The Yielding Warrior

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0:44 Denzel Washington, welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Jeff, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Hey, I'm really excited have you on the show. I think the things that you're talking about are so fascinating and I think it will be such value for the audience as they listen and understand your perspective on this. What I'd love to ask you, though, is how did you get to this point? I'd love for you to share with the audience your story of what brought you to this point of awareness and obviously wanting to help other people. Yeah.

1:30 So I've been involved in martial arts and the meditative arts now for about thirty six years, and I got introduced to the meditative practices in a bit of a roundabout way in that I was a nineteen year old kid. I wasn't looking at all into wanting to do meditation. In fact, when it first was presented to me, I was pretty far from wanting to do it. And at the time I was very much into Western boxing and I used to go to a boxing gym just a few blocks down the street here from my academy. And at a boxing gym, if you're not familiar with how they're run, usually it's not like your traditional fitness class in that you might have four or five coaches in the gym, and each one of those coaches has three, four or five fighters that they're working with at any one time. Well, at this particular gym, one of the coaches there was a very well known coach who had worked with national and world champion level fighters, and I really wanted to get to spend some time with him and have him help me with my boxing, and so I would show up every day when I knew he was going to be there, I'd work hard and try to get him to notice me and try to get him to spend some time with me. And after about three or four months of following him around, he finally started giving me some tips. And you know, every time he told me anything, I treated it like it was gold, and you know, I'd do the best I could to get it down and really put my effort into it. Well,

3:02 it was only about maybe two or three weeks from working with him when he told me something that changed my life forever, and that he said, you know, if you really want to be a good boxer, you should start doing meditation in Taichi. And here I am, this nineteen year old kid that doesn't know much of anything, thinking, you know, isn't taichi for like older people in the park. How's that going to help me be a better fighter? And I had a lot of respect for him though, and I took on the practice and it's changed my life in many ways. And through the years. Running my academy now for thirty years, I've had over twenty six thousand students come through the academy, and I have literally heard hundreds of stories of how the meditative arts has positively influenced people's lives. And that's kind of what gives me the energy and the inspiration to, you know, write my last couple books and create my online program and just try to get this message out there and help as many people as I can.

4:04 Well, And was there an aha moment that you know? Everybody kind of does their own thing, and there are times such as yourself, which I just so greatly honor. And that's one of the reasons you're on the show here, is you know, all of a sudden, you're maybe right when you were twenty, but wanting to really touch the lives of other people and make a difference for them. Was there an AHA moment for you? Or did it just kind of come naturally? You know, there was two things that kind of guided me in this direction, and one of them was something that that same coach said to me. And he told me when I was really young. He said, you want to create a life and not make a living. And at the time, I was the first kid in my whole extended family to go through college and I got two degrees in less than four years, and everybody thought I was going to go out and do something important and get a big job doing something. And I kept having in the back of my mind thinking about creating a life, and nothing I could think about with my degree made me feel like I was creating a life.

5:14 I felt like I would be following making a living, and so I decided to follow the path of teaching the meditative and the martial arts, and that was kind of my first push towards this direction. And then later as I started running the academy. You know, we have our meditation program here where we do tai chi chi gung sitting, meditation, standing meditation, breath work. But then we also have external martial arts that we do like Brazilian jiu jitsu and boxing and Mui Thai, and so through the years there's been competitors that we train in jiu jitsu and Mui Thai, and it's always been fun to take them out and have them do well, and it feels good, you know, to put your time and energy into somebody and have them be successful. But what I found is is that through working with the students coming in through the meditation program, is that they're coming in with illnesses and stress disorders and panic attacks, anxiety attacks, even thoughts of committing suicide, and they use this practice to transform their lives. And I've seen so many people come in and adapt these principles and seeing this, you know, these life changing benefits and things that they get from adopting this practice, and seeing those is what's really fueled me and given me the energy to like just really

6:45 want to one be the best teacher I can be, which is why I've spent you know, my whole career traveling around the world, studying with teachers all over the planet and trying to be as educated on the subject as I can, but all so following this path and trying to help as many people as I can. Well, and I know you mentioned on your website that you know, you really have appreciated the Eastern tradition and philosophy, and I assume that part of your travels brought you to Asia and where you really got that, and talk a little bit about that and how does how does that differ in your opinion from what you experience in the US, and what what's the difference and what's it?

