September 27, 2025 • 51 mins
In this Self Care September: Exploration of Stillness episode of Beyond Chronic Burnout, host Carole Jean Whittington is joined by meditation teacher, author, and global wellness leader Kevin Ellerton.
Kevin shares his personal story of building a multi-million-dollar company on Wall Street by age 24—only to walk away from it all in search of something deeper. His journey led him to Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, years of global study, and ultimately founding Meditation Magazine and Meditation University, where over 200,000 people have learned meditation practices.
Together, Carole Jean and Kevin explore:
🌿 How meditation supports burnout recovery at the physiological, emotional, and cognitive levels
🌿 Why chasing outcomes in meditation prevents you from receiving its benefits
🌿 The paradox of presence: how to stop “trying” and start being
🌿 Personal stories of burnout recovery through stillness and conscious lifestyle choices
Kevin’s message is clear: meditation isn’t about perfection or performance—it’s a universal human practice, a way to root yourself in presence and reconnect with what matters most.
👉 Take the Spicy Pepper Burnout Quiz (free) and discover your burnout level—from Poblano Pepper Level 1 (a little heat) to Ghost Pepper Level 5 (you’re so hot, you’re not). Unlock your custom audio guide to begin your recovery journey with tools tailored to your burnout type. Take the quiz here → https://energize.whittingtonwellbeing.com/products/courses/view/1155744
Connect with Kevin Ellerton:
You can find many of Kevin’s guided meditations, interviews, and documentaries on his youtube channel, youtube.com/kevinellerton, you can find many of his articles on meditationmag.com, and you can find his meditation courses at meditationuniversity.us
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This September we're focusing onstillness and if you're ready to
take that journey deeper, I'd love for you to grab a copy of
my brand new book, Living Unmasked, An Autistic Woman's
Guide to get into your comfort zone.
You'll get both the e-book and audiobook together for just 999.
(00:21):
It's filled with gentle practices and insights to help
you step into a burnout free, joy filled life.
If you'd like to save $5, grab your special code when you
register for self-care September.
You can find it at whittingtonwellbeing.com.
Step out of the shadows, feel the power will rise.
(00:43):
Catch the spark inside you. Let your spirit fly.
Be on the chronic burner. Carol Jeans your guy.
Find your step being real a nicejoy all the time.
So wishful with bright and cold,leave the bird up far behind.
(01:06):
In this journey, hearts unfold. How is your sea can find?
Kevin, welcome to the show today.
I am super excited to be able tohave this conversation with you
(01:28):
today because you are my meditation teacher.
Thank you. Thank you, Carol.
Thank you for inviting me here onto this podcast to share about
burnout and meditation and to just have a great conversation
with you. That's what I'm excited about.
(01:49):
Me too, I, I always learn something new from you every
week in some way, be it through an instruction module, be it
through our our live sessions onSundays.
And I think what I find so beautiful about just being part
(02:12):
of Meditation University and, and being a student, 'cause I, I
am always the student in some way, is that it's not just
through a knowledge transfer. But what I love that you do in
Meditation University and in theSunday sangas is just modeling
(02:34):
the example, the experience of meditation.
How did how did that come about for you that that became part of
this the program in the way thatyou show up to share meditation?
It's a very profound question. I appreciate it.
Thank you. I believe personally that the
(02:58):
modeling of meditation is more important than the information
about it. It's a great question about
where that came from and where Istarted realizing that I'm, I'm
really not sure if I think back,maybe it was Eckhart Tolle.
Eckhart Tolle is such a great model of meditation, you know,
and it doesn't really matter what he's talking about.
(03:20):
It's always pulls you into the present moment because he's
always in it, I guess. You know, I, I, when I started
learning a long time ago about the concept of what a guru does,
guru is not translated as a teacher.
It's a translated what guru means, like a guide from
darkness to light. And that translation can mean a
(03:46):
lot of things. You can be a teacher who's a
guide, but generally my understanding of, of what it
means to be a guru. And I don't, I don't like to use
that word about myself or about anybody really.
You can use it in a very broad sense where everybody's a guru,
or you can use it in a very narrow sense where it makes it
like almost like a hierarchy of who's better spiritually, which
(04:08):
I really don't like when they when people do that.
But to be a, a good guide is to be a role model more than to be
a teacher in my, in my experience, in my view.
So it's so much easier to bring people into presence just by
being present yourself than trying to explain it to them.
(04:30):
And I think actually the reason for that is because explaining
things is on always, always is always going to be on the level
of the mind, but presence is going beyond the mind.
So logic and explanation and information will never do it.
It may be pointing the right direction, but it will never
(04:52):
actually get somebody into presence.
What gets somebody into presenceis something in the present
moment that pulls them in and things like sounds.
I don't know if you can hear those sirens outside here in, in
Miami. There's some police cars that
can pull you into the present moment by just a sound.
(05:14):
And also a person can pull you into the present moment by their
their own presence by being there and inviting you to join
them. So that's always been my my
mode. But thank you for asking me the
question to reflect on where that came from.
Yeah, I, I maybe I'm going to have to reflect on that more,
but for now I'd have to say probably Eckhart Tolle showed me
(05:34):
that. I love how this, this awareness
just now came together because in my, my journey, in my
discovery, in my practice of meditation, for me, it was, I
(05:57):
have always been so in my mind and, and very dismissive and
disconnected from my body for solong that as you were speaking
and talking about the modelling of meditation being so much more
important. And you, you talk about this in
the course in Meditation University.
(06:19):
And I, I really resonated with it when you said it.
And as you said it here today, it made it even bigger because
being in the present moment is so much.
For me, it has been this discovery of acknowledging my
physical body, my sensory system, the experience of this
(06:43):
moment outside of my thinking brain.
Yeah. And within the thinking brain
too, that's something that took me a long time to realize, is
that the thinking brain is not something that is only a
distraction from the present moment, but it is also here in
(07:04):
the present moment. And if we think of it as it's my
body versus my mind or presence versus thinking, then we have
this sort of split in our experience.
Or it's like sometimes we're thinking and sometimes we're
present and there's like a conflict there.
And that can create friction andand some suffering too.
(07:27):
But if you don't make that splitand you realize that the mind is
here in the present moment as well.
The thoughts might be about the past and the future, but the
mind is here and the thinking ishere and now.
Then it's all together. The present moment and even
thinking can be in the present moment.
(07:48):
You can even think in the present moment.
That's, that's something that also took me a while to to
realize, but it's, it's a subtlething, but it's very important.
It really is and it's it is thisawareness of all the facets and
the components of meditation andthe being in the present moment.
(08:17):
Kevin did to kind of kick us off.
So if someone is joining us and and meditation has always been
that sort of, I don't know aboutthat or I'm not really sure
about it. I've never had anybody talk or
share anything around meditationand they're really curious.
How do you just from a very basic standpoint, what is
meditation? Yeah, it's a good question.
(08:39):
IA lot of people maybe feel resistant toward meditation
because it's associated with certain cultures, like Eastern
cultures, Indian cultures, you know, Chinese and Japanese
cultures, and people who are part of other cultures can feel
like that's a foreign thing. But really, I don't think of
(09:01):
meditation in that way at all. When we use the word meditation,
it's an English word. It's, you know, Marcus Aurelius
wrote a book called Meditations back in ancient Greece.
And meditation is more of a human thing than it is any
particular cultures thing. Just like thinking, right?
(09:25):
Thinking doesn't come from one particular culture.
Thinking is something that we all do.
Meditation is also something that doesn't come from one
particular culture culture because it is something that we
all do. It's something we do naturally
and we just don't always know exactly how to access it.
So if you didn't have a word forthinking, for example, and you
(09:46):
did have thoughts, thoughts werehappening.
There's thinking going on. But if you didn't have a word
thinking to describe it, you might just not be able to.
You might not be able to refine your thinking.
You might not be able to work with it, You might not be able
to improve the ways in which youthink.
In the same way meditation you, everyone does it naturally and
(10:08):
sometimes, but if you don't havea word for it and understanding
of what it is and what it does, then it's very hard to work with
it because it's just something that randomly happens.
You don't even know how to describe it.
And I've talked so many people that have had spontaneous
meditative experiences. Most, you know, it's not just
like very special people that have that.
(10:29):
It's like, I think everyone has that to some extent in certain
circumstances, like life or death scenarios where, you know,
you're worried you're going to, you're about to crash or you're
going to skid on the on the roador you're climbing up something
very high or, you know, something like that.
Or, or in just moments where everything, there's only one
thing that matters and it's in the present moment, like your,
(10:52):
your child is sick or you're, you're falling in love with
someone or something like that. We're we're everything that
matters is right here and right now.
And you just come into the present moment.
Then you have this beautiful experience.
I mean, if you're about to crash, it's might be scary also,
but there's at the same time this sense of everything is
(11:17):
here. I'm I'm fully here.
I'm fully in this moment. Rather than being distracted by
things that you're worried aboutme.
You might find that the things that you were worried about fall
away. You might then find that the
things that you were feeling embarrassed about, that you were
thinking about something that happened yesterday, just kind of
becomes irrelevant. And the only thing that really
(11:39):
matters is, is being alive in this moment.
