The Purpose and Neuroscience of Meditation + Simple Techniques (you might already be doing)

Have you ever said, "I can't meditate because I can't stop my thoughts"? 

Do stress, anxiety, or overthinking seem to run your life more than you'd like?

Have you tried meditation before and wondered if you were doing it wrong?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this episode is for you.

In this talk, I break down meditation in a simple, practical way and share the exact practices that helped me calm my nervous system during some of the most challenging seasons of my life. You'll discover why meditation isn't about getting into a "no thoughts ever" space. And how creating space IS the practice.

In this episode, I'll teach you:

✨ What meditation really is (and the biggest misconceptions that keep people from practicing)

✨ How meditation physically rewires the brain and calms the nervous system

✨ Simple meditation techniques you can start using immediately (even if you've never meditated before)

✨ Why mantras, breathwork, and chanting are powerful tools for reducing stress and emotional reactivity

✨ How to create a meditation practice that works for you and fits into real life

If you've ever wanted more peace, better sleep, less anxiety, and a calmer mind, this conversation will give you the tools and confidence to begin. 

For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

_____________________

🌿 Self-Healing with Kristen Brown is recorded live on the Noom Vibe app — a space dedicated to whole-person wellness to live longer, happier lives. Guests are welcome to join the stage to share their experiences, ask questions, and be part of the conversation.

To join Self-Healing with Kristen Brown LIVE, download the FREE Noom Vibe app on both Android and Apple devices. We'd love to see you there! 

🌱 Some guest segments may be edited out due to poor audio quality or moments unrelated to the topic to create the best listening experience.

*This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or mental health care.

_____________________

Hey Soul Sibling!

If you're loving this podcast, we'd be so grateful if you popped over to your app of choice and left a 5 star rating and review. Your reviews help to boost the pod to other like-minded seekers just like you.

Muchas gracias!

