027: Mastering Mindful Movement for a Purposeful Life: Going Beyond Yoga or Meditation

In this episode, hosts Stephen Yeh and Mike Chang unravel the essence of mindful movements, a practice that transcends traditional yoga and meditation. Mindful movement is about conscious presence in every action, be it in the gym, doing household chores, or working, allowing individuals to be fully aware of their body and movements in the present moment.

Mindful movement is not limited to specific activities; it encompasses all forms of movement. The key is being fully present and aware of how the body moves, ensuring that attention is focused on the present moment. This practice creates opportunities for individuals to be truly present, enhancing the quality of their lives significantly. Unlike traditional exercise routines, mindful movement serves as a constant practice for presence, offering numerous opportunities throughout the day to cultivate mindfulness.

Join Stephen and Mike as they explore the transformative impact of mindful movement, showing you how to integrate this practice into your daily life, allowing you to take control of your attention and experience every moment to its fullest potential. Dive into this episode and discover the profound power of being truly present in your movements and how it can revolutionize your life.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

Stephen: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Body Over Mind where we explore how to maximize human potential, release stress, and truly feel free. I'm your host Stephen Yeh with your co host Mike Chang and today we unravel the essence of mindful movements. It's a practice that goes beyond your typical yoga or meditation.

It's a conscious presence in every action we take. Whether it's during a yoga class, exercising in the gym, doing household chores, or even working. Join us as we delve into why mindful movement matters and how it unifies our body, breath, and mind into one powerful movement, discover the profound impact of being truly present in your movements.

Not just for the sake of flexibility or impressive positions, but for enhancing the quality of your entire life. 

Mike: Let's dive in. So mindful movement, [00:01:00] what it is simply, you're just moving with a sense of mindfulness, it's not isolated to only a certain type of movement. It's really just all movement.

So whether somebody is in the gym and exercising, or whether they're doing household chores. Even when they are working, if they are able to be aware of how they are moving, aware of their body, then they are mindfully moving. , the opposite would be if they are moving their body, but they're not. Aware of how they are moving, they're not aware of where their body is at in time or space.

And mindful movement is becoming more popular because it helps somebody bring their attention to the present moment where their body exists right now. The opposite would be somebody is moving their body, but their attention is not present. So they're in their mind thinking about something. And [00:02:00] the key thing to mindful movement is the attention, the being present.

So this is why it's not directly tied in into a specific type of movement. Somebody can be doing yoga, they're doing mindful movement. Somebody can be just walking, they're mindfully moving. Somebody's sweeping the floor, and they're mindfully moving. At the same time, somebody can be doing exactly those same movements, but if they're not mindful, then Even though the movements are the same, their attention is not in the present moment and it's off somewhere else.

Stephen: Okay, cool. So let's say there are certain people out there that they're moving, they're exercising, but their mind's somewhere else. Maybe they're thinking about what they need to do for dinner, what they need to pick up at the grocery store. Why does it really matter? Let's say you're in the gym, you're exercising, you're getting a workout in. but why would it really matter for them to [00:03:00] be present in the moment in that moment while they're exercising compared to just allowing their mind to drift off somewhere else? 

Mike: The reason why mindful movement matters, why it's a good thing to practice. It is because it creates opportunities for a person to be present, being present.

It's something that people know is good for their life to be able to experience the moment. It's something that people long to have more of. However, in order to have more presence in our life, we need to have opportunities.

to practice being present And when we adopt the idea, the concept of mindful movement, what we're saying is that I can make movement in itself, not exercise, [00:04:00] movement in itself, a practice for presence. And if I can make movement a practice for presence, then I I've now created a lot of opportunities to practice being present. And now if I have all of these opportunities to be present and I'm practicing constantly on how to be present, then my skill to be present increases.

I can turn on presence. I can be in my mind planning and just not there. And then now I want to be present and I'm here and I'm present now. And I can have control over that because I'm constantly practicing. But if I don't practice mindful movement, Then when will my practice time be for presence when I'm meditating?

Right? Somebody could say, so then how often are you [00:05:00] meditating? At most an hour a day. At most. People are not doing anything close to that, and most people just aren't even meditating. But even if they were right, an hour a day at most. What about the other 23 hours? What are the other 15 hours that you're of?

