047 Lee Holden: How to Have More Energy And Less Stress?

CK LIN 6:42
I'm really excited to have Lee Holden master teacher of chigong and taichi with me today? These being featured at least I know glo.com and summonLA. And the people that have attended his workshops have always share so much like Oh, I didn't know all these things. About g Gong and Tai Chi, I'm definitely going to start. So I really appreciate how easy he's able to ignite the curiosity, the interest, that passion around this Chinese art. And he's also producing this beautiful documentary called superhuman, I got to see a little raw footage about that. And when he features extraordinary human beings doing extraordinary things, so we'll be diving deeper there. So thanks so much for being on the show. Lee

LEE HOLDEN 7:27
Yeah, thanks so much. was great to run into you at summit LA and do some chigong.

CK LIN 7:33
Exactly. So So I'm actually very curious about your origin story. Because you're, you know, American and and now your whole profession is focusing on chigong. It's Chinese art. Can you tell us a little bit about why you how you got into all this in the first place?

LEE HOLDEN 7:51
Yeah, I'm just a white guy from California doing really cool Chinese ancient arts. So the way I got into It was through sports and martial arts. So as a kid, I was studying martial arts and I saw my teacher break a stack of bricks. You know, when somebody breaks a stack of bricks, that's pretty impressive to a 10 year old. And he looked at me as I was like, curiously looking at him, like, how did you do that? He said, that was through the power of chi. And then he grabbed my collar and he pulled me close. And he said, she is not for hurting people, but it's for healing. And I was like, Yes, Master. Okay, got it. Then some years later, I had the worst injury of my life playing collegiate soccer at UC Berkeley. And the sports doctors and physical therapists couldn't really do anything for me. I was out for the season. That was my first season like starting at a division one college so it was like my dream come true. And the second game in I'm out for the season. The after taking painkillers and cortisone shots and physical therapy, you know, a few weeks Later, I remember this teacher and went back to see him and he did acupuncture on me. And he showed me chigong exercises, some funky, weird movements that I had no idea what I was doing. But all of a sudden, one, two treatments, I was like 80 90% better. And after a week and a half, I was back running and playing soccer. And so all the teammates, and the coaches were like, what did you do? And this really was a catalyst for me. to dive deeper into eastern arts, chigong especially and really seek out ways that we could heal ourselves through movement, breath, mind, and things like that. So when I graduated college, I went to Asia and studied with chigong masters, learning their secrets, working closely with them and distilling the information so that it's practical and accessible for Westerners.

CK LIN 9:57
So pause for a second there. So Let's say I'm putting myself in the shoes of a noble warrior, my audience member who is maybe intrigued who may be even wanting to go check it out to experience it himself or herself, right. It's one thing to hear about it from Lee from ck, it's another to actually experience for oneself. So this is an area where now we're getting getting into the Whoo, so to speak, because she going is one of those things. Yeah, the energy work. The movement, it's obvious, like you can actually hear the feel the difference right away, like, Yeah, but in terms of the cheetah, prana. The experience itself, how does one differentiate someone who is like, say, a charlatan, right? Or someone who is the real deal? Can you tell our audience a little bit about that's

LEE HOLDEN 10:48
Yeah, one of the things I was most impressed with you is, well, I'm of Chinese origin. So so I'm not dissimilar. We're so not familiar with Qi Gong or Tai Chi. But what I really, really appreciate how you explain to you guys and many successful you literally just start out with movement and you started to ask us to pay attention to our internal state, as I love how you just kind of sneak that in there. And then and then people I just do simple movement and right away we, as you said, within 1015 minutes really feel the difference from the movement and from there moving or chi. So love that. So thanks to the way that you teach. I mean, that's what I'm

