Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - What It’s Like To Do A Year-Long Silent Meditation Retreat—By Yourself | Cara Lai

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Cara Lai has worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker, and therapist before becoming a full time meditation teacher. She teaches teens and adults at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and Ten Percent Happier.To find out more about what Cara does, you can go to her website, www.caralai.org – where she’s got some online meditation classes, including one called Meditate Your Face Off. She also has a monthly class for parents, co-led by Ofosu Jones-Quartey and Jess Morey, both of whom have been heard on this podcast. Speaking of podcasts, Cara also co-hosts a podcast called Adventures in Meditating (For Parents), along with Jess Morey and Jon Roberts.Cara will also be a core teacher for a 14-week residential semester program for youth ages 18-32 this Fall in Marlboro VT. The program is called the Contemplative Semester, and there are many folks who will be teaching who have been in the TPH orbit, including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jessica Morey, Kaira Jewel Lingo, and more. You can find more info at www.contemplativesemester.orgRelated Episodes:The Upside of Desire | Cara Lai Can You Get Fit Without Self-Loathing? | Cara Lai Sign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/cara-lai-808See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Herron. Okay, we've got a bit of an experimental episode today, which involves one person's extremely compelling personal narrative. My guest is the great meditation teacher, Kara Lai, who's also a great friend and a frequent flyer right here on this show. A while back, Kara told me she was going on a year-long,

silent meditation retreat by herself. We asked her if she'd be willing to take some recording equipment with her to document this experience, and she said yes. That retreat turned out to be way more difficult for Kara than she had been anticipating, like way, way more difficult. It pushed her to her limits, forcing her to contend with shame, anger,

agony and frustration. But she documented the thing nonetheless, which was pretty damn brave. In fact, this whole interview is quite brave. So what you're gonna hear today is Kara coming on here and playing some clips from her experience and then talking about what happened and how she's thinking about it now

because she took some time after the retreat to kind of let the whole thing settle in before she felt comfortable coming on the show and talking about it. I wanna be clear here before we dive in, Kara's experience of doing a year-long retreat may sound supremely extreme or idiosyncratic, but many of the things that she learned are actually directly applicable to our lives in the real world when we're not on retreat. In other words,

I want to assure you that this conversation is both fascinating to listen to because it's an incredible story and also very practical. Just a little bit more about Kara before we dive in here. She has worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker and therapist before becoming a full-time meditation teacher. She teaches teens and adults at institutions such as Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society and 10% Happier. We'll get started with Karoli right after this. But first some BSP. As you've heard me say before, the hardest part of personal growth,

self-improvement, spiritual development, whatever you wanna call it, the hardest part is forgetting. You listen to a great podcast, you read a great book, you go to a great talk, whatever it is, and the message is electrifying. But then you get sucked back into your daily routines, your habitual patterns, and you forget.

So this is the problem for which I have designed my new newsletter, which we just started a few months ago, and we're just really hitting our stride. So I'd love it if you sign up. Every week I list one quote that I'm pondering right now, and then I give you two of the top takeaways from the podcast this week. It's really for both me and for you to get these messages into our molecules. I'm just kind of mainlining the practical aspects

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Sign up for the newsletter. Also, I want to tell you about a course that we're highlighting over on the 10% Happier app. It's called Healthy Habits. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal and the meditation teacher Alexis Santos. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist, Kelly McGonigal, and the meditation teacher, Alexis Santos. It's great stuff. To access it, just download the 10% Happier app wherever you get your apps, or by visiting 10% dot com. That's one word all spelled out. Listening to audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love,

you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals, all in one easy app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things, household chores, exercising on the road, commuting, you name it. My wife Bianca and I have been listening

to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So, audiobooks. Yes, Audible. Yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is

free. Visit audible.ca. Audible.ca. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there? to the FDA. so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. Karla, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Dan.

It's good to be back. Can't wait to dive into this story. All right, let me just start at a high, high level, which is why did you want to do a year-long silent meditation retreat solo? I don't have a canned answer to this question, but I just really, really, really liked and felt a deep value in being on retreat. And every time I sat on a retreat, the question came up for me, what if I did a year-long retreat? It was just kind of like something that had been bumping around in my mind for long enough that I said it out loud to a friend

at some point. And he was like, you should do that now. Because I was saying, I'm going to do it one day, maybe after I have kids and they grow up. And he was like, that's a terrible idea. You should not do that. You should do it now. As soon as he said that, it just clicked in my mind as something that I felt like was definitely going to happen. The original plan wasn't though to do it by myself, it was to do it at the Forest Refuge. But then the pandemic happened, the Forest Refuge closed. I had to do it by myself, but I was excited about that aspect of it because I thought that it was going to give me this sense of freedom where nobody was going to be watching me and I could just fart loud. I talked about this in my first episode with you.

Yeah, just like be a mess and ugly, cry and be stinky. I was happy it was gonna be a solo endeavor in the end. Let me jump in with a little bit of context here. You mentioned the Forest Refuge. That is a retreat center on the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS is a place listeners may have heard me talk about in the past. I sometimes semi-facetiously call it Dharma Disneyland on the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society in central Massachusetts.

They have the main retreat center, then they have the forest refuge, which is kind of like pro level where if you've done a sufficient number of retreats, you can qualify to go to the forest refuge, which is much less structured, and you can go for lengthy retreats there. And then there's also another center on the grounds where you can study Buddhism as it relates to meditation practice. So you were thinking you were going to go to the forest refuge, but then it shut down in the pandemic. And so you went to a place in Colorado that we're going to hear all about in a moment. But let me just go back to your why here and to drop a little bit more context. You are, and I'm saying this semi-facetiously, like a

professional meditator, you're a meditation teacher. Before that, you were working as a therapist. And I know it's important to you to point out that this is not something everybody has to do. You can meditate five minutes every other day at home and still be a perfectly good meditator. But for you as a teacher, somebody who had committed her life to the Dharma, a year long retreat, as actually not unusual, many, if not most teachers have done a year and more. Yeah, but I wasn't even really thinking about it like that in terms of me as a teacher.

