S05E135 Elevating Athletic Performance Through Mindfulness with Special Guest Rafi Silver
Have you ever wondered if the clarity of your mind can truly influence the way your body moves and conquers challenges? Our latest Herd Fit Podcast episode brings the insightful Rafi Silver, professional actor and mindfulness advocate, into the HerdFit studio to share how mental fortitude has been an essential part of his success in the spotlight and the gym. Together, coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic peel back the layers of mindfulness with Rafi, discovering how it's not only a practice for monks but a game-changer for athletes striving for peak performance.
We engage in a riveting discussion about how the lessons of mindfulness can profoundly influence our fitness journey, from overcoming grief to smashing personal bests. Rafi recounts the transformation he witnessed within himself, melding the emotional strength gained from navigating the entertainment industry with the physical demands of CrossFit. This episode transcends the typical fitness talk; it's a heartfelt exploration of connecting deeply with our inner selves to elevate our external achievements.
The conversation doesn't stop at the personal; we address the broader implications of mindfulness in competitive spaces, how it fosters growth in the face of failure, and the surprising similarities between acting and athletic performance. Rafi’s experiences both on set and in the gym serve as a testament to the power of authenticity and resilience. By the close of our discussion, you'll be equipped with a new perspective on how to utilize mindfulness to shatter the glass ceilings of preconceptions and truly live in the present, whether you're under the bright lights of the stage or the weight of a barbell.
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00:00:05 Mindfulness Training for CrossFit Athletes
00:09:10 Mindfulness and Fitness
00:19:42 Performance, Growth, and Mindfulness
00:27:37 Mindfulness and Coping With Success
00:42:42 Mindfulness and Overcoming Preconceptions
Transcript
S05E135 Elevating Athletic Performance Through Mindfulness with Special Guest Rafi Silver
David Syvertsen
Host
00:05
Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr Sam Rhee and myself, Coach David Syvertsen. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition and, most importantly, mindset. Alright, welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I'm Coach David Syvertsen. I'm here with my co-host, dr and Coach Sam Rhee. We have a very special guest today. Here across at Bison, we have a lot of talent, a lot of stories that others may not know about. One of the more interesting talents and one of the more interesting people that I think I've ever met at Bison in almost 10 years now is the man sitting right in between Sam and I, rafi Silver. What?
Rafi Silver
Guest
00:51
is up the most interesting. Wow, that's an honor Now.
David Syvertsen
Host
00:55
Rafi, I just want to make sure. Are you comfortable being on camera and talking to him like a?
Rafi Silver
Guest
00:59
I'll be honest, I'm more nervous now than I have been in class.
David Syvertsen
Host
01:03
Why am I asking him that? If you don't know who Rafi is? Rafi, you probably have seen him before. He's an actor. He's been onRafi. Give me a run of shows that you've been on that you know people have watched.
Rafi Silver
Guest
01:13
Pretty much. If you watch CBS, you'll have seen me at some point in your life. Ncis yeah, I was on NCIS, but first I was on NCIS LA. I was a terrorist. On that. I got drowned by LL Cool J. I died a lot on TV for a while. There I was on elementary. I was on NCIS for a while I did. Madame Secretary, there's going to be an episode of Evil coming out whenever the next season wraps and that's on CBS as well. Another show called Fall Out, which is going to be on Amazon, which that comes out April 12th. I'm going to put that episode of mine because it's all top secret, but yeah, there's that. And also, you probably have heard me, I was the voice of Bud Light for five years, wow, yeah. So I was on the Super Bowl. I did all the. I rode the dilly dilly train pretty much, which is pretty awesome. The same.
David Syvertsen
Host
02:08
Is pretty cool being next to an A-lister like Radio.
Sam Rhee
Host
02:11
You know, when my daughter, sasha found out that he was Kasim from NCIS, she freaked out. It was like a three or four episode or multi-episode arc where you're dating one of the primary characters. I forgot her name Agent Bishop. Yeah, agent Bishop, the blonde one. I remember watching it at the time, never connected it. Then Sasha did and she was like, oh my God, he was the best People loved you in that character. It was that was very cool.
