Episode #118: Monday Mornings with Neha Saxena
Why do we get off course so easily? And what are some strategies we can use to get back on course? On our regular Monday Breath Yogi segment, Neha Saxena helps us to understand how to control our thoughts, so we can control our actions. Plus, a quick breathing exercise to kick off the week the right way.
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Grad
It’s Monday. Welcome to the CXM Experience. I’m your host Grad Conn, CXO at Sprinklr. And as always, today we’re with Neha, our breath Yogi. We’re going to talk about being human, having a good week, and all the challenges that we face every day. So, let’s just chat about stuff for a second. I want to add a couple of really great experiences lately. I wanted to share them. A couple of things I’ve been doing that have really helped me. So, I had knee surgery about two months ago.
Grad
I’m doing my other knee in the fall and that’s going to be a really big deal. But this first knee, it wasn’t so bad. But anyway, I had to do a lot of PT to bring the knee back. And it’s funny how an event will have a big trigger effect. I started doing PT, and I started really enjoying working out and I was, like, I have to get back into this. It’s just sort of slipped out of my life. I used to do Pilates a lot. And so, I reached out and found a Pilates studio. And when I say I found a Pilates studio, actually, Sabrina, my world class assistant found a Pilates studio for me. And she is amazing. Oh my God, I don’t even know how I would live my life without Sabrina.
Neha Saxena
Are you listening to this, Sabrina?
Grad
I don’t think she listens to them actually. She never comments on them so I don’t think she actually listens to them. She is not just the best EA I’ve ever had. She’s the best EA I’ve ever seen, period. She’s one of the best people I’ve ever met as well. So, Sabrina found this for me and I’m working with this amazing Pilates instructor named Susan. And Susan has been doing it for a few years. But she’s got that really good instructor’s … in my experience, I’ve been doing Pilates for about a decade, or maybe a bit longer than that, about 10 to 15 years … and the really good ones are really conscious of your body position like they know exactly where to put you. And if you’re off by just a tiny bit, they’ll correct that. Because you could actually hurt yourself quite a bit or not get to the abs the way you need to get to the abs if your pelvic positioning is wrong. She’s amazing at that. And I’m going every single day. So, I’m at Pilates Monday through Saturday. I’ve never done that before. I’ve done a couple of times a week and stuff like that but I’ve never done every day. And it’s been amazing because there’s so much breath focus, and I can really feel the difference in the change. So, I was kind of thinking to myself, I guess it was this week …
Grad
This week I’ve noticed just how much stronger I’m getting. And I was thinking to myself, ‘What took me so long?’ Let’s talk about that for a second. You know, we often know what we need or know what we want to do and even what we like. I like Pilates, I’ve been doing it for years. Why did I get off course? I stopped. I know what happened. I moved to New York and everything got disrupted. It was very difficult. But then I couldn’t get back on my track. And it’s interesting that it’s only when I moved to Florida that I thought of getting on track again. I don’t know what that means about New York. But what is that? So, let’s talk about that a little bit. You must run into this all the time where people kind of are knowingly saying I know I should be … blank… but for some reason… and then suddenly, there’s a trigger event, which is sometimes unpredictable, and suddenly they’re back in and they’re like, ‘I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this doing this all along’. So, you get those type of things. I’d love to hear your experiences with that with some of the people that you coach.
Neha Saxena
Yeah, that is interesting you bring this up because it is true. All of us have those things that are nice to do, that we would like to do, but somehow keep getting pushed to the back and get into the background unless something happens that you can’t ignore them anymore. Actually, in my experience, it’s different for different people. For some, it could just be as simple as getting their priorities right. And for some, it could be real reasons like, “Oh, I had a surgery so I couldn’t do Pilates for two months. And then I had to find my way back slowly but surely.” I’m doing PT and there’s so much that goes on, on more than just a physical level if you go through something like that. Right now, your knee is injured, you have to recoup and you have to go to PT. That’s hard. This was a part of you that you had full control over and now you are kind of like at the mercy of someone and trying to get it back to normal strength. And then you do that, and it’s taxing. It’s not just taxing for your body. It’s emotionally and mentally taxing.
