meditation healing food living in balance healthy relationships and harnessing the truth power of where you are powerful you are welcome to this week's episode of the geeta chopper show today we're going to talk about the magic mystery and healing power of silence there is a program known as the silence program retreat in which people sit in  complete silence for up to seven days at a time this means no technology no verbal contact and out of your familiar surroundings why do this while they will uncover the transformative healing benefits of the silence program and how it can change and heal your entire life most people can't sit alone in a room with themselves for more than five minutes their mind starts racing or they simply can't face themselves they need to get busy  to something and avoid themselves others who can see the law and practice meditation still haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg the silence program goes deep and it impacts you on a soul level it forces you to face yourself and get to know who you truly are not just an earth form silence is more than just not speaking my guest today the cost teaches this program at the art of living institute in new jersey so i called him on the show today to discuss all the glorious details of what this program can actually do for us he has trained people throughout it because briggs over nineteen years of experience he has served on the national board of art of living foundation which is an educational nonprofit foundation and currently one of the biggest non profits in the entire world he has also served on the national coordinator for the art of living meditation program saw somebody for three work so i was story to share you know i once was a long time back in ninety six early ninety six i was in india it was just the day before i was going to come and there was a gentleman who was visiting our home would just drop by and he was saying you know there's this organization or to flavoring and i was in a hurry to bag and he kept on talking about it and i said ok here's my number have somebody called me and i just wanted him to go to leave your own because i had bunch of stuff to do but anyway i came to me his somebody has said they want to call me nobody called me and and that very night i got a call so that was a coincidence that fun so i came back three months later i get a part and then i get to see the phone cause i'm like it's pretty cool let me do the course and then i did the art of living course and that was good what was the art of living course the silence program or something it was actually the breeding course ok so the breed of course ok and then they kept saying you know the have this wonderful silence even i can feel it you know in the spiritual path i've seen you can read a lot of books but if you don't experience it yourself there just remains a concept i can carry guide you didn't remain there for a long period of time but just a few powerful and now you teach the class that's correct ok and out you have people coming in for what three five and seven days out of time so it ranges anywhere between four days to seven days depending on your different formats and that's the ok so silence is so much more than just not speaking can you can you tell us well that more of the depths of what the silence is selected i join the program and i mean now you know my first day kind of getting into it it's ok not talk but the second day you know i'm imagi that's when it gets deeper and it really hits so what is that that we decided meditation all day that we stared a wall what do we actually do right so firstly you're absolutely right the silence is not about putting your cell phone in silent and playing angry b if you like a truck driving on the turnpike one hundred miles an hour you put a brake on it it's not going to stop yeah it's going to take some time to write the same thing in the mind it takes some time and that's why the photos did you have them talk a little bit gets together at six thirty around six thirty seven o'clock we do an hour long yoga then we do some breathing techniques meditate a little bit our breakfast ok then we come back then they go for a long walk  home cooked meal right so that afternoon so after breakfast and come back after a long walk b b so if they have any questions they can write it down so we look at the question doll answer and then we do a bunch of guided meditations and then they go for lunch again go for a long walk i'm back again a few more meditation not in silence right not talking to their not talking to colleagues even sometimes they'll help cut vegetables or clean it's all in silence ok so in today's busy world why is it absolutely essential to take time out and have silence even if they're not going for the silence program let's say you know you discuss take time out actually go home in your little secret quiet place or your our mind is always going even when we're not and that's a really powerful analogy is actually i volunteer at a farm and my first couple days was you know pretty hard work and i never think i'm going to sleep really well tonight again it's quite a contrast like you said right and i did i slept really well so blessing it's not a service and hear what we're seeing is for a moment for a few days do nothing you know wow and dad doing nothing and just being that you are so recharge is our batteries so now you'll be more productive i imagine when  this what would you say to viewers for example you know i phones or fall how are people going to disengage from their i phone for five days you know i mean we're talking about five minutes we're constantly checking e mail or phone and you know and that also sends that message to the brain it's not good you know so how do you go from that to completely shutting down the you know you checking your phone and you go and you don't see your phone for five days or three days it is not so initially it is like people are jittery but and the that's what is sometimes you can sing or like a digital detox it's ok but but after five days people don't want to come out of so it's like wow it's in a sense