How To Be In Love With Life

A conversation on the soul, relationships, and Yoga Nidra

Trained at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health with degrees in Anthropology and Psychology from Smith College and La Salle University, Kamini Desai PhD has served as Education Director of the Amrit Yoga Institute, Director of Wellness at Yarrow, an executive retreat center, and on faculty of the Foxhollow Leadership Center.

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Transcript

Adam Jacobs: I feel like I know your whole love life at this point. I really enjoyed this book. I dunno if you can see it in front of me. Life Lessons. Love Lessons. And I was very disappointed at the Darren section at the beginning when you guys finally got together. And then it ended so fast afterward. I thought it, and by the way, it's very easy to follow these stories. It was very engaging, hearing about it. I was very drawn in by a lot of these tales. And it seems like you've had a lot of growth through this particular process, as many people have.

But maybe it's a good question to start off with. You called the book Life Lessons and Love Lessons. I presume you think that there's a connection between those two things. I'll frame it like this. There's a great song from 1929 by Cole Porter called, What is This Thing Called Love? Maybe you've heard it. Great song. And this may be a deep question to start off with, but in your thinking, what is love? What's it about? It's a mysterious thing people have wondered at it for many, probably millennia. And what is its bearing on day-to-day life for you and for all of us?

Kamini Desai: Well, where I've arrived at the end of this book is that love is really a spontaneous experience of wholeness. When we fall in love, we don't just fall in love with a person. We fall in love with life. Our heart opens even to the checkout person at the grocery store. People we don't know, we're smiling. Our heart is open, we're in love with all of life. And that sense is a sense of wholeness that spontaneously arises within us. But typically, what we do is we associate that feeling with another person because it seems like, well, because of them, I get to experience this experience of heart opening or this experience of wholeness.

Adam Jacobs: So it's much broader than just an emotion, which a lot of people, I think, would describe it as, although it seems so limited. But yes, when you plug it into life itself, and it seems intuitively right that everything seems right with the world whenever you are in love, especially a romantic kind of love. Everything is tolerable; all the birds are singing, all the lights are green, and everything's amazing. And, of course, when we lose that, the opposite happens. There's this crash, and everything seems horrible, and so on and so forth. So, is there something unique about the experience of love that opens people up to that sense of reality? Or are there any other emotions that can do that? Or is there something about love that's sort of fundamental to living itself?

Kamini Desai: I think it's the second I really at heart, I am a romantic, but of course, I practice spirituality. And to me, there's a really big connection between the two. And it's not a mistake that in yoga, it's called Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. It's not a mistake that we all yearn for love because somehow, even though it's a human emotion, it pops us into a spiritual state where we are unconditionally receiving life. We're open to everything as it is. And so even though it's a human state, it somehow gives us a channel to this spiritual place of not even, it's almost like a bliss. It's this sense of happiness that just sort of arises spontaneously from within.

Adam Jacobs: So, therefore, even in a romantic setting, if it doesn't work out and love seems to end, does that mean it wasn't real to begin with? I'm thinking of Marianne Williamson, who talks about really having a thing for a guy, and he stood her up on a date, and she was crestfallen, but then she realized she was going to get even with him, and she ended up saying to herself, I really like this guy. Who am I fooling? I don't think he's a jerk. And so she decided that whenever he calls back, she's going to tell him, I really like you, but as she put it, “I don't think we do the same dance, and therefore, I don't think we should date.” But somehow, she managed to perpetuate the positive feelings despite the fact that it was going to come to an end.

I'm just wondering if you have any feelings about that because there's so much pain associated with loving as well, and it seems so hard to sustain, especially if you're not receiving it in equal measure to how you're giving it.

Kamini Desai: Exactly. Yeah. So, from the larger, let's say, spiritual perspective, we could look at it, and this is how I like to look at it: we get to experience within ourselves through that person and experience heart-opening. And whether that relationship continues or not, we got to experience that within ourselves. And so typically, we tend to measure the success or failure of a relationship, even by how long it lasts or, if it goes on forever, or how they treated us. And all those things matter. But in the end, we still get to walk away, having had an experience of open-heartedness, of wholeness that gave us a glimpse into something greater. And nothing, no matter how they behave, can take that away. We might not continue to be with them, which may be absolutely correct, but we still got that experience and that's ours.

Adam Jacobs: Right. Okay. And last question on love. Is there a qualitative difference between the love of a parent to a child the love of transcendence like that a person might feel for the Infinite? Are they all the same at their roots? Is one better than another? If you had only the capacity to cultivate one, which one would you pick?

