Jeff Patterson - Creative on Purpose Live

All right, looks like we successfully landed everywhere we're supposed to be. Welcome to Creative on Purpose, conversations with insightful difference makers to inspire a life of greater intention and impact. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to get clearer about and closer to what you really want in life and business, please visit creativeonpurpose.com today. Let's meet today's guest, Jeff Welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Hello. Yes, uh, my name's Jeff Patterson. I've been running a martial arts and meditation center here in Portland, Oregon for the last 30 years. Uh, the last few years I've really been focusing on my online program. I've written a couple books on the topic. Uh, you can check that out at theyieldingwarrior.com. If you're interested in getting a free copy of my latest book, you could go to theyieldingwarrior.com/book and check us out there as well.

Fantastic. Well, I'm always really curious, Jeff, first to learn how did, you know, how did guests get to be doing what they're doing? So how is it that you came to be doing what you're doing and the difference that you're making at The Yielding Warrior?

So I got turned on to the meditative arts in a bit of a roundabout way. I, as a young guy, I was very much into Western boxing, and I used to go to this, uh, boxing gym that was just a few blocks down the street here from my academy in Portland. And at the time, in the late '80s and early '90s, it was really the only boxing gym in town in Portland. And at a boxing gym, if you're not familiar with how they're run, it's a little different than the traditional fitness style class, and that it's not one teacher in front of a group of people. It's usually 4 or 5, 6 different coaches in the gym, and each one of those coaches has, you know, 3, 4, or 5 fighters that they're working with. Well, there was one coach there who was an amazing coach. He had created national and world champion level fighters, and I really wanted to get to spend some time with him in hopes to train with him. So I would always show up at the gym when I knew he was going to be there and work hard, let him know I was disciplined. And, you know, I was going to the gym 5, 6 days a week. Well, finally, after following him around for about 3 or 4 months, he started teaching me some stuff and giving me a few tips here and there. And, you know, everything, everything that he gave me, I treated it like it was gold, you know. I put my time in. I was there early. I was working on it. And then, he said something to me after about 2 or 3 weeks of training with him that changed my life forever in that he said, "If I wanted to be a good boxer, I should really start doing meditation and tai chi." And, at the time, I'm this young guy thinking, "Isn't that for old people in the park? How's that going to help me be a better fighter?" And it changed my life in so many ways. And through the years, you know, I've been running this academy for 30 years here. I've had thousands of students come through the academy and I've literally heard hundreds of stories of how the meditative arts has positively changed people's lives. And this is why I've been so passionate about putting together my last couple books and creating this online program is just to get that message out there more.

I love that. One of the things that I love about that reflection is how important it is to find mentors, and, you know, how fortunate that you met someone early on when you were still fairly young, and it sounds like it really changed the course of, you know, the arc of your journey. Uh, just curious about, were there other mentors along the way between that time when you were introduced to meditation through this coach and the time that you began to put together your own academy and become a mentor of your own?

Yes, you know, I've been very fortunate through the years since I started my academy. I've spent the majority of my time seeking out the best teachers in all of the areas that I train in, and I've traveled around the world many times and trained with some really amazing teachers. And so I've had some great guides along the way, and, and, you know, I owe everything I have to them.

Awesome. What's, uh, what do you find— what, what specifically was the benefit to you when you took your mentor's advice and, and started to practice some meditation? How did it impact, uh, your, your ability and your skill development as a, as a boxer?

So many ways. Uh, kind of some of the direct ways would be improved my awareness, my response time. It improved my foundation and my stability. Um, it, it just helped make me more in tune, you know. And at the time, I had a group of, of training partners that I was working with, and he told me— and I'll never forget this— he said, you just wait, 1, 2 years down the road, all these guys that you're working out with won't be able to hang with you in a year or two. And sure enough, because I was really disciplined with the practice, I was, you know, I was doing my meditation practice every day for at least an hour and a half a day. It changed my whole path and it wasn't very long and I was moving, moving ahead, you know. And so it's, it helped in many ways, but more than just the ways that it helped on the mat, It changed my life in my relationships, in my own personal relationship with myself and my awareness and my communication and how I treated other people and my respect for the world and everything. You know, it just made things a lot different in multiple different areas.

