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Mindfulness: Emily Herzlin
30 Plays5 years ago
Season 1, Episode 17: Emily Herzlin is a mind-body instructor with Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. Listen to Emily discuss mindfulness in a clinical setting and her Jewish faith.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
You're listening to The Wound Dresser, a podcast that uncovers the human side of healthcare.
Guest Introduction: Emily Herzlin
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm your host, Jon Neary. Today, my guest is Emily Herzlin.
Emily's Background in Mindfulness and Meditation
00:00:24
Speaker
Emily is a mind body instructor with Wild Cornell Medicine in New York City. She's also the founder of Mindful Astoria, a meditation community in Queens. Emily has been trained as a meditation teacher through the Interdependence Project,
00:00:38
Speaker
and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Emily, welcome to the show. Thank you. So glad to be here.
Mindfulness Exercise and Its Fleeting Nature
00:00:45
Speaker
So I first wanted to start out with just an interesting exercise. I don't know. Have you ever seen the Calm Meditation commercials? I have seen some of them, yes. So I know there's one recently that they just kind of say like, do nothing for 30 seconds. I thought it would be like a fun exercise just for us and our listeners to kind of just pause here and see what that's like.
00:01:08
Speaker
I love that. Let's do it.
00:01:59
Speaker
So that was just about a minute. And I guess my first question to you is could you just describe like that experience for you, like how you spent that time and sort of how you tuned in to that mindful moment? Sure.
00:02:16
Speaker
For me, that was, as you said, an attempt at a moment of doing nothing, of just sitting, letting go of the to-do list, the planning, what am I going to say next? What's he going to say next? And just feeling that I'm sitting here right now and hearing the different sounds in the environment around me outside on the street and inside my apartment.
00:02:45
Speaker
Feeling the movement of my breath. I think I noticed my heart beating at one moment. So all of these different sensations.
00:02:55
Speaker
and experiences that come and go in that moment. And then even as we're sitting there with the intention of doing nothing, our mind doesn't always go along with that. So the mind gets pulled off into thinking about what's going to happen next, or how much time has it been, or I wonder if the people listening to this are wondering what's going on right now.
00:03:24
Speaker
And then, oh, okay, look at what's going on. Let's let that go and just come back to just what's happening. I'm just sitting here and waiting. That's really all that's going on right now. Yeah. And I felt like I was kind of trying to do some of the same things. Like I liked that you said attempt, but you know, you can only sort of grab it for like, or not grab it, but experience that for like a millisecond.
Mindfulness vs Meditation: Key Differences
00:03:48
Speaker
And then your, your mind kind of, uh, just sort of takes over on autopilot again, but
00:03:53
Speaker
I guess I'll just direct this to like a broader question of what is mindfulness and do you use that word interchangeably with meditation? That's a great question. The word mindfulness and the word meditation do not mean the same thing at least in my training.
00:04:17
Speaker
Mindfulness is a way of paying attention. There's many different definitions of mindfulness in my training, in particular in the mindfulness-based stress reduction community. We talk about mindfulness as a way of paying attention on purpose in the present moment without judgment or with kindness.
00:04:42
Speaker
And so it is this particular way of paying attention to what is going on right now, which might be an experience we're having in our bodies, our sensations, or our emotions, how we're feeling, or even having awareness of what our thoughts are and or that we are having thoughts in the first place.
00:05:04
Speaker
This is an intentional kind of attention, not the way that often we're sort of pushed and pulled around by our thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes. So we're cultivating this ability to pay attention.
00:05:21
Speaker
And we're doing this with this attitude of kindness and friendliness towards ourselves and towards our experience. So often,
Incorporating Mindfulness into Daily Life
00:05:31
Speaker
especially when we're stressed or having a hard time, we can be very hard on ourselves. We can be very judgmental, critical.
00:05:42
Speaker
And this doesn't usually doesn't help us to feel better. In fact, it usually makes us feel worse. And so when we're practicing mindfulness, we're paying attention to what's going on right now with the same kind of attitude that we would give to someone we care about to someone we love.
00:06:03
Speaker
And so that's mindfulness. Meditation, there's many different kinds of meditation. There's mindfulness meditation. There's transcendental meditation. There's movement meditations like yoga. So there's a lot of different kinds of meditation.
