Jeff Krasno
speaker
350 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jeff Krasno’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And, you know, part of my spiritual practice is non-attachment, right? That I can be here and now with my full passionate self, but unattached to result. the buddha's teachings but then when you're faced with the reality right of like oh my god this place that i've built where i've forged so many deep profound relationships This place is at risk. It might disappear.
And in a way, like crisis often does, it forces you to really examine the nature of things and say, what is the most important, potent component? Why do I have such sadness inside? And of course, as I meditated on that, It wasn't for risk of actually losing the physical place, per se. Of course, that would be hard and logistically difficult.
But it was really more about potentially losing the container for community and connection. And it helped me to actually focus on really, I suppose, what makes life most worthwhile in the first place. And sometimes like crisis helps you do that.
that could be considered kind of morbid, like many of the stoic practices, but they're not morose at all, actually, when you really embody them. And it could be sort of a negative visualization if you categorize it that way. But there's this practice of... Imagining that you're doing a thing for the very, very last time. That I'll never make this coffee again.
I'll never sit here in front of you again. I'll never talk to my mom or dad on the phone again, whatever. Could be small and petty, could be profound. But in sitting in that, there is a profound gratitude that bubbles up from under the crust of consciousness often. And then you come back to the realization that, no, I do get to do that thing again.
And I'm sure that's related to the feeling that you probably had coming back here, which is like, oh my God. I am so grateful that this does exist. And for, you know, often in life we, you know, begin to take things for granted that sort of appear in our quotidian life.
So, and then every once in a while we're reminded, oh my God, you know, the bounty of what I have, I should wake up and be grateful for that every day.
Yeah, I mean, we were evacuated from here, obviously, from Topanga, and then also from Laurel. So I was evacuated twice in two days, essentially. You know, I found myself, I guess, on that one Wednesday night, sleeping on the floor in Studio City at one of my daughter's friend's houses, staring up at the ceiling and asking myself, like, who am I? Who really am I without all my stuff?
And of course, texting endlessly with my brother, who lives in Altadena, and listening to the decimation of that neighborhood. which is really sometimes gets short shrift in comparison to the Palisades. But what happened in the Eden fire over on the east side of Los Angeles in that Altadena neighborhood was just as awful, really. Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, at the same time, I mean, I lived in New York City during 9-11. And in the wake of that tragedy, I witnessed something that I'm witnessing here, which is really tragedy and collective grief i guess i would call it sometimes really elicits people's better angels right and the outpouring of generosity um has been something quite beautiful to watch
I mean, I remember I didn't buy my own beer for like three months in the wake of 9-11. You walk out on the subway and there would be people of all colors and creeds and races and religions, et cetera, like giving people hugs, carrying their groceries for them, buying them sandwiches, whatever. It was a moment in time. And of course that faded away.
But where people's munificence and philanthropic instincts were tickled and brought to the surface.
Totally. And this is where emotional regulation techniques come in handy, right? And being able to manage stress and see opportunity in stress sometimes. But certainly, you know, your practice and my practice, though they probably slightly deviate, they share a common goal, which is one of emotional regulation, where we can bring ourselves back to center and leverage our emotional
our better qualities, our neomammalian brain and our centers of rationality and reason to make good decisions and to treat people well. So these are where those practices become probably more important than ever.
Yeah, well, I feel like I'm sort of a public relations agent for stress on some level. Because we have a very negative association with stress in our modern age, and justifiably. But when you kind of untangle the nature of stress, it is actually a very beneficial, adaptive response at its core. I mean, you live up here. In the hills, you probably hike in the hills every once in a while.
I hike, you know. And we might come across a whole host of different wild animals, like coyotes or maybe a rattlesnake, right? So what happens... That happened to me.
And so when that happened... you had a physiological response to that, right? And a very adaptive one. You know, your heart rate and respiratory rate started to increase, like your liver secreted just the right amount of glucose and sent it to the extremities in order to fight or flee. But also all these other things were happening. Your pupils were dilating.
The aperture of your attention was getting super, super narrow. You become self-obsessed for good reason and distrustworthy of the world around you. And that serves... your biological imperative to survive. So this is coded, engineered in the human organism in response to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as a positive, adaptive response.
Now, in your case, what happened to that rattlesnake? Probably just... took a look at Andre and said, you know, Andre's probably not going to be on the specials menu today. I'm going to just slither off into the tall grasses. I'm assuming something like that happened, right?
Okay. But, you know, essentially your immediate reaction might have been one of involuntary response, but then you were able to leverage, you know, your conscious top-down pressure to basically push down on that involuntary bottom-up response and regulate. And this is what happens. I mean, if you're on a trail and the snake slithers away, your body returns to homeostasis.
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