It was more like, practice has always just been about me really feeling deeply, deeply satisfied and intense inner growth from practicing like that. So it wasn't so much driven by me being a teacher as it was just me feeling personally really fulfilled by doing a lot of practice. I got home from my most recent meditation retreat. Actually, you were involved in my most recent meditation retreat. I know. meditation retreat, actually, you were involved in my most recent meditation retreat. I know. I didn't know this was going to happen in advance.

I was staying in what's called the Teacher Village, which is where teachers stay on the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society. I know the guy in charge, Joseph Goldstein, he's one of the guys in charge. He lets me stay in the Teacher Village so I get my own little cottage. The cottages are kind of divided in two, each with their own like apartment. And you were in the other one on the other side of the wall from me, which I didn't know but was a very pleasant surprise. Not that we were chit chatting much, but it was just nice to know you were there.

I bring this up only because when I got home from it, Bianca was like listening to me complain a little bit about how hard retreat is for me and she's like, why do you do this? Yeah, I had to think about that a little bit because I hear you talk about how satisfying retreat is for you and yeah, I have moments of that. I've had probably some of the happiest moments of my entire life on meditation retreat, but much of it is a slog for me. I just say that just to see what it provokes from you

in relation to why retreat has been so satisfying for you. I think there's a lot to say about this. And I think my relationship to meditation retreats has changed a lot over the course of my practice because it was more of a slog when I first started. And I was still experiencing these extremely valuable transformations within myself as a result of them, which is what made me keep doing them. But my practice has gotten so much less intense and there's just a lot less effort involved.

So even when it's really hard, it's not hard in the same way. I'm not adding to the pressure by pushing into it and blaming myself as much when it's hard. And that makes it so much easier when it is hard. Because what made it harder before was this idea that I had every time it was hard that it was my fault that it wasn't going well and that it was my Responsibility to make it go better again That's one of the biggest Insights actually that came out of my long retreat was I can put down this burden of needing to feel responsible for everything that I feel

And that's like such a deep relief and it's so much easier to practice like that. It's so much easier to be on retreat for as long as I want to be because it really feels like I want to be there. That notion of not taking whatever you're feeling or thinking personally and you know, so not feeling bad about it if you're feeling homicidal or whatever it is. I mean, that is one of the biggest. Benefits of meditation. And so that is huge. Like you, I've seen that that capacity gets deeper when if you go off to a place

and meditation is all you're doing. I think for me often, I really don't want to be there and I need to not get attached to that. I spend a lot of time like fantasizing about missing my family and fantasizing about what it would be like to be back home right now, instead of stuck in this grueling schedule of sitting meditation, walking meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation all fucking day. Yeah, and that's totally understandable. Actually, I think you said something to me in one exchange that we had when we were on retreat together about that. Because my son, Huck, came to

visit and we were outside playing. And I told you, I was like, trying to, we had to have this visit because it was a two and a half week retreat for me and I couldn't be gone for that long from him. At least I wouldn't have felt fully able to be present if I was gone for that long because of how bonded we are. So he joined me and I was like doing this kind of hybrid on retreat with him and being quiet and watching him play. And then you walked by and I told you, you were like, oh, so you're like teaching here? I was like, no, actually, I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm on retreat right now. You're like, oh, so you're like teaching here? I was like, no, actually, I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm on retreat right now. You were like, wow, I really wish

that I could have my family on retreat. I was like, huh, because I hadn't actually thought about that. I was like, man, I wish I could just have an uninterrupted retreat. But I actually think that it did make the retreat so much easier for me to let go of the tightness around needing it to be like totally uninterrupted. I was also checking my phone once in a while to make sure like no emergencies were happening with Hawk, making sure he was okay. And

it was just relaxed a little bit more. And everything has had to be a little bit more relaxed since I did my year-long retreat because I learned a lot of lessons and we'll probably talk about that later about how unhelpful it is to be in pence with retreat. So maybe you should go on a retreat and have your family come visit you and see what that does. Because I mean, I also learned a bunch of stuff too that I could bring home with me since my home was with me on retreat. You know what I mean? All right. Well, let's go to the year long retreat. Enough dilly dallying. So again, this is pre-huck, pre-baby. And the first recording we have that I'm going to play here is from October 2020. And it's you talking to James, your partner, who's a lovely human being, I might add a couple of days before your year long retreat starts. Let's listen.

Why are you crying? Because I'm scared. What are you scared of? I guess I'm scared of not doing it right. If that makes any sense. So you're saying you missed opportunity. Yeah, that's part of what I'm scared of.

Well what's the right way to do it? I feel like I'm putting pressure on myself to... Um, I don't know, I guess like have this be the biggest, most life-changing, insightful experience of my life. And that I have to make it that way. I don't think I really realized that I felt that way until just now when I said that. What if one year and two days from tomorrow you come out and you're like, oh my god that fucking sucked! And he's like, oh my god I have so much to talk about! Why do I sound like a middle-aged man?

Because I'm approaching middle age right now. I don't know what to tell you. But once you come out, you feel like... What if you're right? I can't see that happening actually. Because I think that if that was happening that I would probably leave. So that's on the table for you? I guess I tell myself that it is.

I try to tell myself that it is. I try to tell myself that it is, but maybe part of me is kind of hell bent on finishing it no matter what because it's... What is it about the one year mark then that says you're done? I feel like that's the length of time to see every season go by and to fully be there for it and to come literally full circle around the sun. feels symbolic in some way of a lifespan. Each season representing a different stage of life. And I'm really glad that I'm starting in the fall, because it feels kind of like everything is starting to die. And there's a part of me that's going to have to die.

