Ryan Dunn [00:00:01]:
Welcome to compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. My name is Ryan Dunn and we are sitting down with Andrew Lang for a deep and enlightening conversation about redefining spiritual practices to suit modern life. Andrew shares his insights from his transformative experience at the Strozzi Institute, exploring the importance of centering and finding link, width, and depth in our bodies to connect with the relational space around us. So let me assure you this. What we get into today is highly practical, with Andrew offering poignant real life examples, including things like center how Centering helped him handle his youngest child's tantrums. This episode also explores a variety of adaptable spiritual practices for you and the challenges of balancing traditional monastic routines with contemporary lifestyles, as well as the significance of integrating a spirituality with our body and emotions. So we're gonna get into Andrew's journey from a negative church experience to how he established a personalized spirituality. And he invites us to evaluate our lives intentionally and creatively, highlighting simple and impactful routines like gratitude journaling, morning pages, and something called box breathing.

Ryan Dunn [00:01:21]:
We're gonna find out about that. So join us for a compelling discussion that challenges common spiritual narratives, encourages experimentation with personal practices, and offers a roadmap for integrating spirituality into everyday life. Don't miss Andrew's valuable tips and reflections, and you can learn more about an upcoming 30 day cohort, which is designed to foster individualized spiritual growth, which, by the way, Compass lists in her, you may be able to get into for free. So if you're running on autopilot and wondering how you can clear some space in life, then check the show notes for this episode on unc.org and enter for a free slot. Andrew Lang is a spiritual director and coach. Andrew walks alongside folks building capacity to be more present in our lives and to the wisdom and stories that we carry. His practice is grounded in the fields of internal family systems, somatic awareness, contemplative spirituality, Jungian psychology, asset based community development, organizing and activist work, and his time working in in the US education system. So that's a lot.

Ryan Dunn [00:02:35]:
Let's just get to the conversation and navigate spirituality in daily life here on compass. Andrew, greetings to you out in the west. How goes it with your soul today?

Andrew Lang [00:02:49]:
It's going well. The dog is running around and doing the chaotic things that it does in the morning, but he seems happy, so I am happy.

Ryan Dunn [00:02:59]:
Yes. Well, so let me ask you this then. I I'm gonna do a deep read, and this is probably way off.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:04]:
Are you an Enneagram 9?

Andrew Lang [00:03:06]:
I am not. I am a 1.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:08]:
And, like, through and through almost, like, to every single piece of, like, different component of it. Whenever I talk with my, friends who are Enneagram coaches, they're always just like

Andrew Lang [00:03:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:19]:
Oh, okay. So I I guess I'm so self focused. Like, I know what 9 is, but what is 1?

Andrew Lang [00:03:26]:
So there's different names for it, perfectionist and fixer and reformer, blah blah blah. What I really think of in the way that I have interpreted the Enneagram one in my life and how it shows up is a sense of, like, I need some order, doing things in a logical straightforward kind of sequenced way. There's a lot of control elements to it. And that that has showed up in really unhealthy ways in my life as well as, I think I'm I've been really working with it the last 4 or 5 years and moving into a, I think a way to maybe say it is like a consent filled, open minded sense of of control that nothing is truly controllable. But what is the way that I can order my surroundings and order my life, that feels sturdy enough and flexible enough for when the waves of chaos come through, which they are perpetually doing.

Ryan Dunn [00:04:24]:
Okay. Well, all this sense of giving order to things really kind of makes sense in my mind with some of the work that you're engaged in now. Can you give us, like, the elevator speech of, like, what it is that you do?

Andrew Lang [00:04:39]:
Yeah. Totally. So I was a educator for 7 years, and, my day job is I still work in education. I I work in a nonprofit, and I train teachers. But the work that I do with folks on the side of that is largely around how do we build spiritual practices if folks use the spirituality language, their work practices. But how do we build rhythms of our life that feel good for our bodies, that feel good for, for who we are, our sense of purpose, our sense of identity. And I think that's a that's a big mind shift for folks around how are we building these, habits into our life that help us ground and stay rooted in the context of chaos, in the context of every day getting pulled in different directions? And how do we do that in a way that doesn't feel like an add on? So that's that's a lot of what I do is, and we we work in cohorts, cohorts of folks building those

Ryan Dunn [00:05:34]:
practices. And what drew you into this work?

