7 Days of Silence, No Phone, No Words
Episode notes
I used to think meditation was woo-woo. Then I spent seven days in total silence - no phone, no reading, no talking - and came back with a definition of mindfulness so simple it almost feels like cheating.
No expert here. Just me, a former mindfulness skeptic, sharing the honest version of what actually stuck - and what didn't.
What you'll take away:
- Why the goal of mindfulness isn't to feel better - and why that's exactly why it works
- What happens to your brain after three days of silence, and why the "I could never do that" people are the ones who need it most
- Two 30-second practices you can start today - one before meals, one before bed
Chapters:
00:00 Mindfulness - the buzzword, broken down
01:00 Tools of Titans and the one habit every top performer shared
03:00 A layman's definition: notice, don't react
04:00 Try it: the 10-breath exercise
05:00 Seven days of silence - the retreat
06:30 The first three days (and the moment you melt in)
09:00 Exploring the recesses of your mind
11:00 Two daily practices: gratitude before meals, breaths before bed
🔗 Links mentioned:
- Or HaLev - Jewish silent meditation retreat
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
- Calm app
- Headspace app
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Transcript
Transcribed from the recording and lightly formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so the occasional mis-hearing is left as spoken.
Jeff Albaum
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. This week's episode, I want to talk about something that's pretty near and dear to my heart. And it's a buzzword, and so I kind of want to wanna break it down a little bit and and share what it means to me and and some of my experiences with it. So today's episode is all about mindfulness and what that means and what it doesn't mean. So I want to start off by sharing just a little bit of my background as it comes to mindfulness. So as
Most of you probably know, I didn't grow up really into mindfulness stuff. It wasn't something that was on my radar a lot. And I I started getting into it probably around 20 after graduating from college. So I started hearing the word a little bit and thinking about what it might mean and didn't take it too seriously and had heard of meditation, but didn't really know what it was and thought it was kind of woo-woo and not really into it. Fast forward to January 2025.
my wife and I went on a seven day Jewish silent meditation retreat through this amazing organization called Orha Lev. And I'll I'll link to that in in the show notes. and so that it was a really intense experience, but it was a really beautiful experience and something I want to talk about today. And also the arc of how I got from you know hearing what mindfulness was and just kind of getting dipping my toes into it to going like to a f to a seven day silent meditation retreat.
and then what I'm doing now today and how I how I maintain the practice. So I think my journey through mindfulness was probably pretty typical. you know, started reading books and and started the people that I would follow and and listen to and read about kept coming back to mindfulness. Like I feel like a really big influence for me was Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. And a number of the people that he interviewed, he it's a book basically where he interviews.
hundreds of super successful people in in different categories. So not all financial. It could be r like world champions in health stuff. So I think the the three categories are healthy, wealthy, and wise. So people who are at the the top of the top in in sports and athletics and then also in finance and then also in could be anything like investing or or chefs or world people who are world class at their craft. And and time after time
something that was a common thread was they all had some sort of mindfulness practice. And so I thought that was interesting. And so started to do a little bit more research and do a little bit more research. And, you know, during COVID in 2020, I was using the the calm meditation app and really liked that. I thought it was really nice. And then tried headspace and and kind of all these things. And so I want to give a a a layman's definition of mindfulness because I think that'll help to set the table a little bit. So
When I say mindfulness, the things that come to mind for me are the ability to notice without a reaction thoughts as they come to mind. That's it. The ability to notice without a reaction thoughts as they come to mind. so to me, it's not about feeling a certain way, good or bad. It's not about changing how I feel, good or bad. Like we're all humans, we all have emotions, we all have good days and bad days and
Feeling great and feeling not so great. And so the goal of mindfulness for me is not to change how I feel, but rather to notice. And that subtle distinction is interesting because as soon as you take the onus off of trying to change how you feel, it's kind of counterintuitive, but at least for me, I end up feeling usually better. but that's not the goal. And if the goal ever is to make myself feel better, it doesn't work. So it's this kind of catch 22. But so for example, a very common practice to start is.
Show full transcript
Jeff Albaum
You know, get comfortable, get in a seated position. Try to sit upright so you're not slouching. Try to sit upright and close your eyes and take a long breath in through your nose.
And out through your mouth.
We're gonna do that ten times. And each time, just try to notice your breath. Notice how it feels in your nose, how it feels in your throat. Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it room temperature? And sure enough, some other thought is gonna pop into your brain. All the things you have to do today, all of the laundry you have to fold, what you're gonna make for dinner, the grocery list, et cetera, life.
And so the goal is not to shut that down. It's to say, totally. Yeah, I do have that grocery list. I'm gonna put that aside for right now and try to come back to the breath. And slowly, slowly over time, the more you do this, the easier is it the easier it gets. the best analogy I heard for this is meditating once and saying that it doesn't work is like.
never having gone to the gym and you go to the gym once and you don't have a six pack, you're like, this is stupid, exercise is dumb. Right. Like you need to be consistent with it. And I'm saying this mostly for my own sake because I have not been consistent with this. but that's the gist of what I think of when I when I talk about mindfulness. It's the ability to in any situation, a thought comes up and try not to react to it. Right? Try to just focus on something.
