70: How This Ancient Practice Transforms Your Life | With Jeff Patterson

Intro:

Jeff Paterson: Yielding is a very deep concept, it's used in any kind of athletics or combat of arts, uh, it's used in strategy, in wartime scenarios, you can learn how to strategize and use this idea to get the advantage on people who are bigger, stronger, and faster than you. 

Michael Kummer: If you don't recognize that your wife is about to get mad, because you keep going down the rabbit hole of a certain argument or whatever, you're not going to be able to yield, right?

Jeff Paterson: And you know, it's so common in our lives where we get two miles down the road and we're still thinking about negative thoughts that are taking us off center. 

Michael Kummer: You mentioned energy before, um, and you know, making sure energy flows. Is this something that we can measure?

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Michael Kummer: All right, welcome back to the Primer Shift podcast.

Today, I have a very special guest who has dedicated over 36 years to mastering and teaching the art of meditation and martial arts. Jeff Patterson is the founder of Northwest Fighting Arts and Portland Tai Chi Academy and the Yielding Warrior. And his approach emphasizes the transformative power of these ancient practices, particularly through the concept of Yielding, which honestly I know next to nothing about Jeff.

It's an honor to have you on the show. 

Jeff Paterson: Hey, thanks for having me. It's honored to be here. 

Michael Kummer: All right. So let's dive right into, um, the core or one of the core aspects of your teachings, um, the concept of yielding. Uh, as I said before, this isn't a term, uh, that I've heard before, or a term that you might've heard before, uh, the audience that is, um, but in the context of martial arts, you know, between strength and power, where does yielding Get into the picture and what does it mean?

And what are the benefits? 

Jeff Paterson: Yes, so I had that question asked to me fairly often a Lot of times teaching the martial arts you get people with very strong personalities that want to come back They want to come in and learn combat, you know, they're very aggressive And so when you talk to them about yielding they think oh, that's weak.

You know, I I know I can make this happen Why would I want to give way to that? Right and Yielding is a very deep concept. It's used in any kind of athletics or combat of arts. Uh, it's used in strategy and wartime scenarios. And this idea of learning how to use yielding in everything you do in life can be extremely powerful.

I break down yielding into three categories. We have physical yielding, Mental yielding and emotional yielding. Physical yielding is the easiest one to understand and apply. It's the idea that I push you, you push me, whoever's the bigger, stronger person with the most leverage, eventually is going to push the other person over.

Michael Kummer: Right. With 

Jeff Paterson: yielding, instead of us trying to see who the bigger meathead is, when you push me, I get out of the way of that force, and now I can respond with less effort. You know, and we've been using this in the martial arts for generations. It's the only way that we can deal with somebody who's bigger and stronger than us.

is to yield to their force and maybe get behind them and choke them out or you lead them into a place where they're more vulnerable. And so, This is very valuable in that aspect, but it's also used in any kind of athletics, in any contact sport, in basketball, anything where you're applying any kind of physical movements against other people.

You can learn how to strategize and use this idea to get the advantage on people who are bigger, stronger, and faster than you. Now, in order to be good at physical yielding, A lot of things have to come into play. You need to be well rooted. The lower part of your body needs to be strong and flexible so you can change your central equilibrium without getting tight.

The body has to be relaxed, the breath has to be calm, and the mind has to be present. Now, it takes years and years to get to a high level of this. But from day one, by incorporating these meditative practices into your life, you start to become more in tune with all of these things that are going on inside of you, which allows you to be more effective in this idea of applying yielding in more of a performance kind of field, if you will.

And then once we start to see those things inside of ourselves, you We also start to see those things more clearly in other people. This is where we move into what I call mental yielding. And the idea of mental yielding is say, for example, we're having a conversation and I say something that unsettles you and I pick up on it right from the beginning.

And so it's very easy to adjust the conversation and keep us in a harmonious place. But say I'm not paying attention to that, pretty soon I'm so far off track you want to knock me upside the head. Right. Learning how to use yielding in all of our conversations is extremely powerful. One, you're being more considerate, which is something, you know, we should all just strive to do anyway.