KB 🦋

Transcript

Kristen 0:00

Hello, everyone. I am Kristen Brown, a personal development and self-healing author, healer, and mentor. I'm the author of the International Number One Bestseller, The Recovering People Pleaser, a spiritual guide to reclaim your true worth and attract the love you deserve. Through a blend of lived wisdom, neuroscience, and universal truths, I help people rediscover their true worth and reclaim their personal power. My model is simple: all change happens on the inside first, and when you change your inner world, you change your life. For free resources, my book link, and more, you will find my link tree with all my goodies in my Noon Vibe profile or in the show description on other podcasting platforms. Today we are diving deep into what meditation is, the benefits you'll receive, and practices to get you started or add to your meditation technique toolbox. For those of you who are maybe new to meditation, I'm going to share with you how meditation can benefit us. And I'm going to use some realized examples about things that people experience that they may not realize that meditation can help. And I know meditation can be confusing, it can be scary, it can be like, I don't really understand this. And I really think that people overcomplicate what meditation really is. So I'm going to share the key purposes and benefits of meditation. Because I think once we understand what's really happening here, it makes sense and it might invite us to start a meditation practice. And like I said, they're not as complicated as we think. And this is not about being perfect. A lot of people think meditation is really about getting it right and being perfect and completely clearing the mind. I'm here to tell you that's not what it is. And there's many other experts in the world and meditation practitioners and teachers that are going to tell you this. This is not about perfection on any level. It is a practice. We got to keep that in mind. We're not here to look perfect. There's no failure. By the way, you can't fail in meditation. I think that's a great thing. So here are some of the purposes, or I'm sorry, some of the key benefits. It reduces stress and helps us to maintain calm. Meditation relaxes the mind and the body, which lowers our stress levels and reduces our anxiety. It helps in emotional regulation. Regular meditation practices strengthen the ability to manage our emotions, and this reduces our reactivity to stressful situations. It increases our self-awareness. By observing our thoughts without judgment, that's only that could be that's one practice. Individuals gain a deeper understanding of themselves. It improves focus and cognition. It enhances focused attention, memory, and cognitive function. And there are physical health benefits. Meditation is associated with lowering the blood pressure, improved sleep, and decreased inflammation. There are also brain changes that happen. Science shows that meditation can physically rewire the brain. It can rewire the brain. What are we always looking for here? On a power hour with KB, we're looking to rewire that bad boy up there. It improves our sleep. Oh, wait, that's the wrong one. It decreases the size of the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and it strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that is responsible for being rational and having emotional control. It also deepens presence. It helps us to stay centered and present in the moment rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. One of my listeners here on Moon Vibe reached out to me yesterday to share something, you know, that was going on within them. And then they just threw into the email, they're like, you know, I'm really still confused about meditation. I'm not really understanding it. So I really hope this person is here listening. If they're not, probably gonna send them a message afterwards and send the link to them. Because I think once we really understand meditation and the benefits of it, things are going to start changing for us. And they may even have started, but we sometimes have this idea of what's going to happen. That it's going to be quick, it's going to be fast, it's going to be this massive change overnight. And when that doesn't happen, kind of the same way with weight loss, we think we're doing something wrong. I'm here to tell you, if you keep practicing, there is this build-up effect. I don't know how else to explain that, where it just sort of builds on itself. And eventually you'll just start seeing if you're if you're in observance with yourself and you're closely connected with yourself, you're just going to start seeing you act, respond, or deal with life differently. And then you're going to be like, what, what's changed? Oh, maybe I just slept well last night, or maybe this, or maybe that. And those things could be true too. But when you start to see those things, it's going to promote you to want to continue it. And I will tell you that I happened upon meditation very organically. I didn't sit down and say, hey, I read somewhere that meditation is good, so let me try this. No, it was, I was knee deep in my, I was neck deep in my tsunami. My anxiety was off the charts. And I remembered back to my kundalini yoga practices. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with kundalini yoga, it's some small poses, like it's nothing, you're not doing like warrior pose or those type of things. There's these smaller type poses, but it's a lot of breathing. A lot of breathing. It is long, slow, deep breathing, where you inhale as high as you can, hold it, take another sip at the top, and then you slowly exhale it. And then there's breath of fire, which is sort of like a panting that I can't really demonstrate for you guys on here. There's two types of breathing, but also it involves at some point, it depends, because each each session, I guess, each time we practice it, the yogi kind of does a um what's the word I'm looking for? Um a set. That's what he calls it. He calls it a set. So he'll do certain sets for certain particular reasons. So it changes every single time. By the way, if you go to a Kundalini practitioner or yogi and you start taking those type of classes, if you don't resonate with that person, go find someone else. It's just like hairstylists. You know, if you don't resonate with one, you go find someone else. Okay, it's not like every single one is doing the same thing. They're all different, they're all different teachers. But at the end, we often did mantras. And oh my gosh, I would leave Kundalini feeling like I just had a four-hour massage on the beach in perfect weather. I mean, it was like I didn't have a care in the world. I remember driving home like I was floating and thinking, wow. Now, did that happen the first time? No. Did it happen the second time? No. It came after I practiced it for a while and I learned the breathing and all the other things. So during my tsunami, when my anxiety was through the roof, that's when I said I remembered back to the days of my kundalini yoga practices. And I thought I need to get myself calm. So I started doing deep breathing practices. And I don't even know if I called it meditation at that time, to be honest with you. I just knew I need to calm my nervous system. But because it was working, I thought, hmm, I'm gonna do more of this. And then my practice expanded and it deepened, and I started doing other things. So I'm here to tell you that there's a lot of different techniques, you guys. A lot. I'm just gonna share what I'm aware of. But if you've got someone out in the world that's telling you to practice something and you want to go try that, go try it. Find what works for you. For me, at its core, meditation to me is getting out of my hyperdrive mind. That's what my ideal was. I wanted to get out of that mind that was just going nuts and it was causing all kinds of physical symptoms in me. I just wanted to quiet my mind and it worked. I've told this story before on here that when I went to court and I was scared to death on the drive there, I was like, oh my God, I'd never been to court before. And I was