Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Is Meditation as Great as Everyone Says? An Answer, According to 20 Studies

Episode Date: April 20, 2018

You’ve probably heard that meditation can do many wonderful things for your body, like reduce stress and inflammation, help you live longer, think more clearly, and more. How true are these claims, though? Can something as simple as controlling your attention and focus for a few minutes every day have such profound benefits? And, if so, what are the best and most effective ways of doing this? Should you do “body focused” meditation, “open monitoring,” transcendental meditation, or something else?   Well, this is what we’re going to explore in today’s episode with Kurtis Frank, who is the co-founder of and former lead researcher and writer at Examine.com, as well as the Director of Research for my supplement company, Legion Athletics. Unfortunately, there isn’t a tremendous amount of research available on meditation, but Kurtis read everything relevant that he could get his hands on, and in this interview, he breaks down his findings. So...if you’ve wondered if carving out some time for daily meditation can actually make a difference in your life, then this episode is for you. 6:36 - What is meditation? 8:38 - What are the types of meditation? 12:00 - What is the difference of passive focus and active focus and what are some examples? 12:39 - Is reading a book more beneficial than listening to an audiobook? 15:02 - What are the benefits of focused based meditation? 15:25 - How can you tell if you have a problem with focusing? 17:53 - What are the benefits of open monitoring meditation? 20:09 - Which type of meditation is right for me? 21:30 - What are the downsides to meditation? 22:27 - Do brain training apps help your ability to focus? 25:10 - What are bullet hell games and are they beneficial? 28:16 - Is exercise a type of meditation? 28:48 - Is reading a type of meditation? 33:01 - What is the link between meditation and hallucinogens? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

A meditation protocol is exercise to your mind, like a training protocol would be exercise to your body. A set of rules to roughly follow to get the desired effect. Hey, Mike Matthews here from Most of a Life in Legion Athletics, and it is that time again. Time to talk about interesting things related to health and fitness. Specifically, this time around, we're going to be talking meditation. This is something I have been asked about a lot over the last few years, and honestly, I had put it off because while I had tried it myself and didn't really notice any benefits and so didn't want to spend the time doing it,

I was reluctant to write or speak about it because I knew that it was going to require a lot of research to do it justice. And while I enjoy doing research, I have a lot of other things on my plate these days. And so this is something that kind of just sat on my list as something to do if I have a good hundred hours or so that I can really commit to doing the research. And basically, Curtis Frank, who is the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of examine.com and now the director of research and development at my supplement company, Legion Athletics, beat me to it. He wanted to do it actually, because it's something, again, that he has been personally interested in. And so he had fun with it and read a lot of research on it

and is here to share his findings. Now, you've probably heard that meditation can do many wonderful things for your body, like reduce stress and inflammation, help you live longer, think more clearly, and so on. And you have probably wondered how true these claims are. Can something as simple as controlling your attention and focus for just a few minutes per day really have such profound benefits? And if so, what are the best and most effective ways of actually doing it? Should you do body focused meditation? Should you do open monitoring or maybe transcendental meditation or something else altogether? Well, those are the questions that we are going to be exploring in today's episode. And as I mentioned earlier, unfortunately, there really isn't that much research available

on meditation, but Curtis read through everything he could find that is relevant. And in this interview, he is going to break down his findings. I found it interesting. I think you will too. And especially if you have wondered if it's worth carving out some time every day to do some meditation, if it can actually make a difference in your life. If you've wondered that, then this episode is for you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my newest supplement, which I'm very excited about, which is a 100% natural nootropic or brain booster called Ascend. Now, unlike many nootropics, Ascend doesn't target just one aspect of your mental capabilities at the expense of others. And it also doesn't rely on stimulants, which can produce immediately noticeable effects but can also undermine critical brain functions and of course result in unwanted side effects instead ascend contains clinically effective dosages of five different nutrients that have been scientifically proven to support and enhance your focus memory mental speed mood, and overall brain health. So if you want a healthier, happier, and higher performing brain that allows you to think faster, focus deeper,