But two, it allows you to be strategic in all of your interactions. And this is effective in relationships, in business, in sales, in negotiation. When you can learn how to guide a conversation to the point or the outcome that you want to see, with the least amount of resistance, this saves a lot of heartache on the other side in interaction with other people.

Then we have what I call emotional yielding and emotional yielding is very much like mental yielding, but it's with our own interpersonal conflicts. We think about oftentimes things will happen to us and we'll respond and we'll go down this path and we might get an hour a day a week down that road and Uh, maybe that wasn't the best choice.

But with yielding and our heightened awareness through these meditative practices, we're able to notice that first sign of imbalance or uncertainty and maybe take a step back and realize, uh, maybe this is a better approach and choose something that's going to save us a lot of time and heartache on the other side.

And you know, I've, I've been explaining this idea of yielding for years. I've been running my academy now for over 30 years. I've had thousands of students come through the academy. And one of the most common things I'll hear people say when I start telling them about yielding is that they'll say, ah, that makes a lot of sense.

You know, I use yielding all the time. And I would agree in that. I think everybody uses some degree of yielding all of the time. However, it's kind of like. You know, if you or I were to walk into a crime scene with a detective who's been on the job for 30 years, he would see things about the series of events in the timeline that I know at least I would have no clue of.

Meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people. that most people will never have a clue of unless they develop and cultivate some kind of meditation practice in their life. 

Michael Kummer: Right. That makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the main things that I understood from everything you just said is that it requires a lot of, um, being present and understanding what is happening in this particular moment so you can yield to something.

Because if you don't recognize that someone is. about to bulldoze over you, you're not going to be able to yield, right? If you don't recognize that your wife is about to get mad because you keep going down the rabbit hole of a certain argument or whatever, you're not going to be able to yield, right? And so, or, you know, just something very simple in the realm of nutrition, if you don't realize that eating that cookie is gonna, um, actually causes you to feel not great, maybe in your stomach, Then you're not going to be able to yield, you know, next time and say, you know what, maybe I'm going to back off here.

I'm going to choose a different route and not have that cookie. Right? Um, and I think that's a not recognizing what is happening in a given moment, I think is, is at the root of, of. A lot of issues, obviously, you know, we keep going, we follow routines, right? We follow certain patterns that have been ingrained maybe over decades without really realizing what we are doing.

Right. And, and so by following those meditative practices, and I guess then martial arts as well, you learn how to pay attention, to recognize, and to, well, yield or make a different choice than you would normally make. Is that a fair statement? 

Jeff Paterson: Yes, you know, and one of the things that I've heard people say through the years over and over again when we start talking about meditation is that I've tried meditation but it just didn't work for me.

I couldn't quiet my mind. You know, and somewhere along the way people got this misconception that Meditation is supposed to be this thing where we reach this state of Nirvana and we're in this blissful state and you know I've been meditating for 36 years I've traveled the world and trained with many Influential teachers around the planet and I've never once met anybody who doesn't get distracted Meditating, you're not failing.

You know, the idea with a meditative practice is, if you sit for 20 minutes, or do a movement practice, or a standing meditation, or whatever that is, and you get distracted 50 times, every time you get distracted, you use your breath, you use the posture, you use the movement, if it's a movement practice, to come back to center and focus.

And now you got 50 repetitions of being distracted and coming back and you do this all day. You're every day you do this for one month, five months, five years. Eventually you get so many repetitions. of learning how to, one, notice the distraction so you don't let it gain too much negative momentum, and two, have these tools at your disposal to help yourself come back to center.

Now, nothing can make you off balance. You know, you'll go through the day and somebody says something to throw you off, or you get stressed out at work, or whatever it is. It's very easy for you to come back to that central equilibrium, if you will, and approach things from a more balanced standpoint. And that's one of the many benefits of that, that we get from doing a meditative practice.

Michael Kummer: Right. So how does that work with being a warrior? You know, so let's say, you know, funny enough, you know, I've, I do CrossFit normally as my, and, and walking, um, and functional fitness in general, as my, you know, primary health and fitness routine. But I've, I thought that I'd like to incorporate martial arts as well, but predominantly for the sake of being able to defend myself, right.

