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TTP #6- Drummer Stephen Chopek on The Discipline of Persistence- Chopek Breaks Down How He Has Been so Consistent in Living a Disciplined Life on the Road with Health of Mind, Body and Soul, Through His Daily Meditation, Fitness Routines and a Vegan Diet
10 Plays7 years ago
Drummer Stephen Chopek is an inspiring example of someone who is committed and unwavering in his pursuit of health of mind, body and spirit on the road.
In this conversation:
- Making the transition from career drummer sideman to front man and solo artist. What that progression has entailed and what he has learned.
- Motivating factors in Chopek’s transition to being a plant-based vegan- Master Cleanse, empathy for Animals, listening to his body on tour in order to find out how he could perform at his highest level.
- The life changing experience of doing a 10 day Vipassana silent meditation retreat and how that has manifested in his everyday life and his music i.e. the power of decision making, the concepts of impermanence and acceptance.
- What Chopek gained by cutting out alcohol on the road and how that set him up for a morning routine that has enabled him to thrive.
Please take a moment to rate and review the podcast in iTunes and visit www.tourganic.com for more info on this episode and living healthy on the road
Tourganic Podcast Theme songs 'The Path' and 'Shirtmaker's Brawl' written by David Bailis and this episode's musical interludes by Stephen Chopek and Stephen Chopek/Charlie Hunter Live
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Transcript
The Intersection of Music and Lifestyle
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Torganic Pike. When you're young, learning how to tie your shoes, it was this monumental task, right? But you do it, whether or not you're conscious of it, that's preparing you for kind of the next thing, right? And so if growing up and being an adult and being able to put those pieces together and realizing that
00:00:21
Speaker
The discipline that it takes to learn an instrument, you can apply it to whatever else it is, your diet or your health, and specifically transferring that discipline into any other aspect of your life. This kind of feedback loop is that what you put into it, you get back tenfold.
00:00:39
Speaker
I am David Bayless, your host. Just got back from playing up in Alaska and man, is it ever beautiful up there. An amazing place to get out and get some exercise while on tour. In the podcast, I speak with touring musicians about how they live a healthy lifestyle on the road. While many of the conversations are about how and why my guests live a plant-based vegan diet on the road, the content of these conversations has a diverse and holistic approach to focus on health of mind, body, and spirit.
00:01:04
Speaker
My goal is that this podcast will give you a window into their life and offer you some insight that will inspire you. Please take a moment to comment and rate the show in iTunes and let me know what you think.
Chopeck's Musical Journey and Lifestyle Choices
00:01:15
Speaker
My guest this week is Stephen Chopeck, the great drummer who now has successfully transitioned into leading his solo career as a singer, songwriter, and recording artist. Chopeck has toured with numerous artists, including John Mayer, Charlie Hunter, and we toured together for a few years when Stephen joined the Pimps of Joy time.
00:01:32
Speaker
Chopeck's discipline is evident to anyone that knows him and his commitment to living a healthy vegan lifestyle while on tour is an inspiration to witness firsthand. In this conversation we learned about how he got into a plant-based diet, how meditation has played a major role in his life and his success as an artist, and he provides some critical tips on how he maintains that lifestyle on the road.
00:01:53
Speaker
We start our conversation discussing what sparked the transition from career sideman to making the jump to begin recording and touring with his own music and how that progression has been going.
00:02:07
Speaker
So I put out, I recorded a batch of tunes, I made an album that I put out in 2012 and it was just me singing and playing electric guitar. It wasn't until kind of a year after that, it was the year after that that I just kind of got the book to play shows, you know, and book shows. So I started booking some gigs.
00:02:27
Speaker
Was playing with with a band at the time a rock band called the everyman and I had booked a show for us in Atlanta this place called Smith's old bar. Oh, yeah and Smith's old bar They got the big room upstairs, but downstairs there this place called the Atlanta room Okay, which is a cool little room and a friend of mine was booking it so I booked a show for the band But the bent it turned out, you know, the band couldn't do it. So I just thought
00:02:54
Speaker
You know, I'll do it. I'll play myself. You know, I'll take the slot myself. And my friend who was booking the room, he was cool with it. So I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey at the time. And I was down in Atlanta. And so it's kind of a stretch for like a one-off, right? So I booked some shows in between and just kind of got the bug to kind of keep doing it. I'm curious. Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
That show in Atlanta, I mean, that was like, so that was your first foray into like solo, it was like your gig, especially like being on the road. What resonates of that night looking back at that night? Is it all kind of a blur or is there aspects of it that were really important or do you see it more as just kind of this stepping stone? Yeah, I see it as kind of a stepping stone. I mean, I remember aspects of the night of
00:03:51
Speaker
of kind of, like you said earlier, just kind of getting out of my own way. I mean, I kind of made it a point to not think too much about it, you know, because when you, at least in my experience, when I kind of think too much about what I'm doing, it can be kind of stifling, you know. So if I thought about all the things that took me there and
00:04:12
Speaker
know, I would have just kind of tripped myself up. It was just a matter of kind of getting on stage and, you know, blast. At the time I was playing, I was playing solo electric, you know, electric and singing. So I was just kind of, you know, I had a set of tunes that I would just kind of blast through. It would be interesting to hear. I would probably kind of cringe at what it sounded like at the time. But
Embracing Challenges and Growth
00:04:35
Speaker
I think it was more of a stepping stone to being out in front and doing my own thing because I had been accustomed to playing drums for other people and being on stage so that was another thing a kind of a steep learning curve was when I started because I had booked the gig and then
00:04:59
Speaker
Really kind of thought that I should do start doing some Preparation for playing out in front of people because I was used to I had written the tunes and and played the tunes But playing in front of people is a whole nother thing, especially being a drummer and then being out in front of the stage Yeah, I was gonna ask you that how
00:05:18
Speaker
you prepare differently, especially for that first gig, because that's so much more calculated. Like how do you prepare differently from being the drummer on a gig, which most likely is not your gig.