7:31 How's it affecting people one way or the other. Well, you know, there's a there's a lot of differences in the culture as far as the methods in the meditative and martial arts, because a lot of that comes from the Eastern culture. A lot of that is ingrained into the meditative and martial arts here in the States as well. It kind of it just depends on the source and the teacher that it came from as to far as you know. And the funny thing is is something that you wouldn't really expect, but you know, some of the most advanced teachers I've ever met are from the States, you know. And and it's since information is so easily attainable now, you get people that are able to travel all around and train with different teachers. And a lot of times, what I found is in some areas that people kind of do it more as a hobby and less as like a career or something where it's kind of their life's mission to go in and really dive into it. And so when you find those teachers, it's it's a blessing and a rarity. You know, there's not there's not as many of them out there, and so I think when you get to that level of a practitioner. It doesn't really matter what part of the world you're in. They're just you're just lucky to find that person.

9:02 Well. And as you talk about martial arts, and obviously for you this all integrates together with martial arts and meditation and so forth. But for many that are listening, I'm sure today they're not into martial arts. And so do you find that these principles can be separated from the actual practice of martial arts and still be incredibly effective for people in their lives? For sure? You know, and most of my students who do our meditation program aren't into the martial arts as well, you know. And you don't have to be in the martial arts to benefit from meditation, you know. Within the meditative arts, I kind of break it down into five categories, where you have the athletic side, which teaches you awareness and timing and the ability to relax and focus and to be a better athlete. Then you have the therapeutics side, which is great for balance and stability, flexibility, strength, dealing through injuries. You have the medical side, which you know, all of Chinese medicine is based off of chigunk theory.

10:13 You have the philosophical side, and then you also have the spiritual side. And so people are drawn to the meditative arts for any one of kind of those five directions. And you know it's you. We have people coming in here to the Academy that fit all five of those categories, and you would adopt different practices for each of them, and it can be very effective without having the martial artss of backing. Okay, And I know again I've enjoyed your website as I went to look at it. One of the things you actually talk about is three areas meditation, mindfulness, and fluid movement. And I appreciate what you're talking about there, and you kind of explained to the audience what you mean by that and how it all integrates together. I know you've mentioned it a little bit, but let's get into it a little bit deeper.

11:09 Yeah, So when I talk about meditation, there's you know, a lot of people think of meditation as sitting there and counting your breaths and trying to acquiet your mind, you know, And while that is meditation, I look at the meditative arts as a pool of different tools that we can use and it can involve many different sitting and energetic practices, to standing meditation, to movement meditation through chigung or tai chi or yoga practices, all of these could be what I would call different sources for developing a ritual practice. And a ritual practice is kind of like the core of any meditation practice, and it's that time when you set a little bit of time aside every day, and maybe it's twenty minutes, it's maybe it's an hour or whatever that is for you, and you do your meditation, and it's meant to be a time where you turn off all the screens, you turn off all the audios, and you can just turn your focus inward.

12:14 You know, one of the things where I see a lot of people getting distracted these days is you know, there's a million videos out there on YouTube, and you know all these different audio programs and apps that you can get that teach you meditation. And while all of those can be a good source in a way to learn specific practices, and some of them a lot more than others, but where people get I think misguided, is that they substitute their ritual time every day to listen to an audio or watch a video and they use that thinking that that's their meditation time, when really that hinders their progress, because you know, the meditative arts are often referred to as the internal arts, and they're called that for a reason. The internal arts means it's a time that we can turn our focus inward and listen to our thoughts, listen to our physiology and our body and how things are moving. And if we're focusing on an audio program or looking at a video, we're really missing out on a lot of that awareness and sensitivity.

13:25 So for that ritual time, it's best to not have anything around and really just kind of focus on that. Then we have active practices, which are a lot more into that kind of mindfulness category that allow you to integrate these practices into everything you do, because the meditative arts is meant to be a way of life and a lot less of a hobby that we do once in a while, and so with these active practices, they're great because you can do them every hour, every ninety minutes. You can do them when you're standing in line at the grocery store, when you're walking down the street, and they could be as simple as doing some easy breathing exercises or maybe some spinal rotations or simple movement practice, or going through some philosophical sayings. All of these things we can do to integrate into our day. So now we're starting to live the practice. And when we do this, we kind of start getting to the point where we're regulating without regulating, and that's where we really try to get to the heart of what meditation is a meditation lifestyle is all about. And then lastly, we have like the philosophical style of practices, and these can be integrated in the active and the ritual based practices. And so when you can combine these three different pillars and create an evolving life practice around the meditative arts, you can really get a lot of benefits from it.

