Cali Alpert:
Welcome to Dropping In from Omega Institute, a podcast that explores the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. I'm Cali Alpert, dropping in today, Dr. Eric Loucks. Eric is associate professor of epidemiology, behavioral, and social sciences and medicine, as well as director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. He is also the author of The Mindful College Student: How to Succeed, Boost Well-Being, and Build the Life You Want. Eric focuses his research on the impacts of mindfulness and early life adversity on adulthood wellbeing. He has studied mindfulness meditation for over two decades and is a certified mindfulness based stress reduction instructor. He has over 100 peer reviewed publications and has received wide coverage of his research findings in outlets such as in New York Times and BBC news.

Cali Alpert:
I'm happy to say that Eric has also created a self-paced online course with Omega, titled The Mindful College Student: Finding Your Path to a Thriving Life, which can be found on Omega's website. There Eric sets the framework for finding ways to understand the unique challenges college students face and how mindfulness based skills can mitigate stress, cultivate wellbeing, and create a strong foundation for the future. Welcome Eric, thank you for dropping in today, so good to see you and hear you.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, you too. Really, it's a great pleasure to be here, so thanks for hosting me.

Cali Alpert:
It is our great pleasure. So I want to start with a nice, simple question, and I say that with a smile. What is mindfulness and why is it so crucial to adopt it?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, it's a great question with no one answer, and it's been interesting to be in the room with world experts trying to come to a consensus definition of mindfulness and seeing not so much consensus happening. It's something that we can point to. One of the most common definitions of mindfulness is that it's paying attention on purpose nonjudgmentally, which is one that was offered by Jon Kabat-Zinn and has had a lot of traction. I often define it as present moment awareness of our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical sensations.

Eric Loucks:
So there's that present moment element of just being aware of our entire experience, but then there's the quality of that attention that it's nonjudgmental, it's got curiosity, gentleness kindness, and another piece that I'm really appreciating that has come through with some of the ancient languages that Buddhism was first written down in like in Pali and Sanskrit is there's an element of remembering to mindfulness, and for a long time, I was like, "What do you mean remembering? That's thinking about the past. Why would that make sense?"

Eric Loucks:
Then I was reading this one story where it was talked about how mindfulness it's almost like an arrow that flies fast, and what it's doing is it's bringing our wisdom into this present moment. So we're remembering to bring our wisdom that we've gained over our lifetimes, wherever we got it from, and we're bringing it here to this moment, and that's something that I've really been using a lot in my teaching now.

Cali Alpert:
I love the idea of remembering our wisdom, the collective wisdom that we might not even be conscious of. Why do you think it's so easy for us to not remember that, the idea that we have to summon it up, that it's not our reflexive sort of MO every day?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, it's a good question. I sometimes wonder if it's just a fundamental human genetic thing, like the reason each of us are on the earth right now is because of all our ancestors that stayed alive and created more offspring and what it takes to stay alive and create more offspring isn't always bringing our wisdom into this present moment yet we all have that capacity. So part of meditation training is to train that capacity. So we're training ourselves in what we call like a tension control, how to place our mind where we choose to place it, and by doing that, we start to get better at doing that. Also, we're training ourselves in self-awareness.

Eric Loucks:
So if we're training ourselves to really be aware of our wisdom and bring it to this moment that we can do through a meditation practice focused on that, then that can potentially lead us to a healthier and happy life. It may not change how many offspring we have, for example, that would get to the next generation or help us may help us stay alive. I mean, I've had moments when it has, personally, but it certainly seems to be able to have the capacity to bring happiness and wellbeing and even potentially enhance our performance in the areas that we really want to excel in our lives.

Cali Alpert:
Given that most of your research and so much of your attention, and especially at Brown University in your writing is geared around young adulthood. What would you say are some of the biggest ills that are facing our young adults and college students these days? Because the list is so long, it must be hard to even prioritize in your work.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. It's a tricky time. It's a tricky time to be a young adult. When I was writing the book, I interviewed about two dozen young adults that had either gone through my programs or had really solid mindfulness practices themselves, along with the hundreds of young adults that have gone through my programs, and then the data that I look at too. There's a few things that really came up of, especially in the interviews. One was around their relationship with digital media and screens and how to work with that, whether it's the craving to engage or, I had one young adult who talked about how she had developed an eating disorder and some body image challenges and she shared that just about all of her friends had too, and that because of her looking at different kinds of apps showing different images of women, she just felt like what she should look like was actually unhealthy, but she had the desire to look like that on screen, and so she moved towards it.