Yeah, really, really fascinating. I'm not— I have a couple of clients that are also tai chi and/or qigong. Teachers, and I actually studied— not studied, but was a client at a Chinese medicine clinic for a number of years where they also did tai chi and qigong. And despite all of that connection with the traditions, I don't know a ton about the specific practices that go into those disciplines. But what I'm hearing and what you're saying is that part of the meditation practice, and I'm guessing it bleeds into your, uh, into what you teach as a qigong and tai chi master, is, um, this idea of presence. Like, you— the, the current moment that you're in is the only time that you really have, or the only opportunity that you really have, to create meaningful change for the better, however that looks. And so, um, there's that element, but I've also been re-listening to a bunch of, uh, Alan Watts, who talks a lot about Eastern traditions. And there's a concept, um, that he discusses called Wu Wei. I don't know if you're familiar specifically with that term, but basically it's the idea of effortless action, of not overthinking or being hijacked by your thoughts in a moment, but being, relying more on your instincts and intuition to be responsive instead of reactive. And I don't know if any of that makes any sense, but It feels to me like what you're talking about with meditation allows you to be in that state of presence, acceptance, gratitude, humility that helps you become more responsive to situations on the mat and in your day-to-day life. Is that a fair reflection?

Yes. You know, so one of the most common things I hear people say that come to the practice if they have tried meditation before is that I'll hear people tell me that, you know, I tried meditation, but it just didn't work for me. I couldn't quiet my mind, and I was too distracted when I was, when I was trying to practice. And, you know, this— somewhere along the way, people got misguided in thinking that in order to do meditation, you have to reach this state of nirvana and this blissful state where, you know, nothing affects you. And that's so not the case. You know, the idea of meditation is you go through your practice, say maybe you sit for 20 minutes or you do a standing practice or even a movement practice. And during that 20-minute session, your mind gets distracted and goes down these tangents 50 or 100 times during that session. Well, every time that happens, you use your breath, you use the posture, you use the movement, whatever it is that you're doing. To bring yourself back to center and find that focus again. Now, two things are happening here. One is you're building the strength to learn how to have this distraction and come back to focus. But two, because of this expanded awareness that you're gaining, you recognize the imbalance before it gains too much negative momentum. Now, if you do this every day, you do this for a month, 5 months, a year, 5 years, Now you're getting so many repetitions of getting off balance and learning how to come back to center. Now, when you're walking down the street and somebody says something to throw you off your game, or you come up against a lot of stressful situations at work or whatever it is, you're so in tune to learn how to come back to center and approach things from a more balanced state of mind. It starts to become easy and bleed over into every area of your life.

Really, really fascinating. I am much more familiar with and have been practicing since I was a very young man principles and practices associated with Stoic philosophy, and I hear so many, so much overlap in a lot of what both traditions, you know, both the Western and ancient Western and ancient Eastern traditions teach. And that idea of developing a practice of meditation, of returning to center, of maintaining or re-achieving balance, really resonates with a lot of the practices in Stoicism that have to do with establishing a sense of equanimity, a sense of peace of mind, what I call sometimes stillness in the storm. Like, life is inevitably going to throw obstacles and curveballs, and there's going to be all sorts of situations and relationships that can really throw us off our path. But if we develop these practices that allow us to come back to our true selves, recenter ourselves on the path, maintain that sense of equanimity and peace of mind, then we're always able to make more reasoned choices about what we decide, uh, and do next. So I'm just curious, for those that are listening that are maybe intrigued by the traditions that you draw from and the things that, um, you know, that you practice, is there anything that you could share with listeners, um, that would help? You know, any meditative practice or any kind of movement practice or breath practice that you can think of that where someone could get a, a little taste of what it is like to achieve that level of equanimity and peace of mind?

Yes. So I, I think with somebody new coming to the practice, one of the things that is important to understand is just the overall mindset and the layout or the plan of the practice. And with The meditative arts, I break them down into ritual practices, active practices, and philosophical practices. Ritual practices are when you set that 20 minutes aside every day and you do a sitting meditation, a standing meditation, maybe a movement practice from Tai Chi or Qi Gong or whatever it is, and you have that so consistent that you do it every day like you're brushing your teeth. That's kind of like your foundation with the practice. Then there's active practices. Active practices are things that you can do when you're walking down the street or standing in line at the grocery store. And these could be as simple as coming back to your breath and counting out 10 cycles on the breath, or maybe doing a gentle movement exercise or some spinal rotations, something that helps bring our awareness back into the present moment. And then lastly, there's philosophical practices that can be used both in the active practices or the ritual practice. And as we incorporate these into our beginning regimen with our meditation practice, we'll start to develop these habits. But it's also important to note that not every meditation is the same, and we incorporate different meditative practices for different reasons. So in the meditative arts, I kind of break the different directions of practice down into 5 categories. So we have the athletic or the combative style of practices, the therapeutic side, the medical side, the philosophical side, and also the meditative or spiritual side. And people that are drawn to this practice are coming for different reasons. And, you know, one of the most important things I think for a new practitioner is that you really want to spend some time in the beginning evaluating why you're being drawn to the practice and why you want to do this. Because if you're somebody who is an athlete and you want to improve your performance and you think about all the reasons about how that's going to affect your life, or if you're somebody who's dealing with stress and you think about how that is affecting your life and you really put some time and effort into understanding why this is important to you, then tomorrow morning when that alarm goes off and it's time to go do your practice, you're not hitting the snooze button because you have a reason to get out of bed. And so, you know, as, as a teacher, that's the hardest thing that I have to do is teaching people the value of this consistency. You know, the Dalai Lama once said that everybody should meditate for 20 minutes a day unless you're too busy, then you should meditate for an hour. And I love that saying, but it's so true in that the world would be a much better place if everybody just took a little bit of time and looked inward, you know, and really listen to what's going on and use this meditation practice in their life. You know, everything in today's society is so busy. We're bombarded with advertisements. We've got this thing and that thing going on, and it's so easy to get caught up in these things. And when you're out there going through your day, you're at work or wherever you are, a lot of times we're kind of forced to wear a mask. You know, we're not wanting people to see how we truly feel about things, or maybe we don't want to hurt somebody's feelings or whatever it is. And we get so used to wearing this mask every day that eventually we start looking at ourselves in the mirror and we're still wearing that mask. The meditative arts help you let go of that mask and really stay connected with who you are at the core, which is something that we could all use more of.

