Get Booked – Vanessa Potter, Finding My Right Mind 280621

Hello, this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station, played daily at 5 PM for Women's Radio Station and Tuesdays at 4 PM for Men's Radio Station. I'm Hazel Butterfield, and I absolutely love doing this show, talking to authors, chatting about anything and everything books related, and a little bit more as well, and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books authors can provide, including invaluable information. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different author each week, sharing who they are and what they do and what inspires them. Now, on today's show, we will be chatting to the author of Finding My Right Mind by Vanessa Potter, released on the 29th of April of this year by Trigger Publishing. Author Vanessa Potter woke up one day to find herself blind and paralyzed. As she recovered, she was stunned to discover that it was meditating, not drugs, that saved her mind. Finding My Right Mind is a story detailing the process, the experiment undertaken using EEG, a diary of the process, the pitfalls, the highs, lows, and realizations. Described as a consciousness road trip, which I absolutely love, from mindfulness to psychedelics. The theory is great, but how did it actually work out? Vanessa, hi, thank you for joining us. Hi Hazel, thanks for having me on. You are very welcome. Um, there is so much I want to ask you, but I think, um, I'm going to try my best to squeeze in everything that I want to ask you. But why don't we kick off with just telling our listeners a little bit about what instigated this journey? Well, the, the meditation experiment itself came about from what you described, which was this horrific event. I mean, it was life-changing, and the trauma of going blind threw me enormously. And I found myself using all these mind tools that I had, I suppose, were sitting dormant. I'd had a child only 18 months before, so I'd learned things in antenatal classes like visualization and slow yogic breathing. And I knew that these were really good ways to calm, you know, your nervous system. And also I'd learned a bit of self-hypnosis. So I just, I just sort of started delving into all of these tools because, you know, needs must, you're in this situation and it's like, well, what do you do? And I didn't actually think about it. I just started using all of these tools. And over time and after the event, I look back and could see how helpful that was and how powerful it was. And It gave me respite. It gave me, you know, moments away from this unfolding horror movie that I seem to be, you know, having the starring role in. And it got me curious. And I continued to use a lot of the tools, particularly the visualization. I visualized this amazing, beautiful beach. And it's funny because every time I say it, it pops into my head. I mean, it's here now. So it's the most magical, calm place. It's got these rolling waves and I control everything in this beach. I mean, I can imagine putting my feet under the sand, you know, it feels really cool underneath the sand. I can feel just lovely sun. I know that my family are safe in a little hut, you know, so I built this beach and I went onto this beach and just visualized it over and over and over. And that calmed my body and my mind so much so. And that's why I mean, it's a bit of a trite statement that meditation saves your mind. You know, these things get distilled, but basically going on to that beach and doing that for large periods of time during my time in hospital had more of an effect. It calmed my body, calmed my mind. It meant that I could open my eyes and come back and go, right, now what are you going to test me for? Because they didn't know what was wrong with me. So, you know, it was not only a horrific situation, it was full of uncertainty. They called me the mystery patient. I mean, no one even could tell me if I was going to live. So I needed something, somewhere to go that was safe. And that beach was my safe place. And so I continued using that. And I got curious to know, well, you know, God, that's clever. I was like, the mind is brilliant. You know, that was my, one of my biggest saviors. And so it started from there. And I researched my visual system with neuroscientists. That was featured in my first book. And then, and then this, the My fascination and love affair with my mind and how it works and why it does what it does has just continued and then turned into this— yeah, consciousness road trip is a good description, a bit of a crazy, crazy adventure where I've tried 12 different meditation techniques one after the other. I mean, yeah, that's where it all came from, lying in a hospital bed blind. Do you know what? What was quite interesting is I was talking quite often on a Tuesday when I finish work, people say to me, you know, what are you— we have a bit of a discussion and we say, who are you interviewing this week? What are you doing? And I was explaining Finding My Right Mind. And, you know, 10 years ago, people would have kind of rolled their eyes and said, yes, yes, thinking about beaches is going to cure cancer. Wow, wow, wow. And they get really kind of judgy about the whole thing. But everybody was saying, well, yes, because, you know, everything revolves around our central nervous system. Nervous system, if your body's not working properly, it has so many different effects. I mean, if you get an earache, you know, the— how it can throw you off balance. And if we look after our body, and if our body is stressed, it cannot work properly. The, the— it's all linked to your gut floras and, and having that sense of calm. And it— and the difference is, is that the, the process that you went through was actually rather than subjective, you actually had, you know, you were using EEGs and actually gathering indisputable data to actually prove it, rather than just say, I've had a 20-minute session where I've meditated and I feel light and airy and as if I can take on the day. Because that doesn't really win people over sometimes, does it? It kind of makes people feel a little bit, you know, I don't, I don't think that this works. I think it doesn't work for me. But the fact is, the experiment you did proved that actually this does have a positive effect, an indisputable positive effect. There's a whole bunch of things in what you've just said that I'd love to respond to. This, I'm going to pick up on this prove word. This gets pulled out a lot, and this is our fast-moving modern society. We want to distill, you know, my experience is like a 7-year experience, distill them into these, you know, sound bites. And it's very hard to prove anything really when it comes to the mind. And actually going back to the subjective, the subjective for anybody is still the most powerful thing. But we live in a society that wants to measure and compare everything. And so, so, so there was like a double-edged sword with this experiment. Part of it was me going on this journey because I I said to myself, right, look, I got all of these benefits. This was amazing. But then I found out there's 300+ different ways to use my mind. And I started to discern the different ways I had already used it. So I thought, well, I'm going to investigate