Grad
Actually, it is emotionally taxing. I’ll tell you something weird they did to me. And I’m not so sure about it. I’m going to have to think this through for my next knee. They don’t put you under a general anaesthetic anymore because generals are kind of dangerous. So, it’s a local anesthetic, but they give you this drug, and it’s referred to as the date rape drug. And what it does is, it causes you to lose short term memory. So, you are awake, fully conscious and actually conversing. Who, though, knows what I said, right? But you don’t remember it. And that’s how they do it now. You’re kind of sort of unconscious because you can’t remember it, but you’re not actually unconscious, so they can get you to move around and do stuff and all that kind of stuff. So just wrap your head around that for a second. I’m generally kind of slightly weirded out by that, but I’m kind of okay, except for one thing that I am not enjoying. Which is, well, I’ll give you a caveat in a second, but I couldn’t remember the surgery consciously. Okay. But I’m a big dreamer. I dream a lot. I am a very vivid dreamer and I have very, very detailed dreams. And I do remember the surgery in my dreams.
Neha Saxena
Wow. Interesting. It’s like, yeah,
Grad
… that’s when I’m sleeping, it’s like I keep waking up on the surgery table. It’s not a good experience. And now I’m actually consciously beginning to remember it, I think, because my dreams are informing my conscious mind about what actually went on. It’s not good. So, I may stay conscious next time. Maybe I don’t want that. I think I’d rather almost not. Because this kind of particle memory thing has always with it just an element of what a horror movie is.
Neha Saxena
Two things, right, like this thing that you brought up about emotions being at the core. So, there’s this whole cycle of how we feel informs how we think, and how we think informs how we act. Right? And then how we act again, makes us feel a certain way. Right? So, if you feel hungry, the emotion is hunger, we have the thought that ‘Oh, I should go and eat’. And then you take that action, you eat your food, and then you feel full. And when you feel full, you say, ‘Okay, I think I need to stop eating’. And then you stop eating, do you see this loop? So actually, how we act is definitely determined by how we are feeling. So, coming back to our key question that we started out with, ‘Why do we procrastinate?’ or ‘Why do people get off things that they really think that they should be doing?’ somewhere? That’s emotional awareness. That’s emotional intelligence, being aware of ‘How am I acting?’ ‘What am I saying?’ ‘What am I doing?’ And that’s why sometimes it’s very different from what people say and what people do, because it comes back to neuroscience and even that whole point about dreams, because when you go back to the dreaming state, there are four states of consciousness; the awake state, the dreaming state, the sleep state, and then the fourth state is what we call the meditative state or there’s a Sanskrit word for it. But in the dream state, the mind is actually working; the brain is classifying information into different parts of the brain. There’s something called the glymphatic system, which is really going to work getting all those toxins out of the brain and the brain is refiling and reorganizing all the information. You have very lucid dreams and it’s like, ‘Okay, what do I do with this?’ ‘What do I do with this operating table memory?’ I think a little bit of hypnotherapy or EFT might come in handy.
Grad
I just had face surgery too. And that I did fully conscious. I did nothing for that.
Neha Saxena
Fully conscious for face surgery? Were you freaking out? Oh my god.
Grad
Well, actually, it was fine. I was freaking out a little bit. And it was funny because the plastic surgeon could see I was a little bit nervous because he walks in the room with a needle that he’s literally carrying in two hands and he starts to wave it near my face. And I’m thinking, ‘Holy smokes’ That was freaking me out a little bit; it was also happening a little quickly. And he was a little thrown off and goes, ‘Hey, calm down’. And puts his hand on my forehead, like I’m a dog, and puts my head back and says, ‘Calm down, calm down’. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, this is kind of working. It’s kind of weird’ but I did calm down.
