52. This is How you Heal Through Discomfort (Not More Protocols) with Jeff Krasno

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Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with Me, Wellness Advocate, and Holistic Nutritionist,
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Mona Sharma.
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Together we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices from imbalance to balance,
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guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights.
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I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine,
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and your kitchen is your greatest source of health care and prevention.
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After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety, and weight challenges, I discovered that just
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because your symptoms are common doesn't mean that they are normal.
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Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body, and
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soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest well-being.
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What happens when your protocols start to feel more like pressure than support?
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When all of the supplements, the fasting windows, the coal plunges, they start to disconnect
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you from your body instead of helping you come home into it.
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In today's episode, I sit down with my friend Jeff Krasno, founder of Commune and author
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of Good Stress, which I highly recommend reading, to explore how it can relate to stress
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in a completely different way.
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We talk about the impact of chronic stress on metabolism, mitochondria and mental health,
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and how simple daily practices like breath work, silence, and even discomfort can help
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you reclaim your vitality, your presence, and your resilience.
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If you've been feeling stuck in the loop of doing everything right and still not feeling
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your best, this episode gives you a new way to start to look at healing from both the
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scientific and deeply human perspective.
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Jeff Krasno is the co-founder and CEO of Commune, a wellness platform offering courses and
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content on personal and societal well-being.
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Jeff is also the author of Good Stress, the health benefits of doing hard things in which
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he shares protocols he used to reverse his diabetes and improve his health at the age of 50.
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Let's dive in.
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Jeff Krasno, welcome to Rooted and Wellness.
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This is long overdue.
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I wanted to connect with you for so long.
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I would say since COVID, I found myself going to your page for some solace in a world that
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seems so dogmatic or, you know, I really went quiet during COVID for fear of asking the
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wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, and everyone in their mother in the wellness industry,
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I also had a protocol at that time.
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I found myself going to your page because you've got this beautiful way of merging spirituality
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into science and also your personal beliefs, which ties in so beautifully into your book.
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I just got back from the ashram, I let it retreat at the ashram, and I was able to get
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four days in on the Caribbean Sea, and here I am sitting at the pool with a book called
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Strasil.
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You're reading this on vacation, but it was the most perfect book to read on vacation.
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So I'm so excited to have you to talk about this.
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So before we dive in, this podcast is all about ancient wisdom in our modern world and
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really how you can become more rooted in your health and in yourself, but also this
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inner wisdom that we all have to heal.
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So to start off, what are three practices that you have that help you feel more rooted
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in your health and happiness?
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Yeah, I'll go from the most anodine to the most wacky, how's that?
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So I have a morning breathwork practice that is, it helps me a get outside.
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So I always do it outside and it's, I guess you would call it a single pointedness of mind
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practice where I'll just get very quiet in my body and sort of observed the natural world
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around me and let thoughts emerge and feelings emerge and sensations emerge.
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And then just always witness them, not judgmentally, and come back to that single pointed
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focus of the breath.
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And you know, you can use other gimmicks, if you will, it does not have to be the breath
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although the breath is something that you generally always have until you don't have it.
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Then you have another problem.
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So you can use a mantra or a casino or a justine gaze point, I was coming back to a single
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point of focus and the real opportunity there is in the return because meditation, these
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practices now be confused with turning off the spirit of thoughts.
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They will arise, but the opportunity is in the return to that focus.
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And then that can really spill into the other parts of your life off the cushion, if you
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will.
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Okay.
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So then the other protocols I would say is I have a very, very dedicated, non-negotiable
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contrast bathing morning ritual, which is hot cold, hot cold, this is daily.
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This is yeah, this is without negotiation, which makes it difficult to travel about to
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go on quite a journey and part of the fun of logistics was figuring out where I could
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do this every day, but you know, I don't also want to be trapped by my own protocols.
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So anyhow, but what I'm home, it is certainly part of my routine.
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And often in the sauna, this will get to the more wackier bits is that TMI for your audience
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is that I'm not clothed, and I'm often doing air squats, naked, dripping sweat, reciting
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the mantra, which is a Nietzsche-Ren Buddhist mantra, naam yohorangakyo, you might be
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familiar with it.
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So you can imagine me naked squatting in the sauna, sweating, naam yohorangakyo, naam
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yohorangakyo, naam yohorangakyo, and it's actually not a joke.
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And but you really eventually begin to actually embody the vibration of it and the world
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ceases to be symbolic and just becomes the thing.
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I knew I would be pleasantly surprised asking you.
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I asked this question one, obviously that's the first, you're the first person to give
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that answer.
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But we talk about wellness with such rigidity and we think that we need to follow these
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insane protocols, which might be good for one person, but not the other.
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And it's to showcase like the wisdom that you found with your body and the things that
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make you feel good.
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And I want to hover on that aspect of coming back, you know, with mantra, without judgment,
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right?
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So when you're catching your mind shift, I think a lot of people will quit their morning
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wellness protocol or mindfulness protocol because of the judgment that comes with it.
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It's too hard.
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Can't come back to it.
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I'm not good at meditation or I'm not good at breathwork when it's like the gap in that
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non-judgment that we take out into the world.
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So thank you for sharing that.
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So on the flip side, you and I both work with a lot of people who have practices that
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cause them to be uprooted and a lot of these protocols, especially living in L.A. might
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feel like it's something that's really, you know, part of a checklist to make them feel
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good every day, but it's actually uprooting them, maybe causing more stress, worry or anxiety.
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So I'm always fascinated by people like you who, like me, have had this healing journey.
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Do you notice when you get uprooted or do you slowly drift to the point where you feel
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and balance is again, that dry you back?
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What are the things that cause you to feel uprooted?
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Hmm.
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What's interesting?
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Yeah.
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It's interesting to conflate the uprootedness with one's over dedication to protocol.
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For example, I mean, there's this notion of orthorexia, right?
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Yeah.
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I don't like anything that has the prefix ortho.
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Exactly.
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You know, ortho-orthodox fundamentalism or orthorexia.
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But you know, there's this over-consumption with our dietary choices or our protocols such
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that we become kind of neurotic or fundamentalist about it and can exist without them or that
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we don't have the resilience to operate in the world just kind of here and now.
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So I mean, I think that many of us would be so fortunate to have that problem, I suppose.
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But for me, you know, it's been funny going out and talking about this book because it's
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not something that I've typically done.
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And I have a lot of anxiety around public speaking and opening my mouth to say words.
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Shocking.
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Yeah.
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People are often surprised by it because I tend not to be awful at it.
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So I've had to really gird myself, sturdy myself in many ways to go out and be the reluctant
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public face of my company or the book or whatever.
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And that process of learning to trust myself has been a real journey, like a very recent
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journey because it can throw me off the horse.
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You know, I will, on many occasions, show up for things like this, you know, like this
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conversation and feel as if my pants are too tight and by that, I mean, by that, I mean,
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the only time you actually really feel your pants is when they're too tight and by the
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same token, the same, the only time you actually really feel yourself is when you are too tight.
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And we know that kind of as the sympathetic nervous system or some degree of amygdala
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hijack where your respiratory heart rates are to increase and you're just tight in your
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muscles and you become a little bit more self obsessed and distrustful of the world around
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your aperture of attention becomes very narrow.
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That is kind of, that was a very apt description of me in these situations.
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And I've had to become comfortable in that discomfort, but that's a part of good stress
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I suppose.
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Yeah, I love that you share that because I would say that that is my most recent area
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of growth.
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Also when I launched this podcast, I would have to literally look in the mirror and say
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you're not going to die.
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Yeah.
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That's not the day.
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Right.
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And how much of that I'm curious with you two now knowing about your story from childhood
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is this behavioral conditioning, right?
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Because we were never taught that it was okay to be free or maybe we had the people in
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our environment and you're going to share about your story where we and I became such an
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introvert to the point where one of the most common pieces of feedback that I get from
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people is my calming soothing energy and my voice.
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Yeah.
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That was my trauma response.
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I had to go inward and be quiet and be calming because there's so much chaos around
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me.
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So I love you share that because I think a lot of people think when we get to a position
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especially with the caliber businesses that you've grown that this is effortless, easy
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work for you to do, but the message behind what you're sharing and to be able to overcome
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that in order to do so is something that I think a lot of listeners can take away with
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as inspiration.
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So that really leads into the concept of stress.
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When you ask how somebody is today stressed, right?
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We've normalized living with these levels of stress and to the point that it's making
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use of a weight of connection anymore.
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I don't know how you are because all I know is that you're stressed and oh, maybe we
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don't want to talk about that, right?
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But through the reading of your book, it's not about eliminating stress anymore.
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I think that's kind of a concept that we're trying to chase that isn't realistic.
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And when we look at ancient wisdom, it's not something that's practiced or preached
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either.
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Going through the stress in order to kind of awaken new levels of living life to its
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fullest.
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So let's talk a little bit more about your personal story and your journey into wellness
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because like the concept of wealth and illness is something that I know everyone's bringing
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out because it's so accurate, it does feel that way, right?
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And with your lovely wife who I adore so much, you would think that somebody with your
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background, you had so much access to wealth and information, but can you take us back
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to how this all started?
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Yeah, sure.
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Well, as you mentioned, my better three-quartered styler, and it is sort of birthday today,
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so I'd be remiss not to point that out.
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You know, she's, I'm really just been kind of the torchbearer for her mostly.
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I mean, she's the one that's sort of introduced me to this whole world of wellness and healing
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sort of incongruously tied to 9-11.
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So I was from a refugee of the music industry at that juncture in 2001.
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I was operating a fledging record label and management company down in Lower Manhattan.
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And then that tragedy occurred.
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And we were in that tiny little perimeter around what became ground zero, cordoned off for
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a number of months.
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And you know, living in Lower Manhattan, or just in Manhattan in general at that time
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was quite amazing moment because there was a tremendous amount of collective grief, but
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that collective grief, not unlike what we just experienced here in Los Angeles in the
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wake of the fires, elicited really people's better angels and magnificence, but also compelled
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people to do some madcap crazy things.
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And one of those people was Skylar, my wife.
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So she opened a yoga studio at ground zero, literally out of the ashes in the floor above
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my office.