And then be reborn. Were you right to be nervous? Yeah. It was a really hard retreat and way, way, way, way harder than I thought it was going to be. So a couple days after that, you fly to Colorado. Can you set the scene of the place where you're doing this retreat? Describe it for us. We are actually already in Colorado because we were living there at the time. It was this

very remote part of Colorado. It was like southwest mountainy Colorado where there's just like lots of dry mountains with beautiful trees and it was like quite a drive to get to this place from where we were living in Durango. It's this retreat center called Tara Mandala. And I think they have five or six of these cabins where you can go and do a retreat for as long as you want. And you're just by yourself and you don't have to see anyone's. They have this whole setup where every week you drop off a grocery list at the bottom of the hill and they take it and then drop groceries off for you a couple days later. I was in this cabin that had a small solar panel for a small amount of electricity. I had a wood stove for

my heat so I had to chop my wood. There wasn't any running water and the water all came from a catchment system, so the roof would drain into the gutter and then I would have to filter it all. So it was pretty off the grid. I was living this kind of like solo taking care of myself life, which was- No toilet? solo taking care of myself life, which was no toilet. No, no, I just shit myself all the time. No. There was a outhouse that was like, you know, a short walk from my cabin. Shared or your own? It was my own. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Did you drive yourself there or did James drop you off? and what was it like when you had to say goodbye? Oh my God. Yeah, he dropped me off. He actually spent the night there with me, which was really sweet. He drove me the day before we did a ceremony like the tar mandala helped me facilitate an opening ceremony for myself in their meditation hall. me facilitate an opening ceremony for myself in their meditation hall. And James spent the night with me in my cabin and helped me get all set up there, cooked me breakfast the next morning. And then we had a tearful goodbye. Well, I cried.

James was fine. And then I was alone for quite some time. Many people listening to this may have never done a retreat before, so what do you do all day long? Your main intention is to be mindful as much as possible. So like, I guess the ideal is to have continuous mindfulness through everything that you're doing, from brushing your teeth to doing sitting meditation to going to the bathroom to whatever else you find yourself up to when you're by yourself which is

many different things. Mostly I tried to find the activities that would support me in staying mindful as much as possible which turned out to be a lot of lying down practice actually, and walking practice. It was a hard retreat and sitting was really painful for me. I was having a lot of pain in my body, physical discomfort, big time. So sitting actually was like very, very hard to sustain, which was new for me. I had never experienced that before. It had always been easy. It had never been hard to sit or focus my mind, but I attribute it to the lime as just my mind was foggy and unfocused and my body was so hard to be in that the mind just would not stay put.

By the Lyme you mean Lyme disease with which you've been diagnosed several years prior. Yeah, in my head it was not gonna be an obstacle. When I started out I was like, well, I mean, obviously I'll just be able to meditate and that'll make it better. And this for the first time ever was something that meditation could not conquer for me. How soon into the retreat did you know

this is going to be bumpy? Well, I was in denial for like the first five months, I would say. You know, I was like, well, as soon as this ends, then it'll be fine. And then I got to this point where I really had this idea that if I could just practice more continuously, then I would finally be able to get through it. And so I like did whatever I could do to get more renunciative, if that's a word. I was like, okay, I'm not gonna use this audio recorder anymore. I'm not gonna write letters to James. I'm not gonna do anything besides formal practice

unless I have to. And that was when I started crying every day. I cried every day for like at least a month, probably more than a month. It was clear to me by the end of that month that strategy was not a helpful strategy. And that I think was when I was like, okay, this is really hard.

I need to change tactics. Let me play a clip. The first clip we heard was from October, 2020, as Kara's getting ready to go on this retreat. This next clip is from four months in, roughly, February, 2021. So she's been on retreat for a while. Things are bumpy.

Let's listen to this. February 26th. I woke up this morning with this like, I mean, it's pretty par for the course at this point, but so much, so, so much so much, so, so much discomfort in my body. And then we went outside and started walking fast and I was really noticing how There's just, you know, I've used my ability to concentrate and notice things on a subtle level for so long to heal myself and to address problems and really to move past things and

to get rid of them. On this retreat, there's no... this disease is preventing me from getting subtle and it's forcing me to stay on a really gross level, like really overt. I can't even really stand still this overt. I have to, I can't even really stand still this morning. I have to move. Right now I'm kind of like rocking in my bed. I just like, it kind of has been dawning on me this morning how much I've used much. I've used concentration and meditation as a tool to deny a sense of care for myself and to not really acknowledge the pain that I'm in. In the years leading up to this retreat I would sit on the couch next to James and I would meditate and He said to me a few times I can hear your throat because my throat

It just like is writhing with discomfort and I don't have control over it. It's like always moving and Undulating and you can hear it. I could hear it but I didn't know he could hear it. And then he touched it, he would touch it and the right side is like super tense. There's like a lump in there. At a certain point my mom could see it. She said your thyroid looks swollen. My mom is a doctor, so she knew the anatomy. But this whole time, I'm just saying to myself, yeah, James is like, you should go see a doctor. And I said, no, I know what it is and I'm addressing it. You know, I thought it was just like a karmic knot. I thought it was just like

something that I unearthed that I was healing. And I probably was healing it. I was healing it with the meditation practice. But at what point do you move from that subtle level into addressing something overtly? And yeah, I was like seeing these massage therapists and going to these different people. I couldn't tell the difference between when you're supposed to just work with something internally and when you're supposed to say,

Okay, there's really a problem here. And I couldn't tell because I feel like so much of the message that I was getting in the Dharma, which the Dharma was the thing, I was like, oh, this is going to fix all my problems. Meditation is going to heal me in every way. I don't have to do anything else. Just this. But that was actually avoiding a problem or making it so that I couldn't see that there was a problem. And there's a really difficult and painful problem. And it's not until now when I've been forced to stop accessing the ability to address it on a subtle level that I've really been able to care for myself and see how much pain I've been in.

