Stop The Thinking Mind - L,L,&L W/ Glenn Ambrose

Have you ever wanted to stop your thinking mind from incessantly running? Where we put our attention determines where the energy flows. In this episode I break down how to walk through life without the constant stream of thoughts narrating your experiences.

Transcript

Welcome to Life, Lessons, And Laughter with your host, Glenn Ambrose. Hey everybody. Welcome to the show. Yo, Yo, Yo So, So today, Today we are talking about getting rid of that stress. Walking around in stress all the time. Stress, Anxiety, Fear, You know, Stress and anxiety are just versions of fear. So. You know, I don't know if you've noticed, But. As a general rule, We walk through our lives in a perpetual state of stress and anxiety. Most people do. And a lot of it is just it's kind of like the hum of the refrigerator, You know, It's it's it's always there, But you're only aware of it when you put your attention on it. Then it's like, Ooh, Yeah, Oh, That's not good. You know, The. Just trying to see which door I jump in on this. From. Well, I'm probably going to end up coming at it from a lot of different angles, But. The basic answer is inhabiting our body. Learning to walk through life. Functioning. With our attention on that hum of the refrigerator coming from our body instead of our mind. Our mind is where the fear lives. Our mind is where the random thoughts pop up from our past about our future. All that. Just pops up randomly. You know, For most of us where we are in life in a way that we're not in control of it. We're not like we don't sit down and go like, OK, I think I'm going to sit down and find something to worry about. You know, It's just, We're going about our business. The next thing, You know, We're worried about something that popped into our head. So we're not really in control of it. It's happening all on its own. And, You know, A lot of teachings are centered around trying to control the mind, Which control is kind of a tip off. Like you're, If you're trying to control something, It's usually not a good sign. I'm not saying that we can't get more in control of our mind. We can through meditation. We can train our brain to stop when we tell it to stop instead of it just incessantly running all the time and us going, Oh, I would, You know, Stop running mind. And it's like, Yeah, Right. I don't even know what you're talking about. And it keeps going like, Yeah, Through meditation and just stopping our stopping the momentum of that pole, That that brain activity, Like it puts us more in control of it. So when we say, Hey, Brain, Be quiet, It'll actually be quiet. So, You know, There's now how long it's quiet. You know, That's another thing, Right? It's just a lot of work that doesn't. Produce the results that we want by itself. It's not that we should stop meditating. Meditation is very important for many reasons. But most people. That have a regular meditation practice are still going through their lives with a fair amount of anxiety and stress. Not all, But many. What I'm talking about is a technique or a method or a way of being that I've found success in. And for me, I, I, I guess I'm not sure how I originally noticed this, Or came across it, But it's been becoming more and more prevalent lately. But like, You know, My ADHD brain doesn't like meditating. There goes my mind bell. Shut that off so we don't get interrupted by my phone. So. Yeah, My ADHD brain goes and it's, You know, It's very active and I don't have a ton of luck meditating in a way where I just stop my brain. I mean, Sometimes I can do it fairly well, Other times not very well. It's been getting increasingly better as of late, But What I found was that through meditation as well as other ways, Me being in my body. And putting my attention, This is what I mean by putting my attention on my body, Usually. My heart. And. . . Really, When I'm putting my attention on my heart, It's my heart area. It's not specifically my heart or specifically my heart chakra or anything like that. It's my heart area. And the reason I say that is because it's kind of the whole torso fills up with this pleasant sensation. When I put my attention there. Now, If I'm experiencing fear or anxiety or discomfort, Emotional discomfort in some way. If I put my attention on my body, Then I feel that. I feel the. . . Uncomfortability. In my torso. That this is kind of what we have to work through. It's it's the same thing like. When we have built up stored emotion in our body, And then we put our attention on our body. A lot of times that stuff starts bubbling up. And we don't particularly like the way it feels. So we go back to distracting ourselves in our head. We'll go back to distracting ourselves because we don't like how it feels in our body. Well, Our body is our home. We need to get comfortable with how it feels in there. And. . . As you spend more time in your body, What happens is your attention, There's a portion of your attention that's on your body. And that is Consciousness. That is the light of consciousness shining in on your body. And that's what dissipates the fear. That's what dissipates all the sadness, The anger, All the pain body emotions, The difficult emotions that we don't like feeling. Like we can't outrun them and we can't stuff them forever. So we need to feel them. So going in and feeling them, You know, You can, Do this practice that I'm talking about at home. Like don't, Maybe don't wait until