Do you have stress in your life? Do you know what it’s doing to your body? Is it causing weight gain, preventing fat loss, and what can you do about it? Today we answer that based on a series of questions that came in & give exact steps that experts use – including Amanda Holmes & Tony Robbins – to reduce stress, to start their day & thus, you can become more present & lose excess fat, in literally just a matter of minutes.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Salt / Float Tanks:
* Salt Spa St Augustine
* Metta Relaxation, Bethlehem, PA
Ignite a Fit Life
Episode timestamps:
01:44 – Stress (and cortisol) can cause weight gain
02:43 – Studies show taking a few minutes in quiet time can reduce stress
04:06 – Amanda Holmes shares how to destress in 2 minutes using sound and rhythm
06:53 – Tony Robbins’ method of International thought to prime for your day
08:33 – Establishing a morning routine can make an incredible impact
09:23 – Just get started with meditation, work it at, and with repetition, your brain calms down
10:47 – Transcendental meditation and choosing your mantra
13:51 – YouTube and Apps as resources for meditation
15:03 – Using the Tibetan singing bowl to feel calm and destress
16:04 – Muse: The brain sensing headband you can wear during meditation
18:25 Sensory Deprivation in salt / float tanks for relaxation
20:53 Next steps on reducing stress and living a fit life
Transcript
* This transcript was mostly generated by AI, so please excuse any mistakes, and enjoy!
00:00:00 Patrick: Hello and welcome to Live Fit Ignite Change. I’m Patrick, and let me ask, do you have stress in your life, and do you know what it’s doing to your body? Is it causing weight gain, preventing fat loss, and what can you do about it? Today, we answer that based on a series of questions that came in and give exact steps that experts use, including Amanda Holmes and Tony Robbins, to reduce stress, to start their day. And thus, you can become more present and lose excess fat in literally just a matter of minutes.
00:00:34 Patrick: On this podcast, we are all about helping each other live fit, optimize performance, and accomplish more in less time, so we can ignite the change that we wish to see at home, the workplace, and the world, and thus thrive in all areas of life. The bulk of today’s episode comes from one of our Fit Life Challenge mastermind calls on a day that I was on the road. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see I joined from the back of my Jeep, and I love these mastermind calls since it’s where members share what’s worked for them. Plus, we add in some clips from some of the best of previous conversations. So with that, let’s jump in.
00:01:11 Patrick: I’ll dive into the Mastermind topic, and always these come from your questions, comments, suggested topics that you want to talk about, so put them in that questions form. And there were three that came in this time, so we combined them into one all about mindfulness and stress reduction. So combining a few that came in, I’ll read them to start off, and I’m happy to jump in to start answering, but definitely, I know some of you do an amazing job with this. So I’d absolutely love for you all to share as well.
00:01:44 Patrick: So the three comments, one, is stress really preventing me from losing fat? Two, an explanation of the morning routine and meditation, and is daily prayer quiet time considered meditation? So I thought those were all pretty related in mindfulness. So I wanted to put them all together. Like I said, I can start out, but be ready to jump in. So, I mean, first off, on stress and losing weight. And I think you guys know whenever you experience a stressful
situation, body releases the hormone cortisol, which cortisol is great if you’re in a fight or flight type thing. You need to run from danger. Or, Cortisol is also really good in helping the body with metabolism, blood sugars, cranium rhythm, all kinds of helpful stuff. But, of course, high levels of cortisol from increased stress, that leads to the anxiety, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, high blood pressure, and weight gain from the excess back game. So I think that’s what we want to be able to stop.
00:02:43 Patrick: And when we talk about this Fit Life Challenge, it’s like all the different ways we can mitigate whatever might be causing issues. And so it’s been great to see that in studies. It’s just taking a few minutes per day. And what they’ve said is quiet mindfulness, such as meditation, prayer, quiet time, journaling can reduce those elevated levels of cortisol, and that’s really what we want. So I think that leads back to the question, is daily prayer, quiet time, considered meditation? And while that may be semantics or depend on your definition of meditation, I think even a better question might be, can you get the health benefits or really what you’re looking for from prayer or quiet or meditation? And when you’re looking at it like a deep meditation, when you’re clearing your thoughts and just focus on your breathing, I mean, that’s going to be hard to beat. But like anything, meditation really does take practice.