And when I found out that I had Lyme disease, I just cried and I didn't really know why, but there was this part of myself that knew all along that there was a problem and that it wasn't okay. And that this, the concentration and the subtlety was dismissing the pain I was in and preventing me from really having full compassion. And it was also making it so that I wasn't fully landing in just allowing what's happening to be happening because I was always addressing something that was wrong with my concentration. I was into this thing of like, the only way I can feel better is to meditate. You know, in my teacher training, I couldn't just sit there with my eyes open for all those hours

while different presenters came through. I had to sit with my eyes closed and meditate otherwise I couldn't be present. It was too uncomfortable to be my body and now I can't do that anymore. And so I'm like just, I'm really with the not knowing, I'm really with the not knowing. I'm really with the having absolutely no control. And I'm really with the pain of that, you know? Like, it's so hard to be in a body that gets sick and gets injured and gets old and to not have control. And I never had to really be with that until now because I don't have my tools. There's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do. I don't feel like being with it helps at all.

It just sometimes makes it worse. It usually makes it worse. It always makes it worse right now actually. So I just have to keep my eyes open and walk around and cry and hug the trees. And I'm so disappointed. I'm so disappointed that I don't have control. You know I came on this retreat because I was trying to help myself. I was trying to heal myself through meditation. And I thought I knew what I was doing. You know, I've done so much meditation, I feel like I'm pretty good at it at this point. But this is like nothing I've ever experienced disappearance before the complete inability to concentrate after five months. I'm just looking out the window right now. There's a little bunny hopping by. I think my only solace, the only place that's possible for me right now is opening up to what's around me externally and now it's inside me. You know there's just like this emphasis,

this emphasis, this emphasis on going in coming internally. But mindfulness is external too. I can never find contentment if I'm always trying to fix myself or heal myself or have control. Because condemnance, it's right now. It's not an inner project. I don't know, sometimes all this I don't know, sometimes all this thinking about it doesn't help. I just have to be in it. I was a little worried, and my teachers were worried too, that having this voice recorder would somehow get in the way of practice or distract.

But this is also like... It's my place of self-expression and outlet and... Why can't I have that? Why isn't that okay on a meditation retreat? Why isn't it okay to do a craft or not do any sitting meditation or lie on my side all day? Because that's the only place that feels comfortable for me. That's what's going on for me this morning. I'm scared. I really feel for you. When I listened to this, I have a bunch of questions.

I'm willing to just start with a technical one, which is for people who haven't done a retreat or don't have a ton of experience with meditation, you keep talking about concentration and subtlety and how in a meditation session characterized by a concentrated mind and the ability to see subtle phenomena arising, you generally felt better. But I'm not sure that's going to be intuitive to people. Like how would being concentrated in meditation make you feel better in the face of whatever physical pain was arising from the Lyme disease? When your mind gets really subtle, things happen that don't happen in our normal way of experiencing life. We start to see

when our mind is concentrated that we can be with things that are normally quite intense or difficult or painful without having reactivity to them and they start to become just what was once pain is now just sensation that's intense. There's such deep comfort in seeing that I don't have to suffer when something is painful, you know, because the reaction of the mind starts to settle when we're in a deeply concentrated state. There is not a reaction anymore and it's just intense like, whoa, I can be with anything and it doesn't have to blow me around. Plus, we can enter some pretty trippy and extremely satisfying blissful states when we concentrate a lot. At least that's something that I've experienced in meditation before. It's like, oh, I can escape the regular world by focusing my mind

and going to this altered state where I'm having a full body orgasm. Part of me was like, I'll be having full body orgasms all the time on this year long retreat because I'll have ample time to just get into concentrated states like has happened before on other long retreats that I've been on. But this was not that kind of retreat for me. I mean, it's an excellent answer. I like that we're getting technical right now because it's helping me cope with the fact that we are playing a very vulnerable clip for the whole world to hear.

How is that for you? It's intense. Yeah, it's really intense. That was very raw for me. That was totally real. Yeah, I was having an active insight while I was recording that about loss of control. Maybe that's like the first time I've ever documented an insight in real time that I've had and it's kind of cool. Like, oh, that's what insight is like. Not always, but sometimes insight is this like extremely deep disappointment and grieving the loss of control.

Letting go can really feel like that sometimes like, oh my God, I don't of control. Letting go can really feel like that sometimes, like, oh my God, I don't have control, fuck. That sucks. But at the bottom of the grief is this freedom. Oh wait, I don't have to be in control. That means it's not my fault when things are bad. Just to provide a little bit more context on a technical tip, you're using words like

insight and letting go. So the kind of meditation that you practice and that I also practice at a much more JV level is often called insight meditation. I think in the ancient language of Pali, it's called Vipassana, but we translate it as insight meditation. And the lay person's description of this, and I'll probably mangle this a little bit, is that you sit and watch the mind, and as the mind gets a little bit more concentrated, you get to see how the mind works, what this being alive thing is all about. Over time, you can have these very powerful

insights into some basic fundamental laws of nature of what it's like to be alive. And one of those insights that is going to sound very obvious is that things are moving so fast. You're having thoughts, emotion, hearing something, tasting something, smelling something. It's all just moving so fast. You understand that impermanence is so non-negotiable that it's all just moving so fast. Do you understand that impermanence is so non negotiable that it's all out of your control. There's nothing to do but to let go that can sound kind of intuitive. I hope it sounds somewhat intuitive as I describe it. But an insight, which we just heard you have is

when it gets into your molecules, and you really understand it. And that's what you very generously are letting us in on from your own practice. Am I restating all of that with some degree of accuracy? Yeah, that's totally, totally it. That particular insight didn't come from that kind of minutia that insight sometimes comes from, because like I said, I wasn't able to concentrate

in the way that I normally can it was coming more from a gross level like I just don't have any control over my body feeling good it was almost like I Just had had a lot of experience of letting go and on that subtle level, but it was kind of time for me to have more on this real life, real world level or something. I don't know. That's an interpretation, but there might be some truth to it. achieved the more rarefied states that are on offer in deep meditation, where you are letting go, you know, in other words, you're seeing how quickly things arise, you're seeing through the illusion that there's some core nugget of Kara behind your eyes, between your ears,

who's in control of all of it, to whom it's all happening. So you can have that experience on a fine or subtle level, but on a gross level, which is basically a Buddhist terminology for the unconcentrated mind, the conventional mind that we're all living in, it's really hitting you in a way that it's never hit you before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. In my head, I really valued that type of insight when I was coming into the retreat, but I

don't think I valued it in my heart. There's a part of me that really thought where the good stuff was only in deep states of concentration, but I was forced to not have any access to that and then be with it on this different level. Sometimes when we surrender, I've had the experience, and again, my experience is much, I don't know, much less advanced level, but I've had the experience a few times of really letting go of striving to achieve a certain state.