Kamini Desai: Ooh, good one. I think I would go for the transcendent first as the underlying of the others. And the reason is because there's a difference to me between love and when love becomes attachment or when it becomes conditional. So we can feel like with parents, I think there is maybe a natural, more built-in unconditional love that no matter how that kid is, we are almost hardwired to love them no matter what. So I think that that's probably the closest to the transcendent where in love relationships, to me, it more easily becomes attachment. It becomes need, it becomes dependency, it becomes an exchange. Will you give me this, and I'll give you that.

But I think that the thing that we need to cultivate in both of those is this transcendent quality where it doesn't mean that we're always going to, not always like what the other person does, whether it's our child or our partner, but we can still hold a space to love them. And that may be that you no longer have a relationship with them, but you can still have a transcendent open heart for them exactly as they are. It just may not be the right form for you. So I think cultivating that, even with parents to kids, it reduces that whole idea of where the child feels like love depends on what I do or don't do.

It's more like, no, I love you no matter what; I may approve or disapprove, but you're loved by me. And that is such a key thing for a child. And the same in a safe relationship where we get to grow. I might not love everything you do, but I love you.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. I really promise this is the last one about love, but I'm developing more as we go. I'm sure you've noticed in the States and around the world that it's a very fractious time, not that we've ever been unified, but I think we're at a point where if you're a member of this camp, we simply can't have a relationship. I can't even respect you and certainly can't love you, but many of the ancient traditions teach a kind of unconditional love, whether it's “love your fellow as yourself” or the doctrine of turning the other cheek and loving, praying for your enemies. And I'm sure this exists in the Hindu tradition as well. Why are we so very bad at that at the moment and in general, and what could we do? And I think I know what you're going to say. What could we do to be better at it?

Kamini Desai: So, I imagine that this world is made up of yin and yang, one side and the other side, the complementary opposites. And these two together make up one whole. And when we are, this is going to sound strange, but when we're relaxed enough to see the underlying unity if two people are leaning away from each other, even though they're leaning away, the balance between the two opposites creates one whole. When we're relaxed enough, and at peace enough inside of us, we're able to appreciate that even though this person appears to be leaning away from us, they, in fact, are contributing to the whole in some way.

And I believe part of it simply means we are too stressed out. I know this sounds crazy, but I really believe it that we have come to such a state of tension, tightness, and constriction. It has led to a constriction in our own point of view. So now I see somebody leaning away from me, and instead of, oh wow, you bring this to the table, you're my enemy. You don't think the same as I do; therefore, you are the opposite of me. Therefore, you're my enemy. And the only way to fix this is that you're like me. There's one who's saying you should be like me. You should be like me. In the end, what we get obviously is struggle and conflict. To me, the place to begin is let's all take a deep breath and relax.

Adam Jacobs: Which we're also bad at.

Kamini Desai: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And just immediately, as soon as we all just even viscerally in our body, come to a place of more peace, it's like we move from the more dualistic perspective to, oh yeah, I remember, I appreciate that about you. And oh yeah, you do bring that to the whole. And we begin to see what the other person is trying to say in their own way, in their own words. And we start to get connected back to the yin and yang of it all rather than one versus the other.

Adam Jacobs: Makes sense. Easier said than done, of course, for everybody, but let me pivot for a second. One of the aspects of your story that I really just enjoyed hearing about was also your upbringing, which is very unusual. And you're the daughter of a very successful guru, and I have no idea what that's like, but there were certain expectations of you, certain pressures, but there also seemed to be certain freedoms that you had that other kids don't have. My question is, outside of whether you were a naturally spiritual kid, there seem to be moments of rebelliousness and pushing the limits. Did you feel sort of controlled by the system and wanted to escape it, and therefore, you came to spirituality more later? Or was it always just part of you and took a while to flourish? Does that make sense?

Kamini Desai: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was both early on when I was younger; it was definitely just naturally a part of me. Of course, it was just sort of osmosis. You pick it up, and it felt very natural to me. It didn't feel like anything foreign or imposed. But then, around my teenage years, I would say 17, 18, 19 into my early twenties, it started to feel like, well, in the, what do you say? I forget how you say that, but just in the pride of my youth, I thought I was better than these thousand-year-old yogic teachings and went out thinking I was going to change the world through. I wanted to be a diplomat.