and feel better, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and try Ascend today. And just to show how much I appreciate all of you podcast peeps use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now,

place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Mr. Curtis Frank, back again, back again. Welcome, my friend. Glad to be back. So this is, I'm looking forward to this discussion because this is something I've been asked about a lot. I'd say probably, I don't know, I haven't looked on Google Trends. It seems like the last

six months or so, maybe a year has been the meditation craze has been building. Definitely in the last six months, I've been asked more and more about it. And I hadn't done that much research. I had tried a couple of things that didn't really seem to be for me. Like it seemed kind of like a waste of time for me. So I just kind of dismissed it and was essentially putting off doing what you did because I knew that it was going to be a pain in the ass and I have too many things to do. So I'm glad that you're going to do my job for me. To the best of my abilities, at least. Like it's a pain in the ass on my end as well. Yeah, but see, I can just just let somebody else have the pain in their ass. And so, that makes me happy.

Yeah, and it is my job to have ass pains in an academic sense. That's in the job description. Brain hemorrhoids. All right. So, we were talking about meditation. And Curtis, he put up an article over at the blog over on legionathletics.com, really well researched, very informative. And so I asked if he would come on the podcast to explain what is essentially in the article, but also there's some other interesting tangents that

didn't make it into the article and little rabbit holes we can go down. And so we're going to kind of start at the top here and assume that you, Mr. or Mrs. Listener, pretty much don't know anything about meditation. You've heard of it. Maybe it means what sitting there and, you know, reciting mantras to yourself or not, or just breathing or whatever. That's, I think where we should start, Curtis, is when people say, you know, that meditation is good for you, what do they even mean? What is meditation? Okay. So meditation meditation it's something you can define in multiple ways most because meditation does have a large historical background and links to religion different sort of habits and trials all over the world but basically when it comes

to the purpose of enhancing some aspect of cognition meditation seems to be like it's technical definition is a discourse intended to express its author's reflections or to guide others in contemplation. And if you're like me, that doesn't help at all in understanding what meditation is. Yeah. So that sounds like talking about stuff that you think about or help someone else think about things. First time I read that definition, I thought, so just reflecting on your day in the shower, would that be considered meditation? Like, according to the definition,

it is, but the technical definition and the practice of meditation are different these days. When we tend to think about meditation, we tend to think about how, well, take a few steps back, I just want to preface that our mind exists. As long as it exists, it does things. Similar to how our bodies exist, like we can just move our hands around right now, just because we're moving our hands around does not mean that our bodies are getting stronger. It doesn't mean they're getting weaker, they just kind of are. But when we go exercise, we are putting a significant eustress on our body in hopes that it will get stronger because of that. And what we refer to as meditation these days are a collection of practices that could be seen as sort of targeted

exercise towards the mind. You focus your mind in a certain way in hopes that through this focus, your mind gets a beneficial trait added to it, or you just train an aspect of cognition better to sum it all up when you hear about meditation these days it's kind of like a meditation protocol is exercise to your mind like a training protocol would be exercise to your body a set of rules to roughly follow to get the desired effect interesting and there are a few types of meditation right there's probably a lot more in like ancient texts that i have not even tried to read at this point in time i need to like actually learn more languages for that but in research it tends to focus on three different types of meditation

focus-based open monitoring and transcendental which sounds amazingly fancy. Focused attention is you have a cue or something you focus on and you focus on that one cue for a long period of time. If you utilize your brain in such a manner to focus on one thing for like 30 minutes, your brain will tend to adapt in ways that improve attention focus capacities. So for anyone who has ADHD, these focus-based meditations may be up your alley. Open monitoring is sort of related. You have a cue, something to focus on, but it's more general. And you focus on this general thing, but the specific topic you're focused, as long as it's within that thing, changes. The best example of this is a book or mantra or something you're focusing on a chant but the words you say change whereas whereas in the first one it might be like a breathing exercise

you're just focusing on one thing yeah like you just focus on your diaphragm going in out then back in out and in for like 30 minutes and the monitoring, the one where your specific focus does like flow like a river, if we're going to get into analogies, that's the one that tends to focus more on micromanagement and memory formation, because you have to keep some things in the back of your mind as you're focusing on other things, but it's still sustained focus. The last one, transcendental, it just avoids all cues. The first one was focusing on one thing, the other one with sustaining focus on multiple things. Transcendental is no cues whatsoever. So just allowing your mind to go wherever it goes?

