Stillness in the Chaos: The Meditation Technique That’s Changing Lives

Ep 111.   How to Find Inner Stillness in the Chaos of Modern Life: A Meditation Practice That Transforms Stress into Strength

In both ancient wisdom and our hyper-connected modern world, one truth remains unchanged: stress and chaos are constants. But what if the key to mastering them lies not in escaping—but in embracing stillness within them?

The late Kung Fu and meditation teacher James Patrick Lacy introduced a powerful principle known as “Stillness in the Midst of Chaos.” This isn’t just a poetic idea—it’s a daily mental health and mindfulness practice that teaches you to access peace in even your most stressful moments.

In today’s world of nonstop notifications, rising anxiety, and emotional burnout, learning to drop into micro-moments of meditation throughout your day could be the secret to transforming stress before it takes a toll on your mind and body.

✅ Whether you’re navigating high-pressure work environments
 ✅ Coping with personal or emotional overwhelm
 ✅ Or just seeking a grounded life in a loud world...

Practicing embodied stillness helps build emotional resilience, self-regulation, and a real sense of inner control. You don’t need hours of silence—you need a few intentional seconds to return to your center.

Start today. Practice the power of stillness under pressure, and you'll carry calm through every storm life throws at you.

👉 Breathe. Reset. Realign.
 👉 Walk steady, stay grounded, live well.

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 111 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project Podcast. With me, your host Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at a local community college. What we're going to be discussing today is a principle that is very unique and yet is very useful in today's world and it is called stillness or meditation in the midst of chaos.

Now I want to preface this communication today with the name James Patrick Lacey. Now he was martial artist and I'm a martial artist and have been lifelong for the largest part of my adult years and have gained a lot of good philosophical and practical useful day-to-day skills as a result of not only the physical training but also the mental and meditation energy healing training as well. And the reason I'm bringing up

Jung Chi Lacey, the late Patrick Lacey, James Patrick Lacey, is because a number of years back there were some herbs that I needed to train Iron Palm and I'd had them before but I needed to get a new batch and he was running a pretty good deal. part of the training that he involved was not just herb but also instruction on martial methodology but on top of that martial art meditation specifically for healing and stillness and enlightenment.

And what is really cool about what he taught was the fact that he always emphasized meditating in the midst of chaos. He would go down to the beach, I believe he was in San Diego, and he would take a folding bench with him, and he would sit, and there were people playing volleyball on the beach, was doing whatever it was doing with the waves coming in, noisily, people and their dogs and everything running around, not really close to him, but yet still.

He was there in the dune sitting doing what he was doing, but in the midst of all of that, and he was saying even near a park where there was people playing, playing frisbee and stuff, he would go knowing that the sounds and the activities were there, but learning to achieve stillness in the midst of chaos and movement, not running off to some cave that is unrealistic and leaving a life behind, becoming one with your navel so to speak and the universe but yet

armando (02:48.033)
in the very practical sense no longer being useful to society, but also society no longer being abused to you. And that is definitely a way of becoming enlightened, so to speak, but it's not one that is most practical, especially in a modern sense. So it is with the greatest degree of respect and nod of my psychologist hat in his direction, saying thank you to James Patrick Lacey for having taught that principle of

Meditation and stillness in the midst of chaos and with that we'll start our discussion So what is the usefulness of being able to stay still? Whenever things seem to be falling apart in our lives Whenever our lives tend to be really fast moving and we have very little time in between spaces so to speak to be able to slow down and stop and Maybe gather ourselves a little bit and maybe get a rest Now this is something that's really common

in our modern world is something that was common in the past. Of course, we had more leisure time, free time after working, even though we may have worked from sun up to sun down, but we have fewer distractions, so to speak. But as far as gaining the benefit of stillness outside of the chaos, what it does is actually teaches us to silence mind and quiet mind wherever it's not trying to engage and activate.

and dealing with every little bit or signal that comes across our liminal level that is just above our unconscious space and being able to float there in that space in in between the conscious and unconscious just aware but not judging or attaching and it sounds really kind of hard to do it's really not we tend to do that eyes open eyes closed it doesn't really make a big difference some meditations do work better with eyes closed but if you were just wanted

perfect stillness so to speak and yes I'm using an absolute the term perfect but rather working as a project continuously adding a little bit of practice to your practice so to speak and gaining skill in the process we are needing to try not to attach on to all the perceptual signals and perception has to do with the touch taste smell the sound and

armando (05:12.287)
all of those things that we take in through our five senses and then our internal sense of ambience, also, you know, being able to detect the shift and change of our immediate environment without necessarily labeling it or consciously naming it. So trying to stay out of higher cognitive process, so to speak, and just being in that space, that moment, and to be able to practice that stillness, to be able to do that. One of the first things that I usually teach, and this is something that helps

get one into that state of experiencing that perception of stillness and that quiet. And you can do this with your eyes either open or half closed, or you can still see in between the squinted-eyed lids without really squinting, but the half-closed lids, and allowing yourself to be able to see your environment without fixating on anything, but more so going into a peripheral visual defocus state or looking at things like the Native Americans.

