#003 - Stuart Champion - The Body Wisdom Expert - This is how you permanently heal yourself

Stuart Champion, welcome to the YouChoose podcast. It's a gift to have you here, mate. One of my greatest beliefs in the world is that people, simply by being in the environment of a human being, without a word coming out of their mouth, they can shift how you show up. And I had no recognition of what that meant until I met you, and the manner in which my nervous system has regulated and continues to regulate simply by being in your presence is potent, and it's powerful, and it's the reason that you're here on this podcast. For me, from my perspective, I'd love to know why you came on, and we'll talk about that in a bit, but I could go into the myriad of accolades and where you've been and what you've overcome, and we will get there, but what I want the people that are listening to know is that why I see and where I see this conversation going, and what I'm most fascinated by about you, is the manner in which you've been able to be with your pain, sit with your pain. And now you stand in an energy of peace that is potent, and it's magnetic, and it makes me, and I know everybody that gets the opportunity and is fortunate enough to be in your space, there's a curiosity as to how you've arrived at that place. Thank you, man. Thanks for inviting me to be here, and it's an honor to be on this podcast with you. I'm excited to see where this conversation takes us. Yeah, that's welcome, all, mate. What I want to know. If I was to start broadly, is. How have you arrived in this place, inside of yourself? You know, most of the time I'm not sure what this place is within myself, or connection to how I perceive this world or reality, but it's like a practice. It's something every day where I feel for years now I've been operating in a place of observing or trying my best to observe myself when I feel reactive to something, or something triggers me or hits me. I want to pause, and I want to observe how I want to react. And now I can drop in a state of, like, observing, observance of myself, because my reactions feel connected to my past conditions, to my survival mechanisms of arguing with my mom or saying no to my dad or, you know, playing with, you know, frustrating my sister or something like that from growing up. So, I don't know. Yeah. But. The best way to explain, I feel like, is a route we were just talking about before the show is my current state. Yeah. The state in which I'm operating from. Yeah. And if I'm racing around all day, I can feel that within my body. Yeah. I can feel my body saying, hey, slow down. Yeah. Stop pushing. Yeah. Like in a soccer match with 10 minutes to go and your body's already. It was done 30 minutes ago, but we pushed through. Yeah. And so now I do a lot. I do a better job in observing how. How I'm feeling. And I give myself that time to pause and stop and slow down so I can actually feel how I'm. My body is operating. Yeah. And in those few minutes, I feel like I can shift a lot where it shifts the state. It shifts the state I'm operating from. So now I can show up for myself. I can show up for others. Yeah. I didn't do that before. Yeah. And how have you arrived at the place in which you're willing. Courageously. Courageous enough and have maybe a relationship that is deep enough with yourself so as to not be afraid of what exists in the pause? Because. And I want to add on here. It sounds wonderful to pause and to listen and to be with yourself. And I think the greatest challenge. The greatest challenge in society today, at least one of them, is the inability to be with stillness, to be with silence, and to allow what arises to exist without judgment. And you do that better than anyone I know. How? Yeah. It's such a great question. It's kind of connected to a conversation we've had about, you know, pain and suffering. Like, I love the quote, like, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I've had some amazing guides and teachers that have really pointed out the wisdom's already within me. Everything I need is already within me. Everything that you need already exists and has always been within you. So, to pause and slow down isn't to be in the mind looking and controlling, you know, oh, I'm going to stop for five minutes and I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to force myself to do something because that's coming out of our mind's controlling ways. But slowing down, how can we stay in the experience of what we're feeling? If I ask you to lay down on the floor or sit in a chair, the practice would be to sit here now for the next 60 minutes without conversation and staying in experience. Yeah. Staying in the experiences that your body is communicating to you. Mm-hmm. So, when my back was screaming at me and I couldn't walk for many months, I didn't know how to do that. The world I was operating in said, go to the doctor, take medications, go have surgery. That's the path for you. And my body was like, fuck no. Yeah. I don't want that. I want to put my body into balance. I don't want to be in back pain. Yeah. Like, lower core isn't engaged. Yeah. Like, but my nervous system was struggling. I was stressed and I was surviving. So, to slow down can be hard. Most people say, I don't have time for that. To slow down for a few minutes just to practice. What is your response to the person who says, I don't have time for that? Well, from my perspective now of actually prioritizing slowing down, now I can operate from a place where I'm not in the high levels of pain, like the suffering piece of this. Mm-hmm. Like, discomfort, where I couldn't take airplane flights because I couldn't sit for that long. Mm-hmm. Or I had to avoid long car journeys. Mm-hmm. Or I couldn't go and visit my family in England because I was in so much pain, I couldn't bear the thought of traveling. So. Wow. As the practice would be, if we're just to try and put words to it, me talking to you here, I'm kind of talking brain to brain. Yeah. But to ask you as an example to pause for a moment. Take a few breaths into your nose, out through your mouth, and as you start to slow down and check in with your current way of breathing, ready for this podcast, wanting it to go well, how does it sound, how does it look, all of these pieces, as you keep breathing now, you're checking in with your current way of breathing. You're just observing your breath. Mm-hmm. Is it short? Is it shallow? Is it in or out through the nose or mouth? There is no right or wrong way of doing that. You're just observing your current way of breathing, which is your current state. Your sensory system perceives your environment. Your sensory system communicates to the nervous system, are you safe? And then your nervous system communicates with your musculoskeletal system, so many of us that have been holding tension in our physical musculoskeletal body. It's connected to the nervous system and the sensory system. So my invitation to you to observe your current breath, watching the air coming in and out, without there being right or wrong or good or bad, dropping any story and any energy around what you're thinking and feeling, coming back to the sensation of your breath, and then invite and ask your body to show you how it would like to breathe in. Mm-hmm. And how it would like to breathe out. Mm-hmm. And just by asking and inviting your body to show you the way, every single soul that I work with, you see this beautiful shift of their belly and diaphragm starting to relax, their rib tips starting to drop towards the floor and let go towards the pelvis. So we're not holding that musculoskeletal tension. The slowing down of the breath is bringing our nervous system into deeper balance. And our sensory system can soften. Yeah. And feel safer. Yeah. So what a beautiful place just to explore inner peace and belonging within self. Than slowing down and pausing for a few moments. Yeah. It's a beautiful answer. And my intuitive highest version of me can fully hear and understand the resonance with that in my body. that there's a piece of me, and I'm sure those that are listening that want to know, and I really want to know, What have you noticed happens in the absence of someone's ability to slow down? What happens to someone who can't slow down? In other words, why does this matter? I feel the root of our suffering is directly related to our stress. The way we perceive the life that we are living and leading is directly connected to the state in which we're operating from. So I could share something with you, and if you have a completely different perspective or disagree with me, you might be reactive and defend your perspective where I was just sharing something with you. The simple conversation we've all had where it feels like somebody wants to share that they know more than you. Or somebody wants to share that you're wrong and my way of seeing it is right. You know, we talk about relationships. It's usually with the people closest to us, our family, our friends, the people we communicate most with. And obviously we can have misunderstandings, miscommunication, but can we do that without fighting? Because it feels like fighting just leads to more fighting. My mom would