DisclaimerThe views expressed on Dead America podcast are the views of the person expressing themselves.We are here for entertainment only for any Medical or Mental Health concerns you might have. We always recommend seeking local listings for a qualified provider in your area. We will always consider other points of view on any subject. We do not necessarily agree with our guests all of the time. We value everyone. All of our guests deserve respect and a platform to voice concerns. https://www.deadamerica.website (https://www.deadamerica.website) https://www.skillfulmeans.life (https://www.skillfulmeans.life) Transcript https://www.mediafire.com/file/9eb4izbw5706jok/Dr.+William+Jackson_Transcript.docx/file (Download) Dr. William Jackson SUMMARY KEYWORDS meditation, mindfulness, people, mind, life, meditating, develop, meditation practice, psychologist, monk, psychotherapy, world, stages, practice, studied, skillful means, talking, understand, experience, behavior SPEAKERS Dr. William Jackson, Ed Watters Ed Watters 00:00 Understanding the world that we live in, can be very exhausting. It can make our minds do unthinkable things. Today's guest Dr. William Jackson incorporates psychotherapy, positive psychology, and the most accessible core methods of meditation into his practices, with 7000 plus hours of total time in retreat. While a monk, he practiced with an organized retreat of Buddhist teachers around the world, including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He's here today to help us understand his contemporary evidence-based meditation practices. Let's not waste any more time and get into today's exciting episode. Ed Watters 01:07 To overcome, you must educate. Educate not only yourself but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others. However, some of the best conversations happen with ourselves. Reach Out and challenge yourself. Let's dive in and learn something right now. Dr. Jackson, could you please introduce yourself and let the audience know, just a little bit more about you and how you got to where you are today? Sure. My name is William Jackson, I I'm a health psychologist and a former Buddhist monk. And what that sort of means is, as a health psychologist, I help often people who have both a chronic illness and something that they're dealing with psychologically. And I found that sort of niche for myself, after being a Buddhist monk and deciding I was going to take the robes off, I wanted to find a way that I could utilize what I had learned in meditation to help people. And it just so happens that mindfulness has found a niche in the chronic pain community, and then sort of expanded into the rest of the medical community from there. So that's what sort of brought me into doing the work that I'm doing now. And, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it a little bit later. But there's certain types of practices and certain structures of courses and learning meditation that are more helpful than others. And I've sort of veered in the direction of these more comprehensive meditation programs. Ed Watters 04:10 Right off when I saw you on Poddit, I saw that you were a former Buddhist monk. Yes, that just fascinates me. Could you walk us through? What made you become a Buddhist monk? And then why would you decide to walk away from that lifestyle? Dr. William Jackson 04:30 Sure. Yeah. So before I became a monk, I was actually an actor. So I started in my junior year of high school acting because I wasn't doing so good academically in my public high school, and, you know, getting into a little bit of trouble here and there. But I had one teacher who saw me do a bunch of impressions and characters and he really encouraged me...