And so we all have these experiences and we just don't
think of them as we, we don't have a word to describe them.
But now we're starting to develop, to develop words to
describe them in the Western world, you know, presence or
present moment awareness, being in the here and now, you know,
(12:03):
and sometimes you would just call it like getting out of your
head being, you know. But these words are also kind of
vague. You know, if you hear them, it
doesn't really tell you how to do it.
It doesn't tell you how to access it intentionally.
It just tells you, Oh, yeah, sometimes you experience it like
(12:25):
that. But in the Eastern world, for
thousands of years, they've, youknow, we, they actually have had
civilizations for way longer than we have over here.
They, the Indian civilization isone of the oldest in the world.
The Chinese civilization is one of the oldest in the world.
Thousands and thousands of yearspeople have been hanging out
together and doing civilization and farming and, you know,
(12:49):
building stuff and talking together and developing
language. And over time, over thousands of
years, people start to realize like, oh, you know, that state
of being like really present is actually pretty awesome.
Like we should, we should explore that more.
And then they develop techniquesto become more present.
And they're not really that complicated.
(13:10):
They're, they're more like, they're pretty, pretty simple
actually. Just, you know, for example,
closing your eyes and paying attention to your breath or
being aware of your body sensations or listening to the
sounds around you. All of these things help you
(13:32):
come into the present moment. And I, to me, when I discovered
that there was AII didn't, even when I was in college, I was, I
had so much anxiety and depression and I was going
through the all this suffering and I didn't realize that there
was a way out of it. I thought I had to think my way
(13:54):
out of it, which is actually theopposite of what I needed to do
'cause the thinking was what wascausing the anxiety and the
depression, the overthinking, the constant spinning mind and
the analysis. But when I started to find out
that there were ways to come into the present moment that
we're beyond thinking that we're, you know, more about the
(14:14):
body like you were saying, Carol, I and just the more I
started to learn about it and tounderstand it, I suddenly just
came out of that world of pain and suffering and anxiety and
depression and all that at the even the ADHD that I've had for
my whole life. I mean, I was able to, to handle
(14:35):
that a lot better. The you call, you call it
neurodivergent or, you know, Asperger's or autism or whatever
it is that I struggled with my whole life, didn't even realize
that I was struggling with that.And then when I started coming
into the present moment, like all that started to at least
the, the, the parts of that thatwere problematic started to
(14:57):
dissolve. And it's just amazing.
And it's, you know, when people are like worried that it's not
for them or it's, you know, something that's like far in or
weird or exotic or something, whatever it is, it's like,
actually, it's just, you know, being, being, being skilled at,
at being happy and being skilledat being in the present moment
(15:21):
and enjoying your life. It's a skill like, you know,
like any other skill, like playing piano or riding a
bicycle. So I, I get that some people,
you know, have conceptions of meditation as if it's something
that it's not. But I think at the, at the core,
at the foundation, I think it's,it's really something that
(15:41):
everyone can benefit from. Though it would be sort of just
to encapsulate what you just shared.
A meditative state is is just from what I hear you saying here
is just to be present in the moment.
(16:02):
That's a. That's a good encapsulation.
I think that when we use few words, it can be helpful to, to
try to get something into a box and, you know, make it something
that's easy to digest and understand.
But I think that sometimes when people only hear the few words,
(16:24):
they're, they don't really know how to implement that.
So that's why I try to to elaborate, you know?
No, no, no, I love both. That's why I think we have to
give both 'cause I, I like, here's the Cliff notes and
here's, here's the deep dive. Here's the encyclic me.
And I love that because I, because it, there isn't also.
And I, I think this is somethingthat has just been such a joy
(16:51):
for me in my practice of meditation in, in to strengthen
my awareness of the present moment is that there is no end
goal here. It's not like here's the
meditative state. This is the box you check and
(17:13):
how you experience and how you get there.
Because that is not what this isit.
It is this practice, this ongoing evolution.
Because what I've discovered is that in the practice of
meditation, in the compassionatecuriosity of different ways of
(17:37):
approaching. And that's what I love about how
you teach meditation, is you really take all of these
different approaches. You know, we can, you know, from
maybe a Western approach, say, OK, so if we were going to give
you some idea of, of how to maybe start putting meditation
together with some, some words that might feel a little more
(18:01):
concrete. We can say if you've experienced
a flow state, if you have engaged your default mode
network and, and had mind wandering or daydreaming, you
know, those types of things. But essentially it is this
experience, this allowance to bethrough a variety of ways of
(18:26):
engaging the brain, the body, the electrical energy.
You know, we can talk about thismetaphysically, We can talk
about this scientifically. There is an electrical energy to
our being. It all comes together in this.
(18:46):
And but the big question is, what's the benefit of it?
Well, that's a very good question.
And it's important for people tounderstand what the benefits are
in order to, you know, be motivated to want to do
meditation, to practice it, to take the time to sit down
because it's actually not easy to do.
It's not that it's complicated, it's actually very simple, but
(19:09):
it's, it's, it's hard to get past our minds busyness that the
mind is constantly wanting to do, do, do, do, do, do things.
And the meditation is the stopping of that stopping doing.
So it's, it's very hard to convince ourselves to actually
(19:31):
sit down and do nothing for sometime because the brain thinks,
no, no, I have so many things I have to do.
I'm not going to do nothing. That's crazy.
So I understanding the benefits is important and I will get into
the benefits in a moment, but but I, I think it's also
important to preface this with that if you're aiming for the
(19:55):
benefits, they will elude you. And it's so true that if you're,
if there's the big disclaimer, it's a paradox.
It's a paradox if you if you practice meditation just with
the intention of practicing meditation.
(20:15):
Then the benefits will be there because that meditation
naturally leads to these benefits.
But if you're practicing meditation with the idea that
you're going to get some benefits, then you're going to
be chasing something in the future.
When you're trying to meditate, you're chasing some state or
(20:37):
some experience, and that is theopposite of what meditation
practice is. So meditation practice,
paradoxically, is to just let goof any chasing.
It's to let go of any need for anything else that's not here
already in this moment. And so if you say, OK, the
(20:59):
benefits of meditation are you increase your happiness, you
know, less anxiety, less depression, more creativity,
more, you know, higher clarity and higher quality ideas, less
burnout, all these things that are benefits of meditation.
And I could go on and on and on.I actually have a new book
(21:21):
that's that's out right now and that's this is, and we're still
working on just like an image quality issue on the cover.
But it did come out a little while ago.
I hit #1 on mysticism on Amazon and #2 in the meditations
category. And we're going to fix the cover
issue and then re release it. But I did go through a ton of
(21:43):
the benefits in this book. If I open it up and try to find
it. Benefits of meditation.
Here we go. I even have, you know, it's it's
all based in the in the science.I have like dozens of footnotes
in there about all these different benefits.
Increased happiness, focus, empathy, compassion, kindness,
calm and relaxation, alertness, awakened consciousness.
(22:06):
Well, that's that one's a littlebit more subjective.
Perceptual accuracy, life satisfaction, self esteem,
cooperation, productivity. And then at the same time
reducing the sort of inverses ofthose things.
Depression, ADHD, antisocial behavior, anxiety, stress,
(22:26):
susceptibility to illusion, suicidal ideation and self
hatred all and anger and laziness.
All of those things have been shown scientifically to be
reduced by meditation. So there are all these benefits.
And where do all these benefits come from?
All of these benefits come from stopping chasing things like
(22:51):
we're stopping chasing things inthe future that are, you know,
these, these desired states, allof these benefits are desired
states that we may chase. And the iconic thing is that to,
to attain them, we have to stop chasing them.
Happiness is the best example ofthat.
Because if you want to be happy,then the wish, the want to be
(23:15):
happy is like, I want to be happy.
And then but you, you keep wanting to be more happy.
So there's never, you're never fulfilling the, the want.
The want is a form of like desire.
That's, that's not quenched. It's, it's burning and it burns
inside of you and then it's there.
It can never be quenched. But by letting go of that desire
(23:36):
for happiness, suddenly you're content.
And it's like because you're, you've stopped desiring this
thing, Suddenly you actually have it because the thing that
you wanted was actually there already beneath the desire for
it. And so just by getting rid of
that desire, you actually suddenly have the thing that you
(23:59):
wanted. It's it's, it's it's, you know,
it sounds so frustrating and paradoxical.
And it actually is very frustrating for people at the
beginning of the meditation journey.
Extremely frustrating. You say, OK, I'm gonna stop
desiring happiness, then I'll behappy.
Like, there's that paradox. Yeah, there's that paradox
(24:20):
because you're, you're, you're doing it, but not for the real,
not for you're doing it because you're trying to fake yourself
out almost. It took, there was a moment that
that really broke me through that.
And it was in the this monasteryin Thailand called Wattsuan MOC.
And I was doing a 10 day silent meditation.
(24:40):
And the first seven days or the first day was OK.
I was like, OK, cool, I'm doing cool meditation thing in a
monastery. This is awesome.
And then the the second day I was like, wait, wait, I'm still
anxious. What's going on over here?
And then the third day was like,wait, this is like anxiety is
actually deepening what's going on?
I'm like having all these thoughts like I'm worried about
all these things. And the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th days
(25:02):
were like that deepening anxietyspinning mind like what's going
on with this? I'm in a meditation thing.