Grad
He has this giant, like almost a comedy size needle. Like it was like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon and puts it into my face. And then I said, ‘I don’t know, I think I can still feel it’. And he goes, ‘Can you feel this?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I can’t feel that’ and he goes, ‘Well, I just stuck my knife into your face. If you didn’t feel that you’re not feeling anything’. I’m like, ‘All right’. And he proceeds to cut three inches of hole in my face. And so that I will say that memory is slowly displacing the knee dreams. Interesting. Yeah, if I have surgeries with higher levels of consciousness each time, I’ll forget about the other ones. But you know, I do find my one of my favorite things to do is I like to break my sleep up. So apparently, humans didn’t used to sleep eight straight hours, originally what we used to do is typically go to sleep when it got dark. And then we would often wake up in the middle of the night, which is where the expression nightlife comes from. And then people would go out and actually do things. And then go back and sleep again, and then get up when it was light again. And I’ve been doing that now for years. And it’s pretty fun, because I kind of have my own little party in the middle of the night. And then I go back to sleep again. And I find that my dreams in the second half are amazing. I am really excited to go to sleep and see what dreams I’m going to have. I have these crazy dreams in the second half whereas in the first half, when I tend to be more exhausted, I don’t tend to dream the same way or as much. So, I find that if I can get some sleep, take a break and then go back to sleep. I get a really great sort of dream sleep. And I enjoy that. And that, to me is a form of consciousness because there’s stuff I learn and things that I do in that stage, which is always fun.
Neha Saxena
The crazy thing is that I never remember my dreams ever, like in my whole life. So maybe one or two or two dreams. So, I just don’t and I think there are ways that sleep experts can help you remember them, but they’re like, ‘Are you sure you want to remember your dreams?’ So, I don’t remember my dreams at all.
Grad
I create a whole world in my dreams. It’s really the best. It’s like an entire other existence.
Neha Saxena
Oh, really? And do you still wake up refreshed?
Grad
It’s like I’ve got another life going on. It’s great.
Neha Saxena
Well, maybe you do. So, Grad, which one’s real? Is this the dream? Or is that the dream?
Grad
Yeah, well, yeah, generally I prefer this particular reality. But sometimes dreams are pretty cool. So, you’re working on stuff too in your dreams, right? Like, I had one dream where I got a chance to live my life over again and made a whole bunch of different decisions. And then things turn out differently, but not necessarily better. It was a really interesting way of dealing with some sort of decision angst I’ve had recently and so, really, it was great. That must be my favorite thing to do is to have those. But let’s talk about this. Let’s talk a little bit about this sort of thing where people know they’re doing something that they shouldn’t be doing but they do it anyway, I find that fascinating. I don’t know if you and I talked about this or it came up some other time but there’s this animal brain that we have that is very reactionary and very instinctive, then we’ve got this intellectual brain, which is the one that tends to argue with itself all the time and tends to know what’s going on. And then we have this intuitive brain, which is the one that makes leaps and often is the inventive brain or the one that comes up with new ideas. I think we don’t tend to spend as much time in intuitive as we’d like to, we tend to be controlled, often more by the animal than we should be. And then the intellectual is always going to sit in there and try to navigate between the two. And I think as we’re more tired, animal brain drives us more. I don’t want to say this person’s name, but I had a manager. I’m not going to even use a pronoun, because if I use a pronoun, everyone will know who it is. But I had a manager and this person and I are talking at a party. And the person said, ‘Yeah, I had a really rough night last night. So ate a box of Oreos’. And I was like, ‘ha-ha’.
Grad
And then I was like, ‘Are you serious? You ate an entire box of Oreos?’ And this person said, ‘Yes, I ate a whole box of Oreos’, but looked at me kind of strangely, like, ‘Haven’t you?’
Grad
No, I’ve never eaten a box of Oreos or any box of cookies like that? No, that sounds disgusting. I don’t know how you’d even do that. But since then, I’ve learned that many people do that, many people just are
Neha Saxena
Emotional eaters. Yeah.
Grad
So where does that come from? Where’s that animal coming from?
