SSP 106: Willow Francis: A New Perspective On Meditation

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Shifters Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you discover your true potential through connecting the mind, body, and soul. Mr. Willow, welcome to the State Shifters Podcast, my friend. It's great to have you here.

It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

It's been long overdue. I mean, we've had some really epic conversations, and whenever we catch up and every time I'm like, man, we need to record one of these conversations, the time has finally arrived. Sitting here in your beautiful house, such beautiful energy. And, yeah, I feel like it's divine timing for us to capture this. So. Yeah. How are you feeling about this conversation, Jay?

I'm good. I'm excited. I've had a few days off, which means I've been out bushwalking. I've been sitting a little longer. I've been unplugging from some of the routine so that I'm feeling quite fresh and excited.

Yeah, always so important, the unplug, the reset, the recharge something. That mind sometimes will downplay the importance of it. So, yeah, I really admire that in you, the ability to honor that. Tell me a little bit about what's got you to this place right now where you have that level of awareness to know how to unplug and recharge and. Yeah, give us a bit of background on what's got you to this present moment right now. Whoa.

That's a long story. I'll try for the abbreviated version or.

Perhaps explain to people what it is that you do. Yeah.

What do I do? Well, my main. What seems to have come about is that I really enjoy helping people see a slightly different perspective. And that slight shift in perspective can really catalyze where they're going in their life. It was just something I noticed in my life as I traveled the world. I kept sort of being in these strange jobs or situations, but there'd be one person there that I'd have these cool conversations with, and there'd be these ahas. I could see them light up, and the spirit moved through me, if you like to use that term. You know, the energy was there, and I couldn't help but share my thoughts. Deep philosophical take on life or my personal journey where I've jumped off the cliff and sure enough, these people have written to me over the years or I've heard from them years later, and they're like, oh, my goodness, I did this, and nothing's been the same, or that sort of thing. So over time, I realized that seems to be something that a. I really enjoy doing. I Love supporting people, to be honest, to break out of this paradigm that we're in, because I don't think that living on planet Earth on this beautiful ball spinning around this burning gaseous ball in the middle of space, just having a job and a house and a dog and a wife and then dying, I just tend to feel there's a bit more to it than that. And my experience would say for me, yes, that's true. I'm much more than my physical body. And so that's sort of been a driving part of my whole life. From the very beginning, I had some very particular moments that were plot points. If you're looking at this as in a book. Willows going along and then bang. This very normally quite dramatic, quite painful. My inner self tends to give me very loud pushes when I'm not listening. I'll take it on. But then I find myself on my path, so to speak. I'm on a different path to where I was. And all of those little nudges or knocks or kicks or screams really started to. I could see the alignment. I could see what was going on. It was this splinter I'd had since I was probably eight years old, getting pulled out and then the revelation of life. Life showing me life picking me up, especially when I got out of my own way. So what I do at the moment is I work one on one and also with groups and I work with the methodology from the Heartmath Institute, which is an organization in America, been running for 40 years studying the field of neurocardiology. Get nice and scientific, but what that's talking about is we've got a whole new understanding of the physical heart. So I was an emergency room nurse for years. My partner was a physiotherapist. So we both got big backgrounds in anatomy, physiology, health and wellbeing. But none of us had been taught what has now been revealed about the physical heart and its effect on the whole body. And this learning, this study and practice and training just was so life changing for me. So that's something I love to teach with people. But also I take it a step further that it's. Once you've got emotional regulation, then hopefully you start to really continue your journey. So you start to wake up a bit more because now you actually are moving ahead instead of coming back down to ground because you're not regulated. And so then I've got my spiritual now. Spirituality is everything to me. I had to hide behind that for years. And then now Kathryn and I have just decided, no, this is what we do, it's obvious. So I like to help people learn to meditate in a bit of a radical way to probably what people traditionally think about meditation. And I love that. So we also run meditation evenings to help people be consistent with their practice. And we run ceremonies. So we've been all this sort of ties into ceremony because ceremony is at the heart of being human. And we left that behind a long time ago. And yet when humans sit in a circle together, equal, often on the ground, in a sacred environment, and sacred being a designated place, that's a little different to the day to day. And we come together with a shared intention to that space, meaning we're all on the same page to some degree or other. Obviously we're all self invested individuals, but we turn up with a shared intention, then something quite profound can take place. And we've been using the medicine of cacao, interestingly enough, where all chocolate comes from and a particular way of sitting to facilitate a space where people can just literally unplug from this mainstream paradigm for a few hours. So you're not called to your Facebook, you're not called to your phone or to eat something, or take something, or exercise, or be a father, a mother, a doctor, a lawyer, a spiritual guru. You just come and, and sit as the person who's born and the person who's gonna die. Cause when you were born, you weren't who you are now. You weren't Jordan. You had to learn to be Jordan, you know, and so it's such a gift for us after we've been doing this for at least 10 years now, pretty well every month. So there's. With that, like anything you do for a long time, that comes a learning, understanding and a practice that we just love holding this space and watching individuals arrive, travel through and pop out the other side. So that's probably a brief summary of what I do.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on here to this podcast, was because I sensed your level of deep understanding for how to facilitate ceremonies, the impact they can have on someone's life, but then also the ability to be able to facilitate a ceremony here, locally, at home. And the setup that you guys have in your space is so beautiful that it allows someone to go deep without having to travel to another country. You know, can you tell me a little bit more about the requirements? Because more and more people are now looking to participate in ceremonies, whether that be with plant medicines, whether that be with medicine like cacao or other ceremonies. Right. Without having to use any plant medicines. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you've Learned through those 10 years of facilitating ceremonies? And the requirements are to get that experience, I guess, at home or locally without someone having to travel to, say, Peru or Mexico or Costa Rica.

