The Power of Breathwork

0:00So welcome everyone and um it's really wonderful to be here. It's wonderful to have everyone joining in and the topic for this particular um workshop is the

0:14nature of the mind and how I first got involved with this was back in 1980. And at that particular time, a relationship had broken up and um I'd gone into

0:29depression and I couldn't understand it because a week before my wife left me, she found someone else and she went off in another relationship. Um I had

0:40contemplated leaving her. So it made no sense, you know, why am I so devastated by this experience? Why has this affected me so much? And I was just

0:53lost. I was in depression for about nine months. And at that time I was living in Northern New South Wales up in Lismore. And someone had said to me, there's a

1:04wonderful therapist in Sydney. She works in Balain and [clears throat] you could go down and try a workshop with her. And so,

1:14excuse [clears throat] me. I came down and in September of 1981 did a breathing workshop and in that breathing workshop um came to a huge

1:24amount a lot of realizations about who I am what's going on why I was feeling that way and things started to make sense and through a whole lot of other

1:36experiences eventually I decided to come down to Sydney at the commencement of 1982 and started working in effect full-time in this field. And so

1:48everything has been about the mind and how does the mind work and what is the mind and the nature of the mind. And when I talk about the mind, what I'm

2:01really saying here is the ego or the personality. It's the same thing. It's the way in which your mind has been um programmed and this is

2:17particularly important at the time at this time because I think we're in challenging times in very unusual times and even though we've had the Corona

2:28virus and in Australia there have been floods and fires and droughts I think it hasn't actually started. I think the challenge is is going to become far

2:38worse and in particular it will be the economy and I think the economy is going to go through a very difficult time and even though there is

2:51this difficult time with the economy it doesn't necessarily have to impact so strongly on us. It's a matter of holding your state. It's a matter of holding

3:02your focus, being aware that these things are happening. There is this major sense of fear, anxiety, stress, and how can you rise above it? And in

3:18rising above it, not only do you serve yourself, but in rising above it, you serve other people as well. and in particular your family and friends and

3:27colleagues because at the end of the day of of course everyone's going to get through this and it's all going to be okay but there are major challenges

3:38[clears throat] and challenge has both a um a difficult side and a positive side there a challenge can be something quite hard to deal with uh if it's not really

3:53faced and embrace. And a challenge can also be an opportunity to get better, to do things differently. For instance, you know, this um these last six months,

4:04I've had to cancel four residential courses that I was planning to run at my retreat up in Tulum Beach on the sunshine coast of Queensland. And it's

4:16forced us to and forced me to think outside the square. And here we are having webinars and presenting the sort of information that I would have

4:25presented at these residential retreats. And the thing about the ego, the mind, the personality

4:36is that it's something that you have inherited. It's something that was in place before you were conceived. Not born, conceived. It's something that's

4:50come through your ancestral memory. It's something that sits in the society and the conditioning that you've grown up in. It's something that you have

5:01inherited. A small piece is um to do with the circumstances of your life, possibly 5%. 95%

5:13is to do with an inheritance that's come through you. If you do nothing, if you allow this to continue in the way that you've been uh born into, you will

5:29become a version of your mother or your father. That's basically what will happen. A better version of your mother and your father. But if you grasp it and

5:40really go for it, you can become something more. You can completely release this. And in the releasing of this um you free yourself, you support

5:52the people around you to free themselves. And if you have children, then a great deal of this programming does not get passed on to the next

6:01generation. And you owe it to yourself because you're born into certain challenges, but those challenges don't define you. Those challenges represent a

6:15destiny, a history that you've born been born into. And you are to be something greater than that. So with this presentation I'd like to firstly talk

6:28about the mind and four characteristics of the mind and then I would like to talk about the breath because the breath is one of the mechanisms for

6:40neutralizing the effect of the mind and then I'd like to take us into a meditation that would take about 10 minutes and then after that meditation

6:52It's open to questions for about 15 minutes. So, if you have any questions, please jot them down as I'm going and if I have time, I'll answer the questions.

7:05At the moment, I'm working with the computer and the PowerPoint presentation. So, I'm just trying to still get that thing together, but um

7:17here we go. And um so the ego, the mind, the personality, the way I would describe it is that it is a self-induced

7:34hypnotic trance. It's something that you do to yourself. It's something that you do because you keep believing it. You've identified with it. You see that to be

7:51um a representation of you but it is not a representation of you. You are not your mind. You are not your ego. You are not your personality. They are parts of

8:02you but who you are is something far greater. And the journey as a human is to rise above the mind. So the four characteristics of the mind that I'd

8:16like to talk about um the first one is that the mind does not exist as an entity.

8:31Only thoughts exist. Even though I've said an ego and I've said a mind and I've said a personality, there is no such thing as a mind.

8:41A mind is a bit like a cloud, a a crowd. It's more like a crowd. It's more like a group of individual thoughts that have come together and that the way in which

8:56it's like a crowd. It's the way in which these people relate to each other for that period of time that you could say yes this is a crowd. But when you really

9:08drill down and you look at each individual there and you move them away, there is no crowd. There is just a collection of individuals that came

9:18together and were relating to each other. The mind, the ego, the personality is the same thing. It's not an entity. It's not real. It you drill

9:29it down to an individual thought. So your thought is really what the thing that matters. And this thought in this moment, if you

9:40grasp it, you can change the effect of how you were programmed. And if you can grasp that thought and choose out of that thought through repetition, you

9:53will change a habitual nature that your brain gets caught up in in thinking. thinking in a way can be thought of as a a field of wheat and you're on one side

10:07of the field and you're asked to cross the field and go over to the other side. The first time you cross the field, it's very difficult because you're having to

10:17break your way through all this wheat and and establish the path. The second time you cross the field, it becomes a little easier because

10:29um there's already a predefined path. The third time you cross the field, it becomes easier. And the more times you cross the field along that pathway, the

10:40easier it becomes. And after a while, it becomes habitual to cross the field only in that way. That's the way your mind works. So if your mind says people say

