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“When you can quiet the mind and there’s not a wave or a ripple, that’s when you experience the true reflection of yourself—and the true reflection of reality,” says holistic health practitioner Greg Schmaus, who returns to Mental Health in a Modern World for a powerful solo episode on one of the most daunting challenges of our time: quieting a racing mind in an age of constant overstimulation. Drawing on his own journey overcoming severe anxiety and OCD, Greg dives into the real roots of mental chatter, unpacking why traditional approaches so often backfire and revealing how our thinking mind works more as a protector—like a loyal but overzealous watchdog—than a true enemy.

In this episode, Greg lays out the paradoxes of mind, why what you resist persists, and how befriending negative and intrusive thoughts leads to authentic inner calm. He shares two transformative meditation techniques (one for cultivating attention, the other for awareness), plus practical frameworks from Jungian psychology, Internal Family Systems, and Taoist wisdom. Greg also explores the powerful interplay between breath and thought, demonstrating how simple physical practices can break the loop of mental chaos.

Tune in to Mental Health in a Modern World to learn how to move beyond duality, train your “unruly puppy” of a mind, and discover how stillness is the gateway to your truest self.

5 Key Takeaways

Quieting a racing mind is possible with practical tools and self-understanding—here are five powerful actions you can take today:

1. **Practice Sustained Attention**: Use breath counting meditation daily—focus your attention on the in-breath and out-breath through your nose, counting up to 10, and gently return focus whenever your mind wanders.

2. **Cultivate Open Awareness**: Spend time each day in the “watchtower,” observing thoughts, feelings, and sensations without attachment or aversion; when you get hooked, simply note “thinking” and return to observing.

3. **Feel to Quiet the Mind**: When your mind is racy, ask yourself, “What am I resisting feeling right now?”—drop into your body and allow yourself to fully feel emotions, noticing how this naturally settles your thoughts.

4. **Befriend Negative and Intrusive Thoughts**: Instead of fighting or replacing negative or intrusive thoughts, thank them as protectors, and welcome them like an old friend for tea, turning resistance into curiosity and gratitude.

5. **Regulate with Breathwork and Movement**: Use practices like square breathing (inhale, hold, exhale, hold—each for four counts) and walking meditations matched to your breath to calm both mind and body.

Take one of these steps today—commit to a mindful moment and begin reclaiming your inner peace.

Memorable Quotes

"When you can quiet the mind and there's not a wave or a ripple, that's when you experience the true reflection of yourself and the true reflection of reality."

"The more we can access the feeling body, the more we can quiet the mental body."

"The most important thing when you're having negative thoughts is to not create resistance or opposition to it, but to actually express gratitude, seeing it as a watchdog or a protector that's just looking out for your sense of safety."

Resources Mentioned

Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell (Translation) - https://amzn.to/3VK4CCQ

Open Focus Brain by Les Fehmi - https://amzn.to/3VKeTiJ

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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Mentioned in this episode:

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When the pond is still and you look into it,

you can see your reflection. But when the pond is

turbulent, when the waves and the ripples are

chaotic, where there's a lot of activity, if you

look into the pond, you can only see the waves and the ripples. You can't

see your reflection. When you can quiet the mind and there's

not a wave or a ripple, that's when you experience the

true reflection of yourself. And the true reflection of

reality. In a world moving faster than our minds were designed to handle,

mental health is becoming one of the defining challenges of our time. Welcome to Mental

Health in a Modern World with holistic health practitioner Greg

Schmaus. After overcoming severe anxiety and OCD in

his own life, Greg dedicated the past decade to helping others heal

through a fully integrated approach to mental health, combining lifestyle

coaching, psycho-emotional healing, Mindfulness, and

archetypal work. Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of

sessions, guiding people back to peace, clarity, and a deeper

connection with themselves. Each week, Greg shares powerful solo

insights, conversations with leading voices in holistic healing, and

immersive live coaching sessions that take you inside the healing process

itself. New episodes every Friday. Follow the show and start

reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern world. Here's Greg.

