For people who can't meditate with Jason Campbell

This week I have Jason Campbell, who I met at the Jeff Bland/Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute/Microbiome Labs tag team event in September. I found him simply interesting on all levels–from his brilliant piano skills (you can find him on Spotify as “Zen Piano”) to how he makes meditation or breathwork accessible to anyone. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• What does the emotional mastery mean
• How emotions hanging out in the body
• Meditation is an exercise to stop thinking so the real creativity can happen

GUEST SHARED HELPFUL TIPS ON:

• Movement and short meditation for people who can't meditate

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Jason’s journey into meditation, music and wellness began 44 years ago, at age 8 when his teacher told him to never listen to notes, but instead to listen to the space in between the notes. 

He has released over 100 albums, has been #1 on multiple Billboard and Amazon charts, and had five Billboard top 5 albums in a 5 month period in 2019. Today Jason releases his 40th album in 40 months.

Jason is a 7th degree black belt and co-founder of Zen Wellness.  His unique perspective on health, wellness and spiritual growth comes from his lifelong study of both music and the ancient arts of Eastern health, medicine, meditation and enlightenment.  

He is the director of music for GeniusX Virtual Reality (think Masterclass for VR), and writes music and meditation for other organizations such as Hapbee, ChilliSleep, Cincinnati Reds, Heromaker Studios, Focus at Will, GravyStack  to name a few. He runs an entrepreneurial mastermind teaching business owners the Zen Wellness process of breath and mediation and will release the first breathing course in Virtual Reality in 2022.

His whole adult life has been an effort to combine eastern arts, meditation and music.

His music and teachings have opened meditation to thousands of people who have never meditated before or who have tried meditation and have failed in their effort to simply sit still and clear the mind.

His most recent endeavor includes purchasing the town of Cleator, Arizona (he is the Sheriff) and the historic JL Bar 400 acre Ranch with a small group of visionary investors. As the newly appointed Sheriff of Cleator he is combining western culture with eastern wisdom to create a community committed to the uplifting of the human spirit.  

WHERE TO FIND       :
Website: zenpiano.com.  

Breathing Audio :  at zenpiano.com

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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jason: True self-defense. The true warrior actually protects on all fronts because most of the time you're gonna have more issues with stress and negative emotions and anxiety is gonna be a bigger problem than a bad guy trying to attack you. I mean, yes, we wanna learn self-defense against a bad guy, but.

[00:00:17] Jason: Stress is usually gonna give you more pain.

[00:00:20] Christa: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less trust life. We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our.

[00:00:46] Christa: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.[00:01:00]

[00:01:03] Christa: Today on the Less Stress life I have Jason Campbell and I need you to buckle up a little bit for this bio. I couldn't cut anything out cause it was kind of just all really interesting and we like interesting. Right. First of all, I met Jason. You might say, people always ask where do these people come from?

[00:01:16] Christa: I met Jason a few weeks ago at a, essentially a microbiome or a functional medicine conference. He was the last speaker. Unfortunately, we could have used him a lot earlier in the day. and. He gave us the most interesting intro to kind of meditation, breath work, et cetera, and it's so fascinating how people have their own styles, and I think you'll understand why he has his own style, and we'll get a sampling of that today.

[00:01:37] Christa: So Jason's journey into meditation, music, and wellness began 44 years ago. At age eight when his teachers hold him to never listen to notes, but instead to listen to the space between the notes. He's released over a hundred albums, has been number one on multiple billboard and Amazon charts, and has had five billboard top five albums in a five month period in 2019.

[00:01:59] Christa: [00:02:00] Today, Jason releases his 40th album in 40 months. I feel like, I don't really know what angel numbers are, but I feel like this is . I, I feel like that's what this is, where it's like five and five, 40 and 40. So we can talk about. Peter Jason is a seventh degree black belt and co-founder of Zen Wellness.

[00:02:17] Christa: His unique perspective on health, wellness and spiritual growth come from a lifelong study of both music and the ancient arts of Eastern health medicine, meditation, and enlightenment. He's the director. Of music for Genius X virtual reality, think a masterclass for vr and he writes music and meditation for other organizations such as Happy Chili Sleep.

[00:02:36] Christa: Cincinnati Reds, hero Maker Studios focus at Will Gravy Stack Tuna Mafu. He runs an entrepreneurial mastermind teaching business owners the Zen wellness process of breath and meditation, and will release the first breathing course in virtual reality in 2022. I told you I couldn't cut any of this off cuz just only gets better.

[00:02:52] Christa: His whole life has been an effort to combine eastern arts, meditation, and music. His music and teachings have opened meditation to thousands of people who have never meditated before or [00:03:00] have tried meditation and have failed in their effort to simply sit and clear their mind. His most recent endeavor includes purchasing the town of cleat.

[00:03:09] Christa: Arizona where he's the Sheriff in the historic jail Bar Ranch with a small group of visionary investors as the newly appointed sheriff of cle, he is combining Western culture with Eastern wisdom to create a community committed to uplifting the human spirit. Well, welcome Jason. Well, thank

[00:03:25] Jason: you so much for

[00:03:26] Christa: having me.

[00:03:26] Christa: Thank you for that incredible bio. Should we just take a break and talk about what's going on in the town of CLE for a moment? Just joking. We don't have, we don't really have to ,

[00:03:35] Jason: but very funny where that comes from. It's an old ghost town and you can Google it. It's a very famous town, actually. Cle, I mean, there's a bar there.

