I Came For Biceps, Stayed For Bliss: A Conversation With davidji

Welcome to Season Two of The Squats & Séances Podcast.  The guided meditations shared over the break were unanimously well received.  What better way to kick off a brand new season than with the master of meditation himself, davidji!

On that note, what if grit isn’t about grinding harder, but about leaning fully into the moment without clinging to outcomes? That one shift frames an eye-opening conversation  in this episode with davidji—globally recognized meditation teacher, mindful performance trainer, and the “Velvet Voice of Stillness”—as we connect ancient practices to modern performance and wellbeing.

We start by demystifying meditation as a simple, repeatable tool for presence. We trace its origins from seed sounds in the Vedic tradition to today’s secular methods and shows how consistency, not duration, produces real results. The physiology is striking: stress spikes cortisol, tightens blood, and shuts down immunity; practice reverses those markers within minutes. Over weeks, the brain itself changes—hippocampal growth, calmer amygdala—while research linked to telomeres hints at benefits down to cellular aging. These aren’t abstract claims; they’re the biology of better choices under pressure.

davidji makes the inner path feel honest and human. He maps the six stages of a real session—settling, witnessing, drifting, judging, surrendering, stillness—and explains why the gentle return is the master skill. We talk about reframing “threat” as “challenge,” using a 16-second breath to interrupt patterns, and building bookend rituals that anchor the day. Two resonant ideas bring heart to the science: gratitude as a daily primer for intention, and “evidence of presence,” a perspective shift that turns small annoyances into reminders of what—and who—you love.

We close with a short guided practice blending breath, gratitude, the mantra “I trust,” and intention planting. If you want lower stress, better focus, and a steadier sense of purpose without the jargon, this conversation is a clear, practical on-ramp. Subscribe, share with a friend who could use a reset.

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Until the next time - stay gritty you badass! 

Transcript

Meet David G And His Work

Venessa 0:17

On today's episode of Squats and Seances, I have the absolute honor of introducing David G. David G is a globally recognized mind-body, health and wellness expert, mindful performance trainer, and meditation teacher. He has taught millions of people around the world to heal their hearts, plant powerful intentions, and manifest their dream lives. He is the author of the much anticipated and newly released Sacred Powers, The Five Secrets to Awakening Transformation. He also authored Amazon's bestseller, Destressifying, The Real World Guide to Personal Empowerment, Lasting Fulfillment, and Peace of Mind. And lastly, Secrets of Meditation, a Practical Guide to Inner Peace and Personal Transformation, winner of the Nautilus Book Award. He is credited with creating the 21-day meditation process, which spawned hundreds of 21-day meditation experiences and challenges around the world. Often referred to as the Velvet Voice of Stillness, David G is the most prolific creator of guided meditations in the world. His more than 1,000 guided meditations are available on Insight Timer, Daily Ohm, Apple Music, Amazon, Hay House, Spotify, Tidal, and more. Welcome, David G.

davidji 1:58

Thank you. So excited to be here.

Venessa 2:01

I am so excited. I know. I wonder who wrote that. In full disclosure, listeners, there was so much more I wanted to share about David G and his background. I will provide links for his website where you can go and read the full biography on this very fascinating individual that we get to speak with today. Before we begin the bulk of the conversation and the questions, I have a specific question that I ask every first-time guest on the podcast. And I am particularly interested to hear your perspective on this. This one's a little bit left field. Are you ready? Okay.

What Grit Really Means

Venessa 2:42

What does the word gritty mean to you?

davidji 2:47

Oh, it's so fascinating that you asked that question. Because I was just teaching the uh Nevada Air National Guard. And that's a word that they kept using as part of their leaning in hard and doing their thing. And I it it it stuck out to me when I heard it, you know, when I when I heard them first talk about grit and gritty. For me, gritty is leaning in. That's it, leaning in, not phoning it in, not uh wishing you were someplace else, but truly, fully putting our full attention and leaning in hard in the direction of your dream, your action, your activity, and I would say being fully present in that process. And Bhagavad Gita, chapter two, verse 47 says, we have total control over our own actions and no control over the fruit of those actions, which is sort of like a little message that we should let go of outcomes and be fully present, leaning in at 150% into the thing we're doing and let the chips fall where they may. So for me, that's gritty.

Venessa 4:00

Wow. I hear leaning in without needing to control. Yeah, I love it. I'm putting together a, I don't know what the right word is, anthropology, compendium, a collection of everyone's answers to this question ever. And I am very honored to be able to add yours to it. So thank you.

davidji 4:20

Yeah, it's brilliant.

Venessa 4:21

To give a little context here, the Squats and Seances podcast is all about exploring the intersections of mind, body, and spirit, the connection between our physiology, the cell level, the psychology, what's going on in our mind, and the spirituality, the intangible. Across all the conversations I've ever had, both in season one and now in season two, the theme that comes up again and again, regardless of who I'm talking to, whether it's a professional athlete, civil circabists, like firefighters, energy healers, psychics, meditation. Every

Meditation Defined As Daily Tool

Venessa 4:59

one of them has dropped the word meditation unprompted in the conversation I've had with them. And I am beginning to believe meditation is this gateway to healing, peace, love, and eventually self-actualization. So you are the resident expert when it comes to meditation. How do you define what meditation is?

