031 - Meditate With Your Eyes Open - Say WHAT?! Brandon Mehrgut Shares His Wisdom

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If that's where we want to be, if I'm a school teacher, and I got a group of kids in the classroom, I want to be an executive state so I can serve my students best. If I'm a first responder, I want to be an executive state because otherwise I have tunnel vision tunnel hearing tunnel thinking and i i miss stuff I'm in more danger I don't serve my community I'm I'm potentially putting myself or my partner's my my crew at risk. So we got to be an executive state when we're working as a first responders as much as possible. When I want emergency, you need to come right away. There's a man with a gun preceding emergency signal from Georgia level 41. When the paramedics are available units will code that way. Welcome to the de escalation conversations podcast with me today is a really, really cool guy who I've gotten to know over zoom, I've never actually met him in person, I hope to to do that pretty soon and shake his hand give him a big ol hug just because he's a great guy, Brandon, Margot, and he has over a decade of experience in the field of meditation training. You know, a lot of times we've talked about all sorts of different types of training. Well, today we're going to be talking about meditation. Brendon is the founder and managing director of modern mindfulness, which is a company that helps humans take a real world approach to meditation. He is also a lead meditation trainer, and a certified mindfulness coach, who has trained organizations and individuals in mindfulness, mental effectiveness, and compassion. And that's sorely missing in today's world that that that's the C word compassion. Brandon is passionate about developing the long term habit of mindfulness, creating mindful communities around the world, working with law enforcement and helping fellow mindfulness teachers increase their impact by better sharing their message with the world. He has a global reach, along with a local touch, as he is fluent in Chinese, certified by renowned experts, and a lover of you're going to help me have I can't talk this morning, Brenda, you're gonna have to help me out with the pronunciation of this. Renzi a Zen? Both Rinzai Rinzai, Zen and jujitsu. Yes. Also, he leads an air national team in Austin, Texas that covers US, Europe, and China. Brendan, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You did very well. I appreciate that. They put me right back into executive stage just by that compliment. I appreciate that. So I was blessed to be introduced to you by a friend of mine, whose name is Gagan. And I've spent spent a lot of time with Goggin talking to him and he just raved about you and said, Hey, you guys got to meet. And you didn't hear induction. I love how the world, the universe, Gods spear, whatever your higher power is, brings people together. And as soon as I started chatting with you, I immediately knew you had to be on the podcast because I want other people to know about you in the schools and first responder community that we serve here at idea. So we're going to tell us a little bit about your journey. And how did you get into this whole meditation thing? Because, you know, it's starting, I will say this, school teachers probably been way ahead of first responders on this. But in the first responder, community, military, police, fire medical services, we are starting to see more and more and more mindfulness stuff come in, which is having a really profound impact. And everybody in the communities that we serve school teachers and first responders, they need this mindfulness approach, they need some answers to deal with the overwhelming amount of stress that they're facing. So tell us a little bit about your journey. What brought you into this space and then what you do with it? Sure, absolutely. Thank you for the great introduction. When I was about 19 years old, I started my self help journey, self improvement journey and I gotta say, was like drinking water through a firehose, in terms of the world of self improvement, where the how do you begin, there's so much out there. And then when you throw spirituality and religion into the mix, it can be overwhelming. And I grew up very traditionally it's not Louisiana. And when I started that self help journey, I was totally overwhelmed. And I thought, what is the simplest thing I could do? Start attempt be a better human being. And the idea of this, watching my mind, gravitated towards me very deeply. And just practicing basic mindfulness meditation, which is watching the breath, or watching the mind. And about 23, I knew that I wanted to face my fears of abandonment, actually, my father's from Cuba, he came to New York as well alone. And he had a fight, basically, to defend himself because he got picked on didn't speak English, that he learned judo, got a black belt in Judo, got me into jujitsu, and he grew a business. And I wanted to go to the other side of the world, to face that fear of abandonment, and also go towards my love of Eastern philosophy. And very early on in that journey, about nine months that we ended up in the Himalayan Mountains, study more meditation, study more yoga. And from there, I spent about five years in that region of the world, it was north of Laos, and close to Myanmar, in Burma, province, for Yunnan, province, and China. That's the beginning of the region, the Himalayan Mountains. Same thing, I lived there for a long time learning Chinese, with a lot of interesting people. And I thought, where's the fear? Where's the one thing that I'm afraid of doing? So I'm from South Louisiana, Iowa's population 6000 that the you know what, I'm gonna go to Shanghai. That scares the crap out of me. Let me go check that out. So I moved there, first month, really suck. It's extremely hot, very hard to find a place to live in Shanghai, putting 5 million people you don't know one person is super intense. And about a month, and I started to go to networking events. And at that time of my life, I was writing about just general self improvement. And writing about what I loved. And I, I supported myself via just like, Google ads on the blog, very simple blog. When I got to Shanghai, but we go to professional event at the network. Nine out of 10 times people ask me, oh, you write about meditation? I said, Yes. Do you practice meditation? Yes. What are the benefits that will help you