00:05:32
Speaker
versus you being completely exposed and you being the only guy on the gig and it's your songs. Yeah. And that's that. Right. When I set out to do it, I thought to myself, I mean, it was a combination of probably being overly confident and kind of, you know, psyching myself up to do it, you know, thinking like, I've done this before, you know, I've played in front of people before I got this, you know, but when getting up in front of people with just the guitar and a mic and not being behind the drums, there was a moment of just like, uh, I don't got this. I don't got this.
00:06:01
Speaker
so it was a there was definitely a steep learning but it was pretty quick learning curve of of being in front of in front of the stage rather than behind it and you know performing your own tunes and sing your own tunes and I knew I just from my experiences as playing all those years as a drummer and what would a big difference it makes to of
00:06:26
Speaker
going out there and doing gigs like as you know there's Practicing is really important, but there's really no substitute for a performance a live performance and all the things that you learn Kind of on the job training right just kind of baptism by fire just being out there because it's just a totally different headspace of
00:06:47
Speaker
regardless of whether or not there's two people in the room or 200 or 2000, there's just something about that performance mind space, head space that you just need to do it. You need to do it over and over and over again. No doubt. I like the concept
00:07:08
Speaker
about just kind of psyching yourself out. You know what I mean? You psych yourself out in a sense of I can do this, I've done this before even if you haven't, but in the same breath, I'm going to be cool. I've encountered other things in my life that probably were harder than this. This is all part of a process. In life, I think that's a really important thing to just acknowledge that
00:07:33
Speaker
There's jump-off points, you know, where you're teetering on the edge and how important it is to just have faith in yourself that you gotta just sometimes jump off. You gotta go for it, you gotta take chances if you're expecting to see any results at all in life. Any growth, any personal growth. And it's empowering too, like you put yourself out there and you just kind of leave it all on the stage and
00:07:58
Speaker
There's just kind of an empowerment to that. It's not just a growth process as a musician, but as a person. And I think particularly as you get older, it's easy to fall into comfort zones. Comfort zones that you're aware of, comfort zones that you're not aware of. So I find it's even more important to make an effort to put yourself into situations that you're not
00:08:28
Speaker
that comfortable with just to kind of break out of yourself. Definitely. I've heard people say you should do something every day that scares you. Right. Right. Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations is what enables you to reach higher limits in your life. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And again, not just and I see it as it's certainly a musical endeavor, right? And as an artistic endeavor, but it's also there's just something more kind of
00:08:55
Speaker
holistic about it, there's just something more of a human growth process of it to me. There's something about the pushing and the pushing yourself, that's part of the enjoyment of the process. I've kind of grown to almost not seek it out, not seek to make myself uncomfortable, but appreciate those uncomfortable moments because I know that that's kind of a signal of
00:09:24
Speaker
of it being somewhat of a growth process.
00:09:27
Speaker
That's so awesome that you can acknowledge that, you know what I mean? Cause that, that can be, it can go the other way too. If you let that get in your head, you're like, Oh my God, things aren't going right. I'm going down, I'm going down, I'm grabbing the whole of, of, you know, tanking right now or, you know, and you start thinking about that and you're not in the moment anymore and you're kind of losing your connection with the crowd. But if you can be present, if you can be present enough to acknowledge that in the moment and be like, okay, this is a bump in the road, but it's, it's cool. Yeah.
00:09:57
Speaker
to deal with it.
00:10:20
Speaker
She talks to strangers and tells the whole world Staying is the hardest part Staying is the hardest part Staying is the hardest part So she runs
Diet and Discipline on the Road
00:10:44
Speaker
You've had a long career as a sideman from long before we knew each other of you know playing with John Mayer and Charlie Hunter a couple like bigger names that I know of and us touring together for years and having many incredible shows together. I want to dive in a little bit about health because we rolled together and
00:11:05
Speaker
you were a huge inspiration for me and it was it was always uh I had so much respect for how you went about uh your life on tour and and i'm i'm interested because I don't all this time we spent together I don't think I got the history of how you kind of ended up especially in in terms of your diet yeah and how you got to where you're at now and i'm curious is that were you doing that back when you were on tour with John Mayer is this something that
00:11:30
Speaker
almost comes from when you were a child or how did that how did that path happen? Yeah, it's definitely developed I guess in my early 20s when I when I started making meat less a part of my diet and it was just kind of circumstantially you know once I once I moved out on my own
00:11:52
Speaker
you're providing for yourself, you're working and you're making your own food or you're going out to eat and doing kind of things on your own. And so I wasn't preparing, I just, meat and like the preparation of meat just kind of became like less a part of my diet. And then realizing that it was something that I didn't really, and as a result didn't really miss,
00:12:16
Speaker
I still but I wasn't really substituting it with the proper things and it was far as you know maintaining a you know a balance of Protein and you know balancing your proteins and your carbs and your things and I wasn't really conscious of all those things again, it wasn't until some years later that I that I started to think about or started to realize about you know food combining and making sure that you had a balance of of of your
00:12:46
Speaker
you know, if you're raw foods and cooked foods and, you know, substituting animal proteins for, you know, beans and legumes and nuts and things.
00:12:59
Speaker
Okay, so what sources did you pull from to learn about that? I think it was just things that I had learned from other people, you know, friends that had, that were, you know, vegetarians. So there wasn't like a monumental book or documentary. There's not necessarily something that you would pinpoint. It was more just from the community that you were just asking around, like, I'm interested in this. How do I do this right?
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was more of a gradual thing. It was more of a gradual learning process from people. And then eventually it kind of became, you know, when I started to learn more about factory farming and the treatment of animals. And so in combination, it kind of became, it started to become a health choice as well as a moral choice. And thinking, and another big step was when I started to become aware of food ingredients and reading
00:13:55
Speaker
food ingredients. I think that was kind of a big thing. You know, there were a couple things that friends of mine had told me about, like high fructose corn syrup, right? High fructose corn syrup and partially your fully hydrogenated oils. Something kind of, you know, it just kind of flipped the switch and really kind of got me into what it actually is that I'm putting into my, that I'm actually putting into my body. I started to become more aware of
00:14:23
Speaker
all the things that go into processed foods and the number of ingredients that go into things. And as a result of that, just realizing that the way to go, if you really want to keep your ingredient count low on things that you put in your body, on things you eat, kind of the only way to go is to just prepare your own foods.