00:06:27
Speaker
When we practice mindfulness meditation, we're cultivating mindfulness through this formal practice of meditation. So meditation is putting your attention on something for a period of time intentionally. And that's what you're cultivating in that moment. So do you feel like mindfulness is just more of kind of an attitude where
00:06:53
Speaker
meditation kind of brings in more of a specific practice to it.
00:06:58
Speaker
I would say generally, generally, yes. Mindfulness is something that doesn't, we don't want it to just stay with us only when we're meditating. We want to bring this way of being mindful throughout all of our day, as much of our day as possible. So we don't want to leave it behind when we get up from our seat, from our meditation seat.
00:07:27
Speaker
but we really want to live mindfully. So it's absolutely something that we want to carry with us and bring with us and have with us throughout our day. Can
Techniques and Practices Taught by Emily
00:07:41
Speaker
you elaborate more on the techniques you teach within Mindful Astoria or your work at Wild Cornell and perhaps in other settings?
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, so I am trained as a mindfulness meditation teacher. So, you know, different techniques that I tend to teach all point in that direction.
00:08:07
Speaker
teach mindfulness of breathing, where we experience the sensations of our breathing moment by moment. And then our mind wanders away, we notice it, we bring it back to the breath. You don't have to use the breath as your anchor. I think it's important for a lot of people to know that breath is not some gold standard of meditation practice. It's just a very common one.
00:08:36
Speaker
But for a lot of people, breathing may not be so comfortable or so easeful or might be bound up in trauma or anxiety. And so you can use another grounding sensation other than the breath. You can feel your feet on the floor. You can feel your hands in your lap. You can just have a sense of your body sitting here right now.
00:09:01
Speaker
So we do a lot, I do a lot of practice with those grounding anchors as well. Body scan meditations where we move our attention throughout the different parts of our bodies, explore what's there. Walking meditation, mindful movement, very gentle stretching mindfully. I also teach a lot of loving kindness and self-compassion meditation as well.
00:09:35
Speaker
How do you translate some of those things over to sort of a clinical setting at Weill Cornell? Yeah.
00:09:43
Speaker
Well, so I teach meditation in sort of a number of different settings through my work at Wild Cornell. And obviously, right now, things are different because of the pandemic. And it's also been very interesting and also very inspiring to see how that work has shifted and been really beneficial during the pandemic.
00:10:12
Speaker
So, I guess, you know, maybe to talk about pre-COVID times when we were in person, I was doing a fair amount of work in one of the infusion centers with patients as they were receiving chemotherapy or immunotherapy infusions.
00:10:32
Speaker
Often those patients, as you probably know, are there for a long time sometimes. And it can be a very stressful, chaotic environment with a lot of sounds and a lot of anxiety. And so I would sit with patients and guide them in different kinds of mindfulness meditation.
00:10:55
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or guided relaxation practices just to help them meet what was going on in that moment to give some tools for breathing, reducing anxiety, even helping them to fall asleep, get some rest.
00:11:11
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also teaching groups. Groups have continued during the pandemic. I've been doing a number of different online groups. And that's definitely one of the good things about meditation is that it's a modality that works online. It actually works very well online. And so
00:11:34
Speaker
Actually, one of the highlights for me personally, you know, if we can talk about highlights during a pandemic has been just developing these really wonderful online meditation communities of patients coming together almost every day to just sit and meditate together. And so that can be done as more of a drop in, you know, come when you can group
00:12:00
Speaker
and also courses such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, the eight-week course, we have continued to do that online as well. And so patients might come to any of these sessions for a number of different reasons. They might be referred for chronic pain, for anxiety, for difficulty sleeping,
00:12:29
Speaker
for depression, for just general health worries, health anxiety. Maybe they have a procedure or a surgery coming up and they're looking for ways to help prepare themselves for that, to help with healing, to help reduce stress leading up to it and afterwards.
00:12:56
Speaker
And
Mindfulness in Clinical Settings and During the Pandemic
00:12:56
Speaker
so they might be referred by a doctor in the hospital or one of the integrative health physicians or one of the other clinicians in the department for any of these particular reasons or it's just that they've always had a curiosity about meditation and this is a good time for them to give it a try.