00:03:34 Patrick: And I think when oftentimes, people sit, and definitely me, if I try to sit in quiet, my mind just races. And it’s actually pretty interesting when I interviewed Amanda Holmes, who she was on episode four of the podcast. She is the CEO of Chet Holmes International and also has a whole side business really, on meditation and helpful things there. And she shared from her group that the true definition of meditation is that you have an altered state of consciousness.
00:04:06 Amanda: What she taught me, which I found fascinating, is that the true definition of meditation is that you have an altered state of consciousness. That is what meditation is. And yet, so many just go silent, and they think that that’s what meditation is. However, when you go silent or you just sit and everybody does their little hands, you sit, actually, your brain only gets louder. So people come to me all the time, “Oh, I wish I did meditation, but when I sit silent, my head just races.” Well, the monkey mind does race. You actually have to do something to alter that mind. And it’s actually an advanced process to be able to know how to have that altered state of consciousness. In India, they’ll take a dot and they’ll put it on the wall, and they’ll tell you to stare at that dot on the wall until you can make your mind turn it into two. When you’ve done that, you’ve truly had an experience of altering your state of consciousness.
00:05:00 Patrick: At this point, Amanda shared how her guru taught her a faster way to alter your state of consciousness and de-stress literally in just 2 minutes, using the power of sound and rhythm.
00:05:12 Amanda: So what she taught is, if you can get into a rhythm, if you can say something positive and actually have a melody, your brain will go into a rhythm, and it will clear out the monkey mind much faster than if you were sitting in silence. So on a scale from 1 to 10, if you look at yourself right now, how stressful do I feel on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being crazy stressful, 1 being not at all. So if everybody, that’s listening to this right now, think of where you’re at because we want to quantify it. We want to make it real. Then do your practice, which one thing that I do is I’ll chant this over and over again, “I’m happy. I love myself. My body’s full of love and light. I’m happy. I love myself. My body is full of love and light.”
00:06:01 Amanda: If you do that for two minutes and it sounds silly, right? So I used to teach this in Los Angeles, and they’d all look at me like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is like I Love You, Barney stuff.” And so they’d be like, “I’m happy. I love myself.” This is crazy. But two minutes, after two minutes of repeating that over and over again, you can’t help, but crack a smile because it’s just too loving. Two minutes, right? It doesn’t cost you a dime. And then measure yourself again. Okay, on a scale from 1 to 10, where do I feel? And so often, what I would see in these groups, that I would run these meditations with, they’d be at an eight and they drop down to a four. They would cut it in half in two minutes. You don’t have to pop a pill. You don’t have to pay for a therapist, right? It’s just getting you into a rhythm, into a positive place, and it just takes everything within you to take that two minutes to do so.
00:06:53 Patrick: Tony Robbins said something pretty similar. Again, when he tried to be silent, his mind raced. So he went through the pattern of tension thought with his priming to start the day. And we’ve covered this again in the podcast, episode 18. I think it was on the Power of Gratitude, and we’ve also done it on our TLP days, where he goes through the process that involves being intentional with breathing exercises and then focuses on three things you’re grateful for. And then once you’re in that grateful state, it’s blessing others or asking God to bless you. It’s like a cleansing where he’ll say, like, “Heal my mind, heal my body.” And then it’s sending those blessings out to others. And then it’s seeing your ideal future, like thinking of three goals, but not just that you will achieve, like envisioning them as if you’ve already achieved them. And that it’s happening right then and then seeing yourself as that ideal you in that area of your life.