00:14:49
Speaker
And so that kind of got me into thinking about preparing my own foods and being a touring musician, bringing those ideals on the road with me and traveling with a lot of food or traveling often with food, you know, things. Because as you know, I mean, it's easy to eat poorly anywhere, but particularly on the road.
00:15:10
Speaker
When you might be in the middle of nowhere and food options are pretty low, that kind of got me deeper onto the path as far as providing for myself in those situations. And early on,
00:15:25
Speaker
traveling with bands that weren't necessarily on the same page. So I would kind of have to seek things out on my own and make sure that I made stops, make sure that I had things with me, make sure that I had made stops at a grocery store, and so I kind of always had things with me so I wouldn't be subject to stopping at whatever place and have to
00:15:49
Speaker
eat things that I would rather not. So eventually cutting meat out altogether, going vegetarian, realizing that I felt better without eating certain things, without eating meat, without eating red meat, and then eventually cutting all meat out of my diet.
00:16:07
Speaker
And so mostly it was just and still is an experimentation process of figuring out the things that do work for me and things that don't work for me. Kind of going back to our conversation again, just kind of taking it further. So I was vegetarian for a while and then I started to think about the animal products that I was still eating, dairy products and eggs and things and kind of experimented with cutting those things out as well and realizing that I just kind of functioned better without
00:16:37
Speaker
without certain things, without animal products and without dairy. Yeah, so really getting that more heightened awareness of what you're putting in your body and how it's making you feel in conjunction with talking to community and people around you and learning, okay, there's these ethical issues with the treatment of animals.
00:16:59
Speaker
A, I'm feeling better in general, I feel more healthy, and then kind of really looking even one step further and say, more specifically, within diet, what's making me feel good, what's making me not. That's a good lesson in itself right there just because
00:17:14
Speaker
It can be hard to be aware of what we're eating and how it makes us feel in the hustle and bustle of the day to day life of anyone out there living their jobs and kids and family and whatever. Plus for us as a musician on tour, it's like
00:17:33
Speaker
You're just trying to get by a lot of the time and get to the next show. Play a good show and keep your energy up. Sometimes it's hard to even be aware of what am I eating. Slow down. I know I'm super hungry. How is this making me feel? That's the other thing too. You're talking about being super hungry and then blood sugar things coming into. You might be going a while without food and realizing
00:17:57
Speaker
you know, you've gone the whole day without eating and then you finally get to somewhere where you can, and it's like, you're not even thinking about what you're eating. You just need to eat, you know, whether it's before the show and then particularly after, you know, or even after a show and you know, you're staying up late nights and you're, you know, you may be driving late and late night eating. So it takes a lot of, it's kind of like a willpower builder or like it takes, it takes a certain amount of willpower to kind of to stay on that path, you know, because you have all these options open to you.
00:18:29
Speaker
of late night places or fast food places and most of the times it might take a little more effort and a little more money to go out of the way to get something
00:18:43
Speaker
they might be a little better for you. The convenience of not eating well is pretty tempting because it's always very accessible, because it's always very affordable. So to be able to resist those things and stay on that part, I find that willpower is kind of a big part of it.
00:19:05
Speaker
in a way that I think about the word willpower, that concept is discipline. Yeah, absolutely. Right? I see a parallel is certainly in my life with my health and my fitness and the process and my path of continuing to work on that and the discipline that I show. There's a parallel with my path with music and especially learning to play an instrument and the craft.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. There's this book that I read a long time ago called, I think it was maybe from the 50s or the 60s or something at the time, it was kind of a pop, you know, maybe one of the first initial kind of self-help kind of books or something, right? And I don't even know what would turn me on to it in the bookstore. Sorry to use bookstore. It's called Psychopictography. And it was the focused on, you know, kind of positive imagery and, you know, positive mental attitude and things like that.
00:20:02
Speaker
But one of the things I remember about this book is called the transference technique. Learning something, you know, learning a new thing and kind of putting it in relation to when you're, you know, when you're young. I think one of the examples they use was like learning how to tie your shoes. And tying your shoes, I mean, I could vaguely myself remember it. It was like this monumental task, right? Learning how to tie your shoes. But you do it whether or not you're conscious of it.
00:20:29
Speaker
kind of preparing you for kind of the next thing right and so if growing up and being an adult and kind of being able to put those pieces together and realizing that you know not necessarily learning how to tie your shoes but for example you know learning how to play an instrument or the discipline that it takes to learn an instrument it's like you can do that and you can apply it to
00:20:53
Speaker
whatever else it is, you know, your diet or your health and specifically, you know, transferring that discipline into any other aspect of your life. And again, it's this kind of
00:21:04
Speaker
And this kind of feedback loop is that the discipline that you put into it is kind of the, what you put into it, you get back tenfold. Yeah, I find that all those things kind of feed each other, that the discipline involved in, that I put forth in initially learning an instrument is the same discipline that I use in maintaining a workout routine or a specific diet routine. Or again, learning another instrument when we were talking earlier about
00:21:34
Speaker
playing guitar and writing tunes and you know realizing that or remembering the effort that I put into you know the learning curve that went along with learning how to play the drums and the hours and the hours that I would put into it and
00:21:48
Speaker
knowing the, the, the results that come with consistent effort, you know, with consistent, like concerted concentrated effort. There's that book, um, Kenny Warren, that effortless mastery book. Again, one of the, one of the things, there were so many great things in that book, but one of the things that, that stood out to me is the, the, the continuity of practice, the continuity of, of, and of course, if you, if you have the,
00:22:15
Speaker
If you have the discipline and the time and the schedule that allows us to practice for eight hours a day, that's awesome. I mean, I haven't done something like that, like college or after college. But a focused effort of 10 to 20 minutes a day, every day, is going to make a bigger difference than
00:22:38
Speaker
practicing for three hours, once a week or two times a week, because chances are pretty good is that your discipline isn't even going to be strong enough. You're going to practice for about probably 10 or 20 minutes anyway. And then the rest of the time, you're going to start to wander. You're going to start to be noodling around anyway. So the discipline involved in doing something every day and building on those whatever 5, 10, 20 minutes a day at the end of a week or the end of a month or at the end of a year,
00:23:08
Speaker
you're not gonna, the growth, it might be a more gradual build kind of day to day, you know, similar, you know, whatever, like, you know, looking at yourself in the mirror every day, you're not gonna notice that much of a difference, but somebody who's seen you, you know, on January 1st of that year is gonna notice a difference than, you know, December 31st of that year, you know what I mean? That discipline of the persistence is a big part of it.
