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Hi friends 👋,
This week, I’m excited to kick off a giveaway where I’ll gift one of you an amazing and unique live online breathwork class. More details at the end. But first, a few thoughts and pointers I enjoyed exploring.
3 Top Picks
I. 🎥 Docuseries on the importance of discussing mental health —
The Me You Can’t See on Apple TV+.
This fascinating new series is guided by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry discussing mental health by sharing personal stories. But the most interesting part is about the stories and testimonies from several other people that are interwoven throughout the series.
There are moving testimonies from Lady Gaga - who opens up and describes the chronic pain and a psychotic break that were the aftermath of being raped at age 19 -, basketball player DeMar DeRozan, and Zak Williams (son of Robin).
We can also find ordinary people with moderate and severe issues and disabilities, like a 20-something diagnosed with schizophrenia and a female athlete with OCD and an eating disorder.
Both celebrities and ordinary people are mentioned by their first name, keeping the focus on the personal story they have to tell. It’s a powerful deep dive into the significance of honest conversations about mental health in an effort to normalize them and remove the stigma.
In this context, celebrities come through as the ordinary people they really are, sending the message: “I have all this, and yet I suffer from that, too.”
II. 🎾 Naomi Osaka and the French Open —
Naomi Osaka, the 23-year-old professional tennis player, recently pulled out of the French Open after she was fined for skipping a news conference.
While many articles and comments criticized her decision and highlighted an athlete’s responsibilities and the significant economic upside that comes from interacting with the press, I believe the focus here should be on the person’s experience. Especially when it involves mental health, depression, and anxiety.
I found this piece on The Ringer to be the best article on the story, where the author - the editor - admits: “I like to go to bat for sportswriters when leagues try to restrict their access. Yet I can’t get my mind around the idea of making an athlete’s ability to take the court contingent on her willingness to talk to us. I can’t even imagine using that as a threat.”
But Soren’s take resonated with me more than anyone else’s:
I so appreciate Naomi Osaka’s vulnerability and honesty about her inner life.
She does need to conform to other people’s worlds, if it means overriding what she feels inside.
And it reminds me that we really never know the inner world of another person ... even if they are at the height of success. We each carry so much.
III. 🎙 Podcast episode I found myself immersed into —
Suleika Jaouad on Invaluable Road Trips, the Importance of a To-Feel List, and Finding Artistic Homes on the Tim Ferris Show.
Suleika Jaouad (@suleikajaouad) is a bestselling author and writer of the Isolation Journals newsletter, where she shares weekly journaling prompts with a large community of 100k+ people.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Tim Ferris, she describes her experience of spending much of her twenties in treatment for leukemia. It presents mortality and impermanence as deeply scary, but ultimately sobering and liberating.
It’ll help you (re)consider many of the things you do and think from a very different perspective.
“When the ceiling caves in on you, you no longer assume structural stability. You have to learn to live along fault lines.”
— Suleika Jaouad
🎁 Giveaway: free breathwork class
In Mindful Nerd #10: On breath, breathing, and breathwork, I talked about a unique and powerful breathing experience taught by Jon Paul Crimi - the Hollywood breathing coach - at Breathe with JP.
This week, I would love to gift a voucher for an upcoming 1-hour live online class with JP to one of you. I promise it will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced!
The task is simple: leave a short public comment to this Substack post describing a “mindful experience” that you recently enjoyed. It could be a particular meditation or yoga practice, a passage from a book, a video, an activity, or any other type of experience that evoked qualities like surprise, presence, self-awareness, and compassion.
Ideally, the comment should describe:
how you felt during the experience
something you found surprising and unique about the experience
the reason why others should consider trying the experience
Submissions will be open until Saturday, June 26th 2021. I will select and announce the winner in the next update on June 27th 🙂.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this content, please click on the like button below - it will help others find the article on Substack. Feel free to also forward the email to a friend or share the web link. Anyone can enter the friendly contest to win the breathwork class!
Be well and be kind,
Matteo