Not necessarily, because if your mind is going wherever it goes, you will find that your mind instinctively looks out and seeks a cue to then build upon if you've ever uh like heard a meditation where there's like people just like crossing their legs going um for like 30 minutes straight that's transcendental because the best way to practice transcendental is to get a meaningless term that serves as sort of white noise for your brain. And you just do this for a while, and benefits happen, I guess. Like, I've never been to a transcendental meditation session in person, so it's limited what I can say on it. But it's basically using meaningless nothing in white noise to avoid all cues. That's its own form of meditation.

Okay. So what does the literature have to say in terms of benefits and effectiveness? Well, I do have to clarify, when I said body-focused attention, that's actually a subset of focused attention. Because focused attention is you just focus on one thing for a long period of time. If there's a religious devout follower in a church just focusing on like a statue of Mary for 30 minutes, that's technically focused attention. But when you're telling people to practice it, generally speaking, the easiest way for them to get an introduction to it is focusing on their body, focusing on their breathing

or focusing on a specific muscle group. Why isn't just sitting there and watching TV beneficial then? Because that's just focusing on a bunch of pictures and sounds that come at you. Wouldn't that be kind of like an open monitoring type of thing? Technically speaking, yes. Because you're focusing on the TV, but there's multiple cues passing. But at the same time, it's not interactive in any way. So when it comes to meditation, you need to be the one doing meditation. You need to be the one breathing. You need to be the one voluntarily going through things.

To watch TV is kind of like someone reading the book to you. Sure, the information is going through your head, but you're not going out and seeking that information, if that makes sense. Sure. So in that way, then reading a book might be more beneficial for your attention than listening to an audio book? Correct. And I think that's actually one of the main reasons why parents are told to read to their kids and encourage reading rather than having them focus on TV. Because one of them is passive and the other is active. But what about reading yourself versus listening? Reading yourself would be the active thing because you're the one like opening the book. You're the one moving your eyes would be,

it would be the more meditative experience, I guess, to be honest, it'd probably be chanting because you're using your, like you're using your body and your voice to say the words. Yeah. And in a way, conversations can also happen.

This, if you're able to focus on one particular topic, like we are right now for a prolonged period of time, but the specific thing that we're mentioning is flowing, that could potentially be an open monitoring situation. But I haven't looked at the specific literature on how just conversations fall under the meditation umbrella term. Yeah, it makes me think of what's I can't pronounce his last name. Chiksa Mixaheli flow and the different types of flow experiences that you can have. And you can have flow experiences in interactions with other people. And that's one of the examples given is you can reach that state, it seems, in just speaking with someone. Yeah, but whenever I hear words like flow, it's sort of weird because I come from a really scientific background. And whenever I hear

these vague terminologies that are like broken down digestible tidbits for the reader, if I'm not the person who made those digestible tidbits, it's hard for me to understand. That's actually a reason why meditation research is so hard because there are so many different nonsensical words thrown around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know that his work, his work is in hard science, of course, is very much a soft science. But I think if you have you read the book, I have not. You might like it. Actually, I think that there's definitely something to be said for the research that he has done. I don't think he's completely incorrect.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll probably read the book in the next few weeks just because I'm going to be looking to meditation over the course of the next two years. It does seem to have a lot of benefits that I need to look into more. Exercise for your brain. Come on. It has to be good. So let's just segue back into those benefits then so on the on the focused attention uh what did you find in your scouring uh for the most part if you are

bad at focusing on one particular thing like adhd or add like symptoms and your mind always wanders this can help with those symptoms what does that mean practically for somebody listening? Because let's say somebody's like, oh, no, I don't have ADHD. That's not me. But how might you self-diagnose? What are maybe a couple examples? If this happens when you try to do this, or if you can't do this, we don't need to label anybody, anything who really cares.

