#101: Movement as Meditation - George Thompson

0:00The Qigong model and the Daoist model is that we are our own doctors, we are our own healers. and we do that through understanding the ways of nature, the ways that we work and really giving ourselves what we deeply need. As we come into the body through the breath and through meditation and awareness, we begin to connect with this energetic being that we are, 36 trillion cells, self-organizing. Then that's the wisdom journey is that nobody else can do the work for you. People can support you. They can be mirrors to help clarify your own wisdom. that has to be experienced coming from the present moment, which is ever-changing.

0:37Even if you read every book that ever existed, it won't prepare you for the infinitely complex and ever-changing present moment. Really, it's meeting this life as it is with lightness to empower ourselves that we can be our own healers and it comes from understanding our patterns. The evidence of a beautiful way of understanding the world is one that empowers you to discover for yourself.

1:05Welcome back to the Fit Mind podcast, where we talk with experts on the mind, including neuroscientists, psychologists, to Navy SEALs and monks. They share cutting-edge research, fascinating stories and proven advice for creating a fit mind, one that is full of focus, vitality and joy. I also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that we recently released an incredible free course on the app and YouTube called 30 Days of Meditation Science and Bliss where we blend together the most recent and cutting-edge neuroscience with the best contemplative practices. The feedback we've had so far has been incredible.

1:43It's legitimately changed my life and thousands of others. We also now survive entirely off donations. Whether or not you can help us financially, if you could just like or subscribe, comment below or share this podcast or the course with anybody that you think it will help. Our main goal is simply to help as many people as we can. Today we have an amazing guest, George Thompson. George is a Tai Chi teacher and Taoist practitioner. His journey spans from a troubled youth to filmmaker and Tai Chi practitioner in the Wudang Mountains in a story that could only be compared to that of the Karate Kid.

2:20We talk about him discovering his amazing teacher, Master Gu, and the profound impact of his teachings on self-discovery and overcoming the inner critic and self-compassion, the importance of breathwork, meditation and daily mental well-being practices, Taoist perspective on life, healing and embracing challenges as opportunities, insights on mindfulness and integration into everyday life. We talk about filmmaking as a pathway to nature connection and life balance the transformative power of intuition kindness and serving others he recently released an amazing new documentary which is free on youtube called the subtle art of losing yourself the documentary is one of the most beautiful and inspiring that i have ever seen and it was co-produced by the amazing louis schwarzenberg who also produced the fantastic fan guy.

3:17I really hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. And without further ado, let's dive in with George Thompson. George, welcome to the Fitmind Podcast. Thank you, Josh. Great to be here. So I'd love to start with your journey. You've had an incredible, I think, karate kid-esque story that's taken you to the Wudang Mountains in China. But maybe let's go back a little bit and start with your childhood what was what was George like growing up yeah so for people who haven't seen my work from before now I am a filmmaker and I share Taoist philosophy the yin yang philosophy from ancient China with so many beautiful insights as to who we are and our potential for wisdom and for peace and I knew nothing about this growing up I had never heard of Taoism before and yeah growing up as a child I always loved nature I was always walking in nature and enjoying that I was also passionate about climate change and I remember watching Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and that really awoke an activist in me I was also yeah grew up a Christian for a little bit of time and talked to Jesus tried to do some prayers to fix my dad's back but my prayers were never picked up and i was a bit like this isn't working the divine doesn't just answer my my calls like it's supposed to and yeah so then i became an atheist and yeah you know really still today a big lover of science and as we can explore in this conversation the daoists their method of discovery is observation so it's observing patterns and so yeah when i later found darism it really worked with my scientific instincts i yeah i guess growing up curiosity i always loved learning i always enjoyed working as well like i've had a work ethic where i enjoy taking action um but that also then led to some some burnout and some pain which i could talk about as well yeah amazing it's interesting that that aligns a lot with with my past as well and i agree a lot of this the contemplative practices it's almost a big surprise when you discover they were using like a sort of early iteration of scientific philosophy for discovery and the patterns are really what control our lives so yeah i'm excited to dive into that the start of the the more recent journey what what was it that that drew you to moving moving to China?

5:56Yeah so I finished university, entered into the big bad real world, was delivering food with Deliveroo, cycling on my bike, earning not a lot of money, making videos so you know I kind of had this vision of being a sort of entrepreneur doing stuff around climate that I didn't really know what I was doing and I thought well I'm gonna make this YouTube channel and bring people on the journey with me from some clueless graduate to hopefully doing something interesting. I was making videos I thought were good and I equated my value as a human being with the number of views I was getting, but I wasn't getting any views.

