Mindfulness Mode

Trevor Blake is a serial entrepreneur and New York Times bestseller, who over the last ten years has gone from starting his first business with just a few hundred dollars to creating and successfully selling & exiting three separate companies for over $600 million. He has done all without hiring a single employee and by working only 5 hours a day, giving him time to focus on what he loves: writing and sharing tips for a mindful, balanced lifestyle.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.trevorgblake.com

Most Influential Person

• My wife, without a doubt. She was clairvoyant and clairaudient and so I was kind of a child at her knees. I learned from her the ability to set the ego aside.

Effect on Emotions

• I've met a lot of people who say that I don't get excited, I don't get fearful, I don't get upset. I'm very emotionally level.
• And that's also the emotion of intuition, it's this very calm feeling. if you get all excited, you're not at the right energy level. If you get all depressed, you're not at the right level.
• So when you feel very calm, you have a sense of self-confidence that I think is the right frequency. So for me it's all about feeling the frequency.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Mindful breathing is essential and I've studied it a lot. It depends on what I'm doing and what I'm hoping to achieve. I'll change my breathing technique for that.
• I teach taking long, six-second inhalations and holding like the death breath and then letting go only six times because it's very, very powerful.
• When I'm doing one of my other techniques, I use the shamanic dancing breathing technique, which is two quick inhalations through the nose and out through the mouth. But when I'm walking, I'm very specific that it's all inhalation through the nose and out of the nose. It's very important to do that.
• Most people breathe higher their chest and out of their mouth. That's not a way to set the ego aside; the ego is in full place here.
• I've learned over the years to be aware of my situation and to adapt my breathing to the situation. I observed that my wife was just naturally [breathing], because being clairvoyant, clairaudient, you could see the rhythm of her body change, depending on what mode she was in. And so I kind of learned by watching.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life By Trevor G. Blake
• App: Headspace

Bullying Story

• When I was a kid, I grew up in Liverpool, and we were poor. My father was unemployed and unemployable; not a bad man, he was just different. And my mother was dying of cancer, and we got evicted from the apartment we were living in and we ended up escaping from the creditors and living in a rural area, where English was not popular.
• I was English in a place where the Welsh wanted the English out. As a kid I would see this stuff on TV, this political movement, burning down houses owned by English people.
• So I was getting bullied and harassed a bit and so what I did was, I got out of their way. I used to fight because I came from Liverpool with kind of a feisty culture. But I didn't do very well with that. So in the end, I just got out of the way. And the way I did that was to hide in the town library because they were too dumb to go in there.

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• Thrive In Spite of Life’s Challenges; Lee Baucom
• How Music Saved My Life; Riopy
• Using Habits To Gamify Your Life; Will Moore

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Jessie Asya Kanzer was born in the Soviet Union. At the age of eight, she emigrated with her family to Brooklyn, New York. She is a writer, former reporter and actress. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, The Independent, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and more. After extensive study of the Tao Te Ching, Jessie experienced a shift in mindset that allowed her to fully trust her inner voice and to create a satisfying life. She also attributes Taoist philosophy to helping her stay centered as a parent, navigate challenges, and hold space for others.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.jessiekanzer.com
• Blog: Jessie Kanzer

Most Influential Person

• Wayne Dyer, took these very complex things like the Tao Te Ching and showed us how to apply them in our lives.

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness taught me that there's more than one of me. There's the one that feels the emotions that react and the observer part of myself. Because I'm able to observe myself and watch myself, I've become much less reactive.
• That doesn't mean I judge my emotion, or I hate my emotion or anything like that. But I'm able to come back to the center much quicker because I see it. I feel it. I work through it if I need to work through it, but I don't react to it anymore. I mean, I should say most of the time.

Thoughts on Breathing

• I love breathwork. I don't do it daily; sometimes I do breathwork instead of meditation. I am amazed at how breathing in certain ways can help you enter almost a different dimension. That is why for me, breathing really gets me out of my monkey mind.

Suggested Resources

• Book:Don't Just Sit There, DO NOTHING: Healing, Chilling, and Living with the Tao Te Ching
• Book: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
• App: Calm

Bullying Story

• I think if I'd had mindfulness training when I was a child when I was bullied, it would have made a huge difference for me. I was not very welcomed when I came to America as a kid, because I came here in 1989 and that was right on the heels of the Cold War.
• By the way, I'm not even Russian. I'm a Jew from Latvia. The Soviet Union divided people very weirdly, like on their passports. On my passport, it just used to say, Jew. That sounds crazy to people when I say that, but that's what it said. And then my family; half of them from Latvia, half from Ukraine.
• But our language was Russian because often these geopolitical shifts are affected, individual people. And I was one of those people.  Therefore, I came from this war-torn family that suffered a lot under Stalin under the Nazis, and finally made it to America, the land of the free, but unfortunately, mindfulness was not taught, at least not the way it is now.
• A lot of kids were pretty mean when they heard my Russian accent.
• First, the Russian language, because they had watched movies like for instance, Rocky Five, these movies where the Russians were always the evil people.
• So there was a lot of making fun of, and you know, I remember I'd be stopped, in the middle of the stairway,  they would laugh and say, Where Are you Russian, Russian.
• As a result, all of these things I internalized because I was a very sensitive child.
• Bullying did not exist in the Soviet Union.
• The socialistic ideas that formed this country, a lot of them did not work clearly. But this kind of unity, versus individualism in the classroom, made everyone be really nice to each other.