great. I think that's a really good question. So when we step back a little bit, she means energy. Energy means your likeness and we don't really have this word and let's say a Western framework. There's more Different kinds of chi where do we get chi from you get cheap from breathing. You get cheap from eating we get cheap from nature, we get cheap from each other. So, chigong is the practice at working with your likeness in a skillful way. Gong means skill. So how skillful Are you at working with the energy of your body, your health and vitality, the energy of your emotions, your feelings, and the energy of your mind, or spirit. And so energy can be looked at in a lot of different lenses. So when you're looking for a teacher, it's important to know what your intention is for your practice. Often people come to Qigong for relaxation, stress management, increased energy or pain, but it has application to all layers of life. So I often recommend people to understand why they're coming to chigan and then understand what is the best teacher with a best practice for me to meet that intention? Because there's she goes way back into it. Three 4000 year practice or an ancient history probably older than that, and there's 3000 styles that she gone. So how do we decide what style is right for me. My goal and developing Holden chigong was to make ancient practice practices accessible to modern life. So my practice and my style would be, in a nutshell, less stress more energy. If we clear the stress, let's say out of our mind and emotions, our bodies feel better. So we all know now through research and Western medicine, research that stress is the root cause of most illness. And so when we see how stressful life is and modern life is and how we've moved away from our natural expression of chi, we can use this practice as a way to come back to our center come back to our authentic authenticity to ourselves, and really develop our internal power. Now, here in the West, we have lots of different teachers. Sometimes they're more martial oriented. So if you want to learn how to break a stack of bricks, you probably don't want a teacher like me. You want to more martial Qigong oriented practitioner. If you want a really esoteric practice that is more in Dallas, esoteric arts and spirituality again, probably not me, there's probably some better teachers. But if you're going to deal with, in balance, accessibility where you can, you know, practice in 10 to 15 minutes you're going to feel a major shift in your state of mind and body then this might be a great thing to start with. So I like to be an entry level I like to take people who don't know anything about chigong or have never had an experience and give them a really wonderful experience that's within themselves and access that power from within and give them accessibility really to to what they have in their Internal capacities.

passionate about is just giving people that Aha. They don't know that they have power within themselves. We are always looking for power, joy, happiness, as an outside in approach and chigong gives us that inside out approach that reads orients us and we get to discover where power truly lies which is within ourselves.

CK LIN 15:06
So since you are a master of internal energy or external energy, can you tell us a little bit about when someone is asking like Okay, so, so less stress more energy? How do I, what do I measure? Like what am i metrics?

LEE HOLDEN 15:21
Right you thinking, you know, this is an art. This is an art of subjective science, you know the ancient art of Qigong meditation, the Yogi's, the rishis, the Qigong masters, they were the scientists of subjective experience. And often we invalidate our subjective experience to objective science. And really what's happening now it's exciting times because our objective Western minds our scientific approach that's an outside in is verifying, documenting these ancient arts that were discovered through subjective means way going inward we have a way in which we experience the universe. And so you to be able to trust in yourself and your subjective experience, whether it's feeling sensations, consciousness, your own body gives you tremendous capacity and capability to know who you are and your place in the universe. So, to reorient to help people reorients that there's validity by looking within can be extremely empowering as well. And we all know intuitively we can feel something shift and when you feel that shift within yourself, that is what we want to hang on to. So after let's say we do a practice 1520 minutes if you're checking in and you feel your energy, elevate. And as you go through the day, those triggers where you normally get stressed or agitated. They start to be softer and more relaxed, and then what they do is eventually They disappear. So those irritations, those stressors, sitting in traffic, it reframes in what we call transforming stress into vitality. because energy is energy. Stress is one kind of energy, depression, anxiety, these are all energy states, you're not going to find anything solid or physical about those states. And if we can transform those into something that we want, that we want to cultivate joy, inner peace, happiness, a sense of being centered, it's just transforming one energy state to another. You know, for example, somebody came in and saw me as a patient. And she was her mom. She was like, my daughter's depressed. She has no energy. She's in bed all day. She's not going to class. And I said, What happened? She said, Well, her boyfriend broke up with her and she got really depressed and then just stop doing everything. And so it was like her she had no energy, and I worked with her and got her into a better state. She was going to class and whatnot, she still made say, maybe 50% to where she was. And all of a sudden she came back into class and saw me. And she was like, hundred percent joyful, smiling. And her mom said, Yeah, the boyfriend got back together, they worked it out. So I was like, Where was the energy before and after it was in your mind, it's a perceptual thing. And the energy of our minds is so powerful. And if we can shift perception, attention and work with the energy of the mind, and the energy of the body, we develop power, because energy is there. We just don't know how to tap into it. You people, listeners have energy and you have the capabilities, where it's just late and it's in potential form. And then with certain breath, movements, practices and states of mind you tap into the right kind of energy that you want in your life at this moment.

