 Why should you meditate and do bread work on a daily basis? Well, let's find out. Hey, what's up, drag here, the founder of your inception. Today we're going to talk about two very interesting topics, meditation and bread work. Now, I've been meditating for a lot of time, for many years, actually. I started years ago when I heard about some benefits of meditation, but I wasn't really sure if meditation really works and everyone told me, that's like bullshit, it's really something you shouldn't do if you want to be a cool guy. And I was like, all right, let me do it and let's see what happens. And the first couple of weeks were really struggling. I was really struggling with trying to focus, trying to breathe in the way you're supposed to do it, trying to be focused on the bread. I was experimenting with different kinds of meditations. I was using different kind of apps that helped me during the first weeks of struggle. And I couldn't really see any benefits. But after weeks of doing, of learning, of improving, I started noticing a couple of things. So I became less anxious, I became more focused. Whenever there was a terrible situation happening, I didn't react immediately in a negative way. I was really calm and trying to think things through. If I was super late on a meeting, for example, it happened to me many times, I didn't really worry about it. I just accepted the state, I accepted what's happening. And then I just tried to find different ways of how to get over that. And eventually I was thinking more about how not to repeat this. And I wasn't really thinking about the negative effects that I would feel because of being late, for example. So I really start to think certain benefits. And obviously, when I talk to other people, other experts, by the way, today we have a guest joining us here, and he's an expert on meditation and bread work. So when I talk to different experts, I see, I mean, often they tell me that most people that meditate, for example, on a daily basis for a longer period, they're able to reduce stress, become less anxious, they're more calm. It's easier for them to control pain. They get certain cognitive benefits. They're sleep improves. There are a lot of benefits you can get from meditating. How about bread work? Now, you probably heard, or I guess you heard about Wim Hof and the Wim Hof Method. He's an expert on breathing and he does all the crazy stuff. Like he does bread exercises in the winter outside without wearing a t-shirt, for example. And what he can do with the method he teaches is he's able to get in a totally different state of mind by doing just a very simple bread exercise. And when I tried it, I was really surprised. You can actually get high just by breathing. It's really something I didn't expect to happen, but it happened. So that's one of the exercises I try to do on a regular basis. And there's another one, whenever I'm stressed, I try to put both hands on my heart, look down and breathe slowly and try to feel the heartbeat. And this really calms me down. So bread work is really important for different benefits. Again, you can relax. You can, as I said before, you can get in a different state of mind, which really is a great thing if you're into biohacking. You can push yourself over your limits. If you live in the framework, you can easily go out of the box. So it's really, there's two things, those two hacks are really easy to do, and you get lots of, lots of benefits. Now let's get over to Jesse. Jesse runs a very popular YouTube channel called Midwestern Method, and he teaches bread work, he teaches meditation. He's really expert in that. I'm gonna give the word to him and let him do the talking, let him share some cool benefits you can get from meditating and doing different kind of bread work. Hey Greg, thanks so much for having me on your channel and welcome to the Midwest. My name is Jesse and I've been teaching meditation and breath work now for many years. And one of the things that we always start a session, anytime I do a workshop, I always start with the joke that meditation is the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is sit there and don't think about anything. And of course, obviously it's not that funny of a joke, but the point is that it's difficult to do that. It is difficult to quiet that neocortex, that thinking, problem-solving part of our brain that gets us through every day, right? It's the part of our brain that's responsible for language, for problem-solving, for driving all of these calculations, the infinite things that we do that we use that part of our brain. We're trying to quiet that part of our brain. So it is something that is quite challenging. I think a lot of people think that whenever you sit down and you close your eyes and you get in a meditative state that you are going to somehow, there's some kind of woo-woo magic that happens. And that's just not the case. Meditation is something that is a practice. It's something that even I, after doing it for years, I have not perfected it, I just continued to practice it. So it is something that can be frustrating because oftentimes thoughts will creep in, and oftentimes we're just, we have so many things going on that it's difficult to get into that relaxed state, but not a sleepy state. We don't want to be in a sleepy state because we don't want to sit there and fall asleep, but we need to be relaxed. Now there are some supplements that are out there that can help with meditation, but the one supplement that I recommend most often is L-theanine. L-theanine is something we find in green tea in small amounts, and it's responsible for giving us kind of that in-the-flow state feeling. That state of zen, if you will. If you've ever had green tea, you know that there is a certain mental state that kind of comes over you. Well, L-theanine, whenever you take it separately, you can take between 200 and 400 milligrams of L-theanine, and you can get in a very awesome flow state. It's perfect for sitting down and having meditation. So in addition to L-theanine, you can also modulate your breathing. Breath modulation is something that only humans can do. That's something not a lot of us know, right? Only human beings are capable of breath modulation. When you go on a jog with your dog, you are the only one who can decide to hold your breath. Your dog can't do that. And the theory is that we developed that capability when we learned how to speak, when we evolved the ability to use words and language. And so if you just think about what I'm doing right now, I'm having to modulate my breathing in order to make the words work and in order to speak, right? And that would be really weird if I had to time my words with my breath. So that is the theory behind how we are able to do breath modulation. Well, the interesting thing is the part of our brain that also determines breath, the part that allows us to control that breath, is very close to the part of our brain that determines state. So we are able to put ourselves into a parasympathetic state by modulating our breathing. A parasympathetic state is a state of restfulness and relaxation. We want to be relaxed when we're sitting there meditating. So a breathing technique that you can use is a one-to-two breathing ratio. So for every one second that you inhale, you'll be exhaling for two seconds. So for instance, maybe you inhale for three seconds. So you're inhaling through your nose, one, two, three. You'll exhale for six seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, and so on and so forth. Now what this does is it signals to your brain that you are in a safe place, that you don't need all that adrenaline. You can just relax. And that is going to help you to get into that calm state. So you're ready for meditation. So you're ready to let that all the thoughts and all the problems and all these things that that you're dealing with throughout the day, you're ready to let those go. So I highly recommend althianine to help you get into that state. So whenever you sit down, maybe you just have had a crazy day. Maybe you're worried about something and it's really difficult for you to get it off your mind. Althianine can do a lot to help get you started. And then once you sit down, once you're getting into that state where you're like, okay, now it's time to meditate, focus on your breathing. In for one, out for two, that ratio. And what you're going to find is, as you get more and more relaxed, you're going to notice that maybe you can inhale for four seconds and exhale for eight seconds. Maybe you can inhale for five seconds and exhale for 10 seconds. It's just going to help you get relaxed if you do this. Okay. So try it out, see what works for you. Greg, thanks so much for having me on your channel. It's really an honor to be here on your own section. Back to you. Thanks, Jesse. I'm super happy you decided to join us today. Thanks for sharing some really cool stuff. I can't wait to try some more things. I knew about Althianine being very popular, very effective and tropic, but I never thought about it in combination with meditation. So yeah, that's very, very interesting. So again, thanks for joining us today. Guys, thank you for watching. Keep you any questions. Don't forget to ask me or ask Jesse directly. Don't forget to follow my channel, his channel. Subscribe to Bollywood channel. That would be super great. And guys, I hope to see you soon again. Take care.