The Space Between with Dermot Whelan

Transcript generated by AI:

Music: 0:00

I will not be afraid of the shadows in the dark. They will lead the way to the hidden pathways of the heart and that secret place that is where I find my start.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:17

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher davidji.

davidji: 0:23

And heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:33

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into in tune.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:02

Hi, davidji.

davidji: 1:19

Oh, hello there, Elizabeth. We have a rule here, Elizabeth, and I have had this rule now for at least the last year. It’s called the Regis Rule. You familiar with Regis Philbin? No, oh, what was his most famous show? Who wants to Be a Marriage. I guess it was the morning show that he did Regis and Kathy Lee.

davidji: 1:23

Regis and Kathy right.

Dermot Whelan: 1:24

Oh, yes, I do know that, yeah, yeah, yeah, so the Regis rule is that you?

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:28

well, I’ll let David Sheetal Go ahead.

davidji: 1:31

Well, it’s Elizabeth’s story actually, but apparently when she was on TV going to be on that show, she said does someone want to come and interview me, pre-interview, before the show? And the person said oh no, we just had no conversation prior to the downbeat, so that way if things pop up, we’re not saying them again, so they sound inauthentic. So Elizabeth and I, even if we drive to the studio in the same car, we’re only talking about the coffee that we’re drinking or we’re talking about the road that we’re driving on. We don’t talk about any content because we don’t want to like have the mic drop line. And then suddenly we’re like, oh, let’s make believe, we never had that conversation before. So we call it the Regis rule and Regis, of course, regis Philbin, one of the great. Well, he was born, I think, in New York, but he is one of the great Irish. He is buried at Notre Dame University fighting Irish.

Dermot Whelan: 2:32

Yeah Well, you’d know you’d never professionally worked in commercial radio, because the two greatest words that you live by are planned spontaneity. So, yeah, it sounds fresh, but it ain’t. And then you say this, and then I’ll say that, and then you do this, and then we’ll finish on that.

davidji: 3:00

And like wait, I’m having a spontaneous thought. What was I meant to be spontaneous?

Dermot Whelan: 3:04

thought it’s that. Yeah, what was I meant to be spontaneous about again? Oh yeah. So, yeah, I get it. I guess we used to call it the roadmap in radio that we’d have a loose roadmap. We’d have an idea of our direction, but we didn’t want to share all the goodies before the trip.

davidji: 3:26

Yeah, our philosophy for our podcast I think it was born out. Of. That’s just what happened, not out of any deep strategic thinking, but we figured someone just shows up and says all right, what do you want to talk about? And then the other person just springs it on the other person. So the other person has no clue. We could be talking about death or astrology, and then that person is spontaneous because they never knew what the theme or topic was.

Dermot Whelan: 3:53

So that’s sort of kind of the format for yeah, but that speaks to how confident and knowledgeable you both are and comfortable in your own skin, in that you’re like we can do that. You know that because any other way would seem a bit weird, and that shows what a good match you are as well, because if one of you was a hyper prep list merchant and the other was easy peasy, then you know there might be a little bit of a clash there. But yeah, I think it. There aren’t many people who work that way because they usually don’t have the knowledge and confidence to back it up, so that’s a lovely thing.

davidji: 4:34

Very kind Pouring all these accolades on us.

Elizabeth Winkler: 4:38

I would imagine that when you’re on stage, that there’s so much of that right For you.

davidji: 4:43

Wait, wait, wait, let’s start, Cause this is really important and powerful.

davidji: 4:46

Okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, and this is our final episode, if you can even believe it, of season three and, as you know, we don’t have guests on the Shadow and the Light podcast. We flow spontaneously in every episode. But we have broken that rule on our final episode of each season. And in the first season we had Jamar Rogers, the amazing meditator musician who intros and outros the podcast. At the end of season two we had Laura Wright, who’s 30 plus years of daytime TV and, of course, she’s also a certified Masters of Wisdom and Meditation teacher. So that was just great. And, elizabeth, you and I spent some time in Dublin earlier in the year at our teacher’s retreat and we had the opportunity for both of us to hang out with one of my favorite people, also, of course, a certified Masters of Wisdom and Meditation teacher. But I think really during our journey, you also got to hang out with Dermot and fall in love with him. So please welcome our amazing guest for the final episode of Season 3, the incomparable, just incomparable, dermot Whelan.

Elizabeth Winkler: 6:08

Welcome, yay, oh my.

Dermot Whelan: 6:11

God, what an honor, thank you. Thank you so much, guys. It is just a real honor to be here, to be closing out another incredible season of the Shadow and the Light, and just to see you guys as well on my computer here from across the Atlantic and lovely to say hi to all your fabulous listeners.

davidji: 6:33

Oh, my Thank you. You are an inspiration to us and you have been an inspiration to me. I’ve had the opportunity to hang out in studio with you, with Dave Moore and you during the Dermot and Dave show, a couple of times actually, and I’ve gotten an opportunity to walk around Dublin with you. You pointed to me this is the first comedy club that I ever stood up in, but you are an author, you are I don’t know how you even feel about the word comedian, but you are certainly one of the most enlightened beings on the planet.

davidji: 7:09

And why would I say that? Because, in our definition of enlightenment, enlightenment is being able to hold polar opposites simultaneously. That’s what the ancient wisdom teachings tell us. If I can hold the shadow and the light simultaneously, that’s enlightenment. And your brain, however, your mom and God created that brain, that magnificent brain of yours. That’s the secret of comedy, that’s irony, that’s paradox, that’s like what? That’s not what I was expecting. I was expecting that conditioned thing. And boom, dermot just drops the line and just rips our hearts open and creates belly laughs and deeper insight as well. And so you are a master of that.

davidji: 7:58

It was Siobhan McKenna, not the actress, siobhan McKenna, but the author and meditation teacher Siobhan McKenna, who lives down the lane from you, who introduced us and she just opened my life to really all things Ireland and took me to all these amazing places and even hooked me up with Bressie. I was on Bressie’s podcast a couple of years ago talking about mental health, and so truly, one of my deepest and most beautiful connections in my life is my connection with you, and so I’m so grateful that you said yes and here you are, and I’m so glad that Elizabeth got the opportunity to really spend time with you and see us in our weird little interplay that we had at the Sugar Club for a couple of nights.

Dermot Whelan: 8:49

Your American viewers and listeners may not be fully aware that you and I shared a stage on two nights in a row in Dublin and we had such a great time.

Dermot Whelan: 9:01

And I tell you what. You know, I’ve been working as a comedian for the last 20 years and I was put to shame by you just rocks up onto the stage and firing out zingers every two seconds, and Elizabeth knows exactly what I’m talking about. But you know, humor obviously is such a huge part of my life and that’s what I do now is I try and blend humor and comedy and meditation teachings to help people to de-stress and feel less busy and overwhelmed in their lives. But it was the humour that I heard when I was busy and wrecked, which is the name of my current live show and my new book. But when I was feeling busy and overwhelmed, I was in a tiny, teeny, tiny cottage about three hours from Dublin and it was the first time I’d ever gone away on a retreat and it felt weird to me and the space felt weird and I kept asking myself what am I doing this for? And I should be back in the thick of things.

Dermot Whelan: 9:56

And I remember lying there in bed just kind of you know I’d gone to bed early because it was nothing else to do because I was in the middle of nowhere and I turned on an internet radio station called Hay House Radio and I heard this voice and it was davidji, and you were talking about some deep stuff, but you were doing it with humour, you were making me laugh, and it was such a moment for me because I was like, oh my God, what he’s saying is totally resonating with me.

Dermot Whelan: 10:27

But it’s the way he’s saying it as well, he’s infusing it with humor and lightness, and that really set me on a huge, you know, a really important trajectory, years before I knew I was going to end up doing what I’m doing now. But that seed was planted, you know, and it’s one of the things which I love, elizabeth, about your relationship with davidji on your podcast is that you get those lovely little insights but delivered with humor and lightness, and that lovely relationship between the two of you. So I think that’s why I and everybody else love your podcast.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:00

Thank you. You bring such a gift to the world with laughter and you know, being that I’m working with people all day in mental health and a lot of heartbreak, I totally know what you’re talking about. But one of the things I love about the teacher training that you did we both did is that davidji’s going so deep into the wisdom but then you’re also falling on the floor laughing and that’s something that, when I saw you live and I’ve listened to your podcast, what that does, what that brings, is that laughter. For me I’ll just speak for myself is it opens our heart. We feel maybe a little less alone in the heartbreak and the pain that maybe we’re talking about, but then we can laugh about it in a way, and that humanizes our experience.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:50

So many of us are trying to uphold some persona in our lives and that makes us feel more alone. But this element of humor, this element of comedy, that is real. I mean I’d love to hear what you would say. You feel that it is touching in on, but to me it’s the heart. You don’t even realize it, right, like there’s this vulnerability, there’s this window that opens up and then to be able to add in this breath and meditation. There’s a major expansion that can occur in that.