Why am I going crazy? And like, why is this getting
even worse than before? And it was because, oh, I didn't
realize it at the time, but it was because I was seeking this
state of peace and calm and happiness.
And therefore the anxiety was like, hey, that's not supposed
(25:26):
to be there. And then when I would have
anxiety, I would have anxiety about having anxiety.
And then I would have anxiety about having anxiety about
having anxiety. And it would just became this
like downward spiral echo chamber.
And it got so bad by the 7th day, I literally could not fight
it anymore. Like I was, it was like breaking
(25:46):
my like I, I just couldn't do it.
It was like, if you have too much weight on your shoulders
and you just collapse, like it wasn't an intentional like, oh,
I'm just going to give up and like then I will be happy.
Like it wasn't like that. It was just like I couldn't
fight it anymore. I was just like, OK, like OK,
I'm, I guess I'm just going to have anxiety forever.
It's fine. Like whatever.
(26:06):
Like, I, this is just my life now.
And suddenly, suddenly, like in the acceptance of the anxiety,
in the acceptance of the fact that my mind was still spinning,
that there was no peace and silence inside my mind, in the
acceptance of all of that and just being like giving up and
(26:27):
surrendering, you know, giving up and surrendering.
We use these as like, oh, you should do that.
You should give up. You should surrender.
Oh, cool, I have some confetti now.
You should give up and surrender.
And like these are things that we tell people that they should
do as like techniques as if it'sa technique, but it's not really
a technique 'cause if you give up and surrender in order to try
to, you know, make something happen, you're not really giving
(26:49):
up and surrendering. You're still trying to do it.
You're still trying to control it.
But if you get to the point where it's it's like you
realize, you just realize that you can't stop the anxiety, you
can't stop the thoughts, you can't stop all of the stuff
that's going on inside your mindand your emotions.
You just realize that and you just stop fighting it.
Then suddenly everything is fine.
(27:13):
It's like, OK, yeah, I have anxiety.
That's fine. I have some thoughts.
That's fine. And then once, once, then that
changes the feedback loop, that changes it from a downward
spiral to just some, maybe some mist that's still swirling from
before. And then it just Peters out.
It just dissipates because that swirling mist was swirling
(27:34):
because you were, you were, you were continuing to swirl it
because you were, you were beinganxious about the anxiety.
So you were just continuing that, that spiral.
But once you just give up, then suddenly everything is good.
And then I was walking away. I was walking around in this
monastery as if I was on clouds.I felt, I literally felt like I
(27:57):
was walking on clouds for like 3days.
The last three days of the, the 10 days and, and even after that
and it, it was really weird because it was barefoot and
there was gravel and it had beenhurting me before and like, it
just, it stopped. It wasn't hurting me anymore.
It was very strange. It was like I never experienced
anything like that. And it, there was like a kind of
bliss and ecstasy. And I had never experienced that
(28:21):
level of bliss and ecstasy before.
And I had never like experiencedlike pure happiness, like the
pure happiness of being alive. And like, I started like, I, I
guess I'd never done this before, but I had that there
were, you know, some, some columns of, of ants that would
walk across the grounds. And I would sit down next to the
columns of ants and just watch them and like look closely at
(28:43):
them and see each one and see what they were doing and what
they were carrying and being like so intrigued at the lives
of each of these little beings that that were all conscious.
It was and just like walking around floating, basically
floating around the monastery and seeing all the people and
just being so blissed out at thefact that these people are all
(29:05):
alive and conscious that they'reall like experiencing this crazy
amazing thing called life. Just the the the love and
compassion that came from that it, it just all poured out.
And it was just all from not focusing on the benefits and
just, you know, giving up on theidea that I was going to get
(29:26):
something suddenly. Yeah, it's just it all came
through. But I think we have to start
sometimes with the benefits in order to because otherwise
people are like, why should I dothat?
You know what I mean? So it's it's this sort of ironic
and paradoxical thing that you you have to kind of start with
the benefits and then then you realize that that was actually
(29:46):
holding you back. But if you don't start with
that, then you don't end up starting in the first place.
It's so true. I, I don't know that I've had a
conversation with anyone who hasstepped into an, an adopted
incorporated a meditation practice and in a state of being
(30:08):
a meditator in their life who hasn't come from a place of
suffering, A struggle. I think that is the, the
contrast that gives us the clarity or at least motivates us
to want to, you know, we're so uncomfortable that we are
motivated to try and seek comfort.
(30:31):
And in that way that you described it, it's in that
surrender and that acceptance ofthe present moment and things as
they are without that illusion that we always as humans try to
ascribe and and give a story to everything, to give it this
(30:51):
meaning, 'cause our minds are these meaning connectors.
But is this beautiful, powerful place where it It seems so
counterintuitive that to surrender is to actually step
into an embrace your personal power.
Yeah, that's so true. And I, I'm curious for you, my
(31:19):
journey has been one where it's been in these stages, it's been
in these, these layers and sort of these high growth points and
sort of a plateau and then, you know, maybe a dip a little bit.
And then there's another one of,of what the meditation
experience is. And sometimes it even started
early in my journey where I didn't even realize that was
(31:39):
what was happening. You know, I, my ADHD autistic
brain, I have, I've always been an athlete, but I've never been
a runner. And at 42, something in me just
said you need to run. Your physical body needs to move
in this way, whether it is feelsnatural to you or not at the
(32:01):
moment. This is something that my
something in my being said. I needed to try it.
I needed to to learn how to do it for me.
Now this is the ugliest, weirdest.
My kids tease me. They say I run like AT Rex,
which is all the things and I didn't care.
I was I didn't care. I was so out of shape.
(32:21):
I was really, I was in the worstburnout in my life.
I had been incapacitated and bedridden.
So I really I had no stamina, but I would.
There was something in me that Iwas determined I was going to do
this. And in the process I started to
experience this state of being present, of recognizing my body
(32:46):
of of recognizing my mind and just being and surrendering to
kind of like when you were describing.
This is what brought this thought up when you were
describing sort of feeling like you were walking on clouds and
the gravel no longer was hurtingyour feet.
It was in those moments when I really got to that place where I
started to run and my feet had hurt and everything in my body
(33:08):
hurt. And then all of a sudden it was
still hurting, but it wasn't painful.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was this bliss that was
starting to occur and there was this place of surrender to the
moment in my body and my my breath and my just the rhythm of
(33:32):
my feet on the pavement. And it was in that that I
started to get a glimpse, not knowing the word for it, of
being meditative. Yeah, yeah.
That's, that's what I'm talking about.
The people have spontaneous meditative experiences all the
(33:52):
time, and we all have them and we just don't.
We don't realize that. We don't realize until we start.
If we start understanding how itworks, then we can access it
more. And which is great because we
love those states that they're really very happy and pleasant
and enjoyable. I mean, pleasant maybe not the
right word, but they're deeply conducive to happiness.
(34:15):
Let's just say that and yeah, I'm glad that you were able to
enjoy that and experience that through the running.
I I really, really want to see videos of the T Rex running.
That sounds really funny. I will.
I will go totally, totally raw, totally real and I will.
I will post one for. You nice, Nice.
Tag me. So I see.
(34:35):
It sounds awesome. Yeah.
I just have to let you know thatin about 7 minutes, my wife and
daughter are going to probably barge in here.
So if, if let's if you want to talk about burnout, we should
get into that now. Absolutely.
So Kevin, I know you've had yourown experience of of burnout.
(34:56):
Can you describe or share what did burnout feel like for you?
Like what was that experience and how did meditation come into
being a part of the path out of burnout for you?
Yeah, that's, that's a great question.
I, I honestly think I've experienced burnout many times,
(35:18):
much less so lately. But you know, meditation
practice helps. And also my choice to do things
that I'm interested in rather than doing things that I think I
have to do because I'm supposed to has very much reduced the
amount of burnout. But I've experienced burnout
(35:40):
many times in different in microand macro scales.
And actually, you know, I'm not an expert on burnout, so maybe I
may miss define it in certain ways.
But like to me, even that feeling of like, oh, I've been
working for 10 hours and I haven't had a break.
And at the end of the day, my brain doesn't want to keep
(36:02):
going. Like, to me, that feels like a
micro version of burnout. And then on a macro scale, that
has happened to me in running a company for three years in, in
Wall Street and feeling like, you know, I'm done with this,
like I'm going to go to Thailand.
(36:22):
Like that's more of a macro version of burnout.
Would you, would you consider both of those types of things
like types of burnout 'cause I tell me you're the expert in
burnout. You're muted, I think.
Those are warning signs of burnout.
(36:44):
So those are those are the presentations in the symptoms.
So yes, absolutely. You know, I have 20 warning
signs that are the most common that show up.
And all of the warning signs, there are physiological signs,
you know, there are sensory signs and then there are mental
and emotional signs that all come together.
(37:05):
These are, these are the things that tell us that we are not our
nourishment keys are not being fueled in a way that isn't
aligned with us to our, our, ourwell-being.