gonna be on the stand, which come on, this is divorce court, really. I mean, I had no idea that this is how the thing went down. And I sat and I meditated out in the hallway with my head sitting in a chair with my head leaning up against the wall. And my lawyer walked in and he was like, hey, I was like, kind of cracked an eye open at him, and I said hello, and I closed my eyes again, went back to doing. And he he literally leans down, he goes, Are you okay? I said, Yeah, I'm just meditating. I did the same thing when I broke my femur out in the middle of the desert. I did the same thing, and they kept saying, Is she awake? You know, is she awake? Is she awake? And I'd crack an eye open and I would say, Yeah, I'm just meditating. I mean, this is something that I practice in so many ways in so many scenarios, and it has served me. So I won't put it down now. I know that I need it. I know that I need it. Okay. So we're gonna jump into some simple practices to start. And then there's one uh practice, this is the mantra section that I'm really gonna go into deeply. I'm gonna talk about chanting as well. And I know the chanting, I remember when I first started chanting. Oh my god. I was uh, you know, in kundalini, and you're kind of, I was kind of over in the corner and I'm kind of chanting kind of quietly. Oh my gosh, now you see me in kundalini. I'm the one you hear. I am chanting because it does something to us. So I'm gonna go into that a little bit more. So key techniques. First one is focused breathing. It's kind of what I mentioned already. This is about either sitting comfortably. Most meditation practices, practitioners, and including Dr. Joe Dispenza, want us to be sitting. I don't sit, friends. I don't. I've never sat during my meditations, but if I they say that's what we should be doing. So if you want to sit, sit, I mean, I have done it like sitting outside the courtroom, those type of things in here and there. But if I'm gonna put myself down to meditate, I really don't do that. It's either flat on the floor or flat on my bed or um in my recliner here. I have two recliners in my coaching office for people, me and my client, and you know, things like that. But you do you, okay? And then this is about breathing. It's inhaling and exhaling. And you can do it through your nostrils, in through your nostrils, out through your nostrils. You can do it in through your nostrils, out through your mouth. I don't typically do inhales through my mouth because that just dries out my mouth. But you can do, and I'll give you um some practices for that, but focused breathing. Think about just sitting there, just watching your breath. Oh, I'm inhaling. Oh, I'm exhaling. Oh, that was an inhale. Oh, there's an exhale. That's it. It's just about focusing on something else other than those crazy thoughts in our mind. Then there's the body scan. And this is again, you can sit or you can lie down. And this is mentally scanning your body from head to toe, pausing at each part to notice sensations, tension, warmth, the way your clothes feel, you know, whatever it might be for you, without trying to change anything. Body scans are huge because, again, they get that they get us into the present moment. One of the things that I revert back to a lot if I'm feeling some kind of way, I'm stressed out, I'm nervous, I'm, you know, in hyperdrive in some capacity. I'll also ask myself, where are your feet? How do they feel? That's something that I do all the time. And that helps a lot. All right, the next one is counting breaths. Okay, now there's different ways to count breaths. I saw a guy on TikTok recently that all he did is this first technique, and he said he was launched into all types of cool mystical experiences. And this is inhale, then exhale, and then say one. So after the inhale and the exhale, you say one in your head. And then you go inhale, exhale, you say two. Inhale, exhale, three. You go all the way up to 10, and then you go back down from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. So it's inhale, exhale, one, inhale, exhale, two, up to 10. If you lose count, if your brain goes off, as mine has done 6,475,000 times, then you just start over at one. You don't judge it. And this is where the practice comes in because there's that uh desire sometimes for us to go, oh God, I can't do this. Simply observe, go back to one. Sometimes I giggle. I'm like one, one, one, you know, and I'll kind of giggle to myself and I'll just say, because I am only the observer, I'll say, Wow, Kristen, you got a lot going on in your head today. I don't judge. So don't judge yourself through any of this. Now, I learned a technique from Buddhist monk Tik Nathan. If you guys haven't heard of him, love this man. He was an integral part of my College of Christian days when I was, you know, reading all kinds of literature and learning all kinds of things. And he taught in one of his books, and I couldn't tell you what book it is, he taught to inhale and count one, exhale and count one. Inhale, count two, exhale, count two, inhale, count three, exhale, count three. See what I'm saying? You're going one, one, two, two, three, three, all the way up to ten, and then back down the other side, nine, eight, seven, six, five. Okay, the reason why I like this one better is because it takes more focus for me. Because I've done both. But I this is the one I learned on was the one, one, two, two, three, three. But I like this one better because it really requires my focus. And this is my go-to. This along with another one I'll share with you, my go-to meditation for sleep. I lay in bed, sitting there, I'm ready to go. If I'm tired, I don't really have to do it. But if I'm not like super tired or a little amped for some reason, I just go to immediately. One, one, two, two, three. And like I said, sometimes I lose count. I'm doing one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. So what? It's still a practice. I need you to hear this. It's still a practice because I'm still aware, even though my mind drifts, I'm like, oh, you're drifting and I'm coming back. Do you see how I'm returning focus? That matters, you guys. A lot of times we think it's this perfection. I gotta do this so perfectly. No, it's the practice, not the perfection. VA said, she said she does she does the meditations here on Nune Vibe. And there is guided meditations here on Nune Vibe and everywhere. One of my clients found a guided meditation practitioner on YouTube. She just loves her. She has released so many emotions from her body that were stuck through this person. So go out there and find what works for you. All right, the next one is mindfulness or observing your thoughts. This is not something I do. I don't know why. I think because I like my other practices, but this is a big one. They talk about this a lot. Sit quietly and just observe your thoughts and emotions as they arise. But don't judge them. Just watch them. In Kundalini, we call this being the observer or being the watcher. It's allowing them to pass without judgments. The same way you're watching clouds pass in the sky. The way I've explained it is being the passenger in a car. You know, when you're a passenger in your car and you're just looking out the window and you're like, oh, there's a tree, oh, there's a farm, oh, there's a river, or there's a bridge, or there's another car, or you know, you're just kind of watching things as you pass by, but you're not putting any judgment on them. It's like that. Just let your thoughts just sit there and breathe, take a couple of deep breaths, settle into your body and say, What am I thinking? Here's another practice that I've heard people talk about that they have a lot of benefits from, and that is saying, I wonder what I'll think next, or what thought am I gonna think next? Continuing to repeat that over again. Super interesting. We also have walking meditations. And this is walking, you can do it slowly. I'm I'm a medium walker when I do this. I'm not like I'm not rushing, I'm not doing the fast walk, but I'm not like sauntering. But this is focusing on physical sensations in your body as you're walking, your feet touching