it's addictive it's very you know he's like wow i did not realize i what kind of meditation do they actually do there in the silence program so there are many different kinds of meditation but in this case we primarily do a meditation which is a combination of breath and awareness ok and we become aware of so we have these energy centers in our body and each energy center is responsible for a particular emotion so for example when you get angry you will feel at some place here in between your forehead ok when you feel some grief you feel it in the back or your aware of it without having to apply any effort so this is more effortless you are imagining and using your imagination you are taking your attention to different parts of the nervous system and using the breath an awareness sort of cleansing it of different emotions ok wow that's great so how does that heal that mentally she actually first live me talk about so let's talk about some research right ok so if you look at itself to be just two hours of silence per day and that's what research on the rats tell us now if you look at it that when our minds are constantly engaged in activity and give it deep rest let's a mind is going fifteen thousand miles right and we don't give it any and the rest a car when we run for fifteen thousand miles we take it for service what is the service for a mind think about it right we don't have a mechanism to do other service of our mind even if we run it one hundred fifty thousand so how often do you recommend doing a silence program based on the car analogy would you say every three months six how to six months or how many days happen to know they are because if you look at the opposite of silence would be like noise right yes the real you know the root word of noise now it's actually an origin the word noise comes from north korea which is interesting you know and itself causes you unease so noisy no way causes unease to our system right and they did research that people who are subjected to let's say who live close to a highway or have are subject to a lot of  plus sounds of planes or trains or traffic they have higher incidence of high blood pressure hypertension and many other diseases right so the silence in a way is not just rejuvenating the mind of course you know mind and body connection you know because you have many different tools we have meditation we have i don't know reiki different things when you actually said in silence i think maybe after the twenty fourth or i don't know seventy second hour that's  here ok so what would you say to viewers who are maybe afraid of this or think that you know they can't do it because a lot of people tell me that well how they asked me how do you meditate i don't know how or you know if i if i set out to meditate i have so many thoughts in my head how do i get rid of them so i think they're really concerned with the how and you know my feedback is always i will comes naturally so how do you answer that question if someone's concerned with that firstly it's firstly it's a little bit about the training also because right so one is taking commitment on a daily basis that no matter what i am going to look at a certain time of the day whether it's fifteen minutes twenty minutes just to spend time with myself ok so you mean in silence or like can a proper process or a method to doing it secondly our locating the time on a daily basis to practice it and over time it becomes more concrete you know well i think on the discipline part may not be like let's say somebody can get past that you can make yourself discipline and show up every day i think the problem lot of people have is the fear when they actually get there how do we do it what do they actually do and they don't know how to either meditate or they don't know meditating on that and it's a very ok so that's really answer so you basically meditating on a sound so you take all the focus off your thoughts and for right now are only focusing on the sound and that's how you kind of train the mind to be focused and i guess on one object and layer get rid of or train it really over time it takes time you know i remember reading a story for then monk and he was saying when i started the journey of meditation and i was fifteen or twenty i was completely dry and at the end of fifty years of meditating i'm centers sometimes you share there you can get your own room or you can share usually shared with one another individual you can speak to the individual are all ok and do they have the option of going home at night and being there in the day the one the ones that would conduct locally well anything else you want to tell the viewers about this program why they should sign up to me it's more about we have to figure it out so all of us want happiness right if you if you look at it at the very end what each and every one of us is looking for is happiness the think that happiness is in our relationships in our careers and our finances in our car and that's that's how it is you know and what is interesting is once we get there so we think we'll be happy when we get this job or we gets always late in the future always in the future happiness is always ten feet away from where we are and we have to realize i  sometimes think of a story which we tell our kids is that a person lost something inside the house and then they were looking outside and somebody said why are you looking here it will you lose it said i'm looking here because there is late but like you're never going to fi actually happiness is inside of us and our day to day activities tell us that for example what do you do when you let's say you bite on your favorite dessert right that's a term as soon as your favorite dessert you bite on it to seal close your eyes you smell a flower what do you do such a good rose you close your eyes you're in the peak of physical intimacy what do you do close your eyes and why is that because that peak of any senses is putting us in touch with ourselves so the outside sense objects are just making a start bit our did something deep inside of us that's all leading us back to our socks to if the so so