That's great because it's, you know, it's the foundation that ceremony grows and thrives and survives on. And if the foundation is unstable, then like a house, it tends to fall down or doesn't do what it's made to do. So if you've got a house that's unstable and you're in there, you're not going to feel very safe. And that's probably. Safety is the first and foremost metric for a ceremony. And there was a saying in the 60s that came out of working with psychedelics and it's all about set and setting. So that sets the mindset that you've got and the settings where you're taking the medicine or having the ceremony. And what I've learned through the opposite as well, of being in places where I didn't feel safe and doing ceremonies myself on journeys around the world doing different medicines and different ceremonies is it's just walk out, just stop. And I have, I've walked out of space that just was not going to be a safe journey. And the reason this is so important is that fundamentally we're neurologically hardwired for two things and it's safe or unsafe. That's. We're binary creatures. People have to remember that the brain hasn't actually changed much in the last 10,000 years. But we in our modern world is. We're overwhelmed with change and we're barely able to integrate the smallest parts of it. You know, I still get excited going to sliding doors that open up that I walk up to and they open up and close and we just don't even think about the magic of that. So I'm still integrating that one. But the safe, unsafe mechanism in the body. When we're unsafe, we go into fight, flight, freeze. It's limbic, it's reptilian, it's primal. It's the thing that, you know, as I say to people, there's no point being philosophical if you're dead. So this mechanism is designed to keep us alive. You know, the challenge in the modern world is that it's. We're pretty safe in our suburban western environment, but that switch is still on exactly the same as if we're being chased by saber tooth tigers. The challenge today is that unsafe comes from Facebook and relationships and cultural challenges rather than physical challenges. But when you go into a ceremony, if you walk in, if you don't feel safe, then that little mechanism, A, it's creating cortisol in your system, which is a hormone that is a stress hormone. So that mobilizes energy in your body to get you running, increases the heart rate, the breath, all these other. There's something like 1400 biological changes take place when you're in fight flight, freeze. So you're not there to sit down and chill and go into the inner realms. You're like, got one foot out the door before you've even started the ceremony. Whereas when you feel safe, you think about it. If you had a bunch of friends that you really care about and you wanted to wish them just one thing and that the prayer, the intention, may you feel safe. What wouldn't you do if you felt safe? You know, I felt safe enough to jump off a cliff and paraglide. And I'm scared of heights, I get vertigo. But my teacher got me to the point to feel safe enough with my training and my skills to actually leap off a cliff and fly. And so that's a great metaphor or analogy for the ceremony. If you feel safe enough, then you can fly, you can go into the inner realms and let go. But if you've got one eye half open, then it's going to be tricky. So primarily safety. So what we like is that over the time, we've really learned a way to welcome people. I've been to events where you hardly feel like you're even noticed there. And that doesn't make me feel safe because I'm not sure am I welcome. Whereas to greet someone by name, maybe offer them a warm cup of tea, because a warm cuppa can really help you feel settled and safe. Have everything set up ready to go so you're not running around the place and thinking, oh, God, what's does this guy know what he's doing? But everything's set. There's a nice Zen feeling, if you like the concept of Zen. You walk in and everything's in its place and everything's quite clean, but not in an egotistical, spiritual way, but in a grounded, oh, this feels nice, this space. I want to be here. There's safety. So that's probably primary.

The primary pillar. Yeah. Creating that environment that makes someone feel comfortable, relaxed and safe. And same goes for anyone at home who's trying to go on their own individual journey. It's like, have that in your awareness, like create an environment, even if it's a room, you know, doesn't matter. Some candles, burn some sage.

Yeah.

Put on some nice music.

Yeah.

Talk to me a little bit more about the process that then unravels for you around how you guys incorporate some of the heart math stuff into your ceremonies and the soundscape that you guys create because it's. It's quite unique what you do and it's structured in a very intentional way to get the outcome or the intention that someone has set for that journey. How does then the heart math stuff play into? Once you say you've got the safety and someone's about to then go into the journey, what do you take them through then?

Well, this has all evolved, which has been a gorgeous thing to watch. The organic nature of our ceremonies from when we first, you know, we were involved with other plant medicine ceremonies for a long time and for a few years. And then we started our cacao ceremonies after going to Guatemala and touching base at the home of the holy bean, where cacao comes from. And we came back and all just sort of emerged. I've been interested in sound technology for many years. Binaural beats, hemi sync, and a whole range of the sort of leading edge stuff that actually changes the brainwaves to change the perception of reality. So people might not know or they might know that as the brainwaves slow down or different parts of the brain brainwaves, then we go from an outward focus to an inward focus. So people might have heard of beta more fast outward alpha. That's sort of daydreamy. Then we get into the theta realm, which is sort of the shamanic realm, the altered states realm, the mystical realm if you like, where you're right on the threshold of sleep and it's a skill to stay there. Normally you fall asleep if you're not skilled and if you're very tired. But if you got everything right, you can be in this state where suddenly the body sort of drops away and then there's Delta, where if you can hold Delta and be awake, that sort of deep sleep state. But when you're there, then all sorts of.

So theta is that lucid state where sort of the body's asleep but the mind's still conscious in a way.

That's a good description. It's a lucid state. So you really lose overriding dominance of the body perception. So the tech goes into the soundscape, which has always been a passion. And then eclectic sounds, sounds that we're not used to hearing. So there's some novelty, so that also helps the ceremony, the state, but the Hamath work, it's just inseparable now because of the physiological effect. The essence of the work with Heartmath is that what we learned is that the changes in the heart rhythm change the way the brain is working. So for example, if I'm feeling a bit anxious, come to the ceremony, haven't done one before, not sure who's these strange people here, you know, then the rhythms of my heart are going to be quite different to if I turn up and hey guys, how you doing? Looking forward to this. And I'm all chilled and relaxed and maybe I've been here before and I already know you guys. And that change in heart rhythm literally travels up the vagus nerve to the brain. And in the brain there's an area called the thalamus. It's like a switchboard operator. So she's up there. And depending on which signal comes up the thalamus, it could be an erratic, what we call an incoherent signal. We call it anxiety, anger, all the stress signals, or a coherent signal, a smooth sort of sine wave type, depending which signal comes up to the thalamus depends on where she plugs in the areas of the brain. So if she gets this erratic incoherent signal coming from stress, anxiety, irritability, anger, and all those sort of so called negative, so called negative emotions.

So the thalamus is connected to the vagus nerve, is that right?

Yes, yes.

Gotcha.

Yeah. So the vagus nerve is the main nerve running up from the heart. And more information travels from the heart to the brain than the brain to the heart, more than 85%, which is.

Such a big thing to land once that lands. Right. A lot of us are trying to fix our anxiety from the head, trying to think positively when we drop into the heart.

Great point, Jordan. That's it. And the cognitive approach, as I learned over the years for dealing with anxiety and stress, is not the solution because I can be relaxed on the couch, but I'll be ruminating and worrying and thinking about what these people are thinking and saying. So my heart rhythms are incoherent and I'm in the stress response. I've got caught. Or I'm getting depressed, I'm getting worried because I'm doing this over and over and over. Whereas when we can actually change the heart rhythms and what that means physiologically, and this is where not having infotainment but actually having education that you act on, really, this is where the rubber Meets the road with this sort of practice that we do. So we back to the vagus nerve that the heart's singing out this incoherent, jaggedy signal. So the thalamus goes, oh, danger, Fight, Flight, Freeze. That's what we need. And the body responds. That's the normal response. So it's very hard to. You won't get into theta, you won't get into Alpha, you're hyper alert, you're on the danger zone. Watch out for this, watch out for that. But if we've got a different signal coming up, we've got a nice smooth, what we call a coherent signal. Then the thumbs are like, ah, safety. And then she plugs in the neocortex. So this is the executive center of the brain. This is where you, you know, in Fight Flight Freeze, you're only thinking about yourself. You think about it when you're really stressed and anxious. You're not thinking about the neighbors or doing good in the world. It's just you get me out of here. On this narrow, everything narrows to a very. I'll be kind after I do all this, once this settles down, then I'll be generous. You know, it's all very self driven and that's the nature of the mechanism. It's not that you're a dick, it's literally just the mechanism.

Survival. Yeah.

