March 1, 2023 • 31 mins
Can interruptions be a positive force in transforming violence to peace? We can use specific breathing patterns to pause, bring our mind and bodies into the present moment, and “turn question marks into exclamation points”.
Join our conversation with Mandar Apte, a petroleum engineer whose career and purpose evolved into social innovation. We talk about how daily inner recalibration through breathing techniques can connect our emotions, feelings and actions and help us manage conflict by peaceful means.
Mandar’s current work on interrupting violence at Cities for Peace draws upon his time at Shell creating and managing their GameChanger program to foster clean energy startups – one of the early corporate social responsibility efforts. A recognized practice leader, Mandar brings nearly two decades of studying, practicing, and teaching meditation to thousands of leaders across four continents (including over 2000 colleagues while an engineer at Shell).
To learn more about We Interrupt this Podcast and to suggest people we should talk to and topics you think we should explore, please see our webpage at: https://www.weinterrupthis.com or contact us on twitter at @HaakYak. Learn more about Mandar and his work interrupting violence at Cities for Peace at https://cities4peace.org/.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
An emotion already happened 20 years ago,
10 years ago,
but the mind has not learned how to disconnect, and it gets into the emotion.
We can break the cycle by learning how to breathe.
And I tell you it's a golden gift that you can give yourself.
Welcome to.
(00:22):
Welcome to We Interrupt this Podcast.
I am Laure Haak, your host.
Interruptions can be a positive force in transforming violence to peace.
We can use specific breathing patterns to pause,
bring our mind and bodies into the present moment, and "turn question marks into exclamation points", as Mandar Apte has demonstrated with his Cities for Peace project.
(00:46):
Join our conversation with Mandar,
a former petroleum engineer with Shell, whose career and purpose has evolved into social innovation.
We talk about how daily inner recalibration through breathing techniques can connect our emotions,
feelings, and actions, and help us manage conflict by peaceful means.
Mandar's current work on interrupting violence draws upon his time at Shell creating and managing their Game Changer program to foster clean energy start ups,
(01:12):
one of the early corporate social responsibility efforts.
A recognized practice leader,
Mandar brings nearly two decades of studying,
practicing, and teaching meditation to thousands of leaders across four continents,
including over 2000 colleagues,
while an engineer at Shell.
(01:43):
When we connected and you told me about the word interruptions,
my mind went back to my childhood. In those days in India,
we only had one television channel, and more often than not during the news hour,
like the 30 minute evening news,
a logo used to come, saying "Interruption".
(02:06):
That's what I remember.
These interruptions, you can say technical glitches or whatever,
divine glitches,
but, if we are not going into life with an agenda,
then those interruptions can reveal many things about yourself, about the situation that might unfold.
(02:28):
And I think these interruptions are good to have.
But really, usually our mind goes, oh shit.
If we can flip that and say,
oh wow!
(02:49):
It's just turning a question mark into an exclamation mark.
My guru taught me this when I met him first,
that enlightenment is the ability to turn every question mark into an exclamation mark.
And so interruptions can be a source of enlightenment, if you think about it.
When we are going through the life stuff, to realize this at that time, is the art of living.
(03:29):
You can go through life and then look back and say,
oh wow,
actually,
this tragedy that happened in my life is a good thing because I learned so much from it.
But while going through that interruption --
and that is the skill set we have to build,
that is the muscle we have to build,
the muscle-building of how to deal with interruptions.
That is the real skill.
(03:50):
That is actually the real skill is what to do when there is an interruption in your life.
What to do when your plan get goes on a different track than you were expecting,
(04:13):
Mandar, I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about how you got to this point in your life.
I grew up in India.
I grew up reading the Hardy Boys.
I grew up dreaming about solving mysteries.
I was good at studies,
good at academics.
I got a scholarship to do a graduate degree.
I landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(04:35):
All my imaginations about America were interrupted because what you see on CNN and Baywatch and all these shows that we have seen while we are growing up, is not Tulsa ,Oklahoma.
That's where you realize that all the mental models that people have about America,
(04:56):
they're not true! And the reverse was also true.
All the mental models that my friends from Tulsa, Oklahoma had about India --
some people really asked me,
did you grow up with elephants and snakes?
So I was in Oklahoma,
my research was sponsored by 35 oil companies, and so I had multiple job offers.
(05:16):
I chose the Shell offer because I had been to Amsterdam during Christmas holidays.
So I had seen all the canals and I felt,
oh,
wow.
I would love to be in Europe sometimes.
So I chose the Shell offer and moved to Houston, Texas.
I developed a lot of stress due to the travel in my job.
My doctor said, you need to start cholesterol pills.
(05:38):
And at that young age,
I felt like .. cholesterol pills ... side effects.
So somebody recommended me to do a meditation program.
And again,
that's where again,
my life was disrupted,
interrupted, because I was taught by two white Americans in Houston, Texas, to
live in the present moment and, you know,
yoga and meditation, and pranayama.
(06:00):
And I'm like,
wow!
Looking at their dedication,
I was inspired.
And of course,
my health improved after a few months of practice.
And I really liked Daniel and Susan.
They are my very good friends, and I became a teacher.
I became a teacher in one year and I brought this at Shell in 2004.
(06:21):
Long time before mindfulness ever entered corporate America.
So some of my colleagues at work,
they had kids on the autism spectrum.
Some of them were going through a divorce.
Because I was a meditation teacher, they shared all this with me.
And that's when I realized that,
oh my God,
just having a title like Vice President doesn't mean anything.