I love that reflection because In our community, we talk quite a bit about the power of intention and the dangers of the identity trap. And what I'm hearing in what you just shared is that in a world that is so full of distractions and where there are so many places that we can invest our time and attention and so many places where we can seek to reaffirm or find identity and belonging, it can be very easy to continue to always look— be looking for that external source, that external validation. And what I'm hearing and what you're saying is having that intention of getting up and be— and having your meditative practice and having a moment of self-reflection And checking in internally with yourself is not just a great antidote to all the distractions and the bombardment of stimulus that you're going to get from the outside world, but it's a way of connecting with and maintaining a connection with who we really are. And, you know, what it is what our core beliefs and values are, what our guiding principles are, what maybe our beliefs and goals are, and have a more intentional approach to the things that we do throughout the day and the way that we engage with activities and other people and situations that occur throughout the day to maintain integrity within ourselves, to be that, that sense of being a unified whole integrated whole, maintain our, you know, that discipline to stay true to ourselves. Just a reflection, and correct me if I misheard any of that.

No, I like the idea of, you know, making sure that we are reflecting and being in tune with our true root of what's going on. You know, one of the things with developing a meditation practice is what I call the Five Regulations, and they really help you break down and listen to what's going on inside of ourselves. And so it— within the Five Regulations, we have regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. Regulating the body is the easiest one to accomplish, and An example of that would be, you know, you think about you're sitting down at your computer for 3 or 4 hours and your shoulders are rounded forward, you start feeling lethargic, your neck is getting sore, you know, your, your state is really being drained. Whereas the flip side of that, somebody walks in the room who's maybe the most important person in your world, they walk in and think about how your body perks up and your whole energetic state changes. This is something very simple that we can do all day, every day, just how we hold our posture throughout the day. And so the more that we can start living this way of moving and using our skeletal alignment can change our overall energetic state. Now, it might only take 2 or 3 months, and you start incorporating these things in everything you do when you're sitting down at your desk, when you're sitting on the couch, when you're walking around, and you start to hold yourself with a little bit more awareness, this can make a pretty drastic change in your overall energetic state. Then we have regulating the breath, and regulating the breath is a lifelong practice, you know, and oftentimes Qi Gong is referred to as the science of the breath, and there is literally hundreds of different breathing strategies and different reasons why we use the breath. An example of that would be, you know, we kind of break these down into yin practices and yang practices. Yin practices are often deeper, more holistic style meditations. For example, like if you ever listen to somebody sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer inhale and a shorter exhale. And that's the body's natural way of bringing our conscious mind into our subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming. And so if you wanna emulate this style of breath in some of your meditations, you can do longer inhales, shorter exhales. And this is a great way to bring your stress levels down, to work with anxiety, to get to deeper levels of focus. And so we start understanding how this breath can be used as a tool Then we have the other side of that, which is more of the yang side of the breath. And these are things like, you know, if you ever had to pick up something heavy or you push your car, your natural instinct is you use the exhale side of the breath, put tension in the breath, make the breath audible. And these are ways for generating power. And if you watch athletes or you watch warriors, a lot of times you'll see them use these chants or these, these kind of different styles of breathing to help build up that energy and that focus. And this is also something that can improve your creativity. So when you start seeing this breath as a tool, now, you know, everybody goes through the day with emotional ups and downs. Some people are like a roller coaster. Others of us may be a little more balanced. But when we start noticing these disturbances and maybe start feeling that level of excitement, we can use the breath to bring us back down. And we start feeling a little bit depleted, we can use the breath to bring us back up. Now we're finding a little bit more balance throughout the day, which is very good for conserving our energy and being able to have that focus and that kind of balanced state of mind throughout the day. Next, we have regulating the mind. And regulating the mind, again, just as the breath, is a lifelong practice. And this is something that we're always working on. And we already kind of touched on this a little bit about through when you're doing your practice, how you get distracted and you bring it back to center. You know, there's this story of these two monks who are walking down a dirt road after a rainstorm. And it's muddy everywhere. And they come up to this big mud puddle, and on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful lady standing there in a white dress, and she's crying. And the older monk says, "Is everything okay, ma'am? How can we help you?" And she says, "I need to be somewhere, but if I walk across this puddle, I'm going to get my dress all muddy." And so the older monk, he rolls up his pant legs, he walks across the puddle, picks her up, puts her on his back, carries her to the other side, and she's off on her way. Well, him and the younger monk are walking down the path for about 2 or 3 miles, and the younger monk is just furious. And finally he says, "You know we're not supposed to touch ladies, but you did back there at the puddle." And the older monk looks down at him and he says, "You're still thinking about that lady? I left her back there at the puddle." And You know, we do this all the time. How many times does something negative happen to us and we get 2, 3 miles down the path and it's still bothering us? We need to learn how to let these things go. And this is part of the idea of regulating the mind. Then the next regulation is regulating the energy. And regulating the energy is a deep subject and it's work used in different movement meditations and different energetic circulations in the body. And we could literally talk about this for a couple hours, but it's something that can help aid you with your practice. And then lastly, there is regulating the spirit. And regulating the spirit, you know, we see glimpses of that a lot. You'll have these aha moments or moments of enlightenment or that feeling, that flow state if you're in athletics. But, you know, the, the deeper level of regulating the spirit is working towards opening the third eye. Now, a lot of lifelong monks and meditation practitioners are working towards this goal. You know, I've been spending the last 36 years of my life studying with teachers around the world, and I've never personally met anybody who I would say has opened their third eye, so I don't know if that's even possible. But that's the idea of the regulating the spirit and the Five Regulations.