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And yeah, for that extended period of time, I got to watch these the dragled griefs,
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in beleaguered yogis, you know, traips up these cock-eyed stairs into this really funky,
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funky studio.
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I mean, this was prior to the advent of, you know, an equinox on every corner, some, you
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know, Tony corp power here and there.
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You know, this was a one-room studio, the radiator and the corner whistled incessantly.
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The bathroom was actually in the studio.
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And it was like the width of a bread box, basically.
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So you'd have to go to the bathroom while everyone was practicing.
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But it had a lot of soul.
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It was called Kula, which is, is transliterated as intentional community.
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And this is where I first experienced, I guess, maybe witnessed from a front row seat,
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the power of somatic and spiritual practice in combination with community to heal.
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And you know, I would watch these sweaty, open-hearted yogis, you know, file out of that
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little room and collapse on this little stained futon in the vestibule outside and just share
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with each other and piece together their lives again.
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And that really bent the arc of my, both my personal professional life.
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It really led me to found Wanderlust, which became a very large series of yoga and wellness
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events around the world.
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But kind of along the course of doing that over a decade of wonderful and treacherous experiences,
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you know, I got quite ill.
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And you know, I was the product of kind of just modernities circumstances.
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I was on a plane, 150, 200 days a year, you know, I was committing carbicide, sometimes
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I call it.
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I was living kind of coffee to wine o'clock, constantly negatively, chronically stressed,
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you know, with incoming from every angle.
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And that was really where I would say, have my forays into health and wellness, took
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you turn into wealth and illness because there I was kind of in the wellness industry.
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With all of these anodine symptoms that we've normalized, but they're really absolutely
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abnormal, you know, chronic fatigue, inability to concentrate, insomnia of kind of dad bod,
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man boobs, little weird protuberances growing in my armpits like weird shit.
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And then I got my diabetes diagnosis and I had to wake up.
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I was shocked to read about your late night benches and drive-throughs, being surrounded
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by so many.
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And you know, I think that there's a common thread that I hope no one has to experience,
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but you know, nothing matters when you don't have your health.
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And you know, the fact that you've now lived through 9-11 and growing from those ashes
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literally, now these LA fires and growing from this on top of your own healing journey,
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it's really upsetting that it takes these big circumstances for us to just like, oh, pull
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back a little bit instead of drowning in our day-to-day and how hard that we think wellness
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is when everything that you have talked about today and so often that we do on this podcast,
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the greatest takeaways from wellness happen to be free, the stillness in the mornings,
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be finding our breath, the finding of sangha in community, right?
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And I love just that the resonance of you ultimately like building this ashram, you
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had a wife that was doing it herself and then now you're building it into your own life.
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And I think there's so much beauty in that.
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It's curious something that you say there is that why we have to reach this crisis point,
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this rock bottom in order to wake up.
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And when the nature of these diseases that we're dealing with at an epidemic level are so
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progressive and insidious, they're not just like a fall off the precipice, it's like,
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I think there's a Hemingway quote about going bankrupt, it happens very, very slowly
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and then suddenly.
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And then suddenly?
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Yeah.
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And that's the same deal with our disease, chronic disease of all sorts, diabetes, stroke,
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all timers, etc.
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So for me, it was hard for me to grok that I was part of this bigger nightmare, given
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all the arrows in my quiver, but there I was, you know, 50 years old with a total hip
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replacement with 210 pounds, diabetes, which essentially just makes me average.
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It's just the sad component essentially what makes you average in today's world.
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That's exactly it.
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So let's talk about that then, this chronic imbalance, chronic disease that leads to disease
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today.
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And a lot of the symptoms that you've mentioned, again, it's something else that we've normalized,
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right?
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Whether it's the stress, the overworking, the gaining of weight, the brain fog, I call it
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the carbiterian, also carbiterian diets for, you know, these symptoms that we're experiencing,
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but we're not attributing them to the suffering of our body, right?
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So you talk about this in your book.
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Yeah, I mean, I think we're living at this strange moment where we've engineered our
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life for convenience and comfort at every turn.
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So that has created a situation where we have kind of endless availability to this self-stable
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nutrient-deficient calories, right?
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Just kind of in the palm of our hand, that door dash, just like our bees, Chick-fil-A,
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whatever, Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, whatever.
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Sometimes I was wondering how's driving over here.
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There's so many of these places.
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Every corner.
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Like how do they get wound up?
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Like Bob, I've got a line on chickens.
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Okay.
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That's for all of them.
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Okay.
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Chick-fil-A.
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I mean, I didn't know all these things get wound up.
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Anyways, I don't really know.
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This elixir, this combination between always available cheap calories and emotional dysregulation
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is so caustic.
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So we live within this attention economy, let's say, where everyone and everything is
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vying for our conscious attention, moment to moment, and they're essentially leveraging
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our own human negativity bias to capture that attention, commodify our own focus to
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sell it.
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And the product of that is feeling a sense of not enoughness, of deficiency, of living
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within comparison all the time.
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And so, and then just over there in the pantry, there are engineered foods to hit your
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bliss point, that magical combination of fat and salt and sweet, to give you that spritz
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of ephemeral dopamine to satisfy those feelings of perceived efficiencies and discontents.
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And they're so easy.
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And oh, boy, you just grab for those chips and you grab for those cookies because they're
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right there and they're just are going to make you feel better, but only for a very,
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very short period of time.
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And then, of course, the long-term impacts of that are so maladaptive.
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So we live in this moment where, you know, for we've created a surfeit of calories and
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then we've created a lot of emotional dysregulation and those things together really create an expected
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and normal result, which is a 44% obesity, right?
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Right.
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We create perspective too, right, because now more than ever before in history, we have access
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to so much discomfort in the world, whether it's through media, news, politics, our environment,
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look at the mental health crisis that's happening here in Los Angeles, right?
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Like, is that every layer and we're experiencing it firsthand and it's kind of like oscillating
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between the scarcity and the fear to the dopamine and the hate of something that mixes good
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on the next slide over in the next swipe.
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So despite people's best efforts and the knowing of the rise of disease and the constant drug
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commercials and commercials for prescription drugs, you're feeling down on yourself, you're
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driving by and let's call it Chick-fil-A or wherever you hear that, or smell that wafting
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God knows what's in the oil that they fry everything in.
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Right.
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It puts you under a spell and you just drift in.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, and you have to have it all and it gives you bliss just for a moment only to
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have fueled inflammation within your body.
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Yeah.
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Well, that's sort of the metaphor that you could pull on, which is that, you know, that
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short-term comfort leads to long-term discomfort, but the other way around is true too.
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That short-term discomfort can actually lead to the long-term real ease that we're looking
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for.
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Yeah, good point.
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In your book, you share also about, like, you didn't just arrive at 50 becoming pre-diabetic,
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right?
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It was the combination or, you know, in our, our vetic terms, we call it accumulation.
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Right.
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We call it accumulation of all these things.
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So if you're trying to pinpoint and tour this hardcore mentality, well, I'm just going
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to cut this out.
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I'm going to do this hardcore in order to heal again.
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It's not even about that.
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Like, we've got to go back all the way to childhood to kind of clean up the pipes of what's
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been going on.
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Yeah.
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I think this is really the great lesson that I wish to communicate to most people because
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there's plenty of tactics out there.
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There's plenty of tactics in my book.
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I mean, intermittent fasting and deliberate cult therapy and deliberate heat therapy and
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light therapy, resistance training and stressed plants and all these things that I talk about
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in the book are tactics and tactics are very important because people do want to know
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what to do.
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But behind that or before that, there is a deeper, more profound biopsychosocial intake
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form that one must conduct on oneself.
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And I think for so many of us, we become the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves
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and I'll raise my hand guilty as charged.
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So I grew up, you know, a chubby kid moving around from country to country, always trying
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to fit in essentially willing to sacrifice every and any authentic aspect of myself for
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a sense of belonging.
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And that was a rucksack that I pulled into adulthood.
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Just feeling that I would always people please, I was just a consummate pleaser, perpetual
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pleaser, but at the same time, I'd never be quite good enough.
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And I'd always be that chubby kid whose fate was written in his genetic stars and that
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change was simply not possible for me.
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And I believe that that is resonant for a lot of people that you become that story.
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As I began to delve into Eastern mysticism and into human physiology, I learned a great
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lesson.
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And this is a lesson, of course, that, you know, the Buddha had under the Bodhi tree
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2,500 years ago without the luxury of an electron microscope or knowing what germ theory
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was or anything like that.
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This notion that we are impermanent, that the universe is impermanent subject to construction
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and deconstruction at all times, so clinging to anything or craving anything is totally
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futile because all we are is transient, we're constantly in flux.
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Now this is a great spiritual lesson that was echoed in other traditions as well.
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But when you open the hood on the human organism, what you learn is something quite similar,
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is that the physical actually patterns the metaphysical, that we are these seven octillion
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atoms, 70 trillion cells, experiencing 37 billion billion chemical reactions per second.
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In the last minute, I've lost 40,000 skin cells.
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We have 39 trillion prokaryotes in our guts on our skin and our various organs, these
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single cell bacteria that are turning over every four minutes to 24 hours, literally
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Mona and Jeff are not the same people that started this podcast.
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And there is a great lesson in that that change is not only possible, it's all that's
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on offer for people.
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And to really truly embrace that possibility of change, that is probably the deepest work
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that you can do to retell that story about yourself and know that yes, change is not
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only available, that's all there is.
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And so moment to moment, I can make decisions about protocols that I'm going to adopt, tactics,
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the environment that I want to shape to essentially make sure that that change is operating on
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a trajectory, on the spectrum towards healing, towards wholeness and away from disconnection
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and disease.
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And if there's any message that I want to impart, it's that, it's that change is there
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waiting for you.
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Oh God, I love this so much.
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I can feel my heart beating faster because you're talking my language.
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And you know, the frustrating thing about this is when we talk about this wisdom, like
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this insane intelligence of the body, you know, there's a lot of people in our world who
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say, well, there's no clickbait to them, right?
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It's ancient wisdom.
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There's no clickbait, but it's this fundamental understanding of if you want to drive
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change, getting to know how you want to feel again, because as you said, and thank you
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for sharing your story, even when I do my initial calls with new clients, you know, the
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first thing, Mona, just tell me how to eat.