davidji 5:23

I consider meditation simply a tool. It's a tool to help us connect to the present moment, to connect to the stillness and silence that rests within. To uh connect to that space between, the space between what just existed and what may exist. And in that space we can that can be just a flicker of a millisecond, that can be a deep breath in, that can be a full-on meditation practice where you're actually have some object of attention, whether that's a mantra or watching your breath or whatever technique you want to use in that. And there are literally thousands of nuances to what that is. Uh, but for me, it's for me, it's a lifestyle. That's what I am. I am meditation. I wake up every day, I meditate. Probably in sometime in the morning, I'll meditate again, uh, usually around noon. I'll do some other kind of meditation, probably somewhere between around two o'clock, even if it's just again, maybe it's a minute where I just stop, close my eyes, and breathe to reset. And then I have my, of course, my book ends, my four o'clock, somewhere between four and five. I do my let go, my release, my catharsis meditation. And then I like to meditate usually sometime before I I go to bed. Sometimes that leads me into falling asleep, and sometimes I'll just do that. So I am I'm not meditating in every moment, but meditation with that level of frequency allows me to be more present in every moment. Do I sometimes lose it? Absolutely. Do I get pissed off? Yeah, absolutely. Am I frustrated or disappointed or sad? I have all the emotions, but meditation allows me to process them at a higher level and not be mastered by my emotions and instead master them, certainly how they're expressed in the world. You can be really, really pissed off and not have to scream at somebody. You could just be very, very disappointed and not shame someone. So again, it's meditate, meditation sort of is that place that we that we can cultivate between everything that's coming in, that's external, whatever it is. Maybe we see it, maybe we hear it, maybe we're watching it, maybe we're reading it, we're vibrationally even experiencing it. And then what do we do next? I like to say, here we are in that sacred, precious present moment. What are you gonna do with it? Yeah. Is that the sweet spot? That is the sweet spot. It's the place where we get to pull back the bow. Because we all, you know, we're athletes or warriors or or game changers, however you wanna however you want to refer to what we are doing. But if we don't take a breath first before we then do our thing, whatever that is, if we don't get set, get still, then we're probably not going to be our best. Doesn't mean we won't be brilliant, but higher likelihood that if we can always just before we power lift, before we run a race or hop on a bike or surf or take a run or have a conversation, whatever it is, or sit down to work on a project, or sit in a room with a bunch of people, if we don't center ourselves first, then we're going to be bringing in the energy of the previous moment, and that's going to inform this moment, which has its new energy, its its sacred energy. Um so I think it's everyone should uh have some kind of relationship with meditation, however you define that.

Venessa 9:18

Yeah, that is a hard question to start with because it means so many different things, meditation, a tool to drop into the present moment, a tool to connect to your higher self and to others, a tool to self-regulate emotions, all of these things.

davidji 9:38

Yeah.

Venessa 9:38

Interesting. I meditated right before this podcast. Me too. Good. Oh, I had a feeling you would be. I needed it. I was like, sink in. So I listened to Susie's meditation before the meeting, and it was wonderfully helpful. All right. So, next big question for you, and also a little bit unfair to ask because I am only giving us an hour for this conversation. Really broad strokes, where did meditation come from? This practice, this tool that we now are discussing today.

davidji 10:12

Yeah. I think it was a technique originally created. We can go back to like the foundation of everything, probably was some ancient sages, medicine men, medicine women, some sage way, way, way back in the day. Some oracle, someone who was greatly respected. And their original tool to connect with that thing that's bigger than them. And everyone gets to define that in a different way. Some people say it's God, some people say it's the universe, some people say it's their highest expression or your higher power. We can go all of those

Origins Of Meditation And Sound

davidji 10:45

things. But back in the day, that's what it was designed to do. It was in the earliest expressions, if we go back to the oldest book in history, the oldest book in history supposedly is the Rig Veda. Supposedly 7,000 years old. And that's sort of like a guidebook for how you're supposed, you know, the Vedas are these ancient wisdom teachings. Pre-Hinduism, these, you know, the Rig Veda was written when the world was pretty tribal at that point. Okay. Um, but there was some level of religious understanding, and that religious understanding was to connect with that thing that's bigger than you, to connect with the cosmic order, as it were. And so that's really the foundation of these teachings as a way for you to connect to your higher self in that moment. And a lot of the original meditations were using some type of seed sound or bijja sound, primordial sound, supposedly the sounds that existed before there were humans walking the earth. Um, the sound of waves crashing the shore, the sound of leaves in the forest rustling when the wind blows through, the sound of an owl's wings flying through the sky. And obviously, we can't recreate these. This is going back five, 10, 20,000 years ago. But these great sages cognized these vibrations and said, let's let's use the man-made interpretation or translation of this primordial sound. And let's use that to help us to connect vibrational healing, help us connect to this thing that's bigger than us. And if we can connect to that thing that's bigger than us, then suddenly we realize our purpose. Why are we here? And we we we recognize who we truly are when we show up in life. And that's probably got to be the the original question that everyone has asked for for all time. Who am I? Who am I? So if you want to find out who you are, meditate and answers will come. Sometimes there'll be no answers immediately, but if you keep asking that question, who am I? and are willing to sit in that stillness and silence, outward things and inward things will reveal themselves. You know, the more subtle we can get, the more easily we can listen to whispers. Yeah. So that's gotten fused into every religion and every culture throughout the I mean, pick a culture, and there was some form of getting still to connect with the thing that was bigger.

Venessa 13:29

Yeah. And the part that sound played in that. I don't know if I ever made that connection before. That's really interesting. Thank you. Okay. What about you? And I know that you talk a little bit about your beginnings in Sacred Powers. I'm reading that book right now. But where did you first discover meditation?

davidji 13:52

Oh, I discovered meditation in college. It was an experimental Asian studies course. There, sort of like a Zen meditation, which is a very, very rigid form practice. And there were 12 of us in this class. We all sat in a circle. Our Zen master stood in the corner. We were instructed that when we were meditating and we had a thought we should raise our hand. In his hand, he carried an 18-inch bamboo stick. And when we raised our hands, he would come over and whack us on the back. And so I didn't really dig that.