And then something interesting will happen once you've surrendered. Is that what happened for you? Yeah, I guess, but like, it wasn't pleasant. I guess what was interesting was just being in a state of confusion and profound despair for an extended period of time and not understanding why. That was so unexpected. That was so, so, so unexpected to the point where it was like, I kind of had to stop taking

it personally. Maybe this isn't about me. I know this might sound kind of kooky, but like, I really had this clear sense that I wasn't doing this retreat for me, I was doing it for everybody. And the stuff that I was feeling, it wasn't mine, it was the world's stuff. I was in these extremely long periods of time where I could just feel shame and anger. It was like I would wake up so angry and I would be on like a rant or a rage, like pacing around and screaming for the whole next two days. And then it would switch to shame and I would just be in like this deep, deep state of shame, which if you've ever hung out

in shame, it's not a fun place to hang out in. But it didn't have any real strong story attached to it. It was just like the feeling of shame, little nuggets of memories from my past. They didn't really seem like they were cohesive in a story or anything like that. I just had this clear sense that this wasn't about me. If we're gonna talk about what's going on with the world, it's like, hey, shame and anger, that's pretty big. At the very least, it helped me to think that I wasn't doing this for me, I was doing it for everybody.

I went down into this place of unprocessed emotion so that I could process it for the world. You wondered earlier whether that would sound kooky. It doesn't to me for whatever that's worth. And it's bringing to mind a quote I once heard, long time listeners will have heard me say this many times, so I apologize, but a quote from some Buddhist monk who said that claiming your emotions or perceptions or sensations as yours is a misappropriation of public property. Yeah, that's awesome. I really feel like I started to understand that more and more deeply the longer I was on this retreat.

I mean, whether or not it's true, you can't really know you're processing something for the whole world, but you can tell that it actually feels deeply freeing to feel it that way. Insight leads to the kind of release into this idea that it's not mine. It's not mine, it doesn't have to be mine. Also, you do start to see like it doesn't even make sense to think about it as mine. Now, like, what does that even mean that it's mine? Don't ask me to explain what I just said because it's hard to explain that. I'll spare you, but not too much because I'm going to take us one month later to another clip from you. This is March of 2021, and you're talking about five straight months

of none of the cherished concentration. Coming up, Kara Lai talks about letting go of expectations, her mantra for when things get unbearably hard, her definition of awakening and whether it's possible for all of us, even without going on a year-long retreat. And as we get back from break after the commercials, we're going to start with another clip from Kara's retreat.

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So what I want people to know, whoever listens to this, is that if your meditations are really, really painful and difficult, it's not because you're bad at meditating. And it's not because you're doing something wrong. Because I think that what's happening for me is something that happens to a ton of people, but it doesn't get talked about nearly as much as the concentration stuff and the peace stuff and all the fun stuff, because it's not fun to talk about. And people are embarrassed, so they don't talk about it. It brings up shame. It makes people feel like they're not good at meditating and they can't do it and so they stop trying and they just walk away.

But here I am and I've done a ton of practice and after more than a decade it's It's five straight months of a complete inability to concentrate and a completely, just extremely uncomfortable just. If this was what meditation felt like when I first started practicing, I don't know. I don't know if I would have kept doing it. This is obviously just armchair quarterbacking here. And this may be just a statement of the blazingly obvious to is part of what's going on here that you have this expectation of

concentration and it's not happening and you can't let go of that? Yeah, maybe it is. That's just like kind of what the whole first half of the retreat was for me, was like not being able to let go of this idea of what I thought a meditation retreat should be. And in some ways that was like reinforced by some of the conversations, because I was having some conversations with teachers. I think that the territory I was in was very unique and rare. And my teachers didn't, generally speaking,

have experience with the place that I was in, which just made me feel like, well, I must be off the map. I must be off the map and it must be my fault. However, talk to Temple Smith. I don't know if you know him. This is cool. He heard the podcast episode that I was in, the first one with you, where I talked about I was going to go on this retreat and I had Lyme disease, da da da. And he called me before I went on the retreat to be like, hey, I think we have some stuff in common because he had had chronic fatigue syndrome and went on this year long retreat with it. He had had this experience, basically the same exact experience as me. But we had this conversation before I went on the retreat. So I was like, oh, that's too bad for you. And I went on the retreat

and started to experience the same thing. And it didn't occur to me to call him until like around this time of this recording that you just played. And I called him and he was like, yup, I know exactly where you are. That's exactly how I felt. And you're just in a different ecosystem. It's not the jungle. It's the desert and you're looking for it to be the jungle. It's just a different place. He didn't really give me like techniques, but that was good. I didn't need a technique. Like more techniques were just making me go crazy. I just needed someone to validate that where I was was like in a real place and that being there wasn't a place where practice was inaccessible.

CBer Right. JG Right. LS Or if progress was inaccessible. He totally validated that for me. He was like, yeah, this is part of practice. Like you are doing a really deep practice that's going to be huge for you. And he turned out to be right. I do feel like there's a, and I want to hear a lot about how he turned out to be right and what happened in the back half of this retreat, but this issue of expectation seems

like one that's universal, important to all of us. That if you are walking around with expectations about how something should be, this moment, your relationships, your job, your birthday party, that's a setup for suffering, especially in meditation. Yeah. Yeah. Like this whole time, I've been wondering if, if today is going to be like judgment day in Harrisburg. And we're like playing all these clips and Dan's gonna be like, judgy, judgy McJudgerson. Would you think that?

