How to Stay Calm, Focused, and Resilient When the World Speeds Up with Ishan Shivanand

hey everyone welcome back to make it happen mondays where we talk about sales business entrepreneurship personal growth mental health and everything in between with guests who i truly respect and i think make a positive impact on the world around us now this week's episode is definitely a little bit different and i'm going to be up front that this is a bit of a selfish one for me with everything happening in the world right now with all the ai with the economy with all the pressure that we put on ourselves i've been looking for ways to calm myself down and regulate a little bit better and also just be more mindful so i reached out to someone who i think can help and hopefully help you too dr ishan shavanand is a mental health researcher the founder of yoga for immortals and a best-selling author he was born into a 21 generation yogic lineage and spent the first 20 years of his life in a monastery in india like born into it and this wasn't a weekend retreat this was 20 years he trained in martial arts breath work and meditation under his father who is one of the most prominent spiritual leaders in india he's now a research fellow at stanford his clinical research has been published in frontiers in psychiatry and he works with organizations including google mayo clinic and the u.s military so we get into what actually happens in a monastery for 20 years which i was fascinated with the difference between numbing and real relaxation which is something i think every high performer needs to hear and why the breath work and meditation protocols he has developed are showing measurable results and anxiety and burnout within weeks not months he also draws a direct line between what he does and what we do in sales and the idea that selling healthcare and even religion are all about the same thing helping people who may not want to be helped i hope you enjoy this conversation as much as i did let's make it happen hey real quick if you heard me last year you know i stopped 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an exclusive offer go to otter.ai forward slash jb sales to learn more and start selling smarter today ishan shavana what's going on my friend how you doing today i'm doing very well very happy to be here hope you're well as well yeah i'm very well my friend this is uh i'm been looking forward to this conversation uh for for a lot of reasons i think more selfish than not uh when it comes to my ability to calm myself down here in a lot of ways based on what's happening in the world right now uh so hopefully the audience will enjoy the conversation but this one is going to be a little different uh than a lot of the conversations i typically have with sales leaders or executives is you know about drive and success and what it takes in your process and all these fun things but this one's going to be taking a step back to to understand how we can regulate a little bit better and and be a lot more mindful to handle a lot of the world's stresses that are that are coming down on a lot of us right now so i'm really looking forward to this conversation what um as i do with all these uh podcasts here you know there's something that we can learn about people out there on linkedin or whatever it is but then there's the growing up factor of who made you know how'd you become you and you have a very unique uh background and you spending 20 years in a monastery and being born into the shivyag uh sanatan tradition with your dad as your mentor and and one of the most prevalent yoga instructors on the planet so could you walk us through first of all growing up uh and and the influence that you had and then up until you went into i think it was what 20 years in in a monastery uh because i'm very curious what happens in that monastery and how you learned you know what you learned but up until that point talk to us about where you grew up how you grew up what the influences were and then let's get into the 20 years and then we'll jump into where we are today so it's very interesting um if i talk about the monastery now i have a frame of reference because now i have lived out of the monastery as well so when i was in the monastery that was life so i didn't know anything else and it was beautiful in a sense because it was a lot of repetitions and uh discipline so if you look at nature nature follows a circadian rhythm the bird will do what it needs to do in the morning and then it will return to its nest the river flows in a set pattern the sun goes up then comes down the moon goes up it's it's a very beautiful dance of nature and humanity um goes against this dance imagine a set of people that want to be in this dance with nature that wants to flow with nature that wants to flow with the sun and moon as if nature itself was the dancing partner and that kind of a life is very beautiful it's it's it's you finding your place in a broad infinite cosmic system and then that's what life was life was a beautiful purpose that was given to you life was measuring your evolution life was understanding uh beautiful concepts about your own being your own body and when it comes to influences there were definitely people around me that were better than me and i was always in awe of them when it comes to body when it comes to mind what they could do what was better what is better sorry to interrupt but like what did better than you mean because i think better is a relative term better at certain things better at mindfulness better at connecting let me understand that a little bit so let's take an example of martial arts um a person would be extremely strong so we we did this exercise with mudgers so mudgers are these strong clubs and they are ancient so in india uh in warfare we used to have tanks in the form of elephants now you can't take down an elephant with a bow and arrow or a sword so we used to have these clubs these maces a heavy heavy like 100 kgs which is like about 200 pounds and you have to make them move and then you were like the anti-tank unit and and when we would wrestle or when we would do certain uh yogic tradition exercises we had these martial arts so so you know i could only perform with a small mudgarh and then i had these crony yogis that would just come and they had such control um of their prana their life force energy that they could take the heaviest mudgarh and they didn't have these big big muscles that that you see in bodybuilding tournaments they were just normal looking people like you and me and they would pick that up and they would do all these things for and they would go in a trance so it's not like you're doing it for 10 repetitions putting it down taking a breather they could do it for half an hour one hour i'm looking at them and that's what being