[00:03:41] Jason: I mean, if you showed up with Spurs and a six shooter, you'd fit right in and it sounds like where I'm from, . Yeah. It was an old mining town and at one point there was a school, a railroad, a post office and everything, and now it's a ghost town. People still live there and there's still a bar there in a general store, and we're doing.

[00:03:57] Jason: Cool stuff. We're, we're building a bunch of [00:04:00] structures. We're gonna have events there and, and a whole bunch of stuff, but East. Meets West is if you have the sheriff badge, everyone knows the five points of the sheriff badge. And the sheriff traditionally is the protector of persons and property. And so we can call that matter, but if we wanna take that another step, and if we wanna look at, there's a very old concept called the three treasures, which simply means that we are actually made up of three things matter, energy and consciousness.

[00:04:27] Jason: Think H two O, solid liquid vapor, you know, ice, water mist. It's all made up of H two O. And so the matter is everything. You can see, touch, feel, okay, we know that. But the chi is the energy, it's the breath, the emotion, the bioelectric energy, the prana, the key, the gi. It comes in many words. Let's see. We all know what emotion is, and we all agree that emotion exists, but you can't put it in a jar and you can't hold it in your hands, but it's very real.

[00:04:55] Jason: And then the last level of it is consciousness. I mean, it's a big range. We [00:05:00] can divide it into many things and subdivide it, but basically it's the thoughts. It's the I am the mist. And so the sheriff just. Protects property, but true self-defense, the true warrior actually protects on all fronts because most of the time you're gonna have more issues with stress and negative emotions and anxiety is gonna be a bigger problem than a bad guy trying to attack you.

[00:05:22] Jason: I mean, yes, we wanna learn self-defense against a bad guy, but stress is usually gonna give you more pain than somebody else. So that's what we're doing. It's like the true warrior. Is on all three fronts. And then the five stars on one side is the sheriff edge, but then on the other side is the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal, water, which is just the metaphor for the repeating patterns that's found in nature.

[00:05:45] Jason: Mm-hmm. , that was a real short, flyover . Some of the stuff we're doing in Cle .

[00:05:50] Christa: Well, you bring up. The matter energy, consciousness. Actually, I wanna start with a little bit more of a tangible question, which was you just brought up. We're gonna have way more issues of stress and our negative [00:06:00] emotions, but so often the barrier that I see, or the hardest thing that I encounter is unrealized stress.

[00:06:06] Christa: Where someone says, I have this, but I don't think I can do anything about it. I don't see an exit point. I don't think it's really affecting me that much, but I'm like, oh, I can see it on you. I do not know how to point it out to your periphery. And so that is like the biggest challenge. I see. And what is your thought on that?

[00:06:24] Christa: Your

[00:06:24] Jason: wise thought? Well, that, that's a deeper, I haven't realized. Yeah, so, so this is a lot of the stuff I work with is in my entrepreneurial group, my breath mastery group. Mm-hmm. . And so I call this emotional mastery. Emotional mastery. Here's what it's not, is not having any emotions. Good luck with that.

[00:06:41] Jason: And no, I don't have any, no, I never get angry. I rise above everything. That doesn't make any sense because once there's an emotion in you, once you have an anger in you or an anxiety in you, you can't think it away. You can't intellectualize it away. It's going to be there. And if you really go micro into this, [00:07:00] Emotions hang out in different parts of your body.

[00:07:02] Jason: Like anger hangs out in your liver. Anxiety hangs out in your spleen and stomach grief hangs out in your lungs. Fear hangs out in your kidneys, and shock hangs out in your heart. And that's part of the five elements. Wood, fire, earth, metal, water, which is the metaphor for the repeating pattern. So what we wanna think of it is, Okay.

[00:07:21] Jason: I was taught this as a child. I was taught that this is not my shirt, it's the shirt I wear. So you think, well, wait a minute. Yes, it's your shirt. Well, from a legal viewpoint, but from spiritual viewpoint, it's not my shirt. You don't own anything because at some point, me and this shirt parked ways, but you can take that a step farther.

[00:07:35] Jason: We can say, Hey, it's not my house, it's the house I live in. So, From spiritual viewpoint, we don't own anything. And I'm not saying get rid of your belongings. Let's be very practical here. From a legal viewpoint, from legal, it's my shirt, it's my car, it's my stuff, it's my microphone. Fine. But if we look at it that way, then we can take emotions because if we say emotions, somebody says, I am angry.

[00:07:58] Jason: Well, let's think about that [00:08:00] statement you just identified with anger, and it's actually not correct. You are not angry. You might have anger type energy running through you right now, but you are not that vibrational frequency that we call anger. Actually, you're a little dollop of consciousness or a little dollop of God that gets to temporarily hang out in this big.

[00:08:17] Jason: Bag of levers, pulleys, circuit boards, flesh meat, bones, water, fluids called a body. You really, it's, you could even say, Hey, this isn't my body, it's the body I live in. Because at some point, You and the body part ways and the body have to give it back. We have this weird lease agreement with our body. So, okay, back to emotional mastery.

