Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Yung Pueblo:
A lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence, we reject change, and that creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor’s Farmacy. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman. That’s pharmacy with a F, a place for conversations that matter. If you’ve ever felt lost or confused about who you are, where you’re going, what’s important in life, how to integrate your own wellbeing with your actual day-to-day practices, this is going to be the podcast you want to listen to because it’s with a really inspiring man, someone I’ve not known personally until recently, but has who’s really inspired me through his work and his writings.
His name, you might be familiar with him, is Yung Pueblo, but his actual name is Diego Perez. And he’s a meditator, a New York Times bestselling author who’s really known on social media, Instagram, and under this pen name Yung Pueblo, which I’ll get into why he calls himself that. He has an audience of nearly three million people, which is a lot of people and is writing folks on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing who we are.
His books are really extraordinary. They’re kind of meditations on life and love and growth and how we navigate without suffering, because there’s so much suffering in the world now. And they’ve personally helped me a lot, particularly when I was going through rough moments in my life. The first one is Inward, it’s about really the relationship with yourself. Clarity & Connection’s more about our relationships with others and ourself in those relationships.
And his most recent book, Lighter, is about his own personal journey and his own story about how he came to know what he knows, which is pretty remarkable for a young man. So I’m excited about having Yung Pueblo on the podcast. His book is amazing. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, and I think there’s no accident because he’s really struck a chord with so many people about the things that we struggle with today as a species. So welcome.
Yung Pueblo:
Thank you, Mark. I’m so happy to be here. I feel like this is a long, almost like a homecoming, because you are a common name said in my household, and my wife and I have just benefited so much from all the work that you’ve been doing, and it’s literally just greatly impacted our health. So I’m very grateful to you. I’m happy to be talking to you today.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, I think that’s a mutual admiration society because your work has really helped my own personal journey for healing myself and my past and relationships and love, and it just, it’s great that we can help each other. So thank you.
Yung Pueblo:
Thank you. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Now your first book was really remarkable and it was, they’re written almost like Prose poems. They’re really easy to access. There’re these beautiful meditations on different aspects of our own soul and our own sort of psychology and our own relationship with ourself. And the Inward was really about self-development and self-knowledge. Clarity & Connection was more about interpersonal relationships. And your new book, lighter is sort of an extension on these themes, but it’s more of a narrative description.
It’s less poetry and more actual discovery of who you are, what led you to become who you are, what you’ve learned along the way, and how that sort of informed how you live your life. So can you tell us about how Lighter came to be? What was the inspiration for the book, and what are the sort of key themes in there that people I think might be interested in hearing about?
Yung Pueblo:
Sure. So Lighter, it was interesting when I started my writing journey, I knew that I wanted to at some point put together a book that would have everything in it. And yeah, I’ve really started off with writing about personal development and started realizing through my own journey that once I started getting to know myself better, starting to love myself better, starting to sort of give myself that hard medicine that I needed, and started to realize that, okay, there are qualities that are missing that I need to start developing.
And not only for my own mental wellbeing, but as soon as that started springing forward, I realized that my relationships around me were changing. And that’s when I started slowly going into the relationship and friendship writing that I’ve been doing. And really Lighter just brings that all together in a way that shows you where it’s coming from as well.
So my story is included in there, and I get a chance to kind of connect it all to my background, where I was born in Ecuador, came to the United States when I was four years old, my family and I, we, when we got to the United States, we were living in Boston. It was where I grew up, but we were experiencing really extreme poverty. And the difficulty of my mom, she worked cleaning houses. My dad worked at a supermarket. So we were really stuck in a poverty trap.
And that tension that we would feel as a family, it feels akin to a submarine that has gone way too far into the water and the pressure is just starting to cave in. And that really made some big imprints in me where I felt so much sadness, anxiety, sort of a scarcity mindset that started developing. And yeah, it snowballed into some pretty bad habits as I got older. And when I realized that my mind was just incredibly heavy, I was like, “Okay, I have to figure out how, a way to make my mind lighter.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So you basically were in this sort of first generation American. Your parents came from Ecuador to find a better life, but they kind of were stuck in the fate of many immigrants, which are doing jobs that are low paying, that keep them stuck in the cycle of poverty.
And you grew up as a child in that, which I can imagine really influenced your view of the world and your view of yourself and lack and scarcity, and maybe even affecting your self worth. And looking at your story, you talked about how you got into drugs and you were doing all these horrible things and you kind of were trying to escape or not feel, but something kind of propelled you to start feeling, and it was a particular event that happened. Can you share about that event and what that was?
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because it’s not something most people would want to get, but I think it is worth talking about.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, totally. So as I was mentioning, I was developing this ability to just run away from myself as fast as possible. And it was mediated through drugs, it was mediated through partying, mediated through just drinking and constantly externalizing myself so that I would never be alone. And it got to a point where I was just pushing my body to the edge, literally to the edge.
I was so mentally unhealthy, so physically unhealthy. And there was one night where I just took a bunch of different drugs, which was common for me at that point, but my body had had enough. And it got to the point where I just, my heart couldn’t take it anymore. And I spent two, two and a half hours laying on the floor just trying to breathe myself back into life because it felt like my heart was exploding.
And it was interesting, I talked to, I had a doctor at that time, but talked to them about a few months later and they said, “Oh, it sounds like you had a mild heart attack.” And it was just a wake-up call I needed. I felt like I, in that moment when I was on the floor, I was thinking about how much my parents had sacrificed and gambled for us to have an opportunity to move our family forward.
And I was kind of just tossing that away because I had no process to be able to handle my emotions or deal with them or even to take a look into the past. And I just didn’t have the courage at the time. But then I knew that if I was going to live, if I was going to really be able to access and create a new life, that the only way to do that was to be able to feel, to let myself feel and be honest about what’s in there.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Quite amazing. I think from that point of pain, somehow you’ve come to sort of understand how to navigate a very complicated world of emotions and triggers and relationships and feelings around self-worth and self-knowledge that are hard to come by, that they’re sort of, when I read your stuff, I’m like, this is sort of the ancient wisdom of Eastern philosophy, of Christian mystics, of the [inaudible 00:08:57], of… This is sort of like the stuff we’re all looking for.