6:32And so that meant that I wasn't a valuable human being. And a part of me, which I later called the underminer, who was a troubled wizard, would begin to dominate my headspace and say, George, not many friends, still single. Oh, and now you're anxious. You're pathetic. Look at all the other things that you've been given in your life you don't deserve to be anxious you're weak so i had to you know get to know this part of my mind and i really didn't know how to relate to it so i descended into anxiety and confusion and i thought you know all i've really done is be by myself for like six weeks and i'm in the biggest mental health crisis of my life so far and so i knew something needed to change there's also you know like a teaching in that of the pain can be the path you know what's in the way is the way and you know i've got friends who go on this journey of waking up and you know understanding who we are understand understanding our consciousness that have come from joy you know like reading ala watts for example like wait it's like i already think about all of this and this this is stuff i already think about so that's pretty awesome if if you know your journey of self-discovery comes from that but for me like many of us it's you know I'm hurting and I don't want to hurt anymore I've been running away from this for a long time and actually I'm going to turn towards it so literally as arbitrarily as having watched some videos of kung fu monks doing backflips at uni I wrote that in my diary and then when I was anxious I was like yeah I want to go learn in a monastery and so I bought a flight to China arrived at the wudang mountains which is the birthplace of wudang kung fu and tai chi arrived at a monastery went up to a monk sweeping the floor and i said ni hao kung fu and she's like wabudong like i don't understand what you're saying i said okay okay no worries went up to another monk who's carrying tea and i got to say ni hao kung fu and she's like what are you chatting about try this with a few the monks turns out it wasn't a kung fu monastery to begin with it was a female only daoist monastery with lots of like old grannies who who maybe would do tai chi but but not kung fu so i just done my research badly so i turned to plan b if i can't learn in a kung fu monastery i'll learn in a kung fu school asked the locals to help me they ended up taking me to a tai chi school i thought tai chi isn't that for older people but i tried it and fell in love with it i met master gu my tai chi master got the ponytail and the goatee just happened to be the only english-speaking master on the whole mountain and we brought me into this stunning world of tai chi and meditation and daoist philosophy and one big insight and there's many that i'm sure we'll explore but just I judge myself as being uniquely messed up like you know nobody understands my pain I am I can't share my pain because I feel shame about being anxious and then to read these books from two and a half thousand years ago from the other side of the planet of ancient people struggling as well and their solutions still hitting you know which spoke to me that there's a nature here there's something fundamental about understanding how I work that leads to peace and that journey continues what was it first like when you met master goo what was what was your yeah what were your initial feelings towards him what's he like as a person what i love about master goo is his joy his joy is infectious and you're like each teacher that we have in life you know like friends um books that we read teachers and guys that we may meet on our journey they all have their own unique secret sauce which is because we're all unique like the classic every no no two snowflakes are the same well i watched a hilarious video of like well that's not very interesting because no two anything is the same in nature no two leaves are the same no two trees are the same no two humans are the same and so yeah each teacher has their own gifts and for master goo it's his joy for me that's my experience and just to give you some funny examples of that so he would be like walking up the mountain steps playing guitar singing chinese opera to the mountains and then in the morning he would yeah like sometimes crack his boiled egg open on his forehead just like that's how he would smash it open and you know it'd just be like just a funny little surprise missing high fives and then with that levity and i do think like the spiritual teachers that i've met and if spirituals are where that works for you like and we can i can share my understanding of that it's a universal concept for me of my connection and my place in the universe then yeah they this they have this levity so that was my first impression of him and then you know very generously he guided me into this this culture and he really I was grateful felt you know he's generous in how he shared it because some teachers they can keep the secret sauce and certainly in Taoism you know you've got to sit meditating for five years before the teacher's even going to begin to show you the basic standing meditation posture whereas I felt very grateful that Master Guru generously invited me into the culture I did get that from his videos and as well to me, I think, yeah, fun, lightness, joy, compassion, that that's really what I would always be drawn towards in a teacher.

12:22I have a lot of respect for people that aren't necessarily drawn to that. And as you said, no two people are the same. Um, but yeah, it's interesting that that would be the, the more inspirational traits. I think to me, they were the traits that I looked up to as a child as well what i tried to to embody so yeah very lucky that he was the the english master on the mountain yeah his friends would say like oh so you two met through unfen which is their word for destiny which for them is as tangible as meeting down the pub and when you first got there what was what was the initial training and exposure like what was because because in some ways you must have been unaware what you what you were in for i guess absolutely yeah i didn't know what tai chi was didn't know what daoism was i had done had a few meditations on headspace at university but that was about it so it was really clueless but you know like an intention i was like you know meditation is probably gonna be good for me so yeah it was i mean i had seven injuries starting off with tai chi which is i was surprised because I was my wrists were hurting my ankles were hurting my feet were hurting my knees were hurting my hip and you'd think well a soft gentle tai chi how could that happen but tai chi is comes from the martial art culture so it's a moving meditation you move with your breath like yoga but you're standing up and you're imagining you've got all these attackers coming from different directions and you yeah begin to internalize these beautiful graceful movements as then I learned to get out of my head and then to actually come into my body not just as like you know eat healthy and run but like this is a a place I can rest a teacher has so much wisdom and to yeah Tai Chi for me to like actually wow realize all of this that's already in me that I could reconnect with and then through these injuries and and this training yeah like the daily routine is like four hours of tai chi training a day from 9 a.m to 11 a.m and then three to five and then other cultural things and meditation things as well but beginning to strengthen my body and to have a functional form of strength like yoga is great for flexibility and in the kind of this plane, in this kind of the straight plane, but opening the legs wide, having strong glutes, strong legs.

14:59One of the classes that I teach now is called Strong Qigong. And we get a strong leg and a strong mind from that. I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you that we recently released on the app an amazing new course called 30 Days of Meditation, Science and Bliss. The course and practice has honestly changed my life. And I cannot believe that it's free. The course brings together the latest neuroscience with what we find are the most effective contemplative practices. FitMind now purely survives on donations and even if you can't help us out financially you could just drop a comment below.

15:35These things help us out so much and we really appreciate the help. Now back to the episode. What did those initial injuries, because often you hear that old injuries come up as you start to practice particularly the moving practices it seems qigong and tai chi i seem to hear it more often do you feel that they were old injuries or just weaknesses emerging yeah just to give you one example i when i was younger hiking down mountains my knees would always hurt and this is something that my family like my grandfather had two knee replacements my mum had bad knees so my story at that time was I have bad knees started Tai Chi and you know Tai Chi the problem with civilization in terms of our body strength is that everything's flat and even and we don't need to move as much as our ancestors did you know you don't see monkeys going to Pilates you know they they just are moving in their very nature and our ancestors moved as their nature now in our modern world we don't need to do that one problem with the knees is that you know steps they are flat it means our knees not very often are going outside of the normal kind of straight range of motion so it means all the supporting muscles around them particularly for me the glutes my glutes weren't strong enough to stop my knees collapsing so i started tai chi and had knee injuries and that story of i've got bad knees came up but then actually i realized i don't have bad knees i have weak knees because this injury it was if I could see its wisdom it was a signal to say that something needed to change like if I just stopped at the pain and said well you know my body's too weak I can't do this then I wouldn't have heeded the signal the signal was that yeah there's something there's a weakness here and so yeah I began to strengthen my knees knees over toes guy shout out to a great YouTube channel if people want to check out if you want to get stronger knees and then lo and behold yeah within that first trip my knee pain was completely healed and just yeah testament to actually strengthening the body not just stretching but strengthening in applied ranges of motion can transform how much energy we have and how injury free we are i don't know if you're familiar with michael levin the biologist's work actually but i think in terms of the science he's probably got the closest representation of how this is working and he's finding that particularly with like cancers there's like a bioenergetic field between cells at least this is my understanding and i think there still needs to be somewhat peer review but basically when the cells aren't communicating properly the cancer can spread and as soon as he adjusts the bioenergetic field for the the cells to sort of communicate effectively again which tends to happen when we're at kind of homeostasis or the effects that we find from these practices then the cancer will then disappear and i think it's quite a like i've been to a qigong retreat and many people were claiming like what seemed like very sort of mystical things but it's interesting that he is finding like something quite similar uh that these we know these practices uh even scientifically lead to these sort of states of homeostasis or extremely calm equanimity down-regulated um nervous system and then that just puts you in a state where you're just ready to heal yeah have you have you come in contact with that as well people healing many many injuries yeah for sure yeah and you know i i see the value of stuff like Wim Hof, but my problem with it is that if people are learning this activating breath and then eventually, you know, they hold their breath out for two minutes and then they get this beautiful stillness because they've just been like hyperventilating and activating their nervous system and then a break.

