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Rane: Hello. My name is Rane and this is the Flow Artists podcast. Together with my co host Jo Stewart, we speak with extraordinary movers, thinkers and teachers about how they find their flow and much, much more. Before we dive in, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and honour the traditional owners of the unceded land where this episode was recorded, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our deepest respects to the elders, both past and present, and acknowledge the emerging leaders within their community. In this episode, we speak to Jeff Patterson, who has been practising martial arts for the past 36 years, learning from highly skilled masters from seven different countries. He has black belt equivalency in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Eskrima, Muay Thai, Kenpo, Tai chi, and Qigong. He's also written a book called the Yielding Warrior, which you can get for free from his website, theyieldingwarrior.com. Now our conversation is more about the meditative aspects of these practises and also how Jeff balances the demands of his writing, running his martial arts school and family life. Jeff has some great insights to share about meditation, especially if it's a practise that you or your students might be struggling with. We loved Jeff's accessible and down to earth approach, and both felt more relaxed and centred just listening to him explain the philosophy of what he shares. Now, before we get into this conversation, if you've been listening for a while, you might remember that each year Jo and I do an episode where we ask our past guests and listeners if they have any questions for us. We're doing the same thing this year, and this time around we have a theme. The theme is on running your own small yoga business. If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to email them through podcast@flowartists.com or send us a Facebook message. We'd love to hear from you. This episode will be coming out on the first Monday of December, so get your questions to us as soon as you can. All right, let's get into our conversation with Geoff Patterson. All right, well, Jeff, thank you so much for speaking with us today. So just to start off, could you maybe tell us a little bit about your background and where you grew up?

Jeff: Yeah, so I grew up mostly here in Oregon on the west coast. I was born in southern California, but I've been in Oregon since fourth grade, and for a little while I joined the military and went out for a bit. But I've been back in Oregon now since 91.

Jo: And so how did you discover martial arts?

Jeff: You know, I've been doing martial arts for a good majority of my life. I've always kind of wanted to do it as a kid growing up, my family never really had the means to put me into martial arts. I was in a single parent family and I couldn't really start doing martial arts until I was in my mid teens when I got a job. And ever since then, it's been a pretty big part of my life. I've been running this academy now for a little over 30 years, been practising for a long time, and had thousands of students come through the academy here. We've probably about 26,000 students come through the academy since we started up, and it's really been a pretty fun ride.

Jo: And so did you grow up in the karate kid era? Is that what drew it to your attention?

Jeff: No, it was more the Bruce Lee movies that kind of got me interested in the martial arts, you know, and in a roundabout way, they led into the meditative arts what's been a major passion of mine for well over 30 years.

Jo: And so, like, I know that you practise a lot of different disciplines. Like which one did you learn first? Where did it start?

Jeff: Well, I started in the external arts, doing kickboxing and western boxing. And I used to actually go to a boxing gym just a few blocks down the street from my academy here in Portland. And at a boxing gym, I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but they run them a lot different than what you would see your traditional fitness style or martial arts class in that. At a boxing gym, usually there's four or five coaches running around, and each one of those coaches might have three or four fighters that they're working with. And at this one particular gym that I was going to, there was a very well known coach that was training there who had created national and world champion level fighters. And I really wanted to get to spend some time with him. And so I would always show up at the gym when I knew he was going to be there and work really hard, you know, try to get him to notice me, let him know that I wanted to spend some time with him. And finally, after following him around for about three or four months, he started giving me a few things and helping me out with my training. And it was only about maybe two or three weeks of working with him when he said something to me that changed my life forever and that he told me if I really wanted to be a good boxer, I should start doing Tai chi and meditation. Now, at the time, I was this young kid about 19, 20, thinking, you know, isn't Tai Chi for, like, old people in the park? How's that going to help me be a better fighter? And I really didn't understand it at that time, nor had any desire to even take on the practise, but I had a lot of respect for him and I knew he was trying to help me and so I jumped in. And it's not only changed my life in many ways, incorporating the meditative practises into my life, but through the years heard hundreds of stories of students that have come in that have seen major life transformations from doing the meditative arts practise.