Rafi Silver
Guest
02:41
You want to hear a quick story of Bud NCIS? Absolutely Okay. So Bud NCIS just cast as a guest star in season 12 and I was there. You know, when you're doing a guest star, you're there for eight or 10 days. An episode shoots for 10 days and I think I was there every single day and most of my scenes were with Emily, who played Agent Bishop, and with Mark Harmon, who's also like the show runner of the show and as well as the lead. And there was one scene, one scene I got to have where it was. You really get to drop in as an actor. Most of the time as a guest star, it's like my line okay, send it to the lead. But there was one scene where I really got to just talk to her and I was talking to Carly, my wife, and she was like you know, if you play this right, you can add the subtext that there's chemistry between the two of you. I hadn't watched the show so I didn't know her character was married, but I played the scene that way. Mark Harmon watched me do that scene and that was it. I felt really good about it. The episode airs the nighted airs.
03:51
I get a untitled call on my unknown call on my phone, so I don't pick it up. I get a message from Mark Harmon on my phone being like you were great on the show, we're going to bring you back. It's like fantastic. I know nothing about that. A year later, nothing happens. A whole season goes. I'm like all right, well, that's Hollywood. But then all of a sudden they call me back and they're like you're going to play the boyfriend. I show up on the set and I say what happened? They were like well, you had such a good chemistry with Emily that they wanted to make you the boyfriend. They had the husband. They added a storyline where the husband, you know, had a, had a affair or something like that, and then came back and so was like the power of the subtext in the acting. That was pretty cool. Wow, that's a really cool story Very cool.
David Syvertsen
Host
04:43
You would have an awesome tell all book at some point. Oh God, you should think about it.
Rafi Silver
Guest
04:48
You know, I just realized this is live and I just told that story. Hopefully you're not watching.
David Syvertsen
Host
04:54
So the reason we're bringing in Rafi on today, it does directly relate to some of the stuff he just talked about. And here we are in the reset challenge we're entering your week to. And Rafi actually approached me about bringing mindfulness to bison, to crossfitters, right and really exclusively to bison. And we talked about, you know, my performance and trying to find different ways to improve myself. And then we started relating it to the gym what can we do to help the gym out? And this has really been spurred on by Rafi the idea of trying to train the mind for crossfitters and, in particular, bison.
05:34
And at first, you know, I'll admit that I have a little bit of an internal eye roll to it because I'm not a meditating type, I'm not that deep of a thinker. When it goes into a dark room and, you know, put my hands up in the air and hum and hope that the life's answers come my way. And then, the more I talked about it, rafi started to pick up on this pretty quickly that I was intrigued Once he started saying we spend all this time training our bodies. How often do you actually spend, how much time do you actually spend training your mind? And part of this podcast was teach about mindset. So it actually made me look at myself in the mirror and say is am I being a hypocrite by saying, hey, we should be focusing on mindset and we do talk about it a lot, but are you actually training it? Do you have the tools to train it? Do you know what to do when you train it? So long story short.
06:28
To wrap that up, it is a part of it's an option to be a part of the reset challenge here in 2024 for CrossFit Bison, and Rafi has really taken this task on very serious. He's actually teaching a course at Columbia. Is it this spring? I keep forgetting. Yeah, I started actually next week, awesome.
06:46
So this is something Rafi is really passionate about sharing with others, and I think it's going to be really important for us all to dial in right now and focus in on what he's saying, why he's saying it and how it can help you. That's really where I want everyone's perspective to be right now, because, if you do pay attention, there's an element maybe multiple elements to this that can help you and your pursuit of fitness and health period. It's that simple, sam. I always like to get your opinion on stuff. That is different. This is different. You know, you've been here for a long time. We've never even touched this on this level. All right, I mean, I have talked about mindset a lot, but where does your mind go immediately and be honest about this when we started adding mindfulness training to the reset challenge?
Sam Rhee
Host
07:33
I thought that this was perfect for CrossFit athletes, because we are sort of 80D go, go, go, go fast as you can. Everything has to move quickly and there's not a whole lot of you know long thought or drawn out thought. That goes into our endeavors and in the sport, and I think most CrossFitters, when they start to get deeper into it, they realize it's not just physical ability, but it's the mental part that really drives us, whether it's satisfaction in our workouts, whether it's thinking about our workouts, whether it helps us feel better and work on our mindset by working out, and we start turning towards our brains, and I know I tried different things as well. Yoga was one that I think, with breathing and mindfulness, is one way of approaching it. I know top athletes.
08:30
I never saw someone be so mindful as JJ McCarthy, the championship winning quarterback for the Michigan Wolverines this past year. He, uh, you could see him. They would feature him sitting being mindful before a game at the goal post and just being and just engaging in that same practice, and I think you'll see a lot of top athletes also do that, and so this is something that has come on really strong in a lot of different sports and I was really looking forward to seeing what Rafi has to offer. I don't know a whole lot about mindfulness myself, and so I was really interested in learning more, Rafi.