Venessa 14:33

You just stopped raising your hand, I imagine, at some point.

davidji 14:36

Stopped raising my hand and ultimately I dropped that course. Um, but when I left that class, I said, Well, I still loved what meditation was bringing to me, especially if you're a kid in college, and so much anxiety and so much peer pressure, and so much comparison and judgment and questions of worthiness and you know, all that stuff and competition. And but I loved what it had done to me. It made me so much calmer, made me a better person. I felt I'm better on meditation, but I wasn't going to do that one anymore. So then I started doing candle gazing, did that for, I don't know, like a year. And um, you know, it's very trippy, you know, like, oh, we're just getting high, and I'm like, me too. Gazing at the flame, the flickering of the flame. Um, that's actually a form of meditation called the drishti. Anytime we put our attention on an object with our eyes open, some kind of visual, it's called drishti. And um, it's a term from yoga as well. And that's why when people say, oh, contemplate your navel, it was really just that your head's down, gazing down at that space. Um but so many different I explored so many different things. I explored tantra and I explored mantra and I explored mindfulness and vipassana and all these, sometimes for like weeks, sometimes for years, and um and especially the chocolate tasting meditation, which I still do today. I think that's one of the my favorite meditations out there because it it for me it expresses the importance of having a light-hearted approach to this practice. Yeah, it's a surrender practice, which means you can't show up with an agenda and you can't show up, quote, serious.

Venessa 16:19

Yeah.

davidji 16:19

And that doesn't that hasn't stopped thousands of different lineages and schools of meditation from being very serious and very dogmatic. But I'm into dogs, especially this dog. Yes, the first Buddha princess. And so, not dogma, but dog. So for me, this practice

A Personal Path Through Practices

davidji 16:40

should be fun. Stuff we do should be fun, lifting weights should be fun, running should be fun, working out should be fun. That doesn't mean we don't take it to heart. Yeah, it shouldn't be even our relationships. Who wants a serious relationship? You want a relationship filled with love, and so a lot of people say, I want a serious relationship. No, they don't. They just have had, you know, not enough good ones in that process. So I think that meditation is always bringing us back to our most authentic and our most authentic self transcends all the need for ego and the need for seriousness and the need doesn't mean that you need to be smiling all the time, but and you know, what's a worse feeling than feeling the burn when you're working out? It's just so horrible. It's just when you're pushing past that point. But we're on a mission in in that moment. We're we're we're on a journey. And so if the journey is filled with love and light and um and kindness to ourselves, to our physical body, uh, then we can push through and transcend that. And I feel that way, even when we have physical ailments, if you treat your physical ailment like a like a bad friend, uh then it's gonna treat you like a bad friend would treat you. And if you treat it with kindness, you know, instead of saying, oh, you stupid hip, you're not working out today, or oh, these hands I can't open the jar, or oh my stupid back, or something like that, well, then it's gonna treat you like a stupid back, or uh, but if you treat all your physical attributes with kindness and our physical activities with kindness, even if they're hard, and even if we're leaning in really, really hard, and even if they don't feel great in the moment, we know we're working towards something. So I think that um my philosophy, and this is not everyone's philosophy, and I'm probably in the minority on this, but I think we need to show up to our practice with kindness and to ourselves with kindness as well.

Venessa 18:41

Thank you. Yeah, I I hear that. I saw a study recently, and it said that the couples that stayed together the longest were not the ones that were the most serious. They actually were the ones that had laughter between them, were the ones that lasted the longest in terms of their relationship. I wanted to ask a quick question about one of the things that you cover in detail and de-stressify, and that is the physiologic effect of stress on the body and how meditation in particular is the antidote to that stress. And I know, again, that is a huge topic, and I would strongly encourage listeners to read that book. It was amazing for me and was so good that now my husband's reading it. So it's one of those books that we're just gonna keep passing along the family. But yeah, the the physiologic effects of stress. We've got good stress, we've got bad stress, a little bit of good stress is good for us, and then that's euserous. And then when it persists for too long and becomes chronic and elevated, we land in places with hypercorticalism and other long term effects on the body. And pretty much everybody today, I think, lives in a state of chronic stress. So, what does that do to us?

davidji 19:58

Yeah, but that's only 8 billion people.

Venessa 20:00

Oh just safe.

davidji 20:04

And then you might want the planets of kilter over there.

Venessa 20:08

That's literally why we're on an axis now.

davidji 20:11

Yeah. The fascinating thing about stress, and there are so many different ways that we can define stress, and lots of people have put their spin on it, their flavoring on the definitions of stress. Um, my two favorite definitions of stress are stress is how you respond when your needs are not met, and what you do with that becomes the fabric of your life. That's one component, one translation, if you'd like that. And another translation of stress that I really, really like, and I think it really speaks to this. And again, stress is always in the eye of the beholder. So you and I might be sitting in a moment experiencing the exact same thing, and I'm feeling stress from it, and you're not. And so it's how do you want to perceive this moment? So the definition of stress from that vantage point is when you perceive that the demands of the moment are greater than uh your perceived resources that you have.