(06:43):
So that's where my reason was a very emotional reason.
I spend 8 to 9 hours at work.
I have to create something that people will come to me for this emotional release.
That was a very interesting journey, Laure.
Shell at that time had gone through what is called a reserves crisis,
(07:04):
ethics crisis.
So the top of the house had wrongly reported the reserves to Wall Street and they were fired.
It was very embarrassing to tell where you work for during those times.
Me and my friends in Holland and Singapore Shell,
we felt like we had nothing to do with it.
We felt that a little more self-awareness about what you do,
(07:28):
why you do, will help rejuvenate the enthusiasm of the workplace.
I received very bad year end reviews.
I remember one of the site managers,
he called me in his office and he said, meditation after six pm, outside my complex.
(07:50):
Now, mindfulness at the workplace,
all these things now are offered. At that time,
like 17 years ago,
I'm talking about, it requires a certain grit. And I felt I can leave Shell,
but what's the point of changing the boat unless you know how to row the boat?
So I felt like there's no point leaving the company.
(08:11):
Let's just say if I can make a change in Shell,
one degree change,
it's a massive super tanker.
And so luckily I got a job at Shell where then my life skills or teaching life skills was then valued.
(08:31):
The job title was Game Changer.
It sounded like me.
And my supervisor --the next supervisor,
the manager of the program asked me why I am teaching American soldiers meditation practice.
And I said,
Russ,
I get my mojo back by helping someone.
And you know,
this was 2009,
2010.
So this was at the height of the PTSD crisis.
(08:54):
I went to the Veterans hospital,
I went and put on meditation awareness camps.
And I used to teach returning soldiers from the American Army,
the Navy at the American Legion.
And so I told my boss that,
you know,
just a few days ago,
the wife of a veteran cried on my shoulder.
And she has said, Mandar!
Where were you so many years?
(09:15):
My husband slept like a baby yesterday.
Why will I not go and share this knowledge that I know can help.
Listening to this, my
manager,
I call him my friend,
my mentor,
my advisor.
He said,
innovation is also about mindset.
And I said,
yes,
of course,
it must be.
And so he said,
why don't you teach at Shell?
(09:36):
And I said, what?
You want me to bring my passion at work?
And he said,
yes.
Your chocolate is meditation practice.
The wrapper on the chocolate is innovation,
entrepreneurship,
creativity.
My boss just took it to the next level. Instead of waiting for people to come,
he said,
why don't you teach at work?
(09:58):
And so that chocolate of inner healing that was helping me,
I just got permission from the top of my chain to create a wrapper on that chocolate.
So that became one of the things I do in my work at Shell. Travel the world and teach meditation workshops.
(10:21):
I taught 2000,
not one, 200,
but 2000 people at Shell Oil worldwide.
That was quite an experience. Because, many people come to work,
but if they are not encouraged to bring their passion at work,
if they try something new and it fails -- because innovation is not taught,
(10:41):
they get slapped on the wrist,
right?
You made a mistake.
Or usually we are programmed to say, I'm not valued here.
I'm not going to do anything innovative next year.
So when people did our workshop,
there were many who were very emotional because when we spend 8 to 9 hours at the workplace,
if you're not recognized for your whole self,
(11:02):
then you will keep your passion away.
Whatever that passion may be.
I left Shell in 2016,
after 17 years,
This was 2016,
one of my friends at a Texas gas station was "interrupted". He was told to fill enough gas and drive to the border.
(11:28):
So that day,
I felt like,
oh my God,
this is no longer just CNN,
no longer TV news.
It's come near my life.
It's my,
one of my best friends.
So that event got me to go to Barnes and Noble and pick up the autobiography of Doctor King.
And in there,
I am shocked,
pleasantly shocked that this man had gone to India.
(11:51):
I didn't know this.
He had gone for five weeks.
This was 1959.
I studied the trip and then I put together this story and people came on this India trip with me. I had the honor of hosting victims,
survivors of different types of violence.
And I spent 10 days with them in India.
(12:13):
So that was again,
something very magical.
My life was interrupted.
I came back to work and my boss,
when he heard,
he said,
I feel like you need to leave and get out there.
(12:35):
That's where my life got the impetus, that everybody's mission is peace.
Whatever they do,
if they analyze it,
they are doing it
so they feel peaceful.
Peace building needs to be brought into every community,
perhaps every home.
And if we don't,
I think the manifestation of that lack of peace at home results in violence in schools,
(12:55):
results in violence in the street.
We cannot say violent neighborhoods and I don't have a role to play with it.
You do!
Of course we do!
Everybody does. When any act of violence happens,
whether it's domestic abuse or suicide or
these mass shootings,
nobody wants it in their life,
right?
We don't get up in the morning and say, today,
(13:16):
I want to see violence in my neighborhood.
We are all wanting peace.
And so when violence happens,
of course,
we cry,
we may go hug somebody,
we may put flowers,
candle marches, and the worst thing is we are desensitized.
So we see so much of it that we say, oh my God,
(13:39):
flip the channel.
So that is the apathy.
That is what I feel I wanted to address.
And so I went looking for victims of violence.
People who have been survivors,
they have gone through violence.
But we did nothing as a society -- I did nothing, forget society.
I didn't do anything.
That's the target population that I look for even now, because tomorrow it could be me.
(14:05):
Could be me tomorrow.
Hundreds of people that I know of such backgrounds, who lost mothers, who lost their children,
gang members who inflicted violence,
police officers.