And it's evolutionary, it's what works. That's why you get up the tree really quick when the snake's there. Or that's why when you're really rude and push your way through, when you're feeling really freaked out and you're not kind or patient and you lose all those core values that we know are the heart of the spiritual journey. But on the other side, when we have those lovely smooth rhythms, when we feel safe and the neocortex comes on board, we think of the other. We can think of how our actions are going to affect the future, which we don't think about. In Fight Flight Freeze we get a broader sense. The brain literally opens and we see a different perspective, like, oh, maybe there's something I don't know. And just that one thought opens up the space to a whole lot of potential about how you're going to respond to the situation. So that's the mechanics that sort of. And I can go into this for hours. But back to the ceremony. The idea is that we get everyone sitting there, we make sure everyone's welcome, they're feeling as good as we can for an arrival. And using the heartmath Methodology, it's called the heart lock in. So basically we're going to lock in this signal into the physiology to change the brain, to change the perception of what's going on. And when I say change, it's a natural state. So we'll talk about gratitude because when we feel the feeling of gratitude, it creates our natural resonance state. We're actually meant to feel that way. We've odonically adapted to life as being mundane and normal. But if you think about getting up here, getting up in the morning, you get your car keys off, you go to work. What's spiritual about that? Well, you're taking a lot for granted. The fact you're here, consciousness sitting in a meat sack. You know, what it took for that car to be thought about and come together, the trillions of people involved and the mechanics of welding and metal and earth and mining and don't get me started, we'll be here for days just talking about walking to the car. So we're in this state of awe. Now we can have gratitude because you're like, oh my goodness. Now when we feel this feeling, as simple as that, as simple as what we've just done, the signals of the heart are very clear, smooth the biological change in the body. 1400 biochemical changes take place. We start creating something called DHEA, dehydroepiandrosterone, vitality hormone, hormone, longevity hormone. We create oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, all these lovelies that we know about, we've researched, but the part of the brain that's on is the neocortex. We're feeling safe, we're in a, in a really good state. And the parasympathetic nervous system comes on board. That's the break. So we've got sympathetic active charge, run, let's get out of here, or let's get on with the day, or parasympathetic. Brakes settled, relaxed, coming down. So you walk in, you've come to the ceremony, you're not sure what's going on, who the estranged people are, what I'm going to do, what's going to happen, you know, all those natural anxieties you call them. So we sit, we do this breathing technique where you're focusing on the heart and by shifting to the heart to focus, then you're moving away from the cognition. So again, we're not talking about an intellectual or cognitive approach, we're talking about a feeling approach. Because this was the big breakthrough with HeartMath. We found that our feelings drive our physiology. Now in medicine, if you go to hospitals, the feeling things all for the psychs, and it's over there. Little did we understand this is fundamental to our health, understanding that the heart rate variability or the changes in the heart are the best predictor of mortality and mental health conditions. You can look at someone's heart rhythm and you can tell if they're having trouble, if they're going to have trouble, or if they've had trouble. And with simple practice, we can change those heart rhythms. And this is what we're doing in the ceremony. We're doing it in a small context. We sit together, we're breathing, imagining we're breathing through the heart. That's the first step. Starts to modulate the heart and the breath brings on the parasympathetic. But then the real breakthrough, the big secret. And check this out, this is the big secret. We then feel a feeling like gratitude, appreciation, love, kindness, compassion, hope, dignity. There's a theme to all of those feelings, and they're renewing feelings. When you authentically feel those feelings, everything in your system changes. You feel safe. The brake comes on. DHEA is created. Your perception of your challenges, of yourself, of reality opens. So what better platform to launch into a ceremony than that platform?

Man, I feel, I hope the people listening received how important what you just shared was with. Because ceremony could be everything that we're about to do before we eat food, before we have sex, before we have people over for dinner.

Yeah.

And if we were to apply that to process, breathe into the heart, go from narrow focus to open focus, switch on those feel good chemicals, and we apply that to every little ceremony that we have in our lives, all of a sudden we are bringing in different energy and a different intention and different behavior into everything that we do. And I just wanted to wrap that all together because it's so powerful, the heart, intelligence. And for a lot of us, sometimes we get pulled into unconscious living or where the mind is.

Yeah.

The mind will play into emotions. And then we get stuck in certain emotions and it becomes this like, feedback loop of emotions feeding negative thoughts. And to start your day with a conscious practice of breathing into the heart, cultivating those elevated motions, such as gratitude and empathy and compassion can then shift the thoughts. That resonant frequency starts to shift, like you said, the brain into thinking thoughts that allow for positive actions.

Yeah. And what's beautiful about that, Jordan, and you've nailed it there is if people choose to do this, practice at the start of their day. And you only need to do 5, 10 minutes a few times a week, the research shows. There's some great research on this. And what's really exciting for myself and other people in this field is that this is a cumulative and it changes the baseline. So what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that we all have an emotional baseline that's set normally in childhood. I'll give you an example. You imagine a young chap, a young boy, and he's in an environment that's very violent, domestic violence and maybe alcoholism and not very safe, a lot of drama going on. So the baseline for that chap is going to be anxiety and fast and get me out of here type thing. And that will go into life with that person. So the amygdala, the pattern recognition machine, interestingly, is connected to the pacemaker cells in the heart. So when there's a change in the heart rhythm, there's a change in the amygdala and vice versa. So the problem with a cognitive approach to emotional challenges is it doesn't have the impact, it doesn't have the power to change. That's why positive thinking is a good thing. You know, relatively. Relatively it's a good thing, but it's not the be all. And it won't be the solution to your anxiety, your depression, your emotional challenges. We need to be at a level higher than the level of the problem, as we know, just to solve things. We need to get to a different state. So what's been found with the practice of HeartMath, which is what we're talking about here, is that with practice over only six weeks, six to nine weeks, depending consistency, quality, those sorts of things, we get a baseline shift. So if you're generally quite reactive, maybe you're one of those road rage people, maybe every time someone criticizes you or offers an opinion, you take his criticism, maybe that's your jam. What you'll find over time is that you're less reactive. So the amygdala resets the baseline. And as I've noticed in my life, you can have massive baseline shifts with continual practice. So suddenly the new normal is everything you aspire to, everything you hoped would happen when you got on your spiritual journey or your personal growth journey, which we can talk about the two differences with those. But by practicing the heart lock in the heart practice in the morning that you described, we know that over a short period of time we get a baseline shift. And that's because the power of gratitude, it's a bit of a throwaway at the moment because we hear lots of Stuff about it, but you can't talk about it enough, and it can't be a lightweight. Oh, I'm so grateful for everything. Yeah, yeah, I see that with people. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What about the water coming out your tap? What about that? You're not in Syria. What about, you've got two legs that work? If you have or if you haven't. What about your vision? Or there's always a way you can tunnel into your reality and say, my God, this is amazing. I'm so grateful. And that authenticity, then you just stay with that. You deepen that. You breathe that through your heart, you rest in it, and your mind will come in and tell you all these, oh, I'm not doing it well, I got distracted. It mustn't be working. But I've got technology that shows us when I hook you up to my little heart rate variability monitor, that those thoughts have very little effect on your heart rhythm and the change that we're building over time. And that's what I love about the work I do with people. I can show them objectively that their mind actually isn't as powerful as they think it is. The feelings of the vast are here.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And there's a couple of books that I'll reference here that landed the Importance of Gratitude and Heart Coherence. And for me was Joe Dispenser's books and Bruce Lipton's books around the biology of belief and how when you access these states, you're switching on different genes is actually you become your own storehouse of medicine for the body, for healing.

That's right.

Turning on those gene pathways and the practice of gratitude. What I found was I initially was measuring, using the tech to see, okay, the heart rate variability. But soon, when you do it long enough, you know, when your heart's incoherence, you know, you can feel it. There's that. Like you can actually feel. Feel your heart beating in its chest in this. And that beating is creating a frequency. It's creating an electromagnetic field around your body that can be felt by other people.

