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Empowering Balanced Living: Jeff Patterson's Journey Through Martial Arts, Meditation, and Yielding Techniques · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Welcome to your Thoughts, your Reality, with Michael Cole, Thank you.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life, Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles procrastination, self-doubt, fear and more.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Hello, hello, hello everybody.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: So today I got a special guest on, super excited for Jeff to join us.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: He's a US Marine Corps veteran, experienced practitioner of meditative arts, avid musician we didn't get to talk about this yet We'll get into that.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Mountain biker and fly fisherman, dedicated to guiding others and incorporating meditation and martial arts into their daily lives for not only improved mental clarity but also peace of mind, and then passionate about helping veterans and their families.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: So, jeff, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for having me here.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: So I've been in the meditative arts for about 36 years.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I started up my academy here in Portland Oregon about 30 years ago, in 1994.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: And since then, you know, we've probably had about 26,000 students come through the academy.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: So it's been a fun ride.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: You know, when I first started up teaching, you know I was the first kid in my whole extended family to go through college and all of my cousins and aunts and uncles and family thought he's going to go get some big job and do something important.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: And I remember when I made the decision to follow opening up a martial arts academy for years, I got you know, when are you going to do something real with your?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: When are you going to get a real job?
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: You know, and something happened when I was training with a boxing coach of mine 35 years ago and he told me that you want to create a life and not make a living.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: And that's something that really stuck to me and I remember telling myself that if and granted this was back in 1994, I remember saying that you know, if I only make $30,000 a year and do what I love to do, it would be worth it rather than sitting at a desk job making $100, hundred thousand, you know.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: And so I followed yeah, I, you know, I I followed my passion and I never realized that it could have turned into what it has been and, uh, it's really been a fun journey since.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: That's fantastic and you know it's funny because especially back then it's the stigma around it has changed now, but um more so anyway, but back then the stigma around it has changed now, but more so anyway, but back then it was very much go to school, get a real job, have a career, you know, and stick to that.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: You know, and I mean how many lives?
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Well, you just said how many lives you've changed by your path, which is absolutely fantastic.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: What martial arts do you practice or teach?
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Well, here at the Academy we do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, muay Thai and Western boxing.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: We have an Eskrima program and then we have our meditation program, which is where we do Tai Chi and Qigong Yi Quan, sitting meditation and breath work.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, excellent, excellent.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about, if you will, the martial arts portion of it and how that can help veterans and their families.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: So, if you will, I mean I imagine obviously the discipline which military already know, but when military personnel generally get out maybe you could attest this as well they tend to not really think about the skill sets that they learned there because it was a job more.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: So how could you, would you say it would bring out and help with that, with doing martial arts?
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Well, I think martial arts is great in that it gives you something positive to focus on and it's challenging, you know.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: It's something where you can push yourself outside of your comfort zone and find a passion for something that pushes you mentally, physically, emotionally, in all of these different areas, teaching you how to be comfortable in the discomfort, and all of these things that are just valuable life lessons.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: You know, I've heard hundreds of stories of how people have been positively influenced by doing these practices and, you know, it's kind of one of the things that's made me so passionate about following this path.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: That's fantastic.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the emotional well-being with physical activity, if you will, and we'll get into obviously being focused mentally and learning new things.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Obviously, you don't just practice it in the dojo or the academy, Sorry.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: You practice these things at home, or at least I did and keep in mind I did a long time ago.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: So talk about that a little bit.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: As far as just the using it or focus, yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: So the you know, when you're practicing the meditative arts there's so many different directions you can take the practice.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: So we have broken down into five categories.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: We have, like, the martial or the athletic side of the practice, the therapeutic side, the medical side, the philosophical side and then also the meditative or spiritual side.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: And as you start integrating these practices into everything you do, they can affect your physical well-being, your mental well-being, your emotional well-being and by integrating meditation into your life, we have these basic foundational principles that I call the five regulations Regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy and regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy and regulating the spirit.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: And briefly, I'd like to go through and kind of tell you what those mean, because they're foundational principles that anybody can use in any meditation practice they would think about participating in.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: And the first one, when I say regulating the body, this is the easiest one to do and if you put some consistent effort here in a couple of months you can see a lot of changes.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: And what I mean by regulating the body.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: To give you a couple examples, one would be think about a time when maybe you're sitting at your computer for three or four hours and your shoulders are rounding forward and your neck's getting sore and you're starting to feel lethargic and a little bit tired.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: And then think about another time when the most important person in your world walks into the room and your body perks up and your energy is on top of the world and those two different energetic states.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: We're in a hundred percent control of all the time with how we carry ourselves.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: And if you're walking around with your shoulders rounded forward and your head down, you're going to be feeling depressed.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: We're sitting down at our desk, we're walking down the street or standing in line at the grocery store, wherever we are.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: The more that we can incorporate this proper physical alignment, the more we can get a higher level of our mental state and our emotional state.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: That would be regulating the body.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: And then we have regulating the breath.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Really quick, jeff, before you go there, I just want to give a quick neuro-encoding tip here.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: That would be regulating the body.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: And then we have regulating the breath.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Really quick, jeff, before you go there.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I just want to give a quick neuron coding tip here because it's really vital, because I think that physiology is one of the most important parts.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Um, when you catch yourself and you're in that unresourceful state, you're doing this and you catch yourself.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Take a second and celebrate it, sit up up straight, celebrate it, take the nice deep breaths and smile.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: It releases a bunch of endorphins and good stuff that your brain says, hey, what just happened?