you get to work to try it because then all of a sudden you put your attention on your body and you start feeling all this upset emotion that you had been stuffing. And next thing you know, You're crying in the bathroom. Well, If that's the case, Don't do that. Bye. But don't stop, Find a way that works. That's something that I've noticed. When I was learning how to do all this stuff and somebody told me something to try, Or I came up with something to try and I wasn't able to quite get it. I didn't try once and then have a bad experience or not be able to do it really well and go, Oh, Well, I guess I can't do it. It's like, No, Keep trying. Use your brain, That's what it's there for. It's not there to create all the fear and worry and we use it for that. Instead, It's there to actually problem solve and we don't use it for that. Use it what it's there for. You know, If you go to work and you put your attention on your body and then you end up crying in the bathroom, Don't go, Well, That didn't work. Go, OK, Well, Maybe I shouldn't do it at work. You know, Use your head. Maybe I shouldn't do it at work. Maybe I should do it at home first. Maybe if I do it at home and I start crying, Then no big deal. But then once I get the hang of it, Maybe I can do it at work. You know, Find what works for you. So when you put your attention on your body, You'll, Like I said, In that heart area, It's to me, It's it's this is basically how I've meditated for years, Because like I said, My mind's very active. And if I'm trying to control my mind or listen to my mind or trying not to latch on to thoughts, Try, You know, Trying not to do something. Can actually make us do it. Don't think of the color red. So I had more luck putting my attention on my body. I'm more of a feeling person. You don't necessarily have to be a feeling person for this to work, Just to be clear, But that's one of the ways I came across it. I noticed that when I came into the present moment, And my attention was on my heart area. I could feel a pleasurable sensation. And I noticed that I could keep a portion of my attention on that sensation, And it would continue emanating, It would stay there. I would just continue feeling it. If I move too quick, I would lose it. At first. And then, You know, So I would I would try to maintain that feeling, That feeling of connectedness, That feeling of love, Presence, Whatever you want to call it. And move, And look around the room. And stand up and sit down and move like all these things without losing that feeling. And that to me was much easier to cultivate than anything I could do with my mind. So. That in itself, If you just want to use it for meditation, Great. But like I was saying, The fear and the anxiety is all mentally created first, Right, As a thought. And a lot of times it's random thoughts that just pop up, Like that you didn't call in, You know, You were just sitting there watching a movie, Next thing you know, You're worried about what you got to do at work tomorrow, And you're not sure when your brain went in that direction, Right? So like all that type of stuff, I have much better luck instead of trying to stop my brain. I've taught this for a long time. Trying to get yourself to not do something generally doesn't work. So replacement, I call it the replacement technique. If you don't want to do this, Replace it with this. So if I don't want to be caught up in my mind, Then what I can do is learn to keep a portion of my attention on my body. All the time. All the time, Because if my attention is on my body, Then I'm not sending energy into my brain. It's circumventing that energy, That energy is my life force energy is going through my body, It's going through my chest, My heart, Instead of going up into my mind. So I'm feeling this peaceful sensation, Which is pleasurable, You know, Like I said, Unless I'm working through something and okay, I'll take it. I'll touch on that. If I'm working through something, Then, You know, I can always go, Oh, Like if, If, If a big batch of, Um, Pain, Some emotional pain comes up. Which doesn't. Normally happen. It's just it can. If that comes up, Then usually I can just kind of go, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. No, That's not what I'm doing. Like I'm not dealing. I'm not, I'm not feeling my pain right now. You know, And I'll only do this if I'm in public. If I'm alone in my car or in a Like, You know, At home or in the shower or somewhere where I can actually feel that and cry if I need to or just feel like crap for a little while. And I'm not interacting with other people or something like that. Well, Then fine. I let myself feel that because, I mean, That's an opportunity. Like when pain, When you put your attention there and emotional pain comes up, It's coming up to be felt so it can leave. That's the whole point that it comes up. It's not coming up to irritate you. It's coming up so it can be felt, So it can get the heck out of your body because that's what it wants to do. It wants to transmute into a different form of energy. It doesn't want to stay stuck. Energy doesn't like staying stuck. It's made to move. You know, It's like, You know, What happens if you trap energy, It starts to spin on itself and pushing outward on its container to get the heck out of it because it doesn't like being constrained. So when when you open up this little vessel, You know, And like I said, You can do this at home several times to get the