Exactly. And that's called social coherence.

Yes.

And there's a lot of new research, thanks to Joe. Joe Dispenza's working with HeartMath and has been for decades now. So he hooks a lot of people up at his seminars and then feeds the research back to the guys at the HeartMath lab who bust that data down. And he's got a great relationship with HeartMath because that talks to his side of science and spirituality. And what's really interesting with that is that that change becomes permanent, as you're alluding to with the genes, the power of the heart, and the ability for one person's coherence to affect a group socially is huge. It really is a big thing. And we forget that. We get caught up in gossip. You know, we get caught up in a negative pitch dip. Someone starts talking about COVID and then someone comes in with their polarized view on Covid, and suddenly the whole room sort of drops down and you can feel it. Whereas if you get people to stop and say, wow, aren't we lucky being here? What a beautiful day. Would you like some chocolate? We can lift the frequency and then change the brain as well. You know, that's what's enjoyable about this. It really changes perception.

Yeah. I'll never forget the experience that I had when I was in Toronto and I got to go to one of Joe's seminars in person. And I remember reading all three of his books in the space of a couple of months leading up to this seminar, because I wanted to be fully ready to receive all of what he had for me. And I was in the front row, and he did the group meditation. You know, probably there would have been a few hundred people in the room. And he guided us through one of his, you know, typical Joe dispenser meditations. And I got to experience first hand the power of that group coherence, that group syncing up, the amplification of that energy was something that, like, I'll never forget. It was just as powerful as any plant medicine ceremony I've been on. Yeah, it just like swept me up. And I remember just being above the room, looking down and feeling.

Yeah.

That elevation, you know, And I changed my life. To have an experience like that is what I really hope that people listening, choose to take from hearing this information is like, apply it.

Yeah.

Experience it. Yeah.

Don't let it be infotainment. Really. There's too much of that. We're just bombarded. And I hear people say, oh, if you listen to this podcast, if you listen to this, I'm like, no, I don't have time because I'm practicing. And I mean, it's a tricky edge because obviously you want to be open to listening to great stuff like this where you. There is stuff offered up that has been life changing. But if you don't practice it, then nothing changes. That's the one guarantee you can have. That I say to people that I work with is like, I guarantee. I can give you one guarantee. Working with Willow. If you don't do the practice, nothing will change.

Yeah, Willow, perhaps because we're going good on time, perhaps would you be able to give us a little practice right now? Say a five minute gratitude heart coherent style meditation that you would guide someone through if they were about to start a ceremony or just to give someone a taste of. If you're driving, obviously don't close your eyes and do this. Do it when you get home. But if you're at home and you can have the space, maybe we can drop into a little heart coherence right now, just so someone. We can experience that.

Yeah, yeah. And the benefit, if you are driving or you are somewhere where you need to keep your eyes open, this still works. This is the joy. A lot of the tools that I teach people are eyes open on the go. Whereas with relaxation practice, we retreat from the world. There's that sense that I need to retreat from the world. It's too much. But with this practice, I'm engaged with the world. And this is the difference between coherence and relaxation. Generally, when you're coherent, you're quite relaxed, but you might be an emergency room doctor. And you've got to go from one client to the next. You've got ambulances banked up out there, you got to prescribe these drugs. You've got to access all this implicit knowledge in you, so you can't be like lying on the couch. But also running around in circles does not help. As I learned working in emergency, you don't get. Nothing comes out, you're just stressed. Whereas a coherent state is like a calm poise and you're moving at the state of ease. So internally you're calm, but you might be quite busy externally. And this is a really good differentiation and a good understanding of this practice. It's not about us all getting on the couch. It's actually about we need to engage with our world. This world needs us. And yeah, I've got a big belief in sitting and being yourself as one of the greatest services to the world, doing nothing at all. But that's we can talk about in a minute. I'd love to. Whereas this is about becoming emotionally regulated, coming to the foundation of your spiritual practice. Because as I've seen over and over and over and over, a lot of people have heard the call, they're listening to this podcast, they're doing lots of different spiritual things. You know, they're doing all the yoga and the vegan and all the practices but when it comes to emotional stuff, they're still being assholes to themselves. Other people, righteous, judgmental. They'd rather be right than happy. They're irritated, frustrated, angry. They're angry at the world, they're angry at this, they're angry at that. They're not able to be with what is authentically. And so you fall back down. You fall back down to that lower. Low is not the right word. But you're not growing, that's for sure. You're not changing. You're still where you were 10 years ago. No matter what practices you do, no matter how much plant medicine you drink, no matter how many yoga classes you go to, or wear Lululemon clothes from head to toe, you won't change unless you emotionally grow. Change that set point. And this is the well researched, over 200, 300 journal articles on this practice with 2,000 ancillary articles. So it's as deep and rich and solid as you want that this works. And that's why I just say to people, look, you just got to practice it. And when you're first doing it, you might not feel the changes so much. You just do it. When you go to the gym and pick up that first barbell, do you walk out like Arnold Schwarzenegger? No. You feel like, oh, I'm a bit tired, actually. But if you go there every day for six months, guess what, you're looking buffed. And that's what you wanted. It's a bit like that. But we're working the heart and we're working the emotions and we're changing the set point. And this is a beautiful way to do it with a meditation like this, because you do get to close your eyes. You do get to just have a break from your engagement with the world.

Yes.

So for those listening and you as well, me here, Jordan, we'll just take a moment to really stop and arrive here and really give this some value. That's always important. You know, I always talk about making something sacred. I've made people make their cars a sacred place so they don't go into their road rage. It's their temple now. They're not allowed to swear in the temple or give someone the bird because you wouldn't walk into a Buddhist temple and start swearing and giving people the bird. So it's a lovely parallel. If they can get that there's something.

I love that kinescetic.

That they can take their practice and instead of giving the bird, they do the heart. Breathing.

Yeah. It becomes like an anchor. Exactly. Yeah.

