride horses that our neighbors had have. We're like creating this flow um that wasn't there before. By risking it to make a connection, we're actually opening up a little bit of a channel that just would not have been there and we all would have thought it was fine. So, some of it's acknowledging the interdependence that already exists and some of it is like opening up the channel so that we can really um thoughtfully engage with each other, need each other and allow ourselves to be needed too.

Maybe you were saying with some, you know, minor um degree of sheepishness about it maybe being woo, but like it seems inarguably true and yet papered over, cemented over by modern life, which drives us into our info silos, our hyperindividualistic worlds, where we're not connected with nature, we're not connected with our neighbors, And I don't think it's a coincidence that we also are seeing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness. And so what's the way out? It is it is through reconnecting. That's reconnecting.

That's reconnecting. That's terrifying to to many of us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um and so what you're recommending is take little risks. Yes. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. And um that way lies happiness. A little risk. And not like you said, I don't want to underestimate the terror that is involved with saying hi to your neighbor or going up to their door or leaving something for them. I know that that produces a lot of terror for people, but take a little risk. In the grand scale of things, it's a small risk.

And those little risks open you up, open your body up over time, open other people's body up over time to the kind of connection that I think we we desperately need. But it it always it's a little bit disheartening for me that I think the thing that terrifies most people right now maybe the most is connection with another human being. The thing that terrifies us is Yes. The thing that terrifies us is the basic unit of evolution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not your fault. If you're if if somebody's listening and feeling like uh Yeah.

Well, I'm terrified. I'm I'm here to say, and I think apprentice, you would agree with me, this is not your fault. This is the world that has that that we live in, which is militating against this basic um common sense. Um and the good news is there are little things you can do um that will move you in the right direction. direction. direction. Yeah. That feel like a risk now and then may not soon. what what feels scary now doesn't always have to be that way.

If you take a risk, it might change shape. One minute you're trepidaciously baking cookies, the next minute you're on a horse. Um and uh and that's how it can go. Absolutely. That's how my life is. So, this seems connected to what I understand to be the animating idea, the central thesis of your book, which again is called um what it takes to heal. uh which is that individual healing and you'll correct me if I'm misstating this but individual healing and group or communal or social healing however you want to put it these are indivisible you know you you can't you can't focus on either in in isolation isolation isolation that's right that it doesn't make sense for me to sit here and believe that I am well.

If I've gotten everything that I need, every potion, every, you know, um, organic, whatever it might be, and I feel well, and you, my neighbor, are deprived, that there's something to me um, about wellness that has to be redefined from the individual into the collective. Actually, I think for for more of us to actually be well. um where we don't have to compartmentalize as much or shield ourselves. I I think the wellness that I'm interested in, and I don't mean it in some kind of like pie in the sky way, but it's just can we reorient our concepts of wellness to actually be much more um about our communities and about the planet that we live on and ourselves.

So, what does that look like practically? If I'm I'm I'm I imagine some listeners might be thinking, okay, I'm a super busy person. I'm listening to this podcast in my car between my two jobs and my four children and I'm not an activist, you know, by or a community organizer or volunteer by temperament. So, how can I apply your Francis's wisdom in a life like that? It's a it's kind of a practice of awareness. when we did the body scan, it's sort of the same thing like doing a scan of your life.

Um the question of how am I showing up to the things that I'm doing? Um the question of where do I have power and where do I not have power? Like where could I change the way things are? Where do I know that something just actually needs a tweak or needs to be shifted? Who is missing that I would want to be a part of the conversation? I don't think it has to be that everybody takes on an organization or everybody drops what they're doing um to to change the world especially not individually but um I do think bringing more awareness to our lives to how we are living them even what we were just talking about the kind of little risks that we can take I I think it's it's bringing attention to those things that are seemingly small that actually open up space for other people or um change who gets included or changes how we do something that I think is really important.