19:42It's giving an agitating practice to an already agitated society. What I believe is necessary first is to really develop the breath mastery to be able to relax on demand. Because the basic insight is that when we slow the breath down, we slow down the mind, we slow down the heart, we slow down the body through the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, the parachute, parasympathetic slowing us down. we can do this through slowing the breath and so that is a key key key insight and if there's one thing that our beautiful viewers and listeners can remember is that like just begin to bring awareness to your breath and if you'd like to share one practice with me the practice that i do the most throughout the day is just a single breath so powerful and if people would like to join me i'd like to take a breath together to breathe in to soften the face and to breathe out.

20:47Trying one more, breathing in.

20:55Breathing out.

21:02That's it. So easy, so simple. That's something I do throughout the day. and I've got to a stage now where my nervous system automatically gives that to me when I notice stress. 90 % of the time I notice stress, my stress is here on my forehead or clenching of the throat, I notice that and then immediately that soothing breath comes in. So that's where we can get to with our practice. So Qigong is a moving meditation, moving with the breath, it's a way to learn how to regulate our nervous system and then strengthen the body through movement and that breath control is something that okay we do consciously in practice but then eventually the nervous system begins to learn and can present it to us automatically that's usually how it will emerge for me too it feels like a fist somewhere in the fore the forefront or mid-brain which will generally relax i also find the moving practices are just so much easier to stack than more meditation which is just another major major benefit so you've spoken about dealing with the inner critic or an evil wizard mingiya rinpoche might might call this the monkey mind and some westerners might call this ego identity so how did the the tai chi and meditation and and the daoist philosophy how did that help transform your relationship with that in a creative a classic story from the daoist canon is the three vinegar tasters so there's around a big vat of vinegar there's three men these are not any ordinary men but the three great philosophical, great philosophers of the East, Confucius, Buddha and Lao Tzu, Lao Tzu being the founder of Taoist philosophy.

23:02Confucius goes to take a sip of the vinegar and he's got a frown on his face. The vinegar is a metaphor for life and life is sour. And so since life is sour by its essence, we've got to work really hard in order to control life, in order to make it sweet and good. So, you know, we've got to have structures in society. People have got to be very benevolent and working really hard to be good. Life's out. So frown in the face, work hard. Then the Buddha tastes the vinegar and the Buddha is trying not to react because he knows that if he has aversion to the vinegar, then he will be lost in suffering.

23:40If he has craving after some pleasure outside of him, he'll be lost in suffering. So just don't react. then Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, takes a sit and this time he's got a smile on his face, a smile on his face, tasting the sourness of the really sour, sour, bitter vinegar. How could he have that? And Lao Tzu says, well, yeah, this is the nature of the vinegar, to be sour. If I went after this, you know, being all sad, trying to fight that reality, then I would show I would know nothing about fate so that's why i have a light smile so that's a a beautiful story that's indicative of the daoist approach to healing and to joy and really it's meeting this life as it is with lightness and that lightness comes from a perspective that we can get deep into of like really understanding with clarity who we are so not we're not so attached to yeah maybe what you could call the monkey mind that thinking and that craving and that constriction and contraction but instead to open up into more flow more ease more flexibility so applying it to the inner critic yeah the underminer that's what i call my inner critic is a part of being human you know in a an infinitely complex world with this little brain where uncertainty may mean death this brain tries to work through all the things that could go wrong and if i am bad and things go wrong with me at least the locus of control is with me then i can get better so like i'm bad now get better the powers within me it's actually more scary for the brain to say well there's yeah sour stuff out there there's dangerous stuff out there and there's nothing i can do about it so i've got to release control and embrace uncertainty and mystery and just trust myself to move from the present moment so we actually have a biological tendency to internalize external challenge into stories about how we're not enough and we're not good enough and and life's painful and we're we're flawed in various ways so that's the sourness that you know can bring people down but like if we can understand that that's the nature of being a human being then compassion arises compassion naturally arises when there's understanding so for me okay the undermine is there it doesn't make me uniquely messed up this is part of being human and if i don't fight that if i actually embrace this is who i am even if you know there's parts of me that judge me as being weak can i can i welcome that and say okay yeah that's that's fine this is part of my present moment experience and then as i found the more i could extend that compassion to all parts of myself that's then when i began to really transform and to find that peace and ease and joy beautifully shared i love that and it's so true we put a lot of focus on the heart qualities there's some evidence that the heart qualities change the default mode network quicker but i love what you said about understanding being the foundation of that and yeah that i can see how that could increase your ability or it just spontaneously arise from the understanding and you can also to put it in had shamil shandaria on fairly recently talked about the bayesian brain hypotheses and to put it in somewhat some of the neuroscience terms they would say that we would have layers of prediction errors so as expecting the vinegar shouldn't be like this it shouldn't be sour or i should have drank something else or whatever it might be there's an expectation of what didn't happen which creates a prediction error and then that will create suffering so the meditation is coming down the stack of that and bringing us closer to its true nature to use daos terms or or how it really is or however you want to present that so yeah i think it's just such a powerful practice yeah and the coming down that's such a important distinction because yeah the brain is here and there's voice in our head so that's normally how we identify ourselves with you know i am george that's me i have a body i am in a body and that leads to disembodiment like I'm kind of this separate psyche like a mote of consciousness inside this flesh robot but actually as we come into the body through the breath and through meditation and awareness then yeah we begin to connect with this energetic being that we are 36 trillion cells self-organizing you know the the gut has its own brain hundreds of millions of neurons and there is a lot of wisdom and and yeah like i said earlier like not just the body's a thing to keep healthy so your brain's healthy but like it's a it can be a teacher and you know like connect with your gut what does that mean you know when you're making decisions but to take a breath and to come down into emptiness emptiness is one of the key words in daoism it's actually my name that the master goo gave me shoo because that was always the thing that i found hard it's like i'm a I'm a Westerner that wants to do.