better meant and i thought to myself that one day i want to go to that level or or when it comes to breath work exercises so there is this tradition of mastering your breath because i grew up in a desert that there is very fine sand you know when you when you look at sand dunes it's very fine sand so what these guys would do is they would bury their face in the sand and you have to breathe in a certain way because if you breathe very fast you you go the sand goes in when you go if you breathe very exhale very fast then the sand goes in your ear no so it has to be very subtle it has to be slow and steady complete mastery over the nervous system and they would do that and i i i saw some of the practitioners they would uh do it for 10 hours 11 hours and i thought to myself as a kid i i need to get to that level wow that's what better meant and and i i like that i like that i liked having role models around me yes was when did you go into the monastery if you don't mind me out were you born into it or were you was there a point where they you kind of when you were five years old ten you know ten years old we were like okay now you're in the monastery oh no i was born in it i had no choice i would love to take uh uh credit that you know at five years old something happened and then i took a conscious decision no no they were born into it yeah um before we move forward on that can you help me what was the definition of happiness at the monastery because i i and i asked that because i think you know happiness is a relative thing people chase it or want to be happy and there's there's content and then there's happy and i'm just curious how from a monk standpoint being one with you know the earth and and all of it around and working with nature and dancing with it is there a concept of happiness or is is it being is happiness so these guys have done phd on happiness there's no such one word happiness they call it anand anand means joy okay and then there are various versions of joy out of that five are the main versions of joy and out of that the most important joy that one should move towards or strive for is called sat chit anand and sat chit anand means the joy that comes from inside okay so the happiness that comes from inside so they they divide joy so the joy that comes from having something the joy that comes from being with a woman or the happiness that comes from achievement they say this this all is temporary joy it's is joy that can be taken away it's an illusion it's not real yeah so they say that the one joy that you must strive for and all of the yoga practices and meditation practices is for sat chit anand that that it's coming from inside irrespective of what's around you irrespective of what's happening if you are able to access that the one that comes from within then that's that's the mastery and and that's what they teach so so the key word is sat chit chit means consciousness sat means like mind and anand is the joy so that that which is coming from within me is real everything else is uh fake or temporary is fear fake or temporary in that construct fear is a projection of my own beliefs my own they call it sanskaras so sanskara means a sum total of my experiences conscious and subconscious so subconscious can be an experience that which is forgotten or which is buried deep down inside and because it is an unresolved emotion it manifests somehow in my behavior in my actions in my choices and fear is a projection of what is unresolved within me and that's why you'll see fear is subjective i would give therapy to people um as part of my practices and it always surprised me a person could come to me and say that i'm afraid of cockroaches and it was surprising because cockroach doesn't have a venom it doesn't have teeth it can't do anything and you know like a big woman someone coming and saying i'm afraid of a cockroach you could just step on it madam and the cockroach will die but yeah we are afraid of it and then there are some people who are adrenaline junkies they should be afraid of all those things and they're not and it's so very subjective that uh society can uh influence you to be afraid uh create cognitive biases and judgment and it's all about that unresolved sanskara that you have inside you that makes you limit the world based upon your own understanding so again it comes down to the concept of satchit your own being how are you processing your own thoughts and emotions so was there in the in the environment of the monastery with everything being harmony or focused ideally on i am understanding harmony and again my uneducated knowledge of it um was there fear for you in that like did did you uh did you were you afraid in that in that environment knowing that you had other people that challenged you you had other people that you looked up to but was there a manifestation of fear in that environment i'm curious based because of how different it is than this environment where we get influenced by every social media every email every commercial that we see and our part and our friends who are scared you know and not in into that environment as well so were things that was there fear so simple fears like uh fear of getting whooped uh if i didn't do something right but i don't call it like a big fear if if you're saying something that influenced me more than fear it would be guilt okay of not uh being enough or not living up to the expectations of my teachers so that was a much bigger uh motivator because culturally i think uh that is more relevant because the thing about whooping is after some time you just get used to it and because we were doing a lot of martial arts and and in this monastery the the physical fitness was a big part of it so you get used to whooping it's training it's training it's not even whooping it's training so it's it doesn't really create fear inside you but if there was some form of fear it was the guilt-based fear that what if i wasn't enough or what if i couldn't live up to the expectations of my masters and that sometimes motivated me uh till i started to realize that i'm enough and i'm just competing with myself but yeah in the beginning that was there yes okay and that i think that important point of you're just competing with yourself and i think not enough people understand that you know when it comes to competition and everything else like your number one i always tell reps that i work with and train and everything it's like your number one competitor is you period it's not if you lose to a quote-unquote competitor it's you lose you lost because either a you weren't good enough or or b they were better and you need to figure out what that was you didn't lose to a competition you lost because of something different and owning that is really important um so with you you know at a certain point