And one of the things you recently shared on social media said, “Real maturity is noticing your own inner turbulence and pausing before you project how you feel onto what’s happening around you. I mean, just in that little nugget is so much wisdom about how our psychology works as we project our own view of reality onto the world around us, and we create meaning from it.
And our interpretation of what that is causes us to be joyful or have suffering or be happier or sad or whatever it is that we create. And so these insights don’t come easy, but you’re just full of them and you’re full of a way of sort of expressing them.
And you talk about how this creativity came from your meditation practice. Somehow you went from this party animal doing drugs almost killing yourself to almost being a zen monk who goes, you said you just came back from a 10-day meditation retreat and you’re finding a way to sort of navigate this both not just in the monastery, let’s say, but actually in your relationship with your partner, in the work you do in the world. How did you come to kind of get so wise, so young and early? To me.
Yung Pueblo:
It’s funny. I feel like what I’ve really have done and have accomplished is being able to just put myself on the path. I have focused on really learning the Buddhist teaching. And I’ve been really fortunate to find a practice that really works for me. And that’s something that I try to encourage to a lot of people is whether you’re into meditation or not, because people have a lot of, they go through so many different types of trauma, the amount of accumulations that they acquire over their lifetime that affects their mind.
It allows them to do different practices and it’ll connect you with something that hopefully meets you where you’re at. And for me, it was this Vipassana meditation and the Goenka style. And what I’ve done is just, I did my first course in July of 2012, and that was about almost exactly a year after that rock bottom moment. And what I noticed was that not only was it just incredibly difficult, that first courses is rough.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So for those who don’t know what that is, tell us what that is. What is a Vipassana retreat?
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. So these are silent, silent 10 day courses in a very sort of rigorous Burmese style. And so Goenka is a teacher who was taught by his teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin. And these teachings all originate from the Buddha’s teachings that emerged 2,600 years ago. And these are right silent 10 day courses where you’re meditating about 11 hours a day.
And you start off the first three days, so you take the vow silence, you start off three days being aware of the breath, so you can concentrate and calm your mind. And after that, they give you the actual of a pause and a practice where you start learning how to observe reality within the framework of the body.
And that ultimately introduces you to the truth of impermanence. And that truth of impermanence is so powerful that it’s really the gateway to all the rest of wisdom. It’s really the gateway to you learning about yourself fundamentally as in your own lifetime, how you function.
But it also shows you how the universe functions. And I really credit all that I’ve written and whatnot, it’s all profoundly inspired by these truths that I’ve come into contact with as I’ve been meditating. And I’m not a perfect person. I don’t pretend to be enlightened or anything like that. I still have a lot of rough edges, but I’m just another person that’s on the path like everybody else.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, I mean, that, I want to come back to that concept of impermanence because…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think most people don’t know what that is. I mean, those who are familiar with Buddhist teachings and Buddhism, I actually majored in Buddhism in college. I don’t know if you know that, but.
Yung Pueblo:
Really, I had no idea.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I’m a little weird. I always joke I have ODD, I’m odd. And it was really back then that it was 40 plus years ago that I did my first 10-day meditation retreat. And watching your mind for 12 hours a day, we had the harder version. It was the Zen version, which was 10, 12 hours a day.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that concept is hard for people to grasp because I think most of our suffering comes, and this is really the core of the Buddhist teaching, most of our suffering comes from our attachment and holding onto things and wanting them to be the same. And yet the nature of the universe is that things change.
Yung Pueblo:
Constantly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And are not the same.
Yung Pueblo:
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And are constantly changing, whether it’s the weather or whether it’s your body or whether it’s your relationships or whatever it is. And I think our stuckness in wanting things to be same and not being comfortable with the uncertainty of impermanence is what caused a lot of suffering. So can you talk more about this concept of impermanence from your perspective?
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. Totally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Perspective. And then how we play with that is a doorway to becoming happy and joyful.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence, we reject change, and that creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle, because there are things that we really like in life, and we want them to stay the same. We want the people that we like to be there.
We want the situations to remain in a way that continue feeding that sort of calmness and pleasantness of life. But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing.
And if we don’t embrace that truth, that sort of natural flow of nature that’s just constantly moving forward, then it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot, because no matter how hard we try, we just can’t keep things the same. We may be able to elongate things sometimes, but ultimately whatever arises will pass away. And that doesn’t need to be a truth that strikes fear in you. And that’s something that I’ve been sort of working on in my own life and writing about is that a lot of times our relationship with change is one that’s based on fear. But…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
It can actually be, that relationship can be evolved into one that’s quite inspiring, where I know that I’m not always going to be here. I know that this situation won’t be here, so let me bring presence into this situation.
Let me bring my attention here. Let me really try my best to connect with the people who are around me, who are crossing my path in this moment. Because it’s special. We’re not always going to have this. So what that has done, it’s morphed my relationship with my wife, morphed my relationship with my mom and dad. And these moments that we do share and we’re able to connect, it’s like, wow, they’re so precious.
And I’m more so grateful to change because if you think about it fundamentally, if the universe wasn’t constantly changing, if everything was static, you and I would not be here. Nothing would exist. There would be, no one would be here. So because of change, you and I can exist, we can learn, we can love, we can grow, we can really flourish and evolve. So change is difficult, but it also gives us an incredible opportunity.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s true, but it’s a tough one for people because people get comfortable with the way things are, and…
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. T.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Hey live in the fear of what’s not here, what’s going to change. And I can tell you at 63, I just turned 63. And impermanence, it definitely has a lot more relevance for me now.
Yung Pueblo:
I bet. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And whether I live another 10 years or 50 or 80 years, maybe. I’m hoping I’m dying at 180, we’ll see how that goes. Maybe I got 120.
Yung Pueblo:
Do it. Do it. Do it for the rest of us, man. Yeah, I feel like it’s a good goal.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Maybe I got another 120 years left. We’ll see.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But I think regardless, there’s an end.