CK LIN 18:52
I love that. Thank you so much for articulating in that way. I mean, part of what I what I teach myself as well as how do you actually line, the mindset, the heart set, the health set, and the soul set together and then really tap into that unlimited potential that's within all of us. That's probably a little bit more esoteric. And the way that you articulated what you articulate is a lot more accessible.

right, how we can actually reframe things and room boom and tap into that, for the people who are listening to my noble warrior podcast, they want to up level the performance, I want to tap into their potential, they want to really step into their, their purpose in life and really increase the capacity to serve as an entrepreneur as a leader. So everything that you said is so on point to the way that that we're talking about here.

LEE HOLDEN 19:46
So that's awesome. You know, there's something and she gone. It's called the three treasures. Three treasures is the treasure of your body, the treasure of your hearts and the treasure of your consciousness. And so what you just said your you know, mindset hearts I love that term and health set. It's really gauges. And I think people need to think of these as energies, like stations on a radio that you tune into. Most people are just dialed into the wrong station, there's dialed into the stress station, the anxiety station, the lack of purpose station, and it's programmed by a society that doesn't lead people to their potential. So to have access to different stations can be completely empowering to know that when we're depressed or stressed that we can change that station and get on a better frequency, one that is harmonious to our life purpose rather than discordant to who we are. And that takes a skill set. So chigong is a skill set to be able to change frequency to change, mindset, heart set, or body state into what we truly want to create. And then we feel on purpose. And you all know entrepreneurs know this that when you're on purpose, you tap into another abundance of energy, we get inspired inspiration gives us a surge of energy. Whereas when we're in a daily grind that's depleting of energy. So people that are energized, have more chi they're inspired, they inspire others, they become leaders, they tap into unseen forces that gives them vision, a pioneering vision that that isn't following just a normal way of moving through the world. So it sounds like your listeners are tapped into this kind of energy in this kind of spirit. And she gone only enhances that pioneering mindset, that entrepreneurial mindset by very specifically helping people get into flow state to transform stress into vitality, and to live up to an inner compass that leads them to staying on purpose. So is there

CK LIN 21:52
so I'm gonna geek out on this just a little bit. For my listeners sake, these are some specific techniques. A movement or posture that you can tell them like, Hey, you know, if you're stressed out, right now, if you drop into this particular posture during busy doing this breath within 1015 minutes, you can then get a high level of energy.

LEE HOLDEN 22:16
Absolutely. So let's because this is a an audio version, let's do some things that we can do vocally, rather than visually. So one great thing to do and we see this and animals, children and athletes, it's a very intuitive way to transform stress back into purified energy and it's shaking, shake the body loose. So right now, if you're not driving your car, just take your hands to your side and shake like an athlete before an event like before an Olympic event. Now, the other key thing is breathing. So you're going to shake and inhale through the nose and you're going to exhale through the mouth. You're shaking your hands out like this to your sides or in front of you. So shake out to the sides down below. Really pump your wrists or shake out your hands and then breathe this just two, three times in through the nose out to the mouth, you're gonna.

And as you exhale, you're blowing away the stress. And you're clearing it out and see through your fingers, do one more.

And 30 seconds to a minute. When you have your hands down to your sides. Notice how your hands feel now. You should feel tingling, buzzing, some electricity moving in your body. So you've just transformed, let's say, a state of tension or stress now into purified energy. How's that feel? It feels great. Yeah, it's amazing. So thank you. These little tricks can be very helpful in the middle of your day, when we're low resource when we're feeling stressed out when we're feeling a time crunch when we're feeling our internal mind, oppressing us, meaning that our thoughts are leading us into a stressful state and we all know that when we're in fight or flight or a stressful state that limits peak performance, and when we're in a relaxed energized states we perform way better.

CK LIN 24:24
That's beautiful. So actually, let's let's talk a little bit about from your experience dealing with your patients or students. What kind of transformation Have you seen in what let's say when they come to you they feel other case studies where you can say hey, when so and so come to me they were x. We did a little bit of sessions and then they were now why just tell us a little bit about the before and after. So then that way people can in similar situations can see Oh, I didn't know that was possible. Yeah. Now explore Chico and patchy as a means to help you get there.