[00:08:38] Jason: The so subtle shift of I'm not angry, I have anger, energy running through me creates a little dollop of space between you and the vibrational frequency that we call anger and it just softens it. It's still there, but there's a little bit of space not identifying with it. So if you. Okay. I'm not anxious, but I [00:09:00] do have anxiety type energy running through me.

[00:09:02] Jason: Well, now you're more empowered. Now you can actually, well, it's just an energy running through me because you have a story that creates it, and sometimes you don't even need a story. Some people, if you have a lot of stress and anxiety, you don't even need a reason. , you can just flood your body through it.

[00:09:16] Jason: But there's the story and then there's the. and there's ways that you can purge the energy. It's like ringing out a dish rag and get it out of you. That has nothing to do with the story of why it was there. It's almost two separate things. There's the story that triggers it, and then there's just the actual energy.

[00:09:32] Jason: So if we look at just the energy, Hey, you got some dark energy in you. Well, let's clean it out. It's like cleaning your kitchen. Your kitchen's a mess right now. Okay, well let's roll up our sleeves and let's do something about it and let's. And we can do that. They're two separate things now. Yes. Is it a good idea to maybe make a lifestyle change or some type of change that's creating it fine, but they're not the same, which is very empowering once you make that realization.

[00:09:55] Jason: Mm-hmm. ,

[00:09:55] Christa: it feels like curiosity, right? It's, oh, I'm having this [00:10:00] experience, but I am not this experience. I am not angry, or I'll put it in the context of the stress. I have stress, like energy running through me, but I am not stress. Perfect.

[00:10:11] Jason: Exactly, yes.

[00:10:12] Christa: So it is staying curious, I think about this. You're saying emotional mastery.

[00:10:16] Christa: I've been really intrigued by the term self-regulation recently and self-regulation can look like as I think through my own life. It can be around food and just wanting to eat at all. Right. Because we love it. It's delicious and wanting everything it can look like. . Oh, well I am someone who like wants to go all in without kind of, again, having self-regulation.

[00:10:38] Christa: So I've really been thinking about self-regulation and when you bring up emotional mastery, it reminds me further of it. Are these different or really the same?

[00:10:45] Jason: It does very similar what we do in the breath mastery, uh, training. First we purge, then we regulate, then we ignite. Hmm. So you purge it and the first thing we do is we wanna get the negative crap out.

[00:10:57] Jason: It's like if you have a glass of water and [00:11:00] there's dirt in the water, let's say it's halfway filled, but before we put in more water, let's. Clean it out, let's get the dirt out. And so that's what we do. We do that with the breath, and we purge with the breath. And I mean, there's movement also. We do. But the simplest way to start, the lowest hanging fruit is always with the breath.

[00:11:16] Jason: Even before you start a sitting meditation. I start everyone with breath work because in the beginning we get a faster result with the breath work, but there's three types of meditation, sitting, standing, and moving. And then we, mm. Do a whole series, but you can sit and do it. So we purge everything and then we regulate the breath.

[00:11:32] Jason: And when you regulate the breath, it's also regulating your nervous system and you're just making it even, you're making it smooth. And then after we do that, it's regulated, then we fire it up and we pump energy . We bring a lot of energy into it. So you have the juice, the the chi to get done what? You need to get done because stress can suck out a lot of your energy, especially if you have kids.

[00:11:54] Jason: See, my kids are grown. They're 20 and 22, so I'm in a little different situation. But raising kids, [00:12:00] and especially if you're running a business and if you're doing all the things, you're doing it, you can feel. Completely exhausted at the end of the day or even during the day. And that's because you didn't fill up your energetic bank account,

[00:12:11] Christa: which you're saying start breath work at the beginning of the day.

[00:12:13] Christa: And I know we're gonna talk about, I wanna talk about breath work and I wanna ask you about movement and music. But before we kind of go into that, you brought up a concept. You brought up some concepts at the beginning that didn't maybe feel tangible. The people, and you were talking about matter, energy, consciousness.

[00:12:29] Christa: What I love about you is you can describe, you know, you say pr, achi, whatever, you run us through all the potential words, depending on whose viewpoint it is. . And one thing that was really interesting to me when you spoke at the conference, so there can be kind of a divide between. Spiritual and religious, and you've tied those together in those ways.

[00:12:46] Christa: You said, oh, if you believe in Father Son, holy Spirit. And why I bring this up is because some people, that's a one of the blocks, right, where it's like, I am afraid to get in some of this woo, or spirituality or breath work or all these things because it feels. Separated and you tied it all [00:13:00] together beautifully.

[00:13:00] Christa: Can you speak to that for a second? I actually can't remember what it was about. Was it, maybe it was matter Earth consciousness. Yeah, that

[00:13:06] Jason: was, it was the three Treasures matter, energy and consciousness and, and the Asian words are jing, chi and shun. You don't have to remember 'em, just remember the meaning.

[00:13:13] Jason: But if you were raised Catholic, you were raised with this principle. The father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. The Father is the Spirit, the son is the matter, and the Holy Ghost is the chi. Is the energy even in the Old Testament that they say, you know, then he gave up the ghost. Well, yeah, the chi left and then that's it.

[00:13:30] Jason: Then your life is over. So these concepts have been around for thousands of years in many different cultures, but the frame is different. And look, there's many paths up the mountain. Doesn't matter how you get. There. If you know you like religion and that, you know, whatever religion speaks to you, then you roll with that.