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• • Ride The Waves of Life With Mop; Jaimal Yogis

  • How Thoughts Become Things; Doug Vermeeren

  • The Key To Mental Toughness With Mani Vaya

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Thomas Campbell answers the question, “What Is Consciousness”. He is a physicist, lecturer, and author of the My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) trilogy. In the books, he discusses the origins of consciousness and brings together science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, as well as the normal and the paranormal. The writings are based on the simulation argument, which takes the position that reality is both virtual and subjective. He is here to answer the question,”What Is Consciousness?”.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.tomcampbell.info
• Website: www.my-big-toe.com
• Website: www.mbtevent.com
• Youtube: Tom Campbell
• Nonprofit Org: CUSAC : Tom Campbell's Center for the Unification of Science And Consciousness
• Book: My Big Toe: Book 3 of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics: Inner Workings by Tom Campbell

Thoughts on Breathing

• I don't really put any focus on the breathing at all, all that stuff just happens by itself. You know, when I was meditating, I didn't use the breathing type of meditation, I used the mantra type. But I don't say mantras anymore and I don't need to; I can be in a meditation state in an instant. It's the same with the breathing breath, just like a mantra is used. Because it fills your mind with something that's non-operable. By non-operable, I mean, it's nothing that you're going to think about, oh, I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out, you know, that just happens automatically, you don't have to think about it.
• The mantra is a word that doesn't mean anything in particular, you know, it's a word that has kind of a resonant ending, has a little vibration to it. But other than that, any sound will do as well as any other sound. I know, sometimes people sell magic sounds, or meditation monitors and stuff, but any sound will do just as well.
• You use that sound of the mantra to replace thoughts that come into your head. So the mantra kind of fills up your mind space and crowds the thought out. The same with the breathing; when you take your deep breath, you're aware of being in a relaxed state, and you focus on being in touch with everything.
• Eventually, you don't need to be focused on your breath or anything else. You just live in that state all the time. So I don't do any kind of breathing exercises or anything.

Thoughts About God

•  Interestingly enough, I was at a Unitarian Church, giving a program there. That church was just the venue, they had a less expensive room to rent than anybody else. And there were two theologians there that went along with that church.
• They were there while I was giving my talk and I asked them, I said, you two both have PhDs in theology, tell me, what are the attributes of God? Now, I said, I don't want dogma, I just want the general, what are the attributes of God. And this was a Unity Church, so they're into a little less dogma in that organization.
• So they spent a little bit of time in a conference talking to each other for about a minute or so and they came up with this list of attributes of God. And the reason I asked is, I compared that list to the attributes of the larger consciousness system. And I thought, I wonder how they're going to compare. And as it turned out, there was a one for one. Everything they had on their list was also an attribute of the larger consciousness system.
• [They said]  it's perfect, all-knowing, knows everything all the time. It's Supernatural. It's infinite. And well, my larger conscious system is not infinite. It's a natural system, not a supernatural system. Everything is a part of it. But it's not necessarily aware of everything all the time, it has to focus its attention on things. And it can be aware of a whole lot more than I can because it's got a lot bigger mind than I have.
• But it's also limited in that its number of bits is limited, it's finite. So it has to be efficient, in the way it does things. You can't just do things sloppily, if it's going to make a simulation, it's got to do that in an efficient way. It has constraints. It has a boundary, what's outside that boundary, have no idea. And we can't know because we're in it, we're conscious.
• We can't see an experience outside of what we are, you know? Yes, a lot of people are very religious, or at least they describe themselves as very religious. That also, like my Big TOE, they're not incompatible. I expected them to be incompatible because of my brush with religion had mostly been very dogmatic.
• But I found out that there are lots of people as individuals, they may belong to dogmatic religion, but they're not dogmatic at all. They've outgrown that. They don't have to go there, the details don't matter. Then they see the big picture. It's about being kind and caring about love. They have all the big picture stuff. And, you know, they're just not that interested in the details that aren't important to them. So in that sense, the larger consciousness system is the source of everything else.

Advice for People Who Love to Study

• I was always very slow at almost everything, because I just rejected memorization. Memorizing how to get the right answers to me did not make sense.
• When I got to graduate school, I was a little envious of the guys that could write the right answer down in a few minutes, because I couldn't do that.
• After talking with them, I found out that they were envious of me because I could solve the problems that they couldn't [solve]. [For] the problems that they hadn't learned a methodology to get the right answer, they were stuck. Yeah. And I wasn't stuck. But I was very slow, and they weren't. They were very fast.
• So it had its advantages and disadvantages. It has to make sense, has to be derived from the bottom up, otherwise it's just not even worth doing it. So if your son's like that, then I'd tell him to persevere and just keep doing it. Don't learn to ‘Plugin' any more than you have to to get a decent grade. And if it doesn't make sense, then you don't understand it yet.

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• The Science of Understanding You; Erin Claire Jones

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Be as young as you feel is my topic for today, Mindful Tribe. Part two of Tom Campbell's, ‘What Is Consciousness' will be published on Wednesday night, so in three days from now. I honestly believe that no matter what your actual age is, you can choose to feel young and there are a lot of different ways of doing that. Today I'm excited to share
some of the thoughts that I have on this topic. I am sending out some Mindfulness Mode mugs and T shirts to some of my listeners who responded with an email. Check out my Instagram, and my TikTok.