David Syvertsen
Host
09:10
what is mindfulness?
Rafi Silver
Guest
09:12
Well, we actually had a debate in our training about it, but this is what we came to. Mindfulness can be described as learning to bring our attention to the present moment by simply seeing what arises, without bias or judgment. That's what mindfulness is. It's not a lot of misconceptions about mindfulness. Is that it's therapy, it's that it's mental health, it's that it's woo-woo or whatever you want to call it. What I just said is exactly what mindfulness is. It's paying attention to how we work and right now that's it. And so you could imagine, if you take it step one, step two, step three, how that could help in performance, how that could help an athlete.
09:57
Because what we're trying to do as George Mumford says, who wrote the Mindful Athlete, mindful Athlete we're trying to cultivate the zone right. The more consistently we can get into the zone, the better we're gonna be as performers. And so we can experience the zone, sometimes randomly, all of a sudden, and we start to dissect like how did we get there? Was it what I ate? Was it you know? Something that happened in my personal life before, and we try and mentally pinpoint it, but we didn't realize, like there's so much more, there's so much more complexity to it. And so sitting there and doing a mindfulness practice every single day allows us to try and unpack what it is that sets us up to succeed. And so the quarterback from Michigan, or LeBron or Michael Jordan, or any of these people that meditate, the reason they're doing it every day is to just stop, center, see where they're at right there, reconnect to their intention and move forward.
David Syvertsen
Host
11:06
Great, I love that answer. I'm probably gonna replay that a few times once this episode goes live. Why do you believe in it?
Rafi Silver
Guest
11:14
Well, it's interesting that Sam started this, because my connection to mindfulness and my connection to fitness literally go hand in hand. It started when my father passed away and I was depressed. I had a lot of grief, and how long ago was that? I think it was maybe four years ago. Okay, it was COVID time Got it, and I was in a rut like pretty bad, and I didn't really know how to get out of it.
11:50
I'm gonna give a shout out to one of my, to my best friend, max Ozinski, another actor. He plays Zava on Ted Lasso. He was filming a show, one of the Walking Dead spinoffs, and I went down to Richmond to go visit him. He was really close with my dad as well. This was maybe two weeks after and we just had a nice cry.
12:11
We talked about it and Max had been eating macros for three years. He looks like a superhero. He's like 5% body fat. He even looked more ridiculous during that time because he had to like take his shirt off on on camera and he was like Rafi, just just exercise. I was like what do you mean? I do exercise, kind of. He was like no, not swim. He's like you need to commit to this. You need to start eating macros, you need to actually start lifting heavyweight. And he was like I have this trainer that was a trainer for the movie Jurassic Park that his wife was in and he was like he's in London but he'll FaceTime train you. And so Carly and I my wife this was kind of still during COVID which helped with the macros because we can control our food we did it together and in six months of lifting heavyweights and eating macros at a deficit, I lost 40 pounds and pounds. Yeah, I lost 40 pounds and I got really, really strong and it was something I could focus on. It was something that I could put my energy into.
13:25
And, slowly but surely, what I started to see in the gym as we could all relate to progress, not just like shedding weight, but I was doing pull ups, weighted pull ups, I was deadlifting, I was squatting, I was building up my body but building up my confidence. And then eventually it got to the point where I looked really good for my career and I took some photos. And then I had these photos. I was staring at them and I didn't know what to do with them. Everyone's like put them on Instagram, you know, showcase how you look and I couldn't do it. I just felt so vain and I started to investigate, like what, why was it that I was doing this? And yeah, okay, I was doing it because I was like battling my grief, but I didn't feel fulfilled at all and I didn't know what to do. So I kind of press pause on the macros. At that moment I was like, all right, I got the photos in the can, that's great, but I really need to investigate this. And so I was drawn to.
14:35
I had been meditating a little bit but I was like I need a real change. So I signed up for this seven day silent meditation retreat that focused on a particular meditation technique called loving kindness meta in the Buddhist terms and I was going to spend seven days sending loving kindness towards myself and towards others basically sending myself to love prison. And four days of doing that I lost my mind. I kept wishing for COVID so they could kick me out. I'm not kidding.
