[00:00.650 --> 00:07.270]  Thanks for getting up early on Sunday morning, third day of epic HOPE conference.
[00:08.730 --> 00:12.390]  I'm pleasantly surprised to see so many people here this morning.
[00:13.110 --> 00:14.930]  Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
[00:18.730 --> 00:18.970]  All right.
[00:20.630 --> 00:26.130]  All right, so this morning I'm going to give a presentation called Go Hack Yourself.
[00:26.950 --> 00:47.690]  If you didn't read the little blurb in the handout that we got when we came in, this is going to be talking less about being a cyborg and more about how you can change yourself, change your habits, change your mind, change your body, using an ancient science called yoga.
[00:49.050 --> 00:55.290]  So yeah, less about implanting things, but maybe I'll implant some thoughts and ideas into your head today.
[00:56.430 --> 00:57.670]  A little bit about myself.
[00:57.870 --> 00:58.610]  My name is Mike Hernandez.
[00:58.790 --> 00:59.470]  I work at Etsy.
[00:59.630 --> 01:00.650]  I'm a software engineer.
[01:01.330 --> 01:04.670]  I'm also a yoga teacher and a hacker, of course.
[01:06.030 --> 01:15.210]  During my days at Etsy, I have to come up with creative solutions, sometimes hacks, sometimes well thought out and methodically written programs.
[01:15.970 --> 01:19.390]  But I like to think that my greatest hack is me.
[01:19.810 --> 01:24.450]  I'm standing here before you now as a speaker at a conference, as a software engineer.
[01:24.450 --> 01:28.570]  A few years ago, I was out of shape.
[01:28.910 --> 01:30.470]  I had a job that I hated.
[01:31.070 --> 01:34.850]  I was just kind of... I don't know.
[01:34.910 --> 01:35.970]  I felt less than average.
[01:36.130 --> 01:38.230]  I didn't feel like I was being my best self.
[01:38.530 --> 01:40.350]  I was just kind of going through the motions.
[01:40.690 --> 01:48.990]  Just getting up and eating and going to the bathroom and kind of just going to this workplace and coming home and just not being happy at all.
[01:50.130 --> 01:52.390]  Life didn't seem so great.
[01:52.570 --> 01:55.390]  There were a few little glimmers of real happiness.
[01:55.650 --> 01:59.990]  And then the rest of it just seemed kind of crap, to put it bluntly.
[02:00.510 --> 02:03.930]  But I was able to transform myself.
[02:04.270 --> 02:07.890]  And I'm going to talk to you about how you can do the same thing.
[02:09.370 --> 02:12.530]  So first, I'm going to describe a little bit about yoga.
[02:13.090 --> 02:13.790]  All right?
[02:14.070 --> 02:18.730]  So this guy up here, Dalsim from Street Fighter II, not a real yogi.
[02:19.870 --> 02:23.570]  Particularly because of all the violence that he enacted against people.
[02:24.030 --> 02:27.130]  But when people hear yoga, they get a lot of different ideas.
[02:27.270 --> 02:27.330]  Right?
[02:27.410 --> 02:29.390]  Some of us maybe think yoga fire.
[02:29.970 --> 02:35.150]  Some of us think like, oh yeah, it's all like the namaste and like the stretching and that kind of stuff.
[02:35.730 --> 02:39.110]  You know, some people they think like, oh yeah, it's those crazy guys in India.
[02:39.230 --> 02:41.310]  And they like, they can sleep on a bed of nails.
[02:41.530 --> 02:45.430]  And they can like, you know, hold their arm up in the air for like 10 years at a time.
[02:46.370 --> 02:49.190]  And you know, yoga is actually, it's a little bit of all of those things.
[02:49.810 --> 02:50.950]  Except for the yoga fire.
[02:52.510 --> 02:56.830]  But it's more, it's more, how can I put this?
[02:57.430 --> 03:01.490]  It's less of the stuff that you see in mainstream media.
[03:01.490 --> 03:02.230]  Imagine that.
[03:02.590 --> 03:07.170]  And more about how you can, how you can change your life.
[03:07.290 --> 03:10.810]  And how you can be the best person that you can be.
[03:11.750 --> 03:13.570]  Now I call it an ancient science.
[03:14.470 --> 03:16.130]  It actually is a science, right?
[03:16.230 --> 03:18.130]  So part of it is sort of religious.
[03:18.350 --> 03:20.290]  There's a lot of Hinduism in yoga.
[03:20.570 --> 03:24.890]  But you can, you can kind of leave out a lot of the mythology.
[03:24.890 --> 03:29.950]  And a lot of the sort of kind of stuff that's really weird for a lot of people.
[03:30.230 --> 03:33.630]  And you can really focus on the very practical aspects of it.
[03:33.710 --> 03:35.930]  And really make a lot of change, right?
[03:36.010 --> 03:37.690]  You don't have to adopt a new religion.
[03:38.030 --> 03:39.690]  You don't have to adopt any religion.
[03:40.510 --> 03:47.570]  But you can practice yoga, including meditation and breathing exercises and physical exercises.
[03:47.990 --> 03:49.330]  And see great results.
[03:49.330 --> 03:50.010]  All right.
[03:50.890 --> 03:51.650]  All right.
[03:51.930 --> 03:55.590]  So, focus and concentration.
[03:56.030 --> 03:58.150]  It's something that our minds can do.
[04:00.030 --> 04:02.630]  You may have had moments where you can concentrate.
[04:03.490 --> 04:05.990]  And actually do some really cool things.
[04:06.410 --> 04:09.490]  You may have had times where you needed to concentrate.
[04:09.950 --> 04:12.690]  And you found that you could not concentrate.
[04:13.830 --> 04:19.370]  Maybe if you're taking a test and you're thinking like, oh wait, I know I studied this.
[04:20.110 --> 04:21.730]  But your mind just goes blank.
[04:22.710 --> 04:26.590]  Maybe you're giving a presentation in front of a bunch of people on Sunday morning.
[04:26.830 --> 04:28.750]  And you forget everything that you're going to say.
[04:28.870 --> 04:30.210]  No, I'm not going to forget everything I'm going to say.
[04:30.850 --> 04:36.870]  But the thing is like focus and concentration is something that's really special about our minds.
[04:37.390 --> 04:39.350]  I'm not sure that other animals can do it.
[04:39.350 --> 04:42.050]  We can see like some monkeys and stuff.
[04:42.170 --> 04:43.410]  They can kind of work with tools.
[04:43.670 --> 04:47.010]  And they have these looks on their faces that looks like they're concentrating.
[04:47.170 --> 04:48.850]  And kind of looks like they're thinking really hard.
[04:49.550 --> 04:51.550]  But it's something really special about humans.
[04:51.570 --> 04:52.370]  That we can concentrate.
[04:53.170 --> 04:57.070]  And if we put our minds to something, we can do some pretty cool stuff.
[04:57.970 --> 04:59.370]  You know, we're all hackers here.
[04:59.390 --> 05:02.210]  So if you think about some of the coolest things that you've ever done.
[05:02.390 --> 05:04.270]  Some of the coolest things you've ever made.
[05:05.290 --> 05:07.390]  You wouldn't be able to do that without concentration.
[05:07.390 --> 05:08.130]  Right?
[05:08.590 --> 05:14.590]  But it seems like now, concentration, like, it's so hard for a lot of people.
[05:14.830 --> 05:22.750]  And the more people you talk to, the more you find that it's very common for people to say things like, oh, yeah, well, I have ADHD.
[05:23.350 --> 05:27.050]  You know, whether or not they've been diagnosed by a doctor or they just self-diagnosed themselves.
[05:27.730 --> 05:32.610]  You know, it's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, we're in the ADHD generation or the ADD generation.
[05:33.330 --> 05:35.470]  You know, everything has to happen fast.
[05:35.810 --> 05:37.370]  People can't listen to one song.
[05:37.370 --> 05:39.270]  That goes on for more than three minutes.
[05:39.930 --> 05:44.050]  You know, people read 20 pages of a book and, nope, can't go switch off.
[05:44.830 --> 05:49.050]  Everything has to come in bite sized chunks, you know, because people can't pay attention.
[05:50.390 --> 05:52.470]  And it's become sort of the norm.
[05:53.030 --> 05:55.690]  And I don't think that that's great.
[05:56.110 --> 05:58.850]  I mean, I understand that it's difficult to concentrate.
[05:59.030 --> 06:04.350]  I understand that there's a lot of external factors and internal factors that make it difficult to concentrate.
[06:04.590 --> 06:09.090]  But I think that as a norm, it's something that we can do better at.
[06:09.210 --> 06:18.850]  And we don't have to accept that just because no one can concentrate because of all these different things that it's okay, that we shouldn't try to work on our powers of concentration.
[06:19.150 --> 06:22.250]  Because we really can do amazing things if we put our minds to it.
[06:22.950 --> 06:23.630]  All right.
[06:24.490 --> 06:31.990]  So it's actually pretty simple to change yourself and to make positive change.
[06:32.830 --> 06:36.890]  But the things that are most simple are often the most complex.
[06:38.590 --> 06:44.490]  And that's why it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.
[06:44.610 --> 06:51.090]  And it takes, you know, really smart people to kind of lean on in order to find out the best ways to go about it.
[06:51.830 --> 07:08.270]  There was someone named Patanjali, a long, long time ago, who wasn't, he didn't invent yoga, but what he did was he saw that there was, there were several systems of ways to sort of improve your mind and improve your body.
[07:08.450 --> 07:14.370]  And he took all of these sort of things that he saw around him and he put them together into something called Yoga Sutras.
[07:14.570 --> 07:22.650]  It's just an ancient Indian text that describes a very clear, a series of steps that you can follow.
[07:23.250 --> 07:29.010]  And at the end of which you should be, you know, the best person that you could be, the best human that you could be.
[07:29.710 --> 07:32.870]  They're really, the sutras are really compact.
[07:33.690 --> 07:36.090]  Sutra is like, it's like an aphorism.
[07:36.670 --> 07:45.310]  It's a really short sort of a blurb that if you just read it at face, like, take it at face value, it might not mean too much.
[07:45.310 --> 07:55.890]  But if you unpack it and break it down and look at like, you know, some down to the syllables, you know, sometimes you can find extra meaning, right?
[07:56.370 --> 07:58.970]  Even today, I'm wearing a shirt has one of my favorite sutras.