29:13And so then to trust emptiness, to not just rely only on my thinking mind, to come into my body, to then intuitively, you know, kind of, it's something that all of us have to experience. It's not something that you can really explain with words, but to intuitively check into more wisdom. That's the only way I can really put it. So like to have a more intuitive way to make decisions as opposed to just relying on cognition. That's a great example, actually. How would you, how would you just feel a lot of Westerners struggle with emptiness as a concept, partly, potentially because you can't understand it as a concept.

29:53But for those looking to try, how would you, how would you describe it?

30:00i think like always coming from experience like that's that's always the way into the the deeper philosophical understanding so we're having a shower not together you're having a shower in your own house and so you have ideas come up you know you're finally not on the technology you have these insights and then you know you're rushing out to go take some notes because you have these moments of insight. You're walking in nature with the dog, you have these moments of insight. So this emptiness, like when we're not filling our mind, then it creates the spaciousness, another key word, spaciousness, for then that intuitive insight to come up.

30:43So to protect, firstly, protect that space, you know, to carve out that space every day, which is why daily meditation practice is so life-changing, because you can really then begin to train your heart and mind to firstly enjoy being in that space and then secondly you know what can come out creatively you know it's not just be empty do nothing you know not that we are seeking to do something from that space but if it does come out then yeah like for me all of my films have at least been created if not improved from my meditation practice because you know i can get to this beautiful space where you know i'm not seeking it but then eventually you know i am visualizing yeah like a my whole film you know like i was in a 10-day silent meditation retreat and yeah my my recent one i had a whole yeah like a two-hour show that i'm going to do like i've been doing ecstatic tai chi and sharing philosophy on yeah i did a for my film did like a 200-person movie theater event and i was just visualizing spontaneously this whole thing come through and it's just a really deep and beautiful experience if i was craving after that if i was seeking that with the rational mind i would have blocked that spaciousness so that can be kind of more like to help maybe i'm guessing from this audience of you know people want to do stuff enjoying science enjoying self-growth and learning and like that that that is me that still is me and i really would invite our viewers and listeners to consider really carving out more space because i have found it really powerful one more thing is just then the connection that can come from that so this is when i get more spiritual yeah so what is spirituality for me it's my understanding of something bigger than myself and the extent to which that understanding is a resource that can support me.

32:41So it's the understanding and the resourcing, resourcing, coming back into connection with the source of life. So in emptiness, as I'm present with my lived experience, this breath, this body, this moment, this planet, then I come into relationship with the mystery that is inherent to our being. And when I do that, I begin to dissolve and shed this separate George story of like me being alone facing this big dangerous world outside of me and then actually begin to transform my identity to realizing that I'm an aspect of this whole this great interdependent unfolding I think it's very similar actually that there is because it points to there being no sort of independent existence and I think even fairly well established now the default mode network can be shut off which leads to this no separation between the doing and the doer more that that sort of selfhood collapses and then we feel spontaneously feel connection with the world and everything beyond that so is is that is that the same would you say there is there is no independent existence it's pointing to no independent existence and emptiness of that as well yeah i could give you the origin story of the universe for the daoists would be interested in that so this is chapter 47 of the dao de jing need to confirm that so the dao de jing is the foundational text of daoism so it's the kind of core stunning piece of philosophy is 81 chapters each chapter is very short only a page and yet it's very timeless deep wisdom so so the Tao of Taoism means the way or the path and it can mean the ways of nature so the ways of the universe or it could be the ways of Josh the ways of fit mind the ways of our beautiful viewers and listeners the way of knitting the ways of carrots you know everything has its own Tao.

34:55And so when we understand the Tao, we can harmonize with it. So that's the general, like the observation, the scientific technique that we've talked about, you know, observation, understand the way. So the origin story of the universe from the Tao Te Ching is the Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and the three gives birth to the 10 ,000 things. So the Tao gives birth to one. So like the emptiness that we've been talking about in their view like pre it had to be nothing before something and that nothing like the physical nothing had to hold the potential for the material world and so the dao is this potentiality and this is you know the the mystery even for the scientific story of the universe of the great you know the big bang is like well what set it off and if we live in this deterministic universe then you need the first cause and you know a religious person would say well god set the whole thing off who's the causeless cause like god can start off without anything else but the problem with that is that well you know if god can start without a cause then why can't the universe start without a cause can that be spontaneous as well so the unit the daoists have this have a orgasm orgasmic orgasmic or organismic understanding of the universe where they see it as a spontaneous unfolding but they still see like that potential of of the emptiness before form as yeah as the dao that's the word that they put in it so dao gives birth to one one gives birth to two so from from form and and and you know material beginning to form in the universe then differentiation is formed so yin and yang light and dark being and non-being contrast two gives birth to three so yin and yang interact so you know mother and a father give birth to a child two gives birth to three three gives birth to the 10 000 things from there then we have all this multiplicity and yeah duality and abundance but they can still bring it back to the the fundamental unity of life the apparent duality you know the separation between life and death there's an apparent duality but there could be no life without death could be no death without life all of it in this great interconnected flowing web so certainly you know similar to ideas of buddhism which are generally you know more popular in today's zeitgeist the daoists see it in the same way spontaneous unfolding interconnection yeah the emptiness and what you just beautifully described i feel like it it is really a relief that okay this brain can't really understand what is happening even my best prediction about george it's not a real prediction i can't understand his gut health his past experience why he's doing what he's doing and in many ways that does just bring us back down into the body and into this more relaxed and open state okay i cannot fully understand what you're thinking or what i think you're thinking and therefore i don't need to and often what that leads to is just more connection more openness more spontaneity so i think you also mentioned a little bit earlier about patterns how do you is is there like a because i think a lot of people would go to us like a psychologist today and we would be looking at patterns so is there a specific sort of workflow with that you would in a way you would address patterns yeah so again the dao so it's like understanding the ways of nature and a remembrance of like psychologists and therapists is amazing and you know like i have a therapist and to have someone to hold space who's trained uh and that is beautiful but like a remembrance of that you know meditation teachers have been working with humans that have been struggling for as long as you know meditation has existed which is thousands of years and so yeah like i think that there can be a disempowerment if we if we put healing in the hands of just those that you know have qualified in a degree in something because actually the qigong model and the daoist model is that we are our own doctors we are our own healers and we do that through understanding the ways of nature the ways that we work and really giving ourselves what we deeply need and like needs consciousness I think is a really really important thing and non-violent communication has given me a language to be able to understand myself if people type in non-violent communication book find that book by Marsha Rosenberg stunning life-changing book so what do I need as a human being yeah like so what are these patterns as a human being yeah connection independence safety foods to be seen to be celebrated to be respected to have meaning and purpose you know the list continues and so then each one of those needs has its own pattern and then you are a unique being just as i am just as we all are and so then you know what needs are more dominant and important for us will be different and so then that's the wisdom journey is that nobody else can do the work for you people can support you they can be mirrors to help clarify your own wisdom but wisdom is inherently it has to be experienced it has to be you know coming from the present moment which is ever-changing you know even if you read every book that ever existed it won't prepare you for the infinitely complex and ever-changing present moment which is great because that makes life fun and interesting otherwise would be you know just robotic mechanical machines and so this intuitive wisdom is really the beauty of life and the journey that yeah those that want to take the path are stepping on the stepping step by step piece by piece part by part breath by breath day by day better understanding ourselves falling over picking ourselves back up falling over again picking ourselves back up so yeah maybe that would be my starting point is is to to empower ourselves that you know we can be our own healers and it comes from understanding our patterns yeah i agree and the same thing really you just can't the other person couldn't fully understand the depths of what you're feeling so if you do empower yourself i mean you're in a much greater position to help yourself because of your understanding particularly as you start to investigate with with tools like meditation and tai chi so what what what are some of your like personal go-to daily practices if somebody's struggling i think anxiety addiction and depression would be the major three right now in the zeitgeist what would you recommend for those people