Welcome back to Mental Health in a Modern World. So today's going to

be a solo episode and it's a really important topic,

quieting a racing mind. And this is one of the most common

topics that I get approached with in my one-on-one coaching

practice and in a lot of my coaching and program

offerings. And so in our modern world, this

racy mind, this inability to quiet the inner

chatter, For me is one of the biggest challenges in

our world today. And it's a topic that we're going to explore

in some depth today. And we're going to go into a variety of

areas that a lot of times either get overlooked

or a lot of conventional approaches that end up doing more

harm than good when it comes to quieting the mind.

And this is, you know, one of the biggest challenges that I faced

early on in my personal healing journey,

struggling with severe anxiety, obsessive compulsive

disorder, and struggling with a lot of thought

ruminations, looping thoughts, intrusive thoughts,

and really an inability to quiet that inner chatter.

And so in this episode, we're going to take a deep dive into this topic

because it's something that many, many people are struggling with

nowadays. And so if you can't

quiet your mind, it's really hard to find

inner peace. You know, the state of our mind is really

the dictator of how we feel within ourselves. When we

have a quiet mind, we feel at peace. When we have a racy

mind, we feel a level of internal chaos. So the

mind is really the creator of our reality.

It's always the creator of our subjective experience.

And so our experience of reality is really dictated by the

mind. You know, people say your thoughts create your reality,

and from my experience, it's more your thoughts create your

experience of reality, right? So your thoughts or your

ideas are not necessarily going to immediately change the outer

environment. Like if I think about a plane flying

over my head right now, there's not a manifested plane gonna

Suddenly arrive and appear in my awareness, but

whenever I am in a given environment, a given situation, or

a given experience, the state of my mind is what

dictates my experience. It's less the circumstance and

more of my inner experience that creates my reality.

And so when we can quiet a racy mind and quiet the

inner chatter, it brings a level of peace and stillness

within us despite whatever outer circumstance we might be going through.

So quieting a racy mind is really a superpower that we

all want to be able to tap into. Now, it's important to acknowledge

the mind's purpose, and the mind's job is to think,

just like a river's job is to flow. Everything has a

purpose, and the mind's purpose, the mind's job is to think. So we

don't want to try and force the mind to quiet

itself. We want to be able to work with The mind and the

flow of it exactly what it's meant to do, which is to think

thoughts. The mind is kind of like an ocean.

I'm going to offer a little analogy. So if the mind is this

big, vast ocean, and each thought

is like a wave or ripple on the ocean,

we could say that everything on the surface of the ocean that you could

see from above would be the conscious mind. So you see the

activity of the waves and ripples on, on the surface,

and that represents conscious thought that you're really aware of.

Now, the sea, the ocean underneath the surface, you know, that deep

sea that is filled with so much unknown, that would be the

unconscious. And so for me, the ocean is

really a beautiful analogy of mind. The movement of the

ocean, the tide, the ripples, the waves, that's all the movement of

thought. Now, when the, the water, the

ocean, or a lake or a pond, whatever analogy you want to use, is

calm, that's when the mind is still. And

now, interestingly enough, if you go to a pond,

when the pond is still and you look into it,

you can see your reflection. But when the pond is

turbulent, when the waves and the ripples are

chaotic, Where there's a lot of activity, if you

look into the pond, you can only see the waves and the ripples. You can't

see your reflection. So this is also a beautiful

analogy of when you can quiet the mind and there's

not a wave or a ripple, that's when you experience the

true reflection of yourself and the true reflection of

reality. But as soon as the mind becomes turbulent,

you're losing sight of your true essence. You're losing

sight of the true reflective nature of reality because all

you're experiencing is the turbulence and projection of the mind.

So that's why I love using water analogies when it

comes to working with the mind, because they pair so beautifully well

together. And so the mind is the ocean.

Each thought is a wave on the ocean. The surface

waves and the surface activity is the conscious mind.

