Healing Moments

Shay Beider From Integrative Touch, I’m Shay Beider, host of the Conversations on Healing Podcast, and this is Healing Moments. Healing Moments is a segment we’ve created to share moments of healing and wellness that you can incorporate in your everyday life. Today’s healing moment is with Jimmy Yen or the ACU Sensei as he’s known on social media. He’s a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, entrepreneur, and innovator. In today’s healing moment, Jimmy explains how to find peace through stillness. He’s found that many of our modern inventions pull our attention and distract us from finding inner peace. So, Jimmy shares some simple techniques for how to return to being more still, and he even poses a little challenge to our listeners. So, find yourself a nice quiet place to tune in and let’s get started.
Well, thanks, Jimmy. We’re so happy to have you for this healing moment. And this one is very deep and peaceful because we’re going to focus on peace through stillness. So, I invite you to share with our listeners what they can learn and practice about finding peace through stillness.

Jimmy Yen Absolutely. Thank you again for having me on. And so, this is a topic that may seem like a little woo-woo for some people, but if you can really have an open mind and really listen- and actually execute and implement- this is going to change your life. So, peace through stillness. I would say most people that I’ve talked to, when I ask ’em, “What are you trying to seek in life? What is your ultimate goal?”, right? Some people will say joy. Now, they want to be happy, right? They want to be happy. And when I ask more deeper questions about “What does happiness mean to you?” we tend to end up with this one word, which is peace, right? When we are at peace internally, when we are at peace, then naturally that happiness and joy comes out. And so, then the next question is, “How do we get to be at peace?”

And I was reading this book, and it’s called- actually, I have it, bear with me- Praying Like Monks, Living like Fools. And it really touched upon this topic of being still. And so, once I read it, I was like, “Oh, this, yes, this makes perfect sense. That on how we can achieve peace through stillness.” Why do we want stillness? Well, let’s come back to why do we lack peace to begin with. If you really sit down and just think about why you have all maybe the stress, the chaos in your life, and just the uneasiness, a lot of it is because we are so hurried, especially in the Western culture. We need to be on schedule. We have a schedule from- we wake up from this time to this time- and then we work from here to here, and then we got to go pick up our kids to take ’em to soccer camp, and we got to do this and that.

We got to make dinner, and then we got to do blah, blah, blah. Just me saying all this, you’re probably already getting anxious because we are so busy. And that is one of the root causes of a lack of peace. And that brings me to a couple of inventions. How do we get here in the first place? The clock. The clock was one of the inventions that- the clock is a great thing. All these things, these inventions, they were created with a great intention and a great purpose in mind. But somehow, they have made things a little, maybe unpeaceful. So, before people- when they didn’t have clocks- couldn’t determine the clock. They slept when the sun went down, and they would naturally wake up when the sun rised. And so, there was that natural progression of sleep time. So, during the winters, people would sleep longer.

Why? Because the sun is out. I mean, the sun is not up as long, so you would sleep longer during the winters, and during the summers, would sleep less. And there was just a natural flow. And so, that’s how people used to be. But then, the invention of clock- of the clock- now we are like, “Okay, we want to wake up at 5:00 AM.” So, we set the clock at 5:00 AM, and most of the time, we don’t set a clock of when we should go to bed. So, that just disrupts our sleep completely. And so, with the clock, I did the example earlier. Now we plan things because we want to be efficient. And I know about efficiency. I like to be efficient, but sometimes efficiency is the cause of our busyness in our lives because we try to pack so many things to every single second in our day that we really never… I can see some people, especially moms, right?

They’re just like, they never are able to take a deep breath because they’re going from one thing to another, because they’re taking care of their family. It’s totally understandable, but it is like they never let their breath sink, so to speak, and they’re just like this all the time. And that’s because the clock, the clock- oh, I’m late- and then now they have to rush to the next place. They go in, and because they only have one hour at a time, they got to do whatever they have to do in one hour. And they look at the watch and they’re like, “Oh, get me to another place.” And so, the clock has made us busier. Clock is not a bad invention; we’ve been using it to increase our busyness instead of helping us and becoming less busy. The next invention is the light bulb.