42:14so daily practice so so to hurt is to be human we have awesome potential for peace wisdom and balance practice is the path so to put like compassion to this moment to hurt is to be human you know we live in a world that isn't supporting us to get our needs met and yeah we live in a world of isolation disconnection mass ignorance that are destroying the life support system of our planet to support us it's no wonder so many of us anxious addicted and depressed and yet we blame ourselves you know like i've got a chemical imbalance in my brain or you know it's my fault because i'm weak and i deserve this or i don't deserve love i don't deserve wholeness so to her it's to be human like it's not your fault the stuff you can do to change but really the journey is compassion to the life that's right here that's that's the magic and you know in my journey of like sharing meditation like there's parts of me that can judge myself like well i'm not perfectly at peace at all times i'm not the buddha therefore i'm a fraud and an imposter and you know i've managed to work with those parts and actually release that pressure it's like no like the value that i can give and really the whole point of this journey is to meet the life that's here right now with with compassion and the beautiful thing is that that's a practice our heart and mind can get used to the chemistry of anxiety and self-judgment and it can get used to the chemistry of empowerment and compassion so to her is to be human we've got awesome potential practice is the path then daily practice daily practice so like if we're creating an energy of compassion to the life that's right here and we do our practice once a week that's not going to be really doing our full justice like hey doing it once a week is great but can you do more daily is the key next principle then is don't make your practice so big that you don't do it don't make your practice so big that you don't do it that's one of my key mantras so that even though those breaths that we took earlier so easy let's say what 10 seconds for one breath but that is a really really powerful tool that if you begin to do that three times in the day even once in the day your life will change because what you're doing is beginning to develop your relationship with your own breath to help you relax your nervous system and then to create compassion as a natural consequence of that spaciousness that you develop so don't make your practice so big that you don't do it then in the morning so that's that's the time can you when you wake up just go straight into your practice because sure everyone has their own time that works for them.

45:02I, like most of us, have grumpy George that can be alive in the morning. And, you know, like it makes sense from a nervous system perspective because cortisol is what wakes us up. The stress hormone literally flushes through our nervous system to wake us up. So no wonder that a lot of us feel less resourced and more anxious first thing in the morning. However, if we can get our practice into that, the moment we wake up, you know, maybe go to the toilet but then like yeah just jump straight into it super powerful don't make a practice so big that you do it don't do it what's the smallest you can do so my morning practice is MMA and it's not mixed martial arts it's move meditate affirm so I move I do qigong or I dance and then I do seated practice because I do think there's something in the clarity of the mind of seated meditation and then I affirm, I speak my empowering truth.

45:58This is the affirmations. I used to have my woo-woo alarm, woo-woo, woo-woo, and I'd really got struggled with it, with the like, believe in yourself, you can do anything. Like as a British person, I wasn't quite sure about that. But I really, really believe in the power of affirmations now because it's the technology to work with our storyteller. We are storytelling creatures. and our nervous system and brain and heart can't distinguish between that which is imagined and that which we experience and so if each morning i you know my affirmations is with compassion humility moderation integrity i serve fearlessly i'm on a mission to inspire balance for people and planet and i say that each morning so i'm cheered up i'm in that energy of my like full empowered self and even if that only feels true for that one minute that I'm doing that affirmation then I'm back into grumpy George that still is an experience for my nervous system that then can begin to have that as an option yeah like my empowered whole joyful self is an option so that practice MMA you know and you all have your own practices so take what resonates but that could be like two minutes of movement two minutes of you know five breaths so it could be like playing one song have a track snack five breaths saying one sentence i'm really really nice whatever your sentence is and then you can adjust it so i do 30 minutes in the morning and then i have another practice later in the day but yeah adjusting it to what works for you yeah i love that because we're all looking for the one size fits all and it's it's very difficult to recognize that as you said everybody's unique everybody's different different times in your life it's perhaps better to do more the tricky part with that is sometimes the the ego will jump on and say no you don't just skip it today so how important is breath work in in your personal practice and is there any specific uh like simple uh breathing technique you could share perhaps or that you use yeah so like i've been saying i'm passionate about the the down regulating breath the slow breath and the foundational breath so a few practices four seven eight breathing is really beautiful breathing in for holding holding for seven breathing out for eight box breathing breathing in for four holding for four breathing out for four holding out for four that can take us to a deeper practice and I could talk more about that if you want but the the deeper practice is is Taoist true breathing so Taoist true breathing is the breath that emerges when your breath is so subtle so quiet so gentle that you can barely perceive the breath coming in and out through your nostrils and the breath happens by itself so it's just like so gentle so slow and deep deep states of concentration can arise from that breath and it's really beautiful and box breathing is you know how i teach it so you start with the box breathing so then you can get used to holding the breath out holding the breath in relaxing in those breath holds and then instead of having it like a box then it's just beginning to make it more like a wave or a circle where there's this still point and yeah maybe you'll rest in that still point but you're not you're never holding so actually the daoists they don't like to hold the breath because it's a it's a blockage of the chi flow the energy breath flow so like chi meaning energy and breath and so they like to yeah get to this daoist true breathing i personally do love holding the breath i i think is firstly accessible and easy and then it's a tool on that journey so eventually the daoists I want you to have this really gentle, slow breathing.