But it's more just a point of you could stand to improve your ability to focus so there are some things that you focus on that are rewarding when you focus on them a video game for example and there are some things that when you focus on them there is no inherent reward like you know just reading a scientific study it you need to do it every now and then, but there's no inherent reward in focusing on it. If you truly want to focus on something for 20 minutes that in and of itself doesn't have an inherent reward, and you can't because your mind wanders, then you need to focus on your focus. But if you are able to just put things aside and focus on one thing for 20 minutes with no distractions bothering you, then your focus is pretty good.

Cool. I like that. So then getting back to some of the benefits that you've documented in the literature on focus, attention, exercises, then maybe a couple examples of the exercises that produce those benefits. I didn't get too, too much into the exercises because for the most part breathing exercises are what people uh talk about most and tai chi was also researched a lot because it's a set of motions that you do and you have to focus on your body which is the best cue for beginners getting to focus attention their own physical bodies and of course it could help with the mind muscle connection but i couldn't find any literature on that i don't even know how literature would prove a mind muscle connection i mean if you're a if you're a fitness marketer you just make fake citations then you get a bunch

of bodybuilders to start doing tai chi yeah pretty much which would be honestly a hilarious visual we could it could be done it could be done oh yeah definitely like there's even that uh photo shoot of a bunch of mr olympia contenders just farming in china they just have like little baskets they're just picking up all these cabbages carrying them and i didn't i didn't see that oh it was hilarious because you have these like six foot five just beefcakes getting outlifted by the grandma who lives at the farm right now i'm googling right now uh bodybuilder cabbages maybe okay let's uh let's let's keep it going and i'll see if i can find it because that sounds hilarious but yeah so open monitoring i mentioned the benefits briefly earlier how it's memory and micromanagement based but i didn't specify that for transcendental

meditation the benefits are related to reducing anxiety and trauma related disorders i didn't specify that for transcendental meditation the benefits are related to reducing anxiety and trauma related disorders i don't think we uh got to the benefits of focused we were talking about tai chi and then oh it's mostly just attention okay so it is just mostly being able to control your attention better that's the major benefit there are probably some other benefits because like the three different types of meditation activate three different generalized brain regions so there's probably some sort of other benefits that could come from it but again i just i've read probably like 50 to 100 studies on meditation and that is just i'm not even through the frosting here there's just so much literature on meditation and a lot of it is really poorly written so it

takes time to parse through not surprising but for the most part and just again like sum everything up really quickly focused attention focusing on one cue and just that helps develop focus-based skills open monitoring focusing on in general but shifting your focus from one thing to the next improves working memory and micromanagement. Transcendental, avoiding all cues and just trying to white noise your mind, improve stress, anxiety and trauma symptoms. And that's not conclusive, but that's the general gist of the three types of meditation. Interesting. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it?

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And then, so if somebody is listening, like, okay, so then which ones for me, and are there any other examples of things that can be done that, you know, maybe make, sure. Like take, take, you could do breathing exercises or you could do Tai Chi or you could do, I guess it would be mantra related stuff or just the cue-less white noise. But how would they determine like which one should I try and how exactly should I go about it? Do I have options or should I just, you know, is it kind of like if this thing doesn't really work for you in this one way, it's not for me? Truth be told, I do not think i have the expertise to say that right now i would probably just take what we're hearing in this you know discussion we're having right now and just keep an open mind to meditation and there will be a certain point in

the future where you think well i need this particular benefit maybe i just want to be better at micromanaging things so you of the open monitoring and then talk to a meditation practitioner, see what they say. Or you do your own research and just realize the general concept of open monitoring, focusing on one general thing, sustaining that focus, but shifting your attention throughout, applies to many things in life. Because again, the meditations that we have right now are pretty much cheat sheets to do a certain thing with your mind,

