Potent Breathwork Tactics From A Navy SEAL Commander, Staring Down Your Wolf, Operating Calmly Under Stress & More With Mark Divine.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, when you really are clear about why you're on this planet and why you do things, then you get much better with that decision making. In particular, the most important word. No, no. They just keep on greasing the groove of injury, fatigue, burnout. Potential can only be found on the inside. It can never be found exterior to the individual. Well, I pull right, he pulls left, and he collides with me, and my chute literally disappears into a, you know, little bundle and I start plummeting him to the ground. And now it's like 900ft. So I got nine second health, performance.

Nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, well, well, Today is a wonderful show because I got to reconnect with my good friend Mark Divine, former Navy SEAL commander, and his new book is really good. You're in a dig two days show, I guarantee. And considering that I have spent plenty of time on the grinder floor at US CrossFit in Encinitas in a giant cold tub during the Kokoro SEAL fit challenges that I have attended at Mark's facility down there. Well, folks, my podcast guest and I were commenting before we hit the record button that his new book could not have come at a better time, at a time when many of us need to step up and be leaders and also become inspired to kind of get more in touch with who we are and what drives us. And I literally just got his book yesterday. So thank you very much, Mark, by the way, for leaving me up until the wee hours last night reading your book so I could prepare for this interview. Yeah. And my guest, if you're familiar with the way that his rollicking voice sounds and you already have guessed who he is, it's Commander Mark Devine. And Mark has been on my podcast before. He actually was on the episode called Secrets of the Navy SEALs how to train, Eat, and Think like the World's Toughest Fighters. But that was a few years ago, and a lot has happened since then. In addition to this new book that he's written called Staring down the Seven Leadership Commitments that Forge Elite Teams. So Mark, who is a retired Navy SEAL commander, he's an entrepreneur. He's a New York Times bestselling author. In this book, he really gets into a lot of the principles he learned on the battlefield training SEALs and in his own entrepreneurial and growth company ventures. And he really, really knows what it means to lead elite teams. And he's a wealth of Knowledge in many, many other things. I've had the blessing of being able to travel down to San Diego where his company is located and do his crazy Kokoro multi day, SEAL esque training program.

Had to have been a highlight of your life then.

That's right. It was actually amazing. And Mark's actually been up to my house too, where we did a. You remember that, Mark? Where we did like a. Was a 12, 12 hour beat down. Yeah. 20x. Are you still doing those, by the way, the kokoro or the 20x programs?

Well, the answer is yes, when we can. Right now everything is on ice, as you imagine.

Yeah.

And we're looking at like how California is kind of rolling out slow, rolling the back to normal and the rules would gut the race or it's not a race, gut the event, you know, so we're hoping to relaunch him in October.

But these, the Kokoro events, I mean, you know, in terms of that being a real crew, probably one of the more character building things I have ever done. You know, some people, we talked a little bit about that last time, but just briefly describe to people what the Kokoro is. And I'm only saying that to make me look good for having completed one.

Okay, I'll start out by saying this. It's been described as the toughest physical, mental, emotional training in the world outside the actual Navy SEAL Hell Week program. And most people who know anything about the SEALs probably know about hell week. It's one week out of nine months of training where you train nonstop around the clock for six days, seven days, six nights, seven days, I think. Be off by a day. At any rate, it's.

You probably lose track after a few days anyways.

Pretty much, yeah. So total sleep deprivation? Total. You're wet, sandy, cold, miserable the entire time. And you got to perform. And if you don't perform, you know, you're dropped. And if you get injured, you're done. And of course, if you quit, you're done. So a typical class, you know, like let's use my seal training class, for example, we had 185 hard chargers, everyone extremely fit. Obviously you wouldn't even be standing at the, you know, starting line or something like that without being ready.

Yeah.

By the time we got the hell week, which for me was week seven, they moved it up to get it out of the way earlier. And I'm sure there was logic behind that, but for us it was week seven of the first phase of training. By the time we got the hell week, we were down to, like, 85 people. By the time we got out of Hell Week, we're down to 40. And when we graduated nine months later, we were down to 19. So, you know, Hell Week itself cut the class in half. And then all the lead up to Hell Week nowadays, of course, because the Hell Week is much earlier. You know, a class that starts with 185 might go into hell week with 140, come out with, like 70. So those numbers. But the end result of the actual numbers of seals who graduate hasn't changed that much since I started. It's changed by 5%. Totally. And I had something to do with that, which is kind of cool, but it's part of the story. Wow. Yeah. So Kokoro. I went down that rabbit hole to tell you that Kokoro is our version. To me, when I started sealfit, Kokoro is an event that we originally started as the sealfit Challenge, but it didn't. That name didn't really capture the essence. It's way more than a challenge. It's a transformation. The preparation, just the commitment to enroll is enormous for a lot of people. Right. Some people wait years and think, you know, that they've got to just keep preparing. But once you commit, then there's the. The journey to Kokoro, which is transformational. The training regimen, Learning how to think, learning the big four skills, which I hope we talk about in this podcast. And then the Kokoro event. 50 hours nonstop physical, mental, emotional training in a team environment led by SEAL BUDS instructors who are also certified by.

Me, who are very mean.

Yeah, they can be. They're not, but.

They are during the entire event. And then I think when all the smoke blows over at the very, very end, when you're finally cracking a beer with your eyes barely open and your entire body sore, you realize they're actually nice guys who like to chat. But during the previous three to four days, they're real assholes.

That's correct. Yeah. So I built this program, as you know, Ben, for special ops candidates, in particular, Navy SEALs, with an intention of building or forging a new breed of warrior. And I've been very inspired. It surprises some people to hear that I was a certified public accountant before I became a Navy seal. I had four years down on Wall street as a cpa, and during that time, I got my mba and I also became a black belt in karate. But what's unique about that is my karate master was a Zen master, and so I took up Zen meditation when I was 21 when I got out of college and all the way up until when I got my black belt. And that was such a transformational experience, especially with all the neuroplastic effect of my, you know, growing brain still as a 20 something, you know, young guy. And all the hard physical training. So now I'm doing hard physical training. I'm doing some serious mental training. 20 minutes every morning of breathing, 20 minutes of meditation. Long weekend retreat to the Zen mountain monastery Long sits every Thursday night with Nakamura and a small group of dedicated Zen practitioners. And my brain changed and it allowed me to tap into what I now call kind of my, my inner vision or my inner voice, which said, mark, what the heck are you doing as a cpa? Like, you are not built for this. Your calling, your dharma, so to speak, is to be a warrior. And when I finally allowed that to be heard, then I discovered the seals and I went in the seals. So anyways, that, you know, years later, I'm tying these together, right? But I'm tying these together. Years later. I wanted to. I found that I had a real passion and talent for developing unique and innovative training programs. And I wanted to build a program for Spec Ops candidates that had a similar effect to what I coddled together on my own, which combined, you know, the hardcore physical, functional endurance, austere, severe training in all environments with the mental and emotional skills of things like Zen and breath work and imagery. And that became the SEAL Fit Academy, which you experienced. And the capstone experience for the SEAL Fit Academy became kokoro camp, the 50 hour hell week experience.