this. So it was a lot of curiosity. But then the scientific measures was to, to build on that curiosity. So rather than prove that one is better than the other, because I can tell you now, that is just a moot conversation, it just doesn't exist. Because based on what, what are your measures, you know, what you're measuring. But we all respond differently to every single kind. We do, whether it's medical or actually spiritual. We do, absolutely. And that's a really key part of this. So by exploring all these different techniques, what the scientists could do alongside me was measure my experience. And that was the really unique part of this experiment that had never been done before. Most meditation experiments will take— go to a retreat where there's lots of experienced meditators who are there in a controlled space for like, say, a month, and they will record data for that month. I didn't do that. I had a portable EEG headset that I took into my home, and I sat down and recorded data. So every single time I meditated, I wore this headset, and they collected the data every single time for 3 years over 12 different techniques. So you got this you know, you get this enormous landscape of neural data, which for scientists is so exciting because they get to look at patterns and similarities and differences between techniques. But also they get to look at what different states of mind I go into. And this is where I come back to this proving word. You know, if you approach meditation, you need, you know, it's quite important to ask yourself what you want from it. You know, you might want a body relaxation, you might want to calm your mind and de-stress, but you might be on a spiritual journey. Maybe actually you feel disconnected from people around you, you know, that sense of kind of numbness almost verging on dissociation. Well, there are different practices that you could use to kind of nurture that part of your psyche. So, you know, when you approach a meditation, it's really important to kind of have a little bit of an idea about what you expect to get out of it. And so by teasing apart all the different techniques, and then within those techniques, all the different states of mind I experienced, like whether it's, you know, whether I'm feeling very, you know, elated, high emotion, or whether I'm bored stupid, or whether I'm super distracted, or whether I've got this idea of heightened awareness during a meditation. And these are all different states. And that's what the scientists get they get very nerdy about it and super excited. And so it was wonderful having this. I mean, I would have conversations with them alongside my kind of, you know, experience. And I say adventures because it really was an adventure at times. I found myself in some very extraordinary places with some, you know, really interesting people. But they would be looking at these very objective measures alongside, and we were both feeding each other. And so it was a very collaborative experiment. But, but I can't prove anything for anybody else. What I can, if you like, prove to myself is that if I want to feel more connected, if I ever feel that over-busy, I'm not, I'm not looking at my family closely enough, I'm not connected to them, then I know exactly which practice I'll go for because I've tried and tested it and it absolutely does it. I did one last night. You know, a kindness practice is just so powerful and, if you like, works for me. Well, I think then what I'm going to do is I'm going to change what I said about, you know, using the word proven and say it was more— it's data-driven. Yeah, yeah. And it's my data. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, and that's the key thing. It's my blueprint, my data. But Of course, that's really useful for other people because, you know, we're all very similar inside our heads. A lot of the same things go on. You know, I have an inner voice, an inner critic, you know, most people do. And so a lot of the experiences I talk about are hugely relatable, but you're quite right when you say that everybody responds differently. And that's why I, you know, it is an experiment. That's why sometimes you've got to explore and be a bit curious and not give up with a meditation practice and maybe try some, you know, different things. But that's the key word, isn't it? It's meditation practice. You do need to practice. You can't just suddenly say, oh look, I've downloaded an app for £3.99 from the Apple Store, I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes and I'll feel better for the rest of the day. No, it could take you months to some— for some people to, you know, even longer to actually learn how to do it properly or to be able to get yourself into that kind of healing state. Um, I mean, I, I'm somebody who does struggle with meditating because my my mind goes off on all these different tangents. I mean, I do remember at one point when you were talking about one of the places that you went to and you weren't allowed to take pen or paper or write anything down, and I was getting agitated just reading about it. And the fact that you were using— you cheated a little bit and you used your train ticket, and I was going, I'd have to like write on the walls or something, you know, scrape it with my nails, just hoping that they were— which kind makes me sound a little bit like a psychopath, but the fact is, you know, I, when I am relaxed, that's when all the thoughts come into my head and I need to get them out of my head and order them and order my thoughts for me to feel like my brain has been cleansed and a kind of control, alt, delete. So I was getting agitated just reading about that. You couldn't actually write anything down. And I was thinking, this sounds like torture, but you know, everybody has different things that are going to suit them. And you were very much describing pretty much how I was feeling in terms of, you know, you couldn't write anything down. But when you are relaxed, when you are meditating, that's when your brain comes out with the most incredible and enlightening things, isn't it? Um, was it Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and people like that where they'd completely take themselves away and sit on a beach and just chill out, and that's when they come out with their best ideas? Well, David Lynch is infamous, and his connection with the Transcendental Meditation movement is exactly that. He uses TM, which is a mantra-based practice, and I experience a lot of creativity, a deluge at times. And so there's some interesting things there. You're right, you know, it is called practicing for good reason. But I think sometimes that can feel very intimidating in our very busy lives. The idea You know, me, I work, I've got 2 kids. Shoehorning, you know, a daily practice is quite a stressful thought. It's like, oh my God, another thing. So one of the things I'm quite keen, you know, to talk about really is that it's a life practice. You know, if you start seeing it as bleeding into every aspect of your life, it becomes different. So rather than shoehorning something new, Adapting something you're already doing is much easier, and you can actually get benefits from just 1 or 2-minute little grounding exercises. To be honest, meditation, you