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One Breath Can Change Your Life with Suze Yalof Schwartz
271 Plays10 days ago
In this episode of The Choice to Grow, Suze Yalof Schwartz, founder of Unplug Meditation, shares the powerful story of how one mindful breath changed her entire life—and how it can change yours. From her high-fashion past at Vogue to becoming a leading voice in meditation, Suze invites us into the radical simplicity of the pause. She and Scott explore the science of stillness, the myth of “not enough time,” and how to shift from reactivity to presence, one breath at a time.
Suze Yalof Schwartz - Meditation Maven, Wellness Pioneer, Transformer
Suze Yalof Schwartz is the Founder and CEO of the Unplug Meditation App, and the world's first drop-in secular meditation studio, Unplug in Los Angeles. She is also the author of Unplug: A Simple Guide To Meditation for Busy Skeptics and Modern Soul Seekers. In 2012, Suze learned a three-minute meditation that changed her life forever. Prior to this, she was a fashion editor and "makeover guru" working at Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Glamour Magazine with regular appearances on GMA, The Today Show, CBS Early Show, and more. Once she discovered meditation, she was determined to keep doing it but could not find a place to easily learn and practice. After taking hundreds of hours of classes, reading every book possible, and listening to podcasts and lectures from the world's most famous meditation teachers, Suze realized that meditation needed a makeover and she was the one to do it. Suze's mission is to make meditation simple, accessible, powerful and interesting enough so that everyone will want to practice it and experience the benefits for themselves.
Scott Schwenk - Master coach, spiritual teacher, culture architect
Scott Schwenk’s teachings, courses and private mentoring guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Scott spent several years living and studying in a meditation monastery which introduced him to the core body of Tantric meditation traditions which continue to flow through each of his teachings. Scott continues to study and teach from two key Tantric lineage streams.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold the breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:41
Speaker
Ah. Now let's dive in.
Susie's Journey to Meditation
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. I'm super excited to introduce you to my next guest, who has become a friend, a mentor, and really a teacher in a lot of ways. This Susie Yalaf-Schwarz.
00:01:02
Speaker
Susie Yalaf-Schwarz is the founder of the world's first drop-in meditation studio. She's the founder and CEO of the Unplugged Meditation app. Now everybody gets to meditate with the studio all over the world.
00:01:16
Speaker
any time of the day in all different ways, whether it's to sleep, whether it's to wake up, whether it's to find your joy, whether it's for abundance, there's a meditation for everything down to the shortest possible meditation you could imagine.
00:01:30
Speaker
So in addition to this, she's the author of Unplugged. It's a simple guide. It's a book, simple guide to meditation for busy skeptics and modern seekers. Anybody
Creation of Unplugged Meditation
00:01:40
Speaker
out there skeptic?
00:01:41
Speaker
In 2012, Susie learned a three-minute meditation that changed her life forever. We're going to find out what that is. Prior to this, she was a fashion editor and makeover guru working at Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, and Glamour Magazine with regular appearances on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CBS Early Morning Show, and more.
00:02:02
Speaker
Once she discovered meditation, she was determined to keep doing it, but could not find a place to learn and practice. After taking hundreds of hours of classes, reading every book possible, and listening to podcasts and lectures from the world's most famous meditation teachers, Susie realized that meditation needed a makeover.
00:02:22
Speaker
better but Susie to do this. And she was the one to do it. So Susie's mission is to make meditation simple, accessible, powerful, and interesting enough so that everyone will want to practice it and experience the benefits for themselves.
00:02:38
Speaker
Just a few more words from my experience of Susie. Susie can do more things in a day than most people could ever get done in a lifetime. I don't know how she does it, but I think in part it's because something I didn't yet mention. She's a mother of three extraordinary young men, gentlemen, gentlemen who I'm certain are already making a difference in the lives of everyone they know simply by being raised well and knowing how to show up as their authentic
Scott's Unexpected Career Path
00:03:03
Speaker
self.
00:03:03
Speaker
So without further ado, with so much joy, Susie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Scott. And as you were reading that, I have to say, I remember when the universe, and this sounds very woo-woo, sent you to me and you came to Unplug and you're like, I don't know why I'm here, but I was sent here. dear And I just felt like, how lucky was I that you were sent to me and I was smart enough to say,
00:03:32
Speaker
Let's go. And you really helped me launch Unplugged in the early days before we even opened.
00:03:40
Speaker
it ah It was so amazing too because I had just come out of a really intense sort of dark night of the soul. I was really successful at what I was doing ah in a lot of different ways.
00:03:52
Speaker
And then something happened that I didn't realize had really kicked my butt and kicked my confidence to the curve. So my phone stopped ringing. And so there was a period of a few months where i was like, how am I going to pay rent? Am I going to keep my car? How's this all going to go?
00:04:08
Speaker
And I remember sitting down in front of one of my altars and just going, you've got to show me what to do. I don't know anymore. And this voice said one word, lift.
00:04:21
Speaker
I got up from my seat, I knew exactly what it meant, and I signed up as a Lyft driver. Ridesharing was brand new. Uber and Lyft were brand new. They were totally competitive with one another. And so for 10 to 20 hours a day, i was sitting in my car.
00:04:35
Speaker
At the same time, I started working with this tiny little book, literally physically tiny, called The Abundance Book by John Randolph Price. And in it is this 40-day prosperity plan.
00:04:47
Speaker
And there's these 10 statements and you're supposed to read each one for like a day for 15 whole minutes as though it was already true. And then when you're done, have your notebook ready and write down anything that comes like intuitive prompts because they do.
00:05:03
Speaker
So when I didn't have writers, I was reading these statements. I ended up memorizing them. And then it was somewhere about
Meditation Accessibility and Approach
00:05:12
Speaker
two and a half months when you wrote to me on Facebook.
