Miriam Trahan

Tony Winyard 0:00

habits and health Episode 22.

Jingle 0:03

Welcome to the habits and health Podcast, where we believe creating healthy habits should be easy. Brought to you by an educator and coach for anyone who wants to create a healthier life. here's your host, Tony Winyard.

Tony Winyard 0:20

Welcome to another edition of the podcast where we give you ideas on improving various aspects of your health. And today, it's all about meditation. My guest is Miriam Trahan. She's an expert in meditation and pranayama in breathing. And we dive into some questions around for example, many people struggle to meditate on a regular basis. And so one of the questions I asked Marian is, you know, why? Why does she think that is? And so we're gonna hear a lot more about meditation in general coming up very soon. If you know anyone who you feel would get some more value from this particular episode. Please do share the episode with them. And hope you enjoy it. My guest today is Miriam Trahan.

Miriam Trahan 1:03

Hey there. Hi, I'm really well, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Tony Winyard 1:07

And you're in Hawaii?

Miriam Trahan 1:11

I am in Hawaii. I'm on the island of Maui on the North Shore. And it's beautiful. Is it most often is here in Hawaii. It's a lovely place to be.

Tony Winyard 1:22

Is that where you're from?

Miriam Trahan 1:24

No, I grew up in Louisiana, and moved a number of places. I moved to Hawaii from Long Island, New York. I lived there for 12 years.

Tony Winyard 1:35

And what was it that drew you to Hawaii?

Miriam Trahan 1:38

You know, people ask me that all the time. When you pull out your Hawaii driver's licence, it has a rainbow on it. And people look at and go, Oh, Hawaii. It was the beauty. There very simply, the beauty was so profound here. And the people here reminded me of home in Louisiana, they're very family oriented. They cook a lot of rice, which is a big important part of the diet, where I grew up. And there was a kind of openness that really appealed to me. It was fairly easy to become part of the community, people were very accepting. And my husband and I just really were very drawn to that. But the place is just saturated and beauty. People come to visit, you pick them up at the airport, and they just go Wow, you're like, yeah, and this is just the airport. It's just in the air here. We love it here. It's quite beautiful.

Tony Winyard 2:38

It's clear for me, you're just hearing your tone in your voice. It's not a decision you've regretted

Miriam Trahan 2:45

Oh, no, it's has its challenges, like any place is isolated that took a while to get used to it's a very fluid environment, people come and go, it's a small little piece of land in a very big ocean. And the energies of are very different. That fluidity takes a little getting used to. But now I've never regretted moving here, it's really filled my soul. And since I'm an active meditator, the energy here is very clear. And it's very soft. So I find it a really, really pure energy really easy to find a meditative state here. And since that's a big part of my life, my meditation practice that was a real benefit. I wasn't really expecting when I first moved here,

Tony Winyard 3:40

we you mentioned about no meditation. So could you describe to the listeners what it is that you do?

Miriam Trahan 3:46

Right now my meditation practice is centred around. Inner technology is what I call it, called light body. And I study with a teacher named Dwayne Packer. Their website is luminescence calm. And it is a series of specific energy tools that allow you to access very high states of consciousness. The practice of light body is exploration of consciousness. And I'm really drawn to that I've always been a consciousness Explorer. So it has a powerful spiritual component, but it's not religious or dogmatic. It's skill based, which I really like because that allows me to access the energies on my own and have my own experiences without someone trying to codify that from the outside and that's really the essence of meditative practice. Become familiar with your own inner being your own consciousness. Who am I as Eckhart Tolle he says, Who am I when I am not thinking? Who am I when I am not doing and we spend in Western society, precious Little of our time in that exploration. And it's my knowing and sensing of this very transitional time we seem to be and the what we are learning to do is to sit with the inner self and be and what that means in terms of expanding our consciousness or in deepening our consciousness. And so the practice that I have now teaches me the tools to be able to do that on on my own.

Tony Winyard 5:32

And so, do you help people who are wanting to meditate to learn how to do what is?