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What's the supplement protocol?
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How am I working out?
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All right.
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Let's do this, right?
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And nine times out of 10, we are talking about their childhood.
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And I'm often met by tears and for people who are still in the belief system of the version
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of themselves, making the choices on their fears as a child, how on earth would you make
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different choices today?
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It's always going to feel hard.
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And unless you choose, you're actively deciding that there's a new way of being, right?
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And I think that that story in your story also is just so powerful in understanding that.
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So thank you for sharing the picture of change.
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Well, yeah.
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I mean, I think this is where mysticism and medicine share a bridge, you know, and it
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really violates our sense of self identity because we feel day to day that there is a stable
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reliable Mona or a stable, reliable Jeff.
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This is often underwritten by kind of a sense of physical continuity or even psychological
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continuity.
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I wake up in the morning.
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I take off my shirt.
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I go in front of the mirror.
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I look, oh, there's Jeff.
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He's essentially appears more or less as he did yesterday and the day before.
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And he has more or less the same beliefs that he did yesterday and the day before.
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So we're essentially fooled into this illusion of self, often also underwritten by that
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tightness that we were talking about earlier that I'm here, I'm separate.
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And but of course, you know, all you need to do is pick up a family photo album and open
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the pages and there's Mona as like this angelic, true, big little baby.
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And then that's just like hot teenager or whatever and this distinguished woman and she
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is now and to know that, of course, impermanence is all there is.
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Absolutely.
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And then the other the other piece of that equation is that if we are impermanent and
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changing all the time, what is the mitigator of that change?
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Well, we're always changing in relationship to our environment.
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And this was, of course, the other great central tenant of Buddhism, this notion of interdependence
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that, of course, the Buddha had a wonderful image of Indra's net, right?
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That the entire universe exists at a massive cobweb and at every juncture of that cobweb
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is a crystalline diamond reflecting every other juncture.
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I mean, it's just a absolutely sublime image, but that gave birth to this notion of, I
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think it's a pretentious solid part of, but it's like dependent origination that everything
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is dependent upon everything else.
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And if you bring that back to the human body, that what you learn quite quickly is that
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you cannot separate the function and behavior of your organism from the function and behavior
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of its environment.
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They are actually one thing.
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They are an environmental organism or an organism or something like the other that you
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can't pull them apart.
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And again, that does also violate our sense of self because we often associate ourselves
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with a locus of consciousness, kind of crouching behind the eyes somewhere in this ever sagging
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bag of skin that we sort of have that breaks down from time to time and we'll take it
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in to get fixed like the car, but that this locus of consciousness is separate from everything
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else in the foreground and background of our attention.
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And but of course, any even remotely rigorous study of ecology, I mean, we don't make
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our own oxygen.
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Right?
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So we're not autotross or heterotross.
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We're reliant always on the world around us, but even in our relationships, it seems
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to impact how our genes express and our food that expresses, that changes the expression
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of our genes.
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So it's this interdependent net is everywhere.
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I love that.
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I'm so turned on by this concept of quantum healing.
453
00:32:11.080 --> 00:32:15.240
I'm studying it right now and even you and I right now, you know, I cannot wait for
454
00:32:15.240 --> 00:32:20.160
the day until we can actively see kind of our shared energy and biome that were created
455
00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:22.200
on our own, but outside in the world.
456
00:32:22.200 --> 00:32:26.840
And I know probably like most of the people listening, you've had a moment in your life
457
00:32:26.840 --> 00:32:30.720
where you're in a different environment or the stage is set.
458
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:34.600
And when the stage is set, read a feel your best, maybe to relax a little bit more, maybe
459
00:32:34.600 --> 00:32:38.560
the foods a little healthier, you're practicing your yoga, all of a sudden your physiology
460
00:32:38.560 --> 00:32:41.840
changes despite the rigidity behind it.
461
00:32:41.840 --> 00:32:45.440
So I think it's so important to try it to kind of own in on the choices behind that.
462
00:32:50.160 --> 00:32:59.320
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463
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466
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469
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470
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473
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474
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475
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477
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478
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479
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480
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489
00:34:51.960 --> 00:34:56.320
So I want to go back, you know, when we talked about chronic imbalances, you mentioned so
490
00:34:56.320 --> 00:34:59.280
many in your book, so many that you were experiencing.
491
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:02.800
What are some things that listeners should really kind of like, okay, we've talked about
492
00:35:02.800 --> 00:35:06.280
this one vessel that we've got and it sends me signals all the time.
493
00:35:06.320 --> 00:35:09.080
I've never really been taught how to listen to it.
494
00:35:09.080 --> 00:35:13.040
What do they need to be looking out for in order to not go down the same path as you?
495
00:35:13.040 --> 00:35:19.000
Yeah, well, I think you point to this notion of imbalance wisely.
496
00:35:19.000 --> 00:35:25.520
Because really, imbalance is the signature of disease, if you will.
497
00:35:25.520 --> 00:35:30.440
And to the degree that we can refine that sort of interception to recognize it, to see
498
00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:33.280
and hear the signals of it.
499
00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:35.920
So it appears in a whole variety of different ways.
500
00:35:35.920 --> 00:35:38.920
So you could have blood sugar imbalances, right?
501
00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:44.640
So you have a blood sugar imbalance that will likely lead eventually to insulin resistance.
502
00:35:44.640 --> 00:35:51.040
Your cells will stop making energy as efficiently as they'll instead store glucose and other
503
00:35:51.040 --> 00:35:54.240
subs 12 fat as fat.
504
00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:59.000
So then you will experience degrees of brain fog and lack of energy.
505
00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:02.320
And those are very, very common, common symptoms.
506
00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:07.880
And of course, I think there's some outrageous number like 93% of Americans are metabolically
507
00:36:07.880 --> 00:36:10.120
dysfunctional, right?
508
00:36:10.120 --> 00:36:12.160
So there's blood sugar imbalances.
509
00:36:12.160 --> 00:36:15.200
There's neurotransmitter imbalances, for example.
510
00:36:15.200 --> 00:36:20.320
So we have excitatory neurotransmitters and inhibitory neurotransmitters like glutamate
511
00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:23.560
on one side and GABA on the other side.
512
00:36:23.560 --> 00:36:28.480
Too much GABA, you're going to start to feel like maybe numb and disassociative.
513
00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:31.040
Too much glutamate, too much excitatory activity.
514
00:36:31.040 --> 00:36:34.440
You're going to start to feel what is known as ADHD or something.
515
00:36:34.440 --> 00:36:36.200
So overactive.
516
00:36:36.200 --> 00:36:46.360
So this is again a place where health is really about the body's ability to foster dynamic
517
00:36:46.360 --> 00:36:47.360
homeostasis.
518
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:52.760
Really, I call it the place on the teeter totter where no one's feet is touching the ground,
519
00:36:52.760 --> 00:36:53.760
right?
520
00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:58.000
And because it's not a stable place, we're never perfectly imbalanced.
521
00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:02.120
We kind of find it and flirt with it and glimpse it.
522
00:37:02.120 --> 00:37:09.880
But the amazing thing is like the body is very engineered for homeostasis.
523
00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:15.960
This is why we shiver or sweat when we get very cold or very hot.
524
00:37:15.960 --> 00:37:21.200
The body is remarkable at maintaining a pH balance, right?
525
00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:27.280
You really, really have to knock your body off its course to become too alkaline or too
526
00:37:27.280 --> 00:37:28.280
acidic.
527
00:37:28.280 --> 00:37:30.200
You can actually hold your breath.
528
00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:32.800
We won't do that right at this moment.
529
00:37:32.800 --> 00:37:37.800
But that hypercalf, you know, that concentration of carbon dioxide will make you slightly more
530
00:37:37.800 --> 00:37:39.120
alkaline.
531
00:37:39.120 --> 00:37:43.600
But that's actually adaptive because when you have a little bit more alkalinity in your
532
00:37:43.600 --> 00:37:47.440
body, there is less affinity between oxygen and hemoglobin.
533
00:37:47.440 --> 00:37:49.480
So, I mean, this is the amazing thing.
534
00:37:49.480 --> 00:37:53.640
So, I know I'm taking a little bit off course here, but things like holding your breath,
535
00:37:53.640 --> 00:38:03.400
for example, inducing a mild state of hypoxia, like stress in the right dose is so adaptive
536
00:38:03.400 --> 00:38:07.600
because what I just described, so let's say you hold your breath for a little while,
537
00:38:07.600 --> 00:38:11.920
your oxygen concentration goes down a tiny bit, your carbon dioxide concentration goes
538
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:12.920
up a little bit.
539
00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:18.240
So, mild hypoxia, mild hypercapnia kind of have these chemoreceptors around here in your
540
00:38:18.240 --> 00:38:22.200
carotidide race, they're going to sense that phenomenon and they're going to springboard
541
00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:28.840
your body into this production of additional red blood cells because the red blood cells
542
00:38:28.840 --> 00:38:35.320
are the couriers for oxygen, the hemoglobin in them, the couriers to your cells and your
543
00:38:35.320 --> 00:38:37.040
mitochondria for energy production.
544
00:38:37.040 --> 00:38:42.920
So, your body knows when it has a little bit of stress and it immediately adapts and
545
00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:47.880
this is why, of course, Olympian athletes often train at high altitudes because the
546
00:38:47.880 --> 00:38:52.120
air is less dense and the partial pressure of oxygen is lower, so the oxygen diffusion
547
00:38:52.120 --> 00:38:57.080
is lower, so they're going to create more red blood cells, they're going to also just
548
00:38:57.080 --> 00:39:01.640
create greater efficiency at the micro, at the mitochondrial level, so that is a great
549
00:39:01.640 --> 00:39:08.760
example of the body's adaptive response to stress and when you start to actually unpack
550
00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:15.320
the body, it is riddled with these adaptive mechanisms, just everywhere to be found.
551
00:39:16.200 --> 00:39:21.560
Yeah, so when people are ignoring this kind of chronic stress every day, long-term then,
552
00:39:21.560 --> 00:39:26.680
you know, leading to disease, would you say that stresses the instigator of all disease?
553
00:39:26.680 --> 00:39:29.720
I think it's stressing the wrong doses for sure.
