Mindfulness Mode

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Increase your calm, focus and happiness so you can be more relaxed, contented and satisfied with your life. For business, entrepreneurs, educators, parents. Hosted by Bruce Langford.

Episodes

Wednesday Apr 20, 2022

Reaching For Joy; Zehra Mahoon

Wednesday Apr 20, 2022

Zehra Mahoon is a master mindset and law of attraction coach and manifesting expert. She is the author of twelve books on these subjects including Reaching For Joy and the creator of the Unlimited 40-day law of attraction workout and the Unlimited 365 Mastermind. After committing to completely transforming her self-worth in 2006, she went from being massively in debt to owning multiple properties and creating a thriving business, as well as healing her relationships and reaching for joy. Zehra’s books are based on a visual, diagrammatic approach to the law of attraction. She breaks down complicated concepts into small bite-size pieces linked to analogies that make them easy to remember and apply.

Zehra’s courses and programs help individuals to identify the blockages that are keeping them from achieving success. She helps them to change their self-talk and develop new thinking habits that open up a world of new possibilities.

Zehra believes that all things are possible in other words you can start from where you are and create a better future once you start understanding how to use the basic law of attraction concepts. She is committed to making it easy for you to understand and apply the law of attraction.

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Contact Info

Website: www.zmahoon.com
Blog: www.zmahoon.com/blog

Most Influential Person

Effect on Emotions

I'm a totally different person.
There is no such thing as procrastination in my life anymore. Therefore, ideas and creativity flow freely, and my anger issues are gone. However, if you ever wanted to meet someone with a bad temper, you should have met me when I was much younger.

Thoughts on Breathing

Firstly, breathing is the easiest thing for us to focus on. Breathing is important because you can take all your five senses and focus them on breathing. After that taking your five senses away from the world around you, is what is the basis of bringing peace into your heart and reaching for joy.
Certainly, you can take all five senses from the world and focus them on the sound of your breath. Your breathing is always with you and you have to breathe in order to come down and reach for joy because when you breathe in deeply, you automatically open up your connection with the source.
Our breath is the channel of communication with the collective consciousness. After that, my consciousness is connected to me as a drop of water is connected to the ocean, all because of my breath.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

I was talking to a neighbor who just had major surgery and was telling me about the medical system. After that I went away from that discussion, thinking, sweetheart, if I could just explain to you that you create your own reality. That is to say, if you encountered that experience, you created it, it didn't come to you out of the blue, it came to you because you created it.
What we really need to look at is what is your habit of thought that resulted in the creation of this experience. It applies even to little children. Moreover when a child is fearful of something, everything in that child's life will gravitate toward the vibration of fear, and will bring those people into that child's life that will subject the child to bullying.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at bruce@mindfulnessmode.com with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life

Sunday Apr 17, 2022

Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow: Winnie Chan Wang

Sunday Apr 17, 2022

Winnie Chan Wang is a lover of science and spirituality. Her vision is for all medicine to join as One! She is a trauma-informed licensed acupuncturist, teacher, shadow worker, Reiki, and open-hearted Tao healer. She is also a professor in acupuncture at Alhambra Medical University. She is passionate about empowering people with chronic pain to step into their source power to heal themselves. In her book “Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power”, she and her co-author searched deep into their traumas and made lemonade out of the lemons. As they navigated the darkness, they gained trust and purpose.

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Contact Info

Website: www.mindfulhealingheart.com
Podcast: Integrated Healing Circles
Book: Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power By Winnie Chan Wang

Most Influential Person

I'm gonna say me, okay. You know to clarify, it's choosing me over and over again. Because we all have a tendency to check out Brene Brown who talks about showing up in the arena. It's kind of like, okay, well, I checked out of my mindfulness yesterday.
But today, I'm gonna see if I can stay in the mindfulness longer. It's this idea that I'm just going to keep showing up day after day. That's just like my discipline, you know, no matter what, I'm gonna stand behind myself, Yes, I'm gonna say me.

Effect on Emotions

Emotions are full of gifts. Right? For example, anger is when I feel anger, that's when I should set boundaries with the bully. So it's really funny, Bruce, as an Asian girl growing up in Asia, I was told I have to be nice and people-pleasing, and I was completely disconnected from my anger.
I talked about this in my book, how, even in the moment of rape, I shouldn't be angry. But I am not angry. So like, I should fight back, but I don't. Therefore the gift of anger, you know, my trauma responses, freezing and thawing. You know, those are kind of like the conditioning, but if I own my anger, I can really love my emotion.
Emotions are the most powerful thing. Definitely embrace and appreciate all the protection that comes from your emotions.

Thoughts on Breathing

One of my favorite breathing techniques is to put one hand over the heart and one hand below the belly button. And just really picturing myself as Santa Claus with a big belly. So when I breathe in, I'm like, okay, when he gives me the biggest Santa Claus belly you can, because the lower abdominal breathing really grounds and anchors.
I want to talk a minute about the recycling program. Shinzon Jung talks about this; we have all the positives in the world. That's like loving forgiveness, compassion, and light. And then we have all the negatives in the world, like shame, fear, anger. We don't actually get to the emptiness condition by love and light, we get to the emptiness condition or the oneness condition or the zero, by mathematically adding all the plus, all the negative, then we get the zero.
So true power, true source. Certainly, true oneness is when we put together all the positives and all the minus and get zero. So how we do that actually is below the belly button. In Chinese martial arts, we call that the dantian. And in yoga they call it the Kundalini center navel point. There's a lot of different names for this practice.
That is to say, when we breathe in, we breathe all the love and light. And we can source and connect to all the anger and fear and all the negative things in our body; cancer, whatever you want. Channel that into the dawn tan, and mix the light and the dark together into oneness.
Above all that is how I want all the listeners to try breathing. You know, when you feel angry, or scared, be like, Oh my god, I have the raw ingredients to make a powerful ball. You know, it's kind of like if I'm cooking a pot of soup. I need all the ingredients. I need the sugar, and I need the lemon to make lemonade.