you got to the you you wanted to work what was the catalyst for you leaving the monastery was it a conscious choice was it a a progression through the process what was the catalyst there so uh in my book the practice of immortality i write about this i write about so many times in the monastery people would come seekers seekers seekers would come and these would be the seekers who live their life and some of them are looking for escape because they have been jilted by life they have been burnt so they they want this place a happy place a place that's like a it's like a spiritual embassy where they want to live out their days and be free from everything the world threw at them but then there were some people the ones who motivated and inspired me they were the ones who were looking for answers that yes life was tough but they had not given up they they wanted to rise to the challenge and they wanted you know like when we play a game we go on a side quest to find the correct weapon or to level up yeah and then go back and and then slay that demon so these were the people that would come to the monastery to level up and then i would talk to them and they would talk to me about their challenges and they would tell me how big the world is how vast its challenges are and and i would think to myself that if the world is there what am i doing here and what's the point of knowing so many things and if you can't do something with it and and that thought went in the head that that seed went in the head and you know i talk about the crazy thing like when i was very young there were these two american ladies that came susie and barbara and and and silly things like they gave me a snickers bar and i never had that before and it was so nice it was like immediately reading about joy and happiness and then each fight of that snickers bar gave me the enlightenment that buddha talked about and and for months i was thinking about the snickers bar and and how so when my teachers would say meditate on joy i would think about having the snickers bar and so and then i thought that the world has that the world has sneakers why are those crazy lady coming to us to learn meditation you have sneakers so i wanted to explore i wanted to explore that was one motivation i wanted to help because many times i would see these seekers they would come and they would change and then i thought to myself that it would be so nice that if i could share what i had but more than that i think it was curiosity curiosity that what is out there i want to see that that brought me out i love that and so then you went to get your degree sorry when my notes go did you go into university at that point oh no sir that all happened much later the first the first few years was um me traveling the world okay and uh because you have to understand i have no resources i'm a nobody i'm a nothing right yeah so um i would teach i would teach so my congregation my uh the the people that associate with my lineage uh i would go to them around the world around india and i would teach them um because they really coveted me as a resource because generally when you wanted to have exposure to such teachings again you would have to go to a place and learn and since i was the one who was ready to travel it was a big deal because uh something like that is very rare so i was uh grateful enough to be invited to almost every single country under the blue sky and i traveled and i taught and i traveled and i taught i learned but then after six years or so of that i realized that i'm hitting a wall because um i would do retreats five day retreats six day retreats and people would come and and they would benefit from it but then i realized that six days of working on yourself versus 360 days of torment and torture of a bad lifestyle it doesn't go away yeah so 300 days of toxins and and five days of detox yeah it's not the way to go and then i i i wanted to know understand that where is the problem so for a student the problem would be in the in university institutionalized uh where in the institution itself we have made structures in such a manner that it is detrimental to one's mental health one's focus one's edge one state of mind when it comes to the professional setup it is leading to a state of burnout so changes need to happen on an institutional level on a policy level so then i wanted that how can i bring real change where it's not me helping people in that retreat environment but in the institution itself where they are working or studying that these protocols and structures can exist and i wanted to do that but then the wall that i hit was that what is my credibility how can i go out there and and ask institutions to change their um methodologies and that is where i got into research so i partnered with doctors i partnered with universities and and we started to re do research on insomnia uh anxiety burnout depression and that's from where my academic journey began yes fantastic yeah because then you went i i mean you had a you you a lot of academics right uh you got a dva from swiss school of business management in geneva research fellow at stanford adjunct faculty a head of yoga yoga sciences at aria university so you caught the bug as far as uh education is concerned and what was it about the learning and the research that that balanced your your previous knowledge was was there anything that you did in this research that i guess what was the the surprise what was the hunger like what were you searching for in that research that was really important for you to help translate what you knew to other people the hunger the hunger would be to find systems that could be easily placed in a person's life okay the monastery asks a lot from you it asks you to leave your home it asks you to leave your identity and it takes away a lot it gives you a lot but it takes away a lot a normal person cannot live that life a normal person requires set systems that can easily be integrated into their lifestyle and that integration has to be subtle like like how a glass of milk you can just mix hershey's chocolate and it just disappears and the milk becomes chocolate this it's simple so what were the systems that were evidence-packed what were the systems that could easily be integrated and and and that was the hunger to leave that which is unnecessary and to find the core it's it's it's like it's like the chopper motorcycle world war ii that what what can i cut out from the motorcycle uh so that the motorcycle become as lightweight as it can and still give me that speed and performance and function so chop this chop this chop this until you have that that perfection and then uh the outcome data keeps on coming back uh so so when we had that system and then we applied that system in in various um professions and saw the outcome