initial burst of pain and sadness out of you. And then maybe you can start doing it in public. You know, And nobody will even know if you're doing it in public. But at first, If you have a bunch of stored pain, Then it can feel yucky at first. That's okay, Allow yourself to feel it. Be the witness, Just look at it. Don't try to get rid of it. Don't try to control it. Don't resist it. Don't push against it. Don't yell at it. Don't tell it to leave. Just look at it. Allow it to be felt. Allow it to be felt and it will go all on its own. It'll start to dissipate. You can remind yourself to breathe. If you need to give yourself, Uh, Your mind something to do, You can be like, Oh, Wow. What is this? What's the physical sensations I'm feeling? Oh, It feels like heaviness on my chest. It feels like. Four cinder blocks are on my chest. Oh, Now it moved up into my head and. . . And I feel a general tightness around my whole head, But now it's kind of pinpointing down into my temples and I'm feeling some pressure there, Like my head's in a vice. You can be the witness of it like that because you're not feeding it like that. You're not telling it what to do. You're not thinking that there's something wrong with it. You're not thinking about the story that it was attached to because all those things actually feed it and create more of it. So you just want to observe it. So if, You know, Like I was doing this in the car, I just ran down the mountain to pick up a little plumbing piece that I needed and they paved the road so it's a It's a nice little drive now. Uh, So I just drive down to the center, You know, And come back up. It probably took me, I don't know, 15 minutes altogether. And I'm driving and I'm putting my attention. And I was in my head a little bit when I was at the hardware store, Looking around thinking. And it's amazing how easy your brain can generate. Like when I think real, When I think, And then I think, And then I think, And then I think, And the longer I'm thinking, Like the more kind of constriction almost happens. It wants to go in the direction of stress. It wants me to figure out whatever I'm thinking about. And get it finished so I can be at the next moment. Which is kind of ridiculous. So it's seeking for me to finish whatever I'm doing. So it can create minimal amounts of anxiety, Just minimal amounts. It's not, You know, So then I hop in the car and I'm driving back and, And I, I, I make my little U-turn safely to make sure I, You know, With the traffic and. And I start driving back up the mountain and I put my attention on my body and all those little bits of anxiety I felt. And now with me, This started like over 20 years ago, I was getting these spiritual healings and releasing lots of rage and anger from my body. I used to do this regularly for months, Just releasing this stuff. And the person I was doing this releasing was saying, Wow, We're really releasing a lot. And I didn't really feel that much. So I asked I asked Spirit, God, The universe is like, You know, Let me feel this energy that's supposedly leaving. So I so I know that it's leaving so I can have a physical sensation. So when I did that right after I started twitching, When energy left my body, Which now, You know, 20 years later, I'm like, OK, This is This is boring. I don't particularly enjoy it, But whatever, It is what it is. So I'm sitting there, I put my attention on my body. And all of a sudden, And I feel this little bits of anxiety. And then as I'm talking about it, I'm gonna try to go into the feelings. I don't know if my body will twitch or if it won't, Because I don't feel a buildup of the energy. If I feel a buildup, Then I basically know it's gonna twitch. But if I don't, It might just be a little just a little batch. And it just it's just a little twitch. And I don't always necessarily know when it's coming. But you those of you on video, You might see it. So, So I'm driving and I put my attention on my body. And all of a sudden this little batch of anxiety pops up and I twitch. And it released. And so my Twitch for those watching, I didn't do it right then. It didn't happen. It might happen later in a podcast, But because I'm talking about this process. And sometimes my body will do it because your body like doesn't know the difference between whether you're talking about something or actually doing it. It basically functions the same way. So but I'll give you a kind of like a little mimic. Um twitch now like i can just be thinking about sun and also my body's like Just this little, This little. Miniature convulsion just there. And I can feel the energy come up out of my body. Out of my chest and just. I just. . . Um, Pops out. So. So I felt that and and and I was like, Oh, What's this about? Like I like I've been in my body most of the day. I've been really having a good day. I didn't really expect to feel any anxiety energy when I connected to my body, But I did. It's OK. So I twitched a few times and that energy released and then that pleasurable sensation. Settle down. And I was like, Oh. I'm like, So what was that? I was like, Oh, It's probably because I got in my head a little bit when I was doing some things. You know, At the hardware store or something. Whatever. You know, I just got one into my head a little bit and it and it caused little minuscule amounts of anxiety. You know, And it's not a big deal, But if you don't release that stuff. It builds up, It accrues, It's pushing outward. So do