My teacher kind of used to sum it up like this. He used to say there is no such thing as good or bad meditation.

There is only awareness or non-awareness. And that's it. You can't fail.

That's meditation guru Andy Puttakome this week on the Retro-Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast.

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So I am really excited about today's show. This is a fantastic conversation with Andy Puttakome.

And it's a conversation that I think is really going to give you quite a few things to think about and hopefully inspire or make that compel you to get over yourself to do what you know you should be doing.

What you know will improve your life, but just can't seem to begin this pesky practice of mindfulness and meditation. So who is this guy? All right, well prepare that self.

Consider the Jamie Oliver of meditation by the New York Times and the international poster boy for the modern mindfulness movement. Andy is a meditation and mindfulness expert.

He's an accomplished presenter and writer. He's written two books. The first is called Get some headspace and the other ones called the headspace diet. These books have been translated into a zillion languages. And he is the voice of all things headspace. What is headspace? Well, headspace is the award winning digital health platform. It's a mobile app. It's a website. It's a blog and it's a podcast also on which I recently casted that he co founded that provides a wide range of super accessible, simple, secular guided meditation sessions.

With over a million users, it really is a fantastic service. And you've probably heard me talk about it quite frequently on the podcast on my blog when I guess on other people's podcasts. I'm always suggesting that people check it out.

And I'm doing that because I think it's a great place to begin the journey of learning more about mindfulness and meditation to really enter this world. And it's been very, very helpful to me personally.

And just for the record, just so we're clear, I have zero business affiliation with this company whatsoever. I just love what they do and I'm happy to support what they're doing. And so it was really a thrill and a pleasure to be able to sit down with Andy.

Not only that, Andy has a really amazing personal story in his early 20s. He made this unexpected decision to just drop out of university and instead traveled to the Himalayas to study meditation.

And this was a 10 year journey that took him all over the world culminating with ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in northern India.

He essentially lived as a Buddhist monk for 10 years. Amazing, right?

But this is also very much kind of a postmodern set hearth of story because he had this realization that this was not his place that he needed to kind of come back to the Western world.

And he made this transition to lay life in 2004 and that transition is no less extraordinary. He trained briefly at the Moscow State Circus. Can you believe that? That's amazing.

And then he returned to London where he completed a degree in circus arts. I mean, who does that with the conservatoire of dance and drama whilst drawing up the early plans for what would later become headspace?

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