data that was the the bug so to sort yeah i've always been a a kiss fan right keep it simple stupid like you know and i would say how sales reps were pretty simple creatures like you you don't make it too complex for me because if you make it too complex could you repeat that for me that was nice yes it's the it's kiss uh k-i-s-s keep it simple stupid keep it simple and stupid i am no no keep it keep it simple stupid so basically like stupid ah okay so yep just basically like hey talk to me like i'm a five-year-old you know like i do with ai these days i'm like tell me like i'm a five-year-old explain it to me like i'm a keep it simple because the more complex you make it the less likely i am to do it and but that's why a lot of it is like getting people kind of hooked on this little quick thing that makes a difference to then get them indoctrinate not indoctrinated but get them open to doing the harder work which is the systemic change in behavior and everything else but if you don't give it to them that that hook if you will to get them into it and then see the benefit in the short term it's almost never going to happen that is something that i i actually am i'm still trying to learn because i think that is a very western tradition and uh like when i look at the bestseller books uh they just take that one key hook yep and then all of philosophy is is molded around it like mel robbins let them like you just take that that thing and and and that goes into the imagination of the reader and and i have that problem because i come from this ancient culture and there's so much knowledge and there's so much to to give and and sometimes when i'm working with my publisher and i'm working with with an american mind they say what's the hook and then i come back with the 70 pages and 100 paragraphs and they say no no no no no no shot it down to a parable or shot it down to to this one thing and i'm still scratching my head on it but i learn i'll i'll kiss there you go see it's well and it's also if you think of the you know in the social media too right the quite frankly the more i study about social media the most important component of your post whether it's written or video is the hook because if that first sentence doesn't get me interested in this in i'm not going to read the rest of it so you don't want to do the bait and switch where it's like you say something just to get someone's attention just to drive them in but there's an art form of saying something to get to have somebody be like wait what stop for five seconds on the scroll and watch the rest of this video or read the rest of this you know that's why you always see the tldr like too long don't read versions of a lot of people's podcast like you know books or whatever because it's like i just i just want to see this and if i'm interested enough in this then i'll read the rest of this but unfortunately the vast majority of at least here in the western americans we just you just want that there was a very sad study that was run a while back of uh when this was when twitter was really was actually twitter and um they did uh it was this group that only published the headline only just the headline and if you clicked on the headline it brought you to a page that said we're just running this experiment we just want to see how many people actually read like click on it before they share it and it was like 72 percent of people who shared never even clicked on the title to see if it was valid to see if there was a story behind it they just read the headline which is the challenge the blessing and the curse here of attention like we have very limited time to get it and unfortunately a lot of people don't even take the mental bandwidth to to follow through on it and they just recurgitate the information which kind of brings me back to what you work with people on so when it comes to slowing down because i think that's a lot of you know a lot of what i read and what you do is from you know yoga or mindfulness or whatever it's it's really just slowing down so talk to us i mean you work with a lot of elite performers now what do you what you work on them with and what what was yeah talk to me about kind of what you tend to walk into and what do you tend to work on people individuals organizations with right now and then i want to uncover a little bit of how you do it so when it comes to what i do one of the most important thing that i'm trying to teach is awareness whenever we are talking about stress or whenever we are talking about high performing individuals because people are overlooked many times whenever we are talking even about artificial intelligence behind that there is always the human component and we can keep on developing infrastructures and we forget the human component that is where problems happen one of these examples i was reading in history is about the dynasty that made the great wall of china and it had so many weapon systems and it had extraordinary technology and when the wall um the system was defeated they didn't break the wall they didn't climb over the wall they didn't defeat um the technology they just bribed the soldier so that was the critical point of failure you just bribe the soldier you can make the big wall you can have like cannons and uh you can have primitive gunpowder but you forgot the soldier and and that's the human component and we forget we forget we create such exorbitant technologies the human component so how can we develop the human component at par with with the infrastructure of artificial intelligence that that we are developing and when it comes to the human component one of the key factors that i'm teaching is awareness resilience stability balance okay so resilience would be very very important because the opposite of resilience is burnout yeah burnout is one of the big key points in today's world it's leading to absenteeism it is going to have an exorbitant economic impact in the future we are seeing burnout and the professions that i deal with frontline workers uh healthcare workers there there is uh the graph of burnout is exceeding every single year and that is going to have an impact we we need doctors we need frontline workers and if you don't check burnout there is going to be a problem and resilience is something that can be developed the mindset can be trained for resilience using these protocols that i'm talking about then awareness so a lot of the time stress is doom prophesizing about future or or not being able to let go of the past and most of the critical work that i'm doing it is in the the present moment and then we see this a lot uh especially when we are working with um so for example i was working with this um enterprise in england shreem enterprises and and they work with cyber security and hacks and um again when the hack happens