know, the front door of meditation is awareness. It's self-awareness. It's just knowing what you're doing. It sounds really obvious, but actually, how much of our life is spent in autopilot, 100 miles an hour, Multitasking. I mean, women, oh my goodness. I mean, me and all my friends, we do this. We multitask 6 things at once. A life practice is just taking a moment to notice that you're doing that. You don't beat yourself up and go, "Oh, you bad person, you're doing that multitasking thing again." But you can, you know, give yourself a minute just to scan through the body and feel your feet. And it's amazing what that does. And that's a minute. And then if you do it again while you're washing up, you know, standing at the sink, just notice what your thoughts are doing. You don't have to change anything, just feel your feet, feel your body. And the body's very clever, it's like a knock-on, it's like dominoes. All of that system will start to change the second you become aware and you go into the parasympathetic, which is the healing state that we all, you know, desperately like to have. And you can do this throughout your day, even just walking, when I was walking to collect the kids— my children are older now, they, um, they can come home by themselves— no, like, they're kind of really happy, and then I went, no, I'm not. I used to use that time to do something productive. Yeah, and actually, I used to use that walk as a mindful experience. You know, I would do it slower, look at things, and you don't have to do it every time. It doesn't have to be like homework. I think it's really important in our busy lives to try and find a way that this can be complementary rather than, you know, this new commitment that feels very arduous. Well, this is what's important about books like this is that you point out what is available, how to do it, and yet appreciate the facts. And I think what you termed it as is the scrum of everyday life, which, you know, I think kind of that is perfect. So people don't just read it and I can Imagine people are saying, right, okay, I've got this to do, this to do, this to do. I don't have time to do a 30, 40-minute practice. And I know that when you came back from one of your rituals, you, you were asked to try and meditate for 2 hours a day. And I'm sure many people would read that and go, I don't even have 2 minutes to kind of put the washing out and blah, blah, blah. However, you know, what we need to kind of accept and change our mindset in regards to, you know, the more the more time we put into ourselves, the better what we're actually going to be able to produce. So there's no point doing a 12-hour day's work because after the first 6 hours it's rubbish. However, if you stopped after 6 hours, did something to do with self-care for an hour, and then went back to work, those remaining 5 hours would be a damn sight more productive than what they could have been. And we need to kind of find ways to squeeze this into our life because actually you've got to speculate to accumulate when in terms of looking after ourselves. Yeah, and I think even you don't even have to say, look, I've got— I'll take an hour in the middle of the day. As I say, little 5-minute slots. I mean, I was hanging the washing out yesterday, and just for an example of the little life practices that I do, because I'm really busy at the moment, so my formal practice has got shoved to the evening quite often, and sometimes I don't even get a chance to do it. But I can really tell in myself when I haven't. But I stood outside and I was hanging stuff on the line, and I just— because I, I'm conditioned— because this is the thing, If you do this, you become habitual. We have bad habits in our life, right? So this is about just throwing in a couple of good habits, and the body is just the same, so they will become conditioned habits. So I stand, and not because I know to do this now, I just stopped for a minute or two while I was putting the washing out, and I was listening. All I did is I switched on my hearing senses, and I just got this, this overwhelming, like, and it's like a, it's like a cacophony of birdsong. And it floods the body with just all the positive chemicals, because I'm just like, oh my gosh, so glad that I'm just doing this in this little moment right now, hanging out the washing, nobody knows. Bingo. And that's all. And but when you build and put them all together, they really start to have an accumulative effect. And then what happens is you start to look forward to them. So that's how they become conditioned, because you realize you get this little— oh, you get a reprieve. I describe it, you know, the old-fashioned VHS tapes where you've got the recording, got a little 000. It's like a dial, and you just go back. 000, baseline. It's going to go up and you're going to go into the red again. But in terms of your life, you've got a mechanism that you can just Go to that little dial and go back to zero zero. And that's how meditation, when it's done, you know, if it's done effectively, can be— have this— has this drip, drip, drip effect throughout the day, and it constantly brings you back. And the other thing I just wanted to put— to bring up, it's a common, you know, question I get about clearing the mind and thoughts. And the mind thinks, it's kind of what we need it to do, you know, it's planning, it's scheduling, it's assessing dangers, it's rehearsing the future. The mind will do this. And again, I think this is a very modern thing that we, you know, we beat ourselves up about that. Actually, a lot of meditation techniques— there are a few for sure that are about absolutely, you know, trying to cut the thinking process. And Zazen Zen is one of those. It's quite a quite a full-on strict practice. But a lot of traditional mindfulness practices are just about being next to your thoughts. Okay, they're buzzing like a load of angry wasps, but you're not changing them. You're just acknowledging them. And there's a weird kind of dichotomy that goes on with that, that when you actually notice them, what happens is that you interrupt them. And it's the story trains that are the problem. So, you know, you get all hooked on a thought, And before you know it, in the future, and she said this to me this morning, and I, when I see her next, I'm going to glare at her, I'm going to do this. And you've invented this whole scenario that does not exist. Oh, been there so many times. Right. Yeah. Right. And you do it the past, you do it the future, and we know this. So this is a story train. My story trains are the Japanese bullet trains. So they are vroom, they've gone, and I can't stop them. So by using these practices, I can slow them. I can make them more like a steam train that I can run alongside. I'm giving you a weird analogy, so bear with me. I can run alongside, I can jump on it and put the brakes on and go, "I'm not going down this story train 'cause this situation doesn't exist." And you get to interrupt that very damaging, sometimes, flow of thoughts and go, "Right, let's just get off. Get off this story train and have a look, and let's just, or let's just park it." for a moment, and it gives you space. And that's a critical space between responding to a situation or knee-jerk reactivity. And