22. The Yielding Warrior - The Meditative Arts with Jeff Patterson

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[00:00:10] Jeff: meditation is meant to be an evolving practice and it has to evolve with your understanding of why you're doing these different breathing exercises, body movements, why you're doing these different energetic circulations in the body. And if you're just following an audio or you're listening to some music and trying to go into a trance.

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[00:00:40] Jeff: anytime you're listening to an audio or you're watching a video, You're looking outside yourself and they call it the internal arts or the meditative arts because you're supposed to look internally and listen internally.

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[00:01:12] Meredith: In our world today, it doesn't take much to get stressed out. Just turn on the news, open your calendar, or have a conversation about facing your shit and healing yourself with your non holistic doctor. Our entire country has been under a tsunami of stress. Since the plan demic year of 2020, where businesses were shut down and failed, suicides and divorces drastically increased.

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[00:02:21] Meredith: So where do we go from here? Now that the truth is out, with stress being at the root cause of most diseases, it would be wise to treat it at the source, starting with meditation. And when you start to see these things more clearly inside yourself, You also start to see them more clearly in other people.

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[00:03:15] Meredith: So thank you for liking this video on Apple, sharing it on Spotify, and subscribing on YouTube, also hitting the like button, to my channel to help me break the algorithm and help others heal themselves. Facing your shit and healing yourself is a movement. You can join this movement with a one off donation or become a member for as low as 5 a month and receive exclusive art, be featured on the show, submit questions for guests and more.

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[00:04:14] Meredith: I powerfully illustrate how I healed myself as I live by the phases of the female hormonal cycle. The artwork shows what's happening in the brain and the body during each phase and reveals how to biohack and leverage this energy in your life. I am actually living the art as I create it.

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[00:04:54] Meredith: com. from the Every Phase series, and pick up a signed copy of my award winning augmented reality interactive book, Face Your Shit, Heal Yourself. So all of that to say, even though I was lied to for years by doctors promoting big pharma, I was able to find experts that helped me achieve what I thought was impossible.

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[00:05:50] Meredith: Some of his top accomplishments include earning the title of Sifu in Tai Chi and Qi Gong, Fourth degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and becoming a guru level instructor in Eskrima and running one of the biggest martial arts academies in the Northwest. Also creating two amazing kids who help keep him positive.

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[00:06:35] Meredith: Anchoring his advice in the core principle of yielding, Jeff invites readers to explore the transformative power of this principle offering a priceless resource for those seeking to enrich their lives and cultivate inner strength.

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[00:06:57] Meredith: Wow. Kawaii. How was that?

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[00:07:05] Jeff: So I was, painting and, just a lot of cleanup stuff.

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[00:07:19] Jeff: Well, if I didn't have, this academy here and my family here, I'd definitely consider it. Yeah. Yeah.

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[00:07:29] Jeff: it's a good city. it's been a little bit of a turmoil since, last few years, but, it's hopefully going to get back on track. And

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[00:07:49] Meredith: I don't know if Oregon, Eugene. Yeah. I've been to Eugene many times.

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[00:07:55] Meredith: Okay. His name's Gino. He's fucking awesome. Hey Gino. Shout out. But yeah, we've tried to go up there, but it's always been like, no, the weather's horrible. Or it's like freezing or raining or like some kind of crazy ass storm.

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[00:08:14] Meredith: A lot warmer and more humid down here.

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[00:08:24] Meredith: while we're on the topic of swampy ass Humidity, I'd love for you to share with everyone how

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[00:08:42] How meditation helped Jeff face his shit

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[00:09:06] Jeff: And there was a coach there who was a very well known coach, created a lot of high level fighters, and he was always busy, I always wanted to train with him, but he really didn't have time for me, and so I just started following him around, and showing up at the gym when I knew he was going to be there, and trying to get him to recognize me, And, after about three or four months of following him around, he started showing me a few things and paying a little bit of attention to me.

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[00:09:51] Jeff: How's that going to help me be a Better boxer and, had a lot of respect for him though. And I took on the practice and it changed my life in many ways. And I don't believe that I would have my Academy here or have created a lot of the things that I've done in my life. If it wasn't for the meditative arts.

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[00:10:38] Jeff: Yeah, there's people even in high level athletics, you'll look at like,Phil Jackson, who coached the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers when Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were playing. And he used to have his athletes doing meditation and Tai Chi and yoga because of the value to make them higher, a higher level competitor.