15:11
I really was standing there in beautiful California doing the mantra of loving kindness, which is may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, may I be safe, may I be at ease. And one day I just out of my mind. I said, may I have COVID so I could escape this place? And I stopped in that moment, four days of paying attention, and I just looked at myself and was like you just wished for COVID. You've been avoiding this thing for two years. There's so much complication. I just wished for COVID so I could escape beautiful California and just myself, literally just my own mind. And in that moment there was like a weight lifted off my shoulders, like a lot of my grief, just like poured out of me. And I realized the importance of meditation and how, if I didn't have exercise, it couldn't have built up the strength for me to be able to face my mind. And so I really connect the two together.
Sam Rhee
Host
16:22
First of all, I can't believe your friends was Zava, because that is a great character from Ted Lasso. He was the superstar soccer player that they bring in in the last season.
Rafi Silver
Guest
16:33
I tried to get him to drop in here the last time he visited. He'll be back in two weeks. He said hell, no, because the workouts that they do, and that I did have zero cardio involved. And he, just like I would read my pretty fast.
Sam Rhee
Host
16:48
Yeah, he looks like a specimen. How did you bring CrossFit into that into your life then, once you got to that point?
Rafi Silver
Guest
16:57
So I knew that just lifting heavy weight and not doing anything cardiovascular was fine for, you know, vanity sake, and I was strong and you are working your heart. But it didn't feel like enough and so I started searching for different workouts or different exercises. And I had dropped in here once because I'm friends with Dave Boke, mo Boke, michelle and Dan Fruciano, and they were talking about bison all the time and I felt left out and so they called me CrossFit Curious and so I just did one of the Wednesdays I think Terry was the coach and I came in and I'll never forget it was like the wall balls and toast to bar and some sort of running and I was like, oh, I could do this, I'm strong, I've been like doing 60 pounds off my belt pull ups and I got destroyed. I got capped out on the workout, like badly, and I looked over at the board and I saw Dave Boke had finished it in like 15 minutes and the cap was 24. I was like what, how is that even? How is that even actually physically possible? I was like I need to figure this out if I want to ever step back into this gym and I was kind of afraid, to be honest to come back. But last year my mother-in-law bought me a 10 pack to bison for Christmas and I was like, all right, well, let me give these 10 classes a shot.
18:39
And I came in and I started to really give it a chance and there was a lot of energy going on here because I think we had just signed up for you got the open announcement. As I'm staring at this poster and everything, I was like, wow, this is a community, everybody loves each other. I was like I think I could fit in here and I pretty much drank the Kool-Aid because it really exemplifies everything that I was going for. It's a mental test every single day and it's a community which really is important to me. I mean, in Tibetan Buddhism maybe you'll see there's three bows right when you walk into a shrine hall. The first bow is towards your teacher, the second bow is towards the teachings and the third bow is to the community, and that really matters to me, and so this place really exemplifies that to me.
David Syvertsen
Host
19:42
Performance you are. Your career is performing. Yeah, camera, lot of pressure, crossfit, whether, no matter what. You're here for a career, to screw. It's a performance every day, right, and some are. That's why they're here Scores, whiteboard weights, reps. Others are here for help, but you're still performing and you're still putting what you did on a whiteboard. That's your name for the whole world. Well, the bison world to see. Can you give me a couple similarities, because you are one of very few that performs for a living and then you're also a member here. Some of the similarities between the two performance related and then where the mind helps or hurts in that regard.
Rafi Silver
Guest
20:25
Well, I'm, you know, here's a. Here's a quick little joke about it is that I'm trying to teach my eight year old son how to fail and how to fail gloriously, and how failure is in fact the best way to improve, because if you put everything out there and you don't succeed or you don't match your expectations, it gives you the most amount of information. And so he had. He was having trouble failing one time and my wife, who is quick witted, she was like oh, don't worry about it, daddy fails for a living. And it's true, I literally put myself out there daily, I'm auditioning daily, and there's so much that's out of my control. What people tell me I'm not tall enough, I'm too tall, I'm not good looking enough, he's too good looking. I mean, it's literally the most ridiculous reasons why you get or don't get a job. And so you, I, started to build up that idea that failure, or being exposed when you give it everything that you've got, is actually the only place you can learn. And the fact that we hold each other accountable here on the whiteboard is exactly that. If you're telling the truth and you're doing all your reps and doing everything that's for you to say I did my pit. I can be proud of that number, no matter what it looks like next to somebody else, because it represents everything I got and there's a place where I can grow, like that workout I told you about. I got capped out and a couple of days ago I just did finish the workout with a 20 pound wall ball and I scaled it in the open last year and I can't believe that I've made it that far. It doesn't feel like I did, but I was chipping away. I was giving everything I got in every workout, sometimes to the point where you're like, oh my God, I might die, but I kind of crave that feeling because I know there's a chance to grow.