it's always targeted at the human component of the infrastructure and when that hack happens when that attack happens if at that time the person loses his stability he loses his awareness that is the time a lot can be done by the nefarious element so how to maintain cool how to be aware how to be balanced at that point of failure is again something that can be taught to that human being and focus focus is again a skill focus is again something that needs to be developed and and over time we teach that so these you can you can think of it in a way as human potential development just like we train our muscles or like in martial arts we we make our bones stronger we make our ligaments stronger we make our muscles stronger so we can perform and strategize in in a manner that can help us win a fight the same as with the mind and the spirit how can we deal with our emotions how can we deal with our thoughts how can we deal with our breath how can we deal with with our own regulation so that when a time of crisis comes i can overcome it in a strategic manner that's that's what i teach so when one of the things i haven't practiced i'm trying to uh meditate slightly calm my thoughts down because my brain runs a million miles an hour constantly and i'm doing my best and one of the things that i just realized recently and and helped me understand this if i'm wrong you you know the whole idea of focusing on your breath it's not about clearing your mind completely it's about when your mind goes astray it's re it's training it to re-center on your breath is actually the the key factor there so it's not that you just can make sure that your brain is completely empty and you are you know you are meditating it is the fact that when you stray when there is for instance stress or something that comes up that you have a mechanism to force force it back to focusing on something that you could control your breath or something like that so what is is that a an accurate depiction of of one of the things about meditation that help people deal with stress that help people recenter when times are are are are complicated or there's too much going on you painted with a very broad stroke yes of course and it is not our fault when i see the concept of meditations that were bought out into the west or what the west was exposed to we are talking very generic if we look at eastern civilizations from where these concepts occur there is a deep study of it and let me try to explain to you so there are meditation protocols for enlightenment um for peace so there is a human being and then there is a concept of sannyas sannyas is when you are done with the world and now your only objective is to go towards enlightenment just be in zen with yourself forget the world so post sannyas you are taught certain meditations so when we look at buddhist methodologies or or if you look at mindfulness in itself that inspires don't combat jinn they are post sannyas meditative modalities because buddha talks about what you said you know focus on the breath mind let it be clear etc etc because now you're a monk you know you have already taken the three vows buddham sharnam gachami mean surrender to buddha sangam sharnam gachami i surrender to the people who are in the sang and and dhammam sharnam the practices nothing else matters to me not family not family not taxes not life this is it so the meditations are different but then there are the pre-sannyas meditations what we call the king's meditations so those strategies are different like like the king who's in a state of war he can't do the buddha meditations it will be he needs to have controlled aggression he needs to have that fire that drive so the meditations are different the the meditations are as i said human potential driven that how can i make my performance better how can i focus better so even when it comes to being in a married married life so i need certain energies that can you know all the energies can't go up to the to the higher consciousness some of them need to go down for the sexy time yeah yes so so we need certain meditations and a lot of the times i see people get confused because in research it happens a lot we are working with veterans or or i see somebody who's working with veterans and rather than giving them the king's meditation people give them the buddha's meditations which may not have the benefits that we want and sometimes can be detrimental as well because you say to that person sit alone with your thoughts thoughts are not nice ones no so yeah and bad things can happen and that's why what is most important is that we give the correct forms of meditation and that's why we need expertise so when it comes to health advice we rely on experts but when it comes to meditation advice what i've seen in the west is everybody becomes an expert like a snake salesman yes yes so i'm trying to bring that expertise back in this profession because this is not a faceless nameless profession because generally that's what we see you know like in the western imagination that some guy gets inspired you know goes to the east and bring something and just bring something is like a phd from harvard they just bring it from some mountain some ashram and then nobody is there approving that credibility here and they can say anything in the name of the east but it's not a faceless nameless profession there are people who have dedicated their lives that they need to be spokespeople to say that this is real this is bullshit yeah how many meditations are there pardon my ignorance but how many different types of meditations are there you said there's the kings there's the like if if you were to and i know there's probably a million of them but if if are there a certain group that are that everything else stems from like if i were and the reason i'm asking this is like if i were to really think of meditation right now for myself right my ignorance is okay i need to be peaceful with my thoughts i need to be you know focus on my breath right yoga go from there like the the western version of the generic uh meditation but in in a moment where i'm at right now as as a uh an entrepreneur who uh has gone through ups and downs and right now is a very challenging time with what i'm doing right with ai and everything else and i'm nervous about my family i'm nervous about you know providing and i want to calm i want to put myself in a position of making better decisions where what types of meditation should i be looking into to to help me with where i am today compared to where i might be at a later point in my life so when it comes to your first question how many meditations are there there are many parts there are parts that are written down codified and then there are parts that are yet to be explored and discovered okay so but it's objective driven