Triumph Over Turbid Thoughts with Jason Campbell

What it really comes down to is coming back to center because you get thrown off center. And I think with technology, I mean, you know, this silly phone that we all have, I don't know anybody that says the phone has made you happier. Maybe it makes you more productive, maybe, you know, makes you more knowledgeable. I don't know, maybe. But rarely happier. It usually creates more turbidity, like the snow globe analogy that I made earlier. And so when you feel you're pulled this way and pulled this way, pulled this way, usually it's just too many thoughts that you're having. And so you need to settle the thoughts. And part of mental toughness is actually having less thoughts. It's estimated we have between, oh, 60,000 and 100,000 thoughts a day, and something like 98% of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday.

Hello, everybody, it's Eric Edmeads, back with another episode of Thrivetime. I'm glad to have you here watching this right now. We are in the most interesting times in most of our memories, and I want you to know that my commitment to you here is to try to bring you the very best resources you can to help you to cope with, survive, and ultimately thrive through this pandemic. So when we get to the other side, you're ready for whatever's next. And so here we go. Our guest today is a good friend of mine, Jason Campbell. And we really believe in synchronicity. And I'll tell you a little personal story to tell you why. I had been muddling my way through trying to find some really good meditation music and different event music that I could be using at my events. And that same day, I happened to call my friend Jason Campbell, a different Jason Campbell. And I launched into the conversation. Jason, we got to do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. And suddenly he goes, you may be looking for a different Jason Campbell. Which Jason Campbell is this? I said, and he says, this Jason Campbell. I go, oh, my God, Thank God. I need some music. Anyway, and so we started talking. Let me tell you a little bit about Jason. He is a serious martial artist, seventh degree, if I understand correctly. He is an incredible meditation master and a phenomenal musician with a number of number one Billboard songs out there for us to enjoy. So today we're going to talk about, hey, what can we be doing this time to feel better, to manage our stress and develop mental toughness that will help us get through this pandemic in the best possible way. Jason, thank you so much for joining the show.

Hey, thank you for having me on. It's so good to be here.

So let's jump in with. Look, there's one theme we've been talking a lot about on the show. I want to talk about it again. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because I think we've covered it so well. But the short version being, hey, stress matters, and we need to be aware of that. And we need to be aware of the threats and dangers that are around us. We need to be smart. But what we don't want to be doing is really stressing out about it, because as we've said on the show so many times before, when we stress, we lower our shields. We lower our shields and we allow the possibility of getting sick. And so while I'm not suggesting meditation is going to cure everything, now, today I. I think that there are some things we could do to get ourselves more calm. One of the things that I like so much about what you do around the music you create is, in a sense, it's almost like you have this goal to just get everybody on earth to once a day sit down and sit still and listen to calm music for five minutes. And I wonder how big a difference it would make if people started doing that. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, it's actually a really amazing thing. So let's talk about this. I mean, it's. You know, you have to be very careful about. You and I were just talking about the last line of defense, which is, of course, the immune system. And great ways of breaking down the immune system is stress. And then, of course, sugar. Like, if we wanted to teach everyone how to destroy it, let's get really stressed out and put a lot of sugar, among other things, in the body. Here's the analogy I like to use for meditation. If I have a snow globe and I shake up the snow globe, that snow globe right now is very turbid. But if I make the snow globe over a period of time that turbidity settles and then up, we start to have some type of clarity and the power of just a sitting practice, of just make your body still connect into your breath. And there's all types of, like, internals and exercises we can do. But just being still and being in your breath lets the mental and emotional turbidity start to settle. Then we have more clarity because you can even say, like, what is stress and what is fear? Well, it's viewpoint and it's perception of stress and fear. Two people can be in the exact Same situation. One experiences stress and fear, one experiences calm, tranquility and confidence. And it's all in that viewpoint. 25 years ago, when we were teaching meditation, we would say to everybody, okay, do it 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes at night. And most people would say, okay, I can do that 40 minutes. Nowadays, well, you tell that to tell people to do that, it's a little bit more difficult. So that's why we start with five minutes and just be still for five minutes.