but you don't need to do them as long as your mind gets the benefit. Yeah. And any downsides that you came across with any of them? Any potential downsides? No. I'm uncertain about transcendental because I just don't truly understand what the hell's

going on in your mind when it comes to transcendental meditation when it comes to the two focus types there's really no downside because you're not forcing your brain to do anything against its will yeah you're not like putting any like foreign compounds into your body you're not punching yourself in the head or anything you're just doing something with your mind and as long as you have the ability to do that eventually your brain will just curtail it like if you were going to hurt yourself with focus-based attention your brain will prevent that hurt by making you lose focus makes sense so yeah there's a lot of uh safety switches or whatever just a lot of ways that your body will make sure that the mere act of thinking is not going to hurt you. Sure, sure. That makes sense. What about brain training apps? That's anything. It seems like just brain stuff is very hot right now.

Nootropics are hot. Brain foods are hot. It's just, it's definitely a trend. And so of course, then brain training apps, these games that are supposed to, I actually haven't looked into them. It's not really interested myself, but I know what are the common marketing claims, improve your memory, particularly your working memory. I don't know if they say raise IQ, that'd be not surprising. It is marketing in any, in any space gets shady, but the idea is that it's just going to, it's going to make your mind sharper, work faster and just make you better. Yeah, that's open monitoring because you're focusing on the game as a major thing, but you're micromanaging things within the game. Furthermore, when it comes to brain training apps, it's not like a video game in that sense, but they're actually putting in cognitive tests that are best at training your mind in particular aspects. So it's a combination of the whole meditative state,

but also just general testing. So brain training apps are, I like them, to be honest. Which ones have you used that you like? I haven't personally used them. I like the concept of them. Because a lot of times when you tell someone to focus, they're just going to get bored. But if you make it fun in a certain way,

they're going to be enticed to do it. It's kind of like the same difference between going to the gym and powerlifting when you hate lifting or going to the gym when you absolutely love lifting. You're going to do it a lot more in the second case. Yeah. Or even the difference between exercise and training, right? It's more fun to go in there with a goal and know that you have a structured system that you're working with. And opposed to just going there to kind of you know move your your limbs and burn some calories yeah and like even like if we're going on the exercise analogy route i like power lifting because i just like lifting heavy shit for like three to five reps i don't like crossfit it's just not something that i like doing i don't like you know flailing around like a dead fish on land or or on a bar come on you can you can do kip ups oh yeah kip and it just reminds me

of like that first pull of a fish out of water a nice kip but yeah like because i don't like doing that stuff i'm not going to instinctively give it my all so when you put meditation, some of that many people may not want into a fun and inviting system, it's going to make people want to do it. So they basically want to make themselves smarter, both instinctually and practically. And that's a great combo. Yeah, sure. I mean, a lot of different types of video games would be that open monitoring type of experience, obviously. But you were talking about when we were just going over what we wanted to discuss, you had mentioned something I had never heard of. Bullet hell games, the bullet hell genre.

Oh, I love them so much. They're my favorite genre of games. A visual would definitely work best. best so anyone listening like if you put bullet hell into google images you're probably going to see what looks like rectangles and a bunch of shiny fluorescent things in the rectangle the general concept of bullet hell games is there's you at the bottom of the screen and you die in one hit there's your enemy who you have to hit for like a minute straight. It's just unfair. And you shoot like one projectile per second. Your enemy shoots about, I don't know, 5,000 projectiles a second.

So it's very visually straining. But at the same time, there are so many bullets on the screen that they're usually in patterns. So you have to look at the screen, see every individual projectile, and then you have to focus on pattern recognition and able to put them into groups and see how they move, predict where they move. It's a type of video game that is also a cognitive test. And if you play any of these games, you will find that after about 20 minutes, your brain feels absolutely fried. And the first day after you play these games, you sleep very well. And you actually see the bullets in your sleep. I know a lot of people get this when they play Tetris for the first time.

