 Hello, my beautiful internet friends and welcome back. Today I have a super special video coming to you guys. It's my very first collaboration, which is pretty cool. We're gonna be talking with my friend Scott over at Depression 2 Expression. Now what you need to know is that Scott has been a huge inspiration of mine for years. He's actually the first YouTube channel I ever actually watched. He's been around for a long time spreading a fantastic message around the internet of talking openly about your mental health and learning how to live with it and move through and find help and find what works for your life. And so we had a conversation on his podcast, so a video was up on his channel, and also he was kind enough to come on mine. So today we're talking about mindfulness. This is something that I don't even know how many people have talked to me about mindfulness and meditation. And there have been times where I've tried it where I just thought, this is not for me. Suddenly must be broken in me that this just like literally produces anxiety in me instead of what people usually say it should do, which is like, calm you down. But Scott has always been a huge proponent of meditation and mindfulness and so I wanted to ask him a what's up and he did an awesome job of explaining things. And here is what he had to say. Real quick before we dive in, I would love it if you hit subscribe to this channel and like on this video. I am working my way up to 100,000 subscribers. I think that number was really cool. I think it'd be super exciting to get there. They send you a cool plaque from YouTube. Kind of makes you feel superficial. So if you wanna help me get there, hit subscribe and like on this video. And now let's hear what Scott has to say. Well hello my beautiful internet friends and welcome back. Today I have a guest with me, a friend who I've known for a while over the internet. This is Scott from Depression to Expression. He has a fantastic channel that I've actually followed for years well before I started a YouTube channel. I don't think I've told you that. It's true. So first of all, can you tell everyone a little bit about what you talk about that we're gonna dive into the question? Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on and for those watching, I also just interviewed Joe. She's gonna be on my channel. So yes, a beautiful exchange and thanks for having me on yours. So Depression to Expression exists in two forms really. The mission is to have an honest dialogue about mental health. I don't always consider myself an expert about these things. And just like Joe says, everyone has different challenges and that beautiful soul and we create resilience and we all have different capacities. We all have stories to share and I absolutely love that philosophy. I have a certain topic and then I invite people to either prove me wrong or help me learn about something new or give me a new perspective. It's not just for the viewer, it's for me too and it's been so great and a great addition to my life. And that's the online part. Offline, I provide presentations to businesses, schools, parents in the greater Toronto area and across Canada actually. So thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here. I know that one thing, there was a while that you were doing every Monday morning, I think it was like a meditation for like a live stream meditation, right? Yes. Things just got a little too hectic to be able to do that every single Monday. But all those meditations are still on the YouTube channel. Like all the content's still there. People forget sometimes to scroll down, they want the new content but I think of it as like an archive. You've existed for a while. There's lots on there. They're like, can you do a video about anxiety? I'm like, there's 300. You just scroll down. There's lots there. Now like meditation and mindfulness, I'm sure anyone watching this has had someone in their life or like before watching this YouTube video, it was suggested to you as an app or something. Like people talk about mindfulness and meditation all the time and my therapist has suggested it to me and I really hate it. I really don't like it. It's very uncomfortable. I know it's a practice but I found that oftentimes it'll like make me more aware of how anxious I am and I'll just freak out or it'll make me more aware of like the physical pain that I feel and I'll be like, peace out. This does not work. This does not work well for me but I also know that I'm not a special snowflake. I'm like, it does work for people. So you're a big advocate for it or at least you talk a lot about it and you obviously practice it. So I would love to hear your take on mindfulness and meditation and why you like it. Okay guys, so brief intermission. I wanted to ask the question to you guys. What does mindfulness mean to you? I think that this is a word that has more definitions and meanings that I thought it had especially after this conversation with Scott. So hop down to the comment section and let me know what you think about mindfulness and how it has or hasn't impacted your life. Oh my gosh, I would love to explain. Okay, so we have this notion of mindfulness as being a tool to calm you down. It's your feel anxious, meditate, you'll be soothed, you'll be present, you'll be zen like, all right. The sun will be shining from your eyeballs. You'll be this like extraordinary figure. And