The Power of Meditative Arts with Jeff Patterson

Jeff Patterson
[00:00:00] Ed Watters: Today, we are speaking with Jeff Patterson. He is an author, he has thirty-six [00:01:00] years of experience practicing and teaching meditative and martial arts. Jeff, could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please?
[00:01:13] Jeff Patterson: Yeah, thanks for having me. Um, I have a, uh, uh, academy here in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been teaching here at the academy for thirty years, I started it up back in 1994. And through the years, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had over 26, 000 students come through the academy. And we do four different adult programs here at the academy, we have a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu program, a striking program, or we do boxing and Muay Thai. We have an Escrima program and then mostly what we’re going to talk about today is our meditation program. And you know, through the years, what’s been such a motivator for me and has been a lot of enjoyment is that, you know, it’s always fun to take a competitor out in Brazilian jiu [00:02:00] jitsu or Muay Thai and have them do well.
But something that’s always been close to my heart with the meditative arts is that, you know, people are coming here for learning how to deal with a sickness or an ailment, or maybe they’re dealing with stress or anxiety. And when they can take on the meditation practice and it changes their whole life, that is something that truly inspires me. And that’s what’s kind of motivated me to write my last couple of books and create my online program and why I’m just really trying to get the message out there.
[00:02:40] Ed Watters: Yeah, I enjoy what you do a lot. I no longer participate in those sports, but in my younger day, I used to really enjoy it. It really helps ground you in many ways, find your center, and it humbles you. Once you open up [00:03:00] to understanding, you’re not invincible, and that’s where thinking about things come in handy, and I take that meditation helps with that a lot.
[00:03:16] Jeff Patterson: Yeah. Meditation is great, you know, and it’s funny because I got turned on to the meditative arts in a bit of a roundabout way. I was about nineteen years old, very into Western boxing, and I used to go to a boxing gym that’s just a few blocks down the street here from my academy. And if, for your listeners, if they’re not familiar with it, your traditional boxing gym is not really run like your normal fitness class where you come in and there’s a, a teacher or a coach and everybody follows what the coach’s instructions are. In a boxing gym, usually there’s a handful of coaches or maybe just a couple depending on the size of the gym, but each one of those coaches might have three or four [00:04:00] fighters that they’re working with. Well, at this one gym that I was at, one of the coaches had created national and world champion level fighters. I really wanted to get to spend some time with him, he was an amazing coach. And so I’d always show up at the gym when I knew he was going to be there and tried to get him to notice me and work very hard. So he would, you know, keep an eye on me.
And it was about maybe four months of doing this, he finally started giving me a few tips and helping me out a little bit. And It was only about maybe two or three weeks from him starting to give me a few pointers when he said something to me that changed my life forever. He said, You know, if you really want to be a good boxer, you should start doing meditation and Tai Chi. Now at the time, I was this nineteen year old kid who didn’t know much of anything thinking, You know, isn’t Tai Chi for like old people in the park? How’s that gonna help me be a better fighter? And, you know, I, I started doing the practice, I had a lot of respect for him. And [00:05:00] not only did it change my life in many ways through the years, you know, I’ve heard hundreds of stories of students that have come in, come in and taken on the meditative practice and seen how it’s positively influenced their lives. And so it’s, it’s been a strong driver for me.
[00:05:17] Ed Watters: Yeah, it’s interesting. You, you say there’s three types of meditation, could you cover those for us and let us know a little bit about each of those meditation types?
[00:05:30] Jeff Patterson: Well, so I, I break down meditation into kind of five different paths. And then I’ll, I’ll touch on what you’re referring to here in a minute when there are different modalities of how we can practice the different methods. And so when somebody comes to the meditative practice, they can come with the goal of, uh, what I call the athletic side of the training where they’re wanting to improve their athletic performance and their timing, and their present state of mind and their ability to focus, and all those things [00:06:00] that help make them be a better athlete. Then there’s the therapeutic side of the practice, which is great for dealing with injuries, working on your strength, and stability, and your flexibility. Then there’s the medical side of the practice, which is a very deep topic. You know, all of, uh, Chinese medicine is based on Qigong theory, which is one of the meditation practices that we do here at the academy. And then there’s the philosophical side, which teaches virtue and how to strategically think through life situations. And then there’s lastly the spiritual side of the practice, which is what we mostly think of or hear about when we talk about the meditative arts. Now, any one of these five paths that we decide to follow, there’s three basic pillars that we use
that help us integrate the meditative arts into our lives so we can build an evolving life [00:07:00] practice with meditation. And they are ritual, active, and philosophical practices. A ritual practice is where you set time aside every day. Maybe it’s twenty minutes, maybe it’s an hour, or whatever that is for you. And you do maybe a sitting meditation, or a standing meditation, or a movement practice like Tai Chi, or Qigong, or whatever that is for you. And then active practices are where we integrate these things, these breathing strategies, these postural exercises, these mental training exercises that we do into our daily lives. And they can be done in as little as sixty seconds or two minutes, it’s not that you need to retire to a cave and meditate for the rest of your life. But when you can learn to make meditation a way of life and not a hobby that we do once in a while, that’s where you really start to benefit from the [00:08:00] practice. And then lastly, there’s philosophical practices that can be both active or ritual based. And so with these three pillars, we start to create an evolving life practice with the meditative arts.