Neha Saxena
Like you said, it’s the primitive brain. And as you know, if you look at human evolution, it’s the part of the brain that just takes over, we’re not saying, ‘Okay, do I need to keep my heart beating?’ ‘Do I need to keep breathing?’. Those kinds of things are happening on their own. So, when we feel even a whiff of stress, we get back to the most primitive part of the brain, which you’re calling the animal brain; that brain takes over. Like, there’s nothing you can take up, forget about using your rationale about ‘I shouldn’t be eating those’, that is not working at that time, because some people call it the amygdala hijack, or the primitive part of your brain just hijacks that center. And that’s what also happens when people have PTSD, so to speak. You get a trigger. From my own experience, I knew, ‘Okay, if I’m going into this situation, I’m going, probably, to respond this way’. I don’t want to but when I would be there, I had no control. It was just like that part of my brain was hijacked. And that instinct is really just trying to keep us alive. Because that’s the first instinct – to protect myself and keep myself alive. Once I have that, then maybe I can think intuitively and creatively and that’s the whole thing. There are no tigers, nobody’s killing us. But the moment we start feeling like somebody is attacking our identity, something like my relationship’s going, I’m going to fail. Anything like that elicits the same response. It gets that primitive part of our brain to take over and then we are at the mercy of our emotions. The emotions take over. We don’t know we eat. Sometimes I will. How I would respond is I would say things that I don’t want to say. It wasn’t fun. It was so it was so painful. I would say things that I do not want to say and I knew I was going to say that but it is just not awesome.
Grad
It’s just going to be interesting. We’ll spend time together over the next couple years so at some point you’re going to say something to me and I’ll think, ‘Oh, there! Oh, that’s what that is. Okay’.
Neha Saxena
Oh, I hope not. But yeah
Grad
Everyone eventually says something like that to me. Trust me, it always comes. It’s just a matter of time. Well, so there is this other model. And again, I’m not sure we’ve talked about this or not, but there is this model of controlling your actions, controlling your words and controlling your thoughts. And so, classically, we should strive – those are, I think in order of difficulty – so striving to control your actions is something that I think most of us in professional settings are pretty good at. Someone says one thing that you find offensive or you find upsetting or you find ridiculous or whatever, you don’t strike them, like slap them or throw something at them. You just say to yourself, ‘Wow, what an idiot’ but you don’t say that out loud because that’s the second level of control which is controlling your words. Now, it sounds like for you controlling the words may start to be the thing where leakage occurs, right?
Neha Saxena
Not anymore. That was my PTSD response when I would get stressed, really stressed, then my heart rate would just go through the roof, I would start breathing and I would imagine the worst. I would imagine the worst and then behave in a way which would be to say words that were defensive which wasn’t really called for. But that’s a whole different thing. But having control over your thoughts is hard. Can you control your thoughts? Let’s try this.
Grad
That’s the next level to control your thoughts. And I think actually, I feel really good about actions, I haven’t struck anyone in anger in a long time. Sorry, Morgan. That’s my brother. He was fine. Controlling your words, now that’s something I have been working on. And I feel very good about that. Now, when I’m confronted by stuff, I think I’m very good now about processing it and not reacting immediately. And there’s lots of times people say things to me where I’ll be like, ‘well, boy, this is like …’, and this is something I’ve not always been good at that so this is something where I’m much better. And I generally avoid email, which is where I still potentially get myself into trouble. But I just don’t use email anymore. Seriously, if you can’t fix it, then stop using it. That’s helped a lot.
Grad
But the thoughts that I’m actually working on and something in particular, which is pretty personal, so I can’t really talk about it here but there is something that has been banging on the door of my brain for the last couple of months. I guess he was kind of coincident with the knee surgery actually. And, and I, at first, was just letting it wash over me. And then you know, having all the fields that go with that. But lately, I’ve been like, you know, I’m going, to manage that thought, I don’t think that thought is correct or I want to reframe that thought or contextualize that thought or provide perspective around that thought for myself versus just letting myself be the victim of my own thoughts. And I find that that’s actually been remarkably effective. And so, I’m working a lot on that. And then I think if you can get to a point of controlling your thoughts, it’s a lot easier to control your words and actions.
Neha Saxena
Yeah, no, I agree.