LEE HOLDEN 24:57
I love that and not quite Simply I often tell people to notice how they're feeling before they start class and then notice how they feel after and you'll feel a transformation even in one exercise like we just did. I work with a lot of people in pain so back pain, neck pain. I work with a lot of people let's say with anxiety issue mental emotional issues, mainly anxiety, depression and stress and anxiety just like clinically diagnosed both clinically and self proclaimed. Let's say I just feel I just feel depressed I man I'm also stressed out or doctors will prescribe their patients to come to me with clinical depression. What's interesting with mental emotional states is that your body shapes to the emotional energy so you can tell that somebody is depressed by their body posture. So if somebody is depressed, they're going to their chest is going to be sunken and their head is going to be down and their face will have a certain expression when your energy elevates You do movements, you shift your posture, you change your breathing, and mood follows. So your mood and your body are intimately related. If you change one the other changes. So we can shift mental emotional states fairly quickly and get people into empowered states, where then that creates bitchu ated ways of being and moving through the world. So I would say those are really common. Now, more extra ordinary states are when we have let's call them extraordinary healings where people have come in for side effects of cancer where the doctor saying, you know, you have four months to live, you know, but the chemotherapy is going to be really hard on your system and your energy. So people do cheat on slow movements, and I've seen people do have miraculous recoveries, and are in remission from, you know, death sentences, really. So one of my patients, he was watching my show on public television, I have a show that is usually nationally, televised. And he's in his hospital bed just clicking through the stations and he sees me doing chigong and he just thinks what is this guy doing is this weird movements. I'm in on a river, you know, doing slow flows with nice music. And he just starts to visualize himself doing it. And then he starts to do it in his hospital bed, then he orders the DVDs, then he starts to do it with me. And little by little, and after four months, he's recovering. After a year. He's one of my chigan teachers, and he feels like you know, this gave me a new lease on life, and full recovery and remission. It's been four years and he teaches Qi Gong all over the place, and he's got so much energy. He's so vibrant and vital that you know, just just a joy to be around and such an inspiration with a success story like that. So

CK LIN 27:52
so so they're not using your method as a way to replace what they were already doing. Let's say chemotherapy or anything like that you use your methods, you're teaching your DVDs as a way to augment what they're doing is that accurate?

LEE HOLDEN 28:08
I like complementary medicine because there is always a time and a place for Western medicine, you know, infectious disease, you break your arm car accidents. You know, this medicine is really designed as preventative. And that's where it becomes so powerful. In fact, the way the medicine worked, was you would pay your doctor, your Qigong doctor, your acupuncturist, often were the same person, you pay them a monthly fee, and as soon as you got sick, you stopped paying. So this becomes a model of true healthcare because now, the system is set up wrong if we want health, the system is set up and designed as sick care and nobody gets paid unless people are sick. So unfortunately, we have more people sick than ever before. We're living longer lives, but there's more sickness and disease to the quality of our lives. is often quite poor. So this this medicine is designed for health, vitality, joy, happiness and deep, deeply and deep connections to other people and life around you. And that's how this medicine was designed. So when you activate, and I think the thing to think about when we're talking about health and healing is that it's not the chi Gong that heals you, it's your own internal healing power. And when we tap into the healing power that we have within us, miraculous things can happen because our bodies, when we get out of stress mode have an innate capability to self regulate, and activate a healing power that's beyond any medicine, whether it's Eastern or Western, then then we can imagine that's why the power of the mind is such as the strongest healer.

CK LIN 29:51
So So now I'm curious. So this is what you do. And from what I understand is that most people have what they do regularly and then they have the Part of them that they're growing and researching and r&d. So can you tell us a little bit more about what are you experimenting right now personally, in addition to what you know, the foundations of your skills and knowledge,

LEE HOLDEN 30:12
yeah, that's great. I mean, as you mentioned, I'm making this movie called superhuman. It's going to be a docu series. And we basically went around the world looking for people with extraordinary abilities in the energetic and chigong arts and the powers of the mind in spiritual capabilities. We traveled through to Tibet, China, martial arts masters, meditation masters, we went to Russia and look for the psychics. And just were curious about what are what is the human potential and what are we capable of. And so some of these masters that we found is incredible practitioners showed us techniques and tools that they use and so that's what I'm working on. I'm working on.

Definitely there's a foundation with all traditions that work with energy.

There's definitely a tradition of working with breath, consciousness and mind and how these ingredients work together is kind of the secret recipes of various cultures. So, ancient cultures, whether it was India, China, Russia, Southeast Asia, shamans from South America, they were the early day biohackers. And they have a lot to teach modern people on how to integrate, and how to reconnect to the power of nature and, and the power that's within ourselves. And when we start to combine modern technology with ancient, ancient technology, we start to see what is capable and where our potential lies. So I think this is what's really exciting in our day and age is how we can compliment combine and synergistically access our human potential.