And everybody has a little bit of power. We don't all have all the power. Um and certainly not individually, but each of us has a little bit of power. Each of us has a little bit of power. You, Dan, have power to go, who do I want to talk to on this podcast? Who do I want to introduce my audience to? That's a place where you can look and ask a a question that might actually lead you to things like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of this before, or maybe I need to ask somebody for help, or maybe I'm holding back in some way." But I think getting getting more curious and becoming more aware and being even in our own lives, being able to take those little risks are meaningful.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Let me see if I let me give you an example example example that's not on the level of being a podcaster just because I I suspect most people listening to this even though everybody has a podcast these days but most people listening to this are not podcasters but um so tell me I'm going to give you an example for my own life and you tell me if you if it fits in in in what you're describing. So I don't live in in New York City anymore.

Charlotte, we live in the my wife prefers me to call it the the country, but it's basically the suburbs. Um, so we live outside of the city. And um, but when I did live in the city for 20 years, uh, I did notice that it was actually painful subconsciously to harden my heart, to use language I wouldn't normally use, uh, to the homeless people or unhoused people all around me. around me. around me. Um, Um, Um, And we ultimately in the last 5 years lived next to a soup kitchen.

So there were a lot of homeless people. And I got the idea from a Buddhist teacher to just make sure I had a pocket full of ones all the time. And so I just got in the habit, my son and I, he was very little. We would just give people money. Um and yeah, a lot of people have questions like what are they going to use the money for and blah blah blah. Bottom line, they need the money more than I do. Yeah. And um that moment of eye contact, how you doing?

Here's a little something changed the complexion of my day, changed my experience of moving through the city. I can't speak for the impact on the people to whom I on the people to whom I was giving the money, but it made Yeah, it just I found it helpful. Is that close? close? close? Yeah, that's great. I think wherever we're humanizing each other a little bit more, we're moving in the right direction. however small. Um that's that to me is the work and I I I think you have to look at it like what's missing.

We're scared of each other. We're scared to connect. Um we're dehumanizing each other. Um when you were talking about unhoused people who are not being seen or, you know, not treated well, don't have what they need, whatever it might be. Anytime we move towards witnessing each other, humanizing each other, it's not about the money per se, but it's about the human connection, the more we have of that, I think the more that we are on the right track. The more we move away from that, we will continue to see um our world destabilized.

Made a note in preparing for this and this this um what I'm about to say goes back to sort of the the main ideas in your book. And I don't know if this note accurately captures one of your sentiments, but here's the note. Uh, you would have us think of things like stress and burnout and and anxiety not as personal failings, but as predictable nervous system responses to a [ __ ] up world. Yes. And the more that we focus on it as individual problems, in a way, the deeper we dig the hole.

Not that we shouldn't all have whatever access to treatment that we need. That's not the point that I'm making. But to think that it can be limited to individual treatment treatment treatment when if like you said earlier there are I mean we're we're facing record high rates of depression and anxiety. We can understand that. Okay. Everybody's anxious, everybody's depressed. Deal with it individually. That doesn't actually make sense. It is at this point an issue in the collective. It's an issue in the culture. So what are the things that we are practicing that we are doing the ways of being that we are normalizing that are producing this collective outcome?

Not what is you know whoever Deborah who's going to work what is she individually doing perhaps doing wrong might be the way that she interprets it. But what are we doing? what are we allowing? allowing? allowing? Um because I think that's actually what we're we're missing. We're not actually tackling these issues on the level of culture, on the level of society, on the level of institutions. We are trying to make each individual deal with something that is much bigger than their own life. They have a part in it.

They have a piece of it. There's a way that it it's almost like there there's a way that the light casts through their life onto them. It's it's specific, but that's not the the that's not everything that's happening. This is their piece of something much larger. And until we can get we can become willing to look at it on that scale to become creative enough, courageous enough to think of interventions on that scale. scale. scale. We'll keep trying to treat individual and we'll just be a a nation and eventually a world of people that are, you know, trying to fix themselves endlessly when that's not where the problem originates.

So when you use a phrase like interventions at that scale, what what comes to mind as an example? Sorry, I'm laughing only because there's it's such a massive question and and I don't always don't always don't always um feel hopeful and but I have seen you know there's there have been attempts in the US and and in other countries maybe more profoundly like attempts to take on to really understand say what how loneliness is occurring like what are the mechanisms that are bringing about loneliness how are we doing our work.

