Welcome back to the Monkey Mind Lab. Today we
have with us Professor Dana Yeaton, Associate
Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College and
a distinguished playwright and educator. A Middlebury
alumnus, Dana has significantly influenced the
stage and the classroom. His acclaimed works
include Mad River Rising, which earned the Moss
Hart Award, and Helen at Risk, a recipient After
Heidenman Award, his musical Swing State was
featured at the New York Musical Theater Festival.
Yetton's plays often explore depths of everyday
life, blending humor and poignancy to reveal
profound human experiences. Beyond playwriting,
Dana is a passionate advocate for the art of
the spoken word. In 2014, he founded Oratory
Now, a student -driven initiative in Middlebury.
that has trained over 7 ,000 students in effective
public speaking. Through workshops, peer coaching,
and campus -wide events, Oratory Now empowers
students to communicate their ideas with clarity
and confidence. Please join me in welcoming Professor
Dana Yeaton. Well, hello, Abir. Thanks for having
me. Let's begin with the first set of questions
that we usually ask everyone. What is it that
you do? What got you into it? And why do you
do it? Well, you've touched on it. I was a poet
in school, a wannabe poet, found that playwriting
was a better fit and devoted, I'll say, the rest
of my life to it, but because playwrights need
something else to do, that became teaching, that
other thing. And somehow that led me to what
I think of as a spinoff from playwriting, another
element of it, which makes a fair amount of sense,
right? We're still... Standing in front of an
audience when we're doing oratory, we're still
wondering what will keep people's attention.
We're still trying to make a change, make something
happen in a live situation. But those two things
have continued to interweave and amaze me. And
the teaching of it, I can't imagine needing to
teach the same thing over and over. Nominally,
I have. It's playwriting or speaking, but those
change for every single student. So I've never
had to read the same play twice from two different
writers. I've never heard the same speech twice
from two different speakers. So the subject matter
changes. And that's what keeps me on my learning
edge and keeps me excited. That sounds really
fun. What did I leave out? Did you ask a question
beyond what do I do? Why do I do it? Maybe I've
covered it. When I looked around at the world
of poetry, still thinking that was my chosen
field. And back then, I was a kind of parody
of a student, meaning I was actually smoking
a pipe and drinking tea. Like I really wanted
to be an intellectual and a poet. I'm not saying
other people were doing that, but I wore different
colored socks and I was just trying to become
a human with a brand. I just felt like, no, I
don't really fit in. And the beauty of the words
is not enough for me. I want change. I want things
to happen as a result of the words that I craft.
And I started to get suspicious of words, feeling
like they were sort of seducing me to say things
that I maybe didn't yet mean. The breakthrough
then would have been, in a way, looking back
and seeing how many of my poems were actually
monologues, were actually in the voices of people,
not me. and how that freed me up. I did a few
solo plays and performed them, and that was a
great lesson in why I shouldn't be on the stage,
ultimately. So... The part of writing that is
I deliver something and then disappear and other
people present it has always appealed to me.
The part of that that is necessarily collaborative
excites me. It takes you out of the solo sadness
of writing and puts you in the world, even if
you're sitting there thinking about that next
phase and imagining that audience. So I find
that kind of irresistible because it means. Well,
I'll give you the analogy. I was walking across
campus the other day and a kid came up and said,
I want to give you this camera. What would you
call it? A real camera, but a plastic one, right?
One of these disposable camera. And he says,
I just want you to take a bunch of pictures and
I'll develop them. And I walk away and suddenly
the campus is not the same campus anymore because
I'm looking through the lens, the imaginary lens
of the camera. And when you're a writer, In a
way, that's what the world does. It turns into
not potential material, but you're just paying
attention in a way. It's a lens I'm addicted
to. So maybe that's the answer to why I do it.
It's a way of being alive and being maybe a little
extra alive. That's a beautiful analogy. Okay,
it's time for the big question of the day. So
from what I understand, you're a big advocate
of oratory. one of the coaches myself. So here
it is. Is oratory the liberal art that will save
the liberal arts and balance the budget? Is it?