Yeah, and I think the way to do it, and this is what I did, I went down and I did the SEAL Fit Academy. And then that just transitions straight into the Kokoro experience. So by the time you start Kokoro, you feel so immersed in all the concepts that you teach from, you know, finding your why to box breathing, to probably some of the things we're going to dig into today to where even though you're actually kind of tired from the SEAL Fit Academy, because it's not easy either. You know, we're out there learning Olympic weightlifting and still doing a lot of rucks and marches and time in the sunshine and. Yeah. And water loss and. But. But by the time you get to Kokoro, you feel like you've built up a little bit of a callus and all the skills are super fresh on your mind. And so, you know, I think anybody who's going to go train for a Kokoro event needs to needs to do a lot of TR before they actually go down and do the SEAL Fit Academy. Those five days aren't enough. But you actually have that book. A lot of people ask me about how you train for something like that Kokoro event, and I say, well, the guy who put it together actually wrote a book called eight Weeks to SEAL Fit. And I opened the front cover of that book and went from week one to week eight and figured, hey, you know what? If this book was written by the guy that designed the thing, this ought to get me ready. But yeah, it does take a lot of preparation. But I would say compared to, you know, any of the Spartan Agoji and the Ironman triathlons and anything I've done that, that was probably one of. One of the most character building and just in terms of making everything else in life feel relatively easier in comparison once you've come out the other side. I remember. And then we'll jump into your book here momentarily. But I remember after the event ended, I crashed on a friend's couch in San Diego and I just passed out for like 18 hours, just slept. And then I, I got up, I caught my flight, and I'm walking through the airport and every, every mild annoyance that would actually normally kind of annoy me seemed absolutely pale in comparison. I mean, you know, you, you, you're walking past some lady complaining about the temperature of her latte from Starbucks and you know, in the back of your head you're thinking like you have no clue. I think I almost just died in the Pacific Ocean for three days. The coffee's nothing.

Yeah. We have two sayings that kind of reflect that. The first is you come to Kokoro to meet yourself, your true self, for the first time. Right? And that's like connecting yourself to a deeper sense of why you do things. And when you really are clear about why you're on this planet and why you do things, then you get much better with that decision making in particular, the most important word, you know, that we have available to us, and that's N o no, right? So you get. You learn to say no to people and things that just are distracting you or used to give you, you know, make you pissed off, right? You're just like, no, I'm not going to let that happen because it's just going to take me away from my mission or my. Why. The second is life before Kokoro is very different than life after Kokoro. It creates a whole new paradigm. You know, the transformation is not like a physical transformation. Even though that happens, it's a transformation of consciousness. And one of the more important aspects, the reason why we called it kokoro, there's really no word in the English language. I guess courage would come the closest, but it didn't quite capture it. But kokoro comes from the martial tradition in the Japanese samurai legend, and it means to merge heart and mind into your actions. So it's heart, mind, and action. And most people are in their head, and because they're in their head, then they take action from a transactional standpoint, or they're. They're timid and fearful around it. But when you bring your heart into the equation and lead with the heart, but you don't leave the head behind, you obviously need to strategize and plan, but then you're able to connect at a much deeper level and not make it about yourself, but make it about your teammates. And that's where you unlock the power of 20x. You're capable of 20 times more if you lead with your heart and your head merged into your actions so that you can connect at a deeper level with your teammates. And then it's your teammates that help you unlock that massive potential. In fact, the Staring down the Wolf book really is an expose on this issue right here. Like, how do you unlock massive potential to operate with an elite team? It's not by trying to be the perfect leader. It's by getting into your heart and connecting at a deeper level with your team. And in order to do that, you got to get out of your own way. You got to clear up your emotional baggage. You got to learn and train to open your heart, because it's not something that comes naturally in the west, especially for us guys. And then got to not make it about yourself. Remember the saying in Steelfit Academy, Take your eyes off yourself and put them on your teammate?

Mm.

That's kind of the experience that we want people to begin to get. And I think, you know, the world certainly is ready for it. A big part of the mess we see right now is because everyone's been obsessed about themselves. Everyone's locked in ego, you know, and then that gets projected out pretty much as a disaster onto the social scene.

Yeah, I think I remember you telling a story. It may have been you, and correct me if I'm wrong, at Kokoro, or it may have been either before or after that that you had mentioned this to me, that a lot of times, the people in Hell Week who tend to kind of ring the bell early or suffer a Lot more are those who go in with a very individualistic mentality who are often like the, you know, the high school football standouts and the athletic stars and the people who go in really looking like they'll completely dominate, but they're so used to operating on their own as an individual lone wolf that those are the people that get taken out early because they don't know how to depend on a team or really cooperate with the team as efficiently.

That's right. And that's the big difference between like elite level professional sports and elite level SEAL teams, is that those prima donnas can make it and find a role and actually get paid a lot and are given a lot of attention in professional sports. Whereas in the team they're the first people who get weeded out. Because at Bud's, Bud's instructors are our military special operators and they're going back to be that. In fact, they can't wait to go back. And a lot of them get drug kicking and screaming into the schoolhouse. They're like, wait a minute, I want to go downrange and kick ass and take names. They're like, no, no, no, no, we need you because you're a talented operator and you know how to teach and you got a good presence to come to the schoolhouse. And so those instructors are actually de facto selecting their next teammate. And there's a high likelihood that they're going to serve right alongside one of those or many of those students that they put through in the 18 months to two years that they're instructing. And the most important thing is team ability. How are you taking care of your teammates or are you making it all about yourself? Right, but that's a consciousness thing. It's not a tactic. Right? It can't be a strategy or tactic. You can start to train it as that like we do at SEAL FIT Academy, to get begin to bring awareness to it. But until you get out of that egoic stage and open up into a more, you know, me plus we, we're in this together. And then that opens up and you realize, wait a minute, if I'm going to take care of my team, then I better get, I better up my own game, right? And so this concept plays into this idea of self mastery and service. You can't serve without mastering yourself. And then the more you master yourself, the more powerful you can serve. The more powerful you serve, the more important and motivate. More important it is the motivated you become to do the daily self mastery at all levels. And so it becomes this Self reinforcing kind of transformation machine. When you work with team like that, I'm sure you've experienced that many times.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Now you highlighted something that I think is unique about your approach and that is your background in kind of this more Eastern training, particularly influenced by your background in the martial arts. That I believe was something that you were pretty well versed in even before you became a Navy seal. And you talk in the book about this guy named Ken Wilbur, is that the gentleman you were referring to, who you took your martial arts training from?