22:42
So, if we're just looking at it in terms of performance, that's what I try and do with every audition. I try and pay attention to what I can control, being as authentic as I possibly can be every single time, because if I do that and I don't get the job, I can sleep at night, and it's always those times and that's where mindfulness comes in for me where I'm looking for some sort of validation on my audition Is this good, did you like this? Where I know I didn't give my all and that's tough to look in the mirror and say that to yourself. I like to tell my students it's like being a magician, where you like do a trick and you're hoping everybody buys it. That, to me, is inauthentic.
23:32
I'd rather see somebody be true, be real, have a moment really happen on camera or on stage and then live with that and move forward. And that's kind of what people do here at this gym, absolutely, and that's inspiring to me. So it's not like, oh, I'm not doing my, I'm not reaching my potential on the whiteboard or in my workout because I'm not beating this person or that person. It's quite literally like I'm doing everything I possibly can to grow and trying to do this new skill or anything like that, and the progress is incremental and so they really do align If you look at like your performance as maximizing your own potential, because I'm never gonna make the games, nor do I have aspiration to make the games, but I have the most aspiration to get as far as I possibly can in my own body, in my own mind, so then I can relay it to others. Hey, pay attention to this, I made that same mistake. Or pay attention to this and that's why I teach acting and hopefully, you know, we'll be continuing to teach mindfulness, that's really authentic.
Sam Rhee
Host
24:46
I think that really I relate to that very strongly.
24:49
I never really thought about acting as not being judged by others, cause that's what I always thought.
24:56
That would be Like you'd go to an audition and you'd be very worried about what other people, like the casting director and the people in charge, would think. But if you walk in as an actor and you give your best performance, then that's what counts and that's the same thing as an athlete in CrossFit when you come in, if you are really bummed because you didn't beat you know Jim by five seconds, and that's how you judge your own performance as opposed to. I mean, of course you want to measure yourself against someone, but you have to take away the fact that you gave it your real effort and you should be proud of that. That's what you should be taking away from a lot of things in life. Honestly, if you look at what other people are doing or if how they judge you and that's a hard thing for older adults as well as young adults I mean I see that both in my kids and in myself all the time fighting that, that urge to base my satisfaction and happiness on what other people are judging me by.
Rafi Silver
Guest
26:00
And you know what's interesting about that I was. You know I like to meditate before I do anything like any type of performance, or you know, before I came here, I sat for 20 minutes and the thing that kept popping up in my mind was in Buddhism, there's this thing called the Brahma Vihars, which are the four immeasurables. The first one is compassion. Well, the immeasurables mean that no matter where you're at in your life, whether you're dying, whether you're just born, the well cannot run dry. It's infinite. So we could tap into any four of these things at any time. The first one is compassion. The second one is loving kindness, which was that retreat that I talked about. One of the another one is equanimity, which is balance. But the one that kept coming back to me is appreciation for others, appreciative joy, and if we really consider that, like actually hoping that somebody else is joyful, that somebody else succeeds, like that well will not run dry. And if you practice that, like hoping that the person next to you in your box does the best that they can, you like I know this sounds really soft and woo-woo, but it actually can be the engine that drives you Absolutely, and for me, that has become my why and going back to like whether this mindfulness stuff works or not.
27:37
I, you know, I'm glad we talked about Max and Zava because I had been spending all this time sending him appreciative joy, and he's another actor too. We compete and I mean we don't compete for the same roles, but we compete. His success I measure myself versus his success. We left school together. We lived together. He was doing better than me. You know we've had times where we flip flop, but I remember sitting there and he sent me his audition tape for Zava and when I watched it I burst into tears of joy looking at this audition tape and I was like he just did the best he could and this is so good, I was so proud of him.
28:23
And then I stopped in that moment and was like, oh my God, this stuff, this stuff is working. I felt good that. I felt good for him and I didn't think about myself like, oh well, you're not gonna be on Apple TV. It was like, no, I want the people I love to succeed and if I tapped into that as my engine, I was like, wow, that could really push me forward. You know, a lot of time we and I did I attacked my workouts out of rage, out of anger.