[00:08:13] Ed Watters: You just brought up a good point. On one of the podcasts that I listened to with my research, I ran across the quote that came from you, Create a life, not a living. Now I know that somebody told you this, but I found that quote very, very interesting. And I think that’s important for introducing into our lives also that we have to create our life and not a living when we reach out into the world for like our jobs and all of this. So, how do we do that? How do we create a life instead of a [00:09:00] living in this complex world?
[00:09:05] Jeff Patterson: That’s a great question, and it’s not always the easiest path. You know, I was the first kid in my whole extended family to go through college. And everybody thought, Ahh, he’s going to go get a big important job and do something important. You know, and, and I remember my old boxing coach telling me you want to create a life, not make a living. And, and, you know, the thought of sitting behind a computer all day or doing something that I wasn’t happy doing and doing that for the rest of my life seemed daunting. And I was really passionate about the meditative and the martial arts and so I decided to follow that path. And it was difficult, you know, it took a number of years.
I never would have thought it would turn into what it was or what it is today. Um, you know, I remember telling myself back in [00:10:00] 94 that if I could just make 30, 000 dollars a year doing what I love to do, I’d be happy. You know, it was, I didn’t follow this path thinking that I was going to be rich, you know? And, and, uh, it’s been so rewarding to have a passion that I follow. And I think the first step for somebody to do that is, they need to stay connected to who they really are. Because there is such a pull in society today to get in this fast paced way of life where we’ve got the cell phone in our hand 24/7 and we’ve got this distraction, and this distraction, and this distraction where we kind of lose touch of who we are. And a lot of times it’s almost as if, you know, we’re wearing a mask everywhere we go or got these barriers up to maybe not show people how we truly [00:11:00] feel.
We don’t want to say something to hurt their feelings or we don’t want them to see how we really feel. And because of this, sometimes we get so caught up in this way of life that we start to look at ourselves in the mirror and we’re still wearing that mask. And the meditative arts is one of those things that allows us to take those masks off, put those barriers down, and really stay connected to the root of who we are. And when we can do that, then we can start to create the life that we want. But without that connection, it’s, it’s a very difficult thing to do.
[00:11:39] Ed Watters: Yeah, I believe that 100 percent. Now going further with that, you live in Portland. You know, I, I live in Southern Oregon down here in Bly, Oregon. And I’m in the wilderness by Crater Lake so I have a lot of time to be in nature and I [00:12:00] consume it a lot because I find it peaceful and it’s, it’s kind of a meditation practice. So living in the city, how do you enjoy nature? Or do you? And do you try to apply that into your life?
[00:12:19] Jeff Patterson: First off, yes, I love being out in nature. Which is why, um, we live in the outskirts of, of the, the town here. Um, we have a seven and a half acre lot up in Forest Park, which is, uh, beautiful. There’s lots of trees, it’s quiet, you can’t see any neighbors around, you know, it’s, it’s very peaceful up there. And that’s always been, uh, something that I’ve desired and wanted. You know, for most of my life I’ve lived in the city and having some connection to nature, I think is real important. The other thing is, is that same [00:13:00] feeling you get sometimes when you’re in nature is having the tools and the ability to use these different meditation practices to tap into that energy and that feeling when you’re in your office, or when you’re in your living room, or when you’re in your car, you know? And start making it become a connection, and a feeling, and a way of life that you do and everything you do. And the great thing about the meditative arts is, it gives us the tools and the ability to keep that connection going all the time.