How is child care structured? Do people have actually what they need? If I'm anxious because I don't have what I need because I can't afford child care because um I'm having to work multiple jobs in order to pay the bills because I I both have no time to connect to people or I'm addicted to my phone and so connecting to people feels really challenging. If these are kind of the the norms, it's going to be hard to actually do the things that turn that around. So to me, when I talk about healing or well-being, it's not just a retreat.

It's not just a yoga retreat, some of it is like, well, you know, what calms down people's anxiety or or shows people's depression? um is having child care, is having um uh work that feels meaningful to them and that that pays them what they need. Um those things are not separate from wellness. Those things absolutely um are important. Having third spaces, spaces where we can congregate and meet one another, encounter each other that are spontaneous and don't require us to pay a subscription to do it.

Um interventions on that scale. I think that, you know, something as big as, you know, let's build railroads through this country, let's build third spaces through this country where people could actually meet each other again. Something like that. I love that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. While we wait for the world to get a little wiser, um, another thing you talk about in the book is and an and this is an area where we really do have agency. Not to say we don't have agency on the level of the scale that you're describing.

I think we can dream big and do our best to get ourselves there if we have the time, energy, and influence. But where we all I think I think it's inarguably have um agency is in our relationships. And we've we've talked a little bit about relationships and when we were uh discussing micro interdependence earlier, but um um um in terms of our intimate relationships, you know, our our family and our um our romantic partners, if we have one, um there's a lot in the book about what how we can integrate, you know, kind of open the aperture in how we think about our own personal healing and include, you know, how it's showing up in our relationships.

Um, there's a lot to say there, so I'll leave the question open and then follow up with some more detailed questions. But where would where would you start? I think one of the things I was trying to convey in the book around relationships is that whatever you're holding, whatever story or maybe trauma, if that word works for um you um that you are grappling with, it doesn't stay neatly in our own bodies or lives. It's not that we can quarantine people away from um what we're holding that it actually gets actually gets actually gets um transmitted in a way through relationship.

It can also get worked out and healed through relationship. Trauma to me is a relational injury or that's one of the ways that it manifests and that's one of the ways that it gets resolved and healed is through um repairative relationship. And so I think that's just important for us to know. Some of us think, "Oh, this thing happened to me and I'm kind of, you know, I'm musling through it. I'm hiding it away." That's going to impact how you do relationship. do relationship. do relationship.

It's going to impact how you parent. It's going to impact how you partner. It's going to impact how you do friendships. It's going to impact how you lead. And I don't say that to like make it into a burden, but just again to bring awareness to what's inside of you is going to come out in your relationships because we are relational beings. How we do relationships is shaped by the stories we have of what safety is, what other people are capable of, um our our unmet needs.

This all of this stuff comes out in relationships. And so bringing some awareness to that, but also the beauty that when we become aware of that and when we we do relationship thoughtfully with other people, it can be deeply deeply deeply transformative and repairative um to all the stories that we have. It can it can absolutely change the relationship too. One of the things you say in the book that struck me and that I've thought about a lot is that we all have or to a certain degree amount of unprocessed stuff.

What I think the poet Robert Bllye calls like a black bag, this kind of shitty wedding train that we're dragging around with us everywhere of our past traumas and ancestral stuff or whatever. whatever. whatever. And that we bring that into our relationships with some degree of consciousness hopefully. but often none. Um, and then friction results and we write the friction off as I believe you say incompatibility as opposed to an inevitability of unprocessed trauma or other stuff. You know, there's a story that I tell people a lot.

I'm a I'm a parent to a four-year-old. I became a parent late in life because I was scared to parent. I was scared of what I would pass on to my kid. But I have a four-year-old now, and when she was really, really small, I would hold her. And you know, when babies look at you, they have this just like wide open stare. Like they take in everything. It's like they don't know. I'm just going to land and look at you in the eyes. It's like they are experiencing your face, your being.

They're just taking all of you in. And my daughter was looking at me that way. And I felt myself recoil a bit under that kind of gaze that wasn't like she wasn't coming to a conclusion. She wasn't she was just taking me in. And I started to pull back a little bit. And when I thought about it, it was because for me growing up, um, being seen could be really dangerous. It could mean you're going to get, you know, a punishment that is not deserved or you're going to get singled out for something.

