Explained in an interview on Cultural Brilliance Radio! Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, And Addiction with Dean Sluyter
Who is Dean Sluyter?
Dean Sluyter has taught natural methods of meditation and awakening throughout the U.S. and beyond since 1970, from colleges and yoga studios to corporate offices and maximum security prisons. He is known for his warm, funny, down-to-earth style, and for making authentic, life-transforming teachings accessible and easy. A grateful student of sages in several traditions, he has completed numerous retreats and pilgrimages in India, Tibet, Nepal, and the West. Dean’s books include “Natural Meditation”, winner of the Nautilus Award for best book on body, mind and spirit practices. He has appeared frequently in national media, including The New York Times, National Public Radio, Coast to Coast AM, and O, The Oprah Magazine. When not writing or teaching, Dean plays the ukulele and happily rides his Vespa through the streets of Santa Monica.
Claudette: I appreciate you being on the show and sharing your book Fearless with us.
Dean: Yep, really, this book came out last March and it really has kicked up quite a bit of interest. I seem to have had the right timing on this. I mean, in some ways of course sadly as we’re speaking today, you know bombs are being delivered to people’s mailboxes, and last week it was something else and next week it will be something else, there just seems to be so much of it in the air.
In fact, somewhere in the book I quote a letter that C.S. Lewis, the great Christian essayist and the author of the “Narnia Chronicles”, wrote to a friend shortly after the end of Word War II, as those horrors were being replaced by the new horrors of the thermonuclear age. And he said something along the lines of you know that today, now that we have newspapers and of course that was obviously before the internet which just compounded the thing. He said, today with newspapers, now all the troubles of the world arrive at your doorstep, every day – including a lot of things that we can’t necessarily do anything about. And to me, this is actually a good place to begin. He says something along the lines of – “I don’t believe that it’s the duty of the individual to be upset about things that he or she can’t do anything about”.
As your vision, your perception gets clearer – you’ve more clearly distinguished between the things that you can do something about, what your steps of action are, and the things that you can’t do anything about it.
Breathe Through Your Feet
Dean: The title of a chapter and really the description of the whole tool here, the whole method is “breathe through your feet”. The method is very simple and you want to practice it first before you get into those tricky situations. You know, it’s always good to do the fire drill before the fire. So, very simply you can do this right now. Put your attention on the soles of your feet. Now, as you breathe in, as you take your next breath, just imagine that you’re breathing in through the soles of your feet. You don’t have to breathe deep or whatever, however the breath is naturally. And then, as you breathe out, imagine that you’re breathing out through the soles of your feet. And breathing in through the soles of your feet and breathing out through the soles of your feet. Just do one more – breathing in through the soles of the feet and breathing out through the soles of the feet. That’s simple!
To listen to the podcast and full interview with Claudette Rowley and Dean Sluyter visit:
Cultural Brilliance Radio on Transformation Talk Radio!