Dermot Whelan: 12:29

Yeah, yeah, you said that so well. I think you know a key word is resistance and you know we all resist. When we feel something we don’t want to feel or experiencing something we don’t want to feel, we push back a little bit. And the stage is a great place to see that resistance in action because you get this bird’s eye view of the audience a bunch of strangers who were all together for one night and I’m sure you see it in your own clients and your own students as well, davidji. But when I’m standing on a stage I’m looking at audience. Particularly with men. You can see that resistance.

Dermot Whelan: 13:05

A lot of them wouldn’t be used to being in an environment. You know where meditation is on the table. You know I’ve been to enough spiritual weekends to know that it’s usually me and one other guy and we’re sort of giving each other that. You know that knowing look that we were. You know both found ourselves here and we’ll make the most of it. But I think you can literally see resistance in people’s bodies in the audience and when you open them up with laughter, they literally open their bodies. You can see their physical being start to open up and relax and you have to imagine that there’s something inside them as well, then starting to open and that’s all you need, then you can start dropping in the ideas and the, the insights it’s about just working with that resistance and humor is a beautiful way to do that.

Dermot Whelan: 13:55

You know, and as I just as I said, men are, are a little bit more resistant to this stuff because I think just wellness, spirituality, meditation, mindfulness, that kind of stuff has been marketed with quite a female slant, I think, for many years, and I think that’s because women are generally more open to it. So I think as men we have got to work a little bit harder to find our way into this world, but as well we tend to be slower to drift into this place or to ask for help or to try out new stuff. You know, I always think that if a woman goes to the doctor and the doctor says so how long have you been feeling this? A woman will go a while. How long is a while? Maybe a week or 10 days, ok.

Dermot Whelan: 14:33

When the man goes to the doctor, he says a while. How long is a while? Since I was 11. We will carry this stuff around and literally wait till our limbs are falling off before we actually put ourselves into a position where we’re going okay, I’m a bit vulnerable here. I think I might have to ask for help. So a long way of answering your question. I really do think humor is a beautiful lubricant for easing people into places where maybe they wouldn’t have naturally gravitated to.

davidji: 15:04

Yeah, and it doesn’t help that in spiritual circles they’re like oh, you’re getting deeper into the stillness and silence that rests within to access your divine feminine. You tell that to most guys and they’re like wait time out here, divine what? But that’s really what I see, you know. There’s masculine energy, which is do, do, do out of my way kind of energy, follow through, get it done, lock it down, check those boxes on to the next thing. And then there’s feminine energy which is more nourishing, nurturing space, holding openness. Let me hold this moment, or let me hold you Again back to that interesting dynamic between polar opposites. Obviously, we’re most balanced when we have both of those energies going on, where I can be stable and still have a vision and move towards the fulfillment of that vision. But yeah, you’re right, I’ve been teaching for a bunch of years and it has historically and consistently been 85% women, and so whenever I suddenly do stumble into any member of that 15%, I’m like wait, stay here with me, don’t go. This is amazing, magic is happening here, and that’s what I really loved about your first book.

davidji: 16:24

I know you, you wrote a book, a children’s book. Uh, what was that? Nonny and the and the chocolate factory, or or really?

Dermot Whelan: 16:31

wonka, you know no nonny and the great chocolate mystery. Uh, it was based on a radio character I had about an old lady who sold what she called chocolate out of a pram. Um, so yeah, that was. That had nothing to do with mindfulness, it was just a crazy caper.

davidji: 16:48

Yeah, well, it’s great, you know my mother-in-law’s name her whole life. Her name’s Naomi, but everyone always called her Noni. Ah, no way, you know so it’s so perfect. Whenever I see you dressed up in your little cape and your shawl over your head, it’s like, oh yeah, it’s reminding me of my mother-in-law, so perfect.

Dermot Whelan: 17:09

Yeah, you know, I’m sure you’ve come across this as well, both of you and with all the wonderful people that you work with. I had an example of it with my brother. It’s the idea that meditation, mindfulness, anything in that space, is going to make you soft. My brother was quite resistant to it and he was like no, that’s going to take my edge. You know, like he’s a go-getting business guy, always ran companies and made quick decisions and go, go, go and close that deal and all that kind of stuff.

Dermot Whelan: 17:38

And I think there’s a perception for a lot of people, male or female, that maybe if you delve too much into this stuff, that you’ll go soft and suddenly you won’t care as much about your career or reaching goals or closing that deal.

Dermot Whelan: 17:53

You might miss something because you’re so chill. You know that you don’t react as quick in a moment, whether it be business or sport or whatever it is. And of course we know that that’s not true. A lot of it is so much of it is actually getting the clutter out of the way so that our great selves can be even greater, and certainly that’s what I’ve found. But I think that is a perception that is still out there, particularly amongst men, in that this stuff is a bit fluffy and that if you engage with it too much, that either A people won’t take you as seriously in your working or you know whatever environment you like to thrive in, or that it will in some way make you soft or cloudy or you’ll lose that edge that you’ve been relying on you know it’s such a misinterpretation by the planet in general.

davidji: 18:43

I’ve worked with Dutch special forces and with NATO and with different police departments throughout the United States and I even got to work with the Dublin gang unit of the Guard. And it’s the first question everyone is that going to make me slower on the draw? Is that going to make me miss something critical? Is that going to make me get killed?

Dermot Whelan: 19:03

And it’s like no, something to worry. Irish police quicker on the draw because they don’t have guns. How quickly can they get their pencil to their notebook? They write down all the bad things you’ve done right, it’s part of that whole masculine persona.

davidji: 19:20

Did you divine masculine energy? Obviously it’s your divine masculine energy. Obviously it’s such a powerful teaching that you say, even the concept, your first book on these teachings, mindful. Wait, if my mind’s full, isn’t that the thing I don’t want to have, don’t? I want the mind less, you know, but it does. There’s like the Jason Bateman podcast, the Smart Less. Isn’t the mind less where we really want to be? And it’s like awesome and awful. I don’t want some awe, I want full on awe, I want awful, I want mind less and awful. So that’ll be my next book Mindless and Awful.

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:00

Right Hilarious.

davidji: 20:18

Right. Hilarious Again. That speaks to your brilliance being able to take these polar opposites. Dermot, you’ve probably given the same answers to this question a thousand times, but humor our audience here just for a moment. I have a massive ego. I’m happy to talk about myself.

Dermot Whelan: 20:37

all day, I keep writing books.

davidji: 20:40

What about me? What do you think about me? So there had to be a moment in time where you’re like, you know, hanging out, you know, just a kid, and suddenly you’re like, give me the mic, I have something to say and it might garner me some positive attention if I make it funny, or something along those lines. So what was that spark inside of you that suddenly inspired you or even led you in the direction of comedy in some way, being the funny guy in the room? Because I also went through that same journey. Mine was because I had such low self-esteem and was always being ignored and no one was ever listening to me. I was always told to go to my room, but I knew that if I could come up and do like a five minute standup routine, even for my parents or their friends, that people would say, oh, you’re not worthless, you’re not a worthless piece of poop. So for you, what was that journey?

