Dr. Pedram Shojai

Episode Description:

Your mind is wandering 47% of the time, and it’s making you miserable. In this episode, Dr. Pedram Shojai explores the science of temporal displacement and why constantly living in the past or future is destroying your health. Drawing on Harvard research tracking 15,000 people, he reveals how your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a memory and a real threat, keeping you in a constant state of stress. Learn three powerful anchors to bring yourself back to the present moment: breath as clock, sensory grounding, and the witness pause. This isn’t spiritual theory, it’s neuroscience-backed practice that can rewire your relationship with time and restore your body’s ability to heal.

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform and check out the Urban Monk Academy here.

Podcast show notes:

[00:00:00] Where Is Your Mind Right Now?

• Most people are rehearsing conversations from three days ago or simulating what might go wrong next week
• This is the default human operating mode, and the research is sobering

[00:02:00] The 47% Problem: Harvard’s Mind Wandering Study

• Harvard researchers tracked 15,000 people and found minds wander 47% of the time
• A wandering mind is an unhappy mind, not because the content is negative, but because the disconnection itself is the problem
• Matthew Killingsworth’s 2010 study: people were less happy when mind wandering regardless of what they were thinking about

[00:04:00] Understanding the Default Mode Network

• The set of brain regions that activate when you’re not focused on an external task
• Replays the past, imagines the future, runs social situations
• In the modern world, we’ve left this system running full time with nothing to yank us into the present

[00:06:00] Your Nervous System Can’t Tell the Difference Between Memory and Threat

• Ruminating about a conversation from last Tuesday makes your body produce cortisol as if it’s happening now
• Catastrophizing about next month’s financial situation activates your HPA axis in real time
• Chronic anxiety is exhausting because you’re stressed about things distributed across past and future simultaneously

[00:08:00] Temporal Displacement Shuts Down Your Body’s Data Streams

• When you’re in your head, you’ve closed down interoceptive and exteroceptive channels
• You’re not feeling your breath, noticing your body, or registering sensations
• You’re running on narrative alone

[00:09:00] Three Anchors to Return to the Present Moment

• These aren’t affirmations or bumper stickers. They’re psychological levers tested through your nervous system
• First anchor: Breath as clock. Your breath is both autonomic and voluntary, providing a four-second temporal reset
• Second anchor: Sensory grounding. Your external senses are incapable of operating anywhere but the present
• Third anchor: The witness pause. Noticing you’ve been time traveling strengthens the neural circuitry for faster returns

[00:13:00] Live Practice: Anchoring to Now

• Guided practice: feeling breath, body weight, temperature, sounds
• Your body keeps time, and that time is only now

[00:15:00] The Present Moment Isn’t One Option Among Many

• The present moment is the only place where anything actually happens
• Every decision, breath, and connection you’ve ever experienced happened in a present moment
• The past is a memory of a present moment; the future is anticipation of one
• This practice removes static blocking us from what’s already here

[00:17:00] The Seven-Day Challenge

• Set three alarms daily across your waking hours
• Each time: stop, take one breath, feel three physical sensations, ask “where was my mind just now?”
• Don’t judge, just notice

[00:19:00] Discussion: What Came Up During the Practice

• Pedram opens chat for reflections on resistance, body sensations, natural moments of presence
• Integrating the three anchors into existing gong practice (Pedram is on day 65 of his gong)

[00:21:00] Athletes, Flow States, and the Shift to Mindfulness

• Advanced trainers are replacing “no pain, no gain” with mindfulness, breathing, and awareness work
• Michael Jordan in flow state: pure brilliance moving elegantly without worrying about defense or shots

[00:23:00] The Body Calls Attention to Areas of Imbalance

• In the present moment you can heal
• Reference to Daoist healing set taught in Austin: focusing breath and awareness to locate and move energy through areas that feel off
• Lights On practice is the foundational floor for advanced Daoist work

[00:26:00] Temporal Displacement Creates a Chemistry Lab

• Living in the past or future saddles your energy systems
• Impairs ATP production and mitochondrial function
• A scared animal doesn’t heal; a tired animal sleeps with one eye open

[00:28:00] Don’t Give Your Power to External Sources

• If you give your power of relaxation to yoga, you’re ruined when you can’t make class
• If you give your power of introspection to marijuana, you can’t relax without the drug
• Retreats teach fundamentals you can practice at home. The fundamentals are the three anchors

[00:30:00] Be Patient: You’re Changing the Crops

• You have to fix yourself by catching bad habits through witness practice and correcting them
• It’s like changing crops on a plot of land: plant seeds, water them, weed the old ones
• It might take a couple seasons for the harvest to shift
• Most people get frustrated when they see the weeds but don’t see the sprouts yet, and they give up

[00:32:00] Building a Beachhead in the Present

• Over time you start to build a beachhead and have more control of that switch
• You start to lengthen your fuse and live more in the now

[00:33:00] Making the Body Feel Safe Cues Healing

• When the body feels safe, it cues ventral vagal dominance: peacetime economy, rest and digest, heal cells, recover, thrive
• A scared animal doesn’t heal. A tired animal sleeps with one eye open because it’s afraid of getting eaten
• Learning to override these signals and make the body feel safe puts you in a position to rejuvenate, restore, and reparent your psyche

[00:34:00] EMDR and Daoist Practices

• EMDR was birthed from Daoist and Tibetan practices using eyes to go from periphery to focus
• EMDR is integrative work for heavy emotional trauma that keeps pulling you back to the past
• It helps integrate, release, bless, let go, and take the charge away from traumatic memories

[00:36:00] When to Seek Trauma-Informed Therapy

• This week’s practice is for day-to-day work
• If you need to dig back into heavy trauma, there’s trauma work, trauma-informed therapy, and somatic work available

[00:37:00] Closing and Next Steps

• Recordings are archived in the meeting section
• Spring retreat announcement coming soon, will be in May in Austin, Texas once contract is signed
• See you next week, same time, same bat channel

Key Takeaways

• Your mind wanders 47% of the time, causing measurable unhappiness through disconnection alone
• Your nervous system treats memories as current threats, producing real-time cortisol responses
• Three anchors bring you back: breath as clock, sensory grounding, and the witness pause
• The present moment is the only place anything actually happens
• Temporal displacement impairs mitochondrial function and prevents healing

Resources Mentioned

• Matthew Killingsworth’s 2010 Harvard study (15,000 participants on mind wandering)
• Default mode network
• HPA axis and cortisol response
• Ventral vagal dominance
• EMDR therapy
• Lights On course (weekly drip, sleep module)
• Urban Monk Academy
• Spring retreat in Austin, Texas (May 2026)

This episode is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Consult with qualified healthcare practitioners for personalized guidance.

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