[00:13:36] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I think it’s really important for people to practice some sort of quietness, if you will. I know nature is not quiet, it’s got birds, and wind, and water, and all of these things. They can be very calming if we just listen to them and I [00:14:00] find it really nice. Uh, another thing you talk about is, uh, understanding the five religions and this will lead to a healthier, happier life. Can we talk a little bit and understand more about that?
[00:14:18] Jeff Patterson: Yeah. So these are the five, what I call the five regulations and they are, um, the fundamental pillars in any meditation practice. And basically it’s regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. And briefly I’ll kind of touch on what all of those are. So first, regulating the body. It doesn’t matter what meditation practice you take up and whether it’s a sitting practice, a standing meditation, a movement practice like Tai Chi, Qigong, or Yoga, regulating the body is very essential. Now the idea of regulating the body [00:15:00] is being aware of our skeletal alignment, and our muscular tension in the body, and how we move through the day.
And an example of this would be, think about a time maybe when you’re sitting down at your computer and you’ve been there three or four hours and you’re feeling lethargic and drained and you’re, maybe even your neck’s getting a little bit sore, and then think about another time when the most important person in your world walks in the room and your body perks up and you feel like you’re on top of the world. Well, these two different energetic states, we are in control of 100 percent of the time. And so when we can learn how to regulate the body, we can regulate how we present ourselves to the rest of the world. And the question that I ask for those of you that are listening is, How much of your day are you choosing to live in that depleted state?
Because we can all change that by the simple idea of learning how [00:16:00] to regulate the body. Then the next regulation is regulating the breath. And regulating the breath is a very deep topic, it’s something that you will study for the rest of your life if you take on a meditation practice. And oftentimes, Qigong is referred to as the science of the breath because there’s literally hundreds of different breathing strategies. And so we broadly categorize them into the Yin Methods and Yang Methods. Yin Methods are often deeper, more holistic style of meditations that bring the energy inward. And an example of a Yin Meditation, or a Yin style breath would be, if you ever listen to somebody sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer inhale and a shorter exhale. And this is the body’s natural way of bringing your conscious mind into our subconscious mind, which is where we are when we’re sleeping and [00:17:00] dreaming.
And so if we want to emulate this style of energy in our meditations, we can do longer inhales, soft retentions, at the end of the inhale to help bring that energy inward. And this is very effective for stress reduction, dealing with anxiety, panic attacks, it’s good to boost your creativity, there’s a lot of benefits that come from this side of the practice. Then we have the Yang side of the practice and this is more aggressive. It’s kind of like if you’ve ever had to push your car or you pick up something heavy, your natural instinct is to use the exhale side of the breath, put tension in the breath, make it audible, and this helps generate power and bring the energy outward.
Another example of a Yin breath would be, if you ever listen to somebody when they’re crying, they are normally, they’re doing longer inhales, which brings that energy inward. And in [00:18:00] turn, when somebody cries for a long time, and they get depressed, and they turn their energy inward as a, as a, over a period of time, they will often make them sick because this Yin, this strong Yin energy is weakening of the immune system. And then the flip side of that, and another example of the Yang side of the breath would be when you’re laughing, ha ha ha ha ha, you’re exhaling longer than you inhale. And if you’ve ever laughed, did a deep belly laugh and laughed for twenty minutes, you’ll notice you start sweating and you start feeling very warm.
Well, this is an example of how we lead that energy outward. And we naturally do these things in our life all the time. But when we can learn how to control that and balance that with our breath, and in Chinese philosophy, they call this balancing the Kan and Li. Now, you know, everybody goes through the day with emotional ups and downs. [00:19:00] Some people are like a roller coaster, others maybe a little more balanced. But when you start recognizing these imbalances, and you start feeling a sense of agitation or excitement, we can use the Yin breath to help bring you back down. And when you start feeling depleted, we can use the Yang breath to help pick us back up.
And now understanding how to do this can provide us a lot more balance in, in present state of mind throughout the day by learning how to regulate this breath. And then the third regulation is, regulating the mind. And just as with the breath, this is a lifelong practice. Now, oftentimes I’ve heard people that are coming to the practice, they’ll tell me, I tried meditation, but it just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t quiet my mind. Well, somewhere along the way people got this idea that in order to be successful with meditation, that you have to reach this state of Nirvana [00:20:00] and nothing bothers you and you never get distracted. And it couldn’t be further from the truth.