[00:13:48] Jason: And if it doesn't speak to you and you, you go with some more spiritual and it's weird. We could talk all day about what the difference is. And you know, spiritual religion, don't even get caught on the words because the words [00:14:00] don't even matter because even, you know, if we're even gonna use the word God.

[00:14:03] Jason: See, 2,500 years ago, this really smart dude wrote this book. His name was Lasu, and he wrote was called the Doe Ching. It was. Very famous book in this 81 chapters, and in the first chapter he says, look, we're gonna talk about God. He doesn't use the word God, the word he uses dao, t a o. But again, let's not get caught on the word, but when we're using a word, it's all wrong.

[00:14:25] Jason: And what does that mean? The finite mind can't understand that the infinite. Hmm. The in finite, which is God is infinite, but our little minds are finite. So it's not something that can be understood. And if we're going to take a concept like God and put it into words, words are just five owls in compressed air, fuck.

[00:14:46] Jason: And we can do this combination of them. And we use this to communicate, which really. Clum very clumsy way of communicating. If you really think about it, it's all wrong. So the old saying, the finger that points at the moon is not the moon. So a lot of times it's easy to look at the [00:15:00] finger and not look at the moon.

[00:15:01] Jason: So you have to look to what it points to. So we're going to use this word, but it just points to what it is. It's not it. Now I, I know this might seem kind of obvious and might seem kind of silly. It's not something that can be understood. It is something that can be felt. It's something that can be experienced, something that can be even channeled, and it's something that can be connected with, but the finite mind can't understand God.

[00:15:24] Jason: And I will say this, looking for God is like a fish looking for water. You're already there. Funny analogy there, but one of the things we do, cuz we have a mountain, we have 400 acres. We have this mountain and we take part of our training retreats. We actually go up the mountain, we take Kip the mountain.

[00:15:37] Jason: And so if we look historically, well, why did the historical figures always go to the top of the mountain to find God? Interesting question. They usually didn't go to like the 34th floor of a skyscraper and they usually didn't go down in the valley. It was. Always going up to the mountain. Well, does God exist more in the mountain than he does on the base?

[00:15:53] Jason: Well, back to the fish analogy, no, of course not. But what happens is by the act of going up the mountain, [00:16:00] you become ready to hear, your mind gets clear, all the crap gets flushed out of your body, even just the physical stuff. And you're even usually exhausted by the time you get up there, cuz ah, and then you can rest in, and then you can hear a lot clearer than you can before the journey.

[00:16:15] Jason: I just

[00:16:15] Christa: think it's. There's so many ways to, as you say, go up the mountain. There's always so many ways to arrive at the same thing. And when you use different words, sometimes they resonate with different people. And what I think is that we're all so much more similar than we are different. And so when we kind of use, when you use all of the words that kind of encompass every type of theology, so to speak, maybe it is just very inclusive to all of the people.

[00:16:38] Christa: It's, it's not a thing that is so, and unattainable, right? As we often think about with meditation and breath work, if we've never done it, never experienced it or tried and so to speak,

[00:16:49] Jason: failed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I work with a lot of people that, that have failed, that that come to us, that failed because here's usually what happens if you're an entrepreneur or even a parent or someone that considers themselves busy, [00:17:00] and I don't like the word busy.

[00:17:01] Jason: Bees and beavers are busy. You might be highly scheduled, but always be. . So, but if you have, if you're highly scheduled, if you have a lot of going on, or if you feel scattered, what sometimes happens, it's like, okay, everyone's talking about meditation. Let's do meditation and I need to meditation. So you close your eyes and maybe you take a course or get some instruction, and then 20 seconds into it, you start to get stressed.

[00:17:21] Jason: Mm-hmm. Goes, well wait a minute, I got all this stuff to do. What the hell am I doing? Just sitting here? Okay, I could be doing this. I got this whole laundry list of things to do. Okay, clear your mind. Okay, but I got these things to do, and by the end of a couple minutes, you're more. It's exciting. Yeah. Well, and that's what happens is like, screw this, I can't do this.

[00:17:38] Jason: I don't have time to meditate. Yes. When, when I was teaching this 25 years ago, we would say, okay, you know, we teach meditation and we'd say, do 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the night, and everyone would say, uh, Okay. And they'd actually do it. Well, yeah. Try that now. Uh, no one's gonna do that now.

[00:17:56] Jason: So here's the, so what's the solution to that? Well, that's why [00:18:00] what I said a few moments ago, I like to start with the breath work cuz the breath work is active and the breath work will put you in the now because then you say, well what is meditation? You know, why should I be meditating? What does that even mean real?

[00:18:13] Jason: We have between 50,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day. 99% of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday. So we get into this skipped record, and what it also means is most of the thoughts that you got going on aren't necessary for you. They don't improve your reality. Actually, they fill your head with stuff.

[00:18:34] Jason: The, the whole mindfulness industry is actually wrong. And what do I mean by that? Think about it. Mindful. Who wants to put more stuff in your mind? Usually everyone's mind is already full. So I'm gonna go take a class and being mindful. Wait a minute, it's crazy. In between your ears. What's going on? Now you don.

[00:18:51] Jason: Fill it up, you actually need to empty, it really should be called mind emptiness. And that actually came from a mistranslation of a Buddhist scholar in 1910. T w [00:19:00] Davis translated the word sati, which probably a better translation would be awareness. And he translated it to mindfulness. Can't blame the guy.