Eric Loucks:
So I'm finding that there's a lot of opportunity actually for mindfulness to help use digital media just as a tool, just like humans have used tools over time. So let's use it for the things that really help life be better and notice maybe when there's a hook in it that we're getting caught in and to see if we can let it go when that's the case. So that's one that came up a lot. Another one has been around like finances, that cost of college has been outpacing inflation for decades, and the cost of housing has also really been going up, and then there's also more kind of job insecurity where the gig economy and stuff, and more kind of fluidity.

Eric Loucks:
So hearing a lot of stress from young adults about how to set themselves up and to not have too much debt and to be able to establish their lives and the stress kind of around trying to figure that out and a number of young adults talked about how they'd use mindfulness to really find a really healthy career path and to notice how they feel when they spend their money on certain things or when they make different choices that have economic impacts.

Eric Loucks:
So those are two big ones. We've seen anxiety and depression levels increasing in young adults for three or four decades now, and just even fairly recently stress levels and adolescents for the first time in history were higher than adults in the United States. So COVID or not, COVID is of course just magnified so much, that's another one that really comes up a lot, and these trends have been happening before COVID came too.

Cali Alpert:
As I'm listening to you giving some examples of some of the greater challenges facing young adults and adults and people of all ages really, it makes me wonder it's sort of a chicken or egg thing. Is it our human predisposition to respond to the world and byproduct being things like anxiety and depression, or is it that the outside world is becoming harder, and so as a collective based on how we're made biologically, psychologically, that it's inevitable that we're going to have more like the statistics that you cite are going to get higher?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. In some ways it's an amazing time to be alive. We're living twice as long now as we were just 100 years ago, twice as long. So I'm having to think of that with young adults or me. If I'm making a right mess of my life right now, well, I've got like twice as long to recover before I die than 100 years ago.

Cali Alpert:
That's one way to look at it. Yeah.

Eric Loucks:
So there's these kind of amazing things that I often feel like it's good to remember too and to kind of savor what in the world has really developed, so many fewer people are in poverty now than it used to be, and there's certain things that we know improve wellbeing that were almost like a given up until the last 100 years. So some of those things are like pretty healthy foods, like eating good numbers of fruits and vegetables, because up until processed food and stuff, that was kind of what was available or regular physical activity up until 100 years ago or so there was so much more, cars just came out like 100 years ago, or may maybe a little more than 100, but still. So how sedentary we are now and also including with COVID, but also with the work from anywhere, movement and stuff, there's a lot of loneliness now.

Eric Loucks:
There's a lot less interpersonal communication in a kind of like, I mean there's tons of Zoom meetings, there's no lack of that in a lot of our worlds, but that kind of meaningful connection is lesser, and all three of those are really good for wellbeing, and we're in this time and history where a lot of our jobs are pretty sedentary and a lot of our pastimes are too and processed food is inexpensive and it's tasty and it's not always so easy to have the time to cook the vegetables and fruits and-

Cali Alpert:
Especially in college.

Eric Loucks:
Especially in college.

Cali Alpert:
Or when you're starting out your life as a young adult, right?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, and college it's funny, but it's one of the lonelier times in life for many people because they've left their families, they often don't have a long term romantic relationship yet, don't have kids. They can certainly have friends, but there's a lot of time alone in college and as a young adult too. So it's the second loneliest time in life, that and end of life. So it's just, it's what we're working with right now, but part of mindfulness is to just see clearly. So that is what we're working with right now in society.

Eric Loucks:
So if we're experiencing obesity or craving for salty sweet items or we're feeling lonely or we're kind of out of shape, it's not all our fault. In fact, it's not really our fault. It's sort of the structures of society right now. So if you were feeling that you're in good company and with mindfulness, can we see that, notice it and then ask, well, what's a wise response in this moment to the world that we live in right now? That's part of what this course that I developed at Omega as well as the book helps lead young adults through.

Cali Alpert:
We've should also note here though, while we're focusing certainly again on your expertise in the young adulthood demographic that's spoken to, especially in the book and the Omega program, that where we're talking about during this conversation today really applies to everybody, the parents of these children, the relatives, the grandparents, the neighbors, right? Something that is much more universal.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. The course and the book, it is universal. So it is for everyone, but the stories are mostly focused on young adults in many ways, it's kind of peers teaching each other, and a lot of the research is focused in young adults. But that said, the course is about really connecting in with our body and our heart and our mind and applying it to day to day life that no matter what age we are, it applies.