Grad
You typically say stupid things when you haven’t got your thoughts sort of set. And then you’ll say things sometimes that are hurtful or dumb or insensitive, or not thought through and stuff like that. And so, I’m trying to get to that level if I can. I think that leads to happier life.
Neha Saxena
Now, totally. And actually, for the normal average person, it’s very, very hard. You cannot manage the mind from the level of the mind. Like if I tell you, ‘Okay, Grad, close your eyes. Think about anything in the whole world except for your bear’. And the image of what pops up? Exactly. The bear. So, it’s hard to manage the mind from the level of the mind. And if you resist the thought, it’s going to keep coming back with a vengeance. I love the bear by the way. He’s cute.
Grad
Because people can’t see us, right? We can see each other. But they can’t see us. It’s just audio. So what Neha was talking about is on my desk right behind me. I have a little FAO Schwarz bear that my girlfriend bought for me. And he’s got a little tail jutting out of his pants which is pretty cute and it says ‘FAO Schwarz’ on the bottom of the paw, and he’s wearing a little top hat and a little jacket. It’s kind of like a ringleader. And he definitely looks very dapper. So, you’re right. As soon as you say: ‘Don’t think about the bear, think about anything but the bear’. You’re right. Yeah. All you have to think about is the bear. And yeah, the mind is hard to manage from the mind. I love that expression.
Neha Saxena
And that’s where the breath comes in. And when you if you really actually want to get to the level of mastery that you were talking about where it’s not so much about controlling thoughts. The more you’re going to try to control them it’s going to be so much effort. And we’re somehow wired that ‘Oh, I have to put effort’. Thoughts just come up, they just come up just like waves in a freaking ocean. There are so many reasons why certain thoughts come up. And there’s a whole lot of talk about that. But thoughts just come up just like bubbles in water. And so, the idea is to get that the breath is the tool. It’s not about trying to shove those thoughts away, or to invite thoughts away. If you really want to get to that equilibrium, it’s about being in that state of observation, without attaching any meaning to any thought, it’s just a thought. And if you let that thought in, if you keep chewing on the thought it becomes nice and you start to feel something about it. And when you start to feel something about it, then you again, have some thoughts about what you should and should not do. And then you start to act a certain way. But the first moment the thought springs up, it just could be like, oh, here’s one bubble. And here’s another bubble. And here’s another bubble. It’s only when you take that thought and the mind keeps going and chewing on it that it starts to turn into an emotion of feeling. So, it’s very hard for normal people to say, ‘Okay, no, no, no thought, no thought’ If you’ve ever tried to sleep and you’re not being able to sleep, and you’re like, ‘Okay, no, Grad sleep, sleep’, you’re going to be awake, right? Forget about sleeping. The more you tell the mind do something, the less it does it. So that’s where the breath comes in. And it’s a really, really handy tool. Like, if this is the middle of the night, your Pilates studio is not open, you can get back to your breath. I’ve spent a lot of time with many people who’ve been meditating for a long time. And it’s not about resisting the thoughts. It’s about getting to a level of comfort where, whether it’s a positive thought, or whether it’s a negative thought you’re able to not cling to either of those.
Grad
Well, let’s stay on that for a second. That’s very interesting comment. I do agree with you, by the way. I mean, I do find that doing a breathing exercise and meditation exercise, if for some reason I’m having trouble sleeping, is very helpful. But this particular thing that happened to me a couple months ago, … happened to me … is not quite the right words, the particular thing I learned a couple months ago, is probably a better way to put it. It’s fraught with potential issues, right. And so, I was talking to my therapist … I’m a big believer in therapy as well, a reasonably new convert to it … and he’s saying, ‘Well, can you imagine yourself never mentioning this?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can. And he says, ‘Really?’ I know. ‘Yeah, I could probably never mention it’. ‘Well, okay’, he said. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. And he said, ‘The research shows that the more you suppress something’, the is the point you’re making, ‘the more you suppress something, the bigger a deal it becomes over time. And then ultimately, you might be in a situation of stress, or anger, or maybe you had too many glasses of wine or whatever. And then this thing pops out, and it comes out in a not particularly productive way’. And so, his general recommendation is that he thinks I should talk about it, but I don’t know. I don’t know, I actually don’t know, because I also find that sometimes stuff like this can be hurtful, because once it’s out there, you can’t pull it back in, right. And so, I am trying to see if I can control the thought in a way that I just don’t ever have to bring it up.
