Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: How Navy Seals Create an Unbeatable Mind, with Mark Divine (Military, Mindset, Business, Motivation)
Transcript
- 0:00Host: Mark Devine has a degree in economics from Colgate
- 0:10University and an MBA in finance from NYU, his first career was
- 0:52as a CPA, but four years after joining mark left and became
- 0:56pursued his vision to become an elite Navy SEAL officer. And
- 0:59what's cool. Not only was he in the Navy SEALs, but he graduated
- 1:03as the honor man, the number one ranked trainee of his seal class
- 1:08served nine years active duty, and 11 years as a reserve seal.
- 1:12He is the New York Times best selling author of the way of the
- 1:16seal and eight weeks to SEAL Fit, also an accomplished
- 1:19martial artist and just an awesome guy, Mark, welcome to
- 1:23the show, man. You know, this concept of unbeatable mind. I
- 1:26think it's so relevant. One of the things that you talk about
- 1:29is the 20x factor. Can you tell us what that's all about?
- 1:31Mark Divine: Yeah, sure. You know, most people have heard of
- 1:34hell week Hell Week is that one week during the nine months of
- 1:37seal, you know, in dock training, or basic training
- 1:40called buds, and then SQ t. So there's one week that's kind of
- 1:43famous, and that's the week called Hell Week where we train
- 1:45from new Sunday afternoon until Friday, the following Friday
- 1:49around the clock without any sleep, actually, they give us
- 1:52four hours just to mess with us on Thursday. But so it's kind of
- 1:55legendary, you know, and, and it really is, it's multi purpose.
- 1:59But I would say the dominant purpose is to teach those that
- 2:04make it through it, that they're capable of practically anything
- 2:07that they put their mind to. The reason I use the 20x term is
- 2:10because as I was preparing myself, for my own Hell Week,
- 2:14you know, I kind of I had some unique rituals, my teammates
- 2:17were all sitting in messing with their gear, and you know, that
- 2:20we had this big tent set up, set up and buzz and they're kind of
- 2:22like anxiously awaiting what we call breakout, which was the
- 2:25start, and I had kind of wandered off over the berm, you
- 2:29know, and just sat and looked at the ocean and just, you know,
- 2:32began my breathing and kind of meditation practice what I now
- 2:35call, you know, winning in my mind before the battle. And as I
- 2:38was sitting there, one of the instructors came up to me and he
- 2:41kind of smiled. He, like, he looked at me, and I don't know
- 2:43what was going through his head, but he must have been thinking,
- 2:45Okay, this guy is a little bit different. And he's doing
- 2:47something different. And I get it, and it came at me and he
- 2:50goes, Mark, you got nothing to worry about, because you're
- 2:52capable 20 times more than you think you are, have fun, you
- 2:56know, basically have fun with this one, because he knew for
- 2:58some reason that I was going to make it through. And when the
- 3:01training started, you know, again, the first like, 50, some
- 3:05odd hours are the hardest, because that's the like, the new
- 3:07reality of this, your life circumstances setting in your
- 3:11body is all of a sudden saying, I am exhausted, I haven't slept,
- 3:14I'm freezing cold, I'm shaved, I'm bleeding, you know, I've
- 3:18just ache all over the place. But your mind says, Okay, that's
- 3:21all fine and good. But you're not quitting, you got three and
- 3:24a half more days. And so that was what was going through my
- 3:26mind. In the meantime, my my teammates were quitting left and
- 3:29right, we, you know, we started my class with 185 students, all
- 3:34highly qualified super studs, by the time we get to Hell Week,
- 3:37we're probably down to like 120 or something like that. And then
- 3:40by the end of 50 hours a hell week, we're down to like, 60. So
- 3:44they're just dropping like flies. And I was just telling
- 3:46myself can't quit, just keep going one foot in front, the
- 3:49other, you know, words to that effect, my body started to get
- 3:52stronger. So you know, after days without sleep, you know,
- 3:57around the clock physical training, most people
- 3:59conventional wisdom would be that you'd be breaking down and