CK LIN 31:52
So you gave me the privilege of watching some of the raw footage that you guys have already put together. Thank you so much and As a scientific person who has a PhD in biomedical engineering when I first saw it, the first thing that comes to my mind is Oh, there's a lot of CGI in this. Then my friend who was the Derek was founder of glow. He said, No, I was there. He said that I had the guy stripped naked. So there's literally nothing connected to the person and he held my hands and then I felt pulses of electricity running through my body like now this is the real thing.

So I'm curious to things like this again, right? That naturally that the ego and my what the scientific training say not, you know, it's not possible also, well, can you highlight some of the personal experiences that you have witness yourself? And that was like, Whoa, this is so intriguing the power of the human mind, you know, things like that. That would be really, really great if you can illustrate.

LEE HOLDEN 32:55
Yeah, you know, this story that you said was just great because This is a master from China when we found people that have this, let's say, strong electrical current that moves through their bodies that they can project into somebody else. And these are healers, martial artists, spiritual practitioners, they seem to be able to generate current of energy inside themselves. So in China, this is called she in India prana or kudalini. In Tibet, these practitioners do certain stances postures, breathing exercises, meditations to cultivate this extremely strong electrical current. And what what Derek was talking about it is you extremely downplayed it because when this guy holds your hand, it is stronger than putting your finger in a light socket. And you feel all your muscles in your arm and through one side of your body where he's holding, completely contract and spasm with electricity and basically what he's doing it's beneficial, it opens all your channels and he says, you know, a week of these treatments with him is like a year of acupuncture or more. And it's just so incredible because as soon as he holds your arm and you feel this current, you immediately go, it shocks you out of a particular mindset set of what you thought was possible and do an expansive, expanded mindset. So when we traveled, you know, we traveled with the scientists and made sure we vetted lots of people so that we knew that they didn't have let's say, a battery pack on them or any gadgets. So we scanned them with airport detector kind of devices and made sure that they were legit. And then when we had the, the treatments, it was just mind blowing and incredible. So we like like Derek was saying, we had him, take clothes off airport security detectors and then give treatments to people and just absolutely blow Your mind things you know, we found in Russia was so cool we had there's one woman that we show in the movie, but she can we blindfold her, and with you know, medical grade blindfold and and she just basically she just reads and sees with a blindfold on she tell you shapes, colors, we go to the car and get a car manual in English. And she reads the book with the blindfold on. So it's kind of like, what is it? How, what does this mean about our minds and our and our capabilities. So there's physical energetic capabilities, we're showcasing mind power and then and me for me, most importantly, it's to then teach people how to do some of these techniques themselves and tap into those powers that we're all capable.

CK LIN 35:50
So naturally speaking is I'm curious if you ask them questions like this because in my mind, they have superpowers like this as a scientific person or a As someone who is documentarian, I'll be asking them, Hey, why don't we, you know, create a way to do scientific experiments. So then we can help others do the same tap into their potential. And can you tell us some of their responses or why they don't necessarily want to share how they got to that state?

LEE HOLDEN 36:22
Yep. You know that there's a lot of research in Russia. And it's been happening since the 80s. There's definitely research happening in the United States as well. It's interesting, some of it has been covered up. Some of it has been a lot of these people, for example, the Chinese masters they don't want their name or their faces shown because in China, what can happen is that you can be tagged by the government. You can be forced into government jobs, healers into positions you don't want, you can get put in jail. There's throughout History, there's been prosecutions, all kinds of horrible things that people have with special abilities. And so often we found that people are in secrecy. And also then when we do scientific testing, there's ways in which people will say, well, that's not double blind, or it's not legit, or it could have been this. So as we go through the research, I think, more money, more legitimate science, more safety and things like that would be really helpful. And I think that's kind of phase two of this project.

CK LIN 37:39
Appreciate that. So, so where where are you with this project right now?

LEE HOLDEN 37:45
We are just finishing up the edits. It's going to be a kind of an initial launch in January and a fuller launch probably in March. And it's going to be a nine and nine episode docu series. Three of those episodes are the main chunk of the movie where we went searching for superhuman. Then I have wonderful interviews with modern day experts like Wim Hof, or Deepak Chopra, scientists like Bruce Lipton and Dan Siegel. And then the last three episodes are how to so viewers can actually start practicing the techniques that we learned and feel a shift in their energy and potential right away.