say something when I was a kid. Something maybe I didn't want. Something maybe I didn't want to do, or maybe I was in trouble for something I didn't actually think I did wrong. Nobody likes that feeling, being told off for something they didn't believe they did. Or asking for something and then being told no. You know, and then we want to fight for more. We're basically fighting for freedom. But when I'm fighting with that energetic, say, with one of my parents, they're fighting back. It just keeps leading to fighting and more stress nervous systems. More reactive nervous systems. More held on to tension in the musculoskeletal system. So I think a part of the practices and the work that I've had through like some beautiful practitioners, mentors, guides, is teaching me that the wisdom was already within me. That there's a different state that I can operate from. Break that down for me. The wisdom is already within me. What does that mean? I believe that every soul, every person is born with everything they need. From our very first breath, as we come out of our mothers. We know how to breathe. We know how to, before we can talk and even have our earliest memories. We know how to ask for food. Use our emotions to say that something's right or wrong. We giggle. We play. We cry. We wake up in the night. We do it again. The wisdom being within us is rooted in the body knowing exactly how it wants to operate. An example would be a new cell that's being produced in the bone marrow. It knows exactly where it's going to go. Is it a red blood cell? Is it a hair follicle? Is it a fingernail? We don't know. As humans with the best modern technology, we don't know where that cell is going to go and how it's going to organize itself. And so if I'm working with somebody with tight back pain, their left hip knows exactly where it wants to be in location and space and time and organization in connection with the right hip. But if we're holding on to some musculoskeletal tension, hip flexors, underdeveloped glutes, these kind of pieces, our musculoskeletal systems holding tension probably more on one side than the other. And now our whole pelvic floor is out of balance. And when something's a little tight, the equal and opposite muscles are a little loose, like a guitar string. One's over-tightened, one's loosened. And so we can spend all the time, I mean, as people are listening to this, we can imagine the front left thigh, the upper thigh or the outer thigh holding tension. It's in pretty much everybody. Everyone that grew up in this modern world of sitting down in schools and chairs and TVs and cars. We developed our whole body. We developed our whole body and its systems in this amazing modern world. But who knew that all of these conveniences would have us in musculoskeletal tension? And in that tension, we're holding on to these past arguments and no's and fights. So the beautiful balance in this practice and these practices is we could do talk therapy all day. And trying to understand it from a cognitive. Mindset of the mind still being in control. But when we start to allow the sensory system, nervous system and musculoskeletal system all to come into deeper balance and integrity, now we're supporting where as being held, the tension has been held on to by supporting the equal and opposite muscles. Now the tension is supported. The body's wisdom will actually unwind itself. And in that those memories, those held. Hold on to patterns of surviving and conditioning. I don't believe the depth of healing is just in having several communications or several years of communication. Yeah, I believe it's in a practice, bringing all of our body systems into deeper balance. Yeah. Well, that's a beautiful answer. Um, it, the first thing it makes me think is that when you talk about the body's natural understanding. Understanding of knowing what to do, it speaks to like the highest value in human healing is the ability to know how to surrender because in the act of surrender, we realized that the whole process can take care of itself. And like you said about a cell in our body and the, the, the inner workings of our system, knowing exactly what to do. The only thing that's interrupting our ability to move through things is ourselves getting in the way. And I think where I want to take this next is. Yeah. How we have demonized certain emotions inside of our society so much so that we one do not have a relationship to those emotions and two, as a result of the inability to understand how to move through those emotions, we hold onto them and holding onto those emotions, holding onto certain emotions, such as pain, anger, disappointment, sadness, maybe those that we would consider the less comforting emotions, how they come out in dysfunctional ways. And, um. Um, so my question around this is what happens? Let's start here. What happens over time? In fact, I'm going to take a couple of steps back because before I go into other people, I want to begin with you. Cause you have, obviously you have a history. Yeah. Yeah. History with back pain and healing yourself. And so I want to know what happened to you over time as a result of whatever emotional pain you feel may have been present, how that manifested in your back and then take us on the journey to healing. I know that's a long, it's a long winded question. I feel like as you're asking these questions, the first part I want to bring back around is these emotions. Yeah. You were talking about the, the good emotions, the bad emotions, you know, the anger, the frustration, the sadness or the, the joy, the happy, the, you know, we kind of categorize, you were giving examples of emotions, but I feel like from our conditioned upbringings, our parents brought us up and raised us in similar ways that they were raised themselves. Like our parents are doing the best that they can with the tools that they have. And some of our upbringing is going to be very similar. To how the rules and values that they were brought up by. And so on down the generations, there's a beautiful story in my, one of my mentor teachers and guides, Carolyn wrote about the girl with a frozen ice cream. And there's this, imagine this three-year-old girl and she's got this frozen ice cream and she's trying to dig her spoon into it, but it's that frozen that she can't get any ice cream. She's really frustrated. She starts crying. She's sad. She's sad. And mom and dad say, Hey, what's the matter? You know, this is, I think I believe it's a viral video and it's cute, right? It looks cute. But underneath it, and just the parents saying, Hey, what's the matter? We've assigned, um, a negative piece with being frustrated that you can't eat your ice cream right now. You might need to wait. And in that response and in that kind of reaction now, that is a good thing. It's a glimpse into how that girl's condition patterns of frustration is a bad emotion where within myself and how I've been guided to really trust in the wisdom within me. There are no good or bad emotions. That's kind of stuck in duality, right? We're talking about equal and opposite for every action. There's an equal and opposite reaction. If I have a really great day, I'm enough. I am worthy. I had a great day. Uh-huh. You know, then a few days later, what I'm, I'm not enough. I'm not worthy. And I have a bad. And I'm just bouncing and seesawing between being enough and not being enough, being worthy, not being worthy. So in this emotional piece of frustration, sadness, anger, what a beautiful thing to experience. I was saying goodbye to my partner Carissa at the airport yesterday. I was so sad. I was so sad that I was leaving and saying goodbye for a few weeks. But how beautiful it is that I could feel the emotion of sadness without assigning it good or bad or right or wrong. The invitation coming back to what we were just sharing is staying in the direct sensation and experience of sadness within my body, not to have to wipe away my tears, leading with vulnerability in a way like I'm crying and I have tears rolling down my face in front of my partner. And she's got tears rolling down her face too. And it was such a powerful, beautiful moment. And in that piece of vulnerability there, there was deeper connection. And deeper trust built where my past self would, you know, men and boys don't cry. We have to, you know, give off this aura that everything's okay and it always will be. And I'm strong. No, it's good. I'm just going to push through. Not going to talk about it. That didn't serve me. That was a different way of operating. Yeah. So I would, you know, I'd love to share this work and these practices with the world. Yeah. Which is really teaching others how to do this for themselves because that wisdom's already within them. Yeah. So that was kind of the story of like, you know, every emotion is equal. Yeah. If there isn't a good or a bad emotion, it's just beautiful to feel it and stay in the experience of it. And then I think, you know, particularly in England where we're from and America, we could probably name 10, maybe 20 emotions. Most people know, you know, happy, sad, anger, frustration. Well, I think the greatest problem in the world today is not actually, it's not pain or sadness or