#125: Asian in Western World, Buddhism and Neuroscience, Stay True to Yourself with Christin Chong
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Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chiwi Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camille Yang. My guest today is Christine Chong. She is a neuroscientist at heart and enjoys investigating consciousness through the Buddhist lens.

Christine's work history continues to evolve, from researching the lab to biotech marketing, to creating a delicious self-care tea for physical and mental health, to establishing a community for accelerating compassion. In today's episode, we discussed Asians in Western world, the connection between Buddhism and neuroscience,

and how to stay true to yourself. I hope you enjoy this episode. So before we start, would you mind sharing your journey, how we met each other, and your background stories? So you and I met through the Right of Passage cohort-based course that is led by David Perel and also by course director Will Manon. And to be honest, when I first signed up for the course, I thought that it's a

transformative business exercise to help me sell more tea. But what I came out of it was like, wow, this has been a life-changing experience and I feel like I have a better integration of who I am as a person. So I was wondering if that's what you felt as well, that was like way more than what we had expected.

Exactly. Because before I followed David Peril, the writing guy, for a long time. So I want to learn how to write online, how to get more engagement with my readers. But after taking his course, I do feel like, wow, it's more than just a writing technique. It's about the community and...

All the good people I met, like for you, I just want to invite you on my podcast to talk about not just writing, but a lot of different life stories and Buddhism. Because I see your writing and I feel like, wow, I enjoy reading your thing.

So yeah, as you mentioned, it is like a life transformation. Exactly. And it's very hard to convince people because I feel like people are like, wow, you're really oddly enthusiastic. Are you doing okay? Is this a cult? I'm like, yeah.

Yes, but it's a healthy cult, I think. A very educational one for sure. And I think one of my reasons for my kinship with you is based on my background. I'm definitely a third culture kid myself. I grew up in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Malaysia and I grew up speaking Cantonese and a little bit of Mandarin. That's what my parents speak at home and my brother as well. And I learned English when I was about starting about seven or eight. And the reason why I became more of a third culture kid is because I went to international schools growing up as well. But the reasoning is a little unexpected by a lot of people, I think. So I was in a Chinese education system in Hong Kong. It was a very strict public school.

And I was really behind on my homework all the time. And so I was actually not that good of a grade of a student. And so my dad thought that an international school would be so much easier because they don't have as much homework there.

And so it was actually because of my own lack of academic ability that propelled me on this life journey with way too much education on the back end now. And I feel like that has really shaped my worldview. And I believe a lot of your listeners feel the same way. As a third culture kid, I think what I end up doing a lot is observing people.

A lot, because I'm exposed to a diverse group of people from expats to multicultural countries like Malaysia, where there's Chinese, Malay and Indians coexisting in harmony. And also Indonesia, where there was a lot of conflict between cultures when I was growing up.

So I think just being able to witness very heterogeneous types of people has really taught me to draw out my interest of understanding why people are the way they are, both positive and negative, and trying to...

almost be like a chameleon and learn to adapt and change who I am depending on who I'm interacting with in order to survive, right? Like, changing schools and having to meet new people every single time. Like, you have to learn really quickly how to make friends with people, right? So I was wondering, is this something that resonates with you? Like, this observation and people-watching that you have to do? Yeah. I won't consider myself as a third-culture kid because when I moved to New Zealand... Mm-hmm.

It was in my adult year, but I still went through all the experience you just mentioned. I need to observe people and I need to try to be included to their group. So I'm like a chameleon. Yeah, I try to use different jargons or slangs when I deal with my Kiwi friends.

And if I deal with other group of friends from different cultures, I need to learn their way of thinking or speaking. So I kind of feel lost of my identity and I have this multicultural identity. Sometimes I feel like, am I crazy? Who am I? Am I Chinese or Kiwi or American? Because I watch a lot of American TV shows and movies when I grew up.

So yeah, I do feel like I don't belong to anywhere, but I can belong to everywhere. But people won't accept me as one of them. Since I have an Asian face, if I hang out with my Kiwi friends, they'll regard me as a Chinese, but I don't.

like the typical Chinese in their mind. Yes, so I do read these a lot. I was going to bring up how I feel like that's where write a passage was really powerful because it was essentially you get the luxury of six weeks to examine the identity that you've built up and to, you know, maybe reconsider like, is this really who you are? And like, you know, what are the ways in which we can explore that through writing? Yes.

So I found that really helpful for myself. I do feel like people are more like global citizens in rite of passage. I don't know what appealed them to join this course, but I do feel like whenever I read other people's stories, I feel, oh, yeah,

They share the same interests and hobbies like me. Because in my physical world, I don't have a lot of close friends because I always feel like I don't belong to here. That's why I move around and try to find my traps in physical world, but it's pretty hard. Mm-hmm.

in the online world, I feel, wow, yeah, I can belong to any group and no one judge me based on my appearance. I can use pseudonyms to write anything I'm interested in and talk specific topics with a specific group.