become on have to have less stress, more self awareness? And then after the third or fourth person that I met in a very high pressured city, asking the question, Could you teach me? Absolutely. Very happy to. So I started teaching, I ended up teaching for three about 1000 people in one year in Shanghai and growing communities there. And I asked myself, question who's done this that I can model who's a mentor, somebody who teaches me hard to find a new problem in life somebody hasn't already faced and succeeded with, they end up getting a job at an organization called potential project, to corporate mindfulness training organization. And basically, they taught me the most professional way, in my view, to portray meditation. So I started working with a lot of executives, fortune 500, Lego Disney, Sony, Chevron, with the New Orleans, FBI, and New Orleans. And it they taught me a different way of portraying meditation and more of an executive, high pressured environment, worked for them for about four years, came back to America three and a half years ago. And I thought, my God, there's so many mindfulness teachers here, not so popular, more so than it was a decade ago. Great, the peace army here. And I started training those mindfulness teachers and entrepreneurship and leadership. That was my full time job for about three years straight. And then I pivoted more towards teaching the general public and also I work with a lot of coaches, a lot of executives, and I absolutely love of working with mindfulness teachers, meditation teachers, and the general public. But by and large, our goal is sharing meditation with 10% of the US. And that's the vision. And sometimes the strategy of the vision always change the vision fans truth. So that's really what I'm about. And I'm not naive to think, okay, the whole population is gonna be meditating, like, hey, go for a walk. It just when you're walking, just walk, or write, just write, read, and just read, or smoke a cigar, if that's what you're into. And but when you're doing it, don't roll on your phone. Just be in a moment. Meditation is great. Do that. But really empowering people to practice more metacognition? more awareness of mind. And that's really what we would like to see society look like, in the future. This is what separates us from all the other animals in the animal kingdom. I know there's a lot, but I want to give you a lot to pick from. I know that's what an amazing journey. So. So a couple of quick things. How far from Nepal? Were you? Oh, that's a great question. I would say it was probably about a third drive. Okay. And the reason I ask is this, you mentioned the Himalayas. I have set an intention. So back in 2018, I went to a 10 day silent retreat. First one I ever did. And people asked me they're like, yes. So did you do like a one day or a three day or four day silent retreat before he did? 10? I'm like, No, I just, I frickin just jumped right into it and Bay. And it was in England, just a couple hours outside London. Beautiful location. Well, I found out that they have one in Nepal. And I have no idea. But I was just I'm like, I'm going. I don't know if it's going to be in 2024. Or might take until 2025. I'm waiting for the the announcement to come out for for openings. But it's so when we talked about that, like, hey, that's where I want to go. So I'll go with you. All right, that Oh, dude, that would be so much fun. We couldn't talk to each other. But you know, we can talk about we traveled there and back. And firsthand of communication is the words coming out of your mouth. There you go. Good point. Good point. Asia. I'll be I'll be in China this month. Yeah. You You had mentioned that you're going to be traveling back there. How long do you think you'll be back in China for about a month? Okay. That's awesome. So did you learn to speak Chinese? When you went there the first time? Or did you know before you went or how did that work out? I got all kinds of goofy stories. And I'll share one I think people would appreciate it. First of all, I'm not a big fan of Rosetta Stone. That was fun. That's what I paid like$200. For Rosetta Stone the person was I like to go swimming. Like this isn't helping me. I just moved to China. Well, she won. Yo Jung. That's not helpful. When am I ever going to use that phrase? That's funny. Yeah. So basically, I moved to China and not knowing Chinese. I could say hello. I don't want it and fried rice, spices that first week, I had a lot of fried rice. Basically, I wanted to know, how do you say how do you say like that was the one thing I wanted to know how to say. And my cell phone didn't work at the time, I couldn't just like open up my smartphone and purchase this stuff. Because like the internet would work. It was 13 years ago, it wasn't as easy. So I had one big Canadian friend, super nice guy. So you just got to teach me how do you say how do you say like I say it's cough headphones. And he didn't teach me how to say how you say he thought he said this is how you say how you say the Shema ether and that is what does it mean? But I thought it was how do you say oh, let's go practice to Chinese and took him to the market and you smoke a cigarette and kind of walk me and China everybody. Most people that's how much smoke a cigarette. And he points it go talk to that lady. We have to really say a lot enthusiasm, and go pick up that banana and ask her how you sit banana dog will pick up this banana to the lady and I go What does it mean? If he was like, say it loud, I can't hear you. What does that banana mean? Because if somebody doesn't understand you, that means you got to shout at them. Right? That went on for a whole month. Oh my. Yeah, I got a lot of fruit, bananas, a lot of free candy. I was the village special person. They're just yeah, they're just trying to get you to go away, aren't they at that point? Pretty much. But yeah, that's how I learned tiny. And it's great language. I'm always a forever student of learning that language is more almost 1.4 billion people speak it. That's so cool. So when I learned to meditate, which I kind of dove into it right before I went on the silent retreat, I figured, oh, maybe you're doing this for 10 days, I kind of know what I'm getting into. And then of course, they teach you during the retreat. Your when you and I talked before, one of the things I you know, I learned this one method of meditation. And it wouldn't work. For a first responder on duty, well, maybe