Venessa 21:12

Right.

davidji 21:13

And so someone can ask you a question 50 times. And if you're in an open space and if you're very, very patient, and we can go on and on with you know mind mindsets and heartsets of what's happening when those same demands are coming in. But if you feel I don't have the resources to meet this demand, then you're going to feel stress. Our brain is hardwired, it's hardwired to protect us. It's all a self-preservation mechanism. It's the number one thing. We can think like, no, it's isn't it art and isn't it music, and isn't it love, and isn't it safety, and like, no, it's survival. So this self-preservation mechanism is what our brain is really on the lookout for all the time. And so anytime it senses a threat to the physiology, because it's looking for any threat to the physiology all the time. And this has been going on for over 10,000 years. Every animal on the planet is hardwired with this. We can go out fight flight or fight flight, fight, freeze, flight, or there are so many different translations of that. But in that moment that you sense a threat, mortal danger to the physiology, in under five seconds, your autonomic nervous system does like these like five things. First, you start to perspire because your mind, body, autonomic nervous system knows

Stress Physiology Explained

davidji 22:40

you're going to overheat because there's a threat. So back in the day, you'd hear a twig snap while you're walking in the forest, and maybe it's a saber-toothed tiger or a warring villager from some other tribe. Yeah. But most of us are really not in war zones right now. Some people on this planet are right now in a war zone or in a very, very dangerous environment where their physiology is actually threatened. But we're hardwired no matter what. Start to perspire because that's our only cooling-off mechanism. And your autonomic nervous system says, You're gonna fight this thing or you're gonna run away. Either one, you're gonna break a sweat, you're gonna overheat. So we start perspiring. The second we get cut off on the highway, we start perspiring. That's an example of suddenly, if someone suddenly yells and you and it startles you, you start to perspire in that moment. So we start to perspire instantly, then we start to breathe more rapidly and more shallowly because our this is the delivery system of all the hormones and chemicals that are going to save us. And so more rapidly and more shallowly, which then feeds to our blood, which then pumps faster. So our pulse rises up because we need that blood to be flowing fast to get all those hormones and chemicals. Then the autonomic nervous system says, let's shut down everything non-essential, no matter what it is. Shut down your digestion, shut down your growth hormones, shut down your sex hormones, shut down. You pick it. If it's not critical to this moment, we're gonna shut it down. And then it floods your body with uh adrenaline, cortisol, and glucagon, which is like eating five Snickers bars at once. And then you're ready to either fight this thing, because everything else is shut down. We get tunnel vision, we get tunnel hearing. Really pretty fascinating, the concept of tunnel hearing, where you can't hear what's going on outside, only where you perceive the threat to be. And then you'd think that was would be enough, but then your blood starts clotting in advance of being cut. The platelets, the hard parts of your blood that flow through the plasma become plump and sticky. All this in under five seconds. And now you're ready, you're hardwired to do this to either fight that threat, save your life, or run away and save your life. However, you had mentioned all of us are experiencing chronic stress all the time. And that's because we have been, maybe we've devolved, but we would call it evolved. Um, that now we perceive any kind of threat, not to the physiology, but to our sense of self, the ego, to something we think we own. Right? You think you own your house, the bank owns it, you think you own your car, probably the bank owns it. We think we own our religion, right? Very, very defensive. We think we own our music choices, the school we went to, the sports teams we root for, the activities we do, right? You know, our clothing. You can keep going on and we think we own our kids, laughable. There's a whole bunch of stuff that we think we own. So now we've we've evolved fast forward 10,000, 20,000 years. Now, anytime we sense a threat to that thing we think we own, belief systems, certainly politics. Oh, yeah, we can go on and on about that. And so the same exact hormonal and chemical things happen. Yeah. You say, I voted for this person, and someone says, That's how could you, whatever, and then suddenly all that hormonal and chemical stuff starts happening to you. So, how many times do you think you can shut down your immune system? How many times can you shut down your immune system over the course of a day before you start experiencing some type of immunoresponse? How many times you think you can flood your blood with sugar before you're diagnosed with some type of sugar or glucose or some kind of something? How many times you think you can harden your blood before you experience some type of cardiac? We call these the seeds of illness.

Venessa 26:47

Yeah.

davidji 26:48

So it's not a threat. It's not a threat to the physiology. We're not in mortal danger. Just someone said that thing you think you own, uh, they made fun of it. I have a very, very, you know, I've I'm a small dog kind of guy. So I've always had these little teeny, you know, under eight-pound dogs. And there are times when someone walk, I'm just walking my dog, having a you know, a blast. And someone comes up and says, What is they've got like a mastiff or they've got some hundred-pound thing. And they're like, What is that? A rat on a leash? And in that moment, I'm like, I'm experiencing all that stuff. You know, I want to take out a machete and I got them up. And I'm like, Well, I'm I'm not threatened. The dog isn't, the dog didn't understand that. Well, maybe the dog did, but we're so sensitive, we're hypersensitive to all the things we think we own.

Venessa 27:34

And regardless, this cascade starts in the body, and then you're right there.

davidji 27:39

So then we say, like, that's stress, how we respond, you know, when our need is not met, or when someone challenges something, or when suddenly the demands of the moment come in, you know, someone says to you, these are these are classic lines. You're at the family dinner and you haven't had a you don't have a family, or you don't have a boyfriend, you don't have kids, and they go, So when are we gonna see a grandchild from here? Um or you know, there's all the whole thing about you know Do you have the ring on your finger yet?

Venessa 28:04

And all those questions, right?

davidji 28:05

Right. Yeah.

Venessa 28:06

Did you make partner yet? What's happening?

davidji 28:09

All those things like in the past, those would not be issues because there's not we're not in mortal danger, yeah, but we're so sensitive to all the interactions and all the relationships that we perceive, oh yeah, I get my body's responding as if I am in mortal danger. Now, here's the beautiful thing about meditation meditation is the antidote to stress because what happens when we meditate, even just for a little bit, and we'll meditate here for a little bit. Here's what happens. Number one, we've stopped perspiring, we don't have the need to perspire because our core body temperature actually elevates because our skin temperature heats up, cooling our core. So it's great for night sweats and hot flashes. Brilliant for that.