But in physical work, I find it's pretty hard because people always give you a stereotype, especially for Asians. I don't know if you live in America, you will feel more about that. Oh, that's a really great question. Definitely so. I think especially as someone who is not actually Asian,

Chinese American, but people think I am because I guess I blend in enough. I feel like even there's a cultural diversity even between me as an immigrant to America versus Asian Americans, let alone if you grew up here in America, you know? So the stories I hear, exactly, they have a very unique story.

that I find really fascinating and sometimes I feel really sad because I can sense that if you truly grew up here in the 80s and 90s, it must have been quite a challenging time to be treated as a minority. Whereas in China,

In my experience, I'm lucky enough to have been Asian growing up in an Asian country. So it wasn't as jarring, I think, compared to my friends' experiences. However, I think practically speaking, I live in San Francisco Bay Area. And in these metropolitan countries, it isn't as contrasting. But the moment... So one thing is...

me and my wife, we like to go fishing and hiking in outdoors in rural areas. And the moment you drive even two hours away from the city, it's a different country. Like you have, we have to be very careful in like not standing out too much. Um, you know, because like, um, the, the rural, even rural California is very conservative. So, um, I think like the, we have to modify our behaviors and the way that, um,

we interact with people. I try to sound more American and like, you know, try to blend in. So I think it's almost like the mindset I have to adapt to based on my understanding of the local people. And I'm not saying that like these other rural places are bad or anything. It's just that they have a different culture from my experiences of being in different cultures. I think it's out of respect.

that I want to understand like you know these are their values like these are their beliefs and maybe they're not the same as mine but I'm in you know I'm in your home right so I let me try to extend myself to be respectful so when did you move to America and

How long have you been living there? I moved in, I think it was actually like December 31st, 2003. So it's been quite a number of years. And I went to the US to study biological sciences at the time. Yeah, and that was the beginning of my journey into neuroscience.

I want to say that I can tell you the story in retrospect and it'll sound really logical, but at the time it was much more random and serendipitous in my approach. So I was a transfer student, didn't know anybody. And the first person I talked to in one of my classes was like, hey, I work in the lab. Do you want to come check it out?

And so while I was studying sciences, I didn't have a concept of what it's like to be a scientist or to do research at the time. But through this friend introduction, I just literally showed up in the lab at 7 a.m. and like observed. And then like they let me like watch how things are done. And eventually I was allowed to like

touch things. So it's almost like a medieval apprenticeship system. That's how a lot of these scientific labs work. So eventually I was able to learn exactly how scientific facts are generated and also the amount of hard work that's required in order to study a very specific scientific question and to start to get at some answers using the tools that we have.

And so I think being exposed to working in a lab early on really encouraged me to continue the pursuit of science. But at the time, I didn't know what I wanted to study because biological sciences had so many elements. I see that in retrospect, I was really driven to understand the motivation of people, right? And I thought, okay, the brain is where this motivation comes from. This is something I should care about. And so I think like, and also I had a

a professor who taught this class called sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I thought, that sounds cruel. Yeah. And it's actually about the neuroscience of all these drives. So we would like do little psychology experiments where we'd like stare into our classmates' eyes for like five minutes to see if that increased bonding. Yeah.

It was very, like, I don't know, memorable because I still remember this person I stared at after all these years. And we watched movies like Trainspotting, which is about heroin addicts in Scotland, you know? Yeah. And it's like, you know, and I was like, wow, there's like so much that we don't understand about the brain. You know, what can I do to start to get like a tiny piece of that understanding? And so through that, I was...

given the opportunity to work with a really fantastic professor who studied the white matter of the brain. So I think a lot of us, like we know about neurons, which are brain cells that are almost like wires in the brain, right? And the white matter is the insulation around the wires. And they actually work really closely together for our brain to work.

And so in diseases like multiple sclerosis, the white matter becomes damaged by immune system, and that causes a lot of unfortunate effects. So that's what I ended up studying for my graduate school. And through this, I was able to at least have a really good baseline foundation of the hardware that's underlying a lot of how our mind works. I feel like that's what...

Gave me a good foundation. So I want to say, have you seen the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi? No, what's that? You haven't? Okay, so it's a Netflix documentary about a sushi restaurant. And the main character is Jiro, who is a very strict...

like, sensei type who was teaching his sons how to do everything. And it's the kind of place where you're not allowed to touch the rice until you can work there for, like, you know, many, many years. So that was the kind of system I grew up under where it was, like, you know, very, like, strict mentorship of, like, you know, being in the lab all the time and, like, really spending, I would say...

a lot of mental power trying to be very rigorous in how we study science. A lot of these factors came together and I was just really lucky to be in the right place at the right time in order to pursue these studies. Another aspect of why I was motivated to study that I rarely talk about is that my dad had a stroke when I was really, really young.

It's not actually... So the easy answer is like, my dad had a stroke. I wanted to understand how the brain works so that I can make him better or something like that, right? But the real truth, I think, which is something that we all like to avoid talking about is...

