0:00 Hi, everyone.
0:01 Welcome back to the Change Your Mind podcast.
0:03 I'm your host, Kris Ashley.
0:04 We explore the intersection between personal development, spirituality and science.
0:08 And today we're gonna talk about our current mental health and recovery paradigm because so often we treat the symptoms without looking into the deeper causes of addiction and mental health concerns.
0:22 And as a result, a lot of us just resigned to the fact that, oh, this is how life is supposed to be.
0:28 But my guest today is gonna share that.
0:30 No, there's nothing wrong with you and life doesn't have to be this way.
0:34 So I'm really excited for our conversation first.
0:37 A couple of quick announcements.
0:38 If you head over to the links in the show notes, you'll find a link to my book.
0:42 Change your Mind to change your reality.
0:44 It was endorsed by three experts from the Secret John Gray, tons of others in the spiritual and personal development space.
0:51 You will find links to my free downloads, my free master class as well as courses in coaching.
0:57 And as always, this podcast is a part of the Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network.
1:03 So check out what we're doing, we have lots going on in the personal development space.
1:08 Hi, I'm Kris.
1:09 When I was younger I went through trauma that caused me to feel broken and lost.
1:14 But my life changed after I had a spiritual awakening.
1:18 Since then, I've dedicated my life to studying and learning from masters all around the world that have helped me to create a life of fulfillment and abundance beyond my wildest dreams.
1:27 Now I'm dedicated to sharing everything I've learned so that you don't have to suffer for decades.
1:31 Like I did, I've seen people's lives completely transform and I share it all right here.
1:40 All right.
1:40 So I'm so excited to introduce my guest, Bob Gardner.
1:44 So Bob is the founder of the Freedom Specialist, a body based approach to happiness, health and well being after 18 years of being trapped in addictive patterns and on the brink of both divorce and suicide, something inside Bob told him it was not time to quit just yet.
2:01 So against the prevailing wisdom that said these problems are permanent.
2:05 Bob chose to create a way to permanently eliminate them from his life.
2:09 His body based no nonsense approach to freedom has since helped thousands of people leave their struggles behind and find real freedom and happiness.
2:17 So welcome, Bob.
2:18 I'm so excited to have you here with me today.
2:21 This should be a fun conversation.
2:22 I appreciate you taking the time to have me on.
2:25 Yeah.
2:25 Yeah.
2:25 Right before we pressed record.
2:27 Bob asked me like, what would your listeners get the most value out of?
2:30 And I'm, I'm going through everything he teaches.
2:32 I'm like, wow, everything it's so aligned with what we talk about on this show.
2:36 So I'm really looking forward to, to hearing what you have to teach us.
2:40 So I always start all of my episodes the same way and that is by asking my guests, what is your origin story?
2:47 What led you on this path?
2:49 And I know I just gave probably a little Sprinkle of it, but tell us in your own words.
2:53 How did you, how did you come to develop your system?
2:56 What was your story?
2:57 I love that.
2:58 You call it an origin story.
2:59 Now, I feel like I'm turning into a superhero or something.
3:01 I know that's why I love it, right?
3:03 I love like marvel it, it just works, right?
3:06 And like most origin stories, it starts with utter destruction, right?
3:10 My mine started with basically me messing everything up.
3:14 I I did not have a traumatic childhood.
3:17 I did not have abuse happen.
3:19 I mean, we moved around a bunch.
3:20 But what happened early on was because my father was in the military because I felt like an outsider all the time.
3:26 There was a lot of social angst in the middle of that as a growing boy learns about sexuality and stuff, I discovered pornography and I quickly discovered that that was a lot more exciting than trying to figure out what people meant when they said the things they said and who liked me and who didn't.
3:42 And so that became sort of a guilty pleasure.
3:45 And then later on that went into drugs and,, some other stuff.
3:49 So I'm dealing with we,, couple decades of addiction, addictive behaviors, compulsive behaviors, what people called them that at the time, obviously, I challenge all of these things.
4:00 And,, and I really didn't want to live.
4:05 I had four kids by the time I finally decided to turn things around and my wife had told me that she was, she couldn't handle it anymore.
4:13 And, and the only reason I had stayed was for them.
4:16 And so if they leave, then like there was no reason to stick around.
4:19 And so that was when I sort of pulled up my breeches and said, no, hold on a second.
4:25 I don't leave just yet.
4:27 And so I went and tried to figure things out and what I did was basically throw out everything that I had learned as good as much of it was that was not producing immediate and measurable results that I could rely, look back on in a sort of scientific way and say I, I saw that it worked, then I see that it's working now and I see that there's a change over time and therefore I'm keeping this one and that led me back to the body and that led me back to paying attention to simple things and realizing that when people are talking about trauma or they're talking about depression or they're talking about anxiety, like in the end, what they're talking about is not something out there or not some weird emotional state they're talking about.
5:07 Well, I have this feeling in me and I was like, that feeling in me is like, it feels like there's a constriction in my chest.
5:14 My breathing is going this way.
5:16 My eyes are darting to and fro and I was like, what happens if I just change that?
5:20 And I realized that when I changed that my instinctive response to situations changed all the addiction stuff went away on its own.
5:26 And so then I was free and I could go live my life the way I wanted to.
5:31 Wow.
5:32 Well, thank you for sharing.
5:33 I appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability.
5:36 So, so do you think that simply by changing these patterns in your body that you can actually release trauma that you've held on to or release that emotional burden?
5:48 because I, I talk a lot about how, you know, repressed emotions get stuck in our body.
5:52 We need to release them.
5:54 So I guess what I'm asking is do we need to do the emotional work or just simply kind of skipping over that and going right into the body sensations and changing those have that effect on the emotions.
6:06 I, what I've seen in my experience is that you can completely skip it but not all the time.
6:11 It just depends on the person and the situation and how deep it is.
6:15 But there's a lot of stuff that can be handled by the body itself.
6:18 So when asking about trauma, I guess the question I had to ask myself was like, what do I mean, when I'm talking about trauma or what do I mean when I'm talking about a repressed emotion?
6:28 And then in the end, I am working with it, I'm just working it from the biological standpoint most of the time because I had to realize that my thoughts, my brain and was it Lisa Feldman Barrett and some of these other researchers that are discussing the neurobiology of emotion and how emotions are made and what is really going on.
6:47 You're discussing the fact that the brain is in this sort of black box, it's not in touch with the outside world.
6:53 So it's just getting this, this data that's chemical and electrical and that's coming through the body.
6:59 So it doesn't matter how beautiful life is.
7:01 If the body is ill at ease, then the message I'm gonna get to the body, to my brain is oh, something's off, something's off, something's off.
7:10 So the hypothesis I was working with was what if I could get my body to be at a place of ease?
7:17 Then what if that made it so that no matter what was happening on the outside, it came to me with this message of ease instead of this message of despair or anxiety or discomfort.
7:28 So I work with the body primarily and then as, as thoughts come up or as emotions come up then and if that becomes a lever point, leverage point, like I was just on the phone today with a kid who was an innocent eight year old.
7:42 He was experimenting sexually with his cousin because someone had shown him some pornography and he was doing what any kid would do.
7:51 Like, oh wow, that's something people do on the planet.
7:53 Cool.
7:53 Let me go try it out.
