Hey guys Chris Sajnog here your firearms training guru and in this short
video I want to talk about the importance of having a daily meditation
practice and give you a few simple tips to help get you started now retired Navy
SEAL sniper Chris Kyle
all right so what is meditation and what is it not well in the West here we tend
to associate it purely with Eastern religion but when I teach shooting and I
teach meditation together and the importance it has nothing to do with
religion so if you have a hang-up on the word meditation let's do some brain
performance training or some mental focus drills because that's all we're
doing any hang-ups on the word meditation don't use the word meditation
okay I have been meditating myself for about thirty five years when I started
doing martial arts as a child I was required to practice meditation and I've
continued doing that through this day today I meditate twice a day for about
15 minutes and I'm going to go over exactly what I do
in my meditation practice there's literally hundreds of ways to meditate
find one that works for you and try different things even if you find one
like I'm still trying new ways just kind of exploring and seeing what works some
of the more popular ones are guided meditation so you can get an app it's
called headspace they have like a 10-day meditation thing where they teach you
how to meditate I highly recommend you just check that out and try it out I've
done it and it's great there's open eye meditations there's moving meditations
something like Tai Chi would be a moving meditation and you can try all these out
but what I'd like you to start out with you're not meditating right now super
simple sit somewhere where you can put your feet flat on the ground you have
your back supported your head is erect you just clasp your hands put them in
your lap close your eyes focus on your breath or you can focus on a word such
as LOM L AM it's called a mantra in meditation that word for me I use it
because it doesn't mean anything to me any word that you can associate
something with I tend to kind of start associating stuff in my mind and I can't
focus on what I want to okay so you can focus on your breath you can use
the words LOM and the other thing I do too is I will it may sound kind of
strange but I will with my eyes closed picture black hole and I focus on that
and that's it so do that sit down close your eyes sip set a timer either on your
watch or your phone for five minutes and just sit there and focus on one thing
one of the reasons that people don't meditate or they think that meditation
is hard is because there's not a goal that you associate like with doing a
sport or playing a game or making money there is no goal to meditation the whole
goal is to meditate so if you sit down for five minutes or even one minute
close your eyes and practice focusing you're meditating and you will see
improvement now I recommend just like with anything else like dry fire
training give it 30 days 30 days of sticking with it every day in doing it
consistently before you say this isn't for me because it's going to be hard
there's going to be times where your mind is going to be rushing and thoughts
are going to come in your mind when that happens realize that's the whole purpose
of meditation meditation is not clearing your mind meditation is saying that you
know what there are all these distractions and things going on random
thoughts running through our heads and it's being able to take those thoughts
and acknowledge them and go you know what I acknowledge you there mister
thought I'm going to choose to focus on this being able to control your mind it
may sound like oh that's easy I control my mind if you don't practice meditation
I guarantee you're not controlling your mind like you can and it's super easy so
how does that translate to shooting say you're at a competition and there's a
lot of stress going on in a shooting competition there's noises and there's
buzzers and there's people run around people are watching you those are all
thought distractions in your mind but because you practice meditation you know
how to control what your mind is focusing on you choose to focus your
mind on the course I'm going to do this going to go to this target I'm going to
shoot it in the center and you go all the way through and you choose your
thoughts it's the same as your day so many people wake up and they let their
day just happen they don't wake up and go you know what this is the kind of day
I choose to have today I'm going to get this done I'm going to get this done I'm
going to do this I'm going to be with this family member and we're going to
have fun you can do that you can choose that and you can do the same thing with
your mind you can choose your thoughts and direct your thoughts and focus your
thoughts and it also works the same way with front sight focus say you're in a
gunfight somebody start shooting at you that's a lot of mental distraction going
on but because you practice meditation you know that for a split second your
front sight being crystal clear is going to be the difference between life and
death for you or your family or whatever but you've trained it so you have all
these distractions and you go you know what mind and eyes focus on the front
sight deliver some exceptional customer service and then you get back to
controlling your focus so now you choose to focus on your environment with that
there's some tools that I use and I have them right here so the first one this is
called a muse headband and I've been using this now for about six months it's
really pretty cool what it does is it tells you when you are focused on one
thing or whether when you're distracted and I've really found it useful because
there's times I'll meditate for I'll go probably five minutes where I'm planning
out a whole sequence of my life or whatever I'll realize wow I've been
thinking about that for five minutes don't don't worry about that that's part
of meditation okay the next thing this is a focus band I just started using
this and I'm working on an application right now with the developers of this
turning it into a shooting application so this tells you when you are in flow
so this tells you when you're focused on what you want to focus on and you can
move around with this one the hardest lesson I learned with the muse band is
like you can't even move your eyes around
with a focus band you can play sports and you can shoot with this an amazing
tool it's a little pricey but I guarantee it is going to be worth the
investment for you so those are some tools I use again you don't have to use
them just sit down close your eyes and meditate that's it
also when I did start meditating for a while and I did start feeling different
things I'd feel euphoric I'd feel like I was flying great feelings and you'll
experience those too but I warn you if you seek anything when you meditate if
you go oh I'm going to meditate because I want that feeling of flying if you
seek it you're not going to find it it's kind of like that thing if you want to
hold sand in your hands if you squeeze too hard it all runs out so it's the
same thing with meditation you just need to do it and enjoy it and you will see
amazing results in your life just a few more tips before I let you go first tip
if you can't do five minutes which you may not be able to you may find five
minutes is too long do three minutes do two minutes do one minute
what I don't want you to do is sit down and go you know what I want to meditate
for 20 minutes twice a day and you sit down for the first time for 20 minutes
and you hate it and you're like man I'm just just wasting my time if you try too
much too soon you're not going to stick with it it's the same thing when you're
doing your dry-fire training and you want to practice something new people do
it all the time with exercise and they'll go hey Chris can you do a
exercise routine for me write one out I want to work out six days a week twice a
twice a day and I go sure I'll do that for you have you do you exercise three
times a week for 20 minutes well no no I go okay well why don't you do that why
don't you do 20 minutes three times a week for a couple weeks and let me know
and nobody ever has gotten back to me on that because people don't want to do
that but don't want that to happen to you I know you don't want that to happen
to you and it won't happen to you if you just start off slow you can always add
more time later so if you're comfortable with five minutes I recommend starting
off with with three minutes or two minutes and you will find that
after you do that for a couple days you'll want to do more you go you know
what I want to do five minutes so then do five minutes but just don't force it
just like getting faster when you want to shoot faster the benefits of
meditation and the desire to do this brain performance training they they
happen on their own through your daily practice just short daily practice
besides that don't look for an outcome that's probably the biggest thing is
people want to expect an outcome and the only outcome you should have is at the
end of the day you saying I sat down and I meditated today and you succeeded you
reached your goal so pat yourself on the back for that one the final kind of big
thing that really a lot of people get hung up on is they tend to think they're
doing it wrong when thoughts come into their head thoughts are going to come
into your head realize that is part of meditation if thoughts aren't coming
into your head there's something wrong with your head so go go to a doctor and
find out why you don't have thoughts in your head but seriously you're going to
have these thoughts that's the whole point the whole purpose of meditation is
going from those thoughts acknowledging they're there and going to what you want
to focus on don't get upset with the thought don't go oh I'm doing it wrong
everything's great I choose to focus here I hope this helps until next time
keep paving your path to perfection hey I really hope you enjoyed watching
that video and if you did I put together my top three videos for learning to
shoot at home and I want to give those to you absolutely free now all you have
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keep paving your path perfectionist