In a way, that showed me one of the four messengers that's discussed in Buddhism really early on, which is the messenger of illness, old age, and death. I feel like being exposed to seeing how my dad was really ill and the amount of suffering that caused me

for the family and all of that made me want to understand like, okay, how do we, how do we avoid this? Like, this seems to be like a lot of pain, right? So, so I think that is the true underlying reason why I'm like, okay, like I'm very lucky to be exposed to having really like ill, like, you know, parent from a young age

and I wanted to understand, okay, what can I do to alleviate suffering when it's so close? Do you feel it's kind of like your calling? Because you know, sometimes we make some decisions and then later on we use our rational mind to put the meaning behind that. Like when I moved to the UK, I just feel like, yeah,

I need to go there. I don't have any rational reason. But when people ask me, I'll say, oh, UK has more opportunities. I love football. It's like dream come true, blah, blah, blah. But for me, when I made that decision, I never thought about that. What opportunities? What my hobby? I just feel like I need to go there. Same as when I moved to Portugal. People say, oh, why you moved to Portugal? I say,

Here is my reasons Portugal is the most popular digital nomad destination. But when I move here, I just feel like, oh, I need to go there. I don't know if it's the same as when you pick up neuroscience because you see some signs in your life.

like your father and your friend invite you to the lab, it's just some science calling you. I know it sounds like crazy. I don't know what's your interpretation for those things. Yeah.

Gosh, that completely resonates with me. And I also have this hesitance to discuss it because I think people will think it's crazy. Yeah. But I think through my whole life, I'm kind of like intuitive person. Yeah. I like to follow my intuition. I like to observe.

my life then if there are some signs show up I'll follow it right I don't know what exactly what's the neuroscientific explanation for that

Oh gosh, I don't think I can come up with a neuroscience explanation, but just to add an observation, I have observed that my friends fall pretty cleanly into two types. It's either people who can just make a decision or people who spend quite a lot of time wavering between decisions. It's just not considered either a strength or weakness. I think it's like dependent on situation, but I'm definitely the kind of person where I want to decide to do something, I'll do it.

Like there's no like hesitance involved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I guess can be good or bad. I think like sometimes I wish I gave it things a bit more thought. But it is like, it does save a lot of like hesitating time, I suppose. And I feel like that is what I see is almost like

the intuition, like it shortcuts me into a decision. There is some studies that's done by Antonio Damasio, who's a neuroscientist on how decision making is fundamentally tied to emotional regulation. Mm hmm.

So they did studies where there are these people who, because of neurological damage, they have no emotional responses that are common to all of us. And one way we can measure emotions physically is through skin conductance. And that's where you kind of put an electrode on skin. And then because of our sweating and other responses, there's actually a change in the conductance of the skin. And that's one way you can infer an emotional response.

And so for people with neurological damage, they don't have the response. And when you ask them to play a poker game or something where decision making is really important, they can't decide between the cards. And so I do wonder if something that I sometimes see as a weakness is I get a little emotional sometimes.

But maybe that really helps me to just make a decision because they're all connected. I recently listened to a podcast. It's called Infinite Loops. Oh.

They talk about the hero journey, Joseph Campbell's book about hero journeys. The hero got the calling, then he conquered all the difficulties, then he defeated the monster, then he brought back the truth, shared with others. But from that latest episode, they talk about...

Actually, the hero journey is the journey between your left and right hemisphere. Let your intuition or creative mind defeat your rational mind. That makes it easy. I know it sounds crazy, but yeah, I highly recommend people to listen to that episode between the host, James O'Shaughnessy with Tom Morgan.

this very interesting episode I've been resonated a lot yeah wow I really love that analogy yeah that's a that's a really visual analogy there and I read your blog entry in Chinese right you recently wrote to be honest I don't understand 10% of it I guess my Chinese reading is very slow um

But yeah, like, thanks for the recommendation. I definitely want to listen to it. And I feel like, again, that's where the passage gave me that permission. Because I feel like for the first time, I have a framework to use creativity to start to explore the different parts of my subconscious, you know? Yeah. So when did you start your Buddhism practice? Yeah.

my memory of this is quite fuzzy because I feel I've been exposed to it from childhood, right? Because growing up in Asia, there was like the Chinese kind of Buddhism. Yeah, which is very different. So that's because every culture adapts Buddhism in their own way. The Chinese type is much more of like

almost like seeing Buddha as a deity. And there's a lot of like worship and a lot of like, you know, bison type of Buddhism that I was exposed to. But only when I came to the United States and began to read more about studies, not studies, about writings by Thich Nhat Hanh and a lot more of these like more attuned to the Western mind type of

Buddhism, which is a lot more focused on meditation, maybe even more of the study of the Buddhist suttas, which are the original writings documenting the Buddha and his disciples. That gave me much more interest in studying Buddhism because I feel like with

I think the benefit of the Western form Buddhism is that there is a lot more emphasis on the practical and experimental aspects of the practice itself and less so on like the mystical and the rites and rituals that's associated with Buddhism that came with the Asian cultures. Of course, there's a balance. I think like now we're kind of swinging back. There's like...

and things are actually coming back into like Western Buddhism. But I think like it gave me almost like a fresh lens to understand like, oh, this like Buddha person was an actual person and that, you know, he like did a lot of experimentation himself with his life in order to get at what he determines to be the most efficient steps to lead us to freedom. Do you have any daily routines on practicing Buddhism?

