Create New Habits Without Lifting a Finger

A habit is a consistent craving and thought that leads to predictable emotions, actions, and behaviors. Habits are reflective of your old self. They represent the activities of your past, and predispose you to a foreseeable future. Good habits are the process by which we achieve long term goals. Bad habits do not align with what we hope to achieve. Society typically views habits as a physical phenomenon. Something you do, focused primarily on actions and behaviors. Rarely talked about, is the physiological impact of habits, and how we can create a new future before lifting a finger. 

Neurologically, habits are strong and steady electrical signals, wave types, frequencies, polarities, and patterns in the brain and body. 

From an endocrine perspective, habits are high resting levels and mobilization of hormones associated with chronic emotional states. 

From a genomics standpoint, habits are the expression or down-regulation of genes.

Habits are rhythms. Biological expectations. After a habit is formed, our body anticipates its occurrence. If you eat lunch every day at noon, by 11:30ish, your stomach starts releasing digestive enzymes, preparing you to eat and digest. If you go to sleep every night at 10pm, by 9:30ish, your brain releases melatonin to prepare you to sleep. Location, the five senses, and time of day all pool together to form associations with the habitual activity. The more associations you have, the more likely you are to engage in the habit. 

Example: If I am trying to form the habit of meditating, I will increase my chances of forming that habit by:

• Meditating at the same time of day (time)

• Meditating on the same couch (location)

• Meditating with the same pillows and blanket (sight, touch)

• Lighting a sweet smelling candle as soon as I sit (scent)

• Ringing a bell at the start and end of every session (sound)

• Leaving the candles and bell in clear sight next to my meditation couch (sight)

There are associations everywhere. Most of the time they go unnoticed by the conscious brain, yet influence our behaviors. Thankfully, we can control many of these cues, to weaken strong associations that are undesirable, and strengthen associations to behaviors we want to engage in consistently. By controlling your cues, you are controlling your subconscious, and improving your ability to create new, or discontinue old habits. 

As we know, habits are persistent cravings and emotions that lead to behaviors. These behaviors influence, or are influenced by, the expression or repression of genes that regulate cells, which regulate tissues, which regulate organs, which regulate systems. Genes alone do not determine anything. They are about potentials and vulnerabilities. Environment is the driving force that tells us whether a gene will be expressed to its fullest potential, or down-regulated and dysfunctional. 

Environment is typically thought of as the physical space around us, the people we spend time with, the culture we adhere to, the food we eat, the air we breathe, but it is also an internal state. Internally, our environment is our cravings, thoughts, and emotions, aka the root cause of our habits. Chronic stress, over time, has been proven to make us sick and diseased. Chronic stress is a product of thoughts and cravings. Chronic stress, therefore, is a habit. The beauty about this phenomenon is that if our thoughts can make us sick, our thoughts can also make us better. Our thoughts condition our physical body and drive habits. By focusing our thoughts, emotions, and intentions on a new and different outcome, we can change our internal environment, signal genes in new ways, and anticipate a new future. 

This type of internal work enhances our ability to make and break habits before we even lift a finger. It stacks the deck in our favor, and sets us up for success. When attempting to start a new habit, or break an old habit, consider first doing this:

1. Manage your external environmental cues in ways that support your new habit or weaken associations to the habit you wish to break.

2. Change your internal environmental cues through clear intentions, and elevated emotions:

   1. Utilize the meditation cues listed above, close your eyes, and:

      1. Identify exactly what you want to achieve

      2. How would you feel if you were to achieve it? (Grateful, accomplished, happy, healthy, proud)

      3. Place your focus on your heart, the area surrounding your heart, and the empty space surrounding your body

      4. Fill that space with your elevated emotions (grateful, accomplished, happy, healthy, proud)

      5. Feel it! 

      6. Stay there for a given amount of time (10-60 minutes)

      7. When you are ready to stop, do an extra minute

      8. Do it every day

Through this practice, you are changing your internal environment, and conditioning your body to a new mind. You are discontinuing the energy of old habits, and predisposing yourself to a new future. This work can enhance your ability to successfully create new habits, break old ones, and stop living in the past. It is time to create a new future.