10:53no to me, therefore I'm being rejected. No can equate to rejection. Um if I feel I'm not enough, then I have to prove myself to be something more. If I think

11:08that I intrinsically don't deserve love, then I have to prove that I deserve love. I have to prove I deserve love by going out there and doing something, by

11:20earning love by proving to people that I am valuable to be loved. But it's not really to another person you're trying to prove that you're lovable. It's you

11:32proving it to yourself. And this is linked to some pattern of behavior most likely relationship with mother father usually mother not because mother is in

11:46any way less than. It's purely because you spend more time in your childhood during those developmental stages with your mother. Your mother because of a

11:59biological fat function. You spent nine months in her womb. You may or may not been breastfed by her. She was your primary caregiver. And so your mother

12:12represents the greatest external influence on your psychology and therefore your um personality, ego, mind. And so

12:26the way she probably treated you was probably the way she was treated by her mother. And um and it's like punishment reward type thing. And her intent is

12:38totally a loving intent. Her intent is totally a um a beautiful caring intent, but she just wasn't aware of the effect of her actions. and she's been taught by

12:52others that these actions really are okay and have no impact on who who we are or or on who you are. And it's only years later that you've got

13:06all these ways of thinking that um represent you, but they don't represent you. And um so there is no such thing as a mind and there is no such thing as an

13:19ego. And it's more as thinking of it being a um a crowd. Um when you think of the mind, you can think of minding, you can think

13:33of thinking, thoughting. That's more what the mind is. The second element, the second characteristic of the mind. The reason why I'm explaining the

13:45characteristics of the mind is the more you understand how the mind works, the more likely it is that you'll be able to control your mind. You'll be able to

13:56control your thinking in effect and you can choose out of your thinking because you really do need to control your thinking. You need to make choices

14:06around the way you think. recognize whether that particular thinking is resourceful or unresourceful. The second component is thoughts exist

14:20separate to you and you are not your thoughts. You can have a thought but that thought doesn't have to represent you. A

14:32dramatic thought that I had was many years ago my wife at the time was pregnant with um our daughter and she must have been seven months pregnant and

14:46then we were talking or doing something and I had this impulse to punch her in the stomach and I thought to myself, what that's ridiculous why would I want

14:58to punch my wife who's pregnant with our seven month uh daughter in the stomach really. It was like and what we were saying was was quite benign. There was

15:08nothing really negative or bad about it but I had this urge you know oh I feel like punching her and then I went away and sat down and started thinking about

15:19it. And as I was thinking about it, a realization came to me. And here I am seven months in my mother's womb. And my mother had come to Australia in 1947. I

15:35had I was born in 1949 in July of 1949. So it was sometime probably April whatever um of 1949. you know, working out seven months, April, May, something

15:50like that. And my mother was boarding a bus and speaking to my father and said to my father

16:01in Greek, "Will this bus take us to where we want to go?" And someone sitting in the back of the bus shouted out to my mother, "Don't speak that w

16:11language here. Speak English." and my mother had only been in the country for 18 months or something. There's no way she understood English.

16:22She's speaking to my father. And in that moment, that um statement that that person made from the back of the bus felt like someone had punched her in the

16:34stomach. And here I am years later with my wife with our seven-month-old baby and I'm having this urge to punch her in the stomach. And

16:48I'm thinking, where's that coming from? What's going on? This isn't me. I don't have to believe every thought I think. Just because a thought pops into my

17:03mind, I have a choice as to whether I wish to act on it. I have a choice in whether I wish to make it real or not real. The greatest wounding that occurs

17:15to most people is that they are identified with their thoughts. They believe they are who they think they are. You aren't. In conventional

17:29psychology it is I think therefore I am and that was some a philosopher French philosopher during the 17th century uh Decart came up with that idea and in

17:43that instance you know it was a breakthrough in a in a lot of rational thinking but it's not the case I am therefore I think there is an element of

17:55self there is an element of awareness awareness. There is an element of consciousness that exists outside of thinking. And so

18:05your thoughts exist separate from you. Your thoughts do not define you. You are something more than your thoughts. Another significant characteristic of

18:22the mind or of thinking or of the ego is very few I put here no thought is yours but really 99% maybe 99.99% of thoughts are not yours. They're not

18:37yours. These thoughts are to do um with something you've inherited. Einstein is reputed to have said it's very unusual to meet anyone um who has an original

18:52thought in his entire life. Most people were regurgitating thoughts that other people had given them that they had read or they'd heard about. Most of us um

19:06have no one has a real you know most people don't have an original thought. No thought is yours. Um, and your thoughts are

19:17something that uh you inherit. And you've got to see thoughts as alien objects that come in and you can choose to accept them or reject them. But you

19:32have the choice. These thoughts do not represent you. And these thoughts are not your thoughts most of the time. And so this thoughts popped into my mind. Is

19:47this um to my advantage? Is this something I want? And the next piece is um thoughts have

20:01power. And so thoughts can um change reality. Um it's might be getting a little um theoretical but uh when I was a student

20:17at university initially I studied biology, chemistry, mathematics and when I was studying chemistry we were studying the structure of an atom and in

20:29studying the structure of the atom I was told back then back in 1970 whatever it was 7172 um that an atom was made up of a uh a

20:42neutron and a proton. That was its nucleus. And going around the atom was an electron. And that was the basic say hydrogen atom. And then as atoms grew in

20:54complexity, you had more neutrons and protons and more electrons in the shell. And then as researchers started to examine the um atom they saw that there

21:06were subatomic particles more than just neutrons and protons and pyson and all these other things quite exotic things. And then they continued to keep studying

21:17the um nucleus of the atom and found even more subatomic subatomic particles. And then a point was reached in this research where they said to themselves

21:28this is impossible. How can we have so many subatomic particles? And then the theory came that the observer, the scientist watching and observing the

21:42splitting of the atom and the particles that are coming off um influenced the particle they observed. And eventually they kept res refining it and refining

21:52it until they came to the conclusion that the nucleus of an atom is an electromagnetic relationship

22:04and it's way it presents is a function of the observer and so then the whole thing changes. They're even saying that solid matter really doesn't exist. Solid