00:23:37
Speaker
One of my teachers years ago told me with practicing, which is really similar to what you're saying. He said, practicing is like maintaining a fire.
00:23:49
Speaker
you know, you keep working on that fire, that fire is gonna be raging. You neglect it for a day, it's gonna go down, but it's still there. Two days, there's maybe some burning coals. Three days you don't practice, like that fire's done. You're gonna have to work to relight that. And that's something that's actually stuck with me. That little allegory or whatever you would call it has really stuck with me over the years and certainly in my,
00:24:17
Speaker
Music because he was applying it to my to my playing but also I think in a subconscious way it has applied to my fitness and and my overall outlook on Wellness and well-being. Yeah, and even relationships, you know relationships are like that too. It's like if you just let anything kind of You know any you know, so many more things are kind of
00:24:41
Speaker
or like organic living organisms that we think they are, you know, a plant, you know, you order a plant and, you know, a plant needs sunlight, but kind of everything that you, um, everything that involves a growth process, whether it's again, learning an instrument or maintaining a healthy lifestyle or maintaining, you know, do personal relationships. I mean, they all require a certain amount of, of, of,
00:25:07
Speaker
concerted, concentrated effort, mostly on a daily basis. Yeah, investment. Yeah, totally. And the return that you get on that investment is only going to be as much as you put into it. Yeah, for sure.
The Impact of Meditation and Veganism
00:26:01
Speaker
Another thing that I did that got me thinking deeper about things, I did the master cleanse a bunch of years ago. I found it to be really beneficial. I kind of, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed as difficult as it was to, you know, to maintain that for the period of time, you know, 10 to 12 days or something. You know, so it's basically kind of a juice marinade, like a liquid cleanse, right? Right, right, right.
00:26:25
Speaker
And after when it was done thinking about that I kind of gave myself an opportunity to like start from scratch, you know, that really got me thinking about, okay, what am I going to start feeding myself with? And of course it wasn't, you know, I wasn't, you know, it was ups and downs. I mean, I kind of go through periods of eating well and not eating that well. And, but I did a meditation retreat a number of years ago.
00:26:54
Speaker
And this particular meditation retreat, this particular silent meditation retreat, most of the food that they provide on that retreat, it was all vegetarian and mostly vegan. And so on that retreat, I kind of got to thinking about eating vegan. Totally. Were you touring at this time as well? At the time of the meditation retreat, I had kind of taken a break from touring.
00:27:24
Speaker
But when I first did the master cleanse, I was actually on the road when I was doing it. Wow. That got me thinking about, because you really kind of have to be prepared with any cleanse for that matter of making sure you have everything that you need.
00:27:40
Speaker
regardless of where if you're home so yeah that that got me into you know realizing that okay if i can do if i could do the master cleanse on the road and and have everything that i need for that then i could certainly do it while i'm actually like you know eating food you know and kids just take note you might not want to try the master cleanse on the road not not for the first time at least
00:28:05
Speaker
Trying a cleanse on the road is a difficult thing, I'd imagine. But you know, on a serious note, I think a lot of people use, not even necessarily knowingly, but have the experience of like a cleanse, like a master cleanse or a juice cleanse or some kind of fast as a gateway that really launches them into
00:28:27
Speaker
the next period of their life, which is often maybe veganism or living plant-based or something. I think that's a common tie in a lot of people's lives. You took a break from touring, but I'm sure you're still playing a lot. And you had been touring prior to that and through this whole experience. And I'm wondering if, although it's still a path, you know where you're trying things out, if you could see a noticeable difference
00:28:57
Speaker
in your playing as you start to make this transition into being more healthy. Yeah, even more so than in my playing, I think it kind of changed the way I felt just kind of inside my own body. You know, because so many times for so long, at least in my experience, you eat things and you don't necessarily feel good after eating them. It's just something that you're used to eating and you kind of
00:29:25
Speaker
it's just a cycle that you kind of get yourself into. So as a result of feeling better about myself or just kind of feeling better physically, I think that certainly had an effect on how I felt as a musician, particularly as a drummer and it being a very kind of, you know, physical instrument. I think that definitely made a difference on how I felt as a
00:29:50
Speaker
as a player and how I was interacting with the instrument myself and interacting with other people and having a sense of clarity kind of physically allows you to kind of feel better, feel more clear mentally as well. And music being such a physical and a mental thing, having that sense of physical clarity and mental clarity
00:30:15
Speaker
certainly had an effect on the way I was playing and the way I was thinking about music and the way I was responding to music and responding to other players when I was playing. Those two things, those two things definitely had an effect on each other. I settle down to play
00:30:45
Speaker
Excuse the fire in my brain Burn away then rearrange Lie, cheat and steal Get yourself the best deal Convinced the pain is not real
00:31:17
Speaker
I think you were the first person that I toured with that had such a serious dedication to meditation and I wonder if you can if you're if you're up for it if you can talk a little bit about how you got started on the path of meditation and
00:31:35
Speaker
how that's affected your life and sort of your overall outlook and also if that's kind of become a factor in your playing and your health as well. Yeah, totally. In high school, I guess in high school and
00:31:54
Speaker
And it's funny, you know, you asked earlier about specific books and I said that there wasn't one, but as we're going on, like I keep mentioning, you know, the Psychopatography and the Everless Mastery, there was a book that my sister had it for one of her classes. I have an older sister who's also a musician. So when we were younger, she was in high school, maybe. So there was this book called the Dao, the Dao De Jing. Oh, yeah.