Andrew Lang [00:05:39]:
A weird experience as as is always the best way. Oh, I love those. Yeah. I so when I was 18, I I grew up in the Methodist church. And when I was 18, we were leaving a church and moving across town. And during the final Sunday, we'd, you know, been there for 11, 12 years. So during the last Sunday, we had kind of a big community goodbye celebration, and I'm, like, bawling my eyes out. And, you know, I at this point, I basically chosen baseball over church as my operating, you know, what my operating focus.

Ryan Dunn [00:06:11]:
But it

Andrew Lang [00:06:11]:
was still my people. This is my community. I'd you know, I knew everyone by name, and everyone knew me. They'd watched me grow up. I'd watched them. And so here I am bawling my eyes out. And from across the sanctuary at the very end, service ends, and and this man, Dale, comes across the room. And Dale, for some context, he is fully institutionalized in the church.

Andrew Lang [00:06:36]:
He had grown up in the church in that exact church. He basically grown up in that church, been there for 60 years, married in that church. And, you know, any committee meeting, leadership structure, volunteer events, you know, church, food event, no matter what, he was there. Even if he wasn't, like, supposed to be there, he was there.

Ryan Dunn [00:06:57]:
Okay. Uh-huh.

Andrew Lang [00:06:58]:
Because that's he was he was a pillar of the church. So here he comes walking across the the room, and he's, you know, 6 foot 2, 6 foot 3. So big big kind of force. And he comes straight up to me with my tears coming down my face, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me just dead in the eye. He goes, men don't cry. And I just

Ryan Dunn [00:07:18]:
That is not where I was expecting that to go. Okay.

Andrew Lang [00:07:21]:
Nope. Yep. There was the weirdness right there.

Ryan Dunn [00:07:24]:
Mhmm.

Andrew Lang [00:07:25]:
Because it was this moment of, wow. In my moment of despair and sadness that is rooted in beautiful things. Right? Like community. In this moment, though, I'm being told don't trust your body. Don't let your body do what it do. Don't trust your experience and your emotions. And so I had this question that popped up in me a couple days later that, you know, was, I think, percolating in my understanding of what happened in that moment because I knew it was wrong. But what was percolating up for me was this question of, like, if this is what a lifetime of spirituality and spiritual development, spiritual practice, spiritual formation, church attendance, If this is the outcome, then why bother? Because, like, this ain't it.

Andrew Lang [00:08:11]:
And there were there's lots of nuance around that. And it wasn't necessarily a fair question, and I I recognize that now. And it really led me in a journey, of figuring out what does practice look like that does ground me in a spirituality that is, human affirming and body and emotion affirming?

Ryan Dunn [00:08:31]:
Yeah. Okay. I'd love to just kinda cut to the chase and be like, okay.

Ryan Dunn [00:08:36]:
What does that look like? But I would be like,

Ryan Dunn [00:08:39]:
yes. We'll we'll get a sense for what that is, and it's probably not something that's answerable even within a 30 or 45 minute, chat. But but let's play around with a scenario to begin with then. So say that you're approached by somebody who says, you know, I feel like I'm just I'm stuck in a a rut. I feel like I'm on

Ryan Dunn [00:09:00]:
a hamster wheel where my life just kinda keeps spinning around and I'm going through motions, sucking routine.

Ryan Dunn [00:09:07]:
What are some steps that you might recommend they they respond with right off the bat?

Andrew Lang [00:09:13]:
Totally. The the first question I often ask is and there's an an exercise I sometimes lead folks through, but it's essentially mapping out what what is your life? What what are you currently doing? What are the actions, behaviors? What are the condition tendencies you have? Basically, what are the real and what are the relationships you care about that you're in? What are the relationships that are really, difficult that you're in? Basically, let's get it all out in front of us. Because if we're able to name it first, that's a huge that's a huge, step. I think there's a there's this beautiful quote that I think about a lot, and it's James Finley. He's a psychotherapist. He was a teacher of mine down at the living school. He was under Thomas Merton for 6 years at Gethsemane. And he says, if we're not careful, we can find ourselves skimming over the surfaces of the depths of our own lives.

Andrew Lang [00:10:06]:
And I think that gets to it as oftentimes because of the hamster wheel, because of our you know, everything we have to do to survive the day to day, we just we just keep swimming, like Dory says. We we just kinda keep going. Or or to change a little bit, we just keep skimming. We just keep surviving. Okay. And so the first step I always invite people to is, alright. First off, let's take a look around. Let's notice what is the quality of your skimming.