And then under the surface, the deep sea would represent the unconscious

mind. Now, one of the

purposes of mind is mind is a

process that divides reality into

pieces, right? So the mind takes something

in its whole form, chops it up into different

isolated pieces or components, And that allows it

to digest information, right? So the mind

knows a dog different from a cat. The mind

knows hot different from cold, right? So the mind

is a process of division. It's called the logos cutter.

So it cuts wholeness into divided parts

in order to digest, quite similar to your physical

digestive system. Where your physical digestive

system takes food in the form of

calories and nutrients, which is energy and information.

So your physical digestive system takes energy and

information. It divides it or breaks it

down into its isolated components and

digests it and assimilates it. So the mind

actually does exactly the same thing. The mind takes energy

and information from any given moment. And

it divides it and digests it into its

isolated components so it can be assimilated

as an experience, right? So the mind is really a

digestive process on a psychological level,

very similar to how the body digests on a

physiological level. Now,

the mind is what creates polarity. Right? So we

live in a world of polarity in this physical form.

We live in a world of separation. We live in this really

illusory world of duality, which is all a

manifestation of mind, right? So mind is what

creates the polarity of up and down, light and dark,

left and right, good and bad,

wanted and unwanted. Attachment and aversion,

right? Pain and pleasure, right? So the mind is what creates

polarity. The mind is what divides

everything into this dualistic experience.

Now, healing the mind is always working with

paradox. I found this to be especially true when I was

working through a lot of my struggles with anxiety.

with obsessive-compulsive disorder, that healing the mind is

always working with a paradox. Now, a paradox is a

seemingly contradictory truth, right?

And one of the most important paradoxes when it comes to healing the mind

is what you resist persists. So

what you resist will persist. Whatever you push

up against pushes back. Whatever you resist, you're feeding

energy into it. If you try and stop the mind with

force, it will come back with more force. So a

perfect analogy would be if you are by the pond

and you notice waves or ripples in the pond,

and you want to quiet the waves and the ripples in the pond.

If you try and do it with your hand with force, you're like, oh, I

can't. I'm going to take my hand, I'm going to try and smooth out the

ripples in the pond. What are you going to end up doing? You're going to

end up creating more ripples, right? So you're going to end up

creating more waves, right? So that's a perfect

analogy of mind, of what you resist will persist.

By trying to get rid of the ripples in the pond, you create more ripples.

And so working with the mind is really

Working with the Tao. So my favorite book of all

time is the Tao Te Ching. I like the Stephen Mitchell

translation because for me, the teaching of the Tao

is really the teaching of the mind. It teaches you how the

mind works, and it invites you to move

beyond the polarity or the dualistic nature of the

mind. And so one of the common verses, I

think it's maybe verse 2, says, when you make something beautiful,

something else becomes ugly. When you make something good, another

thing becomes bad. When you make something right, another thing

becomes wrong. And so what the

Master does is the Master moves beyond polarity.

The Master empties its mind by moving beyond

desire, by moving beyond attachment and aversion, and

into a state of observation, into a state

of undifferentiated awareness. And into a state of what

we would call the witness. Right? And so this is really

what we're working with today, is we're working with the

true nature of mind, and we're working with the Tao

to move beyond that dualistic or polarized

existence into a state of undifferentiated

awareness. Some people call that unity consciousness,

where we see the unity Beyond the illusion of duality.

Now, when it comes to the mind, there's, we could

say, 2 functions. From my experience, there's,

think about it like 2 sides of the coin. One side

is attention, and the other side is awareness,

right? So if you take kind of like the yin-yang symbol, yin

is the feminine, yang is the masculine. Attention would be the

masculine. Awareness would be the feminine. They're two sides of one

coin of working with the mind. Now,

attention relates to the capacity to focus your

mind on a single point to the exclusion of

anything else. All right, so if I focus my mind on a

candle, I'm excluding everything else in my

environment other than the candle. If I'm focusing my

mind on you speaking to me, I'm attending

to what you're saying to the exclusion of everything else.

If I'm meditating where I'm focusing on my breath

to the exclusion of everything else, that's a singular

point of focus. That's sustained attention.