CK LIN 38:31
Oh, that's great. It's great for for for my audience for guys like me, who was always looking for ways to tap into their next potential, actually was particularly intrigued about one of the guys who I can't remember where he is from my thing is Indonesia, which is called holding a leaf. And then as a way to heal others do you believe and then he actually highlight on that guys just a little bit.

LEE HOLDEN 38:59
Yeah, he's credible and incredible healer and he's one of those electrical human beings. His story is quite fascinating where he developed this internal power but he had so much energy that unlike that Chinese master that chigong master who can modulate it so he can actually, the Chinese master holds your hand and sends the current. But this guy, he has so much power that he only can touch you with a leaf. Because if he holds you directly, it's too strong. And it's dangerous. like David says in David's the star of the movie said all if he touches me directly could give me a heart attack. So he touches him with the leaf and then we take a an LED light socket detector to see if there's like a detector to see if the plug is working. And so he puts it on him and he just gets this incredible jolt and shock and sends him flying backwards. It was an incredible cool scene with somebody with just tremendous power.

CK LIN 40:03
So what do you see as possible with this docu series? I mean, throughout your awareness to the human potential, you maybe teach some elementary fundamental techniques as a way to help the the viewers can access and awareness to their internal state. What do you hope to achieve with this docu series?

LEE HOLDEN 40:23
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think really three things, the first three episodes inspiration, like what's possible, watch some of these people that we found and discovered, open your mind. You know, kind of kind of confront your internal belief systems just kind of like we were just having, like, my science mind, my Western mind. My, you know, intuitive sense, you know, kind of pushes our boundaries a little bit, and then the next three episodes would be information. Let's talk to some experts. Let's talk to scientists. Let's take to modern day spiritual leaders and get their take on it. So inspiration information, and then practicality What am I capable of? What if I tried it for myself, so giving people simple practical tools to try it for themselves and see if they feel a shift and improvement of their energy, an expansion of their mind and a deeper sense of life connection.

CK LIN 41:25
So, on that note, as a teacher, so as a student yourself, what you see is the journey that it takes from beginner to familiarity to, like be informed to mastery. Like what's the what's the most difficult part of going through this journey?

LEE HOLDEN 41:48
That's great. I think. I see it a lot as I as I explored the possibilities and saw people train to very high levels like these people were talking about. Very much like Olympic athlete training. So these are people with a skill set already developed, you know, if you want to be in a, you know NBA basketball player, sometimes it helps to be six, five or taller. So there's an innate natural talent, then they train, you know, three to five hours every day. And they train since they were younger, often teenagers sometimes before and they develop a skill set that's extraordinary. Like any professional athlete, or Olympian, you're like, wow, these guys have trained it way beyond ordinary. So that's what we found, we found basically the Olympians in this world. Now, not everybody wants to go win a gold medal in the Olympics or be you know, NBA basketball player to enjoy the sport, or to get the benefits of going for a swim or exercising or playing a particular sport. So that's kind of comes back to your initial point. What is our attention with the practice? Sometimes the intention with the practice is just to expand into ourselves, feel our own internal power, have access to resources that lead to health, vibrancy, happiness, deeper, intimate connections with, with our friends, family loved ones, and a spiritual visceral connection to a higher power of the universe. And that's, like what everybody can do within themselves and we just start to, to walk along the path and see what's capable for ourselves and where it's going to lead us.

CK LIN 43:37
You might concretize that a little bit more like can you share with us your personal practice or the practices that you've witnessed with these grandmasters so that way people can say all right so these morning ritual right or or evening rituals or the way he brief or whatever, yeah, ladies delivered more specific

LEE HOLDEN 43:58
Yep. So it's it's it's not going to be anything necessarily that people haven't heard a lot of times, it's what you already know, and combining it in just the right way. So it's taking the ingredients that we have. So we all breed, we all have mind energy, we all have body energy, we all have emotional energy. And how do we use these in an integrated way. So integrating seems to be the key. Meaning that think of your breath, body, mind, emotions, spirit, like five horses, and often what in normal life, these horses run in different directions and keep us kind of stuck or stagnant. If we line all those horses up in one direction, you're going to have horsepower, you're going to have energy going in a direction that you want. So that's what I find is key is alignment.