And as thoughts come in and out of my my brain, just notice them. Let them pass, let them, let them settle, and then move on. So I've run a lot of questions about the silent meditation retreat. And it was a super, super epic experience. I cannot h recommend it more highly. It's essentially seven days of little, it's not none, but it's very little input.
So you're not on your phone. You don't listen to any music. You don't write. You don't read. there are nightly kind of lectures. So there it's like a lecture style. So for about 45 minutes, they'll give some sort of teaching that you listen to. So you're you are hearing some voices. It's not totally silent. and you're in beautiful nature. So you hear obviously like the rustle of the trees and that kind of stuff. But the first three days are really strange because you're basically sitting in silence a lot.
And it's physically uncomfortable because your body isn't used to sitting in that way. And it's also weird to not communicate with other people. And after about day three, you just kind of like melt into it. And it sounds kind of gnarly. And I I want to preface this too with it's really hard to put into words and to describe the the feelings that you have and and the experiences that you that you
create because it it is a it's not really like anything else. There's not anything else you can really compare it to. so I'm just gonna share my experience because it's obviously the only one I can I can talk to. But after about day three, you start to kind of really enjoy it and little things become really, really entertaining because obviously you don't have other forms of entertainment. So you're not checking your phone, you're not even reading or watching TV or anything like that. So you don't really have a form of entertainment.
And what that does is it kind of let your it lets your brain and I don't know if this is true, but your entire nervous system, it feels like, kind of just settle. Because in day-to-day life, you're kind of amped up. And over time, after a couple of days of just being quiet, it just settles. And so you're not any different, but you just feel a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more almost in flow. And the things that you look forward to are really interesting. Like you'll start to enjoy,
Like we had a lot of free time because you know, that's you would basically meditate or eat all day, essentially. That was and then you had breaks in between and you would go on walks and et cetera. And so going on a walk was the was the the coolest thing because you would notice all of these little things that you otherwise wouldn't. You'd notice the way that the leaf kind of moved along the ground and the sound that it made was really cool. Or you'd look at the trees and you'd see the the branches blowing in the wind and you'd just think like
This is beautiful. This is amazing. so it's this really, really unique experience. And towards the end, you at least for me, you know, the first couple of days, the actual meditations, it was really hard for me because it's it was the longest I had ever meditated for in one one stretch. And by the end of it, you almost it again, it's a muscle. And so you're practicing this muscle day after day. And so towards the end, you really get.
You have a very good understanding of kind of of what you're doing. and so you're able to kind of like drop in a lot easier. And so by the end, you you get to kind of again, that sounds really weird, but you get to explore the recesses of your mind in a way that you haven't that that I hadn't at least been able to prior. And so you memories come up and you're able to like kind of pull on these threads.
But then you can come back to your breath at the same time. And so you're you're kind of focusing on your breath, but also like all this cool stuff is happening as you're focusing on your breath. And you can kind of choose to follow any thread that you want to, because after all, it's your meditation. You do whatever you want. but it's this amazing, really amazing opportunity and and and time. so I I I didn't really do it, I probably did not do a good job of explaining it.
But I cannot recommend it highly or more highly. it's something I think everyone should do. And I think I s would especially recommend it to people who would think immediately, I could never do that. I think that's exactly the type of person who should do it. it's kind of like the old adage, if if you don't have ten minutes to read every day, you need ten hours.
Think about it. but it's similar with meditation. So all I have to say, that was definitely the peak of my mindfulness career to date. that was in January of 2025. And since then, I kept up a good meditation practice that was daily for a couple months after. I've definitely not been as consistent with it as I as I would like to, and I want to get better at that. but there are a couple of mindfulness practices that I that I do do.
daily that I wanted to share as well. So from that experience, I actually don't remember if I started this before that experience or after, but but from that experience, what I've taken with me is before meals, taking a couple seconds to just think about the fact that holy smokes, like we have food. Like that's insane. Like we have food and then we eat it and our bodies know what to do with it. And like it'll continue, like our bodies are working and it'll continue
giving us energy and like that's amazing. Like, so A, how lucky are we that we get to have food? And B, how lucky are we and how cool is it that our bodies know what to do with that food so that way we can keep living. Like I I don't know. I I think that's really s really cool. and so I take a couple of seconds before starting meals and just think about that. Like I just think how frickin' cool that is. and then the other one is before bed, just taking the 10 deep breath exercise that we did earlier and just
Trying to focus. And, you know, a lot of times tons of thoughts pop up and I'm not able to focus on my breath. And that's okay. You know? So to me, it's all about being consistent and just trying to make it a daily practice and make it a daily ritual and just really try to focus and if not hold on so tight. So if I'm not able to focus and I my my mind drifts, like that's okay. Just notice where my mind goes. Like, what am I thinking about? Okay, cool.
And then try to come back to the breath if I can. So in summary, before meals, just taking a couple seconds to think about how lucky it is, how lucky you are that you get to have food on your plate, how cool it is that your body knows what to do with that food. And before bed, taking a couple deep breaths and just trying to really focus on those breaths before bed. So that's it on mindfulness for this week. I'm really hoping to have somebody come on to who's actually an expert in mindfulness because I'm
Clearly not, and talk about it in more depth 'cause I think that'd be really fun and exciting. But that's it for now. Thank you so much for following along and I will see y'all next time. Bye everybody.