And so I can tell that story in just a moment, but certainly, there was a point at which I thought, no, I'm going to find my own way. But I do think that that's actually healthy. At least for me, it was because I think just for me, adopting a point of view without discovering it and chewing on it and making it my own isn't as complete as it could be. And that's really the point of the book Life Lessons. Love Lessons, where everything that I had learned in theory about yoga and all of that stuff then became real to me through the lessons of relationships.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. And can I ask you just for a second, your practice is yoga, meditation, Hindu practice? Yes?

Kamini Desai: Yeah, I guess it's called Hindu. The main thing that I practice and teach is called Yoga Nidra. It's a meditation that's done lying down. And yes, I guess you could call it Hindu practice. For me, it's just a question of resting in the silence behind the busy mind and just in a core essence of silence and peace inside of myself and finding the peace there rather than relying on things outside of me.

Adam Jacobs: So one of the things I'm interested in is the perennial philosophy. I'm very excited by the connections between theologies and spiritualities, and the commonalities really stimulate me. And I don't think things last for thousands and thousands of years if there's nothing to them, and I also tend to think that there was a certain wisdom that the ancients had that we don't have so much anymore. The wisdom of concentration, focus, patience, and a very different kind of lifestyle that I think we were referencing before would be extremely positive for people to discover now.

And I think slowly some people are, but for a Westerner like myself growing up here in New York, you see that Hinduism and the Eastern traditions had a massive impact on Western culture. Everybody knows the term karma. Everybody knows mantra, yin and yang, which you mentioned before. It's really penetrated the consciousness, I think, of your average westerner. I don't know to what degree that they successfully engage in it, although I know mindfulness is extremely popular, meditation is very popular, and yoga is very popular. But could you tell me and the audience a little more about what Yoga Nidra is and, what its goals are, and maybe a little bit about how it's accomplished?

Kamini Desai: So, speaking of the transcendent self, there are many ways you could use Yoga Nidra. You could think of it like a multipurpose tool, but its ultimate purpose is really to realize or kinesthetically rest as the transcendent self that abides beyond the mind, beyond our emotions. And I think it was, I am right. We talk about it as the I am. And the idea is that there is a presence, a continuous, infinite, eternal presence that is there before our thoughts, before our emotions, before our feelings. It is there, before it is there, during it is thereafter.

We know this because this presence can identify the coming and going of things. And if it is identifying those things, it can't be those things. And so, according to Eastern philosophy, this is who we really are, and the cause of our suffering is that we become identified with the things moving through thoughts, fears, and identification. It's like this infinite, eternal presence assumes the limitations of whatever happens to be moving through awareness. The practice of Yoga Nidra and its technology is a series of body breath and awareness techniques designed to quiet the stuff moving through awareness so that you can notice the awareness itself.

And that's really its technology. But what I love about it is that everybody can do it. If you can lie down and not fall asleep, you can do yoga.

Adam Jacobs: Is it related to Advaita Vedanta?

Kamini Desai: It is definitely. In terms of this presence we're talking about, it would be a practice or technique that would help us rest, as Advaita is pointing to.

Adam Jacobs: And so you lie down and try to realize that your thoughts and emotions are transient, and there's something underlying all of it.

Kamini Desai: Exactly, yeah. So what we do is we guide you through, so Yoga Nidra; nidra means sleep, yoga means wholeness. And so what we do is through these progressive body breath and awareness techniques, we're helping release doing, it's almost like floating. So you're releasing more and more effort, and it's like a subtraction of doing. And the less that you're doing, the more that you begin to rest as the silence behind the sound of the mind. And the way that it works is by taking you into the same brainwaves as sleep. The only difference is that you're maintaining a very gentle level of awareness. So you're able to experience what it is to kind of rest in that silent space behind the mind.

Adam Jacobs: It sounds very similar to techniques that I've heard about in lucid dreaming, trying to stay sort of conscious as your mind is sort of settling into that liminal state, which, and I've tried, I have tried at least with those techniques, and I just always fall asleep. Not that obviously, people can do it. So, how do you prevent people from just drifting off and not maximizing that experience?

Kamini Desai: Yeah. Well, what I like to say is restoration before liberation. So when we're going down into these states, they're also profoundly therapeutic and restorative. And so if your body needs rest, sleep, or regeneration, your body's going to go there first. And the more you practice, you'll naturally maintain a level of gentle awareness. It's sort of like as the battery fills, you're able to maintain that awareness.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. So let's say, and I assume you have done this many times, but let's say you get down to your core awareness, let's call it. Do you have a word for that awareness or presence?

