 It's great to be here. My name is Kylie Kwon and I am the founder, co-owner and chef of Billy Kwon restaurant in Sydney, Australia. For the next few hours I will be introducing some of the speakers and many of whom I'm very lucky to know. First up is Michael Miller who is the co-founder of the London Meditation Centre and New York Meditation Centre. Michael teaches regularly throughout Europe and New York also leading retreats across the world. He teaches the ancient technique of Vedic meditation in a way that is accessible and relevant to people living modern lives. Something that I can certainly attest to having attended a session of his back in 2016 during our week at Mad Jail. Would you please put your hands together for Michael Miller. Hi everyone. It's been a fantastic couple of days and so great that we're coming into this right in this moment having just eaten that amazing food from Rocio who of course spoke yesterday about meditation and in Ayurveda the science of health that comes out of ancient India they would say that the consciousness of the chef is as important as the ingredients and the preparation. The state that that person is in. So here we are infused with meditation food about to have an experience. Now the title up there was peace in the kitchen and so here we've been having amazing food and probably a lot of people have been having amazing drinks and now suddenly here we are at the wellness session. And some people this is the moment you've been dreading. I go oh no. Is he going to have beads? Will there be a big beard? Is that you turn to the person next to you? Do you think there's ice cream out there already? Maybe we can sneak out and skip this one. And I just want to say don't worry the worst is over. Just the title that that part is done. Peace. This is why people come to learn to meditate to find peace and they might not quite frame it that way. You know someone comes along and their blood pressure is high and they say I've heard meditation does a lot for that and great there's really good research on meditation that shows blood pressure normalizes. If it's high it comes down, if it's low it comes up. Someone else comes along and the CEO says I want to be more focused and engaged in my work and absolutely she discovers that when she learns to meditate her focused attention and her creative and critical thinking skills go up and she has that sense of peace that comes about from knowing you're doing your work in the very best way. Someone else Michelin star chef comes along and says things going well at work but home you know my ability to be in the moment and be aware and present with my family my child it feels like it's undermined by the other work I'm doing and they do start to discover that sense of I can be where I am instead of still back in the kitchen and there's a piece that comes from knowing you're being the very best for your family. Where is this piece? How do we create it or how do we find it? Where is it? Because it's easy to say ah peace it's inside man it's inside you just got to find it. What does that mean? So I want to do a little exercise to demonstrate for us all to have an experience of where peace actually is. So I'm going to divide the tent in half kind of right here so if you're on the line just lean one direction to the other decide which side you're on and there's our two halves and if you're at home streaming just lean one way or the other. So this half this half I'll come back to you just relax for a moment. This half in a moment I'm going to raise my hand and when I do I want you to make a sound and I'll tell you in a moment what the sound is and just keep making that sound making that breathe as you need to just make the sound for a little bit until I bring my hand down. And so the sound might be spelled O H H H H H H O something like this. Okay so when I raise my hand ready and go. Nice good yeah I'm back to you. So same I'm going to raise my other hand in a moment and I want you to all make a noise and just keep making that and breathe as needed and the noise I want you to make is a lot aren't to be really noisy scream yell stomp your feet really make a lot like so much noise like if a tour boat is going by filled with English people who voted for Brexit. They should be scared they should think Scandinavia is rising up to reinvade the British Isles this loud. Okay ready and go. Oh my god if you're at home I hope you didn't do that. The person in the next room is concerned. Okay that was perfect it was the Brexit bit. Okay in a moment I'm going to raise both my hands and make your particular sound until then your hand goes down this hand or this hand yeah makes sense right. Okay ready could you hear that when you're making that racket. Could you hear yourselves. Did you did you only start when when they stopped. No you were doing it the whole time it was there. There's peace it's always there. It's the baseline it's there underneath all the time it's just there's noise there's excitation. And this is stress this is stress in our bodies pieces here pieces inside that's the background that's the baseline of all of our experience but we've layered in stress on top. And we call stress different things anxiety irritation anger sadness depression over excitation mania boredom these are all different ways that stress gets expressed. But it's the same thing over excitation and it drowns out the piece that we have inside. And how do we find that do the opposite of excitation the excite and this is meditation that the technique that we teach research shows that when you meditate in just a few minutes you are resting