So mindful movements give somebody the opportunity to practice being present. And if we dive into the benefits of presence, it stretches across the board, it improves the every aspect of somebody's life. And that's the reason why mindful movement is becoming more popular and why it's really needed simply because it creates the opportunity for somebody to be present and therefore enhance the quality of their life.

Stephen: Do you remember when you used to exercise and what that was like? 

Mike: Oh yeah, there's the movement part. I wouldn't say the mindfulness was really there. Now, coming from the world of fitness and bodybuilding, what I was paying attention to [00:06:00] was the way I looked, the way my body felt, which did bring in an aspect of mindfulness.

However, I was unconsciously, I didn't have the same intention for being present. Being present wasn't an intention, it wasn't a goal, it was something that would happen, but it wasn't something I was aware of when I was present, and I wasn't aware of it when I wasn't. My focus was very different. It was more on changing the way my body looked versus using movement or using exercise as a way for presence.

Now, what I do is I still have an aspect of my focus on changing the way my body looks when I'm training. However, there's also the intention of being present. So this way I'm able to gain the best of both [00:07:00] worlds. 

Stephen: Essentially it's really just. Unifying different practices and training together, right? So instead of you going and exercising or even just mopping the floor or doing any type of movements and at the same time going off and spending time sitting down meditating, you just bring it together into one and essentially getting the benefits of both.

Mike: If we think about moving Let's say we're just moving every day, right? Every day, you're always moving, doing something, sitting down. We're still moving, right? We're not just completely still like a stone. So when we are awake and moving, where is our mind? When we need to, , pay attention to something in front of us.

Right, something that we're working on, let's say we're working at the moment, then I need to pay attention to what [00:08:00] we're working on. If I am exercising, then I need to pay attention to how my body feels and the thing that I'm doing. This is still a present moment. If I am working and I need to bounce back and forth between this idea in my head and the work that's in front of me.

Then I'm balancing between being present and then going into my mind and making sure it matches my idea or concept and then coming back to being present and then going back in my mind and comparing it to these different things. The ability to be able to control where my attention goes, this ability needs to be developed.

If not, I don't have control over my attention. I either can't keep my attention here. To see what's happening, or I can't keep my attention in my mind on this idea, this concept, I can't hold on [00:09:00] to the moving pieces in my head. Because this is all based on the ability to control our attention and people are lacking the ability to control their attention.

So therefore it's not just about presence. Presence is very important for all of these things, but it's about the ability to control our attention. And if a person is not training, Their attention, then they don't have control over it. And mindful movement is essentially about being present, but it's also on a deeper layer, controlling our attention, which dictates our experience of reality, where our energy goes, every single aspect of our behavior, habits, actions, everything.

It's all attention. It's all consciousness. 

Stephen: Another perspective for mindful movement that I feel as well is it helps to unify. Your body with your mind, [00:10:00] right? Because if you are doing something physically, but your mind is somewhere off, then your energy is being split and it's going into different directions.

But if you can unify the body with the breath and the mind all into one, into that moment, Now, whatever is going on in that moment just becomes that much more powerful instead of your energies being split in so many different directions. 

Mike: That's right. That's because energy is attention. If our attention is present here at the moment, also connected to our body, then that means all of our energy is here directing towards this action.

Involved in this action, involved in this experience, feeling what is happening now. If our attention is here, our energy is here. And [00:11:00] therefore, if our attention is partially somewhere else, then our energy is partially somewhere else. And if we have 100 units of energy slash 100 units of attention to start off with, and part of it is somewhere else.

Then we have less energy, less attention to contribute towards this task, to contribute towards this event, towards this experience, we actually experience this event less, right? It's like being in a conversation with somebody and our attention is partially somewhere else. So we aren't fully there. So we might be 50 percent there.

So we can only hear 50 percent of what is being said. We can only understand 50 percent of what's being said. We can only connect the dots 50%. So if somebody was to say something that is very complex, we can't keep up. We would ask them, can you repeat that again? Can you clarify that? Um, what do you mean by this?

When we ask [00:12:00] for clarification is because our mind isn't able to connect the dots, but what determines how much we can understand, comprehend, is based on the amount of attention that we are giving to the present moment. And then the same way to say that exact thing is the amount of energy that we are giving right now to this situation.