you'll just be- Yoga pants too. Yeah, yeah, you need the yoga pants, you need a meditation pillow, you need the sound bowls, you need to totally change your wardrobe, you need to have like drapes from the curtains in your condo to be all meditation-y. And it's so wrong. And I think a lot of the time with social media when something explodes, usually because of some celebrity endorses it, we get skewed with what it actually means. And I love this definition of mindfulness, which is what I use all the time when I teach. It's mindfulness is noticing what's happening right now. That's it. So if pain is happening right now, it's about noticing the pain. If anxiety is happening right now, it's about noticing the anxiety. It's not about breathing and calming down in order to forget about the anxiety and to run away from it. It's actually acknowledging what's happening right now in the mind and in reality outside. So there are a few practices that you can do. And if mindfulness makes you more anxious, you could actually feel like, okay, it's working, right? Because I know it's backwards, isn't it? But the real mindful approach is accepting all emotions on this spectrum that we have, right? With society, we spoke about this, it's like that force positivity. And there's this section of emotions that are acceptable and these are the ones you want. All of these, get rid of them, destroy them, they're out of here. Of course. And like no wonder, of course, feeling angry sometimes isn't that pleasant feeling, anxious sucks and depressed. But if we're only focusing on the positives in life and we're constantly running towards positivity, we're actually running away from a 80% of life, 50% of life, but also we're running away from these signals that our body is telling us and we're running away from these challenges that we need to address. So a quick example, one thing mindfulness has taught me is screen time usage. I've been on the screen way too much. And going into a meditation, it's kind of self reflection. You notice what's happening right now, but thoughts will come up, right? These thoughts come up and you've probably heard the metaphor of your mind being a sky and these thoughts are clouds. And as they come, it's a cloud and it disappears. Sometimes it's unpleasant, but it comes and goes. Thoughts, the future is a thought, the past is a thought, you're gonna get all kinds. But a lot of the times the thoughts can be pleasant, unpleasant, but they can actually tell us something. And in mindfulness, a lot of the time I'm able to solve and realize problems that I have been running away from because you're finally taking the time to notice them. I find mindfulness sometimes can be pleasant and it sometimes can be very unpleasant. You know the drug ayahuasca, have you heard of that? Or DHT? Yeah. Well, the people, I'm not endorsing that at all. I don't think I'd ever do it. Don't go out and do it right now. Yeah, I don't think I have the mind for that. We even talked about marijuana, but it's a good example with marijuana for us or for DMT for other people. What it does is it makes you acknowledge all of the problems that you have in your life. It doesn't bring you into a state of utter peace. It kind of makes you, helps you realize and brings you into this state of self-actualization where the self is lost, but you still have to deal with what's right in front of you. And I think that's what mindfulness is all about. And once you're able to check under your bed and see if there's a monster, that's a good start. But once you're able to check and let's see, you even see the monster and it's like, okay, now I know that's the problem. And then you look at the monster right, like eye to eye. Just look at him or her right in the face. And when that is acknowledged, when you can actually see the monster for what it is, well, that's a massive step. It loses its power now that you know that it exists and now you can deal with it. Now that you know it's there, you know what it looks like, you know what it feels like. That's the mindfulness approach. Use all of your senses. Okay, now I'm either going to live with the monster. I'm gonna ask it to pay rent. I'm gonna take out my sword and deal with it that way with some different coping tools, right? I feel mindfulness is a little skewed in what we think it is. And same with meditation. It can calm you down a lot of the time and it usually does for me. But if you're in a state where you're already anxious, sometimes it can calm you down. And as you said, sometimes it can make it worse. But I think having the expectation when you're in a meditation thinking, okay, I'm gonna calm down. This is gonna calm me down. This is gonna be great. I've heard that it calms me down. Here we go. And then it doesn't. Well, what a hoax, right? So I hope that's helped people at least realize that it's not just about stress relief and feeling calm. It's sometimes about facing harsh reality. I see, I can get on board with that. That makes so much more sense to me. I think the expectation, like expectations are so important. Because if I'm just going into like meditation and the idea of mindfulness thinking like, I should feel better after this. I should feel calmer. And I'm just like, I am a psychopath, obviously. Because all I feel is all of the anxiety. And I feel like I'm failing it or whatever. But the idea of mindful, like your explanation of