That's kind of like a fisherman using a spear, right?

So you project the spear in one direction and you're excluding

all other directions, all other possibilities.

Awareness is the other side of the coin.

Awareness relates to a state of inclusive observation

in which everything is being witnessed and nothing is being excluded.

So when I'm in a state of awareness, I'm not focusing my attention

on anything specific. I'm being open and

receptive to everything the moment and everything the

environment has to offer. Without clinging to or

attaching to anything or being in aversion to

anything. This is kind of like fishing with a net

where you throw a net in and the net allows things to move in,

allows things to flow out, and it has, you could say, no

attachments and no aversions. Right. So we have

these 2 sides of mind. We have the mind of attention.

And we have the mind of awareness, the yin and the yang, the

masculine, the feminine. Now, to heal

the mind, we must develop both attention and awareness,

right? So we have to practice sustained attention to

heal the mind, and we have to practice open awareness

to heal the mind. Now, our modern world—

now the show is Mental Health in a Modern World, so we always want to

apply it to our modern day. Our modern

world is really challenging our capacity for attention

and our capacity for awareness. Attention is

compromised via overstimulation and

short-form content. You notice that with a lot of the

short-form content and the overstimulation in

our culture, especially via technology, people's attention

span is very small. It's very minimal. I've

seen some really frightening data in terms of how much attention

span people have when they're looking at content on the internet.

It's something like under 7 seconds.

Now awareness is compromised also via

overstimulation, but it's also

compromised through states of chronic stress and

states of contraction. So when we're in a state of

contraction, whether it's mentally, physically, environmentally,

emotionally, our sense of time, our sense of space,

our modern world is very contracted. And our modern world is

creating a lot of chronic stress that immediately moves us

into a sympathetic fight or flight state. It moves us into

survival mode where we become more

hypervigilant than aware. There's a big difference between

awareness and hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is a

more, is more of a state of scanning where

awareness is more of an open focus, right? So very big

difference between awareness and hypervigilance. So

our modern world has compromised our capacity for sustained

attention and open awareness. And for me,

meditation has always been the staple, the most

important practice for cultivating attention and

cultivating awareness. So I'm going to introduce 2

very simple practices, one for attention

and one for awareness. I'll introduce the practice of attention

first here and now. And then when we finish, I'll introduce,

just to break up the episode so we're not just doing back-to-back practices, we'll do

one practice now, even just for 2 minutes. And

then we'll do another practice at the end for maybe 2 or 3 minutes or

so. Just to break up our practices over the course of the

episode. So we'll do our attention practice now and our

awareness practice at the end. So if you're able

to take a moment and close your eyes, if not, you can actually

practice this meditation, even if you're

just driving a car, if you're walking, if you're cooking,

whatever it is that you're doing, you can potentially practice this

meditation even while you're Engaging in other

activities. So just take a moment to

close your eyes if you can,

and notice your in-breath and out-breath through the inside

of your nostrils. So you're going to breathe through the nose,

in and out through the nostrils.

And you're very simply going to focus your attention on the

airflow, on the breath in and out through your

nose. And as you follow the breath in and out through your nose, we're very

simply going to count the breath up to 10. You're going to do

it silently in your mind. So as you inhale, you'll count 1.

As you exhale,

2. As you inhale,

3. As you exhale,

4. As you inhale,

5. As you exhale, 6.

As you inhale, 7.

As you exhale,

8. As you inhale, 9.

As you exhale,

10. And we'll start back at 1. We'll do one more round. Going at your

own pace. When the mind wanders, come back to the breath, come back to counting.

The breath up to 10, and following the breath through the

inside of the nostrils.

And then once you get to 10 for that second round, you can just bring

yourself back, open your eyes.

So it's a very simple practice of sustained

attention where you're focusing your mind on a single

point. You're focusing your mind on the breath.

You're noticing the in-breath and out-breath through the inside of your nostrils.