Miriam Trahan 5:39

Right I have, I have a podcast, it's called Miriam's meditations. It's on all of the podcast servers. And the way I go about it is when I first wanted to learn to meditate, I was in college, I was a very young person, I had a very speedy kind of type A personality, my brain was like, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and to sit and do nothing was made me very anxious, it made me very fidgety. And it took a long time to find a tool that I could use to access that meditation state. And for me, that doorway was breath, I came upon a breath teacher in mid 90s, who was in a matter in Virginia, which is where I was living at the time. And she taught me pranayama practice, and pranayama practice has many, many benefits to the human system. For me, the most profound benefit was it gave my mind something to do. Because the breaths are specific, very specific, and you do kind of counting and certain kinds of inhales and exhales, some of it's very dynamic. So it'll gave my brain something to occupy itself. And then the power of the pranayama itself cleared out my energy fields, my emotional body, my mental body, everything became a lot more stable, and calm. And then when I finished the pranayama practice, which would take me about 20 minutes, I was left in this really pure, quiet place, so that my mind was much calmer than it had been in my ordinary consciousness. And at that point, I was able to really hear what was going on inside of my consciousness and my deeper levels. And so I did that for about a decade. And my teacher stopped teaching, and I practised on my own for a long time. And then I came upon the luminescence practice. And so that was that forms the basis of my practice now, but in my podcast, my approach is, I have a group of people that I meditate with regularly, while I'm recording the podcast. So we practice the sahana. That's an practice with a Sanskrit Sanskrit word for practice. And then we do the pranayama, for maybe 10 or 12 minutes, that's just shortened practice. And then I do a guided meditation of some kind based on my own inner explorations. And so we might imagine a walk on the beach, we might go into the garden, we might do something that's a lot more just energy based with colour or sound. And following my own inner guidance, I take the listeners on a journey. So what, for me what happens is, in that journey, after having done the clearing of the pranayama practice, in that journey, I have an opportunity to meet myself, be with my own inner knowing and have an inner conversation. While I'm with this other group of people, we're all doing it at once. And this is something that I personally found extremely useful. When you're first learning how to meditate, you're looking for this brain state where your brain is quiet. So it's not your ordinary levels of thinking is deceptive. There are many levels that the brain can access. When you do it with other people. And they know how to access that state. It's as though you just somebody opens a door to this room and you just go right in, you're like, Oh, this is what everyone's talking about. This is this is really nice. I can find that meditative state, as a group consciousness with these other people. So as I make this recording with my students, then I put it out as a podcast. Other people can enter the room, the energetic container that we have created, and it makes it easier to find that meditative state. So if you can find a group, a podcast, or a group of people that are meditating Even if there's not instruction, it really helps to just sit in the energy field with others who have meditation skill. And it provides a container, a room that you can enter.

Tony Winyard 10:14

And so is the are the listeners, people trying to learn meditation or to improve or a combination of both?

Miriam Trahan 10:24

Well, I think it could be the meditation in the way that I'm teaching it with the breath access, you need to learn to do the breaths. So if people would listen to Mike podcast, for example, I would recommend that they begin at the beginning. And listen, because it's a progressive practice. If you pop right in, if you have experienced with pranayama, these are breath practices that are fairly well known in the yoga community, for example. So you may be familiar with some of them, I put them together in a very specific way in the fashion that I was instructed in, so that it has a very supportive way of moving through. So anyone can access this level of meditation from beginners to people who who would like to improve their practice, let's say you've been practising for a while and you're feeling like we may be a little stuck or you'd like something fresh. And you might have listened to an app. That's interesting. But this has got the immediacy of being a recording of many people practising. And it sounds a little bit like magic, but the energy of the group meditating imprints, somehow on the recording, so that when you access a recording like this, you are accessing that imprint. And for me, it gives an added layer an added dimension of opportunity for you to find success in the meditative field in the meditative state.

Tony Winyard 11:52

Sorry, how long typically would the duration of the meditation be?

Miriam Trahan 11:57

Well, the, my podcasts are about 40 minutes. So we do the breath practice, which as I mentioned earlier, helps to calm the mental body, it organises the emotional body, it brings you to a state of oneness. And then the meditation, the guided meditation itself is about 15 to 20 minutes, which sounds like a long time. But it really isn't, because you've prepared yourself. There's music playing in the background that's quite beautiful and very supportive. And so it goes, it goes by and you come out of the other end of it, and we spend a moment or two exiting. So there's a few moments of the end where you bring yourself back to your ordinary consciousness, that's very important to return to ordinary consciousness is you access deeper and deeper states of meditation, you need to become skilled at returning yourself to your ordinary consciousness, and not just popping right in and going about your day. If you do that, you may find you're dizzy or disoriented, a little spacey. And you can avoid those, those happenings by coming back carefully from your meditation. So my why podcasts are about 40 minutes all together.