And it is, it's a beautiful anchor in this world of ours that's so pressing on us all the time and our own psychology. You know, I still be a dick, but I've got the tools to quickly shift out of that. And that's what this is all about really. So we arrive, we set, off we go. So really just if you like to close your eyes, you can do that. If not, you can do this open. But if you shift your attention down to the center of your chest, they call it the heart center, but just the whole chest area just really dropping out of your head. And this sort of helps disengage from thinking. And as you anchor yourself in your heart, we're going to start some slow, gentle heart focus breathing. So all you need to do on the next in breath, just imagine your breath is coming in through the heart on the in breath and out through the heart on the out breath. And all you need to do is continue that heart focused breathing and just breathing a little slower and deeper than usual. Don't strain or try too hard. You know, if you can breathe in for the count of five and out for the count of five, that's great. But don't get caught up with counting deep, slow, gentle heart focused breathing. And you'll notice that your mind will get involved, it'll wander off here and there. That's what the mind does. It's no problem, it doesn't affect anything. You notice you've drifted off. Oh great, back to the heart. There's your anchor. You just keep coming back to the heart, the heart focus breathing. And as you continue the heart focus breathing, just now consider someone or something that you really feel appreciation for or gratitude for. You know, it can be a loved one in your life, it could be a pet, it could even be a place in nature or an event. Maybe you stood on the beach and saw a sunrise on a pristine, clear morning. Or maybe it's a friend who's always there for you and you think, wow, so grateful for that fellow in my life that's just so important to me. Or maybe you have trouble with that level of gratitude and you can just think, wow, I can go to the tap and have fresh water to drink. Wow. So there's lots of ways to find this gratitude. It doesn't have to be existential, it doesn't have to be so massive, you're lying on the floor crying with gratitude. It can just be that sense of gratitude, that feeling of appreciation for something in your life. So as you're continuing the Heart focus, breathing. You can even imagine breathing this feeling of gratitude in through your heart and bathing all the cells in your body in gratitude and then breathing out through the heart. I could imagine you're resting in a pool of gratitude, just resting in that feeling, that renewing feeling of appreciation or gratitude. And then you can take it to the next step, if you like, where you can just imagine maybe someone in need, a friend, a group of friends, a place, a situation where you can radiate that care, that gratitude out to that place, that person. And just effortlessly, the same way light leaves a candle, it just effortlessly emanates from your heart into the field, sending that gratitude out, that care. As you continue with your heart focused breathing connected to that feeling of gratitude and radiating out into the world, any particular place, person or group of people. If you get distracted or your mind wanders off, it's just like training a little puppy. You just very kindly bring your attention back to the heart, re center there with a few slow, gentle, heart focused breaths. Reconnect with that beautiful feeling of gratitude and just continue back to where you are radiating that, emanating that through your body, out into the world. It. And just as we're bringing the meditation to a close, I always like to just check in with my heart. Just come back into your body, see how you're feeling now, see if there's anything your heart wants to offer up to you. Heart intelligence is an amazing understanding that a quiet voice, a feeling, there might be a little message that the heart's got, something to point you towards for your day. And when you're ready, just coming back into the room, opening your eyes.

Thank you, my friend.

Wow.

You can feel a shift when your heart syncs up into that coherence. You can feel the energetic shift. Right? And man, thank you for guiding us through that. I really appreciate and I hope people at home listening got to experience that shift. And if there's people listening to this at the same time, there is that collective harmony that is created. Right. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Because distance is no barrier here when it comes to heart coherence.

Yeah, it's the classic challenge we have. The ego that we have makes us feel separate. That's the only problem we've got. We're not separate. We never were. We're part of one being. So when we do switch off the mind, which is the ego based area, the most dominant, I would say, and we get down to the heart, which most of us would probably agree, this is where I rest this is where I come from. This is me. Especially when we think of those core values, kindness and generosity and love and even pride and dignity in a good way, then what happens is the signals from the heart that literally emanate a few meters out from the body. That's only what we can measure at the moment, but we know they go further. We've studied the power of Prayer, Intention, and HeartMath has set up something called the Global Coherence Initiative that has set technology around the world that measures global coherence. When big groups of people come together and practice this. So when there's a challenge on, as we know there are challenges, big groups of people come together, they practice this, and they send that energy to that place or they send it to each other. Because we're suffering by worrying about situations that we can't do anything about, and we need as much care as the people who are in the situations. And we've got to remember that it's not selfish. It's the most powerful. You know, what we do to the one we do to the whole. That's like when you wake up, when you have awakening experiences. Most everyone I ever meet, they say you sort of just feel like you want to drop on your knees in awe. And then you realize all you want to do is help others wake up because they're all suffering. And until everyone stops, then you're still suffering in some degree. And it's sort of part of this whole conversation is that the more coherence we can share, the more you can help others, the more you can be in that state. You're literally physiologically helping them, because it's been shown in great research. Again, we could have six of us in this table or four of us all hooked up to a heart rate variability monitor. Four of us, say, are really good at practicing this, or not averagely good, know how to do it. How's that? Even just what we did, the other person knows nothing. Okay, we measure all the heart rhythms on separate devices. And what we know, which has been run through the mill a lot, is when we all get coherent, their heart rhythm becomes coherent without them doing anything at all. And so this social coherence is the capacity that when you're in a group, if you notice that the pitch is dropped, the conversation's getting a little clunky for your enlightened view. I say that tongue in cheek. You can literally practice this yourself to bring some coherence. And what I find happens is you might be able to throw in a little curveball about, hey, did anyone read that article about plants talking to plants? And my God, isn't that amazing? And we shift the pitch or you might find, I've got to go, guys, this isn't serving me. Or can we change the conversation? But it's set in a heart vulnerable space. And heart vulnerability is a powerful state. You're not manipulating anyone. You're not doing a poor me and you're not dominating along with spiritual superiority. Oh, this is beneath us to have this conversation. You're saying, guys, I can feel the pitch in the room. This isn't helping anyone. Let's get somewhere else. Because that's where I want to spend my time and my time's valuable. I've only got so many seconds on the planet and we just lost 20 talking about this shit, you know, that's not helping anyone. So, yeah, it's a fascinating field. There's a lot of new research coming out this year from Joe Dispenza's work, HeartMath, putting all the data and crunching it and specifically focusing on compassion. Because compassion is a super high coherence, building emotion. We've got gratitude, we've got all these other ones, but compassion is something else. Compassion is a bit harder to work with because we don't know it so well. You know, we think of sympathy, pity. We don't realize that compassion is like, I'm not responsible for your pain. I feel it and I'll do anything I can do to help. But, you know, we're all on our journey and I love you and I really don't want you to feel this. It's more like that, which is a bit awkward because we've got to deal with people's pain, that they're experiencing it and I can't take it away. I can give you the tools to help you, but you've got to use them. That's at the end of the day and that's where the true love is. It's not pity, it's true care coming from the heart, you know?

Yeah. Just reinforces the fact the most important work that we can do right now is to raise our own vibration, keep our energy high, you know?

Oh, yeah.

In a time when there are lots of things trying to bring our energy down, it takes a kind of like a tight bubble of protection or boundaries in terms of what you allow into your mind so that the energetic standard is kept for the work that we're all doing here. Right.

Yeah.

And that then plays into, you know, the way we start our day. The practices that we commit to is the foundation for keeping that bubble, that energetic bubble protected. And I know for you, you're a deep diver in the meditation. And same as me, meditation has just had such a profound impact on my life. And it wasn't until I really started to dive into the depths of sitting for long periods of time when I noticed my energy field shifting in a big way and the impact that that was having on the people I was spending time with. And you've been meditating for a long time now, and you have a daily practice that involves sitting in stillness for sometimes up to an hour, sometimes longer. Why has that been such a critical component of how you live your life?

Yeah, well, I was first drawn to meditation decades ago because it was the spiritual thing. It's what you did. There was that splinter again. What's this meditation thing? What's that all about? And fundamentally, it's turning inwards, isn't it? It's the first step of realizing that it's not all happening out there, it's actually all happening in here.

Yeah.

And that opens a whole can of worms. You know, I know people that can't sit still for a second, let alone sit on their own for a second, let alone close their eyes and look at all that garbage that's being vomited up inside. So there's some cleaning up to be done. So meditation's a great way to. To realize the path of self realization. That's essentially, you know, that's the path, is the awakening path. But over many years of meditating and doing all sorts of meditation, you know, trying to search for the ultimate type of meditation using, you know, trying every sort. It's only in the last three or four years that the real awakenings have been happening in such an organic way. And it came to the point where I stopped meditating as a practice. So the problem with meditating or it's like relaxing, it's not something you do, but it's a verb, isn't it? It's a doing word, like running, cooking, going, meditating, relaxing. But it's actually not doing that. If you think of a leaf falling out a tree, it just let's go. It drifts down. It comes to rest on the ground and comes still. It didn't do anything. It just let go. Yeah, it fell down, gravity took over, landed. There we are, we're meditating. You can feel it.