00:13:24
Speaker
You mentioned a number of different reasons why people would come and seek out your services at, say, Wild Cornell. Do you have to be careful in a health care setting how you set goals of the practice? I feel like that experience would be very different outside of a hospital setting versus inside because I imagine a lot of the people who come through your door, or I guess nowadays you're a virtual door,
00:13:56
Speaker
they're very hopeful to find results in healing in this practice. So how do you kind of reframe that to make it both optimistic and realistic? Absolutely. I do meet a lot of patients that
00:14:15
Speaker
want meditation to cure their pain or cure their anxiety or make it so that they'll never get distracted by anything ever again. And I don't at all blame them for having those desires. Of course they do, of course we all do. And
00:14:37
Speaker
I think that there is this sense in our culture and the way that media often portrays meditation as being this sort of magical experience that will feel good and your mind will be calm and you'll feel totally at ease. And it isn't true. It just isn't always like that.
00:15:04
Speaker
And especially when we're talking about mindfulness meditation, this is really about being with our present moment experience just as it is.
00:15:20
Speaker
without trying to change it, make it go away or hold on to it, which is really very different from why most people go to see a doctor or medical professional. There's something that we want to change, cure, make go away. So in terms of
00:15:49
Speaker
How do we work with that? How do we create reasonable expectations? There is something to be said for the profound impact that being with our present moment experience in a caring and nonjudgmental way can have on us, can help us to suffer less.
00:16:17
Speaker
And so while that may or may not translate to literal reduction in pain levels, which it can sometimes, but it doesn't always, I think a very big part of our experience of pain or illness is the emotional component, is how we see ourselves in relation to it. And that is something that mindfulness and meditation
00:16:47
Speaker
can be very helpful in that regard. It can help us to see ourselves with greater wholeness, with more compassion, more connected to others, less alone. It can help us to notice what isn't wrong, what is well.
00:17:11
Speaker
And all of that can actually have a very big impact on our experience of our illness or of our pain. And so I tend to focus there in my work with patients. And at the same time, you know, the practice of paying attention mindfully to sensations of pain, sensations of discomfort,
00:17:37
Speaker
you know, with this attitude of care and curiosity rather than avoidance, judgment, criticism has been shown to have effects on our perception of our pain levels.
00:17:55
Speaker
And so it's a little bit of both, but you're absolutely right that it is really important to align patients' expectations appropriately and to sort of have this conversation about what they've been told or what they've taken in by our culture and the media and what is possible and what are the limits of meditation or mindfulness practice.
Realistic Expectations of Mindfulness in Healthcare
00:18:23
Speaker
I think everything you just said probably applies across the board to a lot of patients that you encounter. But you did mention a lot of diverse populations that you are seeing. So how do you alter your approach of introducing mindfulness for somebody who is depressed versus experiencing chronic pain versus somebody who has cancer? Do you kind of implement your practice specific to those patient populations?
00:18:53
Speaker
Well, I always try to get to know the individual person, the individual patient, learning about what's bringing them to meditate right now, if they've had any experience with meditation before, if that's been a positive experience or what they haven't connected with. And in certain cases, I might
00:19:19
Speaker
offer or even request to speak with if they have a therapist, just to make sure that the work that we're doing will be supportive and be in alignment with their journey and what's helpful to them. And then I'll try, you know, based on what we discuss and what we talk about to
00:19:44
Speaker
To guide them in in a practice or towards practices that I think that at that moment Might be a response to what they might Be needing be going through and that that may or may not be different, you know for different people But you're right there is such a wide variety and and sometimes it takes a
00:20:11
Speaker
It takes experimenting with different forms of meditation or different practices to find what you connect with, what's really going to be responsive at that time. You
Tailoring Mindfulness to Individual Needs
00:20:24
Speaker
also said that you teach mindfulness-based stress reduction. Can you just talk about the work of John Kabat-Zinn and how he essentially integrated mindfulness into the healthcare setting?
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, so he, John Kabat-Zinn brought meditation, yoga, mindfulness to, you know, in the 1970s, what was then the pain clinic at UMass Medical. And, you know, he brought it to patients who maybe were not, you know,
00:21:08
Speaker
were not benefiting or not getting the full benefits of traditional medications or therapies, you know, to see what, you know, could this be helpful as well or in addition. And so there is a very, very strong body of research around this particular curriculum, this eight-week MBSR curriculum.