Cali Alpert:
So before we start breaking down some of the specifics that are in your book and your general teachings, I'd love to hear you speak to how someone comes to mindfulness. Often people look for a practice or a therapist or whatever when they're in a place of crisis or difficulty or challenge, right?

Eric Loucks:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cali Alpert:
What do you say to people? I heard this so often, I'm sure you have too. Oh, I don't have the time to meditate. I don't have the time to be mindful. I'm too restless. My attention spans too short, which we know is precisely the reason that people like that can benefit. But what do you say to people that are having a hard time crossing the line to even commit themselves to adopt a practice?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. For me, I am a big fan of the opt in approach to mindfulness. So for people to see if it resonate with them or if they're curious about it and if they are, there's lots of ways in right now, and if they're not, there's many ways to health and happiness and meditation's just one and it may not be right for everyone. So I really try not to push anyone into it, but if they're curious and say, they're having trouble finding the time to meditate, it's an opportunity to explore it. Like Pema Chodron for example, who is a really wise nun who lives up in eastern Canada. I remember in one of her books she talked about, how, at least in her experience, meditation actually makes time, rather than takes time. And that's certainly been my experience too.

Eric Loucks:
So if I start my day with meditation, I just find I'm more grounded and I'm also more aware of what's the most important thing to do. So that say in the past, like I remember when I was a junior faculty member at McGill University, that's where my first faculty position was, and I had some really important emails to go out that were emotionally challenging for me, because I'd gotten this big federal grant, and I was really trying to get a big project moving with some very famous people, and I was kind of this young guy just out of school and I'm like, "Okay, I'll go get a cup of coffee and then I'll come back and I'll write that email."

Eric Loucks:
So I'd go and get that cup of coffee, which would actually get my nerves a little more jittery, and then I'd sit back in front of my computer and be like, "Hmm, tomorrow. I'll definitely send it tomorrow." Now when I meditate more, I can notice the challenging emotions come up and care for them, and also notice, say that coffee makes me jittery, so I don't drink coffee much anymore, and then do what is most important that my wisdom is telling me, and that actually creates time because I'm doing the most important things.

Eric Loucks:
So I'm spending less time spinning out, ruminating on stuff or running around getting a cup of coffee that I didn't actually need in the first place, and that's where the time can get created.

Cali Alpert:
So let's dig a little more deeply then into the idea of the, sort of the mental narratives or the mind streams as we can sometimes call them. Can you speak to, first of all, define what that is, the mind stream or when we get caught in the web of our thoughts, whatever language you use, I'd love to hear more about, and then we can dig a little deeper into what we do with that.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, sure. I mean, I would say at least with mindfulness based stress reduction that was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn that we teach at Brown University and have a teacher training program at Brown University for people that want to get certified and teaching it. So one of the things that they talk about is, is we're training ourselves to be aware of our physical sensations, our emotions and our thoughts and in many ways that's the entirety of the human experience. So these thought narratives, if I understand what you're sharing about, that's kind of like the thought domain, right?

Cali Alpert:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Eric Loucks:
So with meditation we're training ourselves to just observe the thoughts almost like we're sitting on the bank of a river and there's like maybe a twig floating on the river going by and we're just watching the twig go by and maybe it gets caught in a whirlpool or a little riverlet or whatever it is. So can we sit back and just watch our thoughts go by just no one is good information and that we don't necessarily have to act on our thoughts. So for many of us, when we have thoughts, it's just like, yeah, I got to do that. It's just like part of us and what meditation is training us to do is what they call like decentering or taking that step back, so that now we're just starting to observe our thoughts that we don't necessarily have to act on. We can, if it seems wise to act on them and we can also know they're just thoughts, and we also just let them travel by unless we feel like it's important to act on them. So that's sort of how I conceptualize that sort of thing.

Cali Alpert:
I love that visual, the twig in the river, it's a really good kind of palpable one to create a visual for what meditation or mindfulness can do for somebody. To that point, when you describe the idea of creating a little bit of space or a little bit more witnessing is a word that's used a lot in the mindfulness community or meditation community, can you speak to just the idea that we are not our thoughts and how important it is to recognize that, that there can be a separation? Because I think a lot of people don't even know that's a concept.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, like I kind of think of it as the way our bodies are set up, they have channels for information to help us better understand reality. So some of the channels are the senses, like the sense of sight or hearing or smell or touch, and then we also have the sensations of the emotions, that what emotion is here even for the podcast listener now, what emotion are you feeling right now? Taking that moment and observing it with kindness, whatever it is. So that's actually helpful information about how and who we are in this moment, and same with the thoughts. So what thoughts are here even for the listeners right now, what thought is in your mind right now? Whatever it is, it's unique to everyone in the world, this is your thought, and is it a common thought that you have quite a bit, or is it fresh and new?