00:05:16
Speaker
And you said, I've been watching your stuff. I've been following you. I'm really curious. I'm opening this new studio. Would you like to come in and meet? I'm interested in you as possibly teaching here. So that cuts into your story where I show up in the studio and it's beautiful. It's brand new. There's like, you know, white walls and big white curtains and it's super bright with the sunshine. And we sit down and we have our chat.
00:05:39
Speaker
And then you said, well, show me this breathwork you do. And I take you through my playlist and it happened to have Steely Dan. And you just lost it. You're like, this is so cool. This is exactly what I wanted. Because here's my rules.
00:05:51
Speaker
If you want a teacher, no flute music, no music that sounds like Take Me to India, no prayer hands, no Sanskrit, no namaste.
00:06:03
Speaker
I want... the people that my husband works with in venture or capital to want to come in here and meditate so we've got to make this really really accessible and at first i was like are you kidding me that's like cutting the heart out of a body how is it going to operate i didn't say that i kept it to myself and i thought you know what this is a really good opportunity for me i've had this reboot with the driving the car things are opening back up let me do things in a new way let me find out What have I really learned?
00:06:31
Speaker
What have I really learned that's not just information that could be actually transmitted without using special words or special gestures? And so for a couple of years, i really went for it and I really learned so much, including being gifted some trainings with you like the media training you gave us as teachers i will never ever forget i've passed two of the tips on to everybody i've ever talked to who's going to be on camera who's terrified which is most people so yeah you came into my life at the perfect moment and it was such a boost to to my life at that moment to have somebody so strongly believe in me who didn't already know me
00:07:14
Speaker
And you were such a superstar at the studio. I just want to tell your audience who might not know that Scott actually taught at Unplugged. He was trained by David Elliott and he was such a rock star that his classes sold out every single time.
00:07:29
Speaker
One of the big devastating losses and what happens a lot at Unplugged is that the superstar teachers just end up spreading their wings and flying. um And I love it, but I also get sad because just I'm so lucky that you graced our studio for as long as you did and that you're actually on the Unplugged app for me to be able to share you with the planet.
00:07:53
Speaker
And a lot of people have discovered you through our app.
Collaboration in Meditation Community
00:07:56
Speaker
um And i just to feel grateful. Well, you know, I look forward to continuing to collaborate.
00:08:03
Speaker
i look for ways I reach out to you from time to time because one of the things I see in the world that's a real opportunity is for collaboration. Like recently I interviewed or dialogued with Tracy Stanley, who also was teaching at Unplugged for a while.
00:08:18
Speaker
And one of the things Tracy said is like, well, can't there be two or more teachers of Tantra in the world? Like, does it have to be a competitive model? Like, why can't there be more than one person who brings their own flavor?
00:08:31
Speaker
And then this this really important opportunity, I think for humans, which is to learn how to collaborate. Like we're the only species that I know of that doesn't collaborate with its environment.
00:08:44
Speaker
And that's the fear. I've just finished recently Napoleon Hill's book that was suppressed while he was alive called Outwitting the Devil. Talking about Napoleon Hill, for those of you who don't know, was one of the early writers in the 1920s around the depression of how to increase abundance.
00:09:03
Speaker
particularly focusing on financial abundance by changing our thoughts and changing our, our way of being. And this book talks about the main things that get in the way are drifting the mind, drifting into all sorts of territories that drop our energy and fear.
00:09:22
Speaker
And one of the biggest fears that a lot of us have had and had to overcome because we've been trained into it is this fear that the competition is going to swallow us whole and the idea of even competition.
00:09:36
Speaker
What have you seen in terms of like all these years with Unplugged, how collaboration can really go well? Well, one of my favorite things is when we used to have, and we still do, have these teacher meetings and the teachers meet each other and then they do double workshops or they kind of connect in some way. And we've done a lot of those.
00:09:58
Speaker
And these teachers end up really connecting and falling in love with each other. And I'm so grateful to be a part of that because I wanted to create an environment that didn't feel like as competitive as fashion, the previous environment that I was in.
00:10:13
Speaker
And one of the things that I wanted to do when I opened up Unplugged was meet new people and surround myself by interesting people that teach me things that I trusted. And I really feel like I was lucky to, one, seek out those people like you, and two, have those people flock to me.
00:10:31
Speaker
So I feel like it's been a very collaborative environment for the teachers and for the students and even the community who connect in the lobby and then go out for dinner together and connect with each other and take it off property.
00:10:45
Speaker
And
Transformative Three-Minute Meditation
00:10:46
Speaker
I love that. Right. So meditation, what was this three minute meditation you were shown that really opened the doors and changed your life before you opened the studio? Yeah. What's so interesting is I was just listening to it on the Unplugged app by John Sahakian.
00:10:59
Speaker
because So my mother-in-law taught me this pretty much this meditation called the three-minute cure that John Sahakian has on the Unplugged app. And i I didn't even put two and two together. But basically what it was was closing our eyes, bringing our awareness to the breath, counting the breath in for four, holding, exhaling for six,
00:11:25
Speaker
And continuing to do so and then visualizing our happy place. Mine is Jamaica, but you know other people could be their bed. It could be the river. It could be whatever it is.
00:11:37
Speaker
And then when you open your eyes, you just feel lighter. One, slowing down your breath, sending a signal to your brain that everything's okay, taking you out of fight or flight.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then visualizing your happy place genuinely makes you feel happier just thinking that you're there. And it was those two things done in a three-minute meditation that took me from really stressed to really calm, and I couldn't believe it was that easy.
00:12:07
Speaker
And then I went on a quest to discover more and learn more, only to find the original- And you learned lot of systems. What? You learned a lot of different systems over these years. have to say- Like you through, think in the early days, my MBSR or M- mbsr or m what I've studied mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness, guided visualization, hypnosis, Vedic, TM, Zen.
