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Part 2 – Review of Tony Robbins’ Ultimate Edge


Session 2 – Inner Strength: Your Hour of Power

In this session, Tony explains how every decision in our lives is controlled by two forces; our state (how we feel in the moment) and our blueprint (our structure of beliefs and values). We’ll apparently learn more about our blueprint in the last session of Ultimate Edge, but for this session, Tony concentrates on how we can control our state.

Have you ever stopped to think about all of the different emotions – positive and painful – you feel during an average week? That was the first exercise in this session of Ultimate Edge. My list was surprisingly small, and from what I understand, that’s pretty common.

We can’t control all of the events in our lives, but we can control what the event means to us. Today’s session, the Hour of Power, helps us establish rituals that will condition us to consistently be in an empowering emotional state.

What Tony calls the Hour of Power is all about taking time for yourself, each and every day, the first thing every morning. So, here’s how it works…

  • Step 1: Get up and start moving. If you can, go outside for a walk, or jump on the treadmill and start out slow. This will jumpstart your metabolism. Remember to breath. Take a few deep breaths in this ratio: inhale for one count, hold for four counts and exhale for two counts. Then for the next five minutes, practice inhaling four times through your nose and then exhaling four times through your mouth.
  • Step 2: All about gratitude and visualization. For about 10 minutes, think about everything you are grateful for, starting with things about yourself, family, friends, colleagues, special moments in your life and so on. Then visualize everything you want in your life as if you had it today.
  • Step 3: Incantations and exercise for 15-30 minutes. Tony suggest speaking incantations repeatedly while exercising. For example, you could say something like “every day, in every way, I’m feeling stronger and stronger” or “all I need is within me now.”

The assignment for this session was pretty simple. Look for “magic moments” during the day, and then do the Hour of Power the next day.

My thoughts
I got up early and tried the Hour of Power… well, in truth it ended up being the 45 minutes of Power, but I’m still giving myself credit for getting up to do this!

At first, I thought the breathing patterns would be difficult, and to be honest, I didn’t expect much from it. But to my surprise, somewhere around the three or four-minute mark, I got a sudden surge of energy. Now I’m curious to see if I’ll have the same experience every day.

The gratitude and visualization went well. One thing I find though, I that I visualize better with my eyes closed, which is fine if I’m on a treadmill or an elliptical machine, but not so good if I’m going for a jog.

Honestly, the incantation felt odd, but I did them. I did find myself speaking the incantations rather softly, instead of at a regular volume. Also, I spoke even softer when my son joined me in the room where I was exercising! So, the incantations take some getting used to… and I’m going to have to get over the embarrassment if I want to give this a real shot. 🙂

I felt great after my Hour of Power! My mood and energy was fantastic all day long, so I’d have to say my first experience was enough to get me to try this for a while.

Next up: the first Personal Power sessions

37 thoughts on “Part 2 – Review of Tony Robbins’ Ultimate Edge”

  1. Pingback: Review of Tony Robbins’ Ultimate Edge « MCG Media Blog

    • Hi Dawn!

      Yes, the hour of power does get easier on subsequent days the more often you do it. Like most exercise programs, or any rituals for that matter, what’s important is to keep going so that you create momentum.

      I’ve done the hour of power on and off since I first wrote the blog post. What tends to make me lose my momentum are things like waking up a bit late because I played a late hockey game the night before, having to get to the office a little earlier than normal, or simply hitting the snooze button once too often. 🙂 But I have always found that I feel better once I get back to doing the hour of power because it really does start the day off right.

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      • Hi Ed,

        I’ll let Michael explain it in his own words, but I think the ‘Ha’ breathing is as I described in the original post. On the Hour of Power CD describes a breathing pattern he calls “Step Breathing” that consists of four short inhales through the nose followed by four short exhales (perhaps what Michael is calling the Ha’s) though the mouth.

        Thanks for reading the blog!

        Mike

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      • “Ha” breathing comes from Hawaii, and was apparently a form of collective healing. It’s very simple in principle. You open your arms, breathe in deeply while pulling your arms towards you. You then exhale loudly (the “haaaaa”) while pushing away from your chest with your hands. As you breath in, you roll back on your heels. As you breathe out, you lean forwards. Repeat this for a good few minutes, while focusing on something you think important. You could, for example, be sending out energy towards those you love.

        It is followed by short exercises to round it out and wind down. You end up very “bright” and full of energy.

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      • This “ha” breathing sequence sounds almost identical to some of the initial exercises for Qi Gong routines, you might want to look that up as well, it’s simple yet powerful stuff.

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  7. Couldn’t agree more with the Gratitude part. Great post. Take a look at our 30 day Gratitude challenge; http://www.socgratitude.com/vtmiller and I’ll set you up with a free credit to make your own greeting card including postage – and send to someone you really appreciate! To learn more about the great cause check out http://www.sendoutcards.biz/vtmiller and show people how they too can become more grateful by acting on their promptings.

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  9. About four months ago, I made a very bad financial move and lost a lot of money. When I say a lot of money, I mean in the range of over 6 figures all in one month. For some that might not be a lot of money but for me it was. It ate at me for days and I felt so guilty about it. I had to find something to get my mind off my mistake and that’s when I listened to Tony’s tapes and learned about the Hour of Power. I was so desperate for change that I started doing it right away. For my 30 minutes of exercise I started doing P90X. It’s been over 4 months now and I have still doing both programs and I love it. I have so much less stress and I am such a happier person. I also feel great and have so much more energy to play with my kids and help out my wife with the household chores. I am lucky that I have a job that does not require me to be at the office at a certain time, but if needed I can cut things out to make it work. The best part is that if you do it everyday, it just becomes a ritual of something you do and you start feeling confidence in yourself that you can stick to something. There are still times that I think about the money I lost, but I quickly remind myself about the new life I have gained and there no price tag on that.

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    • Thanks for sharing your story Quoc Do. It sounds like you have come to the realization that wealth isn’t measured in dollars and cents. Congratulations on your breakthrough!

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  10. I believe the hour of power has to do with positive confession just like it is stated in the Bible. It involves saying and believing what you want and before long you will see it happen in your life (Heb 11:1-6). So frame your day with your words every morning!

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  11. This sounds like new-age pseudoscientific babble. The results seem to be impossible to verify or falsify, and the ‘evidence,’ if any, is entirely anecdotal, like that of those folks who have posted here. This seems to produce little more than the placebo effect.

    No wonder Tony Robbins is rich, preying on the gullible.

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    • Finally someone that is making sense in this blog. I admit that I would read anything related to, or that it has to do with the “positive thinking” concept. I also agree that if used properly and most importantly with faith, these types of exercises can help people. However, like with the rest of the free information I try to find in the Internet, I would not go further and spend ton of money in stuff like this. In that sense, I believe that stuff like this can be addictive and very dangerous. I would not mind to pay a few bucks for a good book in the topic but when you start to milk people by continuously publishing more and more material of basically the same in different costume, and when gullible people keep buying and buying these materials compulsively, then there is definitely a danger. Either this type of person need medical/psychological attention and/or their problems are beyond what these type of messaging can resolve. Mike, I truly appreciate your review of the product and I certainly hope that it is genuine. Sometimes you sound as if you work for the publisher and are just promoting the product. I really appreciate some of the inputs from other people suggesting alternatives products and websites. As for me, I would try every free sample from every related site and try to do my own research on the exposed techniques trying to use all the free sources that I can find in the net. As with my religion learnings, I forbid myself to help make other people rich on the expense of good advisement. Like with the web, I think that information like that should be totally free and open. Imaging Jesus Christ charging $9.95 per month for a subscription to his teaching… Outrageous, don’t you think?

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      • Thanks for the comment, Walter. Yes, the reviews I post on my blog are genuine. I post them because its the kind of information I wanted to find before investing any money on a product.

        I also try to gather as much free information as I can on the web; whether its from blogs, YouTube videos or even the product sites themselves. However, I don’t have an issue with paying for a product if it contains information I’m seeking. Would I like the products to be free? Of course, but at the same time I think it’s alright that whoever produced the product makes some money off of it.

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  13. EM, Good point! But… human instinct generates a draw towards peace. And a person smart enought to not only promote it, but advise on how to get “closer to the light” is cashing in and that’s the American way. Do you own a car, or depend on others to move you around? No, most people own a car and give in to capitalism…because it works.

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  14. Hey EM,
    I graduated in Computer Science, a fairly technical field, then worked for some time. Currently, I’m studying Psychology (as in academically). It’s a more balanced, less mechanical field coz the subject is humans. I don’t have much for or against Tony Robbins, coz I shouldn’t comment till I read his works or attend his seminars. This is just on the idea we tend to have that everything has to be ’verifiable’ and ’objective’ to be acceptable to us, to even deserve to exist. This used to be a whole big debate in Psychology (and other behavioral sciences) in the early part of the last century. Back in the 1930s and 40s, Psychology theories used to be formed based on experiments on rats and pigeons, like giving them electric shocks to see how they respond, or giving them food pellets if they did something the experimenter desired, or damaging some part of their brain to see the result. These scientists were called ’Behaviorists’, and they enjoyed a good run back then coz people had a lot of faith in machines and science to solve all their problems. But these theories failed to explain complex human behavior which is done without anticipation of reward. Especially acts of courage and heroism, or day-to-day helpful, altruistic behavior towards strangers, or curiosity-driven behavior. As the problems caused by a blind belief in machinery-oriented science (pollution, ozone depletion etc) came to be noticed, scientists (or at least a small progressive group) started to question things more. Prominent such sets are the Gestalt theorists (German word) and the Humanists. They realize that the human experience is very complex, and cannot yet be contained in formulae and equations. Maybe we’ll figure it out someday, but that day is far.

    Just think about it: which is your favorite color? Red? Green? Whatever it is, can you give a logical explanation for it? Can you argue with another whose favorite color differs from yours? One might say blue is best coz it’s the color of the sky, while another can counter green is the color of trees and grass. Similarly favorite foods. And complex tapestries of sensations like film or art or literature or music are in a different league altogether. On top of that, the same human’s preferences may change over time. We’re not robots with a fixed circuit board. Deep human experience cannot yet be bottled and labeled objectively and verifiably. I suggest we read Robbins’ books and see if his ideas seem logical and scientific. That is the first step in the experiment. Then interview or survey a large cross-section of people who have taken his courses, and see if they report subjective improvements (e.g. in mood, self-image, lowered stress etc) as well as objective measures (lower blood pressure and heart rate, greater mean income, more promotions at work). Only if such an experiment is conducted can we prove or disprove anything, and only then can it be called a Scientific study. To disclaim someone’s statements without conducting an experiment is unscientific.

    Complex behavior is ’verifiable’ to some extent, just that the experiment also has to be complex. There are studies in Psychology that measure relatively complex behaviors like aggression or altruism. You just need to design the experiment more creatively and cover a wider set of variables.

    And the ‘Placebo effect’ is the biggest example of how limited current science is. Scientists discovered unusually powerful responses to fake stimuli, like mock pills curing people of illness. Doctors couldn’t objectively explain how it happens, so the phenomenon was named the ‘placebo effect’ and used just like that. Repeated usage made people forget the significance of it. If a guy can get cured of a disease without ingesting a chemical at all, then this placebo effect is the biggest evidence of the innate power of the mind/body, and of the weakness of science in explaining how it happens. If a guy gets rid of an illness, whether a cold or a cancer, via the placebo effect, then the effect is a valid cure in itself.

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  16. Part of your experiment should be to participate in the program yourself and see how it affects you if you open yourself to it. You don’t have to be gullible, just be curious and see what happens. If you are always a skeptic you’ll miss out on some great things.

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  17. Hi
    Im thinking of buying one of Tony Robbins audio cd programs. I’ve never listened to any of them before. Which one should I go with? Im debating between the Personal Power II (30th anniversary) program, or the newer Ultimate Edge program.
    Thoughts?
    Thanks!
    T

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    • Hello and thanks for the comment. Interesting question… Personally, I went with the Ultimate Edge program because I figured it would be more up-to-date. However, someone recently told me that the full Personal Power program is more in-depth than Ultimate Edge. Never having listened to the full 30th Anniversary edition of Personal Power, I couldn’t really tell you if that’s true… perhaps one of the other readers could enlighten us!

      In either case, I’m sure you’ll be happy with your choice.

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