Jo: And so I did have a bit of a look on your instagram. Have you been to China a few times to learn directly, or can you kind of explain what your training has been like?

Jeff: So I've pretty much spent my entire professional career travelling around the world, studying with teachers all over. I've been to China seven or eight times and trained with a few teachers over there. It's been something that's always been a major driver for me and that I still find myself, even after 36 years, is I'm just as much of a student now as I've ever been. And I'm just trying to get deeper into the practise so I can be a better resource for my students and my community here at the programme.

Jo: And that very much seems to be a big part of the martial arts tradition, like, to advance and progress. It seems to be that teaching others is intertwined with that process of your own personal growth.

Jeff: Yes. You know, teaching is really a blessing in that it makes you really have to learn how to break things down and see things from different angles, because not everybody learns things the same way. And when you can see it from multiple different angles, it not only gives you more resources to help more people, but it also gives you a better understanding of the practise as well.

Jo: And so, like, I believe you've done Brazilian jiu jitsu as well. Do you want to take us through, like, because that's a completely different culture and a completely different tradition, yet it seems like the meditation is still a part of that practise. Do you want to talk a bit more about that?

Jeff: Yeah. So here at the academy, we have four programmes. We have our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu programme, our striking programme, which is boxing and Muay Thai, our JKD and Eskrima programme, and then our meditative programme, which is, you know, the Tai chi, the qigong, the ichuan, the sitting meditation, and breath work. And so of those, you know, really. And the cool thing about meditation is that it doesn't matter what you do, whether it's Brazilian jiu jitsu or boxing or play football or basketball or baseball, the meditative arts help you to be more in tune and more aware of what's going on inside yourself. They help you be more present. They help you see things more clearly and be able to break them down so you can improve your performance. If you look around at professional athletes these days, you'll see a pretty good percentage of professional athletes that are practising the meditative arts to help improve their focus and get those last couple percentage points. It's easy if you have a coach that has a group of disciplined athletes to get them to 85% of their potential, but to get them to 90%, 95%, 97%. Now you're talking about the rare individuals like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, who almost seem magical when they play. And the meditative arts is one of those things that kind of help those last few percentage points and help you get to that level that you really can't reach without having some kind of practise like that. And even, you know, when Phil Jackson was coaching the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers here, he had, you know, two of the best teams of all time, and he was having his players practise tai Chi and meditation to improve their performance. So, you know, you got the best athletes in the world and they see this as value. And so it really doesn't matter what you're doing. The meditative arts can help in many ways.

Jo: and that must be a good selling point if you have people who came to you because they want to fight better and you're telling them, the way to do that is to learn to meditate, to kind of point to all of the success that other professional athletes have had. And I'm really interested to learn, like, say you do have someone who maybe has tried meditation before and it hasn't worked for them, or someone who's just, like, reluctant to try. What are the initial practises that you found the most helpful to help people start to learn to be with themselves and to start to get those peace of mind benefits?