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Bullying Story

I've had verbal abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, and all kinds of humiliation in my life. So I'm going to start with the other counterpart. My teacher calls this the ABCDE method.
First, A is aware, right? Your mindfulness is like, oh, I'm aware that this is happening, or I'm aware that I'm triggered as something happened, and I'm triggered back to the trauma that I was bullied. But A is also to accept, right?
This is the equanimity part to accept that this is happening. And actually to appreciate. Appreciate the sensation inside my body, okay, maybe my throat is choking. Meanwhile, I am shivering, maybe I'm even peeing in my pants, you know, like, appreciate that my body is doing what it needs to be and also appreciate that God doesn't give us bullying to punish us.
God gives us bullying, to help us learn how to make lemonade out of the lemons, so that we can make connections and spread love and feel the belonging. That's the other thing is that intimacy happens when we have vulnerable and difficult conversations.
If we just talk about hey, how's your golf game? Oh, yeah, the Lakers won, whatever. Hey, how's your food? How's the movie? If we just talk on a superficial level? We're never gonna get intimacy, right.
So but if I share with you my rape story, my abortion story, my bullying story, then I have a connection. So almost think about I'm not stuck as the victim. Because whatever lemons that happened to my life, I can make lemonade out of it.
Next is B which means breathe. Whether you're in the middle of being bullied, or you're being triggered back to a memory of bullying, you breathe.
C is the compassionate witness. In short, compassionate witness is our ability to validate the victim. Oh, you know, yes, you are bullied. It makes sense to me that you're feeling cold and shivering and palpitations and all of that.
But also the witness word is very important because that's like the observer. If we only have compassion, we actually dwell on victimhood. We're like, oh, yeah, you know, it sucks that I'm bullied. I'm a victim, I'm a victim, but the minute we bring the witness, it's like okay, I am detaching from the story, the victim card, and I become the witness.
C means compassionate witness. If you get to see the amazing job, okay, it took me a lot of time and years to proceed.
D is dialogue within and what it means to dialogue within. So meditate and reflect on what is really going on. For example, let's say I am the victim of the silent treatment, okay? Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow. Somebody is emotionally bullying me with the silent treatment. Okay, so on the top level, I am feeling abandoned, rejected, sadness.
When we do the shadow work, we dive deeper into our subconscious. We're like, okay, what is beneath this thing that I'm experiencing? And you check-in and you're like, oh, because deeper down, I have a thought that I'm not lovable. And I'm not worthy of my respect. I'm not worthy of other people's respect.
I don't know that I'm a gift to the world, and I just feel utterly worthless. Okay, so d is when we don't look at, like, okay, that person hurt me. But really go down into what is my core source fracture? Do we call this? Yes, you're unworthy. And when this one, the fact that you don't love yourself, you don't respect yourself that causes the manifestation of the bullying, right?
Lastly, E is an effective response. So that's when you be like, Okay, well, now that I've done ABCD, what is the effective response? So instead of reacting out of the trauma of being a bully, being bullied, it's like, well, how can I empower myself? You know, having done all the shadow work, how having empowered me, what can I do?
How have I disempowered myself to manifest this bullying situation? Maybe if I really own that, you know, I can work on loving myself, respecting myself, feeling that I am a gift to the whole universe, I am a legend.
As a result, I'm here. I'm authentic. And you know, from a place of strength and power, how am I going to respond to this bullying situation? Oh, and I do want to reference if you like the ABCDE method. It's by Dr. Raven Lee. And her book is called Unbinding The Soul: Awakening Through Crisis and Compassion by Dr Raven Lee.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach, and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at bruce@mindfulnessmode.com with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life.

Wednesday Apr 13, 2022

Entering The Mind; C von Hassett and Rachel Reid Wilkie

Wednesday Apr 13, 2022

C von Hassett and Rachel Reid Wilkie are, as they say, co-conspirators in all things – with a heavy emphasis on spirit – which together they’ve been exploring since the day they met. Throughout the years they have collaborated on numerous projects in the Arts, both in Los Angeles and New York City. Their time in the East Village culminated in a monumental exhibition, Documents of Love, at the famed Hosfelt Gallery in Chelsea, where the couple exhibited a diverse body of work – poetry, paintings photography, a short film – to the attendance of thousands. Upon returning to Los Angeles, C von & Rachel founded Riot Material magazine, a now thriving and widely read literary-cultural magazine with its eye on Art, Word, and forward-aiming thought.

Rachel and C are the rare married couple who not only work and create together but practice together day after day, side by side, often knee to knee, in the singular pursuit of knowing the deeper self beyond the conceptual self – that timeless, eternal Being which births forth the temporal one. To that end, the Pandemic Years saw the couple in contemplative retreat at their high-desert ranch in the Northern Mojave, a sacred landscape that sits just below the 12,000-foot peaks of the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. Here, beyond their full immersion into meditative practice, C von wrote Entering the Mind, while Rachel delivered to the world her inaugural spoken-song album, titled XI.