50:02So most people will be wondering how throughout the day they'll be walking, eating, working. How do they apply mindfulness in those instances? You know, the common thing to do will be, OK, remember, monkey mind's chattering, relax, come back to the hands or whatever they're doing to the legs, perhaps. But then immediately they're off again. Monkey mind's chattering again. and then five minutes later yeah so how do you how do you apply it in those instances

50:37if somebody has the opportunity for extended silence i would say that has been transformational for me so vipassana has been a very important tool in my journey which are the 10-day silent meditation retreats you become a monk for 10 days no reading no writing no eye contact I was speaking for 10 whole days meditating from 4.30am to 9pm. It's a strong practice, it's difficult, some of the most challenging things I've done in my life. But really that helped me drop much deeper into understanding the monkey mind and to slow it down. In a way that Tai Chi is a beautiful re-embodiment, but it doesn't, the Vipassana complements the Tai Chi so well.

51:18because it's really just dropping into stillness in a way that is is then possible with tai chi for me at least after after the vipassana that's when my tai chi got a lot deeper and more the subtle vibrational being that we are that you know sounded woo-woo to me before and then you know then i began to experience it so that would be my first thing is that if you can get away to do retreats then that can be beautiful but then like the key bit is how do we bring it back. That's the key. That's the medicine. And if it was that we could only find peace by going, escaping to retreats or mountains, then these tools wouldn't be very helpful.

51:58And yes, compassion to the life that's here. That's spaciousness and ease to the life that's here. That's the training. That's the beauty that is available to us from this path. So how do we do it so firstly just intention just have that intention you know i intend to meet myself with compassion and ease and spaciousness and like you said you know like we we we remember then we forget we remember we forget that's that's the journey meditation is about awareness and equanimity awareness and compassion so if it is that when we forget to do our compassion practice we beat ourselves up we're missing the point so you know and that's something that i would do it's like oh you know i wasn't present for that moment and then i beat myself up and in buddhism that's called the second arrow so you've got the first arrow of you know the pain that's here stress grief shame whatever the second arrow is the i shouldn't be feeling this you know i should have been more present.

52:58I should have experienced less grief, less shame. So intention, compassion, whether or not you achieve that intention. And then ritual, ritual for me. So it's like creating those moments of spaciousness. So for me, like my, I, I love coffee and self-help people complain about it. I still enjoy it. And, you know, to really be with those first sips of the coffee and like hold it against my heart to take a moment with it and that richness you know it's not like i'm oh i've got to do my my gratitude practice like what a bore it's like no like wow so much richness available in the present moment so yeah what can rituals be in your day yeah beautifully put i agree that the self-compassion is the trick and that's really when the mind will usually get back in i should not be feeling this way i should not be but each repetition is just that in the same way you would work out in the gym you get stronger each time you come back and it does not matter how many times you come back but the mind will try to jump in at that point and be like you know i should be i've just done a 10-day retreat i should be better at this by now you know i should start to see results i i find the mind is very non-linear and if you do you do hear about a lot of these masters that you do have profound realization and they still have those major like all of everything comes up so i wonder if you found that too that at each point there's kind of a re-humbling i find you feel like you start to get the hang of it and then there's a re-humbling of oh no actually maybe i don't have the heck of it absolutely yeah and that's the beautiful teaching of impermanence like this too shall pass even those deep moments of clarity and insight they pass as well and the daoist teaching of flow then you know like this this river of life and these currents of life and it's kind of the metaphor of like we can steer but like if we're trying to go upstream we're resisting we're resisting life you know i should be higher up on this river by now i've been meditating you know like i remember when i first got to wudang it's like three months in i've been meditating for three months now and my brain's still thinking i should be better at this you know this is this is rubbish i'm i'm not built for meditation and yeah and then you know those judge i've already named those judging parts of like you know george you share meditation and you should be perfectly at peace at all times or else you're an imposter you know that's my perfectionist part and the language of parts really helps me with that because it's like okay i have a perfectionist part but that's not all of me this is a part of my psyche part of the energy arising in the present moment and that's okay so then that's when for me that the teachings of compassion we can really apply them so it's not just like well compassion is super beautiful and the daoists and the buddhists talk about it internal family systems which i'm training in is is for me an innovation in the teachings of compassion because what internal family systems is about is really the acknowledgement that our mind is multi multi-centric it's not bipolar it's multipolar we have all these parts that come up so I've named my underminer I've got my taskmaster which is my interdisciplinarian who I honor because it you know helps me work and do all the things I'm passionate about that can take over then I've got this perfectionist part that is like my inner samurai that wants me to be perfectly at peace and perfectly meditating and then I've got my people pleaser and I've got all these parts in me so then we've got this self energy awareness itself the spaciousness the consciousness within which all these thoughts and feelings and sensations and parts arise and we come in and out of relationship with that you know maybe the parts begin to blend over and you know that imposter part say you know may come up it's like yeah i didn't hold that class very well and uh you know that imposter part blends in the language of ifs it's like and then i notice it and i take a breath and then yeah i'm back and that's one sentence to to close this little bit on but you you can't stop the waves you can learn to surf i'm starting to learn a bit about ifs as well and i agree it does seem like a major innovation i don't know how recent it was but it's extremely impressive 80s 90s and yeah it's powerful your incredible new documentary which i honestly legitimately found probably one of the most inspiring and beautifully shot documentaries i've ever seen um what what was it that inspired you to to create that film and what message or experience are you hoping that it will deliver to the viewers yeah beautiful to hear your experience and yeah the film's got like 650 000 views at the moment it's getting 100 like 50 000 views a day which is so exciting and people like just the comments yeah yeah it's two years of work and load of challenge uh through that journey getting frauded and scammed losing all of my money moving out my flat moving back with my parents struggling to play the team and loads loads of growth in that journey my organization is called balance is possible and I'm almost a prisoner to that that vision of hope you know there's parts of me that despair with everything happening in the world and yet I have really found deeply the potential that all of us have the potential that I have the potential that every human being has and therefore the potential that we have as a species this Tao this wisdom built into us if we can work with those patterns we can access that potential so balance is possible that's that's what my whole life mission has turned into is to advocate for our potential for peace for wisdom for balance and this film you know I see filmmaking is the medium through which I express that mission and so i'm making philosophy in nature adventure films so you know people want to learn about the world philosophy they love to see this beautiful stunning living planet that we are a part of not separate from so that's in nature and then adventure films so yeah like i i go into jeopardy and you know you follow me as not the voice of god like david attenborough i know everything about nature and I'm going to speak in a slow soothing tone and you're going to trust me all the way and whereas I'm like you know like I'm I hurt like you do and yeah I have been learning that there's great teachings that can help all of us and you want to adventure with me join the adventure so this film's called the subtle art of losing yourself and it's recorded in Scotland and it's in the Cairngore mountains in the deep dark depths of winter and we see the amazing animals snow hair and reindeer and the amazing birds and squirrels and they're all surviving on this snow-capped mountain and we see their intelligence and their emotions and their lived experience of yeah this desire to play fear running away from predators and then cuddling with family you know so much of it familiar and then we ask the question well you know if they're intelligent experiencing feeling beings then what does that say about our intelligence where we come from and then we adventure together through the mountains to discover our place in the universe and our potential what what would you say is the importance you put a lot of emphasis on reconnecting with nature what have you yeah what have you discovered about the mind spending time in these wild places and why do you think that modern life has like disconnected us from so many of these insights and experiences?