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: And it makes you think about it and see it and find it more so you'll catch yourself more.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: So just real quick tip Fantastic, I love the physiology.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Please go ahead tip.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Fantastic, I love the physiology.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Please go ahead though.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: No, I like that, and I like how you make a win out of that instead of getting down on yourself for recognizing that.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And you know, and that's such in that when we get into regulating the mind, I think that that'll fit right in, and so.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So, with regulating the breath, there's hundreds of different breathing strategies, and oftentimes they'll refer to Qigong as the science of the breath.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: And because there's so many different breathing strategies, we kind of broadly categorize them into yin methods and yang methods.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Yin methods are often deeper, more holistic style of meditations, and what I mean by yin breath is, if you ever listen to somebody sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer inhale and a shorter exhale, and this is the body's natural way of bringing our conscious mind into our subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: And so if you want to emulate this style of breathing, we can do longer inhales, soft retentions at the end of the inhale, and that'll help bring our energy inward closer to that subconscious mind, but without falling asleep.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: And so this is great for stress management, for anxiety, this is great for improving our focus.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of different applications of this side of the breath.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Then we have the yang side of the breath.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: The yang side of the breath is more aggressive.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: It's if you ever had to push your car or you pick up something heavy.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Your natural instinct is to exhale and put tension in the breath, maybe make it audible.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: This is very good for generating power and energy and improving your immune function and all of these different things.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: And so as we start learning how to use the breath as a strategy and in Chinese philosophy they call this balancing the con and Li, or the water and fire we can use this to control our physical, mental and emotional outcomes, and so this is a very powerful tool in that, you know, we all go through the day with emotional ups and downs.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Some people are like a roller coaster.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Others of us may be a little more balanced, but when you start noticing yourself get a little bit excited, we can use the breath to bring it back down, and when you see yourself starting to feel a little depleted, we can use the breath to help pick us back up.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: And so this one idea of learning how to be in control of the breath and aware of the imbalances that happen can be a huge game changer in our overall energetic state and how we live through the day.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Absolutely love it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Really quick, jeff, if you can.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Can you give us an actual example?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Can you show us the breathing exercise?
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: So one example could be, if we're trying to tap into the inside of the breath would be to think about and when we start doing counts this is something that I'd like to point out Never do any breathing exercise that makes you feel uncomfortable inside.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: You know the breath is supposed to be natural and so if I say, inhale for a count of eight, for you that might be six or that might be four.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: You don't have to follow my length of what's comfortable for me.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: So an example of a yin breath would be maybe I inhale for eight seconds and then I pause for two seconds and then I exhale for four or five seconds.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: This will help me bring that energy inward and if I do this for a period of time maybe three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is I can get to pretty deep levels of meditation on that inside of the spectrum by doing a breathing pattern like this.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: On the other side of that, an example would be more on the yang side If you ever watch any athletics or maybe fighters before they go into an event, maybe you'll see them doing some chanting or they're doing some deep breathing and using that exhale side to help generate power.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: If you ever watch a weightlifter and watch how they breathe before they pick up a heavy weight?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: This is an example of how we'd use that yang side of the breath to help generate energy and power on that side.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you Appreciate going through the more details on that.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's important you know that the breathing people forget, right?