Yeah, the Tetris effect, right? Yeah, like that comes from any cognitively yet visually straining task and is best exemplified in video games. But basically, I played these games all throughout university and it actually really helped with my micromanagement, pattern recognition, and sustained focus. The game I played in particular, it's called Toho. It's like a Japanese game. But literally, a run lasted for about 30 minutes.

And you had to remember patterns. You had to remember where the bullets were coming from. You had to be able to avoid things on cue. Very visually straining, and I could definitely say it was like a brain training app for me and and so that carried over in what ways because like okay sustained focus that's pretty obvious how that can carry over into real life but but how how does the the micromanagement and pattern recognition how did you notice that in the your day-to-day life outside of the game? Why is that even practical or why does that matter? Whenever I was researching anything related to cellular structures or

cytology, I would research five different topics and then my brain would instinctively group them together based on similarities. And beforehand, I had to actively do this. I had to basically say, here's one, here's another. How do they relate? But as I was reading, because I was so used to pattern recognition, it just became significantly easier for me to connect the dots, basically. That's cool. Do you feel like those benefits have sustained? I mean, do you still play these games?

I don't play them as much these days, but the benefits do sustain themselves as long as I do something that pokes at it. Yeah, sure. As long as you keep researching. You could stop playing the games, but as long as you keep doing something that requires that. Yeah, it's kind of like to use an exercise analogy because they're the easiest to just understand. you spend like four years of your life getting a 400 pound bench press and like you go to the gym each and every day to get that 400 pound bench press then if you go to the gym like once a week for the next decade you could probably get that 400 pound bench press back pretty rapidly yeah like once the benefits are there as long as you just do a little bit of teasing every now and then and just remind yourself that the benefits are there, then they will, for the most part, stay. And what are your thoughts on, let's say reading, for example, could reading be considered a

meditative exercise, like an open monitoring type, if you are really focused on what you are reading and not thinking about anything else? Do you think you could get similar benefits from that? Or even exercise to some degree, where you spend a lot of your time i i mean i i'd say in my workouts a lot of my time is definitely more body focused right it's focused attention even if you're just focusing on executing the lift or if it's more of an accessory exercise maybe you're just focusing on the muscle and trying to you know feel the muscle contract and so forth i'm uncertain if you're like on the exercise at least i'm uncertain if you can apply to weight lifting specifically

but at the same time when you're jogging uh there is evidence that like when you're jogging you're trying to seek out a rhythm seek out a tune and then eventually you hit that zone state that could very well be focused meditation and you could argue that those benefits and meditative benefits are kind of related but i'm uncertain if weightlifting would qualify unless like you just had some like out-of-body religious experience because you squatted so much like there's always a possibility that it could happen transcendental squatting bro yeah you just like squatted to the next plane of existence you squat your astral body out uh that's a big hip drive um so what about reading that's a tough one because like i'm not too much of a i wasn't

too much of a reader in my childhood, but I do know that like reading is recommended for kids because it's the whole active form of learning. Yeah. But at the same time, maybe to be honest, I've never been pulled into a book, but when people speak of being pulled into a book,

they speak of something very similar to uh that jogging zone or the author they mentioned earlier talking about uh flow states it sounds very similar so there could potentially be some meditative benefits there but i do not know enough on the topic of reading to explain why i i guess i mean again going back to Chixmixaheli, how do you pronounce his last name? Going back to that book, I think that you, I mean, take work, for example, you can definitely get into at least that flow state in work where you lose track of time, you're 100% focused on what you're doing. And that is, I guess, one of the things I personally enjoy about work is when you get to that point when you have no distractions and you're 100% concentrated on what you're doing. And, you know, time feels like it starts moving quickly and so forth. There's so many things on meditation that I just do not know yet. And I probably haven't even given too many answers in this conversation.

