Episode
97
Staying vital through effortless meditation
James Brown: Vedic Path Meditation
Living long and well involves focussing on multiple lifestyle practices, including our spiritual awareness. It is a pillar of human longevity that sits alongside a clean diet, vigorous exercise and optimal sleep habits. So let’s meditate. James Brown once thought that his life was “too crazy” to involve meditation, but after a 25-year career in advertising he is now a teacher of the practice and founder of San Francisco based Vedic Path Meditation. In this LLAMA podcast interview with Peter Bowes, James explains his journey from stressed out executive to one of the world’s leading experts in what’s known as a “flow” approach to meditation.
Published on: 30 May 2019 @ 11:58 PT
NOTES & QUOTES
Thanks James!
In this interview we discuss:
- What does the ticking clock mean to you?
- Being blessed genetically and putting in place practices that sustain vitality.
- Living a frenetic lifestyle and discovering spirituality.
“One of the things that made me feel the oldest in my life was buying a lawnmower.”
- How does an account executive in advertising and aspiring lawyer become a meditation guru?
- Becoming a father and responding to new pressures.
- Embracing the power of unforced smiling.
- Cleaning a bike chain and the LOL moment that changed James’s life course.
- What is the practice of flow meditation?
- Dispelling some of the myths about medication – why and how we do it.
- The impact of stress.
“Stress has been clinically shown to accelerate the rate at which we age and so, not only distress is it killing us, it’s making our lives suck in the process.”
- What is wide-angle present moment awareness?
- Assessing our habits and putting multi-tasking in persecutive.
- Focussing and concentrating. What’s the difference?
- Trying too hard versus a flow experience. The benefits of effortlessness.
“I don’t just want to stay alive. I want to stay vital.”
- The stresses of parenting and how to cope.
- A calling to be on a bigger stage? Ego or nature?
- Meditating and relationships.
Also listen to our earlier conversation with James Brown in episode 94 at the 2019 biohacking conference in Los Angeles.