and and this is the simplest way to explain that you know post sannyas the enlightenment and then pre-sannyas the human potential so for our purposes we are discussing the the pre-sannyas and in this if we look at the main things that that that can be useful to a person so the first is what we can call the hatha yoga the hatha yoga are the physical expressions of meditation where i am working with the body so that could be what you see in in a western gym the yoga asanas so when they are doing those stretches that that's that really helps that helps being in tune with the body that helps calm the mind so that that can be a part of the practice but something that is much more powerful low impact to no impact and uh can really bring a change in the nervous system would be the breath work okay that if i can start to practice the yogic breath work then it can give me the physical benefits as well as the emotional regulation as well as the cognitive benefits the yogic breath work is called the pranayam and pranayam itself cannot be called as meditation but it is a precursor to meditation so it is uh like a warm-up the warm-up yeah and and if you do the correct warm-up you perform better and if the warm-up is not good then it is injury so a lot of the times people just start to look at the meditation technique they've not done the right warm-up so they don't feel anything so they think meditate i can't meditate and it's it's is a lie we meditate how do i say we meditate is we have doom prophesies stress is a form of meditation and it's a deep meditation because then you depression is just going on to one thought and it's a reverse meditation that we are a master of so so breath work is something that i really recommend suggest and always it's one of the key components in my research strategies uh that i introduce people to and when i do that they they benefit they benefit a lot and the correct yogic breath work followed by the meditation protocol so the meditation protocol that i um like to explore is coming from these ancient shabbat traditions but i try to make it uh non-denominational non-theological whereas we just look at the practice we look at the practice and we try to remove the philosophy and the spiritual part of it because the practice itself is extremely powerful and in that practice we have focus visualization awareness and understanding of the flow of energy in the body so these components put together create a very robust meditation practice and finally we end the meditation practice with relaxation and deepening relaxation is again very very important and that's that's a key component that we must learn how to relax and not numb because in western society now even in the eastern societies we have become experts in numbing doom scrolling is a form of numbing eating as a coping mechanism is a form of numbing alcohol is a form of self-medication weed is again a form of numbing in which we are trying to relax but we don't know what relaxation is so we numb and yoga nidra uh one of the ways how we call it is is a way of yogic relaxation we want to relax ourself and that relaxation uh and we did this research we partnered with variables and and we found that uh a person drinks alcohol and yes he's zoned out but when we looked at the parameters inside the body was in a state of stress high and extreme stress so that wasn't something that recuperates them or helps them so we teach them relaxation real relaxation and that is after post meditation then you relax then when you come out of it you feel changed so these three components the breath work which is um high energy then meditation strategic focus and then relaxation so these three components together make a very beautiful king's meditation okay so that's the king's meditation like the encompasses it so let me ask you about sales reps you need specifically um because you work with military you work with hospitals you work doctors right and and now you're working from my understanding with a lot like sales and business professionals a little bit more is there something uniquely different about a sales professional compared to every other or we all pretty much similar to how we manage stress how we deal with stress and how this can help us let me think sales professional is someone who's trying to convince the other person um so i have a different definition okay i i think i think sales reps i think if you think sales is about convincing other people i think you're doing it wrong um because i don't think sales about convincing anybody of anything i think sales is about helping people solve problems or achieve goals now the stress comes in where our managers and our quotas and everything because it is a month-to-month day-to-day thing this isn't a salaried position where at the end of the year you get evaluated you are literally evaluated sometimes on a daily basis about your activities and the results of those activities and have you hit your quota and if you did great one month nobody cares the next month uh because what have you done for me lately like this is the definition of what have you done for me lately profession now does it have the same implications that being in the military does or a doctor absolutely not you know i always say that my out of office i always say look i'm not a an emergency room doctor and i don't cure cancer so i'm guessing that your email can wait until i get back right so so there's kind of this stress that we put on ourselves but it's usually outward that it manifests itself internal be and there's a lot of sales reps that i know that that really define themselves by their number you know if they if they hit their million dollar quota they're feeling great about themselves if they're not they're they're starting to doubt they have a lot of self-doubt and i'll and i'm gonna put myself into this position i've been six i'm 50 years old i've been selling my entire life um you know i had a great first quarter okay uh but one second quarter because of what's happening with ai and and all these other things like there's the nose have started to pile up right or the well yes john but you know let's push this till q2 or q3 or q4 um sorry not now but right so all these kind of little no's start to whittle away at your your confidence at your at your mentality at your psyche and so that's to me the kind of the the slight difference of sales compared to a lot of other professions is it's it's a lot of no's to get that one yes and that one yes makes us feel a lot better about ourselves but when you mature in sales you realize that it doesn't matter yes or no you know you just do um but even at this age doing what i'm doing there it creeps in is is you know my self-worth when it when i'm not getting the successes and not getting that external validation that i am