Dermot Whelan: 21:36

There was definitely a beginning to my role as a performer and I think that was Catholic mass church, because I grew up in a very small country neighborhood. There were no exciting theatres or any place with a stage. The only place with a stage really was Mass. So when you’re sitting in the congregation and you see altar boys and girls sitting there in front of everybody with jobs to do and their own wardrobe department, I thought I think I’d like to get up there and see what the audience looks like from that perspective and be in everyone’s gaze. So I think, like a lot of comedians ended up started off as altar boys because it was the only stage in town and you got to ring a bell and walk around and, as I say, change into exciting clothes and things. So I think it started there. But I think the humor side of stuff I guess impressions were always part of my sort of stable. So every impressionist as well generally starts with the people around them. So my dad was the first person that I did an impression of to make the rest of my family laugh. My dad had a very particular way of eating chocolate, so as soon as he would take the chocolate out actually I have a little bar here I can demonstrate. He would start to open the chocolate and it automatically moved into the space of ritual. So there was a long process and the gentle and precise unfolding of the foil, and then he would begin to sort of feather it all out. And as this whole process was going, he would, he would begin this whole cycle of sniffing and none of us knew where he came from. I think, as dads in general, you just hit some, you just wake up one morning and you just make weird noises. I think that’s the thing. You start going and sniffing. So sniffing was one of his things. So he would go and then he would take the tiniest bit of chocolate and put it on his tongue and I mean it was the most mindful chocolate eating exercise in the world. He would take this and he would sit on his tongue and he would inhale it and breathe it in. And he would sit on his tongue and he would inhale it and breathe it in, and then of course we’d all be watching him, you know, with our tongues hanging out of our mouths, because we were desperate for some of the chocolate, but he wasn’t big into sharing it. So he would then carefully fold it back up and put it back in the box and back into the shelf. And of course he ate so little of it that the chocolate was gradually turning white, like the box had probably been given to him during rationing, during the shelf. And of course he ate so little of it that the chocolate was gradually turning white, like the box had probably been given to him during rationing during the war. So you wanted the chocolate but you knew that it was so far past its sell by date. So I guess you know the comedy kind of started doing impressions of my dad and kind of moved on from there. But it’s also a great survival mechanism.

Dermot Whelan: 24:23

You know I’m not a particularly big guy. I was a tiny child, you know, when I was 16, I looked 12. So you know you got picked on from time to time because you were an easy target and humour was also, you know, was a great little distractor. You know it was like kind of throwing in a stun grenade or something you know, a smoke bomb into the altercation Distract, distract with humour.

Dermot Whelan: 24:44

And then I remember one day one of the guys who I was sort of very nervous of and the gang who might have picked on me. From time to time I overheard them saying wheels because I had suddenly got this nickname and they went wheels is sound and that meant that I was OK, you know, wheels is sound and that’s because I’d made them laugh so that I guess was one of my you know wheels of sound and that’s because I’d made them laugh so that I guess was one of my. You know my little seeds that was planted there and I realized you know what this comedy stuff could actually bring me in and out of some interesting situations.

davidji: 25:17

Yeah, and maybe you can’t punch the six foot guy in the nose, but you could certainly say something that was like so brilliantly cutting, which would be more powerful even than, perhaps, punching him in the nose.

Dermot Whelan: 25:31

Definitely yeah. Much safer approach, that’s for sure.

davidji: 25:35

There had to be like a moment where you were on stage, you were a host, you were a comedic host of many shows in Ireland and you’re a presenter for many years. We don’t have that terminology here in the States, but tons of people are presenters but we never think of them as that, because once someone does that usually at the Oscars or the Grammys or the Emmys they say something inappropriate and then get fired. So it’s sort of like you know, it’s the last funny thing that you do or the last great thing you do, and then your career is destroyed and then maybe they forgive you or maybe they cancel you. But for you you had this really meteoric rise of being a presenter and being a comedic host. Was a radio show first in your mind or bumping into Dave first in your mind? That led to that amazing fusion that the two of you had.

Dermot Whelan: 26:25

Yeah, it’s funny. Well, in my early 20s I was thinking of it. Today, actually, I was just chatting about it with my wife.

davidji: 26:30

Karina. You know, just a little plug for Karina. What an amazing artist, and I just actually gave someone a note card last week.

davidji: 26:39

And she had given me, like a little booklet, note cards of several of her paintings and I just gifted that just last week. They didn’t even open it, you know, and I go, you can, you can open it. They were just like gazing at the card, going, oh, this is so beautiful, this is so amazing. Thank you for this mini painting, I like, and I said no, no, no, it’s a card. You get to open it up and then, with something like you know be still today, or something you know, she’s got these beautiful lines in there as well. So quite a creative DNA combo you have for your legacy.

Dermot Whelan: 27:13

Yeah, they better not disappoint us. It’s funny. We have our man cave and our woman cave here at the end of our garden and if we angle ourselves properly we can see each other at work. So I can see her painting away and she can see me pretending to work in here. But yeah, I was just chatting to her today there was a movie being shot in our village here in Hoth in Dublin, down on the pier, and I was just reminiscing about my time as an assistant director, an AD, back in my 20s, which was a wonderful time. I spent about five or six years doing that. I learned lots of things. I learned how to smoke, drink passionately, stand around all day, tell people they can’t park there and shout quiet, please, we’re rolling. That was kind of it, and I was thinking of your Dree arcs, davidji, that you both were talking about so beautifully on last week’s episode. It was one of those things that I thought I wanted to do forever, but then I realised that my arc was on the downward trend and I thought I wanted to try radio. So that’s what I did.

Dermot Whelan: 28:19

I started working in news because I did a really good impression of a newsreader. I could put on a at six o’clock. Here are the headlines. I could do one of those kind of newsy voices so I didn’t know anything about current affairs or anything about the world, but I did it anyway. But actually that was one of my first insights into the anxiety I was never really aware consciously that I had, I just thought everybody felt this way. But I remember going in to read the news after about three months doing the job and I felt quite comfortable in the job. I wasn’t consciously aware that I was nervous. But my throat started to close up one day as I was reading and I was like you know. Here are the headlines.

Dermot Whelan: 28:57

The government said that I started to turn into Yoda while I was reading the news and all my fellow newsreaders were looking at me like what is wrong with you? So I remember I didn’t know what it was. I just kept saying my throat thing. I didn’t know what it was. So I just removed myself from reading the news for a month or two and then I sort of drifted. They made me a reporter out on the street and then I kind of drifted back to it. And now, looking back, of course I realize it was anxiety and that’s one of the symptoms, your throat can start closing up. After that I started doing comedy for a radio breakfast show in the same station. Then they gave me the breakfast show. Then I met Dave. We were put together like a play date and then we stayed working together as a duo for over 20 years.

Dermot Whelan: 29:41

For a lot of that early working career and maybe some of your listeners can relate to this I was always very driven and I want just like that child looking up at the altar and thinking I want to be up there. I had the goal to really move in certain directions, and I still do. Of course, I still always want to try out new stuff and test myself, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners do. But at the same time there was that feeling like I had one foot on the accelerator driving with passion towards my goals, and then another foot on the brake at the same time going whoa, what are you doing? And it was that hand on my throat that was like no, no, no, you shouldn’t be doing this. Like literally closing my throat as I tried to bring my voice to the world.

Dermot Whelan: 30:23

So it always felt like that and every time I jumped up on a comedy stage. It was exciting and there was adrenaline and cortisol and all that good stuff, but it was terrifying and I had an inner voice that just kept telling me that this is a disaster and your jokes aren’t good enough. You’re not a real comedian, you’re a radio DJ pretending to be one. You know they’re all laughing, but that one guy isn’t. Why the hell isn’t he laughing? You know that good old negativity bias in action.

Dermot Whelan: 30:51

And it’s really only in the last oh, I think, since I became a meditation teacher in 2018, that’s really when I started to ease my foot off the brake and say imagine what you could do if you weren’t braking at the same time as you were accelerating. And I know that sounds like horrifying, because it’s like most of my adult life, but I think maybe that we can all relate to that feeling of so many of us who really want to get out and do stuff and meet people and get after it and maximize our potential. Those Instagram posts like to say but there’s this other voice, there’s this other force inside us that just keeps us in check and wants to keep us small, and can manifest itself In our physical bodies as a closing of your throat or falling over your words, or sweating or a panic attack, like I had actually on the way to a comedy festival, and I know it’s something that both of you know so much about.