You know, I’ve been studying the meditative arts for a long time. I’ve traveled around the world and trained with some of the most amazing practitioners on the planet and I have never once met anybody who doesn’t get distracted. Everybody does, it’s just the way of humanity. And when you can change that mindset and realize that you’re not failing when you get distracted and realize that you’re doing good by recognizing the distraction, you can turn it from a negative into a positive. And now say, for example, you’re doing a, a sitting meditation or a movement practice for twenty minutes, and you get distracted fifty times during that session. Well, every time you get distracted, you recognize the distraction. You use your posture, your breath, your movement, whatever it is to help bring you back to center.
And now you just got fifty [00:21:00] repetitions of being out of focus and bringing yourself back into focus. Now you do this every day, every month, every year, you start almost becoming indestructible. And if somebody says something to throw you off your game, or you have a stressful day at work, you can use these techniques and strategies to help come back to the present state and be more balanced and approach it with that calm state of mind rather than that imbalanced place. You know, there’s this, uh, story that I really enjoy about these two old monks. And they’re walking down a dirt road after a rainstorm and everything’s muddy and there’s puddles everywhere. And they come up to this huge mud puddle and on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful little girl standing there in a white dress and she’s crying.
And the older monk, he yells across the puddle and says, Is there anything we can do to help? Are you okay? And she says, I need to be somewhere, but if I [00:22:00] walk across this puddle, I’m going to get my dress all dirty. So the older monk, he rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle, picks her up, puts her on his back, takes her to the other side, sets her down, and she’s off on her way. Well, him and the younger monk are walking a couple miles down the road, and finally, the younger monk is just furious, and he says, You know we’re not supposed to touch girls, but yet you did back there at the puddle. And the older monk looks down at him and says, You’re still thinking about that girl? I left her back there at the puddle.
And how many times in life do we have to get two miles down the muddy road before we finally realize we’re imbalanced or need to let something go? And so this idea of learning how to regulate the mind is a very important pillar in the practice of the meditative arts. Then the fourth pillar is, regulating the energy. And regulating the energy is a very deep topic and something that we could [00:23:00] talk about for hours, but the basic understanding of it is, is once you’ve reached a competent level in regulating the body, the breath, and the mind, now you have the tools to circulate the energy in the body. Lead the energy inward, extend the energy outward. And we do this for different meditations to get different outcomes. And then the last regulation, which is regulating the spirit, is a very profound, deep idea, and it’s something that meditation masters and, and monks will spend their entire life working towards that ultimate goal of enlightenment. And from these basic five pillars, or five regulations, they’re the fundamental principles of any meditation practice. The cool thing is when you start to understand these and see how they work, you can see that the practice affects everything we do in life. And when we start [00:24:00] integrating these concepts into our day to day activities, it can make everything we do better.
[00:24:07] Ed Watters: Awesome. You know, I want to say sorry to my listeners. My dyslexia kicked in there and I said religion instead of regulations. So I do apologize for that. I do want to be mindful of those absentee moments in my life. So I do really enjoy that and I understand it better now. So I want to talk about the Yielding Warrior Program and the Yielding Method a little bit because that, that’s truly unique. Could you cover that for us?
[00:24:49] Jeff Patterson: Yeah, so yielding is a concept that is used in the meditative and the martial arts and it has been for generations. And all through my [00:25:00] career, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea because it allows somebody who’s smaller and weaker to deal with somebody who’s bigger and stronger. And the basic idea of yielding is, there, I break it down into three pillars. We have physical yielding, mental yielding, and emotional yielding. Physical yielding is the idea that I push you, you push me, whoever’s the bigger, stronger person with the most leverage eventually is going to push the other person over. But with yielding, instead of us trying to see who the bigger meathead is, when you push me, I get out of the way of that force.
Now I can respond with less effort. So I’m not trying to butt heads with you and see if I’m bigger and stronger than you. Now it’s obvious how this is beneficial in any kind of sport or physical activity. Because many times in athletics, we come up against athletes that are bigger and stronger than us. And meeting them head on and trying to force our will on them, we’re going to [00:26:00] lose that battle. But when we can use this strategy and learn how to lead them to a point of weakness and then attack, it allows us to get the upper hand on people who are a lot bigger and stronger than us. Now in order to be good at physical yielding, a lot of things have to come into play.