If I ever have to, and to, you know, incorporate different movements, you know, that I'm probably not very good at, and that are just different from what I normally do. And I understand the concept of, uh, and I think I first heard about the concept of kind of using the force of your opponents to, to your advantage.

I think, uh, Aikido. uses that concept as well. Right. I remember from the old Steven Seagal movies, that's kind of, you know, what, what he did on screen. Right. Um, and I get that concept, but is there a place for a warrior, you know, to, to just, you know, use force? Is it always the yielding or is it gotta, is there a, is there a balance between yielding and then exerting.

a massive amount of force to get where you want to get, both from a physical perspective, but if you spin this, you know, into the mental and emotional world, how does that, you know, work? 

Jeff Paterson: Using force, obviously, in any kind of athletics or combat, you have to do, you know, a lot of times, The most conditioned athletes, and especially on the combat of sports, are the ones that are winning.

Now, that said, that doesn't mean that those, you could have the most fit person on the planet, and if they understand how to use yielding, and they can do this strategically, they still use their force and their endurance to win. But, think about it like this. It's kind of like if, You get somebody who's a professional linebacker and they're built like a, you know, just a brick house, you know, as strong as, as anybody could be.

Right. And they're coming straight at you. You may be strong enough. to fight that person and stop them from knocking you over. But what about if you just sidestepped a little bit to let that energy go by you, and then you hit them with as much force as you could at an area where they're weak. And now think about how much better and how much more efficient your energy is going to be used.

because you're being more strategic on how you apply it. So it doesn't mean, you know, a lot of times people think that yielding means being weak. It's not about giving way. It's about being smart and strategic about how you use your force. 

Michael Kummer: Okay. That makes, that makes sense. Um, again, from a warrior's perspective, how does I understand the concept and the benefits of meditation, you know, generally speaking for health and wellness, specifically for, for a warrior, for someone who pursues, you know, be it martial arts, or maybe even being a warrior in, in, in another, you know, context, how can meditation help to be more effective?

Jeff Paterson: So, so many ways, you know, with, with meditation and the meditative arts. It helps us to be more in tune with who we are, be more connected, be more present. It helps our response time. It helps when we get distracted how to stay focused so we can respond with a more educated response, whether it be in athletics or in business or in anything that we're doing.

There's, there's just so many different angles that come, you know, and in the meditative arts, we have what we call the five regulations. Regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating the energy, and regulating the spirit. All of these things help our performance. For example, regulating the body.

An example of that would be, think about maybe a time when you're sitting down at your computer and you've been there for three hours and your shoulders are rounded forward and you start feeling tired and maybe your neck's getting sore and your energy's getting depleted. And then think about another time when The most important person in your world walks into the room and your body perks up and your energy is strong and you feel great.

This is something that we can control all day, every day, just by how we regulate our skeletal alignment in the body. This is the first stage in any meditative practice is how do we hold our body? How do we correct our alignment? So we let the energy flow through the body and be able to build up momentum and get strong.

The second regulation is regulating the breath, and this is very scientific. You know, qigong is often referred to as the science of the breath, and there's literally hundreds of different breathing strategies, and we'll use them to get different outcomes. Because there's so many different breathing strategies, we kind of categorize them into Yin methods and Yang methods.

Yin style breathing meditations are often deeper, more holistic style of meditations, and an example of that would be, if you ever watch somebody sleep, their natural breathing pattern is a longer inhale, and a shorter exhale. And this is the body's natural way of bringing our conscious mind into our subconscious mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming.

So if you want to reach some of those benefits of that inside of the breath, which will help with stress and anxiety, it'll help improve our focus. We could use longer inhales, maybe softer retentions at the end of the inhale to help bring that energy inward. Without falling asleep, right? Then we have the yang side of the breath, and this is more aggressive.

This helps build our energy up, and an example of that would be if you ever had to push your car or you pick up something heavy, your natural instinct is to exhale and maybe put tension in the breath. Make the breath audible. This helps generate energy. It improves our immune function. These are things that you see a lot of combat athletes before a fight or an athlete before an event will use chanting or use their voice and their exhale side of the breath to help pump them up and get them ready for an event.