You know, I really like that idea and it's interesting. I had Emily Fletcher from Ziva Meditation on the show a couple days ago. And one of the things that I mentioned to her about meditation is when I see these people saying, like, if you just started with one minute a day, and I think that there are times when we misunderstand minimum effective dose. So something I noticed years ago, and I mentioned this with Shelly, or sorry, with Emily, was that when I first got into running, the first mile was the most horrible mile ever. It was only the second and third mile that were enjoyable. And I have found in my life with meditation that it's very much like that. If you try and do one minute, that's the worst minute. That's the worst possible minute. And I do feel like five minutes is a good minimum effective dose. You're sitting there in the quiet, breathing nicely for five minutes, you do feel better. I think that's a great way to start.

Yeah. And here's what we found. Because a lot of the music that I write is for this piece, the songs are five minutes. There's a bell every four seconds and you listen to the bell, then you breathe in, and then you listen and you breathe out and you just do one song. And so when you have the music, it even goes by faster. But then what we find people do, they listen to one song and then it feels so good. Then you do another song and then, oh, that feels so good. And all of a sudden you do three, four songs. You did 15, 20 minutes and you're just, you're just flowing in the zone. And it's not because you tried to do it, it's because you wanted to do it.

So, all right, now you pick your track, you've got your, you know, it's well designed, you've got the bell to guide the breathing and all that kind of stuff. Talk to me a little bit about. I mean, some people are just so strict and I suppose, I mean, look, as a seventh degree black belt martial artists, you probably know a few things about Strictness. But when we get into this meditation, I think there's a lot of dogma around. Well, I need to be sitting like this and my hands need to be like that. And talk to me a little bit about, what do you think is a great environment for somebody to do this? Obviously, we don't want them crashing out and falling asleep, necessarily. But at the same time, is rigidity really the key?

No, I find that the rigidity creates obstacles and creates barriers. And yes, there's the sit in the full lotus and suck in and here, and you can do all that. And then the energy. And yes, there's definitely forms of that. And for some people, that makes a lot of sense and to do it. But in order to get started, it's like you want to set up with a win. You don't want to lose and feel really stupid and feel like, I'm not doing this because one of the things that, you know, that we've done is we help people that have either never meditated before or more likely attempted meditation and felt like you failed at it because I didn't adhere to these rules. Or you're sitting and you're doing an internal dialogue. Okay, what's going on right now? What's everyone else getting? I don't get this. What's happening? Am I supposed to feel anything? Which is not the point of doing it. So just stop and breathe and be still, and that's enough. And there's a saying, there's no such thing as good or bad Zen. There's only Zen. And the same is true in meditation. Don't think, oh, that was a great meditation. Oh, that was a lousy meditation. No, stop it. You're still and you're breathing. You're good. That's enough. And then there's an accumulation effect that starts to happen when you start to get momentum. I tell everybody it's just about seven days, one song a day, which is five minutes. It's very rare that you don't have the time to do that. It's more just, you know, you just have to make a commitment to it. And it's really, really easy to get. Get started.

You know, I can't remember I saw this, but meditation, I don't know if it's. If it's Sanskrit, but the original. One of the original meanings of the symbol for meditation was to. To know oneself. Yeah, to know oneself. And I think that's a really. That's a really interesting thing. So let's. Let's talk a little bit about, say, Focus and mental toughness. I mean, to get to a seventh degree black belt, you really have to be. You got to develop some mental toughness. But it wasn't like that for your white belt. Right. So talk to me a little bit about what it takes to really control your state of mind and maintain mental toughness when things are difficult.

Well, you know, that's a really, really good question. And I think what it really comes down to is coming back to center because you, you get thrown off center. And I think with technology, I mean, you know, this silly phone that we all have, I don't know anybody that says the phone has made you happier. Maybe it makes you more productive, maybe it makes you more knowledgeable, I don't know, maybe. But rarely happier. It usually creates more turbidity, like the snow globe analogy that I made earlier. And so when you feel you're pulled this way and pulled this way, pulled this way, usually it's just too many thoughts that you're having. And so you need to settle the thoughts. And part of mental toughness is actually having less thoughts. It's estimated we have between, oh, 60,000 and 100,000 thoughts a day. And something like 98% of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday. It's like a skipped record. And so most of the thoughts we have, we don't need. And so when you can go and drop in and have like a moment of stopping the internal dialogue, because right now there's a voice in the head, like so for the listener, there's a voice in the head. I'm saying words. And then your voice in the head.