buddhism or meditation yeah and i would definitely love to learn your routine and your latest explorations yeah one thing you listeners will probably know that like Amelia prepared a wonderful list of questions for me to pre-think about um a very great journalist for sure um so when i was thinking about routine i wanted to kind of

explain more about where I even get this information from. Because I think when we say Buddhism, it can mean so many different things depending on who you consider your teacher, which particular branch of Buddhism you're talking about. So the one that I have the most affinity for is what's called Theravadan Buddhist tradition. And that's what's considered the original branch

though I think it's historically still quite studied. So the idea is this branch really relies on the original writings that document the Buddha and his disciples. And so one thing I was really excited to share with people about as an analogy is it's almost like the Buddha and his disciples had a PKM, Personal Knowledge Management System.

even back in the day because they lived in a world where it's all only oral tradition, right? There was no writing when the Buddha was alive. But many years after he died, a lot of the monks and nuns at the time were like, "Hey, we better write this stuff down."

so that we can all have like an official record. And so they had a huge conference, like an ancient South by Southwest where they all gathered. And it was so hard for them to travel in India at the time. There's no roads. They're like slogging through mud. They're like, okay, we got to get together and write it all down. And like, luckily, because they have such training in the oral tradition, like they were able to corroborate a lot of the stories that were told.

so that it is quite an official source of what the Buddha really said. And so through that, we're able to have a lot of these teachings that people might know about, which is Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and a lot of these lists of here's a list of things that you can do in order to lead your life towards enlightenment.

And so for me, one teacher that really resonates with me is called Ajahn Brahm. He is a British monk who lives in Australia. And he's a student of Ajahn Chah, who's a very renowned Thai practitioner. He's since passed away. This is like many, many years ago. But he was very well respected because he, back in the day, Thailand's Buddhism, they

unfortunately because of many years of corruption, it became much more, um, you know, became a power hierarchy situation. Um, you know, a lot of like superstitions involved in like, you know, casting out demons, that sort of thing. But then, um,

Ajahn Chah kind of brought back this revival of like, hey, you know, we should live in the forest. We should, you know, live off only donations from people and take as little as possible and just like practice meditation and just live a very simple life. And so this is actually a turning point in which the original Buddhism became a little bit more revived. Yeah.

as opposed to practicing more as a ritual, which was more common at the time. And so Anadra Brahm kind of made it understandable for me because he's a Westerner and he understands the Western mindset and how to reframe a lot of these ancient Buddhist teachings.

So, for example, the Four Noble Truths usually sounds really depressing because the first one is like, they're suffering, okay? And here's the causes. Exactly. And I feel like, oh, that doesn't appeal to the modern day, right? But like, for example, Ajahn Brahm, he reframed it as, let's just say, let's just say the Third Noble Truth goes first, happiness, peace,

And then go to the fourth one, which is like, here's the path. And that's the Eightfold Path, of which there are like eight categories of practices you can do. And then let's go to like, you know, the inherent dissatisfaction of life and what's the cause.

And so like in summary, the cause is known as like clinging, right? Where we're trying to attach to certain viewpoints or wanting the world to be a certain way. And like the whole Eightfold Path is designed to let us help us let go of all these attachments so that we can arrive at peace.

So I think that has really benefited me. And when you mentioned meditation routine, the original question, I wanted to bring up Eightfold Path because I see meditation as one aspect of the Buddhist practice. Yeah, and there's a lot more I personally need to work on.

for example, like skillful speech, like, you know, or like livelihood. And like, there's a lot more that I think is really important for like a complete view of Buddhism that I'm starting to explore myself. Because I think a lot of these, like, even the words and language of the past are a little tricky to relate in modern times. And I'm trying to understand how to make it more relatable to myself as well. Wow, great. I read the

read the book called Why Buddha is Truth. Yeah. I think it explains the connection between the Buddhism and neuroscience. I find it's very fascinating. Yeah, tell me more. Which part resonates with you the most? Yeah, because before when people mentioned Buddhism

Buddhism. People probably think about it's a religion and people just practicing all the like recognition or karma, this kind of non-rational thinking. But from that book, he didn't, the writer didn't mention those things.

kind of unrealistic thing, but more focused on the neuroscience background. So I think it's quite like explain the advantage of meditation. Like through meditation, you kind of clear your mind and get your neurons in your brain connected together. Then you have a clear thinking. Yeah, I highly recommend this book. And I also want to know your perspective on

on the connection between Buddhism and neuroscience? Gosh, I've heard this book recommended by many people. I think whenever I mentioned neuroscience and Buddhism, they directly, they always mentioned this book. There's another great book called The Buddhist Brain as well. I think of like neuroscience as understanding the hardware and like Buddhism kind of gives you a little bit about the software. So I feel like in that sense, yeah,

The reason why I went from science to being really into spirituality was because I felt that the questions that are posed by Buddhism are more direct in answering the root causes of suffering or how to reach happiness the way we frame it more positively.