00:07:44 Patrick: So I think a lot of that, kind of sounds like what we’ve done in our events. It sounds like the Elite Journal, right? Which is why journaling can also have benefits to help reduce stress. And I mean, I know I’ve talked a lot, but I’ll just say, personally, and then open up to you guys. When I started my morning routine years and years ago, but I hadn’t been doing it every day until it was the fall of 2017. It’s when my family and I, my wife and my two boys and I were on our trip around the world. And so we spent a ton of time together and my boys would actually notice. On the mornings, I did my morning routine. I called it my quick kickstart. And so they said, “Dad, you haven’t done your kickstart yet, have you?” If they saw me as the groggy dad versus the more inspired happy dad. And so they’d tell me to go do it. And that’s when I realized that that was that big of a difference, that they could notice it. I committed to doing it every day.
00:08:33 Patrick: And now, I mean, gosh, it’s been around 2000 straight days and I will say it’s probably been the one thing that’s caused more positive impact on my life than anything else. And it doesn’t take that long. I mean, I’ve combined breath work, priming gratitude into about five to seven minutes every day. And then most every day I journaling on after that for a few more minutes and that’s it. Then it’s on to the most important priorities. And I think the afternoon too is important with that, can be beneficial. Like just take a few minutes, walk out of the office and I’ll put on some YouTube, whatever I can find. Even recently, it’s been like this Tibetan monk flute music you find on YouTube. So anyway, sort of rambling. But the point here is just finding a method that works for you. And like I said, I know so many of you have just some amazing practices. I’d love for you to share with, what would be beneficial for the group.
00:09:23 Hope: Yeah, Patrick. I guess I’ll go. Recently, I haven’t been meditating as much but I think it was last quarter. It was my rock to be able to meditate, up to 30 minutes. Because that’s the problem that a lot of people have is the fact that they say, “Oh, I can’t meditate because my thoughts just don’t stop.” And that’s normal. That’s going to happen your first couple of times. What I always say is start off with just doing five minutes every day. Do that for a week or two. Go up to 10 minutes. Then go up to 15 minutes if you want to do it that long. But you need to do it every day because your brain, it works just from repetition and from you doing it. Your brain will calm down. You’re going to have less thoughts and you’re going to be able to sit there longer and just focus on yourself and being in that moment.
00:10:15 [Denise]: And another thing that I do too is how you’re kind of saying like the flute. I’ll put on a Tibetan singing bowl. I actually have one too. You can buy them off Amazon. They’re
only a couple of bucks. You sit there with that and you just do the singing bowl. And it has such a frequency that calms and relaxes you. That just puts you in that moment and you’re thinking about the frequency. You’re not thinking about your thoughts. So those are just some tips that really helped me.
00:10:47 [Denise]: I’ll throw in a couple of things too. I’ve been trying to put the meditation in one of my commitments because I have not been very good at it. But I will say in my 20s, I learned transcendental meditation, so a long time ago. And really, it’s a sound meditation. And it’s just for transcendental meditation. You’re given a specific mantra, but like Patrick said, you could pick anything. You could pick ohm. You could pick I am love. Whatever works for you. It doesn’t have to be that. But really, the way that I was taught was to just, you sit there. Your mind races. And every time you notice that your thoughts are wherever they are, you’re like, “Oh, I’m thinking.” Then you just start repeating that mantra and then that brings you back to the center. And then again eventually, your thoughts start going around again and then you just start repeating that mantra again. And the more you do it, the better you get at it, the less your mind wanders. And like Hope said, you start with five minutes and that’s it. And just try to sit there for five minutes. But it’s really just noticing every time your mind wanders, you bring yourself back to that mantra and you start repeating that. That keeps you focused, but eventually you stop repeating it and your mind starts going again, you come back. So that has worked really well for me and I should take my own advice on that because you’ll see when I go through my commitment. This is really somewhere I’m trying to focus.