Yung Pueblo:
Yep.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think the preciousness of every interaction, of every moment, of every person is really a beautiful meditation because it brings you into the present moment. Of course, if you feel like crap, if you’re not well, if… So there’s a saying that a healthy man wants many things, a sick man wants one thing, right?
Yung Pueblo:
Yep. Yep.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think, so there is for sure that, and I think I personally have become much more clued into the preciousness of everything in every moment, in every sunset of every experience I’m having. And David Whyte, who’s a poet, who I love, talks about being in friendship with all things, which is realizing that you’re in relationship with everything.
The Native Americans have a prayer called Mitakuye Oyasin, which means to all my relations, to all the living and breathing things, to the rocks, everything. Literally, you’re in relationship with everything all the time. And I think we get pulled out of that when we’re so attached to our own sort of individual self, our own ego, our own sense of separateness, which is really an illusion.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so I think I’m curious about how you kind of come to share with people this sort of illusion of separateness, that…
Yung Pueblo:
It kind of, what you’re saying now reminds me of something you said a little earlier, and there’s that very common quote that’s attributed to a number of people, but we don’t see things as we are. We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
And what I’ve tried to do with some of my writing is expand on that. Right? When we’re interacting with reality, what is our perception doing? Our perception is actually seeing reality through our emotional history. It’s seeing reality, and not just through that emotional history that we carry from our past, but it’s combined with whatever is our current emotion.
So we’re seeing reality through these really thick lenses, and that sort of enhances that attachment that we have towards basically tying whatever we’re seeing in the present towards to something that happened in the past. And if anything in the present is sort of, we’re slightly reminding us of something positive or negative from the past, then immediately our emotions will just flow in these old directions and we’ll be repeating the past over and over again.
So that creates a situation where I may be meeting someone and I won’t be able to fully appreciate them because I’ll just be seeing them through my own gunk, through all the old sort of conditioning that I’ve been carrying in my mind. And you won’t be able to see that sort of unity or the potential love or the depth of a connection that could really be there because you’re just looking at them through the unhealed parts of yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, some of the things that I think happen in this sort of framework of personal development, self-help and growth is this phenomenon called spiritual bypass.
Yung Pueblo:
Sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Where people can do all the yoga and meditation, all these practices, but they really haven’t dealt with their fundamental framework and beliefs.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And their conditioning, whether it’s their epigenetics, inheriting trauma from past generations and just being a human on the planet.
Yung Pueblo:
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Let’s face it, it’s been a hard thing over the last few hundred thousand years. And that’s literally wired into our DNA. Whether it’s our own trauma from our own personal stories. And I sort of really have had a lot of recent sort of relationship with the world I came into with my mother and father being in a very conflictual relationship, my father not wanting me, wanting an abortion.
I mean, my mother being alone and depressed during her pregnancy and me being born into this environment. And what that did just to my epigenetics, and activating my sympathetic nervous system as a place of, in the world, as a place of danger. And having to just deal with that. And each of us have our own story. And so how do we sort of deal with the traumas and then whether they’re big traumas like abuse or micro-traumas of just growing up in a dysfunctional family or relationship?
Yung Pueblo:
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do we take the things that you’ve learned as part of your self-discovery and discovery of how to be in relationship to yourself and relationship to others and sort of heal that without doing the spiritual bypass?
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I find that this really sort of brings in what we were talking about in regards to impermanence, because we want to allow impermanence to influence our understanding of our own identity. So we should allow ourselves to learn about our past, to see the way our relationship with our parents and whatnot affects the way that we show up in life today and allow these things to inform us.
But the moment that our trauma becomes our identity, then it makes for a very rigid healing situation. Because if we’re like, “Oh, this is how I am because of this moment, and I’m always going to be like this,” or “This is how I constantly see myself,” then it’s going to slow down your evolution.
So in some ways, I think we can do our best to understand ourselves, but then we also have to let it go because it’s like, okay, I’m a changing, growing, being, so let me flow with nature and allow myself to develop new interests, new likes, let go of old parts of myself that don’t really serve me anymore and start letting my idea of who I am just continue blossoming.
And in terms of spiritual bypassing, I think it’s tough because the human mind can only process so much information at once. That’s the reality of it, is that we can’t process everything at once. And I think we get a little confused by the fact that the technological world of today is so fast and information is constantly coming our way. It’s we’re constantly being inundated and it’s exhausting.
Don’t quite realize how much you take in and how much energy that burns because you’re processing all of that. So one of our challenges is to be able to develop our awareness and expand our awareness, but also in a sustainable manner. Because there are times where you’re going through a hard time and staying connected to every single part of everything that’s happening in the world, that may not actually serve you.
And in other times, you want to be active, you want to be out there, you want to stay very informed, but those may be one year of your life versus another year of your life. And understanding that we have very different capacities. There may be people out there who can not only have a beautiful business, but then they’re also part of all these different organizations and they’re out there actively trying to change the world, and they’re…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Doing all these amazing things, and that’s fantastic. You’re helping all of us. Great. But then there are other people who have experienced so much trauma that all they can do is heal themselves. But that’s also beautiful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
You’re actually serving us by just focusing on healing yourself. Because if you heal yourself and you increase your ability to love yourself well, then that means you’re going to be less likely to harm yourself and other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think that’s true. And I think one of the most helpful sort of frameworks I’ve ever learned about my own mind is that every emotion, every time I’ve triggered, every belief I have is just my own interpretation of reality.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Your perception.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That I project my worldview onto the world. And so when I step back and go, okay, this is just one version of reality, this is not necessarily the truth with a capital T, then I can get free from believing all these stupid thoughts. My friend Daniel Ammann talks about ANTS, automatic negative thoughts, right? Where he says, “Don’t believe every stupid thought you have.”
And I think a lot of us are so embedded with our thoughts, and that’s the beauty of meditation, is it sort of creates this slowing down so you can kind of watch your arising and you’re coming and going with thoughts and realize that you’re not your thoughts, you’re not your emotions, you’re not your beliefs, you’re not your body, you’re not any of these things. And I shared this in the podcast before, that I almost died about six years ago.