22:19matter is a form of mind and the mind you hold, the the beliefs you hold, the personality that you got is going to influence the very um

22:33[clears throat] structure of the physical environment. Now that's you know sounding very out there but

22:42an everyday example where science has shown where mind has power is this thing called the placebo effect. With the placebo effect, what we're looking at is

22:55that um they're doing medical research and they're checking to see if a particular newly developed medication is effective. And so they have to do a

23:05double blind test. So what they do is they will have the medicine. They will have [cough] a [clears throat] neutral medicine which may call it a sugar pill

23:17that looks exactly like the uh the medication. Both the people running the test and the uh participants in the test neither of

23:30them know which is the real medicine. and which is the pretend medicine. And then they get the research papers in. They may have a 100 people taking the

23:42new med medication and they'll have 100 people taking the sugar pill. And what they'll find is it's quite common that 40% of people taking the

23:55sugar pill show a market improvement in um their symptoms purely because they took the sugar pill. And then you may find that people taking the medication

24:08only 50 or 60% of people actually showed improvement from taking the medication. Often the medication shows a better improvement than the sugar pill, but

24:22there are other rare occasions where the sugar pill will show a significant better healing rate than the um medication. And this is purely a

24:33function of the belief that the patient has, the belief that I've been given medication by the doctor and I trust the doctor. I trust this medication.

24:44therefore it's going to work for me. And surprise surprise, it works. Now, the medical profession kind of dismisses that and says the placebo effect isn't

24:57something like an anomaly. It really doesn't have any real impact. But the placebo effect is is very hard evidence as to the way in which the mind affects

25:09your reality. It's what you believe. um will manifest and occur in this thing. And so thoughts have power. How you think will affect you. If you wake up

25:25every day and think, "I don't feel well. I'm not good enough. It won't be long before you won't feel well and you won't be good enough." If you wake up every

25:34day and you think, "I believe in myself. I can do it. This will be okay." Initially it may feel like nothing is changing but if you keep going with it

25:47you'll find aha it's changed it's become different and so thinking has power and so you have to be careful of um not identifying with your

26:01thoughts thinking that you're your thoughts um understanding that thoughts are really your mind or the way you're conditioned is really boils down to just

26:10one thought. Uh ultimately no thought is really yours. Thoughts are inherited. And fourthly, whether um you believe any of the other things, you know, it's an

26:24entity. They exist separate from you. Uh no thought is yours. They really still have power. And to allow thoughts to run uncensored

26:35is really something that can be debilitating and keep you small and um have you caught up in the whole experience of um stress, anxiety and

26:50survival and I think we're about to enter a time where our sense of survival will be tested and it really requires you to rise above the mass

27:06confusion that's occurring and that the only way you can ultimately do that is by managing your thinking and your physiology in another webinar which

27:18you're more than welcome to come and join I want to talk more about the physiology but that is your physical body and what you can do physically to

27:26change it but just right now the simplest thing you can do physically to help your mind work better is get physical. Get physical. Get physical. Go

27:36to the gym. Work hard. Breathe hard. Um work physically hard. Not um mentally and emotionally hard, but just physically be

27:46at the gym. Go for a swim. Go for a run. Um push bike ride. Uh swim. If you aren't able, aren't physical enough to be to go to the gym and do those sort of

27:58things or to be physically strong enough to go for a run or a bike ride, then the next thing is a bath. I believe a bath is um a secret. I think a bath is one of

28:11the most powerful ways to rebalance your endocrine system to um rebalance the left and right hemispheres of the brain to initially it may raise your blood

28:22pressure but overall it will lower your blood pressure and it'll bring your blood blood pressure back to a normal state. It will also he help with um

28:32excessive uh sugar in the diet and if you have your insulin out of balance, bathing is a a significant thing. There are different ways to ba bath and you

28:43need to build it up or go and jump in the water or if you're unable to do any of that, you can't go and have a bath, you can't go for a run, you don't have a

28:53bath, um then I would re recommend go and lie in the sun, find a sunny spot in your house somewhere and spend 20 minutes a day just lying in the sun. uh

29:0720 minutes is enough without it creating a skin problem and just lie and relax. You need to take control of your thinking. The other thing is that occurs

29:21is without thinking it's very easy to imagine that someone else um is wrong. It's very hard to tell the difference

29:31between a rational thought and a projected thought. you know, we call it discernment where I'm making a judgment about something not working and then

29:41having a um a projection of my fears. You know, I look at someone and I think um they're going to make a mistake. They're incompetent and then I treat

29:50them in a particular way which makes it really hard for them to succeed in what they're doing. And what we need to do is look at

30:00how am I projecting that on? And so sometimes I can't always gauge my rational thinking. Sometimes I can't even tell that I'm stuck in a program

30:10that is really neutral and debilitating and affecting me. And so I have this thing called on and off. And so it's really very simple. You're either on or

30:23you're off. If you're on you can possibly ch trust the way you're thinking. I call it connected. If you're off, you're disconnected. I don't feel

30:35connected to these people. I don't feel okay with these people. I feel very shut off from these people. You're open. Or the opposite side of that would be

30:46you're closed. Another way of saying it, I'm feeling happy. I'm feeling okay. Or I'm feeling sad. I'm not feeling okay. The general way we describe it is I'm

30:59feeling loving or I'm feeling fearful. Uh another way of thinking is understanding or critical. I can say 100%. All disconnected, closed

31:14off, sad, fearful and critical thinking is um neurotic. I'm not saying you are neurotic. I'm saying the thinking

31:24process in that moment is neurotic and you need to recognize this neurosis that's running you at the moment because if you don't recognize that neurosis it

31:37will just lead you down to catastrophizing to worrying too much to uh being too defensive being too scared to try

31:47something to making yourself more small and withdrawing. ing from the world. Fundamentally, freedom requires you to systematically

32:00look at your limitations. And those limitations need to systematically be dealt with. I'm not saying throw yourself over the cliff,

32:10but if you're at the top of the cliff and you need to get to the bottom of the cliff, well, you have to go and find the path from the top of the cliff to the

32:18bottom of the cliff. And to go from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the cliff could be 100 150 steps. It's not one jump. And so it's a process of

32:26working, working, working, working, working, working, working. And now you're down off the cliff onto stable ground, maybe on a beach or whatever it

32:36happens to be. So it's a process, but systematically you must face the things that inhibit you. You must face the things that limit

32:48you. And all you need to do is face it and just keep working towards it. One step, one step, one step, one step, easy peasy, nice and slow. Don't push it.