But my expectations, because I like to set my expectations really low so that I can be pleasantly surprised when they get dashed. I do the same thing. I do the same thing, totally. But that's like the reverse side of it, that setting low expectations and then leaving lots of upside room for surprise. I completely buy that. But it's so much of my suffering on retreat and in life has been on the other

side, I'm beating myself up for not getting back to some place, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. That's really where the suffering happens is like, we don't even realize that we have these expectations before they get challenged. And then we realize, Oh, I've like, was really living this idea about how things were gonna go or how things should be, and that's just not how they are. And so much of the time, insight and practice

can be like getting all these expectations kinda dashed. It sounds really disappointing at first, but when in real time you really experience enough of that, it's quite freeing to live without expectations because you're really open to what could happen and life becomes more interesting and mysterious and full of surprises and things that we think are going to be bad. We don't look at through a lens of fear. We just see clarity and what could happen. You're like, well, maybe this actually could be a good thing.

Who knows? So we've listened to some clips from February and March of 2021. There's another clip from July of 2021 that I want to play. It's a quick one. So let's listen to this one. I wonder if whoever is listening to this is wondering if this retreat is going to have a happy ending or not. And that's the only reason that they're listening to the whole thing. Because I wonder that myself.

And that's why I'm staying for the whole thing. It's a mystery. It's a cliffhanger. Who knows? It could all just fall apart. Or maybe that'd be good. Or it could all coalesce into a massive extended orgasmic release of bliss. Wouldn't that be nice? Well we're to find out. Okay, so let's find out now. That's July. You had started in October. Did it start to turn a corner at some point? No.

Which like, in some ways, it's kind of like oddly satisfying in its own way that it didn't because if it had, it would have just maintained this belief that I have that like it has to go a certain way in order for it to have been a good retreat. And I didn't, I got stuff out of, I got a lot out of the retreat. I didn't have a moment like that, you know, a moment of bliss, but I can say that I came away from the retreat with just huge amounts of compassion that I had never had before for, and

this ability to touch suffering and have patience and be with suffering and understand the condition of the world and not want to escape it. And I think before I was using meditation to try to escape the world, I don't want to use meditation to escape the world. I want to be fully human. I want to be completely alive. I don't want to avoid other people's pain. I want to be able to be there for them. I learned how to do that on this retreat without trying, just from living. Part of what happened in the second half was just a real backing off. I totally backed off from practice. I mean, not totally. I did do practice, but I just held the retreat so much more loosely and lightly. And I really want to thank Temple for a lot of his encouragement to this because I wasn't

giving myself permission and I was constantly feeling guilty whenever I was doing something that was non-traditional like, I don't know, drawing or like, oh, even I had access to the internet, right? I had cell phone service at the top of my mountain. He was like, you should feel free to research stuff about Lyme disease so that you can figure out ways to address it while you're there. Because that's what he had done when he was on his retreat. It just really helped him to have something like that to actually address the problem. Man, that really felt like a mindfuck to me. It's like, well, I can be on the internet, on Recreet, but I didn't need a release of some kind and I needed to cope in whatever way I could.

And so it was actually really helpful that he gave me that permission because the pain wasn't from being distracted all the time. The pain was from beating myself up for distracting myself all the time. This backing off that you're describing, you spent months banging your head up against the wall expecting and beating yourself up for not achieving quote unquote and then you backed off. Have you been able to take that into the rest of your life? like crap and I had to keep being really gentle on myself. My mantra was like, just do what feels good or just do what doesn't hurt. There still hasn't been like a moment of complete release from that. I do feel much better now, which has happened over the course of a couple of years. But because maybe there wasn't this

sudden release from pain, I've really carried this looseness and lightness into my practice in a way that's been really beneficial. I still feel conflicted about it though at times, just because it feels really non-traditional. There's this we have in Buddhist tradition that if you're not renouncing and you're not going on retreats all the time and being really, really simple and giving everything up, then you're not really able to have insight and progress on your path. And that feels hard for me to shake, but I feel like I really want to shake that because I can see the ways that it prevents a lot of people from even trying. If the idea is that you can't really practice unless you're on retreat all the time or you're a monastic or even just going on retreat once a year, which a lot of people can't, then people basically feel like they already failed. It's like, oh, well, that's not my life. I'm not going to be able to do that. And so I guess I shouldn't have gotten this job that I feel really committed to, or I guess I shouldn't have

had kids, or I guess I shouldn't have married this person who's not a practitioner, I kind of fucked up. So I guess this path isn't for me. And so then there isn't an effort put in to practice. It's like, well, I'm not good enough. So I can never yet anywhere. So I'm not even going to try. But I think if we changed the story, that actually, your life is exactly what you need to wake up in whatever circumstances you're in, that would totally be a game changer for a lot of people. It makes a lot of sense too for that story to change because the way it's set up really privileges wealthy people and men who can afford to go on retreats all the time, not moms who don't have a lot of money or aren't Dharma teachers. And even Dharma teachers who are moms have a hard time

going on retreat all the time. I'm lucky. So it just doesn't make any sense to me that that should be the case, that the only people who get to wake up are the people who can go on retreat all the time. I think everyone gets to wake up. And the Buddha actually talked about how human birth is the best, most optimal birth for awakening. We have the perfect blend of pleasure and pain, not so much pleasure that you're wallowing in pleasure all the time and just having sex with beautiful people whenever you want, and then not so much pain that you're overwhelmed by it and consumed by it. It's a perfect balance. And so being born a human is extremely rare and it's the optimal conditions to wake up. So I think it's kind of interesting to think, wow, you were born a human, which is like, you know, only happens one in a bazillion lifetimes

if you believe in multiple lifetimes. You have the perfect chance to awaken. Oh, and you're also into meditation. But because you can't go on retreats that much, you can't wake up. Sorry. I think it's kind of interesting to think about that. But because you can't go on retreats that much you can't wake up. Sorry. I Think it's kind of interesting to think about that Agreed and so what you're saying is that anybody listening whether they've got a consistent meditation practice or not There's still hope for us Yeah, and and maybe even more than hope like it What if we flip it upside down and say that it's just a different kind of awakening

from a retreat awakening, but what if it's exactly what you need to wake up, that you don't need to go be a monk, but actually exactly the people and the circumstances in your life are exactly what's needed for your path. And what do you mean by waking up and how would we do it in our daily lives? Oh my God, Dan, that's such a hard question.