Jeff: Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that question, because one of the most common things I've heard through the years of teaching is people will come to the practise and they'll say, ah, I tried meditation, but it just didn't work for me. I couldn't quiet my mind. You know, I've heard that hundred times over, you know, and. And somewhere along the way, people got this misconception that in order to meditate, you have to be in this blissful place where nothing bothers you and you never get distracted. And. And it couldn't be further from the truth. You know, as I mentioned already, I've spent the good majority of my career travelling around the world, training with teachers from all over and some of really amazing meditation practitioners. And I have never once met anybody who doesn't get distracted. Everybody gets distracted. I don't care who you are. And the idea with the practise is, say you are doing a meditation practise, whether it's a sitting practise, a standing meditation or a movement practise, like tai chi or qigong, and you're doing a 20 minutes session, let's say if you get distracted 50 times during that session, and every time you get distracted, you recognise the distraction, you use your posture, your breath, your mind to bring you back to centre. You just got a repetition of being distracted and bringing yourself back to focus. Now, if you do that 50 times every day, and you do that every month, every year, every five years, every ten years, you start getting so strong and so in tune with, one, noticing those distractions at the first sign of imbalance, and two, having the tools and the necessary applications to help bring yourself back to that focus and that centre point, which is invaluable. You know, we can use it in anything we do, whether it's business or athletics or our personal well being. I mean, there's just really endless applications on how the meditative arts will help you. Now, you ask, like, when you start, how do you start? Well, there's a number of things that I think are important, and the first one is, anytime you start anything, no matter what it is, it's very important to sit down and think about, why do you want to start? Why is this important to you and how is it going to benefit you? And what are the reasons that's drawing you to the practise? Because, and I don't care who you are, if you start meditating, there's going to be a day, whether it be next week, next month, next year, that's going to come by where your alarm is going to go off and you're going to say, I'm going to hit the snooze button, I'll do it tomorrow. If you have some very strong whys, maybe you want to live to watch your grandkids grow up and you want to stay healthy and mobile or you want to improve your performance on the field, or you want to deal with stress and anxiety better, whatever that is for you. If you have these reasons that are drawing you to the practise now, when that alarm goes off, you're like, hey, I get to get up and meditate. I'm going to do it. And rather than it being a chore that you have to do once in a while, it starts to become this thing that you get to do and you want to do, and it's part of your lifestyle. And, you know, the meditative arts is meant to be a way of life, and it's not meant to be a hobby that we do once in a while. And so by integrating the practises this way and training your mind to look at it from this approach, now you start to just use the meditative practise in everything you do. And that's where you really see all the gold from the practise. And so I've broken down the way that we teach the meditative arts into three main categories. And we have what we call our ritual practises, our active practises and our philosophical practises. Ritual practises are when you set a little bit of time aside every day and focus on, you know, shutting your cell phone off, not watching any screensh, and just diving deep into listening to yourself and having that personalised practise. That's kind of like the core foundation of any meditation practise. Then we have our active practises. And these are great because they help us learn how to bring some of these practises into our day to day activities, to stay present, to build that awareness in everything we do. And now we start living these practises, which are invaluable. And these can be as simple as counting out ten breaths for 60 seconds, or maybe doing some spinal rotations or anything that could be done in as little as, you know, 60 seconds or two minutes. But we just integrate them every hour, every 90 minutes throughout the day, to help keep us in that mindset, in that place of awareness through the day. And then lastly, we have what we call our philosophical side of the practise. And these things can be used in both our ritual practises as well as our active practises. When you can have a good foundation from these three basic pillars, if you will, you can start to create an evolving life practise around the meditative arts. And that's where we really start to see so many benefits from adopting these practises into our life and so with.

Jo: The people that you're working with, what do you think? The normal, or not 'normal', but in what kind of a timeframe do people usually start to see enough benefits to keep them on track? Like, do you tell people, give it two weeks or a. Yeah, I'm really interested to know. Like maybe starting with that morning meditation and then throughout the day, some of those drop in meditations, when do people start to really feel like it has become part of their lives, or is it just really different for everyone?

Jeff: It is very different from everyone. That said, there are certain practises that you can do that immediately after the first session, you're going to be feeling very relaxed, you're going to be feeling very centred, and you're going to be knowing that something happened, you know, something, there was some change going on there. It felt good. I don't really understand it, but I want more of that, you know, so you'll see that very soon. In the beginning, however, I always tell my students, and what I've seen through having so many students come through the academy, is that if they listen to what I tell them, and that is to integrate a 20 minutes a day ritual and integrate some of these active practises into their day, and they can keep that up for a year, they'll see so many benefits from the practise that I bet 97 or 98 out of every hundred people that do that will do this practise for the rest of their life, because they'll see so many benefits from it that it would be crazy to stop. Now. The difficulty is how do we get people to stick with it until they really change their mindset and see that there's a lot of value here. Well, what I found to be most successful with that is really spending time in the beginning and thinking about why we're doing the practise, because with that strong why, that'll help us build the energy and keep us consistent and get through those kind of times where maybe you're not really wanting to go out and do it, and those are the days that it's really the most important to get out there and do it.