Elizabeth Winkler: 31:51

I love like you’re bringing in so much mindfulness, like when you’re talking about earlier, how you’re on stage and people are crossing their arms and then they start to laugh and they open and and how. That’s just such a teaching of I’m all about that. I’m all about what’s happening in your body. What are you noticing? So this voice in our head that terrifies all of us and everybody knows about that. When we ask the question why, people are always like, well, why, why? Well, that just feeds that voice, right, and so all these things you’re talking about keep going into the sensation of our experience. That’s always been there and when you were doing the news and that was happening, you didn’t probably just going why, why is? Why is the throat thing here? Why is that happening? And it’s just gets that. Guess what that does? It adds more logs onto that fire and it gets worse and worse. That’s why people have panic attacks, because they’re asking why.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:47

And offering I have to our listeners and to ourselves, because it happens to all of us, is where, where is this happening in my body? What am I noticing? That’s what the mindfulness is all about. And so if someone’s coming to your comedy show or listening to us now. Whatever’s happening, it’s like what are you noticing in your body as you laugh? What are you noticing as you feel that constriction, that contraction in your body, and just where is it? What do you notice? No judgment, equanimity, just allow.

Elizabeth Winkler: 33:17

You were also mentioning earlier I think it was your brother said is this going to make me more cloudy? It’s like no, it actually brings you into the sky. The mindfulness brings us into the sky like presence, so we can see the clouds, we can see the storm that’s coming, we have a greater perspective, we zoom out right. So I want to zoom out a little bit and offer something like I don’t know how old you were when you were having that throat thing, but what would you say to him, given that now you have much more wisdom and much more awareness and tools, but he didn’t have those then? What could he have heard? Because there might be people listening today that don’t have the tools that we have from davidji’s teacher training. What would you say to him?

Dermot Whelan: 34:03

That’s such a great question I think I would ask him training? What would you say to him? That’s such a great question. I think I would ask him what’s going on for you right now? Yeah, because I was never able to equate the physical manifestations with anything that was happening in my life Stress and at that time I was being quite severely bullied by a work colleague who was older than me who very clearly resented me getting this airtime and I never equated. Okay, that’s a lot of stress and fight or flight in the work environment. And so then, when you add the red light of the mic going on and missing a word or saying something wrong that could libel you or somebody else, you know, with that added pressure, of course my body was going to move into that state.

Dermot Whelan: 34:49

I listened to vinyl. I don’t know if you listen to records. Still, elizabeth, for anyone who doesn’t look, it’s a wonderful pastime. If you want to spend $60 on a record you have for free on your phone, go crazy, knock yourselves out and it’s more hissy and crackly.

Dermot Whelan: 35:08

When you crank the volume or the gain on my amp, the needle goes into the red and I guess years later I realized I was living my life, maybe not with my needle in the red all the time, but just below it. So any extra load, stress wise, was going to send me into that high stress state where I would physically manifest in my body. So I guess I would ask my older self what’s going on for you right now, you know, and ask him how he felt about that person who was making him feel small and like physically, physically threatening him in work, and ask him how could he maybe get some help or was he getting any sleep? And why did he think he was drinking so much? And I would love to be that big brother who would just I see myself just putting my arm around him and going come on let’s talk about what’s going on for you right now, because there is something.

Dermot Whelan: 36:04

But me. Then this was just body doing crazy thing, like you know, like you’re in the middle of a conversation and you go, hold on and you sneeze. There’s your body just did a crazy thing. We don’t question it, we just move on. We’re not going. Why am I sneezing? You know what was that about? Because we’re all used to it. So I guess I reacted to physical manifestations of stress in my body and mood. I guess I reacted to physical manifestations of stress in my body and mood just like a sneeze. It was just stuff that happened. You know, I never. I never saw that there was a, there were things contributing to this sort of pile on on my nervous system and that my needle was gently creeping up there into the red, yeah, and I mean I feel as a therapist that these ages are still within us and they arise, and sometimes maybe the throat thing does come.

Elizabeth Winkler: 36:45

And I mean, I feel as a therapist that these ages are still within us and they arise, and sometimes maybe the throat thing does come. And when it does, if a client says I’m feeling this particular way, that that old energy is arising in you I don’t know if that still happens to you from time to time, but that’s an opportunity for you to heal that old, ancient wound I say every activation is an invitation for you to be more free, because these things they come up in our lives. Right, maybe it’s the guy not laughing we now have the tools to be able to pay attention to what’s happening in our bodies, which takes us out of our head. Because if we’re in our bodies, we’re not in our head. If we’re in our bodies, we’re not in our head. You know, if we’re in our head we’re just going to add more to it. But if we can just notice what is happening here, we can just bring that kind of loving awareness into that experience, into that wound. Do you ever do?

Elizabeth Winkler: 37:39

that do you ever get like activated? I mean this might be a dumb question, so forgive me, but like you’re on stage and I don’t know like what’s a really challenging thing that happens for you and maybe you get really activated. Has that, has that happened? How do you handle it? Now that you have these tools, these meditation, these mindfulness tools, how do you bring that into?

Dermot Whelan: 37:59

your experience? Yeah, that’s a great question because I guess people don’t really know what being on a stage and you know, and performing to a couple of thousand people is like and it’s different for everybody, you know. And of course, that version of me who was trying to reinvent himself back then as a news person, you know, and put himself out there, I’m getting very aggressively shut down. The echoes of that are definitely still within me, you know, and that’s like amplified imposter syndrome, you know, and it’s been very interesting for me over the last year or so because I left a very successful national radio show at its height to walk away and do comedy and meditation full time. I am that young fledgling newsreader again and I really have to be aware of those times where I’m thinking, oh my God, what am I doing? People are going to say this is a joke or it’s a cynical exercise to get into the wellness area because it’s trendy, and you have all these thoughts, you know. You both spoke to it so well last, you know, last episode talking about purpose and, you know, trying to navigate what our path is and all that. So, yes, there are definitely moments like that and on stage that’s amplified again. Old me on stage would be thinking something goes wrong. I catch a glimpse of somebody, I catch an expression in the crowd of somebody yawning or rolling their eyes or something, and I’m gone. I’m now thinking, oh my God, they think I’m terrible. This is. You know, I shouldn’t be a comedian, I shouldn’t be up here. They want the next guy to come on. He’s going to be better.

Dermot Whelan: 39:34

And I do have a technique that I introduced and it was the beginning of my previous live tour and I felt that feeling coming up in me before one show, before going out to a very big audience, and I was thinking, oh man, here I go again. And I was that scared newsreader you know age 26 or whatever freaking out. And I was like, okay, what are we going to do here? And I was okay, this is happening for a reason. Now something’s coming up for you. So what can we do?

Dermot Whelan: 40:03

And I realized that so much of the fear of performance I call my technique, the headlight technique so much of our fear, whether any of your listeners are giving, you know, a best man speech or just standing up at a restaurant saying a few words about a loved one, or want to perform or making a presentation at work. It’s the fear of the glare of everybody, a glare of disapproval. You know all those faces looking back at you and to me it appeared in my mind like car headlights that were parked shining in my face and a kind of blinding. And what I did was okay, if that’s the fear that I’m going to reverse that.

Dermot Whelan: 40:40

So what I do is I, I light a candle in my green room backstage and I get quiet with a few breaths and then I visualize those car headlights and then I see them moving around to the back of me. So now the lights aren’t glaring at me, putting me under pressure. They’re shining from behind, through me and into the audience, and that’s how I see performance for myself. Now it’s not jumping up on stage, going oh, please, like me, please, love me. Oh God, I hope I don’t make a mistake. I survived this.

Dermot Whelan: 41:14

Now it’s very much about I’m here and I am just a vessel or a conduit for you can call it God’s light, you can call it higher self, you can call it wisdom, and I say a little prayer and I say may your light shine through me into all the beautiful people who are going to be sitting out there in front of me and may I say the words, whatever words, that they need to hear tonight. And now I’m done, the pressure’s off, I’m just there, I’m just that vessel and those lights are going to come through me and once I did that shift, it completely transformed. Standing up in front of a group of people. Yeah, totally, you know. Yeah, that’s beautiful, I love that.

Dermot Whelan: 41:58

So, yeah, maybe, if anybody is listening who is worried about something like that, where they have to maybe stand up at their book club or their local you know committee or whatever it happens to be, or that presentation in work, whatever it is that you can kind of take yourself out of the equation and just take that pressure off and you’re just, I’m there. I’m just there to filter this light and whatever information you’re trying to share with people, just ask for it to come through and you’re just the mouthpiece to make it happen.

Elizabeth Winkler: 42:32

Yeah, it’s the whole trust or fear. We’re in fear, we’re in our mind, we’re in our ego. We’ve got to figure it out. I got to you’re checking everything. Or you’re in trust. I’m the vessel, I’m the conduit, what I always say, I have this and I’m pretty sure I have no idea, I’m in a not knowing, okay, but this is what I’m always saying. I have no idea what’s going to come through. And when I can just get out Elizabeth out of the way, then the present moment that we’re all in right now, we merge, and that’s when the magic happens. And you, you know that that’s comedy, that’s, you know, incredible magic that happens when we just let go.