Kamini Desai: Yeah.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. And that's the real us. Okay, but it's not the body.

Kamini Desai: Correct.

Adam Jacobs: It's not the thoughts. It's not the emotions.

Kamini Desai: Correct.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. What is it?

Kamini Desai: Well, that's a good question. And it's interesting because many different traditions you're talking about point to this thing in different ways. And so in some traditions, like in Zen, they call it no-thing as it's that which is prior to things. In some traditions, it's called love because its quality is that it's like a sky that receives everything moving through it. This presence has no preference or judgment or against anything moving through it. So it's unconditionally receptive or love. So I guess its quality is that it has no quality of its own. It's just space for things to appear in it, just like silence has no quality of its own, but it's space for my voice or your voice or whatever to appear in it. But when that sound is gone, it is left untouched. It's just a space of receptivity.

Adam Jacobs: Bear with me for a second.

Kamini Desai: Yeah.

Adam Jacobs: Some traditions, we'll call this a soul, some modern day, a lot of talk about consciousness now and the possibility that consciousness resides everywhere, panpsychism, cosmopsychism, that consciousness is part of the fabric of reality, or actually it's a field that exists other fields in the universe. And this gets very tricky. I know, philosophically, but does it have a purpose? Does it just happen to be there? What's it doing hanging around in this body?

Kamini Desai: Yeah. Well, I'm not sure if I can answer all of those, but I’ll do my best. So, first of all, you absolutely captured it. What I'm speaking to is this consciousness that is the backdrop of everything but is pervading all of it. It's like the air in which we are moving. And what is said is that the one piece that I can point to is that consciousness. So it's not that our body isn't a part of this consciousness, but it's a manifest aspect of the consciousness, just like a wave and an ocean. So this body is the wave, and the ocean is the consciousness from which it comes. And so the idea is that all of existence, including the entire universe, arises out of this infinite field of potentiality.

According to Eastern philosophy, there's this constant movement from formless into form back into formless, which is very much the Big Bang theory, that same kind of idea that everything is moving out away, and then it kind of dissolves back into itself, into the formless and then goes back out again. And in yogic philosophy, they say that the human being was given something maybe a little bit extra special in a certain way, that it has the ability to be self-aware and make choices, a much greater level of choice than an animal would have. And this was given according to philosophy: we were meant to move away from the source that we are this presence, that we are into the world of form to come into full manifest existence only to discover our true nature, this presence again. So the only way this source could experience itself is to forget its own nature, to move away from itself, to rediscover itself again. So, in a way, its purpose is to know itself.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. I mean, you're hitting upon one of the biggest mysteries of Kabbalah, for instance, that's described there in great detail. Exactly along the lines of what you're saying, the thing that's so hard, we're all going to be processing this for a long time, trying to understand it, but it's so similar. The question that arises is you have this infinite consciousness. Correct me if I'm wrong; I think I pronounced it wrong, but it's Brahman.

Kamini Desai: Yes, very well. Very good.

Adam Jacobs: And that's the totality of consciousness, right? In the West, we say God, which is a very loaded word, and this force decides to change or create, even though philosophically speaking, change is not possible for it because it's already infinite. It already is the totality of all that is. Therefore, it leads to this paradox where you have the all and the part existing simultaneously. We know that it's, yes, it's part of the whole somehow, but how did it lose consciousness of itself through us? And did it really? It's very tantalizing and confusing, and it certainly gives us something to delve into forever, I think. But so the Hindu self is Atman if I'm correct?

Kamini Desai: Yes.

Adam Jacobs: And the goal is to realize that Atman and Brahman are one, Correct? That the soul within you is no different from the soul of the source or the Presence. And what is standing in the way of us doing that?

Kamini Desai: Primarily, it's the mind. So you touched on something interesting when you said, well, is it that the presence or this source isn't within us? Is it really gone, or is it really forgotten? And it's there, but you could say it's in a subconscious mode. So, from this field of consciousness arises energy. Energy is the building block of all things, as Einstein says. And that energy is also the animating force in our body, and that energy is divine. That's the spirit within us. So there's energy, which is the manifest aspect of the source that is the spirit within us. And then there's consciousness. And right now, that energy is carrying out mostly just homeostatic functions because it is being dominated by the mind, which is using up most of that energy.