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Contact Info

Website: www.enteringthemind.com
Podcast: Entering The Mind
Book: Entering the Mind By C von Hassett

Most Influential Person

Norbu Rinpoche, Sonia Rinpoche, and MinGi Rinpoche

Effect on Emotions

I have found during the last two years where we have really emerged ourselves into this practice during the pandemic, my emotions have transformed completely.
I'm a very passionate person. I spent many years in Italy, so I learned from the best. I get ecstatically happy and I get very emotionally sad, but I have an incredible new relationship with them [my emotions]. My emotions are almost like an old friend, you know, waving at me saying, Hey, Rachel, I'm back again. This is happy, this is me, this is happy.
What happens at that moment is that I'm still within that ecstatic happiness and I'm also calm in the center of that ecstatic happiness. When I feel really, really sad; if I hear some sad news, I get a sense of the deep sorrow within me. But it's still within a calm container. So I've learned that without even trying too hard, this is the practice that has definitely installed itself within me. I've become less much reactive and I don't react instantly to those emotions.
On the rare occasion, when I do react instantly without a thought, then I recognize it immediately. And I go, oops, okay, I see you, I see where you're coming from. It's okay, let's just sit down. Let's just take a moment. Let's hold hands. Let's see where we're going with this. And so bringing mindfulness to my emotions has been one of the biggest transformational experiences I have had in the last few years.

Thoughts on Breathing

Up until a few years ago, I really kind of poo-pooed the whole breathing practice. I didn't put much stock in it. I've always been intellectual and I love the intellectual approach to meditation. Over The past year I've just come to recognize the utter importance of the breath. And in fact, the breath is the one thing that transitions between the body and the mind, body and the spirit, the body and awareness. You can be sitting down in a meditation practice and still be fully involved in your day and in your world.
You have your breath. Then as you settle, and you move into your awareness, the breath is still there. The breath is the beautiful bridge between the two beings. I'm now just absolutely certain that the breath is one of the keys to moving from one perspective to the next. It's like the rope that you pull through in the darkness to get you to the other side if you need it.

Suggested Resources

Book: Entering the Mind By C von Hassett
Book: The Boundary Stone By C von Hassett
Book:The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
App: onecommune.com

Bullying Story

It's a personal story. I was brought up by my parents in the countryside of Cambridge. My brother and I were both expected to go to private schools. He went to the private school, which is actually a castle, and at the young, bright age of 11, I wanted to go my own way.
I asked my parents if I could go to the state school, because not only did I not want to walk in the footsteps of my brother, but I wanted my own space, and I wanted my own independence. So they also had a great art faculty as well, that I really wanted to get into. And so my parents said, yes. So at the age of 11, I went to a public [state] school. I spoke differently from others, I had a rather nice accent.
A lot of my colleagues at school, my fellow students, they had some really cool accents. [The way they talked] involved a lot of rude words, so I can't do it here.
So I experienced bullying firsthand. And I started very subtle, and I made friends, I had this really lovely close girlfriend, and we used to walk around together.
And you know, these long corridors that go on forever, and gangs of girls would be in wait as you walk through this corridor of girls waiting for you. Something's going to happen, you just don't know what's going to happen. And you just brace yourself and you walk through that corridor of girls. Then someone would stick their foot out and you'd fly on your belly down the corridor.
So I did actually have one other incident, which was where I was actually pinned up against a locker. Then she lost her temper, and she did actually punch me in the face. At this moment, it wasn't so much her actions towards me, but it was the little crowd of other children behind her, as she punched me in the face, that cackled with laughter.
One person's act of bullying can be one thing, but the humiliation and the shame that I felt from the others witnessing it, and then laughing at it. That contributed to this bullying experience.

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Sunday Apr 10, 2022

Conquer Executive Loneliness; Nick Jonsson

Sunday Apr 10, 2022

Nick Jonsson is passionate about helping executives deal with a problem that is often hidden away: loneliness and isolation. This goal led Nick to become co-founder and Managing Director of one of Asia’s premier networking organizations, Executives’ Global Network (EGN) Singapore — a confidential peer group network providing more than 600 senior executives and business owners a safe haven to share their challenges, receive support, and learn from each other. Nick is also the author of the new book, Executive Loneliness: The 5 Pathways to Overcoming Isolation, Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in the Modern Business World. Nick has worked across Asia, Australia, and Europe representing major international firms, and is active in charitable and fundraising organizations to give back and support his local community, along with volunteering and fundraising for the Samaritans (SOS) – a suicide prevention hotline in Singapore. He is here today to share how to conquer executive loneliness.

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Most Influential Person

Just as we came out of the hard lockdown here in Singapore, I was looking at meditation and I signed up for a local Buddhist temple here. They had a meditation class in the evenings.
I knew about mindfulness and meditation, in the sense that I had an app, I tried some things, but I never really mastered it. So I saw this as a chance to master it. So while I don't know the name of this Buddhist monk, I have to say he had a huge impact on my life, because I started to really appreciate meditation.
That made me connect better with a power greater than myself, connect with myself and really get a break and post my life and discover how to conquer executive loneliness.

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness has made me much more aware. By being able to meditate and also to do prayer, I now try to pray in the morning and in the evening, just to hand things over which are challenging. It has really helped me to do that.
And I will say it helped me to put my ego in shape and that sense that you know, I'm not the one running the show. It has made me grounded and helped me to manage to conquer executive loneliness.