33:01It's too hard, you know, and then the whole thing just works itself out. The um I got an affirmation here. And so I'm

33:14just going to put it up on the screen here and then I'd love you to say it out aloud. Let me go back. I went too far. Um and the affirmation is I'll say it

33:27once and then I'll repeat it again. And while you're sitting there where you are, um I invite you to say it out loud as well. The purpose of doing that is

33:37you integrate it deeper into your unconscious. you integrate it more into who you are. So, take a deep breath. Oh, I'll say it first.

33:48I don't have to believe every thought I think. I choose to believe the thoughts that empower me and others. So, let's do it together. Take a deep

33:59breath and we'll do it one step at a time. I don't have to believe every thought I think.

34:13I choose to believe the thoughts that empower me and others just choosing out of it. I don't want to keep thinking this way. And so

34:30this is um a strategy changing the way I think about things. Um one of the ways of escaping the thinking is recognize that you are not feeling okay. You're

34:44either on or off. You're off. And then it's as simple as just choosing out of it. I don't want it. I don't want it. And initially it requires effort. And

34:56then it becomes effortless. It sounds too simple, but basically that's all it is. That's all it is. You've just got to recognize the fact

35:08that your mind is caught up in something that's not resourceful. Choose out of it. I don't want this anymore. I don't want this anymore. There is another way

35:21of doing it which is to run this affirmation that I zero that thought. I zero that thought. I zero that thought. I zero that thought means

35:35I don't want to think that way anymore. It's better to have no thought. There's a st there's an affirmation that says I know nothing. I make no decisions. I

35:48forgot the question. And so it's like I know nothing. I know nothing. And because I know nothing, I make no decisions. And because I know nothing

35:58and I make no decisions, I stop asking questions. It is what it is. And all I have to do now is sit here and manage my physiology and not have a story about

36:09it. And I I've got I've got a little thing here I'm going to show you in a moment. And years ago when I was learning to do all

36:18this stuff, um I attended a course called Creating Wealth with a guy called Robert Kiyosaki and he's an a finance educator and he teaches people how you

36:30know money works, how to invest and do things like that. And this must have been I don't know late 1980s. and I was attending one of his advanced courses

36:41and it was called creating wealth and in create creating wealth was being run in the ballroom at the center point tower in Sydney and

36:52this one particular exercise was musical chairs. There were approximately 200 people uh participating in the game and we had 100 chairs back to back uh down

37:06the center of the ballroom and there were you know 200 people uh in effect. the music would start to play and then as

37:17the music played um the staff would come in and take 30 chairs away and then the music would stop and then people would try and sit down and 30 people would be

37:28eliminated and you would work your way and it so happened we got to the stage where there were only two people left me and this other person who was a very

37:41successful property developer very very wealthy He um he was I believed at the time he was pretty good-looking and he was um very fit and he was much bigger

37:51than me and he was stronger than me and I thought under all those things you know he's better he's he's got more money he's got um he's younger he's

38:00better looking he's he's healthier he's stronger that's the thought you know and most guys it's very macho type thought it's like you know we judge each other

38:11by what we have and what we can do rather than who we are. And so, particularly back then for myself. And so, this was a deep insecurity I'm

38:20running. And there's one chair and there's two of us and we're going around the chair. And as we're going around the chair, whenever he was in front of the

38:31chair, he would go really slow. And when he was at the back of the chair, he would go fast. And I was just basically trying to pace myself. But while I was

38:40doing this, I was running one thought in my mind. And the thought that I was running was, I know nothing. I make no decisions. I forgot the question. I know

38:51nothing. I make no decisions. I forgot the question. What I had learned to do was manage my state. What I had manage learned to do was to manage my anxiety.

39:03Here I am in a challenging situation and the thing that's going to get me is my anxiety. Because no one defeats you. You defeat yourself.

39:16There are no ultimately if you truly want to understand the nature of um metaphysics and how relationships work and that

39:27there are no enemies. All that's occurring is a manifestation of an unresolved consciousness within yourself. Now to try and directly go

39:37into that consciousness and understand it and and dismantle it is a complicated process and it's quite sophisticated and often requires a lot of support. But you

39:47don't need to go there. All you need to do is keep neutralizing the effect of this consciousness throwing up limiting thoughts. And so the thoughts coming up,

39:57oh I can't do it. I'm not good enough. I'm not going fast enough. I couldn't allow one of those thoughts to come into my mind while I was engaged in this

40:05activity of going around the chair with this guy. And I'm saying, I know nothing. I make no decisions. I forgot the question. The music suddenly stopped

40:16and I'm on the wrong side of the chair. And without even thinking, I put my hand on the corner of the chair. I flipped the chair around and I sat down and I

40:25won. And I did not even think of doing that. I hadn't planned that I was gonna flip the chair. I was just in the moment dealing with my anxiety. Dealing with my

40:40anxiety. Dealing with my anxiety. I zero that thought. I zero that thought. I zero that thought. And in the process of dealing with my anxiety,

40:51I just behaved spontaneously. And in behaving spontaneously, I won it. And I won this they gave me a prize and back in those days Kiasaki used to have this

41:02idea that you know people in business were one of two things. You were either a shark or you were salmon and so he would say don't be uh don't be salmon

41:11otherwise the sharks will eat you. And so as a win they went and got me a stuffed shark. And so here is my stuffed shark. Now, I don't believe in being a

41:25shark, but what I do believe in is managing your anxiety, managing your physiology. Doesn't matter what the story is out there. Doesn't matter how

41:37paranoid it may seem or how criminal or how difficult or how whatever's going on, it doesn't matter. All that matters is how you are handling it. And what

41:50matters is you handling your physiology. You handling the way you feel. And you do that primarily by saying, "I don't want to believe this thought. I don't

42:05want to believe this thought. I don't want to believe this thought." And you just have to sit with it and sit with it and sit with it. And if you do, the

42:12level of anxiety comes down. It takes effort initially. It takes effort. There is a a resistance. Even though one part of you says, "I don't want to be angry."