mindfulness, I love and I can totally get on board with that. Because I'm all about recognizing things. Even if it's not a fun time, it's important and it's necessary. And I love that. So thank you for that definition. That makes so much more sense to me. And I hope to a lot of other people. That's great. The other thing I like to talk about is mindfulness being, well, you have basically something happens to you. Okay, let's say. That's life. What do you do? Something happens to you. Who knew? You have some stimulus and then you have, you respond in a certain way, right? And there's this gap between stimulus and response. Okay, so there's decision time like this. What mindful this does when you practice is, it creates a distance between what happens and how you react, right? So the more distance you have, you take a deep breath in between here. You notice what's happening right here. A child being bullied, stimulus. How are you gonna react? You're gonna punch the person. You're gonna say something mean. You're gonna react in a very impulsive manner. What happens when we teach kids in adults mindfulness is you take time to think about your thinking. Little metacognition. Okay. Take a breath. And you can react maybe a little more, with a little more wisdom, with a little more empathy. React more mindfully and realize what's happening right now, right? I think that's a key in our relationships too. That makes a lot of sense to me like that. Sorry, sorry. That's awesome. China made in China, right? Yes, yes. But I love that idea of being aware of our reactions and like why we're reacting the way we're reacting, even if we still react the same way. Like just having enough time to recognize like this is what I'm doing. I hate not being aware of myself. Like not being aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing. Like I really believe in taking a personal journey to understand yourself and I mean like lifelong and to continue to understand like why you're doing things and what motivates you and why you're responding certain way. And it sounds like that literally plays exactly into that idea. Right. And I think that's so true. And we can come back to that definition too of mindfulness is noticing what's happening right now. So noticing, let's take it apart. Noticing which is not judging, simply noticing, observing, okay? Not thinking this is right, this is wrong. Simply noticing what's happening, not what happened, not what's going to happen, but happening which means present moment and same as what's happening right now. So mindfulness teaches us and I'm sure you can completely relate anyone listening and watching can that when tragedy happens or when you're faced with something, let's say losing a limb, you're going to think of, okay, why me? Why is this happening? How am I going to deal with this a month from now? What are my parents going to think? What's my family going to think? What are my YouTube fans going to think? What's going to happen? What am I going to do next week when I upload that video? You're like, you're still dealing with tragedy that's happening right now which you have to deal with. Can I pause you for just a second? Yes, please, go ahead. My apologies. We can edit this out. It sounds like someone was trying to open my front door. One second. Do you want to check? Oh my gosh. I do. Yeah, that's on speed dial for 911. Goodness is, I'm still here. Sorry for that brief interruption. I think we should keep that in. Just keep it in. Yeah, let's keep it in. That's cool. Be aware of your surroundings. Be aware of your surroundings. You're so mindful going to the door. Oh my gosh, that's such a good example of what mindfulness feels like. It's when we're in that state of alertness. Everyone's had it, especially in sports. You're completely in the zone. No one's thinking of dinner while they're in the middle of a game. Yes. You're completely zoned in. It's what people can call flow state when you're in the middle of a song with an instrument, when you're into journaling, when you're making a YouTube video, when you're really invested in something. That's when you're completely mindful and locked in the present. And we've all experienced that. I was saying about the definition of mindfulness. What's happening right now? Where did we cut off? I forget. But I mean, going with what you're saying, it's kind of like a sport. That makes sense. I mean, to me, because in jiu-jitsu, that's why I'd practice jiu-jitsu when I can. That's what I love about it. Everything else disappears. Everything else kind of goes away and you're very present in that moment. Is that kind of, I don't want to say the goal, but what you're moving towards with mindfulness is to be a lot more present in every moment so that your brain isn't everywhere else all the time. I absolutely love that. That's such a good example. That's why people, man, that's why the world loves sports. Because even when you're watching them, you're invested and you're so focused, right? You have your team put it in the net, here we go. And you're not worried about this and that. It's whatever locks people in the moment. And that's why that's what drugs do too. Depending on which ones. It completely locks you in the moment. It makes you see problems differently or makes you forget the problems, right? And everyone's looking for that flow state and being completely locked in. That's what happens when you enjoy