Meditation, Martial Arts & Breathwork with Jeff Patterson

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Today we have an exceptional guest joining us, a martial artist, author and meditation expert who's been helping people transform their lives through mindfulness meditation and the power of yielding. Whether you're feeling stuck in the everyday grind, struggling to balance life's demands, or seeking optimal performance in your sport or profession, our conversation today will offer practical wisdom to unlock your potential. Jeff Patterson is the founder of Northwest Fighting Arts, Portland Tai Chi Academy and the Yielding Warrior, where he emphasizes the transformative power of meditative and martial arts practices, particularly the yielding concept. Jeff has spent the last 36 years mastering a wide range of martial arts disciplines, from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to Muay Thai and Qigong under the tutelage of world renowned masters across seven countries. Beyond the physical, Jeff has delved deeply into the meditative arts, understanding how mindfulness, mental clarity and spiritual grounding can dramatically enhance our quality of life. He's authored three books, created audio courses, and produced countless videos to help others achieve their personal best through the practice of Tai Chi, Qigong and the Art of Yielding. In today's episode, you're going to learn how to bring balance to your life through Qigong and meditation, how to identify the best meditation practice for you, and how Jeff's unique approach to yielding can be applied in all areas of life, from relationships to personal growth. Whether you're an athlete aiming for peak performance or someone navigating the everyday stresses of life, this conversation will provide actionable insights to help you live a healthier, more centered life.

Jennifer Norman:
So, without further ado, let's all take a deep breath and dive into this enlightening discussion with Sifu Jeff Patterson. Welcome, Jeff, to the show.

Jeff Patterson:
Hey, thank you for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
It's a delight. Wow. You've been practicing martial arts for over 36 years and have studied from masters across the globe. I would love if you could share some of the origins of the Yielding Warrior philosophy and what inspired you to Integrate yielding into a path for self improvement.

Jeff Patterson:
Yeah, so the meditative arts were introduced to me in a bit of a roundabout way. I was a young guy, I was really into Western boxing. I used to just love the thrill of the sport. And you know, I'd go to the boxing gym five or six days a week. And at this particular, particular gym that I was at, there was one of the coaches who was there who was a very well known coach and had worked with national and world champion level fighters. And I really wanted to get to spend some time with him. So I would always show up at the gym when I knew he was going to be there and try to get him to recognize me. I'd work really hard and try to get him to spend some time with me.

Jeff Patterson:
And so I followed him around for about three or four months and finally he started giving me a few tips and helping me out a little bit. And I had only been working with him maybe two or three weeks when he said something to me that changed my life forever. In that he said, if you really want to be a good boxer, you should start doing meditation in Tai Chi. Now at the time, I was this young kid thinking, isn't Tai Chi for like old people in the park? How's that gonna help me be a better fighter? And I had a lot of respect for him though, and I took on the practice. And it's changed my life in many ways. And through the years, I've had over 26,000 students come through my academy and I've literally heard hundreds of stories of how people have used the meditative practices to enrich their lives and see some really amazing changes take place from the practice. And so that's what's given me the motivation and the energy to write my last couple books and create my online program and my teacher training program and just really try to get the message out there to as many people as I can.

Jennifer Norman:
That's brilliant. So it sounds like you were introduced to Eastern practices. Can you tell us a little bit? Give us a summary of what you learned and how that does help. Beyond physical combat to help emotional and mental states of mind too.

Jeff Patterson:
There's so many different benefits from the meditative practices. When I talk about meditation, I'm kind of referring to the meditative arts as a whole. And so it could be anything from sitting meditation, standing meditation, breath work, form work, like Tai Chi or qigong or yoga practices, anything that involves a meditative practice. And as somebody new is coming to the meditative arts, there's really kind of five directions that they can take the practice. And I've broken it down into kind of the athletic side, where they're looking to improve their performance, their awareness, their intuition, their ability to respond in the present moment and stay in tune. Then there's the therapeutic side of the practice, which is great for working on your stability and your flexibility and dealing through injuries and that kind of thing. And then there's the medical side of the practice, which all of Chinese medicine is based off of Qigong theory, which is an internal meditative art. And then you have the philosophical side of the practice, and then lastly the spiritual side of the practice.