Tony Winyard 13:14

A lot of people really struggle with a lot of people want to meditate, but they say that they really struggle with meditation and they forget or seems to be too it's going to take too long. I mean, there's a variety of reasons people come up with what what is it you think that makes it hard for some people

Miriam Trahan 13:41

we really don't value introspection in our culture, we value buisiness an activity and productivity. And I love being productive. I love the feeling of having puts only together and look, I did this and I just oh, I had a productive day. I really liked that feeling. And I definitely understand wanting to be productive in your life. And at the same time, there are there are things you can do inside a meditative state that provide a kind of, we call it working on things as energy. So what you do is you find the meditative state and you bring into it something that is of concern to you a project that you want to enfold a relationship you may be having difficulty with. And you just surround it with light. You let it soften. You listen to the situation, you may be at a frequency of beauty or harmony and these are spiritual technologies that you can learn to do. And then now this thing when you come back out of your meditative state, you will have produced something you will have made a shift inside of yourself and so then the practice This becomes integrated into your life, it's something you do that has real value for you. It's not just about sitting and being quiet. That's just the very, very beginning of a meditative practice. When you begin to really find these richer states of consciousness, they're so juicy, they're so wonderful, you're going to want to go back there, because it gives you so much nourishment. And sitting and just simply being is it is a practice that is not that valued in our culture, but it is changing, people are finding this value this nourishment in the practice. So I have, I have a few little things that I did in the beginning that can help you to get started and stay with it. One of the things I found in the very beginning was I found a piece of music that didn't have any words that didn't occupy my brain. That was long. There's plenty of meditative music out there on the market, easy to find

that I use the same piece of music every single time. And in this beginning, I was doing my I was learning my pranayama breath practice. And I played that same piece of music every time. So I'd sit down, I put on my music. And my body would say, Oh, it's time to breathe, and my body changed, it shifted. It's supported me in my practice, it didn't bother me, it didn't want to go out and do things, it was going to do the practice. And so I got a cooperation from my body. Just by playing the same piece of music every I said play the same piece of music for a year. Every time I sat for practice, that was the music I played. And I wasn't expecting this result, I wasn't doing it because someone told me to do this. I just did it because I like the music. And I found it soothing and supportive to my breath practice. But it accumulated over time, this effect of training my body to be ready for meditation and breath practice. Another thing I did. And this is really important, when you first sit down and you stop moving your your brain has a lot of important things to tell you. It wants to tell you about that list of things you need to get to the grocery store, it has something really important to say that you need to tell your brother in law because you forgot to tell him that thing when you were having that big important conversation. And so I put a piece of paper and a pen next to my meditation spot. And as I sat to meditate, if something came to me that I really felt was important, I stopped for a second I wrote down. Then when I returned to my practice, I knew I had written it down. So if my brain went back to it, it was like, oh, but I wrote that down, I can forget about it completely. I don't have to track it with my brain, I can just stop thinking about it. Because that that piece of paper is still going to be there when I come out of this meditation. And sometimes I would get a big download of like this and this and this and this. Okay, now I wrote all that down, I can go back to my meditating, because I don't have to keep remembering, oh, I don't want to forget that was important. It was important stuff. And then your ordinary mind begins to let go. And your deeper knowing comes into being. And then you can write that down. Sometimes I would come out of the meditation and write pages of really valuable insight that I come from, who I truly am onto that piece of paper. And it it became an intrinsic part of my personal journey. A way to access this deep stuff that I didn't even know was still there. Things I may have talked to my therapist about or discussed with a family member, you know that I thought I had really worked it all out. But here was this deeper component. So the music as a container as a support for your body, and the paper and the pen write these things down because they are important and your consciousness really wants to have this correspondence with you. And it really helped me to get past that roadblock of the ordinary mind into the deeper layers of my consciousness.