Dermot Whelan: 43:11

Yeah, well, flow. That’s not where that beautiful flow state happens. I was lucky enough to talk to Cillian Murphy, who won the Oscar for Oppenheimer, about that very thing from my podcast and about that very thing from my podcast.

Dermot Whelan: 43:28

And you know, one of the key elements of the flow state is that your self-analyzing voice takes a back seat. The volume, at least, gets turned way down. So you cannot be in pure flow state and be self-criticizing at the same time. So that is one of the beautiful gifts, as you know, of practicing meditation, whatever style you’re drawn to, is that because you’re just working, massaging that beautiful empathy center in there, so often that level of internal kindness that just you keep pouring into yourself will just keep turning the volume down on that inner critical voice so that you can hit that flow state so much easier or more often or whenever you feel you need it. And that’s been.

Dermot Whelan: 44:14

I think one of the greatest gifts that meditation has given me is the turning the volume down on that critical inner voice because, man, I hammered the crap out of myself and that morning I had the panic attack driving to the comedy festival. I was in full on just kicking myself around the inside of my head, and because I had been using white wine the night before to quieten that inner voice. You know, we all know anyone who’s woken up with a hangover. That voice is louder than ever, you know, and it’s there waiting for you. You’re like okay, so you were a terrible person last night, so let’s see if we can’t get some juicy self-hatred out of this for the next 25 minutes, you know.

davidji: 44:56

Let’s let everyone know. Let’s let everyone know that you were terrible last night.

Dermot Whelan: 45:03

Yeah, I know it’s such an amplifier of I call it fear juice these days because it’s so I’m so bad at it, thankfully, but I guess as well, that’s one of the gifts that meditation can give you is that you can easily identify the behaviors that maybe aren’t working too well for you. You know I call them my peace pinchers. I talk about it in my new book helping yourself to identify your peace pinchers. Sometimes they’re things like alcohol, sometimes they’re behaviors, sometimes they’re people. We’ve all met the peace pinchers in our lives, so that was definitely one of mine.

davidji: 45:40

So interesting. If you’re a comedian, you should expect to be heckled. It’s part of the deal. It’s part of the deal. It’s classic, petty, tyrant stuff. If you don’t have a heckler in the crowd, you need to bring a friend in who will heckle you, just so that shadow and light energy can fully be there.

davidji: 45:54

And I remember I was on stage. It was some kind of meditation program that I was teaching. Must’ve been a couple of thousand people. And I’m on stage and I’m miked.

davidji: 46:05

I say something and this person in the second row says actually, I think actually what I said was Ayurveda, the oldest healing system on the planet. And this woman in like the third row says no, kabbalah is. And like no one could hear her except me and the people in those rows, and those rows went back 100 rows. There must have been 100, 200 rows back there. And I’m miked with speakers all over the place and I say to her actually, it’s Ayurveda, it’s 5,000 years old and that’s what everyone else is hearing. They’re not hearing her, heckle me, and I’m not even making a point with her. And she goes no, it’s Kabbalah.

davidji: 46:50

And so she and I are having this argument while I’m on stage. No one can hear her and I keep blurting out things like well, in the Yoga Vashishta this is where it talks about this and, of course, it’s the oldest. There are actually places in the Charaka Samhita that actually say that the Saraswati River was at this point we’re talking five, maybe 5,500 years ago and people are looking at me 1,999 people in the room are looking at me like I’ve lost it. I have totally. I’m not speaking to them anymore. I’m having to get to this whole dialogue with this person and all I needed to say and I changed this forever I need to say Ayurveda, one of the oldest healing systems on the planet. I’m not going to defend Ayurveda. It’s done fine for 5,000 years, without me holding the flag and insisting it’s the oldest one, but I needed to learn that lesson in that moment it’s the oldest one, but you know that I needed to learn that lesson in that moment.

Dermot Whelan: 47:50

So, but isn’t it, isn’t it really interesting, though, that you were in full flight? You were in your, you know, in your flow. You were, you know, doing your thing, and all it took was a one little sentence from a stranger, no, and just to quest, maybe, you know, I’m not sure who was right in that argument, but even if she was wrong, it was just that finger that rocked your Jenga tower. You know that suddenly, what you thought was this beautifully solid platform was whoa? You know, and that can happen us all, you know. I think we can all feel very comfortable in our skin, and and we’re going after it, and maybe we started something new, and one little barb, one little comment, one little sort of well-timed little joke even, can rock our sense of self-belief and our belief in our ability to to live as this new person, in this new role, you know.

Elizabeth Winkler: 48:48

Which is like the greatest gift of all, in my opinion breaking down belief systems, breaking down our identity. This week has been that has been like the theme there’s always themes I’m seeing seeing people all day and this week it’s all about what you’re talking about, like this identity breaking down. Who am I? And like you know, identifying as the news person or the comedian or this like the more we grip or cling to an identity, the more you suffer, period, because it will all be broken down, because it’s just a thought. You keep thinking right, and that’s what imposter syndrome is all about.

Elizabeth Winkler: 49:24

It’s like I gotta, I gotta keep this thing going. Like what is it again? You know, cause it’s you’re. You’re constantly changing. Like you can’t keep that going. That’s why it feels fake. It’s like I pretty sure I have no idea who the hell. I am Okay and I’m like figuring that out a moment at a time, in this moment I’m figuring that out and in every moment we’re figuring that out and the more that we can. Like that’s the beauty of meditation and mindfulness, because it does soften, but not in the way that you were saying, like these friends of yours or family members were like concerned. It’s like it’s like softening those edges that we grip, the rigidity that the egoic mind can create of what I should be or what I’ve been told is correct. My mantra maybe, maybe not. Can I question that? And the more that we can question these beliefs and let that Jenga thing maybe I am wrong. Okay, like cool, like let’s talk about it, let’s let’s open up the conversation and then then we get to expand into more.

Dermot Whelan: 50:38

Yeah, yeah, a golf course is a great place has been for me to see this in action, because you’re on kind of the second hole playing with strangers, and then eventually the question will come out so what do you do? And since I left the radio, I realized that I am really unable to answer that question. I don’t know how to say what I do anymore. I was always here, I work on the radio. You know, I’m a, I’m a broadcaster or whatever you want to say. Now it’s like there’s a and I go oh god, here comes that question.

Dermot Whelan: 51:08

Um, this week I mix comedy and meditation to help people to de-stress, and that usually shuts them up, you know. Then they’re like, oh, oh, let’s go back to the golf. Yeah, this is about 200 yards. Yeah, so it’s been a great exercise for me in terms of, if not, letting go. You know, as you touched on there, loosening my grip, you know, and I sometimes I think we feel under pressure.

Dermot Whelan: 51:34

You know people say, hey, you need to let that go, you need to let that relationship go, you need to let go of that identity that you had, of that old job, and it’s not easy, but letting go begins with just loosening your grip Sometimes. That’s enough. That’s a place to be for a while where you haven’t totally just, you know reinvented yourself, darlings. You’re just letting go enough so that you can go. Oh, okay, this is interesting. Okay, but you don’t have to go the whole hog straight away. You know, and that’s been a good lesson for me in terms of over the last year or so at this, letting go of that persona in media they talk about the persona all the time your radio persona and learning to be really happy and content with this version of you that was always underneath whatever hat you were wearing, you know.

davidji: 52:23

I have a suggestion for you. The next time you’re out on the links, when someone says, so what do you do? You could always reply my very best, my very best. It’s always one of those like what.

Elizabeth Winkler: 52:38

Yeah.

davidji: 52:40

And then usually I’ll follow that up with what’s your most dominant nostril right now? Yeah, and those two pattern interrupts are like a one-two punch and suddenly we’re on to where’s my ball. You know what’s going on.

Dermot Whelan: 52:57

Yeah, but you really do realize how much of our identity is wrapped up in what we do every day. You know, I mean, that’s the question, hey, so what do you do? You know, and you’re like, well, I do lots of things, but we automatically assume it’s the job. You know, that’s that’s me. You know, um, and I think I I guess I’ve been living in the world of busyness for the last year, just researching it for my book, and you really realize how much of our busyness, how much of, uh, how many of the reasons we stay in situations, our jobs that aren’t a good match for us anymore they may have been 10 years ago, but not quite now is because our identity is in there. So we stay in that busyness.