00:12:36
Speaker
I tried them all. And I actually, like Olivia Rosewood, who was also one of our original teachers, who I just, I love her. Saying her name just makes me feel lighter and happier.
00:12:46
Speaker
But Olivia said this quote to me. And she said, there's more ways to meditate than there are ways to make an egg. And I love all of them. And I have to say, I feel very similar to Olivia Rosewood in her book, Please Meditate, that really kind of guided the studio when I first read that book.
00:13:06
Speaker
ah
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting thing. what What's changed in your view, if anything, about meditation and how to present it to the world to help people to grow from when you first started the studio to now?
00:13:23
Speaker
You know, ah my personal journey was when I first started the studio, I would sit in the studio and I would hear every single voice on the street. I would hear every little... And I'd try to go race out and try to stop people talking on the street.
00:13:39
Speaker
Now I don't even hear or I let them in and I don't care. So as you grow, your practice grows with you. And I'm still in development. And I have to say, this has been now...
00:13:52
Speaker
13 years that I've been meditating, 12 on a daily basis. And it's just been, ah you know, it's ah it's a process. But how has my how has my thought changed? It hasn't even changed a little bit.
00:14:06
Speaker
It's exactly the same. I do believe that there's only three things that happen in every meditation and I've learned all of them. We breathe, we let it go, our mind wanders and we come back. And every time I take a different technique and they say, no, no, no this is different.
00:14:22
Speaker
I'm like, well, it's actually not different. It's, it's but okay. Now I'm adding a mantra, mantra, let it go. Mind wanders, come back. Present moment awareness, feeling present, coming back.
00:14:35
Speaker
Mind wanders, coming back. It's all the same. I just want people to know how easy it is. And once you start actually doing it, at first it's hard because nobody wants to sit alone with their thoughts.
00:14:48
Speaker
But once you befriend your thoughts and see how interesting it is, you realize that like we're on autopilot. Do you hear that siren, by the way? Yeah.
00:14:59
Speaker
Okay, I'm sorry. Do you want me to wait? All good. No, no, no. Totally good. It's life happening. It's like we're in New York City. It'll pass. It'll pass.
00:15:09
Speaker
Okay. Like clouds in the sky. I'm i'm waving for your editor. So we are on autopilot. And one of the exercises that I do with a lot of my corporate clients is I time them for two minutes and have them write down every single thought that's in their brain.
00:15:25
Speaker
And then after that, I have them circle the thoughts that are important. And usually in those two minutes, they'll have somewhere between 14 and 22 thoughts, and they'll only circle one that was important.
00:15:39
Speaker
And and how what the reason why I'm telling you this is because we are operating on autopilot. We have all these thoughts going on that are happening in our subconscious in that mind that we're not listening to because we're plugged in 24-7, looking at our phone any chance we get that we're not doing something.
00:15:57
Speaker
And we're not actually listening to the voice that's actually happening on autopilot inside of us. And that is bringing down our vibration. And as Heather Hayward likes to say, we need to unsubscribe to some of those thoughts.
00:16:11
Speaker
So my arm, I used to think my arms were 400 pounds, which they are not. And that was a thought that I had on repeat that I didn't even know that I was having. And it was a secondhand thought because it belonged to my lovely mother who gave it to me.
00:16:25
Speaker
And I realized that is not true. That is a waste of my time. And I want to focus on the thoughts that actually matter and are important to me. So when you finally listen to your own thoughts, you can understand what's going on on autopilot and what you can acknowledge, say thank you and goodbye to.
00:16:48
Speaker
I love listening to this because as a person who constructs courses that are meditation based or have meditation as ah really strong through line, I can hear from when somebody begins to choose to practice meditation, they sit down and they notice these three things.
00:17:05
Speaker
In my world, it it's breath softening and relaxing the body and returning, returning, returning. Returning to what changes as they grow and develop.
00:17:18
Speaker
But what I'm hearing is this growing and developing. like That first, maybe it's year or several for somebody, is literally maybe just about staying in the seat, the amount of time they said they were going to sit.
00:17:32
Speaker
And then not necessarily seeing much happen, except when they look at how they feel when they get up, they feel different than when they sat down, if they're asked to notice. But where you're talking about is the meditation has taken root enough that I can actually observe my thoughts as they're happening and cease this is the way the Buddhists describe it, cease elaborating on those thoughts, whether we call it unsubscribing or just not elaborating them.
00:18:02
Speaker
Like I don't need to elaborate on them. And it's even a form of psychotherapy with oneself, the way you're describing like, you know, in the world of shadow work that we call it or parts work, there's three main types of shadow. There's projections like, oh, I project that, you know,
00:18:18
Speaker
you don't like me or you, you, whatever, I make something up. Introjections. That's what your mom gave you. We all have introjections that become our beliefs about ourself. They were introjected.
00:18:31
Speaker
And then, you know, this other thing called split ego states, I'm not going to break that down. too mentally complex, but like we get when we slow down, when I slow down,
00:18:42
Speaker
i come back into contact with what is, totally non-attached and aware and already fulfilled.
00:18:56
Speaker
And the more contact I have with that, then it's easier to spot those things that are like, say we're cleaning a house. It's easier to see where the dirt is, where to clean without judging the dirt.
00:19:07
Speaker
I love that analogy. and And Scott, you're also playing on my inner voice. You probably are hearing me quoting every single person here.
00:19:18
Speaker
i could quote you a thousand times too, because I've meditated with you so many times on repeat. And there's so many times in my life where psychically you're so intuitive that you'll call me out of the blue and leave me a voice memo.
00:19:32
Speaker
And I'm like, how did he know I needed to hear that right now? And I think that's something that also comes with meditation. It doesn't need to be spiritual to start, um but that's actually the fun part that comes later. And it's just going to happen and then you're going to want more of it.
00:19:49
Speaker
But what I say to people is, just like we were saying, it's very simple to just breathe, let go, mind wanders, come back, or breathe, soften, let go, your mind will wander and you'll come back.