Adam Jacobs: And by the mind, you mean the thought processes?v

Kamini Desai: Exactly. And so if you think of this energy just as fuel, even though it's spirit force, it's just fuel that can be used to fuel our thoughts, our doing, all of our worries, whatever is fueling our entire body. And all of our thought processes is this divine energy. So because it is all being used up by being held at a subconscious level, it's not able to reach or move to, let's say, a self-aware force where it becomes awakened and begins to reunite with consciousness.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. Presumably, you would say that yoga and meditation are the way or is a way of opening up that blockage?

Kamini Desai: Correct.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. And if we do, then what should we be feeling? What should our capacities as human beings be different?

Kamini Desai: Yes. So, the primary, let's talk about yoga nidra. Let's say that the two major things we are doing are using these techniques to quiet the thought processes, and we're doing techniques to breath awareness and mindfulness techniques. All of these actually increase the available energy in the body. So it's like we're creating a state where the thought processes are quiet enough, and the energy, the spirit force in the body, is strong enough to kind of escape the domination of the mind.

And when this happens, one of the signs that this is happening is that you could feel profound stillness. You're just being drawn in a heaviness, coming over you, a deep sense of stillness, timelessness. Some people see lights or colors, some people feel like waves or tingling moving through them. They have access to experiences or vision where they start getting access to these dimensions when this spirit force becomes awakened and freed. So that would be a sign, at least.

Adam Jacobs: Have you experienced that, experienced these things?

Kamini Desai: Yes.

Adam Jacobs: If you had an adjective to describe what it feels like, what would you say?

Kamini Desai: That's a good one. I would say profound peace, profound stillness, a kind of silent joy, sometimes emanating from within a place that we've always known but forgot. It's like, oh, yeah, I know this. My soul knows this.

Adam Jacobs: There's a passage, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but in the Book of Kings, there's a prophet called Elijah who has a prophetic experience in the desert, and this series of big events seems to happen. There's a big storm, and it says, but God was not in the storm, and then there's an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake, and then there was a fire and God. Then afterward, it says there was a thin, small, thin, still voice, and it says that was God. So the fireworks that people are looking for oftentimes like the big concert or vacation or some reframing event that gets you to think differently about your life and enjoy yourself, I think that a lot of people look for stimulation and enjoyment and meaning there, even though those things can be great, obviously. But the stillness that you're talking about reminded me of that passage. And again, I think that that's a commonality: if you can't get into that tiny quiet place, it's going to be very hard to get through the portal. But it's so counterintuitive in some ways because you don't think that you have to make yourself smaller to fit through if that makes sense.

Kamini Desai: Yes, absolutely.

Adam Jacobs: And it's hard to do it because you have to be very humble, and you have to be, a lot of good things have a lot of positive traits to pull it off. But I think that's part of it also, is that the more you develop in those ways, society benefits as well from your growth as a person in a variety of ways. But okay. Yes. A few more questions. I'm enjoying talking to you.

Kamini Desai: Can I say one thing? What I heard in what you were saying also is to have discernment for the subtlety because we're all looking for, like you were saying, the firecrackers and the party and all that. And really, the real answer is subtle. It's the thing that's not so obvious, but it's real.

Adam Jacobs: Back 400 years ago, when it got dark, and everyone went home, and you had a candle and some books, and you had plenty of time to contemplate things. And now it's just like with artificial lighting and 24-hour access to everything and news flying back and forth. And even though I'm guilty of it like anybody else, scrolling through information constantly and being bombarded is just not conducive to this modality.

Kamini Desai: Correct.

Adam Jacobs: Yeah, unfortunately. So, the Eastern philosophies talk a lot about suffering and suffering being a big problem and how to reduce it how and end it. It seems to be a major goal. It also seems to acknowledge that suffering is a good teacher, and it seems like a dichotomy to me sometimes. Do you just accept the suffering and say, okay, the suffering is here to make me a more humble person, to give me insight into the nature of reality, and so on and so forth? Why the drive to end it so much?

Kamini Desai: The first thing that came to me was the distinction in Eastern philosophies they're making between pain and suffering. So the first is that pain is going to be a part of our life. I mean, we're going to experience pain as a human being. There's no way out of that. The place where we get caught is with the suffering. The example I like to give is somebody slamming a door that's like pain. The suffering is that after they slammed the physical door, we keep slamming the door in our head about what they did, and that's the suffering, and it perpetuates itself, and it looks like the other person caused that. But actually, we do that to ourselves.