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: What do you do when you're in an unresourceful state Shallow breaths what do you do when you're not?
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: You go into that baby type state and you're breathing through your stomach longer breaths, where you actually go into that lower part of your of your stomach breathing.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: So it's really interesting how people forget to breathe, especially in that unresourceful state.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: so thank you for sharing those tips yeah, and you know, the ultimate goal with with working with the breath is to get to the point where you can regulate without regulating, you know, and so it takes.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: You know it's a, it's a lifetime practice.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: However, even from day one, when you start bringing your awareness there, you'll start noticing change from that.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: So it's something where you'll see immediate results.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: But you know, I've been studying for 36 years and I'm still just a student.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: I'm nowhere near the master, you know, and this stuff is very deep and that's one of the things that kind of makes it fun for me is that I'm always learning and growing with the practice.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: So keep that in mind, that it's.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: While it might seem difficult and there's a lot of things there you'll see immediate results by just incorporating some of these strategies.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: And I love what you said.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Right there is you're still a student, because that makes it more fun, that helps you to keep learning.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: You know, when you say, oh, I know how to do everything, you stop growing, you stop learning.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So I love that.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: You said that that's fantastic.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: And then the next regulation is regulating the mind, and this, again, is a lifelong practice.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: And you know, one of the most common things I've heard people say is oh, you know, I've tried meditation and it just didn't work for me.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I couldn't quiet my mind.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Well, somewhere along the way, people got this misconception that in order to meditate, you have to be in this nirvana state and be able to be in this blissful place where you don't think of anything, and that's so not the case.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: You know, I've traveled around the world many times and trained with teachers all over the world and I've never once met a meditation practitioner that doesn't get distracted.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: You know, everybody does at any level, and that's okay and that's part of the practice.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And so when, say, for example, you're doing a 20 minute meditation, whether it's a sitting practice or a movement practice, like a Tai Chi form or whatever it is and you get distracted 50 times during that session, every time you get distracted, you recognize the distraction, you use your breath, you use your posture, you use the movement, you bring yourself back to center and you just got a repetition on being distracted and coming back to center.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: And you do that 50 times a day and you do that every day for a month, a year, five years, you start getting so powerful at dealing with these distractions and learning how to come back to that center focus.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Now it doesn't matter what happens to you, whether somebody says something to throw you off your game, or you have a stressful day at work or whatever it is, you're just.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: You have so many tools in your box to help bring you back to focus and find that balance that that's really brings you a lot of power and a lot of control in the ability to control your mental and emotional state.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: You know, there's this story that I love to tell about these two old monks, and they're walking down to this dirt road after a big rainstorm.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: They come up to this big mud puddle and on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful lady standing there in a white dress and she's crying.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: And the older monk.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: He yells across the puddle and says ma'am, is everything, okay, can we help you?
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And she says I need to be somewhere and if I walk across this puddle I'm going to get my dress all dirty.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: And so he rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle to the other side and picks her up, puts her on his back and carries her to the other side of the puddle and sets her down and she's off on her way.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Well, him and the younger monk are walking a couple miles down the road and at this point the younger monk is just furious and he says you know we're not supposed to touch ladies, but yet you did, back there at the puddle.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: And the older monk looks down and says you're still thinking about that lady, I left her back there at the puddle.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Says you're still thinking about that lady, I left her back there at the puddle.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: And it's a simple story, but it illustrates how many times in life does something negative happen to us and we take it two miles down the road before we let it go?