Oh, wow.

Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I never thought of that. Oh, well, that makes me think of, or whatever it is the inner dialogue is. Well, can we have a moment, even a split second, of not having an inner dialogue? Because you have the voice in the head, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And part of meditation is, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have that little snippet of not having any thoughts. And there's a lot of different disciplines. There's like, so there's a few really simple disciplines, and maybe we can even get into them today that you can do to just learn how to create the off switch in that internal dialogue.

Yeah. There's two things I'd really love to do with you today interactively, I'd love to do. I'd love to do a little meditation piece with some of your music, and I'd love to do a movement exercise with you if you're up for that as well. We have some people obviously tuning in from our live studio audience at thrivetime on Facebook. And then of course, we're broadcasting this out and many people will watch it on recording. Where do you want to start? Would you want to start with the movement piece or the mind piece?

Let's see. You know what, let's do a. Let's just do a little meditation. Let me. We'll just, we'll start with it. So I'll get some music going. Oh, and can you let me, let me share the screen. I have to go into a screen share to get the good audio feed.

Okay, hang on one second.

And so. Okay, so I'll start to explain what we're going to do. How long do you want to do it for, Eric?

I think in the three to five minute range, a reasonable amount. As you would.

Yeah, let's even just make it simple. We'll start with three minutes. So it's really simple. What we're going to do here is the first thing is just make your body still and comfortable. If you want to lay down, you can lay down. Doesn't matter. And if you fall asleep, that's actually okay. There's a saying that meditation is conscious sleep and like sometimes sleep is unconscious meditation. And so because we want to drop know, drop down and all we're going to do is. Okay, great. I got the screen share here. We're going to make the body still. In a moment you'll hear some music. When you hear the bell, you're going to inhale and I'll show you how to do that in a moment. When you hear it again, you're going to exhale and then ask yourself this one question is, I wonder what thought I'm going to have next. And what that does is it separates the observer and the conscious mind. And the analogy I like to use, it's like a mouse or a cat looking at a mouse hole. Like just waiting for the mouse to come out. And at some point the thought or the mouse comes out and then that's okay, let it go. And then you say, I wonder what thought I'm going to have next. And the purpose here, if we can just have a split second of no thought, of just nothing going on inside your head. That's what we want to. We want to work to. So I will start this and can you please let me know if the. Let me know if the volume is good.

Sounds good.

Volume.

Okay, probably. You probably take it up a little.

Okay, Good. One more.

Sounds good. Are you guys getting that music nicely on your end? They are.

Okay, so let me do this about three minutes. Okay, so just a little comfortable and still. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, Inhale, exhale. And continue that breath with the bell. Now you ask yourself, I'm going to have next. Namash. Shivaya, Last breath in and exhale. And I'll say good job to everyone. You just did about a three minute or so meditation. And if that was. Especially if that was your first meditation for the day, good job.

I was going to say. That was very nice. Thank you very much. I really like the rhythm that you kind of establish with it and syncing up the breathing with it. And it's funny, I wrote this the other day on Facebook. It was like, if one more person tells me to meditate, I'm going to meditate. And the joke of it is that very often when we don't want to, that's when we really need to. And so the more you don't want to, the stronger the don't want to, the more you should. And then when you do want to do it again anyway, but you know, it's when you don't want to, I think that the real magic comes in. Let's talk a little bit about movement. You know, what have you got in mind for us there?