So that's your single point of focus. And then you're just

counting the breath, which actually gives the mind something to do,

gives the ego a little something to chew on. And it allows you

to detach from the stream of

unconscious thought that very often hooks us.

So you focus on the breath, you count it to 10, and whenever you

notice your mind wandering or getting distracted, you just very gently

bring it back to following the breath and counting it to 10.

And I highly recommend setting a timer for

minimum of 5 minutes. 10 minutes is great. 15 minutes is even better.

Anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes is a nice practice, but even if

you just started with 5 minutes, it's a great starting point.

And so as you're following the breath and you're repeating a mantra,

it's kind of like when you adopt a dog and you're taking it

for walks on the leash and you're training it to walk by your side. When

you're following the breath and you're repeating the mantra, you're training

the dog like, hey, walk by my side. You know, let's walk together.

And then eventually it wants to veer off and go sniff something or

bark at something or chase something. And just very gently with the

leash, you're like, no, no, no, just come back. It's okay. Just come back. Walk

by my side. Breath. Mantra. A few

seconds later, it wanders off over here, gets curious about

something or gets hooked by a train of thought. Very gently

bringing it back. Walk by my side, breath,

mantra. So training the mind with attention, with sustained

attention, is very much like training a dog.

You know, the mind is kind of like an untrained puppy that we can work

with, and meditation is very much the practice of training

the mind like you would train a dog. Now,

we're going to save the second practice of awareness till the end.

Now, We have what's called the 4

functions of consciousness, and I believe this was

first identified by Carl Jung. Now, the 4

functions of consciousness are thinking, feeling,

sensation, and intuition, right? So

thinking relates to your mind and your thoughts. Feeling

relates to your body and your emotions. Sensation

represents your 5 senses. And your intuition

represents the, you could say, extrasensory

perception, whether it's through imagery,

auditory, through the heart, you know? So there's

many ways that we can define intuition, and it shows up differently for

many people. You know, a lot of people receive intuition

through images. A lot of people receive

intuition through Hearing through

auditory. Some people receive intuition through their

body. You know, so we have clairvoyance, we have

clairaudience, we have clairsentience, and then we have

claircognizance of just like a knowing, a deep knowing.

So we have thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition as the 4

functions of consciousness. Now, thinking and feeling are

complementary opposites. Sensation and intuition are

complementary opposites. We're going to focus on thinking and

feeling in this episode because that's the most relevant to this

topic. Now, thinking and feeling,

like I said, are complementary opposites. So as one increases, the

other decreases, and as the other increases, the

other decreases. So the more you think, the less

you feel. The more you feel, the less you

think. This is really important when it comes to quieting the mind.

Think of it like a seesaw. When one goes up, the other goes down. So

when thinking goes up, feeling goes down. When

feeling goes up, thinking goes down.

So if someone can't quiet their mind,

there's an excess of thinking and there's usually

a deficiency in feeling, right? So a

lot of times the mind thinks, To try and

keep us away from feeling in the body.

Right? So one of the most important things when it comes to quieting the mind

is orienting ourselves to what we're feeling in the body.

The mind is very often the protector, trying

to keep us away from unfelt feelings, whether it's grief,

sadness, shame, fear, anger.

A lot of the emotions that we don't want to feel sometimes go

unprocessed, and the mind has this protective system

that tries to keep us away from the vulnerability

of feeling our emotions. Now, it's way less

vulnerable for the ego to be caught in the realm of thought

rather than to move into the domain of feeling. And so

the mind becomes the protector that uses inner chatter

As a way of keeping us almost living from the neck up

to avoid us from feeling the vulnerability of what's happening

within our heart, within our gut, within our

body, within our emotional body or our

feeling body. And so a contemplation when you

have a, when you have a racy mind is, what am I

resistant to feeling right now? And if you get curious

about that, when you do have some mental chatter,

it can very often bring you to the unprocessed emotion

that the racy mind or the inner chatter was trying to keep you

away from. And so if you can drop into the

body and really feel the emotion fully,

just through your feeling body, the more you

access your feeling body, The more it quiets the

mental body, right? So I'm just going to repeat that because that's really

important. The more we can access the feeling body,

the more we can quiet the mental body. And so if

you have a lot of mental chatter, what am I

resistant to feeling right now? And then move into

the feeling body with simple curiosity.