No, that was Tadashi Nakamura, who was a 10th degree founder of Sato Karate Zen Master. He was my first mentor. And I would say that Wilbur, besides some of my SEAL leaders like Admiral McRaven, he was my SEAL Team 3 commander. He was a mentor to me and I learned a lot from him. But when it comes to philosophy of life, Ken Wilber was probably my second mentor. He's the founder of something called Integral Theory. And my unbeatable mind and SEAL fit were heavily influenced by that. And that's the notion that regular personal development is horizontal in that it accrues to you better skills that allow you to be more effective and efficient, but it doesn't change who you are. And you made a point earlier that Kokoro Camp and Steelfit Academy Kokoro Camp had the biggest effect on your character than anything you've done right. And that's spot on because the training is meant to evolve you vertically, not horizontally like the skills. You're a master in fitness and you know, you do breath control, you visualize, you do everything that we talked about, but the way that we put it together and trained it is designed to shift your perspectives and transform your consciousness and to have you come out of the event with a totally different paradigm or perspective of who you are, your relationship to the world and your relationship to other human beings. And that indeed makes you a better person. And when we say someone's character is deepened or that you know they've had growth, that's really what it shows up like. Greater, more broader perspective, more world centric perspective, as opposed to egocentric, more connecting to the heart so you have deeper care and concern and compassion for others, for your first your family, then your team, then your community, and then ultimately all humans, including the Earth actually. And then the ability to take perspectives of others regardless of their stage of development. So you might have someone who's like, take this. You know, some of the issues that are happening right now, most people can't take the Perspective of others. So it continues to be force on force. Right. And I'm talking about all the racial insensitivity as well as the violence and everything. Force. And force, as you know, never works.

Yep.

But when we grow out of that egocentric my way is the highway. I'm right, you're wrong. Dualistic perspective. Because of the transformation of our consciousness, then then we tend to develop a more world centric perspective. So Wilbur says that if you can develop in an integrated fashion, that's integral theory, then you will transcend through higher and higher stages of vertical development, character development. The highest stages begin with world centrism and what they call the integral level. Anything below integral, which is 85 to 90% of the Western of the global population, then it's going to be locked in positionality. My way is right. And then I kind of demonize everybody else. And you can have some pretty smart people who are still locked in positionalities. And the way to do this, integrated training, which is really. He never developed a training program. That's where we came in. Unbeatable mind is one of only two I'm aware of in the world. That is an integrated development vertical development training program. And SEALFIT was the early version of this. So you experienced it where we train along multiple domains of intelligence with the specific purpose of integrating them so that you become more whole and evolved and world centric as a person. Your consciousness, your emotions, your, you know, your strength, your perspectives. And those five domains are physical. Obviously, especially coming from the seals, Physical training and development was something that's really important. But you don't see that in a lot of spiritual traditions. People do a little yoga, a little Tai Chi. I guess maybe the martial arts has an aspect of that. But that's can also lock people in a position of conflict. Right. So we just say physical development. Then that leads to the mental. The mental we expand to include the work that you're familiar with, like the breath work, the imagery, concentration, mindfulness. Expanding your concept of mind to be able to tap into heart and belly mind, to be able to use direct perception and witnessing as part of your mental toolkit. Extraordinarily powerful. And then the third domain is emotions. This is the one. Like one of my favorite sayings from Ken Wilber, which I fully adopt, but give him credit for, is that our goal as human beings, one of our primary goals as human beings is to wake up. And that means wake up to the the bigger story of your life. Don't get locked in this ego based. I am This, I am that. But wake up to this notion that maybe you're something different, maybe you're a spiritual being having this human existence. Stop identifying with all that material stuff. So that's called an awakening. So wake up. Then we grow up. We grow up through these stages of development until we're at this integral or world centric, and then go on beyond there. And those could also be considered spiritual stages. And at the higher levels we have enlightenment. And then he used to say, so you can show up fully as your whole self. Right. Integrated whole self having a powerful impact on the world. But later on he recognized that waking up and growing up aren't enough. The third component is the cleaning up of the emotional baggage. So you gotta wake up, grow up, clean up so you can show up. That relates to our third domain. So we had the physical and the mental. And the third domain for unbeatable mind and seal fit is the emotional domain, the emotional mountain. And in that, that's why we really emphasize team training. Because your emotions, you know, if you're sitting alone in a cave, you may never surface, you know, the emotional shadow, but it's in relationship and in communication that that surface because that's where the repression projections, you know, and all the different kind of shadow ways that we kind of leak out all over the world are exposed. And so we have tools and training to both develop self awareness around our emotions as well as to do deep shadow work to clear the emotion so that it's not blocking you from further growth.

I think probably that's one of the more difficult parts for people is showing up. Because showing up, that takes some courage, some staring down of the wolf, I suppose, to borrow the title of your book, because that's where all the fruits of growing up, waking up and cleaning up really begin to ripen. Where all that knowledge and personal growth and spiritual practice and this shadow work.

You talk about, it clashes with reality.

Yeah. It allows you to engage and actually make, make impact, you know, and you can sit at home and box, breathe and meditate all day long, but at some point you got to suck it up and, and take it to the streets and, and you know, I think that's where, that's, that's where the differentiation lies, in my opinion, between people who actually make impact with their purpose and those who just spend a lot of time preparing to make impact, but never step and leap forward. So one of the things that you touched on briefly there as part of that big four was the breathwork component. And you're a big Fan of box breathing. I learned box breathing from you. I believe you recommended to me initially that Pranayama app that kind of chimes at specific intervals to walk you through this. Four count in, four count hold, four count out, and four count hold. And there's a lot of forms of breath work out there, Mark. I mean, like, you know, I just interviewed a guy who wrote a book called Breathe, James Nestor. And, you know, we talked about alternate nostril breathing and, you know, Wim Hof style breathing and Prani or what's it called? Breath of Fire. And we talked about. Yeah, exactly. And even holotropic breath work. And, you know, you seem to really encourage. And it pops up, you know, in various places through your book and, and even through a lot of these videos that you've been doing during the pandemic, which have been excellent, you know, all these daily videos you've been doing, you know, box breathing comes up over and over again. So what is it with box breathing? Why do you like that form of breath work so much?

Thank you for the question. This is such an important topic. First, let me frame this up. The breath is the bridge between the body, the mind and the spirit. Most people approach breath like Wim Hof from just a physiological perspective. Like he wants to do it for. To stimulate, you know, to get you in an altered state that's kind of cool to hyper oxygenate, you know, and what he'll claim is to deal or d. Well, whatever, create more alkalinity in your body and make you healthier. And then he pairs that with cold water treatment and, you know, whatever.

Right? But blowing off CO2 for respiratory alkalosis, basically, you know, which is very sympathetically stimulating.

Right? All of that is legitimate. But here's, you know, when I did my podcast with Wim Hof after it, I just sat there for a few moments breathing into it and just like checking in with my intuition. And my intuition said, you know what? You need to go back and record a warning. Because as powerful as Wim Hof's breath practice is, it's not meant to be a daily practice. And here's what one of my just profound yoga teachers taught. I did 12 days of breath training with him, and what he was saying is essentially breath is moving mental energy, right? You're moving mental energy. And if you have a dysfunctional, just like a physical dysfunctional movement pattern and you go really hard, really fast, like CrossFit, you know, and you're just greasing the groove of that dysfunctional movement pattern, you're just going to blow a gasket. And you know many people who've done that and as do I. Well, if you have a dysfunctional mental movement pattern, which I would just say practically everybody does, who hasn't done deep work, you know, like you and I have, you're going to blow it. You're going to blow a mental gasket if you do something like Wim Hof every day. So that was my warning because it's just so intense and you're moving so much energy. So it's not meant to be a daily practice. Maybe once a week. Same with holotropic breathwork. That's more like once a quarter or once a year.

I actually, I do it personally. I do holotropic breathwork about once a month, you know, laying flat on my back in the sauna. And it's, it's a chore. I mean, we're talking 60 to 90 minutes of intense breath work. I wouldn't.