Eric Loucks:
So through this process in so many ways, that's the entirety of the human experience that is helping us better understand reality and how to respond to reality. So that when thoughts come in, they're just one of the bits of data coming in along with our emotions and along with our sensations, and then the brain is kind of amazing of making a story up that makes sense of all those channels, and it's almost always at least a little bit wrong.

Cali Alpert:
Just a little bit.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. Sometimes more than others. So then there's, I think that helps with some humbleness and also not in life or things quite so seriously knowing they're just thoughts, it's just my perception and it's partially right for sure, and it's partially wrong for sure, and it's okay. My brain's just doing the best it can, we're all doing the best we can.

Cali Alpert:
Thank you for that. I think it's so important just to point that out, and you did that so eloquently, just the idea. I wish I had these tools when I was approaching late teens, early 20s, because it felt very melodramatic and legitimately there is a lot going on as you spoke to earlier. So there is a lot of gravity at that chapter in life, and I think our minds can do a really good job of exacerbating it unnecessarily. So I just think it's such a great concept just to introduce to people no matter where they are in their practice or just considering one that there's a place to separate their space between our minds and our essence. So your book, The Mindful College Student, it's a nice combination because it's very applicable. You've got personal stories, you've got science, you've got wisdom offerings, you've got practices.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. I mean, I think the book's almost designed like we're building a house and we start with a foundation, and the foundation in many ways is the body, and there's good evidence over decades around there's certain fundamental things that we can do with the body to help support the mind and the emotions and to live the life of our dreams. So the first part of the book is starting to connect in with our body itself, just in a nonjudgmental, curious way to see what signals are here. We do it in different ways, whether it's through a body scan, meditation where we're not moving, or we do it where we are moving with maybe some yoga opportunities or some mindful physical activity and start to explore into our relationship with diet and sleep.

Eric Loucks:
So some of the fundamental things that create like a really healthy body. So in many ways, that first chapter that's called opening the body is seeing if our body is open. In other words, does it feel healthy and free? And if not, why not? So like say this morning, I went for a swim and ate a really healthy breakfast. So my body's feeling like it's burn and clean right now.

Cali Alpert:
So how does that then if you start with the foundation of focusing on our body and our physical health, how does that springboard into the idea of the health and wisdom of our hearts?

Eric Loucks:
It was interesting as I was writing the book, it started to take this shape that matches a lot of ancient teaching from Buddhism. So one is on the four establishments of mindfulness and the other is on this suture of breathing awareness, and those actually have this sequence where you start with the body and bring awareness to it and care for it, and then you shift to the emotions or to the heart and bring awareness to it and care for it, and then shift to the awareness of like the thoughts or consciousness and care for them, and then shift to sort of like the spirit or more kind of advanced kind of Buddhist teachings on how everything's interconnected and everything changes, that kind of thing.

Eric Loucks:
So I kind of followed up a path that people have been following with success for thousands of years. So even with yoga, it's often been done to help prepare ourselves for really solid meditation so that if we can care for the body, even in those moments, just be like, oh, I might need a little bit of exercise or I might need to eat something healthy, then we can be with the emotions in an even stronger way because the body influences the emotions quite a bit, and they found impacts of physical activity on emotions, diet on emotions. So that becomes the next way in to really start to connect in with the emotions that we're setting that strong foundation in the body. So that's sort of the reason for connecting in that particular order.

Cali Alpert:
I'm curious about these themes and why they resonate with you, and where the early beginnings were for you as a kid or a young adult. Did you have issues then that sort of prompted you to become an expert in all of these different practices?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in so many ways, I too wish I had this book when I was young and I did have some teachers that I was super grateful for. One of the reasons I wrote this book was because young adults were asking me to teach this stuff at Brown and develop these programs and then this book too. I think one of my ways in to mindfulness and I think was racing in triathlons. So that's where we have to monitor the body and the mind over quite an extended period of time to keep it at optimal performance. So that not going too fast, that's kicking in like the anaerobic kind of zone and also not going too slow. So I did a lot of monitoring of my body during training and in races that improved my performance.