And I really didn't want to be seen like that. But what I realized is that by pulling back when she was looking at me so honestly, I was perpetuating that habit of disconnection that had been in my family. And if I could figure out a way to stay present under her gaze, then I could repair a piece of what had been broken in my own lineage, lineage, lineage, in my own line. And so my work with her was she'd look at me and I would just stay there and I would try to stay in presence.

I would try to stay wide and soft soft soft and with her. And I think that has created a kind of closeness and vulnerability vulnerability vulnerability um with my daughter that I didn't actually experience the same way when I was growing up. So it's little moments like that, little little moments like that can can change the tide, I think. Yeah. You could basically say it stops here. here. here. I have some agency and some awareness and I'm going to um like break the causal chain that has been uninterrupted up until this moment.

Um, that's right. that's right. that's right. You have a few other things you recommend in terms of how to navigate our close relationships with more success. Uh, one of them, and please tell me if I'm articulating this correctly, is to practice repair as a habit. Do you ever um I was thinking about this yesterday because I had this insight the other day that I had messed up that I had this conversation with somebody and I'd said something really stupid and I felt regretful about it and I thought I need to call that person and say I'm sorry for doing that.

And at the time it made sense to me but now looking back it made it makes no sense that I did that thing. And what I I you know what my value is around this is that none of us need to wait until we get caught to be accountable. And in fact accountability is almost a personal thing. It's it's almost a question of integrity. Like what do I need to do to be in my integrity? And sometimes that means I have to repair. I have to step into repair.

Sometimes it means I have to say I'm sorry. I messed up. I didn't know. Um, and do it with you can do that with dignity. You can do that without diminishing yourself or undermining yourself, but to say, "Hey, I messed up and I'd like to know what kind of impact that had on you. Maybe they didn't notice." It almost doesn't matter because what matters is your own congruence in a way. So, um, I think repair has to become in a way much more casual, easy. It should happen almost every day.

every day. every day. Well, maybe if you're me, cuz I mess up, you know, often enough that I, you know, I have to apologize to my kid, apologize to my wife, apologize to, you know, people I work with. I have to say, you know, I'm sorry. I sort of messed up there or I didn't actually act in the way that I wanted to act. And we make it a big deal now. It's like such a huge thing. We got to repair and got to have a process.

We have to acknowledge and accountability. And a lot of that is because we're just not practicing it and we're all waiting to be caught or we we have some story that we're like good and perfect. Whatever it is, just make it more regular. It should be it should be regular to repair with people. I think that's an a fantastic idea. I'll be honest again in way that I'm I'm not proud of that where I bump on that is like I'll sometimes think yeah I was a bit of a dick in that conversation but what I did my misstep was a minor infraction compared to the overarching horror of the other person's behavior.

So I don't want to get in the business of apologizing when that person has a million more things that they should be apologizing to me for. Totally. But maybe that person has never seen anybody apologize apologize apologize and it's not your job to necessarily teach them or save them. But again, we externalize externalize externalize the question around repair. And to me, and maybe it's just the way that I I'm sort of um what's the word? Like compulsively honest in a way. It's so annoying, but I I kind of have to clear it out of myself.

Like if I know, hey, I was an [ __ ] I want to get it out of my system. That doesn't mean that you and I are going to be best friends. It doesn't even mean that I like you, but it means that I need to get right with myself. And that's that's really what's important. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You're it's it's not so much, you know, it is about the other person, but it's not wholly about the other person. other person. other person. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

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You have uh a much discussed quote at least in my world. much discussed because of its brilliance I think um that I'd love to hear you unpack. The quote is and I think people on this podcast have have quoted you on this. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Uh boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. Can you just hold forth a little bit on that idea? that idea? that idea? I really wanted to to situate our understanding of boundaries in the body when I uh kind of put that together.

And because I thought, you know, it it goes back to this question of integrity like boundaries should be a felt sense. Like if I'm if I am shrinking myself to be in relationship with you, I want to feel that. That means that my boundaries are being crossed and I'm thinking the only way this can be dealt with is for me to shrink, for me to make myself smaller or whatever it is. To me, um, a boundary comes into effect right when I start to do that.