it whenever it comes up. So this is what I'm talking about. And what I've noticed is like, If I'm If I am like watching a video or reading or listening to an audio of a very deep spiritual teaching, I absorb the teaching. And what I mean by that is I understand it on a deep level, Much better if my attention is on my body. And I actually kind of picture myself listening from my chest, From my heart area. Like, I'm just like, Oh, I'm gonna I put my attention here and then I'm like, OK, I want to I want to take in information here. I want to take in information into my heart through my heart. I want to take in information. And I'll pay attention. Conceptualize and absorb deeper spiritual teachings that way than I can intellectually. So it helps me listen to the teachers. It helps me experience what they're experiencing when they're feeling it. I think there's an aspect of empath ability. You know, A lot of us are empaths. All of us are empaths. So we can tap into that and use that and really connect with the teachings empathetically. Through the teacher. If we're doing it through our heart. Otherwise, We're just intellectualizing what they say. Not that intellectualizing what teachers say is the worst thing sometimes. That's good, But I would recommend experimenting with other ways. So I can take in teachings better. I can understand people better. I can have more compassion when I'm dealing with somebody else because my brain isn't running everything. My feelings are, My body is. So I'm not trapped in thought. I'm not going down these bad neighborhoods of thought when somebody says something that I don't particularly like. I'm in my body. I'm safe. We can be safe inside of our bodies. It's a very safe space to be in, Like when we get comfortable there. So then all of a sudden somebody attacks us. Like if somebody attacks us when we're in our head, It triggers our brain. It triggers those those neural pathways. Oh, He called me a jerk. When somebody calls me a jerk, I tell him to go screw. Oh, Boing. You know, And that's all up in your head. But when you're in your body and somebody is like, You're a jerk, You're like you're safe. So you don't feel attacked. How can somebody attack you if you're safe? Right? So you're in that safe space of your body and you're just like, You're a jerk. Sorry you feel that way. Like, Because you know it's not true. Like, You don't feel like a jerk. You don't feel attacked. You don't get defensive. That's all. Trigger responses that are transpiring in your head. Being in your body circumvents all that. So what else, What else? Oh, Yeah, The other thing too, You know, This is, There's a lot of aspects to this, Like, If I'm meditating, And then I go into prayer, And sometimes I ask questions, And I'm looking for guidance or something. My best conversations happen when I'm focused on my heart. I can. You know, It doesn't work every single time. But when I'm in my head, It works rarely. When I'm in my body, It works much more often, Where I can just sit there and basically have a conversation with God, Just. But it has to be heart-centered. And when I'm hearing the information come back from source, It's coming through my heart. And I know then it's not my brain making it up. Because my brain can't speak through my heart. All right, So I can feel the words coming in. So then I can count on them because I know it's not a trick my mind's playing. This is another thing. What else? I'm just looking over some notes. Yeah, My mind is where the fear is created. Fear is an illusion of the mind. It's not real. We've all walked through fear at some point in our lives. So you walk through fear and you do something anyway and you're on the other side and you look back, Do you see any fear? Do you see that fear energy all like curled up in a ball on the floor? Like, No, It's not there. It's because it was never there. It was an illusion. Fear is just an illusion. It's a mind made concept. When you're not living from your mind and trapped in your mind, Then you're not trapped in the fear. And if you're not in your head creating fear-based thoughts and feeding them and latching onto them, Then they don't trigger the emotional response called fear. That's how we work. A thought is a unit of energy, You know, They can measure in quantum physics. So so you have a thought and it's energy and then it's a fearful thought. So if if I latch on to that and go, Oh, My God. This could actually happen. I better watch out. That triggers a. An emotional reaction, A fear-based emotion. So that thought transmutes into an emotion and now I'm experiencing emotional fear. Well, If I'm not up, If I'm not dancing around up here in my head, Playing with all these random thoughts that I'm not really in control of. Then it's not creating random thoughts that trigger random fear. If I'm in my body. Then my brain isn't active because my attention's on my body. That's what's getting the life force energy. And it, My whole physical energy field, My body. Has the ability to hold attention. Like I can put my attention on it. I can close my eyes and I, We all can close our eyes, Put our attention on our foot. And If we put our attention there long enough, We're going to be able to sense the sensation of a foot. Like it could be a little could be like little tingly sensation or warmth or something, But you know that you have a foot somehow. Right. And like, I mean, Even when people like lose their limbs, They have phantom