Venessa 28:55

Okay.

davidji 28:56

Powerful thing. We don't start breathing more shallowly and more rapidly. Our breath actually slows and goes much deeper. Our blood doesn't start pumping faster, it starts slowing down because our breath is the controller of that. We don't suppress all those nourishing hormones and chemicals. We actually elevate our growth hormones, elevate our sex hormones, elevate our immune system, and we suppress in that moment. Just in closing your eyes and breathing for a little bit, we suppress cortisol, adrenaline, and glucagon. And the hard parts of our blood that flow through the plasma, they don't get plump and sticky, they become more fluid, and our blood begins to flow more easily. So talk about an antidote to all those seeds of illness. It's it flips the script instantly.

Venessa 29:46

Wow. And I know we won't have enough time to go over it today. So I have this weird sunshine that's just following me everywhere I go. There we go. I know I won't have time to talk about it today in detail, but also the work of Sarah Lazar and Elizabeth Blackburn with regards to the physiologic restructuring of the brain after meditation and the changes in the hippocampus versus the amygdala. So I'm going to include links for both of those resources that I know I was able to, I was previewed to in my teacher training. But um do you want to say anything to that real quickly before we go on? How it physically changes the brain?

davidji 30:31

Yeah, I mean, the the amazing thing about meditation, and again, it's the same thing. You can't phone it in. You can't hop on the treadmill for 10 minutes on Monday and say, How come I'm not losing any weight? How come I can't run any further? You know, you sort of have to like do show up and do the thing. Um, but if you're willing to do the thing, it's about consistency, not duration. So even if you just meditated for 10 minutes in the morning, and I wasn't trying to shame anybody who has a morning, evening practice, because I'm I'm meditating constantly, and just five minutes in the afternoon sometime, just to take the uh the lid off the pressure cooker for the day. But we know that we don't just make these hormonal

Brain And DNA Changes From Practice

davidji 31:10

and chemical shifts. And I do just want to back up for a second, because when we talk about chronic stress, the the ultimate results of chronic stress, this is why people get diagnosed with stuff. 90% of your physical toxicity is emotionally derived. And so if you're always in that heightened state, moms, caregivers, people in high pressure, high stress jobs, this is like a consistent thing. This is going on for everyone. Those people, the planet needs to meditate, but those people, very, very specifically, you're taking if you're taking care of kids, or you're taking care of like multiple kids, or you're taking care of like kids and a dog, or you're taking care of kids and a dog and someone else in your house, and you've got a job and you're trying to do something, you need to meditate. It doesn't matter what walk of life you are, because ultimately you will succumb to what stress is doing to your body.

Venessa 32:06

Yeah.

davidji 32:09

So there's the obvious physiological, hormonal, and chemical benefits to this. There are the obvious emotional benefits, which I think are very, very powerful. You'll become more compassionate, more empathetic. This is all scientifically proven. I'm not making up gibberish here. We know that um there's a whole neurological world where um we know that, I mean, there's scientific studies. Typically, the landmark study is University of Massachusetts, Mass General with Harvard Medical Center, that proved that meditation can change the physical structure of your brain. Now that's pretty cool, considering that our the gray matter in our hippo hippocampus, learning, memory, spatial orientation, hand-eye coordination, is thinning from the moment we hit 25 years old.

Venessa 32:58

Right.

davidji 32:59

Thinning every single day, every single minute of every single day. And yet, if you meditate, you actually can arrest it and reverse it. That's what that test showed, that research study showed. And that was only that was only a uh a 56 day, eight weeks study. So eight weeks, 56 days of meditation can actually change that. Reverse. But then we go deeper into this process, and Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 in medicine for her work with Tila Mears and Talamorais, it's now been proven that our DNA, we can actually change our DNA. We can shift our DNA. And I know there's all this CRISPR therapy going on in what's it called, intelligent pharmaceuticals. You know, they are actually going into the threads, clipping out the things for major diseases. But forget the major diseases for now. How about just daily stressors and daily lifestyle aspects so we know that we can actually shift, shift us at the most RNA, DNA levels simply by closing our eyes and watching our breath. That's crazy. That's unbelievable. And so there are studies that are that are proving this. And and again, I I there's tons of studies out there, but I always prefer academic institutions and medical centers because they don't have an agenda. They're not trying to convince you to meditate, they're just doing the research. And so we know it's not just biologically and neurologically, it's actually deeper than that at the DNA level. And again, we can go back to the original formations of meditation. There's obviously, even in this world right now, fast forward several thousand years, powerful spiritual benefits to this as well, allowing you to connect beyond your physiology, beyond your mind, and going deeper into the essence of who you are and why you're here and purpose and meaning and all sorts of things like that.

Venessa 34:58

I'm so glad you brought that up because that was further down on my list of things to chat about. You can take a very secular approach to meditation and just have it be a mindfulness practice, breathing, getting grounded in the present moment in your body. It doesn't have to be a spiritual practice, but I feel that it organically brings that in in a non-religious way.

davidji 35:24

And so spirituality and spirit, there's just the concept, the word spirit, the word soul, the word connotes some type of religious, unproven kind of thing. And it's interesting. I, you know, I work a lot with law enforcement and members of the military. And I'm teaching them very, very in a very, very secular way. I'm not slinging Sanskrit and I'm not talking about anything that's not evidence-based or scientifically proven. But after I've worked with people for days and weeks and months, when I reconnect with them, they'll say to me, Oh, you won't believe this. Totally got off my my my meds. I was taking blood pressure meds. I was hyper I had hypertension for all these years, and now that I'm meditating, with my doctor's support, of course, I'm off the meds. And now my blood pressure is like 100 over 65 or something like that. It's like, score. And then they'll say something like, and I've really found a deeper understanding of who I am. And I've really connected more to my why in life, my purpose in life. And I've forged even a deeper connection to God or to and I wasn't teaching that. I wasn't straight, I had never even mentioned it. And I might have spent, you know, multiple days with these people, but I never went to that level. And they're coming back to me, you know, not everyone, because not everyone has a belief system that's like that. But they'll come back to me and say, you know, I have a deeper connection to my divine creator or to the universe or to God. And it's just so fascinating. Not everyone, but probably a third of the people that I speak to report after over time that uh they're better partners in their relationships. They're more conscious choice makers in their life, and they have found greater meaning and perhaps even living a more purposeful life. Yeah. Just because they're showing up and connecting to stillness and silence on a consistent basis.