Unknown Speaker 19:26

We hope you're enjoying this episode of the habits and health podcast where we believe creating healthy habits should be easy. If you're looking for the fastest and most effective way to transform your energy and wellbeing, we invite you to join Tony for an upcoming habits and health workshop. This five week group workshop will empower you with tools to disrupt unwanted habits and make positive changes easy. You'll enjoy sound asleep, better energy, less stress and a happier mood. Well workshops begin on the first week of every month. And you can sign up now back to the Tony winyard.com. Now, back to the show.

Tony Winyard 20:11

I guess I mean, a lot of people think that they're meditating wrong, because they, they put so much pressure on ourselves. And, you know, they, because they think they have constant thoughts coming into their head and they feel they have to clear their mind completely. And this just, you just give it

Miriam Trahan 20:31

to you. They're trying too hard. You're working at it too hard. My my teacher, Dwayne Packers tells us that mastery is not how long you stay in the higher states, but how quickly you return. And this is these, he's a true master. And so his, his advice to us is just just pop back. So when I tell my students, if you have come to a meditative state, and you have really, really great meditative state and really have getting a lot of hours, then all of a sudden who you just fall right out. Next thing you know, you're an ordinary consciousness again, you're like, darn, okay. It really is kind of like riding a bicycle. It's like, well, you were pedalling along, and you were doing really well and you hit a little bump. And now you're kind of standing there with your bike, are you just gonna curse the bike, our net bike? No, you're just gonna get back on and start over, do exactly what you did before. Set your meditation back up. Again, soften and soothe listen to your breath, listen to your music that's playing go back, try to remember what it felt like to be in that meditative state. And next thing, you know, there you are, again. So it really is a practice, we really are practising a new way of being in consciousness, while it's ancient truly, but it's new to us, this new way of being in consciousness. And you will find that those intervals of those really high states become longer, richer and more satisfying. And the amount of time you fall out, becomes shorter and less important. Just don't, don't, don't yell at yourself. Don't curse the bicycle, just get him back on, pedal along, look at the scenery, listen, come back into your consciousness again. I think we're very hard on ourselves. You know, I think we have a lot to pressure on us internal and external. So that is happening for you. That is something that you can be aware of, be kinder, to you be more compassionate to you speak to yourself as you would your nearest friend, what would you say to your dearest friend, you wouldn't yell at them, you would say, oh, okay, I'll try again. You're doing great, it's gonna be fine. This, you know, take a breath, breathe out, that's the thing I tell my students a lot too is we hold our breath. And we breathe. It's very shallow, breath up in our chest, and to drop in and really exhale. Really empty of the breath. That's a technique you can do to find your meditative state. Again, return to your breath. And exhale fully along, complete deep breaths, and then rest in that quiet place for a moment. Before you return your breath in. If you just listen to the cool air coming into your nose, and the warm air going out, that's a nice little technique that's really easy, cool, dry air in warm, moist birth out.

Unknown Speaker 23:43

Soft.

Miriam Trahan 23:45

A lot of it's about softening, and so much of our society thinks tells us we should arm ourselves, we should armour, our consciousness and surrendering, that is a bit of a challenge for a lot of people. And that's why they may have this internal dialogue that they feel like they're doing it wrong. If you are sitting and attempting to meditate, there really is no way to get it wrong. There really isn't your started, you started and you sat Good for you. You made a try at it.

Tony Winyard 24:19

My one friend as well, when I'm listening to you speaking, it occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons why some people believe that they're not doing it correctly, is because I think it seems to me there's almost become this association with the breath for some people for meditation, especially with all the apps that are being used. And the apps just have a very, very simple focus on breath. And it's, it's, I think that I think there's a lot more to the breath and a meditation, I mean, they're so interlinked, and I don't think the apps really teach people that enough maybe?