It's profoundly powerful. That more, you know, that covers all five mountains. Physical, mental, emotional, intuition and spiritual. And, you know, we do that at each of one of our events and we just say, we say basically what you just said, do, if you're going to do this, don't do this at a maximum once a month. So that has got another. So I would say the holotropic work is really more to get you in a deeply relaxed, almost spiritual state where you can really tap into your intuition and get clarity and begin to find some trail markers deeper into the inner domain. You don't do holotropic breathwork before you go out for a workout. That's something different. Now, alternate nostril breathing because you're shifting the nostrils. Now the NADI system, which is the energy system, is connected to each nostril. The left nostril, the knotty will then kind of circle up through, around the right hemisphere of the brain and then go bound and wrap around the spine and the right nostril goes to the other hemisphere. So by alternating the breathing through the nostrils, you're drawing in life force and oxygen, but you're stimulating these nadis, which are alternatingly lighting up the left and right hemisphere of the brain. And so alternate nostril breathing brings balance to left and right hemispheres of the brain, which help you be more balanced in your thinking. Most people are heavily laden toward left hemispheric thinking. And so by stimulating the right hemisphere and allowing the energy to flow across the corpus callosum, alternate nostril breathing. When that could be a daily practice, right? That could actually be done. And we teach it as, if you want to do box breathing, you can do alternate nostril box breathing, and it'll have even a more profound effect. But you don't have to do it every day. Sometimes you might do it just to feel more calm and balanced, or you, like, just do it as a rebalancing act. Kambhala bhakti is the breath of fire. That's where you don't really inhale. You just forcefully exhale by pressing your belly in. This is terrific for developing the muscles in the diaphragm of breathing. And it detoxifies you, right, by really forcing that carbon dioxide out. So that could also be a daily practice. I often do that one every day. There's no harm in that whatsoever. There's no harm in alternate nostril. There's no harm in the kabali bak in terms of moving too much mental energy. Now, let me get back to your original question. Box breathing is profoundly different because to us, it is the beginning of a deep meditation practice. And you know just as well as I do how many people struggle with meditation, right, Ben? I mean, just they sit down, they try to use Headspace or focus apps or, you know, they go to TM or something like that, and then their mind's racing all over the place. Well, their mind is racing all over the place because their mind is racing all over the place. And so box breathing is a mechanism to calm the body and the brain down. So we're looking at this first as a physiological response. The seals would call that the arousal control response. So by controlling and having a steady rhythm of the four or five count in four or five count, hold. Four or five count out. Four or five count, hold. You're not going, you know, you're not doing the, you know, twice as long in the exhale because that's another breath pattern that will get you very relaxed. You know, it's fine to do before bed, but that's not what you're talking about. Box breathing is meant to be a daily practice. I recommend 20 minutes every day in the morning when you wake up.

When you're doing box breathing. Waking up, because this is actually a question I get from people. Do you do that when you're in bed before you even get out of bed, or do you actually get out of bed and go to a different spot to do it?

I used to, but now I do it in bed just for the physiological adaptation. And then I'll do another 20 minute session which takes me deeper into the meditative practice. It depends. If you want to sit up in bed and do your meditative practice in bed, it's still not an ideal posture, then that's fine. But when you wake up, so you wake up. I have, you know, my morning ritual is first thoughts, first words, which are internal, and then breath and then positivity through gratitude. Right. And so, and that's all laying down. And that's to immediately curate the quality, quantity and directionality of my mental processing as I begin to re enter the day and become consciously aware. And then I'll go more into a meditation. Then I get up and do my more formal practice, which includes movement and breathing and, you know, some checking in with my why and stuff like that.

That's, that's every day for you?

Every day? Yeah.

What time do you get up?

You know, typically between five and six, you know, weekends I generally like to sleep in, could play catch up. So that might be like seven or eight. Typically, you know, if everything, if everything's firing in all cylinders, I'll wake up pretty much the same time every morning right around 5. But sometimes, you know, my wife will want to watch a Netflix or something at night and I get to bed at 10:30 or 11 instead of 9:30, which is what I love to try now.

Netflix is the devil. You know, the. The box breathing is interesting because what I have found that to be most useful for is actually stabilizing my nervous system during times of actual stress. And what I mean by that is, for example, if I need to shift to a parasympathetic recovery mode very quickly post workout, I can literally sit cross legged, do three minutes of box breathing. And that's actually important. A lot of people finish their workout and then rush off to the next event while still in a very sympathetically driven state. And it's actually best to return to a state of relaxation, which can enhance recovery, growth hormone production, testosterone production, et cetera. If you're activating parasympathetic more readily post workout, and then in situations like say, an ice bath or traffic or anything else where my body thinks it's in battle even though it's really not, that's when I've found box breathing to be most beneficial. And I think probably the first time I tapped into that was when you'd throw us into the Pacific Ocean during Kokoro and you'd have the big waves coming and crashing against you and your entire body shaking with cold and you just go straight to your Breath and I found that box breathing to be very settling for that Is it my, my 12 year old boys, they do a lot of this breath work with me and we recently got a very cold cold pool. It's called a Morozco cold pool. It maintains like 32 degrees Fahrenheit at 110 degrees ambient temperature. You still got to break through the ice to get into the thing. So it's super cold. And that was the first form of breathwork I taught my boys when they were in there. Is this box breathing to control their physiology and same thing for them. They're able to use that now during a pomodoro break from their schoolwork or when they're in the ice bath or post workout. And I do think it's got a lot of benefits going for it. I have to admit I don't do it for 20 minutes every time I get up. But certainly for the more stressful scenarios, that's when I find pulling that out of my pocket seems to be the most beneficial.

Yeah, and I think that you're absolutely right. Everything you said was spot on. This is a difference between having a practice and having a tool that you pull out as a drill. When you do the box breathing every day, then over time it bleeds off any excess stress. And so let's take an average person, let's just say that Ben Greenfield's not average for a moment. I think most people listening would agree with that. But the average person hasn't done nearly the work. And so their body is going to be out of balance. Right. There's going to be some. And that out of balance will show up in different ways, you know, over sympathetic nervous system reaction which leads to, you know, all the different, you know, hormones and everything internally being slightly out of whack, which leads to sleep being out of whack. Maybe the fueling is out of whack. That leads to energy imbalances and yeah, basically just lack of optimization. Optimal health. Box breathing is actually the most profound thing. Most people approach it from, hey, change your diet, get better sleep. But if you just enact the practice of box breathing every day and you do it for 30, 60, 90 days, you find this profound deep de stressing that happens from all the buildup of all that stress and you slow your breathing down. Most human beings breathe suboptimally 40, maybe 50% of their lung capacity. They're not really exercising or activating their diaphragm and the musculature of their gut and their belly and their Back when they breathe, it's mostly like vertical from the chest up instead of horizontal from the center of the diaphragm out. And they're not breathing through their nose necessarily. And they're breathing anywhere from 16 to 20 times, 20 repetitions per minute. So box breathing as a training, 16.