Jeff Patterson:
And, you know, most people, when they think of meditation, they think of the spiritual side, but really there's a lot more depth to it than just that one area of training. And so when you start learning how to build an evolving life practice with the meditative arts, you could follow any one of these paths or maybe a couple of these paths, and really build a practice with. I break it down into ritual practices, active practices, and philosophical practices. And we can incorporate different things that help us follow that specific path so we get where we want to go with least amount of effort or the least amount of distractions.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. So tell us, how did you come up with the name the Yielding Warrior, and tell us how that is central to the way that you teach versus perhaps others that teach Eastern types of meditation?

Jeff Patterson:
The Yielding Warrior, that name comes from the concept of yielding, which is used in both the meditative and the martial arts. And it's something that I've been interested in for many years. There's many different philosophies in the meditative arts, and this is one that's always just kind of resonated with me. And so in my most recent book, I've broken down yielding into three main pillars. And we have the physical side of the yielding, the mental side, and then the emotional side. 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.

Jeff Patterson:
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. And so this allows me to deal with people who are bigger and stronger than me, which is essential for an athlete, because many times you're going to come up other athletes that can overpower you, and if you just try to meet them head on, you're going to lose. And so understanding this skill is really valuable. Now, in order to be good at physical yielding, a lot of things have to come into play. You need to be well rooted. The lower part of your body needs to be strong and flexible so you can change your central equilibrium without getting tight. The body has to be relaxed, the breath has to be calm, and the mind has to be present. Now, it's a lifetime practice to really master these skills.

Jeff Patterson:
But from day one of integrating a meditation practice into your life, you start to recognize these things inside yourself with more clarity. And this is where it becomes pretty interesting, because now not only do you see those things better inside yourself, you also start to see them in other people. And this is where we're kind of moving into what I call mental yielding and an idea or that an example of mental yielding would be, say, you and I are having a conversation, and I said something that unsettled you, and I picked up on it right from that first sign of imbalance. It's a lot easier to adjust the conversation and keep us in a happy place than if I'm not paying attention to that. And pretty soon I'm so far off track, you want to knock me upside the head. And so learning how to use yielding in all of our interactions is extremely powerful. One, you're being considerate, which is something that we could all do more of. And two, it allows you to be strategic in any conversation you may have and lead it towards a positive outcome with the least amount of resistance.

Jeff Patterson:
And this is beneficial in your relationships and business and sales and negotiations. I mean, there's so many different ways that you can apply this strategy. And then lastly, we have emotional yielding. And emotional yielding is very much like mental yielding, but with our own interpersonal conflicts. So you think about, oftentimes something will happen and we'll respond, and we'll go down a path, and we might get an hour, a day, a week down that road and realize maybe that wasn't the best choice. But by adapting these meditation practices into our life, it allows us to stay more balanced and present and aware when these things come to us and maybe approach them or have a little bit more of an educated response. And oftentimes, we can make choices from a more balanced place that save us a lot of heartache on the other side. And so I've been explaining this idea of yielding for many years.

Jeff Patterson:
I've been running my academy now for 30 years here in Portland. And one of the most common things I'll hear people say is yielding makes a lot of sense. In fact, I do that all the time. And while I would agree, I think everybody does 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 that person would see things about the series of events and the timeline that I know, at least I would have no clue of. And the meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people that I truly believe most people will go through life and have no clue of unless they have this kind of a practice in their life.

Jennifer Norman:
You touched on some profound aspects. The first being self awareness and understanding that you have power over the situation rather than just point blank reacting to it. I love that you use the word meathead because I think that some people do, they get reactive and then they'll try to hit a, you know, a problem head on, whether it be physically or from just a relationship perspective, an interpersonal perspective, and knowing how to assess the situation and come at it, an element of surprise almost, so that you don't have to use much force. But it is almost like a coherence between your physical and your mental and your emotional state so that you can provide some easier, smoother avenue for yourself to keep yourself in balance, rather than constantly being swayed and tossed by whatever that other individual or what that other situation is doing. So it has so many applications across life, doesn't it?