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is super important. And one of my friends who I cycle with tomorrow when we go down, it's a long Ale, airline straight, basically 20 minutes place where we can cycle straight. He even managed to count his breathing the whole time. So he's so mindful of the breathing that he knows after the breath 266 times, for example. I cannot keep going that long. But it makes it more I'm getting at Bruce it makes a huge impact and he's a fantastic athlete.
My coach is eight times the top 10 Corner finisher in Hawaii. He says that breathing makes the biggest impact on him in the sport as well. And he reminded me that when I wait for the bus or wait at the airport, that I should do some breathing exercises.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

As a child, I experiences both I was part of the kids who are bullying Iverson, I have bullied myself, it was very common back in Sweden when I grew up, born in 1975.
So we're talking in the 80s here, and there was no way of dealing with it or working with it. At that time, there was not much awareness about it. I understand that these days, things have improved, luckily.
I changed schools quite a lot and moved from one village to a bigger city, so you would normally team up with the kids who, perhaps were into sports, and others who were into studying and you would find your own little crowd.
I was one of the good students in one school, but when I moved to another school, I suddenly found myself in the group of the kids with the lowest grades. Then you automatically were frozen out from the smarter kids.
I remember that was a very, very challenging period for me. And it led to me not wanting to be in school.
For the first time in my life, I think I was about 13 or 14 years of age when I didn't want to go to school, and I was trying to hide. That was not a good place to be in.

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Wednesday Apr 06, 2022

Three Simple Steps To A Balanced Life; Trevor G. Blake

Wednesday Apr 06, 2022

Trevor Blake is a serial entrepreneur and New York Times bestseller, who over the last ten years has gone from starting his first business with just a few hundred dollars to creating and successfully selling & exiting three separate companies for over $600 million. He has done all without hiring a single employee and by working only 5 hours a day, giving him time to focus on what he loves: writing and sharing tips for a mindful, balanced lifestyle.

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Contact Info

Website: www.trevorgblake.com

Most Influential Person

My wife, without a doubt. She was clairvoyant and clairaudient and so I was kind of a child at her knees. I learned from her the ability to set the ego aside.

Effect on Emotions

I've met a lot of people who say that I don't get excited, I don't get fearful, I don't get upset. I'm very emotionally level.
And that's also the emotion of intuition, it's this very calm feeling. if you get all excited, you're not at the right energy level. If you get all depressed, you're not at the right level.
So when you feel very calm, you have a sense of self-confidence that I think is the right frequency. So for me it's all about feeling the frequency.

Thoughts on Breathing

Mindful breathing is essential and I've studied it a lot. It depends on what I'm doing and what I'm hoping to achieve. I'll change my breathing technique for that.
I teach taking long, six-second inhalations and holding like the death breath and then letting go only six times because it's very, very powerful.
When I'm doing one of my other techniques, I use the shamanic dancing breathing technique, which is two quick inhalations through the nose and out through the mouth. But when I'm walking, I'm very specific that it's all inhalation through the nose and out of the nose. It's very important to do that.
Most people breathe higher their chest and out of their mouth. That's not a way to set the ego aside; the ego is in full place here.
I've learned over the years to be aware of my situation and to adapt my breathing to the situation. I observed that my wife was just naturally [breathing], because being clairvoyant, clairaudient, you could see the rhythm of her body change, depending on what mode she was in. And so I kind of learned by watching.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

When I was a kid, I grew up in Liverpool, and we were poor. My father was unemployed and unemployable; not a bad man, he was just different. And my mother was dying of cancer, and we got evicted from the apartment we were living in and we ended up escaping from the creditors and living in a rural area, where English was not popular.
I was English in a place where the Welsh wanted the English out. As a kid I would see this stuff on TV, this political movement, burning down houses owned by English people.
So I was getting bullied and harassed a bit and so what I did was, I got out of their way. I used to fight because I came from Liverpool with kind of a feisty culture. But I didn't do very well with that. So in the end, I just got out of the way. And the way I did that was to hide in the town library because they were too dumb to go in there.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach, and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more balanced life, a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at bruce@mindfulnessmode.com with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life.

Sunday Apr 03, 2022

Tao Te Ching Philosophy; Jessie Kanzer

Sunday Apr 03, 2022

Jessie Asya Kanzer was born in the Soviet Union. At the age of eight, she emigrated with her family to Brooklyn, New York. She is a writer, former reporter and actress. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, The Independent, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and more. After extensive study of the Tao Te Ching, Jessie experienced a shift in mindset that allowed her to fully trust her inner voice and to create a satisfying life. She also attributes Taoist philosophy to helping her stay centered as a parent, navigate challenges, and hold space for others.

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Contact Info

Website: www.jessiekanzer.com
Blog: Jessie Kanzer

Most Influential Person

Wayne Dyer, took these very complex things like the Tao Te Ching and showed us how to apply them in our lives.

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness taught me that there's more than one of me. There's the one that feels the emotions that react and the observer part of myself. Because I'm able to observe myself and watch myself, I've become much less reactive.
That doesn't mean I judge my emotion, or I hate my emotion or anything like that. But I'm able to come back to the center much quicker because I see it. I feel it. I work through it if I need to work through it, but I don't react to it anymore. I mean, I should say most of the time.