To 20 repetitions per minute. And just, just to contextualize that, I believe closer to to like a maximum of around 12aminute is, is decent and less than that is ideal. And actually it's really interesting, actually. I was actually just reading a book on, on the heart's electrical activity response to the pace of breathing. And it turns out when you look at everything from yogis to experienced breathwork practitioners and meditators, it's about five and a half seconds in and five and a half seconds out is like the sweet spot. And there's this book I read, it's called Coherence Something, but it actually came with audios you can kind of play in the background while you're at work. That's like a dong or a bell that rings every five and a half seconds. You just kind of know. And you can gradually train yourself in the background to do this five and a half seconds in, five and a half seconds out. But if you do the math, I mean, that, that's, that's like five, basically, like, you know, around six breaths a minute.

Right. So box breathing is. I do a five count. So that's, you know, 20 seconds, that's three breaths per minute. And what that has led to is that my normal breathing, which is unconscious, I don't have to think about it, I have to be reminded about it, is roughly between four and six, depending upon, you know, if I'm talking or moving or whatnot, always through the nostrils. I train nostril breathing, unless I'm in a super high intensity moment, then I always get back to it as soon as I, you know, do set down whatever I'm working with. And anyway, so box breathing brings great. We go from unconscious incompetence about breath to by practicing it every day to where you get that, you know, become consciously competent and then unconsciously competent, where it becomes a natural new normal. And normally now you're breathing five to six rounds per minute, deeply, diaphragmatically, getting a full lung capacity of air through your nostrils, which is stimulating your mind. So it's mind training as well. So I mentioned the. This is the first step of developing a deep daily practice of meditation is de stressing the body and calming the mind. And so Your brain, you know, the mind is the. You know, it's. Depending upon which way we want to look at it, the mind will be affected, depending on how attached you are to your thoughts, by how rapidly those thoughts are going and how many thoughts you have in your head, most of which are just unconscious springing forth. So box breathing will slow that down. It'll slow down the brain waves, which slow down the frequency of thoughts arising and gives you a much more kind of clear, calm focus. When I started teaching this to the SEAL candidates, they're like, why do we need to do this? I said, arousal control. So when you go into a firefight, you're as cool as a cucumber, and you're more aware and you're able to make better decisions because your mind isn't going to be racing all over the place. It's going to be clear, and you're be able to gauge the right target at the right time for the right reason. And they're like, check, let's practice. So that's why I look at it as a daily practice. Now, that's the daily practice part. But you're right. I also teach it as part of the big four skills to use for any type of extreme or intense situation, whether it's intense training, evolution, or, you know, getting ready. I do it before speeches, I do it after workouts to de stress. So the box breathing has a great ability to get us kind of back into that parasympathetic state while we're under pressure. And you want a balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic, so you can maintain the edge while you're working or while you're in a performance state. So it helps you activate, flow easier. And then after an intense event, it does bleed off that stress. And then you can do it just, you know, sitting in the car, like you said. So it's a really profound practice. And then once you master that, then we can start to work on using the box as an object of concentration to deepen your concentration, and then we'll begin to use it for mindfulness practice. So it is kind of a stacked practice the way we teach it.

You know, this kind of leads me to something I was wondering about. I actually have a couple questions regarding this. And the first is, you know, at, I guess, initial glance, especially when you look at Instagram and social media and media in general, you know, the whole SEAL extreme fitness, military operator community seems like a very Yang community that you don't see a lot of this kind of Zen eastern approach affiliated with, and I could be wrong, but do you find that that community embraces or utilizes your kind of more Zen Eastern approach? Or how have you found, how have you found this community specifically to respond to some of these teachings when it comes to implementing these more Eastern approaches? I mean, how successful has that been? Has there been resistance to incorporating a lot of these? Because I've found that when I'm working with crossfitters or extreme triathletes or Spartan racers or anyone like that, they do have that mentality of, you know, work out to get fit, you know, suck down your protein shake, work out again. But there's not a lot of breath work, there's, there's not a lot of self awareness. There's definitely not a lot of, you know, yoga or anything like that that's thrown into the mix. And I'm curious what your experience has been working with that community?

Yeah, that's a great question. It's changing, but it's slow, right? You're talking about a very rigid system. And the people who typically are drawn to that tend to be a little bit more of a fixed mindset, even though they're exceptional, you know, at what they do. When I first started to get into this training business is I was hired by the U.S. navy Recruiting Command to develop a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL candidates. And I was all excited because I'm like, yes, I'm going to bring this kind of integrated model, east meets West. And they were like, no, you're not. Well, all we want you to do is get the kids PT the shit out of them, teach them how to swim and make sure they pass the screening test when they go to boot camp. And we're like, oh shucks. So a year later I walked away from that contract and started SEAL fit. And so people, which we talked about earlier, people, I didn't give them a choice. If you want the best training in the world, this is what we're going to do. But then I did have to take the fu out of the kung fu. I think the first academy was 30 days long and I was teaching yoga as yoga and I was teaching, you know, even using Sanskrit terms and stuff. And I was just getting cross eyed looks and you know, even some of my instructors wouldn't step foot in the room. And so finally I just said, okay, screw all that, I'm going to call it unbeatable mind. And we're going to just call these different drills and practices and tools, right? And we're going to take the Eastern mysticism out of it because these are like profoundly valuable tools that are a gift to humanity and we're just ignoring them because it's not from our culture. So screw that. One of my missions was to bring them into first the elite operator culture and then help bring it globally to the Western mindset. And it was extraordinarily successful. The SEAL candidates who came through, who did what you do, what you did, you know, the academy trained for it, did the academy, did the kokoro learned the skills. 90% of them get through SEAL training. That's compared to like 85% fail rate for the average population. So part one of this answer is there are already, since I started this in 2007, you know, a few hundred seals who've been through my training, who really get it now, whether they're fully practicing or not, or, or just did it to get through buds, I can't really say, but they, they get it that these are important skills. And I'm starting to have some seals who are SEAL fit, trained come back to me out of the service and want to coach, want to be part of SEAL fit. So that's cool. The second thing is the SEAL Training Command has over the last five years started to take this idea of mental training, mental health, cognitive performance seriously. And they brought on two individuals. One of them is a guy named Mike Magiachi, who is the former Dev Guru Master Chief and then Force Master Chief and he is all into mental training these skills and he's read my books multiple times and he's teaching these skills. He is the mental Toughness director or mental Toughness mentor at buds. So he is formally through his job, but also informally teaching these skills to the students. And they love it. The second is Captain Bob Schultz. Bob is the former Naval Social Worker Group 2 Commodore, retired as in 06, became a leadership professor. Just a phenomenal all around amazing guy. And he is now working for the Human Performance Program and he's implemented a NSW Mental toughness or mental training working group which is exploratory. And so we have conversations almost every other week and he's bringing in experts in meditation, mindfulness, imagery, you know, all these different skills. And they're having a frank conversation and he invites operators in, BUDS instructors, you know, and he tells me that there's some interest, but the resistance amongst the broader force, amongst the leadership is still really, really hard, you know, really strong against this. And a lot of it's just like, hey, we don't have time, you know, we train warriors to just become badass, you know, Gunslingers and who's got the time for this shit? But, you know, people are breaking. We've been at war for close to 20 years. You know, post traumatic stress is like finally being acknowledged by the elite operators is something that, you know, is got to take seriously. And so there's starting to be more of acceptance to cap this off. I think that you'll have a little, you'll have some discussion and awareness at the top, but it's going to be an insurgency from the bottom up because the next generation of guys that you and I train, guys and gals, ladies that we train, are growing up with this. Like all these podcasts, all the work that we have done, you and I, plus a lot of others, is now becoming much more mainstream. Whereas when we started back in 06 07, it was like, still really fringe. And I think the next generation, you know, the next five to 10 years of operators going into this teams are going to have grown up doing breath work and having at least explored meditation. And so it's going to come in just by virtue of the transformation of the culture and consciousness that's maybe a dream anyways.