Yeah.

For me to define what meditation is, it's being with what's going on right now. That's it. It's Not a practice of breathing or mantras or. And all these things are good. But we're talking about two different sorts of meditation. So you got stage one getting a bit more peaceful, a bit more relaxed. So that's a good thing. We'd all agree. We all want that. And that's often where we go into meditation, you know, and this is where we start to look at the difference between personal growth and spiritual growth. Because I used to think they were the same thing. Personal growth. I'm big on personal growth. I've been interpersonal growth my whole life. I had to grow because I was so damaged and wounded, and that was my path. It was obvious. I had to sort this mess out so I could have good relationships and good finances and a good job and serve and find my purpose. You can't do that if you just stay fucked up all the time. You've got to clean up and grow up, and then you've got to turn up, you know, and then you got to wake up as this is sort of Ken Wilbur sort of style of talking about things. So sitting down and trying to meditate all the time. Yeah, I had amazing epiphanies and experiences and all sorts of things. But was I waking up? Was I growing? Was my character really finding its spot? No. Then I changed my style of meditation and the basic. It goes back to Ramana Maharshi style, Vedanta meditation and where basically you sit and you don't do anything because you don't need to do anything because everything's fine. What do you mean, everything's fine? Existentially, everything's fine. So you don't need to look for anything. So if you're not looking for anything, you don't need to do anything. So you sit, you relax, and the way you relax is just let relaxation happen. The same way you let sleep happen at night. It just turns up. There you are lying down.

Just let go. Yeah.

Let go off to sleep now, and you become still. And stillness is, I'd say, essential, because if you're moving your body, you're moving your mind, you're moving your feelings, you're moving, moving, moving. And reality is happening right here. It's not somewhere you need to get to. And that's the other part of this meditation style is there's no outcome. And this is hard. We've got a whole paradox here. This is where the mind gets fucked up really well. Okay? The ego can't handle this concept at all. So, you know, it's a good concept. The idea is that you sit, the meditation's already occurring. You don't want anything from it. You don't want anything to change because nothing needs to change. You just be content with whatever's going on. Oh, I've got a busy mind. Great. Busy mind's happening. Oh, I got a bit of a pain in my shot. Oh, I'm a bit worried about John. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's just all happening. CAR GOES BY WIND BLOWS in the tree BIRD CHIRPS Reality's happening and I'm just happy to be here. I'm alive. The miracle of being alive is more than enough. And we want to come back to that spot where we're connected to that understanding, like, deeply, existentially. So look at what's happening. 13.8 billion years and all this shit's happening around us. Do we really need to interfere and do anything to get anywhere? Probably not. Well, we don't believe that, so we've got to practice it. So I started practicing. I was very lucky that my partner took some work elsewhere so I could relax around my work, because the moment I relaxed, I got a lot more clients. I had a lot more work coming in once I got out my way. But also I got to sit for hours every day, literally three, four, five hours a day for two years, you know, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. And she would join in and I'd double down on her practice when she got home, so she didn't do much when she got home. And weekends, whole day retreats and long sessions of practice of not doing anything. How do you not do anything? Oh, so I'll sit, I won't do anything. Ah, well, now you're doing something, not doing anything. So it's not about not doing anything. And again, the paradox is tricky. The semantics, you can come back at me a hundred angles, but all I say is you sit, be still, be relaxed, and let everything be exactly as it is. Don't want to change, don't look for anything. And you're not doing this so that you will become enlightened. It's already happened. There's nothing needs to change. This is it. And the reason we do this practice like this is because we're so hardwired, individually and culturally, to fix problems existentially, we believe there's something wrong that we've got to fix. You think about it, you go home, you walk around, oh, I've got to sort this out. Oh, I got to get the whole life. It's based on the belief and the deep belief that there's something wrong that needs to be fixed, and that's the fuck up there. This is the paradigm shift. We need to shift paradigms, to trust. And this is very difficult. I'll speak for myself, and I think for thousands of other people to surrender, to really surrender, it's taken. You know, I'm still not there, not by a long shot. And trust as well. I'm there, but I'm not there. I remind myself constantly, life did all this. I'm sure it doesn't need me to interfere, to make things happen. So I'm sitting, I'm practicing doing nothing because I'm so used to always doing, doing, doing, fix, change, improve. And that just creates anxiety. It creates spiritual materialism, which is a big problem. Look at me. I've done the yoga course. I'm a vegan. I'm this, I'm that. But are you kind of. Are you grateful? Simplicity of these core values. There's your spirituality. All the other stuff's just dross dressing. And actually, you can start being an asshole. As I experience with myself and other people is I've been through this. I've done. I was on a journey. I couldn't help but take on a thousand teachings and go through a thousand processes and then carry them, like my gold medals, you know? But they were gold chains, and they're gold, so you want to keep them, but they're still fucking chains. So the chains dropped off when I realized there's nothing to do. There really isn't. And I know you hear this a lot, and it's very hard to get. But you'll get it when you sit and don't do anything. Because what happened? Over the last three or four years, my life has become fuller, richer. More service, more everything I ever dreamed of and more. The more I didn't do anything. I didn't have to use algorithms on the Internet to get new customers. I didn't have to do a thousand things on. On Facebook or fucking whatever to make things happen. I stopped, actually. I just sat. I never was on Facebook anyway, but I just sat. And things happened. It's very hard to get because innately there's this. No, I can't trust this. I can't trust it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, consider for a little while, but then I'll double down in the evening and do three times as much work. Because I spent all that time meditating. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a practice of being present. Like, we can do it in a second. Like, I have A lot of people come to this table that we're sitting at and I've got all these problems. They're very stressed. That's why they come to work with me. We have a cup of tea, we've got some chocolate. We're sitting here. Okay. Are there any problems? Oh, yeah, no, no, no. Right this second. So. Well, over in uk, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Right here. No. How nice is that? Oh, that's pretty nice. Yeah. Well, why don't we stay here? Let me say. Yeah, this is nice. Anyway, next one. Oh, this is nice too. And you realize, my God, I'm never in the present moment. And we hear about the power of now, we hear about living in the present, but we just hear about it and we don't practice it because it's hard. Because if we're still living in an egoic existence, if we still believe the mind, the paradigm of the mind, then you'll never get the peace, the joy, the freedom, the liberation, the ease that comes with just being okay with everything as it is. And that's not to say we don't have things to fix, change and improve, but we're coming to them from a place of okayness rather than a place of fucked upness. Two very different paradigms. If everything's okay, existentially, life's good, it's amazing, then I'll go and I'm called. I feel this strong urge to go and help those people there or do this work there. Well, that's different too. Everything's fucked and I've got to fix it all and life will never be good. You know, they're just different worlds. So the joy of this work is I get to sit, I get to amazing experiences that I don't make happen. They come along as my karma. You could use. I don't know the words. There's lots of words we could use, but they might shake the wrong story. As my spirit moves through me and taps me on the shoulder and says, make that phone call. Do that thing. So, oh yeah, it feels coherent, that feels in line. So I'll follow that. And suddenly I'm doing a workshop down here with these people and I meet this lady who really needs some help here, and then she helps her family. And one drop in the pond and the ripple spreads. Instead of this bombastic nature of saving the planet and saving everyone and doing all this shit, and it's like, man, that's exhausting. And I work with lots of people, yoga instructors and, you know, good people. Like yourself, who are very driven to care and change and help. But they also have the challenges because historically, they've got them. And it doesn't make you less than that. I might still have some anxiety. Oh, but you do your heartmath stuff you've been doing all these years. It's like, yeah, but I'm also a vulnerable, fallible, beautiful human being. So I hope I stay that way. I don't want to become a pristine white guru that doesn't feel and doesn't suffer. My suffering's been my greatest teacher, without a doubt. That's how my spirit talks to me. I get deep suffering and then I grow and move. So this meditation style allows me to be okay with what's going on, even if I don't like it. And as you practice not doing anything, everything keeps happening. You realize I'm not doing anything, but life's going on. How's that work? Oh, so I was never doing anything in the first place. I just thought I was. I'm manifesting my reality. I'm manifesting. I'm doing this. Like, really check out, set up a plan, say, I'm going to manifest this, and then just watch life step in and change the direction. Oh, but life got in the way. Well, isn't life always in the way? Isn't life living life through you rather than you living a life?