And all you have to do is allow yourself to feel. The more

you allow yourself to feel, you'll notice the mind starts to

quiet down. So the next piece is

working with negative thoughts. Now, why do we

have negative thoughts? There's research that shows for the

average person, 90% of thoughts are negative.

Well, our mind and our nervous system

is wired for survival. So in order for us to

survive, our mind has to be aware of the

negative things, not the positive things. It's never a

positive thing that killed you. It's always the potential threats

that are a threat to your life. And so negative

thoughts are really the protectors that are trying to

keep you safe, trying to keep you secure, and

trying to keep you alive. Now, the challenge is that

90% of our thoughts are negative and 90 to 95%

of them are not rooted in reality. Right? So it's

kind of like the analogy I like to use going back to a dog. I

love using dog analogies for the mind because it works so perfectly.

Water analogies and dog analogies. Now, when you

adopt a puppy, and let's say you're a homeowner,

And you have your house, maybe a little yard,

and you bring that dog home. Now what you

start noticing is the dog starts barking.

It starts barking at people walking by. It starts

barking at the, uh, the

mailman or the mailwoman, starts barking

at the UPS driver or the Amazon truck. Starts

barking at other dogs that are walking by with their owners.

The puppy starts barking at a deer that's

walking across the street. And so

this puppy is barking at all of this activity going on

outside, not knowing that

99.9% of that activity, they're not actually threats.

They're not actually anything to be afraid of, but

the puppy doesn't know that. So the puppy sees everything passing by as a threat,

so it barks. But in reality, maybe 0.1%

of them are actually threats. Now, the mind works in a very

similar way. If you imagine each negative

thought like the puppy barking, not knowing that it's

potentially not a threat, but it's just going to bark anyway.

The mind becomes almost like a watchdog that

barks in the form of negative thoughts, trying to keep you

safe, trying to protect your territory, trying to keep you

alive, right? Keeping intruders out, et

cetera. Now, a lot of people try and either push away

negative thoughts or they try and replace negative thoughts with

positive ones, which a lot of times those approaches don't really work

very well. We're kind of demonizing the watchdog too

much. And so what I like to do is actually go to the other

side of the spectrum, which is I like to thank the negative

thoughts. Just like if I had a puppy that was barking at something, I'd

say, oh buddy, thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me.

Thank you for looking out for me. Thank you for trying to keep me safe

from whatever it is that you think we should be afraid of.

And so the moment you start thanking

your negative thoughts, just like you would thank a watchdog for trying to look out

for you, it feels heard. It doesn't feel like you're in

resistance to it, and it begins to quiet down

and it begins to settle. And all of a sudden you find a state of

inner peace. And so the most important thing when you're having negative

thoughts is to not create resistance or opposition to it.

But to actually express gratitude with it, seeing it as a watchdog or

a protector, that's just looking out for your sense of safety.

So we want to befriend these watchdogs. We want to

befriend these protectors so we can come into a

more benevolent relationship with them because we see that all negative thoughts have

good intentions, which is protection. And so the

more we relate to it that way, the more peace and

less polarization we experience within ourselves.

Now, intrusive thoughts is also something that's quite common,

whether it's with OCD, with, you know,

schizophrenia, with people who struggle with

anxiety or panic. When it comes to

intrusive thoughts, we want to ask ourselves, what makes a

thought intrusive? What makes someone an intruder?

If you're a homeowner, Or if you're just living at home

and someone comes in and you consider them an

intruder versus, let's say, a friend coming over.