00:20:00
Speaker
But yeah it doesn't need to be long to be effective. And anybody can do this. And it might be a little uncomfortable in the beginning to sit down with yourself. But as i don't know who said, you know Tony Robbins, if you can't sit down with yourself for 10 minutes, then how can you expect other people to want to?
00:20:21
Speaker
Well, let's just pause everybody and take a deep breath into that. That's really something for all of us. Let's just take a deep breath together. And as you exhale, everybody, let go through your whole body like you're setting down a heavy burden at the end of the day.
00:20:41
Speaker
I imagine you've had people say this to you, Susie, at points or to the teachers. I've certainly gotten these comments from time to time from folks writing into me saying, I thought meditation was supposed to make me calm.
Myths and Misconceptions about Meditation
00:20:55
Speaker
And I've had to say to them, there are meditations that attempt to do that and sometimes do, but really what meditation is is an opportunity is to see what is.
00:21:08
Speaker
Well, the number one myth of meditation is that I'm supposed to stop my thoughts. And if I can't stop my thoughts, I'm doing it wrong. And most people think that they can't meditate because they think too much.
00:21:23
Speaker
And we all think too much. We all have between five to 80,000 thoughts every single day. Wow. And meditation is a way to notice those thoughts and still choose to come back to the present moment, your breath, a mantra,
00:21:38
Speaker
whatever that is that anchors you back to now. And once you start playing ping pong with your thoughts, because you're going to go there and then come back and go there and come back, you understand that you'll never be able to stop your thoughts. Even the Dalai Lama has thoughts.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We all have thoughts. I mean, thoughts are just like part of having a body that has senses that are designed to sense the environment and threats and opportunities and alert us.
00:22:09
Speaker
And if I understand my thoughts that way, then then I can actually, as you said at the front of our conversation, learn to befriend them and see what they have to say that's useful and what I can just kind of let go as noise.
00:22:24
Speaker
So then there's this conversation then I'm really excited to dive into a bit, which is there's our practice. There's our daily practice. For some people, it's multiple times a day.
00:22:36
Speaker
For those who've really worked with it, it becomes not something that's a special occasion on a cushion at different times a day, but a way I orient through my life.
00:22:47
Speaker
Where meditation becomes the way I walk through the store, the way I walk through Grand Central, the way I walk through commotion. And both of us live in Los Angeles at this recording, and both of us in very different ways lived through the recent fires.
00:23:04
Speaker
I was, before I introduce your story, i was set, or the next te group of people to get set to evacuate from the Hollywood fires. And so I was running around my house for the first time ever in my life.
00:23:20
Speaker
photographing, videotaping, thanks to you video telling me to videotape everything in case for insurance. And then and then just like shoot like what am I gonna take and what am I gonna leave with the possibility that I'll never see anything ever again that I don't take and what really matters?
00:23:38
Speaker
That was interesting. Also interesting was the compassion I had to develop very quickly for myself because I noticed I was in fight or flight. My heart rate was really moving fast, not knowing where things were going and how it was going to play out.
00:23:53
Speaker
And it was it was like time slowed down and sped up all at once. I had to make peace with the fight or flight was important at that moment so that I would move quickly. It was giving blood to the right places and and and cortisol so that I could focus.
00:24:09
Speaker
And at the same time, I was able to notice this baseline of calm and ease behind the fight or flight and let that help me make the choice of what goes in the suitcase, what stays home and takes a chance.
00:24:24
Speaker
I didn't end up having to evacuate. i could see the fire from my roof, but I didn't end up having to evacuate. But it was an interesting long night of not knowing what was going to happen. Whereas Susie, on the other hand, and I'm going to let you tell your story and how meditation plays into this for you.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah. So I came to the studio and my husband said, you might want to come back to the house because there's a fire and I'm seeing a lot of smoke and you know, people are saying that we may have to evacuate. So ah I went back to the house and I actually called my um, the director of operations, Jelena Dixon's dad, because he lost his house in the Woolsey fire. And I'm like, well, what do i do Just worst case scenario. He's like, you'll be lucky if you get to unpack, stuff your car, grab as much as you can. if you have in any kind of documents and he told me all these things to take,
00:25:15
Speaker
So I came home and I could not, I was looking at Will Rogers and the smoke got bigger, bigger, bigger. And then we started seeing orange. And that's when my husband and I were like, we need to go.
00:25:29
Speaker
And I was lucky because I, in one hand, because I had spoken to him, was very conscious. um So I grabbed the blueprints to my house, all the um all my photo albums,
00:25:43
Speaker
And like a couple key things that mattered to me, I forgot a lot of things, but the key things, and I felt very present. And I have to say, I believe that was because i meditate.
00:25:57
Speaker
I felt very present and was consciously making choices and staying calm. Whereas my husband, on the other hand, was looking and he's like, should I take the blue shirt?
00:26:09
Speaker
with a white shirt. I'm like, Mark, take both of them. Like he was just in a different state of mind. He was not in the same state of mind as I was. And I ended up like luckily taking a bunch of stuff and being really on it.
00:26:25
Speaker
And then we left and we didn't know what we were doing. We came to unplug. um We were in the situation room of the upstairs office here.
00:26:36
Speaker
And we were trying to figure out where to go, what to do. And we ended up going to a hotel. And you know my son ended up going to live with his friend who had ended up, they lost their house immediately. They had no time to take anything. They just had to go.
00:26:52
Speaker
It was like they were home and it was like life, get your life and get out, period. And he ended up staying with them. um first staying with us the first night and then staying with them afterwards because her husband was a doctor, is a doctor, and they ended up getting a house the next day.
00:27:13
Speaker
Wow. Wow. Wow. One of the things that I'm hearing in what you were sharing about just you and Mark at home is how...