Miriam Trahan 25:03

No, they don't, it's not possible, really, I mean, the apps my experience with them is that they have a pattern. And they're a good entry way. They're, they're really, really effective at getting people started there a nice support. What I like about the way that I'm presenting it in my podcast is that I am introducing the breaths, one at a time, teaching it very specifically, repeating it weekly, we do the same breath practice again. And again, these breaths are fairly straightforward. And they build upon each other so that you have more than just watching your breath go in and out of your body. So many of us have patterns of reading that are not particularly rich and full and natural. One of the things I do in some of the podcasts is we simply unravel breathing patterns that are not serving us shallow breathing, tight breathing spaces, we do a lot of breath exploration where we sometimes we lay on the floor and we put her hands on our belly and follow the breath in and out of the belly. So it's sometimes we put our hands on our ribcage and stretch the ribs, sometimes we tap our breath, in and out, tap, tap tap on our ribcage. So that gives you a variety of ways to access the breath, you become more familiar and intimate with your own breathing. And you begin to unravel some of the it's like a calcification on our breathing space. Most of us don't even a rib cage doesn't even move very much as we breathe. It's just kind of that's our whole breath. Your your breath, your ribs are attached to the sternum in the spine with cartilage. That's the same thing in your nose and your ears. So wiggle your ear. That's how your breath that your rib attachment should be. But for most of its it is much stiffer. So as we breathe, our hips don't even root they're supposed to rotate, and pivot and your whole ribcage front sides back, you can just sit and feel your ribs, put your hands on your ribs. Fill your ribs moving in and out, do your ribs move. And a lot of times, when people first begin to do breath practice, all of a sudden you feel like you forgot how to breathe. That is really common. People think Whoa, my breath feels really weird. Now this is this is not helping at all. So if you're sitting and listening to your own breath, and you don't have any instruction, and now your breath feels really weird now you're now you're even tighter than you were before. It's very common. It's because it's an automatic thing that happens for us we must breathe to stay alive. Our bodies thankfully will breathe without us even if we're sleeping. So when you override that with a conscious effort, and you're thinking about your breath is a little awkward right at first, so just move right through that don't let that scare you away. Breathe out, I can't say that enough. I think that a lot of us have a lot of trapped air in our lungs, we don't have a expanded breathing capacity. And so in order to fill your cup, you must empty it. And so if you're trying too hard to get a deep breath, and you haven't really completely exhaled. Now you're just going to get a complicated, agitated feeling. And that's not going to help your meditation at all. I have a little practice I developed that I call notice, soften and soothe. Notice how you're breathing. Just right now think about your breath. Notice how it's coming in and out of your body. Now as you're breathing and thinking about your breath and exhaling that nice complete emptying of the breath. Feel it round in with your consciousness and notice if there's someplace that you can soften. Is it your belly? Is it your throat, maybe close your eyes and feel your face gets soft. Maybe it's your brain. Pretend that you can smooth out all the surface of your brain and it gets really soft and smooth. And I notice if that's changed your breath in any way. Place your hands on your body, maybe Place your hands or your abdomen or on your upper chest or on your heart. Can you soften your heart What does that feel like? Is that scary? That it often can feel really unnerving to soften the heart and they'll say something soothing to yourself. I am enough.

I have enough, I have well being I am doing many things to improve. And they are enough. I like myself, I'm living my best life. Someone said that to me today, I'm living my best life. I'm hopeful that maybe one day I can live my best life. So when you notice how things are going, and you find a way to soften it, and then you insert into that softening something that suits you, that's a habit that you can carry with you. Anywhere you can do that drive in your car, you can do that in your office, you can do that. In a moment, when you're having a conversation with someone that's, that's stressful, or anything that's stressful to you. I like to cultivate these little moments, these little quiet moments. So meditation isn't just about sitting and doing this practice. Meditation is about noticing your consciousness as you move through your life, how are things affecting you, sometimes our breath gets really agitated, and there's not really anything going on, maybe it's in your head, something in your thoughts is agitating your breath, pay attention, it's telling you something, if your breathing is become shallow, you're going to get anxious. And that probably came from something you were thinking about. So if you can work your thoughts and that soothing quality, and your breathing at the same time, you start to reset that response. And you begin to notice what it is you're thinking about, and you try to reframe it in some way. And it's not always about finding a Pollyanna positive. Sometimes it's about meeting yourself where you are, this really bothers me, this really hurt me, I really am carrying this pain. My breath can help me trans, form that and meet it, maybe you need to be with that emotion, not just squelch it or put it somewhere else for later time. Maybe your your brain is trying to tell you how to be so that you can release it, or you can transform it. Or at least get it to a place where you can carry it and it's not disruptive to you. And these are all things that your breath and meditation practice brings to your life. It's not just about sitting on your cushion. It's not just about following your breath. It's about transforming your consciousness. And being that person that you really know that you can be living that life that you know that you can live kind of getting out of your own way. By developing these positive habits, and meeting yourself where you are not being judgmental or harsh to yourself.