00:32:19
Speaker
and the Lao Tzu, a particular translation by a guy named Stephen Mitchell. I read that book and something about the, I know it's such a kind of a catch-all phrase, but the Eastern philosophy, something about that resonated with me and that kind of got me eventually thinking about or kind of discovering meditation and thinking, kind of researching meditation practices and Zen meditation and
00:32:45
Speaker
Another book that an early teacher recommended to me is a book called Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugene Harrogel. I've heard people recommend that and refer to that. It's a small book, it's a quick read and it's something that I read maybe once a year. That got me thinking about
00:33:06
Speaker
the or got really kind of introduced me to Zen and Zen meditation and and I didn't know too much about it at a time and it's such a such a Deep practice, you know Zen Zen present meditation But what I kind of took from it was the calmness and the stillness of mind and the focus involved with meditation and again something about that resonated with me, so I would I kind of
00:33:34
Speaker
tried to learn how to meditate on my own and what my contents of meditation would be of just kind of sitting still and focusing on your breath. Eventually
00:33:46
Speaker
maintaining that practice in different degrees throughout high school and throughout college. And there's a museum in New York City called the Rubin Museum of Art. Oh, yeah. It's like over on maybe 16th, 17th, somewhere around there. Yeah. On the west side of Chelsea. Around there. Yeah. Yep. And they focus on the Rubin family and they have a beautiful collection of mostly Himalayan.
00:34:10
Speaker
art, you know, tankas and tapestries and sculptures and things. And they have a lecture series throughout the year. And this one particular series that I went to was neuroscience and focused on the power of decision making, the decisions that we act on in our lives and how the power of decision
00:34:36
Speaker
even before you actually physically enact a certain course of action, just kind of the mental seed that you plant and how that opens up different paths.
00:34:47
Speaker
So this particular, maybe it's an annual thing, they have a series called Brain Power or something like that. So this particular talk was, there was a person kind of hosting the talk. And one of the guests was a woman who had just written a book on the, I believe she was a neuroscientist and the power of decision making and the power of the mind. And the other person on the panel was an artist
00:35:10
Speaker
named Lori Anderson. She's a violinist and she's a musician and she's a composer and she's a performance artist. And she threw at some point during this this lecture she had mentioned this silent this 10-day silent retreat that she had gone on. It was one of those things it was one of those kind of you know split decisions that the kind of thing that you
00:35:31
Speaker
you kind of hear something or you find out about something at the perfect time and it kind of resonates with you. So that was one of those things. And when I went home from that particular lecture, I was researching silent meditation retreats in the area. And I don't even know if it was the same one that she went to. I have a feeling it probably was. But there's a practice of meditation called Vipassana, V-I-P-A-S-S-A-N-A, Vipassana Meditation. And they have,
00:35:59
Speaker
They have meditation centers around the country, around the world. One of the main ones is in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It's about three hours north of Manhattan. Ten day silent retreats.
00:36:14
Speaker
silent meditation retreat. So I did one of those. First one I did was in October of 2009. Had you been meditating before that or was this kind of like you just dove all in right there? I was meditating kind of sporadically. I certainly didn't have a daily practice of it. So it was a very kind of, it was, you know, I did kind of dive into it. I didn't really know too much about it. I had done some research on the, on the, on the meditation center to kind of,
00:36:41
Speaker
that it wasn't a guru cult kind of thing. And it was an intuitive thing. I certainly did some research, but again, intuitively, I felt that it was a thing to check out. It's a 10-day course that you learn this particular practice of vipassana meditation, which basically
00:37:10
Speaker
focuses on the breath and focuses on your respiration and while you're sitting in meditation and your body sensations while you're sitting in meditation and being aware of those sensations and being where they use a lot is kind of a two-fold thing. So you're aware of your body and your body sensations and you're a quantumist with them, meaning that when an unpleasant
00:37:34
Speaker
situation. When unpleasant sensation arises, your initial reaction may be to get up or get out of the seated position or get out of the meditation hall. You just kind of have an aversion to this unpleasant situation. You want to rid yourself of that. But you're also aware of pleasant sensations and those
00:37:56
Speaker
Pleasant sensations are also temporary. So basically not having an aversion to the unpleasant situations, not having a craving towards the pleasant situations and realizing that they're both impermanent. The pleasant situations arise and they pass. The unpleasant situations arise and they pass. Realizing that concept of impermanence as it manifests itself while you're sitting in meditation. But then that's also the, you know, they talk about the Dom of the truth
00:38:27
Speaker
that that's also the process of life too. Things arise and they pass, things arise, they pass. And that a lot of the turmoil that we experience in life is the clinging to pleasant things that are happening or the running away of things that we don't want to happen. Yeah. Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance, awareness of these things. And again, it's, you know,
00:38:55
Speaker
that there's the theoretical knowledge, you know, it's one thing to be aware of these things, but to actually put it into practice is a whole other thing to put into practice while you're sitting there is one thing. But then next level, putting that into practice in your daily, you know, interactions with the world. Right. Yeah. Cause I've found with, you know, some bumps I've had in the road over the, over the past few years,
00:39:22
Speaker
saying I need to accept it is a far different thing from when I finally get to the point where I do accept it and you just let go of that stress and if you can
00:39:35
Speaker
get to that point which sometimes it's incredibly difficult without a doubt but if you can like what a positive outcome from what can potentially be an incredibly negative thing in your life and then almost jumping off from what you're saying with the transference it's like you've done that once
00:39:55
Speaker
maybe the next situation that's hard okay I've already truly accepted I've already done this once in the last situation you know I'm gonna be stronger I'm gonna get better next time and you can build on that and did you find that that helped you do that in your daily life yeah focused on it there yeah sure I mean it definitely gave me um you know these 10 days are basically it's an introduction to the practice you know it's not a
00:40:22
Speaker
everybody has a different experience there, you know, for as many people that have, you know, it's a very, it's a very,
00:40:32
Speaker
individual experience and where everybody's there together, but nobody's speaking with each other, you know, the things that you experience are very personal, but ultimately, so me personally, what I found, it wasn't a, it wasn't a get well, you know, it wasn't a, it's not a miracle cure for anything. If anything, it's just kind of a step onto this introduction to this path that's going to be a lifelong.
