[Music] I wrote a book about mindfulness and we were presenting this in uh New York City in October I think September October and and it was kind of funny because it was a conference uh called creating a mindful society and there were a lot of speakers John kiten was there I was one of the speakers several others some panels and there was a woman there who I knew who was talking we were talking and she brought her sister who was kind of not into the mindfulness movement but she was at the at the conference and we talked uh for a little bit on Friday night and then we left and we were all going out to meet for dinner uh down the street so we walk outside and it's raining pretty hard so we suck it up and we just keep going and then it really starts to come down so we broke off and the two sisters were in a garage and I was stuck under some kind of something that was keeping the rain off me for about 10 or 15 minutes so the conversation between the two sisters transpires and the one one sister says to the sister who knew me was that a congressman that I just met and she said yeah and he that Congressman practices mindfulness she said yeah and he's writing a book about mindfulness she said yeah she said will he still be a congressman after the book comes out so I wrote the book um after I grew up Catholic and my mom prayed the rosary a lot my grandparents Italian American first generation prayed the rosary a lot and really it wasn't a show uh for them it was I could surprise them riding my bike around the neighborhood and just stop in and they would be praying the rosary they would be centering themselves grounding themselves and I grew up in that environment and later had a priest friend of mine teach me centering prayer um based on Father Tom Thomas King's work which is just magnificent stuff and did it on and off for a while and had been in Congress uh since 2002 still kind of on and off doing some forms of meditation and was working hard at that point the Democrats were in the minority I'm a Democrat um I'm at Berkeley so thank God [Applause] uh I'm a republican no I'm leaving no um so I was working very closely with Nancy Pelosi she appointed me to the uh uh started a 30-some working group to try to help reach out to young voters I was traveling the country raising money going to college campuses kept running and running and then finally 06 we took the house back um we became we went into the majority lot of work obviously 2008 was a huge presidential election between the president and Senator Clinton it made its way to Ohio involved into that and then it was about the summer of 2008 where I was started to do a little bit more yoga than normal because I was really feeling stressed out and I thought I was 35 years old and I thought I'm going to be burned out at 40 if I keep this pace up this is a really bad trajectory for me and uh found John kabat Zin on the internet that he was doing a power mindfulness Leadership Retreat about two days after the November election so it's perfect timing my constituents would not want to see me anymore after the campaign and I knew John because he sent a book I didn't know him personally but I knew of his work because he sent a book to Congress his coming to our census book he sent a 43 35 members of the house and 100 senators and as I tease him one of them read it the book so I did my duty and signed up for this uh Retreat and just had a amazing experience of just my body relaxing could feel the stress and tension begin to leave I could see my mind begin to focus and be clearer and be present to the present moment and it reminded me a lot uh as an athlete in high school I played football and basketball a lot and went on a college scholarship to play football um for a little while and it reminded me of being in the zone as an athlete where your mind and your body are in the same spot in the present moment you have a higher level of presence and it reminded me of that and I thought this is amazing that you can train your mind and discipline your mind to be in the present moment how terrific and immediately after I had that experience if anyone's been on a retreat here immediately after that your brain comes right back in and I started thinking this needs to be in schools I mean why didn't anyone teach me this growing up this needs to be uh in our health care System we know the impact of stress on the Health Care system and this could be a huge benefit for us working very closely with a lot of soldiers who are coming back in in Dire Straits and really hurting and this could be something that could be really really powerful so after the retreat I went and saw John um and after he said what's a congressman doing at my retreat um we had a beautiful discussion about the retreat and he sent me on a journey to meet the people who end up being in a mindful nation and he said you have to go meet Richie Davidson who's the scientist out at the University of Wisconsin you've got to go meet Linda lantier who was doing some work you've got to go meet this person and that person and so I spent time and that's through those connections is how I met Docker um and Christine and some of the folks here Jason going out to see the work that's actually being done and after seeing it I thought this has got to be a book I mean this is these people have they're Pioneers in a quiet Revolution peaceful Revolution that is happening in the United States and we need to throw gasoline on the fire here because our country can't wait we just we're losing generations of kids prison system um you know right down the line Chris is here um you know every aspect of our society what we're doing now is not working and we are discovering something that has the potential to transform our society and there's a growing body of scientific evidence to back us up and quite frankly I don't feel like and some people say wow it's really courageous of you to go out and do this I'm talking about people breathing you know in out in out we do it all the time we're just saying maybe pay attention to it every now and again you know I'm not out on a limb here at all and that's the reality of it it's it's accessible and it's something that we could do so um we wrote this book and the the goal was to really highlight the people that are in it and so we talk about the work being done by the researchers we get into descriptions of how the mind works stresses why we respond to fear the way we do what happens