7:54 And then his ma his grandma had walked in on him and given him a whooping and all of these other things.
7:58 And so here he is trying to make sense of his environment and it got stuck around that, that particular memory.
8:08 And since then he's felt like a complete screw up in life.
8:11 And so we went back to the memory and we talked about that memory in order to be able to release that.
8:16 But the whole time I was going, now, how is your body reacting to it?
8:18 Now, how is your body reacting to it now?
8:20 Because that gives him a like a barometer.
8:23 If my body is not reacting to it, then it doesn't believe it's true.
8:26 And so I want people to go back to their body.
8:28 So they can recognize that this is a really beautiful measuring device to, to, to gro exactly where you are in the process.
8:35 That makes sense because you know, if your body isn't sending those emergency signals to your brain, then then everything is gonna calm down.
8:44 Right?
8:44 Because when you're, when you're living in that state of trauma and you're just thinking about it over and over, your body doesn't know the difference between that event happening then and now, right?
8:54 So the same cortisol gets released, the same adrenaline.
8:56 But if you can shut that off and those signals don't get sent, then there's nothing but ease.
9:01 Like you said, that, that totally makes sense.
9:04 And it also makes sense because it sometimes in talk therapy and I, you know, I nothing against talk therapy.
9:09 I think it's great, but you can just talk in circles forever, right?
9:12 You can just get stuck in those infinite loops and nothing ends up changing.
9:18 Right?
9:19 I, I think it's good to, to mention what talk therapy is good for.
9:23 Like it's not that it's bad at all, but it's good for things you can talk about.
9:27 And there's a, there's a lot of human experience, like even you just sitting there right now, there's a lot going on in your environment.
9:33 That's part of your experience that is non verbal and there are tensions and breathing patterns and heart rates and chemical things going on and only a small part of that could you describe with words?
9:45 And the rest of it is nonverbal.
9:46 So for talk therapy, there's some really great therapists out there that can get you to put words and language on things.
9:53 But there's a whole lot of stuff that is non verbal, that really is just a habitual tensing pattern or something.
10:00 And if you release that all of a sudden you feel great and you, it wasn't the thoughts that were spinning in your head.
10:06 It was just you were tense and your brain was like, oh when we were tense like this before, oh, remember that one time?
10:10 Oh Yeah.
10:11 And then there was the oh and then that one guy said this about me, oh, and somebody disliked my Facebook post.
10:17 And then pretty soon you're like, oh my gosh, my life is a mess when really it started with one signal in the body going, hey, brain, there's something going on here and that's all it started with.
10:27 Yeah.
10:28 Absolutely.
10:29 So, you know what, what is your definition of trauma?
10:32 Then if we're, if we're thinking about just from the body standpoint and like, how does trauma begin and end in the body?
10:40 So, so in the beginning when I was trying to figure this out, I had a challenge like I, because all the stuff that I had learned, well, it was comforting or helpful.
10:50 It hadn't gotten me free.
10:52 I started to go back and say, well, what if we're thinking about this wrong?
10:56 And that included addiction.
10:57 It included depression, it included trauma.
10:59 And the, and the sort of bold question I propose is what if trauma doesn't exist?
11:04 What if, let me go look at it.
11:05 What do I mean, when I, when I'm talking about trauma, because I've never seen a molecule of trauma.
11:11 Yeah, I've, I've never did nobody in a lab anywhere has, has isolated one under a microscope.
11:16 Same with addiction.
11:18 Depression has certain chemical bases, but there's not a molecule of depression running through people's bodies.
11:23 It's, it's one label on a massive complicated string of things that a person experiences.
11:29 So it's like, ok, if trauma is just a label, me trying to fix the label will only change the label.
11:35 What if I tore the label off and just looked at what's in the jar?
11:39 So when a person is experiencing what we might call trauma, what are they experiencing something in their environment changed?
11:47 And as a response to that they tensed, you know, or, or reacted in a way that feels bad to them.
11:55 And, and we can describe what those are, you know, usually it's not their kneecaps reacting or their nose hairs or their ear lobes or something like that, you know, it's usually kind of in the center part of the body and the breathing gets involved or the, or the posture or something like that.
12:10 And I think that's important, only a part of them is reacting to it.
12:14 So when we're talking about what people call trauma, what we're talking about is a reaction to your environment and a reaction can, can be trained, a reaction can be changed.
12:24 And, and what that reaction involves is how you breathe the tension patterns in your body.
12:30 What your posture is like where your gaze is, whether you're on fixed focused gaze or whether your your eyes are relaxed and taking in a, a bigger scene.
12:40 How, how your movement quality is like these are simple, simple types of responses.
12:44 And if you change those, then you're not having the same reaction.
12:49 And if you change those instinctively, then do you have trauma at all?
12:55 You know, and so like just taking the label off and going look, it begins with a bodily response to the environment that is unconscious, your body is just responding the best way it knows how according to the last time it survived something similar.
13:08 So you congratulations.
13:10 Nothing wrong with anybody listening.
13:11 You, you have 100% success rate in surviving your life.
13:14 OK.
13:15 So which means that the what we're calling trauma is actually brilliance is body brilliance.
13:21 That reaction is body brilliance and we just wanna upgrade it.
13:25 Let's give it another option and we, if we give it another option that feels better, it'll start to choose that one.
13:31 I really appreciate everything you just said, especially because trauma has become such a buzzword these days.
13:37 Right.
13:38 And, and you're right, it's, it's really a label.
13:41 Like, how do we even define it?
13:43 And, and it totally comes back to the body and I don't know if you ever have gone to like a Tony Robbins.
13:50 I've listened to him but I haven't been to his, like, date with Destiny or any of those things yet.
13:54 Yeah.
13:54 So I went to his, what is it U P W unleash the power within and he talks about posture, which is interesting.
14:00 He's like, you know, when you're sad, you're rounded over, you're hunched.
14:03 Everything's like in, when you're feeling confident, your shoulders are back and he, his whole thing is like, just like, think about like your sternum, like if you could just like lift your sternum up just like a couple millimeters, it completely changes how you feel when you walk into a room.
14:19 So it's really, it's really similar.
14:21 So how did you, how did you figure out like, you know, I know you dove into the body.
14:28 You, you were looking at breath, you were looking at posture, all these things.
14:30 Like, how did you figure out like these are the things that help?
14:34 Was it just like trial and error, experimenting a lot of trial and error?
14:37 But i it was, I mean, I was a martial artist growing up and I was running a martial arts school.
14:43 , you know, in the middle of all this stuff and, and there were like, I was still afraid I had a lot of fear inside.
14:50 So, even though I owned a kung fu school and I was teaching all these cool little animal styles and stuff.
14:54 So I was doing a lot of movement and breathing anyway.
14:56 And that hadn't eliminated things.
14:58 It was when I started training with these ex Russian operatives and, you know, getting like a story there.
15:05 Yeah, there's a lot there.
15:06 , but it was just like getting punched and kicked and half drowned and someone pulls a knife on you and like, they're not training, they're not trying to scare you.
15:16 They're trying to train you to be clear on what actually is happening in that moment.
15:21 So it was one time I was up in Canada, I was training with Vladimir and in this big camp he was running, it was, it was raining,, nonstop.
15:30 And,, one of the days we were working with clothing as weaponry, you know, I mean, this is like James Bond stuff.