Jeff Patterson:
Yes, it does. One of my longtime instructors who I've been training with for many years, he always says, with yielding oftentimes, you can make your enemies your friends. But without yielding, oftentimes, your friends become your enemies. It's so true because we're having a conversation, even though we may get to a disagreement and say, I'm right 100%, if I just pound it into you and force my view on you, even though I'm right, you're going to leave the conversation feeling a little beat up and a little bit like, that guy was kind of rude, he was insensitive, and that's not really taking us to a positive path. Whereas if I can be a little more strategic and get you feeling good about maybe looking at it from a different perspective, it can change the energy of your interactions in everything you do in life. And that affects other people's days and how you spend your time as well. And so it really is an amazing tool when you learn how to use it.

Jennifer Norman:
There are some folks that have used the word surrender like I'm going to surrender to the situation. Do you feel that yielding and surrender is synonymous or are there differences?

Jeff Patterson:
I'm glad you asked that, because one of the most common things I'll hear people say, especially teaching martial arts, when I bring up the idea of yielding, they'll say, I don't want to give up. I can make this happen. They have this very type A personality. And yielding is not at all surrendering or giving up. Yielding is strategically looking for the path of least resistance to get to the point where you want to be. And it gives you many more opportunities. When you look at this, yielding has been used in military strategies for thousands of years. And they don't surrender.

Jeff Patterson:
They're going, they're out there to try to make it happen. And so if you change your perspective in view of it, you can see that it's very elusive, it's very strategic. It's kind of like playing chess, but with your emotions and with your actions. And so it's a very deep practice.

Jennifer Norman:
Lose the battle, win the war. However, it's not really a war. It's the art of getting to the place where there's a better outcome for all potentially. But if there is a war, then it's a way for you to be smarter and more aware of how you can play your cards.

Jeff Patterson:
Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah. So when people are working with you, You've trained over 26,000 individuals. You have stated, what do people come in like and how do they feel once start getting into a meditative practice? What are some of the things that people can expect?

Jeff Patterson:
That's one of the things that I really love about the practice, is that it can help so many different areas of your life. I've had people come in here who are maybe aging and they want to improve their balance and their strength and their stability, their flexibility so they can stay more mobile through their later years. And I've had other people coming in because they're dealing with stress disorders and maybe having an anxiety or panic attacks and learning how to address adjust the way that they regulate their body, their mind, and their breath so these things don't happen anymore. Other people come in because they want to improve their performance or their creativity. And so there's really so many different paths you can follow. And through the years, it's always been fun running the academy and taking a competitor out to compete in Brazilian jiu jitsu or Muay Thai and having them do well in one of those events. However, when somebody comes in here to the meditative program and they've been dealing with panic attacks and we can show them the tools that they can use to never have that be part of their life again. That is really rewarding.

Jeff Patterson:
And that to me means a lot more than taking somebody out to win a medal. And so that's kind of why I'm so passionate about getting these arts out there, is because the benefits that you receive from this kind of a practice are really life changing and can affect us in many ways.

Jennifer Norman:
Is there anything from a physical perspective that might be limiting for some as I get into this, or is it for everyone?

Jeff Patterson:
Anybody can do the practice. And that's the thing with the meditative arts, is that if you can breathe, there's practices that you can do. Now, some things maybe certain people can't do and others can, but there's so many different things from movement practices, from standing practices, sitting practices, even lying down practices, energetic circulations in the body, philosophical sayings and mindset training. I mean, there's the meditative arts is meant to be a way of life and not a hobby that we do once in a while. And when you start understanding how to use this as a science and integrate these practices into everything you do, there's really nobody that couldn't benefit from the practice.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. Well, I'd love for you to give a little glimpse into some of the practices for our listeners as well as our viewers. You might want to articulate out loud for those that are just listening to the podcast, but I'm sure that my audience is probably very familiar with yoga and probably breath work and meditation. We've talked about that quite a bit on my show. However, I've never had somebody who's done Tai Chi or Qigong. And so if you would describe for our listeners what is the art of Tai Chi, what is the art of Qigong, and how does it help in terms of being a meditative practice?