00:21:35
Speaker
And it's pretty intensive, the eight week course. I don't know if you've taken it, but it is a pretty intensive course of two and a half hour classes, a full day silent retreat. So it's pretty intensive. It's not right for everybody at every time in their life. It's not the only way to learn mindfulness.
00:22:02
Speaker
It's a really strong beginning though. As I've gathered though, uh, I heard, I've heard him speak before and it was just like part of it is just like repackaging a lot of, you know, mindfulness techniques that might've seemed formed to people and sort of making it a little more manageable by calling it mindfulness based stress production. Do you feel like that's, that was sort of part of the secret in the sauce is just like renaming it and like rebranding it to something that might be a little more
00:22:32
Speaker
palatable for a lot of patients I Think I think that that's possible, you know mindfulness comes out of the Buddhist tradition Which you know is It is a religion and it has its own language and its own history And I can say that I've definitely
00:23:03
Speaker
you know, shared meditation, taught meditation with people who I'm not sure if they would have felt that they could, for instance, go to a Buddhist meditation center for a variety of reasons, maybe their own religion or their own preconceptions about what meditation is. I think that it is a complicated
00:23:30
Speaker
question, you know, how, you know, how much is this cultural appropriation? You know, in this time, it's very important to be aware of where this practice is coming from, and to respect the tradition that it's coming from. And how different people
00:23:55
Speaker
might be able to learn based on the words that are used, the phrases that are used. I would say that MBSR is a very small piece of Buddhism. It's not the whole path. Mindfulness isn't a complete path if one is talking about a spiritual path.
00:24:25
Speaker
So it's really one piece of a spiritual path. Your official title at Weill Cornell is like mind body instructor, correct? That is my title.
Exploration of the Mind-Body Connection
00:24:40
Speaker
So could you talk more about like the mind body connection and like how do you explain that to your patients?
00:24:54
Speaker
So when we talk about the mind-body connection, I might think about it this way, that in a moment of stress, I might want to check in and notice both what's going on in my mind, my thoughts,
00:25:21
Speaker
and also what's going on in my body. Often we will find that there is a relationship between what's going on. So if I'm suddenly aware of an anxious thought or an obsessive thought or a self-critical thought,
00:25:49
Speaker
Just take a moment in that situation to just check in with your body. So for me, I might notice that my heart is racing or my stomach is tight or my jaw is tight or my shoulders are up by my ears. So my body is responding or reacting to what's going on in my mind.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I think that we can also notice at other times, so maybe I have some pain in my back. And then from that pain in my back, I might have a feeling of anger towards it. And then I don't want to feel angry. And I start to think about, OK, I got to get rid of this pain. What am I supposed to do about this? I have to call someone. I can't believe I did that thing again.
00:26:45
Speaker
And so our sensations can have an effect on our thoughts. Our thoughts can have an effect on our sensations.
Emily's Personal Journey with Meditation
00:26:55
Speaker
And so we want to be interested in that, in that connection to see, you know, sometimes is there a way that I can shift my thinking to see what effect that has on my body or even sometimes, you know, just, just the act of
00:27:15
Speaker
softening my shoulders or taking a deep nourishing breath can create some spaciousness in my mind or some creativity can open up. And so we can kind of look at it from either of those perspectives.
00:27:36
Speaker
It's on your website, cool website, by the way, EmilyHerslund.com. Show all our listeners, go check it out. Thank you. You started meditating in 2003 to cope with a chronic illness. Can you just talk about that experience and how it informs your work today? Yeah. So I, you know, since I was young, have had an autoimmune disorder.
00:28:07
Speaker
At the time when I came to meditation, I was really struggling with my autoimmune disorder. I was having a lot of flare ups. This was a time when I was in high school.
00:28:20
Speaker
was missing a lot of school because of it. And I was also several, a couple members of my family were also undergoing cancer treatment at the same time. So it was just a very difficult time. And I
00:28:41
Speaker
very thankfully had one of my high school teachers who's very perceptive and caring person gave me a book about meditation as a way of helping me to cope with the anxiety, with the stress I was experiencing, with the fear that I was experiencing
00:29:02
Speaker
And it honestly wasn't something that I wanted to do. I didn't see myself as a meditator. It wasn't the picture that I had in my head of a person who meditates and not line up with who I saw myself as at that time in my life.