Oh, we can do all types of stuff. And I'll say within what you just said about not wanting to meditate, there's a saying, if you don't have five minutes to meditate in a day, you need an hour to meditate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So here, let me just. I'm going to change the sound here for a second. So really simple movement. So there's this concept called jing qi and shen, which is a very fancy. It's just a fancy way of saying what we're made up of, which is matter, energy and consciousness. So matter is like everything you can touch, see and feel. The energy is the chi, the breath, the emotion. And then the consciousness would be the spirit. And the analogy I'd like to use is like H2O. You have solid liquid and vapor, and it's all H2O, but it shows up in different ways. And so what we teach is the first part is if you can just sit down, shut up, be still for five minutes a day, you're ahead of the game, you're actually doing great. And if you just do it regularly, it lifts your spirit, it drops the turbidity, and you really, really feel a difference. If you like the Music. Use the music. Some people like silence. Some people like Mantra. Some people like the Muse, right. Arieyl's company. It doesn't matter how you get there. Like, doesn't matter how you get up the mountain. If you need to be rigid and do this, great. If you want to lay back in a comfy chair, great.

Are you trying to tell me I can do this with Metallica if I want?

You know what? It's a little trickier, but yes. Actually, if it brings you joy, fine. You might get there a little faster because that's kind of like turbid music. When they put up Metallica against. Who is the Japanese doctor that studied.

The shapes in water with sound emoto or.

You know who I'm talking about?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

When he played some of that Metallica music, the water got all putrid as opposed to playing other types of music. So just be very careful about that. But I say to somebody, if you need Metallica to get you through something, they're a great band for what they are. They're.

For me, that was just high school. That was about it, right.

I haven't listened to Metallica since high school either. I didn't know if they're still around. But again, whatever gets you there. Sometimes people like mantra also like tm, Transcendental Meditation, they'll give you a mantra. And the reason for the mantra is something you repeat over and over. Like, the music you just heard was a mantra. Om Namah Shivaya. And I have other albums. Om Mani Padme Om Om Shanti Om. There's all these different mantras. The reason for a mantra is when you say something internally over and over again, it stops you from having other thoughts. That's the main reason. I mean, we can go deeper in the vibrational frequency of the mantra, but just in the beginning, it's like you're just saying, oh, Mani padme Home. O money padme home. O money padme home. So then you're not saying, oh, my God, what am I going to do about this virus? And what am I going to do about my business? What am I going to do about whatever it's. Oh, Mani padme Home. O money padme home. So that's the reason for a mantra. So when we have Jing Chi and Shan, we also call that breath, movement and intention. So when we do the breath, I'm gonna switch out my audio so I can stand, and then I'll put on some. Some music again.

Okay.

Is my audio okay?

Yep.

Okay. And so when you're Doing any type of movement, even at the gym. Like, I see people at the gym working really hard, and that's fine. And I go to the gym and just, you know, you pump life through your body. The thing about the gym, though, is you build up a bicep by doing weights or whatever, but you don't die of a bad bicep. You die of a heart attack. So what I suggest everybody do some types of movements that work your organs in your joints, in your circulation of energy, your circulation of qi. But even when you go to the gym, do the physical movement. Add the breath and add the intention. So the breath, that. And then the intention is don't put your mind on the television set or the other people in the gym. Put your mind right, whatever, extra, whatever part of the body you're exercising, and you get a much greater, like, ROI or return on investment for the. For your experience there. So let's do some movement. Let's see here. I'm gonna have to share the screen again.

You should be able to. Yep. Okay.

Can you hear the music okay?

Probably. Yeah. Maybe down a little. You're a bit quiet last time. Okay.

Is that better?

Yeah, much. Okay.

Zoom's funny because I have no way of hearing what you hear on Zoom. I'm like, kind of in the dark here. Okay, so let's do this. This the quick change of the studio. Okay. All we're going to do, the first thing, it's so simple, we're going to connect the breath with the hands. Breathe in. And if you can, I suggest, do this together. I can see some of you doing it. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Now lift onto your toes, down onto your heels. Inhale under your toes. Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale.

Now when we inhale, bring the third finger up. Exhale. Fourth finger is down. This is actually all for your immune system. We're triggering the energy circuit to strengthen what we call it your wei she field, which is a fancy way of saying your system. Inhale. Exhale. Now when you inhale, press your big toe down. Exhale, your fourth toe down. Inhale, big toe. Exhale, fourth toe. Usually the only time you think about your fourth toes, if you stub it. Exhale, inhale. And then you find the grace. Inhale.

Exhale. Last one.