Jo: Do you find as well that as people's practise kind of progresses and deepens, like there might be an initial stage where you feel the relaxation benefits and it helps you feel calmer, but because these practises are also about, like, looking deeply within, and I know that, like, mental health is also a big aspect of your work, people are going to come up against some confronting things and maybe some things that they've buried down. And there'll be parts of a meditation practise that aren't relaxing and are more challenging to navigate, even though overall they will have profound benefits. But it can be a bit of a storm to walk through at times.

Jeff: Yes, you do have to be able to take down the barriers. I always tell people that, you know, we get so caught up in society today where, you know, we've got our cell phones and our computers and this advertisement and, you know, we go to work and we have this distraction and that distraction, and it's so easy to get caught up in this feeling that we're always needing to wear a mask. We're putting up these walls and these barriers because maybe you don't want to say how you truly feel, you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings, or maybe you don't want to make yourself vulnerable or whatever it is. But sometimes we get so caught up in living this way that we start looking at ourselves in the mirror and we're still wearing that mask. And meditation is one of those things that helps us stay true to who we really are and let go of those masks and those barriers and really stay in tune with our spirit. And by doing this kind of a practise, it leads to so many benefits by truly staying connected to who you are.

Jo: And I guess for some people it might be not just staying connected, but like learning who you are versus who people have told you to be or how you've been raised or all of those other inputs that come from the outside.

Jeff: Yes, for sure. It's easy to let ten years slip by and totally lose connection because you're following your tribe or you're doing what's there. And it's really kind of sad when you see somebody come in who's got so much potential and so much inside of them, but they just don't see it yet, you know, and meditation will help them find that nice.

Rane: And just talking to you now, I can obviously see that you're a very clear communicator, and I'm curious about how your martial arts practise may have informed your writing.

Jeff: Informed the writing?

Rane: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. So I feel like the meditative arts has really helped my creativity since, you know, I mentioned that when I first started doing a meditation practise, I wasn't interested in meditating at all. I just wanted to follow my coach's guidelines. And since then I have started writing, I've started playing music. I've tapped into this creative side of me that I don't know if I ever would have explored or even had the opportunity to look into if I hadn't developed these skill sets.

Jo: And it sounds like, as well, the concept of yielding is a really important part of your personal practise and approach. And I believe that your book is called the yielding warrior. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that concept of yielding and how it shows up in your work and your life?

Jeff: Yeah. So yielding is, to me, it's one of the coolest concepts in the martial and meditative arts. It's something that's been used in the martial arts for generations. I break down yielding into three categories. We have physical yielding, mental yielding, and emotional yielding. Physical yielding is the easiest one to understand. And 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 meathead 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, this is obvious how this is beneficial in a lot of athletics and combat sports, because it's so often when you play sports that you come up against somebody who's a lot bigger and stronger than you. And if you think you're just going to overpower everybody you meet, you're going to eventually lose, no matter who you are. And yielding helps us learn how to find the path of least resistance to get the outcome that we want to achieve. Now, this is a lifetime practise, and, you know, I've been studying my whole career and I don't have the skill mastered. I'm learning all the time. And that said, though, from day one, when you start adopting these meditation practises, you start improving your internal awareness. And because you're seeing things more clearly inside yourself, you also start to see them more clearly in other people. And this is where we move into what I call mental yielding. And this is where it also starts to become very interesting, because we can apply this concept every area of life. Now, the idea of mental yielding is, say, for example, we're having a conversation, and I say something that unsettles you, and I pick up on it right from that first sign of imbalance. It's a lot easier at this point to adjust the conversation and keep us in a harmonious place. Then if I'm not paying attention to that 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 our interactions is extremely powerful. One, you're just being more considerate, which is something we could all do more of. And two, it allows you to be strategic in your conversations and guide them to a positive outcome without butting heads with people. And this is important in relationships, in business, in sales and negotiations. I mean, there's so many different ways that we can apply this strategy and this concept. Then, lastly, we have what I call emotional yielding. And emotional yielding is very much like mental yielding, but it's with our own interpersonal conflicts. So we think about, oftentimes something will happen 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 realise maybe that wasn't the best choice. But with yielding, if we could have had that heightened awareness and that sensitivity, we could have taken a step back and analysed the situation a little more clearly. And oftentimes saved us a lot of heartache on the other side by making a more wise decision by that clarity. Now, I've been explaining this idea of yielding for years, and one of the most common things I'll hear people say is that, ah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I use yielding all the time. And while I would agree in that, I think everybody uses some degree of yielding all the time. 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 30 years, I guarantee you he would see things about the series of events in 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 without having these kinds of practises in our life, most people will go through life and just never experience it, because they just don't have that sensitivity.