I don't know. Who's being judgy now? What do I mean by awakening? I could say something general about this and I do think each person has their own particular way that this might look. But it has something to do with letting go and letting go of clinging. Enlightenment is often described as the absence of something. The feeling you have when the buzzing of the refrigerator that you didn't realize was happening just stops and there's this peace,

like, oh, I didn't even realize that there was this kind of anxiety that was running my life even. As a result of seeing clearly into the true nature of things, as a result of seeing that all things are changing all the time and they're not personal and there's no deep satisfaction I can find in anything in the material world. As a result of seeing into that, this letting go happens that is deeply peaceful. Like, oh, I don't have to try to grab onto anything anymore. I can just let go. And how would we get a taste of that, you know, in a world of diapers and dishes and

bosses and spouses and traffic? Okay. Okay, okay. I can tackle this. of diapers and dishes and bosses and spouses and traffic. Okay. Okay, okay. I can tackle this. Well, okay. So as a mom now, I have really been excited to challenge the notion that all these distractions and all this stuff to do is just in the way. A Fosu, Jones Quartey, who was on this show recently, he and I, and also Jess Mori, we teach this parenting class together. And he said something that was so interesting to me. He was like, if we're going to talk about renunciation, about renunciation, think about parenthood. My life is for you. What does renunciation mean? It's like I'm giving myself over to something. In the case of parenthood, it's loving and helping and nurturing another human being. There's a way in which being a parent at least is like automatically a part of the path of letting go. It's like, oh, I'm giving myself over to you. And then I also have to let go of

my agenda around my life and how my life needs to be. And I don't know about you, Dan, but my level of patience has grown a lot ever since becoming a parent and my level of flexibility has grown a lot because it's not about me anymore. If we see that interruptions can actually be an opportunity to let go instead of being something that's in our way, then we can use that as insight. And so that applies not to just parents, but anyone living in the world, which is full of interruptions and full of unexpected events and full of complex relationships and these things that we need to navigate that are full of opportunities to not have to have it be about us anymore.

Well said. Coming up, Tara talks about her bottom line learnings from this rather extraordinary experience and whether she would do it again. What's up guys, it's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

So follow, watch, and listen to, baby, this is Keke Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to The Offensive Line. You guys, on this podcast, we're gonna make some picks, talk some sh-t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agar.

So here's how this show's gonna work, okay? We're gonna run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like no offense. Here's how this show's gonna work, okay? We're gonna run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No Offense. No offense Travis Kelce, but you gotta step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding

the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter. Is it Brandon Iyuk, T. Higgins, or Devonte Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery+, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday Night Football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app

or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. That actually kind of brings me to there are a couple more clips I want to play from the retreat. This one actually goes right to this issue of backing off or letting go, whatever you want to call it. This is from August of 2021. So we're really getting toward the end here. And it involves some hummingbirds who apparently you named after me and Jeff Warren, who was a meditation teacher. And so let's let's listen to this. Jeff Warren and Dan Harris are out in the hail by themselves with no one to protect them. And they're just little! They're so little! I'm scared for them. I kinda wanna go over there and like... put an umbrella above them.

Oh! Why does life have to be so hard? It's times like these that I feel lucky that I'm not about how this whole retreat has felt kind of like, like why even bother? Why even bother? I don't see any progress. I don't see any results. It's just hard. But I also don't feel like there's any other choice. What else do I do?

But actually, I've felt lighter today than I have since I can't remember when. Since three years ago when I was on a three month retreat. And I felt okay. It's because there's an acceptance that hasn't been there before. Like a really, really deep acceptance of discomfort and not grappling with it and just letting it be there. So it's not for nothing. You know what I was thinking about when I was listening to that was that there are these

famous recordings of old white guy journalists like Edward R. Murrow narrating what they're seeing during World War Two. We you know, in our training as journalists, listen to these. And, you know, it's like the apex of journalistic achievement and courage. But I hear that echoes of that and maybe even a more hardcore version in these recordings of you, because you are going to a frontline. It's just a little bit different from Dresden. I really appreciate that Dan. And that is why I named that hummingbird after you.

I appreciate you. Those hummingbirds were babies. I had put this little hummingbird feeder out on my porch. They just started hanging out with me all the time, tons of hummingbirds and a mother hummingbird built a nest in front of my cabin and then laid two eggs. And what came out of the eggs were Jeff Warren and Dan Harris. This is my interpretation. You'll tell me if I'm wrong, but it does seem to get to kind of like, if not the bottom line,

a bottom line of your learning during this year, which is acceptance? I mean, which is a synonymous with letting go. Yeah, it's so interesting because it was just not what I thought it would be. I was so tangled in thinking that my freedom would mean the release of my physical suffering. And that just never came. But something else emerged, which was just this relief of having to feel responsible for it, having to be at fault for it, being in charge of fixing it. I don't remember that day. I don't remember making that recording, but apparently that happened. Yep. Unless it's a deep fake. Yeah, wow. It does feel though, like it feels like it's in my bones in this way that it makes sense in some ways I wouldn't remember stuff from that

retreat. And because my mind was just like, I couldn't even think straight the whole year. And it was like the insight wasn't coming through my intellect. It was just coming into my bones. CB It's such a courageous thing to do, not only to do it, but also to make these recordings. Speaking of which, let me just play one last which is October 2021. And this is you leaving. I'm ready. I don't know what you're talking about. It seems pretty peaceful here. See, but now this is where the hard part comes. What? Because now you can figure out what all of this meant. I have to figure that out? Mm-hmm.