And I really had, I was in bed for six months and just unable to function and lost 30 pounds and was in really just this almost vegetative state. And I wasn’t in anything. I wasn’t in my mind, I wasn’t in my body, I couldn’t answer an email, I couldn’t do anything. And I just lay there. And I just got to be in the experience of this sort of place, which actually was very happy and blissful.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Even despite the fact that my body was in agonizing pain, I was sort of surrendered into this kind of peacefulness. And it’s hard to explain, but I realized that at that moment, everything changed for me and the ideas that I’d had sort of conceptually became more experiential.
And it was a very powerful moment to kind of start to sort of reorient my life to be more an integrity. And I think sort of the next topic I want to talk about was integrity and honesty. And I think you talk about this concept in your book, Lighter, radical honesty.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What’s radical honesty and why is it so important to have that and what does that look like for each of us?
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, radical honesty is just so critical, so valuable, especially as the first step. And even before I started meditating, I found that I had no technique. I had no process. I didn’t know how to really engage with my emotions, but I knew what the problem was. And the problem was that I had gotten to that rock bottom moment by continuously lying to myself.
I did not want to admit to myself that I did not feel good. And when I realized, and I finally admit that, I was like, “I’m not okay. I don’t feel good. I have way too much anxiety, way too much sadness.” And that first acceptance of me just being like, “Okay, this is true, and now I can more so move forward.” But I started realizing that I need to repeat that over and over again. Whenever I feel tension, instead of trying to roll up another joint or just go find some way to just run away from myself.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Let me just sit with this discomfort. Let me feel whatever’s there as opposed to trying to scrub it away or ignore it in some manner. And radical honesty, it’s a term that’s been out there for a long time, but the way that I use the term is honestly between you and yourself. It’s not about you and other people. This is just about you and yourself and whatever is coming up inside of you.
And I think that being able to develop that radical honesty, it’s a critical part of self-love. And when you are able to see what’s inside of you and accept what’s there, whether it’s good or bad, then that will actually slowly start building your courage, building your inner strength, and you’ll start actually seeing that the sort of tough emotions that you’re having, they’re actually not as fearful and as dangerous and as scary as you originally thought they were. Because I would run as if I was being chased by…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
An animal or something like that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
And once I started sitting with my anxiety.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
I was like, “Yeah, this sucks, but it’s not that bad. I’m okay.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
This isn’t going to take me out. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So being radically honest is hard because you have to be honest with yourself.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You have to be honest with how you see yourself and your beliefs and your thoughts, and almost take a third party view.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Of yourself.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because we get so attached to who we are and our identity and our beliefs about ourselves. And it’s just so hard to undo that. Right? So doing this work and sort of letting go of these old stories and learning about letting go, how do we put that into practice? Letting go is really hard. Some struggle with it, and we often make things harder for ourselves. So why is letting go so important, and how do we have to keep doing this practice of letting go as part of our life?
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Well, this really, to what you were saying earlier about you realizing how you were creating your own narrative of what was happening in front of you. And one thing that I really appreciate that the Buddha and my teacher S.N. Goenka talks about is how wisdom is actually you being able to see things from different perspectives.
So not just from your own perspective, but seeing whatever the truth may be from different angles and being able to see your own angle, put yourself in the feet of another person. To just see the complexity of the situation as opposed to just creating some simplified, self-centered story that’s just, “This was not my fault, this is somebody else’s fault.”
But seeing your own, what is the role that you played in this situation and how may someone else have seen it? I think that can be so informing to your ability to let go, because that’s probably one of the first things we need to let go of, is like, okay, I do have this one perception of what’s happening in this moment, but there’s more, there’s more to understand, and people are seeing this in other ways, but letting go, I think it’s the crux of healing.
It’s quite necessary to be able to even somehow process your emotions and let them go, because we don’t realize that as soon as we’re born, right? We’re constantly reacting. And every reaction, it creates an imprint on the mind. It molds the subconscious. And this doesn’t stop at childhood. And I think that’s one of the things that I think a lot of modern therapists kind of really hone in on those first seven or so years of life.
And they’re very formative, but it doesn’t stop there. The big events that happened to you later, the heartbreaks, the loss, the accident that you were talking about that you went through, these created massive imprints in your mind that are still playing themselves out, that are still affecting the way that you act now. But it’s you’re acting now in relation to what happened before. And the letting go part is letting go of the energy of the past that you’re still carrying, that you’re still bringing into the present over and over again.
And the beautiful part of this modern age that we live in is that there’s a lot of ways to let go. I let go through meditating. Other people let go through the practices that their therapists may teach them. There’s just a lot of different ways to go about it. And there’s no sort of one to five step, “This is how you let go.” But knowing that the letting go often involves, really always involves you coming back to the present moment.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I think it’s hard because we do get so attached to our worldview, and we think it sort of come apart if we actually let go of what happened to us or if we move on or if we don’t hold on to things.
But I think we tend to poison ourselves by this constant holding on to our ways of seeing in whether it’s in relationship or to ourselves. And I think one of the challenge for people, and I noticed this for myself, which people may find hard to explain given that I’m successful and blah, blah, blah, is I realize that I had a certain level of self-worth and self-love, but I really wasn’t fully in it.
And it sort of undermined my ability to love others, to actually choose the things that were good for me in life, to say yes to what was good and to say no to what didn’t resonate with me. And so how do you kind of help guide people towards more self-acceptance, more self-love, more self-worth? Because it’s sort of easy to talk about, but it’s hard to do.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, it is hard to do. And it’s also hard to do in relation to what society has, or what consumerism has created in regards to self-love, where it’s self-love in terms of just kind of pleasing yourself, just buying more things, giving… Just the consumers aspect of it. But I think real self-love, it is you basically trying actively and continuously to get to know yourself and to do whatever it is you need to do to heal yourself and free yourself. So that’s self-love, it’s really an internal dynamic.