Thoughts on Breathing

I love breathwork. I don't do it daily; sometimes I do breathwork instead of meditation. I am amazed at how breathing in certain ways can help you enter almost a different dimension. That is why for me, breathing really gets me out of my monkey mind.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

I think if I'd had mindfulness training when I was a child when I was bullied, it would have made a huge difference for me. I was not very welcomed when I came to America as a kid, because I came here in 1989 and that was right on the heels of the Cold War.
By the way, I'm not even Russian. I'm a Jew from Latvia. The Soviet Union divided people very weirdly, like on their passports. On my passport, it just used to say, Jew. That sounds crazy to people when I say that, but that's what it said. And then my family; half of them from Latvia, half from Ukraine.
But our language was Russian because often these geopolitical shifts are affected, individual people. And I was one of those people. Therefore, I came from this war-torn family that suffered a lot under Stalin under the Nazis, and finally made it to America, the land of the free, but unfortunately, mindfulness was not taught, at least not the way it is now.
A lot of kids were pretty mean when they heard my Russian accent.
First, the Russian language, because they had watched movies like for instance, Rocky Five, these movies where the Russians were always the evil people.
So there was a lot of making fun of, and you know, I remember I'd be stopped, in the middle of the stairway, they would laugh and say, Where Are you Russian, Russian.
As a result, all of these things I internalized because I was a very sensitive child.
Bullying did not exist in the Soviet Union.
The socialistic ideas that formed this country, a lot of them did not work clearly. But this kind of unity, versus individualism in the classroom, made everyone be really nice to each other.

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Wednesday Mar 30, 2022

What Is Consciousness; Tom Campbell (Part 2)

Wednesday Mar 30, 2022

Thomas Campbell answers the question, “What Is Consciousness”. He is a physicist, lecturer, and author of the My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) trilogy. In the books, he discusses the origins of consciousness and brings together science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, as well as the normal and the paranormal. The writings are based on the simulation argument, which takes the position that reality is both virtual and subjective. He is here to answer the question,”What Is Consciousness?”.

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Contact Info

Website: www.tomcampbell.info
Website: www.my-big-toe.com
Website: www.mbtevent.com
Youtube: Tom Campbell
Nonprofit Org: CUSAC : Tom Campbell's Center for the Unification of Science And Consciousness
Book: My Big Toe: Book 3 of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics: Inner Workings by Tom Campbell

Thoughts on Breathing

I don't really put any focus on the breathing at all, all that stuff just happens by itself. You know, when I was meditating, I didn't use the breathing type of meditation, I used the mantra type. But I don't say mantras anymore and I don't need to; I can be in a meditation state in an instant. It's the same with the breathing breath, just like a mantra is used. Because it fills your mind with something that's non-operable. By non-operable, I mean, it's nothing that you're going to think about, oh, I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out, you know, that just happens automatically, you don't have to think about it.
The mantra is a word that doesn't mean anything in particular, you know, it's a word that has kind of a resonant ending, has a little vibration to it. But other than that, any sound will do as well as any other sound. I know, sometimes people sell magic sounds, or meditation monitors and stuff, but any sound will do just as well.
You use that sound of the mantra to replace thoughts that come into your head. So the mantra kind of fills up your mind space and crowds the thought out. The same with the breathing; when you take your deep breath, you're aware of being in a relaxed state, and you focus on being in touch with everything.
Eventually, you don't need to be focused on your breath or anything else. You just live in that state all the time. So I don't do any kind of breathing exercises or anything.

Thoughts About God

Interestingly enough, I was at a Unitarian Church, giving a program there. That church was just the venue, they had a less expensive room to rent than anybody else. And there were two theologians there that went along with that church.
They were there while I was giving my talk and I asked them, I said, you two both have PhDs in theology, tell me, what are the attributes of God? Now, I said, I don't want dogma, I just want the general, what are the attributes of God. And this was a Unity Church, so they're into a little less dogma in that organization.
So they spent a little bit of time in a conference talking to each other for about a minute or so and they came up with this list of attributes of God. And the reason I asked is, I compared that list to the attributes of the larger consciousness system. And I thought, I wonder how they're going to compare. And as it turned out, there was a one for one. Everything they had on their list was also an attribute of the larger consciousness system.
[They said] it's perfect, all-knowing, knows everything all the time. It's Supernatural. It's infinite. And well, my larger conscious system is not infinite. It's a natural system, not a supernatural system. Everything is a part of it. But it's not necessarily aware of everything all the time, it has to focus its attention on things. And it can be aware of a whole lot more than I can because it's got a lot bigger mind than I have.
But it's also limited in that its number of bits is limited, it's finite. So it has to be efficient, in the way it does things. You can't just do things sloppily, if it's going to make a simulation, it's got to do that in an efficient way. It has constraints. It has a boundary, what's outside that boundary, have no idea. And we can't know because we're in it, we're conscious.
We can't see an experience outside of what we are, you know? Yes, a lot of people are very religious, or at least they describe themselves as very religious. That also, like my Big TOE, they're not incompatible. I expected them to be incompatible because of my brush with religion had mostly been very dogmatic.
But I found out that there are lots of people as individuals, they may belong to dogmatic religion, but they're not dogmatic at all. They've outgrown that. They don't have to go there, the details don't matter. Then they see the big picture. It's about being kind and caring about love. They have all the big picture stuff. And, you know, they're just not that interested in the details that aren't important to them. So in that sense, the larger consciousness system is the source of everything else.

Advice for People Who Love to Study

I was always very slow at almost everything, because I just rejected memorization. Memorizing how to get the right answers to me did not make sense.
When I got to graduate school, I was a little envious of the guys that could write the right answer down in a few minutes, because I couldn't do that.
After talking with them, I found out that they were envious of me because I could solve the problems that they couldn't [solve]. [For] the problems that they hadn't learned a methodology to get the right answer, they were stuck. Yeah. And I wasn't stuck. But I was very slow, and they weren't. They were very fast.
So it had its advantages and disadvantages. It has to make sense, has to be derived from the bottom up, otherwise it's just not even worth doing it. So if your son's like that, then I'd tell him to persevere and just keep doing it. Don't learn to ‘Plugin' any more than you have to to get a decent grade. And if it doesn't make sense, then you don't understand it yet.