00:12:13 [Denise]: But the other thing that I have done is because I am actually certified in hypnotherapy from a long time ago back when I lived in California in my 20s. I do a lot of YouTube or whatever meditation things and they just bring you through what Patrick was talking to you about. It brings you through. Like, you could focus it on whatever you want to focus on, so you could actually put it on certain things, but it’ll bring you through a breathing and a relaxation. You could do stress meditation, and you YouTube that, and it’ll have a whole thing. On iTunes and stuff, they have them. But it’ll bring you through relaxing your mind, your body, every little body part and then maybe visualize something and then it closes with that. So that for me has been very useful too. Just when I’m really crazy and I don’t have the capacity to really sit there for five minutes, I will put on the video or something to listen to because that will guide me and take the thinking out of it. And I can tell you, half the time I fall asleep, it is really good. So I throw that out there too because there are two things that I’ve done.
00:13:24 [Denise: And then if you like yoga and you take advantage of the FitOn and you get to some yoga classes, of course, they always end them with the Shavasana, where you get to just lay there nice and still. And that also is just like another way to learn it because they don’t do it super long, usually in regular yoga classes. So that will just introduce you to it as well. So it’s kind of what I have.
00:13:51 Patrick: Love that. Thank you, Denise. And thank you for mentioning YouTube because there’s a lot of good resources out there. I know some folks have used common Headspace. Those apps are good too. And I think Hope, you use another one as well, right?
00:14:02 Hope: Yeah, I use the Balance app, but they do the same thing, the guided meditations and very particular, how you want yours to be. If you want it to just be stress relief or if you want it to be focused on actual breathing, they have all different types and you just choose and pick your time.
00:14:23 Guest 3: Hope, when you played that, was that Tibetan bowl music, that video? Where do you find that? Because I found when you did that in the Miracle Morning, that one day, that was probably the only time where my mind was seriously clear. And my mind doesn’t shut off just like we’ve been talking about last time. So I have so much trouble sleeping. I just can’t turn it off. I’m not worried. It just doesn’t shut off. So where could we find that?
00:15:03 Hope: So the one that I showed you guys in Miracle Morning was just on YouTube. And I always search 432 Hz as the frequency because 432 Hz is the same frequency as something in nature and it really connects to your spirit. So just type in, Tibetan singing bowl or song bowl. Some do it with rain in the background, which is nice. Or, if you have Spotify, I just look up on Spotify. You can look up the bowl or the 432 Hz. You can look that up on YouTube too, without the bowl. And it’s just that frequency and it’ll just play that and it’s very soothing. I’ll have to do it again.
00:15:46 Guest 3: Yeah, I highly recommend that because that was amazing and I was so grateful that Hope shared that, the one day with us. And it works. So if anybody wants something to try, try that. A little plug there for you, Hope.
00:16:04 Patrick: Definitely. Yeah, Hope, for sharing that out, that’d be awesome. I think the other thing that I’ve heard that worked and I used it for a while. I haven’t recently, but I loved it. I’m not sure if you guys have used Muse. It is a brain sensing headband that you can wear and where you meditate with the headband on. And when you go into that place of really quiet, where your mind is really without thoughts, the birds start chirping. And so it can become like a contest where you can count how many chirps you get or just how concentrated you are. So that was pretty helpful to be able to help. Like Hope was talking about, it takes practice to get you into this, but when you can start doing it a little bit more each day, it does really start paying off.
00:16:46 Guest 4: I know these breathing things. I haven’t done it much, but I know they can be really powerful. My wife is a TV producer and she did a segment on a breathing workshop that was done in a special room, where you’re in the dark and wearing the VR goggles. And just after half an hour of this breathing, guided breathing, she said people were just sobbing. I mean, they were so emotionally, I don’t know, just impactful. I don’t even know if it was negative or positive, but they were just very emotional just from breathing exercises. So it’s pretty amazing.
00:17:28 Patrick: It is amazing, just the power of taking a couple of minutes. And I guess you can tell how this all kicked off with the questions that came in a little bit about, what you can do to really reduce that stress, reduce the cortisol, and then just get you in the right state of mind to go back and crush it the rest of the day, right? It’s awesome. Love it. And Hope, thank you for dropping that in. I hadn’t checked that out either, but I will. I’m almost tempted to ask, not to put you on the spot, but how long is it? We’re about to get into the wig session. Should we take a minute here and do it?