Yeah. Do you know Dr. Doug Brackman, by the way?

Not personally. I know his work.

Yeah. Yeah, he's used meditation for a long time to train snipers and serious operators to stay calm in certain situations and to also use meditation to slow down enough to where you can literally take a shot in between heartbeats. He has a new book, actually, I'm going to get on the show soon. He has a new book called Driven, and he has a very interesting approach and he seems to be getting some traction as well. But I agree it's one of those things that slow to catch on amongst a community that is used to, you know, solving everything with a sympathetic approach primarily, you know, and that would include, you know, the CEO and executive community. Same thing. You know, I work with a lot of those folks and it's very difficult to get them to understand the concept of waking up and, you know, taking a walk in the sunshine in your bare feet instead of waking up and, you know, hitting the kettlebells and. Yeah, it's just this, this approach that a lot of people see still yet have to wrap their head around that by slowing down, you can actually get a great deal of strength and power and internal fitness that when combined with the hard charging workouts, you know, maybe performed later on in the day, give you an amazing 1, 2 combo and also allow you to have some things in your back pocket you can use on a day where you should be recovering but really don't know what to do to make your body and brain better besides just, you know, working out. So that actually leads me to, to another thing I wanted to run by you because there, there are, you know, in social media a lot of folks like Jocko Willink and David Goggins and you know, other seals who really have this kind of like wake up at 4am, you know, run 20 plus miles a day, you know, go, go, go and charge hard. And you know, I don't, I don't want to paint those guys unfairly because I know they a great deal of valuable information to share in the realm of leadership and motivation. But I'm curious for you specifically, when I look at these former SEALs who still seem to be kind of like operating from a physical standpoint as though they still are SEALs, how do you think that is affecting folks who are watching and being influenced by, by that type of hard charging mentality? I mean, do you see an issue with sleep deprivation or over training or issues like that in people who are trying to emulate folks like that? Or what's your whole take on this seemingly growing phenomenon of people wanting to train and be like a Navy SEAL because of the fact that social media has made that so easy to watch and follow and be inspired by?

Right, right. Well, if people are trying to like go from zero to hero to be like a Goggins or a Jocko, they will overtrain, they will hurt themselves, they will burn out, they may die, especially if you follow the Goggins approach. But I keep in mind that Jocko is mostly a leadership trainer and Goggins is a motivator. He's a motivator. Neither of these guys are fitness trainers or mental toughness trainers. They aren't trying to train you. And I've seen this, I saw this in an article where someone was talking about a group that was doing, you know, training like special operators. And they acted like they were doing this like crazily innovative, unique thing where they were bringing, you know, mindfulness and breathing into the training and also yoga for active recovery. And I was like, well, that's really interesting. And they called out seal, fica, Coral Camp, Jocko and Goggins as being like the opposite of just hard charger. And I'm like, well, they completely missed it. You know, I wanted to write to the editor and be like you completely. Not only didn't do your research, but you're conflating these two individuals, Jocko and Goggins. With fitness trainers, they're not. They don't try to be that at all. I think that their main value is to motivate people to get off their ass and do something. And then. And what you do, they'll point you to go, you know, Jocko has sent people to Unbeatable mind in sealfit. Right. He's not like, I'm going to train you to be a Navy SEAL and sealfit. As you know, Kokoro camp, had they done their research. We were the innovators on combining hardcore functional physical training with the softer yin practices of breathwork, yoga, active stretching, mindfulness, tai chi, qigong kind of things. And those two. And you're right, which, you know, the way you started this Converse, those two go hand in glove. I consider sometimes when I teach, I draw this infinity loop. And on one side I just write potential, and the other side I write performance. And I say, most people work in the performance zone. They're always performing another workout, performing, you know, they're doing stuff. But what precedes performance is potential. And in the domain of potential, you're not doing, you're recovering, you're imagining what's possible, you're winning. In your mind, it's all interior work. And the 20 times the 20x principle is that when you combine the two, you can 20x your everything in life. Not only your performance, but also your peace of mind and contentment, which are from the field of potential. And ironically, if you were to collapse that, those two, that affinity loop upward, it becomes a yin Yang symbol. And so the field of potential is yin. The field of performance is yang. Westerners live fully in yang, fully in performance, always trying to do more, better, faster, harder, thinking that it's going to lead to 20 times or more of their, you know, of what they got. But they end up getting less of what they want because they just keep on greasing the groove of injury, fatigue, burnout. And also they're not tapping their full potential. Potential can only be found on the inside. It can never be found exterior to the individual.

Yeah. And kind of related to this whole concept is something that I also learned from you in addition to box breathing, something that I still use when I'm tying my shoes or making coffee or practicing a new exercise like a kettlebell snatch. And that's this concept of slow is smooth. And actually the, the entire phrase that you use is slow is smooth, smooth is fast. It's been such a useful phrase for me that I would love to hear you explain to people what, what that means to you and the practical implementation of a phrase like that into one's life.

What's coming to my mind is my. The first parachute axe I was in, I was jumping out of the helicopter and a static line jump, so it's only like 1100ft at night. I was second off the ramp. I jump out, I go through, you know, the chute deploys, no problem because I didn't have to pull it, it just deployed. And then I'm really just take a moment to breathe and enjoy the night. And like, this is really cool. I'm a Navy seal. Hoo ya. And then I see this other parachute heading straight toward me. Our standard operating procedure is pull on your right toggle. I pull right, he pulls right, and we both miss each other. While I pull right, he pulls left, and he collides with me. And my chute literally disappears into us, you know, a little bundle and I start plummeting to the ground. And now it's like 900ft. So I got nine seconds. Now, I had been training in breath work and arousal control and meditation for about six years at that point. And I made immediately clicked into my breath work and immediately started positive mantra. And immediately, you know, all this in a fraction of a second began my, you know, emergency operating procedures, which I had drilled countless times. Reach up, grab the risers, yank them down a few times, try to catch air. Didn't work. So I said, okay, I don't have time here. Time to deploy the reserves. So I pulled the rip cord, punched the reserve, threw it out. The reserve chute goes out, it kind of flutters around a bit. It doesn't catch any air. Another breath, I look back up, okay, back to the riser. So I grabbed the riser, start yanking. 1, 2, 3. They catch enough air to slow me down from about, you know, whatever. I was going 80 something miles an hour, picking up speed to like 10 bam. And then I hit the ground. That whole experience, I felt like I had about a minute, which, you know, when you're parachuting is a freaking lifetime. I felt like it was a minute. Everything was calm, everything was smooth because I was able to slow down time. In my mind, time is a completely perception. It's a relative experience for everybody, right?

