Practicing Mindfulness: The Importance Of Mental Fitness
Mindfulness is a growing trend in the health and wellbeing industry. Bringing your attention to experiences happening right in front of you is something that can be developed through meditation and breathing techniques as well as through other training like journalling.
Its benefits are endless, especially for mental health. More and more people are waking up to the benefits and it’s a common practice for most high-performing, energised leaders.
In this episode, we’re chatting to Marc Champagne, the founder of KYŌ (kee-oh), an app that acts like a digital journal to help people practise being mindful.
KYŌ, meaning “today” in Japanese, is where Marc got the idea for the app. Users are prompted to answer questions from some of the world’s most inspiring figures and are encouraged to focus on today, on the present. Marc is also host of the KYŌ Conversations podcast.
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Episode highlights:
- The main driver behind the KYŌ app - Marc’s morning practices and doing something different to stand out
- Marc’s morning practice so he could start the day on his terms - reading positive material, asking himself motivational questions
- How Marc got into breath work
- Marc turns the interview around and asks what defines us
- One of the most powerful practices for being mindful - being aware by paying attention to your breathing
- What Angie has learned from being aware of her breathing
- By opening up your breathing, you open up your awareness to everything
- Questions Marc asks himself each day - What would make today great? What made me smile today?
- Why Marc receives a prompt to answer questions about his week each Friday at 4pm
- Gathering questions from other interviews and people he’s met
- The context of the prompt or the question is where the magic lives
- Creating new neural pathways
- Autopilot is like a chronic disease - Marc wants to encourage everyone to just slow down and think
- Bringing direction to running commentary
- Is your mind organised? Can you navigate it? If you can’t navigate, ideas can’t surface
- If you’re mentally hoarding things, new opportunities can’t present themselves to you
- Taking your breathing out of automatic and into manual mode
- Altering your state - how breathing can take you to a blissful state
- Shane’s religion - his spiritual experience from breathing, being in nature and being in cold water
- How Angie learned to trust in the process of breathing
- More of Marc’s powerful prompts: Who do I have to be right now? What do I have to let go of in this moment?
- One of Shane’s favourite statements - “It’s not in the words, it’s in the practice”
- Angie’s go-to prompt - What do I need to feel today and how can I create that?
- A trick to help you socialise with more people
- Why Marc does what he does - conversations, connecting with people that are passionate about helping others, and helping others connect with themselves
- The mission behind the KYŌ app - to solve a problem Marc and his team members were having
- KYŌ quickly shifted to a social responsibility- to share and help others