Meditation in Crisis Management
00:27:25
Speaker
a consistent and deep meditation practice over time sets us up to be able to lead others, to actually be a force that can can compel and attract and lead people in a direction that's beneficial.
00:27:43
Speaker
What's your experience of that? like What have you noticed about your your capacity to lead with less force and more energy? Well, I wanted what happened to me immediately to not happen to people who were still in a harm's way with the fires. So I immediately said, okay, everyone, this is what you need to take if you're you know with the fire's near you. And a lot of people saw this video that I did, and it really helped them do the exact same thing. So I immediately wanted to share the wisdom that I got from Jelena's dad that I experienced firsthand
00:28:17
Speaker
because my house burned down the next day, and share that. And then afterwards, there were other little things that happened where you need to kind of know what was in there, what was the cost of everything. And I was kind of sharing my journey as I was going through it. I was very present during my journey.
00:28:37
Speaker
um On one hand, I was also in shock. On the other hand, I was present and wanting to share. But I felt intrinsically that It's just stuff.
00:28:48
Speaker
My family was alive. I was alive. That is honestly the only thing that, you know, it sucks. Having your house burned down by fire, I'm not going to lie.
00:29:00
Speaker
It's a pain. It's it horrible. We lose a lot of memories. We lose a lot of stuff. But the one thing that actually matters is life. And all my friends, and i hundreds of people that I know whose houses burned down in the fire, we all lived.
00:29:17
Speaker
We all survived. This is something money, whether you have it or not, can actually fix. Death and illness is something that money cannot fix.
00:29:29
Speaker
Those are real problems. these are This is a problem, and I'm not going Everyone's experiencing it in their own way, but the way I experienced it was I was alive and I was grateful for it.
00:29:44
Speaker
How have you... used your practices to actually meet and welcome the experience of grief? Well, I don't welcome grief.
00:29:56
Speaker
Okay. Grief is something that is unwelcomed. wish I never had to experience grief. Grief is awful. And I grieve for anyone who's grieving.
00:30:07
Speaker
Because stuff it has grief too. Like we talk about stuff and, you know, some people were saying, I think in a way that other people couldn't hear who were losing things. Oh, it's just stuff. But like, for example, my mother, before she died of cancer, spent an entire year crocheting me a blanket that fits over my huge bed. yeah
00:30:29
Speaker
She's not in a body. That's one of the most tangible things I have connecting me to her. yeah She sent it with a note in a big box. right before Christmas saying, if you ever miss me, if you ever feel sad, if you ever feel lost or lonely, wrap this around you and feel like I'm wrapping my arms around you.
00:30:47
Speaker
oh And I do that so many times. There are so many times. If something happened to that blanket, I would know that it was it wasn't going to destroy my memory of her, but I would grieve.
00:31:00
Speaker
And I would want to give myself room for that kind of grief. That some things, while they are literally just a thing, the association that we form, you know, like I saw something the other day about people who've raised a pet that this, and I believe this is research-based, the loss when that pet dies is just like the loss of a child.
Meditation for Handling Loss
00:31:27
Speaker
And people who haven't gone through it don't know that. So it's interesting to me to, like, I've had to really learn through my practice Not to go into toxic positivity and how to actually meet things that feel uncomfortable or difficult in my thoughts, my emotions, and my body. That's one of the biggest gifts I feel like meditative practices keep giving me.
00:31:51
Speaker
Because loss is natural, right? if you're in a If you're in a body, we're going to lose balance. Every relationship we're in is going to end. Somebody's going to leave or somebody's going to die. Every single one of them. And stuff comes and goes and jobs come and go and friends that we love come and go. And like, I feel like this is a huge learning edge for us as a species is to get intimate with how we meet loss.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah. Thoughts? Thoughts on that? um Well, for me, i didn't grieve my stuff. i I missed my house. I loved my house. But i didn't i don't but we went into automatic fix-it mode. Like, how we need to find a place to live. Where are we going to live? where How are we going to do this? And it was a lot of that where I couldn't really focus on my life.
00:32:48
Speaker
And it was hard, but, you know, actually Pamela Rowlands, who has Meditate With Animals, I love her by the way, she gave me great advice during this time because she lost her house in the fire. And she said, don't screw up your protocol.
00:33:07
Speaker
Meditate in the morning and exercise so that you have at least those two things. And I'm grateful that I'm not a big drinker. because i could have lowered my vibration, but instead I ended up raising my vibration, raising it in a way that one, I not only meditated every day, I didn't lose my practice, but I added on the working out, which is her practice, which helped me a lot.
00:33:33
Speaker
And I also added on the sharing and helping others during that moment of grief. But As I mentioned to you before recently, my son's best friend's tennis partner died.
00:33:52
Speaker
And that is a grief that you feel for the mother, that you feel for your child, that you feel for everyone. And that hurts. And like, yeah there's no fixing that.
00:34:04
Speaker
No. Well, I remember when we lost Jackson who worked at Unplugged, who was an incredible bright light. and just suddenly just suddenly, like this fellow, like your son's friend, hit by a car, like so sudden.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of grief that I don't know, that hurts so hard that you don't even know what to do with. But my advice to people who are experiencing it is try to feel it.
00:34:29
Speaker
try to not push it away, but try to like scream and cry. And this is where breath work with you, Scott, I think would be insanely helpful for people to just, you're holding that space for trauma and grief.
00:34:45
Speaker
And you're, you're really amazing at that. I am out more of a happiness, you know, my, my natural state is just joy and happiness. So when I'm grieving, it's very uncomfortable for me and,
00:34:59
Speaker
and just getting allow allowing myself to feel it. That's been like a real practice. I really treasure you being raw and real about that. There's so many people out there, maybe you've met some of them, who might have a branded name as a teacher around the world, and yet when nobody's looking, they're throwing staplers or they're raging at somebody or they're and they're not telling the truth.