that was one of the big things that I wanted to tackle. And I would say I've done a good job on it. Oh, I still yell at my kids and I still lose it. But those moments are fewer and they're much more moderated. That's the thing, isn't it? It's feeling like you're in control and in control of that speeding bullet train, in control, because I mean, even if the kids deserve it, and let's be honest, sometimes they do need a little bit of a shouting at, or they need to be kind of told what is right and wrong. And, you know, it's not all, "Oh, hello dear, let's go and make some quinoa buns, da da da da." And it's not always like that, but it's when we feel like we've lost control that that completely takes over our emotion and our mind, and it can ruin the whole day. And so we need to find ways to be able to control what's happening. And if it happens once every blue moon, then that's okay. It's when it's constant and consistently happening that, you know, it can really get us down, and that's when we need to kind of control, alt-delete. And we do need to find— I know it's busy, we are constantly busy, but what I found this week, especially with reading this book, is I've been reading about it and I've kind of thought, Yep, that's exactly what I need to do. Yes, that's happened in a car with me where I've possibly, you know, when you were talking about when you've reacted quite angry to somebody around you, and I do that with the kids and they're just, I've heard them kind of go, wow, that person doesn't know how to drive. And I'm thinking, okay, they've obviously learned that from me. And on my dog walks, it's automatic. We all have these automatic things that we do and they're just habits. I put in the AirPods and I listen to music, my Spotify list. Do the walk and it passes the time. This week the AirPods have gone in and I haven't switched the music on unless I felt like it. And at about 5:30 on Monday morning, I did a nice 5K walk. The music didn't come on once. I was ordering my thoughts. I was thinking, I was looking at all the beautiful scenery, which you can miss if you're singing away to Lil Nas X's song or whatever. And it felt like a proper emotional purging because there was hardly anybody else around. I was thinking and I really felt in touch with what was going on. And today as well, when I went on my dog walk, I turned on the music and within about 10 seconds I turned it off and went, that was just automatic. I don't need it on. I want to listen to the birds. I want to see what's going on. And when people are coming past me, I want to hear if they're saying hello and actually respond without going Mm. Like teenagers. And sorry, I was going to say you described a walking meditation. Yeah, well, that's how it felt. And I did feel so good afterwards. And I, you know, I had a whole day ahead of me and they were saying, well, people were saying, you were up at like 5 in the morning. How are you still going at 9 o'clock at night? I'm like, because actually I think it was good for the soul and it gave me the endorphins I needed. Sometimes, what I said before, speculate to accumulate. Yeah, and these practices are, are really powerful, and they're not woo-woo, you know. Of course, people can pursue a mind practice for spiritual reasons and for self-advancement, that, you know, like I said at the beginning, there's lots of different reasons why you might approach meditation. But there are lots of ways to do it with, you know, in a completely woo-woo-free arena. And, and being out and walking and just connecting to nature and allowing your senses to open is one of the most powerful experiences we can have, and in fact is hugely researched. So, so this is forest bathing. I was just about to say forest bathing. You beat me to it. Yeah, well, this is, this is a project actually I'm currently working on. I'm doing a huge forest bathing project at the moment called ParkBath, and it's one of— I love taking skeptics out, people who are like very eye-rolly and sighs, or do that you can't see me, but you know, the inverted commas, they go, um, I mean, I still have friends that do that. And, um, and of course, you know, and that, and that's going to stay for a long time. But these are really wonderful ways to just tap into that self-awareness, which is that, as I say, the front door to all of this. Because I mean, I described it to a friend And after she did a session with me, she came back, she was right. I understand why you say you feel like you're alive. And if you think about it, that's such a powerful statement to feel like you're actually living and not just watching your life as it rushes past. You're actually in it is so powerful. And it's consciousness. It is. And it's— and it has so many benefits. You know, this is what allows your body to heal, but it also boosts your immune system. There's also sort of respiratory positives that can happen. There's a number of illnesses and diseases that can be, you know, positively impacted. COPD, you know, from, from doing forest bathing and from walking, particularly if it's in nature, because then you get the phytochemicals, you get all the benefit. But just that grounding and coming in and just knowing that you're walking, because of course the other thing you do is you walk slower. You know, all of these things have a knock-on and it's, it's incredibly powerful and you don't have to do it very much. To get it, to go, ah, I understand what they're rabbiting on about now, you know. Well, the breathwork, I mean, there's so many books about at the moment that are just on breathing, and it is so powerful to be able to breathe properly. And bizarrely, I did an interview with somebody recently, her name was Annabel Williams, she's a vocal coach to like most people that are in the charts and have been in the charts for the last 20 years, and she's done this app on a vocal coaching app on how to teach yourself to sing. And a lot of it is to do with breathwork. And when I was interviewing her, I was saying, it's not just people who want to learn to sing that need to buy this app. It's people who want to learn to calm down, to control their breathing. It's not, you've got to be able to control your diaphragm to be able to sing, but you actually, you know, when you breathe, most anxiety attacks are to do with when your breathing goes out of control. You know, if you're about to go somewhere when you're nervous, calm yourself down with correct breathing. If you're about to do a speech somewhere or you've got a meeting to go into at work where you know you're going to be expected to speak and maybe you feel a little bit uncomfortable about that, if you can control your breathing and do certain exercises, the control you can have, which has a knock-on effect on your gut because you're less nervous and you feel as if you, well, you're in control of yourself. And again, that is consciousness and it all comes back in to the same place, doesn't it? Yeah, breathing is, is pretty much at the core of most practices. It's not absolutely every single one, because some mantra practices are much more about repeating a word inside your mind than actually focusing on the breath. But a lot of them are breath-focused because it's portable and it's accessible and we all breathe. And