When I have to start making internal compromises to stay in relationship with you, reshape myself. And not that we don't impact each other, but if it's kind of like I've got to keep reshaping myself to stay with you, then then then actually what's needed is a boundary, not my reshaping. And so I wanted to give people that that kind of image of like like like a boundary allows you to be intact and in relationship with somebody else. And I know that if you keep crossing my boundaries, I'm going to shrink or if I keep, you know, I might lose connection with you if I keep moving past um my boundaries, your boundaries.

What we're looking for is like what's the shape of this relationship? How do we stay connected with each other and without and without and without losing our dignity, without losing our sense of who we are, what are the parameters? What's the rhythm and flow of this relationship that allows us to be ourselves and experience our love? And sometimes, And sometimes, And sometimes, you know, I came up with this quote because I I hadn't talked to my father in 10 years and then I wanted to talk to him, but I found myself going, "Okay, I'm going to talk to him and that means he's going to call me this often and this often." I went back to the old uh model of what our relationship was because it's the only one I had.

And then I thought actually I get to reshape our relationships, our relationship, which means that in order to love him and love myself, we're not going to have the same cadence of communication that we had. We're not going to speak about the same things that we used to speak about. Our relationship was shaped by who we actually were. And I didn't have to go back to old patterns. So that's really the invitation is like let your relationships be shaped by who you are. Pay attention to can I experience being loved and can I love somebody else in this relationship?

Is my boundary crossing do I feel that in my body? Am I crossing somebody else's boundary and not paying attention to it? And can we keep negotiating and keep the relationship alive enough um to feel for those things? So that's that's where that quote emerged and I always joke that's going to be on my tombstone. I I really didn't know that that was going to be what it what it came to be. I'm curious just you know and you'll see that you're no by you're no doubt uh at this point seeing um that I am relentlessly focused on practicality.

um yeah uh on when it comes to setting boundaries and you can talk about your dad or if you want to talk about a less fraught relationship that's totally fine or just speak in in um a less personal more broad terms. How how do we set a a a boundary? I don't I'm gonna answer that but I don't mean to be frustrating to your mission but I think there is we we because we often don't include the felt sense as something that is important. important. important.

We um seek out kind of like first step, second step, third step. We don't feel our bodies and so we don't know where we go wrong when we can't do it. Mhm. And so I actually do think it's quite practical in a way to point to the experience of the body because that is going to make it successful or not successful. Whatever tips anybody tells you to do if you are not in the state to do those things because you are you know uh completely unsettled about something else.

It does not matter how I map it out. The map is not the territory. Um, so that's why I sort of push back on that because I I think practicality to some degree tries to make everything um portable in a way I don't think experience is. So just a little push back on that, Dan. Um, well received just to say I think I I that lands well for me. Okay, cool. I appreciate that. Um, so it's the practical thing for me. Again, it kind of goes back to the practice of centering.

If you can be centered in a relationship, then to me, it doesn't mean that you're happy. It doesn't mean that you feel good. It means that you are able to feel yourself, feel your breath, feel your body. I want to be in relationships that give me enough room to feel my body, to be in my body. A lot of us do not live inside of our bodies cuz it has not felt safe. And we because we don't know what it is like to be in a relationship where we get to feel our bodies.

We do not seek those relationships out. We have relationships with people that replicate the same feeling that we have known which maybe we sit a little skew to ourselves or we feel a little pulled back or we come a little too far forward. Whatever your shape is, we end up finding relationships that cause us to have that experience again. So when I talk about integrity or I talk about center, I'm saying you actually cannot, in my opinion, articulate a boundary fully until you know something about what it means to feel centered in your body.

You might say something, but you won't won't be able to hold it. It might not be precise. It'll break down under pressure because you're not looking for the bodily experience of center. So I I actually do think that is something we need to understand is self-possession centering is what I'm talking about. And boundaries are just the easy result of a body that is centered. It is the natural expression of a body that is centered and is uncompromising about that. about that. about that. Mhm. So with my dad for example, um um um I and you know it's funny cuz I wrote this book and there's so much personal stuff and my dad was like you can write whatever you want.

I'm not going to read it but you can write whatever you want. So I actually felt okay about it. Um but for him it meant saying not arguing about but saying this is how much I'm available to be in relationship with you. I find myself wanting to be in relationship and this is the kind of relationship I'm available for with you. And when I'm there, I'm present. And when I find myself leaving my center, I leave. If I stay a minute too long, I'll start blaming him or I'll start trying to fight him about it.