[00:19:08] Jason: It was a hundred years ago. And a lot of times the scholars know of it. They don't know it like they know how to write about it. And most of 'em, not all of 'em, some of 'em actually know it. But usually the scholars aren't the people that are, that really are doing the meditation. So I, it was 1910. It was a new time, but that word stuck.

[00:19:23] Jason: And so if you really think about it, the whole word is wrong. , the whole industry is

[00:19:26] Christa: actually upside down. Cross it out, mind emptying, not mindful. We're already full of mind,

[00:19:32] Jason: mind empty. So that's why if you start with the breath work, if you do some simple breathing, and I can, if you wanna do a little three minute breathing exercise, I can, if you're, if.

[00:19:41] Jason: Listening cuz there's a conversation of three right now. It's, you know, you, me and then, and then the listener. So I'll, I'll talk to, you know, the listener if you want to go through a little three minute meditation. I'll put you in the now because, okay. Back to the 50 to 80,000 thoughts a day. What you're learning in meditation is to stop thinking.

[00:19:57] Jason: It's that simple. That's it. Turn the off [00:20:00] switch. And when you have a moment of not thinking, well, that's sati, that's awareness. Your awareness level is fierce, and you hear everything, you smell everything you can touch and feel because you're not cluttered in your mind. And so it's getting to the point of not thinking.

[00:20:15] Jason: And that's where you can be super, super creative. I mean, that's why I'm able to produce the amount of music that I produce. I go to the place of nothing, of no thought, and then from no thought something. Arises. So again, there's a lot of different ways to get there. It doesn't matter how you get there, it just matters that you do get

[00:20:32] Christa: there.

[00:20:33] Christa: Hmm. Can't have, it seems that we cannot have creativity without some space between the notes. Right.

[00:20:37] Jason: That's the secret. Because if you're a creative type, you tend to be non-linear in your thinking. If you are like a C O O, if you're into operations, you tend to be linear. In your thinking and everyone kind of has a, like, what's your natural mojo as an entrepreneur?

[00:20:52] Jason: It's good to have both . You gotta be, you have to be a little bit linear or get people on your team that can be linear and take all your crazy ideas and make 'em [00:21:00] real. Like making, getting stuff done is linear, but you gotta be creative. Which is of course not linear. Mm-hmm. . Well,

[00:21:06] Christa: let's do this three minute meditation.

[00:21:08] Christa: Oh, great. And are you bringing, and if you want, I don't know if you're queuing this up, I'm curious how music actually fits into meditation. Does it help fill in some of those, that uncomfortable space? Does it sit, does it create something in our brain? Does it shift something? Because it's very powerful when we add, which is really your, yeah.

[00:21:26] Christa: Part of your special.

[00:21:27] Jason: Oh my goodness. We can have another hour conversation on that question, so lemme see if I can give you a really honest answer. All right, cool. Okay. The first sense that develops in the womb is our ears. And so of the five senses, the hearing comes first, and the first thing we hear is Mom's heartbeat.

[00:21:44] Jason: Mm-hmm. . And that has a rhythm. Gun, gun, gun, gun, gun. Gung like that. That's why when mom is nice and chill, good for baby, if mom is stressed out, not necessarily as good for baby, but baby will make it so the ears connect into the kidneys. Like [00:22:00] kidneys are the batteries of the body. Think like two duracells, , you know, behind our body like a toy soldier.

[00:22:04] Jason: And so we want the kidneys to have energy, and if we have any type. , you know, frequency between 20 hertz and 20,000 hertz. We perceive that as sound, but here's the interesting thing. Everyone has had chills with music, but it's been a different song. If we have a hundred people, Hey, what gave you chills?

[00:22:20] Jason: There'd probably be a hundred different answers. So that vibrational frequency penetrates in it, moves in us. The ancient Chinese character for medicine was the combination of two Charact. Herbs and music, and it was sound, you know? And then we can get all philosophical and we can say, we used to think about this as a kid, when a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

[00:22:42] Jason: Hmm. And I remember as a kid, I couldn't figure that out, but actually, if you really think about it, the answer's obvious, which is no, it doesn't make a sound, it makes a wave. Hmm. It only makes a sound when there is someone there to hear it, or a surrogate, like a recording device can hear it. And then that wave, that moving of [00:23:00] air is translated into a sound.

[00:23:02] Jason: So it's a funny thing, what we perceive as sound, but then there's, sounds like the earth vibrates at a, uh, frequency about eight beats per second. We can't hear that low. Anything under 20, we can't hear low elephants talk it around nine or 10 beats per second. And you have dog whistle. You know, dogs hear like 50,000 hertz that we can't hear.

[00:23:20] Jason: So I think that was a short answer. My goodness. I do like the long answer on that one. .

[00:23:24] Christa: Yeah, there's a lot there. It's an underwhelming word for it, but it's fascinating. Right? Yeah. It's fascinating if you stop and, and you stop and consider it, and I'm so called to herbs and so I love what you talk about how herbs and music was essentially, I don't know how you described it, you, you said no, that was the.