would teach using soft eyes so to speak but your eyes, eyelids half open and just breathing evenly in a comfortable space either seated, you can be on a park bench, could be seated cross-legged on the floor or on your knees or you can even do this if you're in a safe space wherever you're laying down face up and work on that sense of stillness and just paying attention to your breath. Now that might seem like you're splitting

attentiveness and you're really not because you're becoming aware of the appropriate receptive quality. This is that sense of keeping upright in space, that sense of the pressure of the air coming into our lungs when we're not breathing but whenever we let the environment and the universe breathe us so to speak, that pressure pushes the air in and it's not really like a push but rather it's a cascade of air that goes in in a very simple vacuum sense.

and then it just kind of rises out and you get to that point of stillness you're not moving up a lot and you don't have to do a whole lot of mechanical breathing where you're visibly raising your chest and also opening your abdomen up to inhale and then squeezing your stomach and your shoulders dropping when you're letting the air out. When you get to that point of stillness the breathing becomes very easy at ease and it's almost like you're not breathing if someone's really paying attention.

armando (07:35.159)
It looks almost like you're suspended in breath, but you're really minimizing whatever it is that you're taking in oxygen-wise, and you're maximizing the use of the oxygen that you do take in, because you're being still and you're not burning unnecessary levels of oxygen by overthinking, by over-physically doing and acting. And that state of stillness, once again, is a very physical, very palpable, and very learnable skill. It doesn't take long to do it.

and it doesn't take long to feel that sense of stillness. Now back to modern times and how fast things go and how busy our lives are and sometimes how we have very little space between activities. Sometimes it just requires that if we have an office we can close our office door a little bit or if we can't do that at our cubicle be able to sit with our feet flat on the floor and if you can take your feet out of your shoes

where there's less restriction, less pressure, and you can wiggle your feet even better. This allows our arches to relax as well. And we're getting that sense of comfort, generally, for a couple of minutes. And if you can do that, you can make room for this exercise, where you can just sit with your eyes, once again, half open, and not focusing on any detail in particular, but just kind of taking it all in. And in that soft-eye state,

you might note that not only does your breathing slow, but also your heart rate goes down. You may have a sense of pressure before doing this and that will start to settle as well. And if you want to go into this first and you're feeling a little hurried, do the double sniff technique. Once again, I've referred people to Dr. Gubin's podcast as he's the one that brought it to the fore and it has been studied in medical research where we do the double sniff.

inhale and that actually starts to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and that's the part that cools our body down and that's a very palpable and perceptible experience in the sense that you start noting that there's less pressure to the information that's coming in and less need to want to label and organize and name that. So that means our prefrontal cortex is settling down and we're not going into unnecessary cognitive process. So it makes us more efficient so to speak.

armando (10:00.259)
But to be able to use this in the midst of chaos and chaos in quotes is not evil or bad. It's just whatever it is that is the activity that is going on in our lives. It could be the different activities at work, could be at home, could be whenever the children are sleeping or maybe baby's taking a nap but you're not sleeping and need to rest. This is a really good way to get into a very quiet state and often feel that very pressured sense of going to the next activity.

And this is what we're trying to cut down on. Not everything is extreme priority that requires us to put our hands on things soon as the baby goes to sleep or as soon as I have just a free moment. And there are some things that yes, they are priority and they do require attention. But whenever we do have the luxury of that in between space to be able to slow down a little bit and the house isn't going to burn down. If you don't do a certain thing, maybe it's just a little laundry and I needed to fold. I want to get it done. But then there's that sense of, no.