15:35 I was, I was geeing out.
15:36 I was like, yeah, I'm gonna be awesome.
15:38 But I, I did a move.
15:40 I did a move and the partner that I was working with had sort of escaped it.
15:44 He stumbled out of it.
15:45 I thought I was gonna get to take him down and, and he didn't, he stumbled out of it and I kind of went like,, and I hadn't heard Vladimir walking up behind me and he goes, no, no, no, don't feel sorry for itself.
15:54 And I was like, wait, what, what?
15:56 Ok.
15:56 Got it.
15:57 Ok.
15:57 You know, my heart's racing.
15:58 A little bit.
15:58 Teacher caught me being bad.
16:00 You know, I'm like, ok, don't feel sorry for myself.
16:03 And I was like, ok, all, ok, no, beating yourself up, negative emotions are bad and he goes, no, all emotion is bad unless you know how to use it.
16:11 And I was like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.
16:14 Joy is bad.
16:15 Love is bad.
16:16 And then a couple days later, we were training and I did some cool move and I was like, yeah, and then the guy while I was celebrating stabbed me with the training knife for the second time.
16:27 And I was like, oh yeah, OK, this makes sense why it's not always good to be controlled by your emotional states.
16:34 So I was learning about like, you have to be able to clean yourself of an emotion as it comes.
16:39 And we were using breathing and we were using movement.
16:41 At the same time, I was receiving this deep body work from people using sticks and antlers and whips and all kinds of things to drive deeper into the body than just relaxing the muscle to get all the way into the psychological structure where there's fear and there's pain and there's worry.
16:58 And as I started to experience this level of freedom that opened up from the inside, like this spaciousness where it felt like my body was clothing and I was just inside free and my body could have all these things going on.
17:11 But there it wasn't attaching me.
17:13 I was like, man, there's something going on here, but that, that guy disappeared to Russia or Latvia.
17:20 And so I had years on my own and I had been training in other sort of body work methods.
17:24 And I was like, how do I link this up?
17:25 How do I link up this freedom?
17:26 I'm feeling from the body stuff with all this emotional gunk that I got going on and with all these like addictive patterns.
17:34 And so that's where I just started trial and error.
17:36 And I would like map where I felt things in my body and I pay attention to it and then I figure out if I could release it that way and then I'd map it with some of my early clients as well and map it in their body and everybody is different.
17:48 There isn't a map that works because everybody has experienced a whole life history and they've patterned that in whichever way they do.
17:56 That's interesting that everybody is different.
17:58 So it's not like every time someone's holding on to rage, they feel it in their gut or something, you know, or trauma or whatever it is, there's like general patterns that I think everybody could recognize.
18:09 But those are often cultural, you know,, there's a lot, a lot of cultural biases that we, we build into when someone has like a stoic face, we assume one thing but in another culture that's like a heroic face.
18:20 And so like the, it's some of it's culturally conditioned.
18:24 Like there was one guy who came to one of my retreats and big guy, you know, so much bigger than, than I am muscularly.
18:32 And I just pulled him up and I was trying to tell them, look, your body stores, things like not, it's not storing memories, it's, it's storing like tension patterns and muscular adhesions and chemistry and stuff.
18:43 And then your brain, the beauty of the brain is that it makes experiences out of that.
18:47 And so if those footprints in the sand, so to speak, don't get washed away, then that's still there in the background as part of the chapter that your brain is writing.
18:58 So I grabbed his bicep just right here just above the elbow just to kind of show like if I just push here for a little bit, then he has one experience where he's like, OK, but then I held it there for, it might have been a minute and a half or something.
19:10 And then he was looking at me and then you could see his face change and then he started to have concern and then all of a sudden he started sobbing and he sobbed for like a couple minutes and I was just holding his bicep.
19:21 And so I asked him like, ok, what was that about?
19:24 Like, do you want, can you share me more about this?
19:27 And he's like, well, there was just this time when I was 16 and I was dating this girl and she was really manipulative and it was a really rough time in my life.
19:37 And I, I was like, well, what does it have to do with your bicep?
19:40 And he's like, well, I mean, I guess that's the time I started lifting weights pretty heavily too.
19:44 Somehow that tension in his body was connected in some way to a memory a way past that he hasn't thought about that lady in a long time.
19:55 And then all of a sudden this thing comes up just from pressure on a bicep.
20:01 That's mind blowing how your body holds on to emotion like that and how it, it connects one event to a specific body part where like, you have to actually, like, consciously try and chase it, like trace it right?
20:14 Like, ok, I was lifting weights at that time but she never, like, grabbed me by the arm or anything.
20:19 That's really, really fascinating.
20:21 And, you know, just to go back to what you were saying about your training with the Russians.
20:26 I think it is so cool.
20:27 By the way, you're, you know, we started off talking about comic books And Marvel and I feel like you're living like a CIA lifestyle or something or I'm trying to borrow theirs or something.
20:41 Yeah.
20:42 , but, you know, it makes sense that you don't, you want to be able to not be ruled by your emotions.
20:47 Right?
20:47 And I feel like we see that in, in movies that are like, that are training kung fu.
20:52 I don't know.
20:52 I'm thinking like Batman begins or something.
20:54 Right.
20:56 Because you want to be able to, if, if someone can control your emotions, they can control you, right?
21:01 And you want to be able to, to have control of that.
21:06 And also I love that all that deep body work with antlers and whips and I feel like I need more details on that.
21:14 But you know the fact that you got to that place that you're like, wait, I'm not my body, I'm something inside of my body like my body is just the suit that I'm wearing, right?
21:25 And that's like such a spiritual place to get to.
21:28 Right.
21:29 That's what so many of these mystics and spiritual teachers are trying to teach people like you like what happens to your body is not you?
21:36 Right.
21:36 Right.
21:38 Yeah.
21:38 That's like, that's, I mean, I went and I learned how to do this body work.
21:42 I've been training people on how to do it now just recently and, and the way that I do it, which is connected to all this emotional stuff as well.
21:49 So that it's not, it's not just, you know, we deal with it.
21:52 I mean, it came from an old Siberian form of healing, you know, where you don't have millions of people you can throw into battle, you have your tribe.
21:59 And if you lose a man that's a blacksmith and a farmer and a, and a husband and another warrior.
22:04 Like so how do you make people not ravaged by war, not ravaged by the seasons not ravaged by the the difficulty, the physical tangible difficulties of life and help them be resilient.
22:16 And so these methods of working with the body were developed in that way and they look like medieval torture in some ways.
22:22 But the other side of it is, I mean, I can share with you if you want it later like a, a video that we made of a demonstration that I did with it.
22:29 And it's the other side of it is this tremendous freedom, the sense of complete bliss sometimes and total space.
22:36 And that's what I'm trying to give to people because once they experience that they like just a taste of it is enough to get them to be like, OK, I want, I want more of that and that's when they start training things a little bit more deliberately and start working with the body more deliberately and really exploring things that way.
22:53 Yeah, I'd love to see that video and it makes sense to me when you're like, this feels like a medieval torture device because, you know, like I, I I own a yoga studio.
23:03 I used to run other yoga studios and teacher trainings and we would, we would put our trainees through some, like, pretty intense exercises, right?
23:11 Like nothing crazy but like Kundalini yoga or just exercises that tested them physically because if you can physically exhaust your body, then the emotions just pour out.