And even though we can't stop the pain, what we can do something about is the suffering. And then to the second part of your question, sometimes we have to bump our heads or hit our heads up against that wall enough trying to change another person or trying to change an outside situation or looking for the answer where it's not often enough in a lot of pain, loss, failure, rejection, illness, where we hit up against it enough through suffering that eventually we say, enough, the answer cannot be here. And now I'm ready to look somewhere else. And very often, that suffering then is the portal to where the real answer lies.

Adam Jacobs: Yes. It seems to me the minority of people say I have had enough of that. A lot of people just seem to say, I'll just keep taking this right on the nose generationally if need be. Just keep passing it from one family member to another. I don't even know what the question is, but I wanted to ask something along the lines of how you can get people to see that this can be different. It doesn't have to be like this. Some people, I've been studying your work. I've been very interested in Eastern thinking and synthesizing it with my own tradition and with Western thinking and finding, I guess, like I said, the commonalities. But this concept of samskara I found to be extremely interesting. The idea is that you carry along these negative experiences or positive but negative ones for a really long time. And I think that anyone can relate to that, which we call baggage, right?

Okay. And it's so hard to get rid of it. It's events that took place 30 or 40 years ago. You're no longer in touch with anyone who was involved. You forgave them; you were kids. And still, you think about it, and you feel it. You relive these experiences, and it's so counterproductive. I think it's going to be the same answer, but you're like, we should open our hearts, get silent, and try to get in touch with the deepest aspect of ourselves. That's the solution.

Kamini Desai: It's one. I think that's the ultimate solution. And so the way that I imagine it is, imagine that we have all this baggage that's sort of crowding our mind stuff, but through those clouds is the sun of the source. And when these things get activated, and we're kind of ruminating over them, the sun of the source can't shine through, and it's like we're living from the past baggage. So when we do practices, whatever it is, whether it's being in nature or any practice from any faith, they're all leading, I believe, to the same place. It's like that baggage gets quieted enough that the silence behind can shine through, and we begin to be able to distinguish, oh my God, what happened when I was five years old isn't me. There's something beyond that. And so the answer isn't always in fighting the issue. It's in recognizing that you're more than that issue, but it can't just happen at the level of the mind. It's got to be experiential.

Adam Jacobs: Yes. Yes. And I think that's why so much self-help doesn't necessarily work; it's all intellectual, and yes, the ideas are brilliant and possibly transformative. Still, until you learn how to bring it into your gut, which is the hardest thing to do, it's just going to remain a nice idea.

Kamini Desai: Exactly.

Adam Jacobs: Right.

Kamini Desai: Yeah. It's just one more thought, a great thought, but how do we embody it? How do we become that?

Adam Jacobs: Right? I have time for one more question, and I want to thank you in advance for a really enlightening and fun conversation. I want to recommend all of your work, including this one, to everyone who sees this, but this is something I deal with also; you're talking essentially about experiential learning as being primary, and that's not popular in the analytic hallways of the Western Academy, let's say. If you can't map it out mathematically if there's no experiment that can be done to support it, I don't think we can measure chakras in a lab, and so on and so forth. It doesn't exist. So, does it matter to you personally that there may not be scientific backing for some of these ideas and practices? Or do you say something like, listen, they can do their research, but when they sit down and really try to figure it out internally, then they'll see it. But it doesn't affect me whether they believe it or not. Or does it bother you?

Kamini Desai: It doesn't bother me. I think it's helpful to have something a little bit of science behind it. I always think that science, proof, or research is the front door that gets people willing to practice. So, I wouldn't necessarily talk about the stuff we've been discussing, but that's not the first thing I would discuss in class. I would talk about what research there is in order to get them to practice. Then, through the practice, the rest of the paper reveals what kind of research is needed on the benefits of meditation.

And it releases dopamine and increases your focus and productivity. It prevents amygdala hijacking and your social and emotional intelligence, all of these things just to get people going. Oh, I want that enough to get them into the practice that they're willing to do it.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. Thank you so much for all of your insightful information and; you're very engaging and entertaining writing, and I wish you a lot of continued success, and I hope our paths cross again in the future.

Kamini Desai: I'm sure it will. This was such a great pleasure. Thank you so much.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. Have a great day, and hopefully talk to you soon.

Kamini Desai: Look forward to it. Thank you.

Adam Jacobs: Okay. Bye-bye.

Kamini Desai: Bye.