Jeff Patterson:
Well, there's so many different angles of both of those practices. What I like to do is have people understand the underlying concepts of the meditative practice. And this doesn't matter if it's Tai Chi, if it's qigong, if it's sitting meditation, if it's yoga, all of these underlying principles are the same. However, some of them kind of affect things a little bit differently than others. A movement practice could be good to work on your balance and stability and your flexibility and that kind of thing, whereas a still practice might be really good for reducing the stress or maybe improving your focus. And so these, I've broken down these basic fundamentals into What I call the five regulations, and they are regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. And briefly, I'll kind of talk about what I mean when I say these. So regulating the body is where we usually start in any meditation practice.

Jeff Patterson:
Again, no matter what path you follow, it's the easiest one to make some substantial changes and see some great benefits in a fairly short amount of time. And an example would be think about maybe a time when you're sitting down at your computer and you've been there three or four hours and your shoulders are rounded forward and you're feeling lethargic, maybe your neck's getting sore. And then another time, when the most important person in your world walks in the room and your body perks up and you feel like you're on top of the world. Well, we are in control of these two energetic states 100% of the time. It's how do we choose to show up at every moment of our day? And so understanding how to pay attention to our skeletal alignment and our muscular tension is kind of a major part of the body regulation. Kind of a more advanced area of the body regulation would be talking about muscle tone and flexibility and diet and awareness. So you're bringing in good nutrients into the body and really focusing on keeping the body healthy and aware. And so these things are simple changes that we can make, that we can see adjustments in our physical, mental, and emotional states fairly rapidly.

Jeff Patterson:
Then there's regulating the breath. And regulating the breath is an extremely deep topic. It's something that if you take on the meditation practice, you'll be studying this for the rest of your life. And in fact, qigong is often referred to as the science of the breath because there's literally hundreds of different breathing strategies. And we use these breathing strategies to help us get different outcomes. Because there's so many different breathing strategies, I kind of broadly categorize them into yin methods and Yang methods. Yin methods are often deeper, more holistic style meditations. An example of a yin breath would be, if you ever listen to somebody sleep, you'll notice that their natural instinct is to have a longer inhale and a shorter exhale.

Jeff Patterson:
And this is the body's natural way of bringing your conscious mind into your subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming. And so if we want to emulate this style of energetic expression in our meditations, we can do longer inhales, soft retentions at the end of the inhale, and shorter exhales to help Bring that energy inward. And this is great for stress reduction, dealing with anxiety, with panic attacks, with boosting our creativity. I mean, there's literally many reasons why we would do this yin side of the practice. Then we have the Yang side of the practice. And the Yang side of the breath is more aggressive. It's kind of like if you ever had to push your car, you pick up something heavy, your natural instinct is to use the exhale side of the breath. Maybe put tension in the breath, make the breath audible.

Jeff Patterson:
This helps generate energy and expand it outwards. And so when we start learning how to use the breath as a tool here now, we can use it to adjust our physical, mental, and emotional states. Everybody goes through the day with emotional ups and downs. Some people are like a roller coaster, others may be a little more balanced. But when you start being able to recognize these imbalances and say you're starting to get excited, we could use the yin side of the breath to help bring us back down. And when we feel ourselves starting to feel depleted, we can use the Yang side of the breath to help pick us back up. And now Chinese philosophy, they call this balancing the khan and li, or the water and fire. And when we have this tool in our toolbox, along with regulating the body now we have these two things that are helping adjust us throughout the day.

Jeff Patterson:
Then the third regulation is regulating the mind. And regulating the mind again, just like the breath is a very deep topic. One of the most common things I'll hear people say when they come to a meditation practice or find out that I do meditation, they'll say, ah, I tried meditation, but it just didn't work for me. I couldn't quiet my mind. And I don't know why, but somewhere along the way, people got this idea that if you can't quiet your mind, you're not successful with meditation. I have been training in the meditative arts now for 36 years. I've traveled around the world many times, training with some really amazing teachers all over the planet. And I have never once met anybody who doesn't get distracted.

