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All right, so we're going to start off today with a little bit of exercise. This is a mental exercise, so don't worry. Now, can we move around for about 30 seconds? I'd like you to focus on some sensation you currently have. Try not to think about it too much. Just experience how it feels as much as possible. It could be an itch, tired feet, or maybe you have a hangover from the conference after-party last night. You don't have anything else to focus on, so focus on your breath. I'll talk through it a little bit. I'd like you to pick what you're going to focus on. Now, eyes closed or open—it doesn't matter. I'll give you a few seconds, and we'll get started. Just try to experience it; don't think too much about it. Just consider what it feels like: is it painful, is there pressure? Does it feel like it's hurting, or does it feel pleasant perhaps? So, just think about it a little bit.
00:01:07.860
All right, time's up. I hope everyone's feeling okay. Now we'll actually get started with the actual talk. Hi everyone, as you might have guessed, my name is Rufo Sanchez, and this is a talk on mindfulness and meditation. You could potentially call this the M&M talk, but that might be kind of confusing. Although, I actually think it might be kind of fun to just go around talking about the M&M talk and then people would be like, 'Oh, I didn't know that was on the schedule.' So, a few things before we get started. First, since a lot of people ask, my first name is from my grandfather, and it's European Spanish—it's actually the translation of Rufus. Both of my mom's parents were born in the U.S. to Spanish immigrants, so it's all from her side of the family. That's where the name comes from.
00:01:41.030
Second, I've been a full-time Rails programmer either as a consultant or for a company since around 2010, but my interest in Rails actually goes back further. I was actually at the first RailsConf in 2006 outside of Chicago. I didn't actually make real money from Rails until 2010, but, yeah, I was actually there. I actually have a photo from that event, which is kind of a perfect proof-of-life picture. I guess if you can't find me, that's me right over there, underneath the RailsConf 2006 sign. I mention this primarily to say that I am NOT a mental health expert. My background is in IT and programming, not mental health.
00:02:11.140
I'll be talking about things that are pretty widely written about, discussed, studied, experienced, and generally regarded as safe. But if you have any doubts or misgivings, or if you have particularly difficult emotions that come up while practicing mindfulness or meditation, by all means, see a mental health professional. Also, I'm not an expert. I think these techniques are meaningful and can add value to our lives, but my practice is pretty easygoing. My approach here is to present these techniques as someone who's found them valuable and thinks we should be more open in talking about this type of stuff, mental health and self-care, especially in tech. As such, we're going to talk about these topics on a fairly broad level.
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My goal here is to explain what these concepts are, how they relate to each other, why I think they are important, and give you some resources to helpfully start off your exploration on your own. Hopefully, you'll be interested. I'm going to discuss these techniques in fairly modern language, using definitions you'll find in most modern books on the subject. I'm going to go through them fairly removed from any particular ideology or religion. You can certainly connect meditation to religions like Buddhism, and honestly, there's a lot there that's fascinating to dig into. It's a practice that we only recently started to just appropriate in the West; people in other cultures have been practicing for thousands of years.
00:03:02.930
But what we'll be talking about today is simple, evidence-based, and can be observed. All right, so let's start moving into some meditation practice, starting with mindfulness. Let's begin with the question: what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment without an inner critic and without judgment. It's awareness of what's happening without being caught up in what's happening. It's metacognition, if you will: observing the state of your mind and the world around you. One analogy I like is that your thoughts are a little bit like a waterfall. In the middle of the stream, normally, without really thinking about it, your head is just in the middle of this torrential stream of thoughts and emotions: what you ate for lunch, the conversation you're going to have with your boss next week. We're constantly wrapped up in this narrative of things that are happening to us, things we want to do, and things we feel should or shouldn't have happened to us.
00:04:05.000
Most of the time, we aren't even aware that we're engulfed in these thoughts. Mindfulness tries to take your head out of the stream, even if just for a moment, to see what the water and the world around you are actually like. This is important because when you start trying to do this on a regular basis, you begin to realize that your mind isn't quite the place you thought it was. What can seem like an endless stream of thoughts, constantly tugging and turning in your mind, you can realize are just passing through. You can start to see how easily emotions can come and go. You start to gain a lot of insight into exactly what's happening in your brain, and even the ability to intervene.