- 4:01you know, you'd be almost catatonic and my body started to
- 4:04build muscle mass and started to get stronger, and I started to
- 4:07get more alert, and I was still probably, you know, if you were
- 4:09to give me some sort of test, I was probably I would probably
- 4:12have, you know, failed any higher cognitive functions or
- 4:16skills, you know, but I was able to stay focused on the tasks
- 4:20that they were giving to me and to stay focused on my team and
- 4:23to, you know, drive through and I was getting stronger and
- 4:26feeling stronger. And so that was really profound to me
- 4:29because I realized you know, afterwards that that that
- 4:31instructor was right, like I truly was capable 20 times more
- 4:35than I thought and how we proved it to me. And so that's become
- 4:39kind of a central tenet of my my teaching today is that you know,
- 4:42you are capable 20 times more and then 20 times again, but you
- 4:45got to prove it to yourself in order to believe it at a really
- 4:48got a heart level. You know, I mean, it's not a cognitive
- 4:51thing. You can't just think yourself that you're capable
- 4:54that much more because that's, that's not enough. You know,
- 4:57you've got to get it know it deeply.
- 5:00Host: Give us an example for some of the people that are not
- 5:02that familiar with hell week, what are some of the other
- 5:04things that you're doing?
- 5:05Mark Divine: You know, the evolutions they call every event
- 5:08in evolution is that evolution is range from anywhere from, you
- 5:10know, a couple hours to like six or eight hours long. And they
- 5:14had us doing you know, seal like stuff but not the not super
- 5:18complicated like we weren't jumping out of helicopters with,
- 5:21you know, live ammunition and bursting down doors because this
- 5:25wasn't the purpose of the training, training was to
- 5:27attract those people who weren't mentally tougher or emotionally
- 5:30resilient and couldn't be good teammates, and prove those of us
- 5:34who were mentally tough, emotionally resilient, and good
- 5:36teammates that were capable of frickin anything. So the types
- 5:40of things we're doing like one evolution was to take our 350
- 5:44pound logs, and you know, to take them on like a 10 mile
- 5:47journey, right, carrying them over our heads and on our
- 5:50shoulders without putting them down. And so that was, you know,
- 5:53interesting challenge to say the least in the soft sand. Another
- 5:56was to paddle our little rubber boats that called IBS. I'm not
- 6:00even sure what that acronym was, but we called we called it at
- 6:04bat ship. little rubber boats. And there are seven of us. And
- 6:10we had to paddle these itty bitty ships around Coronado
- 6:13Island in San Diego at night. And that was I think, on like
- 6:17Wednesday night or something of Hell Week, and everybody was
- 6:21hallucinating, including myself. Now it's like two in the
- 6:24morning. And we're just stroke stroke stroke. And the guy in
- 6:27front of me, literally, his paddle slipped out of his hand
- 6:30and started floating past me and I grabbed it and his arms kept
- 6:33moving. You know, he kept stroking. So I took the battle,
- 6:38I just smacked him over the head with it. And as I hate dummy
- 6:40years battle, he's like, holy cow, I didn't even know I lost
- 6:43that thing a little bit, you know, longer a little bit
- 6:45further along, I saw this massive wave well up in front of
- 6:49me. And I'm like water, water. That's what we used to say, you
- 6:53know, when we go through surf passage, so in a huge wave came
- 6:55up. And so I ducked down and everyone looks at me, like, what
- 6:58are you doing? I said, Doc water, and then I look up and
- 7:01there's nothing there. I'm like, so your mind, you know, our
- 7:03mind, the body first goes, and then the mind goes. And that's
- 7:06that's kind of the whole point here is that the mind starts to
- 7:09play tricks on you. And it's your cognitive mind, which is,
- 7:12you know, the reality is is fraying. And the structures that
- 7:16you used to hang on to his real are starting to shift and to
- 7:19fray. And so you can't rely on that anymore. And so that was a
- 7:22great lesson for me too, as I can't, I can't rely on the way
- 7:26my mind the way I used to perceive my mind working.