Jeff Patterson:
We're humans. Everybody gets distracted. And so when you take on this practice, you got to adjust that mindset and realize that you're not failing when you get distracted. In fact, when you recognize the distraction, that's a good thing. So, for example, if I'm sitting for 20 minutes or doing a movement practice and I get distracted 50 times, I recognize the distraction. I use my posture, my breath, the movement, whatever it is that I'm doing to help bring myself back to focus. And then I just got 50 repetitions of learning how to come out of a distracted state and be more balanced. And if you do that every day, every week, every month, you start to develop this power and this ability to no matter what happens to you, whether somebody says something to throw you off your game, or you have a stressful day at work, you can find that balanced state, approach it with a level head.

Jeff Patterson:
And so this idea of that mental regulation is extremely valuable. There's this story that I really enjoy about these two older monks. And they're walking down this dirt road after a huge rainstorm. Everything's muddy and dirty everywhere. And they come up to this big mud puddle. And on the other side of the puddles, this beautiful little girl standing there in a white dress, and she's crying. And the older monk, he hollers across the puddle and says, is everything okay? Can we help you? And she says, I need to be somewhere, but if I walk across this puddle, I'm going to get my dress all dirty. And so the older monk, he rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle.

Jeff Patterson:
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 are walking a couple miles down the road, and finally the younger monk is just furious and he says, you know, we're not supposed to touch girls, but yet you did back there at the puddle. And the older monk looks at him and says, you're still thinking about that girl. I left her back there at the puddle. And how many times in life do we have to get two miles down the muddy road before we finally let something go or even recognize the imbalance? And so this idea of using the meditative arts to stay more in tune and more present and aware of these imbalances can be life changing in our overall mental capacity and ability to stay more positive.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, that's amazing.

Jeff Patterson:
Then we have regulating the energy. And regulating the energy is an extremely deep topic and something that we could talk about for hours. However, I'll just kind of give you a brief idea of it. So with a lot of meditations, we circulate the energy in the body, or we lead the energy inward, we extend it outward. And once we've reached a competent level of regulating the body, the breath, and the mind, now we have the tools to circulate and regulate the energy in the body. And then last, regulation is regulating the spirit. And regulating the spirit is a very profound idea. It's something that meditation masters and monks will spend their entire life working towards that ultimate stage of enlightenment.

Jeff Patterson:
But when you understand these basic five regulations, it doesn't matter what meditation practice you do. These are the core fundamentals that will influence everything you do in your practice and really everything you do in life. And learning how to find balance and awareness and sensitivity in these areas can make some huge changes in your physiology, your mental awareness and your emotional intelligence.

Jennifer Norman:
I can see why the individuals who come to your sessions probably walk away with life changing experiences because they might come in thinking that they're going to get a meditation session or even just like a physical fitness session. And this goes so much deeper and so much broader than that in order to be able to touch and heal so many aspects of life. I think about the quote from Bruce Lee where he said like, be like water. And I think about how flowing and not allowing obstacles get in the way and just being mindful and just letting your energy continue to flow like water is very similar in this situation. And it's probably no surprise that he's one of the best martial artists in the world. And I also think about how when you were saying like different ways of using your breath, the yin breath and then the Yang breath, how oftentimes we might do that without even being aware that we're doing that. Like when we say, oh, that is a release of breath, we're vocalizing at the same time or if somebody is in karate hitting a block or something, it's like, yeah, you know. And so it's using that forceful Yang breath in order to help push and accelerate forward.

Jennifer Norman:
There are many ways and mantras and things like that in yoga are our breath work without necessarily being called breath work, but we're doing it without even in recognizing it. And so this is really helping to bring awareness to the ways that you can make it really work for you and really move that energy in a way that is going to help things be a little bit easier for you from physical, mental and emotional perspective.