554
00:39:29.720 --> 00:39:36.200
I mean, stress the way we consume it now in a modern context when it's chronic and in the wrong
555
00:39:36.200 --> 00:39:40.200
dosage can lead to a panoplay of disease.
556
00:39:40.200 --> 00:39:44.520
I mean, certainly there's the most obvious ones associated with kind of hormone
557
00:39:44.520 --> 00:39:50.120
dysregulation or hormone imbalance, so you start to have too many stress hormones and not
558
00:39:50.120 --> 00:39:55.080
enough like melatonin, for example. So what's going to happen in that particular case when you're
559
00:39:55.080 --> 00:40:00.920
constantly have this sort of IV drip of cortisol, you're going to undermine immune function,
560
00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:06.040
you're going to stop producing monocytes and neutrophils and cells associated with the innate
561
00:40:06.120 --> 00:40:13.080
immune system. It's going to begin to erode the balance of bacteria in your gut,
562
00:40:13.080 --> 00:40:19.320
going to lead to this condition of dysbiosis or potentially leaky gut intestinal permeability.
563
00:40:19.320 --> 00:40:26.920
It's going to disregulate blood sugar. And again, that is a really great example of the body is
564
00:40:26.920 --> 00:40:31.960
actually programming. It's actually just doing what it's programmed to do.
565
00:40:32.120 --> 00:40:36.680
Absolutely. So you have a stress, you have a stressful incident or some sort of
566
00:40:37.640 --> 00:40:44.360
some sort of perceived threat. Your body then reacts to produce cortisol. Cortisol is going to
567
00:40:44.360 --> 00:40:49.960
then signal the liver to actually release additional glucose because you want that glucose
568
00:40:49.960 --> 00:40:56.040
to go to your extremities so you can fight or fly. You want that in short little bursts,
569
00:40:56.120 --> 00:41:02.360
but when it never ever goes away, then you've got a problem. But you have to remember that the
570
00:41:02.360 --> 00:41:08.920
body is just doing what it's supposed to do. And in this way, chronic diseases are in many ways
571
00:41:08.920 --> 00:41:17.400
could be considered the normal expected byproducts of the body just doing what it is programmed to do.
572
00:41:17.400 --> 00:41:22.440
Exactly. And digestive symptoms are no different. You don't just wake up with leaky gut one day,
573
00:41:22.840 --> 00:41:27.800
see accumulation of stressors over time. And it's the same with autoimmune, it's the same with
574
00:41:27.800 --> 00:41:33.320
cancer. The body's functioning at its best to heal in those moments due to the stressor. It's
575
00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:37.640
doing its job, but it's almost like a retraining that needs to happen in order for your body to come
576
00:41:37.640 --> 00:41:47.000
back on track to heal. But then again, when you begin to untangle the origins of the stress
577
00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:53.480
response in the body, you actually find that it's generally very adaptive. So calorie
578
00:41:53.480 --> 00:42:02.920
paucity, for example, we evolved to have some scarcity. And it would be totally normal and
579
00:42:02.920 --> 00:42:09.800
adaptive for Mona's loincloths to get a little tight in the late summer, early fall, because
580
00:42:09.800 --> 00:42:15.720
that fat accumulation was really just warehouse energy for a winter that was around the corner.
581
00:42:16.200 --> 00:42:21.640
Right? And then during that winter, there would be more of a positive of calories and that would
582
00:42:21.640 --> 00:42:27.160
keep you lean. But now we're learning that it does a bunch of other things too. You know,
583
00:42:27.160 --> 00:42:32.680
it stimulates this process of autophagy and ketosis and metabolic flexibility and stimulates
584
00:42:33.640 --> 00:42:39.640
the serotonin pathways and all that kind of stuff. But now we essentially live from a calorie
585
00:42:39.640 --> 00:42:45.560
perspective in a world where winter never comes. Exactly. So the body, again, is just doing what it
586
00:42:45.560 --> 00:42:52.200
is supposed to do, store fat for a rainy day, but then it never rains. It never rains.
587
00:42:52.200 --> 00:42:57.560
Absolutely. In your book, you also talk about invisible stressors. You know, I would say
588
00:42:57.560 --> 00:43:02.680
mind set probably ties into that, but some stressors are so normalized today that we don't even
589
00:43:02.680 --> 00:43:07.720
recognize them as being harmful. So what are some of the hidden stressors that you address?
590
00:43:08.120 --> 00:43:18.200
Hmm. I can't remember. No, I think that the stress that we actually don't, we can't put our
591
00:43:18.200 --> 00:43:27.080
thumb on is the day in and day out stress. I mean, for me, I often associate this kind of stress
592
00:43:27.720 --> 00:43:37.080
with being a product of what one might call the persuasion economy, you know, where our focus
593
00:43:37.080 --> 00:43:44.120
and attention is being so wide for that we actually don't we're not even totally aware of how
594
00:43:44.120 --> 00:43:51.640
it is being leveraged. And most of the time, you know, the the incentives on social media, for
595
00:43:51.640 --> 00:43:59.800
example, are so perverse that it's the loudest, most salacious, most hyperbalistic voices that
596
00:44:00.520 --> 00:44:08.840
get, you know, the most airtime. And it's those voices that keep us in a constant state of fear and
597
00:44:08.840 --> 00:44:15.640
outrage. Yeah. And oftentimes we don't even know it. And so, you know, we end up just kind of
598
00:44:15.640 --> 00:44:22.040
doom scrolling our way into a very, into sort of a negativity mindset. Yeah. I'm really wanting
599
00:44:22.040 --> 00:44:28.040
to spend time here because I'm convinced that people are living with such degrees of stress that
600
00:44:28.040 --> 00:44:32.680
if I were to step into the body, a lot of men, especially that I work with, they might say that
601
00:44:32.680 --> 00:44:37.160
their stress is a four or five out of 10. But if I were to step into their body, it would probably
602
00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:42.040
feel like an eight or nine because of this adaptability. So recognizing the differences between
603
00:44:42.040 --> 00:44:48.520
the good stressors and the bad stressors, which from our conversation, it's this consistent daily
604
00:44:48.520 --> 00:44:58.200
persistent stress. Yeah. I mean, financial hardship overwork neglect abuse racism. I also just
605
00:44:58.200 --> 00:45:06.760
think in this moment of political vitriol, whether you agree or disagree with any political
606
00:45:06.760 --> 00:45:16.120
platform is not the point. It's actually that it is designed for maximum stress. And, you know,
607
00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:23.400
flooding the zone or whatever, which is the going line here from this particular administration.
608
00:45:23.400 --> 00:45:28.280
You know, whatever I get it as a political strategy. But where I'm coming from, I'm thinking
609
00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:34.520
a bit more as like, what is this non-consensual psychological experiment on our citizenry?
610
00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:40.680
What are the impacts there? I think we're all in a state, not all, but many of us are in a state of,
611
00:45:40.680 --> 00:45:45.640
you know, constant amygdala hijacked. Absolutely. And we just don't operate well in that state.
612
00:45:45.640 --> 00:45:50.600
I mean, we talked about some of the physical downstream impacts. But psychologically,
613
00:45:50.600 --> 00:45:57.640
that state basically bypasses our prefrontal Neoma-Malian cortex. We're always stopping
614
00:45:57.640 --> 00:46:04.360
being able to make, you know, rational, reasoned, compassionate decisions. And we become, you know,
615
00:46:04.360 --> 00:46:10.280
a society of need-jerk reactions. That compassion is lost. And it's funny. We both talked about
616
00:46:10.280 --> 00:46:16.200
the sense of community for healing and connection to other people. But we've gotten to a point where
617
00:46:16.200 --> 00:46:21.000
you can't even ask questions anymore, right? We can't share personal concerns just for the sake
618
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:25.480
of conversation anymore. I have a hard time with it. You're certainly doing much better at it.
619
00:46:25.800 --> 00:46:31.880
Because you lead with compassion. That's the biggest difference. And we've lost that. And I think
620
00:46:31.880 --> 00:46:37.880
that people now, like the fear of the anger, the outrage, the upset feels really good because it's
621
00:46:37.880 --> 00:46:47.640
this perceived notion of action when there is inaction. Yeah. This was something that I was trying
622
00:46:47.640 --> 00:46:53.400
to untangle a little bit because, you know, people often, you know, there's a famous Martin Luther King
623
00:46:53.400 --> 00:46:59.160
quote that silences complicity, right? And that gets levy to people quite a bit. So you're not
624
00:46:59.160 --> 00:47:05.720
speaking out on the Ukraine or on Palestine or on, you know, immigration or what, you know,
625
00:47:07.160 --> 00:47:11.880
and so you're vilified for not speaking out. Exactly. But then at the same time, then when you do
626
00:47:11.880 --> 00:47:18.200
speak out, right, there's just as much invective there where, you know, if people are part of your
627
00:47:18.200 --> 00:47:23.000
tribe, well, they're, you know, heart, heart, heart, watermelon, whatever it is. And if you're not
628
00:47:23.000 --> 00:47:29.640
on your tribe, then it's, you know, vitriolic barbs and ad hominem coming your way. And, you know,
629
00:47:29.640 --> 00:47:37.160
one of my points, I think I made it at some juncture along the path was that silence is actually
630
00:47:37.160 --> 00:47:46.200
the place in which we contemplate matters. We actually study them and learn. It's also where we
631
00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:55.720
tend to find compassion and beneficence and not everybody is an expert in every single topic
632
00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:02.120
under the sun. So not having an opinion on social media, you know, it does not mean that you're
633
00:48:02.120 --> 00:48:09.640
some sheep or that, you know, you're some shell for pharma or whatever it happens to be. It's like
634
00:48:09.640 --> 00:48:15.800
perhaps you're just actually taking a moment in silence for some degree of psychological self
635
00:48:15.800 --> 00:48:22.360
preservation, but also you might be actually learning or studying or contemplating or doing
636
00:48:22.360 --> 00:48:29.560
something that's not in the public spotlight that is helping bend the arc of the world. Maybe you're
637
00:48:29.560 --> 00:48:36.520
actually, you know, maybe you're volunteering at your local soup kitchen, you know, the amount of
638
00:48:36.520 --> 00:48:43.480
judgment that is levied as every single person seems to be a part of the public square now is
639
00:48:43.480 --> 00:48:48.520
is tricky. Oh, yeah, yeah. And even with the maha movement, I've been a little bit quiet about it.
