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hey this is leo for actualized.org and in this episode i'm excited to share with you one of my most favorite meditation techniques and it's called the technique of do nothing the meditation technique that i'm about to show you is what i think one of the most powerful meditation techniques that's out there or at least from all the different stuff that i've studied there are a couple of really key benefits to this technique of do nothing i'm going to show you exactly how to do it here in a few minutes here's what's really cool about this technique number one is that it's very easy and it's very effective this is probably the easiest and most simple technique that you will find as far as meditation goes so there's not a lot of stuff to learn or to memorize very very easy to do and it's also extremely effective in fact just over the last month i've been using this technique a lot and man in the last month i've gotten some of the biggest gains in my meditation practice that i have in the last three years so extremely effective the second thing that's great about this technique is that it's really good for beginners but also still really good for advanced students so you can use this technique if you have absolutely zero meditation experience and it'll be great for you because it's so simple and if you're an advanced student who's been meditating for 20 years you can use this technique and man you'll get some amazing results with it i think it gets only better with time and with practice and the third thing is that it's enjoyable and i think that that's really important especially when you're starting off is that you have a technique that actually lets you enjoy the process of meditation rather than being totally frustrated by it which you know is uh what i experienced when i started i started meditating about three years ago and uh i tried to establish habits and i i have this picture in my mind that i'm going to be a great meditator and that i want to be a great meditator and it's going to be valuable for me in my personal development journey but in practice when i actually sat down to meditate just for 10 minutes it would be extremely frustrating and painful and basically i would do it for a few weeks or a month and then i would quit and i wasn't able to maintain consistency i tried a couple of different approaches the first approach that i tried is simply the don't think approach i figured okay so meditation means not thinking so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna just sit for 10 minutes and not think and then i would sit down and be like okay stop thinking wait a minute that's a thought don't think i'm thinking again how do i stop thinking i don't know how to stop that's more thoughts [ __ ] and so it would go like that and be very frustrating for 10 minutes and of course the problem with that is that you can't really stop thinking because thinking is not in your control but that's a tangent another thing that i tried is letting go of thoughts so thoughts arise and then they go and they arise and they go and you can also kind of detach from them so i'd sit there and kind of watch my thoughts arise and i'd detach and then watch them arise again and detach and that process was quite frustrating too so for me meditation especially for like the first year it was really a frustrating process i wish i knew back then this technique that i'm about to show you because i think it would have made my my life a little bit easier i learned this technique called do nothing from shinzen young and here's how this technique works i'm going to describe it step by step even though it's extremely simple so what you do first is you find a position where you're going to seat yourself you can sit cross-legged if you want or in a chair if you're starting off probably a chair is best if you're a little more advanced do the cross-legged thing get a cushion that kind of stuff if you're sitting cross-legged i recommend getting a little blanket or quilt so you just kind of throw over yourself to cover yourself up and you're going to be sitting here with your eyes open what you also want is you want a timer you're going to set this timer for some amount of time either 20 minutes 30 minutes 40 or 60 minutes if you're new start off with something like 20 minutes or maybe even 10 minutes if you're struggling just to do 20. and then as you get more advanced you'll add more minutes to the clock so you set your timer that's all basic meditation setup stuff and then what you do is you're sitting there your eyes are open and now it's time to get a little bit into the present moment so center yourself how do you center yourself well just recognize and become conscious of the fact that hey i just sat down to start my meditation okay so that already is going to take you out of your normal operating mode of running around thinking about stuff and doing stuff in your in your day you're going out of that mode and you're just kind of entering this peaceful quiet mode where you're not concerned about what else is going on around you for the next 20 minutes it helps to take just a couple of nice relaxing breaths deep breaths into the belly and just notice that your breath is breathing for you or that it has been even before you sat down so just kind of become conscious of the breath kind of going in and out just for a little bit you don't need to do this for a long time just for like 30 seconds and then notice that you have thoughts in your mind become conscious of the fact that thoughts are arising and thoughts have content in them and you're getting lost in that content so start to become a little more present of that present and aware of that this takes just a couple of minutes as you're sitting down and just kind of settling in and then the actual technique begins and how i begin the technique is i sit down i center myself and then in my mind i say okay now i am doing nothing and what i do then is i defocus my gaze so my eyes are looking out somewhere into the distance not at any particular object i'm kind of spaced out just looking into space and then what i do is here's the critical step is i let go of control i let go of control over my attention and over my mind process so i let the mind literally do whatever it wants to do that's the essence that's the core of this do nothing process you just let go and whatever your mind decides to do of its own accord you let it do that and you