#846: Permission to Do Nothing — Guided Meditation with Zen Master Henry Shukman

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 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, 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 to another meditation with me, Henry Shookman. There are so many ways that meditation can help us. There are tons of different techniques, and methods, and approaches, and all of them have something to offer us. But at the same time, there is a meditative path that's about doing less, not so much about deploying a method or a technique, as simply about learning to kind of drop everything, to not be doing anything, and to be coming back to an intrinsic, peaceful well-being that we all have as part of our very nature, but we're not very used to tapping into it on the whole. And in this meditation, we're gonna be exploring that and seeing if we can get a taste of it, and a taste of the wonder of meditation as a kind of non doing, or at least as a doing less. So let's come into a comfortable seated position. I, you know, invite you to get your hands arranged where they they can be very relaxed in the lap or on the thighs. Get your body arranged comfortably. It's fine to be sitting upright in a chair, but if you're not having your spine supported, then try to be balanced so your head is approximately over your seat, and ears over shoulders, and shoulders over hips. A short poem to bring us in. Let the quiet come. Let the quiet come. Don't do anything. Just let it come. It will flow in by itself. The one tide you've always been waiting for, it's coming. The air has sensed it and gone still. The walls, the floor, the windows, they already know it's just one breath away. Let the …