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5 Ways To Feel Young

Here are five ways you can feel young, no matter what your age might be. And the first one is something we talk about a lot on the show. Be as young as you feel by being in charge of your thoughts.

Be In Charge Of Your Thoughts

Notice your thoughts. Be aware of what your thoughts are, are they, you know, put down thoughts are they thoughts where you're, you're putting yourself down and thinking negatively about you and who you are and what you're doing. Notice your thoughts, and don't let your thoughts be your inner bully. Now, sometimes that happens, like it's normal, I think, I think it's human, to sometimes notice that you're may be saying something negative. But don't let your thoughts be your inner bully on a lasting basis. There are a lot of ways you can make sure that doesn't happen. You can use mantras. If you notice that you're sending some negative thoughts to yourself, just start saying a mantra over and over and over. And I do that a lot. And I find it very much helps me meditate. We've talked a lot about meditation, choose to meditate every morning and every night. I think it's just a beautiful addition to my life. Read uplifting material. Watch inspiring videos. Feed your brain with positivity. There's a lot of negativity you could be feeding your brain with, but do spend time feeding your brain with that which is positive. Choosing great thoughts can help you be as young as you feel.

Minimize Sugar

Sugar causes inflammation. It definitely does. We we know that scientists have told us this over and over and over and inflammation does not do good things in your body. inflammation causes joint pain. It makes arthritis way worse. It causes all kinds of other challenges. Minimize sugar in your life and you will feel better. It is not easy. It takes a little time. Drink a lot of water, fresh, beautiful water and minimize the sugar in your life.

Check out my episode where I interview Barry Friedman. He talked about being an advocate of living the sugar free lifestyle. I met him in San Diego, and was so inspired by him that I went right ahead and cut sugar out of my diet, and it made a huge difference. Barry was a professional juggler for a very long time. It was interesting talking to him way back on episode 91. The episode is called, Barry Friedman Explains How To Be Present and Mindful. So go to www.mindfulnessmode.com/091.

Another episode that we talked about feeding your brain was episode 284, Discover the better brain solution with Dr. Stephen Masley. Make a decision to minimize sugar in your diet and it will help you be as young as you feel.

Get Moving

As humans, for some reason, there's something going on our brains that sometimes tell us not to get moving. I run almost every day and I find that by making the commitment to be active every day, I feel younger and more energetic. A lot of our guests talk about how important it is to move. Make a commitment to yourself and stick to it, to move every day. Whether it's walking, or running, swimming, cycling, maybe it's martial arts, just move. I have a mini trampoline and that is so easy on the joints, to just bounce on that and just allow your body to just feel good as you bounce. Moving every day will help you be as young as you feel.

Breathe

Another topic you hear about constantly on mindfulness mode is the subject of breathing. It seems as though all my guests realize how very important breathing is. Breathing is something that can help you. We spend far too much of our time shallow breathing, and our bodies and especially our brains need oxygen, and we thrive on having ample oxygen. So do daily breathing exercises and just believe it, that breathing can change your life. Breathing is just a beautiful thing. So there are several episodes where we talk quite a bit about breathing like 511 Pause, breathe and smile to awaken your mindfulness. And that's by Gary Gach. And 49, Make a connection between becoming aware and breathing suggests Andrea Klunder Another person I met at an event in the United States number 109. Breathe in the universe to cope with mental illness. And that was Michael Weinberger in episode 109. So breathing and taking in lots of oxygen will help you to be as young as you feel.

Laugh

Laughter is one of the most underrated things you can do. Make sure you laugh every day, even if you're just laughing for the sake of laughing. Laughing causes me to just feel so good and I think that we don't laugh enough. I say that often. I think it's great if you can find something really truly funny to laugh at and you can have a really good belly laugh. But apparently scientists have come to realize that we don't actually have to have something super funny to laugh at. As long as you're laughing, it delivers the same benefits to you. And this is what I learned from Dr. Madan Cataria, and he is features in the episode that was called Laughing in the face of COVID-19. I interviewed him in April of 2020. He's the person who started Laughter Yoga. You can go online search up Laughter Yoga, and you can join a virtual class of Laughter Yoga, and just laugh and and feel good, and I highly recommend it. Another person I interviewed was Soren Russow, Booster Shot of Happiness is the name of the episode. He's a guy that loves to laugh and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Soren so you can check out that episode as well. And definitely do check out a laughter yoga group online in order to be as young as you feel.

So my top five tips to be as young as you feel, or maybe I should say begin to feel as young as you want are:

1/ be in charge of your thoughts 2/ minimize sugar 3/ get moving 4/ breathe 5/ laugh.

Take what we've learned today to reach new heights of calm focus and happiness. Stay in the mode.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Laughter Yoga: Daily Practices For Health and Happiness by Dr. Madan Kateria
• Book: Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman
• Book: Pause Breathe Smile: Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough by Gary Gach
• App: Insight Timer

Related Episodes

• How To Be Present And Mindful; Barry Friedman
• Discover the better brain solution with Dr. Stephen Masley

• Pause, breathe and smile to awaken your mindfulness; Gary Gach

• Make a connection between becoming aware and breathing; Andrea Klunder
• Breathe in the universe to cope with mental illness. And that was Michael Weinberger
• Laughing in the face of COVID-19,Madan Kataria
• Booster Shot of Happiness; Russell Soren

Thomas Campbell answers the question, “What Is Consciousness”. He is a physicist, lecturer, and author of the My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) trilogy. In the books, he discusses the origins of consciousness and brings together science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, as well as the normal and the paranormal. The writings are based on the simulation argument, which takes the position that reality is both virtual and subjective. He is here to answer the question,”What Is Consciousness?”.