That's my claim. I'm trying to make a big, perhaps
an overly large claim and then see if I can support
it. Okay. And I should explain, I'm in the mood
for this because you may or may not know that
three weeks from now, I will teach my last class
and I will walk from that class to a lecture
hall and give my first faculty lecture. And it
will be to some extent on this topic. I might
hype it as my secret plan to save liberal arts
and the college all in one. But I am serious
about the role that training people to stand
in front of each other and speak their truth
can have the catalytic effect that that can have
both on the speaker and the audience. And whenever
I bring up that I do this things, perhaps somebody
on an airplane or something. They're like, the
moment I mentioned speaking, they will come out
with their relationship. And normally they're
difficult, tortured relationship with speaking.
And it's a very vulnerable spot for so many people.
And I find that telling and I find it concerning
because I think what that means is. though we're
willing to share our opinions in lots of different
circumstances, when we have to literally stand
in front of others, all eyes on us, we suddenly
shrink in that light. We lose our sense of self
and we fall back on, I don't know, earlier versions
of ourselves, smaller versions of ourselves.
We fall back on jargon and vocabulary and perhaps
the... the discipline we're speaking in so we
can hide ourselves behind speaking it properly
with a level of objectivity that exonerates us
from what we are about to say or what we're failing
to say. So that means what all those problems
add up to is an enormous opportunity. And when
I found out how I felt about oratory, it was
just speeches that I'd heard before that would
make me cry. And I'm sort of like, what's wrong
with me? Why is this? Why is the timbre of this
voice still doing this to me? It's got my nervous
system. It's got my number. What's that about?
When I decided to teach a first -year seminar,
it was like, damn it, I'm not going to do playwriting.
I don't want to do creative writing with new
writers because I feel like that's too rarefied
in a way. I want to help people write better,
and the fastest way I know how to do that is
by helping them speak before writing. speak as
part of developing the writing and that's when
I put the pieces together and what if we study
speeches in order to analyze and ultimately deliver
our own what are the principles behind this and
can we apply them and correct me if I'm wrong
writing meant for reading versus writing meant
for speaking is very different ideally and and
it takes a lot for people to make that switch
To be able to write, to speak. Isn't that odd
that what we do all day is the hard part when
we do it in front of others? So we're used to
writing. We're used to sharing our thoughts that
way. It's not maybe our favorite thing to do,
but we've learned to do it. We've been schooled
in it. We spent many, many hours doing it. And
while I appreciate all the work that goes into
that, I wouldn't take a minute away from... the
schooling that we get in writing and in reading,
that I think tips the scales too far towards
an artificial voice that we develop that is the
voice we use when we write. So many people who
struggle with writing, it's because, as I imagine
it, it's they think it needs to be better than
they are. They think it needs to represent them
in a certain way. They think there's a protocol
that must be observed and it's not their way.
So they become artificial. In that first class
that I taught, I think it was 2011, I had a student
who was struggling to write, really whip smart
kid from upstate New York. And he would talk,
and he would describe what he was trying to do.
First of all, he would come in with a draft,
unintelligible. Just, I didn't know where to
start. So I kind of put my hand on his and said,
just tell me, what's this about? A few moments
later. I pull out, this is a dirty trick, maybe
illegal. I pull out my recording device and I
play for him what he just said. And I watch his
eyes light up because he's hearing his first
paragraph. He's hearing what he meant, but he
couldn't say it when he was trying to write.
But when he was telling me, just telling me,
it was perfectly cogent. It was all it needed
to be. So a lot of what I thought first year
writers needed was just calm down. Don't try
to write like someone else. Try to think. Try
to think out loud. Try to think out loud with
a group of people who are doing the same thing
and compare notes on what works and what's difficult
and how did you get over that. And I thought
we had really good results. I thought people,
when I went to their writing and talked to them
about it as if it were spoken, looking for that
clarity. trying to talk them down from all the
adjectives and the SAT words that had gotten
them here. Then I think they started to sense,
oh, this isn't what I thought it was. I'm not
trying to be smarter than I am. I'm not trying
to convince you that I, I'm not writing only
to convince you that I understood. I'm writing
to show you what my experience was, which takes
them out of the role of writing something, the
only purpose of which could ever be for a grade.
to please a teacher and taking them to the place
where it's like, maybe there's something in this
for me. Maybe I had an experience worth sharing
in relation to this material that we're looking
at, often in relation to a speech we're hearing.