This is why it's so important to have the ability to be present, have the ability to control our attention, which then goes back to our earlier conversation of when are we practicing this? And mindful movement is a great way to be able to practice this. Because the act of being mindful, whether it's mindful of how my body feels.

Mindful of the movements I'm actually doing automatically means I am mindful of the present moment that exists right now. And I think it's important that somebody [00:13:00] understands what mindful movement really is. I'm glad we're really diving into this because I think sometimes people lose out on this aspect and they just skip the part on mindfulness and they just go into the movement part and they think it's all about doing interesting, Inverted positions and be able to be super flexible or do something really cool.

And they miss out on what is it that we're really accomplishing. And if they capture what it is, we're really accomplishing, they can still do the cool things, but they gain so much more. They're hitting the two birds with one stone. They're hitting five birds with one stone. 

Stephen: This is why in, in your program, I teach a class a week in there.

And right now we are really diving in into this. And during the beginning stages, , when we were working on this and actually doing the training on it, what I found was that I was just giving them very simple exercises to [00:14:00] do. It was just like squats, lunges, et cetera, but doing it very mindfully.

Right. I was asking them to put your attention on your breath, the inhales and exhales, paying attention to that while you do the movement and focusing on there. And then from time to time we would come back together and I'll ask them how your experience was. And what we found was that, especially in the beginning, people had a very hard time.

To just be present and to be here, their mind would just go off into space, into another realm, into a different dimension where they're thinking about alternative reality, and then eventually they'll catch on and they come back and After some time when they've done this over and over again, almost like training a dog on a leash, where if, if the dog is wild, it [00:15:00] just wants to run off and go everywhere.

But if you train it by gently just tugging on the leash and say, Hey, we're right here. We're going to stay right here and you're going to come with me along. Over time, the dog learns to walk besides the owner. And so it's essentially as people started to train more and more, they were able to start becoming more present with the movements.

And what naturally started to happen was they became more relaxed. They became more calm. They became more centered. They didn't feel like they were so sporadic anymore. 

Mike: Can you explain why somebody Became more relaxed. How did becoming more present helped them become more relaxed?

How would you explain that? 

Stephen: I'm just imagining because I feel like our attention can bounce [00:16:00] very quick. I remember seeing there was a scientific study talking about how it's very ineffective to multitask. And the reason why is because. When you're multitasking, you're jumping from one to the other, but you always have to jump back and so it's a lot of wasted energy in between.

And so I've, I don't know if this is true here, but it feels like it's very similar here where we are physically here inside the body, but. The mind is traveling off that takes energy to go out there, but then we also have to come back to the moment as well to take care of stuff. So there's this unseen, super quick energy transfer moving along constantly.

And when that happens, it burns a lot of energy. And at the same time it is constantly complexing your current situation when it doesn't need to be that [00:17:00] way. Does that make any sense? 

Mike: Yeah, so basically, if they were to be present instead of being in their mind thinking about things.

By being present consistently, they're able to be aware of everything that's happening every time when they are not present and they're in their mind thinking about something and they have to come back, the coming back that takes extra energy, being in their mind, thinking about those things, it takes energy to think about those things as well.

By staying with what's happening right now, a person's able to continue to stay connected, become aware of the information that is happening in the moment. All of the data. The moment that we drift off, we aren't paying attention to the data, which means we have to try to remember everything that's happening right now.

And every moment that we are not here, it's harder to [00:18:00] remember everything. Imagine like how many pieces of information is existing right now. At this very moment, if we just start to name the countless amount, we will just be naming for a very long time because we can break down this moment into just so many pieces to be aware of.

Information points. And when we are not present, the moment we drift off for just one second and come back, if we have a thousand information points right now at this very moment, the information points includes the data that's in my mind that I'm about to speak, for example. But now I suddenly go and think about what I'm going to eat for dinner.

And then I come back, just for one second, out of the thousand, I might have lost 20 pieces. I might be only aware of 980 pieces. Now that may seem like a lot still, but now let's say I drift off for five seconds. So this idea of there is a lot of information that's happening in the moment and to be present, aware of all the information [00:19:00] allows us to be able to perform at our highest.