the ground, your legs moving, the air around you. I walk a lot, as you guys know, and I don't put any earbuds in, I don't listen to podcasts, I don't get on the phone and make phone calls. This is my time. I have, you know, a lot of people that reach out to me, friends, family, and want to talk. And I'm so tempted sometimes to answer that phone or call them back on my walk. And I'm like, no, this is my time. And a big one for me is observing trees. No one taught me this. This is just what works for me. I just walk and I look at trees and I look at the wind in the trees, and I look at the way the leaves move and reflect the light, and I look at dead branches and trees and just look at trees. One day I was getting ready to go to work when I was, we were living at my mom's, and I had so much anxiety. I was like, my drive to work wasn't very long. It was 10, 12 minutes. And I was like, oh my God, I cannot walk in there like this. This is as a hairstylist. So on the drive to work, I took back roads rather than the big surface streets, and I just looked at every tree. I would not allow myself to think anything. Oh, there's a pretty tree, or that's a pretty I wonder what kind of tree that is. See what I'm saying? I was out of my thinky, thinky, thinky brain. I just looked at trees. I promise you, I swear, by the time I got to work, my anxiety was absolutely gone. Yeah. Because anxiety is often connected to what we're thinking, what we're ruminating on, and what we're fearing. So I remember walking into work and going, checking my anxiety, I was like, oh my gosh, it's gone. It's like literally gone. And that again, once we start to see these benefits, we're gonna start wanting to do it more. And then there is mantra meditations. Now, these have been incredibly helpful for me. If you are on my newsletter list, I wrote an email, a newsletter last week, I believe, I think it was last Wednesday, and I talked about how I woke up irritable and cranky. It was a terrible subject line. I just wrote, I woke up irritable and cranky. You know, sidebar, but when you do what I do, they're always like, oh, you gotta grab, grab them with a subject line, all this. I was like, no, I just for me, for some reason, I just don't put a lot of thought into that stuff. But that's all it said. I woke up irritable and cranky. My husband and I had had an argument the day before. I was still feeling some remnants of that, and whatever else was going on, I don't remember. I'm not sure if it was before my noon vibe talk, but at some point I just sat in my chair here in my office. I reclined, I put on bineural beats, which are huge for me. Love them. I love 432 hertz, that's my favorite. And I put those on in my earbuds because that helps us to block out outside noise. And I just, first of all, I deep breathed, I deep breathed, and then I just repeated, I am love and I am loved. That's a mantra I learned 15 years ago. I am love and I am loved, and I just repeated it. But each time that I repeated it, I felt the truth of it. I am love, and I am loved. And this is not just from love of family, this is love of the universe, this is love of God and source. I'm loved. When I tell you, and I only had like a few minutes to do this, maybe 20, 15, 20 minutes, set a timer in my phone because I had to go. Maybe it was before a client. I really don't remember. But I set the timer in my phone when it was time to come out when the timer went off. I remember thinking, darn it. That's how good meditation can feel. Don't give up if something you're using doesn't feel quote unquote like it's working. Try something else, and that's the whole thing. Reason why I'm giving this talk today because I know how much meditation, how much we benefit from meditation, and I want you guys to win. I want you to win. So don't look at it as this big scary thing. It's not. It's very simple. I've also said the words clear and center. Clear and center. The one I am loved, I am loved that I used the other day. I was emotional. I had a lot of emotional emotions in my body. Clear and center is usually when I can't stop overthinking or I'm overwhelmed. Clear and center. Clear and center. Clear and center. You can also do things like put one hand on your heart, the other one on your belly, those type of things. That's very grounding for you. And then you could repeat phrases like peace. I am peace. I choose peace. Peace is here now. Anything you want. The key here is this is your practice. And you get to tailor it exactly for you, in whatever way that feels right to you. You will find your way, my beloved. You will find your way. I'm here just sharing some things with you. Pick up some ideas, some concepts, say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna try that and see what happens. Then there is some other mantras that I use that are Sanskrit. And I learned these from Kundalini Yoga. Yes, okay. Alicia said she's messaging me. Meditation is new to me since I started Noom and Num Vibe last October. Since then, I've tried several. I've committed to doing the miracle of mind meditation daily, meditating with Panash Desai as often as possible when I can catch him live. And every night I do a Noom Vibe meditation. I have seen a big difference in my nervous system. I also do my meditations lying down. Thanks for saying that. And then she said it definitely gets easier with practice. Right there, you guys, living testimonial. Right there. So now I'm gonna go into these Sanskrit mantras. One of them is sat nam S-A-T N-A-M. Now I realize you might feel goofy when you start doing this because you're like, what is this? I did back all those years ago, 15, 20 years ago, when I started Kundalini Yoga, I was like, what am I saying? This is weird. I was judging it. I was judging it. And then I stopped judging it. I'm like, this is here for a reason. Satnam means truth, existence, the universe is my identity. That's what it means. So sat nam is about stripping away the ego to find your personal truth. Who doesn't want more of that? I do. I work with my ego all the time because I know it's just gonna it can crush me. And so, hey, all right, satnam. Another one is sa na. S A T A N A M A. Sa Ta Na Ma. And this represents the cycle of life by Sa meaning birth, ta meaning life, na, death, and ma meaning rebirth. Birth, life, death, rebirth. Sa ta na ma ah. We did this in kundalini, and you would put your finger, you'd sit in just your regular, I think they call it easy pose, where it's just like crisscross applesauce. Would sit there with a very straight spine, and we would put our thumb on our first finger and say sa with some pressure, and then the middle finger, ta, and then the ring finger, na, and then the pinky finger, ma. Sa, ta, na, ma, with some pressure. And we just repeated that, repeated that, repeated that. And I couldn't tell you how long because I'm in the meditation, but it's it was definitely minutes. And we've done some meditations just repeating the same mantra for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and we just kept going and kept going and kept going. Doing it in a room full of people, there's something powerful about that. And you'll get yourself to a place where it's just coming out of you like flow. It's you're not even doing it anymore, it's just kind of doing it for you. Oh my gosh, so good. And then one of my ultimate favorites that I learned from Andy Dooley, who is Mike Dooley's brother and a love attraction coach and mentor. He put this in a newsletter one day. And like I said, I will pick up things that people throw down. And this became my favorite. I even messaged him back and I'm like, holy smokes, bro! Like, what is this? Magic that you gave me. And this is so hum. S-O-H-U-M. Sometimes it's spelled H-A-M, but the true way is H-U-M. So hum. And this means I am that. Why would that work for us? I am that. What is that? I don't know. I just started practicing it and then I messaged him again. I said, Andy, what does this mean again? Because this is really like doing the craziest things for me. He goes, it means I am that. So what that means is it's reminding us that we're part of something much larger. We're part of