a firefighter, but certainly not a police officer under is certainly not military working. Because the method of meditation I learned was to close your eyes and concentrate on the breath going in and out of the tip of your nose. And just focus only on that and any other thoughts that come in, just acknowledge them. And, you know, you know, yes, I'm having that thought and release it. Or if depending if how I'm sitting, oh, my knees starting to cramp or my, you know, my butt's starting to get a cramp in it. Acknowledge, okay, my butt's getting a cramp. And in, let it go. That was the method I learned. Well, that doesn't work. If you're in the middle of a 10 hour or 12 hour shift as a police officer as an example. And you need to like bring it down a notch because you've been to call called called called call. And you're stressed out and you're like, if I have to deal with one more freaking idiot, I'm gonna lose my mind, which is not going to go well. Because today it's going to be on body cam, or somebody's there with a video, you know, their phone or something. You taught me that there's a way to meditate with your eyes open. And I had never heard that before. And it has to me that was wild. So can you kind of dive into that just a little bit for us? Yeah, sure. Zen vision. We don't live our lives with our eyes closed. And when one sits in meditation, it's like we're starting a fire. We have some warmth. And then we leave the meditation behind after it's done. We go live our life meditation is this training for life. It's warrior training. And I want to go back to Rinzai Zen just for a moment, because there's two types. And then there's total Zen and Rinzai Zen, and this is very, it's been interesting for your listeners, because starters then was for the laypeople. It was for regular monastics and lay people and a long time ago, legend has it that the samurais were very interested that the monastics are not afraid of death. And the samurai sword goes after the monastic pizza meditation, I recommend better says, you're going to teach meditation, and that bird Rinzai Zen Samurais and warriors and very different, a little bit more theatrical, a little bit more intense. We both schools have then they practice meditation with the eyes open, resize, and we were a bunch of troublemakers. Pretty much in PE impatience and both take about the amount of time I go back to your question is we live our lives with our eyes open and to be mindfully aware of what's happening in the present moment with zero reactivity, or aware of everything and reacting to no thing is really the goal of meditation and developing this 360 degree vision. So, the very developing situational awareness behind me, above you, beside you in front of you, and having your awareness go up behind you. Having your awareness boss beside you. And zero reactivity as being extremely, extremely aware of the environment and what's happening, without reacting to it, this would be a freaking amazing skill for law enforcement and first responders. And even just a regular security guard, I saw the security guard at a storage walking around, bored out of his mind. What a perfect moment to practice meditation walking. And there are a lot of different ways to easing to meditative awareness. And you're not you're not at all putting off what's happening, you are saying yes to what's happening, you're being more aware of everything than you ever have been before. Difference is that there's zero reactivity. There very, very little reactivity. One of the ways of doing that, which are many is being aware of the feet on the ground. Okay. I want to pause you there just for a second. So Brenda, you just said some really, really cool stuff. And and I just want to the reason I wanted to pause you for a moment, is I wanted to take a step back. And because because you just you completely blew my mind. You were talking about the samurai warriors, and how they were realizing this other group of people, they weren't afraid of death. And there's a special significance. They're not just that they're not afraid to death, but a calmness, a relaxation, a lack of fear that comes along with that. And the reason I wanted to really emphasize this for our listeners is anybody who's been listening to the podcast has heard me talk repeatedly. And it's one of those our core foundational principle, your mind can only be in one of two states, it can be in executive state, or it can be in survival, state, survival, state fight, flight, or freeze and a few of the other asks, we just keep it simple fight, flight or freeze. It's a negative emotional state fear causes you to go into survival state, executive state where we're at right now we're relaxed or prefrontal cortexes online, were able to, to connect with each other, have a poor, have empathy for other people, be creative, do problem solving, all of those great things that that really make life fun and enjoyable to live. That's the absence of fear show when you said, yeah, the samurais which, clearly, top notch dudes, you know, they're the Special Forces of the day. They were looking at others, to learn something from them, because they weren't afraid of death, the absence of fear, which means they were more an executive state. And like I say, you just, you just blew my mind, because that's where we want to be. If I'm a school teacher, and I got a group of kids in a classroom, I want to be an executive state so I can serve my students best. If I'm a first responder, I want to be an executive state. Because otherwise I have tunnel vision tunnel hearing tunnel thinking, and I I miss stuff, I'm in more danger. I don't serve my community I'm, I'm potentially putting myself or my partner's my my crew at risk. So we got to be in executive state when we're working as a first responders as much as possible. And so I want to, I want to take a step back to this. We're not afraid of death thing and how the meditation keeps us in this executive state because it frees up our mind from from distracting thoughts. Can you can you kind of wrap that all in that? I hope I didn't overload you there. You can try to overload me, but you're probably not okay, to not be overloaded. So, I'll say something that one of my Zen teachers taught me a while ago, and the most powerful person in the room is the one who is most aware. I'll say that again. Yeah, the most powerful person in the room is the one who's most aware where all things and reacting to