Jeff Patterson:
Yeah, the breath really is a science. And if you think about it like you, you're right, we do naturally do a lot of these things. But understanding like for example, if, if you're crying, you naturally you do longer inhales than exhales and that brings the energy inward. Bringing the energy inward does have some benefits, but doing a lot of this can weaken the immune system and make us sick. That's why a lot of times when people get depressed and they get really kind of inward drawn, sickness will soon follow. And the same thing on the yang side, Something else we do all the time is when you laugh, laugh, you naturally do a longer exhale. This helps generate heat and warmth and bring that energy outward. And so while we do things every day that utilize these sides of the breath, when you can realize how they're affecting us energetically, and then make those adjustments to strategically use them, when you notice that first sign of imbalance, and this is something that's so important with meditation, is that I think a lot of people think if, say they're dealing with panic attacks, oh, when I have a panic attack, I'll just go meditate.

Jeff Patterson:
You can't use it as a band aid. It's not something that comes out when the attack happens. It's something that you gotta build into your lifestyle so you recognize the signs that lead to a panic attack. And it's easier to change the signs than it is to stop the avalanche, which it's already going down the mountain. Gotta be able to pick up the pebble before it knocks another rock loose. And so having this ability to recognize these imbalances when they first happen is something that comes from the practice of meditation and expanding your awareness and intuition from the daily practice and the work that you do.

Jennifer Norman:
I am so pleasantly surprised because I think that when people think about, okay, I'm going to a martial arts class, a physical type type class, they don't expect to get all of these wonderful learnings at the same time. I think in the western culture we're so used to seeing an influencer on TikTok saying, okay, you need to just do these five things and you're going to have the perfect body. Or there's always like these quick fixes that are not necessarily going to be right for everyone, or they're just going to be very superficial and perhaps potentially more damaging in the long run. And this, this really is something where you're starting from yourself. You're starting from your center and the coherence and the alignment of all of your energies, your mind, your body, your soul, your spirit, everything coming together in order to develop that self awareness, that mindfulness, that artfulness that helps you to design your life, frankly, helps you to design a healthier way of being and of relating to the world and to your yourself. I think that this is really a moment where we can stop and pause and have our listeners think about ways that they might be able to consider building this kind of self awareness into what they're doing every day and coming to a coach or somebody who can help guide you is a very good first step, because sometimes it's hard to figure out how to do these things on your own. And so we're going to make sure that you have Jeff's information in the show, notes, notes and all. But think about how certain things might have triggered you.

Jennifer Norman:
Think about things that you might not have been very excited about, how they've gone, and think about how if with a little bit more mindfulness and thoughtfulness about, well, let's think about how I might be able to better have handled this situation or come to a better outcome. Whether you're in sports or competing, how is it that you can train yourself to have this. This resiliency and this balance within your body from your mind, from your emotions, and from your physical state to continue conditioning yourself towards better outcomes?

Jeff Patterson:
I'd like to kind of touch on a couple things you just said real briefly. You're so correct when you said that not everybody needs the same solution. You're down in LA I'm up in Portland. If I give you directions how to get to San Francisco, it's not going to work for you is the same as it would for me, right? With the meditative arts, it's very much like this. You want to understand why we're doing certain practices so you can kind of start to build your own prescription to help you get the results that you want to get. And for a new practitioner coming to the practice, I have three things that I think are really valuable to consider that will help you get the most benefit from your time in the meditative arts. And the first one is, why are you interested in picking up a meditation practice? Do you want to stay around longer to watch your grandkids grow up and stay mobile as you age? Or do you have a stress disorder that you're dealing with or an illness that you want to improve? Or do you want to improve your performance on the field and not just, yeah, I want to get more healthy. Why do you want to get more healthy? And why is that important to you? And what are the good things that will happen by being more healthy? And then if I don't get healthy, what are all the bad things that are going to happen to me? Really spend some time thinking about this because everybody faces this.

Jeff Patterson:
Maybe it's tomorrow, next week, or next month, your alarm's going to go off in the morning and it's time to do your practice and you're going to say, ah, I'll just hit the snooze button. I'll do it tomorrow. And you really need to have that motivation and that energy behind your why. So that way, get up and you're like, I get to do my meditation today. It's not a chore. This is something that you get excited about. And that shift in mindset is really valuable. The second thing to be aware of is it's meant to be a lifestyle.