Andrew Lang [00:10:32]:
What is the quality of your life? What is the quality? Let's get it all out on paper. Let's map it out a little bit because that opens up the doorway to alright. Now we can be more choiceful. Do we wanna dip our toes into the water? What are the fears when we look down into the water? What are the fears that are coming up for it? Is it a fear that, you know, you've never really looked into your inner life? You've never gone back and processed some of those stories that make you who you are. So there's fear there. Or is it a fear of when I look down into my depths, I'm scared there's nothing there. I'm scared that this is really all there is. And so we can work with those fears and figure out what's what's the next step that feels right.

Ryan Dunn [00:11:14]:
So as you're talking about mapping things out on paper, is that listing out those fears, or is it just kind of going through, you know, here are the routines of my life or, what does that look like?

Andrew Lang [00:11:29]:
Tangibly, it usually looks like writing stuff out. This comes from my training as a teacher, but, and it's never it's never the same way for everyone. I've had folks do that kind of practice, doodling it out, mind mapping, lots of circles, little squigglies. I had one person who is a cartoon artist, and they were they were doing it in cartoon, like, boxes, all these different moments of their lives and aspects and components of their life. And so it can look a lot of different ways. And realistically, like, if we think about what's happening what happens in a therapy session or a therapist's office, oftentimes those kinds of questions and processes are the things being explored verbally. And so, there there's this gray area and crossover, I think. And, ultimately, this is where I think spirituality and therapy really have just a genuine, beautiful connection because both are asking, you know, what is true, what is real.

Andrew Lang [00:12:27]:
How do we see the world clearly? How do we see our lives clearly? And so, tangibly, it it looks like get a piece of paper and start just brain in the classroom, we used to call it brain dumping. Dump it all out on paper, and then you can organize it however you need to to make sense of it. But from that point, we can be choiceful about, alright, what are the what are the qualities in our life that are numbing? What are the qualities in our life that are exhilarating? What are the qualities in our life that are that are so troubling or so struggle filled that they keep us, if not skimming, actually sinking, in a negative way. So we can kind of look at those different kind of, boxes and figure out what to do. Do you find that a

Ryan Dunn [00:13:12]:
lot of people tend to dwell on the areas of troubling? So for example, maybe the the elements of of depth are there within their lives and even part of their daily lives, and yet they'd still kinda just dwell on the on the getting by features of life. I don't know if that's making sense, but they tend to, get their mind stuck

Ryan Dunn [00:13:34]:
on just kind of the routine and the negative.

Andrew Lang [00:13:37]:
For sure. Yeah. And and I think I I think there's a what we always have to remember, what I always have to remind myself because it's daily for me, is that our bodies have attuned to getting us through the day to day in a way that is protective. Our body's job is to sustain itself. Right? And so the status quo that we've all been indoctrinated into and then, you know, the I I like to think of it as a conveyor belt. You know? And we might be comfortable on it. It might not be great for us, but it's comforting. And so our body wants to stay there in a lot of ways.

Andrew Lang [00:14:13]:
And that's what I think one of the core barriers or frustrations that I experience with folks that I work with is that there is a level of comfort. The status quo works for me, and there is a deep longing from somewhere in them. I think of, like, the sound of the genuine from Howard Thurman. There is something strumming up from within them saying, yes. This is I there's a com there's a level of comfort, a quality of okayness, but there's also this beautiful song that's trying to be sung through me, and I don't know what to do with with those 2 both being true at the same time.

Ryan Dunn [00:14:48]:
You brought up the idea of of living our mental state through our bodies, a few times. And I'm wondering how the the spiritual relates to that. Are there ways that, that you're able to incorporate a spiritual practice that in a sense offers relief to our bodies or at least a sense of, connection or, interplay with our bodies?

Andrew Lang [00:15:16]:
One of the most foundational pieces for me is recognizing that when I say I, I'm including my body. And I think that's a deeply spiritual statement. That, right, that, like, we, what I often what I often see and everyone can check this for themselves, but what I often feel certainly is that we default to thinking that I actually exist as my brain. Yeah. And my body is the vehicle to to get

Ryan Dunn [00:15:41]:
my brain, AKA me, from place to place.