42:24A part of you will be addicted to being angry. Another part of you will say, "I don't want to be afraid." But given half a chance, you'll be running around

42:31breathing through your mouth being anxious all the time. There's an addictive part of your personality. You've got to realize that is not a

42:42negative comment. It's just an objective statement. It's just a recognition. This is how we all are. This is how I am. It's taken a focused effort over a

42:52period of time to raise it rise above that. I'm very blessed. I'm very blessed. I haven't started from a place of where it was easy. I was born into a

43:03very difficult circumstances and it's been a process of resolving and lifting and resolving and lifting and resolving and lifting and that's what's occurred.

43:14Now it's easy. I live in paradise. I live with angels. I live metaphorically speaking with beautiful people and and in an amazing environment. But this has

43:25been a process of releasing my limitations, releasing my fears and moving forward. That is your destiny. Your destiny is to be a success. A

43:38measure of who you are is not the weakest link in the chain. It's the strongest link in the chain. You are destined to become more. And if you say

43:51more is the wrong word. It's not more. You're not going to be more more. It's to be in harmony, in peace with where you are and what you are. That's it. To

44:02be here. And so the next piece I wanted I want to talk about is the magic of breath. Breath is right up there.

44:17You can live for almost 40 days without food. You could probably go seven plus days without water. But you'd be lucky to go 10 minutes without air.

44:30And yet it is one of the most significant, one of the most important things we can do. And we take it for granted. And breath works on so many

44:40levels. On a basic physiological level, a physical level, it is the ingesting, the taking in the inhalation of oxygen,

44:50nitrogen as well, but primarily oxygen, O2. It comes into the lungs. It's then distributed into the bloodstream and it's taken by 50 trillion cells that

45:04exist in your body. And these 50 trillion cells are a community. It's like housing estates and they need to have the water and the electricity and

45:19the garbage and all the the utility supplied to them and all the things taken away from them. So your bloodstream is one of the major

45:26mechanisms for taking nutrients and oxygen to various parts of the body and to take the carbon dioxide and the waste products out of the body.

45:39And so oxygen is a major component of that. And so with O2, we metabolize, in other words, burn up glucose to produce energy. If you're doing work or exercise

45:52and you need more energy, then you'll usually breathe harder. Breathing harder supplies more oxygen, which enables more glucose to be metabolized, which in turn

46:02produces more energy. So there's a direct link between breathing and energy, breathing and vitality. The majority of people are midchest

46:17breathers. They breathe here. They don't breathe in the upper part, the clavicle, and they don't breathe down in the diaphragm.

46:30The simplest thing to do is taking a deep breath. Let's just do that right now. Taking a deep breath through your nose. In through your nose.

46:41Hold it. Take it a little bit more. Hold it. Little bit more. And now let it out. Let it out through the mouth. Let it out through the nose. Hold it out.

46:54Breathe in through the nose. Hold it. Breathe in a bit more. Hold it. And now breathe out through the nose. Right down. Hold it. Hold it. Breathe

47:08out. Now breathe in through the nose. That's the most basic fundamental level. Breathe when you

47:22think of it. Breathe when you get an opportunity. Particularly when you're out in nature and you're in an environment,

47:31the magic of breath. Here's this girl standing on a beach with her arms up breathing fresh air, breathing the ions, the free electrons. They each um that

47:41sit in the atmosphere and it's so vital and energizing. Breathe through your nose. The second thing about breathing, it also has an

47:53emotional level. And this emotional level is about you will breathe differently depending on how you feel. If you feel angry, you

48:03will tend to breathe through your mouth [gasps] lower in your diaphragm. And um it changes the whole way you're breathing.

48:15And if you're afraid, you tend to breathe higher in your chest and it's a bit more like a panting breath.

48:27Anger breath is shift that breathe through the nose. Take the breath up to the top of your lungs.

48:45Let the breath go down to the bottom. And then slow the breathing. Slow it down a bit. So you're breathing at the rate of an

48:59inhalation on two seconds, one, two, possibly three, and an exhalation one, two, three. That brings your breathing to

49:12approximately midchest, slows your whole body down. Breathing in that way also balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain. There is also a way in

49:26which the breathing affects your thinking. If you're confused, you're worried, you're not sure what's going on.

49:34Best thing to do is breathe through your nose. Spend five minutes calming down and then start to think what you going to do,

49:44what's going on. I often meditate in the mornings if I'm feeling I've got a big day coming on and I really just want to prepare myself. I will often go and sit

49:55and meditate minimum 15 minutes often 30 minutes and I do this one meditation called anapana which is a breath awareness meditation. So I'm breathing

50:06in through my nose, out through my nose, in through my nose, out through my nose, nice and chilled. It takes five minutes or so. I calm down and then the next

50:16thing that happens is my mind just clears and by the end of say 15 minutes I'm back to feeling very very centered and if I need to I could

50:29focus on whatever I want to focus on all the day but I would recommend stay meditating be really calm come out of the meditation stay where you are and

50:39then think about what you want to do for the day rather than spending the the meditating or the the attention breathing through the mouth as a way of

50:50mentally processing a problem. There is another way which is called spiritual. So you can breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe and

50:58breathe and breathe and breathe and take yourself into uh deep meditation and it can bring you to a point of um release and you shift perspective. Most of us

51:12see ourselves as a finger. If you breathe and you get the energy up high enough, um, you will change your perspective and you'll no longer see

51:21yourself as a finger. You'll see yourself as a hand and you'll see these other people as being part of you in some way. It's a major shift in

51:29perspective. It's a a thing that occurs with the meditating and the breathing. But breathing is one of the most powerful things you can do. Um, the

51:41power of breath is both voluntary and involuntary. You can choose to do it. Most of the time it's just happening. It's one of the fastest ways to increase

51:52the energy in your body. Um, it not only supports and supplies oxygen to your body, it alsoqi prana. It's an a subtle energy that works through the meridians.