00:35:24
Speaker
about where they're learning edges. The Dalai Lama tells his edges, like, here's where I've struggled. Mother Teresa wrote about, and they originally were trying to suppress her journals where she had doubt.
00:35:36
Speaker
There's so many of us, I'm one of them, the way I'm energetically designed is i come most alive when it's for others. And then I have had to learn and still learn how to include myself in that, like sense myself in that. So it's not like an arrow going out, but it's an inclusive thing.
00:35:57
Speaker
But like when I'm in a suffering, I know I'm just focused on me. And so the rocket fuel for my practice continues to be really choosing to feel, may this be of benefit to all beings without exception, including any who are actively suffering.
00:36:13
Speaker
And that when I suffer now, When I experience pain, like grief is one of the biggest ones for me. I've had one after another. Right before quarantine, my mom died of cancer. Six months later, my father stopped speaking to me. He's a born-again Christian and just can't be with that he has a homosexual son and was getting really contentious and then just cut me off five years ago.
00:36:35
Speaker
Sorry. A couple years into that, my favorite person in the whole wide world, who is a second mother to me, teacher, mentor for 28 years, Sally Kempton, passed away.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah. It was like one after another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember bringing her to the studio. And then you know all these friends who lost everything in the fires, like you feel all this. So I've had to learn to get friendly with discomfort and not make it mean something it shouldn't. like It's just energy.
00:37:08
Speaker
And if I can just be with it the way you talked about, I've noticed, at least for me, that grief is one of the most challenging things that actually I feel is beneficial because it shows me an intensity of love and how much I love.
00:37:25
Speaker
And if I can be with it, it's actually a very intense, sometimes excruciatingly intense form of love. Mm-hmm. I notice I actually soften in front of grief.
00:37:37
Speaker
So I feel like grief has become one of my ferocious teachers. And when I fight it, it seems like nasty, like my images of the goddess Kali, you know, with like gnashing teeth and blood dripping and, you know, ripping things apart.
00:37:53
Speaker
It feels like that, but when I really soften and surrender and put my head on the floor to the grief or to whatever's showing up, suddenly this, what seemed like a ferocious goddess is suddenly the most intense form of motherly love guiding me to being the best person I can possibly for myself in the world.
00:38:14
Speaker
And I do think it's a teacher. Grief is your teacher. I think all of these, there's a guy...
Embracing Challenges with Meditation
00:38:20
Speaker
b Brian Johnson, who wrote the book, Arate, who owns Heroic. Known forever. Brian Johnson. helped him Helped him fill Zod's, his first social media platform before it became, before Facebook came out, we had Zod's.
00:38:32
Speaker
i've He's like in my head too. I love him. But he says, ohms, obstacles make me stronger. Practice your ohms. Obstacles make me stronger.
00:38:43
Speaker
And I do believe that. I think grief is a teacher, the teacher we never wanted, but a teacher nonetheless. And one of the things that um I realized on the Unplugged app, we did not have a meditation for the loss of a child.
00:38:58
Speaker
And I asked David Gee to do that meditation for me, and so I could send it to my friend. Because actually, in the teacher training program, we've had a lot of people who've lost husbands and lost children, but I never really like felt it like when you feel it firsthand.
00:39:16
Speaker
And I do think like now I'm kind of embracing more real things. So it took me 12 years, as you say, how have I grown? 12 years to kind of be comfortable with things that are insanely uncomfortable.
00:39:32
Speaker
I want triple click under that to become comfortable with things that are insanely uncomfortable. I mean, never... in in recorded history that I know of, have so many of us been able to know what's going on all over the world in very many places all at the same time.
00:39:50
Speaker
And I don't think that there's necessarily more violence and destruction. I think we're just more exposed to it. And where most of us have not been shown how to process tension, contraction, and difficult emotions. We just haven't been shown.
00:40:04
Speaker
And we didn't learn how to even yet regulate our own nervous system when we're off center.
00:40:12
Speaker
So the opportunity to meditate is so much more than just simply like something to do on a Sunday. We need to it. Like it may just save life.
00:40:25
Speaker
It may save lives. I mean, so many people have said meditation saved my life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I hear that every day. And I believe 365 is the key to do it every single day, even if it's a minute of the day. and it And it doesn't have to be my practice or your practice. It can be whoever is listening, your practice.
00:40:45
Speaker
Maybe you just want to breathe in stillness and silence for a minute. Maybe you want to be guided by a pro. Whatever works.
00:40:54
Speaker
Well, at some point... I'm curious your thoughts on this. I feel like at some point as the meditation journey takes off for a person, they start to notice, oh, I can observe my thoughts and emotions as they're happening.
Teaching Meditation at Unplugged
00:41:06
Speaker
I'm not my thoughts. I may get lost in them.
00:41:08
Speaker
As that starts to take off and there starts to kind of become more of something I walk around being aware of, there becomes a time when a person is ready to go deeper with a teacher. Mm-hmm.
00:41:23
Speaker
What have you noticed about selecting a trustworthy guide? Well, only hire, in my opinion, the best people um to be at Unplugged. As David G says, it's like the Carnegie Hall of meditation, Unplugged.
00:41:41
Speaker
So I think, you know, obviously going with a teacher who knows i I say to everyone, there is the one thing about meditation is the older the teacher is, the better they are.
00:41:54
Speaker
Why? Because the longer they've been practicing and the more wisdom life wisdom they have. I genuinely believe that. I think the more you do it, the longer you've been doing it. I mean, you've been doing it a lot longer than I have.
00:42:08
Speaker
If I want to dive into breath work, you're the guy I would go to. If I want to go deep into meditation, you would be someone I would turn to. David G., for me, has been someone who's been, you know, taught me so much that his voice is my inner monologue. My mother's my mother's voice, who I love to death, is no longer my inner monologue. It's David G. um And I'm grateful for that.