640
00:48:48.520 --> 00:48:54.840
I'm so grateful for the the recent changes on red dyes and stuff like that. But let's pull back
641
00:48:54.840 --> 00:49:01.080
the curtain on everything else that's happening also. And the contemplation, it's actually a
642
00:49:01.080 --> 00:49:06.200
yogic practice called Mona. Are you familiar with Mona? Yeah, recent contemplation. And I think
643
00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:11.880
that the benefit of that silence, which I've often taken is it also lessens the grip of the
644
00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:17.640
intensity of reactionary, right, of being reactive to everything that we're seeing and witnessing
645
00:49:17.640 --> 00:49:22.440
right now. And when that grip is loosened a little bit, all of a sudden, it opens up perspective
646
00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:26.360
in order for you to kind of align with your views and everything that you've just mentioned.
647
00:49:26.440 --> 00:49:34.920
Your pants are less tight. Your pants are less tight. Yeah, I think a lot of that space can actually
648
00:49:34.920 --> 00:49:42.280
ironically come from from physiological practices as well. Yeah. You know, like even a cold
649
00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:48.200
water therapy approach is like, you know, what happens when you get into a body of cold water
650
00:49:48.200 --> 00:49:53.400
or into an ice bath? Well, you know, you gasp and then you have that involuntary bottom-up
651
00:49:54.360 --> 00:49:57.480
response, which is totally adaptive stress response, right? Your heart rate and respiratory
652
00:49:57.480 --> 00:50:01.240
rate increase. You feel that epinephrine coursing through your range. You're going to have a panic
653
00:50:01.240 --> 00:50:06.520
attack. And then no, you don't have the panic attack because right there, you're offered a space
654
00:50:06.520 --> 00:50:12.600
to place conscious top-down pressure often through leveraging the breath on top of that bottom-up
655
00:50:12.600 --> 00:50:20.600
involuntary stress response. And that can become a invaluable skill, not just in the ice bath,
656
00:50:20.600 --> 00:50:27.000
but more so when you get out of the ice bath because that ability to actually find space and
657
00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:35.000
then put conscious top-down pressure on top of bottom-up response is so useful when you're
658
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:44.840
in a political argument or when you're in a, you know, vitriolic, fabriol discussion with your
659
00:50:44.920 --> 00:50:53.720
spouse. So poor in traffic or at the dentist or wherever. So, you know, these are why some of these
660
00:50:53.720 --> 00:51:00.920
practices are so important. It's not for what they provide within the practice themselves. That's
661
00:51:00.920 --> 00:51:07.640
when they, that's what they provide outside of the practice. You describe the dojo, emotional
662
00:51:07.640 --> 00:51:12.040
sovereignty. And it's kind of a training ground where we build this emotional sovereignty,
663
00:51:12.040 --> 00:51:15.800
which kind of ties into what we're talking about. What does emotional sovereignty mean to you?
664
00:51:16.440 --> 00:51:23.240
And how would it help us navigate stress? It looks interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've never really
665
00:51:23.240 --> 00:51:32.520
thought about that term that way. But the way I would consider it would be the ability to always
666
00:51:33.160 --> 00:51:40.120
move back to some degree of psychological homeostasis to have that arrow in your quiver,
667
00:51:40.120 --> 00:51:48.040
you know, such that within stressful situations that you always have some ability to find centeredness
668
00:51:48.040 --> 00:51:54.520
in equilibrium and equal points. You know, and again, yes, that they're the more tried and true
669
00:51:54.520 --> 00:52:00.840
practices that we know about breathwork and meditation that can help us do that. I also found
670
00:52:00.840 --> 00:52:08.920
that a fasting protocol can have unbelievable psychological benefits as well as physical benefits,
671
00:52:08.920 --> 00:52:13.960
obviously. But you know, because you get hungry outside your fasting window, you know,
672
00:52:13.960 --> 00:52:19.480
but what do you do? You know, you don't just succumb and meander over to the larger for some chips.
673
00:52:19.480 --> 00:52:25.160
You know, you actually have to witness the nature of that hunger and untangle whether that's a
674
00:52:25.160 --> 00:52:33.000
biological need or an emotional desire. And 99.99% of the time, it's not a biological need. We've
675
00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:40.760
got plenty of warehouse energy here for a while. You know, generally, it's an emotional desire.
676
00:52:40.760 --> 00:52:47.960
And I think that that practice, you know, helps you find that space between stimulus and response.
677
00:52:47.960 --> 00:52:54.200
This is the great vitro-franco concept, right, between stimulus and response. There's a space in
678
00:52:54.200 --> 00:52:59.960
that space as a choice. And that choice lies our freedom and liberation. So this is where, you know,
679
00:52:59.960 --> 00:53:07.160
a practice that is ancient and spiritual in many respects like fasting actually can have a very,
680
00:53:07.160 --> 00:53:13.320
very potent psychological impact. If you can find that space between the stimulus, the hunger
681
00:53:13.320 --> 00:53:18.840
and the response, this would mindlessly go into the refrigerator. Can you not also find that space
682
00:53:18.840 --> 00:53:23.720
when, you know, you might have that extra glass of wine or you might need to do that retail therapy
683
00:53:23.800 --> 00:53:30.040
on Amazon or when your children are annoying or your spouse has something dumb or, you know,
684
00:53:30.040 --> 00:53:35.720
fill in the blank. And then, you know, you're equipped with that capacity. And that gives you a
685
00:53:35.720 --> 00:53:42.360
degree of emotional sovereignty, that ability to always cultivate space to psychologically center.
686
00:53:42.360 --> 00:53:46.920
So let's deep dive on some of those protocols then and what your protocol is for good stress.
687
00:53:47.400 --> 00:53:51.640
I love that a lot of them are founded in ancient wisdom, but let's start with fasting.
688
00:53:51.640 --> 00:53:57.160
Fasting has been a hot topic. You call out some of, you know, our great teachers and friends in your
689
00:53:57.160 --> 00:54:05.080
book. Fasting was an incremental piece to your recovery and switching around a lot of the biological
690
00:54:05.080 --> 00:54:11.080
markers that you that you found. So first of all, was fasting easier for you because you have the
691
00:54:11.080 --> 00:54:16.520
biological evidence running your labs, understanding your, your poop, your stool and all that stuff?
692
00:54:16.520 --> 00:54:23.720
Yeah, I mean, I tend to be in empirical. Yeah, same fellow. So I like to understand mechanism.
693
00:54:23.720 --> 00:54:29.560
Yeah. I think the more that you understand mechanism, the more likely you are to actually do the
694
00:54:29.560 --> 00:54:35.000
protocol. I want a gift of modern medicine now, right? Yeah. Well, that so much information is
695
00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:41.800
available. And then you can also tweak the protocol to best fit your bio individuality if you
696
00:54:41.800 --> 00:54:49.480
actually understand what's happening under the hood. And so yeah, you know, devices and CGMs
697
00:54:49.480 --> 00:54:53.880
and things like that were pretty instrumental because you can have some transparency, some,
698
00:54:53.880 --> 00:55:00.840
you know, a dashboard and what you can measure, you can improve, right? So I dug the empirical
699
00:55:00.840 --> 00:55:07.800
component of it and that helped that helped me along my way for sure. I would also say that just
700
00:55:07.880 --> 00:55:12.040
and there's many, many different kinds of fasting protocols, you know, from, you know,
701
00:55:12.040 --> 00:55:17.640
multi-day water, fasts, OMAD, you know, one meal a day and some people doing five, two or they're
702
00:55:17.640 --> 00:55:23.000
fasting twice a week, et cetera. And I think that that's in the fasting mimicking diets. And I
703
00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:27.880
encourage people to experiment, you know, with different protocols and find what's right for them.
704
00:55:27.880 --> 00:55:34.040
I mean, for me, I was never that into sort of a neurotic fundamentalist approach to fasting.
705
00:55:34.600 --> 00:55:40.280
Though the 16-A protocol, which is where I started and where I could find the most data,
706
00:55:40.280 --> 00:55:45.960
was really, really impactful for me. Mostly because when I was honest, I was actually,
707
00:55:45.960 --> 00:55:51.000
I was actually had flipped it. I was eating 16 hours a day. And I think that's where most people
708
00:55:51.000 --> 00:55:58.040
honestly are, you know, at least in our society, you know, if you go to any of these fast food chains,
709
00:55:58.040 --> 00:56:04.440
you'll find four meals a day, breakfast all day, great. So just the consolidation of food
710
00:56:04.440 --> 00:56:11.320
into an eight-hour window, you know, was a big switch for me. And I got hungry outside the window
711
00:56:11.320 --> 00:56:17.000
all the time. But of course, that armed me with that kind of psychological aspect that we talked
712
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:22.520
about already. But yeah, I mean, the ability to burn fat instead of glucose for creation of
713
00:56:22.520 --> 00:56:28.760
energy, this idea of going into ketosis or getting into autophagy and cleaning up your dysfunctional
714
00:56:28.760 --> 00:56:34.280
proteins and upcycling your amino acids and whatnot, all of these, for me, actually,
715
00:56:34.920 --> 00:56:43.080
the metabolic flexibility that was offered by fasting was really useful. This ability to sort of
716
00:56:43.080 --> 00:56:50.360
seamlessly switch between burning fat and glucose for energy production. That really up-regulated
717
00:56:50.440 --> 00:56:58.520
my metabolism. So I think that, you know, for women, I think there's different protocols, I think,
718
00:56:58.520 --> 00:57:04.600
you know, the conventional wisdom is that it's better administered during the follicular phase
719
00:57:04.600 --> 00:57:09.880
and moving into ovulation and not so much in the luteal phase. But it's different for menopausal
720
00:57:09.880 --> 00:57:15.160
women. I think these are many, many women that speak incredibly eloquently about this. My
721
00:57:15.240 --> 00:57:20.600
approach to fasting is slightly more broad in general, which is like, let's just stop stuffing
722
00:57:20.600 --> 00:57:26.760
our face all the time. Yeah. Notice how often you're snacking. In fasting, I'm so grateful as one
723
00:57:26.760 --> 00:57:32.840
of those trends that has roots. I'll keep going back to roots. It has longevity. And look at your
724
00:57:32.840 --> 00:57:37.240
ethnicity, look at your culture, look at your background to see how fasting protocols were used.