Rane: Self massage can be a wonderful addition to your yoga practise, especially since it's not focused on strength or flexibility. It's really all about getting to know your body and feeling better. We love the Markarlu, which is a set of nested domes on a wooden base that you can use for self massage and developing proprioceptive awareness. It's such a great, portable and accessible tool that really opens up new movement possibilities. The makarlu is also a fantastic addition to chair yoga. And since the domes all contain magnets, you can even stick them to your fridge or another metal surface like a chair frame. This is really helpful for anyone who has difficulty getting down on the floor or anyone who wants a visual reminder to take some time for movement and self care during their day. The domes have been designed to support arthritis and peripheral neuropathy and they look like a beautiful little sculpture. You can use our discount code MAKFLOW to get 10% off@makarlu.com and help support the podcast.

Jo: Yeah, I think it can be really interesting as well when sometimes you might have a situation and just an intuitive response will come up and to kind of have that awareness of like oh, when is it helpful to trust my intuition and when is that just a habitual thought pattern? And I'm just having that feeling about this situation because maybe something happened in the past or I know something that I look out for in myself is if I read something or someone says something to me and I start feeling defensive, then that's one to look at because it's like, okay, obviously there's something there. So before I do or say anything, like I'll just take a moment. Do you have any tips or strategies that help for you to kind of distinguish between what is an emotional response and then maybe what is like another level of intuition and wisdom that goes deeper to that? Like which, how do you know which feelings and thoughts to listen to?