00:42:32
Speaker
So he and I do teacher training where we go for six weeks together and we dive deep. And I've met people from all over the world who've done it with us. And I just...
00:42:45
Speaker
I learn something every single time. So sitting in stillness and silence and going deep and talking to people on a deeper level is the thing I cherish most about Unplugged.
00:42:59
Speaker
What would you say the secret sauce is in six weeks of training? Obviously, people could focus on gathering information, and I'm sure there's a ton of really good information, science-based information, David G's experiences, your experiences, but like what is the thing that's actually setting somebody up from day one to the end that's actually something they can share that's not information?
00:43:25
Speaker
What's happening? i I love that because the first five weeks you're learning so much, everything you need to know about meditation. But week six, which is the week we're live together on Zoom,
00:43:36
Speaker
is the best week because you're teaching what you learned. So we believe that if you're going to be good at something, you need to learn how to teach it. And we actually do breakout rooms and they start teaching one-on-one and they have imposter syndrome. Who am I to teach meditation?
00:43:53
Speaker
And then by week, by the end of that week, they will have taught 14 times themselves and they're teaching on our global platform. whether they want to or not, whether they plan on being a teacher or not.
00:44:06
Speaker
Most people don't do this training to become teacher. they They do it to deepen their practice. But they're so surprised and so out of their comfort zone that they're actually teaching people, okay, one, gratitude, two, pain, three, and we have them teach all the different types of meditation in their own voice.
00:44:26
Speaker
unscripted based on everything that they've learned from in the past. And they're learning with you too, Scott, because every day they do a different meditation on the Unplug app in those six weeks.
00:44:37
Speaker
So they learn mindfulness and they learn mantra-based meditation and they learn yoga nidra and all the different techniques that our teachers teach in a simplified way.
00:44:47
Speaker
So then they're kind of doing their own version of that. And that's that's cool to watch. And that's I think that's the magic secret sauce.
00:44:57
Speaker
Do you feel like the people that you see that are what you could say maybe the best meditation teachers you see, whether they're brand new showing up or they've been around teaching for a long time, that there's, do they come to the teaching already having some sort of a thing?
00:45:13
Speaker
do they develop the thing? Is it a combination of both? Well, for me with you specifically, Scott, like you transmute.
Unique Energies in Teaching Styles
00:45:22
Speaker
And I know you know that you do that, but I feel that when I'm in the room with you, you don't even need to speak.
00:45:28
Speaker
I feel your transmission. And I know it's so weird for me to say that because that's like so not a Susie thing or not an unplug thing. But some teachers, like that's the level that is kind of the level that you hope to eventually get to.
00:45:44
Speaker
um but I think people with personalities that let those personalities come out and shine, like the Megan Monaghan's of the world, like they're just fun to be in that energy. And Megan, who's experienced so many life challenges, but is kind of such a great meditator that she just looks at them and smiles and says, thank you, sir, can I have another?
00:46:08
Speaker
Like we gain a lot from that. But I think it's something you can learn to do. I don't think everybody's born with it. I was the last person ever on the planet Earth to be teaching meditation. I'm the most impatient person, and it's something that I've been learning because I've done you know the teacher training and I've meditated with so many amazing stars that now I feel comfortable with it. But it was not it was not who I was, but it is who I am.
00:46:36
Speaker
Listening to you, I'm getting all sorts of imagery from like It's starting with the sun and imagining the sun like like projecting through like different windows or stained glass windows or through a prism you know and all these ways that sun can flow. And it's like all the meditation teachers are tuning into some aspect of the sun, knowingly or unknowingly.
00:46:59
Speaker
And then the personality is the stained glass window. And every stained glass window is unique and should be. Mm-hmm. And to not try and blot that out. Yeah, you find your teachers too. There are people that you'll resonate with and there are people that you won't resonate with. And some people I love resonate with people that I don't resonate with.
00:47:19
Speaker
And some people that I'm like, how can you not resonate with this person? um I'm so surprised by that. But I think we all have voices that work for us. And that's what I'm really proud of with, especially the Unplug app, is I, you know, have a voice for everyone. You know, whether you are you know, trans or straight or black or white or brown or whatever you are, um you know, Republican or Democrat, doesn't even matter. There is someone on there for you that will resonate with you.
00:47:59
Speaker
I resonate with absolutely every single one of them, but I love the fact that we there's so many different voices. There's so much unique energy coming at you and it's all really simplified. And I remember Johnny O'Callaghan saying to me that the hardest way to teach is to keep it simple.
00:48:19
Speaker
Agreed. To do less.
00:48:25
Speaker
To do less. And that really involves...
00:48:29
Speaker
recognizing when my ego is getting involved, not to try and kill it off, but to go, okay, is there any part of me right now that needs you to see me some way?
00:48:41
Speaker
And I gotta let that go. i gotta let that go and treat it just like I'm in meditation, like any other thought. mean, the skillsets that meditation has given me and continues to give me for being in relationship with other humans,
00:49:00
Speaker
you know How many people are hungry for intimacy with other humans? And I'm not talking about sex, I'm just talking about feeling seen and known and loved. and when we talk about meditation being available to everybody, we're talking about like this nourishing current of life that's actually available that we access through something we're calling meditation.
00:49:23
Speaker
Well, intimacy is actually available to everybody. And it's from what I can tell, it's the same obstacles. I get involved in my thoughts, I go into some contracted gesture with my body and my breath.
00:49:35
Speaker
And then They feel it, we feel it, and then there's friction or discomfort or alienation. It's like, oh, well, what would be the simple version here? what could i What could I take from my morning meditation that's simple and bring into this moment?
00:49:56
Speaker
I'm curious, you talk a lot in different ways, but the same thing about your ability to, whether it's appreciate all the different meditation teachers and get something. I can even, I have these pictures of you walking through art galleries and seeing something unique in every piece you're looking at.