23:25 Right.
23:25 And I've, I've gone through so many trainings like that myself where you're like, this is freaking miserable.
23:30 And it, it kind of actually reminds me of the guy whose biceps you touch.
23:33 It's like, at first you're like, this sucks.
23:35 I'm angry.
23:36 I don't want to be here.
23:38 And then after a while, like, once you get past the body sensations, it's like, I, I'll just, I've, I've started bawling or laughing or like, had some sort of emotional release and it's, it's actually some of the most cathartic and powerful releases that I've had and some of the biggest healings I've had, have been through those kind of exercises.
23:57 So I, I get what you're saying.
23:59 Yeah.
24:00 Yeah, I've had one, yeah, one time I was doing a, just a hamstring stretch with my toes elevated and I was bending down and it was really uncomfortable.
24:09 And so I was sitting there then all of a sudden I started just crying and it was the best word I could put on it was this sense of helplessness that started to pour out of me.
24:20 And then when, like, when it all ended, you know, I was just like, wow, that was intense.
24:24 But it didn't have any mental connection to anything in the past.
24:28 This is where I think it's beneficial to work through the body because, you know, when you're just trying to talk through something, you one where is it located, what part of your system is engaged with it?
24:39 And if there's no memories involved with it, then it's just like, what are we talking about when we're saying the body holds emotion?
24:47 Well, if you, if you look at emotion from a couple of different perspectives, one is it's chemical.
24:53 And so if, if there's tensions around the chemistry in your blood, so your chemistry is a little more acidic, usually when you're stressed out or having some kind of negative emotion.
25:01 And if there's tensions around that, then that blood gets held in place by the muscles, then that drives out and crystallizes.
25:08 So you have leftover Lactic acid and ammonia and all of these other chemistry associated with that emotion as you start to work the body and wring it out using yoga or using tai chi and some of these Taoist practices or, or using some of the Russian practices that I've done or I've seen African Americans doing some pretty amazing things and, and, and some of these native American tribes, like in every culture, there's some kind of work with the body when they're trying to develop a person as you do that, those crystallized chemistry of, of that particular those events starts to re enter the bloodstream.
25:43 It, it kind of melts back into the bloodstream and then your brain goes, oh we're there again and then it creates this emotional release and so it's there in crystal form, so to speak.
25:53 And then as you start to loosen up the system, then the it comes back out, but it's coming out.
25:58 Not because you're experiencing that the first time, but it's, you're actually watching it go.
26:04 Yeah.
26:04 Thanks for explaining that, that having that visual like really, really helps.
26:08 And when you're talking about all these different cultures, it made me think I knew this guy who was a native American and he did the thing where they hang you by the eagle claws like, oh wow.
26:19 Yeah, I've heard about it.
26:20 Yeah.
26:20 And then he had tattoos of like eagle claws right there because he had like done it.
26:25 And he said that was like the most powerful experience of his entire life.
26:28 I don't, I don't remember how long they make you hang for, but it's like until something happens, right?
26:33 I don't know the details.
26:34 Yeah.
26:35 No.
26:35 Pretty, pretty powerful, like crazy, crazy stuff, right?
26:40 I mean, and there's, I think it's important to recognize you don't have to go through torture to do this.
26:45 And that's what I've been trying to make in, in the stuff that I bring to people, right?
26:49 Because I'm, I'm extreme enough to go look at some of these things, you know, but not everybody is.
26:54 And so my question was then how do I make this an everyday thing accessible to everyday people who are?
27:00 Because I remember hearing things like this and being like, dang it, I have a wife and kid, like I don't have a chance to go do this thing.
27:05 And I would kind of beat myself up about like, see the fates are against me.
27:11 I was born in the wrong culture or something like that.
27:13 I can't go get tortured.
27:15 Yeah.
27:16 And so I, I, I wanted to develop ways of like, how do I access that state in the morning when I wake up instead of having it to always be.
27:25 I mean, I think it's useful to have extremes just like a sauna is an extreme experience that rec contextualizes the rest of your life.
27:33 And an ice bath is an extreme experience that can rec contextualize the rest of your life.
27:37 And I think they're very useful to have periodically so that you don't end up believing that you know, these little tiny things that are happening in gossip at work are really the these big existential threats that we often feel like they are.
27:52 So yeah, go do an ice bath, go to a sauna go do things like that.
27:56 But, and, and, but in a normal day, just a cool cold shower after your hot one, you know, just for a few seconds, it's something that, that does and it feels wonderful.
28:06 Or there's di different types of breathing things that only take a minute or two and you can start to open up that feeling again.
28:13 Or there's ways of using your voice that start to pro like stimulate the vagus nerve and some of the other like endogenous opioid system that starts to create this sense of euphoria and this sense of freedom and, and almost like a sense of being high, but from your own supply, like just built from the inside.
28:32 And so that's what I started teaching people early on because I wanted them to realize that who they are right here and now has everything it needs and these experiences are only helping them see what they already have inside themselves is all.
28:46 Yeah.
28:47 Yeah, that's super powerful.
28:48 So, so are these types of exercises and breathwork?
28:53 Like something someone can just start to incorporate on their own and it'll still have that powerful of an effect?
28:59 Like, do you still get that release from that?
29:01 I, I know that's a good question.
29:05 Yes and no.
29:06 Like if you start on your own, like everything that's new, has a certain sort of novelty to it.
29:10 And I think that you, you tend to get more of an effect the first few times you do something then,, then you do doing it as a habit all the time.
29:20 And so, like, I think the novelty of it builds into a certain kind of,, effect and then that starts to kind of fade into the background.
29:29 So my own personal practices, I'm, I wake up in the morning and, like, I teach people a certain morning routine and I do a different one right now because I'm looking for something different.
29:40 And then when I get bored with that one, I change it up.
29:42 But it's all based on the same principles which is, you know, muscle tension and breathing and movement and relaxation, proper nutrition, proper hydration, adequate sunlight, things like that.
29:56 So what do you, what do you do?
29:58 Maybe if you could give us like an example or two of like a specific exercise or breathwork that you take people through that has really had an impact on them.
30:08 So at the retreats that we run, I do these like hour long kind of breath works.
30:12 But if you, if you were gonna do them at home, like Wim Hof, for instance, is sort of popularized a sort of a super ventilation type breathing where you're messing with the chemo receptors in the brain and changing the balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen.
30:25 And that has been medically shown that to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your system or to overload oxygen and then hold your breath and then let the carbon dioxide go, can start to produce these sort of visionary things.
30:37 In some people.
30:38 I don't get visions.
30:39 I've never have.
30:40 , but they, because they're shaking up your baseline, they're pushing your body into a space that is more alkaline in the bloodstream and that has its own feeling.
30:51 And I think what's important is that people memorize the feeling of ease because when you memorize that feeling and the more that you spend some time there, then as you deviate from that you start to recognize, oh, wow.
31:05 I'm not feeling at ease anymore and you pick it up way before it's like, oh, I'm stressed and I'm anxious and I'm having a panic attack.
31:11 So the breathing that Wim Hof does, for instance, is a full breath in and then let go.
31:18 It's just a false.
31:21 He doesn't even demand that you put it in your nose, your nose, only you can breathe in through your mouth.
31:25 I have people breathe in through the nose as much as possible because of the production of nitro ate.