52:07um something beyond the conversation we can have right now. But on another webinar, I'll definitely be talking about

52:15moving energy, moving prana through the meridians of the body. It's just another way of balancing your physiology. Keep it simple. So breath is both physical

52:26and metaphysical. It is both the way to be in your physical body and it's also a way a bridge to something else. You are not just a physical body. You

52:39are not just your emotions. You are not the thinking process. These are part of you. You are something greater. You are something far greater.

52:51Part of your empowerment, part of your inner peace, part of your ability to go through life with ease and grace is recognizing this other part of

53:05you because it will give you a dimension that will always enable you to rise above the petty stresses of what occurs every day.

53:18So the one significant thing I want to have you go away when it comes to breathing is to breathe through your nose.

53:29Breathing through your nose filters the air. It humidifies the air. It warms and cools the air. It increases

53:41the absorption of O2. and it balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain. But the greatest greatest advantage I believe in nose breathing is

53:58it brings you into present time. Brings you into present time. When you're in this present moment, nothing can happen to you. You're okay. The story in the

54:11head stops. The most significant benefit of breathing through the nose is present time awareness. So the message I want to give you for in

54:26finishing up the formal part of the seminar the webinar is on an everyday level breathe through your nose.

54:41Breathe through your nose, to slow down your metabolism, to stop the mind from going into overthinking,

54:59to balance the left and right hemispheres of the brain, to filter the air, to humidify the air. and to increase the absorption of oxygen

55:15into your lungs because the oxygen is coming in in a more balanced easy rate and then your lungs are abs able to absorb it more easily. Breathe through

55:25your nose. I've got two more parts to finish. We've got little under 30 minutes about 20 odd minutes or so, 25 minutes. I want to

55:36take you through a meditation. I call this a golden light meditation. It's similar to the France St. Francis of Aisi meditation or metaparmmer. St.

55:49Francis the Visi was a saint in from the Christian religion and he was um put in prison and was about to die and in that process he had all these revelations and

56:04of all the um prayers that I have experienced the Francis of Aisi prayer has to be one of the most powerful prayers you can do one of the most

56:15powerful meditations and metaparmama is a meditation of gratitude from the Buddhist tradition. And I've called this the golden light meditation. And the

56:26purpose of this meditation is to energize you, is to heal you right in this moment, right now. to aid the healing of your family to energize and

56:40put into the environment that you come into a positive positive sort of uh experience. So,

56:51I'm going to get you to prepare for the golden light meditation. So, take in a deep breath and just sigh it out. [sighs and gasps]

57:16And I want you to sit with your spine straight, head erect, and eyes gently closed. And remain absolutely perfectly still.

57:34And breathing in and out only through your nose. Take your awareness to the sound of your breath.

58:01Take your awareness to the sounds around you. Awareness on the sounds inside of the room.

58:32Take your awareness to the sounds outside of the room. Now feel your buttocks. Feel where your body is making contact with

58:57the surface beneath you. And imagine coming out of the bottom of your spine is a thick orange tree root. And it's working its way down through

59:13the floor and deep into the earth below. Imagine this thick orange tree root continues to grow and spread, traveling deep into the

59:27earth until it's at least 60 m deep and it's spread out. It's like a massive tree with a huge

59:43root system beneath the ground. And coming up through these deep, thick, strong roots into the base of your spine is a radiant orange light.

59:59This is mother earth energy. She loves you and she nurtures you. This light travels into the base of your

60:14buttocks up through your spine and fills your heart with radiant orange energy. Feel the energy in your heart. Feel the energy coming up your spine and going

60:31into your heart. Meanwhile, out in space, past the boundaries of our solar system,

60:47is a beam of luminescent blue light, traveling faster than light. Entering our solar as it enters our solar system, it heads towards Earth.

61:01It reaches the outer edges of the Earth's atmosphere and passes straight down through the roof above you and into the top of your head.

61:16This is father's spirit energy. He protects and provides for you. And from the top of your head, this luminescent blue light passes into your

61:37spine and down into your heart, merging with the radiant orange mother earth energy already in your heart. As the orange mother earth energy and

61:50the blue father spirit energy merge in your heart, they become illuminescent radiant yellow gold light.

62:05You are a transformer. You transform mother earth and father spirit through your heart and bring it into existence

62:20on planet earth. >> [snorts] >> Your heart fuels with this yellow gold light and it travels to every single

62:31cell in your body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes to the extremities of your fingertips. Your body is completely saturated with

62:47this yellow gold light. And at the same time, even more mother earth energy is rising up through your spine and into your heart. And father

63:03spirit energy is pouring down through the top of your head and into your heart. Both merging into a yellow gold light and radiating out of your heart

63:17and into the atmosphere around you. This yellow gold light fills the room, the building, and any people nearby. The yellow light continues to pour out

63:37of your heart and fills the nearby suburb. And it continues to keep pouring out and fills your entire town or city and

63:49continues to grow and spread emerge with other yellow gold fields of light until it fills your entire country, continent, and the world.

64:03And I want you to picture a blue white planet Earth suspended in an inky blue space surrounded by an aura of yellow gold

64:17light. and see or feel your heart and the heart and the hearts of millions of people pouring their love onto Earth and all

64:29the beings that inhabit her. Take a deep breath and I want you to say this in your mind repeating this after me.

64:42I choose to be an a an agent of love, joy, and peace for the greater good of all. I choose to be an agent

64:57of love, joy, and peace for the greater good of all. And from your heart, keep beaming this yellow light to planet Earth and say in

65:10your mind after me, "Where there is hatred, let me bring love. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is illness,

65:39let me bring health. Where there is conflict, let there be peace. Where there is injustice,

66:14let there be justice. I seek not to be understood as to understand. I forgive all.