accept it and you don't try to resist it and you basically accept absolutely everything that's happening within your sensory field sites come up sounds come up thoughts come up feelings come up itches come up pains come up memories come up all that stuff you accept all of it and you don't try to stop any of it you don't try to control any of it you don't try to change any of it so what this is basically complete acceptance of the present moment exactly as it is whether it's good or bad or neutral or boring or whatever you just accept all of it and you better believe that you're gonna have a lot of negative stuff come up when you try to do this so you know feelings of anger might come up frustration boredom sleepiness tiredness excitement giddiness anxiety fear all sorts of stuff will come up the trick is not to try to resist any of it and not to think of any of it as bad and something that you need to get away from you totally release control of your focus right so your mind can do whatever it wants it can go into story mode let your mind get lost in stories that's okay too let your mind do the monkey chatter thing if you've got a monkey mind and it's taking you in a million different directions and you're sitting there and you're thinking oh [ __ ] i i shouldn't be thinking this i should be meditating no just like all that let go of the need to stop the monkey mind for a second and that's really the whole technique what you're gonna find in practice is as you're sitting there and stuff is coming up you're gonna feel guilty about not letting it go because you know you're trying to meditate trying to become a good meditator so your mind tells you okay if i'm meditating i have to be doing something i have to be like letting go of thoughts or whatever what's tricky here is that you have to let go of that urge to try to control your thoughts that is the whole technique so when you notice that and you have an urge that you can actually let go of in the present moment then you let go of it and here's the trick if you are not able to let go of it in the present moment then you let it be so notice with this technique some what some people get wrong is that they try to let go of everything even stuff that like isn't in their control and that's not what we're asking you to do here it's a lot simpler than that if you can let go of it right now easily you let it go and if you can't then you don't worry about it it's just something to sit there and watch and so that's the whole technique and you sit for your 20 minutes or however long you sit motionless without moving as still as possible don't scratch your itches or anything like that and keep your eyes wide open so you don't fall asleep keep your back up straight your spine up straight as much as possible so that that helps you from falling asleep and that is right there the entire technique now here's the beauty of this technique it might sound too good to be true almost too simple so so simple and so stupid that it wouldn't be effective but that's actually exactly what makes it so effective what's beautiful about this technique is number one is that it's hard to do this technique wrong in fact really the only way you can do it wrong is by trying to do something with your mind like trying to get somewhere trying to become enlightened trying to reach some goal so if you're sitting there and you're practicing this technique and then you realize that oh i have a goal to be getting somewhere just recognize that recognize that's how that's you trying to control your thought process and just let that go let go of the intention to try to control stuff and just sit there and let your thoughts wander and go in any direction they want and you know 90 of the time your thoughts will wander into some crazy direction that has nothing to do with meditation it'll be just monkey chatter this is what in buddhist literature they call monkey mind so you'll have that 90 of the time maybe even 99 of the time but then that five to one percent of the time what's going to happen is that your mind is actually going to focus in become very laser focused and into the present moment and what's important recognize is that any of those are good it's not just that that 95 is bad and that five percent of focused concentration is good no that monkey mind is good too so here what you're training yourself to do is to accept both the monkey mind and the calmness the calmness is easy to accept because it feels nice and it sounds like traditional meditation the monkey mind usually we don't like accepting that because it doesn't seem like meditation but what's beautiful about this technique is that it's really hard to do wrong because all you have to do is just let go of any need to control and then you know you're doing it right the second beautiful thing about this technique is that it's really effortless it requires virtually zero skill and requires zero energy so you can do this technique when you're dead tired when you're feeling shitty when you forget how to do some other technique this is like the default technique that you should fall back on in your meditation practice and the third thing is that it's very enjoyable and relaxing and you don't need to wait years to get somewhere in order to enjoy it now does this mean that you're going to enjoy every single session when you sit down and do this no in fact probably when you first start it's going to be very frustrating and worrying and anxious for you why is that because your your mind is your mind is always like this this is the default thing that your mind is doing it's doing this all the time right it's like it's like your add you're like a a squirrel on crack cocaine like this right you can't you can't stop when we tell you to stop you can't stop it it goes even worse it goes even more so what do you do with meditation as you practice more and more this slows down and it becomes this kind of undulatory motion like this and then eventually becomes a perfect stillness like this but that takes practice to do what i found is that with this technique because you're letting go of everything and you're accepting everything and you're not expending any energy or effort on your part it's easier for the mind to go from this down to something very steady like this can happen quicker than you think let me give you a couple of clarifications because as simple as this technique is it's very easy to screw it up too with uh you know doubts and also misunderstanding