Andrew Lang [00:15:43]:
And so I think one of the the deeply spiritual shifts is that the the entirety that is me, this living organism of me, is my full body. And in the Christian sense, I think a lot of, you know, what does it mean to be made in the image and likeness? And that's not just my brain. That's not just my cognitive self. That's my full being, my body too. And so where that starts in a lot of our work that that I lead is what are the narratives that keep my brain and my body separate and defaulted? So thinking about I really don't like the way my thighs feel. I really don't like this part of me. Okay. Let's spend time on that.

Andrew Lang [00:16:26]:
And let's spend time, what would it look like instead of objectifying your thighs, which is by definition, taking your essence of who you are and then making something some part of you an object instead that you can look at and judge. So part of it is just how do we begin to wrap ourselves around those spaces of our bodies that we have so many, oftentimes, shame and guilt filled messages around so that we can begin to re this is not a word, but, like, rehole ourselves and and and remind ourselves that that this entirety of us is us. And that's where the the spirituality, I think, is just so infused, which is that when we can exist as a fully formed living organism, there's an element of saying, and if we're made in the image and likeness of God, like, there's God here, right here, right now with with my thighs that I don't love, which is a very true story for me that I constantly work with.

Ryan Dunn [00:17:27]:
From your own personal? Alright. Well, thanks for being that authentic self with us. So are there specific practices that that you've seen help people really kind of as you put it, I love the word. We're gonna use it. It it's part of the lexicon now, rewhole, within their bodies?

Andrew Lang [00:17:46]:
Yeah. There's a couple that come to mind. So the one is what I've already said, and it's so simple, but I just I can't stress enough how valuable it is. And it's a core component of the the cohort I lead, which is the the noticing and naming. Just simply the practice of every day noticing the narratives you've got or noticing even around you, noticing the something beautiful and naming it, noticing a moment where you experience the divine and naming it. So the noticing and naming, I think, is a huge life can be a life defining practice in and of itself. Other ones that I think about, there's a practice called just centering. It's from the Strozzi Institute, which is a, somatic space institute out of, I wanna say, California.

Andrew Lang [00:18:31]:
And it's it's the first time I've ever heard Centering defined in a way that, landed with me. So, you know, there's all these times in meetings where you'll let's just take a few moments to center ourselves before we begin because because we know this meeting's got a lot of stuff, so we're gonna center ourselves first. Or there's church services that I've been in where, you know, we'll have a 3 minutes of centering prayer at the beginning, and then we'll go and what's hard about all of those is that oftentimes, one, it's it's the precursor. It's basically saying, hey. We're gonna center and then we're so that we can be more productive in the meeting, or we're gonna center at the beginning of church often in my experience so that we can say we did a practice and then do church as per the usual. And so the practice of centering, when I heard about it through the Strozzi Institute, shifted it for me. What the practice looks like is the first step is to find your length in your body. And so whether you're sitting or you're standing, you're you're really getting your, spine aligned.

Andrew Lang [00:19:33]:
You're bringing the top of your head up. You're feeling your body's length, and you're standing in whatever way you wanna call it, but standing in a way that or sitting in a way that feels dignified based on your definition of that word. And then you find your width, and you actually sense, you know, what is my left hip feeling? And this was a big moment for me because I realized I don't have any idea of what my skin feels during

Ryan Dunn [00:20:00]:
the day unless there's a breeze.

Andrew Lang [00:20:02]:
My because my clothes have become such a part of me that I don't don't I don't know. So you find your width. You find your where what are your senses on your sides, and then you connect with the relational space around you. Who's around you? And you try to sense connection. And then you center, with your depth. And so you try to feel, you know, what's touching your back. Can you feel your clothes on your back? Can you feel your clothes on your front? And then you try to sense connection to everything that has has come behind you or everything that has come in, in your past, everything that supports you, your ancestors, and then you fill out your depth in the in the front. What is your purpose? And you center with your purpose going forward.

Andrew Lang [00:20:43]:
That sounds like a lot.

Ryan Dunn [00:20:45]:
That does. That would

Ryan Dunn [00:20:47]:
come from just, like, doing a posture check to Wow. Considering my ancestors now. Okay. Yeah.

Andrew Lang [00:20:53]:
It go it it can and there's different levels. So I'll I'll share a really quick example. I use that practice often, and I was just writing about this a couple days ago. I use that practice often when my youngest kid throws a fit. He's 4 years old, and he's got some big feelings right now. And when he throws a fit, I can feel my condition tendency, especially we started talking about control. A lot of my condition tendencies around control and order kick in as my default. And so my practice, my work there is I try the best I can to do that centering practice.