Listen & Subscribe on:

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Contact Info

• Website: www.tomcampbell.info
• Book: My Big Toe: Book 3 of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics: Inner Workings by Tom Campbell

Mindfulness According to Tom Campbell

• First let's say mindfulness isn't a thing you do, it's a thing you become.
• Mindfulness, of course, is not a real precise term. So there's probably at least four or five, or six ways to look at it. And when you look at an each of those different ways, you'll get a little better idea of just what mindfulness is. Let me kind of state it and then restate it in multiple ways. Being mindful means that you have some discipline with your consciousness, and undisciplined consciousness is kind of zinging off on all sorts of thoughts and places and things.
• To be mindful requires you to have some discipline. So mindfulness takes a little work, it's not something that's just a trivial thing to do. It takes work for people to develop those skills. Mindfulness is about whatever it is you're doing, you're doing it purposefully, you're aware that you're doing it, and you're doing it, you know, for a reason. And you're aware of that reason.
• Which means it's the opposite of being on automatic, it's the opposite of being a zombie. It's the opposite of just kind of drifting through life, turning the crank that you always turn, and you're so habituated to that crank that you just never think about really much of anything. You just repeat every day, sort of like it was the last day; you get up, you go to work, you push buttons, you work your mouse at work, and you come home and you eat dinner, and you watch TV; it's that sort of thing. So that's not mindful, that's just letting your life run on automatic.
• Mindfulness is kind of the first step in getting to know who you are. It's getting to know your own consciousness. It will help you answer your own question, ‘What Is Consciousness'. And until you're mindful, you don't really know who you are. You make choices.

The Birth of Big Toe Theory

• The way I created it was I looked at all the facts that I knew about consciousness, and that was after about 35 years of studying consciousness. And I had two parallel careers. One was in consciousness research, and one was in physics. The conscious research I did at night, and physics I did in the daytime.
• So basically, after a long time, I thought I knew enough about consciousness to make a good consciousness model. So I took all the facts of consciousness and I took all the facts of the physical world, which I knew most of because I'm a physicist. And I came up with an idea theory, a model that would explain all of those facts on both sides, and explain everything we know now. Which means in the objective and the subjective world, as well as make projections about things that we don't know. So that's how I made it. And that's called a TOE; a theory of everything.
• Now, Einstein coined that word, ‘theory of everything', when he was trying to unite relativity and quantum physics because those two really have a foundational level, they don't really get along with each other too well. Each one has an assumption that the other one denies exists.
• So Einstein knew there was something bigger. There was had to be something bigger above them in the hierarchy of causality. Something above them that could explain both of them. And then they would be kind of both part of a bigger thing. So he worked on that for the last 20 years of his life and fails, he didn't come up with a with a TOE, Theory of Everything.
• Now, in my world, that TOE was just a objective TOE. That's all it was; just quantum physics and relativity, that's the objective world. But mine was about also the subjective world, because consciousness is subjective.
• So I didn't want to say that this was a TOE. That would be confusing, so I call it a big TOE. And then that's of course kind of amusing at the same time, but I figured all right, that's a good attention getter. You know, that might pull some people browsing the bookshelf on BIG TOE. What's that about? Particularly if you find it in the philosophy or physics sections of the shelf that might draw attention? So that's it all right, we'll go with that.
• But the point of it is not that I'm so proud of it, that it's my Big TOE. The point is that it's based on my experience. And if it's not your experience, it can't be your truth. You can't [dispute]  something that you know to be true, can't be based on somebody else's experience. You have to experience it yourself.
• So I wanted my readers to not believe what I said, but rather to go find out for themselves, because you have to know when we're talking about the internal world of consciousness, we're talking about that subjective state, you can't read about that.
• What other people feel, you've got to go do it, and get there on your own. So I specifically called it my Big TOE to let people know that you have to find your own Big TOE. This is mine based on my experience.
• And if you can use that as a model to help you find your own, well, good, use it as a model, use what parts of it work and throw the rest away. And that's the way you should approach it. So that's why I called it my Big TOE.

Bullying Story

• It goes back a long, long time ago. And it's pretty much the last time that I really got angry about something; got really out of control. I haven't done that since I was probably, maybe 13 or something like that.
• I was at a Boy Scout camp. I was there for several weeks. WhI was somebody to pick on. They would grab my stuff and throw it around, you know typical kids.
• Kids do that because they're very self-centered. And they don't have any appreciation for what they're doing to other people when they do that. In general, I was a pretty laid back kid and didn't get riled up very easily.
• But after the third or fourth or fifth round of that bullying and throwing my things and messing with we, like tearing all the sheets and stuff off the bed and throwing them outside. It was annoying and it just kept going on and on and on.
• I realized I was going to have three days of this if I didn't do something about it. I knew that going up in the chain and saying these people are giving me a problem probably wouldn't work and hardly ever works. So what I did was I got angry, and I knew that I had to stand up to them the best I could. So when that happened again, after I had gotten to the end of my rope, I just hauled off and started slugging this kid, knocked him down and hurt him. And after that, they all backed off.
• I didn't hurt him badly. I hurt probably his ego more than anything else. But because I was smaller than he was, he didn't see it coming. And I didn't let up until he was down. So the time that happened, I kind of came back to myself and the anger. It was all adrenaline at that point. And I saw that the others weren't going to jump in. They were backing off now. So they weren't really terribly mean, kids, they were just being bullies because they could.
• So it's not like they really wanted to beat me because they were they were thugs. They were just kids. So that was the one time that I got bullied and after fighting back, it stopped. So that was a good object lesson.
• For me, ‘turn the other cheek' is really good advice some of the time, but not all the time. Sometimes you get to a point where you have to push back. And it didn't matter. At that point I didn't care whether they beat me up or not. I had to vent and do whatever it is I could. But you know, now that I think about it, even if they had beat me up, they probably would have stopped doing what they were doing. Right? That's my one experience with bullying.