Jeff: Well, something you just said, which is extremely valuable in that if you can just recognise that you're doing that, that's kind of like the first step of being able to step out and realise that, you know, you're not your thoughts and the mind can take you in so many different directions. But when you can step back and realise that hey, every time I think of something that's not who I am, that's just something that my mind ran off on this angle, right? And when we could recognise that and be more of an observer, now we're in control about how we respond and how we let it, let that thought take us forward. Some people will let that thought distract them and take them three weeks down the road and other people will recognise it like you did and say, hey, that wasn't the right decision. This is why I want to think about this and move on. And so with developing this heightened intuition and skill and awareness and sensitivity through the practise, we have what I call the five regulations. And there are five basic pillars that work on our awareness and our sensitivity and helping us being more in tune to ourselves in the present moment. And with these, I think it gives us the power and the tools to have that heightened intuition. And they are regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. Regulating the body is the easiest one to do. And it's one that we always start with, with a meditative practise. And an example of this would be think about a time where maybe you're sitting down at your computer and you've been there for three or 4 hours, and your shoulders are rounded forward, your neck's getting sore, you're feeling really depleted, and you're just very low on energy. And then think about another time when the most important person in your world walks in the room and you perk up and you're feeling like you're on top of the world. Well, these two energetic states we are in 100% control of all of the time. So if we can learn how to pay attention to our skeletal alignment, our body's relaxation and how we move, we can regulate how that energy is expressed. And this is the first one. The next one is regulating the breath. And regulating the breath is a lifelong practise. You know, qigong oftentimes is referred to as the science of the breath, because there's literally hundreds of different breathing strategies and ways that we use the breathe. And what I mean by this is a lot of times we'll break these down into more kind of yin or sensitive type practises and more yang or aggressive type practises. The yin practises are very good for stress reduction, they're good to work with anxiety, they're good for focus. And an example of a yin breath would be, if you ever listen to somebody sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer inhale and a shorter exhale. And this is the body's natural way of bringing your conscious mind into your subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming. And so if we can emulate this style of breathing in our meditations, we can get a lot of the same benefits out of the practise. Then we have the yang side of the breath, which is more aggressive. Like if you've ever had to push your car or you pick up something heavy, your natural instinct is use the exhale, put tension in the breath, make it audible. This helps generate energy and power. Now, when you start understanding how to use the breath as a strategy, and in chinese philosophy, we call this balancing the Khan and Li, or the water and fire, you start learning how to regulate your physical, mental and emotional states throughout the day. Just by controlling your breath and this is an extremely powerful tool to use. You know, a lot of people, they'll go through the day with emotional ups and downs. We all do. Some of us are like a roller coaster, others of us are a little more balanced. But wherever you are, when you start seeing those imbalances and understand how to use the breath, you can keep that a lot more centred and balanced throughout the day, which helps us to conserve our energy and keeps us more focused and more centred in everything we do. Then the next regulation is regulating the mind. And again, just like the breath, this is a lifelong practise. And we touched a little bit on this. When you know you're meditating, you get distracted and you're learning how to bring yourself back to centre. Well, we do this all of the time. We'll get on these tangents and something will happen to us. And sometimes it'll last a year, sometimes it'll last a month, sometimes it'll last an hour. And if we don't learn how to recognise these things, they can really overtake our life with a lot of negativity. You know, there's this story that I like to tell about these two old monks, and they're walking down this dirt road after a big rainstorm. They come up to a mud puddle. It's a huge puddle. And on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful lady standing there in a white dress, and she's crying. And the older monk yells across the puddle and says, ma'am, are you okay? Is there anything we can do to help you? And she says, I need to be somewhere. And if I walk across this puddle, I'm going to get my dress all dirty. And so he rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle. He picks her up, puts her on his back, takes her to the other side, sets her down and she's off on her way. Well, him and the younger monk, they're walking a couple miles down the road, and at this point, the younger monk is just furious. And he says, you know, we're not supposed to touch women, but yet you did back there at the puddle. And he looks down at the younger monk and says, you're still thinking about that lady? I left her back there at the puddle. And it's, you know, it's a simple story, but it illustrates the fact that how many times do we let ourselves get 2 miles down that road before we finally even acknowledge something, let alone let it go? And so, understanding this awareness and sensitivity is a big pillar in the practise when we start talking about the meditative arts. And then the fourth regulation is regulating the energy. And regulating the energy is an extremely deep subject. And something that you'll study for the rest of your life if you take on a meditative practise. And we could talk for hours about it. But a basic example of it is once you've gotten to the point where you can regulate the body, regulate the breath and regulate the mind, then regulating the energy inside the body is pretty easy. And we'll do this to learn how to bring the energy inward. To get more of that yin benefit of the practise. And bring the energy outward to get more of that yang expression of the practise. And so this is a very valuable idea to understand. When you start getting deeper into the meditative arts. And then lastly we have regulating the spirit, which is a very profound idea. And something that meditation masters and monks will spend their whole life working towards trying to get to that stage of enlightenment. And that's kind of the idea of the basic regulations and the foundation of a meditation practise. And when you start cultivating all of those areas within your practise and in your life now that intuition and that awareness and that sensitivity really starts to kind of blossom and come out in many different ways that are unexpected.

Jo: Well, thank you so much for taking us all through that. That was a really beautiful explanation. And just to detour back to something that you said quite early on that I found really interesting. My breath work experience has mainly been from yoga and pranayama. And in those traditions, lengthening out the exhale is the way into the parasympathetic nervous system and the calming down and the relaxing aspect. So it's really interesting to hear that in this tradition, it's lengthening the inhale that's taking you towards that state. And I'm wondering if, like, do you kind of have, like a bit more of an explanation about how that is helpful for brain body states in the breath practises that you've learned.