Andrew Lang [00:21:29]:
It takes about 5 seconds. And at minimum, it's a posture check. Right? At minimum, it's a, you know, get myself feeling dignified again, feel my width, feel my depth, remember my purpose, be more skillful in my next move, be more choiceful. And and then it can also be a much bigger practice. So one of the things we talked about on the cohort, is a lot of times people stop or don't start doing intentional practices because they can seem so huge. Who's got time to sit for 20 minutes a day in silence if you've never done it before? Dear god. And so one of the things we talk about is play with the size and the shape and the complexity of a practice, because the point is not, this is something else James Finley said, but he talks about the fidelity of practice. How can we have a fidelity to practice, not necessarily a specific practice if that specific form isn't filling us or isn't fitting us in the way we need it to.

Andrew Lang [00:22:25]:
So we permission, I always love this reminding ourselves of practice for a minute because with a lot of these, you brought up a sense of

Ryan Dunn [00:22:39]:
a minute because with a lot of these, you brought up a sense of centering. And if you're to Google centering prayer, like it's gonna tell you why you're gonna focus. You're gonna choose your sacred word. You're gonna focus on it for 20 to 30 minutes. And that is a a nonstarter for a lot of people. Right? I love the way that you're able to speak to some of the ways of building these practices in a meaningful way, without this fear of adding on, you know, like another time block to the day. Can you talk to that a little bit? Totally.

Andrew Lang [00:23:12]:
Totally. So full disclosure, my first spiritual practice that I chose into when I really kind of started leaving the church after my experience with Dale that I mentioned was Centering Prayer. That was my it felt right to me for a season. And I never did I think the official guidelines for is, you know, 20 minutes in one sit and then 20 minutes in a second sit, 2 sits a day. College students, me, was not going to be doing that. It just

Ryan Dunn [00:23:40]:
never That's valuable nap time.

Ryan Dunn [00:23:42]:
Like yeah.

Andrew Lang [00:23:42]:
Yeah. That's what

Ryan Dunn [00:23:43]:
You got 20 to 30 minutes. Like, those eyes are shut.

Andrew Lang [00:23:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. I got I got things I got things to not do. And so, one one of the things that that we talk about a lot is, yes, it's daunting. Those big chunks of time are daunting or or other practices. I think about I mean, there's things like the welcoming prayer, which is very similar to sign prayer, but also practices like chanting are beautiful for some people and simply are a nonstarter for others. And so the first piece that I think is a big mindset shift for us in the cohort when we when we do it is one the practice that works for 1 person isn't gonna be the practice for another person. And not only that, but the practice that works for 1 person during one season of their life isn't going to be the practice that fits that same person in another season, and that's okay.

Andrew Lang [00:24:35]:
I think about there's there's this glorification of the dark night of the soul, I think, especially in spiritual practice, where you're gonna go through a time when it's a flourishing practice, then you're gonna go through the time that feels dull and there's just nothing there and just keep going, fidelity to the practice. And I don't I just don't get down with that. I think that, that glorification or romance like, all of that was based in a context that is not our own. Most and this is a this is a context piece to our practices. But when we talk about spiritual practice, many of them, if not most of them, were born out of monastic context. Right? We're talking about monks in a sometimes cloistered. Yeah. In a very set apart environment where their main job, aside from doing work to maintain the the abbey or the monastery, their main job was spiritual practice.

Andrew Lang [00:25:29]:
Practice. That is not our context.

Ryan Dunn [00:25:31]:
And so it

Ryan Dunn [00:25:31]:
feels weird to try

Ryan Dunn [00:25:31]:
to take spiritual practices that were born

Andrew Lang [00:25:31]:
in that space and directly mirror them into our life. And I think what happens is, you know, and directly mirror them into our life. And I think what happens is is the natural, guilt and shame of I tried this thing. I tried 20 minutes a day, and it fell apart 3 days later. It I'm I need to try better. I need to do more. And I think that's that's a that gets us into a cycle where we do a spiritual practice for 1 week, and then it falls apart, and then we we leave it for the next 3 years. And we keep skimming on the surfaces.

Ryan Dunn [00:26:03]:
Well, that brings up the question then of of effectiveness. Like, how do you know it is actually being effective? Somebody might try again. I'll go back to Centering Prayer for a few days. And they're like, I can't I can't stay concentrated and nothing happens. So what's the deal? Like, how do you know or how do you measure or get a sense of effectiveness or purpose behind your spiritual routine?