Neha Saxena
So, I think you’re trying to control. See, the thought is there. I think, correct me if I’m wrong, when you say I’m trying to control, maybe there’s this desire to not have that thought anymore or not act on that thought. And the more you try to keep resisting it for a longer period of time, maybe some emotional will start getting attached to it. Now you’re getting maybe frustrated over a period of time, or there’s something building up, I would recommend journaling, you don’t have to put it out there. Journaling is a really good leadership tool to build emotional quotient. Bring those things that are brewing in your subconscious and unconscious mind and put it out on the paper and get clarity around it. Get to the heart of the matter. What is causing that thought to pop up back and back; what is really gnawing at you. Because if it’s been around for a long time, something’s going on there. Something with the new is kind of saying, ‘Okay, Grad, this is not fun. This is not happening. Something’s going on’. There is some energy behind that thought. So, I would get clarity on what that is. And then you can reframe that. Because until you sort of understand the fundamental issue there, the reframing is not going to work. If you give yourself logical reasons that ‘Okay, this is not a good idea, it’s not good for me to do this’. But even if you don’t act, somewhere, internally, it’s causing a biochemical change in your system.
Grad
Yeah, well, that’s good coaching, actually. Because the thing about journaling, it’s interesting. I’m always a little bit nervous about starting to write because inevitably it turns into a blog post with me, and that could potentially be a real problem. But I’d say that the act of writing (what I’ve always found fascinating) is you take a lot of disassociated thoughts that are sort of unformed, or they may seem formed to you, but when you try to actually express them on paper, they are less formed, right? You see, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is really messy thinking’. And then the writing forces you to put more structure around it, and maybe sort of have some more context. So, that’s a really good piece of advice. Maybe I’ll try that actually. But when you start writing stuff down, then it’s written down, it can get discovered, so I don’t know.
Neha Saxena
Here’s what I do with that. I write it in a way that nobody else can read it. You see what I’m saying? This is, for me, this is my personal journal. Okay, this is not an article I want to put out or post or something. But generally, I have the benefit of having really messy handwriting. And then I just, I curve it a little bit more so that people, even if somebody did get their hands on it, they wouldn’t be able to make out what the whole thing is.
Grad
So, use shorthand or something …
Neha Saxena
… or just write it out and then burn it. it’s just to get it out of your system and get clarity for yourself. I think that would really be very helpful. There’s a lot of neuroscience behind it. But it’ll really help because I think there’s more than that. Then you’re logically thinking about the way you’re thinking about it right now.
Grad
That’s very cool. Well, speaking of ‘Burn it’, I just got a fire pit. My whole life I’ve wanted a fire pit. I’ve never had one. Finally said, ‘That’s enough of this’. Got a propane fire pit, sits right beside the pool. And last night my girlfriend got home super late from a party in Miami with her other girlfriends, I don’t know what’s going on there but they all came home around quarter to twelve. Well, they got home, thank God, and seemed reasonably sober. But the I greeted them with marshmallows and little extendable forks. And we went in the backyard and we had a marshmallow roast at midnight by the pool. And it was quite magical. Like you know, we got this new umbrella that’s got little LEDs in it. So that was lit up, the stars in the sky were like, oh my god, it was a pretty new moon. Yeah, well, the boys got a pool light put in so the pool is all lit up and yeah, it was crazy. Actually, yeah, could have been in Hawaii or something like that. It was amazing. And we roasted marshmallows on this fire pit. And it was … I would say that the thing for me and I try to do this a lot. And sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t. But there are these moments you can grab that you don’t expect. I’ll remember that for forever. It was just like that momentary magical moment. And it wasn’t even that long. And it wasn’t that complicated to do. And it created a really neat memory that I think is important to create that sometimes we lose in our daily rush to get everything else done.