Do you want more information on the science of this practice? Are you skeptical? Would you like guidance during this internal work? Dr. Joe Dispenza has introduced a new course that will give you the foundation on how to make this work. Follow THIS LINK to check it out.

Comment below and let me know what you think of this practice! Be sure to post and share it with others so that we can all raise our collective energy. Enjoy!

Survival Guyd Podcast review

So...first podcast experience in the books. Survival Guyd is a podcast about anything important enough to argue about. Anthony, John, and Chris debate, teach, learn, bullshit and laugh their way through everything from politics, to health, to conspiracy theories, to social sciences. The guys were kind enough to invite me on to discuss holistic health, and I gotta say, I had an absolute blast.

The SG guys were interested in hearing about my personal journey to health, which was specifically geared towards the holistic treatment of Ulcerative Colitis. We reviewed the fundamentals of health, that being diet, sleep, exercise, and stress management. We discussed the pitfalls of conventional medicine and what can be done to fix the broken “health care” system. We talked about how to improve sleep quality, as well as specifics of my core stress management tool, Subtractive Meditation. To Anthony’s disappointment (I think), my answers about diet and exercise were very general. I don’t impose my personal beliefs about nutrition on anybody, I avoid dogmatism at all costs, and do not believe that there is only one approach to a healthy diet. Instead, we discussed meal hygiene and what can be done to improve digestion and autonomics. As for exercise, I again got very general (sorry, Anthony). Movement quality and cardiovascular health is the fundamental physical competence required to live well. The minutia of weight lifting exercises and programing is always interesting and fun to discuss, but is icing on the cake of life. Maybe we can discuss that cake icing on my next podcast appearance, but to satisfy the general theme of the show, I wanted to avoid the reductionist outlook of “everybody must do (insert exercise modality here).” The SG guys and I finished off the podcast with important talks on common physical problems associated with school children, cognitive issues, and how state sponsored policies are failing to address root causes.

I cannot recommend Survival Guyd enough. Anthony, John and Chris were great hosts, made me feel at home, and had a ton of great questions lined up. Even our off the deep end rants were top notch. I hope you don’t mind cursing. Overall, these guys really get it, and I can’t wait to hear more from them in the future.

Lifting without an Ego: A Meditative Approach

“We suffer more in the imagination than in reality.” - Seneca

 In the modern world of virtual relationships, reductionist education, and bias comparisons, void of context, the general population’s global view of meditation and weight lifting couldn’t be more different. People generally picture meditators as placid, motion-less beings who sit cross-legged on pillows trying to “quiet the mind” and achieve Nirvana. Although their opinions may hold some accuracy, it is short sighted and ignorant. In contrast, when people form a picture in their mind of someone exercising, it is typically of a person in a high energy environment, performing various dynamic strengthening movements, coupled with bright lights and thumping music, with an end goal of looking better naked. In a society flooded with social media, that picture may also include a gym selfie-taker, bent on glamorizing their efforts for egotistical self-promotion. Again, there may be some accuracies in such pictures, inaccuracies as well, yet these two general thoughts paint the pictures of two very different individuals, and two extremely different activities. As a veteran weightlifter and rookie meditator, I have come to learn that meditation and weight lifting share more commonalities than differences, and I’d like to explain why.

What is the Subtractive Method?