00:40:55
Speaker
a lifelong journey. Again, the discipline involved in that practice and even more so the discipline in applying that into a daily practice and realizing that I kind of thrive off of
00:41:12
Speaker
discipline kind of self discipline, you know, and realizing that the benefits that are experienced from applying myself to certain things and following through with certain things. So something about that aspect of the discipline involved in a daily meditation practice, again, resonated with me, resonated with me during the course and resonated with me after the course as well.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. If you've proven to yourself that in one facet of your life, you can show discipline and grow and benefit from that. You have the faith that in, in other things you try, if you show that same level of discipline, you'll benefit. Yeah. And seeing, like you said, seeing through and it's not, it's not always going to be easy and seeing and, and kind of make working through those kind of turbulent times and coming out the other end.
00:42:22
Speaker
some kind of side notes of that retreat being reintroduced into a vegan diet and also before the retreat they kind of suggest that you just kind of not do any particular sort of technical cleanse but just kind of take a break from intoxicants whether they be caffeine or tobacco or drugs or alcohol
Life Without Alcohol
00:42:50
Speaker
So around that time I was drinking less alcohol. When I started to change my diet, when I started to cut out,
00:43:00
Speaker
food, you know, more heavy foods, I found that alcohol had, it just had a stronger effect on me. You know, I wasn't drinking as much plus my diet was changing a little bit. So when I would drink even just a little bit, it would just kind of stick with, it would have a stronger effect on me and stick with me longer. You know, the next day I would wake up, even if I had a couple of beers or a couple of glasses of wine, I would just feel that kind of, you know, fog, brain cloud, totally.
00:43:26
Speaker
So I stopped drinking, you know, shortly before this retreat. And, and again, there's no, you know, this is not a dogmatic process, in the sense of, you know, nobody's, it's certainly rooted in the Buddhist tradition. But it's not, it's not a religious, it's a non-sectarian practice, right? Nobody's encouraging, you know, there's no, there's no,
00:43:51
Speaker
You know converting involved or it's not like you do this meditation practice So now you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't you know, there's none of that personally I've found that you know meditation has its own kind of challenges and doing it being hungover does not help You know does not help a meditation practice and I learned that pretty quickly so again experimenting and realizing cutting that aspect out of them out of my diet or out of my
00:44:15
Speaker
a daily routine and realizing that I felt better not drinking alcohol, that had a big effect on my, again, feeling better physically and feeling better mentally and particularly being on the road when I made the decision that, okay, let me just cut it out, cut out alcohol completely and see how that goes. Side note, I tend to be,
00:44:43
Speaker
either I'm on something or I'm off of it. You're like the pendulum swinging. The pendulum, so yeah, there's like, if I'm into something, I'm into it. If I'm not into something,
00:44:53
Speaker
I'm not. I don't really have hobbies. It's like either I'm dedicated or devoted to something or I can kind of do without it. So completely cutting out alcohol, when I decided that I was going to do that, I thought like, oh man, touring is going to be such a drag. Because you think about you're on the road and you're before a show or after a show, you have some drinks.
00:45:17
Speaker
So thinking about completely cutting that out, I was like, man, touring is going to be such a drag. He's going to be so boring. I'm going to be totally alienated. But it was really the opposite. Like cutting out alcohol helped me kind of maintain a more just kind of not being, again, mostly kind of next day stuff, you know, day after kind of stuff. I felt better. I felt more like on an even keel. More balanced. Yeah, more balanced. Totally. And that was and that was and still is kind of a big
00:45:47
Speaker
thing uh you remain you never drink no on the road yeah no or even at home i just you know i just yeah i just don't and i you know me personally it's like i just feel better yeah it's funny i have um a similar experience of i was never a heavy drinker but you know having party nights i would have nights you know and
00:46:11
Speaker
It's an interesting relationship with musicians and alcohol. Being on tour, it's a never-ending free supply of booze. It puts you in an interesting position where moderation can be tricky. There is the people that successfully do it, but I find not as, I haven't taken as much of a black and white stance as you, but I'll find the, oh, I've been on the road for two weeks and I didn't drink at all. Just because it's always there. It's kind of like, are you gonna do it or aren't you?
00:46:41
Speaker
You know what I mean? So I can relate for sure to that Outlook of saying I'm gonna cut it out plus as I've lived a more clean life But also as you get older you just get more affected by alcohol the next day. There's no doubt Yeah, for me. My mornings is everything to me on the road. That's like my time. Yeah, it's so critical my morning to my daily well-being and my mind state on the road that I would
00:47:09
Speaker
do everything I can to make sure my mornings are as in optimum condition as possible. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was a big one of the big realizations is waking up and
00:47:22
Speaker
realizing that you kind of feel different and it's like what's different about it and just not being hungover and not having that like brain clap and just being able to like get up and start your day rather than get up and like have to take an hour or two to get your head together you know just being able to get up and go and just again being able to like maintain
00:47:46
Speaker
More like a more of an optimal like energy level. Yeah, I found that that's those those things for me are like directly related the health the meditation Yeah, and the cutting out alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, they all they all they all feed themselves. They all feed each other and Since you know Ideally, I'd like to do a meditation retreat, you know once a year It's kind of turned out to be kind of once every other year just to kind of re
00:48:16
Speaker
kind of energize the practice, you know? Yeah, meditation has certainly been a big part in that whole development.