But if I acknowledge my feeling and I go, you know what, Dad, I've got to go and I hope you take good care. Then I can leave with a kind of cleanliness. kind of ease. So it's expressing I mean I think there's been a lot of people that have written about boundaries. Boundary is not like you know trying to dictate to someone else what what they will do but in a way it's saying this is what I will do. Um this is what I will do to keep myself intact.

So I think figuring out with any person what what those things are and you can't you can't control whether or not someone will respect them, but it is an invitation to be in a real relationship with who you actually are rather than who they're imagining you to be. be. be. Just to say this is going really well. I'm really enjoying this and I I have a couple more questions and then I'll let you go. Um Okay. I'm glad you're enjoying it. Wasn't say that again. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I wasn't sure. Okay, good. Oh, really? because of my resting [ __ ] face. face. face. No, no, no. I love a resting [ __ ] face. It's my favorite. I mentioned this earlier and I didn't come back to it. Um, you have an expression and again I might be not using it correctly, but something about identifying your lighthouse commitment and I you you talk about this in the book too and I think these are related. how one of the an important step in healing and feeling better and doing better is to create a a vision for your life and not just a intellectual vision but something that you feel in your body.

Um body. Um body. Um yeah. yeah. yeah. So am I am I scrunching these two together appropriately and and what what do they mean? Yeah. Essentially Yeah. Essentially Yeah. Essentially um as human beings we I think are really what's cool about us is that we care about things. we have care and there's a lot of work in linguistics about care but we care and um I like to really visualize that in a way that we care because a lot of us have other people's cares in us like maybe what our father cared about or what our mother cared about or our other siblings cared about we internalize those things so we could feel safe and belong etc etc but at some point I Part of maturation, um, part of living in your own body and living your own life is articulating what you care about.

What is it? What's worth organizing your own life around? And not so much like a goal like I want to be here in 5 to 10 years, but how do you want to live? What do you care about creating more of? What do you care about doing? Really, really doing? and letting that guide you, letting that fill you up because it, you know, I always say like don't keep your commitment a secret. If you have a commitment, don't let it be something that you hide. I wanted to see it in your face.

I want to see it in how you move your hands, how open your chest is, how you speak to people. What are you committed to? Cuz sometimes what what those old commitments or I call them counter commitments that we might have of like I have this counter commitment to feeling guilty or I have this counter commitment to you know whatever it might be that's actually getting expressed through our faces and through our hands and through our words through the way that we move. What would it be like if your commitment, what's at the core of you?

What what is jostling around in your center actually animates how you live inside of your body and in your tissues so that it's not just something that's out there that we're going to achieve, but it's it's something that we are. It gets really intimate to us. So, I think it's really important to name those. And I name, you know, a commitment every year. My team, we name commitments with each other around what we're trying to live into in our roles. I have personal commitments, I have family commitments, but ways of being that I'm trying to cultivate.

And then I have practices that I undertake or um big changes that I have to do actually that that I think will move me closer towards being that more often. Well, can you give me an idea of one of your commitments these days or this year? year? year? Oh, this year. Um yeah, I'm a commitment to uh ease in my power. Ease in your power. I Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Uh so I I I at first reacted to commitment to ease because I would like to have more ease, but to I would like to have more ease, but then you said ease in your power and that's the thing I'm I'm I don't yet understand.

understand. understand. Yeah. Um so that what comes out of me doesn't have to be coaxed out of me. that what I have to share and offer can come out more easily. Um, Um, Um, and my work is removing some of those stories that tell me that it's scary or dangerous to know what I know, to be what I am. Um, to be as powerful as I am. And I don't think I'm it's not about being more powerful than somebody else, but it's it's acknowledging the power that I do have as a being to impact people, to move people.

I want to feel easeful about that and um not afraid of it cuz I don't think it's scary. Yeah. So, it's not that you're saying you're Thanos, destroyer of multiveres. Um it's it's no it's it's it's that you you because of the work you've done and because of who you are um and your your natural attributes you have a certain amount of power in the world as we all do and you don't want to be uncomfortable about that. that. that. Yeah. And I think that we all have power and um sometimes we're uncomfortable knowing that or saying that, but I think everybody has the power to touch someone, move someone.