14:57 Well, and you know the latest book that you've written, and right now it's free on your It's a free download, isn't it on your website? Yeah? And also too, if you want a physical copy, you could go to the Yieldingwarrior dot com forward slash Book and we'll send you out a free physical copy if you just pay for shipping and handling. Great. So why why the name? Why the name? And you know I find that as we all you know, are trying to write books or we know people that are. You know, the title sometimes becomes the most difficult thing to figure out. And yet here's your title, the Yielding Warrior that that's almost contradicts itself in some ways. So I'd love for you to share with the audience what's it about number one and why that title.

15:49 So Yielding is a concept in the meditative and martial arts that's been around for generations, and it's something that I've always been really passionate about, and I love the concept in the idea, which is what inspired me to write that book. And in the book, I've broken down yielding into three kind of pillars of practice. You have physical yielding, mental yielding, and emotional yielding. Physical yielding is the easiest one to understand. It's the idea that I push you, you push me. Whoever's the bigger, stronger person with the most leverage eventually is going to push the other person over, but with yielding. Instead of us trying to see who the bigger meat heead is. When you push me, I get out of the way of that force, and now I can respond with less effort, so I'm not trying to butt heads with you and see if I'm bigger and stronger than you. Now, in athletics, it's obvious how this is beneficial, because you can't choose who he's coming up against as an opponent, and oftentimes that person's going to be bigger and stronger than you. So learning how to yield and redirect their force so you don't have to butt heads with them can help you win and get the advantage on people that are bigger and stronger than you. Now, this is a life's skill and takes many years to master the skill. However, right from the beginning, when you first start doing a meditation practice, you start seeing all these things more clearly inside your body.

17:22 And in order to be good at physical yielding, you have to be well rooted. The lower part of your body needs to be strong and flexible so you can change your central equilibrium without getting tight. The body has to be relaxed, the breath has to be calm, and the mind has to be present. Now, again, this can be very complicated, but when you start seeing these things inside yourself, you also start seeing these things more clearly in other people. And this is where it really starts to get interesting and where we start to move into what I call mental yielding. So say, for example, you and I are having a conversation, I say something that unsettles you, and I pick up on it right from that first sign of imbalance. 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, and pretty soon I'm so far off track you want to slap me upside the head. And so learning how to use yielding in all of your interactions is an extremely powerful tool in that one we're being more considerate, which is something we should all do anyway. And two it allows us to be strategic and guide conversations to a positive outcome with the least amount of resistance. And this is great in relationships and business and sales and negotiations, and there's so many different ways that you can apply this.

18:48 And then the last pillar we have is emotional yielding. And emotional yielding is very much like mental yielding, but with your own interpersonal conflicts. 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 adapting a meditation practice into our life and increasing that awareness and being able to be more present, we're often able to step back and analyze the scenario and make more educated choices that save us a lot of heartache on the other side.

19:29 And you know, I've been explaining this idea of yielding now for many years here running the academy here for thirty years, and one of the most common things I'll hear people say is, ah, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, I use yielding all the time. And while I would agree, I think everybody does some degree of yielding all the time, whether they recognize it or not. It's kind of like if you or I were to walk into a crime scene with a detective who's been on the job for thirty years, I guarantee you that person would see things about the series of events and the timeline that I know at least I would have no clue of. And the meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people that I believe you will never have any clue of without adopting some kind of a meditation practice into your life.

20:19 Well, And you know, It's interesting as you talk about yielding and that personal yielding, you know, and I like how you kind of talked about the two things. As you're in a conversation with me, let's say, and you're going into a direction that you are obviously aware that is starting to affect me, perhaps in a negative way, if I'm understanding it correctly, You're you're taking the responsibility of yielding to change that just a little bit so that I'm not being triggered type of thing. The other thing that I think is fascinating is me my responsibility. So if you're saying something that is starting to trigger or you know, whatever that is, if I can get to the point where I just accept your communication without any emotion, without any triggering, all of a sudden, I'm no longer being affected by the external world. And isn't that something that we're seeing right now, particularly in the US, there is such anger, there is such conflict going on, And is that kind of what you're talking about, the fact that here here's so many people rather than learning to yield, than to accept without trigger an emotion or able just to say, oh, I understand that's your point of view and not get angry about it.