Michael Kummer: And 

Jeff Paterson: as we start learning how to use the breath as a strategy, this is very valuable in monitoring, are overall day to day states throughout the day. You know, everybody, I don't care who you are, you go through emotional ups and downs through the day. Some people are like a roller coaster, others of us maybe a little more balanced, but when you start to notice those points of being unsettled and getting excited, You can use the breath to bring you back down, or if you start feeling depleted, you can use the breath to bring you back up.

Now you can stay more balanced throughout the day, rather than going on these emotional roller coasters that take us off of our center and are very draining of our energy. Right. Then we have regulating the mind, and regulating the mind again is another one of those things that we'll be working on for the rest of our lives.

It's something that is a very deep practice and you know, we already talked a little bit about this in that, you know, when you get distracted, we learn how to come back to focus. You know, there's this story of these two monks that are walking down a dirt road after a big rainstorm and they come up to this Big mud puddle.

And on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful lady who's standing there in a white dress and she's crying. And the older monk, he yells across the puddle, Ma'am, are you okay? Can I help you? And she says, I need to be somewhere and I can't get across this puddle without getting my dress all dirty.

So he rolls up his pant legs and he goes to the other side of the puddle. He picks her up, puts her on his back, takes her to the other side, sets her down and she's off on her way. Him and the younger monk, they walk a couple miles down the road, and finally, the younger monk is just furious, and he says, You know we're not supposed to touch ladies, but yet you did back there at the puddle.

And the older monk looks down at him and he says, you're still thinking about that lady. I left her back there at the puddle. And you know, it's so common in our lives where we get two miles down the road and we're still thinking about negative thoughts that are taking us off center. Why can't we just learn to let them go and stay focused, right?

And so this is an idea of regulating the mind. Then the next regulation is regulating the energy. Okay. Regulating the energy is a very deep concept and it's something that, you know, we could talk for hours on, but when we have reached a competent level in regulating the body, the breath, and the mind, regulating the energy in the body is a very easy thing to do.

And then lastly, we have regulating the spirit. And regulating the spirit is very profound, and it's something that meditation masters will spend their whole life working towards. And it's something that, to reach a true stage of enlightenment, I don't know if it's even possible in today's society, but it's something that we strive for if you're in a deep meditative practice.

And a lot of times, practitioners will get little glimpses of it here and there, and But to truly be in that enlightened state, I just don't know if that's a possibility. But understanding these five regulations is kind of the core fundamental of any meditative practice. And once you have that at your disposal, so many benefits can come from pretty much anything we do in life.

Michael Kummer: Right. I find this highly fascinating and it all makes a whole lot of sense. Now, how does someone who has a job, a family, who is not a monk, you know, who's focused on only this and nothing else, how can we get, you know, how can we make this part of, of a, of a hectic modern I'm done working. I'm done having, you know, raising kids.

I'm done raising animals for food. You know, I just want to focus on this because there's so many benefits. How can we not squeeze it in? Because I think that that already sounds stressful, but how can we make this a natural part of our routine? So it doesn't become. A burden where we feel like, Oh, you know, I did it for two weeks, but now I can't do it anymore because I don't have the time, you know, 

Jeff Paterson: it's, it's a lot easier than one would think you don't need to be a monk and retire to a cave.

You know, uh, Dalai Lama once said that everybody should meditate for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should meditate for an hour. I love that saying, in that, you know, you don't need to meditate for 5 hours a day, but if you could just do a 20 minute a day ritual, and integrate some active practices and some philosophical practices, You could get a lot of benefits from that.

And now when I say ritual practice, what I mean by that is a time where you set time aside every day, just like you do when you brush your teeth. and do a practice where you look inward. Now, this is where a lot of people get thrown off because they're listening to these audios and they're watching videos and they're doing that for their meditation.

Those are great to learn a practice if you don't have a teacher to help you, but when you're doing your meditation. They're often referred to as the internal arch for a reason. It's meant to be a time where we can look inward, not listen to an audio or hear somebody telling us when to breathe or whatever.