31:29 That happens.
31:30 But you're only doing it for a few minutes.
31:31 So what I'll have people do, it's, it's maybe a slight change from what Wim Hof is doing because I'm wanting them to use their muscles a little bit different, but I'll have them do a breath like that for three minutes and then I'll have them when they're done.
31:45 Hold on,, empty.
31:47 So they'll breathe out and hold on empty as long as it's comfortable.
31:51 And then I have them hold another 10 seconds and in that 10 seconds, their physiology and their brain is confronting some semblance of death.
32:01 Right.
32:01 I'm gonna die 10 more seconds.
32:04 And so there's a, a, an element of will that is included there.
32:09 And there's a, and, and that seems to activate in some ways, some of these circuits,, that, that improve the body's ability like that reduce and reverse aging and whatnot.
32:20 These, these circuits that are like you're doing this extra thing that you don't really want to do is really uncomfortable and yet it has some reward on the other end so that extra 10 seconds and then breathe in, hold on full.
32:33 And then I have them do either just squeeze all their muscles except their neck and head or do like push up a slow push up or a sit up or a squat, just some form of physiological exercise while holding the breath on full and then a for 10 or 15 seconds and then relax and then just enjoy the sensations that are there.
32:52 So in, I call it the breath switch, right.
32:55 It's just a little switch that you can toggle and switch how you're feeling.
32:58 This has worked tremendously well in a lot of different arenas.
33:02 It's something that you can do.
33:04 You get home before you go in to see the kids just do it in the car in the front seat easy.
33:08 , you know, obviously you're not gonna be doing squats or push ups there, but you can squeeze your muscles, you know.
33:13 , it's something that you can do in the morning or you get to the parking lot at work and you can do it in the car right there.
33:19 It's something you can do in the evening before bed.
33:21 Like it's something that is transportable and it changes your body chemistry and like the fastest way to change your blood chemistry.
33:31 His thoughts really, which is something that you deal a lot with, right, Kris.
33:35 But, but your body chemistry, the next fastest one is blood.
33:40 The problem with thoughts is they can also change back really fast.
33:42 So, but if you change your blood chemistry that takes longer to kind of correct itself, so to speak, because your body has to do some things to change it.
33:52 So you've done this like sort of uncomfortable breathing.
33:55 And in order to repair itself from this discomfort, your body creates this, this sort of endorphins that rush through the system.
34:03 And they, they have, I have like, they're like any other chemical, your body has to sort of detox from feeling good.
34:09 So it lasts for a while and that's something anybody can do.
34:14 Thanks for sharing all that.
34:16 You know, as you were talking and this whole conversation has kind of made me think about, like, and you even said, like, it's this idea of will, right?
34:23 If you can push yourself past your own discomfort, which is all mental, right?
34:27 , and, and, you know, I'm thinking about, like Navy Seals, right?
34:31 Like, they, like, really push themselves past their own discomfort more so than, like, 99% of the population would do.
34:38 And I'm thinking about how through all my own training with yoga, we had to do all this breath work and even something like that is really uncomfortable for a lot of people.
34:49 Right?
34:49 I remember going to this one workshop where they were basically kind of having us hyperventilate and they're like, your hands are going to form a claw, like don't panic.
34:57 And the first thing you do is panic, you're like my hand is forming a claw.
35:02 This isn't normal, something's wrong.
35:04 But if you can like push past that, then you reap all those benefits.
35:09 But I'm just thinking about, you know, modern times, so many people are, you know, like we're talking about trauma is a buzzword.
35:16 So many people are so over sensitive to this kind of stuff.
35:20 Like I was trained by someone that's like, you know, yeah, like you, we're gonna push you into your own discomfort so that you can come out stronger, you can release all these repressed emotions.
35:31 Like I told you, like we, when I was in training, we had to stand with our arms out, we had to go arms up like this and then back down and that entire process took a full hour and, and, and it was just like this release and I was just sobbing and so many people that went through that we like this was abuse, right?
35:53 Like this is, this is like terrible and it was this whole conversation that happened after where for me, I was like, wow, that was like the most transformational experience ever.
36:03 And, and it's addictive almost in a good way.
36:05 Like I wanna keep pushing myself past my comfort zone.
36:08 I wanna keep having these releases because it feels so damn good on the other side.
36:13 Yeah, I guess, I guess what I'm asking is, you know, how do you, how do you navigate that in these modern times?
36:21 Like it also makes me think about Kill Bill.
36:23 You've seen Kill Bill, right?
36:24 So like, UMA Thurman like respects that.
36:28 I don't know what he is like that Yogi master that makes her like carry the water up the stairs and the other woman just like kills him because she's like, I can't even deal with this, right?
36:36 So like, how do you navigate this in these modern times where, you know, there's so much history from all these different cultures about testing your body and putting it through the limits.
36:48 There's so much scientific backing about how doing these kind of things releases these emotions like you felt it.
36:55 It's, it's almost like a built in mechanism for our bodies to like when we push ourselves like this, to be able to release this junk that it's holding on to, to unwind that tension.
37:06 How do you navigate that with these modern times where people are so oversensitive about things?
37:11 And trauma is a buzzword and you, do you get what I'm asking?
37:16 Yeah, it is.
37:17 Right.
37:18 It is.
37:18 It is an interesting conversation.
37:20 It took me a long time when I started helping people.
37:23 How do I language this in a way that, that they can engage with it as a human being and not from some programmed prejudice that, that they've inherited.
37:34 Right.
37:35 And that's where I, I started learning to ask different types of questions or I would go to the neuroscience of something like, for instance, pain itself.
37:45 And I think education is it like, information to me?
37:49 Information is useful in as much as it opens the door for someone to actually take action.
37:53 So it's not bad to be informed about something, but often the information it stays just there for people.
37:59 Like, oh, yeah, I know.
38:00 And that's where I go.
38:01 You don't know anything until you, you have direct experience of it.
38:04 You mean you've read something, you've heard something that, yeah, so a lot of us have, you know, something come here.
38:10 Let's see.
38:11 Let's test this.
38:12 Right.
38:12 So, pain itself is something that is actually a production of the brain, not the body.
38:18 We've kind of got this back backwards.
38:21 I mean, it started in early medical science where people believed we had pain receptors in the body and that they could, they were sensing pain but pain doesn't exist in the world outside.
38:30 It's like, not a, you don't, you don't have like pain sensors and like, oh I found some pain there.
38:35 You have like little nerves that respond to excitement and you have your sensory nerves.
38:41 And if it's like super intense, our bodies have a pain threshold and they also have a pleasure threshold.
38:47 And those things are directly related.
38:50 The ex the amount of pleasure you can experience is related the amount of pain you can experience, which is why if you're ticklish, that's your, you've reached your threshold and now you can't handle it anymore.
39:00 An orgasm is you've reached the threshold of pleasure and now your body is like now it just starts to kind of spasm on its own and then pain is on the other side where there's only so much discomfort you can experience and then you start to like run away from it or fight it off or, or, or react in some sort of negative way.
39:18 But that's decided by the brain, it's not decided by the body.
39:23 The body is just going like, hey, this is what's happening and the brain is the one that gets to make up all of the and the little brains that are along each of the vertebrae along the spinal column.