so it's a really useful tool, not only— and don't forget, breath is bidirectional. So this is a really cool thing about breath, that you can change your emotional state by breathing and your emotional state will change by how you're breathing. So if you're in a heightened state and this is where practices, whichever practice you choose, I mean, I go through 12, so there's plenty of variety there. Find a practice that will, you know, that suits you, that will help you with that awareness. And then you can— because a lot of people don't even know they're stressed. This is one of the problems. You know, their shoulders are up by their ears and they're on 100 miles an hour and they don't even see the speed at which they travel. So these practices can give you some perspective and what we call meta-awareness, this stand-back ability to look and go, holy moly, look at me, I am 100 miles an hour. Well, let's, you know, let's first of all just deal with that. And the breath is a brilliant way to bring that from, you know, 100 to 60 miles an hour just by doing an extended out-breath. I mean, this is a cue to the body. It's really simple. A longer out-breath and a shorter in-breath will automatically do that. And this is a really powerful tool to know because, like you say, you're coming into an interview, you go, right, let's go to the loo, excuse myself, let's just do this breathing technique. And there's hundreds of breathing techniques and there's apps and there's guides you can follow and listen. There's so many different types, and it doesn't really matter which one you do, um, as long as you do a calming one. And, and this is such a powerful tool to have at your disposal any moment, and it works. It works. I mean, that's what I used in the hospital. I used something called Golden Thread Breath. It's a very visual breath. It's where you breathe out and you imagine a little piece of thread just between your lips and it just goes, it just floats in the air. Yeah, and you can, you can see it, can't you? I'm very visual, my background was a TV producer, so you know, I, I, everything's visual for me. I'm, and so I could just sit and just imagine this piece of golden thread just— Well, also Vanessa, we've got to remember that before there was easier access to all the variety of drugs breathing was the core focus of giving birth. Yes. I mean, yeah, it's like all the NCT classes teaching you how to breathe, but you know, quite often we are kind of moving over to the— I wouldn't say the lazy way because I don't think that's quite, um, accurate in terms of giving birth, but you know, we predominantly go down the medicine route these days, don't we? But we still have to remember to breathe. Actually, I still find that funny now, you know, as adults You know, we think we've got everything together relatively in terms of we know the basics, and yet even I do a yoga class sometimes and they say, remember to breathe, and you're like, oh yeah, I forgot. It is ridiculous. And you know, but life works a lot easier when you are breathing properly. And I did love the section on breathwork. Yeah, the breathwork. So, and so there's another type of breath. So we've described essentially a pranayama practice, which is— and there's a number of them— which is about regulating your breath. And then there's breathwork techniques which are about evoking a very heightened state of awareness. And the transformational breath that I did was like just rocket fuel. And bearing in mind I did that at a psychedelic retreat just before I took magic mushrooms, my poor brain was just like, what are you doing to me? Yeah, we are going to go into depth from this one because I really wanted to talk about this. Yeah, so breathwork, it can be used, you know, carefully and in the right setting and with the right person, can be a really powerful tool. Yeah. And I mean, that is something that I've been wanting to actually explore quite a bit further, probably for a couple of years, and then we keep on putting things off and life just sometimes just gets on top of us. And yet I'm very good at preaching at how good it is when I read about it in books, and it's something I just— I feel like I want to go away to a retreat where you're kind of not allowed to do anything but focus on this, but they've got to let me speak. The fact that you went to a retreat where you had to be silent horrified me, and the fact that I need to be able to have a pen and paper. But I would like to go to a specialized retreat where, you know, I do focus on, you know, getting somebody to kind of, in the nicest and spiritualist way, give me a kick up the bum and actually get me to try these things a little bit more in depth and properly. And not just, you know, although it's nice to do 5 minutes while you're filling the dishwasher, I want to give it some proper time. Yeah, I mean, the silent retreat I went to was a vipassana retreat, which is a form of insight meditation and concentration meditation, and Even though it's kind of on their website, they say, you know, anyone can come and do this. That is true. But I personally don't think it's suitable for, or not for every beginner, because it's a pretty full-on experience. So you've got one which is 10 hours of meditation a day. So there's the actual practicing, you know, for just nonstop. So being able to sit for a period of time is something that it's worth having that under your belt, being able to actually do that and not have that freak you out. But then the other half of it is the monastic environment, and that's the silence, that's the solitary rooms, that's the no, no looking at each other. I think if we could have looked at each other, uh, I would have, but they try and discourage eye contact. It's a very— I think, no, I think people can't— quite depressed. Yeah, some people can't. People leave in the night. Um, one lady I could— yeah, she left us. On the ladies' side, I think there was— because we're split between men and women— I think there were about 5 or 6 that Lee— that left, and that's very common. It is a pretty harrowing time, but also weirdly enlightening. And so actually, after the Vipassana retreat, you know, you talked about earlier about concentration and focus and being, you know, optimal and creative. I wrote 10,000 words when I came back and sat down the next morning with this utter flow, a complete state of flow. Because your mind is cleared and you can actually focus. It wasn't so much cleared, it was ordered. And there's a slight difference with that because we never have empty thoughts. But, but I had other parts of— so my focus was very high and my awareness of myself was super high and my distraction, which is those thoughts, was very low. So they're all— it's all still there, it's just with different levels attached. And so yeah, I wrote the chapter you know, almost in one sitting. I mean, it's been edited, you know, 30 times since, but the bulk of it went down. And that— and then, and in fact, practicing that, even not the 2 hours a day, just 40 minutes a day, had a really significant impact upon my family life. So it's interesting learning the technique in— yeah, I didn't enjoy the environment, but what I gained for 6 weeks afterwards while I was maintaining the practice was actually spooky. It