Tim Ferriss: When you look at periods in your life where you feel like you’re in the zone, however you would define that, what are some of the daily or weekly practices that you spot, just in terms of the pattern of recognition, when you look back at these sweet spots, when you’ve just really been performing well and feeling good, are there any particular daily, weekly practices, morning habits, whatever comes to mind that you see as consistent?
Dr. Andrew Weil: Yeah. Well, I do have a sitting meditation practice, sometimes quite brief. But I do it when I first get up in the morning. And I’ve done that quite regularly for a long time. Part of that is my breathing work. Another is being physically active. And the forms of my physical activity have changed over my lifetime. In my 20s, I ran. Then I got signals from my knees that they didn’t like that. And I started biking, instead. Always did a lot of walking and hiking. And in later life, I’ve really gotten into swimming. That’s my favorite physical activity at the moment. I’ve lived with dogs for most of my adult life. And I can’t imagine life without dogs. And that has been a very important part of my emotional wellbeing, I would say. My connection with plants, which we started out talking about, brings me a great deal of fulfillment. But growing plants, using them as medicine, cooking.
[---]
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know what your current troupe looks like, but do you still have your – I want to say Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
Dr. Andrew Weil: I have two Rhodesian Ridgebacks, a male and a female who are – this is my third generation of them. And they’re stellar. For me, living with them has really taught me to be good at nonverbal communication. We’re really good at reading each other’s needs and wants and attentions. And that’s been remarkable training. There’s been also some – you probably have seen some of this research on some of the positive interactions with dogs, especially. One is that dogs are the only animal that holds our gaze. And most animals regard looking into the eyes as a threat. And dogs have evolved the ability to hold our gaze. And there’s research showing that when a dog holds your gaze, there is oxytocin released both in the dog’s brain and the human brain.
And the longer the eye connection is, the greater the release of oxytocin which is the bonding hormone. The results of a paper that came out in this past year, showing that when you exchange saliva with a dog – I won’t go into how that happens, but it happens – that this does very good things for your microbiome. And in particular, it changed it in ways that seemed to protect against obesity.
- Tim Ferriss Podcast
Dr. Andrew Weil: Yeah. Well, I do have a sitting meditation practice, sometimes quite brief. But I do it when I first get up in the morning. And I’ve done that quite regularly for a long time. Part of that is my breathing work. Another is being physically active. And the forms of my physical activity have changed over my lifetime. In my 20s, I ran. Then I got signals from my knees that they didn’t like that. And I started biking, instead. Always did a lot of walking and hiking. And in later life, I’ve really gotten into swimming. That’s my favorite physical activity at the moment. I’ve lived with dogs for most of my adult life. And I can’t imagine life without dogs. And that has been a very important part of my emotional wellbeing, I would say. My connection with plants, which we started out talking about, brings me a great deal of fulfillment. But growing plants, using them as medicine, cooking.
[---]
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know what your current troupe looks like, but do you still have your – I want to say Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
Dr. Andrew Weil: I have two Rhodesian Ridgebacks, a male and a female who are – this is my third generation of them. And they’re stellar. For me, living with them has really taught me to be good at nonverbal communication. We’re really good at reading each other’s needs and wants and attentions. And that’s been remarkable training. There’s been also some – you probably have seen some of this research on some of the positive interactions with dogs, especially. One is that dogs are the only animal that holds our gaze. And most animals regard looking into the eyes as a threat. And dogs have evolved the ability to hold our gaze. And there’s research showing that when a dog holds your gaze, there is oxytocin released both in the dog’s brain and the human brain.
And the longer the eye connection is, the greater the release of oxytocin which is the bonding hormone. The results of a paper that came out in this past year, showing that when you exchange saliva with a dog – I won’t go into how that happens, but it happens – that this does very good things for your microbiome. And in particular, it changed it in ways that seemed to protect against obesity.
- Tim Ferriss Podcast
No comments:
Post a Comment