39:33 And because there's more than just one cluster of neurons, there's a lot of little ganglia of nerves all over the place and all of them have the ability to learn and whatnot.
39:40 And so they are making sense of the information being handed to them and that information being handed to them is like all these nerves come to one nerve.
39:48 And that guy's got to send a summary to the next guy who's getting these number of summaries.
39:52 And that guy's got to send a summary to the next guy.
39:54 So by the time you're getting a, this is what happened.
39:57 It's a summary of a summary of a summary of a summary of a summary.
40:00 That guy's just got top level like telephone game stuff going on.
40:04 And that's what we say is, is really what happened.
40:07 So the B B brain decides, hey, I don't like this.
40:10 This is bad.
40:11 It's probably gonna kill us.
40:12 It sends a message back down to the body to prepare it.
40:17 And your emotions are your brain's orders.
40:20 It's your brain's guesses about what's going on and its plans for action.
40:24 So your emotional states are a form of pain that are produced by the brain in the body to motivate action.
40:31 And your physical pains are produced by the brain to motivate the body, to initiate action.
40:36 This is clear in people who are paralyzed or numb and don't actually sense things in certain areas, you can poke them and they don't react.
40:45 , and that's just because there's no nerve sitting there taking information from the brain to tell them anything different.
40:53 So it's not inherent in the tissue.
40:55 It's coming from the brain entirely.
40:57 And that's important because now we go, ok, we live in a society where everybody is really sensitive.
41:02 We want everybody to be comfortable.
41:04 This is a great book, The Comfort Crisis written recently, I forget the guy, the author's name off the top of my head.
41:09 But he's, he's discussing this problem with how comfortable we are and how much that is destroying possibly our physical health, our mental well being and how much his own changed as a result of going on.
41:20 He did like a, I don't remember how many weeks, like a three week long Caribou hunt in Alaska and it was like dealing with all of the, you know, roughing it out there and camping and the winds and, you know, and, and it's a beautiful, beautifully written book and his experience with that.
41:35 And so we're looking at this like here's our society where everybody is, wants to both be comfortable and to make sure nobody else gets hurt.
41:43 We don't realize that we are the ones that hurt ourselves outside of physical brute force.
41:49 We are the ones that hurt ourselves.
41:51 And so I'm sharing this with people and I'm going.
41:54 So when I'm pushing on this area in your back with a stick or when I'm, you know, when we're breathing and it's really uncomfortable or when you're holding a position, like a push up position for a long period of time and you start to experience something that feels like it's uncomfortable or it's painful.
42:11 I want you to question that I want you to ask.
42:14 Is that actually pain or is that just information that I'm making into pain?
42:19 And what else might be going on?
42:20 And can I experience this as pleasure instead?
42:24 Since all it is, is information.
42:26 And you would be surprised there have been so many times where even with a big heavy whip, these Cossack whips that they're using as I've been hit some they sting sometimes.
42:37 But there have been other times where it has felt like I was a drum and that whip hit and it was this glorious feeling of like music running through my body, this, this vibrating drum that went through everything and it felt pleasant, not like a tickle by any stretch of the imagination.
42:53 And it was in the wake of that pleasure of being hit that all of that spaciousness starts to show up.
43:00 And you know, people frequently, like most of the time when I'm working with them physically and doing this deep tissue work, that's an experience that they end with where there's this opening and they just feel calm and clear on the inside and I go that, that is the closest we found to who you really are.
43:19 And you can see how there's nothing wrong with.
43:20 It never has been.
43:21 It's perfect.
43:22 It just got buried under all of this tension and all this thought and all this worry.
43:29 That's really beautiful, that end description.
43:32 And I've experienced that only only a handful of times where it's just completely clear.
43:38 My mind is blank.
43:39 There's just nothing there.
43:41 I'm just being and what a peaceful place to get back to.
43:44 And like you said, I think that that is our true state.
43:47 And I really appreciate everything you just said.
43:49 I appreciate your perspective on all of that.
43:51 And I, I really agree with everything that you said too.
43:55 And you said something interesting that I'd love for you to elaborate on.
43:58 You said outside of brute force, like someone hurting you, like we are the ones who hurt ourselves.
44:04 Can you just talk a little bit more about that?
44:06 Yeah.
44:07 Physical pain, it's, it's a, it's a message from the brain to the body.
44:11 It's not bad, it's not like it's not a bad thing.
44:14 It's, it's saving our lives and whatnot.
44:16 So this isn't to vilify the, the experiences people have.
44:20 But basically, our nervous system seems to be this producer of experience.
44:25 And when we go unconscious, we cease to have experience, the body is still there, but we stop experiencing things as we become conscious.
44:33 Then the nervous system seems to be this producer of experiences.
44:37 And so when I'm experiencing pain, physical pain, what I'm experiencing is there's stuff going on, my nervous system is going, what should we make out of that?
44:47 Someone pushed me on the arm or, or, you know, I felt a cold enough breeze on my face that when I breathed in there was this sensation in my nose that should I make that into something that stings?
44:57 Should I make it into something that tickles should I make it?
45:00 And so there's this, you know, this, this production company inside the skull running around directing, you know what's going, it's like the Truman Show if you remember that movie from, from, I love that.
45:14 Yeah.
45:15 And, but like we're just producing this experience, we even have like our, our own soundtracks like Cronk or something sometimes and we hum music, but we also overlay our thoughts onto it and we, we choose where our attention is going to and all of that produces an experience and the same goes with an emotional state.
45:35 It is we are, our nervous system is taking information in deciding what to make of it and how to project that into some kind of experience.
45:44 We don't see what our eyes, what our eyes are seeing, our eyes don't see, they just receive light.
45:50 Our brain is what sees.
45:52 And if anybody wants to try this, you just put one hand close enough to one eye so that you're seeing, you, you'll see the edge of the other hand, you're seeing like two hands in front of you.
46:03 You know, there's only one, but what you're seeing is your brain's attempt to try and make sense of information that is getting from two eyeballs in one vision space.
46:13 That one is the secret to 3D glasses, but 22 is, is a, a doorway into recognizing that what you're experiencing is your own production when you can own that.
46:27 This is not a negative thing.
46:29 This is everything like instead of going, oh she made me mad.
46:34 I can say, wow, she did this and I'm apparently using that as an excuse to be pissed off right now.
46:40 You know, my wife rolled her eyeballs.
46:41 Well, she rolled her eyeballs and then I took that and I went and then I decided to worry about like how she looks, thinks about me or something like that.
46:50 And it's, it's recognizing that the steps that made the experience are really mine that gives me the ability to go back and go like, well, what would happen if I looked at her with my head sideways and my tongue hanging out?
47:03 Would I still feel the same while she's rolling her eyeballs?
47:05 That changes my experience in a big way.
47:08 Goes back to posture.
47:09 Yeah.
47:10 Yeah.
47:10 In the body.
47:11 Yeah.
47:12 And, and the people that I work with that are dealing with sexual addiction or, or, or something like that.
47:17 You know, they're feeling what they would call, tempted and they, they're like, oh, what do I do with lust?
47:20 I'm like, it's really hard to lust and to feel lust when you're not in the position of lust, which is usually like, eyes are like, head is still because you don't want to be caught.
47:30 But the eyes are kind of heads kind of forward and the eyes are looking and there's somewhat tunnel vision.
47:34 The breath is sort of shallow.