28:53
My dad died. Screw this, I'm gonna lift up that barbell. You know F this Like why did he die? Why did he die so young? You know I'm getting emotional and that's not sustainable. Let's just put it that way. I started turning the point of view going to the other side of the coin, which was like may everybody in this gym, may everybody in my competition, do the best that they possibly can, because they are, just like me, working their butt off trying to succeed. They have dreams and I want them to succeed too, because that pushes me to be better.
David Syvertsen
Host
29:38
I mean, I don't think we could have better words said this time of year, sam right Very far for our gym, the emotion behind it and the sense of togetherness that we have with what's coming up. You know it's probably the biggest month of our calendar as a gym the open. You know there's a lot of modelfulness that revolves around failing and how to respond to failure. Can you touch on, have you ever thought about this perspective of the modelfulness that you need to have when you're succeeding? Do you go down the path of when I hit that barometer that I've been reaching for? What's next? How do I cope with success in a mindful kind of way?
Rafi Silver
Guest
30:17
Well, it's interesting If you listen to any famous actor, or you know, I was just watching a documentary about Sylvester Stallone, called Sly, and he talks about how it's really lonely on the top of the mountain, the mountain top that he had been going and going and going to the top of the mountain, and he got there and you're like, well, what's next? Right, and if we're classifying that as quote, unquote, success, you can recognize that as being empty and by saying it cannot be about these superfluous goals that we have, that it has to be more, that it's endless, right, that it's immeasurable. And so, yes, we could have goals, absolutely, there's no doubt. We can put it in front of us, go for that target. We could have a target on a workout, we could do it.
31:14
But when that happens, we have to have the same kind of equanimity, balance that we have when things don't work out as we do. When they do. That it's just recognizing. That's another occurrence that feels good in this moment. But that moment will change. And if you start to not chase the highs and not, then the lows won't come as much and then everything kind of like is like Bruce Lee, like water You're just flowing through and that's why he says that it's just like you can, in that moment, flow and then it's on to the next. What's the next moment? And that's what mindfulness training is. Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment by simply seeing what arises, without bias or judgment. Literally to the next, to the next.
David Syvertsen
Host
32:11
So you're listening to Rafi, right now, you don't have a pulse. If you're not intrigued by this right now, it's really. It's just opening up a lot of different doors right now for a lot of people. So, rafi, I'm intrigued. I want to participate in this mindfulness training. Where do I start?
Rafi Silver
Guest
32:32
Well, you start by doing it by listening to the 10 minutes that I recorded for all of you at Bison. But if you're not at Bison or you're not listening to the recording or anything like that, there are so many resources out there that teach mindfulness. I would suggest making sure that the mindfulness training that you're going to get comes from the Buddhist lineage, because there's and I'm not to discredit any of the breath work or any of these other things that are out there, but the specific mindfulness that people are talking about, that they're studying, comes from that lineage, and yoga is included in that. That's mindful movement, and so I would search mindfulness taught by the Insight Meditation Society or John Kabat-Zen or the Tibet House or any of these places, or come to me or any other certified mindfulness instructor to learn from the lineage of Buddhism mindfulness.
33:47
Buddhism can be touchy because it's a quote, unquote religion, but what we're doing you're not devoting to the religion. Buddhism is non-theistic, it's secular. It's the practice of mindfulness that's in the foundation of Buddhism. So you're not going to become a Buddhist by practicing mindfulness. In fact, I'm not a Buddhist, and so mindfulness you can really just listen to me right now. It's three simple steps and you can do this on your own. You have to make sure you find a seat that's comfortable, upright, but not uptight. Stop pausing that position. Step two pay attention to your breath. Don't control it, and when your mind wanders, label it, thinking, notice it and come back to the breath. That's it. Let's repeat Do that every single day and you will start to see some sort of benefits of paying attention.
Sam Rhee
Host
34:49
What do you think about all of these apps that are available that purport to help with mindfulness, or how does this relate to meditation itself?
Rafi Silver
Guest
34:59
I think there's a lot of great apps out there Headspace, calm, 10%, happier, waking Up. They all say the same thing, and so find who speaks to you. But what I'm referring to, if you hear something similar to what I'm saying, which is paying attention to the breath and coming back, then you know you're doing mindfulness training on whatever app that you're on. I think they're all beneficial.
Sam Rhee
Host
35:27
And Howard Stern always talks about transcendental meditation. How does that relate? Is that adjacent? Is that the same thing?
