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The Tim Ferriss Show

#791: How to Feel at Peace Amidst High Stress — Guided Meditation with Zen Master Henry Shukman

12 min episode · 2 min read
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Episode

12 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Philosophy & Wisdom

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Stress recognition technique: Scan your torso for physical signatures of stress like tightness, heat, or density in the chest, diaphragm, or throat when thinking about minor stressors like unanswered emails.
  • Counterintuitive approach: Instead of trying to eliminate stress, welcome and allow it as part of current experience while maintaining soft shoulders and relaxed body, treating discomfort with kind attentiveness.
  • Warm wax visualization: Imagine your entire torso as warm wax that can hold uncomfortable feelings within its softness, discovering your capacity to give yourself loving and kind awareness during stressful moments.

What It Covers

Zen Master Henry Shukman guides a ten minute meditation teaching practitioners how to recognize and welcome stress sensations in the body rather than suppressing them.

Key Questions Answered

  • Stress recognition technique: Scan your torso for physical signatures of stress like tightness, heat, or density in the chest, diaphragm, or throat when thinking about minor stressors like unanswered emails.
  • Counterintuitive approach: Instead of trying to eliminate stress, welcome and allow it as part of current experience while maintaining soft shoulders and relaxed body, treating discomfort with kind attentiveness.
  • Warm wax visualization: Imagine your entire torso as warm wax that can hold uncomfortable feelings within its softness, discovering your capacity to give yourself loving and kind awareness during stressful moments.

Notable Moment

Shukman reveals he started meditating in his twenties not for spiritual discovery but because he was miserable, and a happier friend who meditated inspired him to try it.

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Episode Transcript

Hey, folks. Tim here. My best selling card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing team at Exploding Kittens, just won the pop insider best geeky game of 2025 and also best stocking filler in the made for moms toy awards '20 twenty '5. It is on sale everywhere. It's cheap. It's fast to learn. It has 4.8 stars out of five. People are loving it. Coyotegame.com will take you to all the retailers, but you can find it everywhere. It is a game of thinking fast and laughing faster. Think charades meets hot potato meets a bunch of brain fun. It's good for your head. It's perfect for families with kids age 10 or adults who are kids at heart or don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of adults love this game. And as I said, it's available everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target, 8,000 plus retail locations, you name it. So please check it out. I loved making it. People are really enjoying it. It has 300 or 400,000,000 plus social views of gameplay online. And try it. Enjoy it this holiday season. Check it out, coyotegame.com one more time. That's coyotegame.com or anywhere you buy your games. Now back to the episode. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. This episode is a brand new experiment called Meditation Monday. That means in addition to my long form interviews each week, every Monday, I will be bringing you a short ten minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four episode series, you'll develop a Zen toolkit specifically to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. The teacher, Henry Shookman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach what is called Sambo Zen, and I have found this particularly interesting and effective. And now he'll be your teacher. I've been using Henry's app, The Way, once, often twice a day for the last few months, and it has lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of the show, you yourself can get 30 free sessions by visiting thewayapp.com/tim. So if you like what you hear in these meditations, which will be valuable in and of themselves, you can get 30 free sessions by going to thewayapp.com/tim. And for the time being, please enjoy this meditation Monday with Henry Shookman. Welcome back to meditation Monday with me, Henry Shookman. Thank you for joining. So I've already said that meditation can be an extraordinary journey of discovery. I believe that its deepest purpose is to reveal aspects of who we are and what our true relationship to the world really is, which can kinda blow our minds when we when we when we taste them. And, of course, meditation is not the only way of finding …

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