During the summer of 2017, I started meditating at Brooklyn Meditation in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This venture began after many gratifying meditation sessions with the Headspace and Insight Timer apps, as well as encouragement from my wife, Krista, who, at that point, had been a member for almost a year. I was enjoying some short-lived benefits from use of the apps and wanted an even greater experience, so I made the decision to work with experienced meditation guides. Brooklyn Meditation teaches the Subtractive Method of meditation. The goal of the Subtractive Method is similar to that of Buddhist ideology; to subtract or eliminate one's “self” also known as the “ego” so that life can be lived in the present moment and not cluttered with preconceived notions, thoughts and emotions that cloud judgement, stimulate reactions and manifest in the body as physical symptoms. The ego is built on desires and cravings that are dictated by personal experiences, cultural and ideological norms. Humans want permanent happiness, and we are always on a mission to identify the cause of our happiness and do everything in our power to maintain and heighten the experience. We want new material possessions but once we get them, our eyes are fixed on the next ones. We want to earn 1 million dollars, but once we get that first million, we are already looking to earn the next million. We expect an effortless and clear commute to and from work, but when it is disrupted by traffic, we become annoyed and frustrated with our bad fortune. Buddhists teach that these cravings, good or bad, are the cause of unhappiness. When a person attains something they desire, they will never be permanently satisfied and will always look for more. When one cannot fulfill a craving, it results in sadness and frustration. Both situations, although opposites, lead to displeasure and dissatisfaction. These unnecessary “minds” can manifest physically as well as emotionally. It is well documented that chronic stress is a major risk factor for disorders and diseases associated with the digestive, neurological and cardiovascular systems, among others. The chronic stress referred to in academia is identical to the cravings identified by Buddha in the 5th century. Same problem, different terminology. Acute symptoms associated with it include non-specific lower-back pain, headaches, abdominal pain, and increased muscle tension, heart rate and blood pressure. Think about it, when stressed, do your muscles tighten up? When fantasizing about a pleasurable encounter, does your heart beat faster? These stressors and fantasies are a creation of the imagination and do not truly exist, however, they have a physical effect on the systems of the human body. When you are able to destroy this non-existent self or ego, you will no longer have cravings which lead to unhappiness, frustration, and disease. You will no longer have the need for objects and experiences to make you happy, and your body will no longer respond physically to creations of the mind, for those minds cease to exist.

When practiced consistently, the elimination of one’s self allows the meditator to be permanently “in the moment” and experience pure happiness without the need for any external sources. This ultimate goal is extremely similar to other methods of meditation, such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Transcendental Meditation (TM). With TM and MBSR, instead of purposefully eliminating unnecessary pictures and emotions from the mind, MBSR and TM meditators listen to a repetitive mantra or concentrate on breathe cycles and try to focus the mind on that sound or sensation and nothing else. When thoughts emerge, the meditator acknowledges them and re-focus’ on the task at hand.

What is Mass 2?

If you are a fitness professional, avid exerciser, or competitive weightlifter, you should know the name Dr. Patrick Davidson. He is the renaissance meathead, mindful savage, Exercise Physiology PhD having creator of the highly acclaimed Mass and Mass 2 eBook and workout programs. These programs are challenging in every way imaginable. Not only do they push the limits of your physical capabilities, Mass and Mass 2 puts your psyche to the test. You will want to quit over and over again, and the biggest challenge of the program is to show up each day and punch your ticket. For the purposes of this article, I will relate my outlook to the Mass 2 program.

Mass 2 is a four block program. Each block is one month, and each week has four different exercise days. These days remain constant until the block is over. Day one and day four are the most challenging from a cardiovascular standpoint. Day one consists of 10 different exercises, performed for 30 seconds, followed by a 30 second rest period. During those 30 seconds of work, the user must complete 15 repetitions of each exercise at maximum speed. If you get more than 15 reps, the load is too light. If you get less than 15 reps, the load is too heavy. The user performs 3 total sets. There is no cheating the 30:30. “It is a punch right in the face with a pair of brass knuckles.” Day four mimics the same protocol as day one. 30:30 work to rest ratio, but at the heaviest load that you can handle, and for only one round. This protocol is simply referred to as “The Cajun”, and it gets spicier and spicier with each block.

Day one of block two progresses the 30:30 protocol and calls for a 20:40 protocol. Five exercises, 20 seconds of work, 40 seconds of rest, 6 total rounds. The block two loads are heavier than block one, and the day 4 Cajun is just as spicy. Three rounds of the heaviest load you can manage. Brass knuckles, right to the face.