It's very emotional for me.
They need social,
emotional a helping hand.
(14:32):
When I moved to Los Angeles,
there was a police related murder.
And the next day, I had shown up in their church and I had shown my documentary and I was talking about meditation.
So the pastor of the church,
he said,
what is this meditation?
Is it a religion?
Like what are,
what are you talking about?
OK. I said,
so make a fist with both hands, and now you close your eyes and just follow what I'm saying.
(14:55):
OK.
Keep your eyes closed.
Hold the fist so tight that not even a mosquito can get into your fist.
Yeah.
And the answer to is your fist tight enough? is if you cringe in your teeth and if you shout like,
aaaaah,
that's how much I want you to crunch it!
Ok?
Keep your eyes closed.
(15:15):
And now slowly open your fist,
very slowly open your fist,
and when your fist is fully open,
take a breath,
release your breath and you gently open your eyes.
How was it for you?
The pastor said this:
he said, that was good!
(15:36):
I feel good!
I said,
sir,
do you have worries in your life?
Yes.
Did you have worries now?
No.
I said sir,
because your mind was where your body is.
You were in the present moment.
And that is meditation practice, is to bring your mind in the present moment and, skillfully if you do it,
(16:00):
your worries go away.
It's not like worries are not there, but they don't come into your mind.
They don't bother you.
So you have created an interruption in the thought stream, because usually your thought stream is about your problems,
either your problems or somebody else's problems or the community problems.
So creating a pause like we just did now for just one minute,
(16:23):
if you can learn to live like this for this moment,
next moment, next moment,
that's the art of living.
So what is the science?
The science is, any event that we have in life,
whether it's a positive event, a negative event,
(16:44):
will create an emotion. And that is where we usually are stuck.
Every emotion has a corresponding breathing pattern.
What is the science?
Again,
events produce an emotion.
Usually we get stuck on the emotion,
but every emotion has a breathing pattern.
(17:04):
And so learning how to use the breaths,
you can learn how to manage your emotion.
So what I tell my students is that,
you know,
every day we brush our teeth.
We do this, and we don't enjoy it.
Nobody enjoys brushing their teeth,
just a mechanical activity we do for dental hygiene.
What do you do for mental hygiene every day?
(17:27):
That's where the breathing exercises can help because for breathing exercises,
you don't need a yoga mat.
You can do anywhere any time,
any place, and uplift your own inner well-being.
You're breathing anyway,
learn how to use the breath to energize your spirit.
Imagine if you don't bathe for a week,
(17:48):
how would you feel?
So that's the life we live, because mental wash we have never thought about.
And how do you feel when you are near somebody who's angry?
I don't want to be near you.
Today, I wouldn't work,
work with you if you are angry all the time.
So not only are you damaging your own health, well being,
(18:11):
but all our social relationships are also disrupted.
Every individual has a huge power.
For example,
if you're feeling low and somebody comes to visit you, and
it's that juicy friend that has this vibrancy and you meet that person and suddenly you feel good.
(18:35):
But feeling good doesn't mean the shit in your life is gone away.
That stuff still exists.
But something in you is like an energy transfer,
you feel good and then you can deal with whatever that stuff is.
If people start to meditate,
they will build such an aura around them, that wherever they go,
that person doesn't have to meditate.
Of course,
it's good if they meditate.
But what I'm saying is you can be a lighthouse,
a real lighthouse of love,
(18:57):
kindness,
compassion,
and you can uplift people wherever you go.
That that is the power of keeping your mind healthy.
Maybe it's a parallel with what you described when you were at Shell,
(19:19):
you started off working with the supervisor who didn't get you, and didn't get that emotion is part of the workplace. And that the workplace is also a place that we can work on and how we work together.
Not just, you have this task,
but how do we work as a team,
together?
And how can we bring emotion into that as well?
(19:40):
There was that transition you had as you changed supervisors where a new supervisor said,
hey, let's bring meditation into the workplace as a valued thing.
In your description of how you're working now with violence survivors,
you're also going through a similar transition where people aren't thinking about emotion as part of,
(20:03):
of what we've learned of emotional regulation, emotional recognition.
And that what you're doing in a way is similar to what you were doing at Shell, to try to bring some of this practice into the daily lives of everyone.
(20:24):
I started with emotional connect first, before putting a wrapper of the logical reason for doing it.
The first thought was ethics, or the lack of ethics.
So the first logic was,
hey,
mistakes happen when I'm not aware of mistakes.
I don't mindfully do mistakes unless I'm really an evil person.
So the first thought was meditation,
(20:46):
chocolate wrapper,
responsibility,
ethics,
good decisions.
The next thing was of course,
health and well being.
The next thing was also, you will be a better leader,
better decision making, clarity,
awareness,
judgment,
all this will be associated with it.
Innovation wrapper came because of my boss.
(21:07):
So Game Changer,
the mandate of Game Changer is to invest in the future of Shell.
And what I was discussing with him one day is that futures thinking is not left logical only. There is a lot of intuitive force that you need.
Like, I believe, I feel.
These things can be grown by improving your gut feeling.
(21:29):
So when you meditate, one of the chakras,
one of the healing centers is your gut.
And when you,
when you meditate,
when you breathe,
that gut becomes, you can say, clean off the dust and then it shines, some analogy like a diamond.
So, gut feeling or
intuitive feeling.
That is the next logic that I tried to latch on to.
(21:51):
And actually I also did one experiment at Shell.
The business reason I found was safety.