00:50:11
Speaker
And at the same time as I'm seeing this, I have this feeling of like seeing you as a young woman and a little girl under your mother's tutelage. Like, what did you learn from Isla? What did you learn from your mother?
00:50:24
Speaker
back there in new York City that showed you how to show up for life and give everything an opportunity? My mother is the greatest optimist on the planet Earth.
00:50:34
Speaker
You will never meet anyone more optimistic than my mom. In fact, as we speak, she is on the Queen Mary crossing from New York to London with her boyfriend at age 86, looking like knowing she lives life knowing that relationships and connection. She has a lunch date every single day um matter.
00:51:02
Speaker
And she loves people. And I'm so grateful that her love of people and love of life and way to look at things in an optimistic way have trickled onto to me.
00:51:15
Speaker
Like i've I've gotten, my mom is amazing. She drove me crazy when I was in high school like anybody else. um But now, ah since I've been in college and beyond, and now I'm 58 years old, my mom, I just think she's the most magnificent human and nothing's a problem. She doesn't watch the news because she just doesn't want to she doesn't want to feel that.
00:51:40
Speaker
She wants to spend the rest of her life looking for the beauty, looking for the love, looking for the light. I see that as a huge contribution. There are people who are who are able to follow all the different news channels in a useful way and do something with it.
00:51:56
Speaker
I realize that's not my job. And it's not my job on social media to tell people what to think. My job is to grow and then help the willing to be able to think with wider perspectives.
Influence of Meditation on Parenting
00:52:12
Speaker
That's it. and then and And as I like to say, work with the willing. Work with the willing. Yeah. So your kids, what have you learned about meditation being a mom? um As my kids call me.
00:52:28
Speaker
What have I learned about meditation being a mom? Patience, love. And you're not always right. Tell me about that. You're not always right. How does that live in your life? You've got be stop, pause, take a look at yourself and apologize.
00:52:44
Speaker
I give myself a, sometimes I said a B plus in parenting. But my friend says that a 90% is still an A, so you could screw up on 10%. Definitely screwed up on the 10%.
00:52:57
Speaker
you know, there's a moment, I'm very protective of my kids to a fault, maybe too much so, only because I was so wild when I was younger. So I assume that they're like me. There's a part of them like me, but I'm just so lucky. i just love them.
00:53:12
Speaker
And they're so fun and so interesting and so different. And like, I love the age that they are now, 18, 21, 23, and being able to connect with them as adults.
00:53:25
Speaker
anne yeah I've learned a lot. They're a mirror. Children are a mirror. They're a mirror all the best parts of yourself and they're a mirror to all the worst parts of yourself. So I fortunately and unfortunately get to see that off often, um but I'm grateful.
00:53:42
Speaker
I'm grateful that I get to because not everyone got to be a parent. i was very lucky that I was able to be a mom. um and And I don't think parenting is for everyone.
00:53:54
Speaker
Were you hard parenting while working full time in fashion? Yeah.
00:54:01
Speaker
Here's a funny story, and then I have to race, but let me tell you this hilarious story. I remember I was walking out of the Condé Nast building, and I was walking to the subway, and this woman who was younger than me was like, how do you do it?
00:54:15
Speaker
How are you a mom of three kids, and you're on television, and you're like the head of the fashion department? How are you doing that? And I was like, oh, well, you know, i compartmentalized my life, and then i right before I got on the subway, I'm like, oh, okay.
00:54:28
Speaker
I had left my son at Condé Nast in the children's center.
00:54:35
Speaker
And I'm like, oh my God. And I had to run back into the building and go get him. And I wasn't doing it. You know, like that story encapsulates motherhood.
00:54:50
Speaker
You know, we can't do it all. It's not perfect. It looks great. I look great on paper, but in reality, it is a messy thing. And you've got to love the mess.
00:55:03
Speaker
That might be your answer to my next question that I ask every single guest. So there's a quote that I share with my students over the years. It's one of my all-time favorite quotes, and it really can change a life when people really let it in in a skillful way.
00:55:17
Speaker
So the quote comes from this amazing teacher who came from Japan in the last century and opened the Zen Center of San Francisco in the 60s, Shunryo Suzuki Roshi. And he would say, death is certain, but time is not.
Expanding Love and Optimism
00:55:33
Speaker
What is the most important thing? So that's my question to you that I ask every guest. Death is certain. The time is not, Susie. What do you say for you, we don't have to agree, is the most important thing and are you attending to it?
00:55:48
Speaker
I want to love everyone I come in contact with. i think that's the most important thing. Love the people around you, but make your love bubble wider.
00:56:01
Speaker
Make your love bubble wider.
00:56:07
Speaker
That's a beautiful place to complete. Thank you. Make your love bubble wider.
00:56:15
Speaker
The sun shines on everything, criminals, saints, trees, barren land. Like maybe love can be like that when we don't make it about our preferences or our versions.
00:56:28
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here together and being in dialogue. These are not straight up interviews as y'all are noticing. The dialogue, and a dialogue literally means to discover together. So I hope you who've been listening have discovered some things.
00:56:41
Speaker
I've discovered some things. I'm going to make my love bubble wider. It's simple. I can think about it. I can imagine it as something I could see, it really touches my heart. So hope it touches you too.
00:56:54
Speaker
Susie, any last words?
00:56:57
Speaker
That's it. you did You did pull the Barbara Walters thing as I'm crying over making my love bubble wider. i just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for having me on your show. And I think we're supposed to end in silence, correct?
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, we are. We're going to take 10 seconds, everybody together in silence. So if you're seated in a place where you can do this, maybe you want to close your eyes or just kind of let them relax. An open gaze, not focusing on anything in particular.
00:57:25
Speaker
Take a couple of breaths and let your body set down tension like you're exhaling and setting down a heavy burden like a big suitcase from coming home from the airport. And we'll just sit together for 10 seconds in silence, savoring.
00:57:53
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
00:58:13
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.