what i told you so here's an analogy i like to use for what this technique is like imagine that you have a monkey that's been pent up in a little five foot by five foot cage for 20 years it's been pent up there and it's angry and it's got all this energy and it's just bouncing around all the walls in the cage now what you do imagine you walk up to that cage and you unlock the lock and you open the door and the monkey just bolts out with all this energy crazed monkey he's ready to tear you apart and then what you do as he's bolting out of the cage you hand him a bag of hand grenades and you set this monkey loose onto the city that's basically what you're doing with this technique you're setting your mind loose sometimes your mind will want to like scream out crazy things inside your voice you're not going to be moving your mouth in this technique sometimes your mind will just want to scream stuff out or it'll want to imagine like crazy things like you murdering children or you've uh detonating a nuclear bomb you know whatever your mind wants to come up with crazy schemes and ideas and this and that just absolutely ridic let it all happen naturally if it wants it to happen what you'll notice what i've noticed is when i first started this technique the mind was just crazy because it was pent up for so long you know we tell ourselves well i can't be thinking that and i shouldn't be thinking this so we're always controlling everything and it feels weird to just say hey stop controlling your mind for 10 minutes or 20 minutes it's uh something you probably haven't ever done in your life before because one of the things that the ego does is that the ego is a control fiend it likes to control everything as much as possible that's like the ego's modus operandi so when you try to take that away from the ego the ego usually doesn't like it and it resists and so you might at first have this kind of backlash where your mind says okay you're letting me loose okay if you're really letting me loose let me test let me see what the limits are and then your mind tries to like see what the limits are and you need to show your mind that hey there are no limits do whatever you want to do and you just let it loose and you sit back and you just watch and you accept all of it without judging it you just accept now here's an important point even though you're letting go of control of your mind and you're not trying to direct your focus or attention or your thoughts you are still maintaining control of your body so if you're sitting there very still that's actually going to be difficult to do you might want to like scratch your face or you might want to move around in your seat maybe you're going to want to lean back because your back is aching or something so here you exercise control and you maintain your posture and you keep your eyes wide open if you're getting sleepy your eyes will want to close and you're going to force them open so there's a lot of control being exerted physically on the body but no control is being exerted over the thoughts and what they're doing in the mind so get that distinction very clear another important clarification is that you only need to let go of control of your intention to control your mind and only if you can so notice if you're sitting there and your mind is thinking about stuff and then you know it's thinking about doing your emails and you're thinking about uh the birthday party you gotta go to tomorrow and it's thinking about the kids and thinking about lunch and thinking about sex it's thinking about all this stuff and then you realize like oh damn i'm lost in thoughts you have that realization and then your mind says something like okay now i gotta focus so see what you just did there when you said i gotta focus now that's you you created an intention now to control your thought process so that's the thing you gotta recognize like oh i'm trying to control it let go now what might happen is that you say to yourself let go and you there's nothing to let go you can't let it go what do you do then well then you're not really in control of it so you just watch it it's just another part of the process you just watch right those are the clarifications pretty easy let me give you a couple of tips about how to make this work even better for you so of course meditation habit needs to be built this is not something you can do on a whim this is something you have to do daily every single day so pick a time either 10 minutes or 20 minutes to start and do it daily like clockwork all the time don't miss any days that's very important for this habit secondly is remember always that monkey mind is okay if you sit there for 20 minutes and all you get are 20 minutes of pure monkey mind and no calm or no relaxation and know what you might call meditation that is still all meditation monkey mind is still all meditation if you're using this technique now you might wonder well leo how does this differ from not meditating at all isn't what i'm doing throughout my day basically do nothing and the answer is no it's not if you actually try this technique what you'll notice is that you are doing something in do nothing the only thing you're doing is that you're watching for those moments where you're trying to take control and you're releasing control now that might not seem like a lot and it might seem like that's what your normal day is like but actually that's not what your normal day is like your normal day is all about seizing control or getting lost in thought stories and never realizing that hey i'm trying to control my thoughts and all this stuff and all these events in my life and you're never letting that go in ordinary life so there is something different that you're actually doing when you're sitting down here also just the fact that you keep your body very straight for 20 minutes that will also have some meditative like impact on you over time as another tip i recommend that you accept the present moment whenever you sit down to meditate always remind yourself like hey why am i resisting the present moment why can't i just accept it and then just accept it that's really helpful another tip is to relax your jaw what you'll notice if you meditate a lot is that your jaw gets tense in fact it's mostly always tense and this creates tension further on in your body so a good tip when you're sitting down to meditate is remember to loosen your jaw a little bit not totally wide open but just a little bit loose and keep