quote-unquote doing well so have you found the unique is there something about you need a sales profession compared to the others or is there commonalities across all that you work with to to slow down to to recenter there is very common with religion okay and it's very common with the even healthcare professionals okay so as you were talking because i'm thinking that where where have i seen this so yeah i work a lot with the interfaith um so it started with when i was working with the office of national drug control policy and we were trying to figure out systems through which we can help the most vulnerable parts of society you know many times it happens that when it comes to drug abuse so let's assume the government has made a helpline number and the cost of creating that infrastructure is 10 million assuming but then how how do you make sure that somebody who's using in los angeles knows about this helpline number so then you have to spend a hundred million in marketing but then uh the solution that we were working upon is why don't we use the existing networks and one of the most robust networks uh in any country are the faith networks because the faith networks go to the most vulnerable parts of communities they serve the communities and if we can partner with faith leaders then they can be the strategic partners that can help the federal government take these uh the infrastructure uh to different parts of society so when i was working with with with everyone on a round table um one of the biggest job of of religion is sales how do you convince other people to be part of the movement and then as you said for it um one yes there are 10 no's and and you're trying to convince everyone and and here it's it's it's not even a million dollar it's it's it's you're trying to convince someone for their own good or or in the healthcare profession in the healthcare profession the doctor is trying to convince someone to take steps that they know will be good for them but it's so difficult to convince people to eat healthy or uh to to live a life in which they are investing upon their own body and it's a fight it's a fight to to help people give them the solution that that they really need and one of the key factors is the people themselves are becoming a barrier to receiving the solution and i see that in my mental health work as well that that i have this thing and it's a solution and the person he already has so much of cognitive biases that they are becoming a barrier itself and then i have to play chess with them to help them yeah and and and sometimes it's silly for me because again as i said i come from a different culture where there's no sales right you just follow instructions and you know yeah like when i was doing this research with stanford i'm still doing it with them um we have to give monetary incentive to the participants and this was this was so um unfathomable for me that i am teaching them to be better and i have to pay them 150 dollars you should pay me yeah i am solving your problem yeah but again it's i think it's it's how things are done yeah but this is where i see the commonality and then please tell me if i'm right to see that commonality yeah yes do you think this is oh so do you think as well what commonality the commonality re-articulate that for me so in my mind as you are speaking i'm trying to process so you were saying which professions do you see a deal in a form of sales so so religion and health care came into my mind yeah absolutely i mean i think at the end of the day you know if i bring it down specifically to like what i do is sales training you know i i did this uh there's so there's a function within most organizations called enablement which is the training of you know the sales reps or anybody and i did a a meme the other day of an image of the horse to water right and and it was the trainer as the as the human the horse as the sales reps and and and the water as the training right as as as and it was and it's just like pulling this horse down and you know the the plight of the enablement is you can't force it to drink you can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink and that's probably one of the most frustrating components of my job is you know i know that because i took this training when i was young and it worked so well for me what happened was when i first started training this if there was 30 or 40 people in the room and if you were in the back of the room on your cell phone or something i'd be like hey eyes up praise you know i'd try to force you to pay attention to what because i believed so strongly and i knew that if you applied it it would work and and then i just got so frustrated with with trying to force people to learn they that i i stopped caring about all of the people and i started caring only about the people who were there and i could tell wanted to learn it's kind of going back to you know for instance being an alcoholic you can't or or anybody with any major issue my experience is it's very hard to help people that don't want to be helped that want to sit in whatever they might say they want it but fundamentally they don't and what if you can't if you know getting somebody to want to be helped getting to somebody to want to learn i always say i live between the give a shit factor and unconscious confidence i can't get you to care i really can't but man once you do i will give you everything that i have to get you to a level where you don't need this anymore and i think that sounds like a similar challenge when it comes to religion when it comes to hospital you know it's just like i'm trying to give you this this water this gold and and i don't understand how i why i have to pay you 150 dollars to do it are you breaking through that are you are you finding ways so for you do you work with people who have raised their hands and say i want this or i guess what percentage of the people that aren't that haven't raised their hand maybe say that they do or in a class because they were told to what's the balance for you and have you found a way to really connect with people um who haven't raised their hands that that want this in meditation there is a concept called sarva mohan vidya which means charisma that i can through my meditation develop charisma or mesmerism that can help positively influence people through my own energy okay so we we see it in leadership there are some leaders like if we read about alexander the great then then told me in alexandria writes after the death of alexander that when alexander said something no matter how audacious it sound we believed we could do it and that is something that salicus negator could not do that is something that told me could not do alexander had that he had that sarva mohan sarva mohan means the universal love you you could