was that powerful. It's, it's died away because I don't maintain that particular practice, but there are remnants of it that have stayed ever since. So it is— but you don't have to go to a Vipassana retreat to do a silent retreat. There's lots of other ones, and you don't have to do 11 days. You can do a weekend. There's so many different types of retreat available. You know, you can find the right one. But this is, this is you know, the purpose of the book is explaining what you've been to and what they expect, so people can read the book and say, right, actually, I think I would be able to do that, or I think that's what I need, or this is what she's describing, that wouldn't work for me, but I think the one in chapter 3 would be better for me. And that's, you know, that's the joy of reading, and that's, you know, the enlightenment that we can get from reading books like this. And I mean, I know for myself, as much as, you know, I don't shut up anyway, I'd be panicking because I have like, it's not necessarily Tourette's, but I do have sporadic words that just come out uncontrollably. And the amount of times the kids have said in the car, did you say something, Mum? I'm like, no, Mummy was just accidentally thinking out loud. And I do come out with just random nos and random hi or whatever. And it's just when my brain's a little bit overloaded and it's suddenly just, it's like like a balloon popping and something comes out, and then I just carry on again. So I wouldn't be able— I think a psychologist would have a field day with me. Yeah, and I think a lot of people will relate to that, that, you know, your brain and your thoughts spill out into, into life. Um, a lot of us have that. I have that. I'm very busy at the moment. I can feel that, you know. And all these practices do is just, you know, rain— it's a rain, they're breaks. You know, I often use the analogy that I feel quite often, especially as working mothers, that we live on a motorway. We don't, we don't live in a house, we live on a motorway, and we're basically driving down this motorway with our foot on the pedal at full speed. And all these practices do is they just take your foot off the accelerator. They don't even put your foot on the brake necessarily, they take your foot off the accelerator. They just take you off the motorway onto a B road. And when you're on the B road, you know, you can take a bit more time, you can look out the window, you become much more aware of where you're driving and where you're going. And if you keep going, you can go onto an A-road, you know. And then you— and if you think of it like that, it makes a lot of sense because it's in steps. But, but that being on that motorway, 100 miles an hour, I think we all know what it feels like. Oh, completely. And actually, um, if we go into hypnosis next, what I'll do— I mean, I tried hypnosis at one point to try and kind of help with a few things that were going on, and I didn't actually manage to kind of be hypnotized per se. Um, I kind of said, you know, I said to the practitioner, did it work? And he says, well, sweetheart, you fell asleep, you were exhausted, but I think I put you in a state where you were. And we tried it quite a few times, and each time I wasn't quite there, or I was absolutely out of it. Completely fast asleep, um, but it was still a form of relaxation. And I remember coming home from one of my sessions with my hypnotist, and I went to the toilet, and I looked up, and I thought, I've lived in this house for 2 years, and I've never— and it was a rented house because it was in between, um, a place that I'd bought and a new place that I was buying, and it was just part of life anyway. So I hadn't bought the actual light fitting, and I looked up and I thought Have I been here nearly 2 years and I've never even noticed what lampshade I've got in my bathroom? Hmm. And that was after the session and, and there were certain things that I was noticing. So it worked on some level, but then I was just sitting there going, so it's tapped into some sort of consciousness, but how can we go through life sometimes not even remembering the color of something that's in your bedroom or something like that? We're just speeding through. But that was a real eye-opener for me, realizing— and I know I, I like, I do like, you know, the places that I live. I try and make them, you know, quite, quite pretty. And, you know, we all want to Instagram this, that, and whatever. And the fact that I didn't even know what my lamp, my light shed looked like in my bathroom just made me just kind of go, wow, I need to slow down. Yeah, hypnosis is a really powerful tool, and we all have different levels of hypnotizability, and there's something called a Harvard scale where you can actually, you know, test that. I'm actually very hypnotizable, very suggestible. But the one thing about hypnosis that perhaps some people don't always appreciate is, yes, it does talk to this unconscious, very vigilant part of us, and that vigilant part of us is always listening, and it listens when you are asleep. So hypnosis can be immensely powerful even if you nod off. And the unconscious mind is this big emotional body within us, and its only objective is to look after you. And it gets all these messages, often in childhood, that it will then repeat. And that's what creates things like phobias and can sometimes result in trauma, where it gets a mixed message psyche, you know, a common one is a very small infant in a, in a bath, just, you know, we know what babies are like, they're slippery little things, slips under the water and it gets a mouthful of water and coughs and all the rest of it. That child will remember that. So the unconscious part of that child's psyche will register. And this is pre-language. So this is why this is sometimes very difficult to access that part of the of the mind, because it has to feel safe. And so the hypnotherapist, a trained hypnotherapist, will work back to these root moments that cause perhaps a phobia with water, or— and it could be something really— it could be associated water, but you, you go back and you unravel the mystery of what caused this misprogramming. And so hypnosis can be immensely powerful But you— I don't think it's something that anyone should ever play around with. It's quite a serious technique and it's often goal-oriented. But yeah, you may not be very hypnotizable, or also your unconscious mind could put you to sleep because that's also a safety mechanism. Don't forget, you know, that's a way of not engaging with the process, which actually everything that happens in a hypnosis session is data. It's all information for you. So it's quite interesting, you know, maybe it, you know, the way you were approaching it wasn't quite right, or it wasn't ready. Sometimes with hypnosis you'll find that things will come up as red herrings. I had this, so like, other things pop up and you're like, oh right, we'll deal with that. And, and then the next time it was like, no, that was just a smokescreen. Yeah, and it's a practice. It is. It's an amazing— I love hypnosis. I have had enormous benefits. I gave a TEDx talk to 700 people with, gosh, showing live footage and video footage on with 3 cameras. I mean, quite complex setup in another country. And I had a very complicated talk to give and I had, you know, 23 minutes or 17 minutes, no, sorry, 17 minutes. And they don't give you a second more and there's a big clock counting down. So there's a lot of triggers there for sleeplessness, for anxiety, forgetting your words, blanking out. And so I used hypnosis with a lady local to me actually for 2 weeks before and I slept like a baby the night before. I was the least experienced talker there by a long shot. I walked on stage, I was second on stage, and the mics didn't work, and I absolutely just loved every minute. And I just, again, I can evoke that feeling. I just walked on and just trounced it. And that was all hypnosis. And that's because the hypnotherapist had implanted the suggestion. We never tell, it's always a suggestion. Yeah. 