21:50 Yeah, you know, I think that if everybody meditated a little bit every day, the world would be a better place, you know, and people would have that sensitivity and that awareness and that presence state of mind to be able to really listen. You know, it's all so common where people are in a conversation and you know there's somebody saying something to you and you're just thinking about all the things you want to say, not even really listening to that person. And being able to be truly present allows you to be more strategic in your responses, so you can guide things to a positive outcome for both people, rather than having that resistance and just trying to force your opinion on somebody, because even if you're right and you do that, you're going to leave them feeling like, oh man, that guy was such a jerk. He just kind of like forced his way on me. And you know, whereas if we could learn how to be a little bit more in tune and a little bit more strategic on how we present things, we can leave everybody feeling better.

22:52 You know. One of my old meditation teachers, he always used to say, with yielding, oftentimes you can make your enemies your friends, but without yielding, many times you make your friends your enemies. And it's so true, and that having that awareness and that sensitivity, I think is really valuable and as you said, needed in today's society because there is so much negative polls this way and that way, and people not seeing eye to eye, and I think if people could just listen a little bit better and realize that there's so many commonalities that we can find a path of least resistance and help everybody get a lot more of what they want with a lot less struggle.

23:35 Well, and you know, one of the things you mentioned earlier on and it fascinates me about meditation and how that literally can affect our help. And you know, as I'm sure you have seen, and certainly as I have seen and read and watched and so forth, how people literally through meditation are able to heal some very specialefic type of illnesses and challenges that they experience physically in their body. What's been your experience with that and any stories that you can share where you've actually seen someone who has gone through this meditative program that you have and where they've literally been able to experience that healing in their body.

24:22 Yes, you know, many stories, you know, through the years. You know, I've been teaching now for thirty years, and that's one of the things that is making me so passionate about the practice, and that, you know, a lot of what we do is affected by our thoughts, and when we can control our thoughts and lead things and not get distracted, you know, and be down that negative path. You know, I read somewhere that the average person thinks anywhere between seventy to ninety thousand thoughts a day. Eighty five percent of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had the day before, and eighty to ninety percent of those thoughts every day are tending on the negative side.

25:06 And so if we're having this constant conflict of our emotions and our mental struggle, and we're thinking all of these negative energies, it's really hard to let that positivity comes out and that you know, that's expressed in our cells and our body, that's expressed in how we present ourselves and how we hold our posture. And you know, in any meditation practice, we have what we call the five regulations, and learning how to build these foundations in these five regulations helps us with you know, numerous different kinds of healing through you know, whatever path that you're following with the practice, and they are regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. Briefly, I'll kind of touch base on what those are. So when we talk about regulating the body, it's basically your skeletal alignment and your muscular tension and learning how to regulate that in all of your activities every day. And you know, you can think about maybe a time when you're sitting down at your computer and you've been there three or four hours, maybe your shoulders around at forward and you're feeling a little bit lethargic, maybe your next getting stiff and just feeling very depleted.

26:26 And then another time when most important person in your world walks in the room and your body perks up and you feel like you're on top of the world. Well, we're in control of these two different energies one hundred percent of the time, every day, all day, and it's your choice on how you choose to present yourself. And so when we start learning how to regulate our movement and our activity and our physical output, we can adjust our energy physically, mentally, and emotionally. In everything we do, then we have regulating the breath. Regulating the breath is a very deep practice and something that if you take on the meditative arts, you'll be studying for the rest of your life. Oftentimes, Cheegung is referred to as the science of the breath because there's literally hundreds of different breeding strategies, and because of this, we kind of broadly categorize them into the Yend methods and Young methods. Yen methods are often deeper, more holistic style of meditations. An example of a Yen breath would be if you ever listen to somebody's sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer in hell and a shorter exhale, and this is the body's natural way of bringing your conscious mind into your subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming. And so if we want to emulate this style of energy and meditation, we can do longer