an infinite whole. So, um. That again is another one of my go-tos. When I fall asleep at night, it's my reset. It's getting clear, it's connecting back. You know, we are always connected to source energy, but this is reminding myself I'm a part of something much bigger, that I'm part of this infinite, unconditional love of the universe. So hum. If you guys just KB's little recommendation, that's all. That is my absolute favorite. And that's the one that I would recommend. Set a timer in your phone for five minutes. That's it. Take some really deep breaths, hold them, exhale, do box breathing if you like, whatever. Whatever gets you to calm down, to just get yourself centered in the present moment. And then you inhale so and you exhale hum. And you in when you're inhaling, you say so in your head, and when you exhale, you say hum. So, hum, so, hum in your head. That's it. Report back to me. I can't wait to hear what comes from this. Not just the first time, unless you have a great experience, but do it a couple times. The craziest thing for me is that no matter how wired I was when I laid down, when I so hummed, now I'm not counting, I'm just so humming, boom, I passed out. I think that's what promoted me to reach back out to Andy and say, What is this magic you bestowed upon me? He was like, I know, right? It is amazing. The next thing we're gonna go into is chanting. Chanting could be different for you. For me, it felt goofy at first. We see that stuff everywhere. People make fun of it. It's it's funny things on TV and movies and things like that. Oh no. There's a reason for this. There's a reason for this. Chanting is about vibration. And even in my kundalini yoga class, he would tell us where to put our tongue and where to focus the vibration. And I think I believe it was through the soft palate of our mouth. It just feels good. There's no other way that I can explain it. It feels good to chant. And again, this is gonna take practice. It's gonna feel weird and awkward at first. If you have people in the house with you, they might, you know, make fun of you or saying, What are you doing? Trust me, my kids harassed me a lot. And I felt it. I'm gonna be honest, I was this part of me that was cringing when, oh, clear and center mob, or you know, whatever they would tease me. But I got over it. I was like, no, this is what I got to do for me. And in choosing me in those moments, I actually got stronger. So keep that in mind. Every time someone tries to pick on you or make fun of you or tell you that's silly, you're gonna get stronger when you continue to choose yourself in those moments. Because then I got to the D G A F section of my life where I was like, whatever, make fun of me. This stuff works. And then, as you would know it, as they got older and adults and life happened, and I'm like, hey, perhaps try meditating. And I have one of my family members, I won't say which one, started meditating because they were having huge problems sleeping. They're staying up till two o'clock in the morning, not wanting to. They were distracting with a lot of YouTube and things like that, watching their laptop in bed until they just couldn't stay awake anymore and fell asleep, type things. I'm like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. We're gonna do this differently. And I started teaching them this, teaching them these practices. And wow, they had huge, like they're now a huge proponent for meditation. So think about it. The people that might be making fun of you, they don't know any better, they haven't experienced it, and that's their little judgy brain trying to pick on you. So what? So what? Hey, that could be a mantra. Inhale, so exhale what? So what? Okay, what does chanting do? Chanting stimulates the vagus nerve. Yes, the physical act of chanting aloud, okay. Now this is not in our head, this is allowed, creates vibrations in the chest, the throat, and the head. And these vibrations stimulate the vagus nerd, which runs from our brain stem through our torso. And this helps our body shift out of fight or flight and into a state of rest and digest. Yeah. I have had some moments in my life where I was my nervous system was wild. This thing was like running the show. I was being dragged behind my nervous system. And I started to learn about the vagus nerve. And I started to do vagus nerve practices, and I was like, okay, really? Do you know that long, deep inhales, like where you inhale as deep as you can, and then you take a little bit more and your chest is expanded. I'm not saying these little wimpy um inhales, you guys. I'm talking you're taking that full breath where your belly is rising till you look pregnant. I'm talking about deep breathing. And you hold that up top, that's stimulating the vagus nerve. Yeah. It's amazing. You hold it there, and then you you can either let it out in a whoosh or you can let it out in a slow. I'm a slower, I like to do it as slow as I possibly can all the way till the end. And here's something interesting that I've experienced is when I've done that, when I get to the end, and I'm I exhale very, very slowly, and I'm at the end of the breath. I just sit there. I don't feel the need to inhale right away. It's because I'm so calm. Vagus nerve stimulation. So this can also lower your dead your blood pressure and slower your heart rate as the vagus nerve signals your organs to relax. Everything, relax. We're okay. The next thing that it can do, and this is chanting, is that repetitive sounds help synchronize your brain's electrical activity. Chanting moves your brain out of the high frequency busy mode, which is beta, and into alpha. Okay, we're lowering the frequency, and alpha is considered relaxed alertness. Meditation is often in alpha, but we can drop into theta, which is the next one before sleep, which is deep relaxation and bliss. So chanting can move us in that space too. It can lower our brain waves. The next one is limbic system deactivation. So brain imaging, which is the fmri's, have shown that mantras get this is brain imaging, you guys, like ohm and so hum can quiet the amygdala, which we know is the brain's fear and alarm center. And this deactivation reduces our emotional reactivity to stress. It is the craziest thing. Things can happen, and I'm just like it's not, I'm not checked out, I'm not a denial. I'm just so clear when this big or scary thing happens because my because of where my brainwave systems are and because my lit my limbic system has been turned down. Yeah. So when I say it reduces our emotional reactivity, it does. It's amazing, you guys. So these mantras allow the prefrontal cortex, which is the area responsible for willpower and empathy, to take more control, which improves our focus and our emotional balance. Cool. The last one is hormonal and cellular changes. This is what chanting does. It will reduce our cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and it releases endorphins, which is the feel-good hormones that make us feel good, that boost our mood naturally. It also says through my research that chanting has anti-aging effects. Some research has shown that satanama and sat nam increase, um, let me see how to say this word, telomerase activity, which is an enzyme that protects your cells against aging. Some research indicates that chanting increases telomerase activity, and that's an enzyme that protects your cells against aging. Also, the vibration of humming or chanting increases nitric oxide in the nasal passages, which helps dilate blood vessels and improves oxygen delivery through the body. Okay. I want to go back to the chanting. When we chant something like ohm, it's not we're going om with our mouth. We're going om. Do you hear the difference? It's not mmm with your with your lips together. It's inside. It's a vibration. It's um. Does that sound ridiculous? But that's what it is. Also, things like satanama, you can say them long and drawn out. Sa-ta-nama. Your mouth isn't shut with those, your mouth is open with those, but you can say them out loud. And so hum, that's one that I do in my head, but you can so hum verbally as well. Also, this is a big one. Sat nam. S-A-T-N-A-M. Sat