And it is hard. It’s not something that’s going to be easy, but the reason that we come back to it, the reason that I keep coming back to it personally is I literally can’t make a bigger investment. It’s the best investment that I could make. I could be out there working and doing all these things, but all of it will just not, whatever I may produce will not be as good if I don’t have a strong ability to accept myself deeply.
A strong ability to balance that with self-love and understand that I should love myself deeply. But there’s also things that I can, different directions that I can grow in that will help me become a better version of myself and just continue showing up into the world in a way that honors the emotions that I’m feeling, but is still showing up in a way that I feel really genuinely good about.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It’s sort of an internal journey first, but then the harder part is in being in a relationship, right? Whether with our family or our.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Coworkers or our partner. Ram Dass talks about how if you think you’re enlightened, just go home for thanksgiving.
Yung Pueblo:
Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think that’s the challenge for many of us is that we sort of seem to maybe construct our reality where we think we’re moving in the right direction, and we may be, but then we’re finding ourselves in relationship acting out these old unconscious patterns. So how can our relationships be part of our healing as opposed to creating more trauma for us, which they often do.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough because relationships are sort of like incubators for growth, whether we want them to be or not. They really accelerate us seeing the different parts of ourselves that are good and the really tough parts. I think whenever egos are in proximity of each other there, it’s only a short limited amount of time until there’s conflict. Because egos are rough.
And when they rub up against each other, the friction is created. So we cannot help but find difficulties in the people that we love. But being able to understand that it’s not just about them, that the initial reaction may be you pointing the finger and being like, “You made me feel this way.”
But when you develop self-awareness and you start realizing that actually, I may have actually just gotten less hours of sleep last night, and this is why I woke up and didn’t feel good, but then my mind wanted to figure out how this is your fault and place the blame on someone else. So…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
There’s one common practice that my wife and I try to do is we do our best to let each other know where we are in our emotional spectrum, and we let each other know, how do I feel right now. Instead of it sort of snowballing into this bigger narrative, we try to cut that narrative by just being in contact with each other about how we feel in the moment pretty constantly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so you wake up in the morning and you go, “Hey, I’m feeling this. How are you feeling?” Or how do you do that in practice? Do you have a time to check in every day or?
Yung Pueblo:
So the practice is really, it’s us checking in first thing in the morning. It’s just letting us know, okay, either I feel like a lot of anxiety passing through me right now, or I feel heavy right now, or my mood feels really short. That information not only helps the person who’s feeling it acknowledge and own the fact that okay, I don’t feel great right now and I’m not going to try to fake it.
And it lets your partner know, okay, that let me figure out ways to support them or just give them space, or whatever it is. So that we’re both aware that one of us is a little short today. And it’s been really funny because there was this one particular moment where my wife and I, my wife was feeling tough that day, and her and I were working in different rooms because we were both working from home at that time.
And we hadn’t talked to each other for about two, two and a half hours. And then she comes in and she is like, “You know, I just spent the last three hours trying to figure out how me not feeling good right now is your fault.” And she was like, “It was so crazy. It was totally illogical, had nothing to do with you.” And there are these times where certainly the tough moments of our past will play into how we feel and how we act and really the way that our character shows up.
But it’s not always like that in the minutiae of regular everyday life where really sometimes it is because maybe the day before I had too much sugar and now my mood’s super low the next day, or I didn’t get enough sleep last night and now I feel tired. And what happens when you’re tired, then you get angry.
Being able to be aware of these things and honest with yourself and your partner or those around you who are with you, I think it actually stops a lot, a lot of unnecessary arguments from happening. Because surely sometimes your partner will say something to you that they should apologize for. But I would say 90% of the time, it’s like you just jumping through these illogical hoops trying to create a problem when there really is not a problem there.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I think that’s true, and I think that’s a tough thing to do in the live action dynamic.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Of a relationship.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But the more we can kind of slow it down and…
Yung Pueblo:
Totally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Be in a non-reactive state is better off we’re going to be in terms of our own self-awareness and our relationships. And you talked about the power of non-reaction, but most people don’t have a tool or a set of skills for not reacting to our feelings, not… We have a thought.
Yung Pueblo:
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Then we have an emotion, and then we have a reaction. Right? And people say, “Oh, we have the emotion first.” I’m not necessarily, it may be instantaneous, but we have some thought that triggers some almost instantaneous feeling. And we then translate that into some reaction or action. And that’s a pretty universal human pattern.
But how do we kind of create this more like slow motion where we maybe have this thought, “Oh, my partner just yelled at me,” or “She criticized me,” or “She… I think she meant this, but maybe she didn’t.” And then you have this feeling of rejection or sadness or hurt or whatever, and then you have your actual expression or whatever that is. How do you kind of break that down so people can actually have that present moment awareness to not collapse all those three things into one explosion.
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. Totally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Which is what happens usually in a relationship.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. These reactions happen incredibly rapidly, and they do so because the past of the mind is so loaded and so heavy that it makes it easy to just react with the intensity that you had, that you did before. And it’s funny because oftentimes we think it’s this thought that is bothering me, but whatever arises in the mind, it simultaneously arises with sensations on the body.
And the thing that we don’t like is how we feel like we forget and we don’t know because our awareness isn’t sharp enough. Fear has a feeling in the body, anger has a feeling in the body, lust, craving, all of these things, aversion. They all have feelings in the body and what we don’t like or what we crave, it’s the, literally the sensations on the body. And I think one of the best ways to even outside of meditating is literally slowing down.
I think that is the key, because the problem is speed. It’s you’re reacting so fast, you just fall back into this happy pattern of reaction, of blind reaction really, and slowing yourself down so that you can actually process and see the different options that are there. Options where it’s like, this is how I normally would’ve reacted. This is what I could do that would be a little more helpful in this situation.
Or I could just walk away from this seeing more of what’s there besides just going with the first impulse. Because the first impulse will literally just be you repeating your past. Whereas if you take time to slow down, if you take time to literally turn your attention back into the present moment, then you’ll be able to come up with a much more genuine response that is connected to how you feel presently than just you repeating your past over and over again.
We have to also remind ourselves too, that when you meditate or when you’re intentionally trying to cultivate any sort of quality in your mind, present moment awareness, compassion, self-awareness, it’s you taking yourself to the mental gym.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Right.