The Block 3 Cajun

Finally, we reach The Cajun of block three. Day one of block three is completely different than block one and two, and I won’t get into detail. However, the block three Cajun is the spiciest of them all and damn near burnt my face off. It is by far the hardest exercise protocol I have ever used in my entire life. Perform the same five exercises as the 20:40 Cajun from block two, same exact loads, except now instead of doing 10 reps in 20 seconds, you are back to 15 reps in 30 seconds. Let me repeat, you load up your heavy 20:40 exercises, but bring back the 30:30 for three total rounds. I don’t know if any participant has ever completed every rep of each set of this protocol. The strongest people I know have zeroed a few stations and others have finished with single digit reps. This is by far the biggest acid bath you will encounter in a weight room. After suffering through two brutal block three Cajuns with vomit and dry heaving, I re-read Mass 2 for extra motivation and rediscovered the passage which turned my world upside down.

The Alter-ego

Dr. Pat Davidson is a former Strongman competitor and was the Springfield College Head Coach of Team Iron Sports, a group of Springfield College students who trained together, competed together, and pushed each other to the limits of their physiology. If you are not familiar with Strongman, it is a strength competition which requires competitors to move extremely heavy weights in various different ways, under various time and repetition constraints. To quote Dr. Davidson “…the sport of Strongman is essentially being given a weight that is 95% of your 1RM and having to do 10 reps with it.” The requirements of these competitions are downright silly, and it takes a special person to be able to compete in this sport. In Mass 2, Dr. Davidson explains that every Springfield team member had a nickname, his being “Daddy Bonez.” Nicknames mattered for two reasons. First, having fun and being silly is a requirement. Second, when Dr. Davidson stepped into the weight room and trained with his teammates, he could no longer be Dr. Pat Davidson, he had to become somebody else. Dr. Davidson was not physically capable of accomplishing the same things as Daddy Bonez. In order to do what was impossible for Pat, Daddy Bonez needed to step in. If Dr. Davidson wasn’t in his alter ego mindset for a competition or workout session, it was going to be a long and painful day. After reading this for the second time, something clicked. If Dr. Davidson wanted to crush grueling workouts and be better than he could ever imagine, he had to remove his ego from the situation.

Cajun Anxiety

Here I am, week two of block three and it's time for The Cajun. Week one of The Cajun made me vomit. Before I even started my interval timer for week two, I was anxious, nervous, jittery, and experiencing a significantly greater heart rate than I typically do after my warmup. I was able to see the data on my heart rate monitor, and could feel it pounding in my chest. I started the timer, suffered through an extremely hard and shit-eating workout, and ended up dry-heaving over the toilet. My heart rate hit an all-time high during that workout, and that’s not a good thing, I attribute it to anxiety. Anxiety about something that happened a week ago. Anxiety which took control of my nervous system, cardiovascular system, and musculoskeletal capabilities. In week one of the Cajun, I totaled 32,405 pounds of weight lifted. In week two, I totaled 24,495. In week one of the Cajun, my heart rate maxed out at 186 beats/minute. In week two of the Cajun, my heart rate reached 194 bpm. That an lifetime heart rate PR. I rated the exertion (RPE scale) as 1,000 out of 20. Last week’s vomiting ruined this week’s workout. My body suffered during week one and my mind held it close, not letting go. Buddhists refer to this as an attachment. My mind was on the future suffering that I was about to endure, and it had a profound physical effect on my body before I even picked up a weight. This is a prime example of how holding onto feelings and thoughts, being attached to non-existent situations from the past or in the future, can manifest physically in the body and influence current experiences. I was able to see a spike in my heart rate.  I was able to see a decrease in the amount of weight I lifted. My perception of intensity was off the charts. I thought I needed an alter ego. I needed someone else to suffer through The Cajun so I didn’t have to suffer myself. I needed to remove myself like Pat Davidson. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I needed to apply the Subtractive Method.