This actually goes also with the analogy of the sun and the moon. The light bulb made it where now there’s cities around the world- even here in the U.S.- it’s 24/7, there’s a sun. And so, that just, number one stimulates our eyes and messes up our circadian rhythm, our sleep patterns, but it also changes our lifestyle. So, now we have something called night owls, where people are up, but they’re not up because there’s no light; they’re up because of the light bulb. We have given them light, so now they can stay up as long as they want. And now, see, that in a sense again, messes up with our sleep. So, I would say instead of helping us organize our life and become more centered and more peaceful, these inventions, we’ve actually used them to make our lives more chaotic and busy. And the last one, which is a powerful invention…

We all have one. I have one that sits right by me. It’s called the iPhone. It’s such a powerful tool. But these days, again, the iPhone- when we get up out of bed- what’s the first thing we reach for? We reach for our phone. And many people, you start scrolling through social media or you start scrolling through the news, your emails… Again, it’s that busyness, that busyness that stimulates our brain to send it into something called a sympathetic response, which is fight or flight. So, my previous example of the mom just running around all scattered: she’s running on fight or flight all day. See, that’s a sympathetic mode, but our bodies like to be in what’s called a parasympathetic mode, which is the rest and digest. And actually, if you want to have a healthier life and be more closer to having happiness and peace, your body needs to be more towards the rest and digest.

Because the sympathetic mode, the fight or flight, just imagine that is like you are literally on adrenaline all day. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, just imagine you give your kids sugar- like a pint of ice cream at night- see if they can sleep. That’s what adrenaline shows up as. Well, you’re doing that ice cream thing by using the iPhone, by being stuck to the iPhone. And so, all these inventions are great. I’m not saying these are terrible inventions; they’re all great. We just need to learn to utilize them to become still. So, how do you become still? Practice. It takes practice because all of these new inventions have trained us not to be still. So, one thing that you can do is when you wake up in the morning, first thing you do is get into a quiet space and just sit there.

Don’t grab your coffee, don’t grab anything else. Then you’re already getting busy. Just get up, sit there. You can sit on your bed, or you can just go into your living room or your study. Sit there. If you’ve got a view- city view, nature view, wherever, on your porch- just sit there. And I would challenge you to sit there for two minutes. Yes, some people are going to say, “But I need my iPhone to track my time.” Yes, okay. If you have an iPhone, yes, you can use your iPhone, but try to get- don’t get on. Don’t start scrolling. Maybe get a stopwatch or something like that. But just sit there and peace and quiet for two minutes. Even if you’re in the city, just sit there for two minutes. The next day, see if you can sit for five minutes. And so, for me, as a Christ follower, what I do is I pray. I will take that time to pray.

So, if that’s what you would like to do, you can do that as well. But what I just challenge you to do is just to sit there, let your body just stay at rest and let your anxiety start to… this is just training. You’re training your body- training your body to enter into the parasympathetic mode, which is the rest and digest. Some people may be saying, “Oh, do I need to breathe in and out in certain ways?” Don’t make things complicated. All I want you to do is just sit for two minutes one day. If you can do that for one week, the next week, every day, sit for five minutes. Just sit. And the next week you just sit for 10 minutes. And the next week you can sit as long as you want. But what you’ll start to notice… these are the things you’ll start to notice as you do these every single day: you’re training your body to get into that rest and digest mode more and more and more and more.

Then you can use this same strategy to just sit during the day. Just sit for two minutes, even if it’s in your car. Just sit for two minutes. Don’t turn on your radio. You turn on the AC if you’re in Texas, because it’s hot here, but don’t turn on your radio, don’t turn on your music, don’t do anything. Just sit-and just sit. That’s it. Don’t do anything else. Okay, so practice this. There’s many other strategies that can help you be more still, but the key thing is, if you want more peace, learn to be more still.

Shay Well, thank you for that wonderful reminder, Jimmy, so that we can all figure out our parasympathetic response and create more ease and peace through stillness in our lives. Thank you so much.

Jimmy You’re very welcome.

Shay We hope you enjoyed today’s healing moment. If you’d like to suggest an idea for a future episode, please send us an email at podcast@integrativetouch.org. If you like the show and want to learn more about the Integrative Touch Healing Center and our virtual classes and services, please visit integrativetouch.org. I’m Shay Beider. Thanks for taking the time for this healing moment.