Most Influential Person

• One of the persons that that was a big influence on me would have been Bob Monroe. Bob was about the same age as my father, I guess. So he was kind of a father figure. And in that sense, he was an older guy, I was in my 20s. And he was in his 50s. Going to 60s. And he was a good role model. He seemed to be able to handle almost everything positively.
• I don't think I ever saw him get angry or get upset. So that was a good influence. But mostly, I'm not very easily influenced by anything or anybody, I don't have a lot of favorites or connections like that. I've always been like my sons. Both of my sons have enough self confidence for two or three people. And I think I was like that as well.
• So I didn't have a lot of books that I read, or people that I met or things that really changed me very much. Because my changes all had to come from inside myself. And they really weren't triggered so much by other people as they were triggered by my seeing that I needed to make the change.

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness changes everything. When I first started on this path, I had a lot of growing up to do. I was a young physicist in graduate school, in my middle to late 20s. And if you know any young physicists in graduate school in their 20s, you probably will know that they're kind of arrogant, they kind of feel like they know everything. That kind of goes with that profession, at least when you're young.
• Now, because you tend to be a little arrogant anyway, when you're young, because you're still kind of self-centered; I had to outgrow that. But it just slowly disappears.
• And I think this is the key, as you grow up; your picture gets bigger and bigger, your decision space gets bigger and bigger. The possibilities that you have, I could do this, or I could do that. I could change this way or that way. Whereas somebody that has no idea they could change at all, you know, doesn't have that in their decision space.
• So as that grows, and your picture gets bigger, then you're no longer such a big person in this bigger picture, you begin to realize that you're just a tiny little speck of something that's much bigger than you are. There's purpose to your being here.
• That helps get rid of most of that arrogance, that self centeredness. So I'd say the key things for me was my pictures kept getting bigger and bigger, my understanding kept getting bigger and bigger. And I realized that most of me being a smart young physicist, was totally irrelevant, didn't have any value. That wasn't a concept that carried value, that was a concept to carry negative value, not positive.

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• Creativity To Heal And Empower; Morgan Beard\
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Special Offer

Jennifer Heisz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Brain Health and Aging in Kinesiology at McMaster University and author of ‘Move the Body, Heal the Mind.’ She directs the NeuroFit lab at McMaster where research is done to study ways to promote mental and physical health, thus improving cognitive abilities. Jennifer is a triathlete and recent solo ironman finisher.

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Contact Info

• Website: https://jenniferheisz.com/
• Book: Move The Body, Heal The Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep by Jennifer Heisz phd

Most Influential Person

• Eckhart Tolle. I read a lot of his work. I listened to his audiobook while I was cycling. Oh, yeah. Just that that consistent message, the power of now, you know, being in the present moment. That's been that that was a really helpful message to me at the time when I had discovered him.

Effect on Emotions

• I would say that mindfulness helps me be less reactive to my emotions. So sure stressors still exist in my life, but I'm less reactive to them. And, and they their options rather than truce. And so it allows me to take a step back and decide how I want to react or not react.

Thoughts on Breathing

• I talked about attention to breath in the book(Move The Body, Heal The Mind), and throughout the book, because this is a really helpful way to incorporate mindfulness into movement.
• Research shows that when we pay attention to the breath, it really helps to soothe a brain region called the amygdala, which is our fear and threat detection center in the brain.
• Paying attention to our breath, our prefrontal cortex, which is the logic part of our brain can help soothe that anxious amygdala so that we don't feel as afraid or anxious.

About Meditation

• My book is called Move The Body, Heal The Mind, and is about exercise but exercise, in my opinion, is just one tool in the whole toolkit you can use to help support your mental health. And meditation is also another one, a very important one that I do every morning, I do a little bit of meditation, whether, depending on the time, I have five minutes, or 30 minutes, and just just reconnecting with, the center, reconnecting with a peace and calmness within me.
• That helps to reframe and refocus my mind for the day. So mindfulness has been such an important part of my life for a long time. And I think it's good direct brain training. It trains the brain, the thought patterns, so that you can have control over those thoughts.
• When we move our bodies in challenging ways, we do enter into the present moment more readily. And then there's a direct correlation we show in our research, between people who are more active and people who are more mindful. So they really do go hand in hand.

Suggested Resources

• Book: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine
• Book: Move The Body, Heal The Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep by Jennifer Heisz phD
• App: Breathe
• App: Muse

Bullying Story

• The kids in my school were just, you know, they were just cruel. They would just sing a song, you know, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. “Come on, Jen sing.”
• But I think I was always able to just let it slide. I think nowadays, maybe, you know, my own thoughts are my own bully.
• That's the bullying that I need to be most mindful of, is the sort of negative self-talk that that can creep in. Especially when I'm stressed and anxious.
• So for sure, I would say these days, the bullying is is self induced. I certainly benefit from really stepping back from the thoughts and taking a very careful look at the accuracy of the thoughts and then potentially just sending them on their way, letting them float away.