Tony Winyard 33:11

Only, um, there was a book I read a couple years ago, called restoring prana by Robin, I can't remember her surname. And it was all about sort of the history of pranayama and so on. And it's fascinating all the you know, I mean, there's so many different breathing techniques in this book that talks about, you know, like the, the alternative nostril breathing, and and many, many more. And I guess, well, I wonder, do you think that for someone who is starting to get into the process of meditating and they're finding they're enjoying it more? Would you recommend someone explore more about pranayama or something else?

Miriam Trahan 33:59

I find that even really experienced meditators find value in pranayama. I might my luminescence Light Body group, we've been meditating together for many, many years, I've been part of the group for 15 years with some of these folks have been meditating together for 25 years or more. And a couple of those folks join my weekly meditation group. And those people are finding a profound shift is possible with breath. So these are very experienced meditators who are finding that doing a simple series of breaths, and it doesn't have to be a long complicated process. I like the tapping breath. I do the alternate nostril breathing. We have a retained breath where we do draw the breath, enter and hold the breath for just a moment. And then let it out. And also some very specific patterns of inhaling and exhaling that allow the breath to balance that when you do Do this as a practice for five or 10 minutes before you come to meditation. It changes how your brain is working. It organises your physiology and your energy fields so that the meditation is cleaner and clearer and more accessible. So yes, I find that even people who've been meditating for a while find real value in pranayama practice.

Tony Winyard 35:23

Before we started recording, we briefly discussed about the different brain waves that people go through beta and beta and Adi brainwaves. And I love the the description that you started to tell me about Sorry, could you tell our listeners a little bit about that?

Miriam Trahan 35:45

In the beginning, you'll access a field of consciousness that is just below your normal consciousness. And it's very delightful, it's a very pleasant place to be, it's a very pleasant level of consciousness. And as you practice over a period of time, you may find that your meditation just takes off and opens and expands is the kind of spaciousness inside of you like you become really large and roomy. And then, as your practice matures, you may find yourself all the way efos theta brainwaves, which is an extremely deep place for the brain. So one of the misconceptions is that you want your brainwaves to get quieter and quieter. And you really do want ordinary consciousness to stop kind of yakking at you, that's definitely an important part of it. But what happens with this theta wave is it's not slower, it's faster it has, it has a rising quality to it that is at once deeper and higher at the same time. And that is a really exciting moment for you and your meditation practice. And for some people, it takes quite a number of years to get to that place. But I think that the more people meditate, and reach that meditative field of consciousness for all of humanity, that it becomes easier and easier for people to find that energy. Sort of like the four minute mile used to be kind of a big deal. And now it's like zoom, people just zoom past that all the time. Humanity evolves. And we we learn, and we learn from each other. And we can learn from each other in these meditative space is in this inner consciousness realm, it's a real place. It's as though we really can walk into a room and meet others who are doing these practices, perhaps not know them by name, but recognise the field of energy. So as more and more people are able to access this theta wave brain state, it becomes more accessible for everyone.

Tony Winyard 38:05

Do you have any thoughts on things like by no beats and sort of holosync? And those sorts of things?

Miriam Trahan 38:13

I haven't done a lot of that myself. I have read a little bit about it seems really fascinating. And I think it is facilitative to this changing of the brain state that we're talking about. So for some folks, I think it would be a really useful tool. I haven't Like I said, I haven't explored it very much. But what I have read about it seems very promising.

Tony Winyard 38:40

What would well for people who are liking what you're, you've been you've been describing and they're interested to learn a lot more about this? Where would where's the best places for them to look to find more information on what you do?