anger or frustration. It's numbness. It's like reminds me of that song, the Lumineuse song that says, it's better to feel pain than nothing at all. The opposite of love's indifference. And I think as I've, I've navigated this path for myself, the recognition that sadness is actually relief from numb sadness. Can you say that again? Sadness is actually relief from numb. It's the repression of years unraveling. It's suppression of decades unraveling. I've never felt more relief than the tears streaming down my face after years of feeling like I don't know how to feel. And I know from the number of men that I've been fortunate enough to hold space for, and I would assert a man's greatest challenge in the world is not sadness. It's the inability to feel sadness. It's not frustration. It's the inability to know how to move through frustration. Maybe the greatest one is it's not anger. It's the absence of understanding as to how to move through anger in a healthy way. And I don't think we as a society do a phenomenal job of teaching men what it's like to be with the full spectrum of emotions and as a result certain emotions have started to come out in dysfunctional ways. And I think too many of us, and I know maybe you can resonate with this, but I know myself as a result of watching the number of men in the world whose anger turned sideways has ended up bleeding on not only society, but women and children and the I mean the stats speak for themselves. The number of 93% of men, 93% of prison inmates are men as a result of domestic violence, sexual violence, abuse of some kind. Um, my own relationship to the emotion of pain, frustration, anger, rage, all emotions that in ancient times were deemed sacred. Um, I've noticed how I don't feel I've ever been taught how to use anger. I don't think I've ever been taught how to move through pain and the only way I knew how was in the context of four white lines and a soccer ball inside of a field and I noticed that one of the most challenging times of my life was when I stopped playing soccer at such a high level and I realized very quickly while I don't have a space to move through this emotion and in the absence of having a space for it to come out and through for it to play itself out. coming up getting stuck and moving back down into my system and the the result of that over months and years became one disease in the mind and inevitably the manifestation of disease in the mind over time is disease in the body. So throats, colds, uh, constant illness injury because I'm holding tension as you talk about in certain places. So, I'm curious to know for you, what is your relationship to anger and how coming from the background that you've come up with grown up inside of which is, I mean, you'll speak more to it than me, but I could, uh, almost into it a little bit understanding the nature of England and the culture in England. How have you unraveled the conditioning around feeling and become such a sensitive attuned? Maybe centered emotionally aware. Accepting individual. Well, thanks, mate. I thought I had my shit together six months ago and then I reflect on that and I'm like, okay, I'm here today and you know, where am I going to be in a couple of years? But that little bit of practice where, you know, you and I both grew up playing a high, you know, good quality levels of football or soccer and, um, when you play season after season without injury, you get pretty good when you start surrounding yourself with other players that are really good and they can elevate your game. And now you're not just playing a competitive match with them and against good players. You're training with them every day. So I really believe I think my background of being on team sports and individual sports is when I thoughtfully train and practice and give myself time to rest and slow down, eat well, sleep well. Some of just the basics that I feel like everyone knows. All right. I shouldn't assume everybody knows, but what does good quality sleep look like? I think that's an individual personal relationship and same with food. I think every single person has a intimate and personal relationship with food, with sleep, with movement, with relaxation and with their work and the stresses they carry with it. Um, the piece, I'd like to share deeper about within my own journey. That was a big pivotal moment for me. You mentioned the word surrender was when I was in a practice laying down flat on the floor, checking in with my breath, going a little bit deeper. I've been practicing for a year or so at this point, and I could feel the tension in my back still holding. And I'm actually using my mind to tell myself to surrender. I'll let go, stop fighting. But really I was still controlling. I was using my mind to try and force my healing where the polyvagal theory of the Vegas nerve is about 80% sensory neurons. And it's communicating from the body back to the brain. So when I got to that point where I could actually stay with the sharp pain, shooting, sciatic pain, collapsed discs in my back, like, when I was taught to actually stay in the sensation, like the roomie philosopher quote of the cure for the pain is in the pain. Yeah. I'd been avoiding it my whole life. Yeah. I've been resisting pain my whole life. I would bend over to pick something up off the floor or scoop it up with my foot to avoid being in pain. So now I wasn't using a deep squat. I wasn't using my hips, my knees, my back, my ankles in full ranges of motion. And. The pain got worse. Yeah. Right. The, uh, whatever we resist persists. Did it only get worse physically? And so in that deeper practice, this one moment on this one day, it felt like such a shifting, um, point pivot pivotal point for me was when I stayed in the pain longer and I was basically allowing my body to feel experience the ickiness stickiness. sharp pain, like hormonally icky, it wasn't comfortable, but several seconds, several rounds of breath later, my nervous system dropped, like shifted that tension I was holding onto throughout every cell in my body relaxed just slightly. And that pain was more tolerable. It wasn't gone. It wasn't away, but now my body pointed at something else. it wasn't that specific location in my lower right back or right glute anymore it shifted somewhere and then i followed it like a roadmap now my body's pointing at my left trap and i'm like all right here we go again let's stay with it and go in go swimming into it as if you have a tiny flashlight within you but we're not controlling this from the mind telling yourself to relax we're breathing in and around those areas and we're staying within ourselves where nothing outside of you exists i think um you know someone that many podcast listeners podcast listeners have have heard and heard ways in which he healed himself is like dr joe dispenser yeah you know he has these massive retreats all over the country and maybe across the world now in different places with you know hundreds and thousands of um i think some of the most important people in the world and i think that's what i'm trying to do um i think some of the most important people in the world and i think that's what i'm trying to i just felt like as a kid i could see how other people were operating like in my school growing up the you know especially middle school high school it was hard to trust anyone else you know if one of my friends had a crush on a girl and he told someone the whole school knew he told someone in confidence and that confidence and trust was just wasn't nonexistent and then came the shame and the fear you know and there was fights in central england like a lot of the boys were fist fighting like after school and so i kind of kept my head down because i didn't want to fight anyone i didn't want to hurt anybody i didn't want to get hurt but you also were you always tall and big framed and no i think i went through puberty later than anyone really when i met my high school friends i hadn't seen them for 22 years and i think the last time i saw a lot of those guys i played football and rugby with i was like 18 yeah and when i saw them you know just a few years ago 20 something years ago later they were like fuck you really grew i think i was growing until i was like 21 or 22 but i um i joined football teams i felt safe on my team and something i was good at and rewarded for you know i think you and i have had many stories about how sports and particularly football was like this identity or something we were rewarded for and we kept going and we got on better teams and better teams and you know played in college and i joined the rugby team i joined the swim club i swam in the british nationals for four years with my school and relay teams and that was a safer place for me to be than being at home and being in school and i didn't know that at the time but i joined as many teams as i could because when i was in that flow and within a game and playing i felt safest but that didn't really prepare me for college you know that was a whole different level yeah i don't know what i how i do sometimes i'm i feel like some days day by day i'm surviving like everyone else but i now feel like i'm i feel within myself my body when my body's communicating to me