But at the very least, if I can make you want to seek out meditation as a listener, I win. It's a competition now, I win. Well, I mean, to summarize some of the stuff that you put in the article. So it's like, if you are looking to improve balance and physical performance, then maybe some body focused or single target attentive meditation would make sense. If you want to improve memory, open monitoring or mindfulness could help. If you want to improve handling social situations, you had written that open monitoring mindfulness seems to be the one to go with there. And there are a few others if you want to share any other thoughts on them. Like obviously, improving intention is the open monitoring is probably the way to go there. And then you had mentioned here,

reducing trauma, anxiety, or PTSD, there's some evidence that transcendental can help with that. And general stress and otherwise healthy people as well. Like the whole relaxing yourself, relax, reduce anxiety, reduce trauma, just being better able to cope with things that's all transcendental and i have to defer to like some actual meditation practitioner for that one because i have no idea where to begin in recommending people do transcendental oh i should also mention a lot of listeners may find this interesting when we speak of the benefits of transcendental there is a lot of similarity between the benefits of hallucinogens and it is thought that transcendental meditation and hallucinogens act on similar functions in the brain so it's the hallucinogens or the shortcut

possibly potentially because hallucinogens themselves reduce stress, significantly reduce instances of trauma, and then just increase overall well-being, if not abused, obviously. But it seems that transcendental meditation is like the exercise for these particular benefits, whereas hallucinogens are the steroids to this benefit. And I don't really know what that benefit is, like the actual function in the brain

that these links these two still don't know but they are definitely linked in some way yeah and you have both in the case of meditation and hallucinogenic drugs you have the people that you know the religious experience that people report in both cases so there's it would make sense there's something similar going on yeah actually there's one like one last thing that was just when i lost focus about two minutes back it was because i was doing this i was just trying to think of ways to like open monitoring your body and like what i was doing uh because just like raise your hand for a second like you know how your hand's there but you don't really feel anything inside your hand if you tense it up so that you're like hypersensitive to every like bone and joint in

your hand get that to a point where you're holding it for like a minute or so and then try to roll that into a forearm flex then up into the arm then into the back like try to like roll a flex throughout your entire body i've been doing that for the past few days and it's kind of helping my mind muscle connection a bit i'm hypersensitive my hands right now it's like freaky quick do something fun with your hands now not that i gave a thumbs up but at the same time like no one can prove it. That makes me think of, uh, fuck, where did I hear it? Something I think is when I was researching for an article on sleep, um, there may be a fancy, a fancy name for it, but basically it's where it, I guess it's an open monitoring

type of, uh, I guess, yeah, I guess already that, or it's a shifting, nah, it'd be, I guess it'd be open monitoring where like you're're you start by focusing intently on like your big toe and then you move to and you do that for i don't know 20 seconds and then you move to your little toe or move to your next big big toe on your other foot i don't remember exactly that's probably exactly what i'm uh trying to do right now it's a process and apparently it helps insomniacs if it has helped some people who have trouble falling asleep in particular. You just kind of move up your body until you are unconscious. I know it's safe, but it sounds dangerous when you phrase it like that. Yeah, just keep on going towards your head until it passes out.

It's safe, I swear. Well, you're supposed to be ready to go unconscious. Just try it when you're driving, basically. Oh, totally. Focus on the big toe, accidentally hit the clutch. Okay, great. Well, yeah, I think that's pretty much everything we had on our outline. So peoples who are listening, if you want to read about this and check out some of the research that Curtis has read and cited all over the article, head over to legionathletics.com.