725
00:57:37.240 --> 00:57:40.520
Instead of maybe diving in, I know a lot of people will jump in and say, I'm going to do a
726
00:57:40.520 --> 00:57:44.360
three-day water fast and sure enough they burn out and they never want to look at fasting ever
727
00:57:44.360 --> 00:57:50.600
again, right? Yeah, the best protocols the one you'll actually do, right? And I think this is the
728
00:57:51.240 --> 00:57:59.640
the one of the other components of good stress is I would never advise anyone to jump into a 34-degree
729
00:57:59.640 --> 00:58:05.160
ice bath if they'd never gotten into a cold punch. I would never advise anyone to run a marathon
730
00:58:05.160 --> 00:58:10.840
if they had never jogged before. I'd never advise anyone to go on a three-day water fast if they
731
00:58:10.840 --> 00:58:17.080
have never experimented with fasting before. I think the key here is that you just lean into the
732
00:58:17.080 --> 00:58:23.000
edge of your discomfort. There's always the opportunity to increase duration or lower
733
00:58:23.000 --> 00:58:29.880
temperature or lower caloric intake or switch around your macronutrient mix. There's endless
734
00:58:29.880 --> 00:58:36.120
opportunity for that. Yeah. But just lean into the edge of your discomfort. Be sure to
735
00:58:36.120 --> 00:58:43.560
beautifully about that. In your book, what happens with your mindset during those times, right?
736
00:58:43.560 --> 00:58:48.040
And often that ends up being the greatest gift, noticing how often you're in your mind or
737
00:58:48.040 --> 00:58:52.360
the pet your thoughts will really dictate your choices, right? If you feel hungry, you see food,
738
00:58:52.360 --> 00:58:57.800
you automatically eat based on instinct instead of as you've done what you describe is just you
739
00:58:57.800 --> 00:59:02.920
stopped. Can you share a bit more about that? The beauty that you found in understanding your mind,
740
00:59:02.920 --> 00:59:08.760
the connection to your mind, about the journey? Yeah. I mean, every experience of reality is
741
00:59:08.760 --> 00:59:18.920
through the prism of your mind, right? So to overlook the mind is at your own peril. So I think this
742
00:59:18.920 --> 00:59:27.320
is a place where we probably need to start even prior to all the more bespoke practices and
743
00:59:28.120 --> 00:59:33.880
modalities and mushrooms and pills and praxies and everything else. And you know,
744
00:59:34.840 --> 00:59:42.360
one aspect that I found to be very interesting as I was getting to this work was that the happiest
745
00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:48.280
people seemed to be the people that were actually thinking about the thing that they were doing.
746
00:59:49.480 --> 00:59:55.400
So if you really examine what's happening in your mind across the course of the day, so much
747
00:59:55.400 --> 01:00:00.760
of the time you're sort of off somewhere else, not thinking about the thing that you're doing,
748
01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:08.600
or you're ruminating on some traumatic past event and then projecting that event into the future,
749
01:00:09.640 --> 01:00:16.280
creating, I think this is a Daniel Kalman term, but creating negative anticipated memories.
750
01:00:17.640 --> 01:00:23.480
Right? Yeah. It hasn't even happened yet. Yeah. And it's already negative. You've already created a
751
01:00:23.480 --> 01:00:27.960
negative memory about something that hasn't even happened yet. But when we're honest, we really take
752
01:00:27.960 --> 01:00:33.560
a inventory, we're doing that all the time. We're actually not anxious about the thing. We're anxious
753
01:00:33.560 --> 01:00:39.400
about the anxiety. And then we become anxious about the anxiousness about the anxiety. And we're
754
01:00:39.400 --> 01:00:46.040
like mason's building a brick house of anxiety. We're just layering one brick on top of another.
755
01:00:46.600 --> 01:00:55.000
And you know, this is where creative immersion or collective enterprise and athletics and other
756
01:00:55.000 --> 01:01:02.360
things can really be very useful because it is in these activities that we actually yoke our
757
01:01:02.360 --> 01:01:09.800
thoughts with our actions. I watch my daughter's dance, that wonderful dancers. And this is what
758
01:01:09.800 --> 01:01:17.160
they're doing. They're not dancing to do to finish the dance or to get anywhere on the floor.
759
01:01:17.160 --> 01:01:26.760
They're dancing purely for the sake of dancing. And when I'm kind of in my best mode, I'm writing
760
01:01:27.480 --> 01:01:33.080
purely for the sake of writing. And we all have a sense for that where linear time begins to
761
01:01:33.080 --> 01:01:39.720
dissipate. And we come totally immersed in what we're doing. This often happens in collective
762
01:01:39.720 --> 01:01:43.960
enterprise too. And we're part of a group doing something that could be just even at a dinner
763
01:01:43.960 --> 01:01:48.760
table having an animated conversation or in some sort of philanthropic endeavor. Certainly for
764
01:01:48.760 --> 01:01:54.360
me on the tennis court every once in a while, you know, every thousand days, I'll channel some
765
01:01:54.360 --> 01:02:00.360
Roger Federer. And I'll be have absolute awareness of my body and space and time. Like I'll completely
766
01:02:00.360 --> 01:02:05.160
into it where the opponent's going to hit the ball before they even that's right. It's flow
767
01:02:05.160 --> 01:02:12.600
stated something kind of beyond what we can truly understand beyond what our, you know, the capability
768
01:02:12.600 --> 01:02:18.600
of what is normally available at the mind level, you know, we're just completely in, you know,
769
01:02:18.600 --> 01:02:27.880
we're in and present and hall here. And the more that we can find those moments, it appears
770
01:02:27.880 --> 01:02:32.760
the more happy we can be. Well, you just painted a picture of the difference of living in a body
771
01:02:32.760 --> 01:02:37.320
that has a regulated nervous system. When you're in that flow state, when you're having those
772
01:02:37.320 --> 01:02:42.120
Federer moments, when you're seeing your daughter's dance, they're in flow, their body feels safe,
773
01:02:42.120 --> 01:02:46.440
they're in the present moment. There's no dysregulation. And then it's the, oh no, I've got to be
774
01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:49.960
busy. I've got to be worried about the future. I've got a living anxiety. And then we get snapped out
775
01:02:49.960 --> 01:02:57.400
of it. Yeah. Again, it's that tightness versus that openness. We often can get that in nature too,
776
01:02:57.400 --> 01:03:03.000
right? Yeah. We're literally the aperture of attention, quite literally, just goes super, super
777
01:03:03.000 --> 01:03:09.720
wide. Yeah. And that feeling of a separate self begins to dissipate. Absolutely. Right? That you are
778
01:03:09.720 --> 01:03:15.800
become, you do actually become one with the external world. Yeah. You're walking through the woods.
779
01:03:15.800 --> 01:03:21.320
You're just super aware. You're listening to all of the sounds. You stop hearing it like a big
780
01:03:21.320 --> 01:03:26.680
monophonic wave, but you can actually place them on a stereo field where there's some birds over here
781
01:03:26.680 --> 01:03:31.560
and some rustling over there. And there's a squirrel up there. And it's almost like you're the
782
01:03:31.560 --> 01:03:39.240
engineer and this massive natural symphony. Yeah. You're just wide, wide open. What's the other
783
01:03:39.240 --> 01:03:45.960
characteristic of that? You really trust the world. Yeah. Knowing this. And you become less self-obsessed.
784
01:03:45.960 --> 01:03:52.760
In fact, you become, there is no self. Right. And this is why, you know, and this is the nervous
785
01:03:53.320 --> 01:04:00.200
system at play. And again, the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system is adaptive in the
786
01:04:00.200 --> 01:04:05.320
right doses. You got it. Yeah. But really where we want to be is in that open space.
787
01:04:05.960 --> 01:04:09.960
Well, let's talk about then the benefits that you speak to of formative stressors.
788
01:04:09.960 --> 01:04:13.960
Then do you have a morning that you wake up and you're excited about the cold punch? I've
789
01:04:13.960 --> 01:04:20.840
gotten to that point. You know, it's funny. I always look at it with a degree of animosity.
790
01:04:21.400 --> 01:04:26.840
You know, I look at it over there. It stares back at me and I say, I'm not today. I'm not going
791
01:04:26.840 --> 01:04:32.440
to do it. The moment I say that is the my cue to get in. It's pretty much like clockwork.
792
01:04:33.080 --> 01:04:41.640
Yeah, it's now become, you know, a adaptive habit. And I don't love it. Who would love it?
793
01:04:41.640 --> 01:04:52.920
Yeah. But it's part of, you know, who I've become. And it is really helpful for actually learning
794
01:04:52.920 --> 01:04:59.080
and doing things that require some degree of alertness. And when you get out of the cold punch,
795
01:04:59.080 --> 01:05:06.760
it's, you know, equivalent to, you know, eight shots of espresso basically, right. But at the same
796
01:05:06.760 --> 01:05:12.200
time, you're not jittery. That's the amazing thing about getting into the cold. You have that
797
01:05:12.920 --> 01:05:20.840
alertness without the cortisol, without the jitteryness. And so it's really quite a wonderful way
798
01:05:20.840 --> 01:05:27.560
to move into what is sometimes known as an ultradian cycle. It is 90 minute periods,
799
01:05:27.560 --> 01:05:33.480
which seems to be about the right amount of time for optimal learning. So if you're having, you know,
800
01:05:33.480 --> 01:05:40.920
to learning a new language or an instrument, even in, you know, later age or, you know, jumping
801
01:05:40.920 --> 01:05:47.320
into a podcast or whatever, a cold water therapy protocol can help you be on your game.
802
01:05:48.040 --> 01:05:53.240
Well, I think it's a commitment to a version of yourself. I think you wrote about, you know,
803
01:05:54.120 --> 01:05:59.400
when you were fasting protocol to the magic of your mornings and the things that you did in
804
01:05:59.400 --> 01:06:06.760
the morning, but the combination of you using that as a protocol for Jeff was actually a part
805
01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:11.640
of your transformation that happened pretty quickly. Yeah. Can you share about that transformation?