Maintaining Health on Tour
00:48:44
Speaker
because we just touched upon it and even us touring together I got somewhat of a sense of it but maybe you could just kind of talk about if you do see it this way like your morning ritual or especially on tour
00:48:58
Speaker
sort of how you get your head right for the day and your process. For all the time that you're on tour, there's only a very small percentage of time that you're actually required to work on stage. Setting up, playing, and tearing down is like a very small percentage of the day. I mean, you can really skate, you can roll out of bed, roll into the van or the bus, go back to sleep, you can drag yourself around all day. To make an effort to get up,
00:49:26
Speaker
an hour, a couple hours earlier, to meditate or to exercise. That definitely has a big part at home, but it's particularly on the road in staying focused on that path and getting my day started off on a high note. The meditation practice and then also for me having some sort of physical workout practice as well. Particularly in the morning because before you start your day, there's just kind of less things
00:49:57
Speaker
there's kind of less distractions in the morning and there's more of kind of like a calm focused energy in the morning before you kind of get your day started.
00:50:07
Speaker
Is there really kind of a regimen of how you do it or is it something that you feel out more day-to-day and it kind of changes? On the road, there's more of a regimen to it because I'm subject to more of a fixed schedule as to when you have to get out of a hotel of when you have to leave. So generally, yeah, wake up.
00:50:31
Speaker
Meditation would be first while it's still, you know early enough and then and for how long is it change? It's an hour hour. It's an hour Yeah, so, you know set an alarm for that hour and then and then my workout I something that I could travel with, you know something I could do in the room regardless of whether or not there's a There's a workout room in the place something I could do on my own at least something that's you know, 20 to 30 minutes
00:50:59
Speaker
And again, I find that's much more beneficial doing those 20, 30 minutes, which might not seem that long, but doing that every day and definitely has a cumulative effect.
00:51:15
Speaker
in the long run. And would you typically do that all before eating any food? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All that stuff I would do before my first meal, it just always worked out better for me doing that stuff prior to eating. Yeah. And your body can focus on all the stuff that you want it to focus on rather than digesting. Exactly. Yeah. What about you? Do you do the same? You know, your morning,
00:51:42
Speaker
work out. Do you have something before? No. Immediately when I wake up, I drink water, a good like 20 to 30 liquid ounces of water, like just a couple big glasses of water, and then I work out right away.
00:51:59
Speaker
Um, just to get my, I like to get my blood flowing and just that feeling of sweat in the morning and my heart beating. Yeah. I'm alive. After that I'll have a smoothie. Okay. A green smoothie, but my workouts are typically pretty long in the morning if I can get it in. So yeah, I'm usually also at least
00:52:17
Speaker
a couple hours after I wake up before I'm putting any food, and then it's a smoothie, and I'm pretty much sipping on smoothies for a lot of the day. Especially if I'm home, it's much more tricky on the road, obviously. If I can get smoothies first, I will, or I'm starting with fruit. Typically, salads and a lot of raw nuts and seeds, I'm not eating my meals until dinner.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah. Typically, I'm not eating really any cooked food. Okay. Until dinner. That's how I find I operate best. Yeah. And really rocking a lot of smoothies, a lot of nuts and seeds and salads and stuff like that throughout the day. Yeah. And bringing things on the road, kind of having things with me makes a big difference rather than getting something
00:53:05
Speaker
getting something at rest stop. You're king of the food bag. Yeah, food bag. I'm all about the food bag. Your food bag is amazing. And just having that kind of mentally having that separate bag that's not part of your suitcase or your backpack. It's like a separate thing where that's your portable nutrition.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah. If there's anything listeners are going to take away from this, there's so much to take away from. But if there's anything about how Chopek Rolls was that preparedness when it came to the food bag on tour, just knowing that no matter what happens, you're going to be good. Yeah. You're going to be all good. You got everything you need. Yeah. I have enough to hold me over. And the same thing, you know, I would have enough to sustain me for, you know, and have
00:54:02
Speaker
breakfast stuff, oatmeal, things that are easy to carry around and things that are easy to prepare, oatmeal, some flax meal, produce that'll keep for a while without having to be refrigerated like carrots for a couple of days, apples can go for a couple of days. So the same thing, my one meal would be like a dinnertime meal. People getting interested or wanting to get interested, particularly during travel or being in a band and touring,
00:54:30
Speaker
having that separate thing where you can have some nuts and some raw veggies and stuff that you can carry around with you makes a big difference. And especially a lot of being on tour, there's so much down time that sometimes eating this kind of like the munchy aspect of like it's not even so much that you're hungry, just kind of
00:54:56
Speaker
Sometimes you're eating, or you get a craving to eat just kind of out of boredom. So better to have something, you know, some nuts or some fruit. Something nutritious. Yeah, rather than, you know, getting something at the rest stop. Yep. That's not going to make you feel that great anyway.