[07:59.470 --> 08:02.570]  It translates to future misery should be avoided.
[08:02.950 --> 08:06.310]  And that's, that's sounds pretty straightforward, right?
[08:06.450 --> 08:10.510]  It's just don't do something now that you're going to regret later.
[08:10.510 --> 08:13.610]  And that at face value is very simple.
[08:13.930 --> 08:16.310]  It sounds like an easy piece of advice to follow.
[08:16.630 --> 08:19.950]  But it's actually not an easy piece of advice to follow.
[08:20.010 --> 08:21.950]  Because you make a lot of decisions every day.
[08:22.190 --> 08:26.930]  And every decision is going to have repercussions, either good repercussions or bad repercussions.
[08:29.190 --> 08:31.150]  So there's, there's a lot going on there.
[08:31.950 --> 08:37.070]  But that's the kind of, this is one of the sutras, and this is what it looks like in the original script.
[08:37.330 --> 08:47.430]  But the, you don't have to read the whole of the yoga sutras, and you don't have to be, you don't have to study them all intently to get benefits.
[08:48.610 --> 08:55.890]  I've been working with it for a long time, but I've still only just really scraped the surface of what I can learn.
[08:57.270 --> 09:02.550]  So the first, the first of the yoga sutras, I'm not going to go into the whole, you know, I'm not going to make this a talk about the yoga sutras.
[09:02.790 --> 09:09.150]  But the first of the yoga sutras, it says, Yogas citta vritti narodaha.
[09:09.310 --> 09:14.690]  What that means is, that yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind.
[09:14.910 --> 09:21.910]  That is the first sutra, and the way that sutras are organized is that the first thing is always the most important thing.
[09:22.310 --> 09:22.410]  Alright?
[09:22.710 --> 09:25.470]  So he starts off by saying, this is what yoga is.
[09:25.650 --> 09:28.790]  Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind.
[09:29.030 --> 09:30.790]  And there's a lot going on in there, right?
[09:30.890 --> 09:35.730]  So first we got this term yoga, that's where the term yoga came from.
[09:35.930 --> 09:39.910]  And then we have this, it's the stilling of the changing states of the mind.
[09:40.050 --> 09:47.030]  So that means that there's a mind and that there's states and that the states of mind are constantly changing.
[09:47.530 --> 09:48.730]  They're called vrittis.
[09:49.690 --> 09:57.990]  So he says clearly at the beginning, like if you follow all of my steps, you follow all these instructions, you can still your mind.
[09:58.050 --> 09:59.610]  You can calm it down.
[10:00.270 --> 10:01.790]  And that's a lot, right?
[10:01.870 --> 10:03.190]  Because there's a lot to yoga.
[10:03.310 --> 10:05.990]  And like I said, there's exercises for breathing.
[10:06.150 --> 10:07.890]  There's exercises for stretching your body.
[10:08.070 --> 10:12.410]  You're standing on your head and, you know, kind of contorting yourself like a pretzel it seems.
[10:12.550 --> 10:16.750]  But it's all really about controlling your mind and still in your mind.
[10:16.910 --> 10:17.310]  All right.
[10:18.650 --> 10:19.110]  Okay.
[10:19.330 --> 10:23.550]  So let's do a test.
[10:23.850 --> 10:24.870]  Very simple test.
[10:24.970 --> 10:25.870]  I know it's Sunday morning.
[10:26.830 --> 10:28.770]  It's gonna be a 30 second test.
[10:29.090 --> 10:32.950]  And I'd like you to, after we take a breath, we'll breathe for a second.
[10:34.550 --> 10:36.890]  And we're gonna do a concentration exercise.
[10:37.150 --> 10:37.430]  Okay.
[10:37.570 --> 10:39.450]  And this is gonna be sort of like a litmus test.
[10:39.610 --> 10:43.230]  So you can see where you are this Sunday morning in terms of your concentration.
[10:43.590 --> 10:44.730]  And it's gonna go like this.
[10:44.790 --> 10:48.790]  You can close your eyes and we're going to count.
[10:48.990 --> 10:49.630]  It's very simple.
[10:49.790 --> 10:51.490]  We've all counted before, right?
[10:51.810 --> 10:57.190]  You're gonna count as high as you can, but only focus on the counting.
[10:57.690 --> 10:57.830]  Okay.
[10:58.270 --> 11:05.890]  If you slip from your count, if you think about anything else but the counting forward, you have to start back over at number one.
[11:06.050 --> 11:06.450]  All right.
[11:06.590 --> 11:07.570]  So I'll give you an example.
[11:07.710 --> 11:12.290]  So I'm gonna close my eyes and I'm gonna think one, two, three.
[11:12.670 --> 11:13.610]  I'm kind of hungry.
[11:14.770 --> 11:17.210]  One, two, three.
[11:17.450 --> 11:18.070]  What is that sound?
[11:18.930 --> 11:20.130]  One, two.
[11:20.250 --> 11:20.810]  It's like that.
[11:20.950 --> 11:22.530]  So you want to try to go as high as you can.
[11:22.610 --> 11:28.170]  But if you feel yourself divert, if you forget your number, then you got to start back at one.
[11:28.670 --> 11:28.830]  All right.
[11:28.970 --> 11:34.890]  We're gonna try this for 30 seconds, which is a short time, but it's gonna feel like an eternity as you start counting.
[11:35.270 --> 11:35.890]  All right.
[11:36.030 --> 11:38.630]  And we'll see how high you can go.
[11:38.850 --> 11:39.410]  All right.
[11:39.530 --> 11:40.070]  Are you with me?
[11:40.750 --> 11:41.330]  All right.
[11:41.490 --> 11:42.930]  So just take a deep breath.
[11:43.110 --> 11:44.090]  Try to fill your lungs.
[11:45.810 --> 11:46.770]  And exhale.
[11:47.410 --> 11:48.850]  Try to exhale everything out.
[11:49.750 --> 11:51.770]  And inhale again, a full deep breath.
[11:53.790 --> 11:56.430]  And then exhale all the air out.
[11:56.570 --> 11:57.730]  Keep your eyes closed.
[11:58.510 --> 12:01.030]  And start counting now.
[12:31.460 --> 12:32.400]  And that's 30.
[12:32.740 --> 12:32.980]  All right.
[12:33.240 --> 12:38.720]  So show of hands, I can't really see because there's a light in my face, but show of hands, who got up to in the 50s?
[12:39.900 --> 12:40.260]  Anyone?
[12:43.280 --> 12:43.760]  30s?
[12:43.760 --> 12:44.240]  20s?
[12:45.140 --> 12:45.620]  Okay.
[12:46.060 --> 12:46.440]  Okay.
[12:47.020 --> 12:47.240]  Okay.
[12:47.240 --> 12:47.300]  Okay.
[12:47.400 --> 12:48.660]  Who couldn't get past 10?
[12:50.560 --> 12:51.040]  Okay.
[12:51.280 --> 12:51.560]  Okay.
[12:51.880 --> 12:57.100]  So you see how if you, if with practice, you can go farther and farther and farther.
[12:57.420 --> 12:57.620]  Okay.
[12:57.900 --> 13:05.500]  The calmer you are, and the more you can really just try to stay focused, the farther you'll be able to get in counting.
[13:05.720 --> 13:05.820]  Okay.
[13:06.040 --> 13:07.580]  Now you can try this with your eyes closed.
[13:07.840 --> 13:13.940]  For some folks, when your eyes are closed, you start to see different stuff, depending on what drugs you've taken that time.
[13:14.020 --> 13:14.440]  No, I'm kidding.
[13:16.160 --> 13:20.300]  But you can also try this with your eyes open if you have like a blank wall.
[13:21.220 --> 13:24.720]  This is written up in some places as a blank wall staring exercise.
[13:25.340 --> 13:26.880]  And that's sort of a next step.
[13:27.000 --> 13:31.940]  If you can get it with your eyes closed, then you can try it with your eyes open and staring at a blank wall.
[13:32.060 --> 13:39.200]  You don't want to stare at something that has a contour or detail because you're going to start to look at, oh yeah, there's cracks on the wall.
[13:39.480 --> 13:40.560]  What's that thing there?
[13:40.840 --> 13:43.300]  And you're going to, you'll find yourself easily distracted.
[13:43.540 --> 13:43.860]  Okay.
[13:44.300 --> 13:52.560]  But it's a good exercise to practice to just calm yourself down, even if you just take 60 seconds or even 30 seconds.
[13:52.700 --> 14:00.300]  But if you can start with 30 seconds and work yourself up to five minutes, you take five minutes a day and you work on this, you're going to start to see improvements.
[14:00.300 --> 14:01.720]  You're going to want to try 10 minutes.
[14:02.040 --> 14:02.200]  All right.
[14:02.340 --> 14:03.780]  And you don't have to just count.
[14:04.000 --> 14:08.040]  You can, you can, you can just kind of think of something else, but the counting kind of gets you there.
[14:08.200 --> 14:08.500]  All right.
[14:09.100 --> 14:11.820]  If you have trouble sleeping, this is a great exercise.
[14:12.080 --> 14:14.800]  You can imagine the sheep jumping over a fence or not.
[14:15.020 --> 14:18.920]  If you find the sheep are distracting, you can just count and focus on the counting.
[14:19.180 --> 14:19.400]  Okay.
[14:20.340 --> 14:25.600]  This concentration exercise is a way, there's many concentration exercises in yoga.
[14:26.040 --> 14:29.420]  But the idea is that you can't meditate without concentration.
[14:29.680 --> 14:32.000]  So concentration comes before meditation.
[14:32.460 --> 14:35.340]  And concentration can help you in a lot of things.
[14:35.680 --> 14:35.740]  Okay.
[14:36.360 --> 14:37.020]  All right.
[14:37.180 --> 14:40.720]  So up here, I have a picture of Swami Sivananda.
[14:40.920 --> 14:43.860]  The kind of yoga that I practice is called Sivananda yoga.
[14:44.080 --> 14:46.460]  And he is the main guru.
[14:46.880 --> 14:48.980]  He's passed away some time ago.
[14:49.180 --> 14:50.940]  But this is one of his quotes up there.
[14:51.040 --> 14:54.900]  He says, to put your heart, mind, and soul into even the smallest acts.
[14:55.000 --> 14:57.260]  This is the secret of success.