1:01:24Yeah like I mean say to the Buddha you know the Buddha had a religion started after him but he really was a scientist and his laboratory was his own mind and so the the showing the evidence of a good the evidence of a beautiful way of understanding the world is one that empowers you to discover for yourself not just saying this book says the world works in this way and you've got to believe this and that actually hey this is my understanding but this is an offering for you to integrate and to then make it a lived understanding because that's when it becomes wisdom right we talked about wisdom is intuitive from the present moment if i say thou shalt do this thou shalt not do this yeah it becomes rigid and dead like the wisdom is in this book as opposed to coming through you as a living human being

1:02:23so learning about the mind yes like firstly these insights have been just around for as long as we human it's like if we actually come into ourselves instead of having to rely on external you know outside in learning i've got to read the books i've got to bow down to those in power to give me the truth it's like yeah you know people who have trained a long long time to respect you know experts you know not to kind of go to the full fake everything's fake news thing but to actually empower ourselves that you know there is truth and discernment that we can come to through our own wisdom journey.

1:03:02So then with the mind, what we can discover is that, yeah, we are this complex being. And for me, consciousness is an emergent property out of energy. And Western philosophy has a dogma to say that there's matter here, unconscious matter, and then consciousness emerging from it. This theory of the universe is called materialism. So everything is this unconscious and then as the process of evolution happened nervous systems and brains evolved and then eventually these nervous systems and brains could integrate all the sensations that this organism was experiencing into then a lived felt experience that we then call consciousness now there's a few challenges of that firstly like well when did consciousness emerge because that means that there's there's a point at which in life that life you know is if we go backwards in time from us so we're experiencing feeling thinking beings and then okay maybe monkeys are feeling not thinking and then bats you know what's it like to be a bat feeling thinking not thinking but feeling worms now like we're getting at worms now like are they just automatic biological machines like they curl up into a ball when you reveal light to them is there any conscious experience in that now if it's not worms then we've lost consciousness consciousness has gone then what about the trees you know the trees just give you one amazing example acacia trees acacia trees when a giraffe comes and starts eating their leaves will release a horrible sap disgusting sap that the giraffes hate and then the the the acacia trees also set off a gas to let all the other acacia trees know that the giraffes are here so all the other trees then release this sap so then the giraffes move on and the acacia trees are protected so acacia trees fart to scare off giraffes now surely that's intelligent but is it consciousness so is that a you know a there's a sensation of okay being eaten that is then integrated by and responded to by the consciousness of the tree or is it just all biological chemistry these are mysteries but yeah as i'm learning more about the mind is like at minimum we've got to really expand our idea of consciousness to all of the animal kingdom because yeah we're not separate from it we're not superior to it and the film goes into that and then for me and you know you don't have to believe as much as i do but like i believe it seems to me that given consciousness we like our planets bursting with beings that are experiencing life and why is there this hard rigid divide between animals that are you know we believe since their brains and nervous systems have experience but then you know trees aren't.

1:06:11One more example is the sperm and the egg, right? Sperms and eggs don't have nervous systems or brains. So according to the materialist worldview that dominates our world, then they have to be unconscious. But somehow the sperm and the egg, every single time a baby is born, for every baby ever born, for every human being ever born, for every animal ever born, to unconscious immaterial you know material stuff through blind chemistry then create you know this complex living experiencing being and that is called the hard problem of consciousness in consciousness studies it's like how does something come out of nothing how does unconscious matter create consciousness and that hasn't been explained for me i take a panpsychist view that consciousness is an inseparable part of the universe like electricity or electromagnetism or gravity it's just an aspect of energy everything is energy in different forms and so like what i've learned about the mind just to get to like the why this is important is it connects me no longer is a human being separate superior to the rest of the world to the rest of the planet it deeply embeds me in this world deeply interconnects me and for me then i have a sense of reverence and a sense of the sacred not just to all the human beings that exist but all the plant life every animal and this beautiful planet that supports us yeah beautifully shared i actually just to draw on michael levin again he's found that even cells seem to have intelligence and problem solving abilities which is difficult at least from his perspective currently to say they're not in some way intelligent so i mean that's getting really small and as sam harris says the only thing we know for sure is that we're conscious it's really that's the immediate certainty i mean yeah where where consciousness comes from if it is fundamental um i guess still a bit of a question mark but it is interesting that so many of the old traditions did always put it at the forefront really in many ways i think there's some differences in in how they would describe it but um yeah it is consistent and they they have um been impressive in a lot of their their foresight and insight so yeah it's a it's an interesting time yeah and that is really changing because yeah many many wisdom traditions understood that intuitively i do love sam harris's he's like it could be that consciousness is a process of unconscious biological processes but i don't know what that sentence means and i don't think anyone else knows what that sentence means either what does it mean to like for it to be an emerging property because it's yeah it's just we don't despite you know we've learned about how black holes are formed at the center of our galaxy and how stars are born and yet this noggin we is still deeply mysterious like there's nothing about the physical brain that would say it's conscious it's only because we are conscious that we know that you know the brain is really important for consciousness just one model of the universe that i love around consciousness is is is the neo-confucian model which sees li and chi two words that we've been talking about a lot so li is pattern chi energy so they see the whole universe is patterned energy so they don't need to make the distinction between matter and consciousness being separate but everything is is patterned energy no separation your journey you must have faced a lot of challenges what what were some of the the key challenges that you faced both on the mountain and making the film

