Author Pavel Somov On Breath-Focused Meditation And His New Book [INTERVIEW]

Sometimes, on the air, I refer to myself as 'Captain Happy' and 'Mr. Brightside'. I've long believed that my attitude is the most important thing I can bring into this studio. Also, in my opinion, my job is not to spin records, but to spread happiness. I want what I say to be heard by a listener, and I want it to make their day better.

If you listen to me, you may think I've never known a struggle in my life. While there is some truth in that, I also lose my mind from time to time. Melt downs. Feelings that I can't go on. Frustration at the seeming pointlessness of so many of life's endeavors. We all go there, and it can be a dark place.

Recently though, I have been actively seeking relief to these maladies, and I keep finding the same thing. Breathing. The more I look, the more I come across focused breathing as a form of meditation and relaxation. I become upset, I breathe. Breathe in deeply, breathe out, thinking that everything is going to be ok. It's going to be better than ok. It's going to be wonderful. Breathe in. Breathe out. Deep, in. Slow, out. Calm. Ease.

I've found some success with it and that is why I was very excited to interview Pavel Somov about his new book The Lotus Effect. It goes well beyond breathing as a method of calming ourselves to a program that allows you to see the essence of what you truly are, and strips away the incorrect perceptions of what you may think you are. As the author told me in our interview...

The book is a program. It's a kind of an informational striptease, if you wish. I conceptualize our psychological life as a way of looking at a variety of different mirrors...one of the steps in the book is that you look in the social mirror and you realize that you are not the reflection in the social mirror. You are not your reputation. You are not what people think of you...

I admit, it's deep stuff. But it's pretty huge just to be here, in my opinion, so I'm looking deep.