[14:57.780 --> 14:59.480]  And I believe that it is.
[14:59.720 --> 15:02.100]  You should put yourself into what you're doing.
[15:02.440 --> 15:02.560]  Okay.
[15:02.900 --> 15:04.500]  Part of that is concentration.
[15:04.520 --> 15:05.980]  It's almost like a concentration.
[15:06.240 --> 15:09.820]  You know, if you're doing the dishes, you should be doing the dishes.
[15:10.060 --> 15:12.800]  You should just do the dishes to the best that you can.
[15:12.940 --> 15:14.120]  Make sure the dishes are clean.
[15:14.300 --> 15:17.780]  Don't do the dishes and think, oh, man, what do I have to do later?
[15:18.100 --> 15:18.640]  Oh, man.
[15:18.760 --> 15:18.880]  Yeah.
[15:19.000 --> 15:21.180]  My wife is going, oh, yeah, and then I got to do this stuff.
[15:21.600 --> 15:22.560]  Just do the dishes.
[15:22.860 --> 15:23.440]  It's okay.
[15:24.580 --> 15:27.180]  Whatever you're doing, just do that.
[15:27.400 --> 15:28.600]  Try to do that thing.
[15:29.600 --> 15:32.040]  And make it a part of your practice.
[15:33.540 --> 15:36.220]  It's a way to hone your concentration skills.
[15:36.460 --> 15:52.780]  If you can do the dishes with your whole being, every time you do the dishes, when you take out your computer, or you take out your soldering iron, or you take out a piece of wood and plan on creating something, if you're putting your whole self into it,
[15:52.840 --> 15:56.060]  you're going to see that it comes out, whatever you're doing, is going to come out better.
[15:56.320 --> 15:58.140]  Whatever you're trying to do will come out better.
[15:58.280 --> 16:03.520]  And this applies to the smallest things, but it applies to this large thing called living your life.
[16:03.980 --> 16:04.260]  Right?
[16:04.660 --> 16:13.700]  If you're just going through the motions, you're not going to have the kind of success that you could enjoy if you actually Really put yourself into your life.
[16:13.820 --> 16:23.640]  And it's hard to think about it in the big, big picture, but it's easy to think about, well, if I take five minutes and I just try to just calm down for five minutes, maybe I can just do that.
[16:23.840 --> 16:33.800]  If I'm making breakfast, then if I'm just thinking about this food that I'm preparing, then maybe this is gonna be a great meal that I can make for myself or for my family.
[16:34.420 --> 16:41.060]  And you put yourself into it and you'll see, little by little, this is practical knowledge.
[16:41.340 --> 16:48.960]  It sounds really silly at first, but if you really think about it and you really do do it, you will see improvements as you go.
[16:50.700 --> 16:58.740]  So another big thing about yoga, to skip forward in the Yoga Sutra chapters, is this principle called Ahimsa.
[16:59.020 --> 17:02.260]  And Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that means non-violence.
[17:04.140 --> 17:07.400]  So hackers are generally not violent people.
[17:07.600 --> 17:09.520]  I don't think anyone punched anyone yet this morning.
[17:10.360 --> 17:13.480]  But non-violence doesn't just mean fighting.
[17:13.720 --> 17:17.420]  It doesn't mean just war and that kind of violence.
[17:17.580 --> 17:19.020]  Obviously it does mean that.
[17:19.160 --> 17:23.540]  But it includes acts of violence that you could even take upon yourself.
[17:23.740 --> 17:28.580]  If you're angry with yourself, that is a form of violence.
[17:29.120 --> 17:33.940]  And the more angry you are, the more violent that thought is.
[17:34.020 --> 17:41.580]  If someone cuts you off, and I'm not perfect, I get road rage when I'm on my bike and someone cuts me off, I'm like, what are you trying to kill me?
[17:43.020 --> 17:45.720]  But I try to bring it back.
[17:46.240 --> 17:53.220]  Because the thing is that violence takes away energy that you could use for doing other things.
[17:53.420 --> 17:55.360]  Like whatever it is that you're doing.
[17:56.300 --> 18:02.180]  And if you think about it, just physically, when you get angry, what happens?
[18:03.740 --> 18:05.260]  Your face turns red.
[18:05.660 --> 18:07.540]  Your heart starts beating faster.
[18:07.980 --> 18:11.000]  You start to... you feel like your body tenses up.
[18:11.340 --> 18:12.500]  That takes energy.
[18:12.660 --> 18:13.660]  That burns calories.
[18:13.920 --> 18:15.160]  And not in a good way.
[18:15.720 --> 18:23.380]  Just the act of being angry takes energy away that you could be using to think about a project you're working on.
[18:23.460 --> 18:25.180]  To think about a loved one.
[18:25.300 --> 18:30.160]  To think about the next step in a plan that you're trying to see through to the end.
[18:30.440 --> 18:37.580]  And the less that you waste energy, the more energy you're gonna have to do whatever else it is that you're gonna do.
[18:38.320 --> 18:47.740]  It's little micro bits of energy, but at the end of the day, there's calories left for you to use for something enjoyable.
[18:48.000 --> 18:48.500]  Right?
[18:48.960 --> 18:52.860]  And everyone likes a person that's non-violent, I find.
[18:53.140 --> 18:54.880]  So you make some friends too.
[18:55.520 --> 18:55.960]  Okay?
[18:56.980 --> 19:03.920]  Part of it... part of this non-violence in a sort of abstract sense is about sort of just self-respect.
[19:04.120 --> 19:05.880]  And how can I put this another way?
[19:06.020 --> 19:10.440]  I mean, Aretha puts it maybe the best way is you gotta take care of business.
[19:10.680 --> 19:10.780]  Right?
[19:11.580 --> 19:14.940]  You want to be the best person that you can be.
[19:15.300 --> 19:17.080]  So what does that mean to you?
[19:17.220 --> 19:17.600]  Right?
[19:17.920 --> 19:20.840]  First, you have to decide exactly what that means.
[19:21.260 --> 19:21.380]  Okay?
[19:22.000 --> 19:24.120]  Does it mean you're gonna lose weight?
[19:24.260 --> 19:27.300]  Does it mean you're gonna be just in better shape?
[19:27.420 --> 19:32.480]  Maybe a little bit... live a little longer so that you can have more time with your children when they get older?
[19:33.320 --> 19:38.300]  You know, maybe you want a better job so you can make more money, so that you can just travel the world.
[19:38.800 --> 19:43.120]  You can be whoever you want to be, but you have to decide who that is.
[19:43.700 --> 19:47.020]  And you have to make a plan, and then you have to stick to that plan.
[19:47.180 --> 19:53.380]  And that's where this sort of, you know, if you're not sticking to your plan, then you're kind of disrespecting yourself.
[19:53.580 --> 19:55.000]  You know, you're lying to yourself.
[19:55.780 --> 19:58.920]  You don't tell someone that you trust, that trusts you.
[19:59.000 --> 20:04.080]  You don't tell them, oh yeah, I'm gonna meet you, you know, I'll meet you at nine o'clock tomorrow, and then don't show up.
[20:04.360 --> 20:05.320]  You don't do that.
[20:05.440 --> 20:05.660]  Right?
[20:05.760 --> 20:06.680]  You wouldn't do that to your friend.
[20:06.760 --> 20:07.860]  You shouldn't do that to yourself.
[20:08.160 --> 20:08.480]  Right?
[20:08.500 --> 20:09.880]  You need to show up every day.
[20:10.140 --> 20:18.440]  And if you decide that you can be a You're a better person, whatever that means to you, and you make a plan, and you start to take steps toward that plan.
[20:18.500 --> 20:20.660]  You have to continue to follow it through.
[20:22.060 --> 20:26.160]  And it's a big deal, but it happens in these small steps.
[20:26.480 --> 20:27.980]  It happens little by little.
[20:28.100 --> 20:31.780]  It happens in 30 seconds at a time of, wait, what am I doing?
[20:32.220 --> 20:33.440]  Let me breathe for a minute.
[20:35.040 --> 20:39.900]  And if you keep, you stick with it, you'll find you get results.
[20:39.900 --> 20:43.380]  But you gotta stick with it, even when it's difficult, all right?
[20:43.680 --> 20:47.020]  Now, coming up with a plan can be difficult.
[20:48.880 --> 20:50.920]  But you don't have to make it up on your own.
[20:51.520 --> 20:54.500]  There's a lot of people out there who have come up with plans.
[20:54.560 --> 21:00.460]  Now, I caution you to be careful, because there are a lot of folks out there that will sell you all different kinds of plans.
[21:00.480 --> 21:02.820]  And all you have to do is join my club.
[21:02.820 --> 21:11.600]  And it's only $3.99 a month, and you can come on in, and I'll send you these DVDs, and you know, you can, or maybe you should just move into my house.
[21:11.600 --> 21:15.460]  And you know, we drink this special kind of Kool-Aid, and everything's gonna be great.
[21:16.280 --> 21:31.420]  You can, you, in your, you know, in your quest to be a better you, and to find a plan that will work for you, there's, there are people who's, who can tell, like, oh, this person is on the cusp of a change.
[21:31.680 --> 21:36.200]  I can change them to be who I want them to be, because they are ripe for change.
[21:36.340 --> 21:37.720]  They're like hot metal, right?
[21:37.880 --> 21:44.420]  I can make them into who I want them to be, because I can tell that they're willing to do whatever it takes to be somebody else.
[21:45.400 --> 21:47.340]  You don't want to end up in that kind of a position.
[21:47.600 --> 21:50.700]  You want to decide for yourself who you want to be, okay?
[21:51.160 --> 21:57.540]  And then only after you're sure who you want to be can you start to make a plan for yourself.
[21:57.680 --> 22:04.120]  And you can use someone else's plan and adapt it to yourself, or you can try to make up your own and kind of freestyle it.
[22:04.360 --> 22:06.360]  Whatever works for you is fine.
[22:07.300 --> 22:14.300]  But just be careful that once you're in this state that you don't fall prey to some people who are going to just say, I know what you got to do.
[22:14.420 --> 22:15.300]  I know what you got to do.
[22:15.360 --> 22:16.020]  Just follow me.
[22:16.140 --> 22:16.780]  Just follow me.
[22:16.920 --> 22:18.800]  You just have to sign over some of your money.
[22:18.900 --> 22:19.640]  Don't worry about it.