Eric Loucks:
Then my mom had a second cousin who did some piece work in Northern India and ended up marrying a Tibetan named Tecee Tithong who became the foreign affairs minister for the Dalai Lama when I was young.

Cali Alpert:
Wow.

Eric Loucks:
So I started to hear about the Dalai Lama just through family stuff and then started reading some of his books and just, it felt like a good fit it for me. Then as I went to undergrad college, I was just, I wasn't too concerned about spirituality and all that kind of stuff. Then as I got older, I was like, "Wow, all these people, I really respect in the world had a pretty strong contemplative practice." Whether it was Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa, or others.

Eric Loucks:
So I was like, there's probably something to it, and so I started to like really deliberately explore different contemplative practices and landed on meditation and mindfulness and Buddhist practice practices, and particularly with the teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and he had a very strong community, and he's also like not trying to convert anyone into Buddhism either which I really appreciated, and it kind of like fit well with kind of my scientific perspective and stuff where it's just like, try to emphasize if it works great, if not, it's okay, too. So it started to just help me become healthier and happier and just have tools to navigate life, I'm definitely far from perfect, but if I didn't have these tools, I'd be even farther from perfect. So it's been helpful that way.

Cali Alpert:
I'm interested in how you just characterize sort of your mind as a science oriented person, which is typically living in the left side of our brains, and mindfulness and meditation, which tends to be more of a heart based or right brain centered practice and modality. Did you ever struggle with that reconciliation along the way in your own practice?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if it really matter, I'm pretty ambidextrous. I feel pretty like I've got access to both sides. I got my daughter some calligraphy it's on my Instagram account, if you want to check it out, but I got them these calligraphy materials, like Asian brush painting, and we've been doing quite a bit of art together in that regard too, like contemplative art. But I've always loved science and my undergrad is in physiology, so I love knowing how the body works, and I was influenced by Leonardo da Vinci and people who just, one of my grandfathers in particular really appreciated the arts and music and for a career, I chose science because it makes a good paycheck and helps me contribute to society in ways that I enjoy.

Eric Loucks:
So I've chosen that, but I still play mandolin, do some art and love pottery. So I have had both in my life and actually value having both in my life. I feel like it makes me kind of a richer, fuller person and also helps me relate to more people, because wherever people land on that spectrum, usually pretty interested in it have those elements. I think all of us probably have those elements in us, but some maybe more in one direction than the other.

Cali Alpert:
It's so interesting that these ancient wisdom traditions, as I know you've studied a lot and practice says like meditation and mindfulness are thousands and thousands of years old, and yet in Western culture, it seems that the kind of work that you do on the research and science side helps to validate it and disseminate it to the masses and maybe mainstream it for lack of a better word, a little bit more successfully. Would you say that's true?

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. I think-

Cali Alpert:
People buy it a little bit more if they know.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. Yeah, and for me I am pretty fundamentally a scientist. So I appreciate the science to help inform my understanding of mindfulness and meditation too, and that's very consistent with Buddhist underpinnings of this work as well, where it like, test it out in ourselves and see. So even the mindfulness approach is very scientific. For us, it's often a sample size of one, like a study because it's just us experimenting on ourselves.

Cali Alpert:
Exactly.

Eric Loucks:
But in science, one of the new methods is what they call N of one trials where we take individuals and we give them lots of different interventions over time and you allow a little bit of a wash out period in between, and over time that starts to see the truth about what works. So yeah, we just have a sample size of one, but every morning we wake and we can try eating, right now my wife and I are playing around with really cutting out grain and dairy and really upping the vegetables. So I've been doing that for two days.

Cali Alpert:
How's that going?

Eric Loucks:
Yesterday morning I was grumpy, and then by yesterday afternoon I was feeling better and today I'm feeling better. I think I have a bit of gluten intolerance and a bit of dairy intolerance, and so does she. So there's an experiment I can run on myself and run it, and then at some point, like last weekend my had daughter made just a beautiful chocolate cake for Valentine's day. For me, I have a complicated relationship with sugar where it's quite addictive for me and it makes me quite grumpy though I love the taste. Your 11 year old daughter makes a cake for Valentine's day, how can I say no?

Cali Alpert:
What loving dad can refuse that?