00:29:23
Speaker
And, you know, just as you suggested at the start of our time today, that we just sit for 30 seconds and do nothing. At that time in my life, that idea was just ridiculous. I couldn't really, like, you want me to do what? But I really needed something to help me cope, and so I was willing to give it a try.
00:29:50
Speaker
It really surprised me how quickly I connected with it. It really gave me this very valuable time to just sit, to experience what wasn't wrong with my body, to experience what was working just fine, and to notice that I had these things called thoughts.
00:30:18
Speaker
and that they weren't always true and they weren't always helpful. And I didn't have to follow them all the time and that I could choose to say, thank you, not right now. I'm going to just rest right now and not worry about all those things. I don't need to do that right now. This was extremely profound in terms of how it's helped me with my own health.
00:30:47
Speaker
issues. I feel that it has certainly helped me to have a greater awareness of the signals that my body tells me when it needs rest, when I'm pushing it too much. And to have less self criticism around around those things. I think a lot of people
00:31:12
Speaker
have a very hard time giving ourselves permission to rest. I think for a lot of reasons in our culture, that's very hard to do. And I'm definitely not perfect at it, but it's helped me a lot. And I think that that's helped me to manage my own health issues better. And just to have more kindness towards myself that it's not something that is my fault.
00:31:44
Speaker
that it's okay, that this is what bodies do sometimes, and that that's okay, that's human. Yeah, I love what you said about just like, you have thoughts, they're there, but you don't necessarily have to listen to them all the time. Maybe they do make good suggestions here and there, right? Yeah, we're not trying to get rid of our thoughts.
Integrating Mindfulness with Jewish Spiritual Practices
00:32:08
Speaker
We're not trying in meditation to not think
00:32:11
Speaker
because we wouldn't be having this conversation right now if we didn't have thoughts. It would be a catastrophic event if we got rid of all of our thoughts forever. So we don't want that, but we want to make different choices. We want to have choice when it comes to how we relate to our thoughts. Yeah. As we said earlier, you were trained at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Do you practice the Jewish faith?
00:32:40
Speaker
Yes, I was raised Jewish. I am Jewish. And I would say that my meditation practice, my mindfulness practice, and my experience of studying Buddhism has really deepened my connection to Judaism and Judaism as a spiritual practice.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, because I think it's a lot of times when we think of mindfulness, it can just be sort of like secular and then it's sort of do people choose to like continue with another religious path like on top of that? So could you elaborate more on that? How like, even though, you know, mindfulness, as you said, a lot of it's grounded in Buddhism, like how that strengthens your Jewish faith.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, first, I guess I'd say that the way that I think most of us know mindfulness, especially maybe in the medical and healthcare community that is grounded in Buddhist mindfulness teachings, there certainly is mindfulness in many spiritual traditions. It's not only in Buddhism.
00:34:03
Speaker
But I do think that the way that we've learned to teach mindfulness in healthcare settings certainly comes out of the Buddhist tradition. In terms of my own personal relationship to Judaism,
00:34:22
Speaker
I want to say there are so many ways, just as there are many different kinds of meditation, there are so many ways to be Jewish, and so I don't want to speak for everybody. But, you know, the idea of being present,
00:34:40
Speaker
with this moment and what we are doing, I think is deeply, deeply Jewish. Being able to pause and to bless this moment, to bless my food, to express blessings for wonderful things that are happening, for new things, to say
00:35:04
Speaker
this, this prayer, the Shahiyanu, when we experienced something for the first time, you know, if I wasn't present, I might miss that this was a new experience. And for me as well, you know, the practice of Shabbat, of keeping a Sabbath day, you know, is itself a
00:35:32
Speaker
a way of connecting with presence and rest.
00:35:36
Speaker
and letting go of doing. It's like a day of not doing and letting be. And there's a lot of different ways to observe Shabbat that might look different for different people, depending on how you practice and relate to Judaism. But for me, that's also been a very important part of my Jewish practice.