And the degree to which you experience those on the spicy
pepper level that I have developed go from a poblano
pepper level 1 where you have just a little bit of heat all
(37:28):
the way up to that ghost pepper level 5 where you're so hot,
you're not and, and your physical body starts to shut
down. So absolutely, when you were
talking about having different degrees, varying degrees, if
we're not, you're absolutely right.
That is probably what has happened.
So, so I, I without going into too much detail about each one,
I guess I mean, I could think back all the way to childhood
(37:51):
and think of different burnout times.
But I would say the major, the major incidences were probably
when I was, yeah, I used to, I was in Jerusalem studying to be
a rabbi. It's a long story.
I, I used to be a religious Jewish individual and I went, I
(38:12):
went to Jerusalem to become a rabbi essentially.
I eventually, I like, ended up actually losing my faith.
But you know, I think that the loss of faith was just the thing
that allowed me to go into the burnout because I think I've
been experiencing it before thatas well.
(38:33):
I, you know, I've been spending sometimes like 16 hours a day
studying the, these ancient law books in Aramaic, which is like
an ancient language that nobody uses anymore with no vowels.
They have to infer the vowels. It, it was a lot, not just
reading it, but very, very logicoriented stuff that was very
(38:53):
like breaking your brain type ofstuff, kind of like coding or
something. If it's the closest thing I can
think of or studying law books. And I found myself like waking
up later and later in the day every day.
And the people that were in my dorm were always like, Hey, get
out of bed, get out of bed. We're supposed to be at the, at
(39:14):
the, the bait Med rush now. We're supposed to be at the, the
study hall now, like get out of bed.
And I, I was like, no, So I think I was already getting that
burnout. And then when I started digging
into the foundations of the religion and stopped, stopped
believing in it, then I was justlike, OK, I'm done.
(39:35):
And I just like, I, I, that's, that's when I really went into
that dark depression and nihilism.
And I, I spent probably a coupleof years and not in college and
in University of New York. And so I, I guess that could
have been likely a, a, a sort ofa, a burnout type incident.
(39:56):
And that lasted for a couple of years.
I, I slept, I, I would go to sleep at like 3:00 or 4:00 in
the morning and wake up at like.1:00 PM or noon or 1:00 PM or
two PMI got into drugs like cannabis and psychedelics and
things like that. Thankfully not the harder drugs
(40:17):
because that would probably beenreally bad for me.
But the, you know, those, even those explorations in the
psychedelics, I, you know, I, I learned a lot about psychology
through them, But I also, I alsoput me down in like a darker
hole, in like a spiral. And that was when I first
learned meditation. That was, I was in that dark
(40:38):
drug addled place after like a couple of years of a year or two
of burnout when a friend of mineintroduced me to meditation,
showed me how to meditate. And that was really the thing
that lifted it. It was the thing that lift me.
I, I call it depression, but youknow, burnout depression,
(40:59):
they're, they probably have a lot of overlap.
At that point I started realizing like, OK, actually,
you know, I'm, I'm OK. Like my life is not this crazy
terrible thing that I think it is.
It's, I'm able to get out of bed, like I'm able to go and do
my things. I'm able to get work done and be
(41:20):
productive. And, and that led to a very
bright and happy time of my life, which was building.
I built a real estate company. Right after that, I traveled
around the world. I ended up in a monastery and
I've had a really great time since then.
Sometimes I still have these episodes of burnout when I'm
really working too hard on something and doing things that
I don't really care about. And there was a Time meditation
(41:44):
magazine. We were printing 4 per year and
I was really, really, really, really working too hard.
I was doing like 80 hour weeks and I had, there was a point
where we just, we couldn't breakeven on the four magazines per
year. It was and we were spending
$40,000 a, an, an issue. So it was coming out to like
(42:04):
$160,000 a year for the magazines.
And I was just spending a lot ofmy time chasing funding.
And that was really not what I wanted to be doing.
I wanted to be teaching meditation and writing and
making nice magazines. And I'm like talking to like at
loan sharks and like banks and, and credit card companies and
just like trying to get funding.And that, that made me really,
(42:27):
really, I did feel burned out from that.
And I took the action. I decided, you know what, we're
not going to keep doing that. We're going to adjust our, our
model. We're going to, we're going to
reduce the number of magazines that we print per year and we're
going to increase the number of meditation courses that we're
creating. And that solved the money issue
to a large extent. And then then that really helped
(42:47):
with the burnout. But at that point, I think I, I
think there was a couple of months after that, even though I
was practicing meditation, therewas a couple of months after
that last issue where we were doing 4 per year.
I was just like, I can't, I can't anymore.
And we went to, we went to Europe and hung out in Portugal
for a little bit in Spain. Oh, there's my daughter.
You want to say hi? Hi, Scott.
(43:08):
You want to say hi to Carol? Hey, you want to say hi?
You want to talk into the, the microphone over here?
Wow, she said no. She's so cute though.
OK, I love you. OK, sorry.
I'll just be done. I'll be there for 5 minutes.
(43:29):
Love you. OK, so when we went to Portugal,
I, I, there was, I just took, I took some time off, you know, I
took a couple of months to just decompress.
And this was actually end of 2023, so not not that long ago,
about a less than a year ago, Around a year ago, Yeah, around
(43:51):
a year ago almost exactly. And I remember I was sitting and
meditating beneath this like, castle wall in, in Porto,
Portugal, just before New Year's, that they were going to
be doing the fireworks over there.
And I just remember doing some breath work and doing some
meditation and just opening my eyes and seeing the beauty of
(44:12):
the world again, you know, like just seeing like, whoa, look at
all those seagulls that were flying over this like ravine.
And just even the cars that weredriving around this curved
embankment that was like, in my view that we're just glinting in
the sun. And each one as it came around
(44:34):
the curve would glint in the sun.
And just just opening my eyes from the meditation, just being
like, wow, yeah, the world is beautiful.
It was something that I had beenmissing for.
It must have been over a year that just in that extreme work
stress, I hadn't been able to look past the intensity of of
(44:58):
the work. And it was in the meditation
that I came back to being OK again, being, you know, getting
past the burnout. So even though, even though I've
been practicing meditation for along time, I wouldn't say it's,
it's a, it's something that gets, you know, keeps you out of
burnout forever. And it's like you're perfect,
(45:19):
perfectly immune to burnout forever.
It is something that has gotten me out of those burnouts like in
really powerful ways that really, really, really helped me
in multiple instances. So I I would say while it may
not be a panacea for for a burnout, it is certainly helpful
(45:40):
and certainly can be can serve as an antidote when needed most.
I thank you for sharing that so much, Kevin.
It is one of the elements that is part of nourishing our whole
selves into into a sustainable state of well-being, that
(46:02):
optimum steady state. And that doesn't mean that
everything is perfectly balancedbecause it's actually the
opposite. It's things are harmonized
because sometimes something is maybe not as pronounced as
another thing in that season of your life, but they are working
in harmony together. And meditation has definitely
been that for me and for so manyof my clients and that sometimes
(46:26):
it is just one of the breath work exercises That is just the
one thing that in that moment allows you to connect and be
present. To surrender a lot of the the
chatter and the shoulds and the have TOS and to just become
(46:47):
aware of what we already have. We, we forget and I think we get
so caught up in the doing that we forget to pause and the power
of our being. And it's truly in that that for
me and for so many of my clients, that meditation has
(47:07):
played a part as being a tool, but also a component of how we
are being and who we are being in our sustainable, optimum
steady state. Kevin, you and your work and who
you are being has been such a tremendous blessing and gift in
(47:29):
my life. I would love for you to share
with everyone today. How can people connect with you?
What services other than your fabulous book awakening?
We will have all of the links down in the show notes.
How would you like people to getconnected with you?
So. So Carol was asking me how
(47:50):
people can connect with my work.So you could see meditation
magazine behind me. You could check out meditation
mag.com. You can get print copies or you
can get online. Thanks for coming, Sky.
She's also really helps me with the burnout when I see your
face. I I'm not burned out anymore.
Thank you, Sky. I love that 'cause when I asked
(48:15):
you back in the green room what was sparking your joy this week
and you were like my daughter. Yeah.
That's right. So, so important.
I am so excited to have you on the show today.
Thank you so much for your time and I love your wonderful book
Awakening because that is also available in Amazon.
And share with everybody how if they are interested in a
(48:38):
meditation practice or becoming a meditation instructor, how can
they start the process, Kevin? OK, if you if people want to
become meditation instructors, do you want to tell them, Scott,
do you want to tell them how to become a meditation teacher?
She's too tired. OK, so you can, they can go to
meditation university dot US andI would say meditation
(49:02):
university dot US slash MTT likemeditation teacher training.
It's a great training for anybody who wants to become a
competent and confident meditation teacher and to
understand everything that they need to know while at the same
time gaining confidence by teaching in Zoom sessions and
breakout rooms and things like that.
(49:24):
It's a really powerful program at Carol's unit.
I think maybe graduated from it.Getting ready to.
Oh, nice. Congrats.
And yeah, I think people tend tolike it.
They they're people are kind of enthusiastic when they graduate,
very excited about it. So if anybody's interested, you
can check it out at meditation university dot US slash MTT.