We had a... What's the word? Process. We had to process it all. Do you want any coffee? No. Clotted? The staircase is not up to code.

I know. Look how empty it looks. Did it feel this empty? No, it was totally full of my stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It felt... It felt funny. Did it feel that it's empty? I really followed my stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It felt...

It felt funny. Does it feel good that it's empty? I don't know. I don't have a lot of feelings about this day, weirdly. Me either. I mean... Perfect. Really?

I felt a lot of pressure to feel a certain way about it, but I don't. Oh, good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like, I figured I'd get out here, you'd be quiet, you'd cry a minute. Checks out, checks out, checks out. But that, I... yeah.

Yeah. I feel relieved for you is what I feel. Yeah. I feel relieved too. Yeah. I don't feel amazing, but I feel... I don't feel depressed anymore. That's good. I don't know if both of us can be out in the open all the time. It's not going to work. Okay, so here's the ridiculously obvious question. Would you do it again?

Yeah. But I wouldn't do it alone again. That's clear to me. I really needed people. And at least in the state that I was in, until I didn't have people around me anymore, I just thought they were annoying. But there's so much comfort just on a visceral level from being around other human beings. And even if we're not talking, there was something about not having them around that I really felt the loss from that.

Yeah. So I would do it again, but it wouldn't be for a while. And it would be different. I would do it again because I know it could never happen the same way twice. I probably would leave if it was too hard. I didn't leave that time because I just was like, I really want to know if something would change or if I'd miss it. And it was like my one chance to do it before having kids if I had kids and I didn't want

to miss opportunity. But yeah, I think I moved through a lot of pressures that I'd put on myself that I wouldn't have in the same way if I ever did it again. So I just would hold it a lot more lightly and I wouldn't have in the same way if I ever did it again. So I just would hold it a lot more lightly and I wouldn't feel like the end I'll be all of my practice. Just to pick up on the thing about other people. I'll just run this by you because I'd be curious to see what you think. But my critique of the Western meditation scene is that even when you're doing it with other people, it's a lonely business. Often you don't know the other people and there's no real opportunity to interact

with them because it's supposed to be silent. I'm not against the silence, but I've had the great good luck to be able to do some retreats with friends just privately, which is not something most people get to do. So I recognize that this is not that I'm very lucky. But in that model, which is kind of just something my friends and I are inventing as we do it, where there is a little bit of careful interaction, you know, not we're not like, texting memes to each other, but you know, we listen to Dharma talks together and maybe have a little check-in and the loneliness.

I'm still lonely because I miss my family, but the loneliness quotient, the desperation that I often experience of being lonely, just goes way down and allows my practice to go to a different level. So I don't know if any of that lands for you. Yeah, totally. We need ways to blunt the intensity of being confronted with the truth of reality. Not only are we actually setting ourselves up to feel lonely when we're on retreat. We're also facing these really

harsh truths about how alone we are with our suffering in the world and how we are the ones who have been tasked with finding freedom from suffering. That doesn't have to be the case. Yeah, we can find ways to alleviate the intensity of that. But also, do we have to do it alone? Do we have to actually awaken by ourselves? That's such an individualistic-minded way of viewing practice. There's kind of like some of what I alluded to earlier in our conversations, like this isn't about me, it's about all of us. So we got to do it together and we have to support each other in doing it. And we're biologically evolved to not be alone. So why contrive the situation that feels so unnatural and force ourselves into this box that, yeah,

then why make it harder for ourselves? It doesn't have to be so hard. You should bring your wife and kid on retreat. I'm open to it. I suspect people are gonna wanna know, what are you up to? Like, what kind of teachings are you doing, programs are you running

that people might be able to check out? I'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah, thanks. And just let me say in closing, thank you again for doing this. It's extremely courageous and incredibly interesting. So I appreciate you. Thanks, Dan. It feels really satisfying

for me to be able to document this with you. It was a big, big deal, what I went through. So it feels really helpful and useful to share it. So hopefully someone finds it helpful. And one day I will write that book, My Year of Loud Mouth Sounds. Thanks again to Kara. Always great to talk to her. I want to say a few things here before we let you go. First, Kara wanted to give a big thank you to some of the people who supported her on

this retreat. Karen Benevento, Winnie Nizarco, Caroline Jones, Temple Smith, Joseph Goldstein, Gabrielle Hammond, and of course her outrageously loyal and loving husband James who I've met. Also want to say that if you want to find out more about what Kara does you can go to her website Karali.org where she's got some online meditation classes including one called Meditate Your Face Off. She also has a monthly class for parents co-led by Afosu Jones-Courté who's been on the show and also Jessi, who's also been on the show.

Speaking of podcasts, Kara also co-hosts a podcast of her own called Adventures in Meditating for Parents, along with Jess Mori and John Roberts, and you can find that at AdventuresinMeditating.com. Oh, also, she will be a core teacher for a 14-week residential semester program for young people ages 18 to 32 this fall in Marlboro, Vermont. The program is called the Contemplative Semester, and there are many people who will be teaching who have long been in the TPH orbit, including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jessica Mori, Kyra Juelingo, and many more. You can find information on that at ContemplativeSemester.org.

I know I'm throwing a lot of information at you, but if you go to the show notes, you can find all the links. Don't forget to check out my weekly newsletter. You can sign up at danharris.com. Every week I sum up my biggest takeaways from the show, and then also list three cultural recommendations, you know, books, TV shows, movies, things like that. DanHarris.com, you can also buy merch there. Before I go, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, who actually just put out a great new album, which you should check out. Nick Rodarthene. Play us out, Nick. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do,

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