First, we need to be well rooted. The lower part of our body needs to be strong and flexible so you can change your central equilibrium without getting tight. The body has to be relaxed, the breath has to be calm, and the mind has to be present. It’s a lifetime journey to master that skill. However, from day one, when we start integrating the meditative arts into our life, we start developing awareness of these things inside of ourselves. Which, and this is where it starts to become very interesting, and we’re also moving into what I call mental yielding now, but when we start to see these things more clearly inside of [00:27:00] ourselves, we also start to see them more clearly in other people. Now, say for example, you and I are having a conversation and I say something that unsettles you. And I pick up on it right from that first sign of imbalance, it’s a lot easier to adjust the conversation and keep us in a happy place.
Than if I’m not paying attention to that, pretty soon I’m so far off track, you want to knock me upside the head. And so learning how to use yielding in all of our interactions is extremely powerful. One, we’re just being more considerate, which is something I think we could all do more of anyway. And two, it allows us to be strategic in our interactions, which is great for relationships, for business, for sales, for negotiations. I mean, there’s so many different applications of this. Now, the next pillar is emotional yielding. And emotional [00:28:00] yielding is very much like mental yielding, but it’s with our own interpersonal conflicts. So you think about, oftentimes something will happen to us and we’ll respond and we’ll go down this path and we might get an hour, a day, a week down that road and realize,
maybe that wasn’t the best choice. But by integrating the meditative arts into our life and being able to stay present and aware of these things when they happen, oftentimes it allows us the time needed to kind of sit back, analyze the situation with a little more detail, and come from a more balanced state of mind and make a different choice. Oftentimes that can save us a lot of heartache on the other side. You know, and I’ve been explaining this idea of yielding now for many years. I’ve been running this academy here for thirty years. and one of the most common things I’ll hear people say is, Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, I do yielding all the time.[00:29:00]
And while I would agree, I think everybody does some degree of yielding all the time, whether they label it that or recognize that or not. It’s kind of like if you or I were to walk into a crime scene with a detective who’s been on the job for thirty years, I guarantee you that person would see things about the series of events in the timeline that I know at least I would have no clue of. And the meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people that I truly believe that unless you practice the meditative arts, you will go through your entire life and have no clue that these things are even happening.
[00:29:40] Ed Watters: Yeah, very interesting. Uh, getting into later life, I know it’s very important to stay active and physical and, you know, get involved with programs because it keeps you active socially [00:30:00] also. There’s always a level where people are trying to enter into these martial arts meditation programs. And I feel that Tai Chi is one of those beginner steps that is easy for people to get into, even if they’re old and sore and beaten up and broken. It can actually help you reduce the level of pain and stressors on the body if you activate them using these simple movements like in Tai Chi, is that correct?
[00:30:44] Jeff Patterson: Oh, there’s been hundreds of studies on this, you know, and it’s, it’s been proven that Tai Chi will help with your flexibility, your strength, with your balance. A lot of older patients or students will practice Tai Chi for fall [00:31:00] prevention. And, you know, they did a study at Harvard Medical School, which a lot of people don’t even think about Tai Chi or meditation for this benefit, but where they took a lot of people who had, um, early onset Alzheimer’s and they were losing their, their memory and they taught them how to do deep breathing and they put them in these oxygen chambers and everybody improved on average thirty percent after just a few short sessions. Now, a lot of this is, you know, when we’re doing the meditative practice, we learn how to improve our lung capacity so we can use deeper breathing and create that oxygen, carbon and dioxide exchange, which is very beneficial.
And as we age, it’s also been proven that we start to breathe more shallowly. And so it’s one kind of [00:32:00] hidden benefit of learning how to keep those lungs more pliable and access more of our lung capacity. Cause I also read that eighty percent of the population out there uses anywhere from forty to sixty percent of their lung capacity. So if we could improve that and use eighty or ninety percent of our lung capacity, think about how that would change our energy and think about how that could improve our cognitive ability, our overall physical awareness, and, and, and our energy levels. And so there, there’s just so many benefits for people of all ages. You know, I have students that come in here that are in their nineties, and I have students coming in here in their twenties, and all in between. So it, it really is a great practice for everybody.
[00:32:51] Ed Watters: So, so what is the cost barrier to get involved in a class like that?
[00:32:58] Jeff Patterson: You know, that’s the great thing [00:33:00] about this practice is that it doesn’t cost much to learn something like this. You know, anytime somebody new is coming to the meditative arts, the biggest barrier is getting over your own self. You know, it’s, um, there’s, there’s three things that I always try to make really clear to new students coming to the practice. And the first one is, why are you coming to the practice? Why is it important to you? Do you want to stay healthy into old age and be able to play with your grandkids? Or you want to learn how to deal with stress and anxiety? Do you want to improve your performance on the field? What is that? Because I guarantee you, it doesn’t matter who you are, maybe it’s tomorrow, next week or next month, your alarm is going to go off in the morning and you’re going to be tempted to hit the snooze button and say, I’ll meditate tomorrow.