[00:23:40] Christa: that they used. The

[00:23:41] Jason: character for medicine was two characters, herbs and music. So we're using music and you use sound cuz it can be used for medicine and also music can be used as poison. Anything that can be used for medicine, that can also be used just for poison. So, Let's do this. Let's do a three minute, okay.

[00:23:58] Jason: And especially if you've never [00:24:00] meditated before or feel like you've meditated and failed before, let's do a little three minute challenge. And mastery is not to be found in perfection. Mastery is just to be found in presence. And so what we're gonna do, we're gonna do some breathing. I'll tell you what to do.

[00:24:14] Jason: Uh, we're gonna do some, I call it primal breathing, which is gonna be a.

[00:24:22] Jason: Just take deep breaths. Breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth or your nose at another time. There's more details that we can get into, but that's not the point. Now. Then we're gonna hold the exhalation only 24 seconds, but that's where the mastery comes, and we're gonna squeeze everything out and hold it.

[00:24:38] Jason: And it's called intermittent hypoxia. And what it does is we're actually you, you bring the blood oxygen level down, then we're gonna pop it back up and then bring it down. And if you're new to this, there's a really good chance that your lizard brain is gonna kick in and your lizard brain is gonna say, what the hell are you doing to me?

[00:24:55] Jason: Oh my God, you're gonna die. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's okay, you'll [00:25:00] make it. But part of strengthening your nervous system is you can have your lizard brain, you know, very loud maybe, and you just stay nice and nice and calm. So ultimately, this is a form of medicine. Are we ready to roll? And wanna do it?

[00:25:12] Jason: Rock and roll. Okay, let's do

this.

[00:25:15] Christa: Jason is a very complex background. Why? This is why you sound so good.

[00:25:20] Jason: Okay, here we go. Trying to navigate Zoom here. This should work. Okay. Inhale. Exhale.

[00:25:33] Jason: Inhale. Exhale. Okay, now we're gonna do primal breath. Here we go in, exhale in. This is the pace in.[00:26:00]

[00:26:13] Jason: Here we go. Okay. Big breath in now. Exhale all the way. Don't breathe out. Keep exhaling. Exhale a little more. Hold the exhalation.

[00:26:31] Jason: Okay. Drop your shoulders. Neck is relaxed. Don't breathe in yet. Smile. We're almost there. See if you can tighten your lower abdomen. Inhale. Okay, hold the inhalation. We're gonna do 30 seconds and the mastery here is. Keeping your neck relaxed, [00:27:00] your shoulders relaxed, and there's a little tension. Okay, round two.

[00:27:06] Jason: Inhale. Exhale in. This is the pace.

[00:27:26] Jason: In

[00:27:33] Jason: last breath. Here we go. Big breath in. Exhale all the way. Now hold exhalation second and final round. So keep your stomach tight, your shoulders dropped. Wiggle.

[00:27:57] Jason: Smile. We're [00:28:00] almost there. Don't breathe in yet.

[00:28:11] Jason: Almost there. Inhale,

[00:28:19] Jason: exhale all the way. Keep exhaling.

[00:28:29] Jason: And congratulations, you just did three minutes.

[00:28:31] Christa: And if you're a perfectionist, it can feel a little uncomfortable at first. Right? And intentional hypoxia, or there's a, there's some other words for it too, as there always is more, yeah, more words for everything, right? That can be not easy on the first.

[00:28:45] Jason: No people.

[00:28:46] Jason: Very challenging. And if, and if you didn't make it, that's

[00:28:48] Christa: okay. Just rewind and do it again.

[00:28:50] Jason: Just kidding. Yeah. And the only thing well, well, for, for real, and the only thing that's important is that you're just present. Mm-hmm. , because just being in your body, because there's a really good chance is that [00:29:00] within that three minutes, if you fully engaged that for a moment, you stopped thinking.

[00:29:06] Jason: Hmm. Incessant voice in the head, the conver, the inner dialogue that you're probably having right now, listening to our conversation stopped for a moment. And when you can build the muscle of an off switch to stop thinking, that's a game changer in your life, it's a game changer in your happiness, in your creativity, in your overall wellness.

[00:29:26] Jason: Your ability to listen, your ability to communicate, your ability to think clearly and even communicate clearly, all gets dramatically enhanced when you have that off.

[00:29:36] Christa: at first, though, there's discomfort that comes first, right? We're uncomfortable with silence and quiet, and so is the antidote to discomfort to sit through it until it's not uncomfortable.

[00:29:49] Jason: Yeah. Usually it's, it's usually and and be. Okay. See, , I mean, also part of emotional mastery is being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Mm. Because look, you have uncomfortable feelings. [00:30:00] It's gonna happen. If happiness can only exist with its opposite. If you're happy all the time, you're never happy.

[00:30:06] Jason: Hmm. It's like if everything is blue, it's no longer blue. You need a dollop of the opposite, whatever word we want to use for the opposite of happiness. But you need that to create happiness. It's yin and yang. Hmm. It's a tomato and a fertilizer. There's no tomato without fertilizer and , you know, and there's a, a cycle.

[00:30:26] Jason: Oh, I just wanna be happy all the time. Well, good luck with that. And if someone tells you that they're happy all the time, they're either, you know, delusional or dishonest. It's one of the two. I've been practicing this for years and I've done all, every zen meditation and I still experience unhappiness. I still experience dark emotions, and I don't know, I haven't seen.