Jeff: Yes. So it's no different in both traditions. It's the same when you lengthen out the breath like this and slow the breath down, that helps bring you to those deeper states of meditation, which is what you're talking about right there. Now, that said, when I'm talking about the yin and yang expressions, while, yes, lengthening the exhale, slow and even and slender, will help us get to deeper states of meditation. When we start talking about the yin energy, it's kind of like we do this naturally in every, you know, in our lives. And that think about a time where maybe you or somebody, you know, had a depressive episode in their life and they were crying a lot, and they were, you know, when you cry, if you ever listen to somebody cry, they naturally they're doing longer inhales than they do exhales. And when you're depressed, you tend to do this. And so by having periods of time where we are very depressed or we're doing a lot of crying, you'll notice that people will often get sick because of this, because they're bringing so much of that yin energy into the body that their immune system breaks down and it takes them to, you know, a negative place. And so we want to use this as a balance. Whereas the flip side of that, on the yang side of the practise, if you think about a time where you laugh so hard that your belly hurt when you're laughing, you know, you're doing longer exhales than you do inhales, and now the body starts sweating and you start getting hot. This is that Yang expression of the breath. And so, while used in different ways, like you were mentioning earlier, you can learn how to bring your energy down by just lengthening the breath, but by understanding these expressions of the yin side and the yang side of the breath. Now we can use that as kind of, like, to help us get a little momentum in a direction that we want to go with the practise.

Jo: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in the traditions that you work with, is there any retentions, like, any times when you would hold on to the breath or take a pause with no breath in your lungs?

Jeff: Oh, yes, for sure.

Jo: And so everything that you've taken us through, I can really get the sense of how it's helped you so much in your life. And something I've also been hearing a little bit in the background is it sounds like you might have a couple of kids in your house, and I know that you're a parent. Would you like to, like, just take us through how has being a parent affected these philosophies or. I know I've got other yoga friends who felt like they kind of had it all together, and then when they had kids, it kind of was like, oh, there's this whole new layer of myself that I need to, like, unpack and learn about. You know, I thought I'd, like, processed all of this stuff, but I can hear my mum's words coming out my mouth or my dad's words coming out my mouth. Has that also been part of your experience or have the philosophies that you learn and practised also help you as a parent?

Jeff: I think it has helped me be a better parent in many ways. And right now I'm at my academy, so there's a kids class going on.

Jo: Downstairs also, it's not just your kids, it's a whole class of kids.

Jeff: It's a mess of kids down there. Yeah, yeah. And my kids are getting a little older these days. My son is 16 and my daughter's 14. They're both in high school. And there's been many times where I've been thankful that I had this practise in my life, because, you know, having kids is challenging. There's times where it's not always easy. And being able to recognise those imbalances before you get too excited are very powerful when you're communicating. Even if you've got to say something difficult to them, it allows you to say it. Not from that unbalanced state. And when you can say it more from a loving perspective and in a balanced place, where you know it's coming from your heart rather than from your excitement, I think has been really beneficial.

Jo: When you mentioned your approach to yielding as well, it's like, how can I get to where I want to go with the least friction and pushing? That sounds like something that could be useful as a parent, for sure. And so this is another aspect of being a parent. But also it sounds like you run a pretty massive business with your academy and you do a lot of travel and you have your creative pursuits and you have a very dedicated self practise. How do you fit all of that into a day and how do you work out what to prioritise on the days when it just won't all fit?