Related Episodes

• The Mindful Movement; Sara Raymond

• Mindful Movement In Addiction Treatment; Kendra Kirane

• Movement Makers Community Founder, Eiji Morishita

Special Offer

Kerri Bicskei uses mindfulness and meditation to optimize athletic performance in her ‘Ready Set Mindful’ coaching business where she trains top national and international professional athletes. Kerri has first-hand experience after enjoying a decade-long career as a professional volleyball player who developed skills to successfully manage sport-related stressors. She navigated multiple challenges, including health issues and surgeries that forced her to develop powerful strategies to enhance her athletic performance and supercharge her well-being.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.ReadySetMindful.com
• Podcast: www.ReadySetMindful.com/podcast

Most Influential Person

• Mike Socko, one of my mentors, a former volleyball coach of mine. He was someone who first introduced meditation to me and who got me into meditating. He's an amazing person.

Effect on Emotions

• I think when you have a mindfulness routine, [it can help] change how I respond to things like maybe I have a quick, quick fuse, and I get angry easily, or I'm really impatient.
• So I think having a mindfulness routine, a little bit of breath, work, some meditation, can work to recondition our neural pathways.
• We're so entrenched in some of these behaviors, and patterns that it takes a good chunk of time for our mindfulness practice to really seep in and start to rewire some of those pathways so that we can start to react in a different way.
• These mindful practices can help us have more space between our thoughts and our emotional reaction to certain things.
• So it really helps just slow down in order to optimize athletic performance.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathwork is this big umbrella. There's so many different different styles of breathwork that are that are underneath that umbrella. And that was something that was just so accessible to me from the beginning.
• I'd learn box breathing and how impactful that that was, and how quick it was to use. That's something that I like to do a lot with my clients.
• Inhale for four, pause for four, then exhale for four,  pause for four. Breathe in and out through your nose. It creates two minutes of stability for your nervous system.
• If you use that every day, start to build that in just two minutes in the morning, every single day, then you will notice your your reactions start to shift, your energy will will shift.
• Attention to breathing will help you optimize athletic performance.

Suggested Resources

• Book: The Untethered Soul by Michael A Singer
• App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

• In the holistic assessment that I do with clients, we see that there are little ‘T' traumas, big ‘T' traumas. The little ‘T' traumas, are like emotional trauma, sexual trauma, physical trauma. Those are easier for people to see if they've had any of those in their experience.
• The emotional trauma is one that I [see a lot], because partners, parents, coaches, the people in our lives that love us the most can unintentionally traumatize us with comments
• Just the one comment that came out of a fifth graders mouth so long ago and our body is still holding on to some of that trauma. That's why we respond in a certain way sometimes, because, we remember these isolated events of these emotional traumas that that happened to us.
• I love to start there to figure out what I'm going to be working with what's at play behind the scenes because emotional trauma, physical trauma, sexual trauma, that will come up in so many of your different interactions.

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• 435 Reclaim Your Health and Freedom With A Walking Life; Antonia Malchik
• 397 Essential Laws For Quantum Success With Christy Whitman
• 329 The Body Whisperer Will Give You Your Body Back; Erin Burch

Special Offer

St. Patrick's Day Mindfulness

Michael Unbroken is an entrepreneur, coach, podcast host, award-winning speaker, best-selling author, and advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma. Not so long ago, Michael Unbroken was down and out. One day made the decision to live a new life where he would treat himself with self-love and choose to be the hero of his own story. At his lowest, he was depressed, obese, a drunk, a drug-infused time bomb, a terrible partner, a poor communicator, selfish, and worst of all scared. He was terrified of what it would feel like to be happy and was trapped in a mindset of fear that he had created. His thoughts were irrational and irresponsible but something he was born into and too frightened to turn away from. Now Michael devotes his life to help trauma survivors get unstuck, learn to love themselves, and heal!

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Contact Info

• Website: www.ThinkUnbroken.com
• Podcast: Think Unbroken Podcast
• Book: Think Unbroken: Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma by Michael Anthony

Most Influential Person

• Mr.Bush , Senior year Business Teacher

Effect on Emotions

• Above all, if I feel anxious, angry, lustful, too happy to adulated, right, knowing that there's this push and pull when you come from this traumatic experience. I need to regulate for a moment, I'm not running from joy or happiness. I'm not running from anger or sadness.
• But it can spiral out of control on either side of the spectrum. And so sitting down, breathing, closing my eyes for three minutes, getting present again, if I have to do grabbing a journal or typing myself a note in my texts, like that helps so much. Because when you come from a place of dysregulation, being regulated is one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to your emotional capacity.