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[00:11:11] Meredith: And it definitely begs the question and inspires the question. And most people, which I know that you've heard, I can't meditate or meditation doesn't work for me, or I don't know what it means.

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[00:11:41] If you can't meditate...meditation misconceptions

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[00:11:59] Jeff: And that's one of the biggest misconceptions of the art is Meditation is not meant to be having a quiet mind and just be in bliss. it's kind of like lifting weights. If you just do one repetition, you're not going to get very strong. But meditation, if you sit down, say for 20 minutes and do a sitting meditation, or you're doing a movement meditation, everybody out there, it doesn't matter who you are, how long you've been meditating.

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[00:13:02] Healing yourself with meditation

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[00:13:47] Meredith: You reach this kind of state of just like inner peace and just complete bliss and you just are one with everything and So when you don't have that immediately, you're like I'm doing this wrong But it's really for me just been like getting to know myself meditation is required in order to be able to sit and listen to what you really need.

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[00:14:14] Jeff: With the meditative practice, I feel like your personal awareness is heightened dramatically andit's part of that is getting to know yourself. I feel like a lot of times in today's society, we get caught up in wearing these masks that, shield us from. People, we don't want them to see really how we're feeling or who we are.

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[00:15:19] 5 directions of meditative arts

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[00:15:43] Meredith: We have to listen and we have to actually. get slow enough and get mindful enough and get aware enough to see what's really happening behind the mask behind the curtain behind all of our behaviors. What is that? motivating force there. and I also think that a lot of people like you were saying where that mask and theyget lost in these routines.

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[00:16:35] Jeff: Well, other than the practice itself, I think one thing to start doing would be to incorporate a little bit more gratitude and awareness to being grateful for what you have. I feel like a lot of times we get caught up in the to do's or the problems and forget that we're lucky to have a place to rest our head, That simple act of just being more grateful is really powerful. as far as letting go of something,

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[00:17:38] Jeff: Is where you're really going to get the value of any meditative practice. meditation is meant to be more of a way of life and less of a hobby that we do once in a while. And then we have our active practices and those are easy to use as well. You can do them in as little as two to three minutes, incorporate them five, 10 times a day, even if it's as simple as just counting out 10 breaths or doing some spinal rotations or doing some energetic circulations in the body, whatever it is.

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[00:18:27] Jeff: There's five different directions of the practice. There's the athletic or the martial side, the therapeutic side, the medical side, the philosophical side, and then also the meditative or spiritual side. And as you build a life practice, you might resonate with one or two of those different than the person next to you.

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[00:19:00] Meredith: And I hear all of this too, speaking of rituals, you know, there's debate over, is it takes 20 minutes or it takes 30 minutes or it's 15 and then you're meditating or, you need to do it first thing before you do anything.

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[00:19:23] Jeff: I think meditation is meant to be more of a way of life and you should do it all the time. there, there is no specific timeline, however, you could get some benefits from doing some breath work for two minutes, but you can often get a lot deeper into a meditation if you're doing it for 45 minutes.

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[00:20:07] Jeff: Well. It's great that they're doing something meditation is meant to be an evolving practice and it has to evolve with your understanding of why you're doing these different breathing exercises, body movements, why you're doing these different energetic circulations in the body. And if you're just following an audio or you're listening to some music and trying to go into a trance.

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[00:20:43] Developing your meditation practice

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[00:20:58] Meredith: aspects of life or specific issues I want to look at, things that I want to really just become clear, guided meditations in like what you're saying where, there'll be a guide through it, or you're actually going to go to a certain place and kind of look and lay out a certain problem.

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[00:21:41] Meredith: What would you say would be more beneficial or what would you say would, lead someone to just more peace inside?

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[00:22:10] Jeff: And that's, what's going to develop that higher sensitivity and a higher level of awareness is being able to look inside. And if every time that you meditate, you're watching a screen or listening to music, you're not looking inside near as deep as what you could if you were developing a real practice.

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[00:22:55] Meredith: So I have a lot of different things happening in the sacral chakra and I'll go more into my body and it literally is like a party down there sometimes into meditation and I go. And, my attention or my focus will take me there and I'm just in that energy and the like creative waters of womb, if you will.

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[00:23:34] Jeff: I'm still learning all the time. Meditation is not something you can learn in a six month course. It's a lifetime practice. And it very, it is very deep. all of Chinese medicine is based on Qigong theory. And so that alone right there, if you just followed that one path could be a lifetime study, not even talking about the philosophical, the therapeutic or the martial or athletic side or the spiritual side.