'Actually, you know this stuff. You're going to walk on that stage and you're just going to go, "Yes, I so want to be here," and you're going to be excited, and you're going to speak slowly, and you're going to go through your script because you know it, and you're going to be awesome.' I love that. Yeah, because that was the thing, it was just, it's like the power of positivity, and I loved reading about that section, and it kind of, it twinned in quite nicely with another section to do with reframing. I think I think page 118, about how you can reframe what's happened in the past and what's going to happen in the future. And, you know, it's such a powerful tool where, yeah, you might— you are tricking the mind, but if something happened in the past and it plagues your mind and it either scared you or makes you sad, reframing it and repicturing it with slightly better images. I mean, I remember the first time I watched It by Stephen King, and I was petrified to go to the toilet for ages. But if somebody had told me that to possibly picture a slightly less toothy clown, I might have, you know, been able to get over that a little bit easier. My mum was absolutely furious with my dad for letting me watch it. But, you know, I did love that section, just for people who have bought the book or who are about to buy the book, please earmark page 118, because, you know, if you, the tools to be able to reframe something that's happened in the past to make it something a little bit, it's not necessarily lying to yourself, it's just giving you a coping mechanism, isn't it? Well, it's not tricking the mind. All you're doing is reprogramming. As I said, a lot of these events, the original core root event happened in childhood with limited emotional intelligence, limited facility to judge the situation, right? So at that time, you were watching a film. You— your unconscious mind has just been told through a visual form that toilets are unsafe, right? So it's doing its job. It's now going, right, that's going logged in the computer in the brain. Toilets are unsafe, right? So I'm going to warn you. I'm doing my job. I'm going to do my best to save you. The unconscious mind is always trying to save you and take you out of harm's way. But that message wasn't right because it was a film that's not real. But the mind doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not real. It'll just go on what it's given. So that data at that moment, you know, age 6 or whatever, or age 9, was correct. But age 40 or 30, you go, "No, that's the incorrect information. Let's just go back into the computer and override that with the correct information," which was It's a made-up film. Yeah, toilets are safe. And so we just reprogrammed. But, but it kind of is. It isn't— any trauma follows a similar pattern. It's to do with what was programmed and what you had resource and access to understand at that time. And but it's such a powerful tool. And the fact that we can go back and have this two-way conversation with you know, older, sort of younger part of ourselves is amazing that we have, that we were as human beings, we have that capacity. And it gives us so much more power to not be dictated and driven by the past. We can reconstruct. We know about brain plasticity, we can change, we can change how we feel about things. And it's one of the most releasing and freeing pieces of knowledge that I got from doing this crazy mad experiment was actually not just being told that and then telling other people, but really believing it and feeling it and experiencing it for myself. Well, I sounded very evangelical all of a sudden, but it's a really good thing to know. Well, we are, we're just trying to arm ourselves with the tools to help us live our best life. Yeah, and I'm very aware that we're running out of time, but there's a couple of questions I'd like to ask all of my guests here on Get Booked. Now the first one is for 3 tips on best— the best way to kind of up your well-being, and there's some incredible examples that guests give, but it's just what works for you and to kind of share it with our listeners if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, I've talked about some of those kind of earlier a little bit in that, um, for me, wellbeing doesn't need to necessarily have this label and a special time and place. For me, wellbeing can be a drip effect throughout the day. So perhaps to take something that you're already doing where you are spending some time in it, maybe you're at the school gates and you wait 5 minutes before your kids arrive, or you walk to school. That's an opportunity to do something different in that time. And whether that's just walking slower and looking around, not doing fixed staring ahead, looking down the road or on your phone, putting your phone away and actually just switching on your hearing senses and listening to the sounds around you, or maybe feeling the breeze. Just that sense of having alive senses is a really powerful thing. So yeah, doesn't have to be a set time and place. Drip it into your life with things you're already doing. That would be my first one. The second one is experiment. Be curious. Break some bloody rules. I think there's a lot of bloody rules around meditation, and it really annoys me because it's too dogmatic for our modern lives. These were monastic practices that have been filtered to the West, and that's great, and for some that's absolutely appropriate. But for others, you know, we need to understand that we can flex and experiment, and that's why this book is a roadmap. And it's a roadmap to, you know, walk alongside me with all these crazy different techniques and this adventure and explore through my experiences what might be best for you, because lots of people don't get on with mindfulness for mindfulness of the breath for lots of reasons. And that's a very classic, you know, starter meditation. But there are so many other things that you could do. So be curious, experiment. If something doesn't work for you in the way you've been taught it, you know, there's latitude to nudge that. Like, for example, if you don't want to sit with your eyes closed, a lot of people are off-put by that. Walking meditation, bingo. And there are apps that can help. So be open-minded. About what practice, what life practice you might start to include in your life? Wow. Yeah, I'm— especially, especially the first one as well, that I so need to work on that. I think that's quite a good reminder