00:18:05 Hope: Well, it’s a three hour video, so you can just play it however you want.
00:18:09 Patrick: We don’t have that kind of time.
00:18:10 Hope: No, you just play it. Like I just played two minutes of it for Miracle Morning. I would say, if you’re going to do it, do it for at least three minutes so that your brain can relax because at first, it’s just going to be all over the place. And also, there is, I don’t know what this is called, but it’s called floating, I guess you would call it, where you go in water. They have one in Bethel, in Pennsylvania. I don’t know, they probably have one in Florida. But the water is the same temperature as your body and it has so much salt in it that you float there. And they turn the lights off and they play white noise. And they say that, when you do that, it is so meditative that you can go into pretty much like you’re knocked out. Like you’re sleeping. You’re floating there, but you’re in between that consciousness level, if you know what I mean. So that’s also another, pretty much they’re just called float tanks, if you look them up.
00:19:19 Guest: Is that place called New House or something?
00:19:23 Hope: I can’t remember the name of it, but I think there’s one called Metta Relaxation, which is on Broad Street, in Bethlehem.
00:19:31 Guest: Oh, cool. I know where that is.
00:19:33 Hope: Yeah.
00:19:34 Guest: Thanks.
00:19:35 Guest: And if you guys want, you were right about New House. New house is awesome.
00:19:38 Guest: Oh, yeah.
00:19:39 Guest: Yes, including Reiki. So definitely check them out if you’re interested in that stuff.
00:19:43 Guest: Cool. Have you been there?
00:19:46 Guest: Yes, I love it. I made my mom do it, too.
00:19:49 Guest: Awesome. Wow. That’s very cool. Thank you.
00:19:54 Patrick: Awesome. Thank you, Kelsey. And Nick put in the chat box, sensory deprivation.
00:20:00 Kayleigh: It looks like there’s one in St. Augustine.
00:20:03 Nick: Yeah, that’s what it is. I’ve done it before. It’s really awesome. It’s a great experience, but just as Hope described, they over salinate the water so that you can’t really sink and you don’t touch anything. You can hear stuff, if you choose to, but you can also choose dead silence and you don’t say anything. And it’s really an interesting experience with your own mind.
00:20:31 Patrick: Really cool. Nick, thank you for sharing. And thanks, Kaylee, for dropping in the link. Was that saltaugustine/floattank So cool. And yeah, we’ll have to get them out of PureFit, so we can go for free.
00:20:45 Kayleigh: Sounds great.
00:20:50 Patrick: Awesome. Really good tips. I appreciate that.
00:20:53 Patrick: So I hope you enjoyed that and can start applying the tips to reduce stress. You can see all the many tips, tricks, and tools mentioned in this episode in the show notes at livefitignitechange.com/mindfulness. And if you like the sounds of it and would like to get started on your journey to get fit, optimize performance, and accomplish more in less time, you can pick up a free copy of our book, ignite@fitlife at ignite@itlife.com or livefitignitechange.com/book. Or if you’d like to go deeper and learn more about how you can be a part of our community, get access to online and in person workouts, and be part of mastermind calls like this, you can get started for free at fitlifechallenge.com or livefitignitechange.com/challenge.
00:21:40 Patrick: Finally, the only ask I can ever have is you help spread the word, so we can help more people live fit, so they can ignite the change that they wish to see and live their ideal life making memories with loved ones. The only way we can do that is if you leave a five star review and share this podcast. So please, leave a review with a positive comment about what you liked. It would mean so much to us and even more importantly, it may change your life for someone else. This is what’s needed to help reach more and serve more. So together, we truly can ignite the change that we wish to see. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey and I hope you make it an outstanding day and go forth to light, love, and serve the world, and live the life you’ve always imagined.