to our body the hormon that are released and how we our body deals with it in such a negative way if it keeps happening that fear is actually a survival mechanism but when your mind is always being tapped into by the news media or by The Hectic Lifestyles that we all lead that it really does have a negative effect on our bodies in the long term especially if we're very very young and we highlight the scientists that are in the book and then get into the education field of education and the amazing work that's going on um by Megan and others uh doing mindful schoolwork and also some stories from a earmark that I got a few years ago about three years ago I got a million dollars to put these programs into the youngst toown and War City schools in my congressional district and we didn't tell the media we didn't tell anybody about it we got the money we put it in it's about two years in and it's just amazing the stories that are coming out of these schools and what's great is it's not me telling everyone how great it is now it's the teachers telling everyone how great it is now it's the parents there's a parental component now it's the parents telling everyone how great it is now it's the parents that fill out these forms after they do two or three sessions the parents are saying I don't want this to end I want to do another three or four sessions or they'll write something like I finally realize that I have a lot of anger issues and I'm putting that anger onto my child I mean that's that's a life Cher for that kid that their parent will some the next day not be is mean to the kid who knows what the positive benefits of that can be and to see the teachers uh transform one of the times I really got nervous because I when I got it I was probably 36 or 37 and I you know that's exactly what a bunch of teachers want to hear was a young hot shot Congressman coming in with an idea I got an idea you're going to love it trust me it'll be great so I was a little nervous but was able to talk to superintendent and others into you know giving it a shot um and we we did get it implemented and the training was four or five days in the summer and I remember going to the training on the fourth day and they would have trainings about acknowledging your emotions that are coming up and so on and so forth and uh they would sit for 5 or 10 minutes in the morning and maybe 5 or 10 minutes in the evening it wasn't a retreat it was just a little bit of breathing exercises and beginning to prepare the teachers to do with the the kids and I'm walking in I'm getting nervous I'm thinking oh boy so get in there and it's quiet it's a break time but it's quiet I thought oh God they hate it you know they're all mad or whatever and because my mind was not going into the positive direction I don't know what was happening in there but so walked in and they were quiet and Linda I talked for a little bit and Linda L who runs it has this globe that's stuffed and she said let's do an exercise before you leave I want you to hear what the teachers have to say she'd throw the globe to a teacher and they would have to say what was on their mind or how they felt the week was going and the first teacher said uh I've been waiting for this program for 30 years of teaching and she passed and I was like okay good um she passed it to the next uh woman and and she said uh I'm already treating my children different at home school hadn't started yet she said I'm already treating my children and my spouse differently at home because of what this program uh has done and has taught me and through it to another woman and she says I feel like I'm born again and just blew me away the response and I think part of it is we're going so quickly we're going so fast that even five or 10 minutes a day of just stopping and breathing has a huge effect we I don't we I don't think we realize how fast we're going but until you stop you're like whoa and then there was there was about four men in the room and I was one of them out of like 60 or 70 and they threw the ball to this dude in the back not surfer dude he was just a dude um I love you brother and and he was probably in his mid 30s and I thought you know this would be great let's maybe the guys won't like this as much maybe it won't resonate with the guys and the guy caught the ball and he said you know this has really been great and I just want you to know that uh last night I was at my daughter's soccer game and I was actually at my daughter's soccer game I was paying attention to her I was watching her run I was just appreciating the age she was at and how she wouldn't be that way very long and a big she was getting and the sky was blue and the grass was green and he was in the moment and he was appreciating life and that's really what we're doing that's what we're trying to say to everyone is let's try to appreciate what we have and you know I tie in the book a lot of stories about my grandparents who helped raise me and it was kind of a different time you know where my grandfather uh my grandmother worked my grandfather worked my grandfather was done at 3 and he would go to the he'd come home and he would go to the garden and he'd work in the garden for a couple hours and then he would have a happy hour with his brother-in-laws who all lived in the same neighborhood and then they would have a family dinner and then you know rinse and repeat he'd do the same thing the next day and then on the weekends they would have a big family picnic where they would go down to the park and they would play bchi and cook out and throw the football and hang out with each other and I think that's really what the anxiety is about in America of course it's economic and inequality and that's huge but we've got to create a society where those Family Values get represented and we allow our citizens to be able to do what is most important in their life and that's be with the people they care about and we've got to get away from this idea that the only thing of value has to be purchased at some store that's not what they believed and that they were happy and I think I don't think we believe that either but we've I think if we stop and slow down we can look at the world differently and then start making some of the changes that need to be made at a real fundamental level like Jim Wallace says the great Evangelical um Sojourner magazine says we don't need to go further to the left we don't need to go further to the right