pains. Like their brain will be like, Oh, My foot hurts. And like, They don't even have a foot anymore. Right, So there's a, My point is that. Like, I mean, That's obviously a mental connection with the body and stuff. But we have awareness throughout our entire body. Like they're finding out that the heart has more intelligence than the brain and that the heart actually makes more independent decisions independent from the brain. It makes, It's in more control of our body and makes more decisions than our brain actually does. It's crazy. So we have awareness in our whole body. Yeah, That's basically what I wanted to cover there. It's just so we can actually practice. My point here is is that we can actually practice walking around in our body with our attention on our body just just a little bit. Like it's when I used to train people as a personal trainer, Like, You know, You learn that different people. Learn in different ways. So like some people doing a very simple exercise, Like a tricep push down, You just, You just push down, You know, Straighten out your arms. And you show somebody and they just do it perfectly. And usually those are people who have been pretty athletic most of their lives because they developed these pathways from their brain to their muscles. And they basically just tell their muscle to do something and it does it. Whereas people who haven't been as active in any type of physical activities like sports or something, Like they haven't developed that. So it can be a little bit harder to develop the coordination for things. So sometimes you have to teach people people in lots of different ways. So sometimes you just show them, Sometimes you tell them, Sometimes you have to hold their elbows in. Sometimes you have to stop them from going up so high. Sometimes you have to make them extend all the way down. And they might have trouble with one or multiple aspects of those things. And some people you can do it over and over and over and over and over again and they still don't they still need you to. To kind of like keep their elbows in or something, You know, Like the elbow. For some reason, Their elbows just want to keep kicking out. And they have a difficult time. Like I said, A lot of times these are people who, You know, Haven't. Aren't as quite as muscularly coordinated. It's no big deal. You can still do the exercise, But most people with these simple exercises like a bicep curl or a tricep push down, It's a fairly small movement. It's fairly straightforward. There's not tons of thinking. So once you get that movement down where it's kind of second nature and they don't have to think about it too much, Then I would tell people, I'd be like, Okay, Take like, Just 10% of your awareness, Your consciousness. And put it on your form to make sure you continue doing your form properly. But take the other 90% or the other 75% and focus on flexing your muscle at the top or at the bottom, Depending on the exercise. And they're like, What? Like, I can't divide up my attention. And I'm like, Yes, You can. Just try it. And And then I would get them doing it because if they got in their head and they tried to figure out how they were going to divide their consciousness, You know, I could go visit them two weeks later and they'd still be curled up in a ball, Sucking their thumb, Not being able to figure it out. It's like it's not. You're never going to wrap your brain around it. So don't try, Like even now, If you're trying to figure out how to do it, Don't try to figure out how to do it. You just have to attempt it. So that's what I would do. I would explain it to them and they're like, No, I can't do that. And I'd be like, Oh yes, You can watch, Just try it. And I'd give them the bar, You know, And then all of a sudden they'd start doing it. And I'm like, Okay, So now you're doing your, Your movement. Yeah. Now just there's a little part of your brain that is aware of the movement that you're doing. It knows you're doing it, But it, But you're good at it. You don't have to spend a bunch of attention, Paying attention to that. Just a little bit of your attention is there. The rest of your attention, Okay, Now start bringing in some of your attention and start flexing at the top of that movement. And like within a couple of reps, They're like, Oh my God, I think I did it. Wait, Wait. And then they do it a couple more times and they do it like first time, Every time. So I remember it anyway, But it was dramatically easier than people thought. So my point here is that we can divide our attention. It just takes practice, Especially with this. But if you practice having some attention to your body, Just enough where you feel this light, Pleasurable sensation. And then you stop moving. Like I'm talking to you guys right now and I can feel that sensation in my chest, Like right now. And I'm using my brain to talk about stuff. But there's just a little bit now when you know when I'm doing something else like this. I'm talking to you guys is probably about 2%. That is when I'm caught up in thought, There's about 2% that's paying attention on my body. I'm not even really aware of it until I until mentally I send a little signal going and do I still feel that connection to my body? Oh, Yeah, I do. There it is. Yeah. But I'm It's still going. It's like the hum of the refrigerator. I'm just not fully aware of it, But it is there. And then when I'm not talking, Or if I'm talking and I actually try