So in that aspect, I feel like they can be very complementary. So for me personally, I find that me finding out that there is some neuroscience evidence that meditation is good for you

is okay. I think it's very tough for me because I'm like, in understanding how scientific data is generated, I feel like if you look for something, you will find some evidence for it. And I think it's really powerful. I think we need to get at some relationship between the two fields, right?

Um, but I feel like for me, um, it is much more, um, about the Buddha and how he framed everything as evidence-based. So when, um, there's a pretty famous Sutta where, um,

which is a historical record of him going to this village where the people, there were like a lot of different spiritual teachers. So the Buddha was one of many at the time. And they were like, hey, you're like the umpteenth spiritual teacher, just come by. How do we know who's real, who's not? It's a very practical question, right?

So the Buddha broke it down as like, hey, you know, you shouldn't believe me because I'm famous, you know, because like, you know, because there's some like documentation or something. And so and he really, really pushes for like, you know, like, here's what I recommend you do. Like, you know, you can meditate, you can contemplate and do all these things and you decide like, does this make your life better? And so like in Buddhism,

in defining that he's saying like, Hey, does it lead to you to cling less to unwholesome thoughts? Right. Like, are you, um, more, um, liberated in, in, um, in ways in like, uh, from negative emotions, right.

So it's sort of like, you know, your, his practice is almost like he's a doctor or a scientist who's like, hey, you know, like I, here's like, I actually, I can't directly tell you what's wrong with you. Because like, I think we all come from so many different perspectives.

and our life background and all of that. But he just provides you with so many tools of like, here are some things that might be impeding your ability to focus and concentrate. Like here are some...

here are some potential causes as to your unhappiness. Like, why don't you think about that? Try it for yourself and see what happens. So I think like, that's a relationship I see is more useful in that like, Buddhism doesn't require you to believe in like an afterlife or like, you know, all of these like other elements. There's,

It is very useful if you were to adopt that framework sometimes, but you don't need to. All you need to do is take the time and try it out and see if it makes your life better.

So speaking of experimentation, I would love to learn more about your recent explorations in the past. Ah, yes. Yeah, I recently did a plant meditation retreat. It's called Sampajoo. So it's kind of similar to Ayahuasca retreat.

but it's mild. They call San Pedro as grandpa plant retreat, but Ayahuasca is grandma. So you can see grandpa is more like mild, very gentle, and always spoil you, this kind of character. But grandma can be very harsh sometimes. So that's how Ayahuasca is very strong and strict.

But San Pedro is more mild and you know you are in physical world, in your reality when you have this experience. So I had two trips in four days. My first trip was...

I feel like I was a Buddha. I see millions and billions years passing by in front of my eyes, like all the civilizations and all the beautiful geometric fractals in front of my eyes. Yeah, just a beautiful pattern. Yeah, actually, if you don't mind, for my own knowledge,

how do you ingest or partake in this plant? Do you smoke it? Do you eat it? I don't know. Oh, you twink it. Okay. It's like a tea. Yeah. Oh, okay. Then what does it taste like? Oh, it tastes like awful. Ha ha ha.

you know that's what i've heard about ayahuasca too a lot of these like plant products don't taste good no it's um like a chinese medicine i don't know if you ever had a chinese medicine before but yeah when i was little i i eat a lot of ice cream so my stomach got some yeah problem with my stomach so my mom sent me to the hospital to drink that chinese medicine or

Every time I drink it, I just throw up because it's so bad. So this Zanpadu is kind of, compared with Chinese medicine, I think it tastes better, actually. So I don't mind it. Yeah, so you drink it. Then it takes you about two to three hours to get the effection from the medicine. So you start to have your trip. It's around...

12 hours the whole trip it's quite a long day oh I feel like I was living like a billion years on that one day because I see so many so many beautiful colors patterns and it's like computer generated patterns oh wow yeah were you given a guide in the process or was it in the in the group setting yeah

Not really. We got three people participate in this private retreat. So the other two, they need the guide because they went through some personal problems. They had a very hard time. I can hear them screaming and crying. But I was like extremely happy.

Yeah, I went to see there is a platform on the hill. So I see the whole valley, the village in front of me. And yeah, I just enjoy myself there. So what motivated you to go? It sounded like those other people wanted to resolve an issue and they were using the plant to help them.

through that so I was wondering like what was your motivation I'm just super curious about it I never tried the psychedelic before so that's okay yeah that's my first psychedelic experience wow yes so yeah because before I tried so many meditations and religions and

I even wrote an article about everything I tried before. So this is kind of want to try and experience what's the difference. But I see people talk about it. Psychedelic can help you see the vision or see your purpose. So I'm very curious about that. I had a very good trip on my first day. But on my second day, I feel...

It's more on personal level. It's more like I see my past life. I was jumping around the different timeline, different countries. I even see myself riding horse in the desert or sitting in some countryside house. Yeah. It's very interesting experience. Yeah. But on my second day, I didn't feel that peace or love. On second day, I more feel like a rage or...