Which by the way, you know, I don't want to derail you, but anyone who has done like a, like a plant medicine ceremony, for example, you know, like, like psilocybin or, or dmt, you know, sometimes you'll feel as though hours and hours and hours have gone, have gone by. And you know, with something like a DMT inhalation when it finally wears off you realize it's been five minutes. Which, which just points out the, the power of perception of time. Especially when it comes to how the brain can perceive time. In this case with the use of exogenous substances. But, but it relates to this whole slow and smooth approach.

Well, that's why I believe these practices at their deepest level allow you to activate flow on demand. I've had countless experiences where I get into a crisis and I just go back to the practices and I'm able to shift my perception of time and make hours of pain turn into what feel like 20 minutes and I make, you know, in this case I made nine seconds into a minute and it saved my life. So slow is smooth. And this is also used in kind of a training sense. Let's say we go out to the range and most people want to like immediately get into, you know, shooting pop up targets and running and gunning. And the instructor's like no, no, no, no, no, slowed it down. We're going to just take this one step at a time and no, let's just practice slowly drawing the pistol out of your holster and taking a bead on the front sight with the target in your vision. And we'll do that hundreds of times and then we'll dry fire and then we'll add rounds and just do 25 meters and just take it nice and slow. Another example of this is when I trained, I became a scars self defense instructor. 300 hours of none stop training and the training was pretty aggressive right from the very start. And I think I got a ton out of it. I became a very, very adept. But a lot of the guys ended up pretty sloppy even after 30 days of 10 hours a day of training. And they ended up canceling the program a couple years later because so many people. It wasn't integrative in the fact that it should have included, you know, mental. A lot of the training we're talking about any. So a lot of the guys got a lot of that horizontal skill but it didn't change who they were. And they were just laying people out at the bars and stuff like that. And it's an extremely brutal art. It was based off of San Tzu kung fu which is developed by the Chinese mafia. And it's like no shit street fighting. There was no defense, there's no, you know, you learn to kill, kill, kill. And it's appropriate for an elite warrior in combat who has the ethical control to be able to deploy it. And they ended up getting taking it out of the program. But anyways, the reason I bring this up is the way it was taught was this fast. It was like zero to hero. And because of my martial arts training, like I said, I got fairly good at it, but still it was a little sloppy for a lot of people. Now fast forward. One of my instructors there, working for the founder, Jerry Peterson, was a guy named Tim Larkin. Tim Larkin, you might have heard of him. Tim started something called target focus training, which is using the same skills, but he wanted to teach, you know, men, women, kids, you know, six year old ladies. And there's no way he could teach it the way it was taught to seals. And so he deployed this slowest, smooth, smoothest fast approach. And he taught it kind of like a Tai Chi speed, super, super slow, intense precision on where you were targeting with your weapon, which you know, obviously your weapons are going to be your feet and your hands unless you have a real weapon. And in a two day program he was able to grease the groove at a neurobiological level of the skills, probably better than we were able to do it by going from zero to hero in our SEAL training program. And he has countless testimonials of women who months later, you know, were accosted and just laid someone out and they're like, holy shit, how did that happen? Right? And so slowest move applies to how you visualize too. Like you want to use visualization for performance, Practice it nice and slow with perfect form in your mind. And then like you said, if you want to warm up, if you got a movement that is dangerous movement like a deadlift or a ballistic movement, like a snatch or cannibals, and do it nice and slow first in your mind and then begin to integrate the movement with breath, spinal alignment and mindfulness, mindful awareness as you do a few reps to warm up and then maintain that awareness. And you'll find, you know, it's kind of like the rabbit and the hare. You start out and you know, like I'm in my 50s, let's just say. And I can routinely destroy the SEAL candidates that I train with. I don't mean that in a bad way, but I mean I can, I can hold my own and beat them time wise or strength wise a lot of times. And there's a 20 year old fire breathers and it's because I deploy the slowest, most smoothest, fast. And I've done it for many, many years. And I integrate Breath and mindfulness into my practice. So that what happens is, you know, if we're in a two hour seal fit workout, they're just running gun and all ego, and about 45 minutes into it, they're smoked. And here comes, you know, here comes Mark the rabbit. And I'm just getting warmed up.

Yeah, the, the, I mean, the thing is, you know, and again, even if you're not some extreme exercise or fitness enthusiast or, you know, training for hell week, you know, I'll use a technique like this when, you know, I glance at my watch, I have an appointment downtown. I got to get my shoes on, make coffee, you know, perhaps get a meal, take care of a couple things with my kids, find the car keys, get in the car. And all of a sudden, you know, there's these 10 things you have to do that you could do very quickly with shallow breathing and, you know, scrambling around like a freaking flailing muppet. And, you know, I'll stop, take a deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth, and just take each thing very slow, very smooth. And another place I used to practice this after learning it from you was during the transition from triathlon where you're running from the swim in your wetsuit up to your bike. And the whole time you're just thinking, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Focus on unzipping the wetsuit, stay calm, rip it off, sit down, peel the legs off, get the bike shoes on, get the helmet clipped, and then same thing coming off the bike, dismount, transition out of the bike shoes slowly get the running shoes on, put your race belt on. But the whole time I'd be having that mantra go through my head. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And there's, there's something about that phrase that just kind of keeps you calm when you're trying to juggle 8 billion things and you're on deadline.

Yeah. Not only do you, you know, what happens is the people who are rushing, they start making mistakes, they start bobbling, you know, whatever it is they're doing, and you're just methodically going through it, maintaining awareness. So that's step one. You end up actually saving time because you're not screwing up. Step two is that becomes a moment to recover, right? So you're practicing mindfulness, you're breathing into it. You've got your mantra, which is keeping your mind focused on the singular task. You're practicing the big four skills. Big four, Breath control, positive self talk, imagery, and task orientation on the micro task. One task, right? Unzip your Wetsuit. Okay, got that one done. Hoo ya. Next task. Right. Put on my right shoe and you're breathing into it saying slow, smooth. And so you're recovering. Whereas someone who's racing through thinking, I gotta get going, oh, someone's passing me and they're weakening themselves because they get themselves into a fear based sympathetic state already halfway between one thing and the next event that they have to do. So you're calming down. And as you know, it's kind of a logarithmic thing where if you spend one minute in deep relaxation recovery, it's equal to like an hour of physical activity in the field of performance. Performance. Like you don't, you know, it's not a one. For one thing, you know, if you, if you do two hours of workout, you don't need two hours of recovery. Right. You might need two minutes or five minutes. But if you don't do the two minutes or five minutes, especially during an event, slowly you're going to just bleed off energy until you're done. One of the reasons that the SEALs say is like if you, when you think you're done, you're only 40% done, is because they've learned how to really make their physical output kind of in a rhythmic pattern where it's like push, push, push, then surrender to a moment of just pure awareness, pure recovery, and then push, push, push, and then breathe, breathe, breathe. Right. And so you end up just tapping into more and more energy as you perform whatever event it is. You experience that during kokoro camp. Yeah. As a real ebb and flow to it, you know.

Yeah. And I'd like to ask you just a couple, couple more questions about phrases with which I was unfamiliar that I came across in your daily briefs. One is, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right, shugyo. And the other is pratyahara. And I'm curious if you could just define what those are for people because those really stood out to me as pretty helpful practices to engage in. But you can tackle whichever one that you want first. But just kind of briefly explain those to folks and how they would implement shugyo and pratyahara and go ahead and slap me on the wrist. If I'm totally butchering the pronunciation.