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Sunday Mar 27, 2022

Be As Young As You Feel

Sunday Mar 27, 2022

Be as young as you feel is my topic for today, Mindful Tribe. Part two of Tom Campbell's, ‘What Is Consciousness' will be published on Wednesday night, so in three days from now. I honestly believe that no matter what your actual age is, you can choose to feel young and there are a lot of different ways of doing that. Today I'm excited to share
some of the thoughts that I have on this topic. I am sending out some Mindfulness Mode mugs and T shirts to some of my listeners who responded with an email. Check out my Instagram, and my TikTok.

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5 Ways To Feel Young

Here are five ways you can feel young, no matter what your age might be. And the first one is something we talk about a lot on the show. Be as young as you feel by being in charge of your thoughts.

Be In Charge Of Your Thoughts

Notice your thoughts. Be aware of what your thoughts are, are they, you know, put down thoughts are they thoughts where you're, you're putting yourself down and thinking negatively about you and who you are and what you're doing. Notice your thoughts, and don't let your thoughts be your inner bully. Now, sometimes that happens, like it's normal, I think, I think it's human, to sometimes notice that you're may be saying something negative. But don't let your thoughts be your inner bully on a lasting basis. There are a lot of ways you can make sure that doesn't happen. You can use mantras. If you notice that you're sending some negative thoughts to yourself, just start saying a mantra over and over and over. And I do that a lot. And I find it very much helps me meditate. We've talked a lot about meditation, choose to meditate every morning and every night. I think it's just a beautiful addition to my life. Read uplifting material. Watch inspiring videos. Feed your brain with positivity. There's a lot of negativity you could be feeding your brain with, but do spend time feeding your brain with that which is positive. Choosing great thoughts can help you be as young as you feel.

Minimize Sugar

Sugar causes inflammation. It definitely does. We we know that scientists have told us this over and over and over and inflammation does not do good things in your body. inflammation causes joint pain. It makes arthritis way worse. It causes all kinds of other challenges. Minimize sugar in your life and you will feel better. It is not easy. It takes a little time. Drink a lot of water, fresh, beautiful water and minimize the sugar in your life.

Check out my episode where I interview Barry Friedman. He talked about being an advocate of living the sugar free lifestyle. I met him in San Diego, and was so inspired by him that I went right ahead and cut sugar out of my diet, and it made a huge difference. Barry was a professional juggler for a very long time. It was interesting talking to him way back on episode 91. The episode is called, Barry Friedman Explains How To Be Present and Mindful. So go to www.mindfulnessmode.com/091.

Another episode that we talked about feeding your brain was episode 284, Discover the better brain solution with Dr. Stephen Masley. Make a decision to minimize sugar in your diet and it will help you be as young as you feel.

Get Moving

As humans, for some reason, there's something going on our brains that sometimes tell us not to get moving. I run almost every day and I find that by making the commitment to be active every day, I feel younger and more energetic. A lot of our guests talk about how important it is to move. Make a commitment to yourself and stick to it, to move every day. Whether it's walking, or running, swimming, cycling, maybe it's martial arts, just move. I have a mini trampoline and that is so easy on the joints, to just bounce on that and just allow your body to just feel good as you bounce. Moving every day will help you be as young as you feel.

Breathe

Another topic you hear about constantly on mindfulness mode is the subject of breathing. It seems as though all my guests realize how very important breathing is. Breathing is something that can help you. We spend far too much of our time shallow breathing, and our bodies and especially our brains need oxygen, and we thrive on having ample oxygen. So do daily breathing exercises and just believe it, that breathing can change your life. Breathing is just a beautiful thing. So there are several episodes where we talk quite a bit about breathing like 511 Pause, breathe and smile to awaken your mindfulness. And that's by Gary Gach. And 49, Make a connection between becoming aware and breathing suggests Andrea Klunder Another person I met at an event in the United States number 109. Breathe in the universe to cope with mental illness. And that was Michael Weinberger in episode 109. So breathing and taking in lots of oxygen will help you to be as young as you feel.

Laugh

Laughter is one of the most underrated things you can do. Make sure you laugh every day, even if you're just laughing for the sake of laughing. Laughing causes me to just feel so good and I think that we don't laugh enough. I say that often. I think it's great if you can find something really truly funny to laugh at and you can have a really good belly laugh. But apparently scientists have come to realize that we don't actually have to have something super funny to laugh at. As long as you're laughing, it delivers the same benefits to you. And this is what I learned from Dr. Madan Cataria, and he is features in the episode that was called Laughing in the face of COVID-19. I interviewed him in April of 2020. He's the person who started Laughter Yoga. You can go online search up Laughter Yoga, and you can join a virtual class of Laughter Yoga, and just laugh and and feel good, and I highly recommend it. Another person I interviewed was Soren Russow, Booster Shot of Happiness is the name of the episode. He's a guy that loves to laugh and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Soren so you can check out that episode as well. And definitely do check out a laughter yoga group online in order to be as young as you feel.

So my top five tips to be as young as you feel, or maybe I should say begin to feel as young as you want are:

1/ be in charge of your thoughts 2/ minimize sugar 3/ get moving 4/ breathe 5/ laugh.