Dermot Whelan: 53:39

And if there’s a little feeling in your gut saying, hey, maybe you’re ready to do something new, it’s like, oh God, don’t tell me that, because this is who I am, so I’m just going to fill my schedule even more with stuff so that I don’t have to think about those deeper questions or listen to that feeling in my gut, which I christened my inner potato, because it felt like this sort of little medium-sized spud that was sitting in my gut, just gently letting me know I was ready to do something else, even if intellectually it didn’t make any sense or financially. But yeah, I think that’s why we hang on to those we cling. We tighten our grip sometimes when we’re locked into that sense of identity, particularly through our work or maybe a relationship, or where you live, or, and it’s it’s just a gentle loosening, allows us to see other possibilities and we start to listen to our potato.

davidji: 54:35

And we were speaking a lot around the time when you were internally winding down your Dermot and Dave trajectory. And it was a leap to this other thing because, yes, you’d been on stage talking about that, but you’d never been on stage. I’m guessing I’ll go out on a limb here. You’d never been on stage before and said hello, people, let’s take a long, slow, deep breath in and allow our eyelids to ever so gently float closed my people, right, you’d never done that one before. So that first moment when you were on stage and I know you probably had to, like set it up a lot to get people to I’ve read this guy’s book Mindful. I’ve listened to him for 20 years on the radio and now he’s going to tell me to what. And so what was going on inside of you right before you were going to guide people, just to connect to the present moment in an overt way like mindfulness.

Dermot Whelan: 55:33

Oh, wow. Well, I know it was like all things, you know, particularly on the back of a book it can sound like you made life decisions, you just. Your life is nothing but these glorious aha moments that you suddenly leapt into action. You know, we all know, these things are a slow burn and the insights generally come after a period of massive discomfort. So I was very just disillusioned with my radio job, and having a civil war in my head between the part of me is like just go in and do the job. It’s a great job, it’s well paid, people love the show. You’re working with your best friend, you’re having a laugh Are you crazy? And then the other part going it doesn’t suit you anymore and you’re not happy and it’s draining you and you’re exhausted after work and you keep daydreaming about doing other things. And this meditation thing is far more than just this background thing. I think you could do this. You heard that guy, davidji. He was making people laugh and I think you could do that. You’re like no, shut up. This is terribly risky.

Dermot Whelan: 56:36

So there was a good period of that. You know, when I did the Master of Wisdom and Meditation teacher training with your wonderful self, I had no intention of becoming a teacher when I embarked on that, but it was afterwards. I was like I found myself explaining what I was doing to people and I was naturally using humor and simplifying things and making it accessible to people who wouldn’t normally be into it. And I realized, well, if I can do that for those two people in the coffee shop, I could probably do it for 15 people over here in a sports club, or maybe I could do 100 people in a company, or maybe I could do 1000 people in the theater and it just kind of grew a little bit. So the transition period I liken it to and anyone who’s ever made that career jump, which you know both of you have, and it’s that question in size when will I know? The timing is right, how will I know?

Dermot Whelan: 57:29

And I got the image of, you know, indiana Jones or Harrison Ford is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Dermot Whelan: 57:33

He’s galloping, he’s on the horse and the train, he’s catching up on the train and they’re going kind of side by side and then at some point he decides, ok now, and he jumps and he catches onto the side of the train and he leaves the horse behind and he goes in this new vehicle and I think so many moments that are in our life are like that particularly with a job or career or taking a risk on a new identity for yourself. There comes a point where you just instinctively know now jump. You know, and you have to be prepared to get it wrong. You know, maybe it’s harder than you thought or easier, or maybe you’re thinking, oh God, I should have done this five years ago. You know so there is that Raiders of the Lost Ark, that indie moment that I think we all have to embrace at some ago. You know so there is that Raiders of the Lost Ark, that indie moment that I think we all have to embrace at some point.

Elizabeth Winkler: 58:23

I love that. The indie moment I always think of is when he jumps I think it’s the last crusade and he jumps into the empty. Do you remember that? He’s in the place? I think it’s that one and he jumps and there’s nothing there and then the bridge arises. Do you remember?

Dermot Whelan: 58:38

that part. Yeah, he steps out, yeah.

Elizabeth Winkler: 58:41

Yeah, yeah, it’s trust. It’s trust, you know, trusting that potato, the inner potato. Like when you were talking about the potato, I’m like here’s the tree arc, like here you’re coming down, this is the potato, it’s right here. I’m going to draw a little potato here now, moving forward. But yeah, I mean it’s honoring that deeper. I don’t really even think it’s a voice. Personally, I think the voice in your head, nothing to listen to, to me it’s a, it’s beyond voice, it’s I don’t know how to describe it, I don’t have words for it it’s a feeling, it’s an energy. It’s again, words fail me.

Dermot Whelan: 59:20

So frustrating when you’re like talking to a financial advisor or your partner or somebody you’ve worked with and they’re like what, what, why, what do you feel? What are you thinking, why? And you’re like it’s kind of a gut, it’s kind of an energy, it’s kind of a calling, a calling. And you’re like they all sound like you’re suddenly robbing all your vocabulary from the Old Testament or something you know.

Elizabeth Winkler: 59:43

Right, it’s the force, the force.

Dermot Whelan: 59:45

Yeah, yeah, you know, because that’s not what the intellectual side of your brain wants to hear when you’re making big decisions that could be affecting more people than you. It doesn’t want fluffy, vague words. It wants, you know, it wants the definitive, helpful, perfect vocabulary. But that all goes out the window when you’re in one of those little changing junctions, you know.

davidji: 1:00:10

That internal quest for certainty that we think, if I can just have certainty then. But we don’t realize that, okay, now you have certainty. Oh, the wind blew. Now you have uncertainty again. So you have flickers throughout your life of certainty where you’re like yes, and then, as that word fades into the ether, uncertainty arises. Boom, here it is again. So if we can remind ourselves, it’s uncertain but it’s infinite possibilities, this is the path where we actually get to step up and then lean into something that we never even envisioned before. Dermot, here you are mindful, smash success.

davidji: 1:00:51

It was the number one book in Ireland for I don’t know how many weeks and months, many weeks and months. And I was just so excited. I was like watching, I was feeling like it was for, somehow, my baby, even though I was distinctly a distant surrogate in this process, but I was so excited. It’s like, yes, another week. Yes, it’s the number one book in Ireland, yes, it’s. And then you launch your podcast and it’s like, yes, it’s the number one podcast. So suddenly it’s like winning, winning. One more win, one more win.

davidji: 1:01:23

And again, there’s so many plateaus in your life where you could have just kicked out the chaise lounge and said, okay, this is it. I have arrived one more time, but yet you then crept into. I think I’m going to do Busy and Wrecked and I’m going to write the book Busy and Wrecked and I’m going to do the tour and suddenly everything is high velocity, blast off again, and so, first of all, congratulations. It’s like classic, oh, overnight success. Good on you. How did you pull that one off? But we know these things are decades in the making. It’s energetically decades in the making, moving you towards these other areas.

davidji: 1:02:06

So you just like swept through Ireland with your Busy and Wrecked tour. How’d that feel? What was that like? I noticed each time the audiences were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and to the point where you were like I don’t know where you were, I don’t think it was in Limerick, but you had posted something on social media. Where you’re like, here I am in my hotel right before the gig starts, far away from home, and I just wanted to make sure that as I look out my window, I can see a garbage dumpster in the alley and I can see also something fairly unspecial and uninspiring and it’s like, oh, welcome to being on tour. So that was just great. But you know, just talk about, like the, the energetic buildup and the and the deep fulfillment as you got to touch so many people in so many different places and so so many stages of life and really inspire and elevate them.

Dermot Whelan: 1:03:01

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it’s been an incredible experience. I have one more show left, would you believe, as we speak here today. I’ve got just one more. I’ve done 20, which I can’t believe. There’s nothing I love more. It’s such a gift to just feel like this is exactly what I want to be doing, because I’m very aware that a lot of people never get to experience that, you know, and I guess the more I do it, the more comfortable I am. Like I can’t describe the joy of sitting I’m on stage.