Venessa 37:29

That's just again, I mean, the all information that just continually every day amazes me because it is this tool to bring together these three foundational pillars of mind, body, and spirit. Even if that's not what you're looking for. And even outside of the box or labels of religion, it's such a powerful product.

davidji 37:51

And if you wonder why there's like a giant beam of light pouring into you, literally, I can't. I always like to be a part of something like that. I won't take credit for it, but clearly it's this conversation that's eliminating something.

Present Moment: Six Stages

Venessa 38:04

And it doesn't matter where I go. It's oh, that might be a little bit better. Let me try this one. There we go. Okay, good. Because it keeps chasing me and chasing me. Can you still hear me okay? Yeah, perfect. Okay, great. All right, now it's just on my forehead. I think the next place that I would like to head is in talking about the present moment experiences that people have. I know when I was first learning meditation, this is circa 2022, before I had daily practice, before I understood the benefit of bookending my day. And when I say that, listeners, that means a meditation practice in the morning. I do it first thing because it quite literally sets the tone for the rest of my day. And when I don't, when I skip, I can tell. And I think everyone else in my world can tell too. So it's sort of the gift I give myself that keeps on giving to everyone that knows me. And then also, like David, you mentioned checking in with myself in the afternoon to close whatever chapter I was on before I check in with my family and I wind down. So having those two practices has been really pivotal, pivotal for me. But when I was first starting, like so many people that I know you hear this from, I had all of the shoulds. I should be doing this, it should feel like this, or I shouldn't be thinking, or I can't stop my thoughts. Why can't I sit still? That's still a problem for me sometimes, but I'm getting much better at it now. Don't meditate while you're on a treadmill. So I would like to talk about the six stages of the present moment experience. Like when some when somebody is is meditating, this is coming from the expert listeners. This is what real meditation looks like, even for someone who does this every day professionally. What are those?

davidji 40:00

Six stages of the present moment experience. And because our brain, in addition to always looking for danger and safety and seeking stuff out there, you pretty much can't really hold our attention for more than 15 seconds on anything. And that's training. If we cultivate it, of course we can. And that's really what we're doing when we meditate. We're cultivating our ability to bind our attention to some object of our attention, whether it's our breath or a mantra or a drishti or anything along those lines. But everyone goes through the whether you're a Tibetan monk who meditates for eight hours a day and has been doing that for every day for three years, or whether you're a dabbler or a crisis meditator, or whether you're new to it, or whether you just found an app that works for you, or a silent practice that you just use yourself. Everyone goes through these stages. First, settling in. Everybody's got to settle in. So you can't just close your eyes and go, ah, nirvana. You actually there needs to be a settling in part of this process. And then once we settle in, we begin to witness. Pick your item. Pick your, let's say we'll we'll witness our breath. That's that's a a major go-to. That's pretty much a lot of people refer to mindfulness as witnessing our breath or witnessing the moment without any judgment attached to that. It's much more comprehensive and complex, but basically strip everything away and just watching the breath as it comes in and watching the breath go out. So we do that, and maybe we do it for two seconds or 20 seconds or whatever that looks like. Let's say we're going to sit down and meditate for five minutes. Pretty quickly in that process, a thought's gonna pop into your head. What am I having for dinner? What was that conversation that I had? Did I send that check? Did I check that email? Did I reply to that? The list is crazy. And so very, very quickly, after we're we're sitting and settled and just beginning to witness, we're going to drift. We just are. We're going to, we're going to drift. And it's like one of these, like these core things. And we shouldn't beat ourselves up because that's what we do. Our attention drifts from wherever it is to, you know, and we get to pick that. We always get to, you know, to pick exactly what that aspect is, but we're going to drift. Now, one of the things that I have stressed and taught over the years is that when we do drift away, when we find ourselves having drifted away, so so important. We need to ever so gently and kindly with love, with kindness, with self-compassion, then drift back. That's the the key. It's the biggest key of that could ever even exist. Because a lot of people say, oh, it doesn't work for me. They sit down, they close their eyes, they say, okay, I'm going to watch my breath. And two seconds later, two seconds later, they're like, oh, it doesn't work for me.

Venessa 43:15

And so that's not just what that was me for a long time. Right, right.

davidji 43:19

So every everyone, everyone who's part of this conversation right here, this is normal. This is one of the stages. It happens. So we're going to drift away. And in that moment, we're going to judge. And it doesn't have to be self-judgment. Oh, I'm such a horrible person. It might be, oh, am I doing it right? It might be, oh, maybe I should use another technique. It might be even judgment about the thing that I'm thinking about. Suddenly it's like I find myself in the supermarket and I'm checking out avocados and I want to make some great guacamole. And I'm like, oh, I don't know if I have, do I mince the garlic or chop the garlic? And I'll definitely want to, you know, squeeze some limes into that. And do I need cilantro? How important is that? So I mean, it doesn't, it can be in inane internal conversations. It doesn't have to be this profound meaning of life conversation. But we're going to drift and then we're going to judge. And that judgment sometimes can last 20 minutes, or it can just be like a couple of seconds. Like, um, maybe it's not for me, or it's not working. It's not working. I haven't achieved bliss yet. I'm not sitting in Buddhist palm or Jesus isn't whispering into my ear or something along those lines. But at a certain point, the judgment ends and we surrender. Now, this whole thing could be a 15-second experience. These five of these stages could be 15 seconds. And then once we have surrendered, then we'll experience that stillness. Now, two seconds later, we may say, Oh, let me settle back in. And then we go through the same six again. Sometimes in a in a 20-minute meditation, we could experience that whole thing 15 times, 20 times, maybe 30 times. But as long as we go, oh, this is just this is the thing. This is how it goes. I settle in, I begin to witness, I drift away, I judge that, I surrender, and then I experience the stillness. Now, after you practice it longer and longer, it's practice like anything else.