00:05:06.970
The ability to step back, take stock of what's actually happening in your mind, and respond thoughtfully instead of reacting mindlessly is incredibly powerful. You get to know yourself, your emotional reactions, and your thought patterns better and, in doing so, present yourself better to the world. While this can be extremely powerful, it's not exactly a superpower, and it doesn't fundamentally change who you are. You're still you, and you don't change into some sort of emotionless robot or an uber Zen monk. The goal is just to give you a little more clarity, a little more insight into what your thoughts and emotional states really are, and give you that additional input when it really matters. That insight, while small, can help a lot.
00:06:02.930
Let's say you're someone who's prone to anxiety, and your boss sends you a message saying, 'Hey, got a minute?' If you're like me, that sends off an immediate chain of thoughts: is everything okay? Oh no, I screwed something up—am I fired? Is somebody else fired? Are we all fired? Is the company going under? When really, more likely, it's just about rescheduling a one-on-one or a last-minute personal matter that came up. Mindfulness doesn't fix this; it doesn't suddenly make you not anxious. But being able to take that step back lets you say, 'Okay, maybe this is something bad, but it doesn't have to be. I don't have to get caught up in this train of thought.' And you don't find yourself racing several minutes into a state of panic and racing thoughts.
00:07:14.200
I still find mindfulness great for appreciating moments—the mundane everyday things everybody goes through and the special ones. It's one thing to be walking down the street on a sunny day with a warm breeze, but so much of the time we're caught up thinking about what we're going to do when we get to the coffee shop or listening to a podcast while we're walking. It can be good to lift your head out and just experience what's happening around you. It can also be surprisingly helpful at getting through tough moments or moments of suffering. I know Amy touched on that in her talk before lunch, and if you didn't get to see it, it was excellent—go check out the replay when you have a moment! Sometimes things suck, and sometimes you can't do anything about it, but you can change how you respond and approach those moments.
00:08:33.790
Let's see: the mindset I tend to go to for these types of things is this: this is what it feels like to be a human. That could be observing the warm feeling of grabbing a beverage with some friends or sitting in an economy seat or worrying about an interview or a difficult conversation with a colleague. Regardless of what they are, these experiences are human. While this doesn't make the problem go away, just interrupting the train of thought and sitting with a feeling for a moment can be a big help, and for the good things, it helps you appreciate them that much more. Okay, so we'll get back to mindfulness more in a bit, but I hope it gives you a little bit of an idea of what it is.
00:09:24.310
Now let's talk a little bit more about the other word in this talk: meditation, and how it relates to mindfulness. This is a bit reductive, and we'll talk about why in a minute, but if mindfulness is the feeling we’re trying to cultivate, meditation is the exercise that builds the muscle. I’ll mostly be talking about mindfulness meditation here, but there are many other kinds to explore once you start a basic practice. So what is meditation exactly? Let's start with the basics of what you actually do.
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It's pretty simple. First, you sit down somewhere—ideally any place you’ll be comfortable enough to sit for a while, but not so comfy that you’re dozing off. I often meditate in my desk chair or an easy chair; my couch is fine. A lot of people like a cushion on the floor. A lot of folks probably have this in their heads as some sort of ideal, but it's not really necessary for most types of meditation. You’ll start by focusing on something. The go-to is usually the breath, specifically some feeling about it that is particularly noticeable. It could be the feeling of your chest rising and falling, the feeling of air going through your nostrils, or the sound of your breath. The breath is classic for a reason—it’s always there, so you don’t need anything else.
00:10:53.600
And it’s typically one of the best choices you can go for. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be that. It could be the feeling of the button you’re pressing on the couch, or the sensations you’re experiencing, or emotions you have. The point is that it’s something you can observe quietly without thought; something consistent but not shouting in your head. Hence the focus on the breath. Third, and this is the most important thing: any time you realize you’re distracted from the breath, simply note what it is and return to the breath. Every time; again and again and again.
00:11:45.600
You might be wondering what I mean by noting, and it’s worth going over because it comes up a lot in meditation. By 'note', we simply mean a quick, light touch thought that identifies what the distraction is. If it’s a thought, just note 'thought' and then go back to the breath. If it’s a sound, note what it was or note 'sound' and then come back to the breath. If it’s an itch, note 'itch' and come back to the breath. Just an acknowledgment of where your mind was before you returned to the object of focus. You’re going to have a lot of notes, and that’s okay. The point—and this is incredibly important—the point of meditation is not the concentrated focus on the breath. That’s just a convenient focus to return to. The observation of the interruption is the exercise.