So for me, let's say a morning practice is going to be to set intention, what I want to create for the day I often need to create anything I'm going to need she I'm going to need energy. So let's say we're looking at a map, here's where I want to go. I'm going to need fuel in the tank to get there. And I'm also going to need clear clarity of direction. How do I get energy? One is breathing practices. So quite simply, the way you breathe, influences your energy dramatically. So some breath work and in chigong stance training, holding certain body postures, then

I'm going to give you a real key to this whole thing that is kind of cuts through and gives people access to inner resources that these folks have developed. It is slowing down by slowing your body down you cultivate energy and this is something very, very key in chigong practices slow your body. When you slow your body, you slow your mind. When you slow your mind, you enter into the present moment in the present moment. is where all the energy and power exists. So when you do slow flows, and chigong, you create that alignment. And so that's where I think is one of the things that chigong has to offer that a lot of other techniques don't tap into. And it is slow your body down to access inner power.

CK LIN 46:22
So actually, and then only, you probably want to jump into other techniques that you use, but on this very point, which is actually counterintuitive to the conventional thinking, a lot of people who are listening and the high performers, they want to go harder and they want to go faster than want to, you know, get into CrossFit because they believe that going harder going more intense is the way to increase one's capacity to one's own energy take, so to speak. So what you just said is is the flipping that on its head say a little bit more about why slowing down be more present. is a way to tap into one's own energy tank versus the conventional thinking.

LEE HOLDEN 47:08
And conventional thinking to is often a little bit backwards because we don't then access what we truly want. So, by slowing down, you get to orient and people want to have more moments. Most people actually want more moments of elevated energy, of deep connection to whatever it is they're doing in the present moment or whatever their craft is. And this is called being in the zone. So even if you are going fast and a professional athletes, when you listen to people in the zone, athletically, they say it's as if time stands still. You're one with everything that you're doing. And there's an elevation of energy that happens.

So to access flow state, we can either do something very dangerous like ride a 50 foot wave or client rock climb or something like that. We can access it because your life is being threatened. You are extremely focused. But if you slow down, you can safely enter flow state each and every day very easily. Now, think of the best things in your life. Whether it's sipping the the finest glass of wine, you don't want to do that quickly, you want to savor it, watching a sunset, you don't want to rush through it, being intimate with your partner. It's not a race to get to the end. So those those moments that we want to create, we want to create more moments of elevated energy. And one way that we can do that, very simply, is to slow our bodies down.

You know, there's a saying, In the ancient traditions walk in ways contrary to the world. So the world is rushing around, always one step ahead of themselves. Constantly future projecting I'm going to project into the future of my state of happiness. So when I have so much money when I retire I'll be happy, well, slowing down. And chigong practice gives you a little mini vacation from that way of thinking, and creates a moments, a vacation moment in your everyday life where you can stand back, look at the horizon and the landscape. It's like a view on the top of the mountain, and be able to orient to what it is that you want to create. So slowing down gives us that perspective. And it's not about always going slow. It's just about slowing down enough to get perspective and to increase energy to then ramp it up and go quickly.

CK LIN 49:36
I appreciate that. Thank you. So here's howI articulated to my audience. There's a space between stimulus and response. And then mastery is gaining awareness to the mind new moments, the finer the moment that you can get you then the more precision that you can have and to bring that awareness to that The microseconds the nanoseconds that's the way I articulated for myself.

LEE HOLDEN 50:06
Absolutely, yeah. It's just like we were been talking, it's shifting the mindset and when you to create that shift in mind, sometimes we need to use the tools of our body, slowing our breath down. For example, if listeners just take a really slow breath in through the nose and out through the nose two or three times, mind states, awareness, energy state all of a sudden just shift. So if you're feeling agitated, stressed out, if you slow your breath down, all of a sudden that will create that shift and give you one of those micro moments to reorient and re navigate to where you want to go.