[22:19.660 --> 22:20.020]  It's cool.
[22:20.100 --> 22:21.180]  You've read about Scientology.
[22:21.180 --> 22:21.580]  It's great.
[22:24.460 --> 22:24.860]  Right?
[22:26.060 --> 22:29.880]  Personally, I found that, I found a plan.
[22:30.320 --> 22:32.620]  This is a guy named Swami Vishnudevananda, right?
[22:32.780 --> 22:34.820]  So he found Swami Sivananda.
[22:34.880 --> 22:38.460]  I'm not going to go into the whole long story of how Sivananda Yoga started.
[22:38.600 --> 22:40.960]  But, you know, he was looking for a way to change.
[22:41.100 --> 22:43.180]  He was in the army, Swami Vishnu in India.
[22:43.420 --> 22:46.420]  We call him Swami Vishnu because Swami Vishnu Devananda is very long.
[22:46.580 --> 22:47.860]  So we just call him Swami Vishnu.
[22:48.940 --> 22:53.100]  He was in the army and he was thinking, you know, this is kind of cool.
[22:53.260 --> 22:57.840]  Like, I have a good job and I have a good life, but I feel like there's something missing.
[22:57.840 --> 23:01.060]  I feel like there's not everything that I want here.
[23:01.260 --> 23:05.260]  And he was kind of just like looking down and he noticed where he was sitting.
[23:05.360 --> 23:09.780]  He looked down and in the garbage can there, he saw some pamphlets from Swami Vishnu Devananda's.
[23:09.900 --> 23:15.520]  And one of the quotes on there said, an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory.
[23:15.780 --> 23:20.160]  And he picked that up and he's like, now this sounds like a guy that I need to go talk to.
[23:20.600 --> 23:26.820]  And he took a mission to go and visit Swami Vishnu Devananda at his ashram somewhere else in India.
[23:26.980 --> 23:28.640]  It was kind of a long trip, but he made the trip.
[23:29.760 --> 23:32.720]  Long story short, you know, everything kind of worked out.
[23:32.940 --> 23:37.540]  He was able to follow some ideas that Swami Vishnu Devananda had.
[23:37.700 --> 23:43.620]  And, you know, he changed his life for the better and like left the army and left his life and became a monk.
[23:43.980 --> 23:45.300]  You don't have to become a monk.
[23:45.380 --> 23:47.040]  That's who he decided he wanted to be.
[23:47.560 --> 23:57.300]  But one of the things that he did through his change was he synthesized all of Swami Vishnu Devananda's teachings into what is now called Shiva Nanda Yoga.
[23:57.300 --> 23:58.800]  And it's a five point plan.
[23:59.100 --> 23:59.900]  Nice and easy.
[24:00.060 --> 24:06.820]  So it starts with proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, positive thinking and meditation.
[24:07.080 --> 24:07.380]  Okay?
[24:08.380 --> 24:13.500]  All of the different things that you can do in yoga that are good for you, right?
[24:13.820 --> 24:15.720]  He synthesized them into these five points.
[24:15.800 --> 24:17.360]  So everything goes back to these five points.
[24:17.500 --> 24:19.160]  So first of all, proper exercise.
[24:20.140 --> 24:23.900]  Obviously to a yoga teacher, yoga is proper exercise.
[24:23.900 --> 24:24.280]  Okay?
[24:24.380 --> 24:28.820]  But you can do any kind of exercise that you feel you need to but you have to exercise.
[24:29.080 --> 24:29.660]  You got to get out there.
[24:29.760 --> 24:30.360]  You got to walk around.
[24:30.480 --> 24:32.720]  If you want to play Pokemon Go, play Pokemon Go.
[24:33.020 --> 24:34.220]  It'll get you walking around.
[24:34.440 --> 24:35.200]  Do it, right?
[24:35.520 --> 24:38.460]  You want to try just doing some calisthenics in the morning.
[24:38.820 --> 24:39.820]  Whatever you got to do.
[24:39.940 --> 24:42.160]  It can be five minutes of exercise.
[24:42.380 --> 24:49.720]  If you don't have any exercise now in your, in your plan, you know, in your daily routine, add five minutes.
[24:50.040 --> 24:53.900]  Get up five minutes earlier and just jump around for five minutes, right?
[24:55.540 --> 24:57.040]  Eventually you're going to increase that.
[24:57.220 --> 24:59.440]  Because once you start to feel good, you're going to say, you know what?
[24:59.500 --> 25:12.280]  That five minute thing, I bet you if I did that 10 minutes and I added some sit-ups, or maybe if I took a bike ride and then did this... As you build it up, you're going to see that you start to feel better and better and better.
[25:12.280 --> 25:13.320]  But it's every day.
[25:13.540 --> 25:16.660]  The thing is, every day is the key.
[25:17.440 --> 25:23.160]  Five minutes a day is better than two hours on Saturday and then never exercising again.
[25:24.180 --> 25:25.760]  10 minutes a day is even better.
[25:26.080 --> 25:28.780]  30 minutes a day, hey, now you're getting somewhere, right?
[25:28.960 --> 25:33.020]  An hour a day is like, you're going to start to, you're going to transform, right?
[25:33.700 --> 25:38.840]  But the idea is proper exercise should be something that feels good to you.
[25:39.000 --> 25:41.160]  Something that does not hurt, okay?
[25:41.720 --> 25:45.660]  And something that you can do consistently, daily, okay?
[25:46.180 --> 25:52.460]  Proper exercise, like I said, is not, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to kind of just stand there and look at myself.
[25:53.240 --> 25:53.780]  Look at that.
[25:54.400 --> 25:56.320]  That's not proper exercise, right?
[25:56.500 --> 25:58.580]  You actually have to do something, right?
[25:58.760 --> 25:59.700]  And you have to feel good.
[25:59.800 --> 26:02.120]  You don't want to... it's not about a fashion show, right?
[26:02.300 --> 26:07.180]  It's not about like just kind of showing up to the gym and then leaving, right?
[26:07.520 --> 26:08.520]  It's about doing it.
[26:08.620 --> 26:10.200]  That's the proper part, okay?
[26:10.940 --> 26:12.400]  So then the proper breathing, okay?
[26:12.460 --> 26:14.420]  Now, yoga has a lot of breathing exercises.
[26:14.600 --> 26:15.440]  They're called pranayama.
[26:15.560 --> 26:20.620]  But you don't have to do advanced breathing exercises to have proper breathing.
[26:20.840 --> 26:23.320]  What you need to do is you need to breathe completely.
[26:23.960 --> 26:29.640]  And most of you, I can tell right now, I can tell you that most of you are probably not breathing completely.
[26:29.840 --> 26:34.100]  You're probably using about half or maybe even 25% of your lung capacity.
[26:34.280 --> 26:35.660]  And that's just the way that we are.
[26:35.780 --> 26:36.620]  It's just the way that we breathe.
[26:38.700 --> 26:41.800]  It's hard to just suddenly walk around.
[26:44.850 --> 26:46.270]  You don't want to walk around like that.
[26:46.350 --> 26:46.890]  You'll get dizzy.
[26:47.470 --> 26:48.090]  Trust me.
[26:48.650 --> 26:51.810]  But try to breathe deeper.
[26:52.490 --> 26:55.870]  Try to exhale more, right?
[26:55.990 --> 27:00.550]  Even if you just focus on exhaling, your body will inhale, right?
[27:00.630 --> 27:03.410]  Your body will breathe on its own for the most part.
[27:03.650 --> 27:05.070]  It knows how to do that, right?
[27:05.170 --> 27:06.490]  Thanks to the magic of science.
[27:06.930 --> 27:13.990]  But if you force all of the air out and you exhale all the way, you're going to have more room for more air, right?
[27:14.230 --> 27:18.010]  And depending on where you are, more air in your lungs is going to be better.
[27:18.130 --> 27:23.590]  I recommend not trying deep breathing exercises out in front of the hotel because there's people smoking out there.
[27:23.690 --> 27:25.050]  There's this crazy gross smell.
[27:25.190 --> 27:26.130]  I don't know what it is.
[27:26.650 --> 27:30.650]  But you want to have, you know, you want to breathe deep, right?
[27:30.770 --> 27:33.730]  And the more that you breathe, the more energy you're going to have.
[27:33.730 --> 27:39.070]  Your body needs the stuff that's floating around in the air, specifically, you know, the oxygen, right?
[27:39.870 --> 27:42.630]  And it needs to get rid of stuff as well.
[27:42.810 --> 27:45.090]  Like your respiratory system is really important to you.
[27:45.250 --> 27:49.830]  The fact that you do it on your own without thinking about it means that we mostly take it for granted.
[27:50.190 --> 27:51.270]  But don't take it for granted.
[27:51.550 --> 27:52.110]  Think about it.
[27:52.430 --> 27:53.390]  Breathe, right?
[27:53.690 --> 27:54.390]  Breathe fully.
[27:54.530 --> 27:58.510]  And if you're, if you have the time, do breathe completely in and out.
[27:58.610 --> 27:59.350]  Not too fast.
[27:59.490 --> 28:01.090]  If you get dizzy, slow down.
[28:01.730 --> 28:03.950]  But focusing on your breathing is really important.
[28:04.150 --> 28:05.430]  And that's why it's the number two thing.
[28:05.590 --> 28:06.830]  So the first thing is exercise.
[28:06.930 --> 28:08.550]  And the second thing is breathing.
[28:08.790 --> 28:10.410]  You should breathe while you exercise though.
[28:10.590 --> 28:11.190]  Make sure you do that.
[28:11.730 --> 28:11.850]  Okay.
[28:12.030 --> 28:13.050]  Proper relaxation.
[28:13.410 --> 28:13.650]  Okay.
[28:13.990 --> 28:24.550]  So one of the things about Sivananda yoga that a lot of people who are already into another kind of yoga, they don't really like this part for some reason, is that in Sivananda yoga, we take relaxed breaks a lot.
[28:24.810 --> 28:25.030]  Okay?
[28:25.130 --> 28:33.890]  Between every set of exercises or every, um, asana that we do, uh, we do a special asana called the corpse pose.
[28:34.010 --> 28:34.950]  It's called Shavasana.
[28:35.470 --> 28:37.950]  And it's important to relax.
[28:38.190 --> 28:38.450]  Okay?