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So, getting lost in a thought is perfectly alright; it’s the radical act of not getting caught up in it but returning to the focus that’s the point. A lot of people think that meditation is about concentration, about getting rid of thought. That’s not it. The point is to observe the thoughts, and because getting lost is alright, we also don’t want to have that intense grip on our minds on the breath. You want to observe the state and not change it; trying to focus harder or judging yourself harshly if you got lost in a thought is not helpful. That's basically it; that’s really all that meditation boils down to: you sit down, focus, and any time you’re distracted, note it, then refocus.
00:13:42.580
So how long do we do this for? Ideally, 20 minutes. You can do less; even quick sessions can be centering. I want to say this is like an ideal based on research. 10 minutes is where the benefits start to kick in more fully, and even 5 minutes or 1 minute can be helpful—just to try to keep your streak going. You can vary this a bit based on how you're feeling. Definitely set your timer on your phone because you don’t want to be checking constantly to see what’s happening. You know, or use some other method to know when you're done. But that’s really it: 20 minutes is kind of shown to be the sign that benefits start to kick in.
00:14:44.600
You should do this whenever you can fit it into your schedule. For me, I find that earlier in the day works better since it adds a lasting benefit to the rest of the day. I’m not tired and ready to fall asleep at the end of the day. A good time to meditate is often before or after breakfast, but around lunch is the latest I’ll usually go. Finding a specific time you can carve out where you're not going to be bothered is perfect. For some people, that would be at the end of the day; for others, it might be around exercise—whatever works for you and your schedule is really the best time to do it.
00:15:37.470
At this point, I've talked about what mindfulness and meditation are. You might be wondering what's in it for me? There are a few things. One is that it’s sort of a good systems check; you’re concentrating and observing the state of your mind and body without distraction. That’s not something we do very often, and it's often useful in and of itself. Several times I’ve sat down to meditate on a day when I was feeling shaky and not really sure why, and after a few minutes I realized, 'Oh, I’m tired,' or 'Oh, I’m over-caffeinated,' or maybe 'I’m worried about an email I need to reply to,' or 'I’m really worried about a talk I’m going to give on Thursday.' That alone is a useful piece of information that you can do something with and you might not have been fully aware of.
00:16:44.000
And then there's all the surface benefits, like reducing stress and anxiety, improving focus, cognition, etc. Those benefits aren’t purely anecdotal. There’s an increasing amount of science backing up that meditation is helpful. Multiple studies from neuroscientists and neurobiologists show increased cognitive function, decision-making, attention, and well-being after just several weeks of meditating, and the effects might be useful for anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other mental conditions. One such study from Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Harvard, studied the effects of yoga and meditation on the brain. She found that participants spending eight weeks in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program had significantly thicker volumes in areas of the brain related to attention, mindfulness, cognition, and empathy and decreased volume in the brain regions related to fear and anxiety. This is just one of many studies contributing to a growing body of evidence.
00:17:34.630
It's becoming clear that meditation has real benefits. How those benefits manifest is particularly interesting, as they happen because meditating helps reinforce mindfulness. The practice of sitting down and observing what’s really happening in your mind helps build resilience and mindfulness into your day in ways you don't fully realize until it’s happening. This space between you and your thoughts starts increasing and you start being able to notice your thought patterns as they're happening. After a couple of weeks of practice, you really start to notice this kick in. And that everyday mindfulness is where the power comes in.
00:18:19.530
I remember when I was talking about dealing with moments. Meditation helps build that awareness so it becomes more of an automatic thing. All of this combines to make you feel happier, I guess, or more accepting. It’s a really difficult feeling to describe, but there is a noticeable difference in how you approach things. Dan Harris, whose books I’ll talk about in a bit, specifically named his book '10% Happier' because he needed a short, snappy catchphrase. However, the reality, as even Dan himself admits, is much more complicated.
00:18:59.580
It's easier to see why you're making the decisions you're making and to make different ones when you need to. It doesn’t make going through something painful easier, but it does tend to help you accept what's happening and maybe see alternate ways out of it. These become immensely powerful tools. So, having talked about mindfulness and meditation, let’s discuss some ways to bring that into practice.
00:20:08.920
First, it’s worth noting that you really don't need anything else. We've discussed the basics; you can start meditating just by setting a timer. Looking inward is the same as I laid out. In some ways, the commercialization of what's a very simple practice can feel a little weird, but it can be good to have some additional guidance. There are many different types of meditation, the kind of meditation I outlined is typically the one you start with when building a practice, sometimes called concentration meditation because we're concentrating on a focus.