I do see my dark side on my second trip. It's quite interesting. Very fascinating. Thank you for sharing all of this because I understand that. No problem. These trips can be a little personal. I'm wondering, through these experiences, do you have new life intentions or realizations that you're pulling through? Because I've always wondered. Because having been in these sort of states before, sometimes it feels like

you can't bring it with you. You know what I mean? It's like, Oh, it was at that time. And I can remember what happened, but, um, it's harder for me to like action on it. And it feels like I watched a movie almost.

So I was wondering whether you were able to bring it with you to act on in the future. Yeah, I do feel like that's such a profound beauty and peaceful mindset. I was like, oh my God, I need to live in it for the rest of my life. But it's not possible. So after one week, I kind of feel like,

okay, that is not the reality I'm in because my physical world is my real reality. I need to come back to life. So it reminds me about the famous Buddha saying, like when you see the mountain, first time you see the mountain, then the second time you

You see the mountain, it's not like a mountain. But the third time when you see the mountain, it is a mountain. So I feel like after that experience, I see everything. Although there are still the things I see before,

But since my perspective has changed, so I see everything is different now. I do feel like I can connect all the doors from my childhood to my current life together through that psychedelic experience because I see what's inside me. I feel like I find my purpose because I know my purpose before, but I'm not that clear through this psychedelic experience. I do feel like...

all the doors connected together. Yeah. Wow. I'm a very spiritual person before. And, uh, you know, the society will see, Oh, I always follow my intuition. People will judge me. Oh, you don't use your rational mind or blah, blah, blah. And I make up a lot of rational description to just share with people. Okay. That's how I make decision. But, uh,

The truth is I didn't follow that rational decision first. It's all the makeup. It's all the stories. So I feel like I do need to more follow my authentic self. I don't need to use the rational decision to just clarify myself or I need to prove to others I do use my rational mind to live. I really love this story and I'm so glad you had a great experience. I do recommend people to try.

But if you do have an issue, I think you need to be more prepared or cautious about it. Yeah. Because the other two people, they do went through a lot. I can feel their pain. Yeah. They're crying and screaming. Yeah. It's quite painful experience for them. I see. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for adding all these caveats too. Cause that's how I feel. Um, even with, um, things like meditation, I feel like, um, right now it's, it's in the West where it's pushed us like the cure for everything. It's like, you have any life problems, you just have to meditate and sit there and magically you'll feel better. Um, but I think like that doesn't, um, account for like mental health issues. Um, some of these like meditation practices, even like going on like multi-day retreats, right? If you're not, um,

you know, in a mentally healthy place. I think we all have to be really cautious and make sure that we have good guides and teachers who are like trained to handle a lot of these issues that might arise. True. And for me, I feel like trying to understand the relationship between like, for example, like,

in the rare occasion that I'm able to have a deep meditation, right? I feel like I can access a little bit of like some of the items that you've talked about, but I feel like, you know, the, the question is like, what can I, what can we all do right. To share a lot of these like realizations with that sounding like a crazy person. Yeah.

And also not to set people up for an expectation. Because I feel like that's the issue with both psychedelic-aided and also just pure meditation, right? I think the more... What I'm really cautious about is the more I tell people, it's like, hey, these are the benefits. It's like...

I feel in both cases, the more you want it, the more you don't get it. Exactly. It's like, okay, that's the awkward part of letting go of expectations that need to occur in order for us to really explore our true selves. Yeah, very good point. Because before I took that, St. Pedro, the teacher asked us, what's your...

was your expectation for this trip. And the other two, they mentioned some, yeah, there's secret or dark side just so they want to overcome. And when the teacher asked me, I said, I just want to surrender. I have an open mind. I don't have any expectation for anything.

for anything so that's how I got the most profound experience very interesting even for meditation every time I see oh my god I need to go into that deep state of meditation I never had it but I just I just sit there doing nothing oh then I got the yeah great meditation session

It's very interesting. For sure. Because I see you are running a course about the, combine the neuroscience and your Buddhism practice together. Can you tell me more about this project? Oh, sure. So the course or the community that we would like to build is called Compassion Accelerator. So compassionaccelerator.com.

And we actually, we named it somewhat facetiously, right? Because me and my co-founder, we're in the tech Bay Area. And we see like there's all these like tech startup accelerators and like biotech accelerators. And even like for building a course, right? There is Maven, the course accelerator.

And we thought, like, what about compassion and kindness? We can accelerate these, like, good qualities in people. And I feel like our goal is to really almost, like, give ourselves permission to think about these topics. I think, like, many of us, like, especially in the corporate world, like, you know, we're thinking about KPIs and all of these, like,

things that benefit the company, right? And like, however, paradoxically, I don't think companies can succeed unless the employees are able to do their best work. And in order to do that, there is a lot more work involved in like understanding our own authentic selves and to be able to identify our personal goals and not the ones that we're conditioned to think about. And I feel like it's this like,

almost like peeling an onion or like unfurling of the Lotus flower. Right. Like we have to be able to begin to examine our identities and to be able to get at the core of, of our values. And so, um,

based on my experience of being a third culture kid and people observed diverse identities and putting them on, I can see that a lot of these identities are created, they're artificial. It's similar to that writer, the Pessoa, right? He's writing under so many pseudonyms and so do you, right? We can see identities are things to play with.