47:35 Like, don't anybody see me, the heart's beating a little bit.
47:38 There's a little chemical flush going on.
47:39 You can't do that if you're like one arm up, tangling your head this way and like trying to look at the person and lust that it's hard.
47:48 Maybe you could train it.
47:49 I'm not interested in training it, but just changing the body's part of the body's experience has the ability to eventually change the entirety of that experience.
48:00 And then you, that's something that can be trained.
48:03 I, I, I love everything you just said.
48:06 And you know, it's so much of what I write about in my own book, which is called Change your Mind and change your reality.
48:10 And it's all about our own perception.
48:13 But I love hearing people say things that I already believe and agree with in their own world words because everyone says it differently and sometimes they'll just say it in a way that you're like, yes.
48:24 Like that's amazing.
48:26 And it's just going to resonate with someone in a way that, the way I said it doesn't, you know what I mean?
48:30 Like, you can hear the same thing 500 times and then someone says it differently and it's like, oh, I get it.
48:35 , and it made me think too.
48:38 , David R Hawkins.
48:39 I don't know if you've ever read his work but he talks about suppressed and repressed emotions in the body a lot.
48:46 And he says that, you know, outside forces don't make us angry.
48:51 We're already angry and we're like, we're like pressure cookers, right?
48:56 Our people with repressed emotions are like pressure cookers where outside forces just give them an excuse to vent their emotions, right?
49:04 So it's like, like you were saying like that, that your wife rolling her eyes like you were already had that anger inside of you.
49:11 It's just giving you an excuse to like unleash that on the world a little bit.
49:15 So you don't like implode.
49:17 Yeah.
49:17 And I think the way that I would language it because I, I think we're, we would be saying the same thing essentially the way that I would language.
49:24 It is the the chemistry and the tension and everything else is already there.
49:28 And then something on the outside poked it enough for your brain to become aware of it.
49:32 Yeah.
49:32 Now that it's aware of it, it's like, well, it's the thing that poked me that made it, you know, that's easy to make that blame.
49:38 But it's really like, oh dang, I hid that in the back drawer.
49:41 Now, I gotta look at that again.
49:45 And so, and that's what I'm doing with deep tissue work when you're doing massage and you get something that is like emotional.
49:51 It's just that like that pressure on the body is like a mirror to the brain.
49:56 It's like, hey, look brain, you see what you're holding and then it has to deal with that.
50:00 And if you don't remove the mirror, if you don't be like, oh, I'm sorry, that's, I know that's uncomfortable.
50:05 But if you hold it there, which sounds unkind.
50:09 If you hold it there and the brain has to look and look and look eventually it's like, you know, may maybe I don't want to make this decision anymore and do this to myself anymore.
50:17 It comes up with a new solution and then you see massive instinctive changes start to happen very quickly.
50:24 There was a, there's a story of the, the founder of Zen Buddhism Buddhi DMA.
50:29 He I mean, according to the number to the legends or the stories or the history, there's only only two students of his that ever really attained enlightenment and only one of them ever taught something.
50:42 And, and this is the one that we're talking about.
50:44 His name was Hui Cook.
50:45 So Bodi Drama shows up at the Shaolin temple in China.
50:48 He's meditating, staring at the wall for long periods of time, monks are seeing him there.
50:52 And one of them is like, dude, this guy has something.
50:54 How can he just sit there in total rapture, day in and day out, you know, goes to eat something, sits back down, goes to the bathroom, sits back down.
51:02 How is he doing?
51:03 This wants to learn is constantly ignored by Bori Darma.
51:09 And finally like gets in his way and he's like, it's, it's winter time at this point.
51:15 He's like, please teach me, show me the way.
51:16 Like I really just wanna learn what you have to do.
51:18 And Bode Dona looks at him, looks around the environment and he says, when it snows red, I'll teach you and then he walks off.
51:24 Well, this guy thinks of it like a puzzle and he looks around, it's snowing.
51:31 He grabs a sword and he cuts off his arm bleeding right there.
51:35 Now, we know that there was a one armed monk.
51:37 And so how his arm got cut off.
51:39 We're not sure.
51:40 The legend says this is the way, right?
51:42 So he cuts off his arm, he's bleeding there passed out.
51:45 They gotta go cauterize the sucker.
51:47 You know, they gotta make sure that he, he survived.
51:49 And in the middle of this whole ordeal, he looks at his master B DMA and he's like, I keep trying to pacify my mind and I can't do it.
51:58 Borma then looks at him and he says, you bring out your mind, hand it to me and I'll pacify it.
52:03 And it was in that moment after that ordeal that all of a sudden he attained.
52:08 It was in that moment where he was on his, at his wits end, he was on the ropes.
52:13 He was like struggling.
52:14 He was in deep pain and he's trying to find his mind and he realizes there isn't such a thing as a mind that he can go be like here, will you fix this?
52:23 And it was somewhere in there like, oh, there's nothing to fix that.
52:26 He that he finally achieved this sort of enlightened state.
52:29 But it was in the middle of the ordeal.
52:30 It wasn't like a concept that he learned.
52:33 So some people would say, well, Bodie Dar was a really harsh master.
52:36 I mean, he let some guy cut off his arm like that's stupid.
52:39 But then you could return and say, which is harsher.
52:42 Have the man lose a bit of an arm and attain enlightenment or have the men spend 20 years meditating to no effect?
52:50 Hm.
52:52 Yeah.
52:53 Yeah, I love that because it, it goes back to what we're you were saying earlier.
52:57 Like you, you, you can read all the books or be taught all the things.
53:00 But until you actually experience it, especially in your body, you're not going to really know that truth or that knowledge Right.
53:08 Yeah.
53:09 Yeah.
53:10 That's a great parable.
53:11 , wow, we are really close to time.
53:14 , there was one more thing I wanted to talk about and I feel like I could talk to you forever.
53:18 I'm loving this conversation.
53:20 , you know, one of the things that I know you teach is that,, you, you can train yourself to find happiness on autopilot.
53:31 So I know we only have a few minutes.
53:32 But how do you make it so that your brain just does all this kind of stuff on autopilot so that you, you don't succumb to stress and anxiety and depression and all of these things.
53:44 I think it's important with that question to go back to birth like the people that are struggling with stress and anxiety.
53:50 And I myself was one, my wife thought I was bipolar, you know, manically all in let's go, go go and then in a funk for months and a lot of struggles there.
54:00 But I wasn't born that way.
54:02 So even at an early age, kids are learning but nobody was born with the kind of panic and stress they have.
54:07 Now it it's a learned skill.
54:10 So the people that are like, but how do you get it to happen on autopilot?
54:13 I turn them around and I go look what you've already created on autopilot.
54:17 The fact that you're experiencing anxiety or depression or stress or addiction or trauma or ptsd or any of these other things is evidence that you already know how to get your body to do something on autopilot.
54:32 Just trained in the like on the mats of misery instead of in the dojo of delight.
54:36 So we gotta go to a different dojo.
54:38 OK?
54:39 We gotta go to a different space.
54:40 It's just training.
54:42 So it's what I would call instinct.
54:44 Your instinct is your body's first response.
54:48 It's the first responder, right to whatever is going on on the outside.
54:52 And so what I have people do is I put them in situations that mirror the ones that they're struggling with.