- 7:30Because it's not, it's not working that way for me under
- 7:33stress. So I'm working right under stress.
- 7:36Host: So if you go okay, that your body is capable, 20 times
- 7:40more, how do you access that?
- 7:43Mark Divine: I mean, that's the Holy Grail. So in the seals,
- 7:45it's just through these intense experiences that you like crack
- 7:50open your body mind system, and reorganize it in ways that I
- 7:54don't even think anyone really understands, I don't even think
- 7:57the seals understand it, they just know it works. That's why
- 7:59they'll never give up pelvic they've had so many, you know,
- 8:03kind of peacetime attempts to get rid of the whole week
- 8:06program because they think it's kind of inhumane. And you know,
- 8:09then thinking maybe too hard. And you know, there have been
- 8:11people have died in the training and stuff, but very rare,
- 8:14actually. And they're from natural causes, like, you know,
- 8:17someone dies of a heart attack, or they have an accident and
- 8:19they drowned. But no one's died from exhaustion that I'm aware
- 8:22of in Hell Week. So anyways, what I'm saying is the seals
- 8:25just that the training is just brilliant. And it's evolved
- 8:29over, you know, 60 years to really prepare seals for the
- 8:33most rigorous challenges missions and environments in the
- 8:36world. And to believe that anything's possible to believe
- 8:40that they can accomplish any mission. And so you know, that
- 8:42you look at the success rate of the seals and the kind of bears
- 8:45that out that that's a pretty effective training method. So I
- 8:48don't want to mess with it. But I don't think they really
- 8:50understand beyond kind of like the combat effectiveness and
- 8:54some of the work that David Grossman has done with his
- 8:56understanding about how to condition a warrior for the
- 9:00rigors of combat. I think that's all that's all like philosophy
- 9:03and research and it's really interesting, but I don't think
- 9:06they understand what's happening at a emotional, even quasi
- 9:10spiritual level or metaphysical level and also with regard to
- 9:14the brain and the mind, and the nervous system and how all those
- 9:18things are are reorganizing you know, through neuroplasticity
- 9:22and, and also epigenetics so that seals are kind of like
- 9:25turning on and off different genes. And I would say, you
- 9:28know, if there was a warrior gene and then the seals have
- 9:30learned how to turn that on, in a big way to where you get, you
- 9:35get activities like you know, what I'm willing to light might
- 9:38lay my life down for my teammate. You don't see that
- 9:41very often in modern world that is a very much of a warrior gene
- 9:45that's been turned on where you put yourself your teammates so
- 9:49far above yourself and that's one of the reasons that the
- 9:51training is so effective because nothing gets done alone as a
- 9:55seal. That's why we called the SEAL teams and when you have an
- 9:58individual miss a tick, mark them out Lunch, who knows that
- 10:01he's capable of 20 times more. And then you put him with a team
- 10:05of 14 others in a platoon, or maybe you know, 35 others in a
- 10:10troop or 40 others in the troop, and every one of those
- 10:12individuals knows that they're capable of 20 times more. And
- 10:17they're all watching each other's back and care about each
- 10:19other, and know that each other is absolutely essential to
- 10:22getting the mission done, then you get an effect. That's not
- 10:25like 20 times, but like 20 times, 20 times 20 times 20
- 10:29times, you know, I mean, just multiply it by the number of
- 10:31people's it's an it's an enormous geometric effect.
- 10:35Host: So take me to preparing yourself, right? Because I
- 10:38think, you know, like most of us are probably never going to be
- 10:42in this situation. But how do you sort of mentally prepare
- 10:46yourself? What do you do when it's real? Like, right before
- 10:49it's real?
- 10:50Mark Divine: That's great question, because you're right,
- 10:53not everyone is going to go through SEAL training, nor would
- 10:56you want to, frankly, because it sucks. So I've kind of spent the
- 11:00balance of my, you know, the last 15 years trying to figure
- 11:04out how do you train, not that that same experience, even
- 11:07though you know, through my SEAL Fit program, we have recreated
- 11:11the whole week experience, and it has an incredible effect, and
- 11:15civilians can go through it, but but through my unbeatable mind
- 11:19training I looked at I said, Okay, so what's what's
- 11:22happening, and I tried to understand what is happening at
- 11:25a mind, body and spirit and nervous system level. And can I
- 11:29kind of parse out those different elements and train
- 11:32them. And so I began doing that with seal candidates back in
- 11:362007 2008. Because I started training seal candidates, I
- 11:39wanted to help them succeed the way I did, and SEAL training and
- 11:43to have a better career and be more focused and make better
- 11:47decisions and battle and to avoid PTSD and all those things.
- 11:50And, and so I began to draw them more are kind of like I would
- 11:54say, equal parts from my Navy SEAL days, with my yoga and
- 11:58martial arts training. So I realized that the Eastern
- 12:01practices had a lot of tools. And they were a developmental
- 12:04path for accessing greater power, almost 20x power, and
- 12:08developing internal potential, and integrating and being able
- 12:11to use your mind in a unique way or a better way. And this, this
- 12:15is lacking in the West, there really isn't any developmental
- 12:19models that that I'm aware of, that didn't come from either the
- 12:23martial arts or yoga. There were some understanding of it
- 12:26Phillips philosophically, through integral theory, and
- 12:29transpersonal, psychology and stuff like that. But there
- 12:33weren't any practices or paths, if you know what I mean, in the
- 12:37traditional sense. And so I looked at my own millet martial
- 12:40arts training and my own now I was deep into yoga and into
- 12:44teach, I've been to multiple teacher trainings, and was even
- 12:47developing our own yoga to teach to seals, which I you know,
- 12:51handled, to really simplify and chunk it out into drills and,
- 12:55and discard any woowoo. You know what I mean, that took the fool
- 12:59out of the Kung Fu and took the woowoo out of the yoga to teach
- 13:02it. And so I came up with these skills, I call them well, they
- 13:06lined sort of with what the seals called the Big Four. But
- 13:10there's, there's more than four. But the biggest and most
- 13:13powerful ones are, first is to develop control over your
- 13:17breath, and to use your breath as a center post of your
- 13:20training, right? Because the breath is what will lead you to
- 13:24being in physiological control of your body. And so the studies
- 13:27have now verified the power of breath control for stress
- 13:31management, stress release, and for triggering the
- 13:34parasympathetic nervous system to bleed off stress. So it's
- 13:37really, really healthy for you and healthview nervous system,
- 13:41but beyond that, the breath is a way to stay focused, because
- 13:45after all, the brain is a organ of the body. And when your body
- 13:49is calmer, your brain is calmer, I mean, it's experienced
- 13:52subjectively as literally a lower brain, you know, cycle
- 13:56rate and you kind of an alpha beta, when you're really calm.
- 13:59And, and it's healthier, right, and you're detoxing when you
- 14:03breathe deeply in so quickly, and you know, you know, you
- 14:06don't have the choppy patterns associated with an anxious
- 14:10emotional states. So the breath controls that first skill that I
- 14:14started teaching the seal candidates, and that alone and I
- 14:17call the practice box breathing, that alone had a profound impact
- 14:21on their ability to focus and remain clear in the heat of
- 14:25battle and that type of thing. And then I said, Okay, so once I
- 14:28am physically, physiologically and physically in control, and
- 14:32I'm clear headed and able to focus, then it's about creating
- 14:36the conditions in my mind, so that I can stay focused on the
- 14:39right thing at the right time, stay focused on on my teammates
- 14:43and stay focused on a positive outcome. Whereas you know, the
- 14:47common individual will seize upon you know, some something
- 14:50that's going wrong and that could be like I'm suffering
- 14:54because this sucks, or, you know, I'm I'm in pain. Normally,
- 14:57my back hurts, or I can't do this because it's too hard, I
- 15:01can't lift this 300 pound log up anymore. There's always
- 15:04something, you know, whether it's physical or mental or
- 15:08something really practical, some challenge or crisis in your
- 15:11life, there's always something great because that's the human
- 15:15condition every day of your life, there's going to be
- 15:18something that doesn't go well. Or right, there's going to be
- 15:22something that's negative, there's going to be some
- 15:25discomfort. And most people will seize upon that, and focus on
- 15:29that. And then, of course, that what you focus on tends to grow
- 15:33or to, you know, it attracts energy to it. And so I learned
- 15:36and I taught the seals that, you know, we accept and be non
- 15:40attached to what happens to us. And we take control in a
- 15:43positive sense of what's happening in our mind, and both
- 15:47our rational mind as well as our emotional mind. And so we
- 15:50maintain a really positive, energetic attitude and mindset,
- 15:54I call this positivity, the train mind, as soon as that
- 15:57resistance is experienced, will begin to dialogue in a way that
- 16:01generates power instead of weakness. And so when that log
- 16:04starts to rub the shoulder or starts to get hard, you know,
- 16:08instead of saying, holy cow, I don't think I can do this or
- 16:11man, this thing's heavy, or how long do we have to do this
- 16:15another three hours, you basically shift that to some
- 16:18sort of powerful statement that you also associate with an
- 16:22energetic and emotional state, you know, so one of the classic
- 16:25ones that I have is this is, this is an easy day, I got this
- 16:29piece of cake isn't easy day, I got this piece of cake, I'm
- 16:33feeling good. And I'm looking in order to be in Hollywood. And so
- 16:37then your internal dialogue, this takes over, and starts to
- 16:40drown out any of that other that other dialogue and, and then you
- 16:44begin to, you know, this ties into the third skill. The third
- 16:48skill is imaging. So that includes visualization, image
- 16:51projection, in terms of the future, what you know, desired
- 16:55outcomes, you know, because if you can see the wind in your
- 16:58mind, then you can achieve the win if you believe it and act
- 17:02forcefully on it, right. And that's, that clip comes straight
- 17:06from Sunsoo, the victorious warrior wins in his mind first,
- 17:09and then enters the battle. And so the combination of the second
- 17:13skill, which is maintaining and develop, developing and
- 17:16maintaining a positive direction, and a positive
- 17:19routine, and a positive emotional pattern associated
- 17:23with your thoughts. So this is requires like training the brain
- 17:26training the mind, to act this way, all the time, especially
- 17:30when the challenges appear. This then connects to your ability to
- 17:34see yourself succeeding in those challenge, see yourself
- 17:37dominating in those challenging environments, being able to
- 17:41maintain a clear picture of the wind, in spite of the dark night
- 17:45of the soul moments that might come over you or the team and
- 17:48you know, you can connect back to that image of the wind and
- 17:52go, Oh, yeah, that's it. That's why I'm here. Right. And so, so
- 17:56this, this goes, I mean, there's so many subtle skills that are
- 18:00involved, how we use our eyes is important. So if I'm, you know,
- 18:04if I need to lift the log up, and put it on my other shoulder,
- 18:07then I then I shift my mind and my gaze into a very practical
- 18:11This is my one task right here, right now I look at the log I,
- 18:15you know, I coordinate the movements with my team, you
- 18:18know, we breathe together and hoisted up on the command and
- 18:22lowered over the and that's, that's the only thing I'm doing
- 18:25and thinking of in that moment, K, but then let's say right,
- 18:29when that's done, and we're like, get a little relief, it's
- 18:33on the other shoulder now, and we're going to take another 100
- 18:36paces or so then I softened my gaze, and my gaze, you know, my
- 18:40eyes literally go from, you know, pupils dilated, I'm
- 18:43focused on a task. And I'm outwardly focused to where my
- 18:47eyes go really soft, and almost like they go wide. And I like
- 18:50I'm using my peripheral vision. And in that state, your mind
- 18:54will soften. And it's almost like, you know, just letting go
- 18:58and turning inward. And in that inward, even though my eyes are
- 19:01open, I have access to my imagery. And I can go back and
- 19:05check in with it, or the image is there for me. Does that make
- 19:09sense? So again, this is the tools are how do we use our mind
- 19:12effectively, our, our minds are so much more powerful when we
- 19:16learn how to use them, right? And so we've been trained here
- 19:20in the West to really dominantly we focused on our cognition, our
- 19:24rational mind our thinking, right? And then if you're
- 19:27creative, they say, oh, yeah, you're creative. So you're using
- 19:31that right brain and you have creative powers. Reality is we
- 19:34all have the capacity to think better and to avoid our
- 19:38cognitive bias. So that's a skill that we have to train for.
- 19:41But we all and we also have the capacity to release that to
- 19:45literally put that back area of our mind that activate your mind
- 19:49to rest like to turn the dial down significantly so that you
- 19:52can open up to what I call direct perception perceive
- 19:56thinking things just the way they are right now without
- 19:59having to judge or analyze or anything. And a massive amount
- 20:02of information flows into that. The fourth skill, by the way, is
- 20:06task orientation. But if you show up doing everything that I
- 20:10just explained, because you've trained to do it, right, it's
- 20:14not a cognitive thing. It's an actually, you know, this is a
- 20:17very visceral process, then, you know, what you're going to get
- 20:21on the other side is energetic synchronization.
- 20:24Host: You know, when I think Navy Seal, I think tough as
- 20:28nails, I think physical but everything you're describing
- 20:32here, this is all mental.
- 20:33Mark Divine: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the mental I mean, you're
- 20:36essentially the human being has a body in the mind and spirit,
- 20:39if you all you focus on it as a body, you're going to be a one
- 20:42dimensional being, the body follows the mind. You know, we
- 20:45learned that in SEAL training as a tenant of what I teach a SEAL
- 20:48Fit, the body follows the mind. And so you could be physically
- 20:52fit and still fail at a sporting event, if your mind is not
- 20:55conditioned properly, you could be the most talented athlete,
- 20:58you know, we've seen this over and over again and still fail,
- 21:01you might win one one or two times, but you're gonna fail if
- 21:04your mind isn't conditioned, right? So really the mind is is
- 21:07is the preeminent everything flows from the mind. And then
- 21:10behind the mind is the Spirit knows beyond the scope of this
- 21:13conversation, but I could almost make that same statement that
- 21:16once you connect with the Spirit, with your Spirit, then
- 21:19everything flows from that. And the mind becomes even more
- 21:22refined, and finely tuned with universal principles. And, and
- 21:25that's when like, your ultimate power comes out. So you're truly
- 21:28at your most complete fullest self, when body mind and spirit
- 21:32are all aligned. And working together, you know, I mean,
- 21:34SEALs who are aligned like that, and everyone's operating that
- 21:38way, you know, they literally are shaping their enemy's minds,
- 21:41they, you know, seal shape their enemies mind with their violence
- 21:44of action and offensive mindset. You know, because everyone is
- 21:47thinking, we got this, we are not we are running toward the
- 21:50sound of gunfire, we're going to dominate this battle, we're
- 21:53going to take it to the enemy, whatever everyone's thinking
- 21:56that way. And like I said, at a very subtle level that that
- 21:59breeds fear and the enemy and the way we act, and the way we
- 22:03think and the way we show up on the battlefield breeds fear and
- 22:06the enemy, and they may not even know it, but it happens, right.
- 22:09And that's why they you know, their actions and reactions are
- 22:12going to be weaker than ours. In Vietnam, this the Vietnamese NVA
- 22:15used to call the seals devils with green faces, because of the
- 22:19just the way they get you know, the the operators back then
- 22:22wouldn't show up in the middle of the jungle, you know, out of
- 22:25nowhere, and their faces were painted because they're, you
- 22:28know, they were using camouflage and they learn how to stalk and
- 22:31to be completely silent as they move through the jungle and they
- 22:34would literally just show up and wreak havoc on the enemy and
- 22:37then disappear. And that's what I mean like that's, that's an
- 22:41energetic that's, you know, obviously there's practical
- 22:43skills, but it's also a mindset that the seals had that hey,
- 22:46we're gonna be devils green faces and we're gonna scare that
- 22:50you know what out of the enemy and they won practically every altercation.
- 22:54Host: So where should people go to connect with you if they want
- 22:57to learn about SEAL Fit, and you got the unbeatable mind book and
- 22:59course and, you know, where do you want people to find you?
- 23:03Mark Divine: Well, I think you said that if someone's
- 23:05interested in these principles, then there's two books that I
- 23:08have out that are that kind of covered down in them one is
- 23:11probably the first one to read his unbeatable mind were
- 23:13introduced these principles and then second is called The Way of
- 23:16the seal both are great books for I hear for for learning
- 23:20these principles. And then if you want to find me on the web
- 23:23SEAL Fit All one word SCA l fit.com. has a ton of content a
- 23:29ton of you know, free resources, and we've got some great video
- 23:33training and and that's where all our events, stuff like that.
- 23:36Host: Well, then last little thing, man, if if somebody's out
- 23:39there listening right now, and they're realizing they're going
- 23:43whoa, I am so far from this unbeatable mind like I am so not
- 23:48mentally tough, like, I'm losing every battle in my head before
- 23:52it even begins. What's like a, you know, one practice, you
- 23:56would suggest you go you need to start doing this immediately.
- 23:58Mark Divine: Yeah, it's the first skill I alluded to earlier
- 24:00in box breathing. And you know, if this the only thing that
- 24:04someone gets out of this podcast years, and it's time well spent,
- 24:07and so that is simply to begin a daily practice of breathing,
- 24:11where you breathe through your nose, your nostrils, with your
- 24:14mouth closed, and ideally, your eyes closed and just sit in a
- 24:18chair, straight spine and you're going to inhale to a count of
- 24:22four or five, hold your breath for a count of five, exhale for
- 24:25a count of five, hold your breath for a count of five. So
- 24:28you're breathing in a box or a square pattern. And to do this a
- 24:32minimum of five minutes, but ideally for 20 minutes a day.
- 24:35Best time is probably first thing in the morning when you
- 24:39wake up. This is not meditation, but although it has the it's the
- 24:42precursor to meditation because it's got the physiological
- 24:46benefits of of resetting your your nervous system, bleeding
- 24:49off stress, and clarifying your mind and so literally, you're
- 24:52going to detox your mind and get your mind really focused. And
- 24:56then the secondary benefit is to concentrate ration practice, a
- 25:00lot of people fail with meditation, because they, the
- 25:03preparatory practice for meditation is concentration. And
- 25:06so we need to learn how to concentrate on this one thing.
- 25:09And that box breathing pattern is the one thing. And so this
- 25:13this practice in itself, I've got, you know, surgeons who use
- 25:16it for surgery during their surgery. And, of course, Navy
- 25:19SEALs practice this, you know, variations of this, and all
- 25:23sorts of people have found some great benefit from it. So I
- 25:26would start there.
- 25:28Host: Mark Devine. I mean, first of all, thank you for your
- 25:30service, and we appreciate you man.
- 25:34Mark Divine: Thanks for having me on as well.