Yung Pueblo:
You have to repeat this stuff over and over again. It doesn’t just happen. It’s not easy. You can’t just run a marathon. You have to start the long walks, start the running systematically and trying over and over again, and then the quality of compassion will be there. Then the quality of slowing down will be there and that will help you.
But I think it takes that intention of, okay, I see the problem. Let me try to slow down. Okay, I didn’t get it quite right. Let me try again. Okay. Now I was able to slow down a little bit. So there’s a lot that you can do just in the raw form. But then other than that, I really recommend to people, you’re going to want to find a technique that meets you where you’re at, something that is challenging, but not overwhelming. Something that can really help you cultivate yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s true. I think you have to be able to withstand and hold the physiology of emotion without actually letting it just be expressed kind of in a messy way. And I think that’s…
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. Feel it without becoming. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. And that’s the hard part, is letting, allowing yourself to slow down enough to go, okay, I have this, oh, initial burst of my gut is tense, or my heart feels hurt, or whatever is happening, or I feel a flood of heat in my body. There’s these physiological responses to what’s happening, and we tend to just jump into whatever those are, but to go, “Oh, I’m just noticing, oh, I stubbed my toe, it hurts for a minute, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to die.” Or…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think you go, okay, well, I stubbed my toe, it’s not comfortable. But then you kind of have to be able to have a response and instead of a reaction. And that takes the slowing down. I think that’s such a beautiful thing. I mean, you also talk about how part of the key to sort of living a happy life is sort of really focusing on self-love.
And part of that’s self love and acceptance is about kind of building these positive habits. Right? It’s honesty, it’s habit building, it’s self-acceptance, it’s unconditional. And you talk about these three pillars that work both inside of you and also in your life externally. They generate and support a kind of really more permanent and deep sense of self-love and acceptance.
Because it’s not something that most of us learn how to do is how do we love ourselves? How do we accept ourselves? And what are the practices we can do? So maybe you can share how you built that for yourself, and then your partnership and then how, you kind of maybe suggest for people to start to think about it for themselves.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And everybody’s got a different path, but.
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. Yeah. I think in terms of the positive habit building, right? Because a lot of what we want to do is undo the past by breaking down those old heavy habits that we have that are semi-conscious or unconscious and we want to build positive new ones. And what I do personally is I meditate every day, twice a day.
I meditate two hours a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. And I’ve been doing that now for about seven years. And it has been radically life changing. And I do that because that’s what works for me. Right? I’m very interested in learning. And I remember the first time that I took a 10-day course, when I spoke to my friends afterwards, I described to them, I was like, “Man, I learned more in 10 days than I did in four years of college.”
It really just opened up this whole new world. So that’s why I put so much time, I invest time into meditating because it is the crux and the root of all the other good things that are happening in my life, my relationship with my wife, with work, and with any type of new endeavor that I may do. So in terms of positive habit building, that’s key for me. My wife also meditates two hours a day.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Yung Pueblo:
And…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Two hours a day. That’s a lot of time.
Yung Pueblo:
It is. It’s a lot of time. But it’s funny though, even though I do that, I still find time to waste. It’s there’s a lot of time in a day that just gets wasted with scrolling, time that you’re giving away to Netflix, there’s… Or time just, I don’t know. I feel like this life, it’s such a beautiful bountiful opportunity.
And I actually have been able to increase my production after I started meditating two hours a day than before. I was just able to do a lot less things before that. So you’d be surprised how much it increases your capacity because you’re just able to see things much more clearly than just rolling in through the nonsense it’s happening in your mind.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, we go to the gym, we eat well, we focus on sleep, but we don’t practice what I call brainer-ercise, which is…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Working on this thing, this gray matter that determines everything about your life. I mean, it’s such an incredible thing because it determines even how you relate to your body, how you eat, whether you prioritize sleep, whether you take care of yourself, all the things that you need to do to be a whole person, to be engaged in life in a positive way, to be in relationships at work, to be doing your purpose in the world, to do your work. Whatever it is, you kind of have to handle this thing between your ears. And…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Look, we learn so much about all the other aspects of wellbeing and health, but very little about that. And that in a sense is the major determinant of everything else in our life, of our happiness, of our focus, of our attention, of our relationships, of our longevity.
I mean, I just finished a book on longevity called Young Forever. And in it, the mindset and beliefs are such a powerful determinant of our longevity. I mean, if you had a, for example, a meaning and purpose in your life, your life expectancy was increased by seven years, which is…
Yung Pueblo:
Wow.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Which is a lot. That’s seven years. I mean, if we eradicated cancer and heart disease from the face of the planet, we’d at most get a three to maybe five or six year life extension.
Yung Pueblo:
Right. Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You’re saying it’s like having a positive mindset’s better than curing all cancer and heart disease from the planet, which is pretty amazing.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. But having a purpose that’s really illuminating, because I, so when I go away to meditate, I, earlier this year, January to February, I set a 45-day meditation course. And in that…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
45 days. Wow.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah. And in those 45 day courses, there’s a lot of people who, my wife and I were by far the youngest people there, and but most of the people were 50 and above, and most of them were really in their deep seventies. And man, they look great. They look great.
Not only has meditating for decades, helped them physically and visibly look young, but they have a purpose in life and their purpose is to serve because a lot of them are also assistant teachers who are conducting these courses and whatnot. And but it’s quite powerful to see the power of purpose because I think it can really drive you. And it’s funny, because my journey started with the mental aspect.
I knew that I had to get my mind right for my life to just develop some sort of stability and harmony. And once I started getting my mind, I was like, “Oh man, I’m really unhealthy. I need to change the way I eat.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Change the way I eat, start exercising more just, and building that consistency so that I can make my life longer and be able to serve well. And I’ve been really inspired by the way you talk about longevity and talking about it as being able to live well as long as possible and not just about extending your life.