00:21:01.790
But there are a variety of different ways to practice meditation. One is pure mindfulness meditation, where you're focusing on whatever comes up as it comes up. So remember how I had you focus on a sensation in the beginning? As thoughts and sensations go through your mind, you would focus on those as they come and go. There are also types like the RAIN meditation, which we talked about earlier, that helps you process emotions. There's loving-kindness meditation, which increases feelings of empathy, self-worth, and gratitude. There are even meditations that aren't based on sitting. I actually find walking meditation really effective; you can focus on the sensations that you experience as you're walking around, which can be a really centering thing.
00:21:51.680
It's worth exploring and seeing what resonates. There are a lot of books out there; obviously, take a look at a variety of approaches. I’m going to call out a few that I have found good and have worked for me. The one that probably convinced me to get started the most was Dan Harris's books. If you haven't heard the name, Dan Harris is an ABC news anchor; I think he’s currently on Nightline as an anchor. He’s most famous for having a panic attack live on Good Morning America, which you can actually find on YouTube if you search for it.
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In his first book, '10% Happier', he details what got him there and the long, strange journey that wound up getting him into meditation and enthused to start writing about it. It's a fascinating story. This book is a little light on 'how-to' aspects; it's mostly about the journey. His second book is 'Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics,' which he co-wrote with the amazing meditative guru Jeff Warren and Carly Adler. It gets more into the 'how-to' of meditation. I will say Jeff's style tends to be modeled described as endearingly quirky, and I actually found it pretty engaging.
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His approach is that of an outsider coming to it; he talks to a lot of experts who have been doing it for a while and a lot of scientists, and he helps digest that. I mean, he’s a news anchor, so that’s sort of his job. So if you're looking for a book, I would probably pick either '10% Happier' or 'Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics,' depending on whether you want the journey or you're kind of skeptical and want to know how he got there. I would say '10% Happier' if you’re interested in the journey, and 'Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics' if you're more willing to dive in and practice meditation.
00:24:51.330
Another book I’ll recommend is by Sharon Salzberg, one of the meditation experts Dan talks to. She’s been doing this for decades, and this book is probably the most direct approach you can find. Yes, it is excellent! Her perspective is a lot more of an insider's view; she comes at it from years of experience, and I recommend her books. I have some other recommended books at the end of the slides. There’s a website where I’ve written up some resources and recommendations too.
00:25:53.650
Of course, there are apps for this; meditation has turned into a fairly competitive tech trend, with all sorts of businesses getting into it with large VC valuations. It feels a little weird, but it sort of makes sense. Having a guided meditation is a great way to try out different types of meditations and keep you on track; they often have courses that help guide you through things. Headspace is one of the biggest and oldest apps, and I think they have a lot of good introductory meditations; it’s a good way to go if you want to dive in immediately.
00:26:47.960
The introduction is excellent; all the meditations are read by one of the co-founders, Andy Puddicombe, so it’s a pretty consistent style, which is nice. Given that this might not be a huge surprise, I really like the '10% Happier' app. The '10% Happier' app is particularly interesting because all the meditation teachers he talks to in the book offer online courses, providing a really broad sense of styles and different kinds. All of those different types, like RAIN and loving-kindness, have parallels in the app too. There are a couple of others out there, like Calm, which is another large one I’ve heard of but haven’t tried. I think Headspace and Calm are the two big hundred-pound gorillas.
00:27:41.890
I know Kevin Rose has one called Oak that I haven’t tried. If you want a free or low-cost option, there’s an app called Insight Timer that I just used for timing back when I was starting off. I know they’ve added a huge amount of community-driven guided meditations, and I know they have a premium option now. I think all these apps are available on both iOS and Android.
00:28:34.440
They’re also lots of other guided meditations available online—some free, others paid—so you can find what suits you the most. As a quick personal note, I came to meditation because I’ve always been a person that worries, who gets stressed out easily and feels overwhelmed pretty easily. I started meditating because someone I never would have guessed in a million years was a meditator encouraged me. They gave me podcast recommendations about mindfulness and meditation. While they are no silver bullet, mindfulness and meditation have been important tools in my quest for self-improvement.
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I hope that by talking about them here, I’ve sparked your interest and that you’ll go off and read some of the related material. So, thank you!
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Okay, so if you go to tox—are you deaf? Oh, that links to a repo where I have this talk and, in that repo, there's a readme that has links to the books, the apps, and some other resources, so go there and check that out. If you're talking and also it's useful, feel free to email me; my email address is on that readme, or tweet at me, or open a PR—it's good!
00:30:15.740
I will also post the slides there as a keynote file and as a PDF for the presenter notes so you can read through them. And yeah, feel free to come up and chat if you want. Thank you!