And if you search for meditation, you may find it in the top of the blog feed. But by the time you get there, you may not. It may have been pushed down by many other great, great articles. So just search for meditation and it'll come up. And you can also find a lot of other ofis's a lot of other uh of curtis's musings and and researchings on the blog so if you look at look at the blog feed and you'll find some of his stuff in there if you click on his name then you can see everything he has written and a lot a lot of good things there and a lot of uh quirky humor you're a quirky man and it makes it fun yeah i was about to say i don't know if that's

good or bad no it's good that's not a left-handed compliment i personally find it hilarious because i grew up on the internet so i appreciate things that are just that are just oddball so you know now now for the people listening we have a game where i've challenged curtis to make his openings as strange as possible where where you come in thinking you're about to read about one thing and then three lines in, you're like, what the fuck am I actually reading? What is this? It's like a high school creative writing class. But, but so Curtis is getting more and more creative with his, with his intros, which is great because you know, when it comes to blog writing, actually your, your job is to get them

to read the first line. And the first line's job is to get them to read the second line. And so if you can work in some off-the-wall shenanigans in the beginning of articles, you're going to keep people reading. At this point, there are probably some listeners who go, eh, whatever, meditation, big whoop and all that. So I found one study that I just find incredible because it just found 16 long-term practitioners of transcendental meditation. Like these are the guys who for 16 years sat in a dark room going, oh, for a while. And this study basically, I think it's, yes, fMRI. Put them in fMRI machine instead, do some meditation.

Each one of them was able to at will redirect blood flow to their prefrontal cortex they redirected their own brain's blood flow at will that makes me think of uh wim hof and some of the weird shit he can do yeah like that's what meditation could potentially do i don't know how it's doing this but it is and we have fmri data to prove it So all you have to do is like 20 years of chanting for who knows how many hours a day. So just get on that. Oh, yeah. Totally. Well, I mean, if these benefits apply to like video gaming, then I'm already a god.

Would you say you're a generous god, though? Oh, God, no. Can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I'm the god of pyramid schemes good my pyramid schemes i mean it is the supplement industry so that is at first at first glance that's kind of like the prima facie uh evidence right so what fmris or pyramid schemes pyramid schemes like oh yeah oh you work in the supplement space oh so you scam people well it's a fair assumption but yeah it is a fair assumption which sucks no shit but actually no

and let me provide an overwhelming amount of evidence to prove otherwise because that's what it takes and like oh i remember i was talking with somebody who like their family so i can diss them despite technically them also being customer uh but they wanted a vegetable supplement so i gave them genesis and they're like i want five grams of spirulina i'm like here you go five grams of spirulina they're like great they have it it would taste like spirulina yeah yes that's right that's the point there's like but i want something that doesn't taste like spirulina that's you, you're not going to get spirulina then, but can I have that?

Well, I mean, you might just have like five milligrams, but you know, yeah, like it actually made me kind of bitter. They need to try the acai berry. Cause the new flavor,

they'll like that. That's actually a big, that's actually a big hit. Oh, there's a new flavor. Yeah. Yeah. We released a new flavor.

Yeah. Acai berry. People love it. Like it's, it basically has just instantly doubled genesis sales like flavors are a magical mystery it actually makes no sense adding flavors just means you sell more stuff it doesn't mean that you cannibalize sales at some point you have to i guess but we have not reached that point with any of our products it really just seems like uh yeah more flavors equals more money so as long as it tastes good like that's the downside of buying like i think it was eight things at genesis at once like i i'm still going through them so i

won't have the acai flavor for a while unless i want to waste it which i don't so well you are you are entitled to whatever you want man so well we can we can we can send you some us e-berry send me the entire warehouse don't careful what you what you wish for that's uh that's a lot that's just my gut that's a lot of things man all right now now we have officially degenerated into into just uh mumble fuckery nonsense. Yeah. So we'll, we'll cut it off here,

but yes, I hope everybody enjoyed the talk and Curtis will be back for something else. We don't know what yet, but we'll figure out something fun to chat about. Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular

health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it.

Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my newest supplement, which I'm very excited about, which is a 100% natural nootropic or brain booster called Ascend. Now, unlike many nootropics, Ascend doesn't target just one aspect of your mental capabilities at the expense of others. And it also doesn't rely on stimulants, which can produce immediately noticeable effects, but can also undermine critical brain functions and of course, result in unwanted side effects. Instead, Ascend contains clinically effective dosages of five different

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