Venessa 45:22

Yeah.

davidji 45:22

Show up and do the thing, show up and do the thing. You'll spend a lot less time in judgment land. So you probably spend very little time in judgment land now after having judged yourself for years. Oh, yes. Right.

Venessa 45:35

And when I am in a space where I realize I'm judging myself, there's awareness that that's what I'm doing, rather than this guilt of I'm not doing it right again. Like, what's wrong? It's almost this like, I'm the observer of the observer. It's a weird experience and it's amazing because it it's very free. I go, oh yeah. I was judging what I was doing there. This is okay. And then it's release, and it that part is the cathartic part for me, and it just happens naturally when it does.

davidji 46:09

And this is like anything else that we would put our attention if you wanted to learn a musical instrument. We have to practice. If you wanted to build uh some muscles or stay fit or whatever, you have to just keep showing up and do the results are cumulative. No one goes to the gym and does 50 curls and then says, That's it, I'm set forever. I'm the bicep king or queen of the go back, and probably better for you not to overdo it that first day because then you'll get injured and then you won't show up the next day. You know, but maybe you progressively build up. Same thing with with meditation. So I would liken it to anything that we would want to cultivate in our life, even if that's you know, being a better parent. Gotta practice. You have to be a bad parent until you realize I don't want to be that. I, you know, I don't want to be a scolder, I want to be a lover or whatever. But I need boundaries, whatever, whatever that, whatever that looks like. Same thing. We cultivate our meditation practice, and it's one of these really beautiful things that just show up and do the thing, consistency, not duration. And then suddenly you're about to scorch the village a week later, and instead you it's not that you're biting your tongue, you just don't go there. Yeah. Suddenly, oh, I accepted the moment instead of trying to change it or trying to prove to someone that I was right. And these things just very subliminally start to

Rewiring Reactivity Into Choice

davidji 47:35

elevate inside of us.

Venessa 47:37

Very true.

davidji 47:38

Yeah.

Venessa 47:39

What I've personally experienced, and I'm sure you've heard this many times, is that the pausing that I'm practicing in my meditation shows up in a pause before reactivity in real time. And I think that that comes from the structural rewiring of my brain. I really do, where I'm not in this constant fight or flight situation. Or when it triggers me, I go, oh, I do my 16 seconds, which is a wonderful meditation that David G has on his website in many different places. That's a great place to start if you're looking for meditation to start with. Very non-threatening and easy to do. And that one alone just it's like comes in.

davidji 48:27

It's the pattern interrupt that we all need. And again, let's go back to like it's the primitive part of our brain that's trying to protect us. Yeah. And there's so many situations where we actually don't need protection, you know. If someone says, Really, I don't like that, I don't like your music, you know, it's okay. It's an opinion. You don't have to like my music. Or you can go, oh, what are you talking about? Haven't you heard this? And don't you know that? And then suddenly it becomes a thing. That's just like the easy one. That's like the low-hanging fruit. Because the primitive part of our brain is always going to do that, we can rewire it. We actually have an inner tool, no equipment necessary, yeah, to actually rewire our brain. So if we can rewire our brains and we can shift our DNA and we can actually shift the hormones and chemicals that flow through us and respond. Because what the message that's being sent is, oh, you thought that was offensive to you, you know, when someone said, you know, you look better in blue than red. Well, are you you're really gonna wear that? Yeah. And you, you know, and you've taken that as a life-threatening thing, and all those hormonal and chemical things are happening to you. We rewire our brain to be like, you know what? That's actually not a threat. It's a challenge. And our brain perceives challenges distinctly different than threats, which is why showing up for a big meet or a competition or some type of like I've rehearsed or practiced for this thing. Let me show up. And that's a challenge. It's not a threat. You're not in mortal danger. So let's just remind ourselves when we're experiencing a certain moment, we could say to ourselves, I'm not in mortal danger. And that'll send the message to the brain. You don't have to prepare for mortal danger. Yeah. It's just a disappointment or an irritation.

Venessa 50:20

Yeah. Brought something to mind. I think it was in Sacred Powers where you talked about experiencing presence. Like when you see those little things around that, you know, I have three kids. And so sure, the house can be a total mess. I'll walk in and be like, why did my teenagers do that again? That's disgusting. Or it could be like, I'm experiencing a present moment. I'm right here right now. I think it's a good thing.

davidji 50:46

I refer to this as the evidence of presence.