Yeah, I resonate with that so, so heavily, because a couple of things on that. It's the realization that the mind will always want more and more. The true success, in my opinion, is the depth to which you can feel the moment. And I know, you know, I know I'm not succeeding when I get to the end of my day and I'm like, man, did I. How much of today did I feel? How much love and peace and joy and fulfillment and freedom did I feel today? And if I was too busy in my mind trying to get shit done, the mind's too active to really drop into any depth of the mind moment. So I've really recently gone back into what you just shared, which is number one priority is like, find that stillness. Create time in the day to really feel it, feel it, you know, because then I know when I go about my actions, it's coming from a different energy and from my mind. For the masculine mind, sometimes it's nice to understand what's happening on that level, as to why we start manifesting things quicker from that place. Because it's like we're reclaiming energy that's wasted in thought. We reclaim it and raise the frequency of vibration of the body because we're not wasting energy thinking. And the more time you spend accumulating life force or energy in the body, you then become more potent in how you speak, how you act, your interactions. But then on the level that you can't see, you become more open and receptive to receiving something because now you're at a energetic match to it. I've noticed that in my own life, man, like you shared, which is like I did way less today, but achieved way more. Or that conversation or that phone call happened or that client signed up and all I did was meditate for a couple hours and something shifted and opened.

Yeah, yeah. And I've got a deep belief or idea or feeling that when we sit and don't do anything because we're not overlaying our personal self's agenda on reality, which is all we're doing all day long. And we're interpreting things and putting an opinion on them that always have an emotion attached. And that's why we're tumbling and tripping and screaming our way through the day. When we sit and don't do anything, it gives our real self chance to move the boxes around inside, open some up and pack some away and wave a little rattle at you from the inside here or there, but then gives you that capacity to engage in a very different way. But we're just so addicted to the personal self. For people that don't know that term, personal self is the egoic self. It's the self that says, I want everything to be a certain way and it's not, so it's wrong. Instead of like, hey, this is how things are. Oh, okay. Pragmatic, you know, this isn't woo woo. This is as less woo as you can be to be super woo woo. If we want to talk about woo woo because it's pragmatic, it's grounded in reality. Is what's happening in front of me my opinion, my preference? That's the woo woo. Because that's coming from a construct, an opinion based on historical processes in my brain and my amygdala that says, oh, I don't like this. You could just as easily like it. Yeah, right.

It reminds me of the book Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer where he surrendered his preferences to life and went with whatever showed up. Which is such a mind blowing thought to think that you can live like that.

Well, you can. And he's just about to release a new book, so I'm glad you mentioned it. Cool. It's coming out In May. I highly recommend it if you read the first two. And this path talks to you. This awakening understanding of who we really are and the capacity to liberate yourself from the personal self. That's what it's about. How can I untether myself? To use his vernacular.

Yeah.

How can I untether myself from this personal preference all the time? You know, he uses a great example of driving along and there's a lady in front of you going 40Ks an hour in a 60 zone. And there you go, you start getting the anxiety. It's like, God, I'm running late. Oh, it's just like, well, what's really happening? There's a lady driving along at 40Ks an hour. It's irrelevant. Why isn't it? There she is. Oh, she should be. Why not just enjoy your car, put on some good music, look out the window, breathe, Do a heart coherence exercise. You probably get to where you're going at exactly the same time. At least if you get there a bit late, you'll be composed. You won't be looking like a dick, rushing in the door, tripping over your feet. Oh, I'm so sorry. There was this old lady. Old ladies shouldn't drive. And you know you've lost it. Instead of like, wow, I got some time to drive a bit slower today.

That's the real practice where you can do the meditation, but then where does.

The rubber meet the road, bro.

The. And I'm mindful of time here because we could talk for hours on this, but do you feel that practice? Because I've noticed that sometimes in myself, I have the meditation. It's deep, it's blissful, it's peaceful. I'll come out, I'll pull up Instagram or TikTok or a social media app. And then bombarded with all this stuff, and there I am, back in my mind again. Lost that. That depth. Or like you said, on the road and I'm running late.

Yeah.

Does that then come down to. Obviously, meditation is like the training ground, right? Like, you're in the sparring match, you're in the. You're in the practice ground, and then life is the arena. To maintain it in the arena, would you say it's a level of discipline that you're bringing into maintaining attention on what's going on inside the body instead.

Of getting pulled in the mind. The golden question, Jordan, this is the golden question. I 100% see that the sitting can be taken off the mat. You know, the practice definitely translates to day to day. So the practice is being content no matter what. And contentment means satisfaction and that means you're full, you don't need anything more. So if you can take that posture into your day to day, you'll find immediately half of your stress is gone. Because most of your stress is about getting more, being more, having more. This constant psychosis, this culture has indoctrinated us all into achieving, getting somewhere instead of looking at what we really are, which is totally content, full, free, liberated right now, no matter how fucked up you think you are. Yes, a part of you, your personal self is very fucked up, no doubt because it lives here. But there's a core that's always available and that's what the sitting's about. And I've sort of tried to remove the idea of the training ground on there, on the mat, as the meditation. You sort of want to sit just because you love, you can sit here for hours. I often say to people, when you start your meditation, whether it's five minutes, 20 or an hour, just pretend you're going to sit for four months. How would you sit on that? Because then you take out that time, think, oh, I've 20 minute meditation already. You're bringing something in that says, what about now? What about standing in the queue at the bank? Gorgeous, Amazing. What about here? Here the paradigm shift needs to be quite complete, which is challenging. But what I would point to is that the affect of off the mat, you're all good, you've got that night, you've had a so called good meditation. But see, with this meditation, every meditation is good. Yeah, you might not be as comfortable, you might have sat there with your mind driving you psycho for half an hour. Guess what? That's what was happening. No problem. Totally content with that. That's what's happening. What a miracle that the brain works and all these things happen. Where did all that come from? And were you doing it or was the mind doing it? Are they your thoughts? Here's a good conversation to have for half an hour. So something was happening, you interpreted it as something you didn't like and then that ruined your meditation. That's generally what happens. So we say, no, everything's good, it's all good. And then when you go into the day to day with all the tiktoky stuff and carry on, that's all good too. You're interpreting it as overwhelmed, this, that and the other. And that's where the heartmath comes in. Because when you're coherent, that helps you manage that internal response to the Outward input. So between the input and the reaction there's always a gap. But often we don't feel like there's a gap. This is Viktor Frankl man's search for meaning. Amazing book to read. Between input and reaction there's always a gap. But with us it's like the gap between nanoparticles on a piece of paper. Whereas the heart math work helps you open up the gap. So then the response is more considered, it's more intelligent. As in true intelligence. As. Is this helping me? Or maybe I'll wait till Monday to respond. Or gee, I really got to get off these social pages because I'm just feeling shit every time I go on them. Maybe I'll just check for five minutes once a day or twice a day. The rest I'll get back to nature. I need some time with real people in person, having a cup of tea. Oh, that's better. You know, this is the way the heart intelligence works. It helps you address those challenges that keep tripping you up after your lovely meditation. Damn, I just spent two hours. Now I'm a wreck. I've got to like, back to the cushion. But instead it's like, wow, look how reactive I am to all this stuff. What am I going to do about that? I'll just keep on doing it. Oh, that's not. I'll go back to make more meditation. It's like, no, more meditation is not going to help.