Thoughts on Breathing

• First, I didn't know that there was a way to breathe wrong. Right? I didn't know that diaphragmatic breathing, as opposed to chest breathing or stomach breathing or filling your lungs fully. I was having 5 time a day anxiety attacks all the time.
• At one point, my diaphragm was literally stuck from stress. I was going to massage therapists I was going to body workers, all this stuff. And no joke. It was not until I started forcing my body to take normal breaths. Did that go away? That is to say, breathing is everything like I sit down every day when I put my earbuds in I play like nature sounds or music or storm or whatever. I just breathe for like 10 minutes. That's how to be unbroken.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha By Tara Brach
• App: Calm

Bullying Story

• First, I am bullied as a kid. Second, my stepfather bullied me. Lastly, from my mother. In addition, the kids at school bullied me because I am the poorest kid in the school, my brothers and I had that experience too.
• Sometimes I would steal food to survive, I wet the bed, my hygiene was so bad as at times as a child because our water got turned off, our heat would get turned off, our electricity would get turned off.
• After that, we got evicted more times than I can even count. I stayed with over 30 different families as a kid. I understand bullying better than most people. Like one time this kid dragged me across this carpet until I had second degree burns on my back.
• That changed when I became six foot four, I promise you that. But I am super violent as a kid. As a result, I think that, because I always experienced bullying, I in turn bullied. And that was a love language of communication. Right? You see that happen all the time.
• To sum it up, navigating the subconscious and changing your thought patterns and your behavioral patterns around the past, it just carries so much weight. I just don't know how you do that without mindfulness. I don't know how to be unbroken and do that without getting your brain and your body reconnected and re associated.

Related Episodes

• Fear Traps and The Triggers That Keep You Stuck; Nancy Stella
• Making a Ruckus In Education; Daniel Bauer
• Feel Better in Five Minutes; Amanda Hainline

Special Offer

Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health is the theme of today's show and I have a guest with me who is passionate about the mountains and dedicated to helping others and has love of the sun. He's a speaker, author, explorer, and mountain climber and he has an intense passion for life. He also has the greatest laugh of anybody I know. He recently spoke at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival where he held the audience in the palm of his hands, according to one of the reviews. His talk was directly connected to the eighth person I had on the show way back in 2015; Brent Seal.

Contact Info

• Website: www.michaelschauch.com
• Book: A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya by Michael Schauch

Brent Seal – Mind, Mountains, Mental Health

Brent was a mental health educator and a close friend of today's guest. I'm excited to tell you that today's guest is Mike Schauch.

Bruce: Let's start by talking about how you and Brent Seal are connected through this podcast, Mindfulness Mode.

Brent Seal was one of my first guests on the show back in 2015; a mental health educator, an athlete and a mountain climber.

After Brent was featured on Mindfulness Mode, he recommended that Mike Schauch and Bruce connect so that Mike could possibly be a guest on Mindfulness Mode.

Mike Schauch: My story with Brent goes back about 15 years, actually. And he told me along the way, about his interview with you that he did. That was in the earlier stages of him getting into public speaking. He told me what a good time he had and said, Hey, you should contact Bruce, and you should be on this podcast. I thought, Oh, this is a perfect fit.

Mike Schauch: Brent, and I go back to when he was in university, and I was doing a leadership workshop at the university where he was a student. I was speaking in the auditorium to about 100 people and I remember during the first break, Brent came up to me, and he said, Mike, How do you become a public speaker? And I said, Well, you go out to the public, and you speak. (laughter)

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A Challenge

Mike Schauch: Brent said, I've got this challenge. I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I just said, so? I think that was the spark that fused our friendship. It began a connection that would go on for the next 15 years.

Mike Schauch: We have climbed many mountains together. I watched Brent overcome many mental barriers over the years and also become a very accomplished mountaineer and speaker. He spoke to larger audiences I ever spoke to in the subsequent years and  became an inspiration.

He became an inspiration, not only for the mental wellness community, but for others as well. It was a beautiful thing to see. Unfortunately, last September, Brent died on Mount Manaslu in the Himalaya, just below the summit at around 8000 meters. That news hit the community and his family very hard.

The Event

Mike Schauch: This event that you mentioned in the introduction, that was meant to be an honor. It honored Brent and what he stood for, and in a way to just continue this legacy that he started about inspiring people to tap into their mental wellness and into that language of the heart, to not limit themselves.

Mike Schauch: The message was to continue to take those steps. They don't have to be major leaps forward, but steps forward. And that was part of Brent's brilliance. 

Bruce: Tell us more about your speech at the Vancouver Mountain Film Festival.

Mike Schauch: One of the things I talked about up there was this concept of the Bardo. The Bardo is a Tibetan term. It translates as place of transition, or a transitionary state between between death and rebirth, between who we were and who we become.

We know that the Tibetans believe in reincarnation from lifetime to lifetime. But what they also believe is that we can experience many incarnations in one lifetime and the Bardo is the place.

Constantly Changing

The reason why we can experience those incarnations is because we're constantly changing. We're not the same person we were when we were born; we're not the same person we were 10 years ago, five years ago, or perhaps even last week. And the Bardo is that place where we can choose, you know, what part of me?

Do I want to let go? What part of me that no longer serves me that I can just let it be? And what part of me do I want to carry forward into who I become? And so this was something deeply linked to Brent because I saw Brent go through challenge after challenge after relapse after challenge and use his illness, not as a as a crutch, or some sort of a life sentence, but as a springboard from which he could create new life. 

Brent as Speaker

Brent was inspired by this idea of climbing the mountain and your mental wellness mountain. As a speaker, you could see him evolve over the years.

Brent got more and more comfortable sharing his story, and more comfortable on stage as well. He captivated the audience and could inspire them to move outside of their head and outside of their own belief system.

Brent would mention about embracing the suffering, embracing the struggle, and he explained, when when we do that, it actually gives us fuel to better deal with the future struggles and sufferings that we might encounter down the road. He would say that so often we attempt to suppress the suffering, the anger, the pain, and that's the exact opposite of what we need to do.