When oratory kicked in, it was obvious that the
key to that particular angle to helping students
do it on a scale was to have students doing the
coaching. So then... The challenge, and I still
love it, was how will we help someone help someone?
Now we've got to really essentialize these skills.
What is at the bottom of this? Because if you're
not crystal clear, it's going to get distorted
as it goes out. Not everybody can do what a director
does and stand there and come up with the perfect
comment that helps someone find their intention.
Many of us just want to say, could you say it
slower? Could you speak up? And the principle
that a theater director would use, it wouldn't
be correction. It certainly wouldn't be, let
me say it the way you should say it, right? The
line reading. So some of those concepts from
the rehearsal room, basically all of those concepts
from the rehearsal room, informed the curriculum
that we developed in Oratory Now. come to believe
since then is that we need more and more opportunities
to do that. So there are speaking competitions
that we built, but most recently the first year
symposium. So this is how I get to my claim,
right? So in 2018, there were four classes that
met at the same time my first year seminar met,
and we decided to do a symposium to each other
at the end. It was a positive psychology class,
a class about Italy. places in Italy and there
was an Arab, a Middle Eastern studies class and
my oratory class. So zero in common, except here
we were doing our first year seminars. But the
mere fact that we were going to present to each
other changed the nature of what we were doing,
not the entire semester, but we knew we were
working toward it. And in fact, one class we
actually did together, but it just meant. We've
got to understand this at such a level that we
can communicate it to somebody who didn't read
the same books, who didn't look at the same maps,
who doesn't have the same vocabulary. And in
an accessible way. Called public scholarship.
You know, look it up. So it has now expanded
to where over the past three years, we ran a
first year symposium that more than half of the
first year seminars participated in. So we had,
I remember the number, not from this last year,
but the year before, 337 presenters, a lot of
kids, more than half of the first year class
in the fall. They presented to each other a minute,
two minutes, three minutes max. They might be
group presentations. It might be the spring symposium
for all students, might be poster presentations.
There was a performance at one point, some drumming
and so on. But the idea is show what you know.
And I'm a big proponent of that. You know, I
just feel like if instead of writing, if instead
of proving what you know by writing the paper,
or better yet, in addition to writing the paper,
you've got to find a way to share that out. That
is, that changes the dynamic. First of all, it
puts you, it makes you a first year scholar.
It puts you in a community, and it shows you
your community. I try to imagine what it's like
to be a first -year student here, and what I'm
told is the major thought coming in is, will
I have friends? Forget education. It's social.
Will I have friends? Well, the friends you meet,
you might meet in class, but not many people
talk about friendships founded in class. More
often, extracurriculars. Well, what if as you're
doing your extracurriculars, as you're living
your life, one of the ways in which you come
to know other people is academically, is through
the way their mind works when they're addressing
a topic of interest to them. So that got me jazzed.
And I started thinking that that could be the
organizing principle for a revision of the first
year seminar program, which will revolutionize
education at Middlebury, unify it. And I haven't
really figured this part out, but somehow it
will balance the budget. Okay. Can I go on? Oh,
absolutely. Okay. So right now we have what's
called the college writing requirement. And among
faculty, there's a fair amount of concern that
some feel quite comfortable doing that, teaching
writing. Others avoid it like the plague and
others. go along with it but just feel like this
is not my best stuff this is not me playing a
home game my subject matter i love it i i can't
wait to share it and i'm willing to do the writing
component but not happily yeah and then there
are others who just refuse they just won't and
i have some sympathy for that i i also have an
argument against it which is yes but you may
not write, but you do communicate and you do
show your work and you show it in certain ways
that help people outside your field understand
it, that's public scholarship. Let's do that.
Let's all do that. So my thought is replace CW
with public scholarship. There's a public scholarship
requirement element to the first year seminar.