(49:45):
Absolutely. We will have all of this down in
the show notes. Kevin, thank you so much for all
of your insight, your wisdom andsharing your journey with us
today. Taking those steps out of
burnout is truly the place wherewe begin as we step into our
optimum steady state. Join us again next week for
another in depth show, chasing and taking all of the joy that
(50:08):
we have, but also embracing it and standing in awareness in the
present moment. Thanks so much for being here.
Bye bye. Thank you, Carol.
Nice to talk to you. Thanks.
So Dan, it's been quieter Energymastery, let's turn the tide.
Top shelf guests dropping wisdombombs.
(50:30):
Join us next week where the energy's strong beyond crying
burnout. We're breaking free podcast
pumping full of energy tips and tricks to push your fight fast,
space and fun. You'll feel alive.
Energy Mastery, Come along for the ride behind.
(50:52):
We're on the Rise. Join us as we form our top shelf
guests. I need to energy.
We're at our best.
This September we're focusing onstillness and if you're ready to
take that journey deeper, I'd love for you to grab a copy of
my brand new book, Living Unmasked, An Autistic Woman's
Guide to get into your comfort zone.
You'll get both the e-book and audiobook together for just 999.
(00:21):
It's filled with gentle practices and insights to help
you step into a burnout free, joy filled life.
If you'd like to save $5, grab your special code when you
register for self-care September.
You can find it at whittingtonwellbeing.com.
Step out of the shadows, feel the power will rise.
(00:43):
Catch the spark inside you. Let your spirit fly.
Be on the chronic burner. Carol Jeans your guy.
Find your step being real a nicejoy all the time.
So wishful with bright and cold,leave the bird up far behind.
(01:06):
In this journey, hearts unfold. How is your sea can find?
Kevin, welcome to the show today.
I am super excited to be able tohave this conversation with you
(01:28):
today because you are my meditation teacher.
Thank you. Thank you, Carol.
Thank you for inviting me here onto this podcast to share about
burnout and meditation and to just have a great conversation
with you. That's what I'm excited about.
(01:49):
Me too, I, I always learn something new from you every
week in some way, be it through an instruction module, be it
through our our live sessions onSundays.
And I think what I find so beautiful about just being part
(02:12):
of Meditation University and, and being a student, 'cause I, I
am always the student in some way, is that it's not just
through a knowledge transfer. But what I love that you do in
Meditation University and in theSunday sangas is just modeling
(02:34):
the example, the experience of meditation.
How did how did that come about for you that that became part of
this the program in the way thatyou show up to share meditation?
It's a very profound question. I appreciate it.
Thank you. I believe personally that the
(02:58):
modeling of meditation is more important than the information
about it. It's a great question about
where that came from and where Istarted realizing that I'm, I'm
really not sure if I think back,maybe it was Eckhart Tolle.
Eckhart Tolle is such a great model of meditation, you know,
and it doesn't really matter what he's talking about.
(03:20):
It's always pulls you into the present moment because he's
always in it, I guess. You know, I, I, when I started
learning a long time ago about the concept of what a guru does,
guru is not translated as a teacher.
It's a translated what guru means, like a guide from
darkness to light. And that translation can mean a
(03:46):
lot of things. You can be a teacher who's a
guide, but generally my understanding of, of what it
means to be a guru. And I don't, I don't like to use
that word about myself or about anybody really.
You can use it in a very broad sense where everybody's a guru,
or you can use it in a very narrow sense where it makes it
like almost like a hierarchy of who's better spiritually, which
(04:08):
I really don't like when they when people do that.
But to be a, a good guide is to be a role model more than to be
a teacher in my, in my experience, in my view.
So it's so much easier to bring people into presence just by
being present yourself than trying to explain it to them.
(04:30):
And I think actually the reason for that is because explaining
things is on always, always is always going to be on the level
of the mind, but presence is going beyond the mind.
So logic and explanation and information will never do it.
It may be pointing the right direction, but it will never
(04:52):
actually get somebody into presence.
What gets somebody into presenceis something in the present
moment that pulls them in and things like sounds.
I don't know if you can hear those sirens outside here in, in
Miami. There's some police cars that
can pull you into the present moment by just a sound.
(05:14):
And also a person can pull you into the present moment by their
their own presence by being there and inviting you to join
them. So that's always been my my
mode. But thank you for asking me the
question to reflect on where that came from.
Yeah, I, I maybe I'm going to have to reflect on that more,
but for now I'd have to say probably Eckhart Tolle showed me
(05:34):
that. I love how this, this awareness
just now came together because in my, my journey, in my
discovery, in my practice of meditation, for me, it was, I
(05:57):
have always been so in my mind and, and very dismissive and
disconnected from my body for solong that as you were speaking
and talking about the modelling of meditation being so much more
important. And you, you talk about this in
the course in Meditation University.
(06:19):
And I, I really resonated with it when you said it.
And as you said it here today, it made it even bigger because
being in the present moment is so much.
For me, it has been this discovery of acknowledging my
physical body, my sensory system, the experience of this
(06:43):
moment outside of my thinking brain.
Yeah. And within the thinking brain
too, that's something that took me a long time to realize, is
that the thinking brain is not something that is only a
distraction from the present moment, but it is also here in
(07:04):
the present moment. And if we think of it as it's my
body versus my mind or presence versus thinking, then we have
this sort of split in our experience.
Or it's like sometimes we're thinking and sometimes we're
present and there's like a conflict there.
And that can create friction andand some suffering too.
(07:27):
But if you don't make that splitand you realize that the mind is
here in the present moment as well.
The thoughts might be about the past and the future, but the
mind is here and the thinking ishere and now.
Then it's all together. The present moment and even
thinking can be in the present moment.
(07:48):
You can even think in the present moment.
That's, that's something that also took me a while to to
realize, but it's, it's a subtlething, but it's very important.
It really is and it's it is thisawareness of all the facets and
the components of meditation andthe being in the present moment.
(08:17):
Kevin did to kind of kick us off.
So if someone is joining us and and meditation has always been
that sort of, I don't know aboutthat or I'm not really sure
about it. I've never had anybody talk or
share anything around meditationand they're really curious.
How do you just from a very basic standpoint, what is
meditation? Yeah, it's a good question.
(08:39):
IA lot of people maybe feel resistant toward meditation
because it's associated with certain cultures, like Eastern
cultures, Indian cultures, you know, Chinese and Japanese
cultures, and people who are part of other cultures can feel
like that's a foreign thing. But really, I don't think of
(09:01):
meditation in that way at all. When we use the word meditation,
it's an English word. It's, you know, Marcus Aurelius
wrote a book called Meditations back in ancient Greece.
And meditation is more of a human thing than it is any
particular cultures thing. Just like thinking, right?
(09:25):
Thinking doesn't come from one particular culture.
Thinking is something that we all do.
Meditation is also something that doesn't come from one
particular culture culture because it is something that we
all do. It's something we do naturally
and we just don't always know exactly how to access it.
So if you didn't have a word forthinking, for example, and you
(09:46):
did have thoughts, thoughts werehappening.
There's thinking going on. But if you didn't have a word
thinking to describe it, you might just not be able to.
You might not be able to refine your thinking.
You might not be able to work with it, You might not be able
to improve the ways in which youthink.
In the same way meditation you, everyone does it naturally and
(10:08):
sometimes, but if you don't havea word for it and understanding
of what it is and what it does, then it's very hard to work with
it because it's just something that randomly happens.
You don't even know how to describe it.
And I've talked so many people that have had spontaneous
meditative experiences. Most, you know, it's not just
like very special people that have that.
(10:29):
It's like, I think everyone has that to some extent in certain
circumstances, like life or death scenarios where, you know,
you're worried you're going to, you're about to crash or you're
going to skid on the on the roador you're climbing up something
very high or, you know, something like that.
Or, or in just moments where everything, there's only one
thing that matters and it's in the present moment, like your,
(10:52):
your child is sick or you're, you're falling in love with
someone or something like that. We're we're everything that
matters is right here and right now.
And you just come into the present moment.
Then you have this beautiful experience.
I mean, if you're about to crash, it's might be scary also,
but there's at the same time this sense of everything is
(11:17):
here. I'm I'm fully here.
I'm fully in this moment. Rather than being distracted by
things that you're worried aboutme.
You might find that the things that you were worried about fall
away. You might then find that the
things that you were feeling embarrassed about, that you were
thinking about something that happened yesterday, just kind of
becomes irrelevant. And the only thing that really
(11:39):
matters is, is being alive in this moment.
And so we all have these experiences and we just don't
think of them as we, we don't have a word to describe them.
But now we're starting to develop, to develop words to
describe them in the Western world, you know, presence or
present moment awareness, being in the here and now, you know,
(12:03):
and sometimes you would just call it like getting out of your
head being, you know. But these words are also kind of
vague. You know, if you hear them, it
doesn't really tell you how to do it.
It doesn't tell you how to access it intentionally.
It just tells you, Oh, yeah, sometimes you experience it like
(12:25):
that. But in the Eastern world, for
thousands of years, they've, youknow, we, they actually have had
civilizations for way longer than we have over here.
They, the Indian civilization isone of the oldest in the world.
The Chinese civilization is one of the oldest in the world.