But if we drift off for a certain period of time, we are unaware of all this information. we lose the ability to be aware of the information, a part of it. If we drift off too long, we may end up forgetting so much so that we don't know what's happening. Can you shared with me the other day about what you did to help the students that you were working with?

What did you do to help them stay present in the moment? While you guys trained, 

Stephen: do you remember? Yeah, 

Mike: I do remember. Okay. 

Stephen: The main strategy, because there's many different ways that you can approach this, but during the practice itself, what I was mentioning for people is just to pay attention to the breath.

[00:20:00] Observe the breath. The ends. Inhale. Exhale and just be there. And then what tends to happen, especially when the mind is quite full of ideas and it's normally just on rapid fire, just moving around, you're automatically just going to go out and then at one point, you'll remember that you're exercising.

You come back and say, oh yeah, I'm exercising. And once you remember that you remember , to pay attention to your breath once again, and after. A number of repetitions of continuously bringing it back. The awareness starts to get stronger and stronger. And in the last class that's, that we were doing, there was one student that has come in for a few.

So I could see that, you know, she was ready for a little bit [00:21:00] more. And so we started to venture off a bit with the eyes closed. We first started to just scan the body. We would start at the feet. So just observe the feet are, and then we'll go up to the shin and the calves and then go up, up all the way through the body and the students that were doing that at first, they were all okay with it and then towards the end, when it got all the way to the top, I asked them to now become aware of the sensations of the whole body.

And to feel that as we are standing, as we're doing this very gentle movement. And now afterwards, when I asked them, how was that experience? They said, scanning one, one part to another was decently easy. But then one of them said, when I tried to become aware of my whole body, it was very difficult, [00:22:00] it was very challenging.

Like it was, she just couldn't do it. And then, so what I realized is, is. When you start to build upon your quote unquote awareness muscle now, when she starts to do that, now she can start to experience more of that, not just compartmentalized, but the whole body itself. And then eventually, if she continues to go.

You, you start to become much more minutely aware of your surroundings as well, as it starts to build. And so it's just a practice. It's just a training and it's just continuously tuning into that. but I think there's many different techniques. 

Mike: So the ability to be aware of the entire body all at once, it can be compared to being aware [00:23:00] of the entire situation in the moment, and it's Versus only aware of part of a situation.

Stephen: Ooh, dive into that one, please. Let's say a student of mine that was in one of my classes a few weeks ago was sharing a story about how him and his family were traveling and they were at the airport about to book a flight and found out that the flight was canceled. And that somehow they made a mistake, airline's mistake, and there were no seats available.

Mike: Somehow they overbooked. And there was about ten of them, and it was like a family trip, and everybody started getting very agitated and upset. And the student, he realized that there's not a reason to be upset because Instead of [00:24:00] just focusing on the problem that was happening, he was able to take a step back and recognize that if this problem was not to be fixed, what would be the worst case outcome from it?

Is it, is that okay? Are we going to really be in trouble? Is it really that bad? And his, response internally was, no, the world's not going to end. It's fine. Worst case is fine. Now, at the same time, he was also aware that there is a possibility that the attendants can go ahead and work some things in a backend to maybe make it work.

Maybe there were some miscalculations. They are currently working on it at the moment and that there is a possibility that everything is going to be fine. While he was aware that there is at this very moment an issue and there's no resolution at this very [00:25:00] moment. His whole family was aware of that particular information, but they were only aware of that information.

That was it. Or at least we can say they weren't aware of a lot of other scenarios because if they were, they may have not been upset and frantic, but because he was aware of that information, plus a lot of other alternative information, a lot of alternative possibilities. That allowed him to be able to stay calm, stay with solving the problem at hand, instead of getting caught up into who's to blame and, Oh my God, what's going to happen?

I can't believe this is happening. Things like that, which some of the other family members was doing. And then about 25, 30 minutes later, the airline got it fixed. Everybody jumped on the plane. Everybody got a ride. No problem. And the interesting thing about this, that he was really happy [00:26:00] about this. He told me that the family, few of them came up to him while they were on the plight and said, I noticed that you weren't upset, you weren't stressed.

I, I noticed that you were just, you were confident it was going to work out. And that was good. And I think they asked him like, how, why weren't you, did you just know that was going to work? Or how did, how did you not get so upset? How did you not get worried? How did you know this was going to work out or you didn't?