Inhale. And exhale. Okay, now we grab the analogy. It's like you grab a robin's egg and hatch. Wave, blow. Grab the A.

Wave.

Hello. Inhale, Exhale. Wave, hello. Inhale. And there's a grace here. Usually takes a few minutes to Find it. Inhale. Grab the robin leg. Use the bell. See, I can see. I'm watching everyone on the screen. You are getting it. Inhale. It's all about the bell. Inhale. Exhale. Exhale. And finish. When we finish, we breathe in and we breathe. Stop the music. Okay, first of all, bravo. Good job. To everyone who just participated. That was pretty awesome. And what we just did was five minutes. So that was one song. And so that's kind of the magic of whether you're sitting and doing breathwork for five minutes or you're doing some type of movement. And we have people that, you know, you just. You take a break throughout the day. You're sitting at your desk all day. And especially now, there's a lot of sitting at the desk and staring at a. At a camera. Move for five minutes and then come back down an hour later. Meditate for five minutes and then come back down. And the quality of your day, the quality of your body, like how good you feel, is actually really amazing. What happens when you do it consistently.

Jason, thanks so much for that. I want to offer everybody a thought, and I really want you to hear me about this thought. There's all kinds of science out there that talks about how patterns of behavior are created or what we call habits. Ultimately, habits are what we call automatic behaviors. And automatic behaviors are designed to stop us having to consciously make decisions all the time about what we're doing in any given moment. Automatic automatic behaviors can be the most unbelievably supportive and magnificent life creation things, or they can destroy everything. So many of you will know me through our company, Wildfit, and you'll know that one of the big things that we're doing with Wildfit is helping people eliminate the automatic behaviors they have around food that are killing them or just hurting them. And so what we want to think a little bit about here over the next little while is what automatic behaviors you're developing. Because here's the thing. Most of the science out there tells us that there's a period of time that somewhere between 21 days and 68 days or so, where anything you do every day during that period of time, anything that you keep iterating will become an automatic behavior. In other words, you'll develop addiction to it. It'll start to become so automatic that you don't have to consciously do it. Now, this can be serving you or it can be hurting you. And one of the ways that it can serve you is that you use your conscious mind to create behaviors that you want to have at the end of that 21 days. And the way it can hurt you is when you allow your body to decide what it wants to do for 21 days, and then it will want to do those things forever after that. There's something we talk about in our quantum shift program that's called super consciousness. Now, the way I define super consciousness is like this. You have a conscious mind, and your conscious mind is where you make conscious decisions. So if you are choosing to eat something consciously, you're probably choosing well. When you're choosing unconsciously, maybe not so well. We probably spend less than 5% of our day in full conscious mode. The reality is, most of our day is unconscious. We move from thing to thing, and we're reactive and responsive from thing to thing thing. So as we work to create more meditative time, like, for example, if you spend five minutes doing, as Jason's just shown us, you actually give yourself five minutes of extra conscious thinking in that day, in that moment where you're present. But super consciousness is when your conscious mind and your body are in alignment with each other. This is one of the reasons that we get goosebumps when somebody goes on American Idol and sings in a way that just blows our mind. It's one of the reasons that when we see a figure skater do the most incredible things with their body, that we like it so much, because that person, relative to that skill, has something called superconsciousness. Their body is doing exactly what their mind wants it to be doing. So here's what I want to suggest to you. A super conscious step that you can be taking right now is to think to yourself, how long do I think this lockdown is going to last? Let me tell you that if it's anything less than 21 days, I'd be surprised. I mean, from today, I'm not talking from the beginning. It's not going to end by Easter, no matter which leader of what country thinks that it should. We are going to be in this for some time yet. So let's imagine that it's going to be at least 21 days. Let's think that it could be 60 days. So my question is, what behaviors do you want to keep at the end of this period of time? Who do you want to be when the pandemic is over? What habits would you like to have by that point in time? Would you like to be the kind of person who spends at least five minutes a day in stillness, listening to great music and getting yourself grounded? Would you like to be that person in two months. If you want to be that person in two months, then use a little bit of willpower today to do it a little bit every day. And then when this pandemic is over, you will find that you don't go back to the old you. You will find that the old you is now heavily supplemented by the habits and behaviors that you picked up during this time. And some of the things that you just learned here from Jason can be really helpful. Jason, tell me something, because this is a question I keep seeing in the thread here. You make some phenomenal music. You've shown some of it to us here. Now, where can people go to get your music?