Andrew Lang [00:26:28]:
Yeah. Totally. One part of it is small and micro, and I think this is true for me, which is if you have a if you try sending prayer and you're sitting for 20 minutes and you have an amazing moment that is life changing, great. Then that has been an extremely effective practice, and it might be trash for the next 7 years of trying to do it. Right? So there's a level of effectiveness of sometimes there's so much going on in the world that just sitting for 20 minutes in a, you know, somewhat of a formulated way can can be exceptionally effective. Now there's the other part of it, which is how do we make it effective over time? Part of that, I think, is the question of how do we make sure we are identifying practices that are a fit for us? And so when I think of effectiveness, I think of what is helping you feel more alive, what is helping you connect with others, and then what is helping you feel more grounded or connected internally with your story, with the essence of you, with what Thomas Moren would refer to as the true self, with God in you, with the divine, whatever language that that that fits for you and that makes sense for you. But I think those three components are really big for me around how do we measure effectiveness, what is the quality of our connectiveness or our connectivity and our aliveness, and is that quality deepening in a way that feels right or feels good or feels life giving for us? Because it's if we go back to the skimming over the surfaces, the effectiveness is, do you feel like you are skimming a little bit less? Do you feel like your toes are now in the water? Do you feel like you're that you've sped the opposite direction and are now running full speed away from you know, because that's maybe less effective. But I think that's I I think so much of the effectiveness question can often be, how do we measure this? And the best thing I can think of is, what is the quality or the depth of of connection that you're feeling?

Ryan Dunn [00:28:31]:
We've talked about centering prayer

Ryan Dunn [00:28:33]:
a bit, and that's different than

Ryan Dunn [00:28:34]:
the centering that you brought up initially. It to maybe broaden our scope of of what

Ryan Dunn [00:28:40]:
people might enter into as they're trying to implement or draw in a practice within their day. I I'm

Ryan Dunn [00:28:47]:
guessing that you probably have, in a sense, a library of practices that that, you're able to pull from. Are there any that you see are really helpful to people, especially those who are kinda stuck in that sense of, well, you know, I don't know if I have the

Ryan Dunn [00:29:06]:
time, like my day just doesn't permit me to to really carve something out.

Ryan Dunn [00:29:11]:
Do you have some recommendations for that kind of situation?

Andrew Lang [00:29:14]:
Totally. I'll I'll frame this with a framework first, and then I'll share some just practical, practice. The the framework we use in the cohort, one of them. We have kind of I have this, like, funny little list of, like, 8. I think I call them, tinker tools. And they're basically when you find a practice that doesn't feel quite right, here are 8 ways to play with them. And so one of them is what we call core and secondary. And it's the framework of find a practice that feels feels right, feels like a fit for you.

Andrew Lang [00:29:43]:
That's your core practice. You're gonna do that sometime in the early part of your day, you know, first half of the day, or first half of whatever your time frame is if, you know, you're doing a practice once a week, whatever. But find your core practice. And then just like the, you know, moon is moving around, then find a small secondary practice that kind of exists out there that if if life happens as it do and you don't get to your core practice, what is your secondary practice that you can make sure you do? It's usually much smaller, much simpler, requires way less anything, and still is building a capacity. That's where we go back to the fidelity to practice, not a fidelity to a specific practice. So that's that's kind of the framing. Here are some practices that we had in the last cohort that I just thought was, they were they're just beautiful. Some of them are meditation.

Andrew Lang [00:30:32]:
Centering prayer, we had a couple people doing centering prayer and different forms of meditation from different, traditions. We had people doing morning pages, which is just a beautiful morning kind of journaling session. And it's a there's a little bit of a structure to it, but not much. We had people doing gratitude journaling that that was their kind of core practice. One of the big hits, and I was really surprised by this, one of the big hits was the practice of box breathing. And for those who aren't familiar with box breathing or or maybe haven't started meditation or ever tried it, Box breathing, it's really become popular in in, just in meditation circles as an easy way in, and it's actually used by several people in our different military fields in the United States. And it is a practice of basically, you you count your breaths, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then you hold your breath, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then you so inhale for 4, hold it, exhale for 4, hold it, and just picture a box going round and round just like that.

Andrew Lang [00:31:37]:
And it's a great starter meditation because it focuses your attention. It's considered a single point meditation method. You're focusing your attention on your breath. You're focusing your attention on the counting until it becomes habitualized that you your body knows what 1, 2, 3, 4 feels like, and then you're just breathing.