that guilt, shame, or lack of satisfaction, the self-adjudication, maybe you're not a good person because you're not doing your laundry or folding it as quickly as you should. Or at least in your mind, we set up these false ideas as to what expectations are and that creates pressure that we put on ourselves unnecessarily. But sometimes, once again, if we are able to carve out a little space to have the luxury of quiet and the luxury of stillness,

then we can benefit from that stillness in the midst of our chaos and recharge a little bit and take our mind offline for a little while take a bit of a mental rest a little bit of a mental emotional and cognitive vacation even a physical one for a minute doesn't necessarily have to result in sleep but if you were to do this for instance and you're in a place wherever you can go to sleep not at work necessarily but then you can drift off more readily by being able to

be in a point of stillness where we're less disturbed going into sleep and towards sleep. This works really well before you go to bed as well for sleep at night if you're going to do that. But if you can't and you just need a little respite, once again, the actual practice of creating some stillness in the midst of chaos is a good way to look at taking a little bit of a respite, a little bit of a break to cool ourselves and also to bring our mental

armando (12:19.585)
strained down a little bit so we can have a little more energy going forward. Now the next part of this discussion having to do with meditation in the midst of chaos or stillness in the midst of chaos is more of a physical thing. Now whenever you train in any kind of activity such as swimming we'll use that as an example. You're putting yourself in a state of duress and pressure so you can get across the water and yes it's enjoyable.

But the swimming, the physical activity, burns fuel, it burns blood sugar, and you burn oxygen, and you expel CO2. And this means the body is mechanically doing something above and beyond baseline activity. And if you put yourself in the water, we know that water can be very enjoyable if you're in a pool, but if you're in an ocean, you can be at risk. It can be under tow, it could be big waves if you're not a strong swimmer. Even if you are a strong swimmer, you can get overwhelmed.

because we have limitations to our endurance and our capacity and sometimes the fight with that big wave is not for you. It's a little too big for you so best not to take it but sometimes we get taken away or swept away by circumstances. What do we do then? Sometimes we have to understand that freaking out doesn't always help. Understanding that I'm not supposed to be doing this while I'm at risk or in danger will actually make you eliminate more oxygen than you need to and you put yourself in a panic or stress state.

So being centered whenever things are hard, whenever there's a real physical challenge, when somebody maybe steps in front of you and is confrontational or rude or loud, our first activity often in our body, mind you, said activity, not thought process, is to shirk back if they move too quickly into our immediate space. If we're in a situation that's very social and safe, largely our physical boundary

tends to be a little closer with most people versus whenever we're with strangers where maybe there's elevated tension, this sort of thing, then our sense of boundary, personal boundary and safety tends to be a little larger. We become aware of that. But whenever someone interlopes into our space and it's in a social setting and they're saying things that are really snide or ugly or remarks that are deprecating and maybe causing trouble, so to speak, we tend to...

armando (14:40.973)
believe the tone and the facial inflection and also how quickly somebody may lean into us knowing that they're pushing the boundaries of safety, but knowing that they're within the boundary of social norms where they're probably not going to get smacked if they get too close. And most people don't want to lose a job as a result of that. And some people play in those spaces between the words that are written as rules and guidelines and policy and procedure.

And they tend to be rather annoying. But underlying all that is still the reality of the fact that we're human beings, we're biological creatures, and we do have a threat detector. We do have our capacity to fight, fight, flee, and run, and all those other things that come with that. If somebody tries to push and intimidate, and we tend to push back, and then they get offended because, I was just saying this or just doing, saying that. I wasn't doing anything.

when in actuality they did something. They leaned into clothes physically and they maybe stuck their face in a space but not their hands or their feet to make it look like, they weren't doing anything, but yet they were still physically doing the chicken walk, thrusting their head or space, face into the space that puts them in physical danger, especially if they're within your personal distance. And they tend to play this game of I'm not doing anything, maybe even...

taunt people this way and the reason I point that out is I see a lot of this frequently, not just where I work but out and about in public and people don't seem to realize that they're putting themselves in danger by doing that. And what about maintaining stillness in this, often not taking offense to it and not biting on the emotional loaded speech that they may be sharing?

is probably the first thing because if we start playing the cognitive game, we're already using our slowest signaling process versus allowing ourselves to perceive actual physical danger or not, are they touching me are not, and not deciding that but rather letting our physiology decide whether or not we're in a safe range or not that is much faster and we can perceive and react to that at about 150 to 300 milliseconds. We were already determined if it's a threat or not.

armando (17:03.992)
and determine whether or not we know it or not. Of course, if it comes in too fast, at faster than 100 milliseconds to as fast as 60 milliseconds, then it's going to be considered a threat by default, even if it's somebody that we know, just by virtue of their own misadventure. And they could put us into a fight-flight state where they may get hit, and that will come out more so from a flinch response on the part of the person that receives it. But as far as the point of stillness that we're talking about in Chaos,

sometimes recognizing what is actually threatening is not so hard because often it will start with noise. People will start making noise and talking about things, saying things that are offensive or abrupt or disruptive before they ever get physically close enough to touch you. Often, not always, and it's not an exact perfect science because there are some people that'll just run up and smack you, but in the typical social norm situation where

There aren't any physical boundaries being crossed and people are assuming that their assumption of safety has been met and they can do what they want. And they think that they're dancing and tiptoeing on the edge of that. And you can't touch me when actually you can't touch them really hard if you need to, but they can also touch you too. And they want to intimidate in that way, but yet not be held accountable or culpable for instigating problems. So what does this have to do with stillness and chaos?