Dermot Whelan: 1:03:32

So to give people an insight into what the show might look like, it’s essentially three parts in two halves. The first half is sort of bang straight stand-up comedy. I incorporate my own story and I kind of, you know, I, as we say here, I would take the mick out of myself a bit so I poke fun at what I’m doing and the world of meditation itself and all that stuff, and that’s generally to put people at ease. Who, because there’s a lot of people who are possibly cynical in the audience or skeptical. You know, I always ask one question at the start of all my shows. It’s like you know, this show is comedy, it’s meditation, it’s transformation. Who is ready to be transformed. And there’s always a big bunch of people who go yeah, and then I go, and who is here Because you were dragged here by someone who’s sick of your shit. There’s another way. So there’s boyfriends, husbands, you know, wives, best friends, who get encouraged along to my shows, you know, by people who say you need this. You know, if you want us to stay together, you’re coming to this show. So I make them laugh, I relax them with some stand up and then we move into. I guess it’s like a funny TED talk with some slides and images and I take people through all the research I’ve done on busyness and I laugh at how topsy turvy our world is these days in terms of how we prize busyness and we wear our busy badge with pride and we scoff at rest and recovery. And then the second half of the show, the whole look at the show changes and I’m sitting in a cube and I call it my cube of calm and it’s it’s like lit up and with neon lights, and it changes different colors and and I gently guide people into the process of meditating. There’s a good few gags in there at the start to kind of help people feel at ease, and we start with something simple like the belly breath, and I say, start with the hand on the belly, and this always works best if you put your hand on your own belly, anything to just kind of cause those little ripples of laughter through it. So that’s the uncomfortable part, where the people with the woo-woo alarms are starting to freak out and you can just put them at ease and then I take them on this lovely journey through.

Dermot Whelan: 1:05:41

Part of is asking those deeper questions, when we can actually step out of busyness and ask who am I Not? Who do I think I should be at this point in my life? Who, 10 years ago, me thought I should be? Or who my wife or a partner thinks I should be? No, who am I right now, at this point? Because you know that was key for me in being able to move on and try something new. And what do I need? What does this person right now need? Again, not what do I think I should need. And is there anything in my life, just like we were talking about Elizabeth, that I’m ready to let go of? And if I can’t let go fully, can I loosen my grip? Is it the way I’m talking to myself in my head? Is it my behavior? Is it something about my work? Is it a peace pincher in my life? That’s just causing me extra stress that I don’t need.

Dermot Whelan: 1:06:31

So the greatest gift of the live show is that there’s an energetic journey. We go high with laughter and those big belly laughs and we come down into this beautiful little peaceful space. But, you know, it’s actually quite therapeutic for me because, you know, there was a moment in 2017 where I was sleeping in my car because I was so exhausted from just saying yes to everything. My job was draining me and if I needed to meet somebody in the afternoon, I would have to have a sleep in in my car. I would have to sleep for 40 or 45 minutes just to get through the day, and I thought that was quite normal for me. You know, because when we get super busy, the abnormal becomes normal fairly quickly, and I went to the the doctor’s surgery and I cried with the doctor in her office. You know I’m sitting there and she’s like so what’s going on for? And I just burst into tears. So I tell this whole story in the book and the live show and at the time it was traumatic, you know, but I made it into a comedy routine and it gets.

Dermot Whelan: 1:07:28

The biggest laugh of the night is me at my lowest point and I think that’s just such a beautiful thing. You know what happened when I sat there in front of the doctor, so vulnerable, after crying which I never do for two minutes solid, like one of those shoulder shaking, snotty, ugly cries, you know, I was finally gathered myself and I said I’m so sorry. I don’t know where that came from, I think I’m just so overwhelmed and burnt out I don’t know what to do. And the doctor looked at me with such amazing kindness and she said me too. I’m completely burnt out. I’ve got a whole lot of patients out there. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.

Dermot Whelan: 1:08:05

And I was like have you tried exercise? So I go into this whole routine. But that’s one of the beautiful gifts that this journey has given me is that I’ve been able to take those moments of my own life and actually shine a lot of humor into them, and it softens the whole event and then you can start to learn the lessons without that charge, you know.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:08:27

I love this. I love this. This is exactly what I was talking about. It’s like that window that you’re opening for everyone, that vulnerable space. When you said when she said me too, because this is what’s happening with your audience, this is what’s happening when davidji makes us all laugh, when we’re doing the meditation teacher training, it’s like that window inside of our hearts opens. We feel a connection. Suffering is such a powerful teacher. We are very, very stubborn people. Humans. We are stubborn, and it takes suffering for us to finally be like, okay, I’m going to loosen the grip, right. I mean, yeah, and maybe I need to let go of this thing, maybe, maybe that’s what I need to do. It takes that sometimes, often, when I listen to you describe your show, I want a front row seat, like what a gift you’re giving, as you said yourself, but so many people. I imagine now there’s a lot of meaning that you’re experiencing from this new jury art you’re in right now.

Dermot Whelan: 1:09:37

Yeah, completely yeah, you know, in the book. The second half of my book is my 10 tools of space, and one of them is purpose. I know you guys were speaking so beautifully about that in previous episodes. You know I compare purpose and meaning to identical twins that I used to know in university that they’d be walking towards you and you think, oh God, is that, is that? Is that Paul, or is that Rob? Is that Paul? It’s Rob, no, it’s Paul.

Dermot Whelan: 1:10:01

And you can easily get them confused, but when you see them up close they’re different, and purpose and meaning are kind of like that for me. You know, where meaning is? That extra juice that suddenly comes out of the things that we’re doing, and it’s transient. You know we can be in a meaningful relationship, but that relationship can end, it can, it can lose its meaning, you know. And so I found that the meaning was slowly sliding out of my day to day radio gig, which had tremendous meaning for me before, and it was now growing up, these little green shoots of meaning in these other spaces. So that’s what it gives me is this incredible sense of fulfillment and, as a result, this sense of purpose.

Dermot Whelan: 1:10:42

You know, and I think purpose is really, what impact do we want to have on the world around us? You know, and I can feel that I can see it, you know, and of course, I get to meet people after the shows, as I’m doing selfies and signing books because I have a massive ego, but I get to talk to them. I get to meet people and hear their stories and see that ripple. You know that davidji always speaks so beautifully about. So yeah, it is that beautiful blend of purpose and meaning.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:11:11

This client of mine had told me about this man who had three brushes with death. He was struck by lightning and heart attack and, I think, struck by lightning again. Okay, but he had this life review when he was dying.

Dermot Whelan: 1:11:27

He really should. He should let go of that 50-foot metal pole he walks around with.

Music: 1:11:31

I know, I know, I know. Why does this keep happening to me? How am I so un Can?

davidji: 1:11:35

I get a refund on that umbrella.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:11:38

Yeah, right, yeah, he was surprised by his life review. It was these little moments. It was not the big moments, it was. He smiled at a stranger and in the life review it showed the ripple that that brought into all the people, the domino effect of that. What Elizabeth’s?

davidji: 1:11:57

referring to when she talks about this life review. For our listeners who don’t know what that is, that moment when you’re sitting in front of some divine creator, let’s flash your life all the years in 15 seconds and we’ve all heard about that and and had that perhaps happen even to us. But in the depths of those, we think we’re going to see all these giant moments oh, the giving birth moment and the marriage moment and the getting the job moment, and really what you’re speaking to it’s everything in between.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:12:31

Right. And also I think so many of our shoulds are like fear of how am I going to be judged? You know, especially if you were raised in like particular religions, it’s like, okay, well, I’m going to be judged by that. I didn’t do the thing right. We think that we’re going to be seeing all the beautiful moments. It could be how I fail. So I was told that months ago and it totally shifted everything for me and I think it’s just an important thing to bring into what you’re talking about with this life and purpose and ripple that you know, we just don’t know. None of us know what’s going on for anybody Someone cutting you off in traffic. We think that that’s a personal attack. People think that’s a personal attack. That person might be rushing off to the hospital to give birth. You know, yeah, right, yes, of course.

Dermot Whelan: 1:13:18

Yeah, well, you know what I heard you speaking about, that I’m obsessed with near death experiences. I love those, and I was very familiar with the concept of the life review and I was driving along today and I was really thinking about what you said about it’s the smiling at the stranger that’s the one that gets you, isn’t it?