Thousands and thousands of yearspeople have been hanging out
together and doing civilization and farming and, you know,
(12:49):
building stuff and talking together and developing
language. And over time, over thousands of
years, people start to realize like, oh, you know, that state
of being like really present is actually pretty awesome.
Like we should, we should explore that more.
And then they develop techniquesto become more present.
And they're not really that complicated.
(13:10):
They're, they're more like, they're pretty, pretty simple
actually. Just, you know, for example,
closing your eyes and paying attention to your breath or
being aware of your body sensations or listening to the
sounds around you. All of these things help you
(13:32):
come into the present moment. And I, to me, when I discovered
that there was AII didn't, even when I was in college, I was, I
had so much anxiety and depression and I was going
through the all this suffering and I didn't realize that there
was a way out of it. I thought I had to think my way
(13:54):
out of it, which is actually theopposite of what I needed to do
'cause the thinking was what wascausing the anxiety and the
depression, the overthinking, the constant spinning mind and
the analysis. But when I started to find out
that there were ways to come into the present moment that
we're beyond thinking that we're, you know, more about the
(14:14):
body like you were saying, Carol, I and just the more I
started to learn about it and tounderstand it, I suddenly just
came out of that world of pain and suffering and anxiety and
depression and all that at the even the ADHD that I've had for
my whole life. I mean, I was able to, to handle
(14:35):
that a lot better. The you call, you call it
neurodivergent or, you know, Asperger's or autism or whatever
it is that I struggled with my whole life, didn't even realize
that I was struggling with that.And then when I started coming
into the present moment, like all that started to at least
the, the, the parts of that thatwere problematic started to
(14:57):
dissolve. And it's just amazing.
And it's, you know, when people are like worried that it's not
for them or it's, you know, something that's like far in or
weird or exotic or something, whatever it is, it's like,
actually, it's just, you know, being, being, being skilled at,
at being happy and being skilledat being in the present moment
(15:21):
and enjoying your life. It's a skill like, you know,
like any other skill, like playing piano or riding a
bicycle. So I, I get that some people,
you know, have conceptions of meditation as if it's something
that it's not. But I think at the, at the core,
at the foundation, I think it's,it's really something that
(15:41):
everyone can benefit from. Though it would be sort of just
to encapsulate what you just shared.
A meditative state is is just from what I hear you saying here
is just to be present in the moment.
(16:02):
That's a. That's a good encapsulation.
I think that when we use few words, it can be helpful to, to
try to get something into a box and, you know, make it something
that's easy to digest and understand.
But I think that sometimes when people only hear the few words,
(16:24):
they're, they don't really know how to implement that.
So that's why I try to to elaborate, you know?
No, no, no, I love both. That's why I think we have to
give both 'cause I, I like, here's the Cliff notes and
here's, here's the deep dive. Here's the encyclic me.
And I love that because I, because it, there isn't also.
And I, I think this is somethingthat has just been such a joy
(16:51):
for me in my practice of meditation in, in to strengthen
my awareness of the present moment is that there is no end
goal here. It's not like here's the
meditative state. This is the box you check and
(17:13):
how you experience and how you get there.
Because that is not what this isit.
It is this practice, this ongoing evolution.
Because what I've discovered is that in the practice of
meditation, in the compassionatecuriosity of different ways of
(17:37):
approaching. And that's what I love about how
you teach meditation, is you really take all of these
different approaches. You know, we can, you know, from
maybe a Western approach, say, OK, so if we were going to give
you some idea of, of how to maybe start putting meditation
together with some, some words that might feel a little more
(18:01):
concrete. We can say if you've experienced
a flow state, if you have engaged your default mode
network and, and had mind wandering or daydreaming, you
know, those types of things. But essentially it is this
experience, this allowance to bethrough a variety of ways of
(18:26):
engaging the brain, the body, the electrical energy.
You know, we can talk about thismetaphysically, We can talk
about this scientifically. There is an electrical energy to
our being. It all comes together in this.
(18:46):
And but the big question is, what's the benefit of it?
Well, that's a very good question.
And it's important for people tounderstand what the benefits are
in order to, you know, be motivated to want to do
meditation, to practice it, to take the time to sit down
because it's actually not easy to do.
It's not that it's complicated, it's actually very simple, but
(19:09):
it's, it's, it's hard to get past our minds busyness that the
mind is constantly wanting to do, do, do, do, do, do things.
And the meditation is the stopping of that stopping doing.
So it's, it's very hard to convince ourselves to actually
(19:31):
sit down and do nothing for sometime because the brain thinks,
no, no, I have so many things I have to do.
I'm not going to do nothing. That's crazy.
So I understanding the benefits is important and I will get into
the benefits in a moment, but but I, I think it's also
important to preface this with that if you're aiming for the
(19:55):
benefits, they will elude you. And it's so true that if you're,
if there's the big disclaimer, it's a paradox.
It's a paradox if you if you practice meditation just with
the intention of practicing meditation.
(20:15):
Then the benefits will be there because that meditation
naturally leads to these benefits.
But if you're practicing meditation with the idea that
you're going to get some benefits, then you're going to
be chasing something in the future.
When you're trying to meditate, you're chasing some state or
(20:37):
some experience, and that is theopposite of what meditation
practice is. So meditation practice,
paradoxically, is to just let goof any chasing.
It's to let go of any need for anything else that's not here
already in this moment. And so if you say, OK, the
(20:59):
benefits of meditation are you increase your happiness, you
know, less anxiety, less depression, more creativity,
more, you know, higher clarity and higher quality ideas, less
burnout, all these things that are benefits of meditation.
And I could go on and on and on.I actually have a new book
(21:21):
that's that's out right now and that's this is, and we're still
working on just like an image quality issue on the cover.
But it did come out a little while ago.
I hit #1 on mysticism on Amazon and #2 in the meditations
category. And we're going to fix the cover
issue and then re release it. But I did go through a ton of
(21:43):
the benefits in this book. If I open it up and try to find
it. Benefits of meditation.
Here we go. I even have, you know, it's it's
all based in the in the science.I have like dozens of footnotes
in there about all these different benefits.
Increased happiness, focus, empathy, compassion, kindness,
calm and relaxation, alertness, awakened consciousness.
(22:06):
Well, that's that one's a littlebit more subjective.
Perceptual accuracy, life satisfaction, self esteem,
cooperation, productivity. And then at the same time
reducing the sort of inverses ofthose things.
Depression, ADHD, antisocial behavior, anxiety, stress,
(22:26):
susceptibility to illusion, suicidal ideation and self
hatred all and anger and laziness.
All of those things have been shown scientifically to be
reduced by meditation. So there are all these benefits.
And where do all these benefits come from?
All of these benefits come from stopping chasing things like
(22:51):
we're stopping chasing things inthe future that are, you know,
these, these desired states, allof these benefits are desired
states that we may chase. And the iconic thing is that to,
to attain them, we have to stop chasing them.
Happiness is the best example ofthat.
Because if you want to be happy,then the wish, the want to be
(23:15):
happy is like, I want to be happy.
And then but you, you keep wanting to be more happy.
So there's never, you're never fulfilling the, the want.
The want is a form of like desire.
That's, that's not quenched. It's, it's burning and it burns
inside of you and then it's there.
It can never be quenched. But by letting go of that desire
(23:36):
for happiness, suddenly you're content.
And it's like because you're, you've stopped desiring this
thing, Suddenly you actually have it because the thing that
you wanted was actually there already beneath the desire for
it. And so just by getting rid of
that desire, you actually suddenly have the thing that you
(23:59):
wanted. It's it's, it's it's, you know,
it sounds so frustrating and paradoxical.
And it actually is very frustrating for people at the
beginning of the meditation journey.
Extremely frustrating. You say, OK, I'm gonna stop
desiring happiness, then I'll behappy.
Like, there's that paradox. Yeah, there's that paradox
(24:20):
because you're, you're, you're doing it, but not for the real,
not for you're doing it because you're trying to fake yourself
out almost. It took, there was a moment that
that really broke me through that.
And it was in the this monasteryin Thailand called Wattsuan MOC.
And I was doing a 10 day silent meditation.
(24:40):
And the first seven days or the first day was OK.
I was like, OK, cool, I'm doing cool meditation thing in a
monastery. This is awesome.
And then the the second day I was like, wait, wait, I'm still
anxious. What's going on over here?
And then the third day was like,wait, this is like anxiety is
actually deepening what's going on?
I'm like having all these thoughts like I'm worried about
all these things. And the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th days
(25:02):
were like that deepening anxietyspinning mind like what's going
on with this? I'm in a meditation thing.
Why am I going crazy? And like, why is this getting
even worse than before? And it was because, oh, I didn't
realize it at the time, but it was because I was seeking this
state of peace and calm and happiness.
And therefore the anxiety was like, hey, that's not supposed
(25:26):
to be there. And then when I would have
anxiety, I would have anxiety about having anxiety.
And then I would have anxiety about having anxiety about
having anxiety. And it would just became this
like downward spiral echo chamber.
And it got so bad by the 7th day, I literally could not fight
it anymore. Like I was, it was like breaking
(25:46):
my like I, I just couldn't do it.
It was like, if you have too much weight on your shoulders
and you just collapse, like it wasn't an intentional like, oh,
I'm just going to give up and like then I will be happy.