command it yeah and that happens it's like that subconscious when somebody is talking no matter how scientific or important things they are talking we look at them and there's something inside us that says shut up yeah and then there are some people who when they are talking we want to listen we want to flow there is this invisible flow of energy that is happening and my master taught it to me in forms of that he called it an energy transfer he said that some people are energy vampires that they are so empty from inside and even if you are giving them amrit immortality go sell immortality but because they are energy vampires and they talk to someone they start to steal somebody's energy then even if they are selling immortality nobody wants to buy it and then there are some people who are universal givers that they have so much energy that immediately they put somebody at ease they put somebody at comfort and when person is in comfort they want to listen so what i have seen in my personal experience that when i meditate i have that energy i'm not a vampire that i can give i can make people be at ease and i've seen that with teachers i've seen that with doctors doctors who practice meditations they say we have this innate ability now to calm the patient the moment he walks in the door teachers say we have that ability to calm elementary school students with how we talk how we are in a room with them so meditation really helps so your question that people who raise their hands if i am in a room with people then i know i can influence them positively my meditation can help me influence them i have that charisma so my hard work goes into bringing people in that room with me yeah so it's like uh milestones of the sale and for that research helps me because i can't have a million people sitting in a room with me so then there are the first milestones so people who are looking for the answers they will look at my research and they'll be convinced through that and then there are other milestones maybe they'll do some other research of their own maybe they'll look at what's it called when when you review they look at the reviews they'll be convinced by that so another milestone crossed yeah then they'll maybe talk to someone who's been positively benefited then another milestone is crossed and then they come into the room and and this is the hallmark of the society that we are living in today we are so skeptical of everything yeah because we have been burned so many times and and everyone is out there trying to take something from us that we paint with broad strokes and we judge everyone and and that's why i also have to play the game i could easily be a jilted lover sit in a corner in a monastery and say that you want something you come to me yeah but now i am not that jilted lover and i'm i'm i'm i'm ready to play the games of this society in which we are living and and yes so a lot of my hard work and energy goes trying to bring people in the room with me but if somebody comes in the room i know my meditation will help them nice and they will listen well and there's and you got the data to back it up because i think that's the the challenge a lot of you all meditation great but how is that going to make me perform but i think you have some interesting stuff that i said found that it was like something like within the four because you have a four to eight weeks that you work with groups and like anxiety drops insomnia drops by like significant percentages by going through 82 82 um so and that's been backed by your work and in the work of others as well so this isn't just a yeah get mindful and start focusing on your breath uh thing this is actually a a productivity a results oriented uh and and a way to i think probably in a lot of ways lead a more fulfilling life at least being able to control that emotion so you know for those westerners here if there's one takeaway from this uh that you want to make sure that people remember outside of making sure that they go take you know check your book out check check out everything else what will be the one takeaway for for people who were not born into the eastern meditation world uh but are trying to figure out a way to slow down a little bit in this chaos that we're all in curiosity i i would say that the key takeaway should be remain curious remain curious about what you can do remain curious about your own potential and remain curious about the methodologies that have been presented to you you should continue exploring just because you were presented something and it didn't bear fruit doesn't mean that your journey stops if you are curious and there is so much that you can learn from people like me that can bring a phenomenal change in your life and i think that is what we should aspire towards we should be hopeful and we should be loyal towards a glorious future i love it it's funny you bring that up because i say that curiosity in this world of ai uh curiosity is the superpower uh because if you look to ai or the internet or anybody for the answer that's a dangerous thing uh but if you're curious it can be a superpower because it can give you any information that you need at the drop of a dime but you need to be curious enough to look for it and validate it and explore it um without looking for the answer because there are no actual answers out there there are uh your journey of figuring things out is the way i look at it so uh ishan this has been a pleasure where can people find more information about what you're working on and all the different things that uh that they can learn from you so the first thing that i would recommend is the book that i wrote the practice of immortality and i i have a lot of kings meditation inside the book protocol structure and also a little bit of my life story and a lot of exploration of the philosophy so i think that is a phenomenal entry point uh they can buy the book they can read they can meditate and uh otherwise uh i am available on linkedin so uh just you can google my name ishan shivan and then there's a lot of stuff about me that uh people can read learn and uh yes i'm a very simple person that puts most of my time and energy on on research awesome well we can wrap it up with the keep it simple stupid uh approach to me as well so i'll i'll continue to follow your your content because i'm about as simple as it gets my friend ishan thank you so much it's been an absolute pleasure thank you mr jv pleasure has been all mine thank you sir and everybody i hope you enjoy the conversation as much as i did and like i always say at the end of all these podcasts go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went if you make somebody smile today you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank Thank you all very much, and I will see you on the other side.