They were interested because it was very apparent. Everybody's, Oh my God. And here he is letting everybody know. Everything's going to be fine. Attendant, please go ahead and figure this out. He was calm about it, very focused on figuring out a solution and the family noticed because he previously in the past was just like how his family responded.

He would go into a frantic thing. And so it was really nice. And this is an example of his awareness was able to [00:27:00] expand large enough so he could see other possibilities in that given moment. While his family couldn't see, they can only focus on the current thing that was happening. Now we can take a look at all the situations in life where there's something that is happening that is undesirable and because our awareness is very expanded, we can see other possibilities that can come out of this undesirable moment.

Therefore, when we see these other possibilities, knowing that this moment right now does not equate to a really bad thing. There's nothing wrong with it because there's so many possibilities that can come from it. Why do I need to focus on just the things I don't like, just the things that I'm scared of.

When there are so many other possibilities, I just need to have the awareness, the expanded awareness to. [00:28:00] See it and if I had the expanded awareness and I can see these things, then I would not be as worried because I know that there are these possibilities now, once I am aware of these possibilities, I actually end up.

Creating or helping to create, manifest these possibilities because And this is, another subject that maybe we'll dive into, another day. However, what we are aware of, we bring in to reality. This is not a hundred percent absolute because everybody else can be aware of something as well.

However, our awareness, whatever we are conscious of, we actually end up changing the. matter This has been proven many times, all the time in different experiences, or experiments, where an [00:29:00] energy that is a particle, which means it's like matter, when we look at it, when we observe something, the thing that we observe turn into a particle, , the energy of the thing.

The moment the observers stop observing the thing, the energy became, a wave and when it becomes a wave, that means it. Opened up into possibilities of turning into something else. When the observer observed the thing, the energy became solid. It became into a particle, it formed, which helped the observers start to understand that just from them observing the situation, observing the thing, they changed the energy of the thing.

And this was done in many different types of tests. Which helped them understand that our consciousness our awareness is changing [00:30:00] the outcome of situations because it is literally changing the matter of things. So now if I am conscious, if I am aware of myself being very strong. Then I will enhance the health of my body.

Now, vice versa, if I am aware of myself being weak and a sickly person, then my consciousness of myself being this type of person will change the energy inside of my body, which means I changed the matter. I changed my body. This is the basis understanding of how miracles happen. When someone says, and there's a miracle that happened.

Oh my God, this person had a sickness and now they're healed. This person couldn't walk and now they're walking. Right. And this person couldn't see and now they're seeing. There's a lot of these types of stories. They're just, they're countless thousands and thousands. [00:31:00] Anybody can just take some time. If you want to search the internet, you'll find endless.

That's how it is happening because somebody's changing their awareness. . Of themselves, most people are attached to an idea of themselves. So if I am sick, then I will create an identity of myself being sick and being conscious of myself as a sick person continues to create or support. This sickness.

Now, yes, the behaviors and my food and my diet and my, those, my lifestyle that affects just as much. But what we were talking about is the fundamental foundation, because if I see myself differently, not as a sick person, but as a healthy person, as a person who's strong, then automatically my habits will change, my behavior will change, the way I present myself will change, [00:32:00] My decisions, everything changes because I'm changing it on the fundamental level.

Stephen: That's so fascinating how we started off with mindful movement and we went this deep, but at the same time, it's essentially all the same. It's just a level of how far down you want to go into, right? So when I'm hearing all of this, and when you just mentioned how, your perspective and what you're feeling inside is going to change the outcome of what's going to happen in your life.

Essentially. That's what you want to be aware of when you're doing your mindful movement. Because like you said, we're moving throughout the day all the time. So maybe initially you can do mindful movements when you're exercising, and then you can start integrating that into when you're washing the [00:33:00] dishes or you're vacuuming the floor or whatever it is, and then the more and more that you do it, you start to integrate all of that into all aspects of your life until it becomes moment to moment.

And what happens is. The larger awareness that you have, now you can really tune in and see what your energy is actually like, or how you are experiencing life. Are you someone that is fearful? Are you someone that is light? Are you someone that is joyful? Are you someone that is angry? You would be able to perceive that very clearly.