The difference is an intruder is someone that's entering your space

that's unwanted, right? So an intruder is

simply someone or something that's unwanted

in your field, in your space, in your environment, in your

Inner or outer territory. And

so the only thing that makes a thought intrusive is our

resistance to it. Our mind saying, I don't

want this here. I don't want this thought to be present. I used to struggle

with a lot of intrusive thoughts until I realized that the only thing that was

making the thought intrusive was my, me trying to keep it out,

me trying to push it away. Me seeing it as an intruder,

my resistance to it. And so I started— what I started to

practice, what I started to practice doing was

once again, go to the other side of the coin. I would

welcome it in. Instead of the thought being an intruder, I would

see it as an old friend coming over for tea.

Come in. Welcome. I'm curious about you. I'm here to listen.

Here to see what you want me to know. And as soon as you welcome

the thought in, it's no longer an intruder. It's no longer

intrusive, and it loses its power. It loses

its charge, and it very often just dissolves.

So the key to working with negative thoughts is see it as a watchdog,

thank it, acknowledge it, offer gratitude. And the key to

working with intrusive thoughts is to let go of the idea of an

intruder. And welcome it in like an old friend.

Listen, be curious without being in

resistance or being in a state of attachment.

So awareness, we're getting to a state of non-attachment and

non-aversion to any thoughts that come into our awareness.

Now, the next piece that we're going to touch upon is the breath. And the

reason the breath is so important is the breath and the mind mirror each

other. Via the autonomic nervous system.

Right? So when the mind is

chaotic, the breath is usually chaotic. When

the breath is running really fast, shallow, you know,

hyperventilating, the mind is usually in a chaotic state as well.

But when we slow the breath down and we breathe

diaphragmatically, diaphragmatically, we breathe slowly,

the mind starts to slow down and match the pace of the breath.

So the pace of the mind and the pace of the breath very often

mirror each other. It's very uncommon that you're going to breathe

really slowly and your mind's going to be racing. The

mind's usually racing when the breath is also dysregulated.

So the slower we breathe, the slower the mind, the more

chaotic the breath, the more chaotic the mind. And this

simply happens through the autonomic nervous system. The pace

of the breath sends a signal to the autonomic nervous system, whether we're

safe, we can rest, digest, relax,

restore, and the mind quiets down. Or if the breath is

chaotic, we move into a sympathetic fight or flight state in

survival mode. And now all of our alarm systems of the

mind are running and everything speeds up. I'm a big fan

of practices such as square breathing, where you inhale, let's

say for a count of 4. You hold the breath for a

count of 4, you exhale for a count of 4,

and then you hold the breath out for a count of 4. Square breathing

is a great way to slow the pace of the breath down with a

nice steady pace, tempo, or rhythm, and that is

great for quieting the mind. Other tools

that are great for quieting the mind, automated writing.

It's really nice if you take out a journal and you set a timer for

say 10 minutes, and you just start writing your full stream of

consciousness in an automated way. And you just kind of do

almost like a brain dump. Once the timer goes off, you stop,

close the book, put it away. You don't even have to go back and reread

it. So automated writing is really great. I'm a

big fan of walking meditations. One of the walking

meditations that I like to do is I actually take the square breathing.

Of 4 in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold.

And I match that with the pace of my steps. So I'm going to inhale

for 4 steps. I'm going to hold for 4 steps. I'm going to exhale for

4 steps, and then I'm going to hold for 4 steps. So

matching the square breathing with the pace of your steps is a great

walking meditation. I just focus on the soles of my

feet touching the ground and touching the earth. Each time

that I step, as I'm matching the pace of my breath with it.

There's a great book called Open Focus Brain that goes into open focus

practices for cultivating more expanded states of awareness.

And then I'm a big fan of parts work, specifically Richard

Schwartz's system of Internal Family Systems, for working

with the mind as a multiplicity. Remember, the mind is a

multiplicity of different parts that are playing different roles. So when

we have these voices that are louder than others, or we have

this inner chatter that can't quiet down, a lot of times these are

what's called our protectors that are trying to keep us safe,

keep exiles locked away, keep us from feeling certain things.

And so working with parts and working with our

protectors, which is a lot of the work that I do in my one-on-one coaching

practice with clients, it's also a great way to quiet the

mind. Now to close, I'm going to bring you

into that last little practice, which is the practice of awareness.

