Elephant Journal: Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis

Latest Episodes:

178. Mindful Monday—6 little Tips for Mindful Eating. Oct 02, 2023

Show notes

From the Buddhist tradition, or the mindful traditions, or the yoga tradition, or however-your-parents-wanted-you-to-behave-at-the-dining-table tradition, we can approach our food—which is a huge part of our life and part of our health—more mindfully.

So here's six little mindful eating tips. You can create an anagram to remember them.

Instead of multitasking when you eat, which is really fun and tempting, we can be fully present with our food. That doesn't mean you can't talk with a friend at a dining table or in a restaurant. Doesn't even mean you can't watch a movie. The idea is that when you're eating, you're going through these six steps.

This isn't about being "perfectly mindful." Even if you're distracted—watching a movie, eating popcorn, at a restaurant, at home eating ice cream—you can always practice these six steps.

You can take them wherever you go and they're free and they're powerful and they actually work for me, the world's least mindful eater.

R - Relax G - Gratitude A - Appreciate S - Smell C - Chew * - Pause

Curious about Waylon's partnership with Kripalu? Check it out here.

177. How to be a *Successful* Writer in 2023—Waylon w/ Mark Radcliffe. Sep 30, 2023

Show notes

"My favorite writers aren't up in the proverbial ivory tower, smoking a pipe full of self-congratulation, writing fancy prose that's so dense & enigmatic you don't know what the hell they're saying. My favorite writers write. Hit us in the gut, break our hearts, expand our minds. Fancy words are great if they fit. Simple words are great if they hit. I want to read. I want the title to pull me in, the story to sweep me off my feet, the ending to send my entire life in a new direction. Mark Radcliffe is one such writer." ~ Waylon Lewis⁠ Waylon talks with the prolific Elephant Journal (etc.) author about how to be a writer—successfully—in 2023. They discuss Mark's process of writing and editing his soon-to-be book, The Wheels that Carried Us. Listen as these two authors dig into writing, editing, and the art of a (really) good title. Mark's philosophy is to find the small kernels in our life that inspire the bigger stories: "If you can find something that almost doesn't feel like work at first, you're probably on the right path. It should be something that feels like, 'I could talk about this forever.' That means you're the right person to write it." ~ Mark Radcliffe Subscribers get the full conversation.

176. Mindful Monday—Awful Meditation Instruction for Mediocre People (like Waylon). Sep 25, 2023

Show notes

There's a million YouTube videos about how to meditate, and apps, and gurus running around, and a lot of that stuff is great. I wanted to offer something that isn't great: awful meditation for super-harried, overwhelmed, ordinary people like you and me.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty ordinary. I'm trying to get through the day, and making a mess of things half the time. It's a good life, but something's always going sideways.

Maybe you're not as ordinary as me, maybe you've got your s**t together. But maybe you, too, are just trying to get through today, trying to live a meaningful life, trying to be slightly sane and grounded and clear-seeing.

From a Buddhist point of view, the important thing is to practice grounding ourselves in peacefulness before we jump into the surf of everyday life.

It's like we're below the ocean. Everything's calm, moving around a little. Then we come up to the crashing waves. We want to be prepared for that moment.

The idea is basically that when we first wake up, no matter what's happening, we can do 45 seconds of sitting meditation. We can do two minutes of meditation. It can be awful meditation, without flashes of insight or lightning bolts of enlightenment…but it'll change your whole, ordinary day.

Subscribers get the full conversations.

175. Waylon & Iye Bako on Veganism, Fast Fashion, Equity & Justice on a Planet on Fire. Sep 22, 2023

Show notes

Waylon talks with the wonderful Iye Bako about vegan love, recipes, clothes, policy, and equity and justice on a planet on fire. They explore veganism as a social justice movement and discuss how it is not simply a "diet," while exploring the interconnectivity that veganism can have with our health, our environment, and all beings on this planet. Iye's philosophy is to lead by example: "I'm not the kind of person to bring [veganism] up when it's not asked of me, but I will treat [people] to vegan food to give them an experience of how good it can be. I just made a banana bread yesterday and my mom tried it. She was like, this is phenomenal! So I want people to know that plant-based food is just as delicious as what they remember. And you're not going to miss anything." ~ Iye Bako Subscribers get the full conversation.