Please truth, eliminate the false

What are the two golden rules of nicknames? You can’t give them to yourself and you can’t ask for one. Since nobody in the gym was able to read my mind and give me an alter-ego, I was stuck being Gerard, the one who vomited and dry heaved two weeks in a row. If I wasn’t going to get an alter-ego, the next solution I could think of was to completely remove myself from the situation. As the guides say in Subtractive Meditation, throw yourself away, for it is made up of false minds. I did just that.

“I don’t exist.”

On week three of The Cajun, I parked my car next to the gym and I left the thought of my physical body in the front seat. Gerard sat shotgun. Someone else paid the parking meter, someone else opened the gym’s front door, and someone else set up the weights for The Cajun. Anything attached to the notion of Gerard, from his cell phone, to his face in the mirror, to the people who said hello to him, was completely ignored. Gerard was not here, in fact, he no longer existed. This is the essence of Subtractive Meditation. I did my usual warm-up routine, careful not to look in the mirror or allow my mind to wander. If it did, as it always does, I reminded myself that I no longer existed. I kept repeating it and it brought me back into focus. The Cajun did not change. The weights were the same, the challenge was no different, but my attachment to last week’s suffering was no longer there. My perception was different, because it no longer came from a false mind. Gerard wasn’t going to suffer today, he no longer exists. This was my golden nugget. This was the key. If you haven’t already guessed, the results were remarkable. My heart rate never went over 184, the RPE scale was 17 out of 20, I didn’t become nauseous, and the total weight lifted increased from 24,495 to 29,755 pounds. When I repeated this mindset on week 4, I topped out at 34,280 pounds. That is just under a 10,000 pound increase in two workouts and it had nothing to do with my muscles. It’s because I acknowledged a mind about my anxiety over The Cajun’s fury. I threw it away by removing my ego. It resulted in a lower heart rate and higher strength output. Applying the Subtractive Method allowed me to calmly accomplished what had previously brought me to the point of breaking.

Closing thoughts

The last two Cajuns of block 3 taught me more about Subtractive Meditation than I could’ve ever imagined. If I hadn’t re-read Dr. Davidson’s thoughts on the importance of the alter ego, this connection may have been completely missed. Being a fitness professional, this experience resonated with me more than anything. Not only did I have subjective feedback, I had objective data supporting the conclusions. My experience may be situationally unique, but the application of the Subtractive mindset transcends disciplines. Since my realization, I have been meditating daily and continue to experience new sensations and changed perceptions. The guides at Brooklyn Meditation taught me to throw away my false self, and Mass 2 became my first step into the True Universe.

Practical Application

Going HAAM (Hard As A Motherfucker) is a popular practice among weightlifters. It refers to their intense mindset, before and during a workout, which is built on self determination in the face of struggle and adversity. This intensity, in theory, will increase sympathetic tone, priming the nervous system for optimal muscular function as well as increased blood pressure, heart rate, and all other phenomenon associated with the sympathetic nervous system. Going HAAM is admirable and done with good intentions, but may actually be detrimental to the lifter. The HAAM mindset is built on thoughts of the past and anticipation of the future. The ego is the driver of this mindset. The same ego that can consume and ruin an experience. Hyping myself up before lifting was adding to the stress and anxiety about The Cajun. It increased my heart rate and muscle tension before I even lifted a weight. It negatively impacted my recovery between sets. When assessing fitness, the exerciser who can accomplish “Exercise X” with lower muscle recruitment and a lower heart rate is the more efficient exerciser. An ego that increases heart rate and muscle tension is an ego that places unnecessary strain on the person absorbed in it. This is something that can and should be avoided. In my experience, the Subtractive Method of meditation is the only coping device that provides a lasting relief. If you go HAAM on a regular basis, try the Subtractive Method and observe your body’s reaction. I promise, your intensity will not suffer and your focus will not diminish, in fact, it may improve. Avoid your phone, the mirror, any thoughts of your own body and mind, and during your rest, continuously repeat “I do not exist.” Let the gains begin.