[00:30:45] Jason: Anyone that doesn't do that. And so there's just an honesty there. And you, you know, you sit with them, you purge 'em, you let 'em run through you, and ultimately you can turn dark emotions into power. Mm-hmm. Back to the fertilizer turning into a tomato . Mm-hmm. , [00:31:00] that's what you can do. So it doesn't just sit and fester and create problems.

[00:31:04] Christa: So we talked a little bit about breath work and real briefly, I wanna acknowledge the other two steps which. One was movement and there is some thought around storing trauma and like doing movement and helping purge that. Right. . Yeah. Will you tell us a little bit more about it if we're unfamiliar? Yeah.

[00:31:22] Christa: Well,

[00:31:22] Jason: ultimately there's three types of meditation, and this is what we teach is, is sitting, standing and moving meditation. And what you wanna do, ultimately with the moving meditation, you wanna get the chi and the blood from your big toe into your pinky. And it's the extremities. There's an old saying, death begins in the big toe because that's, it's the farthest away from the body.

[00:31:41] Jason: And so we wanna circulate the energy and just get everything. Moving and circulating. See, stagnation is not your friend and over 40 inflammation is not your friend. So we have to keep everything moving. And when things get stuck, things get stagnant. The chi gets stuck, the blood gets stuck, the energy gets stuck, or [00:32:00] your thoughts get stuck or your emotions get stuck.

[00:32:02] Jason: We gotta purge. We gotta keep everything moving. And so when you move, I like to think of it as ringing out a dish rag. You just squeeze, twist and turn, and you just. Basically rinse out the crap and the, you know, the emotional stuff and all the stuff that you don't need. Mm. You get rid of it because we understand back to matter, energy, consciousness.

[00:32:19] Jason: We understand in a matter energy that something goes in, something goes out. We have bathrooms for that. Things go out. We, we understand you have to purge, but. The same works on a chi level, on an energy level, you have to purge energy. See, there's no like chi bathrooms or emotional bathrooms that we can go into and just, okay, just have a quiet moment and get, get it out.

[00:32:37] Jason: What you need to get out and come out and everything's okay. Well, we don't have that, but you still need to purge. And so you gotta find your own way to purge and to get out. And that's really what we do with the movement. And movement is done with breath, movement and intention. So it's not just movement.

[00:32:50] Jason: Like if you go to the gym, if you want to. Basically double the results approximately. Double the results that you get in a gym. Add two components without any more time. Add the breath, add the [00:33:00] intention. So when you're doing a movement, whatever, a curl, let's say you, you breathe as you're pulling it up into you, like as you're exerting force, exhale.

[00:33:09] Jason: And then the third thing you do is close your eyes and put your mind intent right into the muscle that. Working and it's just right there. Not looking at anyone else around the gym or anything. There's so many distractions you just put mind in. So if you add breath and then mind, which we can call that intention along with the movement, if I could clone you, you know, for the next six months, one does that and then the other one sits and does all the physical movement while watching the television and watching other people in the gym.

[00:33:37] Jason: It's a huge result that you'll get in a few months. Yeah,

[00:33:40] Christa: breath doubles, triples,

[00:33:42] Jason: whatever the ROI that leaves the body through breath by the. So if you wanna dealing with weight loss, you gotta breathe. You breathe it out. That's like the, the physics of it. Cuz you say, where does that go? ? A physicist. A physicist asked that and he did this whole study on that and he concluded out through the mouth, out through the breath.

[00:33:59] Christa: don't forget to [00:34:00] breathe. Well, I wanna get to where people can find you online, but one of the things that you do, you are an interesting person online, right? You're all over Spotify. If people were intrigued by the music that they just heard, which made the meditation or the breath work so much, . It just made it natural more easy.

[00:34:16] Christa: Right. Because it felt like, I know you do some virtual reality things. It feels like you're in a, feels like you're sitting in a immersive theater or something, right? So it's a really interesting take on it. So I know you have these like little speakers for music and kind of what's the intention around that, because your music is very unique and cool.

[00:34:32] Christa: Okay. Kind of

[00:34:33] Jason: a big, a big question. You know, can I know? I know , you can find [email protected]. That's the easiest way. And then there's also, I mean we have Zen Wellness as well, but the Zen piano is the. Way. And you know, it's a funny thing. I'm actually not on social media. I mean, I'm on Spotify because, uh, my publisher puts my, my albums up, but I don't spend time on social media, so you won't find me there.

[00:34:54] Jason: Social media scrambles my brain, so I don't like being on it. And that's not to say anyone else shouldn't be on it, that's just I stay away from it [00:35:00] reasonable, and I don't need it as a business model. Some people need it as a business model, so I don't, um, my business works just great without social media.

[00:35:06] Jason: And so I think, well, you asked a few questions there, . What is, is what the music does like, like, Song, the little three minute song. I mean, I wrote that for that specific breath work. It's like a custom suit, and so I have all types of little breathing exercises where the music is, it's like a custom score for it, that three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, whatever it is, you put in the headphones, you close your eyes and you just do the work.

[00:35:32] Jason: and it's really amazing if you make those like a little tiny wellness break or a, you can call it a wellness break or how about a, uh, an investment in you, you make a little, or another word I'll say is a deposit into your energetic bank account because you're spending energy, but you might gotta make deposits.