Venessa 50:48

That's what it was. Thank you. Yeah.

davidji 50:50

And it was first, I first experienced this when this David Simon, one of my great teachers, um, he was meeting with one of his patients. He's a brilliant neurologist, and she was saying, I am so, so upset with my spouse. I am so angry at him. I'm seething at him. I walk through the living room and I trip over his shoes, never picks them up. You know, I go into the bathroom, the caps off the toothpaste, there's toothpaste all over the counter. It's just like sickening to me. It's just so annoying. And I go to the kitchen, his dishes are in the sink. He hasn't rinsed them off or put them in the dishwasher. And David Simon said, these are all evidence of presence. And then two days later, she reaches. Actually, the reason she came to him was she said, My husband has been keeping a secret from me and he won't tell me what it is. And I'm I've been really struggling so much and I'm so angry with him. And then she goes, she re calls him back up a couple of days later. He revealed to me that he has pancreatic cancer and that he only has a couple of weeks to live. And David Simon said, evidence

Evidence Of Presence

davidji 52:05

of presence. And then she called back two weeks later after he died. And she said, I'm not tripping over those shoes anymore in the living room. They're neatly stacked at his bed. He hasn't even stepped into them. And he hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks. That cap is tightly on the toothpaste, and his dishes are not in the sink anymore. And so so much of our anger, and you know, especially for relatives, yeah, you know, or close loved ones, evidence of presence. Just remind yourself, clock's ticking. We're all gonna die.

Venessa 52:37

Yeah.

davidji 52:37

And we've got this, we've we've got these moments where we could say, Yep, I'm tripping over your shoes. I hope to trip over them forever. So for me, it's my dad who's like this in incessant whistler, whistling, whistling, but it's not even a tune. It's just like, you know, just filling the tongue. And at first I used to say, Will you stop whistling? And then, you know, I realized as he was getting up there in years, I'm like, keep whistling. I hope that sound never ends. I want to hear that whistle because I know it's gonna end. Yeah, and then I'm gonna, you know, so I was just actually with him. I was uh visiting him in Florida and he starts, we were driving and he started to whistle, and he was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. And I said, Oh, let me get out my phone because I definitely want to record you whistling. I need to have that whistle going on because I don't know when it's gonna end. So, yeah, evidence of presence.

Venessa 53:28

Thank you for sharing that. That's amazing. It made me think of my 15-year-old who loves to sing, but their songs without words, and only she can hear it because she has one ear pod in, and I'll remember that the next time she does.

davidji 53:43

Yeah, that's when you say, Oh, evidence of presence. I'm gonna hug you and squeeze you until you can't take it in.

Venessa 53:52

Oh, thank you, David G. This has been fabulous. Before we end, it would be such an honor if you would share with our listeners a short closing meditation, because this is truly your gift. And I am hoping that this will reach so many people, especially in some of the circles and the industry that I work in, fitness, that really would benefit from something like this.

davidji 54:18

Yeah, sure. And again, it's all about consistency, not duration. Yeah. So let's get comfortable. Uh feather your nest. Remember, comfort is queen. And together let's take a long, slow deep breath in. And ever so gently let that go. And let's do that again. Long, slow deep breath in. Allow your eyelids to ever so gently float closed and release the breath. And just watch your breath as it flows in. Maybe it's coming in through your nostrils, into the back of your throat, down into your lungs, down into your belly, and then leaving the same way. Maybe you're just noticing your chest rising up as you inhale and your chest relaxing as you exhale. Maybe you notice your belly fills on the in and empties on the out. And let's ask ourselves a question. Just one question. What am I grateful for? What am I grateful for? And simply keep asking that question over and over. Sometimes it'll be so obvious that maybe there's a person or an animal or people in your life. Maybe there are certain situations and circumstances. Just allow your gratitude list to unfold before you right now. There's nowhere else to be. Nothing else to do but let all the things you're truly grateful for to unfold.

Guided Practice: Gratitude And Intention

davidji 57:01

To take a long, slow deep breath in here. And let that go. And let's silently begin repeating to ourselves. I trust. I trust. I trust. And you may drift away to thoughts or sounds or physical sensations. That's okay. As soon as you realize you've drifted away, ever so gently drift back to I trust. I trust. For anything? Maybe a state of mind or a state of being that you'd like to inhabit for the day. Maybe it's a real-world action step that you can take. What is that intention that you'd like to invite into your heart and plant there? In that fertile soil of your heart. Feel it embed. It's now pulsing through every fiber of your being. It's washing your brain. It's bathing your organs. It's infusing itself into every cell in your body. With each beat of your heart, that intention pulses through you. And now it has become you take a long, slow deep breath in and release your attachment to outcome. You've planted the seed, but you need to do nothing more. But every time you connect to the stillness and silence that rests within the seed will get nourished. And your intention will get closer to manifesting. Another long, slow deep breath in here. And feel free to give your heart a gentle massage. And when it feels comfortable, you can ever so gently open your eyes. And welcome back. So that was just a few minutes, but now we've gone through some powerful meditation and we've woven in a little bit of a gratitude practice, a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of intention setting, a little bit of mantra. Each of these could be your entire practice, but hopefully one of these things resonated with you. And you can continue that journey. And I know that since Vanessa is a certified meditation teacher, she will continue to reinforce this in every pod that you do from here into eternity.

Venessa 1:00:55

Thank you so much, David G. This has been such a blessing. Your energy, your wisdom, everything. Thank you so much.

davidji 1:01:03

Oh, thank you.

Venessa 1:01:04

Oh, thank you.

davidji 1:01:05

You too. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Venessa 1:01:08

Thank you for listening to today's episode. I hope you found it interesting, actionable, and

Closing Notes And Resources

Venessa 1:01:15

worthy of sharing. You can help contribute to this growing community by emailing topic ideas, suggestions for interviews, and feedback to Vanessa at squatsandseances.com. You can find new episodes of Squats and Seances on all major podcast platforms and the vlogcast on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave us a review if you are enjoying the content. Visit us at squatsandseances.com and subscribe to our newsletter. While there, you can also check out our weekly blog posts on all ways to optimize your health and fitness. Follow us on social media at squats and seances, on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And until next time, stay gritty, friends.