Eric Loucks:
So, I eat the cake, but then I eat another piece of cake and then I eat another piece of cake. I think I had four pieces of cake that day. So there's an experiment I ran on myself of, okay, how does it go when I have one piece of cake? Oh, it makes craving for another piece of cake and another piece of cake and it's life. So the next day I just tried to be kind to myself, not judge myself or having picked out on cake and didn't have any cake the next day and moved on with my life.

Eric Loucks:
So it's sort of these experiments we can run as scientists on ourselves to just see with mindfulness and meditation, present moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, physical sensations. So how do we feel when we eat different things? How do we feel when we're physically active in different ways? And that's a big part of the course with Omega as well as the book to actually train ourselves to do that kind of work and to create the scaffolding that's a safe, courageous place to explore that within ourselves too.

Cali Alpert:
Well, I thank you for the confessional.

Eric Loucks:
Yeah. Sure.

Cali Alpert:
I think it's really, we like to have confessionals here in Dropping In, but actually it is the piece that's so important that you shared coming out of that because even an expert, even somebody such as yourself, we all have our vices in our days where we take our dips or our reflexes get the best of us, and then the next day, the forgiveness piece and the being gentle piece is so important, versus the shaming and the beating yourself up and the things that were so often inclined to do. So I'm glad you shared that. Thank you for that.

Eric Loucks:
Sure. They say sometimes the best guides are just like a little ahead on the river so they can point out the rocks, and sometimes I feel like that. I have two daughters, twin daughters, but one of them is just a really good climber and she's doing rock climbing a lot right now, and she was climbing trees starting at the age of two, and I'd have to hold onto her ankles so she didn't go too high. But one of the things, I just, I trust her so much with her climbing because she doesn't fall much, but when she does, she falls really well. She's very loose and she rolls, and I feel like that inspires me that when I have too much sugar or too much coffee or whatever that can I just fall well? Because we all fall. I don't know anyone who doesn't honestly.

Eric Loucks:
I feel like sometimes like gurus and teachers try to create this like aura of perfection, but when I get to know them and I know a decent number, I have yet to meet someone who doesn't fall sometimes and not to judge other teachers at all because there's just incredible teachers in this world. But I think it's actually a benefit to share how we fall because we all do, and can we fall well, learn what caused us to fall, really let it sink in and then bring our wisdom into this moment about what's that skillful next step. Often it's without judgment and with kindness and curiosity.

Cali Alpert:
So finally, I'd like to ask you these three questions that I like to ask every guest on Dropping In, it's kind of our rapid fire signature round. So the first one is I'd like to grant you one wish for our listeners, what would it be?

Eric Loucks:
Hmm. I think health and happiness for all our listeners, and it's certainly two big drivers of my life and something that I hope for, for all beings.

Cali Alpert:
What is something you wish for yourself?

Eric Loucks:
Hmm. Well, the same with maybe more ease as well.

Cali Alpert:
Finally, what is the most important offering that you would like our listeners to take away from our conversation today?

Eric Loucks:
When you say offering, like an offering that I have provided to them or?

Cali Alpert:
Something that's come up our conversation today that you really want them to grasp and take away, if there's one thing. You offered a plethora of really important things, but I'm just wondering if there's one takeaway that stands out.

Eric Loucks:
I think trust your wisdom, that so much of our lives, we've been exposed to a lot of wisdom and really trusting that and bringing it into this moment.

Cali Alpert:
So I want to thank you so much for your time today, it's been a pleasure talking with you, and I'd like to ask you if our listeners would like to learn more about you, your new book, any of your new endeavors, the Omega program. We know we can find on the website, where would you like them to find you?

Eric Loucks:
I mean, we just launched a website, ericloucksphd.com. So that's sort of a clearinghouse where we have free meditations and free videos and info and what's going on these days. So that's maybe the easiest one stop shop, but you can also check out the omega site for the course that's being launched and the books on most major platforms, if you just Google it or at lots of local bookstores too. But thanks, thanks for hosting me it was real pleasure to have this conversation with you. It's kind of neat that it's recorded, but even if it wasn't recorded, I would've enjoyed this conversation with you too. So thanks for hosting me.

Cali Alpert:
Thank you so much. Thanks for Dropping In with Omega Institute. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps new ears find us. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. To learn more, visit eomega.org/membership and check out our many online learning opportunities featuring your favorite teachers and thought leaders at eomega.org/onlinelearning. I'm Cali Alpert, producer and host of Dropping In, the music and mix are by Scott Mueller. Thanks for dropping in.