[28:38.830 --> 28:43.530]  Uh, we relax a lot because when you relax, your body can kind of figure out, okay, like, what was just happening?
[28:43.930 --> 28:45.830]  Okay, let me just put everything back in order.
[28:46.410 --> 28:50.430]  Um, there are different ways, like, you can go online and you can read about what happens.
[28:50.490 --> 28:51.690]  Like, you have to take a rest day.
[28:51.690 --> 28:52.130]  Right?
[28:52.150 --> 29:05.570]  If you decide to do P90X, right, because you bought the DVDs or you downloaded them somewhere, whatever, um, even in P90X, which is like a super kind of like boot camp exercise, you have to have a rest day.
[29:05.750 --> 29:06.010]  Right?
[29:06.090 --> 29:10.650]  Tony Horton will tell you, you gotta rest, you gotta relax, because you gotta let your muscles build.
[29:10.890 --> 29:11.090]  Right?
[29:11.150 --> 29:14.090]  Because you break them down when you're working out and then they have to rebuild.
[29:14.370 --> 29:14.650]  Okay?
[29:14.770 --> 29:16.490]  You can't just keep working, working, working.
[29:16.990 --> 29:18.490]  Um, you do have to relax.
[29:18.690 --> 29:20.950]  And as part of your exercise, you should relax.
[29:21.110 --> 29:25.270]  If you're gonna run a mile, it's okay to take a break halfway through.
[29:25.450 --> 29:29.190]  It's okay to take a break every, you know, few hundred feet, if you have to.
[29:29.510 --> 29:30.870]  But you do need to relax.
[29:31.230 --> 29:31.330]  Okay?
[29:32.010 --> 29:35.890]  Um, outside of exercise, daily, you should try to relax.
[29:36.070 --> 29:40.130]  Before you go to bed, you should not be on your phone checking on social media.
[29:40.470 --> 29:42.570]  You should not be on your phone looking at the news.
[29:42.790 --> 29:44.070]  It's only gonna give you nightmares.
[29:44.670 --> 29:46.050]  There's, there's nothing good on there.
[29:46.150 --> 29:49.570]  I mean, there's some, there's like, maybe there's baby animal pictures online.
[29:50.050 --> 29:50.830]  That's helpful.
[29:51.210 --> 29:59.110]  But you want to just, just forget about the outside world and just focus on yourself and remember what you're trying to do.
[29:59.210 --> 30:03.650]  Because remember, this is part of a plan for you to be the best you that you can be.
[30:03.830 --> 30:08.270]  So if you're thinking about, okay, so, you know, today I did good.
[30:09.310 --> 30:11.070]  I took, I did my exercise.
[30:11.110 --> 30:12.350]  I did my relaxation.
[30:12.690 --> 30:13.390]  I ate right.
[30:13.630 --> 30:17.070]  I, okay, I made some mistakes, but maybe I won't make those same mistakes tomorrow.
[30:17.410 --> 30:18.670]  Just think about your day.
[30:19.190 --> 30:20.750]  Think, don't think too much about tomorrow.
[30:21.210 --> 30:24.690]  I mean, think a little bit maybe, but don't, don't worry about tomorrow.
[30:25.050 --> 30:26.770]  Don't worry about five years from now.
[30:26.950 --> 30:30.710]  And don't worry about mistakes that you made, but just kind of go over your day.
[30:30.890 --> 30:33.210]  You don't need your phone for that really, right?
[30:33.390 --> 30:38.390]  And you definitely don't want to go to sleep with like the television on, or like that kind of stuff.
[30:38.510 --> 30:39.790]  It's just not going to let you relax.
[30:39.890 --> 30:41.530]  You need to relax totally.
[30:41.790 --> 30:45.430]  And if you have small children at home, that's going to be difficult, but it's okay.
[30:45.990 --> 30:47.050]  You can make it happen.
[30:47.230 --> 30:47.490]  Okay.
[30:47.630 --> 30:49.610]  You can find a way to relax a bit.
[30:49.730 --> 30:53.030]  You just have to relax and kind of keep one eye a little open.
[30:53.890 --> 30:55.510]  You know, my friend is a single mom.
[30:55.670 --> 30:56.610]  She's doing what she can.
[30:56.830 --> 31:02.150]  I'm trying to tell her, if you can relax for a minute, do it.
[31:02.310 --> 31:05.910]  If you can take a nap with your daughter, take the nap with her.
[31:06.090 --> 31:07.910]  You need a nap too, right?
[31:07.990 --> 31:11.490]  You can't, you can't go 24 hours a day at full speed.
[31:11.650 --> 31:12.570]  You have to relax.
[31:14.110 --> 31:20.810]  If you don't relax, you start to see the downsides of not doing all of this stuff in the long term, especially.
[31:21.910 --> 31:22.050]  All right.
[31:22.170 --> 31:22.910]  So proper diet.
[31:24.430 --> 31:25.010]  Stop it.
[31:25.110 --> 31:27.170]  It's just so much junk food around today.
[31:27.430 --> 31:29.490]  I'm not going to go too much into diet.
[31:29.750 --> 31:31.510]  You know what a proper diet is, all of you.
[31:31.590 --> 31:32.730]  You know you should eat vegetables.
[31:32.990 --> 31:33.370]  Come on.
[31:33.610 --> 31:34.610]  Eat vegetables.
[31:34.930 --> 31:35.590]  Eat fruit.
[31:36.110 --> 31:37.650]  That's all I'm going to say about that.
[31:37.850 --> 31:38.270]  All right.
[31:38.790 --> 31:39.570]  I'm a vegan.
[31:39.790 --> 31:40.910]  I'm not going to tell you to be vegan.
[31:41.090 --> 31:41.870]  You don't have to be vegan.
[31:41.970 --> 31:43.050]  You don't even have to be vegetarian.
[31:43.310 --> 31:44.530]  You can eat meat and be healthy.
[31:45.090 --> 31:49.330]  But you can't just eat chicken wings and fries and call it a meal.
[31:49.550 --> 31:51.610]  You got to have something green in there, right?
[31:51.850 --> 31:53.510]  Try to eat different colored vegetables.
[31:54.490 --> 31:59.130]  And I'm going to shut up because I can, I can go off that this could be a whole, a whole presentation about diet.
[31:59.510 --> 31:59.870]  Okay.
[32:00.250 --> 32:01.650]  And then positive thinking, right?
[32:02.970 --> 32:09.730]  Trying to think about the good that you can do for yourself and for the world.
[32:10.190 --> 32:10.230]  Okay.
[32:11.070 --> 32:17.910]  I'm trying to remember that even though people are getting killed right now, probably someone's dying.
[32:18.090 --> 32:24.570]  People have disease and there are, there's hurt and there's pain, but there's you.
[32:25.350 --> 32:28.510]  You can make a difference starting with yourself.
[32:29.150 --> 32:30.930]  Try to put a positive spin on it.
[32:31.130 --> 32:32.550]  It doesn't mean ignore.
[32:33.110 --> 32:36.170]  It doesn't mean close your eyes and stick your head in the sand.
[32:36.530 --> 32:40.890]  It means find the positive aspects of things to think about.
[32:40.890 --> 32:45.970]  And if you can stay focused on the positive, you will feel better overall.
[32:46.410 --> 32:46.510]  Okay.
[32:47.510 --> 32:55.510]  And so all of these things, all of the things that I try to do as part of my yoga practice are all come down to these five points in one way or another.
[32:55.970 --> 32:56.110]  Okay.
[32:57.490 --> 32:58.050]  All right.
[32:58.530 --> 33:00.310]  So, yeah.
[33:00.470 --> 33:11.950]  So I put this slide up here because it's really important to know that when you start working on this plan, after you've made, you know, you've decided to change yourself, it's going to take time.
[33:12.190 --> 33:12.670]  Okay.
[33:12.890 --> 33:14.430]  It's not going to happen overnight.
[33:14.690 --> 33:16.290]  It's not going to happen in a month.
[33:16.450 --> 33:18.110]  It might not happen in a year.
[33:18.270 --> 33:30.110]  It took me six years to go from I hate my life to standing up here telling you that you can change your life and you can be like, you know, you can be actually happy.
[33:30.250 --> 33:30.610]  Okay.
[33:31.030 --> 33:35.330]  But it takes the understanding that you've got to just slow down.
[33:35.750 --> 33:35.850]  Okay.
[33:36.390 --> 33:41.330]  Um, if you feel like you're not going fast enough, um, I got some numbers for you.
[33:41.470 --> 33:41.670]  Okay.
[33:41.870 --> 33:44.650]  The earth is rotating at a thousand miles an hour.
[33:44.830 --> 33:45.250]  Okay.
[33:45.470 --> 33:45.910]  Right now.
[33:46.090 --> 33:46.590]  Okay.
[33:46.790 --> 33:50.830]  Uh, it's revolving around the sun 67,000 miles an hour.
[33:51.250 --> 33:51.970]  Right now.
[33:52.330 --> 33:53.410]  While it's rotating.
[33:53.670 --> 33:54.070]  Okay.
[33:54.710 --> 34:01.670]  Our solar system is in the Milky Way and it's moving within the Milky Way at 490,000 miles an hour.
[34:02.070 --> 34:03.550]  So you're already going fast.
[34:04.350 --> 34:04.790]  Okay.
[34:06.790 --> 34:07.230]  Everything.
[34:07.330 --> 34:09.490]  You got to just slow down a little bit.
[34:09.690 --> 34:09.810]  Okay.
[34:10.150 --> 34:10.890]  And don't rush.
[34:11.030 --> 34:14.910]  If you try to rush into a plan, you end up with trouble.
[34:15.110 --> 34:15.470]  Okay.
[34:15.630 --> 34:16.870]  You start skipping steps.
[34:17.190 --> 34:17.470]  Right.
[34:17.750 --> 34:23.110]  Um, I like to think of like when I think of the counting exercise, there was like, I think it was an episode of the Flintstones.
[34:23.190 --> 34:26.430]  And like Fred had to get anger management problems.
[34:26.590 --> 34:27.970]  Yeah, this must have been the Flintstones.
[34:28.270 --> 34:32.690]  Um, and he, his doctor told him just count to 10 when you get angry.
[34:32.870 --> 34:33.050]  Right.
[34:33.150 --> 34:33.810]  Which is good advice.
[34:33.990 --> 34:34.530]  Just count to 10.