You can do it in a symposium context. You can
do it in a podcast. You could do it with a museum
exhibit. You know, the goal or the challenge
is to show your work outside. And what that would
be doing is putting the liberal art of oratory
to work, unifying the first year seminar. What
to me is even more exciting than that is that
it would be using that liberal art that has been
around since before the Greeks, probably, but
certainly since the ancient Greeks. It would
be using one of the liberal arts to unite the
liberal arts, to show the commonality of it.
So I don't mean this, but I'll say it anyway.
Just imagine that you take every title of every
first year seminar that's taught. And you put
and the liberal arts after it. So whatever that
course is, what was your first year seminar?
I took fairy tales of the world. And the liberal
arts. Okay. Growth and its limits and the liberal
arts. So would they literally have to put and
the liberal arts in? I don't think so. But I
have two ways of thinking about it. Make connecting
your subject matter to the liberal arts part
of the mission. of the first year seminar, or
better, make it the challenge of each season
of first year seminars. Next fall, whatever's
taught, each course will include a reflection
on how this relates to the liberal art, how it
is part of the interwoven network of disciplines
that makes what we do here so valuable. We have
to get people ready for jobs that don't exist
yet. We have to create learners who don't leave
here with their professional skills and knowledge
base sufficient to what's going to be asked of
them. It's just not possible. We don't know what
you need to know, but we know some protocols,
some disciplines, some capacities that would
help you make whatever maneuver you need to make.
So first year seminar and the liberal arts is
my idea for how to reimagine the first year seminar
program. Now, I believe that what happens in
your first months here will have an outsized
impact on the rest of your time here. If at the
end of your first semester, you feel like you
have a sense of what other people are up to,
you have a respect for the disciplines that you...
don't know anything about or know very little
about. You've actually learned something from
your peers. You know them as people who have
been part of an experiment to see how they respond
to the game go, to growth and its limits, etc.
And in that pursuit, what we've managed to do,
and this may sound more mercenary than I want
it to, is we've sold you on the model of education
that you've bought into. We've tried to prove
that the liberal arts is the most effective way
to train someone. That grounding, that sense
that I don't need to study something else to
have an appreciation for its value. I do find
other ways of learning and thinking attractive.
And while I'm here, I want to visit them. I didn't.
go to business school. I came here. That's what
I think could help the liberal arts earn its
keep in a society that is increasingly questioning
the value of the liberal arts, the value of higher
education in general. What will replace us if
we're not winning that argument? Professional
schools, right? It will be that you just go into
a slipstream learning. to perform a certain job,
regardless of the other skills that could help
you do it at a higher level. So there's my monologue
turned into of a case that I want to make on
my way out the door. I think of it as totally
uncontroversial. There couldn't be, I can't see
any problem with it. And I don't know why it
won't be immediately adapted. So the obvious
benefit to having students trained in oratory
is of course, in any job that one applies for
or in any leadership position, communication
is key. And when people start communicating with
ums and ahs and buts and likes and all of that,
it shows that they don't know their own thoughts.
They're not being able to process it out well.
Apart from the obvious benefits of being able
to communicate effectively because you have the
future leaders of the world coming up from from
places like this. And of course, my generation
is going to take on the world and be responsible
for it. Would you say that public speaking and
oratory has a larger role to play in the education
system itself, apart from the obvious benefits
of communication skills? Oh, you'll be shocked
to hear my answer. Yes. Think of it this way.
We inhale what we read and what we hear. We exhale
what we write and what we speak. And these modalities
are connected. And that is how we learn that
there's an in and an out. So this particular
skill, speaking, the corollary of writing, is
not just a subject matter, but a way to learn.
It's a capacity that allows us to internalize
what's going on around us and to make use of
it. It allows us... to interact minus listening
and speaking, we're not very effective and we
can't experience that thing that sustains us
social life without it. So this is about as core
as it gets. It is literally the breath without
which no human. So I started thinking it's not
just good in those obvious ways? In what way
is it also good, but perhaps not self -evidently?
When you are speaking, the challenge is that
you're doing it with your body in front of other
people. If you could just send the message, it
would be much less anxiety -inducing. We all
know this. It being there physically, especially
standing, your whole body exposed. So how does
one get over that? Well, for one thing, You learn
process anxiety. You learn to deal with anxiety
and you learn to maybe relabel it as we like
to say as excitement. Because it's that too.