But yet I think like that is not something that you would do even like in a corporate world, especially, but even online, like where we're trained to be like, this is my personal brand. I am about science and spirituality, but that's like still it's a, it's like a, like a game right at the end of the day.

So I feel like what I've learned through, for example, write a passage is that like writing can be a tool for you to start examine these levels of subconscious identities that we're all holding and to be able to unfurl them so that we can disentangle and to get right at a truer identity of ourselves.

So that is what me and my co-founder are really interested in solving, is to be able to be culturally sensitive and help especially people of Asian descent begin to examine these values. Because I don't know about you, but I grew up in a family that's very focused on survival. You've got to make the money. You've got to like...

you know, do all these things, but there's not a lot of time or room for like thinking about reality and like, um, like, and, and also like, you know, what is truly the path to happiness.

And so that's something that we really want to understand. And I would like to be able to use neuroscience and writing and mindfulness practice to begin to support people in this way. And my co-founder, her name is Christine Wong, which is very confusing to a lot of people, very similar to my name, Kristen Chong. So she teaches interpersonal dynamics at Stanford for MBA students.

That itself is also a very life-changing course. But they use a lot of very well-practiced techniques to improve interpersonal communications. And they also do a lot of reflective practice through journaling. This is one that I joke about quite a lot with my co-founder and I in our daily communications sessions.

There's this concept called crossing the net. Have you heard of it? Crossing the net? No. So it's the idea that it's almost like we're playing like a game of tennis or badminton or something. And I start to play on your side of the court. Yeah.

instead of my own side. And it's the idea that I'm assuming that I know what you're going to think. So for example, since we work on so many projects together, sometimes I'll say like, you're going to think this is such a stupid idea, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, I'm already like caveating what I'm going to say to her because like of my own fears, right? I'm like, oh, you know, I'm so scared that this is not a good idea that I'm going to assume that she thinks that. But this actually creates a lot of micro friction in the way that we relate to other people.

So, you know, and that's like, and it's also like I'm damaging myself, right? Like I'm like not confident in myself enough to be able to express my ideas. So it's like catching all of these like subtle verbal things that we do when we relate to other people so that in a way we can understand that, hey, there is this like weird, like subconscious path that I'm taking in my mind about how I'm communicating with people. And can I resolve that? So I'm not like carrying this burden all the time, you know?

So we feel like, you know, because we're such like self-development nerds, we've been exposed to a lot of these like different techniques and we want to be able to like distill it down for an audience that like don't have the time on inclination to explore all of these crazy things that you can do to understand yourself and to be able to put together like a neat little package to do that. But I think first of all, like we would like to figure out like, like,

Is this something of interest to people? And to be able to understand from the customer perspective, if you're a person of Asian descent, have you ever experienced subtle difficulties in the workplace where you find that it's harder to communicate what you really think because of your cultural background?

Or is there like some sort of cultural conditioning of like, you know, needing to be like financially successful, etc. And like not being able to address what you truly feel is your calling?

So with that, if you go to CompassionAccelerator.com, we have like an email form, but essentially I'll get notified and I'll definitely reach out to you to understand your perspective. So it's at the early stage at the moment. Then what's your plan for this accelerator? Is it a cohort-based course or...?

So as you and I have both like experienced, the cohort-based format is so fantastic, right? For building community. Yeah, love it. Yeah. I think like, you know, this is definitely the next generation and how we are all going to learn as adults.

It's like this cohort-based format where there's an intimate community and then you do the exercises together. There's use of technology such as Zoom and other communication platforms for high levels of interaction through a shorter period of time.

rather than in comparison to MOOCs, the massive online courses where, I don't know about you, but I've signed up for a lot of these online courses and haven't done them. I need that accountability. Exactly. So we're signing up for Maven's course accelerator program that's running from January to February to develop the exact syllabus.

And in the meantime, yes, exactly. So, and there's quite a few of us from Rite of Passage on this path right now. Yeah. So it's like, you know, we just want to spread the love. We're like, we learned so much. We just want more people to be able to experience it. Right.

So, so we're expecting to start a cohort in the first quarter of 2022. But in the first place, we just want to know people and like make more friends so that we're building something that people actually find useful in their lives.

Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes so people can go have a look. And apart from this one, you also run a tea company. Can you share with me more about this company?

this project yeah so I alluded to that's the reason why I signed up for write a passage in the beginning was I have a friend who sells coffee actually I'm going to name drop his coffee because I think it's so awesome it's called new wave coffee n-o-o-w-a-v-e

And it's coffee with L-theanine in it and raw cacao for productivity and creativity. So I highly recommend his product. And he's able to really hone in on his niche because he was one of the early Rite of Passage students. His name is Greg Frontiero. Yeah, and I consider him my mentor and also a good friend.

And he was like, you should do right of passage, man. Like, it's really good for you to find out how to market. And so it's funny because my co-founder and I, we developed Honey Ritual Tea. So if you go to honeyritual.com as the first Asian wellness tea that comes with inspiring self-care rituals based on mindfulness.