[34:34.690 --> 34:35.450]  And he would do it.
[34:35.510 --> 34:37.730]  And you could see like he, when he got angry, he turned purple.
[34:37.950 --> 34:42.850]  And as he counted to 10, his color changed, you know, like back to regular Fred Flintstone color.
[34:43.490 --> 34:46.570]  But then he got really, really angry at the end of the episode.
[34:46.610 --> 34:50.970]  And instead of going one, two, three, four, and counting up, he just went one, two, 10.
[34:51.170 --> 34:52.930]  And he ended up turning like stripe colors.
[34:53.690 --> 34:54.170]  Okay.
[34:54.610 --> 34:57.350]  That will happen to you if you skip steps.
[34:57.690 --> 34:57.810]  Okay.
[34:58.030 --> 34:59.450]  Uh, you don't want that.
[34:59.570 --> 35:05.370]  You don't want to just kind of like, like go about things half, sort of like half a measure.
[35:05.590 --> 35:06.030]  Right.
[35:06.330 --> 35:10.870]  Um, you want to give yourself all of the attention that you deserve.
[35:10.870 --> 35:14.550]  And that means taking time and not skipping steps.
[35:14.770 --> 35:20.250]  And like eating, like when you say, oh yeah, well I'm supposed to eat right.
[35:20.350 --> 35:21.310]  Cause that's part of my plan.
[35:22.790 --> 35:24.610]  But I'm kind of busy right now.
[35:24.670 --> 35:28.310]  So I guess I'm just going to have this Mountain Dew and cause it's green.
[35:28.870 --> 35:31.770]  So he said eat different colored stuff.
[35:32.350 --> 35:38.230]  So, you know, I mean, when I was in high school, kids, like kids in my class would drink orange soda because they were like, it's orange.
[35:38.330 --> 35:39.150]  It's like orange juice.
[35:39.590 --> 35:40.550]  That's not true.
[35:41.290 --> 35:42.390]  It's not true.
[35:42.630 --> 35:45.930]  But you like, you don't, don't try to look for shortcuts.
[35:46.190 --> 35:51.730]  You know, that's another place where these other guys will come in and they'll say, Oh, you want a quick way to do it?
[35:52.150 --> 35:53.030]  Come with me.
[35:53.150 --> 35:54.170]  You've been trying to change.
[35:54.330 --> 35:55.470]  I know a quick way.
[35:55.850 --> 35:57.170]  You just got to take this pill.
[35:57.350 --> 35:58.430]  Everything's going to be fine.
[35:58.950 --> 35:59.870]  Everything's going to be great.
[36:00.210 --> 36:12.870]  Um, when you try to make shortcuts, you start to screw up in different ways and the repercussions from the shortcuts turn out to be, you know, the, it's like, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary thing.
[36:13.030 --> 36:13.270]  Right.
[36:13.290 --> 36:14.450]  You're like, I'm just going to do this for now.
[36:14.450 --> 36:16.790]  And then that becomes your new mode.
[36:17.350 --> 36:17.430]  Right.
[36:17.970 --> 36:21.850]  Um, so take your time, do the right thing that you know is right.
[36:21.870 --> 36:24.830]  Even if you know that it's a challenge.
[36:25.010 --> 36:29.890]  And it's easy for me to stand up here and tell you this stuff, but I can tell you I'm not perfect.
[36:30.030 --> 36:31.290]  I make mistakes.
[36:32.770 --> 36:38.210]  But overall, my, my graph of happiness is kind of like steadily upward trend.
[36:38.210 --> 36:38.930]  Okay.
[36:39.470 --> 36:41.350]  Uh, and it's by following these, these principles.
[36:42.150 --> 36:42.670]  Okay.
[36:43.190 --> 36:50.630]  So now I'm going to say some horrible, horrible things about this, this, this, this thing up here.
[36:50.710 --> 36:51.670]  Does anyone know what that is?
[36:52.050 --> 36:53.610]  Yeah, of course you do.
[36:54.270 --> 36:55.610]  Of course you do.
[36:55.910 --> 36:56.430]  Okay.
[36:56.890 --> 37:01.390]  I want to talk to you about caffeine and caffeine addiction.
[37:02.550 --> 37:04.090]  Yeah, I know.
[37:04.290 --> 37:04.950]  I know.
[37:05.410 --> 37:14.750]  Part of slowing down means maybe you need to think about the amount of caffeine that you're taking into your body every day.
[37:15.290 --> 37:19.970]  Now, some caffeine, sometimes it's good, depending on how you get it.
[37:20.250 --> 37:22.970]  Maybe some coffee has antioxidant properties.
[37:23.490 --> 37:26.110]  You know, there's different kinds of studies tell you all this stuff.
[37:26.290 --> 37:31.570]  I mean, caffeine, I'm not saying that you should never have caffeine ever again.
[37:32.290 --> 37:35.770]  However, caffeine addiction is real.
[37:35.970 --> 37:40.950]  I know because I quit caffeine and my body went through hell.
[37:41.190 --> 37:42.470]  I had headaches.
[37:42.770 --> 37:44.470]  I hated everything.
[37:44.730 --> 37:46.850]  I didn't want to do anything.
[37:47.050 --> 37:47.450]  Okay.
[37:47.650 --> 37:56.390]  And I realized like, wait, this is just because I'm not putting this substance into my body that wasn't there before.
[37:56.690 --> 37:58.210]  I wasn't born with this.
[37:58.350 --> 38:04.610]  I don't need this in me, but I started putting it in me because everyone was doing it.
[38:04.790 --> 38:06.470]  My mom drank coffee every morning.
[38:07.010 --> 38:15.190]  Like everyone around me was like drinking coffee, drinking Red Bull, drinking club mate, drinking... And it's just like, it keeps you up, right?
[38:16.010 --> 38:18.730]  It can be a great performance enhancing drug.
[38:18.730 --> 38:20.790]  It can, it can help you.
[38:20.930 --> 38:28.210]  If you're, if you're, if you're doing like, you know, if you're a performance athlete, you have some caffeine before you race, it's going to help.
[38:28.570 --> 38:29.310]  It is.
[38:29.410 --> 38:44.010]  But if you drink caffeine every day or you're using caffeine soap and like absorbing it into your skin or like you're drinking caffeine water and swallowing caffeine tablets and like you're going to, you're, you're tricking yourself is really what it is,
[38:44.030 --> 38:44.150]  right?
[38:44.210 --> 38:45.150]  That's the way caffeine works.
[38:45.250 --> 38:56.470]  Like you get tired, Your body gets tired, and there's these points in your brain where there's this like neurochemical and like, it's like supposed to be absorbed that says like, and it lets your body know that it's tired.
[38:57.050 --> 39:05.150]  But when you drink caffeine, like the way caffeine kind of plugs in to those receptors, it blocks all of that stuff that says you're tired.
[39:05.190 --> 39:07.110]  So your brain is like, tired?
[39:07.230 --> 39:07.770]  What's tired?
[39:07.870 --> 39:09.050]  I don't know anything about tired.
[39:09.150 --> 39:12.970]  You don't know because the caffeine kind of plugged itself in, right?
[39:12.970 --> 39:23.870]  And what makes you drink more and more caffeine, like to build up the tolerance, is that your brain figures out, like your body figures out that these receptors, that for some reason they don't seem to be working.
[39:24.050 --> 39:26.210]  It doesn't really know why they're not working.
[39:26.490 --> 39:27.990]  It just knows that they're not working.
[39:28.170 --> 39:29.450]  And so it makes more.
[39:30.230 --> 39:36.010]  And so then you start to feel tired because like, all your brains doing what it's supposed to.
[39:36.170 --> 39:37.550]  It's like, it's just working.
[39:37.550 --> 39:40.290]  So then you drink more caffeine and it fills up those new ones.
[39:40.410 --> 39:41.750]  And then it makes more.
[39:41.910 --> 39:43.650]  And then you drink more caffeine and it fills up new ones.
[39:43.750 --> 39:46.670]  And then you drink in three or four or five cups a day, right?
[39:47.650 --> 39:50.170]  Which I was, you know, I mean, a coffee at work is free.
[39:50.270 --> 39:53.290]  They love me to drink coffee because it keeps me coding, right?
[39:55.330 --> 40:01.130]  But the problem is that when you're ignoring your body, your body's trying to send you a signal, right?
[40:02.190 --> 40:06.770]  If your body's telling you you're tired, it means you're tired, okay?
[40:07.010 --> 40:07.890]  And that's okay.
[40:08.850 --> 40:09.950]  Take a nap.
[40:10.830 --> 40:12.510]  Eat healthy food.
[40:13.510 --> 40:15.030]  Try to get more sleep.
[40:15.590 --> 40:25.390]  You'll find more energy and your energy will increase more and more as you train your body to use the energy as you need it.
[40:25.390 --> 40:25.930]  Okay?
[40:26.330 --> 40:28.230]  This is blasphemy, I know.
[40:28.810 --> 40:32.670]  But you can actually be just as alert.
[40:33.190 --> 40:35.010]  You can be just as awake.
[40:35.230 --> 40:38.990]  You can do just as good work without caffeine.
[40:42.620 --> 40:43.340]  I know.
[40:43.560 --> 40:44.260]  I know.
[40:44.640 --> 40:45.820]  You can do it though.
[40:46.080 --> 40:46.900]  You can.
[40:47.160 --> 40:48.200]  You really, you can.
[40:48.300 --> 40:50.780]  And I'm not saying never have caffeine.
[40:50.780 --> 40:53.140]  It's not like it's crack and heroin and stuff.
[40:53.320 --> 40:59.360]  It's not gonna, it's not gonna put you in, in rehab, but you can, you'll have more energy.
[40:59.540 --> 41:06.760]  So the best thing about having like real energy instead of like this kind of like, don't worry brain, you're not tired.
[41:06.960 --> 41:07.460]  Just have this.
[41:07.980 --> 41:09.840]  Is that it lasts longer.
[41:10.100 --> 41:10.400]  Okay?
[41:10.600 --> 41:12.100]  It feels better.
[41:12.340 --> 41:19.120]  It doesn't feel like, like you're kind of disconnected from the world because like your brain's like, what's all this?
[41:19.120 --> 41:24.780]  Um, and when you're tired after you're, after a spurt of energy, you're just tired.
