Liam McClintock is the Founder & CEO of FitMind, a mental fitness technology company. The FitMind approach is taught at Fortune 500 companies, addiction centers, schools, government organizations, and via mobile app.

Liam also hosts The FitMind Podcast, engaging various experts on the mind ranging from neuroscientists and monks to big wave surfers and memory champions. Liam received a B.A. from Yale and worked in finance before traveling to Asia to study meditation full-time.

He is an RYS Certified Meditation Instructor and has trained in various styles (Indo-Tibetan, Vedic, Theravadan, MBSR). Liam is currently completing an M.S. in Applied Neuroscience at King’s College London. His work has been featured in Forbes, Time, Vice, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan, NBC, and Men’s Health.

Learn more about FitMind: https://fitmind.com/

00:01:42 – Sean introduces Liam McClintock (Karuna)
00:07:00 – Guided meditation led by Karuna (sensing into good vibes)
00:17:39 – The problem: Why doesn’t the mind just stay present? Why is the mind unstable?
00:24:57 – What is the cause of craving?
00:29:44 – The mind chooses what to pay attention to
00:32:28 – One of the key uses of mindfulness: observing the chain of causality as it’s happening in your experience
00:38:56 – Does this knowledge lead to renunciation?
00:42:54 – “The wise person will give up a lesser happiness for a greater happiness”
00:45:56 – Three programs that run the mind – and how we can train the mind
00:53:18 – The 6Rs – a useful tool to train the mind
00:55:26 – Experiencing the ‘Relax’ step
00:57:58 – How do you bring the ‘Relax’ step into a guided meditation?
00:59:32 – What is samadhi?
01:02:05 – Five hindrances
01:04:44 – How to work with the five hindrances
01:09:17 – Entering samadhi
01:15:55 – The neural basis of samadhi
01:18:14 – A complete mental training system: wisdom, ethics, and samadhi
01:25:35 – Conversation between Sadhguru and Robert Thurman
01:32:24 – Reflections on the video (Sean and Karuna)
01:37:23 – Samadhi is impossible without ethics
01:40:32 – This is a training process; it does not happen overnight
01:42:21 – Practice as much as you can to lead others from a place of true understanding
01:43:22 – Resources for further practice
01:44:36 – If the observer is ultimately realized as not real, does that mean that nothing is real?
01:46:37 – Can you give another example of working with the 6Rs?
01:55:35 – The FitMind podcast