Well, it has a lot to do with it because what we're talking about in this podcast project is self-regulation. How do I manage me? One of the first things is if somebody moves in very closely, people tell you to breathe deep, calm down, and most of the time they tell you something that's absolutely wrong. And one of the most important things you can do when things are very physically close or proximity is pressuresome and maybe threatening is don't inhale. Don't do that. Don't...

suck wind because that will activate your sympathetic nervous system and might put you in a state of anxiety if they're the ones that move first. So one of the first things that you can do to contemplate and try to encourage good communication negotiation even when things are getting kind of heated is first to exhale. To be able to identify and scan and see is there anything that's there physically that could be threatening? Are they holding something that behind their back? Are they moving too abruptly and jerky such that they're

armando (19:30.966)
More have to act out if I move too quickly and while you're scanning without making judgment just taking into account what is going on what they might be holding how close are they to you and being able to exhale By exhaling and centering down into your lower abdomen literally pushing your lower abdomen out and Make sure your feet are flat on the floor Not necessarily in any way wherever you make yourself heavy, but you will be solid

And it doesn't mean that you make yourself tense, but just yourself feeling that sense of relaxation and the expansion of the lower abdomen as you exhale, the exact opposite of inhaling and sucking wind and raising your shoulder where you feel like you're more on your tiptoes versus on your heels or rooted will give you a sense of not only control, but also calm and you won't be as apt to be startled. Many people when they're in the middle of taking a step,

and they haven't transferred weight from one foot to the next. And if something goes off, like, let's say a starter gun, like at a sport event, people will startle and jump whenever they're mid-step. Wherever they haven't transferred weight to one foot from the other, and those people that don't startle, generally they have their feet flat on the floor. That will instigate a startle reflex. At the same time, whenever we're not centered, if somebody does something abruptly, we're more apt to jerk.

and very clumsily fall than whenever we have at least one foot rooted on the ground where all our weight is transferred from one foot to the next. So being careful, being rooted is a good thing, especially if somebody is suddenly moving in front of you and taking steps away may not be the most apt thing that we should do and we have to move quickly and deftly after that. It's probably good to start from a place of centeredness and that may actually put them off a bit because you won't be shirking.

You won't be moving away and you won't be flinching, which tends to be taken as an interpretation of having been influenced, having been bullied or having been considered weak or weakened somehow as a result of their activity. That may not be the case, but if you're in that state of startle or jump, they will definitely take that as an advantage. They can be. So why is this important to self-regulation? Sometimes recognizing whenever there is physical chaos going on.

armando (21:57.236)
or just the social chaos where there's too much happening, practicing that stillness, practicing that quiet in the midst of everything and not being bothered by the noise or the activity and not taking it personally because the environment is not all yours, you're part of the environment. It's all theirs as well. And if we recognize that, we realize that we can go on without judgment and just peacefully coexist while we breathe and chill.

But the more you can stay in that midst of chaos, seated quietly, just breathing, without reacting, without judging, without naming or labeling, those things that may go on, will gain a very incredible skill. And that is, once again, stillness in the midst of chaos. And once again, thank you to the late James Patrick Lacey, Jung Shi of the the Mueheng system of Kung Fu. And I want to tell you all thank you for listening today.

And I certainly am glad to be moving my podcast project forward. You may have noticed that if you go to Spotify, some of the artwork is changing a little bit. We'll be working on the intro outro music as well. We're getting that worked on. And my son is the one that did the original for the first 110 episodes. 111 will be using that today. And my rogue musician is available on YouTube.

at Lazy Man 2303 if you want to go check out some of the stuff he's put together. It's kind of fun music to listen to. But beyond that, we'll be listening to the new music by Mr. Ed Fernandez. And he is an incredible musician and he is developing the score for the podcast. And we'll be having guests on here for interview here soon. We'll be doing both audio and video podcast interviews.

And I look forward to that and bringing some good information on health technology, among other things and methodologies that could be of use to you and the people that you love. So for now, want to tell you thanks again. Thank you for your listenership and please share this podcast. If you're on YouTube, please like, follow and share. And please give me a thumbs up while you're there and get subscribed. I'd love to have you as a subscriber. We probably have about 1 % of our subscription folks.

armando (24:18.328)
of the total number of people that are listening globally. I'd love to have all of you on there. Please share it once again. I'd love to hear from you. Have any feedback. it to the gmail at runningmangetskillsproject at gmail and for now, take care. Walk well.