now i know how to support it i know how to slow down and listen to it i just flew from wisconsin yesterday and landed late last night i was tired exhausted i think most people i work with are tired and exhausted when somebody says they have the flu like energetically their body is telling them they're exhausted they need to slow down and so now if you know i say if because i'm comfortable traveling now i don't have back pain or tight hip flexors my glutes are supported being like they they didn't for 15 years yeah my hip flexors are more in balance left side to right side than they've ever been i can go to the gym and do 100 pound like kettlebell squats before i wouldn't i wouldn't even know how to lift that thing off the ground you know like i um i share with my dad who's maybe in his last six months of life at the minute um how grateful i am for my parents in so many ways what these practices gave me was a stronger deeper rooted connection with everybody in my life when i slow down and find a deeper balanced centered place within me like physically muscular skeletal system emotionally not being stuck in duality and my sensory system how i'm aware of my environment if a loud car backfires i can feel that and i just don't carry on with my day i actually pause for four or five breaths and i don't have to do anything i just don't have to do anything i just don't have to do anything i don't have to do anything i just don't have to do anything i don't have to do anything i don't have to do anything i process it in the moment i don't let it roll on until i got 20 bee stings by my afternoon and i'm just in a state of surviving and racing to my next thing so in this practice i really feel like now more than ever i have a better relationship with everyone in my life and now i feel energetically the people that i want to surround myself with more and more i feel deeply within me the foods that serve me that give me energy rather than take it away yeah i've always prioritized sleep good quality sleep and consistent wake times and sleep times i'm not even close to perfect in any of that but i'm aware of when i run down and depleted and need to slow down a lot of the times i want to go surf but my body's telling me no so i actually listen yeah where before i'd probably surf for three hours and be in more pain later in the day yeah so i'm you know i'm just pointing at a few things where people can self-reflect within themselves yeah i'm still on my journey and i think my journey will be done when i'm when i'm done in this in this physical body so yeah you have a better relationship than any with you have a better relationship with time than anyone i know and i think we live in the modern world in a culture that is hyper addicted to speed we want it now and that doesn't leave much room for exhaustion it doesn't leave much space to be tired it doesn't leave much room for the process and one of the things that i'm i admire you most for and acknowledge you most for is how much you've honored the process in your healing and can you just speak to that for me like i've watched you over the past three years five years it'll be a decade plus you know and you're healing your back you're healing your ankle you're healing your body from the inside out but i think what people fail to recognize that it's taken it's taken time and i think that's what i'm trying to do i'm trying to make sure that i'm doing the right thing and i'm trying to make sure that i'm doing the right thing and i'm trying to so what just speak to speak to the art of the process having a healthy relationship to time and how those two integrate into living a potent powerful and present life in this uh hopefully not hypothetical agreement of working together over the maybe my first question would be to you is are you willing to look at and dive deeper into where you're getting into your own way if your goal is to go over there on a straight line and heal and feel better are you willing to look at where you are getting in your own way where you are the person leading your own suffering so my first few sessions with this practice i felt a little bit better i could feel a little different so what did i do i went back and did the same things i always did i played soccer and i went surfing and then i was back to where i was was i willing to look at the things that i'm doing in my life at that moment at that state that were keeping me in that musculoskeletal tension yeah the ways i was approaching my work my life my relationships that were keeping me in that like nervous system reactive state of fight flight freeze when i'm working with someone things are going to come up when we slow down and listen to the discomfort and pain in our body it's not any louder when i'm working with someone it's not any worse when i'm working with someone but when they slow down and they're still it can feel louder just because now i'm there slow enough and calm enough to feel it and so how can i take the saying that dance people don't want to be in the stillness because the stillness people don't want to be in the silence because the silence has so much to say yeah and when we stay in that silence and feel that discomfort which feels louder just because we're slow enough to feel and sense it and experience it that's when our body and our nervous system then feels supported because now we're listening now we're actually showing up and we're able to feel it and we're able to feel it and we're able to feel it up for our body and we're it's saying you got to slow down yeah you got to stop i am screaming at you that you've got sciatic nerve pain that you've got herniated discs in your back and you keep going like how many more signs do i need to tell you to slow the fuck down yeah so that agreement of being willing to look at how we're getting in our own way i was teaching physical education at elementary school 45 minutes away so of course like what am i going to do i'm still sitting in my car or on my motorcycle and commuting for an hour and a half every day i want to surf or play soccer at the end of my day with my friends but my body was screaming at me where am i willing to look at where i'm getting in my own way and i slowed things down i stopped surfing for a little bit i stopped playing soccer for a little bit i had to keep doing my job to pay my rent and bring in money and like survive but i also didn't have to teach and learn and i didn't have to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and in a way where um i was creating these environments at school in a similar way where kids get to feel where kids feel safe in an environment to fail and explore and teaching team building games so now i could teach from this perspective that was really in tune with what i was learning within myself and do should i as a an educator be the hardest working person in my class or should the students i just started gently changing things around where my last two or three years working in school with my favorite because i'd started working through these practices and every relationship i had with the students with my staff with the principal with my family everything just started feeling better in my life every avenue of my life my relationship with my sleep my food my schedule i was also looking at where i was saying yes to things where i was actually a hell no so i was setting clearer boundaries yeah so to set a boundary now is really if i'm avoiding something that's not a clear honest boundary yeah but where am i setting boundaries of and looking at my yeses and no's yeah was a beautiful like practice yeah it's kind of fun what's coming up for me as i'm hearing you say this is the saying that we live in a deaf culture and a deaf culture means that we have forgotten how to listen yes to other people but inevitably how to listen to ourselves why because everything and everyone and everywhere and every which way we look everyone is competing for our attention and the inability to listen is actually interrupting our ability to know what we want who we are where we're going and as a result there's a culture of self-abandonment there's a culture of self-compromisation there's a culture of inevitably the result of that being resentment in the world why because people don't know how to listen and if there's anything i'm taking from you it's that the practice is what they've allowed you to do not only in your physical body but to your desires and to be able to hear who you are and the direction with which you're going you know you have uh obviously had a relationship that the the dynamic of that relationship should have been a relationship that you're going to have a relationship with shifted last year you know and the ability to be able to hear i don't want to be in this place and then to be able to make radical new choices in the direction of the life that you want it sounds like this practice has been transformational not only in your physical healing but in your ability to hear yourself and i would even assert that like i have pain of course in different parts of my body i told me acl my i was on a run today and both of my knees were hurting but what i'm taking even bigger than this is like i'm not going to be able to hear what i'm