That's when you just spiritually stay stuck.

That's right. This is the mid, what we call mid fourth arrester. It's a great heartmath term where, you know, I've worked with someone and it's like, it's all back to his birth trauma. He's 65 years old and it's all back. It's like, dude, this is not your birth trauma. You're sitting having a cup of tea with me. You're not doing the practice, because you're not. You've got a payoff through not doing the practice and not growing. There's something that's. You're feeling safer to stay in the cocoon than to grow. It's not the birth trauma. Yeah, that's long done. 65 fucking years ago that happened. And yes, I've gone through my stuff. I've gone back and done a lot of self healing and inner child child stuff and all that stuff. But when you get stuck in that, you're always looking for healing. It's just another spiritual materialism. The next healing, the next process. That's what Spiritual materialism is this idea that there's something out there that's going to make me better, more, more enlightened. Quicker, faster. Where's the goal? Give me some ayahuasca. Give me plant medicine. That'll fix me up. Well, I can agree that I've worked with those medicines and they were incredibly transformative. And I've watched people. But I've also watched a lot of people get stuck drinking that cup because they don't change. They still be assholes to their neighbors. I'm like, dude, what's the point of being enlightened if you're still being an asshole to your neighbor or you're still reacting to the sound that that guy makes in the room all the time that keeps getting your backup. What's wrong with him? Why didn't he change? You know, there's these things that we see like, oh, my God, let it go, Louis. Kindness, gratitude, compassion. There's the answer. It's simple, it's soft, it's tangible, and it's very available because that's our nature. It's in us.

Yes. Yes. Oh, man, you've dropped some real nuggets of gold and wisdom in here, man. And I knew this was going to be a life changing conversation for those listening. Yeah, you can really feel your wisdom in this work, bro. And I'm really glad that we got to capture the first of many conversations that we get to put out into the world. And I really want to invite people to connect with you. Where can people get in touch with you?

Yeah. On the insta face, it's Reverence events. Catherine, my partner, looks after that side because I'm a Luddite. On the social sides, it doesn't suit my character. ReverenceEvents.com We've got a page with all a calendar of events that are coming up. Working with me one on one, we're just about. When I say just about. In the next few months, we're launching some online training. I've resisted this for years because I'm a kinesthetic fellow. My world is one of feeling engaged in the environment. I have done a lot of trainings one on one with people on the line, but I now see that there's a lot of people that would love to do this work. They can't get to me or they don't like being that close or they don't like groups. So having a group training on the line where I can work with the people individually in the back end, but we can come together as a group. And do group coherence work. We can learn the tools together. We can hear from each other the problems they're having and hear the solutions that might be. You know, you don't need to say anything, but you hear, oh, that's the problem I was having. It's actually my spirit has pushed me off the cushion. This is what I'm talking about. We've sat and sat and then the push was so clear that we're actually being mentored by people that help people like us get on the line with authentic integral trainings. So it's offered in a way that's very palatable and if this is for you, great. If not, go somewhere else. That's how we are. Keep your eyes peeled for that. That'll be in the next couple of months. And we're going to do sort of one focus for men especially, because a lot of men I work with are really good men. They've got big hearts, they want to be good role models, but they keep being dickheads and they don't know why this emotional stuff keeps tripping them up. And I've had amazing stories to share about some of these beautiful men I've worked with. They're just so transformative and these guys just want to keep coming back and learning to meditate with me now. And we're talking about bricklayers and, you know, tradies who you'd never imagine in the standard view of a spiritual person. And then women as well. Amazing mums and different women with all sorts of challenges. So we're sort of going to run two trainings and they're not separate. Not men's group, women's group. I do people groups, but some will be more attractive in the marketing or the talking to men and some more to women. But we want one heart at a time, you know, so that's reverenceevents.com that's where we are. We've got ceremonies we run regularly. They're small, so you've got to get in. We only do them sort of once a month there, but then I do other events that I'm always open to, having people to come and have a chat. And maybe this is something that I can help you with, or if not, I might be able to point you in the direction where someone else can.

Yes, phenomenal. And, yeah, you're based here in Perth, so anyone listening from Perth, be sure to hit willow up and connect, man. Thank you for coming on here, having this conversation, sharing just the beautiful information that and the practice that we got to we got to sit in together. So for those listening, you've received a lot of information that you can now take and apply in your own life. And if you do apply it, expect to see a massive shift in your reality. Yeah, yeah.

And even simply just practicing that heart lock in we did, learning, remembering that it's new. So it's not just going to be straightforward. For some people it is. It's immediate and they're like, oh, my God. And others, oh, I don't really feeling anything. That's fine. Intention's really clear. We've measured people on the heart rate variability monitors who couldn't really feel anything. But their intention to feel the gratitude was enough. And then they had the gratitude that that was working and then off we went down the journey. So remember, it's always small steps, but it's consistency. If anything I could leave people with is, you know, I used to be a victim to this as doing so many different things for a short period of time. And what I've learned is a little done consistently with Quality is the life changer. I teach a 30 second exercise in my training that's done throughout the day with real quality. It's like the Zen master training of this 30 second quality, consistency. And it's one of the most powerful tools that I teach. And the feedback from people, I see it when they walk in the door. Have you been practiced? Yeah, I can see it. Or they come back after the second. You haven't been doing that, have you? It's like, oh, no. Okay, let's get down. Let's get it locked in. And then they come back and they're like, oh, my goodness, I got more time. You know, I've got this. I'm all settled. People said you're looking a lot healthier. All these different things, objective and subjective feedback, you know, we get both in.

So it's all the consistency.

It is consistency.

Thank you, my friend. This won't be the last. And yeah, we'll do another one soon.

Thanks for having me on so I could get this message out because I really believe in it. Katherine and I are my partner. This is what we do. And we love helping those hearts wake up to the power that they've got, basically.

Yeah. Beautiful. Pleasure is all mine. Okay, thanks, Willow.

Ciao.