So if you remember 10 years ago BP had an incident, the Horizon Deepwater disaster.
I saw that and I felt,
oh,
wow,
it can happen anywhere.
I've been on drilling rigs,
it can happen.
The mistake can happen.
(22:11):
So I did a meditation program for the bubbas of New Orleans, in a refinery, in a Shell refinery.
I picked 20 of these refinery operators.
I explained to them what I'm going to do, and they participated in my meditation workshop and they loved it.
So the reason I selected the New Orleans refinery is they had no exposure to any of this yoga nonsense.
(22:36):
They knew nothing about it. And capturing those experiences, that how inner well being can lead to heightened consciousness,
heightened awareness, living in the present moment that their job is stressful. And one mistake,
one valve left, one valve right.
Whatever they do,
it could create a
(22:57):
million billion dollar of loss.
But again,
I still remember -- staying on this workshop --
I still remember this refinery operator.
He came the last day of the workshop, and he said,
you know, guys
I didn't cuss when somebody cut my lane today.
And that's it. He got it!
I said you got it!
He changed his behavior.
So this aspect of safety is called behavioral safety.
(23:19):
They know everything.
But in the heat of the moment,
what they should do is a behavioral skill. And you can build that muscle through a pause, an interruption in your mind.
Pause.
Quiet.
(23:53):
I really love this image you have of being a lighthouse. You can't have that light on all the time.
It takes a lot of energy.
But thinking about OK,
I can control myself.
I can do self care.
But that self care also means that for some periods of time,
I can be that beam of light in my community.
(24:15):
How do you think about this concept of responsibility,
both to one's self and to one's community?
My meditation teacher,
Indian humanitarian leader,
his name is Shri Shri Ravishankar.
He's 66 year old now.
He started teaching when he was 21.
(24:37):
He shared with me when I met him,
he said, responsibility is the ability to respond.
Got me to pause.
Wow.
I never thought about it. Because really it is! Otherwise you are losing it.
(24:57):
If you are reacting to situations,
you are losing it.
So that is where you are working on your ability to respond.
Just because today with the capacity you have, with the intellect you have, with the life experience you have, maybe you can respond to it in a certain manner.
But if you keep working on yourself,
(25:19):
the same situation,
you will respond a little differently 10 years from now.
So that means what? Your ability to respond is something you can also work on.
So it's a difference between responding and reacting and,
and how do you move from that reaction mode where you aren't necessarily able to manage emotions in,
(25:42):
in a productive way, to one where you're responding to a situation.
But then that gets back to,
how much time do we spend thinking about these things?
You know,
and so there's responding...
You cannot.
That's where it's not an intellectual thing after a certain point of time.
So it's like, a situation comes,
whatever, somebody blames you.
(26:03):
You are not pausing, and saying Mandar talked about responsibility, reaction.
What should I do?
What should I do?
That's that is the left brain.
So that's what happens when you learn how to breathe your emotions out.
So responsibility,
the ability to respond is
a mental game.
You can't read a book and say today I will be responsive.
(26:26):
I will not react.
Whenever this person comes, I feel my buttons are pushed.
You cannot learn this life skill by reading a book.
It has to come from within you.
You have to learn how to transform yourself.
So that's where the breath work, as you release your negative emotions that are stored in your nervous system. It's the negative emotion that is making you react.
(26:49):
So if you don't breathe out your negative emotions,
just like I said,
brush your teeth every day,
dental hygiene,
breathe your emotions out every day.
And at some point of time you will flip,
you will become free of that mental negative charge that's coming at you. And that negative charge can come from trauma of yesterday.
It could be trauma of two days ago.
(27:11):
It could be 20 years ago. Because your nervous system doesn't know how to release that trauma,
release that negative emotion,
right?
So that is why it's called post trauma stress.
The trauma already happened.
The mind thinks it's still there to analyze it.
The emotion already happened 20 years ago,
(27:31):
10 years ago,
two years ago,
but the mind has not learned how to disconnect, and it gets into the emotion and the body is confused.
The body is confused,
the body reacts,
the body feels anxiety.
So this cycle,
we can break it,
we can break the cycle by learning how to breathe.
And I tell you it's a golden gift that you can give yourself.
(27:59):
If you look at my work in Los Angeles, when I was walking on the streets and I was meeting with the crips and the bloods and the at risk young people and the mothers and the teachers and the police department
through stakeholder interviews, what was I hearing?
(28:20):
I was hearing that everybody is traumatized.
And so that is why I felt, let's bring them all together in one room.
I don't think in America, gang members, community members, LAPD police officers,
have come together for two months on a yoga breathing exercises,
(28:44):
meditation boot camp.
If it has happened before, hats off.
But I think what we started in Los Angeles, is to show everybody there, and to me, that we are all in this together.
(29:05):
If you think breathing,
let me check it out,
then I have a online workshop,
an online one hour program that has this, whatever I'm speaking,
breath and science and some guided breathing exercises.
A 10 minute meditation practice.
(29:26):
I made this for people who are highly traumatized,
but they are not going to raise their hand and say chief,
I'm having a mental breakdown.
They will not do it because they are not programmed to show their weakness.
So that is where I made this online workshop so that you can watch it on your own device,
(29:47):
breathe and meditate in your own good space.
Nobody needs to know.
Maybe meditation,
breathing exercises is not for you.
Maybe it's gardening,
maybe it's cooking,
knitting,
whatever the activity may be,
you choose what is good for you.
But if you think a little about,
(30:08):
oh Mandar,
what was this podcast about?