hearing i'm not going to like what am i going to get out of this is the ability to hear myself and the number one thing that i hear from from men and that i believe the greatest challenge in in in a man's world at the moment is he can't answer the question what do you want in a momentary instance and in the grand scale and perspective of your life what do you want and i just think most people don't know the answer to that and as a result you know a mentor of mine said i don't know the answer to that and said to me billy people who are unclear become slaves to the clarity of other people and too many of us are unhappy because we're living other people's clarity on who how what and where we should be and what it seems like and and is really incredible to witness inside of you is that you are no one nowhere and no why else than coming from the deepest part of you as a result of it sounds like this practice has been transformational not only in your ability to hear yourself but in this practice that you've developed and your ability to list in to the deeper whispers that want to come through as to as to um maybe what is and isn't working for your life and and who you wish to be and what you wish to choose in any given moment you know would i be accurate and well i feel that you know who doesn't ask like what do i want or who am i where do i belong where am i going you know those those answers that we don't have because no body knows we're really what lays ahead for for us so we could develop you know the my kind of vision of is it that we don't ask those questions or that we don't have the space to be with those questions as you're reframing the question it feels like what state are we operating out of when we're feeling like we we don't know what we want and we don't know what who we are or where we're going what state are we operating in at that level right that feels like fear that feels like i'm stuck in that for me that feels like i'm stuck in my own head and i either need to go deeper into it with breath and and not miss the opportunity to experience where those feelings are being stored in my body is that in my heart i don't know what i want slow down and close your eyes and breathe into it what do most people do when when in the i don't know what i want and i don't know what i want and i don't know what i want know when so when the when the when the first answer is i don't know what do you think most people do i have no idea what other people are doing like in that moment of i don't know i'm like my question would be it feels like the equal and opposite like why do you need to know in this moment totally like if we we really need to know that feels like i'm in my mind and i'm forcing myself to need to know something so this brings up that i don't have an answer to yeah and so this brings up society's relationship then to the unknown right peter crone i love how he says to people who here in the audience is afraid of the unknown put your hand up and everyone puts their hand up and he goes no you're not you couldn't possibly be afraid of the unknown because it's the unknown what you're afraid of is what your brain is superimposing into the unknown and i think when people hear i don't know the immediate response is fear it's like fuck i should know why because culture tells you that at this age when you've just come out of college you're supposed to have the answer because at 23 you should have had it figured out because that 19 year old's a millionaire already because on social media you have this hyper access to everything in everyone's lives all around the world oh you should know you should know and i think one of the greatest causes of anxiety in the world is the belief that we should have it figured out and the most freeing thing that has the thing the statement that has freed me from the fear of the unknown is that i don't know it's it's it's i don't know i don't have a fucking clue what i'm doing i don't know where i'm going i might change my mind tomorrow in many ways i don't know where i'm gonna end up i don't have the answer i don't know and that may be it's interesting because those three words are such a practical answer but at the very same time i think that's the greatest thing i've ever heard this spiritual response that there is you know it's like everyone's trying to figure it out what should i do what if this happens or what if my girlfriend says this or what if she breaks up with me well what if i don't figure it out what if i'm 30 and i've changed my mind 48 000 times what if i'm 60 and i don't have a relationship what if i never have kids where is she i don't know and in that moment we pause that was a beautiful example of how your mind started racing and you started talking quicker you feel that can you feel that within you now like you don't know yeah my heart's beating quicker yeah so here's that example for everyone listening let's not miss this opportunity to slow down pause and take a breath in through your nose open mouth let it go in through the nose inviting the breath to come straight back towards the back of your head exhale without force and without pressure so let it go and notice the sensation within your body of where that i don't know lives is it in your throat is it in your chest in your heart is it in your belly your solar plexus your sacrum is it down in the roots so can we break that down for a second well yeah i was just going to point at the idea that i don't know feels like the example of it being an emotion like a frustration or anger where if we decide that i don't know is good or bad then we've given it energy we're giving it life and it's not a new thought for anyone we're just repeating the same story over and over again so how can we practice dropping the story we really need to go to the roots we need to feel into our body using our sensory system system muscular skeletal system and tune in and listen deeper to the areas that were holding that tension not avoid it not run away my offering sometimes goes one of two ways one is to slow down and do exactly what we're sharing here like breathe into those areas directly and stay there and it's going to be icky and uncomfortable stay there longer breathe Surrender that mind story, there is no right or wrong or good or bad or true. True or false? There just is. And that story is something you've told yourself before. It doesn't make it any more right or wrong because it's the same story we're repeating. And then the other that I go to is I know I've got to move. I've been moving my whole life on teams and sports and ski seasons or whatever. If I'm in that place, whether it's usually in bed or at home, where I'm in that place of feeling I'm not enough or I'm not worthy or that kind of condition patterns feels like I'm going to go deeper into it within my own practice, within myself, and trying to find a deeper root of why this is circling back right now. Like my dad's dying. It's fucking scary. There's so many people. Out there are supporting their parents in their last 10 years of life or so. The people that raised us. And now we're kind of like trying to care for them as much as possible. And we're that generation where we want to point it. I want to point at some ways where I feel like I can support my parents, but they really don't want support. They just want me to show up and agree with whatever they, the help that they want. And so moving. Allowing the energy to flow through us when I go for a little bit of a walk without my phone, when I try and look for, you know, I'm not in my mind searching for beauty. I'm just witnessing it and noticing it along the way, you know, whatever time of day or night, sometimes I just got to move and get out of the energetic. I feel stuck in, but my offer is to look deeper first and go a layer deeper each time. Yeah. And when something resurfaces, hopefully it's going to soften and soften over time. Reminds me of that saying that is that a man's capacity to grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth and discomfort that he can sit with and accept about himself without running away. I think that's so powerful. You've had the ability. It sounds like to be able to be with so much of you've expanded your capacity to be with it all. It's like, don't run. Don't. Don't try and control. Don't try and change. Just expand your capacity to hold it. As I said earlier in the podcast, the. The opportunity is to stay in experience longer, to stay in the sensations. We're feeling longer to listen to our body and how it's trying to communicate to us. Yeah. And as I say, like, you know, this podcast is full of conversation. Yeah. And we're kind of going from mind to mind and cognitive thinking. Yeah. But to really dive into it. To really dive into the experience. I was guiding some breathwork sessions at a Pilates yoga breathwork studio in central Wisconsin last week. It's called Salt. It's in the town of Wausau. And it's an idea and an example of an environment that didn't exist. And it was beautifully created for a community to come in and explore deeper within themselves. And in that time and in that experience. And in that experience of sharing breathwork to a community that was relatively new to dozens