there for me that we need to just switch off from everything and just be there rather than doing 36 things at once. This whole plate spinning is driving us bonkers, isn't it? Yeah. And actually my third tip is, and it feeds into that, do this, tell someone, do this with a friend. So you make yourself accountable when you do that. And it's a real, you know, we in the West pluck out meditation from its core kind of roots and we just take out the meditation part of it. But this is a system. It's not an isolated activity. It's done alongside diet. Ethical frameworks, exercise. So plucking out one element is silly. And that is done under the guise of a group that supports you. So find your support network, maybe join a group. If you go once a week to a meditation group, you know, over time it becomes such a lovely thing to do. And the atmosphere when you meditate with other people is really powerful. It's really noticeably different from being on your own. But also you can even do it over Zoom. Loads of Zoom meditation groups have started up. Oh wow. Just that, just that. I mean, I did one last night with a friend who's a beginner and we're going through, and because then you get to talk about it, you know, it's really important to talk about the experiences and also to accept that, you know, you might describe one meditation as just being absolutely rubbish. Well, it wasn't because you did it, you were there. So just having someone else to be part of it or to feed off or to support, I think, are really a good thing in our, again, busy, crazy lives. Well, that does actually feed quite nicely into my second question that I like to ask my guests, um, is who out there do you think is a great person to look up to? Somebody that's in the public eye, because we're all consumed by social media and following people for God knows whatever reasons, and they're not always for the best reasons. But who do you think is somebody that kind of really gives you that positive mindset? I was thinking about this because it's quite tricky because I'm not the kind of person— I don't tend to follow people. And, and, but there is somebody who I think is just awesome for lots of different reasons, and that's Dame Judi Dench. Oh, love her. Well, I love her for M, but I also love that she has conversations with trees, and I relate to that in so many different ways. I go, you're wonderfully barking mad, and actually you're not, you're barking sane, and I love it. And she's done a BBC program, and she's an ambassador for trees and for forest bathing, and I just, I just think she's awesome. And she had a fantastic question because The two things I love in life are champagne and trees. I'm like, well, I just think that's amazing because I kind of feel the same. So I feel the same as well. Oh my goodness, we should start a Judi Dench club. Yeah, no, I just— and I think she's got it right because also she comes with all that charisma and, and sort of, you know, she's an establishment within the UK. And so, you know, she's just this really, um, amazing woman from her acting career, but then also to have this element to her that's actually quite spiritual and— but also quite funny about the way she talks about it. And her excitement is childlike. And I love older people. I think we do a disservice to people who are in the, in the later part of life because actually we've got so much we can learn from them. And I find them fascinating and wise and— but also just, I love her playfulness around the whole tree thing. So I love to— Judi Dench is my person who I aspire and I think's cool. I love that completely. And also, yeah, the whole Richard Osman book on the Thursday Murder Club, that just shows exactly— it kind of challenges the perceptions that, you know, when people get older and they get put in a home, that's class kind of end of life. No, no, no, these are people that have lived a lot longer than us and they've gone through a lot more and they know a hell of a lot and could still teach us so many wonderful things. Um, we've— and I could talk about Judi Dench for absolutely ages, but we've got like just a couple of minutes left and I really wanted to touch on the whole psychedelic experience. So you've got about 2 minutes to sum up psychedelic. Go! All right, psychedelics. Well, research before you do anything. I did entheogens, which is plant medicine, not party drugs. That's the first thing to say. If you go through the kind of healing route, go with a guide and a retreat that organizes it. It's a door. It's a door to self-awareness. It's a door to understand why your life has played out in the way it has and why it keeps on repeating. And it's potentially a way of just blowing that apart and reframing and seeing your whole life in a different way. Forget trying to tell anyone about it, it will be impossible, it will be ineffable, you will annoy everyone because you will understand yourself potentially. But it's an extraordinary experience and I never thought I'd do it and I did. But I don't regret it. That's really good to hear because I keep on having this, I kind of brought into my arena, and I've never tried it, and I was petrified. And reading about your experience made me think, okay, in a controlled environment, this whole microdosing— I, I, I am going to find a way to give it a go. I just— I'm not going to kind of turn around to somebody in a pub and ask them. I'm going to do it in a very controlled way because, um, the data you've put in there and explaining the kind of background of it as well has kind of put me at ease and it's made me really— it's on top of the to-do list. I definitely want to give it a go. And I must thank you for putting that in there as well because I mean that's what the book's about, it's kind of explaining all the different processes, how you reacted to it, you kind of put in some kind of funny little anecdotes as well just to kind of put people at ease that it's not, it's not just a book that's describing an experiment, it's your diary, it's your life, you're explaining what's going on in the world and relating it to what's happening in your everyday life as well, which made it so incredibly personable. Yeah, it's showing, not telling. I don't tell anyone how to meditate. That's not what it was about. It's to walk alongside you as you explore and have a little try yourself and learn through some of the things I've learned. And a lot of people, when you look through someone's eyes in this kind of intimate, kind of sort of diary experience, there's an awful lot that will resonate. And what will resonate to one person will resonate to another. But I ultimately, I just want it to be your best friend when you're going forward. If you want to pursue any kind of mind practice, not necessarily a meditation practice, but any kind of mind practice for bettering your life. Well, thank you so much for this. And I just want to point out to our listeners that they can pop over onto vanessapotter.com to find out more about the book. And there's a little link on there for them to go and buy on Amazon as well. Thank you so much. And congratulations on your book. I think it's fantastic, and thank you for coming on Get Booked to chat to us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. You are very welcome.