Like he seems like a crazy man ...
Shell, petroleum engineer, gang members.
If it has piqued your curiosity,
just try this workshop.
And that way you can prove to yourself whether it works for you or not, in the comfort of your own home.
And if it works for you,
then of course,
there's a whole millenniums of work out there about pranayama and
(30:31):
all these things that are out there. And then your journey will start.
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast,
please see our website at www,
www.weinterruptthispodcast.com.
(30:52):
There, we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
(31:14):
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. The segue music is Silky by Musicwithsoul.
An emotion already happened 20 years ago,
10 years ago,
but the mind has not learned how to disconnect, and it gets into the emotion.
We can break the cycle by learning how to breathe.
And I tell you it's a golden gift that you can give yourself.
Welcome to.
(00:22):
Welcome to We Interrupt this Podcast.
I am Laure Haak, your host.
Interruptions can be a positive force in transforming violence to peace.
We can use specific breathing patterns to pause,
bring our mind and bodies into the present moment, and "turn question marks into exclamation points", as Mandar Apte has demonstrated with his Cities for Peace project.
(00:46):
Join our conversation with Mandar,
a former petroleum engineer with Shell, whose career and purpose has evolved into social innovation.
We talk about how daily inner recalibration through breathing techniques can connect our emotions,
feelings, and actions, and help us manage conflict by peaceful means.
Mandar's current work on interrupting violence draws upon his time at Shell creating and managing their Game Changer program to foster clean energy start ups,
(01:12):
one of the early corporate social responsibility efforts.
A recognized practice leader,
Mandar brings nearly two decades of studying,
practicing, and teaching meditation to thousands of leaders across four continents,
including over 2000 colleagues,
while an engineer at Shell.
(01:43):
When we connected and you told me about the word interruptions,
my mind went back to my childhood. In those days in India,
we only had one television channel, and more often than not during the news hour,
like the 30 minute evening news,
a logo used to come, saying "Interruption".
(02:06):
That's what I remember.
These interruptions, you can say technical glitches or whatever,
divine glitches,
but, if we are not going into life with an agenda,
then those interruptions can reveal many things about yourself, about the situation that might unfold.
(02:28):
And I think these interruptions are good to have.
But really, usually our mind goes, oh shit.
If we can flip that and say,
oh wow!
(02:49):
It's just turning a question mark into an exclamation mark.
My guru taught me this when I met him first,
that enlightenment is the ability to turn every question mark into an exclamation mark.
And so interruptions can be a source of enlightenment, if you think about it.
When we are going through the life stuff, to realize this at that time, is the art of living.
(03:29):
You can go through life and then look back and say,
oh wow,
actually,
this tragedy that happened in my life is a good thing because I learned so much from it.
But while going through that interruption --
and that is the skill set we have to build,
that is the muscle we have to build,
the muscle-building of how to deal with interruptions.
That is the real skill.
(03:50):
That is actually the real skill is what to do when there is an interruption in your life.
What to do when your plan get goes on a different track than you were expecting,
(04:13):
Mandar, I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about how you got to this point in your life.
I grew up in India.
I grew up reading the Hardy Boys.
I grew up dreaming about solving mysteries.
I was good at studies,
good at academics.
I got a scholarship to do a graduate degree.
I landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(04:35):
All my imaginations about America were interrupted because what you see on CNN and Baywatch and all these shows that we have seen while we are growing up, is not Tulsa ,Oklahoma.
That's where you realize that all the mental models that people have about America,
(04:56):
they're not true! And the reverse was also true.
All the mental models that my friends from Tulsa, Oklahoma had about India --
some people really asked me,
did you grow up with elephants and snakes?
So I was in Oklahoma,
my research was sponsored by 35 oil companies, and so I had multiple job offers.
(05:16):
I chose the Shell offer because I had been to Amsterdam during Christmas holidays.
So I had seen all the canals and I felt,
oh,
wow.
I would love to be in Europe sometimes.
So I chose the Shell offer and moved to Houston, Texas.
I developed a lot of stress due to the travel in my job.
My doctor said, you need to start cholesterol pills.
(05:38):
And at that young age,
I felt like .. cholesterol pills ... side effects.
So somebody recommended me to do a meditation program.
And again,
that's where again,
my life was disrupted,
interrupted, because I was taught by two white Americans in Houston, Texas, to
live in the present moment and, you know,
yoga and meditation, and pranayama.
(06:00):
And I'm like,
wow!
Looking at their dedication,
I was inspired.
And of course,
my health improved after a few months of practice.
And I really liked Daniel and Susan.
They are my very good friends, and I became a teacher.
I became a teacher in one year and I brought this at Shell in 2004.
(06:21):
Long time before mindfulness ever entered corporate America.
So some of my colleagues at work,
they had kids on the autism spectrum.
Some of them were going through a divorce.
Because I was a meditation teacher, they shared all this with me.
And that's when I realized that,
oh my God,
just having a title like Vice President doesn't mean anything.
(06:43):
So that's where my reason was a very emotional reason.
I spend 8 to 9 hours at work.
I have to create something that people will come to me for this emotional release.
That was a very interesting journey, Laure.
Shell at that time had gone through what is called a reserves crisis,
(07:04):
ethics crisis.
So the top of the house had wrongly reported the reserves to Wall Street and they were fired.
It was very embarrassing to tell where you work for during those times.
Me and my friends in Holland and Singapore Shell,
we felt like we had nothing to do with it.