We want to put those things aside and use them to help us maybe learn the practice. For our ritual time, we want to sit in silence or we want to do a movement practice in silence. Sometime where, we can really listen to who we are and pay attention to all those small connections through the movement that we're doing.

And this is how we reach a deeper state of practice. Now, if you're doing this for a minimum of, say, 20 minutes a day as your ritual, then you're doing an active practice or practices. And these can be done in 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes. There are things that we can do when we're walking down the street or standing in line at the grocery store.

And they can be as simple as some spinal rotations or maybe counting out 10 breaths or doing a simple movement practice. Something to just stay connected to the practice throughout the day. Because remember that the meditative arts aren't meant to be a hobby we do once in a while. They're meant to be a way of life, and we want to integrate this stuff into everything we do.

And then lastly, we have our philosophical practices, and those could be both active or ritual based practice. And so now if we integrate these three modalities of practice and start building an evolving life practice, around the meditative arts. We don't really need to spend a whole lot of time that takes us away from our other to do's, but we really start reaping the benefits of the meditative arts.

You know, and I I've been teaching for over 30 years now, and I've had thousands of students come through the academy and Of the students that listen to this and they do 20 minutes a day and they integrate these active practices, if they can do that every day for a year, I bet over 95 percent of them will do the meditative practice for the rest of their life because they'll see so many benefits that there's no reason to want to stop.

The ones that stop are the ones that never get the discipline and put the time in and really see what value is there. Now, I think that the most important thing for somebody new out there to do, before you start a practice, is sit down for an hour, maybe, and practice. And write out a list of whys as to why you think meditation would be good for you.

Maybe you want to improve your health, you want to improve your stress and anxiety, you want to live longer, to watch your grandkids grow up. Whatever it is that's really valuable to you, and put some thought into that. Because, I guarantee you, tomorrow's gonna come and your alarm clock's gonna go off and you're gonna be like, Ah, I'll just hit the snooze button and hit it tomorrow, you know, I'll take the day off today.

If you don't have some strong whys that are pulling you to make you, make this a lifestyle and who you are, it's, it's not gonna happen. And so I think that's probably one of the most valuable things for a new practitioner to do, is really take a little bit of time. and find a purpose for why you want to do it.

Michael Kummer: As far as finding someone to help you get started, you said it should be fairly easy. Are there are certain like vastly different methodologies out there as far as meditation is concerned? Are there maybe some that are more conducive, um, to lead to quicker benefits maybe, or, you know, easier for beginners or what have you, or does it, does, does it not matter?

Jeff Paterson: There are many different methods and When I talk about the meditative arts, I talk about sitting meditation, standing meditation, breath work, movement practices, tai chi, qigong, yoga, anything that incorporates that form, some form of a movement or still meditation within the practice itself. Sometimes you'll go to somebody that does one specific meditation and that's what they preach and they do and they think that everything comes from that and some of those can be good.

However, not everybody comes to the meditative arts for the same reason. You know, I break down the meditative arts into five categories. We have our more performance, athletic, or combative category. We have the therapeutic side of the training, the medical side of the training, the philosophical side, and then also the meditative or spiritual side.

And so, if you know, a little bit about why you're trying to get into the meditative practice. It's good to know somebody that kind of has a little bit of a holistic view of what all these practices are for, to help point you in the right direction and help you incorporate practices from ritual methods, active methods, and philosophical methods that will help you reach your highest level performance.

area. 

Michael Kummer: Right. Now, if someone wants to get started with meditation, I know you mentioned before, if you do this for a year, you'll, you know, every day, 20 minutes, you likely stick to it because there is no reason. You don't see any reason anymore to not do it. Uh, considering that all the benefits you have, you've seen, you know, thus far now, does it take a year to start seeing benefits?

Because I know that many people are probably not patient enough to wait for a year. They want to do something for 30 days or whatever the, you know, the timeline is and see some benefits. Is it reasonable? to expect benefits within a month, let's say, or within a couple of weeks. 

Jeff Paterson: Definitely, and you could go do a meditative practice in one session and notice the relaxation benefits and notice the peace and calm that could come with that, and you could see immediate benefits from it.