[00:35:49] Jason: And when you do that type of breath work, you make a deposit. And that's an introduction to me. That was the form of meditation that we did. It was active, it wasn't sitting. [00:36:00] But once you start to do that and you get comfortable with that, and we develop the off switch, then maybe we sit for three minutes and do like a three minute meditation.

[00:36:07] Jason: But with entrepreneurs, I, I throw in an intention. You set one intention, like the intention for the day. Just one can be big, can be small, whatever you set your mind, it's like shooting a arrow under the universe of intention, and then you let it go. You. You let all the internal turbidity drop, and that's how I, uh, do meditation with entrepreneurs.

[00:36:26] Jason: But we'll even start with like three minutes after you do breath work and possibly after you do movements so that the mind gets clear. I

[00:36:33] Christa: know that everyone, listeners tell me, this sounds great, Jason, but where do I start? And you're like, well, I just gave you a three minute thing. And so if people are going out and they're like, okay, but I'm trying to figure out actually where to start from Jason, and he's got all of these albums.

[00:36:46] Christa: Are there some of them that have three minute, five minute, et cetera thing? So. Practice the

[00:36:51] Jason: platform app. Yeah, I can do start, start with the website. I believe if you opt in on the website, we send you a little five minute track on there that you can start with, and then you can inquire for, you [00:37:00] know, if you want to go more or look at one of our courses, it's on the website or if, just reach out to us.

[00:37:05] Jason: There's a, an email there that you can reach out to us. All right.

[00:37:08] Christa: Well, I wanna give you one last opportunity to bestow some wisdom on us because and, and I was even gonna ask you about when this started, but it was in your bio, right? The space between the notes. Yeah. And so if someone's listening to this and saying, this is a different way that I've ever thought about this, and I've always struggled with meditation, what do you wanna say to that person?

[00:37:26] Jason: Okay, well, there's a few things. The space in between the notes, if you go look up any of my Zen piano albums, like on Spotify, Jason Campbell's Zen Piano, I do a new album the fourth Friday of every month. So if you just look one of those up or just get the most recent one, put on some headphones. Each song is three minutes.

[00:37:46] Jason: Close your eyes and focus on the space, not the notes. And it's a really amazing little three minute meditation that you go, because they're all translations. They're actually, there's a wisdom teaching in every song that's based on a 6,000 year [00:38:00] old language called the Eing. And it's, it's, it's like a musical translation of an old language of symbols that I do.

[00:38:06] Jason: I put that together. So it's where I have over a hundred albums. Actually, I didn't write anything. It was written. 6,000 years ago. I'm just a translator is how, I mean I have to put my name on the album cuz who else's name is gonna go on it. But when I look at it, I didn't really write anything. It's like Michelangelo, when he was making statues or sculptures, he would say, I didn't do anything.

[00:38:21] Jason: I just removed everything that wasn't there. Mm-hmm. , it actually already existed. And so that's kind of my approach of my approach with the music. That's one very simple way that you can do this. Like it's an entry point. An entry point into. Now you mentioned the speaker. So I have these zen piano speakers.

[00:38:37] Jason: I have 'em. There's no wifi, no Bluetooth. Uh, I have one for sleep. I have one for pets. I have one for just for like creativity where you just put on the speaker. It's like a set it and forget it type of thing. Sleep speaker is pretty popular because it was, uh, , it does help knock you out at night. The music was all recorded at midnight.

[00:38:59] Jason: Mm-hmm. . [00:39:00] And so energy, there's a vibrational frequency in there of sleep. The one for pets, actually it was my dog gave me the idea because she would always go under the piano when I start playing little, uh, piano info. The best seat in the house is actually underneath a piano. If you have a grand piano, cause you feel it on your chest.

[00:39:16] Jason: And so my dog just sits there. Actually, I'll come home sometimes she. Under the piano waiting for me to play . She just goes underneath it, and so I put together a whole series. Could put it for your pets, like you just said. Again, said it and forget it. When you leave for the day, put the speaker on. Your pets will just be a little happier.

[00:39:33] Jason: It's like over 24 hours of music on that one. I think these

[00:39:38] Christa: are so useful, such good ideas, and Christmas is coming up and everyone's dog needs a speaker of Jason and piano music . But in reality, listening to the album and listening for the space between the notes is such a cool exercise or takeaway or tangible thing that someone can do today, which is helpful.

[00:39:55] Christa: Jason, thank you for sharing a brief culmination of the last 44 years of your [00:40:00] life, with us today, and helping us understand that meditation is not out of reach and it can be active in three minutes, and you start somewhere. Oh, thanks so much for

[00:40:08] Jason: coming on. Yeah. Hey, Kristen. Thank you so much for having me on.

[00:40:11] Jason: And also, let's remember that meditation starts even with one breath. Mm. Mm-hmm. , you know, oh, you don't think you can meditate? Oh, you didn't even make it through the three minutes of breathing. Okay. Do this right now. Close your. Breathe in, breathe out. Open your eyes. You just meditated for the day.

[00:40:26] Jason: Congratulations. Perfection, .

[00:40:29] Christa: Everyone will love that. Thank you so

[00:40:30] Jason: much. Thank you.

[00:40:33] Christa: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to. This podcast.com/less stressed life.

[00:40:48] Christa: That's review this podcast.com/less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.[00:41:00]