Goals and Growth in Music
00:55:35
Speaker
moving forward in your life, clearly like you've got the solo thing is happening, which is great. We've talked about your meditation practice and your diet and fitness and stuff like that. And I'm wondering if you have goals that you're working towards in your life. And if you kind of have that type of outlook of setting goals, are you more the type of mentality where you're kind of just going through the process, you know, like what the next step is supposed to be and sort of have in your mind, okay,
00:56:05
Speaker
some really big macro things that you're trying to achieve and I'm just wondering if you could talk about your relationship with goals. Yeah. Well that's interesting about being a musician and kind of the career trajectory of a musician is that it's not
00:56:24
Speaker
More often than not, it's not as though if you're studying to be a doctor, you go to medical school and you do your residence and then you become a doctor or you become an intern and then you have your own private practice. There are certainly steps in a musician's life where you
00:56:43
Speaker
you know, you study and maybe ideally you do some sort of apprenticeship and then you start playing with people and you start playing with people on your level and start playing with people and you know, you grow. It's not hierarchical in the sense of other careers might be. Yeah, exactly. So as much as strategy is involved in kind of
00:56:59
Speaker
You know positive projection there's always that element and just in life in general But there's that there's a there's an element I think a greater element of the unknown which is which is which could be kind of unnerving, but it's kind of the
00:57:14
Speaker
you know, exciting part of it too. A friend of mine pointed out a while ago that the unstable nature of being a musician is also the attractive part of it too, is that element of chance. As far as goals, I mean, there's certainly the kind of the maintenance goals of like continuing to write and having ideas for how I'm going to put out
00:57:38
Speaker
again speaking on a solo level, you know, when I'm thinking about, you know, timelines as far as when I'm going to put out another record and how I'm going to put it out, especially in the kind of musical climate that we're in, you know, as far as making records and releasing records and how music is consumed and all those things. Yeah, I mean, my goals are my kind of
00:58:00
Speaker
immediate to kind of midterm goals is to continue to write and to tour and to introduce my music to as many people as possible. I find all the things that I've learned and the things that I've done as a sideman and things that I do as a sideman inform the process of me being
00:58:17
Speaker
a solo artist and the things that I, you know, realizing the things that I do enjoy about traveling and about touring life and things I don't enjoy and being able to kind of shape my own path based on those things. So, you know, my goal is to keep creating and keep sharing those things with people and just kind of feeding off of the successes of the past and being able to recognize the kind of small
00:58:47
Speaker
incremental growth and kind of the small, quote, victories that you achieve when you're focused on the task that you kind of set for yourself.
00:58:58
Speaker
Basically, you're living out your goal right now. It's in the process. Exactly. And that's the thing to stop and think about. It's kind of easy to lose sight of you work towards a goal and you reach that goal and sometimes you don't even realize that you've reached it until you step back and it's like, oh, I'm actually doing that thing.
00:59:17
Speaker
and to keep doing it and then to introduce, okay, how am I going to take this to the next level? And as far as eating goes and kind of overall health and physical well-being and things that I've realized that have been working for me, not working for
The Effects of Cutting Sugar
00:59:31
Speaker
me. Recently, I've been more conscious of certainly cutting out refined sugars and all the different forms that sugar takes on in ingredients. I've found that of all the things that I've
00:59:45
Speaker
that I've cut out throughout the years like meat, animal products and alcohol. And as far as maintaining a certain level of energy and keeping that energy up, cutting out sugars, certainly refined sugars, but things that kind of tend to like carb heavy things and breads and not necessarily going gluten free, but really kind of cutting out sugars has made the biggest noticeable impact. That's been kind of the latest.
01:00:14
Speaker
eye-opening experience. And the thing is, you know, this is a whole other subject, but the thing is with sugar and how our minds react to it, how our bodies react to it, how our minds react to it, I find that it's a real kind of Pandora's box kind of thing. Once I kind of open up that kind of sweet craving or that sweet like door or something in my brain and my body that I just kind of crave more of it.
01:00:42
Speaker
So cutting that out has been, that's been kind of my latest, you know, my next level of kind of overall wellbeing. I found that that's made the most difference of a lot of things that I've been doing. Do you find that with, you know, sugars? Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying and it is certainly something I'm very aware of too, trying to keep my sugar intake
01:01:09
Speaker
low and sweets. I'm not a big sweets guy in general or desserts or anything like that. I've been reading and learning about there's some science to the gut flora and studying the gut and about how what we put in our bodies, our guts are trained to crave that.
01:01:31
Speaker
So if you're putting in sugars, that's what your body's trained. Your gut, that's what your gut bacteria is telling you, that's what you need. That's what you want. It's a funny thing, that concept, but I think that
01:01:45
Speaker
It's almost hard to even believe that or understand it, but there is science backing it. But also on a simpler level makes a lot of sense too. It's like, yeah, yeah. These things that we basically get conditioned to eat and that's what we want. And we make sweets as like the prize after the meal. It's like your gift after, you know, suffering through your vegetables or something like that.
01:02:10
Speaker
you know, that concept. Whether it's our gut bacteria or it's just like a mentality that's ingrained into us, I certainly think it's a palpable and a real thing. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think there's a mental aspect to it. And there's also that the, I think there's a chemical aspect to it too.
01:02:31
Speaker
Well, man, Steven Chopeck up on the Torganic podcast. Before we cut out, Chopeck, why don't you tell the people just where they can find you some links, whether it's a YouTube channel or your website or Facebook, just anywhere.
01:02:46
Speaker
The place to go that'll link to all those things, my Twitter account, my Instagram account, my Facebook account, my website, which is my name, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-C-H-O-P-E-K.com, stevenchoppeck.com. And then from there, I have my solo thing, there's a bunch of bio information, there's the news page, my solo gigs are up there, and then my links to everything else, YouTube, iTunes.
01:03:12
Speaker
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, that's all in there, stevenchillbook.com. Thanks for this real treat. I've been thinking about you because there's an app called the seven minute workout, which has all kinds of things, seven minute workouts and has more intense things. Burpees, learned about, Dave introduced me to burpees many moons ago.
01:03:34
Speaker
Check out burpees. Good, great workout. Great, great exercise. But that's one of the exercises. So whenever I got my burpees on, I think about Dave. Got into great burpees into that workout. Burpees, squats, power squats, but there's all kinds of great, and it's a good, it's a good jump off point to introducing a bunch of other great exercises. But thanks for reaching out. Thanks for having me. Also, loved it, Chopack. Keep it on. Good to sit down and hang. Yeah, totally. All right, man. Peace. All right, later.
01:04:04
Speaker
Big thanks to Chopek for coming through and thanks to you guys, the listeners. Again, please take a moment to comment and rate the show in iTunes and let me know what you think of the Torganic Podcast. Until next time, peace.
01:04:30
Speaker
She talks to strangers and tells the whole world Staying is the hardest part Staying is the hardest part