It's performance energy. Especially for actors
and young performers going on stage right before
your cue, you can just feel your heart going
all over the place. Athletes know all about this,
right? If you can't control or channel that.
wonderful adrenaline rush that you get and the
kind of focus that you get. If you can't refocus
under duress, you're not going to perform well
in any pressure situation. So it's practice for
that. But I was thinking of it this morning.
If we want you to leave with something, where
is that located? And I don't want it to just
be in that small real estate of your cranium.
I want it to be more lasting than that in your
whole body. You need it in your bones. You need
this sense of yourself, which is that I can stand
here and not feel awkward standing here. That's
an enormous accomplishment. What that's telling
your nervous system is apparently I deserve this
attention that I'm about to get, that I'm getting.
And I'm capable of riding the emotions. that
stir me, that come up involuntarily. Yup, there's
that little fluttering in my stomach. Yup, there's
the sweat that I didn't really particularly want.
There's the crack in my voice. Just imagine the
power of being able to ride all of that, to anticipate
it even, and go, I'm okay with that. Because
when you see that speaker in the front of the
room, riding that Bronco. You are mesmerized.
You relax. You go, if this person makes a mistake,
we will not all die here. We're going to be okay.
This person isn't really, you know that guitar
player in the open mic who gets up there and
goes clunk clunk and then says sorry? And everybody
just goes, oh no. Like you mistook this situation.
You think this is about showing us how good you
are. But we wanted to hear your song. You know,
we wanted to enjoy this together, but you're
not going to enjoy this because you're just not
ready yet. You're not there yet. And I've certainly
done that, right? I've certainly gotten up and
apologized for myself. But what that tells you
is you need some work. You need a different attitude
towards what's happening when you're the front
of the room. And I think a human out of that
situation. right? Take yourself out of standing
in front of the room. Now, let yourself sit across
the table from someone. If you feel like this
may not go exactly as I want, but I'm going to
be okay. I'm not going to lose contact with this
person. I'm going to keep connecting on the assumption
that I really don't have to hide my lack of ability
because my ability is enough, right? So if you
could leave college, feeling like I went to college
and learned how to feel better in my bones when
it's my turn. And I also learn to listen better
when it's not my turn, because that's my turn
too, in a way. It's my turn to listen. And maybe
I start to prize my ability to listen to three
people speak and then say something that sums
up the situation we're in. in a way that's helpful
to that group. Pretty useful. Pretty useful professionally,
but just plain useful. So that's interesting
what you just said. It makes the monkey mind
jump around. Knowing what to say and when to
say it is very important, but also knowing when
not to speak and when to stay silent is a very
important thing. And being silent or... The power
of silence is something that's very important
from a multitude of perspectives, but specifically
from an oratory perspective. I love that you've
caught that part of it. If you think of speaking
as the loud end of a spectrum, then silence is
the other end of that spectrum. It's the absolute
opposite, the silence. And your capacity along
that entire range is your superpower. Being loud
and not being able to also be quiet is leaving
you without some really important tools. So what's
happening at the front of the room, if you manage
to calm the autonomic system, is that you are
quieting the body. You're quieting the breath.
And you're reassuring your nervous system that
silence is actually safe. I don't have to talk.
to avoid what's going on. A teacher told me the
other day about a student who reported, if I'm
not overly busy, I get really anxious. Being
busy all the time is how I avoid anxiety. And
what I want to say is fascinating. And if I were
your life coach, you might want to work on that
over time and see and sit with. What it feels
like to not be active. Because silence is a kind
of inactivity. You're going mute. And what happens
when you go mute? Where does your attention go?
Does it go to the monkey mind? Which for most
of us it does. There's the chatter. Why can I
not sleep so well at night? Because when I wake
up, I either have something I want to think about
or I have something I can't help but think about.
And it's often many things at once and not particularly
productive. So gotcha on the monkey mind. And
I think people flee, right? They're afraid of
the monkey mind or they don't recognize that
that's what's taken over. And silence is a way
of quieting the monkey. And even in negotiations
or communications, I think. Just staying silent
sometimes has a lot more power than people realize.