two to five times more deeply than sleep. This is really significant the excitation. So let's do another exercise to experience this inside close your eyes before you close your eyes don't change the way you're sitting if you're kind of relaxed and leaning back this is perfect this is just the way to do it. If you're already sitting on the edge of your seat perfectly upright holding your hands like this stop there's no need to do that just be relaxed it's weird don't be weird. Just sit comfortably close your eyes don't feel like you have to be perfectly still if you need to shift and move a little bit this is fine. You're going to hear some noise the rain fantastic beautiful white noise in the background but some noise of people around you and a little bit of my voice but whatever happens fine there's no need to focus there's no need to concentrate. These are not things we're interested in I taught in Sweden a few years ago I said what's what's Swedish for focus they said focus. So how do you say concentrate in Swedish concentrate English Swedish poorly pronounced. Let your attention turn to sensation in your body somewhere in your body there's a dominant primary sensation maybe it's a little heat still in the mouth from that amazing. Spice at lunchtime means little ache in your head from your late night last night. Maybe it's just the feel of the weight of your body on that vaguely cushioned bench you don't have to hold your attention there just note that your attention gets drawn to a sensation. And then that stall or it's it starts to dissolve or shift a little and your attention gets drawn by something else another sensation little ache in the lower back. Funny hollow feeling in your chest a little tingle on top of your head. And again the attention starts to shift and when you notice other thoughts coming it's not a problem it's good thinking as a part of meditation tells us you're meditating correctly. You just notice I'm thinking I thought now back to the body. And the attention goes to the sensation as easily as lightly as a mote of gold dust lands on the pedal of a rose. Maybe you find your attention on more subtle sensation a little air moving across your face the warmth behind your knees the feeling of fabric on your upper back and now without changing without engineering. Notice the sensation the physical sensation of your breath is your chest rising and falling is your stomach moving pressing against your belt. Can you feel air moving from your nostrils across your upper lip just a little more deeply breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and again in through the nose. Keep your eyes closed if you have glasses on you can lift those up onto your head rub your hands together. Your hands rather create a little warmth I stay closed and then press the heel of those warm hands against your eyes and let the hands slide down your face and across your throat. And again rubber and cup those warm hands over your ears and then slide across your jaw and down to your heart eyes are still closed rub one last time and then drop those hands open into your lap drop your head forward. And slowly slowly as you're ready. Open your eyes peering down into your palms and when you're ready slowly raise your gaze. Take one minute 30 seconds each turn to a person next to you something not your buddy not your friend that you're here with but someone close by you haven't spoken to yet and just take 30 seconds tell them about your experience here from then go. Okay, fantastic. So some people felt tired. Who felt tired? Little dozeness coming you had no idea how tired you were until you slowed down till we quietened down a little bit some people felt distracted mind going other places this is fine. One of the biggest myths about meditation is it's training and how to not think that's like training and how to not eat the body is designed to think just like it's designed to digest. We're not going to stop that what we gave here was a little exercise to give you an orienting device stress resides in the body and when we do this what we call body feeling technique. And if you email Molina she can send you a PDF and tell you you'll do this but you'll send a PDF to anyone who's interested with little instructions for how to do this. We're tuning into the language of the body the language is telling us this is where the stress resides in the body and we want that stress out. We want it out because stress makes you old and stupid. Some people say stress is a little stress is good for you but not true it shuts down your prefrontal cortex you don't think clearly and it ages the body very very swiftly and none of you want to be older stupid. All of you want to be engaged in meditation makes you more engaged and more available and more dynamic you're not going to turn into some spaced out bliss bunny. Cross legged in your apartment while someone robs you it's cool I'm a meditator I'm here to give man that's not the deal you will find yourselves more appropriately responding. Rest is the basis of activity the deep rest of meditation is the basis for very very dynamic activity. And you do something do something with a little bit of regularity and you create a different experience inside of yourself you find peace that lives in here because we can't wait for it out here. You can't wait for your employees or your chef or your customers or that president over there or that company over there or anything out here to deliver it for us we've got to find it. We have to find it inside and then it spreads from us out into the world find peace inside to create peace in the world. Thanks everyone.