Ryan Dunn [00:31:57]:
Right.

Andrew Lang [00:31:58]:
So that was a big hit specifically for folks who don't have a lot of time because this I this is certainly me. We talk about set aside practices

Ryan Dunn [00:32:07]:
versus integrated practices.

Andrew Lang [00:32:07]:
Meditation is almost always a set aside Meditation is almost always a set aside practice, and those are the practices a lot of us usually, me certainly, kind of buck against. You know, I don't have time. I don't I just can't do that. So I go for Yeah. There's a quiet space. Yep. Exactly. The context, it either the practice doesn't fit me or the context doesn't fit the practice.

Andrew Lang [00:32:28]:
And so what I what I really love for people who don't have a lot of time is find an integrated practice. And a short box breathing could be one of them that you can do during a meeting. Find the the centering practice is an integrated practice. It is you're supposed to do it with your eyes open. I didn't mention that earlier, but it's an eyes open practice so that you can do it in times of high stress, or you can do it when you're in the midst of everything. There's also just walking practices. You know, an integrated practice for me that I do often, and it's a little set aside, so it blurs the line a little bit. But when I go to work, I walk more than anyone else in my office by far, and and it's because that's my connection point.

Andrew Lang [00:33:09]:
And so if I'm able to take a 15 minute break, I walk the park that's next to our building. If I can't take a break and I'm, like, on a call, I find a way that I can be on the call and walking at the same time so that I can look and feel connected to my context. There's lots of different ways of playing with a practice in order for it to fit you. And I think the big the big weight off my shoulders was realizing, hey. We can experiment. We're humans. We we can experiment and and find what fits. And if one thing doesn't fit, it doesn't mean we stop.

Andrew Lang [00:33:41]:
It doesn't mean that everything ends. It just means that this wasn't a fit right now in this season. That's okay.

Ryan Dunn [00:33:48]:
Yeah. I love that invitation, not just for specifically what we're talking about with practice, but, but broadly in our spirituality as well. It's the idea that, you know, not everything is 100% prescriptive. Yeah. You know, with the, I don't know, basic instructions laid out in in step by step process, that there is a sense of interplay there. Mhmm. Totally.

Andrew Lang [00:34:12]:
I'll I'll share a quick story because this was a this was a mind a shift moment for me is I remember I used to go to Compline in Seattle at St. Mark's Episcopal. They had this beautiful Sunday night, 9:30 to 10, Compline service, and

Ryan Dunn [00:34:25]:
I used to go. And the cool thing about that

Ryan Dunn [00:34:27]:
Can can you describe what compline is for those who aren't familiar

Ryan Dunn [00:34:30]:
with the term?

Andrew Lang [00:34:31]:
For sure. So it's a beautiful space. You walk in this big cathedral. Compline is one of the stations, that is often practiced in monastic spaces. And so in the context of Saint Mark's, it's an all men's choir that stands in the back. They walk in in total silence, walk to the back, and then they sing The Office. And they sing, you know, probably for 30 minutes, couple psalms, couple hymns, couple prayers. And it's just a even and and here's the cool thing is that you have a cathedral that is filled with people who are religious and not religious.

Andrew Lang [00:35:08]:
It brings out everybody because it's so different from what the rest of our culture and society has. And one of the big moments for me was here I am doing centering prayer in in this context, this beautiful singing going on that half of it feels like Latin. I don't understand any of it. I don't think it

Ryan Dunn [00:35:26]:
ever was Latin, but it certainly sound it certainly sounded like it.

Ryan Dunn [00:35:31]:
And a little bit of a confirmation bias there. Right?

Ryan Dunn [00:35:33]:
And you're

Ryan Dunn [00:35:33]:
like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Latin. Therefore, it must have happened. Yeah.

Andrew Lang [00:35:38]:
But so here I am doing signing prayer, and there's another person there that I'm with who's also doing signing prayer. And I know that that's that's her practice. And the next thing I know, my eyes are closed. And, of course, I get distracted at some point, and

Ryan Dunn [00:35:49]:
then my eyes pop open.

Andrew Lang [00:35:50]:
And I

Ryan Dunn [00:35:50]:
take a look around,

Andrew Lang [00:35:51]:
and there she is doing yoga. And doing yoga with, like and I talked to her after.