and dozens of people keep showing up. And it's not, we're not selling a practice. We're not selling a, we're going to heal your pain. We are creating an opportunity for people to feel safe, to slow down and drop into the sensations and experiences within themselves. And then the state that they walked into that room in versus the state they left that room in and their experiences along the way. That's why they come back because they feel held and supported. And they're also learning how to be in sensation longer and these practices they can take with them wherever they go. They don't need to come to a studio or come to me. I just want to guide and teach people. About the wisdom that's already within them. And so then they have it for themselves, wherever they are. Yeah. Hmm. I want to read to you this mini essay on pain, because as I was prepping for this podcast, I feel like it's appropriate. Now, because you were just mentioning the ability to be able to, when you don't know, go deeper, not, not come up and out and like, I got to fix it and solve it, not run away or not run away, but the ability to be with. And so I was actually, um, I wrote a little excerpt on this and then I invited chat GPT to the conversation and it shared this and I thought it was interesting. So I want to share it with you. It's called the war on pain. We live in the most pain intolerant error in human history, not because we feel more of it, but because we have lost the capacity to be with it. Every ache has a product. Every sadness has a prescription. Every discomfort has a distraction. We have engineered a world where relief is immediate and reflection is optional, but pain does not disappear when numbed. It relocates. It moves into the body as tension, into the mind as anxiety, into relationships as reactivity. Into ambition, as overdrive, we have mistaken the removal of sensation for the resolution of suffering pain at its core is not a flaw in the system. It's feedback. It's the nervous system asking for safety, the body asking for balance, the heart asking to be felt yet. The modern reflex is speed, move on, level up, stay positive, stay productive. Stillness feels dangerous because stillness reveals and what it reveals is often grief. Exhaustion, loneliness, the quiet costs of a life lived inside of performance. The tragedy is not that we experience pain. The tragedy is that we experience it alone and in silence, hiding behind competence. The way forward is not greater escape. It is greater capacity. Capacity to sit with discomfort without collapsing. Capacity to feel without dramatizing. Capacity to listen before fixing. Pain that is resisted becomes suffering. Pain that is met becomes information. And in a world addicted to comfort, the courage to stay present with what hurts may be the most radical form of strength. As children, do we all remember? Do we all remember being able to be with our emotion that we were feeling? If we were sad, did our parents allow us to feel sad and sit with us? Not telling us it's good or bad to be sad or try and shift our emotion to something better. Can we just feel sad? Allowing the nervous system to actually move through that. Like an emotion is something that's in motion. It comes through us and it leads. But when we're not allowed to feel our emotions or we've got to brush them under the rug, they just keep coming back around and around and around until they're deeper ingrained with us because we didn't have an opportunity to let them go. So I could work and share this work with 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds. That are having hip and knee and ankle and back and shoulder surgeries. There's so many. There's millions of them every year. But how can we also support the youngest generation in being proactive? And why I worked in elementary, middle and high schools was I wanted to work in preventative healthcare measures rather than trying to heal the people that were already hurting. And now I just want to support every soul that I can. There is out there. But for kids listening, for college kids, for parents, grandparents, whether you're five or 105 years old, how can we feel and stay with the emotions we're feeling and staying in sensation within our body, noting where that is, experiencing it, so that our body can actually heal it and let it go. Rather than avoiding, putting it under the rug and building up the pain, discomfort, tension and suffering that is an expression of that. What I'm hearing you say and what's just continuously emerging through in this podcast that feels like a central theme is that the only way to know what's there is to listen. That's it. And it's like to reference a guy I follow online. He says often at the end of his content, he says, it's simple, but it's not easy. But it sounds like the central theme in all of it is the only way to know what's there is to listen. here is to listen and the inability to do so is what is the cause or the creation and the perpetuation of a society that lives inside of this almost what feels like an eternal level of suffering because we aren't listening it doesn't it doesn't have to be that way one of the questions that i was debating asking you at the beginning of the show and i didn't and it sounds like it's revealing itself but i want to get your perspective on it is what is the greatest disease in the world today and what seems like it's becoming evident to me is that it's the inability to listen and but i want to hear your answer to that question so i'm going to ask you what do you believe is the greatest disease in the world today when i when i hear disease i i i hear that pause in the middle of the word like dis ease like dis ease in the body the body isn't operating in a way that it would like to be if we're holding some tension in one place or another that can be pushing up against an organ a nerve another muscle if something's tight something's weak and so when i hear dis ease i hear anatomy and physiology i hear the body's structure and the body's function isn't in balance we have like homeostasis where we want our bodies always fluctuating in like body temperature curves blood sugar levels insulin um secretion to balance those things out allostasis like the body's way that it really wants to be in harmony across all of its systems endocrine hormonal system digestive system circulatory system so when i feel feeling into dis ease it's across every system within the body it's not just limited to one system that's under disease if my dad's been diagnosed with um esophageal and stomach cancer that is not limited to his esophagus and his stomach right the disease is throughout his body in different ways his digestive system is affected he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and skin cancer before like 10 years ago and he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer and skin cancer before like 10 years ago and he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer and skin cancer before like 10 years ago and he's been and um that disease is throughout every system of the body and if you could root that all the way back to your dad for example to what has led to the manifestation of the actual disease inside of his body the illness and him being now at the place in which he is he's reached his last legs if you were to root that all the way back to the root because you talk about getting to root cause do you believe that there are one or a series of root causes that stem across humanity that are although the way they manifest inside of the body is different where they come from is the same i believe it all roots back to stress our perceived stresses like our primal instincts of survival and safety so as you're explaining and talking about um tuning in and listening our sensory system you know adds sight we're perceiving in our environment by looking around by hearing by smelling by tasting by touching and if our sensory system is perceiving a threat in some way a bully at school not getting good enough grades for your parents not winning in the soccer match and if our sensory system is perceiving a threat in some way a bully at school um maybe it's the foods we eat that's creating stress and tension in our body lack of sleep exhaustion these stressors looking at where we can be getting in our own way how we perceive our environment is our reality so when we're operating in a state of survival our body's systems are operating under stress and so how that shows up is a state of survival and so how that shows up is a state of survival 10 years 20 years decades later my father's 78 years old the environment and reality in which he's perceived his life and operated through his life has got to this place at the end where i'm not saying this is my dad's fault that he's in this way and now we race to the doctors to try and cure us from these things but they don't have any answers there's nothing they can do to cure us from these things but they don't have any answers they can do except for making more comfortable and that breaks my heart that my parents believe so much in western medicine to heal us when we need them but then when they need them the most there's nothing they can do it's like a broken promise so i really