Jeff Patterson:
This is something that we do consistently every day. And through that consistency, you develop discipline, integrity, perseverance, and many other qualities that come from this practice. And these qualities start to bleed over into every area of your life and your relationships, your work, your hobbies. And so it's really important to approach the practice knowing that this is something you're going to do a little bit of every day. The Dalai Lama once said, everybody should meditate for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should meditate for an hour. You've got to make it a way of life and look at it from a positive perspective as something you get to do. And thirdly, something that you kind of touched on briefly is it's extremely important to find a guide because there's so many videos out there and apps and books and things that you could look at. And while many of them can be helpful, if you don't have somebody helping you and guiding you in the right direction.

Jeff Patterson:
You could spend 10, 15, 20 years of your life just kind of never really getting anywhere. And I've seen that here at the academy. I'll have students that come in here that are self taught and they've been training 10, 15 years and they'll see somebody who's been following an approach and a guide and somebody that's leading them in the right direction that's only been here 12 months and is further along in their development. Yeah, lifetime is short. Your time is valuable. Doesn't take much to find somebody to really help point you in the right direction. So find somebody to help you stay consistent and really investigate what your why is. And by doing that, you'll be successful with the practice and the people that follow this.

Jeff Patterson:
I bet 98% of the people that listen to this advice and they do this for a year, they'll do the practice for the rest of their life because they'll see so many benefits and mindset shifts that they would be crazy to stop.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much for re emphasizing those points. Excellent. If there is one thing that people could take away from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Jeff Patterson:
Those three points that I just listed, I think would be very valuable. Really try to stay present when you asked for a simple practice that you could do to help with this mentioned earlier, talking about ritual, active and philosophical practices, each one of those paths are extremely deep, and we could talk for a long time on any one of them. But a simple idea of an active practice and integrating these into your day is extremely valuable. And what I mean by an active practice is it might just be 60 seconds, it might be two minutes. It's something that we revisit every 60 minutes, every 90 minutes throughout the day. And for new students, it's good to maybe set an alarm on your phone and just every time you think of it.

Jeff Patterson:
One example could be maybe just every 60 minutes, sit still or stand still and count out 10 deep full breaths and just bring your awareness back into the body. You could do this with breath work. You could do this with a movement practice. You could do this with a philosophical saying. You can integrate these different things. And as you start understanding the science behind what some of these things are doing now, maybe that alarm goes off and it's time to do a reset practice and you're feeling depleted. Let's do some yang exercises to help pick up our energy, or you're feeling like maybe stressed out. Let's do some yin exercises to help bring us back down.

Jeff Patterson:
And so you can use these things throughout the day to help regulate to the point where eventually you're regulating without regulating. And that's the ultimate goal with a meditation practice.

Jennifer Norman:
That's amazing. So you have a Yielding Warrior program. I would love for you to share with the listeners what that's about and how they might be able to learn more about it.

Jeff Patterson:
Yeah. So right now, if you're interested in this philosophy or the things that we're talking about, my most recent book, the Yielding Warrior, I'm giving it away. Just pay for shipping. You could go to theyieldingwarrior.com forward/book and get a free copy of the book. Also at theyieldingwarrior.com you could get into our online program that teaches you how to build an evolving life practice with the meditative arts through movement practices, sitting meditation, standing meditation, breath work, some of the philosophies behind it, and how to integrate an evolving practice. And also on that website, we have a teacher training program. So if maybe you have a yoga studio or martial arts studio, or you're a life coach and you want to learn how to integrate and maybe touch a different audience than what's coming in right now, this is another option for you as well.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh my goodness. Thank you so much Jeff for all of this information, for all of the work that you're doing. I have a feeling that you're going to get a lot of people very interested in your programs, both the Yielding Warrior and your teaching certificate. And so ladies and gentlemen, please look up Jeff Patterson and the Yielding Warrior online. All of the information will be in the show Notes. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human and joining me on the podcast today.

Jeff Patterson:
Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.