nam. What was sat nam? I forgot what that meant. Oh, yeah, sat nam is I am existence because nam is name and sat is existence. So basically, it is I am existence. I am all it is, I'm everything. We did this a lot of times in our kundalini practice. He sets a timer again, and the timer doesn't go off. You know, we don't hear it. It probably vibrates for him or something, but he sets a little timer and we say sat nam. And this is how he has us do it. Sat. Not nom. That's how we do it. I know it's gonna feel goofy at first. Any of you listening right now, play with me. Does that sound ridiculous? Come on. I know. I know some of these things are like, KB, you really want me to sat and um? Yeah, I kind of do. I really do. If that's going to help you, that's what I would like to see you do. You guys hear me talking about all the time. Regulate the nervous system, regulate the nervous system, regulate the nervous system. You guys know that we gotta get ourselves in a state of calm to be able to change. If the brain is activated, the brain can't change. Certain systems in the brain are shut off, they went offline, other ones are online. That's it. Now we're functioning over here. Do you guys ever watch the show I Survived? It could be rough. I'm just letting you know if you're someone who, for the faint of heart, don't watch it. There's people telling stories of things that they have survived through. And some of those stories are just like they just make you put your hand on your mouth and like, oh my God, how? But it's interesting how many times people will say things like, I must have been in straight survival mode. These shows were recorded a long time ago. So this is before this language and this narrative really became out there in the world. They're like, I was in survival mode. I didn't see anything, hear anything, I didn't feel anything. I just did XYZ. That's what the brain does. But you think in the middle of survival mode that we can learn how to spell a word? No, the body is trying to save us. We are in survival mode. We can't learn. So it's about getting out of it, it's about dropping in and clearing space. There is a quote that I have in my first book. I haven't looked it up, but I keep forgetting it. But it's some like ancient Chinese problems, it's a proverb that says something like, you can't add to a full rice bowl or something like that. And what that means is if your rice bowl is full, you can't add more rice to it. That's overthinking, that's stress, that's activation. We can't add more to it. We must first clear. Also remember that the universe abhors a vacuum. So anytime that we create space, the universe is going to seek to fill it with something. Based on the frequency that we're in, what is going to go in that space? Are there any questions? Do you guys have any questions? What are your takeaways? What have you learned new here? Oh, good. We're having Terry come up. Thanks, Terry. Welcome up. Hi K B. I'm definitely taken away so um, yeah, definitely. And um, from what I understand, it's you know, it's it's a bit like saying I'm an M, I'm M, I'm an M. You know, it's it's um it's just an um another way of saying that you're out of the all, you know, and it's it's great. Um I hadn't actually heard that particular one. So that's amazing. Uh what I would say, and um I did have a little laugh as you were saying, do I sound ridiculous? No. Um look once you can get past this what other people think, you know, then you'll be humming and so humming, you know, like you just don't care. Exactly. Yeah, and um the only other thing I'd add is that um feel it. You know, it's no good going through the motions. Oh that's another one ticked off, like your habits, you know. You you got to um feel it, you know, and mean it basically. That's right. It don't mean a thing, KP, if it hasn't got that swing, baby. Yeah, thank you. Yes. I love that Terry brought up, he said, once you get over, get past worrying about what other people think. Even when I first started meditating, I remember this was, and I'm not talking about in my kundalini, when I was doing it myself and I was saying, I'm gonna go meditate, I felt a cringe. I felt like I was gonna be judged. I felt like people were gonna think I was airy fairy and woo woo, stupid, and all this stuff. I did. Because back in the day, meditation was only reserved for particular sex, S E C T. S, sex of society or people. And like I said, people would make fun of it and judge it and do all these things. I don't feel like that's the case anymore. I hear it everywhere. Meditate, meditate, meditate. People saying what type of meditations they're using and how it's working for them. I can't wait to hear Terry report back because I know he is an avid meditator to the so hum experience. Now it's interesting, he's because so hum does mean I am that, which means I am God, Source Universe. That's what it means. I am that. But for some reason, I can say to myself, I am that, and it doesn't do the same thing at all. So there's a way that these words are constructed and the way that they feel and sound that do something to us. It's crazy. It's really a crazy thing. I really want to emphasize that I started meditating out of necessity because my nervous system was crazed and my life was falling apart all around me. It was almost like an apocalypse movie where someone's standing there and then this building's falling and that one's falling, and they're like, I don't know where to go, and then the road's cracking. That's kind of the feeling that I was in. So I meditated to help calm my nervous system. So what was a necessity, like drinking water or sleep or taking vitamins or whatever, became what's the word? Oh, maintenance. That's the word I was looking for. It became maintenance. I now see meditation as maintenance. And I will even do things like if I'm driving in the car with my husband, we're going somewhere, we're we're chatty Kathes, we talk all the time. And I'll just say, I just want 15 minutes to clear my mind and look out the window. Or something like that. And he gets it now. And he is now starting to meditate. I don't think he meditated. I think he meditated before meeting me, but not so purposefully. He would do it in other ways. But no, he's even meditating purposefully. Okay, who else do we have? We have Michelle. Thank you for coming up. Hi, Chris. What a cute, what a cute picture. Is that new? Um, I think it's a couple months old now. Cute hair girlfriend. Thanks for joining, Michelle. Thanks for having this talk. I was I was cooking, so I couldn't really jump on earlier, but everything you said was just spot on. Just keep practicing. Because when I first started, again, you know, my life was in turmoil, and just like you said, you gotta do something. And so yeah, meditation just came up somewhere somehow, and I just started doing it. And at first I thought I was doing it wrong because back then your mind is supposed to be still and quiet. And so I thought I was doing something wrong. But I'm gonna find out you're not. It just just bring yourself back that gently bring yourself back to the to the breath, you know, or whatever you're whatever you're saying, if you're saying a mantra or whatever it is for you. Just just be still and just relax and be the observer of your thoughts. And oh, look at that thought. Hmm, that's interesting, and just let it float on by. Because they just they will. Yes, they will. Well, you you don't have to grab them and think about them and think why am I thinking about that or how am I going to solve that problem? Just let it go. Just let it go on by. It's just so and another thing I wanted to um emphasize too is about calming down your nervous system. It calms your nerves. You could do maybe 15 minutes even of meditating in the morning, and you'll be calm the rest of the day. Yes. And it's just, you know, it's not like you have to meditate when you get upset. It's like the whole thing, if you practice it, um, it just it just makes you calmer in life. Period. You know, period. There's like no other way to describe it. Yes. Yes. You you just and you're more clear-headed and you can make decisions