So it was an amalgamation of everything we wanted to share about like our interests. So one thing is like, you know, we're in, of course, like we're both like of Asian descent and we're like, you know, like a lot of people in America don't know the benefits of Bao Yang, which is like this like idea of self-care from an Asian perspective, right? Of like eating foods that are nourishing and to be able to understand like your body types and how to like

eat foods that are balancing and like not like causing for example heatiness which the closest western analog but inflammation right so but there are not a lot of products out there and even then there's this connotation that you know traditional Chinese medicine is really disgusting and bitter which is what you were mentioning with the San Pedro right

And so I also was exposed to that early on. And I was like, man, there's a lot of really bad tasting stuff that I can't imagine anyone else eating. But there's also a whole category of like tasty foods and drinks that are like...

almost considered desserts in Asian culture that we would eat and drink. It's like, oh, this is good for me, and it's also tasty. And so we developed teas based on ingredients in this category that are not very well known here. So for example, we call it honey ritual because we use honey red jujubees,

which is a kind of like red date that is widely used in Asian cooking and both savory and sweet. And it's like really tasty. And then when you put in hot water, it makes this like really like sweet, earthy caramel like drink. And that doesn't really have added sugar from since it's all the sweetness based on only the fruit.

So that's our core ingredient in our tea. And we mix it with, for example, I don't know whether you can see this, like I'm drinking the gut health right now, which has the chrysanthemum in there. And the chrysanthemum is often served in Asian cultures, right? And it's very good for after you eat greasy stuff like this is.

Really good for you to settle your stomach, right? Yeah, I remember my grandma always drinking the cross-desert tea with goji. Exactly. So we have goji, one of our products as well. And practically speaking, my co-founder discovered this market need because she's highly allergic to caffeine.

So she can't drink anything, really. And so we've tried everything on the market for non-caffeinated drinks, and it's not very inspiring. It's like, how much peppermint and chamomile can you possibly drink in your life, right? So we wanted to bring something new and exciting to the market and make the packaging really fun and exciting, too. So on the podcast, you can see this. This is only a model. It's a mini model of our teabox. We make it like...

If you go to our website, you can see our logo is like a meditating honey red jujube, you know, to show that it's very calm and also like very playful. Very cute. Yeah.

So each tea comes with what we call a ritual, but really it's like a very short poem of something you can think about in the 10 minutes while the tea is brewing. So for example, we have a grounding exercise where you just feel your feet where they are. And these are things that they teach in mindfulness practice and then stress reduction therapy. And it's sort of like, I feel like a lot of times it's not so much like you and I don't know to do these things.

We don't get reminded to do them throughout the day. And it's like, how can we tie it? We need a daily reminder. Exactly. So it's like tying it to a tea drinking habit so that you can improve both your physical health through drinking something that's nourishing, nutritious, and also your mental health through doing the practice. Yeah, so we're really excited about our product. It's also available on Amazon too, if you search for Honey Ritual Tea. We have a coupon for listeners. Yes.

So if you enter... That's great. Thank you. So if you go to honeyricho.com and order through there, CHIWI20, so C-H-I-W-I 20, the number, that would give you a 20% off discount if you listen to this podcast and let me know. Are you shipping to Europe or just America only? Yeah.

Yeah, so that was my one caveat is, unfortunately, this is a very US only offer right now. And in fact, this is my call for help because as a new small business owner, I'm realizing the challenges with the pandemic in shipping to other countries, especially for food products.

So if you happen to be an expert in this area, please reach out to me on Twitter at Kristen Tweets and let me know how to be able to overcome this because I would like to be able to offer internationally. I just don't know how right now.

very open to feedback. Yeah, I listen to Tim Ferriss' podcast a lot and he recommends a lot of good stuff but they never ship to Europe, not to mention to New Zealand. In New Zealand, I don't even, I can't even get the athletic grain but in Europe, I can get it. But other products, no, there's some gap. We need some

ambitious person to overcome that's a big market gap yeah if we can share yeah okay for sure the last question what do you get most excited about your future

Oh gosh, I feel, ever since Write a Passage, I felt excited every single day. I feel like there's been like new opportunities, like, you know, from talking to you and like, just like later on, I'm talking with like another member of Write a Passage. So I feel like there's just like, I'm in a wealth of opportunities right now. And for me, I'm very much a builder. I would say that I love to make things.

I'm learning to be excited about distribution. I feel like this is something that is a weakness of mine. I'm not big on self-promoting. Even coming on this podcast, I'm like, I have to remember to mention my own products because I just might not even remember to do it. So...

Yeah, so I feel like that's what I'm excited to learn more about, you know, like to tweet more. And there's like so many things that we've learned from Rite of Passage about balancing like 50-50, right? Make the thing, tell people about the thing, or else no one's going to even know that your thing exists.

So that's really what I'm most excited about. Yeah. And so I would love to, if you're listening to this podcast, to like reach out to me because I just want to get to know more people and understand your perspective right now. Cool. Great. Thank you, Christine, for your time. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Yeah. I'll definitely get you back when we talk more about our learnings. Maybe next year after you launch your course. I'm very interested. Oh, thank you so much.