reminding yourself of that as you're meditating throughout the session because if you just start with a loose jaw five minutes later you're gonna have a tight jaw again so just kind of remind yourself that's not part of this technique just a little extra tip you can throw in there to spice up your meditation and also let your breathing be deep and natural you don't need to try to control your breathing just stop restricting it which is what we do a lot of times like we try to you know tighten our muscles tighten our belly and this produces shallow breathing so just allow yourself to kind of you know take in breath naturally you don't need to actually control it consciously those are my tips i'm going to give you a couple of last warnings before i let you go there's one really major drawback to this technique and that is that it's really hard to judge your progress here and in fact because monkey mind is so pervasive when you do nothing that you're going to doubt yourself and you're going to think that you're not progressing and that you're not meditating so how do you address this well you need to have faith that the do-nothing technique is very powerful it's a classic timeless technique that they've been doing for thousands of years in the east so it works it's extremely powerful don't judge it until you give it enough time to actually try it how much time do you need to give it well i'd say at least give it a whole month before you judge it but maybe even longer especially if you're just starting meditation right now because it's going to feel anxious at first and just because you have one anxious day of meditation or maybe you have a whole anxious week of meditation where you don't get any calm at all and it's just 100 monkey mind you're going to want to quit and you're going to feel like it's not working so that's when you need to remind yourself that hey it is working this is meditation and in fact the most powerful meditation sessions are the ones where you get all that [ __ ] out of your mind the way meditation works and this is what most people do not understand about meditation is that it's like a purging it's a purging of your unconscious and subconscious mind you have [ __ ] in your mind that's decades old that your mind is kind of dealing with and struggling with when you force your mind to actually sit down and be still fully in the present moment your mind can't be still it's moving around like that so in order to stabilize itself what it has to do is it has to purge it has to purge crap that's making it anxious so when you first force this this kind of process you kind of clamp it down you try to force it what happens that it it even like it even creates more resistance and so this creates this kind of friction in your body and also in your mind and to reduce this friction purging has to happen and so that's what happens if you're doing meditation effectively is you get these moments of monkey mind and craziness and anxiety then a week later there's like a release and it's like ah finally it purged and then you're calm you reach a new level of calm and then you keep practicing and what happens is again that tension and that friction starts to build up and then again there has to be a release it's almost like think of it like a tectonic plates in the earth's crust which rub against each other and they're kind of like stuck next to each other and then there's more and more pressure being put on them and then finally they release and there's an earthquake that's what an earthquake is those earthquakes when they happen in your mind those are the true signs of progress on this journey so don't worry about too much monkey mind here have faith that it'll all just automatically work out for you and the last warning i'll give you is that i warn you you're going to feel guilty about sitting down and doing nothing and in fact maybe this is the biggest pitfall that people experience when they try to meditate but especially with this technique because do nothing is so poignant they feel like well leo i've got like a full life i've got kids and i've got a family and i've got friends and i've got a business and i've got all this stuff to do and you're telling me to just waste 20 minutes of my life every single day doing nothing that's a waste of my life that makes no sense i'd rather go invest that time somewhere else it's hard to explain to a person like that you know a person who's in this kind of mode it's hard to explain to that kind of person how beautiful and how profoundly incredible it is to take your mind from this to this it's one of the most powerful experiences that you'll have in your entire life so it's very very worth it right but it does take some time it's kind of like going to the gym you don't just go to the gym and expect to be fit the next day you give it a few months to start seeing some results and if you really want to kick ass then you go for year after year after year very consistently and then you can have an amazing looking body and just like that your mind can be sculpted and this meditation technique right here is just like doing bicep curls or just like bench pressing or doing squats so think of it that way if you're a gym rat all right that's the whole technique very very simple try it today try it for a whole 30 days do a 30 day challenge with this 30 days straight for 20 minutes don't miss a single day and then i look forward to hearing what your results are like perhaps in the comments down below or on my website alright this is leo i'm signing off go ahead please click the like button for me on this video share it with a friend post your comments down below share your results with me and lastly come sign up to my newsletter right here at actualize.org it's a free newsletter you can also check out other stuff on actualize.org there's a lot of resources there that you can take a look at a lot of different ways in which you can improve your process towards self-actualization that's what i'm really passionate about i want to keep you on track with self-actualization because this is the most rewarding journey that you will undertake in your life the process of raising your consciousness the process of improving and polishing up and optimizing every aspect of your life so that you have a great mood and then also also your uh your finances are doing better your relationships are doing better and so forth so sign up stay tuned and i will see you soon with more self-actualization videos you