[41:25.060 --> 41:27.060]  You're not like tired like, and you're crashing.
[41:27.480 --> 41:27.800]  Right?
[41:27.860 --> 41:34.220]  Especially if you have like a sugary drink like club mate or like coffee with tons of sugar or like Red Bull.
[41:34.560 --> 41:38.240]  Because then you're getting, you know, the caffeine plus all the sugar.
[41:38.400 --> 41:41.180]  So then you get a caffeine crash and the sugar crash.
[41:41.400 --> 41:43.540]  And then you're just destroying your body little by little.
[41:43.880 --> 41:43.980]  Right?
[41:44.580 --> 41:46.120]  Um, just trust me on this.
[41:46.240 --> 41:48.420]  You can actually, you can actually do it.
[41:48.420 --> 41:49.320]  It just takes practice.
[41:49.640 --> 41:55.400]  Um, I would encourage you to not go cold turkey because it will hurt.
[41:56.480 --> 41:59.040]  Uh, like it, it hurts.
[41:59.180 --> 42:02.100]  It literally is physically, it physically hurts.
[42:02.400 --> 42:06.840]  Um, I was in another talk earlier this weekend and the presenter mentioned brain pain.
[42:06.840 --> 42:12.620]  It had to do more with things being stuck on your brain, but it's brain pain and you don't want it.
[42:12.840 --> 42:13.100]  Right?
[42:13.100 --> 42:16.300]  Um, alright, so I'm going to leave you with that.
[42:16.600 --> 42:18.180]  I'm going to end this nice and early.
[42:19.440 --> 42:20.720]  Have time for questions.
[42:21.000 --> 42:21.780]  Thank you very much.
[42:22.060 --> 42:22.680]  Uh, thanks again.
[42:22.800 --> 42:23.400]  I know it's early.
[42:31.890 --> 42:33.310]  If anyone has questions.
[42:33.910 --> 42:34.230]  Yeah?
[42:34.430 --> 42:38.150]  Could you, uh, demonstrate and have us do some relaxation exercises?
[42:38.330 --> 42:38.730]  Would you like?
[42:39.090 --> 42:39.770]  Oh, sure.
[42:39.950 --> 42:40.210]  Sure.
[42:40.510 --> 42:49.190]  So, uh, my favorite relaxation exercise, um, I would just demonstrate by laying on the floor, but then no one will see me.
[42:49.190 --> 42:57.390]  But my favorite relaxation exercise is to lay on the floor, uh, with my arms out, so about 45 degrees, my legs out about 45 degrees.
[42:57.670 --> 43:01.890]  And just try to not use any muscles at all.
[43:02.110 --> 43:04.010]  Try to relax every muscle.
[43:04.130 --> 43:04.570]  Okay?
[43:05.050 --> 43:06.430]  Um, this is called Shavasana.
[43:06.770 --> 43:09.810]  Uh, you close your eyes and you breathe and you focus on your breath.
[43:09.950 --> 43:10.290]  Okay?
[43:10.290 --> 43:20.770]  Now, once you kind of have a, your breath is kind of a rhythm, then you mentally suggest to yourself that all of your body is relaxing.
[43:20.990 --> 43:21.290]  Okay?
[43:21.350 --> 43:22.270]  And you start at your toes.
[43:22.430 --> 43:27.610]  And you tell yourself, my toes and my feet and my ankles are relaxing.
[43:27.930 --> 43:35.690]  And it sounds crazy, but as you think of your body relaxing part by part, it actually helps.
[43:35.850 --> 43:37.370]  It actually relaxes more.
[43:37.790 --> 43:42.450]  Um, and by the time you get to your head, you're gonna feel the change.
[43:42.930 --> 43:43.290]  Right?
[43:43.590 --> 43:49.790]  Uh, and you can even, as you, you get up to your head and you wanna keep going, you can think of your internal organs as well.
[43:49.890 --> 43:52.530]  And you can think, you know, my stomach is relaxing.
[43:52.930 --> 43:54.890]  You know, my spleen is relaxing.
[43:55.030 --> 43:55.190]  Whatever.
[43:55.190 --> 44:02.710]  You can think of all of it, but eventually you just have to be relaxed and just be that way for as long as you, for as long as you need.
[44:02.870 --> 44:04.090]  You might fall asleep.
[44:04.710 --> 44:06.710]  Uh, it happens a lot in yoga classes.
[44:06.710 --> 44:09.710]  People get into the Shavasana pose and then they fall asleep immediately.
[44:10.050 --> 44:16.610]  It's better if you don't fall asleep because sleeping and, and relaxing in a conscious state are, are different.
[44:16.610 --> 44:21.710]  If you can relax while you're conscious, your body can learn to relax while it's conscious.
[44:22.370 --> 44:25.690]  That's important because most of the time you're conscious, I think.
[44:25.890 --> 44:29.210]  So you should be able to relax yourself while you're conscious.
[44:29.350 --> 44:32.130]  And if you can only relax while you're sleeping, that's great.
[44:32.130 --> 44:35.710]  But you need to be able to try to relax while you're conscious because that's when you're stressed.
[44:36.110 --> 44:36.330]  Right?
[44:36.470 --> 44:38.990]  That's, that's when you really need the relaxation to kick in.
[44:39.090 --> 44:45.750]  And if you practice it, when you're under duress, you'll be able to say, wait, I need to relax right now.
[44:50.510 --> 44:52.790]  You mentioned positive thoughts.
[44:53.070 --> 44:56.230]  I believe you are aware of the concept of bhakti.
[44:57.490 --> 45:02.550]  How do you connect this love, creation, devotion towards normal meeting people?
[45:03.670 --> 45:05.470]  Towards meeting just people in general?
[45:05.670 --> 45:08.290]  To bring the bhakti in the common room or in the Internet.
[45:08.690 --> 45:11.870]  Yeah, so the question involves bhakti.
[45:11.970 --> 45:13.150]  So I'm going to explain what bhakti is.
[45:13.150 --> 45:15.910]  So bhakti is a sort of... it's a kind of yoga.
[45:16.050 --> 45:17.910]  It's the yoga of devotion, okay?
[45:18.790 --> 45:25.350]  And that's part of where yoga and sort of religion and spirituality kind of start to come really close.
[45:25.370 --> 45:31.890]  And I intentionally left that out of this talk to keep it kind of not so religiousy and weird for people.
[45:32.190 --> 45:36.310]  But you can be devoted and an atheist at the same time.
[45:36.670 --> 45:40.930]  But what you need is to have a sort of cultivate love, right?
[45:43.050 --> 45:50.130]  It's hard to talk about love of everyone without it sounding like kind of foofy and like weird.
[45:50.670 --> 45:57.750]  But if you can think about love that you have for yourself and think, why am I trying to change myself?
[45:57.930 --> 45:59.550]  Why am I trying to be a better person?
[45:59.750 --> 46:00.750]  It's because I love myself.
[46:00.890 --> 46:01.230]  That's why.
[46:01.930 --> 46:07.550]  And you can think, hey, this guy, maybe he's trying to be the best person he can be too.
[46:07.830 --> 46:09.830]  Maybe they're trying to be who they want to be.
[46:09.910 --> 46:11.350]  And they're just struggling today.
[46:11.530 --> 46:18.530]  And the reason why they stepped on my shoe is because they're just concentrating on what they're concentrating on.
[46:18.550 --> 46:19.690]  And they just didn't notice me.
[46:19.810 --> 46:20.930]  I'm not going to get angry.
[46:21.330 --> 46:25.170]  And that in a way is like expressing love towards someone.
[46:25.170 --> 46:27.990]  Not getting angry at someone for something silly, right?
[46:28.150 --> 46:30.930]  Someone at work says something during a meeting.
[46:31.710 --> 46:32.850]  Maybe they didn't mean it.
[46:33.630 --> 46:36.070]  Maybe they're a mean person, okay?
[46:36.310 --> 46:39.290]  But you don't have to start judging them.
[46:39.430 --> 46:42.830]  And you don't have to start thinking like, yeah, you know, so-and-so.
[46:43.470 --> 46:45.230]  I hate it when they come to these meetings.
[46:46.750 --> 46:52.170]  You need to think more on a positive aspect of like, you know, maybe they're going through something.
[46:52.170 --> 46:55.330]  It's not your problem, but maybe they're going through something.
[46:55.590 --> 47:05.310]  And if you can kind of keep these positive sort of feelings, you'll find the interactions with anyone are going to, it's going to be better, right?
[47:05.470 --> 47:07.790]  And you can think of it as, I love everyone.
[47:08.610 --> 47:10.770]  But you don't have to like jump right through that.
[47:10.830 --> 47:14.430]  Because that could be a little extreme for people, especially if you're more of an introvert.
[47:14.510 --> 47:15.730]  And you're like, I don't want to love everyone.
[47:15.730 --> 47:16.370]  That's crazy.
[47:17.870 --> 47:22.630]  But if you focus on yourself and you think like, I'm trying to be my best self.
[47:22.850 --> 47:25.610]  Everyone should probably be trying to be their best self.
[47:25.750 --> 47:28.070]  If I can be my best self, maybe I can help people.
[47:28.310 --> 47:31.450]  Maybe if people see me being my best self, they can be their best self.
[47:31.850 --> 47:34.490]  And it sort of like spreads, it radiates from you.
[47:34.870 --> 47:37.530]  And in a sense, that really is love, right?
[47:37.610 --> 47:41.950]  And in a sense, I mean, we really all are one kind of unit.
[47:41.950 --> 47:43.430]  We're stuck on this planet.
[47:43.590 --> 47:44.430]  We're all here.
[47:44.590 --> 47:49.450]  If someone came from another planet, they'd be like, you're all pretty much the same.
[47:49.590 --> 47:51.070]  Like we all see differences in each other.
[47:51.190 --> 47:55.050]  But if an alien came, they'd see the similarities more than they'd see the differences, right?
[47:55.850 --> 47:58.290]  And so that'd be kind of like a way to tie that.
[47:58.330 --> 48:00.010]  And I hope that answered a little bit.
[48:00.650 --> 48:00.770]  Yeah.
[48:01.650 --> 48:08.110]  Your six years of experimenting, like how do you give...
[48:08.110 --> 48:12.490]  Do you believe that now you have more sustained focus?
[48:13.550 --> 48:18.250]  And do you use like any other techniques, you know, to have more of that?