Like it wasn't like that. It was just like I couldn't
fight it anymore. I was just like, OK, like OK,
I'm, I guess I'm just going to have anxiety forever.
It's fine. Like whatever.
(26:06):
Like, I, this is just my life now.
And suddenly, suddenly, like in the acceptance of the anxiety,
in the acceptance of the fact that my mind was still spinning,
that there was no peace and silence inside my mind, in the
acceptance of all of that and just being like giving up and
(26:27):
surrendering, you know, giving up and surrendering.
We use these as like, oh, you should do that.
You should give up. You should surrender.
Oh, cool, I have some confetti now.
You should give up and surrender.
And like these are things that we tell people that they should
do as like techniques as if it'sa technique, but it's not really
a technique 'cause if you give up and surrender in order to try
to, you know, make something happen, you're not really giving
(26:49):
up and surrendering. You're still trying to do it.
You're still trying to control it.
But if you get to the point where it's it's like you
realize, you just realize that you can't stop the anxiety, you
can't stop the thoughts, you can't stop all of the stuff
that's going on inside your mindand your emotions.
You just realize that and you just stop fighting it.
Then suddenly everything is fine.
(27:13):
It's like, OK, yeah, I have anxiety.
That's fine. I have some thoughts.
That's fine. And then once, once, then that
changes the feedback loop, that changes it from a downward
spiral to just some, maybe some mist that's still swirling from
before. And then it just Peters out.
It just dissipates because that swirling mist was swirling
(27:34):
because you were, you were, you were continuing to swirl it
because you were, you were beinganxious about the anxiety.
So you were just continuing that, that spiral.
But once you just give up, then suddenly everything is good.
And then I was walking away. I was walking around in this
monastery as if I was on clouds.I felt, I literally felt like I
(27:57):
was walking on clouds for like 3days.
The last three days of the, the 10 days and, and even after that
and it, it was really weird because it was barefoot and
there was gravel and it had beenhurting me before and like, it
just, it stopped. It wasn't hurting me anymore.
It was very strange. It was like I never experienced
anything like that. And it, there was like a kind of
bliss and ecstasy. And I had never experienced that
(28:21):
level of bliss and ecstasy before.
And I had never like experiencedlike pure happiness, like the
pure happiness of being alive. And like, I started like, I, I
guess I'd never done this before, but I had that there
were, you know, some, some columns of, of ants that would
walk across the grounds. And I would sit down next to the
columns of ants and just watch them and like look closely at
(28:43):
them and see each one and see what they were doing and what
they were carrying and being like so intrigued at the lives
of each of these little beings that that were all conscious.
It was and just like walking around floating, basically
floating around the monastery and seeing all the people and
just being so blissed out at thefact that these people are all
(29:05):
alive and conscious that they'reall like experiencing this crazy
amazing thing called life. Just the the the love and
compassion that came from that it, it just all poured out.
And it was just all from not focusing on the benefits and
just, you know, giving up on theidea that I was going to get
(29:26):
something suddenly. Yeah, it's just it all came
through. But I think we have to start
sometimes with the benefits in order to because otherwise
people are like, why should I dothat?
You know what I mean? So it's it's this sort of ironic
and paradoxical thing that you you have to kind of start with
the benefits and then then you realize that that was actually
(29:46):
holding you back. But if you don't start with
that, then you don't end up starting in the first place.
It's so true. I, I don't know that I've had a
conversation with anyone who hasstepped into an, an adopted
incorporated a meditation practice and in a state of being
(30:08):
a meditator in their life who hasn't come from a place of
suffering, A struggle. I think that is the, the
contrast that gives us the clarity or at least motivates us
to want to, you know, we're so uncomfortable that we are
motivated to try and seek comfort.
(30:31):
And in that way that you described it, it's in that
surrender and that acceptance ofthe present moment and things as
they are without that illusion that we always as humans try to
ascribe and and give a story to everything, to give it this
(30:51):
meaning, 'cause our minds are these meaning connectors.
But is this beautiful, powerful place where it It seems so
counterintuitive that to surrender is to actually step
into an embrace your personal power.
Yeah, that's so true. And I, I'm curious for you, my
(31:19):
journey has been one where it's been in these stages, it's been
in these, these layers and sort of these high growth points and
sort of a plateau and then, you know, maybe a dip a little bit.
And then there's another one of,of what the meditation
experience is. And sometimes it even started
early in my journey where I didn't even realize that was
(31:39):
what was happening. You know, I, my ADHD autistic
brain, I have, I've always been an athlete, but I've never been
a runner. And at 42, something in me just
said you need to run. Your physical body needs to move
in this way, whether it is feelsnatural to you or not at the
(32:01):
moment. This is something that my
something in my being said. I needed to try it.
I needed to to learn how to do it for me.
Now this is the ugliest, weirdest.
My kids tease me. They say I run like AT Rex,
which is all the things and I didn't care.
I was I didn't care. I was so out of shape.
(32:21):
I was really, I was in the worstburnout in my life.
I had been incapacitated and bedridden.
So I really I had no stamina, but I would.
There was something in me that Iwas determined I was going to do
this. And in the process I started to
experience this state of being present, of recognizing my body
(32:46):
of of recognizing my mind and just being and surrendering to
kind of like when you were describing.
This is what brought this thought up when you were
describing sort of feeling like you were walking on clouds and
the gravel no longer was hurtingyour feet.
It was in those moments when I really got to that place where I
started to run and my feet had hurt and everything in my body
(33:08):
hurt. And then all of a sudden it was
still hurting, but it wasn't painful.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was this bliss that was
starting to occur and there was this place of surrender to the
moment in my body and my my breath and my just the rhythm of
(33:32):
my feet on the pavement. And it was in that that I
started to get a glimpse, not knowing the word for it, of
being meditative. Yeah, yeah.
That's, that's what I'm talking about.
The people have spontaneous meditative experiences all the
(33:52):
time, and we all have them and we just don't.
We don't realize that. We don't realize until we start.
If we start understanding how itworks, then we can access it
more. And which is great because we
love those states that they're really very happy and pleasant
and enjoyable. I mean, pleasant maybe not the
right word, but they're deeply conducive to happiness.
(34:15):
Let's just say that and yeah, I'm glad that you were able to
enjoy that and experience that through the running.
I I really, really want to see videos of the T Rex running.
That sounds really funny. I will.
I will go totally, totally raw, totally real and I will.
I will post one for. You nice, Nice.
Tag me. So I see.
(34:35):
It sounds awesome. Yeah.
I just have to let you know thatin about 7 minutes, my wife and
daughter are going to probably barge in here.
So if, if let's if you want to talk about burnout, we should
get into that now. Absolutely.
So Kevin, I know you've had yourown experience of of burnout.
(34:56):
Can you describe or share what did burnout feel like for you?
Like what was that experience and how did meditation come into
being a part of the path out of burnout for you?
Yeah, that's, that's a great question.
I, I honestly think I've experienced burnout many times,
(35:18):
much less so lately. But you know, meditation
practice helps. And also my choice to do things
that I'm interested in rather than doing things that I think I
have to do because I'm supposed to has very much reduced the
amount of burnout. But I've experienced burnout
(35:40):
many times in different in microand macro scales.
And actually, you know, I'm not an expert on burnout, so maybe I
may miss define it in certain ways.
But like to me, even that feeling of like, oh, I've been
working for 10 hours and I haven't had a break.
And at the end of the day, my brain doesn't want to keep
(36:02):
going. Like, to me, that feels like a
micro version of burnout. And then on a macro scale, that
has happened to me in running a company for three years in, in
Wall Street and feeling like, you know, I'm done with this,
like I'm going to go to Thailand.
(36:22):
Like that's more of a macro version of burnout.
Would you, would you consider both of those types of things
like types of burnout 'cause I tell me you're the expert in
burnout. You're muted, I think.
Those are warning signs of burnout.
(36:44):
So those are those are the presentations in the symptoms.
So yes, absolutely. You know, I have 20 warning
signs that are the most common that show up.
And all of the warning signs, there are physiological signs,
you know, there are sensory signs and then there are mental
and emotional signs that all come together.
(37:05):
These are, these are the things that tell us that we are not our
nourishment keys are not being fueled in a way that isn't
aligned with us to our, our, ourwell-being.
And the degree to which you experience those on the spicy
pepper level that I have developed go from a poblano
pepper level 1 where you have just a little bit of heat all
(37:28):
the way up to that ghost pepper level 5 where you're so hot,
you're not and, and your physical body starts to shut
down. So absolutely, when you were
talking about having different degrees, varying degrees, if
we're not, you're absolutely right.
That is probably what has happened.
So, so I, I without going into too much detail about each one,
I guess I mean, I could think back all the way to childhood
(37:51):
and think of different burnout times.
But I would say the major, the major incidences were probably
when I was, yeah, I used to, I was in Jerusalem studying to be
a rabbi. It's a long story.
I, I used to be a religious Jewish individual and I went, I
(38:12):
went to Jerusalem to become a rabbi essentially.
I eventually, I like, ended up actually losing my faith.
But you know, I think that the loss of faith was just the thing
that allowed me to go into the burnout because I think I've
been experiencing it before thatas well.