believe there's amazing doctors and nurses out there that genuinely care my dad's given so much praise to all of the caregivers and the people the men and women that have been caring for him because of their love because have how they've shown up for him but they can't heal him yeah no they cannot heal him i really believe my father can heal himself even at this stage does he i think he's given up i think he's letting go i think he's saying this is it this is my end and how does that feel for you i just love him dearly i love my mom dearly and how she's shown up for my father in this time and it's really hard it's been a really hard journey going back to england and wanting to support in so many ways but also wanting to honor how they want me to show up for them that must be so hard when you you can see that how they want you to show up is not contributing to him getting back to full health and in fact it's actually contributing to the inevitable leading to his death well what i noticed was after the prostate and skin cancer and things being okay for several years then there was a bout of radiation therapy last year and ever since then he had this feeling deep within his kind of chest which now we know led to kind of like the esophageal and stomach cancer so the doctors are telling him they healed him from prostate cancer but now he has this he's in this state that's way worse and i'm really confused by that how we can say we healed something but now you know 12 months later they're giving him you know months to live with something they cannot help or cure and thinking this thing just miraculously grew there and it's a lottery system and this just happened to my dad i don't believe that my dad would laugh and joke about his belly being in a hospital and being in a hospital and investment like that cost him a lot of money he ate a lot of food in his life and i'm like of course there's this place where he's put so much stress on a system that now it's not functioning for him but for me to have this conversation with my parents would be really hard it's the next generation removed from looking at our environment and the state in which we're operating as a way that can either heal us or lead to disease rather than you know trust your doctor yeah and i'm not shit on western medicine i think that's really good at you know if we have a broken bone and certain things are really good i have family our friends that are practitioners in so many different avenues yeah and they're doing unbelievable things and supporting so many yeah i'm talking about the roots of the systems that we live in yeah in this modern world yeah yeah where some of these diseases don't exist in very few people left that live in that grew up in nature yeah that heart disease isn't a thing and um you know back pain isn't a thing because they grew up squatting and climbing and running and working barefoot in the ground but we don't live like that yeah we grow up developing our body in school chairs and vehicles and in front of tvs and of course our and then medicating how this is the pain that we yeah have inevitably the roots of our body are out of balance yeah and then later on it's showing up in in different but similar ways yeah i have so much sadness for how many families um are suffering around the country and around the world like how many people are looking after their parents and their kids and themselves surviving having to go to work to have a house to have a job to have income and i don't know a family that doesn't have someone really struggling really suffering you know we're living longer than ever but what the quality of life versus the quantity of life and um again how are we getting in our own way what are we willing to change can't expect anything to change if i'm not if i'm not willing to change anything yeah so i'm definitely i know within myself i'm willing to look at everything if someone points to something and say hey stewart you were loud here or i felt reactive or i felt offended i'm like i want to learn from that i'm willing to look at that and say hey please tell me more i want to come i want to drop my perspective i want to come all the way around to your side yeah and say please show me what you're looking at here yeah i really want to listen yeah i really want to learn and grow and um from that place where i can see somebody else's perspective and learn from them i'm not fighting with them i'm not resisting them we can set some clear boundaries but that clear boundary is an invitation to be deeper connected not to push anybody away yeah and uh when we're talking about being with self and practicing this within self i think one of the best practices i did for myself i felt within me for years before i actually did it was wake up in the morning go to the bathroom typically i need to do that and then get straight to the floor lay down with my legs up or feet flat on the floor my head gently supported by a folded blanket or pillow and be with myself feel my breath tap into my senses notice what i can see hear taste touch and be with myself before i open my phone or communicate with somebody else or before i put coffee caffeine food in my systems to actually tune into how my body's feeling for the first several minutes 10 minutes of the day and that's where this practice begins is tuning deeper into myself yeah and then how i show up through the day for myself and for others completely changed there's even hearing you say that it reminds me of something that i've been doing for a long time something i saw that i want to try and find quickly and read to you about sitting with your feelings this was a post in in 2023 and it was so it made me laugh and it made me be like that's so fucking true and so much so that it was almost three years ago and i've still remembered it and so much so that i remember the exact guy who shared it it's the heart guy kevin crenshaw his name is and it says that's great you do breath work and yoga and meditation and plant medicine and have a coach and do ice baths but have you ever just fully felt your feelings and i just thought that was so powerful in a society that is constantly wanting to look for remedies but the subtle energy that lives behind those remedies is that i want to escape what's actually here and as a result the attempt to escape never we don't we don't get through and i can just resonate with that so much if i was to give a personal and vulnerable share i feel like the daily challenge for me is every morning i wake up and i feel like everything i do in the morning is an attempt to get out of myself get away from it get beyond it and it all transcends and dissolves the moment that i stop and i realize that every morning that's happened some point between 10 and 11 a.m when i've decided what the fuck i've done a run i've done breath work i've meditated i have journaled i've gone and gotten a coffee i have done a client session what the fuck and it's like oh oh what's actually being asked of you is to be present with yourself to bring a little bit of compassion to yourself to listen because you spent the entirety of your meditation session not actually listening or hearing trying to get away from trying to visualize this future so that get beyond the present experience that you're having right now and it's something i haven't entirely figured out because i could i'm going to say this now and i recognize that tomorrow i'm going to wake up and i'll probably do the same thing you know but i just think it's um it's such a such a a like the only morning routine we need is to wake up and listen the only evening routine we need is to listen the only practice we need to come back to ourself is to listen and everything that isn't done from the perspective of coming into a deeper sense of listening to ourself is an attempt to escape and that's why it doesn't work if you're not walking to listen if you're not meditating to listen if you're not breathing to listen if you're not in the gym to listen the only thing you could possibly be doing is using those things as a tool to get over beyond or away from yourself and the energy of that is is um yeah it's it's basically saying that i don't have the capacity to be with now you know so i don't know where i'm going with that but um yeah the greater theme that seems like it's coming through today is the ability to be able to be with oneself to hear to listen and then not to judge you know to be curious about so i want to close this out here shortly but i want to finish with you are 42 years old 44 44 years old not the age really even matters at all because you're a child at heart um um what do you wish 27 year old knew 27 year old knew i'll ask that again what do you wish 27 year old you knew why'd you pick 27 because i'm 27 the practice that i've been experiencing and going deeper within myself this last five years now from about 39 years old as you're sharing about listening and going deeper into self to listen to your body and support your body i wish that i had the experience or access to these practices before i had back surgery to bring my body into deeper balance and integrity so we're talking about listening and one thing is to slow down listen to your body that's one