Dermot Whelan: 1:13:36

Because, you think of all the times you didn’t smile and you were grumpy with the person at the checkout, or you know, and I was driving along in my car today and a car pulled out of a gateway right in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. This was just before we started speaking together and I slammed on the brakes and did a bit of a skid and I stopped quite close to this car that was. I would have just totally T-boned it and old me would have. Just what the hell are you Rah rah rah? You know, and this is me.

Dermot Whelan: 1:14:09

You know, years ago, not yesterday, meditation helped with the ranting, but what immediately came to mind was when I looked at the driver, he looked like a granddad with grandkids in the back. When I looked at the driver, he looked like a granddad with grandkids in the back and he had a big smile on his face, even though he had nearly caused a crash with a little bit of sort of shock, but he was still smiling kind of, and the kids were in the back and they were kind of smiling, and so I smiled and waved him on. And because it was so fresh in my mind what you were talking about is that if I had shouted and roared at him and gone, what the hell, you crazy moron, what are you doing? Maybe he’s at that age where he doesn’t have much more time of driving left and that’s his entire world and him being able to drive his grandkids down to buy ice cream in the village, that’s his thing. His grandkids down to buy ice cream in the village, that’s his thing, you know.

Dermot Whelan: 1:15:02

And what would have been the ripple effect of me making him feel like a complete fool and that he, you know, maybe he should stop driving if he keeps having more of those incidences. But how I reacted in that moment could have been one of those near death experience life review things where you’re going. You didn’t give this guy a hard time and look at him. He, you know, suddenly took up jet skiing and now he’s a world champ at age 88 or whatever you know. But it happens in real life, yeah.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:15:32

Absolutely, and it also you gifted yourself because you’re free. You had an exchange. It’s back and forth. It’s not only them. You’re receiving this grandfather, this children, you’re receiving the humanity that me too moment Again, me too has a whole other context. Let’s call this also me, also me, right, not to be confused. It’s about connection. That’s what it’s about. What are we bringing to the spaces and time? I did some research a while ago on like waiting, and we spend five years waiting in lines in traffic. Can we use our waiting time as a mindfulness practice? So, when I’m waiting in traffic or I’m waiting in line or whatever, shift that into what am I noticing is happening in my body or what am I noticing is happening around me. These are those little moments, those spaces in between, apparently the most important things right when I’m going, or maybe not. Maybe those are the moments that make life meaningful, but we have to choose to inject or lean in with love or peace or curiosity or whatever it is.

davidji: 1:16:48

Yeah, these are opportunities. These are powerful opportunities. We beg for these moments, the space between, we beg for it. Dermot, you were napping in your car. This is why COVID came to visit us, because everyone was saying I just need a break, I just need to catch my breath.

davidji: 1:17:03

I just need things to slow down. We didn’t think it would happen like it did. But power of prayer, we co-created that one. And so these are gifts. And we could think, oh, I ordered my coffee, it’ll take six minutes. Let me scroll mindlessly for the texts that didn’t come and for my emails that didn’t come, and see if anyone liked me on my social media post. That didn’t happen.

davidji: 1:17:24

Or we could actually take a step back and take a breath and actually rejuvenate ourselves in the space between and you are a master of it, dermot, elizabeth, you are a master of it. Hopefully our listeners are really tapping into that, because it’s the secret to everything. It’s the yoga star. Connect to the present moment and then get busy and then do your thing. But if you can just embrace that present moment and celebrate that present moment and even just close your eyes and take one breath or, while you’re driving, don’t close your eyes and just take one deep breath we never do that. We’re just so busy and wrecked. Who would ever take the opportunity to do that?

davidji: 1:18:05

Dermot, people can pre-order your book right now, but people will be listening to this podcast long after April 3rd, and so I don’t even want to say pre-order, because for years, people are going to be ordering outright and grabbing that book and bringing it into their life. We’re so grateful that you’ve taken the time to hang out with us. It’s fairly evident that we could keep rolling for another five hours or five days of Convo. Are there any final words you’d like to share with at least our audience, which you should know? Our number one city on the planet, 10% of our listeners, dublin, and another 2% the rest of Ireland. So come on, cork, pull your weight. Dublin’s been pulling your weight for centuries. Now it’s time for you to step it up. Anything you would like to share, to sort of like, bring us home.

Dermot Whelan: 1:18:58

You know, there’s a word that runs right the way through my book, which I think just ties into so much of what we’ve been talking about, and that is Akasha space. And for me, that has become the word that sits in the background of everything that I do these days. It has completely shifted my perception of my world and the world around me. It actually came to me on a run, would you believe. I was running and I began to repeat the word Akasha and tap my chest and I was like I am literally losing my marbles. What is happening? Akasha, akasha.

Dermot Whelan: 1:19:38

So when I got home I Googled it and, sure enough, there it was space, ether, the space between the notes, the space that holds sound, and I was like there’s got to be something to this.

Dermot Whelan: 1:19:47

And it has continued to grow in my life, and I guess what I would like to say to people is that the world is so set up for busyness and distraction.

Dermot Whelan: 1:19:56

At the moment, there are the world’s greatest psychologists, paid the world’s greatest amount of money, to pull your attention here, there and everywhere, most notably out of the present moment. But science tells us the more we can pop in there, even for a few moments, the happier we will be, the more content we will be and that space can feel uncomfortable for a lot of people because we’re so distracted and so busy and because the world wants us out of that space, just being in a moment, somebody with noises or words. The more we step into that space and make ourselves OK with uncertainty and OK with not knowing who we are or what our purpose is at this moment in time, the more we can just settle into our little cube of calm, our space. You will become comfortable with all it has to offer and you’ll find the answers in there. So Akasha is the key and I hope that people find it when they read the book. So beautiful.

davidji: 1:21:13

I love it. So perfect. Thank you for taking the time. We know how busy you are. Glad we could pull you out of your car to make sure that you at least got some rejuvenation.

Dermot Whelan: 1:21:24

You know things have gotten weird when you’re in a place called Home Store and More picking out a car duvet and an eye mask for your naps. You know you veered off track.

davidji: 1:21:35

Car duvet. So brilliant, dermot Whelan. We are so honored to have you close out season three. Elizabeth and I talk about you all the time. I think about you and dream about you all the time. I follow you everywhere you go, either in person or through social media or wherever I can track you down. Keep leading the way. Thank you so much for everything that you do. Ireland is so lucky to have you as this native son who truly is raising the vibration of the Emerald Isle. Please join us again at some point in the future. Elizabeth, hanging out with you is such a joy.

davidji: 1:22:16

Again, we didn’t know anything except Dermot. That was our Regis moment. That’s all we knew. What’s the theme, what’s the topic? I don’t know, dermot Whelan. So blessings to you, dermot. Keep meditating and can’t wait to read. Yeah, me too, I can’t wait to read it your new book and everyone out there. Get out there and at least get a copy, or at least get on the list for Busy and Wrecked. Can’t see him live this go round, but perhaps the next time you’ll definitely be able to check him out. And love to you and your family.

Dermot Whelan: 1:22:49

Thank you, Love to you guys. Keep up the amazing work you do and play that wonderful theme tune. My God it stays up. I walk around my house singing it. I’m sure I’m not the only listener and fan who walks? Around singing that theme tune.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:23:03

Yes, so great, so great. I love it.

Dermot Whelan: 1:23:05

Thank you, guys. Lots of love from Ireland. Thank you.

davidji: 1:23:08

Thank you. Come on, jamar, see if you can elevate Dermot by singing the shadows in the dark.

Music: 1:23:20

They will lead the way to the hidden pathways of the heart and that secret place. That is where I find my start. The light is here to remove all my fears and to bring new sight. The light is the time that will go to the deep to take me to new heights. The shadow and the light.

Music: 1:23:55

There’s no fault in the rock bottom. You hold it as your own limit limit, but don’t rush past this moment. The darkness can become a friend. Love will come by your side and you’ll shine brighter than a million suns a million suns. You went through hell, but now you’re in the light. It is here to remove all your fears and to bring new sight. The light is a light that will go to the deep to take you to new heights. The shadow and the light has come because it loves us. The light has come because it loves us. The light has come to set us free. The light has come to set us free. The shadow comes because it loves us. The shadow comes because it loves us. The shadow comes to set us free. The light is here to remove all our fears and to bring new life. The light Is the light that will go on to the deep To take us to new heights, to the shadow and the light.