to be aware of that sensation, Well then I can do both. Like right now, I really feel that sensation in my chest. You know, Fairly strongly. If you haven't experienced this, You know, It's not overpowering strong, But it's just, There's a definite sensation going on in my chest and I can still talk. And I don't lose that. Like that's from practicing doing this. You know, And it'll vary. So just, So sometimes you might like, You might be doing it, But you might not be aware that you're doing it. That's how good you can get at it. But just. Pretty cool. Um. . . Let's see if there's anything else. Well, I am going to touch on this. I'm going to use this as an example. When I was just talking about. . . Like separating our consciousness and being semi-aware of something. Here's another way that you can play with this. And it might be helpful in completely alternative situations. So like I broke my back when I was young. And then when I got older, I herniated the disc in between that vertebrae that I had broken and stuff. So, So I've had back issues. Most of my life. I think I broke my back when I was like 17 or 18 or something. So like, I've had and I was heavy into the gym and working out extremely heavy, And I would never stop working out when I was younger. So like I had to learn how to work out where I wasn't in excruciating pain. So I learned to isolate areas of my body. The way that I did that with my back was through squeezing my abdominals. For the most part, There are other things that you can do, Like never put your feet flat on a floor. Like whenever you're doing exercises like a bench press or a curl or basically anything with your feet flat on the floor. Back machines, Anything. Lift up your toes so your toes are up in the air and just your heels are on the floor because you're not, When you do that, You don't stabilize your body. Through your hamstrings and your legs. You don't realize you're doing it, But when you're working hard, Doing an exercise, Like I had somebody with a back problem going to Disney World one time, And they said they wanted to go on the rides with their young child to experience it, But they were scared because they had back problems. And I said, Well, Don't stabilize yourself with your feet. Just lift up your toes and they showed them how to do it. And they said they slid around a little bit on the rides, Which wasn't the most comfortable thing, But their back didn't hurt at all. So that's, That's one little, I didn't know I was going to be a personal trainer today, But, But yeah, Like if you've got back problems, Don't stabilize yourself with your feet. When you're doing an exercise, You know, A seated exercise, Because like, That's how the pressure gets to your low back. It goes through your feet, Up your shins, Through your hamstrings and up into your back and put stress on it. So if you don't stabilize your feet, There's no way that pressure can get to your back. Okay, Next. So squeezing your abdominals. This is something that's really good for everybody. You can even do this with glutes if you want. Did you know, All right, I'm taking five minutes and I'm doing personal training stuff. Did you know that most your glutes are made for walking and most people don't fire out their glutes when they walk? So you can actually put your brain to fire out your glute muscles every time you take a step, And then it remembers what it's supposed to be doing, And then you'll start using your glutes to walk, Which is good for your glutes. Okay, Abs. So walking up, It's really obvious walking uphill, Like, You know, I've done a lot of hiking, So hiking up a mountain and stuff, People's low back bothers them, Even if it's not as bad as mine. And I always tell them, Squeeze your abs, Just focus on squeezing your abs. Now, They're still walking, Right? So they're walking up a hill. And. So part of their attention is on walking. The other part of their The other part of their attention is on squeezing their abdominals. So you can do two things at once. So you squeeze your abs. And it supports you instead of that thin little muscle in your low back supporting you. So I like, I generally do this. All the time now. Either today or yesterday, I moved. Kind of quickly where I turned or I don't know, I did something a little bit out of the ordinary. And for a moment, I was like, Oh, I better be I should be careful about my back. And all of a sudden I realized, I was like, No, My abs are tight. I was like, Oh my God. So my point here is, Is My. My attention, When I'm moving in particular ways that can be strenuous on my back, I have trained my body to just squeeze its abdominal muscles without me even telling it to. Like I remember when I first started doing this, Like I, It was, I don't even know how many 30. Years ago, Probably more. I remember I was standing in in a kitchen. I don't remember where I was living, But I remember I was doing something in a kitchen and I reached for something in a cabinet. That was up high and across my body and I felt my abdominal muscles. Automatically tighten. And I was like, Oh my God, I didn't even tell them to do that. So they're doing it on their own now. This is good. This is. You know, I said all that for a reason. Hey, Maybe it'll help you if you get some. Physical issues, Right? But the reason is I'm trying to explain to you what I'm trying to do. And if you can experiment with like, If you're having trouble putting your attention on your body. Your