Ryan Dunn [00:35:55]:
I was like, were you doing were you doing centering prayer? What like, what was

Andrew Lang [00:35:58]:
your practice tonight? And she was like and she made this comment that shifted everything for me. And she said, I was doing both because a practice can be moldable to what your body feels like it needs in that moment to feel connect.

Ryan Dunn [00:36:10]:
I actually

Andrew Lang [00:36:10]:
didn't use the connected word, but to feel here, to feel present. And that was a moment for me of, like, yeah, my standing of prayer practice doesn't need to be a specific position. It can involve other things. And and I am sure that if I talk to someone in the centering prayer world, they would, have you you know, that's not quite the right formula. And as humans, nothing is perfect. As humans, we get to experiment. I I think that is the great the part of me that is still so in love with bits of the bits and pieces of the Christian story is that God and the divine movement through our history has always been so unabashedly creative. Parts of me in my history would have seen that as unbelievably chaotic.

Andrew Lang [00:36:57]:
And and and I think the the growing edge for me now is what looks like chaos might be chaos, and also there is creativity even in that. And so I I think there's a if we're made in the image of like and likeness in that way, then there's a invitation for us to see ourselves and our stories in a similar way with creativity at the very core.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:18]:
Andrew, it sounds like,

Ryan Dunn [00:37:19]:
you

Ryan Dunn [00:37:20]:
you've mentioned the the cohorts that you work with. How often do you have cohorts forming?

Andrew Lang [00:37:26]:
We do 1 or 2 a year right now. I would love to get up to 3 or 4. I'd that's kind of a rough vision someday, sometime when it feels as as you've probably figured out, one of my favorite ways of saying anything is if it feels right.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:39]:
If it fits. Go.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:41]:
So if it fits.

Andrew Lang [00:37:43]:
But right now, yeah, we we had one in February. We'll have our next one in October, 2024, and then we'll do another one probably in January the following year. And they're just they're 30 day cohorts, and the entire vision and and beauty of them is you find a practice. And if that practice is what you do the whole month, awesome. If it's not, we provide workshops to tinker and to kind of guide you through that space. But we have 9 different workshops over the course of the month ranging from how to build a practice that feels good to what does you know, if if you're familiar with the Enneagram, how you can use Enneagram in inner work. We have, James Pearson is joining us in October for a workshop on internal family systems and how that can connect to practice. And then we've got another workshop on, you know, what does activism look like from this space, of deep inner work.

Andrew Lang [00:38:31]:
So we kind of move through this you know, it's 30 days, so it's not a long time, but we move through these series of of workshops that are really building complexity in our lives. How do we view ourselves and our connection with the world around us, as as fully connected, as fully integrated together? Yeah. And it's it's a beautiful experience. It's usually, you know, maybe 10 to 20 folks, and it's just it's really great. Everything's on Zoom. Yeah.

Ryan Dunn [00:38:59]:
Cool. And you can learn about those as well as learn a little bit more about your story at andrewlang.com. Right?

Andrew Lang [00:39:05]:
Andrewglangdot com. There's a there's a random g lang.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:08]:
There is. Alright.

Andrew Lang [00:39:10]:
It was it it was not my choice

Ryan Dunn [00:39:12]:
to add the g, but at some point, it got added.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:15]:
Okay. Well, yeah. I was I was thinking, boy, he must have got on it super early to get andrewling.com. But

Andrew Lang [00:39:22]:
Yeah. I did not.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:24]:
Andrew, thank you so much for sharing of yourself and your perspective with us on the Compass podcast today. I really appreciate it.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:31]:
Yeah, it was great to be here. Thank you for having me. Dear listener, thank you for being a part of our compass community. We look forward to continuing to explore spirituality in the everyday with you. You might wanna listen to another episode of compass. And if you like this episode, then I recommend episode 133. It's our episode with John Pavlovitz. It's called cultivating empathy, polarized times, or an episode that would gel nicely with this one was episode 125 with Abigail Bauca.

Ryan Dunn [00:40:03]:
It's called cultivating everyday spirituality. I'll I'll bet you can guess what it's about. Hey. While you're listening or even right now, leave a rating and or review. Those reviews help us connect with future guests. So it's an important part of us being able to deliver meaningful stories and content for you. The Compass podcast is brought to you by United Methodist Communications, and that is all for this week. I'm having a hard time speaking, So let's just send it.

Ryan Dunn [00:40:31]:
We'll be back with a new episode in 2 weeks. So I'm gonna chat at you then. Peace.