To be able to be 60 for many years over and over and over and over again, that’s so powerful. And I think, yeah, I’ve been really taking in the longevity information and applying it now, I’m 35 years old now, but it’s start early and hopefully I can be a really dope 80-year-old.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s a plan. Actually, there’s a guy, I’m in Costa Rica and in the Nicoya Peninsula which is one of the blue zones right now where people live very long. And there’s a guy who tends to the garden in the house I’m staying at who’s 80 years old, and he’s works harder than anybody else. He rides bike straight up this long kind of couple mile.
Yung Pueblo:
Wow.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Hill.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
To get to the property to work for the day. And he’s so fit and so engaged and so strong. And he’s 80 years old. We don’t think of a normal 80-year-old being a hard manual labor worker, but they are.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You can be. So I think, yeah, it’s powerful.
Yung Pueblo:
There’s, I wanted to tell you, there was a teacher who, he passed away a few months ago, but this guy, he was in his deep nineties. And man, he looked great. He looked great. He would teach so many courses. And literally until the last moment of his life, he was in the hospital teaching the nurses how to meditate and passed away so peacefully and quietly. And it was just such a inspiring life to look at. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, that’s true. I was watching a video about Dick Van Dyke, who’s like, I think the guy would be dead by now because he was like.
Yung Pueblo:
Oh, he’s still alive?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sixties, he’s 95 years old or something, and he works out every day. He’s married to a woman who’s 40 years younger than him. And he still dances, he still does yoga, he still acts. I mean, it’s like people have the ability to be vibrant and well into the later stage in life, but it’s really about how we relate to our own minds that keep us young or old.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think actually that kind of bring me to the question of how did you sort of create this pseudonym Yung Pueblo? Because that’s sort of an interesting thing to sort of have that…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
As your.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, it’s…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Forward facing identity.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, it is interesting. I feel like, and it’s also been a fortunate situation too, because I’ve, as everything has been growing, a lot of the attention just goes to Young Pueblo and Diego Perez can just kind of quietly just in the background. And I’ve been loving that. I think it’s wonderful. But Yung Pueblo, it means young people. And it’s a name that combines my Ecuadorian-ness with my Americanness.
And because in Ecuador, I mean, the word Pueblo is used in so many different ways, but for me, it means the masses of people. And when I started meditating, I was like, “Damn, I’m really immature. I have a lot of growing up to do.” But then I’ve always been this huge history nerd. And when I started turning my attention to what’s been happening historically, where the world is now, I was like, wait, the whole world is young.
We literally still don’t know how to collectively do these fundamental basic things, the things that our teachers, when we were in kindergarten, were trying to teach us. Like how to clean up after ourselves, how to be kind to one another, how to tell the truth, to not hit each other, to share.
These are fundamental basic things that we may be able to do them as individuals and in small groups, but as a human collective, we don’t, we haven’t mastered these basics at all. So to me, Yung Pueblo is, it helps me place all of my writing within this context because it really feels like humanity is maturing over this 100-year period. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s beautiful. So it’s really about sort of the maturation of our species and the sort of rising consciousness. So it’s an interesting moment in history because maybe there’s been many times like this in the past, but where there’s sort of a rising consciousness and awareness and many people gravitating towards meditation, towards self-development, towards spirituality, towards psychedelics and across really wide spectrum of the population, including CEOs and political leaders.
It was really fascinating. And at the same time, there’s all this division and darkness and war and kind of really kind of dark aspects of human behavior. I wonder if we actually can come to a place where humans are more awake, where they are more integrated, where there is a better sort of framework for raising children, for helping actually to develop these qualities of self-awareness and self-love and self-mastery and mastery of our minds, which is really the key to a happy life.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. I think.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because as a doctor, I can tell people to do what to do all day long. Right? For me, it’s not hard to cure diabetes or.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Immunities or dementia or many, many things. It’s about people following the recommendations.
Yung Pueblo:
The guidelines. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. That’s like, okay, here’s you have a human body, here’s what it takes to keep your body well and to cure disease. And we don’t know everything about every disease, obviously, but for most of the stuff people are suffering with, it’s not that hard. And yet people don’t do it. And the reason they don’t do it is not because it’s hard, they don’t do it because of what’s in their mind.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that’s the part that I think is the biggest challenge for people.
Yung Pueblo:
I think it’s funny because I will sway back and forth because there’s so many difficulties in the world and it is quite out of balance. But at the same time, what gives me hope is that we really do live in unprecedented historic times. This is a time where all of the Eastern practices that have helped people for thousands of years have become globalized, are globally available now.
And similar with Western practices that have been developed over the past few hundred years that also are deeply helping the body and their mind, they’re also becoming more worldly available. And I think now that the world lives in, we’re in this place where there are literally millions and millions of people in the world who are meditating now.
And there are millions and millions and millions of people in the world who are seeing therapists and people who are actively trying to heal themselves in a way where if you were to look back, I don’t think there are these many people probably since the Buddhist time, but even then in the Buddhist time, there were a lot of people meditating, but it was kind of focused in Northern India and now it’s the world, man.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
There’s so many people who are actively cultivating themselves. And one thing that I have a lot of hope around is just that when you learn to love yourself better and you’re actively cultivating that self-love, that willingness to intentionally or unintentionally harm another person, it also decreases.
Because you know that that self-love is real if it slowly starts opening the door to unconditional love for all beings as well, because self-love is not self-centered. It’s a motivator for you to evolve. But in that evolution, it’ll open you to the compassion that helps you see, “Oh, it’s actually to my benefit as well for the people, for my neighbor to also be healthy and happy.”
And building on these situations so that we’re not as dominated by our past so that. Because if you look at things historically, there have always been groups of people who try to change the world for the better, but the failure comes in that they never change their minds. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
So you can have these beautiful, powerful ideals, but then what happens when you get power? Right? Power, it functions like a magnet and it will pull out the roughest parts of your ego. So if you don’t meditate, if you don’t have some sort of practice, then those roughest parts will start dominating you.
