Brandon Gimbel (00:00)

What would be helpful to share about meditation itself? Because I think a lot of people have lot of misconceptions about it. I know a lot of people have found benefit from Calm or Headspace, the apps they can get on their phones, easily accessible guided meditations. I know from talking with you in the past that you generally steer people to do unguided meditations. What's the difference and why?

Carl Jerome (00:20)

Guided meditations are generally meant to relax you. Some like a body scan where we look at the sensations in our body and breathe into them so that we can become physically calmer and that'll calm down the brain and the rumination and things. But there are different kinds of meditations and the ones that I do are pure mindfulness ones. So the objective of following your breath and remembering to come back when you get distracted is to make you more mindful when you're not meditating. And that's the goal, to be able to be deliberately present with what I'm doing when I'm off the cushion, when I'm not meditating. And that's the goal of a mindfulness practice. And then you watch your breath. Eventually you notice that your breath is pretty impermanent. You're not really as sure after a month or two of doing this when it starts and when it stops.

Brandon Gimbel (01:09)

Giving people something to focus on, noticing the thoughts that are popping into their head and helping them remember to focus on the focal point, the anchor, in this case, their breath, and just to keep coming back to that. That, by definition, is not emptying their minds. It's focusing on something.