Even when I'm having an argument with my mom,
for example, I know I've messed up. We're hashing
it out and she just goes silent and stares at
me. And I was like, oh, wow, I can feel my soul
burning through my eyes. Message received. Message
received. I got it. Do you think when she does
that? It's to send that message or is it because
she's waiting for something to come up for her
that seems worthy of saying? I think it's more
of the formal. I think it's just one of those
things where it's take a minute to figure out
your stuff there. I'll wait. I'm waiting for
you. When you get to my level, we talk. You remind
me of something that. happens a lot with young
writers in my class, my playwriting class, they
read a play and the longest thing they're going
to have to write is a 500 word response where
I ask them not to analyze the play, but to draw
a lesson from the play that will help them be
a better playwright where they are challenged
to speak at least half about their own play and
half about the play they read. So they almost
always just analyze the play. They forget to
talk about their own play because that's what
writing has been. And many of them will do it
in one paragraph. Boom, 500 words, a block of
text. So you mentioned silence, and to me, a
paragraph separated by a blank line for the next
paragraph is a kindness, is a silence. It's a
declaration that I've completed a unit of thought.
Let that sit for a moment. Perhaps I've managed
to make it compelling enough that you're eager
to read this next paragraph. But it's not the
assumption, as it is with a big fat one paragraph
essay, that you're going to keep going regardless
of whether or not I make it interesting. So then
there's also within the rhythm of the paragraph,
the stops, the commas, the shaping of the thought
that's helping someone, in a sense, hear your
voice as they read you. I asked ChatGPT. I gave
it a compliment and he said, well, thank you.
And I said, no, no, no, seriously, like, how
do you do that? And it started breaking down
what it had just done. Because I was impressed
by not just the clarity of its thought, but by
its ability to really make a line that had a
kind of singing element to it that was very attentive
to rhythm and alliteration. And it said, This
is what the large language models study, and
we watch for pauses, meaning it understands the
rhythm of language and the power of the pause,
even in written language. And if you were to
look at its analysis of what it's doing when
it's trying to write well, when it's trying to
write, I'll say creatively, but rhetorically,
what you would see is it's learned every lesson.
that you kind of already know and maybe some
of which you follow. But we'd be better writers
if we just did what chat is trying to do because
it's figured us out on that level. Yeah, spooky.
The other thing that comes along with Oratory
Now is the importance of storytelling. And that's
something I've always lived by. If somebody asks
me, what do you want to do? I first and foremost
tell them I'm a storyteller. My medium may change.
It may be art. It may be poetry. It may be a
podcast. It may be very different things. But
one of my core principles in life is I'm a storyteller.
And there is an evolutionary need for stories,
I believe, in humans, something we studied in
psychology, is that we're extremely fascinated
by it. So what do you think the practical applications
of that? And along with being an effective communicator,
being an effective storyteller is in today's
day and age, especially when, you know, the world
is what it is and everybody could use a little
story here and there. Storytelling is the high
octane form of oratory. It's stealth oratory
because what it's doing is creating change without
apparently being intended to create change. The
parable is maybe a more obvious example of it
teaches you something. It gives you, it helps
you deliberate maybe. It helps you understand
something differently, but it uses story to get
you there. And I think that you talked about
the evolutionary part of story, and I'm a big
proponent of that. I agree that we sat around
the fire at night and we needed to know what
was safe and what was not safe. And we needed
each other's company. But the narrative that
we built around the day let us sleep or not.
And if the story is not yet assembled, we don't
sleep well. And our dreams will do it for us.
So the undigested experience of the day becomes
the food for the dream at night. And maybe the
nightmare. And then you get up the next day and
you go live another unexamined day in the life
and then come back and share notes. It's like,
what the hell was that? And what does it mean?