Well, it's on all the platforms, so whatever service that you use. But the easiest way is just go to jasoncampbellmusic.com that's the hub. And then that has all the links to everything.

So, Jason Campbell, music.com and I think, if I remember correctly, you have a meditation program of some kind that they can also go and do.

Yes. Yeah. So also we have a company called Zen Wellness. And within Zen Wellness, it's like all the movements I did and the book I was referring to earlier with this Jingchi and Shun, that's part of the Zen Wellness, where we combine movement, breath and intention and a lot of the Oriental and Taoist medicine and philosophy. And we put it together and it's all scored. So then we have the music, because there's other, like, there's teachings in that music which is called like a five element teaching. That series of albums is broken up to wood, fire, earth, metal, water, which is just a very fancy way of saying a repeating pattern of five. Thousands of years ago, the ancient masters, through observation, meditation and contemplation, realized things happen in five. Hey, we have sets of five, five fingers. We have, you know, sets of organs. It's going to Eastern medicine. It's two sets of five organs. We have five vowels. They break the seasons up into five. Everything is. Everything is five. And they called it wood, fire, earth, metal, water. But it's not literal wood. It's not literal fire. It's metaphor. So, for example, if I look out my window right here, I can see the wood is sprouting. Fire is flowering, earth is fruiting, metal is falling, like cutting the fall. And water is rotting, going back in to cycle it up. And so it's a repeating pattern that we have. Like the wood element sprouts, the fire goes, disperses, the earth is flat and sweet, the metal splits, little bit of grief and Metal and the water element flows and there's emotions that are associated with it, colors, seasons, phases of life. Like, if you look at your life as one day we can say, hey, what element are you in based on your age? And then a lot of our training that we do is also age appropriate. You know, like a 16 year old generally wants to train differently than a 60 year old, just in general. Sometimes you get 60 year olds that have been sedentary for 20 years and think, oh, well, I was healthiest when I was in, you know, junior high, let's go play basketball. And they blow their body out. So we see that, you know, that. Then they come to us, we piece them back together. So it's that, you know, with one lesson, you learn all lessons. The analogy I like to use the five elements is like seeing the Matrix, if you remember the movie. It's like with one principle, you see everything and you just start seeing everything in five elements. And so a lot of the program is based on that. It'll tell you all of the music, or at least that set of albums is based on the five elements. We first listened. The first one we did was the metal song. And then what we just listened to was Fire, you know, based on the. Based on the mantra.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that metaphor, as you put it. And also the seasons, you know, we have. It has not been a mystery that there was going to be a big economic correction at some point, because we've been in this long, gorgeous summer, in this unbelievably harvest, harvesting autumn for so very long that just about anybody who was willing to talk about it said there was going to be a correction. Now, we didn't know that this is what would cause it. We didn't know this is what would kick it off. But it stood to reason that winter metal was coming and. And here we are in that winter season. But you know what's really great about that is that when you realize that it is a season, you realize that every season is going to change. And so it won't be winter forever. I think there are things that we can do to make sure that even though it might be winter outside, it's summer in our lives. And so, you know, and I think meditation and music and those things can help so much. Thank you so much, Jason. It's really like I. You know, I've had some really phenomenal episodes on the show since I started it a week or so ago. But I got to tell you, this goes up there as one of my favorite ones because of the interactivity. We did a very great we did a similar thing with Peggy Cappy, who does the yoga for the rest of us on pbs, and she got us all up doing yoga. And we had Emily Fletcher from Ziva Meditation, and she did a guided meditation for us. And now you did both movement and meditation. I think we're going to work for more interactivity into the classes. Please, everybody, go to Jason Campbell music.com and check out his music and use it to get yourself through this time. Jason, thanks for making the time today. And I will definitely be following up with you to talk more about music soon.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on.

Eric, always a pleasure. Thanks very much. Talk soon.