Tell Us A Brent Story

Over the years, we climbed all these big mountains and focused on our Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health. One of the most memorable days we ever had was not on some big mountain or a big epic day.

It was on this little winter hike up to a cabin. And to get to the cabin, you had to walk up all these switchbacks, back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, until you finally got there. We had a beautiful conversation up all the switchbacks, and then it was time to come down.

I was on my skis and Brent was in snowshoes. I would ski down a little bit, and then I'd wait for Brent to catch up on his snow shoes.

Then I'd ski down a little bit more and he'd catch up on the snowshoes. I thought there's got to be a better way to do this. In all the years Brent and I had been climbing together, not once had he ever brought a crazy carpet along, except for that day.

I said okay, we have this crazy carpet, do we have a little bit of short rope. For some reason Brent had packed a little bit of rope. I said, let's tie ourselves together by the waist and I just pointed my skis down and we got going and we started picking up speed.

I remember coming down these switchbacks and then coming up the bank. Brent would come down right behind me on the crazy carpet. He'd slide right up the bank almost flying right into the woods and the rope would catch him at the last second and whip him down the next switchback.

We were laughing so hard, like children. People hiking up the mountain could hear us before they could see us. I was  laughing my head off. They were likely thinking, what is wrong with this guy. Right behind me was this grown man on a crazy carpet.

Bruce: (Laughing) That paints a picture of the title of this episode, Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health.

The Goal Of Your Speech

• To celebrate and honor what Brent did, who Brent was, and how that connects to who we were in the mountains, which is about listening to that deep place within us.
• Teach people about that language of the heart. And I think that's innately who we are. Finding that place of stillness again, as we look at what's happening in the world right now.
• It was about connecting with that deep place within us. The more we can connect with that, the more we can kind of act that out. That's going to send more constructive behaviors, choices, vibrations into the world. That's going to actually help us out of this state that we're in right now. Especially as we come out of COVID and think about self isolation and what that did to us, psychologically.
• The best way to find meaning and maintain my own sanity through all of this is to connect with that deep place again.
• It doesn't make sense to get wrapped up in a storm that's not constructive. What's going to help us is connecting with that place of joy, that place of loving kindness, and compassion. That makes us feel good as a human being, from our soul. 

A Time of Meditation

Bruce: During the speech, you had a time of mediation, to reach a spirit of joy. Can you tell us about that?

Mike Schauch: That's really the crux of the whole thing. It was about connecting again, back to who we innately are. Back to that story about laughing with Brent, when we were coming down we were just experiencing that total moment of joy. I mean, that's really what life is about, you know, so we can open ourselves to those moments. It reinvigorates us from the deepest level we can imagine and allows us to connect again with that language of the heart that I think is very much needed today. That takes us back to the mind, mountains, and mental health.

What brings joy to your life?

 The two things that sprang to mind are those two little girls in the mountains, Karma and Pemba.  They bring true joy to my life. 

Humor In Your Life

Laughing and humor is just as natural as that. It's not all the time. If you think about what got us here; there's a Tibetan saying, I heard some time ago: ‘if you could stack the bones of our ancestors, they would be higher than Mount Everest.'

Think about how many people live their lives in a way that allowed us to be here and even you and me having this conversation right now and just the opportunities that we have in front of us?I

t took 1000s, even 10s of 1000s of lives and over many, many years, right? And think about what they struggled with and what actions they took and the courage that they had and all of that. So, if you think about it that way, How can we not be joyful? By being here? Focusing on your Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health.

A Gift From Mike

Because you listened to the Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health episode, I'd love to give away two copies of my book, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya. Again, it's a story of love and joy and human connection, deep human connection across cultures and continents. This is something that can be very helpful today.

Just send me an email: “Bruce@mindfulnessmode.com and put “karma” in the subject line, and we'll get that book out to you. Just reach out and the book is yours for two lucky listeners.

A Poem Written By Mike Schauch

Stillness, stillness.

It is the beginning and the end of all things.

Like the pool of water returned to its natural state,

or the tiny droplet taking rests on a delicate leaf.

It is the eye of the deer.

A dark and endless orb as deep as the universe

filled with a billion stars

is the Great Owl extending from branch and trunk

seeing from behind its yellow eyes.

Hearing what cannot be heard.

Heavenly clouds basking before the Golden Sun,

a great snowy mountain, still as stone,

rays of morning light dipping through the tree tops.

It speaks the language of the Earth,

a language that has been shaped and carved

and created over 100 million years.

It is the language of the heart.

It is where our souls come alive.

It is what we call home.

And so as long as I draw a breath,

I will do my best to move toward that stillness,

to be that stillness.

For that is where I find myself.

That is where we find each other again.

Reminder:

Just a reminder of the free book offer. Listen to Mind, Mountains, and Mental Health episode. The book is by Mike Schauch. It's called, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya. And I can tell you this book was a pleasure to read, it was a heartwarming adventure. The first two listeners to email me will win a free hard copy of the book. Send the email right now, send it to me bruce@mindfulnessmode.com with karma in the subject line. Thanks for listening, mindful tribe. take what we've learned today to reach new heights of calm focus and happiness.

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• 008 Brent Seal: From Aspiring Hockey Player to Global Mental Health Educator
• Finding Karma In The Heart Of The Himalaya; Michael Schauch
• Transform Your Life and Impact the World; Marie Diamond