I love that. I love that story too. It's a story that I actually heard recently in the— my review of Alan Watts's, uh, lectures. It's, uh, a really— that idea that, um, you know, our desires, um, our desires, you know, when, when we hold them too tightly or cling to them, uh, at, you know, beyond their utility. So I love that. I love that share in particular. Well, we have come to the end of our time together, Jeff, but I would love if you would just close with, you know, you've shared so many nuggets of wisdom that I think will help people become a little bit more mindful and maybe think about or improve upon meditative or mindfulness practice. There's just one final piece of advice, tip, practice, even a quote that you would share with our viewers as, as we are wrapping up that would help them be a little bit more present and apply themselves with a little bit more mindfulness and intention to their day-to-day activities as Difference Makers. What would you share with them?

I think it's that it's so important to have a guide. When you're doing this practice, you know, I've been studying the meditative arts for over 30 years, and you could go on to YouTube and see a billion different videos on this practice and that practice. And I have literally had students come into the academy that say they've been practicing the meditative arts for 10+ years and they are learning through videos. And they'll come in here and they'll see students that have been following an approach and have a focused direction on how to take it, and they've only been training 6 to 12 months, and they're light years ahead of where these other people are, you know. And life is short. We don't have a lot of time here on this planet, and your time is extremely valuable. There's a lot of great teachers out there. Find yourself a good guide that resonates with you, and it's great to be in that community environment as well where there's other people around to help you And it'll save you a lot of time and you'll get a lot more benefits out of your practice, you know. And if this— if anything resonates with you with what I'm saying here, you can always check out, you know, at theyieldingwarrior.com. We have an online program that teaches you how to build an evolving meditation practice. You can check that out for a couple weeks and just see if that works for you. Other than that, you know, try to find somebody in your area.

That's really great, great advice. Well, we want to thank everyone for tuning in. Jeff and I really appreciate the gift of your time and attention. We hope that today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility for yourself and the difference that you make. To keep go-go going with defining, developing, and delivering that difference that only you can make, visit creativeonpurpose.com. If you're listening as a podcast, please give us a 5-star rating, leave a review. It really helps more of the right people connect with this content and learn from our fantastic guests. And then now just simply take the insight and inspiration from today's conversation and apply it to the work that you're doing and the difference that you're making. Play your game all in and full out. Jeff, thanks so much for the gift of your time and attention and for sharing all of your wisdom and experience with us.

Thank you. It's been an honor to be here.