Miriam Trahan 38:57

Well, you can listen to my podcasts. It's called Miriam's meditations. It's on Apple, Google, Spotify and a number of other services. It's, it comes with a new episode drops on Mondays, so feel free to follow along. I recommend you start closer to the beginning of season I'm in season one I'm about to transition to season two with some more advanced breath practice for my students. So do begin at the beginning because it is cumulative. I also have a website Miriam's meditations calm, where I have some resources and links to other things. I mean, I I just googled pranayama and I got like 1000s of links, there's a lot. There's a lot of very basic information out there. So I try to share stuff that's that's a little bit more along the way along the path, so that you can grow in your practice. You can learn these students need to learn the basics and start at the beginning and I Do you need to say this about breath practice? It is possible to complicate your own natural breath with too many different kinds of breath practice, it really is helpful to find an experienced teacher and follow that person's instruction, and stay with a particular practice. changing how you breathe is really powerful in the body, you change the acidity of your bloodstream, you change your carbon dioxide and oxygen balance. And if you have heart issues, our nervous system issues, then you should definitely get a little clearance from your doctor that this is the safe practice for you to follow. And the most important place to start is to find your natural breath. So I have a little book called Eddie's breathing that I published a number of years ago, that I would be happy to send to anybody if they will just send me a note on my website, and I will send you a copy. It's it's a little short, very simple beginning book, to bring you into an awareness of your own natural breathing, a lot of it is about unwinding patterns we've picked up along the way that we're not even sure that we have, we don't recognise them. If you put pranayama practices on top of a breathing pattern that's already faulty, you're going to have an unpleasant experience eventually. So it's really important to start at the beginning and find an experienced teacher and there are many experienced good experienced teachers out there. If you look in the yoga community, there are a lot of people teaching that are quite good. And then I'd welcome you to my my podcast anytime if you'd like. And you can write to me and ask questions. Have a link on my website?

Tony Winyard 41:54

Before we finish, Miriam is there? Is there a book that was particularly moved here?

Miriam Trahan 42:01

I thought about this summit. This is sort of tangential to a lot of what we've been talking about, it doesn't really have anything to do is browse. But I read a really powerful book recently called the quantum revelation by a man named Paul Levy, who is union psychologist and amateur physicist, I guess you could call someone follows physics. And he talks a lot in that book about the quantum field, and the power of this as an evolutionary step for humanity. And I believe in terms of meditation, that that's what we're doing, when we reach these deeper states, like the theta brainwave state we talked about a moment ago that we are accessing directly is a quantum field where anything is possible. And everything exists in probabilities. So it's a much more fluid place. And so what Paul levy did was he put together ideas of modern spirituality, and physics. And it was just a fascinating read. It was a really, I went back through it a couple of times. And the physics is very accessible. It's not formulas in mathematics, but the the flow of thinking that brought the physicists to their understandings, and how that mirrors what's going on in spiritual explorations time.

Tony Winyard 43:18

And finally, is there a quotation you particularly like?

Miriam Trahan 43:24

I had a conversation with a few friends recently about spiritual matters. And someone postulated the question, how would you describe spiritual practice in as few words as possible? And one person said, You're it.

Tony Winyard 43:45

That says, That's not very many words.

Miriam Trahan 43:49

So that's my quotation. You're

Tony Winyard 43:53

Difficult to have many less words than that.

Miriam Trahan 43:56

Well, if you want less words than that, I would just say be being is being is the deal. Be Here Now, Ram Das said that he was a Maori resident who passed away recently, he lived in Maui for a long time he was early Explorer. psychedelics in the 70s. Just a beautiful presence here now.

Tony Winyard 44:21

It's been forever with the lights. So thank you for sharing so much great information about meditation and breathing.

Miriam Trahan 44:31

Tony is really a pleasure to speak with you for your thoughtful questions.

Tony Winyard 44:40

Next week, Episode 23 with Grace Elizabeth and she runs a company called Total Wellness with Grace and she will talk a lot about body image and about health and wellness and witchery! She has a podcast called Weights, Wellness and Witchery. It's quite an interesting episode. She has a very good approach to things she really dislikes the word diet and, we get into the whole concept of body image. That's next week's episode with Grayce, if you enjoyed this show, please do share the episode of anyone you feel we get some some real value. If anyone is wanting to maybe to learn more about meditation, trying to make it into a habit that they do on a regular basis, and this could be the first episode for those of you have a great week.

Jingle 45:34

Thanks for tuning in to the habits and health podcast where we believe creating healthy habits should be easy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app. Sign up for email updates and learn about coaching and workshop opportunities at TonyWinyard.com. See you next time on that habits and health podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai