Your BREATH can help you boost your creativity. | Tuya Gombosuren | TEDxMonashUniversity

ah nice breathe so I'm gonna start by asking you a few questions and I really want you to take an honest reflection on them yourself all right so are you here right now right perfect and also bit confusing face what can you not see me let me ask you again are you really aware that you are in this moment in this place with all your senses and your breath beautiful alright the next question so those of you who taken probably a public transportation to get here when you were in the trainer tram how did you spend the time did you scroll the entire time on your phone from the beginning until the end did you actually look around and notice the people around you hi contact the smile an exchange of human acknowledgment Andres is saying like nothing like that alright cool so here today I'm I'm here to explore this notion of what it means to be present and what it really means to be creative as a human in this world of constant changes and technology so before that let me share a little secret perhaps a little confession so it was about a month ago that it was announced that all of us will do a TED talk so I was really happy and all my friends were as well so the funny thing is like every interaction ever since become this reminder that one day I'll be standing on this red carpet all eyes on me all the cameras on me this big light on me giving you this TED talk and it also becoming this reminder that it has to be a perfect talk everybody was expecting me to deliver this amazing talk so what do I do in the situations well my perfectionist knocked on the door uninvited and wrote this amazing script with beautiful English words that I wouldn't otherwise use and that was really proud of it so I asked my friend Laksha to be the judge of it so I sit him in this tiny little room in the university and I delivered my speech then in the end of it he said with no emotions I felt nothing this was his little word so he recorded it so I watched it and when I see it I saw actually a person who was not me at all it was a person who was trying so hard to stick to the script and when I watched that I actually say this this is not a TED talk this is in fact a dead talk so we laughed I went home that day a little disappointed and I was getting ready to sleep and I was walking and I saw a glimpse of me in the mirror and I heard this voice inside of me saying - yeah I just go home so I turn off the light put my meditation posture and I meditate it and in this brief moment of silence I realized this is exactly what happens in this modern world we script the life according to the societal expectations and each and every line becomes this projection of us how we see ourselves through the eyes of others but is it really how do we want to be is it really who we are so what I did I open my bag and brought out the script my tear then piece by piece through them in their beam so hey I'm today speaking from my heart as Felisa say so this story of me understanding and exploring this notion and what it means to be present and what it really means to be a human started like this so I am a nomad from Mongolia and I was born in a Gobi Desert those of you who doesn't know where Gobi Desert is you probably heard of Great Wall of China well they build that to keep us away and in the Gobi Desert pretty wide so that's where I was born so my parents are the very first generations of their nomadic tribes to be located and settle down in a small villages so our entire family read in the northern steppes of Mongolia is a pure nomads so what it really means to be a nomad you're probably wondering what it really means to be a nomad so there's so many things that I could tell you for hours and days but what I really want to bring you today is three things for us life is emotion it's about movement it's about moving with the nature so we'll move our home our little yard four times a year with each season so during summer when it's thirty degree we leave in a wast of land so our animals can graze and drink waters easier in in winter when it's like minus thirty to forty degrees we find a shelter in the bottom of the mountain hiding from the Siberian wind so we can also buy the winter it's all about the edge of survival and existing so throughout the year our yurt the door is always open it's always welcomed we welcome people because we hardly see people of course so when we see someone yeah please come on in you know and then the door is always facing to the south and when we say well the door faces to the south because we can see if Chinese are coming but in fact but in fact it's actually because the wind comes from the from North so we have to have the door facing to the south so our life evolves around nature and the concept of modern time doesn't exist in our culture so we see and measure the day in the life as a space between Sun and the moon so because we don't have electricity - let alone telephones and smart smart technologies anything that we haven't been able to do in between that space can wait until tomorrow no stress so life is also measured by the breath my grandpa used to say when you breathe long and deep you live long and fulfilled and happy life when you breathe short and shallow your life is intense and short basically you will leave early this world in fact the word breath in one going means I'm sorry so the very root of this word M means to exist to leave to be so you can see that we were raised with this notion of embracing nature and its impermanence so we inherit so many things for our children just so didn't appreciate that there's no separation between us and the nature but I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a different type of nomad the one who doesn't only travel the mountains but the one who wants to travel the world so I had a plan I wanted to stay hard and I did and I started learning English at the age of twelve or so and I'll be walking around with the dictionary mindlessly remembering the words without even knowing how to make a sentence of out of it and my older sister was really into English as well so she would with her broken English check if I'm right or wrong so my journey into the modern world this this modern living started when I was in the last year of my university so I was offered an internship overseas so one sunny morning in summer I stepped out the train and I found myself in the middle of Beijing train station so those of you who know who knows or who from China now imagine this little moon going girl who used to ride horses and like gallop through the through the steppe all of the sudden she's in Beijing surrounded by millions of people everybody seems to be so rushed I don't know where they're going no one seems to look each other so I was fascinated for everything the food it was so spicy that it actually burned my tongue I couldn't feel my tongue and the language that I was trying to learn was so hard and it twisted my tongue in a way that actually felt pain in my jaw and my tongue I loved it I loved it I embraced everything so I immerse myself into it learned the language become fluent one thing led to another I was having a thriving career in in China in Beijing but on a very deeper conscious level I found myself to be split in between a contrasting self one side of me wanted to belong in this modern world so bad it was embracing everything it even went out and bought a skin lightening cream because my dark sunkissed in skin didn't meet the definition of what Beauty means in that country but another side of me my fries natural love himself was completely it crash because all of the sudden it was waking up with the sound of traffic and honking noises and all of the sudden it was a squeezing itself into this train with thousands of people but no one wanted to have an eye contact everybody tries away and stared their phones I was longing for a silence and I was longing for the blue sky the green grass the open space so I knew that if I didn't find a way to maintain myself I won't be able to sustain not myself and in this lifestyle so I was searching I was searching I was reading I was trying to find a way to how can I stay in this modern way of living but can bring my mountains and steps with me so there I come across meditation and yoga I remember the first class I've taken in 2008 it was taught by an Indian teacher called Mohan in this ancient Chinese town inside of a written Park we all awkwardly staying there and then the first thing he said find yourself close your eyes and breathe so I did close my eyes I started breathing and I started moving my body and I started sweating a lot in the end of this class I found my breed again I found the reconnection with the nature and with my own being in that place in the middle of Beijing with this practice so this became my best friend I took it everywhere so last 10 years was this exploration of what it means to have a mind and body connection and I wanted to leave an ashram in Himmel eyes for a month and I recently did this island meditation and crazy enough I sit for 10 hours 10 day silently all by myself so what it really did is that me as a nomadic girl probably you as well many of you is modern nomads wants to live in the city in this modern world it's so technology driven but we lose ourselves and myths of it so this become a tool that I can bring myself as Who I am every single day to every single enterprise so now the journey continued I'm here in Australia as they say I'm doing my second master I know it's very crazy and I'm studying finance believe me my mind is exhausted and as you know I have an exam next Tuesday so now I started to ask this question of a graduate who's studying a finance and someone who studied international relations how as a human beings collectively are going to stay relevant and creative and then content in this world of technology so if you notice the way that we leave our alive the technology has completely shifted the way we experience life as a human we started moving everything from this world possible to the virtual reality now we shop we study we walk and we even date in the clouds so what it does is that it eliminates the physical motion of our body so when a body start to move it becomes a stagnant so in fact it's not just one body this your head space is one entity and this your physical body is another entity so when you stop moving this two entity doesn't operate together so our clever brain takes over in and then jumps into the driver's seat and start making all the decisions but the fact of the matter is that the brains very main purpose is to survive so it's not very positive it makes the decision based on failure and self-criticism so just to go back to where we started are you here right now and how are we spending our time so this really become the way that I see my interactions and also people around me so have we taken the technologies in to the extent that we are maybe becoming more like what we created a robots going through our life mindlessly lost in the thought leaving life through the tiny screen smartphones perhaps even confused what's real and what's virtual so I'm not even saying that technologies are bad but the technology fantastic but one of them basically is asking you this question is that maybe perhaps at the time that we as a human as a living thing cannot exist physically in this virtual reality we need the physical motion we need the grass we need the air we need the blue sky we need the nature and we also need another humans this eye contact touch and hug to thrive as a human being so the funny thing is we don't even consider this as a living thing we just do whatever we want to do with it we feed food that that's not good for us we constantly think about things that necessarily doesn't help us and we just keep on going so the power of presence is when you're a body and your mind meets in one place so how do we do that it's our breath so in fact when you start learning yoga you move your body and you bring your mind with it but the fact they say breathe is because that's the bridge that it connects so it is the thing it is a really one thing that happens regardless of what in our body every single moment but we don't think about it so there's a notion for me of going home is to bring myself into the present moment so right before I walk in that door I was meditating on the other side of the door so before I go and have a date perhaps I'll go meditate so I can bring my best self before I go do a job interview I'm so they can see my shine so shall we all go back home to our breath yeah beautiful so I invite you all bring a little movement in your body whatever movement that it feels all right whichever you want to whichever way you want to move just bring any movements beautiful and find your place close your eyes I'd like to invite you to bring your right hand on your heart center and your left on your belly button can you feel your heart beat can you feel the warmth of your own body and very slowly can you arrive in your own body with your breath as you inhale can you feel your chest and your belly expands and as you exhale can you feel the drawing of your Nellie back to your spy but starved from our feet the groundedness half's to the floor earth that supports us no matter what can you feel your knees your senior cough this leg that carries around no matter what as you scan your body can you stay with your breath can you feel your tie the front of your tie in the back of your time and you feel your sitting bones rooted into the chair firmly can you bring your left hand on your belly as you're scanning up to your chest your spine tall and lengthen can you feel your heart it's beating and it's aliveness can you soften your heart to breathing can you feel your shoulders just notice if they tight and you relax your shoulders and properly draw it down a bit as you exhale bringing your awareness to your neck extension of your spine can you feel your jaw can you relax your jaw and your tongue drop it down are you parading relaxing your cheek and your eyeballs and your I lead new eyebrow noticing the space in your forehead very slowly drawing a left hand up and join it on top your right on your heart let's take a deep breath in together take an inhale and let it out slowly open your eyes and you look to your right and acknowledge the person next to you probably look to each other sorry look to the other side and acknowledge the other person with the eyes eye contact so as you might have noticed this is what's called being present you probably feel something just shifts in us it's hard to explain so this is what I mean by going home so before doing anything that it's significant can you please promise yourself to go home and remind yourself that we are human beings not a human doer and anything that we haven't been done we haven't been able to do today can wait until tomorrow if you fail the exam you can do it again it's not in the door oh well let's take a brief so we can not fail it so it's danced your life taking one deep breath at a time thank you for your presence [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 48,863

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Energy, Meditation, Mental health, Motivation

Id: Fw0fZkBW7iM

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2018