The thing is though, that doing a regular daily practice, Helps you reach deeper and deeper, more meaningful levels of practice. And so as you do this through time, eventually you get to a point where it builds up so much value and quality in your practice that you're like, man, I'd be crazy not to keep up with this right now.

You're not gonna, you're not gonna see that in your first session. Mm-Hmm. . But you definitely will see benefits right from the beginning of the practice. 

Michael Kummer: Okay. Um, you mentioned something before, I mean, you know, breath work. You know, I agree there's a lot of scientific evidence and very easy also to, to simply try it out yourself.

You know, I, I use breathwork when I get into the, you know, into cold water, you know, and you can immediately feel that it works, you know, and do a very quick before and after, and then you'll realize that how powerful, you know, breathwork is. You mentioned energy before, um, and, you know, making sure energy flows.

Is this something that we can measure? Uh, is this more philosophical? Is there, is there science behind, you know, energy, meridians, and all of the things that in the past, at least, I thought is You know, baloney. You 

Jeff Paterson: know, there is, you know, and I have, uh, I have this, uh, picture here at the academy and it's really pretty interesting.

It was created 1400 years ago and it's talking about detailed energetic circulations in the body. Now back then, 1400 years ago, there's no science to back any of this stuff. So you know, who knows where, you know, at that time, where it really came from other than. They were able to actually sense and feel these things because they made a map of these energies in the body that now science can track.

And it confirms everything they felt 1, 400 years ago. And so it's kind of like living proof that this awareness really does exist. Now, in the body, we have kind of two main, uh, energy sources. We have what we call our upper level energy, and this is from our oxygen carbon and oxide exchange. Now, As people age, and this is known through science through, through the years, that we naturally start to breathe more shallow and shallow as we get older.

Every day, we lose cells in the body and we replenish cells in the body. If we don't have a good healthy exchange of oxygen and carbon and oxide in the body, those cells that are being rebuilt in the body are being rebuilt not as strong and not as healthy as they were when we were younger. This one idea Harvard Medical School did a study, where they took, uh, elderly patients who were suffering from dementia and early Alzheimer's disease, and they put them into oxygen chambers and had them practice deep breathing.

And in a fairly short amount of time, Almost all of them, hands down, improved their memory function within 30 percent of what they were before they started doing this. So, that alone right there, as we get older, is enough reason to be practicing these lung conditioning exercises and working on breathing and deep breathing to help just reap that one benefit, let alone the benefits of other benefits we get.

Then we also have what we call lower level energy, and this is backed by science as well, in that it's a more of a bioelectric energy, and every cell in the body has a positive and negative charge. We learn how to pay attention to this and understand how that energy is moving through the body We use these some of these different meditative practices to work with these different energetic circulations in the body So yes, it is very scientific and you know, all of Chinese medicine is based off of this science And so it's been studied for years 

Michael Kummer: All right now besides, you know going out on me or maybe going on Google and finding, you know Someone who can teach you how to meditate.

Well, what would be? The first few steps someone can take to get started today and not press the snooze button tomorrow morning. You know, I think you mentioned write down why, you know, what do you want to improve, what is bothering you today? Right. If you don't have that, you're probably not going to follow through.

Right. So would that be the first step to get your bearings right? And to get your why's straight? 

Jeff Paterson: Yes, you want to have a purpose to what you're doing, understand the basic outline of ritual active and philosophical practices, find yourself a guide. If you like the philosophy that we're talking about right now, you could get a free copy of my book at theyieldingwarrior.

com forward slash book and it kind of goes into more detail on this kind of stuff. And also at theyieldingwarrior. com, you could get into our online program as well as our teacher training program and check that out. Um, if, you know, if you're looking for something that's in person in your area, You know, go and meet a few teachers and, and talk to them and kind of see what their approach is and, and see if it resonates and sounds right to you.

I, I would recommend, you know, trying to find a little bit of, of somebody who can give you an offer, more of a holistic approach that has more than just one focus so they can be a little bit more well rounded and maybe kind of give you a specific prescription of different things to do to help you accomplish what you want to do.

Until you can do that, uh, just start something where you're getting in the habit of doing a little bit every day. And you know, it's really an amazing life practice that if you dive into it and put your time into, we'll offer you endless benefits from, from the time you invest. 