54:58 So I use martial arts a lot because most of what people struggle with has is in some way, shape or form related to conflict.
55:05 So I use what I learned from the Russians.
55:06 I use what I learned from all my years in Kung Fu.
55:08 I used and with a lot of goofball playing and roughhousing and will introduce them to something like let's say you have a lot of people like you're, there's like four people laying on top of you and you have to move.
55:20 People can start to feel claustrophobic or they start to feel like they can't move and they start to panic in that state in that space.
55:27 That's where we go.
55:28 Cool, breathe this way, relax this do that.
55:32 They're being given instructions on a different way to respond, but not when it's like pure accident out in the world.
55:39 It's like in a controlled environment.
55:41 And because they're being given instructions on a different way to respond, they're automatically having to pay attention differently.
55:47 Get out of their own head.
55:48 OK.
55:49 Breathe deeply.
55:49 OK.
55:49 Exhale here.
55:50 So when I'm working with like some of this tissue or deep tissue work or whether, whether I've got my fist on somebody's back or I'm using one of the sticks or something, then I'd be like, ok, relax the front of your hip.
56:01 So they're sitting there going, this hurts, this hurts and then they get this like, oh, relax the front of your left hip and they do that and then this muscle goes away and they're like, wait a second, what?
56:08 And then they start to see, wait, if I just wait, it, let's go on its own.
56:11 And then all of a sudden the pain goes away.
56:13 Now they're having all these other experiences of something that they thought was too much and because they thought it was too much, they're reacting in this defensive way.
56:22 And then all of a sudden they realize, oh, it's not too much.
56:24 I'm fine.
56:25 The reaction goes away and now your interesting to response to something is, oh, ok.
56:32 Yeah, that happened.
56:33 Instead of this is bad.
56:35 I need to have an emotional exper emotional reaction to it.
56:38 I think one of the best examples I first saw of this long before I started doing this with people was my philosophy professor in graduate school and we get in there, this is a class on metaphysics where people are arguing about whether or not you have free will.
56:52 You know, which is a, a heated topic.
56:54 You know, people saying no, no, you're, everything is determined.
56:57 You're not making choices.
56:58 Other people are like, no.
56:59 What are you talking about?
57:00 That's not intuitive.
57:01 And they would get in this heated debate.
57:03 And so she would lay out an argument and someone in the class would like, flip out and yell and she would turn around and go, oh, good.
57:11 Ok.
57:11 So you have a different thought on it.
57:12 Tell me about that.
57:14 Never defensive.
57:16 It was like a total embrace of whatever was there.
57:19 And I think that has stuck in my mind for years just to see somebody who, like I, before then I thought arguing was how you engaged with a dis with someone disagreeing with you.
57:30 And she was like, cool.
57:32 Yeah, let's look at that opinion.
57:33 Let's see how that goes and see if that resolves things better.
57:36 And I was like, wow, you can do that.
57:40 And it was just, I needed to have the experience, but it's just training.
57:43 So if you can be miserable on autopilot, you can be happy on autopilot.
57:47 And it's just, well, what do I entertain myself with on a daily basis?
57:51 That's training that new thing.
57:52 That's where breathing movement, posture, all these other things go on because when you're training, your body to hold itself in a really a place of ease.
58:00 Then the automatic reactions that come from ease happen a lot more quickly.
58:06 I love all that.
58:06 And it, you know, your teacher was, was teaching you through example, how to thoughtfully, thoughtfully respond to something rather than get triggered and emotionally react, which is, which is like such a huge lesson.
58:20 And then of course, like the final lesson is to just let things like go, right?
58:23 Let them roll off, not even have to respond.
58:26 But I think that is so genius how you bring people into this martial arts environment and recreate what's going on in the rest of the world because it as we get in our heads, I'm sure we create tension in our bodies, right?
58:40 But if we can bring it back to the breath and bring it back to like, oh just relax this one thing and then there's this like wave of release that happens, you know, we don't even have to get in our heads in the first place.
58:51 I think that that's super, super smart, such a beautiful idea, but it does what it does is it associates a wave of release with the thing that used to be a trigger.
58:59 And when your brain has that association, it's like, sure I welcome the trigger because last time it happened, I felt great and then it stops the reaction.
59:08 I love it.
59:08 And then that's you reprogramming your brain Yep.
59:12 And then I can see how that goes back to my question where like this happens on autopilot, right?
59:17 Because your body is like, oh, that felt good.
59:19 I want to do that again rather than getting triggered or getting in my head or going down the spiral of anxiety.
59:25 That doesn't feel that good.
59:27 Yeah.
59:28 It's more, yeah.
59:28 Think of it like a muscle memory for freedom.
59:31 I mean, you learn to tie your shoes, you learn to walk.
59:34 Nobody is like, you know, even if they trip after they've learned to walk, they don't sit there and be like, oh, I'll never walk again.
59:40 You know, they already know how and they just pay attention and, and freedom and happiness.
59:44 I tell people freedom is a skill, not a pill, you know, and once, once you've really internalized it, then it can happen on autopilot.
59:51 Awesome.
59:52 I've loved this conversation so much.
59:54 Thank you so much for coming on.
59:57 I, I feel like I could, I can't believe an hour went by.
1:00:00 I feel like I could talk to you forever.
1:00:01 Sorry, I kept you a few minutes late.
1:00:03 But if you want to tell people how they can get a hold of you where they can find you.
1:00:07 If they want to work with you, any offers you have where to find your book, all the things.
1:00:10 Yeah.
1:00:10 Yeah.
1:00:11 So the FreedomSpecialist.com is my website.
1:00:14 That's where you'll find links to everything.
1:00:15 So my book Built For Freedom.
1:00:17 This is Adventures through stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, pain, and our body's innate ability to leave them all behind.
1:00:24 That is the title that's available there, links to my podcast.
1:00:28 And then we have some online courses that teach people, take people through these little adventures on how to start to retrain their system.
1:00:33 And I run deep intensive five day long retreats where I'm, we're bypassing all the talking as much as we can.
1:00:40 And we're put, we're helping people go through these physiological experiences to help their bodies learn before the brain, right?
1:00:48 To have the body learn to respond differently to stress and pressure and challenge and all of these different things and then they come out of the other end, you know, just, you know, months and months of like on this high because they've cleaned out years and years and years of baggage that's been held in there and in that space now we get to help them start to recreate their habits and their patterns so that it becomes an automatic happiness.
1:01:11 Those retreats sound wonderful.
1:01:13 Where do you, where do you give them?
1:01:14 Where are you located?
1:01:15 We're in Utah.
1:01:16 So, you know, at the airport there, you know, we pick people up from the airport, we, we cover all the, the food and the housing and stuff.
1:01:23 So it's all just show up and we take care of you for five days and, and then we send you back.
1:01:29 Yeah, but they are, they're a beautiful experience.
1:01:31 We have men's retreats, one coming up at the end of January and then women's retreats, there's one at the end of February as well.
1:01:39 Amazing.
1:01:39 And all of those links will be in the show notes as well.
1:01:42 So if listeners didn't get a chance to write them down, as you were saying them, you can always come back and find them.
1:01:47 If this episode resonated with, resonated with you, please like share, subscribe, help spread the good words, send it to someone who could use it and I hope you all have a beautiful rest of your day.
1:01:58 I will see you on the next episode.
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