heart area and functioning, Then maybe you can start with these other things. Start squeezing your abdominal muscles when you twist or reach for something or when you stand up. Start flexing your glutes when you're walking, Like just because anything you do that's similar is a stepping stone to get you to be able to do this. Because we can all do it. It's not like I have some sort of gift. You know, That other people don't have. It's just we, You know, Sometimes our brain thinks we can't do it. So we can't do it. So it's like, So do it in other ways. And then all of a sudden you have a little success there in more of a physical. Thing, Like squeezing him in an abdominal muscle, And then all of a sudden, The abdominal muscles starting to squeeze on their own, Like, All of a sudden, You're like, Oh, My God, Well, Wait, Like, There is something to what he was saying, Maybe I can do that, You know, Like, Just anything to, To, To, To, To get you empowered to get you to thinking that you might be able to do it. Build off of that. You know, But what we're doing is we're, We're getting to that point. I'm telling you, Man, Like it's, It's. It's amazing because it does everything that I told you about, Like one, If there's fear there or sadness, Then you have to release it. Or you might be able to stuff it if you're out in public and then go back and call it back up. Like I've done that, You know, I've been in public and all of a sudden I put my attention on my body and I'm like, Oh, What the hell is this? I feel like I'm going to cry. It's like, Oh. You know, Sometimes I might ask, What's this attached to? What's this from? Or sometimes I just know. But I'll be like, Listen, I can't do this. I'm talking to myself. I'm like, I can't do this right now. Like, This is not the time or the place. I'm out in public. I'll tune into this when I get home. And then I will consciously stuff it. Because we stuff our emotions all the time. Like, The only difference between what I'm doing and what everybody else does on a daily basis is that I'm doing it consciously. I'm choosing to stuff it for a short period of time, And then I go back to it. Whereas most people just stuff it unconsciously and never go back to it, You know? So you can just stuff something, But do yourself a favor. When you get home, Go find it. Hey, And sometimes you don't even need to know what it's from. You just be like, Put your attention there and it'll probably pop right back up. But if it doesn't, You just go, Hey, What was that sadness I was feeling earlier? What was, Let's bring that up. Now is an appropriate time. I want to feel that. And it'll probably come up. Or if you know what it was about, You just think about your story, About what the sadness was about, And it'll pop right back up. And then let go of the story, Like I was saying earlier in the podcast, And allow yourself to feel it, Allow it to be felt. That's if there's uncomfortable feelings there. And when you're practicing. With this, If you've never done anything like this, There might be a decent amount of trapped emotion within you. And you might just need to sit down for, You know, Once a day for 20 minutes and allow yourself to cry for a week or two. Just to get that overload of emotions out. Because like I said, Like when we stuff emotions, It's basically like energy going into a container. And, And like, It gets so packed with emotion over the years and energy that when you lift up that lid a little bit, It wants to come rushing out. And you need to release some of that so it's more of a controlled container. So you can kind of open up that lid and close that lid and all this. Horrible feelings don't come gushing out. So if you have that much trapped emotion, You just need to feel it, You know, Just take, You know, 20 minutes every day, Every couple days, And just allow yourself to feel it. I did that after a breakup once, You know, I was filled with all this sadness and emotion and all this stuff. And like I was going to work just bawling. Like I kept going to the bathroom because I'd sit down trying to work. And I'd end up crying every 20 minutes. Like I was like, I can't even function, Like I can't work like this. So I would I'd go home and you know, I mean, Me, I would take like an hour and just. Feel at all. And then after a couple days of that. I had reduced the amount of sadness energy in my body enough to where I could go to work and I didn't have to worry about those emotions bubbling over at an inopportune time. I was back in control of when I felt them. You know, So. So that's a little. Tidbit of hopefully helpful information. But this is what we need to do. And then we can get to a point where when we do put our attention on on our body, It's not. It's not this sadness, And it's this feeling of peace and connection in our body. And like I said, It's taking the energy away from your head. So what you'll notice is that your head, You've stopped your thinking. You know, Everybody talks about how can I stop my thinking? How can I stop my mind? How can I, You know, This is how. Because whatever we resist persists. And most people out there are trying to stop their thinking. That's resistance. Don't think, Don't think, I'm thinking, Oh, That didn't work. And this is how, Don't try to stop thinking, Just try to put your attention on your body. Walk around with attention in your body. And if your attention's on your body, Then it's not feeding your mind. And by proxy, Your