174. Mindful Monday—Even Extroverts get Tired. ~ Waylon Lewis Sep 18, 2023

Show notes

"Every Monday, I offer a mindful reminder for our everyday life." ~ Waylon Lewis

This week, Waylon talks about the age-old introvert and extrovert "myth." He's addressed this in the past on Walk the Talk Show (give it a listen!).

But this time he's got six ways to deal with lots and lots and lots and lots of stress. Subscribers get the full conversation.

173. Waylon Lewis w/ Melanie Sue Hicks on Trauma, Travel as Service, & her book "Incongruent." Sep 15, 2023

Show notes

Waylon talks with author Melanie Sue Hicks about trauma, travel as service, and how one helped her heal the other. She discusses it fully her in her book, Incongruent: Travel, Trauma, Transformation.

Melanie is a longtime supporter of Elephant. Read an excerpt of Incongruent here, on Elephant Journal.

Waylon: "So, you're telling the story of the travel, but how does trauma figure into that?"

Melanie: "Each stop, each village along the track, harkens back to some sort of life story of mine. Some of them were traumatic, and it was a way to heal from trauma—travel experiences and what life lessons they taught me. I've been traveling and doing service work for 20 years, maybe more like 30. So I had all these amazing stories to choose from, and I chose the ones that seem to naturally fall in line with something from the village or trek."

Subscribers get the full conversation.

172. Mindful Monday—Waylon Lewis on 9/11. Sep 11, 2023

Show notes

Waylon Lewis reflects back on 9/11: How to deal with Loss, & Aggression creates Aggression.

*Please note: this is an Elephant Classic video from 2014, reshared because of its continued relevance and timeliness.

171. Waylon talks with Kevin Faul of Conway Electric—a Quality, "Made in USA," Eco Company. Sep 07, 2023

Show notes

This week Waylon talks with his longtime pal from afar Kevin of Conway Electric, a quality, made in USA, eco-minded company doing the right thing the hard way—making gorgeous products that contribute to our daily lives…for a lifetime. Together, they talk about walking the walk and not just talking the talk.

"There are faster ways to do things. There are cheaper ways to do things. But we try to take those things and integrate modern values of sustainability." ~ Kevin Faul

Check 'em out and support Conway, I know I do and will again!

Kevin Faul, of Conway Electric, is the founder of three companies all of which incorporate sustainable practices and lean supply chain management. Conway Electric has been committed to US manufacturing, sustainability, and a supply chain minimizing the use of plastic and carbon emissions.

Read the full article on Elephant Journal.

170. Mindful Monday—"How to save the world & have a good time doing so." ~ Waylon Lewis Sep 04, 2023

Show notes

This week, Waylon talks about how to save the world—which is the subject of every comic book, James Bond movie, all that good stuff—but in a peaceful way without having to shoot people, or cause mayhem.

Can we save the world…and have a good time doing so? Yes.

169. Waylon Lewis & author Dougald Hine talk about everyone's Favorite subject in the Entire World. Aug 31, 2023

Show notes

This week, Waylon Lewis is with author Dougald Hine of At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics, and All the Other Emergencies, as they talk about climate change and how the hell to think and act about it.

Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, speaker and the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME.

"I have spent my adult life talking to people about climate change, and I've never been the guy whose job it is to stand up there with the charts and explain the science of it. I come in when we get into the question of 'what does it mean? How are we changed by this knowledge? What would it take for us to absorb this in a way that looked like taking it seriously, rather than looked like assuming it was a problem that could be fixed and made to go away?'" ~ Dougald Hine

Read the full article on Elephant Journal.

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