Neha Saxena
The best part about such moments is because you don’t expect them. They’re just so much like, ‘Whoa’, they blow your mind away. By the way, you have to invite Randy and I to your back … Is this your backyard or whatever? Like your pool party? We’ve got to do something.
Grad
Yeah, you should. Well, I’ll get you out to Florida. And then we have to do that. Probably starting to get a little hot. Probably when I come back in the fall. I’m going to have surgery on my right leg.
Neha Saxena
So many surgeries. Oh, you’d better stop that.
Grad
Yeah. Getting kind of addictive actually. And then maybe you can come down and we can hang out around the pool because I’ll be wheeling around there and it’ll be great and be super fun. And it’s a nice time of year to be here. So yeah, it’s getting pretty good. Actually. The backyard has one more thing left and then it’s going to be super, super awesome.
Neha Saxena
Amazing fun.
Grad
Yes, it is amazing, actually. Yeah, Florida is great. I never lived here before. And it’s extraordinary. I don’t know why people make fun of Florida. it’s incredible here. It’s like living in paradise. Really like the greatest thing ever. Yeah, I don’t know. People are off their rocker making fun of this place.
Neha Saxena
Really. I mean, it’s weird, but every person I know has a house in Florida. So, I’m like, ‘Okay. I need to check it out’.
Grad
This has been super fun. What do you want? Do you want to leave people with something today? Do you want to do a two-minute exercise just to get people wound into the week?
Neha Saxena
Yeah, let’s do that. And I just also want to quickly wrap up the thing that we started with, like, ‘Why do people procrastinate?’ and I would say, it’s not just because you don’t feel like it like you’re being lazy. I would invite you to journal about it and get to the root cause. Maybe there’s some fear there. Maybe you’re like, there’s something more than just laziness. Mostly, procrastination is not just a laziness problem. So, I invite you to journal and kind of get those subconscious, unconscious thoughts out on the paper. And with that, let’s do some breathing. We’ve not done the super brain breath yet, have we? So, we’re going to do the super brain breath. And what it is, is bring your thumb to the base of a little finger and wrap the four fingers around your thumbs, so it’s a closed fist, and place the fists on your thighs and fists are facing the ceiling. So, fists facing the ceiling, shoulders relaxed, spine straight, neck relaxed, and on my count, we’ll be breathing in and out of the nose. And if you can, keep your attention in your head and brain region, and if that’s hard for some of us, it’s okay. Just keep your attention on your breath. Okay, so it’s equally effective. So, let’s start. Simply sit easily and comfortably. Take a deep breath in. And breathe out. Exhale, relax. And for the superbrain breath through the nose, breathe in, 234, out 23456. Breathe in, 234, out 23456. Breathe in. Keep your focus in the head region or on your breath. And as you breathe out, pull your navel in and breathe out for a little longer. Your attention is still in the head region or on your breath. And continue to breathe and keep your body relaxed as you’re breathing in, breathing in, until your collarbones lift up. And as you exhale, gently pull the navel in, breathe out for a little longer. We’ll do just five more rounds. Breathe in, 234 out, 23456, in 234, out 23456, in 234, until your collarbones lift up. Exhale, 23456. Last two. Breathe in, 234, out, 23456 breathe in, last one, full breath until your collarbones lift up. And as you exhale, pull the navel in and breathe out for a little longer. And relax. Let the breath return to normal. Keep your eyes closed for a moment. You can release your fists, bring your attention in words. And notice the state of your mind. Notice the impact of the breathing on the body if any. And just feeling very grateful for this breath this body that keeps us alive. Breathe in. Bring your palms together, rub them and place them on your eyes. Let the eyes absorb the heat and relax. When you’re ready, you can slowly open the eyes. Have a great week ahead and we’ll catch you on the next episode. I guess it’s next week.
Grad
Neha, that was awesome. All right, well, everybody this has been the CXM Experience with Neha, the breath Yogi and we are going to be back with interviews the rest of the week. For the CXM Experience, I’m Grad Conn, CXO at Sprinklr and I’ll see you … next time.