We felt that a little more self-awareness about what you do,
(07:28):
why you do, will help rejuvenate the enthusiasm of the workplace.
I received very bad year end reviews.
I remember one of the site managers,
he called me in his office and he said, meditation after six pm, outside my complex.
(07:50):
Now, mindfulness at the workplace,
all these things now are offered. At that time,
like 17 years ago,
I'm talking about, it requires a certain grit. And I felt I can leave Shell,
but what's the point of changing the boat unless you know how to row the boat?
So I felt like there's no point leaving the company.
(08:11):
Let's just say if I can make a change in Shell,
one degree change,
it's a massive super tanker.
And so luckily I got a job at Shell where then my life skills or teaching life skills was then valued.
(08:31):
The job title was Game Changer.
It sounded like me.
And my supervisor --the next supervisor,
the manager of the program asked me why I am teaching American soldiers meditation practice.
And I said,
Russ,
I get my mojo back by helping someone.
And you know,
this was 2009,
2010.
So this was at the height of the PTSD crisis.
(08:54):
I went to the Veterans hospital,
I went and put on meditation awareness camps.
And I used to teach returning soldiers from the American Army,
the Navy at the American Legion.
And so I told my boss that,
you know,
just a few days ago,
the wife of a veteran cried on my shoulder.
And she has said, Mandar!
Where were you so many years?
(09:15):
My husband slept like a baby yesterday.
Why will I not go and share this knowledge that I know can help.
Listening to this, my
manager,
I call him my friend,
my mentor,
my advisor.
He said,
innovation is also about mindset.
And I said,
yes,
of course,
it must be.
And so he said,
why don't you teach at Shell?
(09:36):
And I said, what?
You want me to bring my passion at work?
And he said,
yes.
Your chocolate is meditation practice.
The wrapper on the chocolate is innovation,
entrepreneurship,
creativity.
My boss just took it to the next level. Instead of waiting for people to come,
he said,
why don't you teach at work?
(09:58):
And so that chocolate of inner healing that was helping me,
I just got permission from the top of my chain to create a wrapper on that chocolate.
So that became one of the things I do in my work at Shell. Travel the world and teach meditation workshops.
(10:21):
I taught 2000,
not one, 200,
but 2000 people at Shell Oil worldwide.
That was quite an experience. Because, many people come to work,
but if they are not encouraged to bring their passion at work,
if they try something new and it fails -- because innovation is not taught,
(10:41):
they get slapped on the wrist,
right?
You made a mistake.
Or usually we are programmed to say, I'm not valued here.
I'm not going to do anything innovative next year.
So when people did our workshop,
there were many who were very emotional because when we spend 8 to 9 hours at the workplace,
if you're not recognized for your whole self,
(11:02):
then you will keep your passion away.
Whatever that passion may be.
I left Shell in 2016,
after 17 years,
This was 2016,
one of my friends at a Texas gas station was "interrupted". He was told to fill enough gas and drive to the border.
(11:28):
So that day,
I felt like,
oh my God,
this is no longer just CNN,
no longer TV news.
It's come near my life.
It's my,
one of my best friends.
So that event got me to go to Barnes and Noble and pick up the autobiography of Doctor King.
And in there,
I am shocked,
pleasantly shocked that this man had gone to India.
(11:51):
I didn't know this.
He had gone for five weeks.
This was 1959.
I studied the trip and then I put together this story and people came on this India trip with me. I had the honor of hosting victims,
survivors of different types of violence.
And I spent 10 days with them in India.
(12:13):
So that was again,
something very magical.
My life was interrupted.
I came back to work and my boss,
when he heard,
he said,
I feel like you need to leave and get out there.
(12:35):
That's where my life got the impetus, that everybody's mission is peace.
Whatever they do,
if they analyze it,
they are doing it
so they feel peaceful.
Peace building needs to be brought into every community,
perhaps every home.
And if we don't,
I think the manifestation of that lack of peace at home results in violence in schools,
(12:55):
results in violence in the street.
We cannot say violent neighborhoods and I don't have a role to play with it.
You do!
Of course we do!
Everybody does. When any act of violence happens,
whether it's domestic abuse or suicide or
these mass shootings,
nobody wants it in their life,
right?
We don't get up in the morning and say, today,
(13:16):
I want to see violence in my neighborhood.
We are all wanting peace.
And so when violence happens,
of course,
we cry,
we may go hug somebody,
we may put flowers,
candle marches, and the worst thing is we are desensitized.
So we see so much of it that we say, oh my God,
(13:39):
flip the channel.
So that is the apathy.
That is what I feel I wanted to address.
And so I went looking for victims of violence.
People who have been survivors,
they have gone through violence.
But we did nothing as a society -- I did nothing, forget society.
I didn't do anything.
That's the target population that I look for even now, because tomorrow it could be me.
(14:05):
Could be me tomorrow.
Hundreds of people that I know of such backgrounds, who lost mothers, who lost their children,
gang members who inflicted violence,
police officers.
It's very emotional for me.
They need social,
emotional a helping hand.
(14:32):
When I moved to Los Angeles,
there was a police related murder.
And the next day, I had shown up in their church and I had shown my documentary and I was talking about meditation.
So the pastor of the church,
he said,
what is this meditation?
Is it a religion?
Like what are,
what are you talking about?
OK. I said,
so make a fist with both hands, and now you close your eyes and just follow what I'm saying.
(14:55):
OK.
Keep your eyes closed.
Hold the fist so tight that not even a mosquito can get into your fist.