66:44I am grateful for all that I have. May all beings be happy.

67:15And while you sit there, breathe through the nose and feel the benevolence that's in your heart go to every organ in your body,

67:27the muscles, and to all the people you love. and the people that you work with. Take a deep breath

67:58and return your attention back to the screen, back to the room. Now, John Leonard said, "Imagine,

68:15imagine a world, you know, the sort of love and peace and imagine." It's one of the most powerful affirmations you can think of. Imagine.

68:26And so imagine the world the way you want it to be, not the way that we're being told it's has to be or it is. We imagine what we want.

68:41And I have a parting um statement from Dr. Zeus and it was quite funny so I thought I'd put it in. You

68:51know, you have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what to

69:04do. And you are the one who will decide where to go. It's your choice. It's your decision. And you know um thank you for listening

69:24to me and for being part of this. This is going to be a series every two weeks for the next six more weeks. I'm going to run a series on the mind and I want

69:38to talk about particular ways in which the mind's been programmed and the major influences on the way the thinking process has occurred. The personality of

69:49your mother, the personality of your father um and also um looking at a process which I call forgiveness, radical forgiveness,

70:01completion and letting go. So each one of these webinars will have a theme. But for now, we've got just about 15 minutes. Um I'll do the questions. Also,

70:13do um if uh you need to drop out or someone's moving, do feel free to go to my website, michaeladamedes.com, and book in for any or all of the

70:26webinars. And they'll be each Fortnite at 6:30 um at this time. So looking at the questions I have just let me stop sharing come back to everything and I

70:42have at this moment opening questions um here we go um Andre H has asked I'm looking at another screen

70:55um is saying um you think personality comes from between lives or our personalities just changing very slowly by working on it reflecting life to the

71:07next lives as long as we wake up and work on ourselves do I'll read the question again I'm not 100% h you think personality comes from

71:18between lives question mark or our personality is just changing very slowly by working on it reflecting etc from life to the next life as long

71:29as we make up and work on ourselves I believe um our personality does come from both between lives and from um an ancestral memory that we inherit through

71:43our genes and it also comes through a culture. Culture has a memory. You know, the culture of Australia is based on um 200 and something years of of European

71:57uh habitation here and it's also based on a history of England and English which goes back to um French and also William the Conqueror and also Roman

72:09times. And so we have a mind thinking process ego that is based on um the past um from our um cultural memory from our ancestral memory and I also

72:27believe it does come um from between lives and the destiny that we're born into is really um the greatest opportunity for you to advance

72:40and um become more magnificent. The way spirit or the universe works on progressing is to put you into a straight jacket of uh challenges.

72:55This straight jacket of challenges can't be broken. The only way you will get out of the straight jacket is to shape shift. You have to look within yourself.

73:08You have to change who you are. And as you change who you are, this straight jacket won't fit and it just drops off. So the process of being put into a

73:20straight jacket and being given the challenges and the destiny of your life may feel quite unfair to some people. But ultimately it is for you to

73:35rise above those limitations and to become great because that is who you are and that is your destiny. So spirit works very different from the

73:46way personality, ego, how we would think things are. We need to understand our psychology. This webinar is about the psychological aspect of mind.

73:57Understanding the psychological aspect of mind is an advantage. It does give you a perspective on how it's put together, but its ultimate destiny is

74:07something beyond the mind. And so um that's it. you got to work on yourself. Um because that's the only way you're going to get out of the destiny of it.

74:17And the Buddhists say the mind you die on mean the programming you die with will be the programming the mind you'll be born back into. So if you don't get

74:29it now, you'll die and you'll have it sitting there and you'll get it next time. Um so way we go with it. The next question

74:39is my understanding is that each incarnation is very different one to provide enough and diverse experiences for soul to grow and learn from all

74:48kinds of emotions and challenges. Yes and no. You know we we need to with with each evolution we need a diversity of experience. If we've had an

74:59experience in one life where we were victims, then in another life we may come back as aggressors to understand the other side of why people behaved in

75:08such an aggressive way. And then we may come back into a future life to free ourselves from both parts. But each of us will have a specific ray of learning

75:21and we will experience the dichotomy both ends both uh hell and heaven. And in going through heaven, heaven, hell and heaven will transcend and will go

75:33beyond heaven and hell and become something greater and something more because heaven and hell ultimately is really a perspective. Um

75:44there is an ultimate peace. There is this ultimate sense of centeredness and being uh here and in harmony with myself. the um

75:57if our ego personality someone's saying if our ego personality uh is 95% ancestral and happens before we are conceived therefore the same for

76:08our children how does us doing the work as parents help change our children's conditioning and programming the nature of transformation

76:18is through uh the will the mechanism by which conditioning is transferred. In part, it occurs through um the uh soul memory that that child has when it

76:35incarnates into a physical body. So it already has a degree of its destiny. Then in part it is also picking up an ancestral memory. And this ancestral

76:46memory is transferred to the child in part through the genetics but primarily through the behavior of the parents. And the behavior of the parents well it's

76:59actually not even the behavior. It's called the resonance of the parents. So it's the way in which your mother or your father felt that will affect your

77:10um the way in which the child picks it up. So it's the resonance. So if I heal it within myself, I change the frequency of

77:20who I am. I change my resonance. My resonance is free of that inhibition. If my child is under the age of seven, their resonant field is very very fluid

77:32and they can easily raise their resonance quite high. The resonant field starts to become um oified, starts to become rigid as soon as we learn to

77:44control our emotions. As soon as we learn to control our emotions, we lock down and solidify the resonant field. And so the resonant field is the um

77:58key uh thing with understanding how it gets transferred to uh from the parents to the child. Um it's a great question. Um

78:12the next question is Cynthia. I'm wondering where one uh is so hurt and blamed and the finger is pointed at how does that represent the past life?