Michael Kummer: All right. Now that was on a meditative, um, aspect.

What about if I want to get into martial arts? You know, there are different types out there. Um, is. Anyone, you know, a good start or the ones that are particularly good for, you know, supporting a meditative, you know, strategy, or if you want to get into, into actual fighting, you know, what is your take on the different martial arts out there and, and, and, you know, the pros and cons.

without going into, you know, the detail of every single 

Jeff Paterson: Sure. So I always tell people to follow, you know, get, get into the martial art that looks like it's going to be the most fun for them. You know, for example, you know, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is something I'm very passionate about. I love it. If you like the idea of being on the mat and rolling and, and learning chokes and arm bars, and that kind of gets you excited and sounds fun to you, then, then go do that.

You know, if you're looking for more of conditioning, maybe try some kickboxing or some boxing classes. If you're looking for, you know, you want to compete in MMA or you want to compete into, uh, boxing or Muay Thai, then you specifically know where to go with that. If you're looking for something that's more meditative, I would follow one of the more meditative arts like Tai Chi or Qigong or Bagua or Xingyi, something that's kind of driven more by that.

a meditative philosophy. 

Michael Kummer: In your opinion, what's the best, uh, martial art for just street type of self defense? 

Jeff Paterson: I think it's very important to know how to fight on the ground, but on the street, you want to avoid going to the ground as much as possible. Knowing how to use your hands and your feet are very important.

So, you know, I think a combination of both of those is the best. But, um, you know, for somebody just looking for some form of self defense and something fun to do again, I would recommend what maybe is the most interesting to you and just start there and then you can kind of get more well rounded, you know, I, I know like, you know, Bruce Lee's idea was putting together weapon based arts, hand and striking, kicking arts, standing grappling, and ground grappling arts, so you learn like the whole spectrum.

But to do that, you really need to invest a fair amount of time to be competent in all five of those ranges, right? So it kind of depends on what your focus is and what you want to get out of it. 

Michael Kummer: Makes a lot of sense. All right. Um, you mentioned already yielding warrior.com. Uh, any other places where people can find you if they wanna learn more to follow, to see what you are up to and, you know, latest tips and tricks or what have you?

Where can people find you? 

Jeff Paterson: Yeah, so all of the social channels, uh, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Um, you can find me through the Yielding Warrior. And remember, if you're want to check out a free copy of the book, just the yielding warrior.com/book. And, uh, you just pay for shipping and handling and we'll send you out a copy of the book.

Michael Kummer: All right. Very nice. So I'll make sure to include all of that information in the show notes. Uh, with that, we're going to wrap it up, Jeff. Thank you so much. It was very informative. Um, I really got, uh, my, my interest, uh, into meditation was definitely rekindled. Uh, I want to try to make this a part of my, I don't know yet morning or evening or whatever your routine, but part of my daily routine for sure.

Um, I've, the short time I've been doing is, and I've been, You know, maybe, maybe like other people as well, you know, when I sit, when I go, you know, back outside, take off my shirt, sit in the lawn, you know, for 20 minutes and just close my eyes and, you know, just feel how the sun feels and, you know, listen to, you know, our chickens, what have you.

I suppose that's, you know, sort of, you know, meditating. I'm present. I'm, I'm feeling, I'm, I'm trying to understand what is happening in a given moment, but there is I think room to take this to another level and to reap all of those benefits and to really make it a part of your, you know, as you said, everyday routine.

When I walk the dog, I can incorporate some of those, you know, practices when I, you know, do whatever, when I'm alone in the car, you know, there are so many opportunities where you don't have to take time out of your day. And I think, um, that's something that's, um, incredibly powerful for, for many who deal with all of the downsides of our modern life.

All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. 

Extra: In the next episode of The Primal Shift Podcast, we dive into the steps to turn dreams into reality. From setting clear goals to visualizing success, we'll share how to build momentum with consistent action and a clear timeline. Plus, we reveal a vision of freedom, a future centered on simplicity and purpose.

Whether you're working on health, career, or a personal dream, this episode is packed with insights to help you get there. Don't miss it. Your goals are closer than you think.