27:59 in in hell, maybe soft retentions at the end of the in hell, and this helps bring that energy inward, which is great for stress reduction, for dealing with anxiety, panic attacks, for boosting your creativity. I mean there's a lot of reasons why we would do this. Then we have the young side of the practice, which is more aggressive. It's like if you've ever had to push your car, you pick up something heavy, your natural instinct is to make tension in the breath, make it audible exhale, and that helps generate and expand the energy. And another way you could kind of think about this, and something that we do all the time is if you ever listen to somebody cry or they start feeling a little bit depressed, they'll naturally they'll inhale longer than the exhale, which brings that energy inward, which makes you get cool. And if you do this for a long time and you get fairly depressed, it can make you sick. Then on the flip side of that, we have the young side of the breath. If we're laughing aha, we're doing more exhale.

29:02 We're extending that energy outward and it makes us get warm and we start to sweat if we laugh a lot. And so you know, in Chinese philosophy they call this balancing the conon lee and it's the idea of using the breath as a strategy to control our energetic states. You know, everybody goes through the day with emotional ups and downs. Some people are like a roller coaster, others may be a little bit more balanced. But when you start learning how to use the breath as a strategy, and you see yourself starting to get excited, we can use the breath to bring you back down. And when you see yourself starting to feel depleted, we can use the young breath to help bring you back up. And so having this as a tool and our toolbox can really help keep our physical, mental, and emotional states a little bit more settled throughout the day. The next regulation is regulating the mind. Again, regulating the mind is another one of those things that is a lifelong practice. And you know, one of the most common things I'll hear people say in regards to meditation is that I tried meditation, but it just didn't work for me. I couldn't quiet my mind. And you know, somewhere along the way, people got this misconception that in order to be successful with meditation, you have to let all your thoughts go away and you can't think about anything. And I don't know why, but because of this, you feel like you're failing. When

30:35 that's part of the practice. You know, I've traveled around the world many times, training with a lot of great meditation teachers, and I have never once met anybody who doesn't get distracted. You know, we're human. Everybody gets distracted. And so the idea when we're meditating is that maybe you're sitting for twenty minutes and you recognize the imbalance or the distraction and you bring yourself back to center. If you do that fifty times during your session, and you do that all day, every week, every month, you start to develop this awareness of these imbalances and this ability to bring yourself back to a balanced state under almost any kind of situation. Now, if somebody says something to throw you off your game, or you have a stressful day at work or whatever it is, you have the tools to help find that balance. You know. There's this story that I really like about these two older monks and they're walking down a dirt road after a big rainstorm. There's mud and puddles everywhere, and they come up to this huge puddle and on the other side of the puddles this beautiful little girl standing there in a white dress, and she's crying, and the older monky yells across the puddle and says, is everything okay? Can we help you? And she says, I need to be somewhere, but if I walk across this puddle, I'm going to get my dress us all dirty. So he rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle and picks her up, puts her on his back, takes her

32:06 to the other side, sets her down, and she's off on our way. Well, him and the younger monk are walking a couple miles down the road, and finally the younger monk is just furious and he says, you know, we're not supposed to touch girls, but yet you did back there at the puddle. And the older monk says, you're still thinking about that girl I left her back there at the puddle, you know. And how many times in life do we have to get two miles down the muddy road before we choose to let things go. And so this ability to recognize these imbalances before it gets too far down the road is a real valuable tool in this practice and takes a lot of that negativity that we struggle with on our minds all the time out of the picture. And helps us stay more positive and focused. Then we have regulating the energy. Regulating the energy is an extremely deep topic and something that we could talk about for hours, but briefly, i'll kind of explain what that is. And once you have got to a competent level of regulating the body, the breath, and the mind, you have the tools to regulate the energetic circulation and the body, and we can circulate this energy for different outcomes, bringing the energy inward, extending it outward.

33:26 There's lots of different things that we'll do with this and some of the more advanced practition practices that we'll do with meditation. Lastly, we have regulating the spirit. And regulating the spirit is a very profound idea, something that monks and meditation masters will spend their entire life working towards that stage of enlightenment. But these basic five pillars are the fundamental basics of any meditation practice that you will ever do. And by integrating these and understanding these, you can see that it can affect every area of your life and you can really get a lot of benefits from it.

34:06 Let's talk about the energy for just a moment, and one of the questions I have for you when I meditate, and I do every day. So my meditation practice is walking meditation, and I try to walk, you know, for an hour five you know, kilometers each morning and as I'm listening, and I actually like to listen to some very specific meditative music with different frequencies and energies. And then what I've also found, and I want your opinion on this based on your experience, is that you know, there's one thing to try to just as you say, is a struggle to get all those thoughts out of your mind. But also what I've found is there's a way to actually verbally talk about affirmations of what you're trying to accomplish in that meditative practice. And I found that as I do that, it's just amazing. Number One, the time goes by so fast, it's like I just started, an hour's gone by. But what about affirmations? What are your thoughts about affirmations? And number one, but number two, where's that energy coming from? And how do people understand that literally there is a universal energy out there that if we can tap into it and allow it, as you say, to literally engulf our body, that it literally

35:39 has the ability to heal. Yeah, So in Chiegung we talk about kind of the three main energies. We have the universal energy that you know, the Sun and the moon and the energetic pole of the stars and the solar system. And then we have the Earth energy, you know, the weather. We have the the shifting of the tides and the and the ocean, the movement of the wind, everything that's coming around. And then we have the human or the animal animal energy. And when you're doing a practice and you're really getting into a meditative journey, you start to become more sensitive of that and be aware of those other energies and it's almost like you can you can sense them or feel them, or be more in tune and you know there's something you know you ever like in the And this happens in areas where there's tsunamis or big things that come up similar to that, where the animals will know it two or three hours before it gets there and they'll all go run up the mountain and hide or whatever, and they'll sense these things. And they have that sensitivity because I think they're more connected to that Earth and you universal energy than we are. And by doing meditation, we start to tap into that and expand that awareness with with the practice. And I think when

37:13 we become more in tune with that and we can settle down and be present, you know, And that's what I said, you know, when you're when you're doing those practices, you know, the meditative arts is often referred to as the internal arts, is we want to really bring that in and be able to be sensitive to what we feel around us. But at the same time, it's almost as if we're in a dance with that energy and we're trying to connect to it with the energy and our body. And when we can find that dance and we can find that connection and be at peace, we can really see some amazing things. You know, you talk about when you practice, sometimes it feels like an hour goes by and it's you know, it's really quick. You know, it does that a lot when you're in those deeper states of meditation, and you kind of feel that time sometimes goes by very quick because we're so present and in the moment. And that's one of the you know, the really cool things about the practice.

38:20 And then as I talk about the affirmations, and I know that there's you know, that's a contradictory type of thing. Some people say, yeah, you shouldn't be doing that. Others talk about how valuable that can be because we're literally then taking responsibility for our lives, for our you know, everything that's going on, for our healing, for our bodies and so forth. Do you find that there are times that and and when we talk about mindfulness, there there there is that mindfulness. So it all of a sudden our focus is on those positive things that we're wanting to accomplish in our lives or in health or whatever that happens to be. And those verbal affirmations that, in my case I speak them out loud, actually make a difference and literally start guiding us towards that path. What are your thoughts on that?

39:16 Yeah, you know, I would agree. I use affirmations myself. I think they're very valuable. I think the kind of intent that you put behind them makes a big difference. You know, if you're in a deep state of contemplation and you've been meditating and you're in that peaceful state where you're really connected and you start thinking about these things, I think they have a lot more meaning than when you're driving in your car and going through traffic and downtown. Now, I still think there's probably some benefit to that, because you're trying to put those thoughts a positive thoughts, whether you're speaking them out loud or going through them in your mind. And you know, a lot of I've had a few teachers of the past who have had me work on memorize different sayings and different thoughts to help kind of train and program my mind to think certain ways.

40:16 And one of the practices that I did for twelve years was I memorized the Dowdy Ching, which is eighty one sayings of a pretty well known book on virtue and philosophy. And I would go through those eighty one sayings in my head every single day, and I think I learned a ton from that practice. And you know, I think that there's there's a lot of benefit to be said from from those kinds of practices. And overall, when when we when we look at this, what what other benefits have you observed with your with your clients beyond just the pain management at the health management I know you talk a little bit about sleeping.

41:06 What have you found and how does someone who's struggling with you know, getting good sleep at night? How does this help them to be able to do that, because I know there's a lot of people out there that just never get the sleep they need. Yeah, you know, there's been hundreds of stories of how people have benefited through through these practices, you know. I think one of the most important ones is seeing their spirit change. You know. If somebody has a negative self talk or a negative view of themselves and they take on this practice and see the world through a different lens, that is pretty special, you know, and I think a lot of healing comes from that, just by being able to have that kind of positive view, you know. And when anybody's thinking about you know, you ask about sleep. I think that part of it comes from being able to have a consistent practice where we learn to control our thoughts and we learn to recognize these imbalances, because you know, most of the time, when you're laying down and you're having trouble sleeping, your mind is racing and you're thinking about this problem or this thing you have to do, or one thing's leading to another, and it's just hard to quiet the mind. Well, by integrating meditation into your life, you start to build that resiliency and that control to be able to take

42:39 those distractions from taking you off on an hour track down to ten seconds. You know, you recognize the imbalance, you know, I always tell people, you know, think about you're standing up on the mountain side and you drop a pebble. It's easy to bend over and pick up the pedbal but if it starts rolling down the hill and creates the landslide, it's a lot harder to stop the landslide. So being able to recognize these and balances when they first happen is the key. And you know, no matter why you're drawn to the practice with meditation, the most important thing is, you know, I always tell new people there's three things that you really have to consider and spend some time thinking about in order to be successful. And you know that's for me as a teacher, my biggest struggle has been to try to get new students to see the value in investing the time in this practice so it can change their life. Because usually when people come to the practice, they're very undisciplined. They don't thinking about doing something every day. That's like crazy for most people. You know, getting them to do it once a week is difficult sometimes, and so I always have them do three things And the first thing is why do you want to take on this practice? What is important to you? Do you want to stay healthy and to your later years and watch your grandkids grow up and stay mobile and flexible and healthy. Do you want to deal with stress disorders and learn how to

44:09 overcome anxiety and panic attacks? Do you want to improve your performance on the field? I mean, what is it that really gets you going and motivates you? Because we're all going to face it where I don't know if it's tomorrow, next week, or next month, where that alarms going to go off and you're going to be, ah, I'll hit this snooze button. I'll just meditate tomorrow. And if you have a strong reason to do this practice, now it's like the alarm's off. I get to get up and do my practice. So instead of looking at it like a chore, now you look at it as something that you get to do because you get all these amazing benefits from it. And when you can shape make that mindset shift, that's where you really start seeing all the benefits. And that comes through consistency. You know, you have to have that consistent effort, and through consistency we develop that discipline that integrity, that perseverance, and these qualities that we get from this practice feed over into every area of our lives, our relationships, our hobby or work, whatever it is. And then lastly, and this is probably one of the more important ones, is you want to find a guide because meditation, you know, I've been studying for thirty six years and I'm still just a student learning all the time. It's a very deep practice, and there's so many videos and apps out there that you could get distracted and turning your wills on and listening to these things or watching these things for years. And

45:42 I've literally seen it happen where I've had students come into the academy that have been self taught and they've been doing this for fifteen twenty years, and they'll see somebody who's been guided and having a focused approach to their practice and only been here a year and very very very much further along in their game. And so, you know, life is short, your time is valuable. Find somebody to help point you in the right direction, and you can really accomplish a lot a short amount of time. And I guarantee you if you take on the practice, it'll be one of the best things you've ever done. Oh, and that's you know. I love that message, and I think that's a message for the audience. And I'm actually going to use that as a short reel because I love what you say there. So we're out of time, which which just amazes me again. You know you talk about meditation and time goes byfastly. Well, we've been meditating for forty five minutes here, and I love it so real quickly. How does the audience find you and how do they find your book and how are they able to reach out to you?

46:49 Yeah, if you just go to the Yieldingwarrior dot com, you can get access to my online program, my teacher training program, and if you'd like to order a free copy of my physical copy of my book, you could go to the Yieldingwarrior dot com forward slash Book and just pay for shipping and handling and get a copy of that. Oh that's great, Jeff. This has been fascinating and so insightful. I love it that you've been able over the years to develop this philosophy and share it with others, and I think that that's probably made such a difference in people's lives. So thank you so much. I acknowledge what you're doing well.

47:32 Thank you for having me well. I appreciate it, and folks, thanks for listening. Go to the website. I guarantee you those insights that you'll get from the book will be incredible in your life and will make a difference. So this is doctor Doug saying, I'm a stay