1:10:15I like to tell stories and one story like philosophical stories one one philosophical story from the daoist which is probably the most famous one is there was a a old man and his son who were farmers and one day one of their horses disappeared and all the neighbors came around and said, oh, I'm so sorry you lost your horse. And the old man said, who knows if it's good, bad, good fortune or bad fortune. Who knows? Next day, the horse comes back with three horses and all the neighbors came and said, wow, such good luck. Amazing. Aren't you happy? And the old man says, who knows what is good luck or bad luck?

1:10:55We'll see. Next day, the army come because there's a war on the border of the Chinese empire and they have to take everyone's horses away and not only that they have to take it yeah take all the horses away bad luck all the horse has gone again the old man says we'll see then next day the son had an injury and his his arm was broken into pieces and the neighbors cared oh what bad luck bad luck and the old man said we'll see next day the army come back not only did they want the horses they wanted the young men as well all of the men in the village were taken to be sent to be cannon fodder in the war and all the neighbours said wow what good luck that your son broke his arm and the old man said we'll see we'll see

1:11:50so that's a beautiful story which can help us break out of our normal ways of understanding challenge challenge is a bad thing woe betide me that all of these things happen to me my life is such a hardship and this is this smile that we've talked about like actually you know to to begin to change our relationship to the challenge to to begin to be able to work with the flow and so what happens when we meet challenge is that our comfort zone expands and we begin to be more resilient because we're not just caving in and and crumbling in the face of challenge but we begin to actually trust ourselves trust that this too shall pass we can't stop the waves but we can learn to surf so for me yeah like you know loads of challenge and yeah you know the anxiety that started off the whole journey then yeah like the being single and not many friends and working by myself and then living by myself and just not really feeling enough connection and feeling loneliness then yeah like with the team and financial instability of like having this big vision and then and then you know like financially being really tight and yeah I'd say that I what I have developed over my time is actually enjoying it you know it's like actually almost like when I got frauded a couple of years ago and lost all of my money it's like it was a huge energetic challenge and you know you know it was comfort eating and um stopped my meditation practice it was tough but you know i learned so much from it and you know like there's two types of people that are happy when when bad things happen to them comedians and dharma teachers

1:13:43because like then i could like in my next tai chi class is like guys i'm i'm really hurting and these are the things that i'm really calling upon these are the this is this is where my practice there really is when i'm calling upon these tools to support me and so if we can begin to to create that perspective then that's when we can flow we don't get in our own way we don't get stuck in you know the depression for years it's like okay well i'm depressed for this week or these days like what do i need get to the need and to meet this current moment with compassion then that's how we can flow and get out our own way i agree and the the story you shared just emphasizes it beautifully it's they're really opportunities every one of them is an opportunity i think bante van la ramsey used to say that that the hindrances to put it in buddhist terminology are our teachers and i think that's what you have beautifully emphasized that really each time we do have adversity difficulty the mental tension or resistance then we just have an opportunity to not respond in the old pre-programmed way and to reprogram or to let go of the way that we were approaching things and then through that repetition we could start to change how we respond and through that we change our actual perception and the way that we see reality we don't necessarily paint it with this negative or um a different picture and perhaps we get a little bit closer and then we start to enjoy things more we also have the opportunity to be kinder and yeah that's just probably one final thing i'd love to chat to you about actually since doing um this podcast and the course that we did i've really noticed that there's a lot of emphasis in in buddhism on sila which is like ethics doing good or kindness i didn't really realize the difference that made the biggest sort of insight into that was i volunteered on a retreat that i wanted to sit like i really just wanted to meditate and i i didn't really want to do the helping because i had quite a big job i had to manage the whole retreat but I knew by doing so that my friend who would normally manage the retreat could sit which he really wanted to do so I just did it anyway and then during that retreat there would be small opportunities to do a meditation and when I did I just I just noticed such a big difference in the quality of my sit my ability to let go and to have self-love compassion and to generate loving kindness was so increased it made me realize wow even small things small gestures repetitions of kindness and perhaps giving to charity or like your your life now is i would say is service um so yeah i'd love to to hear how that's changed your your practice and life so much beauty in that thank you yeah and that morality and integrity is so important and you know the taoist vision on that is is well confucianism which was the dominant philosophy at the time is very much about morality and ethics and to be really strong with that but the taoist critique of it is that it can lead to hypocrisy where you kind of have the performative morality you do the rules and rituals you put your hat on the right way and put your meditation mat the right way and then then you're a good person whereas actually they felt that wasn't an inside out integrity it's like don't be a good person because you want to be seen as a good person you know just be in virtue or duh is the word that they use for it and yeah to be in that without there being an attachment or a performance and yeah that moral dimension in our current society is absolutely not talked about you know it's like they're kind of the free hand of the market the of the capitalist model of adam smith saying you know it's not the the benevolence of the butcher that you get your morning bread it's through their self-interest of the monetary exchange which is true you know it's like all of These are billions of interactions happening around the world because of money means that we don't have to have governments telling how many loaves of bread to send to Bristol and how many to Auckland.

1:18:27It just happens through the market so that there is beauty to that. But then what is missed is this moral dimension of like actually, you know, it's not OK to be extracting fossil fuels, drill, baby drill in a global climate crisis. And it's not OK just to manipulate people in order to make money. and you know if we can use the power of the market grounded in in compassion and integrity and serving life like keyword service then things begin to change and service yeah what deeply nourishes me and is what I you know intend to do in my life is to serve life you know as I understand my interconnection then that becomes my motivation and it's such a big difference from success.