78:24Basically, I am blamed a lot. If you're blamed a lot, it really reflects um a sense of uh a part of you that is carrying shame. There's a part

78:41of you that feels that you are to blame. Now you're there's a frequency somewhere within you that carries the frequency of being um

78:55responsible and probably if you're attracting a lot of blame unintentionally of course if there's a frequency within you that makes you

79:06vulnerable to people blaming you. People can blame you, but you don't have to feel blamed. People, if someone blames you, the the the the big picture on

79:16blaming is this. If someone blames another, you're responsible for how I am feeling. Well, they're not taking personal responsibility themselves. And

79:27they are making external circumstances and other people the creator of their feeling state, their existence. I am the power within my life. I am the source of

79:39power within my life. I am the source of love within my life. And if I'm not finding that love and if I'm not finding that power within my life, then I've

79:48given something away. So straight away to blame someone is to you're caught in the victim. They're caught in the victim aggressor. Now they

79:58can do that. They can blame as much as they like. But then if they blame and I take on that blame to be real, then there's something in me that feels

80:11guilty. There's something in me that feels incomplete. So their projection of making me responsible for how they feel um is resonating with me. So why is that

80:24resonating with me? Invariably in these instances you're taking on the pain of others and invariably it's mother or father. So the child is taking

80:38on the pain of their mother or their father or the child child is taking on the pain of another or the child is feeling the pain that mother felt

80:50um about blaming herself for someone else. So you can have the pattern of blame or guilt taken on because you yourself feel it about yourself or

81:02because you had a loving connection with someone during a developmental time while you were growing up and you picked up their sense of not um loving

81:13themselves and feeling okay. It's a big question. Um someone saying uh very powerful meditation. I got very emotional when

81:25two of the energies were connected and burst into tears. Starting breathing heavily. Why was that? Because you experienced the truth of

81:39what is. And you are the mechanism by which the um very high frequency energy of um mother nurturing and father spirit uh come down into earth and your feeling

81:59function is open and this is a blessing. This is really saying You're sensitive. You can feel and you're feeling the nature of what is.

82:12And if you can feel it and it affects you so strongly, [snorts] then every now and then keep doing it. And what I will do in the next

82:24week or so, we will get that meditation. We will I will either re um redo it or if we can cut it out of the recording. I'll put it in an M2 an MP3 file and

82:38have it on my website michaeles.com and if you go looking for it, you'll find a link to it and you can download that um meditation. So, it's available

82:49to you and you can put it on your iPhone or iPad or whatever. And then on occasion when you're feeling a little bit not okay, you could play it just to

82:59lift yourself again. So that's a wonderful thing to do. I'm going to finish with this last question. What is the line between

83:08separating separating ourselves from our thoughts that we have observing the monster and acknowledging the thoughts we have as a result of us being in the

83:18world hugging the monster? Is there harm harm somewhere along the way in isolating one's thoughts as not mine?

83:30Okay, first question is separating our thought from our thoughts and it it really is a a level of your own personal development if you're still

83:44there. There there are three stages to the evolution of working with thoughts. The first stage is being able to witness your thoughts and see them being

83:55separate to you. Now, the fact that they're separate to you doesn't mean you you don't you don't take responsibility for them. You still take responsibility

84:04for them. They still are thoughts that are coming into your psyche. So, there's something in you that resonates with those thoughts, but they are not your

84:13thoughts in the sense that they are your creation. They are a consequence of something that um was deficient in you. They are a consequence of an environment

84:26that you grew up in. You still need to take responsibility for them and recognize them, but you do not have to say they represent something lacking in

84:36them. The second level of understanding what's going on is hugging those thoughts is that you can use the thoughts that come in because now you

84:46have more awareness and you can allow yourself to embrace those thoughts and see them representing something that still may result may be untransformed

84:57and so they then are embraced as a mechanism for understanding an untransform transformed part of yourself. In the first instance, you

85:08have to learn how to disidentify and not get hypnotized by the thoughts. That's why we say they're not your thoughts and you separate yourself. The second stage,

85:17when you get to the next stage, you can embrace those thoughts and see those thoughts as representing a uh an untransformed part of you so that you

85:27can release them. The third stage in doing this is you have no attachment. Thoughts come and go. There is no monster thoughts.

85:41There is nothing that goes on there. It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. You just see, oh, okay, these people have these sort of thoughts.

85:50You're telepathic. You're aware of those thoughts floating around, but that's just an observation. That's just walking past a a tip and noticing, you

86:00know, there's a whole lot of garbage sitting out there. It doesn't mean anything about that. You just notice it. You don't need to sit there. You can

86:07walk past it or you can go somewhere and you can look at a garden and you can look at some beautiful thoughts that are going on there. Again, you just watch

86:14the garden. It doesn't mean anything. It's just an observation of the environment in which you find yourself. Then you are beyond all that. And so,

86:23um, it's completely different, you know. Um, is there a harm um is there a harm somewhere along the way in isolating one's um thoughts as not

86:36mine? Um, no. It's there's no harm. All it all that does is if you say these thoughts are not mine, all you're doing is disidentifying from them. All I'm

86:47really saying here is I did not create these thoughts. These thoughts inhabit some part of my psyche. I'm observing those thoughts. I've disidentified from

86:57those thoughts by saying they're not mine. But I still recognize that those thoughts coming into my awareness represent a um something for me to

87:07understand and resolve. That's it. So there's no harm there. There's no harm. There's no harm ultimately in anything. You know, there is lost opportunity and

87:18then all that occurs is you go round and round and round and round. feeling unhappy, you know, if you want to call that harm. Um, but really, life

87:30is here to empower you to your greatest your greatest sense of self. Um, I'm going to finish with um those things

87:44and uh questions and answers. And I want to um I've got these other programs, these ones, the nature of the mind, programming the mind, present time

87:55awareness, emotional well-being, um mother, father, and the power of forgiveness. So they're coming up in the next Fortnite along. I really invite you

88:06to come along and be part of it. The next webinar is next um Fortnite 6:30 to 8:30 Wednesday the 5th of May. The topic is

88:20the programming in the of the mind primal negative beliefs and if you want to join just go to um michaeles.com. So thank you very much. Thank you for

88:33being part of this and it's been a pleasure and a joy um sharing the time. So, thank you very much.