we need to go deeper and if we go deeper we'll see that we're all connected and maybe we can get through this and start assembling the kind of society um that we all want the other piece um other two pieces the first is uh Health Care and how stress is a killer you know I'm worried sick well you're right you are you're worrying yourself sick and there are a lot of really important things that maybe need to be worried about and this is not oh we're all going to sit on a cushion and all the problems of the world are going to go away you know we're going to live in a Utopia and no one will die and no one will get sick and there won't be any tragedies no it's not going to happen that's not life but what we do know now is what crippler stress is and from a policy perspective we need to figure out how we're going to address long-term health care costs and part of that is we tried to get in the Affordable Care Act and we did some of the preventative measures for screenings and those kinds of things which are very very important but when you think about it the screenings are still to far Downstream what's causing your high blood pressure what's causing your heart dis disease what's causing you to have an ulcer what's causing you to have diabetes um it's most cases it could be stress so we need to create a Health Care system that reimburses for mindfulness-based stress reduction programs and reimburses people to teach it to go and get the classes um we need to make sure that we teach our doctors mindfulness in my opinion because that way if someone comes in with high blood pressure before you immediately write a prescription you have a conversation with them about their lifestyle and you maybe say take 15 minutes a day to practice mindfulness and then it do it for two weeks straight and then come back and if you still have high blood pressure then maybe we'll give you a prescription but let's not have the default position be here's a prescription you know see you later because we're not getting to the root of the problem and when you see what stress does to your body it's it's a killer you know it's a killer it it inflames it literally inflames your body and what the scientists are telling us is that mindfulness is like a coolant it can cool your body off and when you take time to spend time in silence you can cool your body down for a very cheap cost it doesn't cost anything you know some time and a little bit of training and we need to get that into um our health care program and not just in the health care program but our health care Workforce and our Workforce across the country everybody is burnt out teachers nurses social workers doctors doctors get kicked around a lot but that's not a they're they're as busy as everybody else everyone seems to me is on this treadmill going faster and faster that keeps getting steeper and steeper and so we have an opportunity with mindfulness to try to infuse it into the Health Care system and can have some uh amazing effects at a very very low cost and we need to keep studying it so we can make sure that we prove what's going on and continue to fund the studies and fund science and respect science again um to make sure that we fund some of this stuff and then lastly is uh you know the issue of veterans that are that are coming back um it's just it's a real black eye on our country um you know to think of the rate of soldiers that are killing themselves whether they're in currently in the army or in the service um or they come back and that they are so traumatized and their system has gotten so messed up um that they kill themselves and you know elected officials we go to the funerals we go see the parents you know and what do you say there's nothing you can say I mean they their kids gone it was 21 full of life um or they come back and you know maybe before they kill themselves or many who haven't um come back and you have parents say my kid's a shell it's Hollow it's not the kid that left and uh you know if you get killed in Iraq or Afghanistan you're on the front page of the local paper there's parades and there's two or three days worth of stories and colored pictures on the front page as there should be for serving us and um you know stories about the kids and the family and the foundations being started and all of these things but if you come home and you make at home alive and you end up 6 months later taking your own life you're in the obituary section with the rest of us and we don't want to look at it and part of mindfulness to me is you got to look at it if you want to fix it you got to address it so we have a chapter in here about what the defense department is doing and also some um did I do that whoops um the defense department is doing and some other programs that are out there that are really working with the vets in an alternative way doing a lot of deep one program's called um project welcome home our troops out of Wisconsin um Emma sepa runs the program she did she's now at in Stanford um at seare but it's a program of really deep power breathing and they're finding that a lot of the Vets who have come back it's tough for them to just sit and meditate meditate meditate there too much going on and that some kind of movement is a little bit better entry point for them and the anecdotal stories coming back are unbelievable about guys who have uh you know hadn't slept for for two years on all kinds of medication and after three or four of these sessions are sleeping through the night and off all their and after a few months off all their meds because they're recalibrating their nervous system that has just they say your nervous system's got a gas pedal and a brake pedal and it just it's out of whack and it'd be like you're pressing the gas and then you're pressing the brake gas break gas break and uh it's you know needs to be studied it's but it's showing some real positive um benefits so those are the kind of three key areas that I talk about in the book and finally you know I I believe that if we slow down that we will be able to then see how we want to reorganize our society not some of us but maybe all of us see what those values are and start to bring them to light uh in in society and that would be you know how do we uh obviously a lot of environmental issues how do we build livable cities how do we have more green space how do we have more farmers markets how do we have uh fresher food how do we distribute our food how do we Supply