Rafi Silver
Guest
35:33
to you. That's adjacent, that's a different thing. That's extremely helpful. A lot of celebrities and a lot of famous people do that. Transcendental meditation is a mantra that you're constantly saying to send you into a little bit of a trance, but it's not paying attention, which is the difference. Like, transcendental meditation might be relaxing and it might clear the mind, but what? Mindfulness can actually be quite frustrating because it's very active. You're allowing things to present themselves, but you're alert. And I know we're sitting there with our eyes closed, but you're very alert. In fact, your head is constantly spinning.
David Syvertsen
Host
36:20
Is this something that someone needs to plan out morning, night, x. Amount of time it's for the reset challenge? It's 10 minutes, but thinking beyond just the reset challenge, would you be putting a cap on how long you need to really get the most out of this?
Rafi Silver
Guest
36:36
Well, the studies are showing that 20 minutes a day is the recommended dose. I guess you can say that's where they've been doing the studies that anything before 20 minutes is helpful, but it really doesn't give the same benefit, and that's a lot. It's hard to sit for 20 minutes a day and find 20 minutes a day, but, just like any other habit that you want to that you're really interested in developing, you got to sacrifice something else, and for me personally it was social media. I recognized after one of my retreats that social media was eating up a lot of my time. And they said on the retreat they're like all this great stuff that you're feeling, or negative stuff, if you want to continue, if you, you have to practice and you got to make time for it, and so something's gotta go, something's gotta give or you need to change your perspective on what time is.
37:40
And so I dedicate 20 minutes, no matter what. 365, sometimes more, but not 365, sometimes more than 20 minutes a day to meditating. I it's non-negotiable for me. It is something that I will do if I have to wake up at four am, because I gotta work out here at five and then I gotta go to set for the rest of the day. I will do that to meditate. It's my job. I treat it like it's my job and I treat working out like it's my job too, because quite literally, it is.
David Syvertsen
Host
38:19
In terms of pushing the needle. You know I'm only about I don't know about 10 days into it and you know Rafi checks around me How's it going and I'm very honest with my answers about it. And I think I just wanna give a little experience of what I've been going through with the week because I think others, based on who I talk to I talk to a few people about the mindfulness. I've heard this a couple times too that one of my struggles being a rookie at this is I do like the quietness, I like that. I'm making myself do it. It makes me feel like I'm being disciplined.
38:52
But I have so many thoughts racing through my head while I'm doing it and instead of me being present with myself, I'm trying to think about all the problems. You know. Put out this fire, put out that fire. I got water in my basement, my son is sick, my body hurts. We're changing up the schedule. This person's out next week. We gotta find like that is what enters my mind during this mindfulness training, where I'm trying to solve problems rather than looking at it from the mindfulness perspective. And I know it's this like CrossFit. It's not something you click your fingers and you're there Like I'm not gonna be on Rafi's level. I'm not going to be able to RX this right away. You know what? Can you tell someone like me and others that feel like, all right, maybe I'm just not cut out for this? What's your response?
Rafi Silver
Guest
39:36
My response is that you're wrong. You are cut out for this. Every single person is. And I had been thinking about this coming on this podcast and I was like, oh, you know what if they start talking about the downsides? And I was like there's actually no downside except you lost 10 minutes of your day Quite, literally no downside. So whatever downside that comes up in your mind self-generated, right, completely. And so what I would say to you and to others that are feeling that way? You're not alone. Every single person feels that way, even the monks on the hill, they're still feeling that way. There is doubt. It's the human condition. Am I doing this right? Chasing a feeling? Because you may get there, you may have a state of bliss and be like that's it. I wanna go for that again. I wanna go for that feeling Every time you notice that you're being frustrated or you have plans or you've got something to do.
40:42
That's a moment of mindfulness.
40:43
You're doing it right. I saw someone in the gym the other day. It's like I can't just I can't stop thinking. I'm like, well, are you noticing that? And she said, yeah, I said you're doing it. I know that's frustrating to hear, but the more and more you recognize that that's how you operate, dave, and maybe others and probably all of us the more you're in control of it. That when it pops up, oh my God, I'm planning, I'm clinging to the fact that I have all this stuff I need to do Then you start to see that's my habit we were talking about this earlier that before you started doing mindfulness, that was happening too.
41:26
The only difference is now you're paying attention to it and so you're now in control, like if we're talking about this as training, you're now in control of the fact that you are thinking that way, because now you have recognized it the Wizard of Oz, the curtain has been pulled.