806
01:06:12.200 --> 01:06:20.600
Yeah. So, you know, I was quite a bit happier than I am now. And so weight management was a
807
01:06:20.600 --> 01:06:30.040
big issue for me. And the stacking of various protocols together had an incredibly accelerated
808
01:06:30.040 --> 01:06:37.800
impact on my weight. So one was the intermittent fasting protocol of essentially consolidating
809
01:06:37.800 --> 01:06:45.080
my consumption of food into an eight hour window. This was giving my body and ability to repair
810
01:06:45.160 --> 01:06:54.440
and restore. It was also giving my much maligned pancreas a much needed break from producing its
811
01:06:54.440 --> 01:07:00.840
insulin product. So that was a big deal. I mean, of course, you can still eat 10 pints of
812
01:07:00.840 --> 01:07:05.240
chubby, hubby in an eight hour window. But generally when you're making some conscious decisions
813
01:07:05.240 --> 01:07:10.040
about your food consumption, you're making other conscious decisions. So for me, that was
814
01:07:11.000 --> 01:07:18.040
a more or less ketotarian approach in the early days. It was, you know, focused on, you know,
815
01:07:18.040 --> 01:07:28.600
fiber and healthy fats and a couple bolus, boli, boluses, protein and minimal carbohydrate. So
816
01:07:28.600 --> 01:07:35.560
if that ketotarian combination with intermittent fasting kept my glucose levels much, much lower,
817
01:07:35.560 --> 01:07:43.080
then before I would break fast, before I put a single bite of food in my mouth, I would get into
818
01:07:43.080 --> 01:07:49.000
the cold punch. And if you think about it, what's happening? So get in your core body temperature
819
01:07:49.000 --> 01:07:53.880
plummets, right? And then your body jumps into action because it wants to get your core body
820
01:07:53.880 --> 01:08:01.480
temperature back into that golden lock zone, the warm porridge of 98.6. In order to do that,
821
01:08:01.480 --> 01:08:08.040
it needs to make heat. In order to make heat, it needs an energy substrate. But because I was on
822
01:08:08.040 --> 01:08:14.600
this keto diet and intermittent fasting, it was not a lot of glucose around. So it could only opt for
823
01:08:14.600 --> 01:08:21.480
one other substrate. And that was fat. And so it would essentially break down triglystrized,
824
01:08:22.200 --> 01:08:30.360
free up those free fatty acids and ketones for the production of heat energy to heat my body back up.
825
01:08:30.360 --> 01:08:38.840
And that was that little combination, that little tetris was astounding to see the results.
826
01:08:38.840 --> 01:08:46.440
I lost 60 pounds and probably three or four months. Cold water therapy. Heat as well in terms of our
827
01:08:46.440 --> 01:08:51.000
mitochondrial function. I think that the mitochondria, they need to have like just their own spotlight
828
01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:57.000
on stage in terms of disease prevention, weight loss, proper mental function and performance,
829
01:08:57.640 --> 01:09:01.560
it was probably such a big part for you. Like you're probably awakening mitochondria within your
830
01:09:01.560 --> 01:09:09.720
body that were dormant or kind of poke a little bit. I mean, there's also, yeah, many of these
831
01:09:09.720 --> 01:09:15.880
practices actually activate mitobiogenesis creation of new mitochondrial. It was also just what's
832
01:09:15.880 --> 01:09:22.440
happening at the subcellular mitochondrial level with, you know, providing obviously the right
833
01:09:22.440 --> 01:09:28.600
macronutrient combination there, but also with infrared light. So this is fascinating as we,
834
01:09:28.600 --> 01:09:34.840
you know, learn more about light therapy, the impact of infrared and near infrared radiation at
835
01:09:34.840 --> 01:09:40.440
the mitochondrial level. So I started getting into that bit of it too. And I mean, we can go into
836
01:09:40.440 --> 01:09:46.440
that if you want, but you know, essentially it's this one little band of light on the electromagnetic
837
01:09:46.440 --> 01:09:51.880
wave spectrum sort of outside of visible light kind of at the end of the visible light spectrum
838
01:09:51.880 --> 01:10:00.200
between kind of 700 and 1000 nanometers, more or less. And that kind of light is sort of a,
839
01:10:00.200 --> 01:10:07.960
is depicted in a very slow, long wave form versus like gamma and X and UVB and UVA, which is like
840
01:10:07.960 --> 01:10:15.000
high frequencies, high amplitudes. This is like kind of very like a nice calm sea, which is why it
841
01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:21.480
penetrates the body so deeply. Similarly to like if you drive down Wilshire Boulevard here and you
842
01:10:21.480 --> 01:10:27.320
might come up to like an SUV, you know, pumping hip hop on the street corner, the reason why you
843
01:10:27.320 --> 01:10:32.920
only hear the bass is the same reason is because those wave forms are like long and slow and stuff
844
01:10:32.920 --> 01:10:38.760
like that versus the high treble ones. And that's why it permeates and penetrates the steel and
845
01:10:38.760 --> 01:10:45.000
moves out into your car. So these wave forms actually get all the way into the body eight
846
01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:51.480
centimeters deep into the into the intracellular level and stimulate the mitochondria at the sea
847
01:10:51.480 --> 01:10:58.040
chrome. That's CCO is that kind of a site of chrome oxidase something right there to essentially
848
01:10:58.040 --> 01:11:05.400
produce more antioxidant content. And so, you know, more melatonin, intracellular melatonin
849
01:11:05.400 --> 01:11:12.200
as the as an antioxidant and glutathione. So you're you're to neuter the kind of free radicals
850
01:11:12.520 --> 01:11:17.240
and reactive oxygen species that are just a product of normal energy making. So getting that
851
01:11:17.240 --> 01:11:22.920
infrared light at the subcellular level can also really help mitochondrial function. So I think
852
01:11:22.920 --> 01:11:28.360
there's, you know, all these, you know, that's that's a little bit newer and geekier. I think,
853
01:11:28.360 --> 01:11:36.520
you know, just getting really aligning yourself with the conditions in which we evolved. That is
854
01:11:36.520 --> 01:11:43.320
the key. Absolutely. Just asking yourself this simple question, how did I evolve and then making
855
01:11:43.960 --> 01:11:49.560
decisions about your life through that lens? And what from, you know, the protocol that you've
856
01:11:49.560 --> 01:11:55.800
talked about today could our listeners incorporate into their lives like if would you say for people
857
01:11:55.800 --> 01:12:02.360
who are listening who might feel overwhelmed with your entry point, rear readers? Yeah, I would say
858
01:12:03.320 --> 01:12:13.080
be honest about where you are in your life. And the honest inventory taking is really what
859
01:12:13.080 --> 01:12:21.160
has to happen first, the psychological bit. And, and then find the identify the areas in your life
860
01:12:21.160 --> 01:12:28.040
which bring you some degree of discomfort that you're always avoiding. Yeah. And then lean into
861
01:12:28.840 --> 01:12:34.040
them. And this might not even be in the physical or physiological realm. This might be in your
862
01:12:34.040 --> 01:12:42.840
psychosocial realm. I mean, for me, I spent decades upon decades avoiding conversations, for example,
863
01:12:43.560 --> 01:12:49.800
like conversations with people that I even loved because they were too stressful. But, you know,
864
01:12:49.800 --> 01:12:57.080
if that seems to be part of one of your issues, then focus there. And, you know, there are protocols
865
01:12:57.080 --> 01:13:03.240
for building, for example, your psychological immune system, the way we build our physiological
866
01:13:03.240 --> 01:13:08.920
immune system. I love that. So we build our physiological immune system through some low-grade
867
01:13:08.920 --> 01:13:15.240
exposure to insults, to pathogens, bacteria, and viruses. And then we have this miraculous
868
01:13:15.240 --> 01:13:20.680
floating brain, this immune system that has an adaptive part of it that then spins up proteins.
869
01:13:20.680 --> 01:13:26.840
So we call antibodies. And those antibodies will neuter those antigens on those viruses and
870
01:13:26.840 --> 01:13:33.560
bacteria. And they have memory. So if you confront them again, there's those recipes are pre-loaded.
871
01:13:33.560 --> 01:13:40.760
You build your psychological immune system in a very, very similar way by some low-grade exposure
872
01:13:40.760 --> 01:13:48.280
to insult and challenge and obstacle. So if you actually lean into those things instead of
873
01:13:48.280 --> 01:13:54.920
avoiding them, you know, over time those stressful conversations and those stressful situations,
874
01:13:54.920 --> 01:14:00.440
they just don't bother you as much. They're just not as challenging. And you can lean in
875
01:14:00.440 --> 01:14:04.600
to the conversations that you tend to otherwise be avoiding.
876
01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:10.200
I tend to, in the past 15 years of doing this work, I would say that the greatest healing that
877
01:14:10.200 --> 01:14:15.560
has come for people, and I can speak for myself also, the hardship of what a healing journey looks
878
01:14:15.720 --> 01:14:21.400
like in the beginning shifts into the greatest spiritual journey. And when your healing can become
879
01:14:21.400 --> 01:14:28.040
a spiritual journey, you are set for life. We don't go back. Yeah, I mean, I don't think many people
880
01:14:28.040 --> 01:14:36.440
can find a time of growth in their life that wasn't preceded by some form of challenge.
881
01:14:36.440 --> 01:14:40.520
Absolutely. Yeah.
882
01:14:45.720 --> 01:14:50.040
I want to take a quick break from this episode to chat about our incredible sponsor,
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890
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All right, we've had listeners this whole time. It's going to get to some rapid fire questions.
902
01:16:43.000 --> 01:16:48.840
Very quickly. So we put the question out to our communities. If they could understand better
903
01:16:48.840 --> 01:16:54.440
about their stress and their health, I'm doing the effects. So what's one takeaway for a woman
904
01:16:54.520 --> 01:17:00.920
in her 40s? This comes from Linda that she can start tomorrow. Okay. Well, in your 40s,
905
01:17:01.640 --> 01:17:06.200
depending kind of where you are, you might be in perimenopause, you might be moving into menopause.