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: We've got to be able to recognize these imbalances and have the tools to come back to center and focus so we can approach things without being distracted.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: And so regulating the mind is such a valuable tool when we start talking about the meditative arts.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely love it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So when you talk about that and that is basically neuroencoding, you literally are conditioning and creating new neural pathways so you can default back to your best self, and it's just that conditioning and you talk about.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: You know how strong you can get with this practice.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: You don't go into a gym, lift weights one day and come out looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: It takes consistency, it takes that practice, it takes doing it over and over again and it gets better and better.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: But look at the end result that two-millimeter shift, just changing it, doing a little bit of it each day, and where can you be in two weeks from now, a month from now, six years from now.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: So I love what you just said there.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So true, and then.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: So that would be an example of regulating the know, the regulating the body, regulating the breath and regulating the mind.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Now, once you've got to a competent level in these three stages, the next regulation regulating the energy is very easy.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: And so, regulating the energy when I say that you know, we could talk for hours about this one topic, that you know, we could talk for hours about this one topic.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: And basically, there's different energetic circulations within the body that we do within our meditation practice, and some of them could be something simple like embryonic breathing or small circulation or skin breathing or whatever it is.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And when we have the ability to control our breath, our body and our mind, it's easy to lead the energy in these pathways.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: And they all come with different outcomes and different strategies behind them.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: And then, lastly, we have regulating the spirit.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Skin breathing.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, come on, you can't just get past that one.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: OK, so skin breathing is where we lead the energy to the pores in the body and we bring.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: So there's energetic pathways that run, for example, if you can see my arm here, how I have the bone in the center and then the skin on the outside the energy pathways usually run between the skin and the bones for the most part in the body.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Well, when we're doing some of these energetic circulations, we can lead that energy from those pathways inward towards the bone marrow If we were wanting to do more of a yin style of breathing practice, or outward towards the skin and exit towards more of a yang practice.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: So that's why, for example, if you are ever have a moment where you're laughing really hard or you're doing a lot of physical exertion, your pores open up to sweat because you're sending really hard or you're doing a lot of physical exertion, your pores open up to sweat because you're sending that energy outward.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Well, we can do that with our breath, and so we can just work on having that outward energy from those meridians, which is very good for improving your immune function, for improving your strength and your power if you're doing a physical exercise, and so that's what I mean by skin breathing there.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I'm on my way to Portland.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Everybody shows over.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I need to meet with this guy in person.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Fantastic Jeff.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had no idea and I can imagine we could literally talk for hours.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: So sorry, but I couldn't get past skin breathing please no, it's all good great information, man wow.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: And then the last one would be regulating the spirit.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: You know, and this is pretty profound idea of regulating the spirit, and it basically means working towards that stage of enlightenment.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Now, you know, I've been studying the meditative arts, as I mentioned, for a long time.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: I've traveled around the world and trained with some really amazing teachers.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: I've never once met anybody who I would say was enlightened.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it's even possible in today's society, but these are kind of the five basic regulations when you're building a meditation practice, where these are kind of the fundamental principles that are going to help give us that foundation.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Fantastic.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: What does enlightened mean to you?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: What does that look like?
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: What does that look like?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Enlightened would be living in that state where there's never any dishonesty, You're a hundred percent pure with yourself and with everybody around you.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: And because you are so open that it is believed that your third eye would open up.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: And if your third eye was open, it is believed that you could read telepathically other people's minds.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Now again, I've never experienced that or witnessed anybody who has, and so I don't have any expertise in that area.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: But I know that that's kind of the ultimate stage that a lot of lifetime practitioners in the meditative arts are working towards.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and thank you for that explanation.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: And when you say the third eye, you mean the pineal gland.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: The pineal gland is what we call our upper dantian and that is our upper energy center.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: And it is believed that in order to open the third eye which is not the pineal gland but it is connected that you need to build up the energy in the pineal gland in order to have that third eye be at a place where it could be opened.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: And it is also believed that it's not one of those things where you can open it up an ounce at a time.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: It's one of those things, like you know, if you go to flick on your switch, it's either on or off right.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: And so the belief is is that we do these meditation practices to build up the energy in our lower dantian to such a point where we can lead it to the upper dantian, or the pituitary and pineal gland, and once it reaches a certain threshold, then you would experience that stage of enlightenment.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of the process behind it.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Again, it's a life practice.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I appreciate you going through it because I for me I thought it was just you're just in this calm state and so on, so I did not know the rest of that, or even understand it for that matter.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: So really appreciate that information, really do so.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: We got about four minutes left or so.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: We didn't go through any of the actual questions again, we're just organic.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else you want to talk about with, maybe spirit on those five?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: No, something I would like to touch on real briefly is the idea of yielding.