41:43
You're like that is how I work, that's who I am, that's been conditioned into me by my own need to survive, which is the human condition. And the more and more you notice that, you start to see the things that are in your way and you start to clear the cobwebs, because the things that are in your way, you've put them there, I've put them there, we've all put them there. And so maybe, if we look at that with a little bit of compassion, we can be like all right, well, I don't need that anymore. I don't need that anymore. And I'm not talking about physical things like Instagram or whatever although getting rid of some of that stuff could help but I'm talking about psychological stuff, which is, man, I don't really need to create that narrative about myself Like that was serving me in college or that was serving me as a young adult, but I don't need that anymore.
Sam Rhee
Host
42:41
That is true. I see a lot of people with preconceptions about themselves that I think hold them back in terms of their capabilities, and me, too, I know that. What do you think about people who say, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna have a glass of wine or two before I start my mindfulness, or a little edible might help me a lot with this. Is that something that is helpful? Not helpful.
Rafi Silver
Guest
43:05
I would say not helpful just because we're trying to have a clear mind.
43:10
Not that I don't participate in any of those things or haven't before, but I think what a lot of people who are seekers, who are trying to get something fixed inside of their mind or know they need something fixed, they're attracted to drugs or they're attracted to a stimulant because it does unlock a part of consciousness that they can't tap into normally. But the reason why I gravitated towards mindfulness is because I wanted a tool that I could use at any time, anywhere, that I knew how I got there. And so if you take an edible or anything like that, not that you can't meditate under the influence, it's just not the actual clarity that you could have in your everyday life, because you're not gonna take an edible and then go do a wad. I mean you might, but right, you know it's not gonna be the best idea. So it's like don't do it while you're meditating, because we're trying to train the mind. You know, if we're doing it for performance, we're trying to do the same thing here and there, right, Stimulant free.
David Syvertsen
Host
44:23
Rafi, this was awesome. Man Sam, do you have any closing thoughts on mindfulness, what it can do for us as people, us as crossfitters right, we don't wanna just think about crossfit perspective, but any combination of the two.
Sam Rhee
Host
44:36
I think it's probably one of the hardest things for people to challenge. I know the farther along I go in it, I realize, as Rafi said, breaking down the things that are preconceived in my mind so hard, I recognize that I'm starting to recognize them but actually sort of facing them. They're crutches that I have relied on for so long in terms of getting, like Rafi said, getting by through so many situations and I don't know if I have the you know strength to do that some days and I think for all of us. If you know, I actually came into reset, not planning on doing it, but after talking to you today, I'm gonna start. I'm gonna start today and One subscriber.
45:23
I got two right here and I'm going to start with the scaled version and see where that takes me. I don't think I'm gonna like a lot of what I see. Like Dave said, there's you know, I feel like that's going to start. That's going to be the tough start for me, but let me stick through it, through reset and I'll see what happens with that.
David Syvertsen
Host
45:45
Yeah, echo that, that it's definitely not something that I would naturally do on myself, and this part of what we preach here at reset is trying something new that could help you know, help you in the long run. And one thing Rafi said to me as I was starting this is like you really have to lean into who you are, you know, not run away from it. And I think that's one of the most important things that we all need to know if we're trying to pursue betterment of anything, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, combination of the three. You really have to truly lean into who you are, be present with who you are, know who you are, and not run away from it. Because, just like anyone that would come into the gym looking for a new fitness program, I would never look at them and say, hey, you're a little too old to start here, you're a little too out of shape to start here.
46:31
I would never say that to anyone because I truly don't believe it and it would be foolish of me to say, hey, I'm a little too experienced in life, I'm too old, I have too much going on, I am not good enough mentally to take this on. So I'm really glad that I'm leaning into it. I'm glad that Rafi's a resource. I'm glad that he's putting himself out there, very grateful and I know others are as well and I'm really looking forward to where this brings me and others who would have thought that a professional actor as our guest would have been the realist person on our podcast.
Rafi Silver
Guest
47:02
Yeah, Well, you know, there's a lot of misconceptions about acting too, and I think that that's one of the things that you know. People don't really think about that If an actor is, you know, being a magician, if we're trying to fake it, then you're not gonna feel it. Our job is not to lie. It's to reveal the human condition authentically, so it could help you. That's why I got into it to begin with.
David Syvertsen
Host
47:29
I have a feeling we're gonna see Rafi on here again, sam Hope. So Thank you guys. I'll see you next week. Thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herdfit podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