easier. It's just, oh, I can't even tell people how much it's helped my life and changed my life. So if you want to try it, just stick with it. You're not doing it wrong. Trust me, you're not doing it wrong. You can't do it wrong. You can't do it wrong. That's the culprit. Yeah. You cannot do it wrong. So, question for you, Michelle. Two ones. How long ago did you start practicing? And what was your very first go-to? What was your very first practice? I'm just curious. Oh, cutie! Yeah, that's cutie. She's getting my attention. Um, oh gosh, let me think. Let me think real quick. Uh my first experience was way back in my 20s, late 20s. A therapist had um taught me, was you know, teaching me how, you know, how to meditate. And I could do it in the office just fine, but trying to do it at home, I couldn't, I thought I was doing it wrong because I was in a different space and it wasn't quiet, and my brain just kept going and going and going. And I hadn't yet realized it's okay if your brain keeps going and going, just come back to your breath, just come back to your breath. So, yeah, that's the answer to your first question. I was I was in my 20s, but I did um fall away from it too. So yeah, I'm not doing that again. You kind of do it once or twice and and then decide, you know what, this is maintenance. Right, right. Yes, you have to well keep doing it because when I kept doing it, it caused turmoil in my life, you know, plain and simple. So yeah, I'm not stopping. Was your first practice breath then? Was it just paying attention to your breath or counting breath or uh paying attention to the breath, just you know, yeah. In and out. Um, and then sometimes I would do counting on my own, but he didn't teach me that. But you know, yeah, I just would throw that in there. And I am gonna try that humming thing, the mantras with the humming, because I have heard that before with the vagus nerve, and that is really important. And I'm not gonna worry about people what people think. Terry's absolutely right. You will get to a place where you won't care what people think, and it's because it's your life, they're not gonna care. You know, you don't care about what they do, so why should they care about what you're doing? You know, exactly. Did I say that right or did I say that backwards? I got exactly what you were saying. Okay, you're not really you're not really you're not judging them, so right. They're not they're not really caring either. They don't care, and it and if someone's gonna make fun of us, let them. Who cares? We're gonna melt them. Let them. That's right. Let them. That's a good mantra to it. It is. That's the thing, you guys. Get creative. One of the things that I sometimes I'll sit down to meditate, and if I have too many things swirling and I can't stay on task, then I will just say over and over again, clear, clear, clear. I'll just say it over and over and over again, clear. That's it. Just clear. Jeannie, thanks for coming up. Hi. Hi. I just wanted to tell you thank you. And I have, I'm a note taker anyway, but I've got two pages of notes of just the techniques. Good, good. And I guess I have been doing some meditation and I just didn't know it. I do a lot of breathing, deep breathing and the box breathing, and that other one you were talking about where you take a deep breath and then take another sip of air. Mm-hmm. And so I've been doing those. I think they calm my system down a little bit. I guess I haven't really paid that much attention to the end result. Well, just based on some things that you've said to me here and there, I think they are working. Well, good. You seem clearer in a lot of areas. The thing is, we may not, like you said, you're like, I didn't realize I was meditating just by doing the breathing. But if you think about it, you're having to focus when we're doing that type of breathing, like box breathing, we're counting to four. We're counting to four, we're counting to four, we're counting to four. We're not in our thoughts. We're so focused on our breath that that's a meditation. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the deep breathing, for me, I have taught people to breathe. Kind of, I'm not saying this is you, but I've kind of thought everybody kind of knew how to take a deep breath. And the truth is, not everybody does because a lot of us have been holding our breath for so long. Not literally, because we die, but you get what I'm saying? We've just been so constricted. So I'm inviting everybody who's listening about the breaths, really try to breathe in, inhale through your nose, and just bring it up. And it's gonna, it's going to be shorter at first. These will elongate. Do you notice that, Jeannie? They elongate as you're doing the long deep breaths. Yes, definitely. Mm-hmm. They're gonna, especially if we're if we're anxious. Oh my gosh. When I'm anxious, my inhales are are dumb. They're like, you know, that's all it is. And then as time goes on, they get deeper and deeper and deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. So just allow for the depth and that holding, like that hold at the top, like it doesn't hurt, but you can feel it. It feels so good. And then the exhale, make them purposeful. You actually feel them. Yeah, I was gonna say that I don't think that I knew how to do deep breathing before, but I also think that it was hampered by my weight. And now that I've lost weight, I can take a much deeper breath. Ooh, I think that's a thing. That might be a thing. Yeah. Wow, that's excellent. Look at all those claps coming up on the on the screen for you. Well, thank you. Did this outline everything more clearly? Like you understand meditation a little bit more clearly and and have some. Very much so. Yeah, good. Yeah. I have lots of new things to try out. And get creative with it, I tell people, get creative with it. There's no one size fits all by any means. There is no one size fits all. And there's so many people out in the world that are teaching these type of things. Go check stuff out. Yeah, my sister had one when I was there that we did that was guided meditation and it was just recorded. I don't know where she got it, if she just had it on a recorded session or something. But they were good because they gave you something to think about, and they just talked through the thinking. There's so many guided meditations for different things, too. Releasing things, surrendering, self-love. I mean, there's all kinds of guided meditations, and some people's voice may not resonate with us, so that's okay. Just click out, go find something else. There's also tons of apps. There's apps out that I don't remember the names of them now. Mind Valley, I think, is one of them. There's other ones too. And I have friends that actually download the apps and they do those meditations. So yeah, I mean, sky's the limit, you guys. Just get creative and start out with five to ten minutes. That's it. Five to ten minutes, even if it's in your car sitting in your parking lot getting ready to go to work. Thank you, Jeannie. Thank you, thank you, sister. Five to ten minutes. Don't make it big and complicated. We're not trying to, you know, run a marathon here. Good day, Jeanette. Thanks for coming. Yeah, this has been great. Um, and you've covered a lot of different, which I think is cool. Because it's really helpful for me. I use um crafts as meditation. So what is it? What is it? Craft like art, craft making things. Oh my gosh. Yeah, because it um it focuses my mind and I'm you know actively doing something, but I'm I'm out of thinking about normal life and you know, anxieties are distracting. It it just it really calms me down. And you're tapped into your right brain, which is your creative and receiving brain. Yeah. Yeah, especially something um kind of repetitive like knitting, crocheting, um macrome is my thing now that I'm doing, which is really fun. Um, or just flee um free drawing. Not when I'm like having to focus and like really try and control what I'm drawing, but if I'm just like, oh, just drawing flowers or patterns or doodles. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up because people might underestimate doing a craft or some type of artistic project, yeah, what that what that really does for the brain. We are out of the thinking, analyzing, problem-solving brain when we're doing that. And and even if it is something repetitive, which can be, oh, so good for the brain, even when it's something like that, we're still in that creative center. Yes, you know, very much so, yeah. And I actually I very purposefully use that. Like, um, I know for a lot of people, like when you first wake up in the morning can be a difficult time. Some people wake up very anxious, and I've gotten better with that, but I still don't wake up like super great. So my my my practice is to get up and to immediately go over and start doing my macrame. Or I'll do like diamond painting. If you've ever seen, do you know what diamond painting is? I don't. Tell me. Okay, you have a sticky canvas and you take tiny little um uh sequins, they look like sequins, sort of, and you you place each one in it's like color by numbers, but with tiny little diamonds. Oh wow, yeah, it's super cool. That's so cool. Yeah, it's probably so beautiful afterwards. They are they are really beautiful because they sparkle in the light. And yeah, and they're very um detailed looking because the the tiny little diamonds are so small, you can get really detailed pictures with it. Wow. So it has the canvas has like a picture on it already, and it tells you kind of what colors to put where. Yeah, and it's so cool. It's sticky, so when you put the the thing on it, it just stays there. They stay, and you're doing it with tweezers, like those big long tweezers. I do have a special little tool for that. Okay, that makes it really easy. Yeah, it's it's yeah, the tool is really good because it just picks them up and then it puts them down. That's so cool. It's very meditative because you're just like placing like one and then the next and then the next. Yeah. You know, we can even make things, you guys. This is ridiculous, but make folding laundry meditative. Yeah. If we're just if we're just in presence during it, that can be meditative. I can find like just like walking around, like I know you were talking about walking outside, but even if I'm just like walking around in my kitchen, if I slow down and I do it really deliberately, yes, it becomes meditative. Yep. Those are all excellent examples. Thank you so much for that, Jeanette. Well, thank you for the topic. And I also uh would like to just put out there that Insight Timer is another app and it's free and it's it's pretty cool. Insight timer. All right, bye everybody. I've heard of that. Bye Jeanette, love you, sis. Insight timer, and there's a calm and mind value. Are these, I don't know if these are all free or not, you guys. I'm not affiliated with any of these in any way, shape, or form. And what did Stephanie say? She said healthy minds, and someone else said balance. I think that was an app, balance. Okay, so we have insight timer, calm, mind valley, healthy minds, and balance. Okay. Recently, I just out of the blue, I'm like, I think I want to start painting. I think I want to start drawing. I don't know why. You know what? Maybe it's because I just have the space now, because I've always been a creative person. But you know, basically, all the kids are out, everybody's doing great, and maybe I just have the space now. But I've been feeling this desire. It happened after I repainted my bedroom furniture. Most of you saw online, which didn't do it justice, by the way, the colors didn't really do it justice, but I was like, this felt so good to do this. Hmm. Anyway, a little sidebar there. But I just real briefly before I dip out, I want to tell you guys something that, and this doesn't happen all the time, but I have had two or three or four what I call mystical experiences. Who's okay? Now there's a truck here. Oh, it's UPS was dropping something off. Um, mystical experiences through meditation. They were unexpected. I didn't expect them to happen, but they were wild. And one of them was walking in broad daylight down the street, asking the same question over and over and over and over again. And I dipped out of this timeline. I don't even know how to explain it. Went into another one, had this whole thing happen, and then popped back into the street. I don't even know how long, maybe a hundred feet. I don't know. I don't even know because I didn't know feet, but I had this whole experience happen. I had two or three of these that had happened. And I believe that I'm just gonna use these words, I don't know the proper words to use, but we thin the veil or the veil that we think is here, the veil of the heavy veil of material of form. I is that Michelle? She's getting what I'm saying. When we meditate, yes. That veil thins, or at least that's what I'm calling it. Yes, Michelle said yes with three exclamation points. And then we are more open for these experiences. And when I have these, I call mystical experiences. That's just what I call them. I didn't know what to call them back then. I was visited by some type of being, like I call it a light being because I don't know what else to call it. People might call it a guide or a guardian or an angel or God itself. I don't know because it didn't say its name. And it was androgynous. And the messages that were delivered were very short and impactful and powerful. And they catapulted me. And I thought about them and thought about them and thought about them and thought about them what this meant for me. Being a person who was regular meditating regularly, and then on a walk one day, just basically begging God's Source Universe for help. Boom, I dipped into this thing. And then I dipped out of it and broad daylight walking down 84th Street, literally by my mom's house. It didn't freak me out. I just said, what did that mean? What was that about? What was I supposed to know? What was it trying to help me with? And I had dropped something that had been plaguing me obsessively for years, for a couple years, one or two years, because that's what that's what I was asking for help with. If that stuff scares you, it won't happen to you. Because remember, you are God's source universe. There's no separation. Okay? It's connected. You're not going to be given something that you can't handle because it already knows whether you can handle it or not. We also can't control this. We can't make it happen. There's no forcing of it. The four times that this happened to me were very different times, sometimes with the years in between. But there were times when I really needed something. I really needed something, and it came. So, you know, meditation is just the beginning point. It's just calming our nervous systems. It is opening up space in our mind, body, and spirit. And it can also lead to other really super cool experiences. I could talk about this for days. I'm way over time. 25 minutes, I think. I love you guys. I appreciate you. I am going to say that I recommend, and I've heard this from other people too, if you need to start with a guided meditation, so be it. But I want to see you being able to do it yourself. That's what really true meditation is, is sitting with yourself and doing it. Guided are great. They're great to get you in, they're great to reset certain things. Like I created a self-love meditation. It's on my Link Tree. Um, it's on my YouTube channel. Definitely go check that out. Michelle did it recently and she said she really liked it. Really learning to meditate yourself, you'll be able to whip that out sitting anywhere because your body is gonna get used to it. If you're reliant on a guided one all the time, then you're not training your brain to do it yourself. I hope that makes sense to you guys. Again, all is purposeful, all is well. Use what you use, but be willing to change your practices up. Just try new things. That's it. Okay, I gotta shut up because I'm just gonna keep talking for three years. I love you guys. I will see you again tomorrow for another episode of Empower Hour with KB. Thank you for joining. Remember always, always, always that you matter and you're more powerful than you think. Much love, everyone.