Jeff: You know, I have certain priorities that are non negotiable. Like, you know, I have my morning ritual and I have my active practises that I do every day. And, you know, I'm so disciplined with my ritual practise that I haven't missed a day since I had hip surgery five years ago. And, you know, it's. It gets not to the point where it's something I have to do, it's something that I get to do and I feel lucky and I feel, like, thankful every day that I get to go out and practise, because this is something that not only has brought me so much value in my life, but I get to share that value with my students and I've seen it change their lives in so many ways that I just look forward to that time. Now you're with all of the other things. Those can sometimes be negotiable because you know how life gets and you don't always get to do everything you want to do. And running my academy here, you know, it's. As far as martial arts academies go, it's a fairly decent sized academy. We've got about 500 active students. I've got 15 employees. And, you know, it's. It runs seven days a week. The nice thing about that is that it's very self sufficient. So it allows me to take off for a month or two weeks or if I need to go do something. I don't need to worry about things here. I know they're going to be okay. My online programme and my writing, that's something that's a passion of mine. And so, you know, I've just. I find time for that because I love it. So I just make it work.

Rane: Nice. So I guess we're reaching near the end of our conversation. But before we leave, I'd like to ask you one more question. So this might be not the easiest question to answer, but I guess if you could distil everything that you've learned and everything that you teach down to one core essence, one core thing that you'd like to share with the world, what do you think that one thing.

Jeff: Would be from a philosophical standpoint? It would be everybody should spend more time living in consideration of other people. From a meditation perspective, if anybody out there is looking into the practise, I think that the most value for your time and your investment in putting your effort into a practise to really reap the benefits from it, is find yourself a guide, somebody that's going to help you and point you in the right direction. I've literally had students come in here that have been training in the meditative arts for 10, 15, 20 years, and they're no farther along than students that I've had that have been here for six or twelve months. And it's not that they put any less effort in because they put many, many more hours in, but they're looking at a slew of videos on YouTube or they're watching this or, you know, they have nobody telling them how to put all this stuff together. And, you know, the, the meditative arts is very complex and it's a very deep practise. And having somebody there is, you know, your time is valuable, your life is short, you want to get these benefits from the practise. Having somebody help you is really invaluable you know, and I tell people to think of oftentimes, you know, imagine that I take you to a basketball court. You've never watched a game of basketball. You don't even know you're supposed to dribble the ball. You don't know that the ball goes in the ring. And I say, go play basketball. You're going to be horrible. You're not going to know what to do. You're not going to know any strategy. You're not going to have to play off your teammates. You're not going to know anything. Now, if I give you a world class coach and I take you there and I say, go train with this guy for six months or this gal for six months, and think about all you could accomplish and how good you could get at the sport of basketball if you were putting that time in. The meditative arts is very much like that. You could accomplish a lot in six months with somebody helping you and pointing you in the right direction. Direction. And I really recommend that you consider that if you're thinking about taking on.

Jo: The practise, great advice and you've just given us so much great advice and great wisdom through this conversation. Thank you so much.

Jeff: Oh, thank you for having me.

Rane: We really hope you enjoyed our conversation with Jeff. We've put all of his links in our show notes on our website, podcast.flowartists.com if you'd like to learn more. And again, a quick reminder that we'd love it if you could write us a quick review on Apple Podcasts or leave us some stars on Spotify. This is a great way to help others find the podcast and show your support. We also love hearing from our listeners and finding out what you enjoy about the podcast. We also really appreciate it when you share our post about each episode or leave us a comment online. You can find us at the Flow Artist podcast Facebook page or look for ran loves yoga or Garden of Yoga on Instagram where a DIY operation and your community support really helps. Extra special thanks to our Patreon supporters. Your donations help us cover editing and hosting costs and we appreciate you so much. You can even join our Patreon for free now to get the latest updates. So just head to https://www.patreon.com/flowartistspodcast Jeff has generously shared a free link where you can download his latest book for free or have it sent to you just for the price of the postage. Thanks Geoff. We'd also like to express our gratitude to Ghostsoul for granting us permission to use their track baby robots as our theme song be sure to check out ghostsoul.bandcamp.com to discover more of their incredible music. Once again, thank you so, so much for spending your precious time with us. We appreciate you more than words can express. He arohanui maua kia koutou katoa, sending you big, big love.