(38:33):
I, you know, I've been spending sometimes like 16 hours a day
studying the, these ancient law books in Aramaic, which is like
an ancient language that nobody uses anymore with no vowels.
They have to infer the vowels. It, it was a lot, not just
reading it, but very, very logicoriented stuff that was very
(38:53):
like breaking your brain type ofstuff, kind of like coding or
something. If it's the closest thing I can
think of or studying law books. And I found myself like waking
up later and later in the day every day.
And the people that were in my dorm were always like, Hey, get
out of bed, get out of bed. We're supposed to be at the, at
(39:14):
the, the bait Med rush now. We're supposed to be at the, the
study hall now, like get out of bed.
And I, I was like, no, So I think I was already getting that
burnout. And then when I started digging
into the foundations of the religion and stopped, stopped
believing in it, then I was justlike, OK, I'm done.
(39:35):
And I just like, I, I, that's, that's when I really went into
that dark depression and nihilism.
And I, I spent probably a coupleof years and not in college and
in University of New York. And so I, I guess that could
have been likely a, a, a sort ofa, a burnout type incident.
(39:56):
And that lasted for a couple of years.
I, I slept, I, I would go to sleep at like 3:00 or 4:00 in
the morning and wake up at like.1:00 PM or noon or 1:00 PM or
two PMI got into drugs like cannabis and psychedelics and
things like that. Thankfully not the harder drugs
(40:17):
because that would probably beenreally bad for me.
But the, you know, those, even those explorations in the
psychedelics, I, you know, I, I learned a lot about psychology
through them, But I also, I alsoput me down in like a darker
hole, in like a spiral. And that was when I first
learned meditation. That was, I was in that dark
(40:38):
drug addled place after like a couple of years of a year or two
of burnout when a friend of mineintroduced me to meditation,
showed me how to meditate. And that was really the thing
that lifted it. It was the thing that lift me.
I, I call it depression, but youknow, burnout depression,
(40:59):
they're, they probably have a lot of overlap.
At that point I started realizing like, OK, actually,
you know, I'm, I'm OK. Like my life is not this crazy
terrible thing that I think it is.
It's, I'm able to get out of bed, like I'm able to go and do
my things. I'm able to get work done and be
(41:20):
productive. And, and that led to a very
bright and happy time of my life, which was building.
I built a real estate company. Right after that, I traveled
around the world. I ended up in a monastery and
I've had a really great time since then.
Sometimes I still have these episodes of burnout when I'm
really working too hard on something and doing things that
I don't really care about. And there was a Time meditation
(41:44):
magazine. We were printing 4 per year and
I was really, really, really, really working too hard.
I was doing like 80 hour weeks and I had, there was a point
where we just, we couldn't breakeven on the four magazines per
year. It was and we were spending
$40,000 a, an, an issue. So it was coming out to like
(42:04):
$160,000 a year for the magazines.
And I was just spending a lot ofmy time chasing funding.
And that was really not what I wanted to be doing.
I wanted to be teaching meditation and writing and
making nice magazines. And I'm like talking to like at
loan sharks and like banks and, and credit card companies and
just like trying to get funding.And that, that made me really,
(42:27):
really, I did feel burned out from that.
And I took the action. I decided, you know what, we're
not going to keep doing that. We're going to adjust our, our
model. We're going to, we're going to
reduce the number of magazines that we print per year and we're
going to increase the number of meditation courses that we're
creating. And that solved the money issue
to a large extent. And then then that really helped
(42:47):
with the burnout. But at that point, I think I, I
think there was a couple of months after that, even though I
was practicing meditation, therewas a couple of months after
that last issue where we were doing 4 per year.
I was just like, I can't, I can't anymore.
And we went to, we went to Europe and hung out in Portugal
for a little bit in Spain. Oh, there's my daughter.
You want to say hi? Hi, Scott.
(43:08):
You want to say hi to Carol? Hey, you want to say hi?
You want to talk into the, the microphone over here?
Wow, she said no. She's so cute though.
OK, I love you. OK, sorry.
I'll just be done. I'll be there for 5 minutes.
(43:29):
Love you. OK, so when we went to Portugal,
I, I, there was, I just took, I took some time off, you know, I
took a couple of months to just decompress.
And this was actually end of 2023, so not not that long ago,
about a less than a year ago, Around a year ago, Yeah, around
(43:51):
a year ago almost exactly. And I remember I was sitting and
meditating beneath this like, castle wall in, in Porto,
Portugal, just before New Year's, that they were going to
be doing the fireworks over there.
And I just remember doing some breath work and doing some
meditation and just opening my eyes and seeing the beauty of
(44:12):
the world again, you know, like just seeing like, whoa, look at
all those seagulls that were flying over this like ravine.
And just even the cars that weredriving around this curved
embankment that was like, in my view that we're just glinting in
the sun. And each one as it came around
(44:34):
the curve would glint in the sun.
And just just opening my eyes from the meditation, just being
like, wow, yeah, the world is beautiful.
It was something that I had beenmissing for.
It must have been over a year that just in that extreme work
stress, I hadn't been able to look past the intensity of of
(44:58):
the work. And it was in the meditation
that I came back to being OK again, being, you know, getting
past the burnout. So even though, even though I've
been practicing meditation for along time, I wouldn't say it's,
it's a, it's something that gets, you know, keeps you out of
burnout forever. And it's like you're perfect,
(45:19):
perfectly immune to burnout forever.
It is something that has gotten me out of those burnouts like in
really powerful ways that really, really, really helped me
in multiple instances. So I I would say while it may
not be a panacea for for a burnout, it is certainly helpful
(45:40):
and certainly can be can serve as an antidote when needed most.
I thank you for sharing that so much, Kevin.
It is one of the elements that is part of nourishing our whole
selves into into a sustainable state of well-being, that
(46:02):
optimum steady state. And that doesn't mean that
everything is perfectly balancedbecause it's actually the
opposite. It's things are harmonized
because sometimes something is maybe not as pronounced as
another thing in that season of your life, but they are working
in harmony together. And meditation has definitely
been that for me and for so manyof my clients and that sometimes
(46:26):
it is just one of the breath work exercises That is just the
one thing that in that moment allows you to connect and be
present. To surrender a lot of the the
chatter and the shoulds and the have TOS and to just become
(46:47):
aware of what we already have. We, we forget and I think we get
so caught up in the doing that we forget to pause and the power
of our being. And it's truly in that that for
me and for so many of my clients, that meditation has
(47:07):
played a part as being a tool, but also a component of how we
are being and who we are being in our sustainable, optimum
steady state. Kevin, you and your work and who
you are being has been such a tremendous blessing and gift in
(47:29):
my life. I would love for you to share
with everyone today. How can people connect with you?
What services other than your fabulous book awakening?
We will have all of the links down in the show notes.
How would you like people to getconnected with you?
So. So Carol was asking me how
(47:50):
people can connect with my work.So you could see meditation
magazine behind me. You could check out meditation
mag.com. You can get print copies or you
can get online. Thanks for coming, Sky.
She's also really helps me with the burnout when I see your
face. I I'm not burned out anymore.
Thank you, Sky. I love that 'cause when I asked
(48:15):
you back in the green room what was sparking your joy this week
and you were like my daughter. Yeah.
That's right. So, so important.
I am so excited to have you on the show today.
Thank you so much for your time and I love your wonderful book
Awakening because that is also available in Amazon.
And share with everybody how if they are interested in a
(48:38):
meditation practice or becoming a meditation instructor, how can
they start the process, Kevin? OK, if you if people want to
become meditation instructors, do you want to tell them, Scott,
do you want to tell them how to become a meditation teacher?
She's too tired. OK, so you can, they can go to
meditation university dot US andI would say meditation
(49:02):
university dot US slash MTT likemeditation teacher training.
It's a great training for anybody who wants to become a
competent and confident meditation teacher and to
understand everything that they need to know while at the same
time gaining confidence by teaching in Zoom sessions and
breakout rooms and things like that.
(49:24):
It's a really powerful program at Carol's unit.
I think maybe graduated from it.Getting ready to.
Oh, nice. Congrats.
And yeah, I think people tend tolike it.
They they're people are kind of enthusiastic when they graduate,
very excited about it. So if anybody's interested, you
can check it out at meditation university dot US slash MTT.
(49:45):
Absolutely. We will have all of this down in
the show notes. Kevin, thank you so much for all
of your insight, your wisdom andsharing your journey with us
today. Taking those steps out of
burnout is truly the place wherewe begin as we step into our
optimum steady state. Join us again next week for
another in depth show, chasing and taking all of the joy that
(50:08):
we have, but also embracing it and standing in awareness in the
present moment. Thanks so much for being here.
Bye bye. Thank you, Carol.
Nice to talk to you. Thanks.
So Dan, it's been quieter Energymastery, let's turn the tide.
Top shelf guests dropping wisdombombs.
(50:30):
Join us next week where the energy's strong beyond crying
burnout. We're breaking free podcast
pumping full of energy tips and tricks to push your fight fast,
space and fun. You'll feel alive.
Energy Mastery, Come along for the ride behind.
(50:52):
We're on the Rise. Join us as we form our top shelf
guests. I need to energy.
We're at our best.
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