And yeah, I just want to be comfortable with it. I don't want to diminish myself for the sake of others. I want to be myself with ease. It's interesting to me because the person who I'm looking at right now, they don't look like somebody who diminishes themselves uh in the service of others. Well, I've worked a lot. I mean, Dan, the person you're meeting now is uh I'm 44 years old and I used to just hide and probably until 10 years ago. It wouldn't it I wouldn't have been on this podcast talking to you.

I would have been so terrified to do it. So, it's work. I've worked a lot. I've worked with my nervous system a lot. I've taken risks. I've failed. I've forgiven. Um, I've asked for help, but I've changed and I'm still changing. I can still feel the edges of what I will allow myself to be, and I'm I'm working through those. through those. through those. Okay. Well, that brings me to the last question I was going to ask you. Um, well, first of all, good work. Um, thanks.

thanks. thanks. Uh, you have a whole chapter in the book. There's a lot in the book that we're not going to get to, but again to remind the reader uh the listener and and I hope reader uh what it takes to heal is the name. Um you have a chapter about change being a process, which I think about a lot because people often say to me, "Oh, well, you're the meditation evangelist. You wrote a whole book about becoming a meditation guy, but you're really [ __ ] up.

Like, you know, you you why are you so still so anxious?" or why do you continue to have these problems and I'm I'm like did the title of the book was 10% happier like right right right my point is like this there's no arrival that I'm aware of um that's right that's right that's right and so I just want I would I'd be interested in in hearing you just say more on that subject well first I just appreciate your willingness to reveal that um I hope that this is an era of more teachers that reveal their humanness Um, I think we need so much more of of that.

And that's kind of what I'm pointing to that change and even us, you know, we are processes. Um, that's sort of how I think about it, but change is a process. There are moments, you know, I I I I grew up in the church and then, you know, I came through social movements and there was always in in both of those traditions, traditions, traditions, there's like a big revelatory or revolutionary moment that we're sort of like toiling towards. And it's not that I don't think that there can be really big paradigm shifting moments.

I act I I mean I do and I think we're living through them all the time. Um but I what I mean is that even when those moments happen, there's the next day and there's us still there with our habits and our ways of being, things that we'll still have to work through, problems that we'll have. We don't escape the everyday of being human beings. And I think change, you know, we can go about change as saying, "Okay, I'm going to cold turkey this. I'm going to get this right.

I'm going to go hard." And that can produce a lot of great things for people. But I I I think there's a fuller story of those small shifts and changes, those small masteries that we had to um get under our belt in order to sustain change over time, in order to raise the level of of what the norm is or the status quo is. It actually requires work every day. It requires something every day. And you know for me rather than think about that as like a burden I think there's something to and this might be part of the traditions that we share but how do we find joy and beauty in life in those parts of the process in the repetition?

How do you find you know I have to remind myself that it may seem like I'm learning this lesson again and again and again but each time I have a slightly different vantage point. Each time I'm able to do something slightly different. Can I be excited about that learning? Can I be interested in that? And I that's really what I mean as change as a process is like let's let ourselves off the hook a little bit. Not that there's not things that we have to do, but can we let ourselves be students of this life and know that it's not always about getting it perfect or right, but being aware of and present to the process that we're in and the processes that we are.

Yes. Amen. There's a expression from a Zen teacher. I think erring and airring I walk the unairring path. Um and I think about that a lot because I would I would restate it to [ __ ] up and [ __ ] up. Uh I walk I'm doing my best or something along those lines. lines. lines. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so much compassion to everybody on that path, including you and including me. I'm certainly not perfect on this path, but I stay on it. Finally, before I let you go, I I've mentioned the book uh What It Takes to Heal, but are there other things you've put out in the world that are worth plugging be before we end this interview?

interview? interview? Yeah, I would say the other um place to find me right now is that I also have a podcast, Dan. It's why I have this fancy microphone. I have a podcast called Becoming the People podcast where we're really grappling with the question of how do we become the people that can face this moment in time, this juncture in history. Um, so you can catch me over there. there. there. Amazing. Becoming the people. Um, Apprentice Hempill, truly a pleasure to meet you and talk to you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Likewise. It was really wonderful. Thanks, Dan.