And how do I fit in? Because we need the narrative
container to hold ourselves. Otherwise, it just
seems too unsafe out there. We probably feel
less anxiety on some level today because there
aren't tigers, except there are, right? The tigers
of our monkey minds, you know, stalking us all
day long, not leaving us alone. But, you know,
there's people living through some real insecurity
right now, more than normal. Oh, yeah. And that
is the norm. That is the new norm. So what we're
doing with a story that makes it the highest
form of oratory in a way is we are creating an
experience for the listener. We're not just informing
them. We are grabbing their attention. We're
taking them through a series of events that include,
that incorporate their curiosity and their life
experience. At the best, and the Greeks had a
name for this, Anargeia. At the best, it's putting
us there. You are there is the idea. The well
-told story ends up and I walk up and I open
the door. I've gone into present tense now and
I look and there, right? And we've slowed time
and we've created the visual image and we've
got motion and we have everything zeroing in
on focusing their attention on this moment that
we're about to reveal to them. The structure
of the story is how we structure their attention.
So people are catching on to the attention economy.
They're more aware now that that's what social
media is playing to, is the currency of social
media is your attention. The click, the scroll.
That's, you know, that's one of the things that
makes it hard to sleep at night, too, because
they don't, it doesn't put your day together.
It kind of, kind of introduces a whole, what's
a group of monkeys called? Do you know this one?
Oh, there's your homework. Yeah. Right. A something
of monkeys, right? And they're unleashed in your
brain. I have a feeling we're about to find out.
I wonder if it's a school. I like to think they're
at school. It's a troop. A troop of monkeys.
A troop of monkeys. Oh, I'm disappointed. There's
a challenge. What's a better name? And what are
those names called, by the way? There's a title
for that title. There's a barrel. A barrel of
monkeys. Exactly. There's a barrel of monkeys
in your brain. That's much better than the truth.
That could be the spinoff for this. It's just
like we've gone from monkey mind to a barrel
of monkeys. Well, that's when you do a greatest
hits. It's the barrel of monkeys. We bring back
everybody who's been on the monkey mind. I have
like one big battle monkey for you. I love that
you call it a lab. I like your graphic. Congratulations.
And I'm excited to see what you find out when
you go around asking people questions. Thank
you. I'm excited too. Yeah. We usually end the
episode on a big note. So if you'd like to make
a claim or like some sort of advice for people
on like. Go -to life, improvising life or something.
I don't know. Or something on poetry. I don't
know if this is big, but here's what's been on
my mind recently. There's this hack that is so
easy and so powerful, which is that we spend
much of our life, and your title sort of alludes
to this, feeling a division between mind and
body and a competition. And I have a feeling
that a college student maybe thinks of themselves
as a mind goes to college. and gets its training,
but the body is just sort of, you know, the passenger
or the vehicle to carry him around. But what
I've learned through this practice called Yoga
Nidra that just blows my mind is the moment the
mind thinks about the body, the two come into
sync and both of them are calmed and quieted
and strengthened. And you give yourself resilience
just by allowing yourself to focus on what am
I actually feeling? And you might tell yourself,
what am I feeling on the bottoms of my feet right
now? And then what you notice is instead of,
and what you notice is changing you because the
sensation on the bottom of your feet was there,
but you weren't noticing it. So the act of noticing
something to do with your body is a simple practice
that to me, signals so much more because what
we in order to function we often have to stop
feeling what we're feeling ignore what we're
feeling get past what we're feeling grin and
bear it and that may feel like a lot of what
college is supposed to be just I got all this
energy I got all this strength I got all this
stamina I'm going to use it all and the people
who are trying to encourage you to do mindfulness
Not my favorite term. I like mind -body better.
But they've got your best interests in mind and
body. And if you're becoming desperate, if you're
losing faith that you can be quiet, you are a
candidate for trying it and getting enormous
benefits from all kinds of failure at it. Meaning
any effort to do it. can have an enormous impact
right away, right? Because you're the test case.
If you're already pretty cool, if you're already
pretty calm, if you already can bring your heart
rate down, well, you could work on it and get
better. But the person who can make the biggest
strides is the person for whom it is the most
difficult. So if you give it a try and it doesn't
work, that's a sign there's so much in there
for you. And if I were a student again, And in
fact, I intend to be as soon as I graduate in
May. That is what I would be trying to do is
not just trying to learn, but trying to figure
out how I learn and what I can do to help myself
learn. That's beautiful. Thank you, Dana. And
that brings us to the end of our episode. Thank
you so much for monkeying around with us. Stay
tuned for the next episode of the Monkey Mind
Lab.