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: And you know, yielding is to me one of the coolest concepts in all of Marshall and the meditative arts, and it's what I wrote my last book on the yielding warrior.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: And there's three different kinds of yielding there's physical yielding, mental yielding and emotional yielding.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Yielding Physical yielding is, you know, the idea that I push you, you push me.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Whoever's the bigger, stronger person with the most leverage eventually is going to push the other person over.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: But with yielding, instead of us trying to see who the bigger meathead is, when you push me, I get out of the way of that force, and so now I can respond with less effort, so I'm not trying to put so much strength and power to force the situation Now.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: In order for this to happen, a lot of things have to come into play, and one I need to be well-rooted.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: The lower part of my body needs to be strong and flexible so I can change my central equilibrium without getting tight.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: The body has to be relaxed, the breath has to be calm and the mind has to be present.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: The breath has to be calm and the mind has to be present when I start seeing those things inside myself, I also start noticing those things more clearly in other people, and this is where we start moving into what I call mental yielding.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: So say, for example, I say something that unsettles you and I pick up on it right from the beginning.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: It's a lot easier to adjust the conversation and keep us in a happy place than if I'm not paying attention to that.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: Pretty soon I'm so far off track.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: You want to slap me upside the head, and so learning how to use yielding in all of your interactions and conversations is extremely powerful.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: One, you're just being more considerate, which is something we should all do anyway.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: And two, it allows you to be strategic in your interactions, and whether it's a personal interaction, a business interaction, a sales, a negotiation, whatever it is, when you can learn how to strategically guide the conversation to a positive outcome with the least amount of resistance, this is extremely powerful.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Come with the least amount of resistance, this is extremely powerful.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: And then we also have what I call emotional yielding, and emotional yielding is very much like mental yielding, but it's with your own interpersonal conflicts.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: So you think about, oftentimes something will happen to us and we'll respond and we'll go down this path and we might get an hour a day a week down that road and realize maybe that wasn't the best choice but by incorporating these meditation practices and expanding our awareness, if we could have taken a step back and realize maybe this is a better approach.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: A lot of times it can save us a lot of heartache on the other side.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: And you know, I've been explaining this idea of yielding for years here at the Academy and one of the most common things I'll hear people say is that, oh, that makes a lot of sense.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: You know, I do yielding all the time and while I would agree I think everybody sees glimpses of yielding and uses it to some degree all the time it's kind of like, you know, if you or I were to walk into a crime scene with a detective who's been on the job for 30 years, he would see things about the series of events in the timeline that I know at least, I would have no clue of.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: And the meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people that most people will live their life and never have a clue of.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I love that and you're right, because when you do meditation, to whatever degree or how you do it for yourself, it really lets you see inside yourself.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: It really does and it creates calm and all the different things I know Jeff could talk about.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Jeff, we got to come back on.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Man Really would love to have you back on, but it just does so much and we have so much to learn from you, my friend, that it would be an honor to have you back on.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, anytime, for sure, excellent.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: So we are at the end of the show.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Everybody, it went way too fast, Jeff.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: If you can give us, uh, how do people reach out to you?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: How do people connect with you?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: So you can reach me through my website, the yielding warriorcom, and if you'd like to get a free copy of my most recent book, the yielding warrior, go to the yielding warriorcom forward slash book and you can get a free copy of that.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: You just pay for shipping and handling.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Also on that website, you can get access to my online training programs and my teacher training program and all that stuff up there as well.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Fantastic, and we'll be checking that out, man, for sure I will be checking that out, so I would just want to, if you can, give three tips to get veterans further faster if you can give three tips to get veterans further faster?
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So if you're thinking about taking on the meditative arts, I highly recommend finding yourself a guide.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like you know, if you've never played basketball before in your life and I take you to a basketball court, you've never even seen somebody dribble and I give you a basketball and I say go play basketball, think about how good you're going to get and how long it's going to take you to even figure out half of the strategy of the game.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: The meditative arts is very complex.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Life is short.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: We want to get the most out of our time.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Your time is very valuable.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Somebody can save you years of shooting in the dark and watching a thousand different videos on YouTube by helping point you in the right direction.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: The other thing is find yourself a why.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: If you're drawn to the meditative arts, it's easy to have your alarm go off tomorrow and be like I'll do it the next day and hit the snooze button If you have a strong lie, like you want to stay around to watch your grandkids grow up, or you want to improve your health, or you want to improve your performance, or you want to get the stress and anxiety out of your life and you really have a reason to not hit that snooze button.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: You're going to get so much out of the practice if you incorporate these practices into your life.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: I love it Very good man.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: So I guess that covers it.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Anything else before we go.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: No, sir, thank you for having me.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: You know time, as you just mentioned, is the most precious resource we have as human beings.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: We don't get it back.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you for spending this time with us.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Truly, truly mean that.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: My pleasure.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: All right, everybody, we're out of here.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your Thoughts your Reality podcast with your host, michael Cole.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit empowerperformancestrategiescom.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Remember your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Catch you on the next episode.