CK LIN 50:50
So you are in the middle of sharing the other than the fuel using breath work as a way to do that. Are there other practices that you use personally

LEE HOLDEN 51:00
There's lots of practices. So meditation is a fantastic practice to reorient your mind. There's so I teach a lot of different kinds of meditation. So I feel like meditation should be cross trained like fitness. So there's meditations where you're visualizing, let's say visualization is wonderful for working with the power of intention. Then there's mindfulness, which is working with the power of attention. So you have this yin and yang of the mind, intention, and attention. So mindfulness is going to be less content oriented, just feeling where you are, what is happening in the present moment and holding attention there. And intention is going to be crafting new vision of what you want your life to look like, of you, what do you want a particular outcome to be? And so both of these powers of the mind should be worked with as always Way to strengthen energy

CK LIN 52:06
Sorry, I have a personal question for you, please. So actually have a hard time visualizing things in concept. So so if I dream about Lee Holden as an example, it's not your face that I see is a concept like a concept of Lee Holden. Do you have any suggestions for people who have a hard time in visualizing?

LEE HOLDEN 52:26
Yeah, because sometimes our visualization turns into sensation. Like if I say, visualize golden light on your body, some people won't see golden light, they'll just feel like sunlight shining on them. And that's totally fine. It's a form of internal representation. But the more of your inner senses you can access the stronger that and the power of intention comes. So in Chinese intention is a combination of the character of your eyes. like what you see, which is visualize, mind, which is attention and heart. So your emotion like how much desire is behind how much? how passionate are you about it? Where is your attention going? And then how are you representing it? And this is the symbol in Chinese of intention, which I think is extremely relevant. So desire, passion, business, where your how, how strong, can you hold your attention to that concept. So I think don't get wrapped up that I need to visualize it but bring in sensation, you can also bring an auditory. So I'll ask you a question. How do you know that like when you're thinking about, let's say, like you said, Lee Holden, how do you know you're conceptualizing me as a person? do hear my voice? Do you feel something of that or you you start to hear the words that we had in our conversation, the energy of our conversation, How does it represented in your mind

CK LIN 54:04
Auditory and intuitive knowing,

LEE HOLDEN 54:07
intuitive knowing so I'm more auditory more kinesthetic. And so we all have our skill sets either visual, kinesthetic, auditory, depending our personality. So all of those are good, then what I would say is now to strengthen intention starts to bring in the ones that are more challenging. So, start to exercise you the power of your visualization, even by looking at something in the room like right in front of me as a teapot. Then I'll close my eyes and hold the vision of a teapot my mind more, you, you know, just start to strengthen my visual inner representation. Colors are good to like you can visualize blue, maybe you can just see a blue color but maybe you see blue ocean and remember a time where you around blue ocean sunlight shining on the water and that starts to strengthen that power.

CK LIN 55:01
appreciate that thank you. Yeah, yeah. Cuz my mind was I was always thinking like, Man, I wish I can visualize better, right? Because the egoic mind says how can I do this better? But as you're sharing this perspective, what I hear is hey, you know it's okay to start where you're at auditory kinesthetic. And then should you want to get better at visualizing, maybe actually do like painting or Photoshop where you're actually are looking at the different pixels as a way to duplicate it. And that that's how you can get better at a visual representation,

LEE HOLDEN 55:39
yeah, it's like a muscle you just strengthen it.

CK LIN 55:42
Beautiful. So breath work, meditation anything else before I know that you got to go in in less than five minutes. Is there anything else that you'd like to share? like rain to their daily ritual,

LEE HOLDEN 55:53
I would say activate chi, activate your energy one. Breathe deeper. I mean, that's just a really basic thing that I found with a lot of super humans working with the breath but breathe slower, deeper, slow down. So slow down breath and then slow down body do some Qi Gong flows. And maybe we can send your listeners some free Qi Gong flow so that they can try it themselves. And then get your mind. mind clear with what you want to create. So a clear intention, and then use as much of your mental faculties as you can. So feel it, hear it and see it.

CK LIN 56:36
what a beautiful way to wrap this up. The thank you so much for sharing your your craft. I really appreciate your articulation. I explained this to make it so accessible for the regular people who are listening for this. And also thank you for doing the work that you do in bringing these masters master teachers who are usually not in the public eyes right in into your docu series. superhumans so those people who are intrigued and who want to follow up with your work with this docu series where do they go?

LEE HOLDEN 57:09
Okay we can go to superhuman movie calm for this one superhumanmovie.com and then the show notes are interested in chigong practice (holdenqigong.com). I'll have the docu series there as well as all the Qi Gong practices too

CK LIN 57:33
thank you so much really, really appreciate it bring your heart Your your mind your skills to you know to my audience really, really appreciate

LEE HOLDEN 57:41
Oh, thanks CK was so great to have that conversation with you.