brain is incessantly thinking. And you'll notice probably that if all of a sudden a thought pops through, You'll be like, Huh? Like, Was that a thought? Where'd you come from? And you're like, Oh, I think I took my attention off my body a little bit and I didn't even notice. See, That'll happen more often in the beginning because your mind is used to running. It's used to incessantly going all day long. So whenever so you kind of have to put a little bit more attention on your body. Otherwise, As soon as you're not focused on putting it on your body, It shoots right back up into your mind because that's the norm. So you just bring it back down to your body. No judgment. Don't get pissed off. It's natural. Oh, Okay. Like, As soon as you know that you're thinking, You're aware that you're thinking, So you've already won. Like, You know, We usually punish ourselves. Oh my God, I just caught myself thinking. I'm so stupid. That sucks. This isn't working. I'm a moron. I can't do it. Like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. If you just pause for a moment before you went off on your self-deprecating tangent, You would have realized that the moment you recognized that you were thinking, You were present. Like you can't know that you're thinking without having a certain level of awareness to know that you're thinking. That's what awareness does. The awareness is listening to you think. So as soon as you know, Oh, I'm thinking, Well, That means you're present. So celebrate. Don't judge and beat yourself up. Be like, Oh, Good. Oh, Okay. I caught myself again. Oh my God. At this rate, I'm going to be in my body. Like. All the time soon. Cause I keep catching myself or, Oh, I've been thinking for. Three hours. That's okay. It's fine, You're just getting there. And it's going to go up and down. Some some days you're going to do really well at it. And then other days, You know, You're going to do really crappy at it. And you might do you know, That's what change looks like. I've talked about that a billion times, You know, Like change doesn't look like, Oh, I did it once. Good. I did it a second time. Good. Now I'll do it perfectly forever. Like that's this not how things work. But that's what happens inside of our heads. We're like, Oh, I'm doing it. Oh, I'm doing it. Oh, I'm not. Oh, I'm a moron. Oh my God. I can't. I don't even know why I thought I could do this in the first place. Look at me. I failed. It's like, No, No, No, No. You know. You know, I played a lot of basketball when I was younger. You know, You can drain. 10 free throws in a row. That doesn't mean you're going to hit the 11th. Or the 12th or the 13th, Who knows? Like you're going to miss one at some point. But, But the more you practice, The less you miss that, But, But it's a process. And beating yourself up over it just hinders the process. So this or anything else you do, Stop beating yourself up, Please. So this is our process. Feel inside of our body. If there's something that we need to heal, Or deal with, Then we deal with it. And allow it to heal all on its own. Feel, Deal, Heal. Or, And depending on the situation, Sometimes it's feel, Heal, Deal. Sometimes we have to feel it. Allow it to heal, And then deal with the external circumstance. Sometimes the dealing with it is just allowing it to heal. So feel, Deal, Heal, Feel, Heal, Deal, Whatever, Man. Just be in the body and get comfortable walking around throughout your every day like that. You're going to cut down on your thinking dramatically. You're going to increase the level of peace you have dramatically. And because of those things, You're not going to be so reactive because you're not living in your head from where the unconscious reactions, Stimuli reaction, That's up inside your head. You know, When when we're like, Oh, I'm not going to react this way next time when I see that person, Then they're rude. I'm not going to react. And then all of a sudden they act rude and we react. It's like because there's no gap, There's no space for us to consciously choose what we we're going to do. It's just a reaction. And if we're up in our head, It's very difficult to stop that because it's instantaneous. So but when we're in our body, Then our head isn't in control of all that stuff. For us to react, Generally, We have to take our attention off of our body, Put it up in our brain and say, Do I want to rip this person a new one? And by then is we've created enough space. Now, All of a sudden, We can consciously choose what we want to do instead of unconsciously react. I'm telling you, Man, Give this a shot and please let me know. How it works for you, But please implement this. Listening to this and going, Wow, That sounds cool, Does zero to benefit you or anyone else's life on this planet. Implement it, Practice it, Play with it, Reach out, Let me know if you have any questions. If you need any advice, Let me know if you're doing really good with it. Let me know if you're not doing well with it. Please implement it. I put this stuff out there to try to help you guys. If you don't implement it, It doesn't do anything. You know, It just makes you feel good for an hour while you listen to Glenn on his podcast. It's like, Wow. Wait, Doesn't that get old after a while if your life's not changing? You deserve to live a happy, Peaceful life. Quiet in the head life. So implement it, Give it a shot. All right, Peeps, Thanks for listening. I will talk with you soon and peace.