our food how do you know let's pay a little bit more attention to the energy we waste let's pay a little bit more attention to the supply chain and all of these different things and if you if we all begin to practice a little bit and slow down a little bit that we'll start to see the interconnectedness of life and of things and as we have to take our uh govern governmental model from an industrial model to an information-based model with lots of information how do we restructure that system so we talk about some of the things that Peter S talks about um Paul Hawkin and others at the end of how energy and the environment and the economy are all kind of intertwined and how do we build this um new Society so I I believe that there's a real opportunity for us I'm really excited about it and the best part is you know as we've been on the book tour for the last a few weeks meeting people who are doing such great work it's like all of you guys it's the greater good I mean that you just it's amazing what's happening and I think people are really starting to look for something to help themselves they know they're going too fast but they're afraid to get off the treadmill because they don't know what's going to happen and we have an opportunity with whether you're talking about Compassion or gratitude or mindfulness or centering prayer or whatever it is that's going to slow us down and get us to recognize how connected we are that this is essential to us thriving and surviving in the 21st century I think Peter sheni someone told me Peter sheni said this the other day it's a survival mechanism for the 21st century I mean it's essential so much information so much technology which is fine but how do you come to the technology that's what the training in the schools and everything else would be do you run this little thing or does it run you I know it runs me a lot of the time but we have to be disciplined and people say well you know you're not going to be able to get this in the school how are you going to do this in Ohio how you going to do this in places you know like Ohio and think about what we're telling and I made the joke about well we're just breathing but what parent in Ohio or any other state wouldn't want to hear a legislator or school School Board member or a governor or anyone come to them and say we are going to teach your kid not just physical discipline we're going to teach them mental discipline we're going to discipline their mind instead of yelling at those kids to pay attention we're going to teach them how to pay attention and we're going to teach them how to be nice and how to be kind and how to be tolerant these are all parts of the programs that we're teaching so I think we have an opportunity to really do some transformational things um and lastly I just want to I want to read you a quote that I've been reading at a lot of these events one because I love Bobby Kennedy um two is because I think it touches really upon something that really we all are feeling and lastly because he gave the speech in 1968 and we still have a lot of work to do so I will end with this [Music] and this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us as individuals and citizens this year but even if we act to erase material poverty there is another great task it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction purpose and dignity that afflict us all too much and for too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and Community Values in the mere accumulation of material things our gross national product now is over $800 billion a year but that gross national product if we judge the United States of America by that that gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of Carnage it counts special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them it counts the destruction of the Redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl it counts Napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities it counts Whitman's rifle and Spec's knife and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children the quality of their education or the joy of their play it does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages the intelligence of our public debate or the Integrity of our public officials it measures neither our wit nor our courage neither our wisdom nor our learning neither our compassion nor our devotion to Country it measures everything in short except that which makes life worthwhile and it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans thank you I want to ask you about the the obstacles that you face and you know uh when we were out at the reception a lot of people were you know who are in the trenches of mindfulness and teaching it in prisons and schools and thinking about getting into the healthare system they face enormous obstacles you know structural uh I think there are conceptual obstacles as well right when you talk about when you critique materialism you're going against a very deep vein in politics right and markets and so forth and so how do you how do you do that work how do you act as this Beacon of the idea and fight those and sort of take on those obstacles well um you know I get a lot of inspiration from the people who are doing it that helps keep you going um but I just have faith that this community has a lot of power and a lot of connection and a lot of connectivity um that we have yet to really take off I use the phrase like take off of our cushions and put out into the world and I I think there are millions of people in the country who uh practice some form of mindfulness some meditation recognize its power but don't necessarily connect the dots of oh I could get this into my kids school yeah oh boy this would be great for prisoners or whatever um and so my focus really is to get the people that are doing the work now off the cushion into the world uh to join a lot of the people that are in this room doing the work and we need to get organized I mean you look at the labor movement it was organized labor it was workers who were organized and I think we've got to get organized as a community um if we're going to continue to push this out I'll give you an example today I just got an email from a staffer call so and so who's a longtime friend of mine call pick call him up and uh he starts talking about his daughter who had very very severe depression lost 50 pounds he thought they were going to have to you