906
01:17:06.840 --> 01:17:11.880
You're going to stop producing as much estradiol. This is just totally normal.
907
01:17:12.840 --> 01:17:18.040
And by extension, you're probably going to start to develop some natural insulin resistance.
908
01:17:18.680 --> 01:17:25.720
And that's just kind of a metabolic lead. You're going to be running into some difficulties.
909
01:17:25.720 --> 01:17:33.640
Oftentimes and sometimes that frustratingly looks like belly fat that can look like low energy
910
01:17:33.640 --> 01:17:41.720
or brain fog, etc. So one of the things that I would say in for women in their 40s is to get
911
01:17:41.720 --> 01:17:50.440
into resistance training. Absolutely. And for many, many reasons. But as a metabolic regulator,
912
01:17:51.000 --> 01:18:00.440
it is so, so potent. Muscle is a glucose vacuum. It is just a sink. It will just vacuum
913
01:18:01.240 --> 01:18:09.560
sugar out of your blood system. And also when you're flexing your muscles and they're contracting,
914
01:18:09.560 --> 01:18:17.160
you don't even need insulin to uptake glucose. And then, of course, we're also losing a lot
915
01:18:17.160 --> 01:18:22.920
of muscle mass year over years. I'm 54, so as we get older, we don't want to get into that
916
01:18:22.920 --> 01:18:29.640
cyclophenia and osteoporosis and stuff. So I would say get in the gym. Get in the gym. Get moving.
917
01:18:30.600 --> 01:18:34.200
Nina is asking you about the mind body connection. So understanding, and I think you've done a
918
01:18:34.200 --> 01:18:38.920
beautiful job depicting this, stress isn't just about the brain. As we once thought, stress is the
919
01:18:38.920 --> 01:18:43.720
instigator of the imbalances within the bodies within the body. When someone's going through
920
01:18:43.720 --> 01:18:50.520
acute stress, then how can they come into the body? Yeah, it is really interesting. I think we'll
921
01:18:50.520 --> 01:18:58.280
by dent of everyday life, we're very, very used to experiencing something that our mind that
922
01:18:58.280 --> 01:19:03.480
our mind lays a negative salient surveillance on top of like, that's a threat or that's
923
01:19:03.480 --> 01:19:10.200
bad stress. And then we feel subsequently the impacts in the body. We're sort of used to
924
01:19:10.200 --> 01:19:16.200
that directionality. But there's actually, there's a, there's a bi-directional component of it
925
01:19:16.200 --> 01:19:23.720
that stress and trauma is very much kind of anchored in the soma, right? And this is really
926
01:19:23.720 --> 01:19:32.440
interesting that we have very, we have a lot of adaptations for releasing stress that is kind of
927
01:19:32.440 --> 01:19:41.080
stuck, if you will, in the body. Crying is actually an amazing one. In fact, if you were to take
928
01:19:41.080 --> 01:19:49.800
emotional tears and analyze them in the laboratory, you would find ACTH doing a quadratropic hormone
929
01:19:49.800 --> 01:19:57.160
in them. So when you're crying, you're literally flushing out stress, literally. And also crying
930
01:19:57.640 --> 01:20:04.680
is often accompanied by like deep breaths. So we know that deep breaths, you know, can help us also
931
01:20:04.680 --> 01:20:10.280
move into that parasympathetic state. And it's really interesting. I mean, other animals do cry,
932
01:20:11.000 --> 01:20:17.160
not, not many, but, and then I'll create some controversy here, but there's, they don't really
933
01:20:17.160 --> 01:20:23.080
cry emotional tears in the same way that humans cry emotional tears. They don't have stress
934
01:20:23.160 --> 01:20:29.000
hormones in the tears. Now I know I've seen horses and pigs and cows cry and stuff like that too.
935
01:20:29.000 --> 01:20:34.040
So I don't want to, I don't want to throw shade, but I'm just saying that crying is really quite
936
01:20:34.040 --> 01:20:41.640
amazing. You know, other animals run like gazelles, for example, even after they escape predation,
937
01:20:41.640 --> 01:20:49.960
they will run two, three, four miles to metabolize that trauma out of them. So we know that when we
938
01:20:49.960 --> 01:20:56.840
feel stressful or there's sort of a, a trauma-induced response, that when we go and get extra,
939
01:20:56.840 --> 01:21:02.200
vigorous exercise, we almost always feel better. Absolutely. Always. We just have to get there.
940
01:21:02.200 --> 01:21:07.160
Yeah. And then there's a, I mean, we see dogs and possums shake, right? So you can do a little
941
01:21:07.160 --> 01:21:12.840
shaking if you want to. Wolves actually howl has a means of stress release. Or if you hear coyotes
942
01:21:12.840 --> 01:21:19.640
in your neighborhood howling, that is actually a way to reinstill social homeostasis. And primates
943
01:21:19.640 --> 01:21:25.080
groom each other. Oh my God. So you can groom your partner, pick the little nits off of the
944
01:21:25.080 --> 01:21:32.040
camera her. That is also in a way to emotionally regulate. I could talk to you for hours.
945
01:21:32.040 --> 01:21:36.360
Can you, I mean, I want to shout out your podcast, your incredible podcast. Can you tell our listeners
946
01:21:36.360 --> 01:21:42.280
where to find you? Yeah. I do have a podcast, the commune podcast. I think we're up to episode 650.
947
01:21:42.760 --> 01:21:48.120
And yeah, I've written this book, Good Stress. So I've scooped up GoodStress.com.
948
01:21:49.880 --> 01:21:54.200
So if you buy it there, I can throw in all sorts of goodies from all of our friends,
949
01:21:54.840 --> 01:22:00.440
Casey and Zack Bush and Mark Hyman and great courses and whatnot. So so many great courses,
950
01:22:00.440 --> 01:22:04.840
which I can speak to. Yeah. And if I show you the inside of my book, so this isn't just a book,
951
01:22:04.840 --> 01:22:11.000
this is honestly what I would say, a protocol for how to meet life more fully. So I recommend that.
952
01:22:11.000 --> 01:22:15.400
And I wanted to touch on the science also because you have a very poetic, elegant way
953
01:22:15.400 --> 01:22:20.440
of making such a big topic, very, very tangible. So thank you for that. You can see my
954
01:22:20.440 --> 01:22:25.560
highlighters, my folded pages throughout the whole thing, impressive. And in closing,
955
01:22:25.560 --> 01:22:30.040
something that you've done that I do with a lot of my clients is you forecasted a vision of the
956
01:22:30.040 --> 01:22:35.640
future with your beautiful wife, Skylar. And I could feel so clearly when you were imagining
957
01:22:35.640 --> 01:22:40.520
the future with your glass of wine together and how you were going to feel. And I think it's so
958
01:22:40.520 --> 01:22:45.000
important for listeners to maybe pull back from the day to day and start thinking about the
959
01:22:45.000 --> 01:22:49.720
future. And despite the stress that we're going to experience in this life, what is capable,
960
01:22:49.720 --> 01:22:54.840
what is there for waiting for us as we age into this world of longevity and health spend?
961
01:22:55.560 --> 01:23:00.840
Yeah. Well, you know, many of us suffer from the ultimate stressor right, which is the fear of
962
01:23:00.840 --> 01:23:08.120
our ultimate demise. Yeah. Consciousness for humans has a double edge sword. So we can experience
963
01:23:08.120 --> 01:23:13.720
subjective feelings and qualia, but we also know that we're going to die and that that mortality
964
01:23:13.720 --> 01:23:20.360
awareness creates a lot of anxiety for people. But I think there's a a spiritual path to freedom
965
01:23:20.360 --> 01:23:27.800
from the fear of death. And you know, not seeing our demise as this distinction of morbidity,
966
01:23:27.800 --> 01:23:34.120
this kind of 20 year limp into decrepitude, but actually seeing the possibility to actually living
967
01:23:34.440 --> 01:23:43.000
a full vital life. And you know, the dream that I put forth kind of at the beginning of this book
968
01:23:43.000 --> 01:23:51.000
is that sometime, I think it's in the year 2088, my wife and I will be celebrating our centennial,
969
01:23:51.000 --> 01:23:55.720
our hundredth year anniversary. And it's not unfathomable. We've made it 37 years so far.
970
01:23:56.520 --> 01:24:02.600
And we'll go up to our little cabin and uncork a bottle of chattomargo and curl up and she'll read
971
01:24:03.480 --> 01:24:08.520
the same New Yorker article that she's read to me for about 50 years to put me to sleep. And
972
01:24:08.520 --> 01:24:14.920
you know, we'll drift off and and sometime in the middle of the night, you know, my mitochondria
973
01:24:14.920 --> 01:24:22.520
and my cardiac cells and my neurons and her mitochondria will put one last plume of carbon dioxide
974
01:24:22.520 --> 01:24:29.560
at its energy factory chimneys. And you know, our sleep, you know, will round life.
975
01:24:30.520 --> 01:24:38.600
And and it's simply okay, you know, it's just okay. And and that we don't have to live
976
01:24:39.400 --> 01:24:46.520
with constant kind of fear of our ultimate demise. That you know, we're part of this kind of
977
01:24:46.520 --> 01:24:57.400
greater experiment that in me truly is an atom that was shared with Lauta and the Buddha and
978
01:24:58.200 --> 01:25:06.680
and had its original provenance in some supernova, some eight billion years ago. And you know,
979
01:25:06.680 --> 01:25:13.000
as you know, my instruments of conscious attention come to a close and my cardiac and respiratory
980
01:25:13.000 --> 01:25:23.880
rate function ceases, you know, there's part of me that will go on. And so this is the the vision
981
01:25:23.880 --> 01:25:30.360
that I'm trying to hold forth for, you know, for all of us as we as we, you know, move into
982
01:25:31.240 --> 01:25:40.360
into wisdom and, you know, to to become elders and not elderly. Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Let's bring
983
01:25:40.360 --> 01:25:45.880
back our elders. Yes. Thank you. Go grab your coffee. Your coffee of good stress by Jeff
984
01:25:45.880 --> 01:25:52.840
Krasner. Thank you for joining me today. Until next time. Yeah. Thank you so much.