When you were talking about the power of micro practice and the fact that the definition of it is a wellbeing practice or mindfulness practice that you can do in under 30 seconds and the power of it being as strong, if not stronger than some of the other wellbeing interventions, what interventions are you comparing it to?

Yeah.

So, you know, it depends on the practice and, you know, not, uh, not every practice is like, oh, this is like, you know, there are movement micro practices in the book, like micro yoga or micro dancing.

And, you know, studies show that just 15 to 30 seconds stretch breaks every 15 minutes over the course of a workday can boost productivity by 15%.

Wow.

But, you know, that doesn't mean that, you know, those 15 to 30 second stretch breaks are, you know, necessarily better than going on a run.

Right.

saw the evidence.

And I'd love for you to speak to that because I do think sometimes having all these practices can be really filled with opportunity for people or it might be overwhelming like how do I know what's right for me every you know guru has a different idea and telling you what you should and shouldn't do so what would be your advice for someone of like how to understand what practice what signs should they be looking for of what practice is going to be right for them

Yeah.

So yeah, I think experience, like your own experience is a really powerful tool for understanding what practices work best for you and just in general, like, you know, whether they're working.

And one thing that I'll say kind of before I get to what to look for is just like how...

I think personal experience and like the power of that has become kind of de-emphasized in our culture.

And I, you know, I think part of that has been from, you know, kind of the prominence of scientific research and things like that, which is of course incredibly valuable and can kind of point us in directions that might be blinded by different biases that we might just unconsciously have or blind spots.

But When you look at what that research is made of, it's self-report measures, you know, that are people reporting on their experience.

So can you speak to how dance is helpful and what's been found about the benefits of dance?

What exactly is a micropractice, and how did you discover this idea?

Yeah.

Um, so I think the, the best way to kind of go about that is, um, you know, I was, uh, spending some time on a meditation retreat, and I went up to a monk, and I told him that I just meditated for three hours.

And he looked at me and said, "Three hours?" And then he smiled and he said something I'll never forget.

"How about three breaths? That's all you need to tune into the present moment." And I remember thinking, oh, here I was having walked over like I had just scaled spiritual Everest, and with one gentle question, he helped me see that I've been measuring the wrong thing entirely.

It was humbling, but also really freeing because, you know, most of us aren't short on good intentions.

We're short on time, right? Like, we mean to meditate, and then the meeting runs late, dinner needs making, a notification pops up, and before we know it, we're five videos deep on Instagram into a goldfish driving a car.

Does something like that exist?

I'm curious if you could start, how did you get into this work and this practice?

Yeah.

So, you know, when mindfulness really had a huge impact on my life when I was growing up and it was around that time that I also discovered the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Buddhist monk nominated by Martin Luther King for the Nobel Peace Prize.

And I went out, did a month long meditation retreat at his, you know, kind of main place.

monastery meditation center called Plum Village.

When I was at Plum Village, one thing that really struck me when I got there was how the schedule only had about 30 minutes of formal seated meditation, including for the monks who lived there.

So at one point, I decided to see what it would be like to spend some more time with formal seated meditation practice.

So will you share more about some of these other mindfulness techniques, including that improv dance and then maybe say a little bit about your work with contact improv too.

So I wanted to start there and just hear how you might describe what this thread is that has inspired this exploration and development of micro practices.

When I was 18, I did my first meditation retreat.

It was in Thailand in the Thai Forest Monastery, which is very austere.

We slept on a concrete bed with a wooden pillow.

It didn't need afternoon.

It was a silent retreat.

So there was no talking.

So can I hand it over to you to take it from there?

and the shift in reading the book and what I love is like asking yourself how often, like, can I just make this something that's more frequent and not feel the guilt over the duration?

Totally.

Yeah.

I mean, and, and that is something, you know, that we see in the research time and time again, you know, the biggest barrier to engaging with these practices is time, but you know, you, there are these studies with like, you know, There was one study with 21,000 stressed out Headspace members, you know, which is a mindfulness app.

And maybe you've heard of it.

And yeah, same here.

And, you know, it's, and they, you know, one thing that is really amazing about this study was, you know, because it was an app, they were able to, you know, really objectively track, you know, it wasn't just people reporting on how often they practice, right? They're able to get the data for like how often people are practicing, how long they're practicing.

And I'd love to hear from you what the science was of the dissertation and what this proved out for our audience who might be skeptical in going through that exercise.