[48:18.450 --> 48:18.850]  Yes.
[48:19.070 --> 48:23.770]  I definitely feel like I've increased my ability to concentrate, for sure.
[48:23.990 --> 48:26.670]  I definitely feel like I'm in better shape than I've ever been.
[48:27.870 --> 48:30.810]  And so like, it's been a long road.
[48:31.030 --> 48:33.730]  But I definitely feel like I've made a lot of progress.
[48:33.870 --> 48:35.730]  But I'm not done working on it, right?
[48:35.890 --> 48:38.290]  So in January, I'm taking a sabbatical.
[48:38.430 --> 48:39.150]  I'm going to go to India.
[48:39.150 --> 48:40.810]  I'm going to study yoga more.
[48:41.070 --> 48:43.090]  I'm going to spend four weeks at an ashram there.
[48:43.170 --> 48:45.030]  And I'm going to try to go deeper, all right?
[48:45.170 --> 48:49.290]  But I definitely feel like my powers of concentration have increased a lot.
[48:50.690 --> 48:55.790]  As for some other exercises, another favorite of mine, it's called tratak.
[48:56.710 --> 49:00.130]  Which is another way to say candle gazing, right?
[49:00.250 --> 49:04.450]  So what you would do is you have a candle where you can sort of see the flame.
[49:04.670 --> 49:07.230]  Not a candle that's like covered where you can't see the flame.
[49:07.430 --> 49:09.050]  And you try to get it to eye level.
[49:09.170 --> 49:13.890]  So you try to sit in a comfortable position, you know, a cross-legged position.
[49:13.890 --> 49:16.950]  But if that hurts, it doesn't matter if you can sit comfortably.
[49:17.270 --> 49:19.110]  And you want to have the candle at eye level.
[49:19.710 --> 49:21.390]  So that you don't have to look up or look down.
[49:22.010 --> 49:24.690]  And you just stare at the candle without blinking, okay?
[49:24.770 --> 49:25.610]  For as long as you can.
[49:26.110 --> 49:29.890]  Now, because it's a candle and it's not the sun, you're not going to like burn out your retinas.
[49:30.110 --> 49:32.450]  Don't try this with the sun, okay?
[49:33.270 --> 49:37.030]  I mean, the movie Pie, he did kind of get really awesome powers.
[49:37.590 --> 49:40.150]  But, I mean, you know, you don't want to do that, right?
[49:40.390 --> 49:42.550]  I mean, it didn't really work out that great for him anyway in the end.
[49:42.550 --> 49:45.770]  But yeah, candle gazing is a really good exercise to practice concentration.
[49:46.030 --> 49:49.530]  But the thing is that you don't want to start like, wow, look at that flame.
[49:49.750 --> 49:51.010]  It's like flickering and stuff.
[49:51.070 --> 49:51.950]  And there's like this blue.
[49:52.170 --> 49:54.190]  But you just want to like focus on it, okay?
[49:54.410 --> 49:55.670]  Your eyes are going to water.
[49:56.650 --> 49:57.210]  That's good.
[49:57.410 --> 49:59.750]  It's actually good for like cleaning your eyes out, right?
[49:59.810 --> 50:01.110]  Because your eyes are like, hey, I want to blink.
[50:01.230 --> 50:02.590]  And you're like, nope, I'm not blinking.
[50:02.870 --> 50:03.170]  Nope.
[50:03.710 --> 50:07.470]  And as you practice that longer and longer, that's another way.
[50:07.590 --> 50:11.530]  That's like one other exercise you can try aside from like the counting, okay?
[50:12.330 --> 50:15.750]  Another thing you can do is you can find a mantra, okay?
[50:16.330 --> 50:21.930]  Now, mantras is another kind of topic where it sort of jumps off into stuff that makes people feel uncomfortable.
[50:22.110 --> 50:25.510]  Because a lot of mantras involve things like Hindu gods and Hindu mythology.
[50:26.630 --> 50:29.310]  But you've heard of the mantra OM, right?
[50:29.510 --> 50:30.650]  OM is a sacred syllable.
[50:31.250 --> 50:33.050]  It's non-denominational, right?
[50:33.150 --> 50:36.390]  It represents the sound of the universe, right?
[50:36.390 --> 50:42.010]  If you look online, you can find people have recorded like there's this hum.
[50:42.510 --> 50:45.170]  There's this hum that the universe is making all the time.
[50:45.370 --> 50:48.370]  And OM is kind of like to represent that hum.
[50:48.370 --> 50:58.230]  And if you can think OM or say OM and breathe, that's a really good mantra to start with.
[50:58.390 --> 51:10.690]  And if you just think OM and not let anything else jump into your mind and you concentrate on OM, that's a good jumping point from the concentration to then even go into meditation, right?
[51:10.710 --> 51:12.670]  So that's another exercise you can use.
[51:12.670 --> 51:13.710]  You don't have to use OM.
[51:13.770 --> 51:14.830]  You can find another mantra.
[51:15.390 --> 51:18.210]  But that's... finding a mantra is kind of a journey of its own.
[51:18.350 --> 51:22.250]  And I'll have to leave that as an exercise for you to investigate further.
[51:22.890 --> 51:25.390]  Alright, got another few minutes if there's another question.
[51:25.550 --> 51:25.570]  Yeah?
[51:25.790 --> 51:26.890]  What do you think of Zen meditation?
[51:27.410 --> 51:28.070]  Ah, Zen.
[51:28.330 --> 51:29.950]  So Zen is totally cool.
[51:30.090 --> 51:32.150]  Zen is another way to go about things.
[51:32.190 --> 51:39.410]  If you feel more of an affinity towards Zen, I'd totally recommend getting involved with Zen.
[51:39.410 --> 51:46.810]  Like Zen is kind of cool because it's... especially if you're... if you're really into like moving and kind of like doing.
[51:47.230 --> 51:50.150]  Like Zen is the meditation of like... of doing something.
[51:50.410 --> 51:52.110]  It's you don't really just sit there.
[51:52.490 --> 51:54.170]  It's... you're doing something, right?
[51:54.250 --> 51:56.990]  So maybe you're raking nothing, right?
[51:57.050 --> 51:57.930]  You're like raking sand.
[51:58.090 --> 51:59.330]  Maybe you're cleaning the floor.
[51:59.510 --> 52:01.470]  Maybe you're doing the dishes.
[52:03.990 --> 52:09.670]  And so Zen... like using Zen can also bring you the... some of the same benefits.
[52:10.010 --> 52:12.510]  It's just from a different... it's from a different point of view.
[52:12.890 --> 52:16.090]  But it's definitely... it works for a lot of people.
[52:16.330 --> 52:19.470]  And there are a lot of Zen centers spread out around.
[52:19.750 --> 52:25.810]  So wherever you are, you could probably find some people doing Zen if you want to find a community as well.
[52:25.890 --> 52:26.850]  Just like you could with yoga.
[52:27.830 --> 52:29.150]  There's something about Zen.
[52:29.350 --> 52:31.230]  There is a geek app called Undo.
[52:31.750 --> 52:34.330]  The Apple and the Google Play shop Undo.
[52:34.450 --> 52:38.090]  There is videos and it burns a little incense and gives instructions for Zen.
[52:38.230 --> 52:39.190]  Who likes it?
[52:39.330 --> 52:40.390]  Apps for burning incense.
[52:40.630 --> 52:41.190]  It's amazing.
[52:41.410 --> 52:44.710]  I love the time that... what a time to be alive.
[52:46.110 --> 52:46.730]  All right.
[52:46.890 --> 52:47.850]  I could take another question.
[52:47.970 --> 52:48.030]  Yeah.
[52:49.710 --> 52:52.930]  I don't know how you think about it, but a lot of these things are being sold.
[52:53.130 --> 52:55.730]  I just find all stress reductions and stuff like that.
[52:55.730 --> 52:58.110]  And it's kind of like a commercialization in a way of...
[52:58.110 --> 52:58.510]  Yeah.
[52:58.690 --> 53:00.490]  I guess coping with, you know, life.
[53:00.910 --> 53:04.830]  Like the way you practice your study is also a way of fundamentally changing.
[53:05.950 --> 53:08.090]  So how do you not fall in that trap?
[53:08.710 --> 53:11.050]  And in my tradition we call it big mindfulness.
[53:12.010 --> 53:13.650]  Which I think is a very good label.
[53:13.970 --> 53:16.170]  So how do you avoid falling into that trap?
[53:18.450 --> 53:23.330]  And just use that as a way of just not really making your life better, but just coping better?
[53:24.790 --> 53:31.050]  Yeah, so like there's like... so I see there's like a couple things that you're talking about there.
[53:31.190 --> 53:33.550]  So one thing is the commercial aspect, right?
[53:34.190 --> 53:41.250]  An easy way to avoid a commercial aspect is to not pay a lot of money for stuff.
[53:41.250 --> 53:52.350]  So if you're going to a yoga studio and they're like, it's only $500 a class and you come in and you have to have a very fancy outfit and everything is very fancy.
[53:52.810 --> 53:56.230]  Or you can find a yoga class where it's like donation based, right?
[53:56.790 --> 54:01.990]  Go to the donation based one instead of getting caught up in all of the hype, right?
[54:02.510 --> 54:04.110]  And it's the same with a lot of stuff.
[54:04.270 --> 54:12.310]  Like you can use your money towards other things than trying to cope.
[54:12.490 --> 54:17.030]  And if you feel like you're paying money to try to feel better, you should rethink what you're doing.
[54:17.130 --> 54:18.830]  Because that's probably not going to help you.
[54:19.650 --> 54:26.550]  And as far as coping, you know, just coping day to day, like a lot of these things you could use as tips for just coping day to day.
[54:26.550 --> 54:27.910]  And that's perfectly fine.
[54:28.050 --> 54:31.770]  You don't have to say, I want to be a new person and this is what I'm going to do.
[54:32.570 --> 54:37.970]  If you want to just... you can use some of these same strategies just to cope, right?
[54:38.290 --> 54:40.310]  And I think that's actually great.
[54:40.430 --> 54:43.170]  I think the more people do it, the better the world would be.
[54:43.530 --> 54:47.910]  And nowadays, I think we really need to find ways to cope.
[54:48.630 --> 54:49.210]  All right.
[54:49.630 --> 54:49.970]  Thank you.