And then eventually, it's not just one or the other, but you can just see the dials of what percent all of that is, and then you can see how it's affecting your life. And if you want to make any changes to your life, you can also notice which ones you need to shift [00:34:00] in order to start getting into that space that you want to create.

Mike: It could be a complex thing to, to understand. I would look at it like this, mindful movement. Let's separate out the two words. We have mindful and then we have movement. Mindfulness is awareness. We can call it awareness movement. Mindfulness is also consciousness, conscious of, we can call it conscious movement.

So what it is that I'm paying attention to, what I'm aware of, what I'm mindful of, movement, but I can also be mindful of my thoughts. I could be also mindful of my feelings. I could be mindful of my. Identity, I could be mindful of my judgments of my beliefs. And so when we say mindful movement, we're looking at something that is more on the surface, [00:35:00] right?

It's easier to become aware of the way we move versus. The way we are thinking, because the thinking is more subtle. Where is it? You can't see it. At least with the movements, you can see your body. You can open your eyes and you can see how you're moving. You can see your body in this time, in this space.

So it's easier to observe. It's easier to be mindful of, but you cannot see your beliefs. So therefore to be mindful of your belief, you have to expand your Energy, your awareness, you have to become more mindful. So this way you could be mindful of the more subtle things. So they're all really the same thing.

The difference is the amount of mindfulness, the amount of awareness. And we start off with something that is, so we start off with something that is [00:36:00] simple, like movement, because it's easy to be mindful of it. And then we can say, then we're mindful of our speaking. You're mindful of the voice. I can hear myself speaking right now.

Okay. I'm mindful of it. I'm mindful if I talk fast and I'm mindful if I talk slow. It's easier to be mindful of these schemes, because it's more obvious. And then as we start to develop this skill, we start to become more mindful of the Less obvious, the more subtle and eventually, like our conversation got all the way down to being mindful of our self, the way we are, what identity we carry, am I a healthy, strong person?

Or am I mindful of myself being a sick, weak person? It's all still mindfulness. So I think it's good for a person to recognize that mindful movement is like the first stage. And the [00:37:00] goal is to work your way down by becoming, , more mindful of these subtle things, but this takes a lot of practice. So if you're not practicing throughout every single day, you're not having enough practice time to develop your mindfulness.

You don't have enough practice to develop your attention. If your attention is constantly being taken by Other people by content somewhere else, then you aren't able to take that attention and direct it towards what you want it to go, your attention is being taken by something else. So part of this means in order to become more mindful of movement of beliefs, of anything.

We have to take back our attention. [00:38:00] So this is why when we are doing this inner work, it's always recommended to be in a place that is more peaceful, it's more quiet, it has less distractions, because it's easier. You're not having to compete with everything in your environment that's trying to capture your attention, trying to take your attention.

So therefore you are able to take your attention because you still have to deal with the thoughts in your head, which is a big obstacle by itself. So now imagine you have to deal with everything else on the outside as well. It becomes very challenging. However, 

Stephen: here's the challenge, Mike. Let, let's be honest, most people are not gonna live in a very serene place.

What can they do? How can they start to really become more mindful? How can they start to do mindful movement? 

Mike: Start with your current environment. Just go from [00:39:00] there. We're just talking about ideals. So if somebody had the opportunity to go and have some peace and quiet, that's a great place to practice.

However, if you only have the opportunity once a month, then it's not going to be enough practice. So you're going to gain much more ground if you practice every day in a very busy environment, in an environment that demands your attention. So start now. Don't wait. If you start in an environment that's very difficult, the benefit of this is that You're having to overcome a lot of challenges, and when you overcome them, you become stronger.

If somebody didn't have a lot of challenges to overcome, even if they got to a point to where they're mindful, They're able to be at that level of mindfulness because [00:40:00] of the lack of challenges. The moment you drop them in a very busy environment, they can't be mindful anymore. In other words, their level was set on easy.

While if you are in an environment that demands a lot of your attention, right? You're playing this game right now at a level hard, right? You're not losing out on anything. You're actually just developing your skill a little more. So it's all good. beautiful 

Stephen: guys all for listening to another episode of Body Over Mind. I hope that was inspirational for you guys. With that said, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, please leave a review. That can really help the podcast just to allow other people to know more about us. So thank you so much once again, and we will see you on the next episode.