Yeah.
And the answer to is your fist tight enough? is if you cringe in your teeth and if you shout like,
aaaaah,
that's how much I want you to crunch it!
Ok?
Keep your eyes closed.
(15:15):
And now slowly open your fist,
very slowly open your fist,
and when your fist is fully open,
take a breath,
release your breath and you gently open your eyes.
How was it for you?
The pastor said this:
he said, that was good!
(15:36):
I feel good!
I said,
sir,
do you have worries in your life?
Yes.
Did you have worries now?
No.
I said sir,
because your mind was where your body is.
You were in the present moment.
And that is meditation practice, is to bring your mind in the present moment and, skillfully if you do it,
(16:00):
your worries go away.
It's not like worries are not there, but they don't come into your mind.
They don't bother you.
So you have created an interruption in the thought stream, because usually your thought stream is about your problems,
either your problems or somebody else's problems or the community problems.
So creating a pause like we just did now for just one minute,
(16:23):
if you can learn to live like this for this moment,
next moment, next moment,
that's the art of living.
So what is the science?
The science is, any event that we have in life,
whether it's a positive event, a negative event,
(16:44):
will create an emotion. And that is where we usually are stuck.
Every emotion has a corresponding breathing pattern.
What is the science?
Again,
events produce an emotion.
Usually we get stuck on the emotion,
but every emotion has a breathing pattern.
(17:04):
And so learning how to use the breaths,
you can learn how to manage your emotion.
So what I tell my students is that,
you know,
every day we brush our teeth.
We do this, and we don't enjoy it.
Nobody enjoys brushing their teeth,
just a mechanical activity we do for dental hygiene.
What do you do for mental hygiene every day?
(17:27):
That's where the breathing exercises can help because for breathing exercises,
you don't need a yoga mat.
You can do anywhere any time,
any place, and uplift your own inner well-being.
You're breathing anyway,
learn how to use the breath to energize your spirit.
Imagine if you don't bathe for a week,
(17:48):
how would you feel?
So that's the life we live, because mental wash we have never thought about.
And how do you feel when you are near somebody who's angry?
I don't want to be near you.
Today, I wouldn't work,
work with you if you are angry all the time.
So not only are you damaging your own health, well being,
(18:11):
but all our social relationships are also disrupted.
Every individual has a huge power.
For example,
if you're feeling low and somebody comes to visit you, and
it's that juicy friend that has this vibrancy and you meet that person and suddenly you feel good.
(18:35):
But feeling good doesn't mean the shit in your life is gone away.
That stuff still exists.
But something in you is like an energy transfer,
you feel good and then you can deal with whatever that stuff is.
If people start to meditate,
they will build such an aura around them, that wherever they go,
that person doesn't have to meditate.
Of course,
it's good if they meditate.
But what I'm saying is you can be a lighthouse,
a real lighthouse of love,
(18:57):
kindness,
compassion,
and you can uplift people wherever you go.
That that is the power of keeping your mind healthy.
Maybe it's a parallel with what you described when you were at Shell,
(19:19):
you started off working with the supervisor who didn't get you, and didn't get that emotion is part of the workplace. And that the workplace is also a place that we can work on and how we work together.
Not just, you have this task,
but how do we work as a team,
together?
And how can we bring emotion into that as well?
(19:40):
There was that transition you had as you changed supervisors where a new supervisor said,
hey, let's bring meditation into the workplace as a valued thing.
In your description of how you're working now with violence survivors,
you're also going through a similar transition where people aren't thinking about emotion as part of,
(20:03):
of what we've learned of emotional regulation, emotional recognition.
And that what you're doing in a way is similar to what you were doing at Shell, to try to bring some of this practice into the daily lives of everyone.
(20:24):
I started with emotional connect first, before putting a wrapper of the logical reason for doing it.
The first thought was ethics, or the lack of ethics.
So the first logic was,
hey,
mistakes happen when I'm not aware of mistakes.
I don't mindfully do mistakes unless I'm really an evil person.
So the first thought was meditation,
(20:46):
chocolate wrapper,
responsibility,
ethics,
good decisions.
The next thing was of course,
health and well being.
The next thing was also, you will be a better leader,
better decision making, clarity,
awareness,
judgment,
all this will be associated with it.
Innovation wrapper came because of my boss.
(21:07):
So Game Changer,
the mandate of Game Changer is to invest in the future of Shell.
And what I was discussing with him one day is that futures thinking is not left logical only. There is a lot of intuitive force that you need.
Like, I believe, I feel.
These things can be grown by improving your gut feeling.
(21:29):
So when you meditate, one of the chakras,
one of the healing centers is your gut.
And when you,
when you meditate,
when you breathe,
that gut becomes, you can say, clean off the dust and then it shines, some analogy like a diamond.
So, gut feeling or
intuitive feeling.
That is the next logic that I tried to latch on to.
(21:51):
And actually I also did one experiment at Shell.
The business reason I found was safety.
So if you remember 10 years ago BP had an incident, the Horizon Deepwater disaster.
I saw that and I felt,
oh,
wow,
it can happen anywhere.
I've been on drilling rigs,
it can happen.
The mistake can happen.
(22:11):
So I did a meditation program for the bubbas of New Orleans, in a refinery, in a Shell refinery.
I picked 20 of these refinery operators.
I explained to them what I'm going to do, and they participated in my meditation workshop and they loved it.
So the reason I selected the New Orleans refinery is they had no exposure to any of this yoga nonsense.