I’m going to sleep in today. And so if you [00:34:00] have a strong why, it gives you the energy and the drive to stop looking at this like a chore you have to do. But something that you get to do and be grateful that you have this opportunity to learn these skills and to positively change your life by doing this practice. Then is the idea of consistency, and consistency is key with the meditative arts. You know, in fact, the, the Dalai Lama once said that everybody should meditate for twenty minutes a day unless you’re too busy, then you should meditate for an hour. And I love that saying and that, you know, everybody should take at least twenty minutes a day to connect to who you are. And that consistency, it develops discipline, integrity, perseverance, and many other qualities. And by doing this in our practice, those qualities become not just how we are when we’re meditating, but it’s how we show up to our friendships and our relationships, and our work and our [00:35:00] hobbies, and everything we do. And so it changes our life in many ways by having this consistent practice. Then lastly, and this is one of the most important things is, you need to find a guide. I’ve, you know, I’ve been around the meditative arts for many years. I’m still a student, I’m learning all the time. And I, this isn’t just a hobby for me,
this is my profession. You know, it’s a very deep practice, and if you try to do it on your own by listening to an app or watching a video on YouTube, you could waste ten, twenty years of your life and very get above, just treading water. And so the idea is, is there’s lots of good teachers out there, there’s lots of good programs, don’t get caught up without having somebody that can help point you in the right direction. And, you know, one of the things that I see people getting distracted with that are maybe even fairly disciplined with the meditative arts these days is that, you know, I’ll hear people say, Oh yeah, I’ve been [00:36:00] meditating for five years.
And I listened to this app. Well, the meditative arts are called the internal arts for a reason. I think apps are great, videos are great to learn specific practices, but when you do your ritual practice, you shouldn’t be watching a video or listening to an audio. It’s time to turn that focus inward and listen to yourself. Because if you don’t do this, you’re never going to get a very deep level of practice by this. And I think that a lot of people get distracted because there’s so many different apps out there and videos out there that, and, and they don’t have a guide, they don’t have somebody pointing them in the right direction. That they think they’re doing well when really they’re, they’re kind of shortcutting themselves. And so find yourself somebody to help point you in the right direction, be consistent and have a strong why, and you’ll be successful with the practice
[00:36:59] Ed Watters: That’s [00:37:00] solid advice, I like that a lot. Jeff, our time is really starting to wind down here. We could go on for hours about it. Is there anything important that our listeners need to know about what you practice, what you teach?
[00:37:16] Jeff Patterson: You know, if you like what we’ve been talking about, you could order a free copy of my book, uh, at theyieldingwarrior.com/book. And it’s a great way to kind of get introduced to these concepts and see what we’re doing. And also at theyieldingwarrior.com, you could get introduced to my online program that teaches you the strategies on how to build an evolving life practice using Tai chi, Qigong, sitting meditation, breath work, standing meditation, all of these different things so you can incorporate these strategies and learn how to build a practice there. I also have a teacher training program up there. So if you’re somebody who is a [00:38:00] life coach, or maybe you own a yoga studio or a martial arts studio, and you want to learn how to have another pillar in your business where you can target maybe a new clientele, you know, cause here at our academy, you know, in our martial art programs, we have a lot of twenties, thirties, and forty somethings in our, in our boxing, and Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jujitsu. But in our meditation program, we’ve got a lot of fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties in there. And so as a business, if you can add a whole nother client base to your market, this can be huge. So it can add a lot of benefit to what you’re doing. And I’ve seen in many cases where they, somebody will add an internal art program like this to their existing business and it ends up dwarfing the sales that they’re doing in their other business. And so it really is something that’s very substantial and can help you in many ways.
[00:38:57] Ed Watters: I like that a lot, that’s kind of [00:39:00] interesting. And, you know, there are a lot of gyms out there that could put these practices into their pillars and it would do them good. And it helps the community get stronger and healthier, so I like it a lot. Jeff, I want to say thank you for being part of the Dead America Podcast today. It’s been very, uh, educational in many ways for me.
[00:39:30] Jeff Patterson: Hey, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
[00:39:35] Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever [00:40:00] you might be.