Take what we've learned today to reach new heights of calm focus and happiness. Stay in the mode.

Suggested Resources

Related Episodes

How To Be Present And Mindful; Barry Friedman
Discover the better brain solution with Dr. Stephen Masley
Pause, breathe and smile to awaken your mindfulness; Gary Gach
Make a connection between becoming aware and breathing; Andrea Klunder
Breathe in the universe to cope with mental illness. And that was Michael Weinberger
Laughing in the face of COVID-19,Madan Kataria
Booster Shot of Happiness; Russell Soren

Wednesday Mar 23, 2022

What Is Consciousness; Tom Campbell (Part 1)

Wednesday Mar 23, 2022

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Mindfulness According to Tom Campbell

First let's say mindfulness isn't a thing you do, it's a thing you become.
Mindfulness, of course, is not a real precise term. So there's probably at least four or five, or six ways to look at it. And when you look at an each of those different ways, you'll get a little better idea of just what mindfulness is. Let me kind of state it and then restate it in multiple ways. Being mindful means that you have some discipline with your consciousness, and undisciplined consciousness is kind of zinging off on all sorts of thoughts and places and things.
To be mindful requires you to have some discipline. So mindfulness takes a little work, it's not something that's just a trivial thing to do. It takes work for people to develop those skills. Mindfulness is about whatever it is you're doing, you're doing it purposefully, you're aware that you're doing it, and you're doing it, you know, for a reason. And you're aware of that reason.
Which means it's the opposite of being on automatic, it's the opposite of being a zombie. It's the opposite of just kind of drifting through life, turning the crank that you always turn, and you're so habituated to that crank that you just never think about really much of anything. You just repeat every day, sort of like it was the last day; you get up, you go to work, you push buttons, you work your mouse at work, and you come home and you eat dinner, and you watch TV; it's that sort of thing. So that's not mindful, that's just letting your life run on automatic.
Mindfulness is kind of the first step in getting to know who you are. It's getting to know your own consciousness. It will help you answer your own question, ‘What Is Consciousness'. And until you're mindful, you don't really know who you are. You make choices.

The Birth of Big Toe Theory

The way I created it was I looked at all the facts that I knew about consciousness, and that was after about 35 years of studying consciousness. And I had two parallel careers. One was in consciousness research, and one was in physics. The conscious research I did at night, and physics I did in the daytime.
So basically, after a long time, I thought I knew enough about consciousness to make a good consciousness model. So I took all the facts of consciousness and I took all the facts of the physical world, which I knew most of because I'm a physicist. And I came up with an idea theory, a model that would explain all of those facts on both sides, and explain everything we know now. Which means in the objective and the subjective world, as well as make projections about things that we don't know. So that's how I made it. And that's called a TOE; a theory of everything.
Now, Einstein coined that word, ‘theory of everything', when he was trying to unite relativity and quantum physics because those two really have a foundational level, they don't really get along with each other too well. Each one has an assumption that the other one denies exists.
So Einstein knew there was something bigger. There was had to be something bigger above them in the hierarchy of causality. Something above them that could explain both of them. And then they would be kind of both part of a bigger thing. So he worked on that for the last 20 years of his life and fails, he didn't come up with a with a TOE, Theory of Everything.
Now, in my world, that TOE was just a objective TOE. That's all it was; just quantum physics and relativity, that's the objective world. But mine was about also the subjective world, because consciousness is subjective.
So I didn't want to say that this was a TOE. That would be confusing, so I call it a big TOE. And then that's of course kind of amusing at the same time, but I figured all right, that's a good attention getter. You know, that might pull some people browsing the bookshelf on BIG TOE. What's that about? Particularly if you find it in the philosophy or physics sections of the shelf that might draw attention? So that's it all right, we'll go with that.
But the point of it is not that I'm so proud of it, that it's my Big TOE. The point is that it's based on my experience. And if it's not your experience, it can't be your truth. You can't [dispute] something that you know to be true, can't be based on somebody else's experience. You have to experience it yourself.
So I wanted my readers to not believe what I said, but rather to go find out for themselves, because you have to know when we're talking about the internal world of consciousness, we're talking about that subjective state, you can't read about that.
What other people feel, you've got to go do it, and get there on your own. So I specifically called it my Big TOE to let people know that you have to find your own Big TOE. This is mine based on my experience.
And if you can use that as a model to help you find your own, well, good, use it as a model, use what parts of it work and throw the rest away. And that's the way you should approach it. So that's why I called it my Big TOE.

Bullying Story

It goes back a long, long time ago. And it's pretty much the last time that I really got angry about something; got really out of control. I haven't done that since I was probably, maybe 13 or something like that.
I was at a Boy Scout camp. I was there for several weeks. WhI was somebody to pick on. They would grab my stuff and throw it around, you know typical kids.
Kids do that because they're very self-centered. And they don't have any appreciation for what they're doing to other people when they do that. In general, I was a pretty laid back kid and didn't get riled up very easily.
But after the third or fourth or fifth round of that bullying and throwing my things and messing with we, like tearing all the sheets and stuff off the bed and throwing them outside. It was annoying and it just kept going on and on and on.
I realized I was going to have three days of this if I didn't do something about it. I knew that going up in the chain and saying these people are giving me a problem probably wouldn't work and hardly ever works. So what I did was I got angry, and I knew that I had to stand up to them the best I could. So when that happened again, after I had gotten to the end of my rope, I just hauled off and started slugging this kid, knocked him down and hurt him. And after that, they all backed off.
I didn't hurt him badly. I hurt probably his ego more than anything else. But because I was smaller than he was, he didn't see it coming. And I didn't let up until he was down. So the time that happened, I kind of came back to myself and the anger. It was all adrenaline at that point. And I saw that the others weren't going to jump in. They were backing off now. So they weren't really terribly mean, kids, they were just being bullies because they could.
So it's not like they really wanted to beat me because they were they were thugs. They were just kids. So that was the one time that I got bullied and after fighting back, it stopped. So that was a good object lesson.
For me, ‘turn the other cheek' is really good advice some of the time, but not all the time. Sometimes you get to a point where you have to push back. And it didn't matter. At that point I didn't care whether they beat me up or not. I had to vent and do whatever it is I could. But you know, now that I think about it, even if they had beat me up, they probably would have stopped doing what they were doing. Right? That's my one experience with bullying.