You nail them. Shugiyo is a Japanese word that means practice, but not like, oh, I'm going to go practice my skill. It means to have a life practice. So in the context of my training, my shugiyo is my morning ritual, which is deeply Rewarding, you know, to do all the work that we've talked about. Meditation, visualization, breath work, some somatic movement, and checking in with my why and then making sure I'm clear about what I'm going to do with that today. So that's part of my shoe Giyo. Then seal fit operator workouts. Second part, there's, you know, the only reason to miss them is if I'm on vacation, and then I replace it with something else. And then another session of box breathing and meditation during the day, and then the work I do with my martial arts training. So I'm currently studying aikido and I continue to do San Tzu kung fu. There's a thoughtful training plan, just like you would program someone's training. My training and the way we teach is to be five mountain training. So I make sure that I'm training physically, mentally, emotionally, intuitionally and spiritually every day in a thoughtful training plan. That is Shugiyo, having a life practice that's going to help you evolve to tap and become your most complete version of yourself so that you can fulfill your mission or service in life or on the planet. Pratyahara is a profound, profound concept of developing greater sensory awareness of your surroundings, both external and internal. And the way we do this, through external awareness in the field, we call it situational awareness, is like training the pattern recognition aspects or capacity of the right hemisphere of your brain. And so we would have. We would do things like you did in Kokoro camp, like the Kim game, you know, which is. Most people approach the Kim game from the left hemisphere and try to memorize everything, you know, that's underneath all the items that they're supposed to keep in memory that are underneath the mat or the blanket. And then when they get into it or they get the tips from the coach, they're like, you know what? You've got to actually expand out. You definitely want to use lefty brain, left hemisphere to try actually remember. But then you want to scan out and use right hemisphere to look for patterns and to, like, take us like Grokki, take a mental snapshot of all the patterns. And then, you know, that has this really powerful effect to expand your awareness and to be able to recall more. And so we would practice that and all these other things. Like when you're, you know, when you're on a patrol, right? You know, you're not sitting there chatting or thinking about dinner or anything like that. You're actually just breathing deeply and you soften your gaze using peripheral vision. So you can take in the context of what's happening around you as opposed to any specific content in your mind or any particular thing. And that's what allows us to tap into our intuition to be able to, you know, for like the, the point man, to be able to get the spidey signals to go up to say, oh, there's, you know, I think there's a roadside bomb ahead. And it's because are practicing that Pratyahara, that sensory awareness. There's also an internal sensory awareness. So you know, something like your sensory deprivation tank, which I know you're familiar with, and even swimming or anytime where you close off some senses and you begin to operate with a limited sensory range, begins to turn your attention inward. And this is one of the valuable aspects of meditation, is like closed eye meditation. You begin to turn your awareness inside and that's when you begin to recognize the way your mind is working and the different ways that it works and different aspects of the mind, like the heart, mind, the belly mind, the body as a mind. And then you become much more situationally aware of how to orient your body, mind system to the environment or around it. Right, so that's Pratyahara.

Got it. So Pratyahara would be essentially, in a nutshell, turning in and decluttering from external distraction. You could do it with box breathing, walking in nature, you know, some, some kind of a brief pause of silence. And then Shugo would be working towards daily mastery with, with essentially engagement in tiny bits of personal practice every single day.

Absolutely.

Okay, got it. I'm gonna add those to my vernacular. Those are wonderful. Yeah. Huya has been in my vernacular for quite a while, Mark, since, since I did kokoro some. Sometimes I wonder if I'm, if I'm, you know, offending a seal when, when I use that word. You know, when I'll put. Do an Instagram post of me doing a cowboy workout and finish with. With who? Yeah, I, I always wonder if, if Navy SEALs see that and snicker and think, what's this, what's this cat, this civilian doing saying hoo yah?

But that's acceptable, that the seals have gifted that to the world. So.

All right, got it.

It's great because it just means what you need it to mean, which is, yeah, we got this.

Yeah, yeah, I like it. It's. It's an energizing phrase. Well, the, the, the book is fantastic. And, and by the way, what is it with you and wolves like you. You. You seem, seem to be. Is that just like your power animal, I guess.

So it all started with this idea of staring down the. Or, you know, feeding the courage wolf. And, you know, the story about this title was originally, you know, I was more formulaic about this book. I was going to call it the subtitle, the Seven Leadership Commitments that Forge Elite Teams. And the stories of the military special operators were going to be the main thing. But then I was, you know, like most authors, I was working with an editor who's, you know, helping me out. And he suggested this title, Staring down the Wolf, because he had, you know, I had sent him my other books and my book, Unbeatable Mind, has a picture of me actually staring at a wolf, like, staring him down. And again, that was a metaphor for me staring down fear and building feeding courage. And so I was like, wow, I really like that. And then when I sat with it, I'm like, okay, so that's going to really change the. The nature of this book. So it goes from kind of a formulaic book on Navy SHIELD leadership and teaming principles to like, what is actually the most important aspect for me of that is how do you get out of your own way as a leader to unlock the emotional power of your team? And so I basically added a whole section to each chapter where I talk about how I had to stare down my own wolf to be able to. To tap into these seven commitments. Right. How I failed in courage right when I launched the Coronado Brewing Company, and how I failed it with trust when I really screwed up with another startup venture where there was kind of a coup against the actual founder and I was the CEO and I didn't handle it very well and trust just broke down and how I grew from that and it was mostly emotional and on and on and on. So I tell that story about my own failures of how I did not uphold these commitments until like maybe, maybe two or three, two thirds of the way through the book, where it's all starting to come together. And it has come together in the past 10 years in my business and it's now thriving and flourishing. And I'm flourishing as a result of a deep commitment to staring down my own wolf, which I basically relate to all the biases and shadow emotional elements that tend to trip people up and yet they don't really know how to deal with them or they deny them or ignore them or suppress them. And yet when you work with a team, the team feels it mostly right off the bat.

Yeah.

And so the team gets stuck because they don't trust fully the leader because the leader has these issues that they haven't addressed. And so that's when communication kind of gets stuck and you have people dancing around issues and, and not being transparent and not being courageous to take risks and everything starts to get stuck. And then you have kind of like okay, but not elite level performance.

Yeah, well, staring down the Butterfly also just doesn't quite sound as good.

You can't get the butterfly to stand still fast.

Well, folks, the book again is called Staring down the Wolf. I'm going to put a link to everything that Mark and I Talked about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Wolff I'll link to some articles I wrote after doing that Kokoro experience, some lessons that I learned from it because I wrote three different articles afterwards. And I'll also link to Mark's other books and also everything else that we discussed in today's show. Then if you have your own thoughts to add on anything that we talked about or your own feedback, you want to ask Mark Rye a question, just go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Wolff and that's where you can jump in. In the meantime, Mark, as usual, I love talking to you, man. You're, you're so inspirational. And you, you really have made a significant impact in my own life, my own personal growth and, and my own habits that I use for managing things like stress and my nervous system and operating under stressful conditions. So thanks for doing what you do, man.

Thanks, Ben. You too, man. I really appreciate you and you're doing great work out there.

So awesome. All right, folks, well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with retired Navy Seal commander Mark Devine signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also note that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.