(22:36):
They knew nothing about it. And capturing those experiences, that how inner well being can lead to heightened consciousness,
heightened awareness, living in the present moment that their job is stressful. And one mistake,
one valve left, one valve right.
Whatever they do,
it could create a
(22:57):
million billion dollar of loss.
But again,
I still remember -- staying on this workshop --
I still remember this refinery operator.
He came the last day of the workshop, and he said,
you know, guys
I didn't cuss when somebody cut my lane today.
And that's it. He got it!
I said you got it!
He changed his behavior.
So this aspect of safety is called behavioral safety.
(23:19):
They know everything.
But in the heat of the moment,
what they should do is a behavioral skill. And you can build that muscle through a pause, an interruption in your mind.
Pause.
Quiet.
(23:53):
I really love this image you have of being a lighthouse. You can't have that light on all the time.
It takes a lot of energy.
But thinking about OK,
I can control myself.
I can do self care.
But that self care also means that for some periods of time,
I can be that beam of light in my community.
(24:15):
How do you think about this concept of responsibility,
both to one's self and to one's community?
My meditation teacher,
Indian humanitarian leader,
his name is Shri Shri Ravishankar.
He's 66 year old now.
He started teaching when he was 21.
(24:37):
He shared with me when I met him,
he said, responsibility is the ability to respond.
Got me to pause.
Wow.
I never thought about it. Because really it is! Otherwise you are losing it.
(24:57):
If you are reacting to situations,
you are losing it.
So that is where you are working on your ability to respond.
Just because today with the capacity you have, with the intellect you have, with the life experience you have, maybe you can respond to it in a certain manner.
But if you keep working on yourself,
(25:19):
the same situation,
you will respond a little differently 10 years from now.
So that means what? Your ability to respond is something you can also work on.
So it's a difference between responding and reacting and,
and how do you move from that reaction mode where you aren't necessarily able to manage emotions in,
(25:42):
in a productive way, to one where you're responding to a situation.
But then that gets back to,
how much time do we spend thinking about these things?
You know,
and so there's responding...
You cannot.
That's where it's not an intellectual thing after a certain point of time.
So it's like, a situation comes,
whatever, somebody blames you.
(26:03):
You are not pausing, and saying Mandar talked about responsibility, reaction.
What should I do?
What should I do?
That's that is the left brain.
So that's what happens when you learn how to breathe your emotions out.
So responsibility,
the ability to respond is
a mental game.
You can't read a book and say today I will be responsive.
(26:26):
I will not react.
Whenever this person comes, I feel my buttons are pushed.
You cannot learn this life skill by reading a book.
It has to come from within you.
You have to learn how to transform yourself.
So that's where the breath work, as you release your negative emotions that are stored in your nervous system. It's the negative emotion that is making you react.
(26:49):
So if you don't breathe out your negative emotions,
just like I said,
brush your teeth every day,
dental hygiene,
breathe your emotions out every day.
And at some point of time you will flip,
you will become free of that mental negative charge that's coming at you. And that negative charge can come from trauma of yesterday.
It could be trauma of two days ago.
(27:11):
It could be 20 years ago. Because your nervous system doesn't know how to release that trauma,
release that negative emotion,
right?
So that is why it's called post trauma stress.
The trauma already happened.
The mind thinks it's still there to analyze it.
The emotion already happened 20 years ago,
(27:31):
10 years ago,
two years ago,
but the mind has not learned how to disconnect, and it gets into the emotion and the body is confused.
The body is confused,
the body reacts,
the body feels anxiety.
So this cycle,
we can break it,
we can break the cycle by learning how to breathe.
And I tell you it's a golden gift that you can give yourself.
(27:59):
If you look at my work in Los Angeles, when I was walking on the streets and I was meeting with the crips and the bloods and the at risk young people and the mothers and the teachers and the police department
through stakeholder interviews, what was I hearing?
(28:20):
I was hearing that everybody is traumatized.
And so that is why I felt, let's bring them all together in one room.
I don't think in America, gang members, community members, LAPD police officers,
have come together for two months on a yoga breathing exercises,
(28:44):
meditation boot camp.
If it has happened before, hats off.
But I think what we started in Los Angeles, is to show everybody there, and to me, that we are all in this together.
(29:05):
If you think breathing,
let me check it out,
then I have a online workshop,
an online one hour program that has this, whatever I'm speaking,
breath and science and some guided breathing exercises.
A 10 minute meditation practice.
(29:26):
I made this for people who are highly traumatized,
but they are not going to raise their hand and say chief,
I'm having a mental breakdown.
They will not do it because they are not programmed to show their weakness.
So that is where I made this online workshop so that you can watch it on your own device,
(29:47):
breathe and meditate in your own good space.
Nobody needs to know.
Maybe meditation,
breathing exercises is not for you.
Maybe it's gardening,
maybe it's cooking,
knitting,
whatever the activity may be,
you choose what is good for you.
But if you think a little about,
(30:08):
oh Mandar,
what was this podcast about?
Like he seems like a crazy man ...
Shell, petroleum engineer, gang members.
If it has piqued your curiosity,
just try this workshop.
And that way you can prove to yourself whether it works for you or not, in the comfort of your own home.
And if it works for you,
then of course,
there's a whole millenniums of work out there about pranayama and
(30:31):
all these things that are out there. And then your journey will start.
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast,
please see our website at www,
www.weinterruptthispodcast.com.
(30:52):
There, we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
(31:14):
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. The segue music is Silky by Musicwithsoul.
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