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[00:24:13] The Yielding Warrior

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[00:24:19] Meredith: Definitely caught my eye. The yielding warrior. Can you share about this fascinating philosophy of yielding?

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[00:24:45] Jeff: There's physical yielding, mental yielding, and emotional yielding. Physical yielding is the idea, I push you, you push me, whoever's a bigger, stronger person with the most leverage is going to push the other person over. But with yielding, instead of us trying to see who the bigger meathead is, When you push me, I get out of the way of that force and now I can respond with less effort.

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[00:25:29] Jeff: Now, in order to be good at physical yielding, a lot of things have to come into play. You have to be very well rooted. The lower part of your body needs to be strong and flexible. So you can change your central equilibrium. The body has to be relaxed. The breath has to be calm and the mind has to be present.

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[00:26:07] Jeff: So say for example, I say something that unsettles you and I pick up on it when it's like this, it's a lot easier to adjust the conversation and keep us in a happy place than if I'm not paying attention 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 very powerful.

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[00:27:08] Jeff: A lot of times it can save us a lot of heartache on the other side. And you know what? I'm explaining this to people. I've been teaching this for over 30 years. I'll often hear people say, Oh, I totally resonate with that. That makes sense. I do that all the time. And I agree, everybody does this to some degree all the time, but 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, he would see things about that scene and the timeline and everything that happened, a series of events that You and I had no clue over the meditative arts helps you see things,95 percent of the population never sees.

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[00:27:58] Meredith: So well said. And I, what I got to from what you were saying and Listening to this concept, this philosophy of yielding, it's rooted really in knowing yourself as a spiritual being, as in, at least in my opinion, goes back to understanding,all is one understanding that, and this is something I know has guided me a lot to understanding that, When you know the teachings of unity and you know yourself and you know yourself in that more quantum spiritual space, there is literally nothing that can defeat you because you understand that nothing is bigger than you because you are everything.

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[00:29:08] Jeff: Very much is like a dance for sure. there's the waning of yin and yang, look at the symbol in yin and yang and it's the extreme fades into The unextreme, and it's very, fluid and a lot of people don't know this, but the yin and yang symbol is not just two dimensional.

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[00:29:53] Jeff: It's not something you can figure out by listening to one audio program or doing a six month course. You really need to, adapt these principles and just. make them part of your day, and that's the easiest thing to do. And it's a great thing about the practice in that you don't have to be a monk and retire to a cave and meditate your, the rest of your life.

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[00:30:31] Gratitude & consideration

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[00:30:42] Meredith: And then, to know the other, you must know the complete opposite. You can't have One without the other that's the whole nature of this contrast and this like polarizing experience which Experiences speaking of billboards. if you could have one with anything on it Getting a message out, doesn't have to be yielding, but getting a message out to millions or billions.

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[00:31:12] Jeff: I think it would be,

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[00:31:18] Meredith: Damn, that's a powerful one. gratitude just puts the power in your hands again.

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[00:31:45] Meredith: Oh yeah. Consideration. it's like, When we don't consider other people, we really, or other people don't consider us, we really get it. We really get the importance of consideration. Sure. So yeah, it's like when you haven't been considered or been discarded, then you're like, Oh, consideration. Yeah.

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[00:32:13] Meredith: it's now time. This is my favorite part of the show. It is our finale biohacking with art question. Are you ready?

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[00:32:27] Biohacking with Art - the river

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[00:32:46] Jeff: In some way, whether it be a painting or a sculpture, it would be a river. And the reason why I pick a river is because it flows with nature. It's flexible and anything you put in its way, it finds a way to deal with it.

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[00:33:36] Meredith: Yeah, that river. Yeah. Anything you put in its path, it finds a way to deal with it. And it's funny you say that too, because it's actually been one of my very beginning statements or mantras and understanding meditation. Jen. It felt like the way I related to it was like being a stone in the river and in actually the way that I related to dealing with just like overwhelming emotion or conflict.

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[00:34:25] Jeff: Nice. I like that.

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[00:34:32] Meredith: Tell us where people can find you and learn more about your incredible work.

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[00:34:55] Jeff: And you can try that out for a couple of weeks and see if that might be a good fit for you. And hopefully if you do, it'll be very educational for you.

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[00:35:31] Meredith: We will see you all next time. Bye.

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[00:35:45] Meredith: family and friends, or subscribe with the link below to receive exclusive perks. And if you're feeling really generous, please leave a review on Pod chaser dot.

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