And what will happen is that you start recreating the ills that you were once fighting against. And it has happened so many times historically, but I think this is the sort of silent movement that’s happening now where, well, now we’re actually changing our minds and we’re still simultaneously trying to change the world for the better. So to me, it’s like that’s my shining ray of hope.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think that’s a very insightful perspective, which is that unless we learn it’s not about self-love or self-acceptance as a narcissistic pursuit, it’s really about self-love as a doorway to greater love in the world, to more compassion, to deeper interpersonal relationships that actually help to heal what’s going on and heal divisions and create more connection to ourselves, to each other, to the planet.
And so once you develop those things, you end the process of self-harm, which is what most of us are in, a dynamic of some self-harm to some degree or another. And the Buddhist notion of compassion is important, but it’s also not just out there, it’s directed towards yourself.
Yung Pueblo:
Totally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And there was a very famous guru who was the teacher of Ram Doss and Krishna Doss and for example, Daniel Goleman who wrote the Emotional Intelligence and many others. And his basic message was really simple, love everybody, serve everybody and feed everybody. And I think that everybody includes this.
Yung Pueblo:
You.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Your own.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yourself. And I think for many years I never quite got that. And so I think that’s sort of a beautiful message of learning how to build the awareness, the practices, the tools, meditation or other practices. And there are many practices.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I, for example, used really deep journaling for my own self-awareness, which was, what is all this shit in my head saying, let me just. If you actually recorded what your inner dialogue was and you wrote I down.
Yung Pueblo:
It’s a mess. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
For most of us it’s like a nightmare.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And if you said it, if you said those things to a friend or a partner, things you say to yourself.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You would be the loneliest person in the world because no one would be in relation with you. But we kind of put that on ourselves. And so learning how to change that inner dialogue, to put it out there as an objective sort of framework, okay, this is actually what this thing in my head is doing.
And then create some distance and say, “What is my higher wisdom have to say about what my lower self is saying?” And having that pattern of awareness, that was a very deep practice for me that helped me see my patterns in work and life with myself that I really resisted. Because we get so attached to our ideas and our sense of things.
But it really helped me get so much freer. And when you’re freer, then you are able to be in the world in a much more generative way, a much more creative way, a much more giving way in a way that actually brings more light and love in the world rather than more darkness. So it’s beautiful the messages that you convey, Diego. It’s really important.
I think if you haven’t come across his work, you should definitely at least follow him on Instagram because every day there’s these beautiful little nuggets of wisdom and in meditation. They’re very simple but very profound and they really are great kind of little guidepost reminders along the way about how to actually live your life.
Check out his books Inward and Clarity & Connection and his new book Lighter, which you can find everywhere. He’s really kind of a light in the world. And I’m so grateful for your work and your wisdom. I wondered if there’s any sort of other messages or things you want to convey about your new book Lighter or about things that we haven’t quite covered that you think are important for people to understand about themselves and their own healing journey?
Yung Pueblo:
That’s a good question. I think probably the last important thing to convey is that is really be intentional about the moments when you do have a low mood. Because it’s really easy to forget how far you have come, how much progress you have made, and being able to suspend that self-analysis in those moments where you just don’t feel that good and you’re burdened by anxiety or sadness or something thick is passing through your mind.
Just allow yourself to do a little less that day to relax a little bit and to when you actually do want to do some self-analysis, you want to examine yourself from when you started to where you are now, not from today to yesterday.
From today, yesterday, it’s just going to be some pretty serious ups and downs. Right? So if you look at that healing journey, it’s super choppy, super forwards and backwards. And it just reminds me of my own journey with my health. I know Rice wasn’t good for me, but how hard was it for me to stop eating rice? Only just now this past year am I comfortable with not eating it. Right? But it took so long.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No, you’re from Ecuador, so it’s part of the…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Exactly. It’s the key thing they’re eating, but breaking…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Yung Pueblo:
Breaking these little habits that aren’t allowing our best self to show up, it takes time. So it’s really about repetition. And Lighter is really just, it’s a book that’s there to help you sort of understand those important thresholds that we cross when we’re, because there’s chapters on self-love, chapters on healing, chapters on emotional maturity, relationships. And it’s really helped to feed that intellectual side of that deeper inner experience that’s happening.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it is such a beautiful title, Lighter. And to me, I don’t know what it really meant to you as you created the title, but for me it’s how do we live more lightly with ourselves in relationship.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
With the earth and with our lives. And I think that’s such a beautiful framework for how to think about things.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s heavy. It’s heavy. Being human is freaking heavy.
Yung Pueblo:
It’s really heavy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Being human now is heavy more than ever, I think. And…
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah, that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, we’re closer to nuclear war than ever. Climate change. I mean, the inequities we’re facing. And yet there’s a way to live lightly and joyfully in the midst of it all.
Yung Pueblo:
Totally. And Lighter really kind of sort of points to the heaviness that we carry in our mind, and it’s totally possible to relieve that heaviness through letting go. But the same Lighter also points to the fact that I really believe enlightenment is possible. I’ve come across some incredibly wise people in my life, but enlightenment’s difficult. It takes a lot of effort. It takes right effort. But even though enlightenment may be difficult, it’s really possible to become lighter. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for what you’re doing, for the work you’ve done. I’d encourage everybody to follow you. Go to Young Pueblo, that’s Y-U-N-G underscore Pueblo, P-U-E-B-L-O on social media. Check out your website, which is also yungpueblo.com.
And definitely check out the books Inward, Clarity & Connection and Lighter, which is a great meditation for the heaviness of the world now. And I’m really happy to see that it was a number one New York Times bestseller because that’s not easy and it sort of speaks to the residents of the message that you have, the importance of it and it’s beautiful. So thank you so much, Diego, for your work, and hopefully we’ll get to see you in person soon someday soon.
Yung Pueblo:
Yeah. I would love that. Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you for all the work that you’re doing for the world, because you’re just helping us out in tremendous ways.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh, thank you so much. And if you’ve loved this podcast, please share with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment, have you learned to live lighter in your own life and learned about how to love yourself and accept yourself and know your own mind? And we’d love to hear how you’ve discovered yourself because it’s something we can all learn from. And subscribe wherever you hear your podcast and we’ll see you next week on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Closing:
Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who’s trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