So if you're able to just take a moment and close your eyes, what I

like to do is I like to imagine inside of myself climbing

up to a watchtower.

And as I climb up to the watchtower inside of me, I sit

in the seat of awareness, a higher vantage point. And from

the seat of awareness, from the watchtower, all I'm doing is I'm

just observing. I'm not

focusing on anything specific, but just observing what's

happening within.

I might notice a thought rise and fall, a feeling

rise and fall, a sensation rise and fall,

but I'm not doing really anything other than just observing

The phenomena that's rising and falling inside of me.

And if I do notice my mind getting distracted with thoughts,

getting hooked by a certain train of thought, all I

do in my mind is I say the word thinking as a way

of noting it. And then I just come back to the watchtower.

I sit, I observe, just watching.

And if I notice distraction, chatter,

I just say thinking as a way of labeling it,

noting it. Then I just come back to the

watchtower. Observe.

Witness. And if another distraction arises that I get hooked by,

when I say the word thinking, I unhook myself and I come back.

So just take another 60 seconds, just sitting in the watchtower, observing.

Beginning to create space between you as awareness

and the thinking mind.

The space between you as awareness and the thinking mind growing,

expanding, increasing.

Space between thoughts expanding, increasing.

And the pace or rate of thought slowing down

as you just sit in the watchtower observing.

And if you do get snagged or hooked by anything, just use

the word thinking to unhook yourself and come back.

And then just slowly coming down the watchtower, back into

your body, back into this time and

space. Come back and open your

eyes.

So that's a practice of awareness. You're sitting in the watchtower,

you're just observing. If you get hooked by anything, you just

note it with the word thinking, and you come back to a state

of observation. All right, so you're not focusing on anything

specifically. You're in this open state of awareness.

You're watching, observing all the rising and fallings, the

comings and goings. And if you do get hooked

by anything, you just use the word thinking to note it and to bring

yourself back. And so this gives you

a few practices to work with and a few

frameworks to work with when it comes to quieting the racing

mind, quieting the inner chatter.

Like I said, as we begin to quiet the mind, as we begin to quiet

the inner chatter, we can begin to see our true

reflection. The pond starts to quiet, the

pond starts to become still, and we can see our face,

our original face. You know, the Buddhists have a

what is your original face before your mother was born?

And these beautiful koans from, you know, the Zen teachings can only

be answered through a quiet mind, can't be solved through the

intellect. And so next steps for you on your

healing journey. Aside from these practices and what I shared with you in

this podcast, you know, this exact topic is why I

created my online program, Healing the Mind: A Journey to Wholeness,

which is my flagship 21-day program, mental health program

that really takes a holistic and integrative approach to mental health.

No matter what you're struggling from, whether it's anxiety, depression,

OCD, ADHD, whatever it might be, it's a

21-day program that takes you on a beautiful journey.

Really exploring the ins and outs of mental health from a

really holistic perspective, including nutrition, sleep

hygiene, movement, breathwork,

various meditations, various emotional healing

techniques, inner child work, shadow work,

exploring archetypes. It's really a beautiful program and it's really the

foundation of healing the mind. And I'm excited to share

that program with you. So if you go to

healing40.com/HTM

and use the code podcast at checkout, all podcast listeners get 20%

off. You can also just look in the show notes. You'll see the link below.

I look forward to sharing more with you soon in a

future episode. I'm sure I'll have something beautiful for you next week. So

every Friday, new episodes. I'm going to be doing a few solo

episodes coming up because there's a few topics I want to explore with you all.

I'd also love to hear if there's any topics that you are really interested in

that you would love for me to do a podcast on, whether

it's a solo episode or have a great guest around a given topic. I'd love

to hear from you. You can leave comments below. You can shoot me an email.

You can go through my website. So I'd love to connect with you more intimately

and really create this podcast to most serve your needs and your own

healing journey at this time. Hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.

I look forward to sharing more with you in next week's episode. Bye-bye.