something. When you're doing something you enjoy. And with jiu-jitsu, okay, you're so locked in, but you are aware of pain. You are aware of everything. So that's mindfulness right there. You're not only aware when you're playing jiu-jitsu of the good feeling. No, when you get smacked down on the mat, you feel that. You feel it. You do. Yeah, but then you take action towards, okay, how can I make that not happen again, right? So it's being completely locked in the moment and again noticing what's happening. Someone arm bars you because you moved the wrong way and then you go back and you notice it. You recognize like, okay, that's what I did in that moment. And you try to be more aware next time and not the same thing. Exactly. I've never been in an arm bar before. I can't imagine. I know, oh my gosh. I can't play any contact sports. I'm playing basketball, frisbee, beach volleyball. Yeah, just don't touch me. My arms will break. Don't touch, don't touch. No arm bars for Scott, got it. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, but mindfulness is it's with anxiety, especially with me. It's been a blessing because you get to know triggers too. Yeah, triggers. You get to know what can set you off and you can reflect on certain situations that you are in when you're mindful, right? And it's not about, see, we run away from emotions all the time. We always run away from negative emotions. And again, staring that monster in the face made me realize that it's not that scary a monster. Anxiety isn't that scary a monster. It's there. Okay, what am I noticing? Okay, my heart's beating really, really fast. Okay, get a little lightheaded. Okay, tunnel vision, okay. Majority of the time people don't fade from panic attacks or that feeling of anxiety, right? Once you notice it and you can maybe even label it and talk to yourself, okay, this is some anxiety. I'm feeling some anxiety right now. This is it. Okay, I'm breathing, heart's beating. Yeah, and you kind of label and go through your body what you're feeling, what you're thinking. And we know that eventually it subsides. And I think instead of running away from it, it's like pushing down a spring. I'm not anxious. I'm gonna breeze deep. Everything's fine, right? And what's gonna happen is like when you let it go, it's gonna pop up even stronger. Noticing it as it is, I think, again, you take away its power. You notice that, yeah, it's actually just a fuzzy little monster that was hungry and I just needed to give it some attention. So let's say hi and keep things going. It's like, I remember at the grocery store, just, you know, waves of depression, how they just come out of nowhere. Like, hey, life's great and what the fuck? Like, what? I'm just like, what just happened? What is going on? It has a description of waves of depression I've ever heard. Let's make it into a meme. But it's like, it totally happens to maybe people watching too, is you can't predict when it comes, but I, as strange as it sounds, sometimes I talk to it at the grocery store. It happened during checkout. Now, so I don't know what the, maybe because I was looking at all the ground beef. I'm like, no cows, but it hit me. And I'm scanning items and I'm just like, okay, what's up depression? You came at a weird time. This is interesting. Yeah, things, I feel a little weaker. I feel a little tired. I'm not looking forward to going back home anymore for some reason, but I got things to do. I'm gonna scan these items. I'm gonna keep walking. I got stuff to do. You know what? Depression, you can stay on my back today. You can chill there for a bit, but I got things to do. So rest up, I'm still going, right? You can treat it as, it's still a feeling and you know it's gonna hang on your back, but eventually it's gonna get tired and go too. You know, depending how severe it is, it can stop you from doing a lot, but in my experience, there is that small choice. There's that bit of attitude that you welcome it. You say hi to it and you might do things a little slower. You'll do things with less joy. You won't get a lot out of it, but you can still get things done and when it comes to mindfulness, I feel saying hi to the emotion. Hi, happiness. I know you're here for a while. Hang out with me, but I know you're probably gonna not stay there forever. Okay, hey sadness, how are you? What can I learn from you today? How can I experience you? And when teaching kindergarten too, which I love doing, we talk about big feelings and my language is always nice and clean, but we talk about big feelings and what do you do when a big feeling comes, right? What do you do? You take a breath and I wrote a song too with the kids and I played the flute. Oh, that's so cool. It's so fun. I wish I had that kind of stuff as a child too, but again, we're taught through social media too. It's the positive. It's always the good times and what I love about your channel and what you do for a living and I'm sure your talks are similar. It's not all sunshine, baby. No. It's not all sunshine. It's not all rainbows. It's like some deep and dark times that you can barely describe, but mindfulness isn't the savior, but we need a bunch of things. But I think as a piece, just as a piece to say hi to the emotions and experience them for what they are, not what they could be, not what they should be, but see life for what it is and notice what's happening right now, I think it can give