Most Influential Person

One of the persons that that was a big influence on me would have been Bob Monroe. Bob was about the same age as my father, I guess. So he was kind of a father figure. And in that sense, he was an older guy, I was in my 20s. And he was in his 50s. Going to 60s. And he was a good role model. He seemed to be able to handle almost everything positively.
I don't think I ever saw him get angry or get upset. So that was a good influence. But mostly, I'm not very easily influenced by anything or anybody, I don't have a lot of favorites or connections like that. I've always been like my sons. Both of my sons have enough self confidence for two or three people. And I think I was like that as well.
So I didn't have a lot of books that I read, or people that I met or things that really changed me very much. Because my changes all had to come from inside myself. And they really weren't triggered so much by other people as they were triggered by my seeing that I needed to make the change.

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness changes everything. When I first started on this path, I had a lot of growing up to do. I was a young physicist in graduate school, in my middle to late 20s. And if you know any young physicists in graduate school in their 20s, you probably will know that they're kind of arrogant, they kind of feel like they know everything. That kind of goes with that profession, at least when you're young.
Now, because you tend to be a little arrogant anyway, when you're young, because you're still kind of self-centered; I had to outgrow that. But it just slowly disappears.
And I think this is the key, as you grow up; your picture gets bigger and bigger, your decision space gets bigger and bigger. The possibilities that you have, I could do this, or I could do that. I could change this way or that way. Whereas somebody that has no idea they could change at all, you know, doesn't have that in their decision space.
So as that grows, and your picture gets bigger, then you're no longer such a big person in this bigger picture, you begin to realize that you're just a tiny little speck of something that's much bigger than you are. There's purpose to your being here.
That helps get rid of most of that arrogance, that self centeredness. So I'd say the key things for me was my pictures kept getting bigger and bigger, my understanding kept getting bigger and bigger. And I realized that most of me being a smart young physicist, was totally irrelevant, didn't have any value. That wasn't a concept that carried value, that was a concept to carry negative value, not positive.

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Sunday Mar 20, 2022

Move The Body, Heal The Mind; Dr. Jennifer Heisz

Sunday Mar 20, 2022

Jennifer Heisz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Brain Health and Aging in Kinesiology at McMaster University and author of ‘Move the Body, Heal the Mind.’ She directs the NeuroFit lab at McMaster where research is done to study ways to promote mental and physical health, thus improving cognitive abilities. Jennifer is a triathlete and recent solo ironman finisher.

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Most Influential Person

Eckhart Tolle. I read a lot of his work. I listened to his audiobook while I was cycling. Oh, yeah. Just that that consistent message, the power of now, you know, being in the present moment. That's been that that was a really helpful message to me at the time when I had discovered him.

Effect on Emotions

I would say that mindfulness helps me be less reactive to my emotions. So sure stressors still exist in my life, but I'm less reactive to them. And, and they their options rather than truce. And so it allows me to take a step back and decide how I want to react or not react.

Thoughts on Breathing

I talked about attention to breath in the book(Move The Body, Heal The Mind), and throughout the book, because this is a really helpful way to incorporate mindfulness into movement.
Research shows that when we pay attention to the breath, it really helps to soothe a brain region called the amygdala, which is our fear and threat detection center in the brain.
Paying attention to our breath, our prefrontal cortex, which is the logic part of our brain can help soothe that anxious amygdala so that we don't feel as afraid or anxious.

About Meditation

My book is called Move The Body, Heal The Mind, and is about exercise but exercise, in my opinion, is just one tool in the whole toolkit you can use to help support your mental health. And meditation is also another one, a very important one that I do every morning, I do a little bit of meditation, whether, depending on the time, I have five minutes, or 30 minutes, and just just reconnecting with, the center, reconnecting with a peace and calmness within me.
That helps to reframe and refocus my mind for the day. So mindfulness has been such an important part of my life for a long time. And I think it's good direct brain training. It trains the brain, the thought patterns, so that you can have control over those thoughts.
When we move our bodies in challenging ways, we do enter into the present moment more readily. And then there's a direct correlation we show in our research, between people who are more active and people who are more mindful. So they really do go hand in hand.

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Bullying Story

The kids in my school were just, you know, they were just cruel. They would just sing a song, you know, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. “Come on, Jen sing.”
But I think I was always able to just let it slide. I think nowadays, maybe, you know, my own thoughts are my own bully.
That's the bullying that I need to be most mindful of, is the sort of negative self-talk that that can creep in. Especially when I'm stressed and anxious.
So for sure, I would say these days, the bullying is is self induced. I certainly benefit from really stepping back from the thoughts and taking a very careful look at the accuracy of the thoughts and then potentially just sending them on their way, letting them float away.

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