know really go to the next level uh with treatment and everything and uh he said she started practicing mindfulness and she read your book and she just cannot believe it because this saved her life and that her congressman who she's known da d da is writing a book about it it's like okay now this you are now an activist you now go out and and so her whoever taught her said they want me to come to the class and talk to him so I mean it's those kinds of things that are happening every single day whether they're in a prison or depression or addiction or whatever so motivate the people who are doing it now or benefited from it and let's start to organize that and build a movement exciting you know it's um when we at the greater good science center survey the science and you know some of the people in this room have been part of the science um about the health benefits I mean it's it's incredible and I think that when we're 10 years into this this scientific discipline 10 years from now we'll have enough data to say you know work on the effects of mindfulness on DNA and the cortisol system and the brain and things that you review in your book um I I you know it's it's going to prove to be one of the great risk factors and ways to combat that risk so how do you how do you get that argument into a healthare system how do you how do you push that we we need uh leaders in Congress obviously to appreciate it and I don't think we're going to get a mindful Congress until we get enough mindful constituents voting and and because they will then vote for uh someone who will espouse their views and I think um we need to use really concrete examples um I think everyone intuitively knows stress kills you yeah or it doesn't necessarily going to die anyway everyone's going to die but so you can't but it it obviously accelerates a lot of sickness and I think one of the examples we use in the book that I think is great is the John kabin and Richie Davidson study about sasis I don't know if you've heard it or not but they have two groups one's a just a normal group of psoriasis patients and evidently one of the treatments for psoriasis is to go into a light box so they have a group that goes into the light box and then they have a group that's goes into the light box and practices mindfulness and the group in the light box practicing mindfulness healed or needed four times less treatments than the group that just went into the light box so John and Richie thought it was so significant that they screwed something up so they went back and they did it again and they got the same results so now as a policy maker this would be the argument that an organized group of mindfulness people would go and Lobby Congress and then say to their Congressman or congresswoman when they sat down in their office would say how much does it cost for every treatment in a light box okay times four times Le times less uh how many people in the country have psoriasis okay that's just psoriasis yeah now how about heart disease how about you know and obviously we got to get the science for for some of those studies but that's how you begin to see you organize you Lobby you get out there you make the arguments because I think the American people will respond to it um and the insurance companies obviously don't want to pay those bills if they don't have to absolutely uh I'm not going to ask you about Republican mindfulness so but that's uh and I think you have I I think you've already provided a really compelling answer about the kind of the universality of of this process right um but I wanted to ask you about what your conversations are like with your colleagues about this um you know I do have a good friend who is a republican so do I am I allowed to stay um and he him and I co-chair the house addiction and Recovery caucus and he had he had uh was at Betty Ford I think twice and so was exposed to mindfulness and some form of meditation and so Patrick Kennedy was the other co-chair and he left and he wanted me to do it and I said I'm only going to do it if I could I could push the mindfulness stuff and he said absolutely we love it and and John Sullivan from Oklahoma said the same thing so him and I period periodically do sit together and he's uh a photo he's really open-minded I wouldn't mind he may um but you know he's he's really open-minded because of the science and because so many people in the addiction and Recovery world are using mindfulness and it's it's having a lot of uh positive effects and so what I've told my Republican friends is like this is this is conservativism I mean this is it I mean this what do you guys want you know this is cheap it works it'll help control costs in the long run uh you know I mean we talk about a reporter Cleveland plane dealer last week asked me so what are you trying to push liberalism here I said I said no I said would having a not wasting good clean fresh water on food we never eat that's conservation that's being a conservative you know not wasting money and throwing things away that's being a conservative um I think there are a lot of opportunities practicing mindfulness participating in your own health care that is taking responsibility for yourself you know give me another conservative argument it fits yeah so this this is why I'm optimistic is that I think we can find some common ground I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow but you know I think at some point we really can find some common ground you know if you can start to see how this fits together we're teaching our kids we're training our teachers it should be in the curriculum of a medical school so the docs are learning nurses should learn it social workers should learn it you start to see veterans coming back who were trained as Marines are now coming back the average stay for a marine I think is like 5 years then they come back home join the maror program or whatever Miracle after school you can see how you can just it starts to be assembled and then you have Retreat centers where you continue to build the infrastructure of the 21st century it's not an InterContinental uh railroad it's not an interstate highway it's a Regional Training Center for mindfulness and you can see it all fitting together thank you well Tim I want I want to thank you for your book and on behalf of everybody here I want to thank than you for your your outstanding work and we're grateful you're doing it thank you very much [Music]