00:36:06
Speaker
Couple more questions for you here. So something I've been kind of toying around with is just how much mindfulness is enough is just kind of like a good balance. Like
Finding Balance and Measuring Mindfulness Impact
00:36:19
Speaker
you can argue right that a person could have a fruitful spiritual practice just from meditating five minutes a day. But then you have people who go all the way through a monastic life and kind of
00:36:33
Speaker
you know, that is their thing, that they are, they live a mindful life. So have you kind of reflected on that in your own life and sort of how much, I know you can even live in a maybe not a monastic way and still like live, like embody mindfulness completely, but have you sort of like grappled with that at all? And like how much kind of mindfulness
00:37:02
Speaker
is like a good balance. I'm not 100% sure I understand your question. Could you say a little bit more? Sure, it's like if you kind of if someone values right, like mindfulness as like a like a good part of their life in terms of
00:37:30
Speaker
just like being present in the moment and doing a lot of the things you described earlier in terms of just tuning into your body, et cetera. How do you find a balance of whether you should meditate a certain amount or just feel more balanced in terms of how big a part or mindfulness is playing in your life?
00:38:00
Speaker
Is that more clear? So, I guess, are you asking, like, how do you decide, like, how long to meditate or, you know, to go on retreats or... I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess it's sort of hard to articulate.
00:38:25
Speaker
I guess for one person, just meditating for 20 minutes a day is like an ample mindfulness practice, whereas other individuals choose to go on to, like you said, retreats, or even live a full-blown monastic life, right? So it's like, how do you sort of discern where you fall on that spectrum? And have you had to sort of think critically about that?
00:38:56
Speaker
That's a really interesting question. Because I know so many people who have made a lot of different choices in this regard. I know people who have gone for long retreats or taken monastic vows for periods of time. It's not something that I have personally
00:39:21
Speaker
felt the need to do for myself. So I do value retreat practice in particular when it is possible to go away for a week or 10 days to be in a retreat setting and silence.
00:39:47
Speaker
as a way of deepening my practice, as a way of seeing what is here underneath that I may not have as much space or time to experience and work with in the sort of hecticness
00:40:14
Speaker
of just day-to-day life. I think what your question is sort of making me think of is a question that I hear a lot, which is how do I know if my meditation practice is working?
00:40:39
Speaker
And one of my teachers answered that question. It's really stuck with me that we know our meditation is working if we notice that
00:40:56
Speaker
When things in our life change, we meet those changes with more skillfulness and compassion. Or if we notice when we're stressed, we're reacting differently, less habitually. If we notice when we're angry, we're less likely to lash out.
00:41:27
Speaker
So we notice we're able to know if our meditation practice is working, if we are seeing the effects of it in our daily lives and how we handle stress, pain, difficulty, how we show up if that is changing, if we're seeing that changing. And so I guess an answer to your question might be is if you're seeing those changes,
00:41:55
Speaker
maybe what you're doing is enough, maybe it's good. You know, in terms of how we make decisions about, you know, our long-term relationship to spirituality, do I want to be more, you know, a layperson or monastic?
00:42:17
Speaker
I really don't know that there is any particular guidance or wisdom that I can offer. I think that is so, it's so individual and personal. All right. Time
Emily's Current Projects and Influences
00:42:33
Speaker
for a lightning round series of fast paced questions that tell us more about you. Okay. So one thing we failed to mention is you're also an accomplished writer. Any current projects?
00:42:45
Speaker
I am working on a book about mindfulness and Judaism. How to approach Judaism as a path to awakening and presence. What is your biggest pet peeve? Leaf blowers.
00:43:15
Speaker
Favorite place to hang out in New York? Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria.
00:43:23
Speaker
But you can get pretty mindful and philosophical there, right? Yeah, it's a wonderful park with outdoor art exhibits. So it's been a place that during the pandemic that is still able to provide art for people. And there's a lot of great community gatherings or initiatives that happen there.
00:43:51
Speaker
the most ridiculous thing you've seen on a New York subway. Oh my gosh, it's been so long since I've been on the subway.
00:44:02
Speaker
Well, this isn't really funny, but I had a very upsetting incident once where a man was sort of trying to grab my hand and kiss it. And that was a very upsetting and I guess ridiculous experience and one that I'm sure I'm not the only person who has experienced an unwanted situation like that.
00:44:31
Speaker
Lastly, in your life, who's the most influential mindfulness teacher? Sylvia Borstein is one of my favorite mindfulness teachers. I love her, her humor, her heartfulness, and her
00:44:58
Speaker
her identity as both a Buddhist and a Jew, and how she writes and talks about that, I really connect with her. Emily Herzlin, thanks so much for joining the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to The Wound Dresser. Until next time, I'm your host, John Neery. Be well.