us more contentment and relieve us of those expectations like we have to be something all the time. We have to, I always say, oh, we have to be happy all the time. We have to be athletic. We have to be nice. We have to be kind. I have to be in this career. And I always say, you don't need to fill in that blank. You can just say, I can just be. And you just sit with it and again saying hi to emotions. I know I've repeated myself, but in my personal experience, it's worked a lot. It really has, yeah. I really love that definition of mindfulness. It's also kind of just recognizing and saying hi to emotions or hi to things that come our way, whether it's ways of depression or anxiety. Now, if there was one last thing you could say about mindfulness or who mindfulness is for, what would you say? Everyone. But actually, yeah, no, no. But you know what you're saying? It's like some people can't sit still and practice that meditation, but mindfulness isn't about sitting still. That's a meditation practice. And you can do a walking meditation, right? You can do a walking mindfulness meditation. So why don't you walk next time you walk? It's like I'm looking downtown right here. Let me just show you. There's some sunlight up down by the park, right there by the diamonds, okay? And there's the marina and there's the air. Oh, it's so pretty. Cool. I love it. But as I've lived here for a few years, you'd think you'd get bored of the walk, but practicing mindfulness, if you can't sit down and do a meditation, go for a walk, touch the bark on the trees, ask yourself, okay, what does this feel like? Look at the leaves on the trees. Well, what does that look like, right? Notice your foot touching the ground, your ankle, and then pushing up from your foot, right? Notice what that feels like, all right? If you're in a wheelchair, notice what it feels like to hold the wheels and push this way and glide. What does the wind feel like against your face? And doing that, you know, you don't have to be seated in a room because people are fidgety. That's one way. There's all types of different meditations that can be physical, right? Dynamic meditation is one. Social meditation, where you shake and vibrate and act all weird. There's tons of... Oh, that's really cool. I've never actually heard of that. I love that. That's been a big thing that's helped me tremendously with depression. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because as you said, sometimes if you're sitting down and you try to breathe, well, you get more anxious. And yeah, that's a normal part of the process, but sometimes you notice the anxiety, but then you can actually do things too with the anxiety. Like, I'll go bench press or I'll go do some push-ups and go back if you can. Oh yeah, that's super helpful. Yeah, so with these emotions, yes, it's noticing them and you can accept them, say hi to them, but emotions are really cool because then we can actually do something with them. I've run my fastest 10K when I've been pissed off and I'm like, thank you, anger, right? Thank you, anger. There are all types of these emotions that can do things for us. And I think the more you push them away, I think it's a missed opportunity sometimes, but that being said, jeez, we're not all perfect. I feel anxious sometimes, oh man, I wish I wasn't anxious right now, come on, this is a pretty shit feeling. And no wonder if people take medication and have to take a benzo or they have to take medication or do something, go have a bath and you kind of want to forget about it, put on Netflix to forget it for a while, that's okay. It's not about beating yourself up for this. I'm not a mindful master, damn it, right? It's whatever works, but practice mindfulness, try it once a day for 10 seconds by taking a breath. Next time you feel anxious, maybe don't jump to the TV right away to forget it, maybe see what anxious feels like to you. We know the word, we know the symptoms, we can read those, but what does it actually feel like for you specifically? And it's a cool way to get to know yourself, yeah. I love that, that's a very, you've made it seem a lot less scary and a lot more doable and a lot more like I'm not just gonna fail it. So thank you, I honestly appreciate that. You are very welcome, thanks so much for having me on. Scott, thank you so much for coming on my channel and chatting with me today about mindfulness that really means so much to me, thank you. Make sure that you hop over to his channel and check out the video that I did with him. We are talking about my life story and all different kinds of things when we get into a lot of cool topics. I love my conversation with him. A huge thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon. Our family is growing there and I cannot express my gratitude enough to you guys. Thank you for your support. It makes such a difference in my life in so many ways and I love chatting with you guys there. Our patron of the day today is Austin. Austin, thank you so much for your help, for your support, for your kind messages and for your continued support. Thanks so much for listening guys. Make sure you hit like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, I think they're both over here. Yeah, like and subscribe before you hop away. I'll see you in the next video. I love you guys. I'm picking up you. I'll see you soon. Bye guys. 🎵 Hand her from the sky all about a high tide 🎵