thing but listen to your body through a series of unwinding movements and rebuilding on these three planes of motion at every major joint because that's what helped bring my body into deeper balance and integrity and i know within me i wouldn't have needed back surgery at 30 years old if i had these practices at 27. and it's funny you say 27 because that's when i went i would go back to that's the age you go back to this work is what i wish i knew i had when i was 27 and that's the age that i you know three years before back surgery i mean i could rewind it further and wish that i had this kind of work this practice during middle school and high school to be a better athlete or to listen better to either my teachers or my parents or be less reactive because i think i would have that energetic would have also taught my parents something too you know to have that place within me where nobody else can rattle me because i have me nobody else's reactions or emotions can actually rock my boat but the thing is they do there's some loud things that happen in my life that i can't out there can i ask if at 27 you would have had the capacity to if you if at 27 you would have had these practices which would have afforded you the capacity to listen what do you think you'd have heard well that was the time in my life when i couldn't walk for about six or seven months and i felt like a dagger was stabbed into stabbed into my right glute and i had like radiating sciatic nerve pain all the way down my right leg and my whole right leg was atrophying getting smaller i had to drag my own hamstring and quad to like walk i had to army crawl to the bathroom and i played like you know multiple high school and college sports and so what i wanted at 27 years old was really to be able to be free in my body and it was the opposite i didn't feel free i was in so much pain and tension and stress because of it that it perpetuated the pain and the tension and i couldn't get out of it and the western medical world was pointing at cortisone epidurals lidocaine injections, medications like painkillers. And I didn't want any of that. All I dreamed of was putting my body into deeper balance to unwind the tension in my hip flexors, to train my inner thighs to be as strong and supportive as my outer thighs, to bring my glutes back underneath of me where my pelvic tilt was more at a neutral level. So everything then was supporting my back, which was clearly working too hard and saying, fuck you. All I wanted and wish was for that to be available. And now I get to share that with the world. That's so beautiful. And now you said 43. Yeah, 44. 44. Now at 44, when most people are wearing knee braces and can barely walk and have given up on any form of sport or athletic endeavor, you're doing what? Just help me understand what are you doing, able to do on a daily basis as a result of what? The balance and stability that you've been able and health you've been able to create inside of your system. Yeah. What are you able to do? Well, after, you know, I probably do a 20 minute little floor session in the morning as a minimum. Sometimes that takes me into a workout and a bit of a gym just to keep progressing and keep locking in that deeper balance by doing, you know, some deep ranges of motion at every major joint using all three planes, which I can explain more when we're actually in communication about this work. But yeah, I surf most weeks, multiple days if the swell's good, but I also listen and don't over surf like I used to. I don't need to go for three hours. I can go for 90 minutes and maybe surf twice in a day. I can play competitive soccer. I can run for miles, hike for miles. Go to a variety of different classes. And yeah, I feel, I feel I am in deeper balance within my athletic body now more so than when I was 21 years old. Yeah. And I've even seen photos of you at 25, 26. And I'm sure people looking at this are like, when I, when you say 44, everyone that I, one of the first questions that I ask people when they meet you is how old do you think he is? Yeah. Just for a fun game. Just for a fun game. Cause no one thinks you're in your forties. And, but you looked older at 25 than you do at 44. Yeah. I was exhausted. I was in pain. Yeah. I had an old passport photo, you know, that lasts for 10 years. And I'm like, I don't recognize that person. Yeah. I wasn't free. Yeah. I was imprisoned in my own suffering. Yeah. Yeah. In your body and in your mind and in your heart. And I feel the same. I'm a man, right? So I'm just, I told everybody everything's okay. I told my family I'll be okay. I told everyone like, was I telling myself I was going to be okay? Like underneath it all, I was suffering. I was in so much pain. I was in fear of being handicapped. That was like my worst case scenario that I played over and over again. And I was really then concerned that I was manifesting my own destiny to be handicapped. And I'm like, I'm not playing the victim here. When the doctor told me a year after back surgery, when I was 31 years old, that he'd probably see me in 10 years for that. I was like, that's your advice. He was like, well, this is a year after surgery. Now this is about as good as you're going to feel. I said, fuck that. Fuck you. And I had to look at different perspectives. I read Michael Pollan's book, An Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a deep dive into everything that I put in my mouth as food and where it's coming from. And I was like, I'm not coming from. And little by little, I started changing my diet, really looking deeper into the patterns in which I was moving around my day and how I was working, the stress I was carrying, the relationships I was in. And I was still suffering. I felt like I was doing everything I could. And I moved to San Diego and I was going to acupuncture and chiropractic work and massages every two weeks. And yet I was still suffering. And then when I started these practices at now 37, 38 years old, where I started looking at where I was getting in my own way, where I could bring my body into deeper balance and integrity, little bit by little bit, I'm not promising to heal anybody's pain. I'm not promising to solve anybody's issues. I can't do that. But I can give you a map and guide you through practices with care and support. And I'm not promising to heal anybody's pain. I'm not and Chuck and my mentors for what is possible and what is possible doesn't have a ceiling and it doesn't have an expiration date. The days I don't do practices, just the latest example I'll share before we wrap up is I'm creating a program for the working professional traveler, whether you're an athlete that plays half of your sporting events at home or away, whether you're somebody that long journeys, those people know exactly how their bodies are feeling sitting down for six or seven hours and their glutes go to sleep on an airplane. And then you have to get up and carry 30, 40, 50 pounds of luggage around with you. Like we all feel that. And I avoided that because I knew I was already in pain before the flight. So I didn't go and I didn't see my family for years. But, um, what is possible is something that you got to feel and experience. I can't tell you what the end result is going to be because your journey in your experiment is within yourself. Are you willing to try and look at a different way other than a quick fix of medication and surgery? How do you want to heal from your roots? I just want to fix symptoms. And are you willing to look at where you get in your own way? This practice isn't for everybody. And there's a lot of people going to like yoga, Pilates, acupuncture, chiropractors, people already seeking this work. And I really believe this work supports all of those practices because this becomes the thing that you do for yourself rather than outsourcing your health to others. I want to sort of touch on that as the final question, you said outsourcing your health to others. You've also come up in the past few minutes, mentioned the Western medical system and throughout this conversation, you've also come up in the past few minutes, mentioned the Western on a variety of occasions, mentioned how we are our own healers. And I'm curious, and maybe this is leading you, and I don't want to lead the witness in any way, but if you were to remove everything you've ever shared with anyone from the face of the earth, everything you ever might have posted on any public forum, and you had 60 seconds to leave the world with something that they could take with them, and it would be maybe a piece of code that you could download into every human on this planet, what would that code be? I think that as we've been showing from the very beginning, that code, that wisdom that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given. I think that as we've been showing from the very beginning, that code, that we've been given, that we've been given, that we've been given. flows from there. So these platforms are out there and they're available and we'll just make them available for people to click through and find in your show notes. Let's do a champion. Thanks Billy. Thanks mate. Thanks for having me. Grateful to have you. I'll see you next time. Thank you.