Stephan Spencer's Blog

By now it’s safe to say that biohacking has gone mainstream. After years of experimentation combining modern science and ancient wisdom many biohackers are starting to reap benefits most people never thought possible.

Through new approaches to diet, sleep, medicine, psychology, fitness, and more, these mavericks have unlocked the hidden secrets of the body, and thankfully, many are more than willing to share their discoveries.

If you’ve ever wondered if you could live beyond the age of 100, enhance your IQ and memory, or just boost your energy and increase your productivity, these 7 podcasts will give you the answers you’re seeking and much more.

1. Life Stylist

You might think that a podcast hosted by an ex-Hollywood fashion stylist sounds a little shallow. Let me tell you that Luke Storey’s Life Stylist podcast is anything but! Luke dives deep into spirituality, psychology, technology, and diet on a quest to redesign his life and ascend to the highest levels of human potential.

Luke is not the kind of guy to shy away from a challenge. His life is a wild ride and he often pushes himself to the limit and takes shocking risks, like injecting poisonous Amazonian frog venom or spending weeks in an isolation chamber. Luckily for those who are slightly less adventurous, everything he learns from these crazy experiences is documented right here on his amazing podcast.

2. Ben Greenfield

Where do you go after you’ve been voted the number one personal trainer in the US, written a bestselling book, and founded one of the world’s first fitness podcasts?

Biohacking of course!

After an already impressive career, Ben Greenfield has become one of the leading voices in the biohacking movement. While his podcast still covers a lot of health and fitness tips, he has expanded to include interviews with experts on everything from boosting human longevity to the dangers of magic mushrooms.

3. The Human Upgrade

You may know Dave Asprey from his bestselling book, The Bulletproof Diet, or as the creator of Bulletproof Coffee. Dave’s podcast is about much more than food however, and he has now become one of the best-known figures in the biohacking movement due to his pioneering research and groundbreaking ideas.

The Human Upgrade is a veritable goldmine of information on everything from optimizing your sleep routine to boosting your IQ, and I’d recommend it to anyone who truly wants to fulfil their potential and live their best life!

4. Sex with Emily

What’s the point of biohacking if you can’t hack your pleasure? Emily Morse has been running her Sex with Emily podcast for over a decade and a half and helped millions of people achieve more satisfying sex lives. Along the way she’s explored just about every kink and pleasure hack you could think of, from guaranteed ways to achieve multiple orgasms to the pros and cons of “manscaping”.

Of course, a healthy and creative sex life needs to be based on a foundation of strong relationships and self-love, and Emily also provides valuable insight on how to create a deeper and more honest connection with those you love while exploring your erotic desires.

5. Orion’s World

If you’re looking to take your life from simply “Okay” or even “good” to truly stellar, then Orion’s World (formerly Stellar Life podcast) is for you! Each week she explores topics such as self-development, women’s empowerment, and biohacking, that give you the keys to embracing your destiny and building your dream life.

It’s an inspirational and mind-expanding journey that not only asks some of life’s biggest questions, but offers up solutions and expertise from others who have confronted and overcome major challenges. Recent guests have included biohackers Dave Asprey and Luke Storey.

6. Get Yourself Optimized

Yes, I’m putting a plug in for my very own podcast, Get Yourself Optimized! Years ago I made the decision to embrace my inner geek and transform my life. Over the years, I worked with nutritionists, stylists, life coaches, and business coaches, who guided me as I devoted myself to self-improvement. The results speak for themselves, and I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.

I started the Get Yourself Optimized in order to share some of the lessons I’ve learned, and to help others stage their own personal transformation and achieve their life goals. Along with episodes on personal growth and financial success, you can also find plenty of interviews on topics such as hacking your brain, boosting longevity, and beating the ageing process.

7. Tim Ferriss

If you haven’t read Tim Ferriss’ classic book, Four Hour Work Week, then I’d recommend that you grab a copy right now! Apart from being a best-selling author, Tim is also one of the world’s best-known angel investors, and a self-proclaimed “human guinea pig.”

His podcast is a true source of inspiration for the curious mind (he has even been called the “Oprah of audio”), and it covers everything from enhancing your mental performance to the pros and cons of ayahuasca for treating addiction. As you might expect, Tim attracts some unbelievable top-tier guests from business, the arts, science and medicine, and beyond.

Photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The post 7 Biohacking Podcasts That Will Change Your Life in 2026 appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

Ever felt like you’re only scratching the surface of what ChatGPT can do? You’re not alone. While most people settle for basic responses, power users have discovered how to unlock its hidden potential and transform their workflows in the process.

On the surface, GPT-5 might seem like just another AI upgrade — a slightly smarter version of its predecessor. But here’s the thing: it’s fundamentally different in how it processes and responds to our queries. 

While many users are still typing simple prompts and getting generic answers, those who understand how to truly converse with GPT-5 are unlocking its real power.

As Peter Swain, an O.G. in the digital space, notes, “ChatGPT feels slow – when I say slow, I mean it can do what you can in eight hours in ten seconds, not two.“ This “slowness” isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. It’s the AI taking time to process more thoroughly and to deliver more nuanced responses. But tapping into this power requires speaking to it with the structure and clarity it needs.

Let me show you how to transform your interactions with GPT-5 from simple Q&A sessions into meaningful, productive conversations that can revolutionize how you work with AI.

The Art of the Setup

Think of ChatGPT like a brilliant but literal-minded colleague who needs clear context before diving into any task. To get the best results, you must master what Peter Swain calls “tops and tails.”

Define ChatGPT’s Role

The first step in crafting a productive conversation is telling ChatGPT who you want it to be. Setting a clear identity helps it narrow down its vast knowledge base and respond more accurately. For example, instead of simply asking a generic question, try first assigning a role:

“You are a senior financial analyst with 20 years of experience specializing in small business investments.”

This directive transforms ChatGPT from a generalist into a specialist, giving it the clarity it needs to provide relevant and insightful responses.

Tailor for Your Audience

Once you’ve defined ChatGPT’s role, the next step is specifying the intended audience. This ensures that its responses are framed in a way that resonates with the people you’re addressing. For instance:

“This explanation is for small business owners who are new to investing.”

By tailoring its output to a specific audience, ChatGPT can adjust its tone, language, and level of detail, ensuring that the response hits the mark.

“Tops and Tails” in Action

Here’s how these elements come together:

Prompt Example: “You are a marketing strategist with 15 years of experience in digital campaigns. Your task is to create a three-paragraph explanation for small business owners who are struggling to increase website traffic. Use simple, actionable advice and avoid technical jargon.”

Result: ChatGPT generates an answer that reflects the expertise of a seasoned marketer while aligning perfectly with the audience’s needs. It avoids overly complex language and delivers actionable insights tailored to small business owners.

By taking a few extra seconds to set up your conversation with “tops and tails,” you’ll save time and achieve results that are not only more accurate but also more impactful. This small upfront effort transforms your interaction with ChatGPT from a basic Q&A session into a productive, nuanced exchange.

Crafting Better ConversationsStart with Quality Questions

Once you’ve set the stage with proper context, it’s time to master the art of the conversation itself. 

The quality of GPT-5’s responses directly mirrors the quality of your questions. Bruce Clay notes, AI is a tool, not a solution, and like any sophisticated tool, its effectiveness depends entirely on how you use it. The more thoughtful and precise your questions, the more valuable your results will be.

Teach It Your Voice

One of the most powerful techniques is feeding ChatGPT examples of your own writing style. Start by telling it, “The following is a sample of my writing style. Please use this to mimic my voice in your responses.” This simple step can transform generic AI-generated text into content that sounds authentically like you. 

When done correctly, even close colleagues can’t tell the difference between AI-generated content and your own writing.

Be Specific with Requirements

Being specific with your requirements isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. Instead of asking “Write me a marketing email,” try “Write a marketing email about our new project management software, emphasizing its automation features. The email should be no longer than three paragraphs and include a clear call to action.” 

The more specific you are, the more targeted and useful the response will be.

Build a Real Conversation

Perhaps most importantly, treat your interaction with GPT-5 as a genuine conversation rather than a series of disconnected queries. Build on previous responses by referencing them:

“Based on the marketing email you just wrote, can you create three social media posts that highlight the same key features?”

This approach helps maintain consistency and allows the AI to leverage context from your entire conversation, not just your latest prompt.

Advanced Techniques for Better ResultsVerify Every Response

Even with perfect prompting, AI isn’t infallible. One powerful technique shared by Peter Swain is the trust rating system. After getting any factual response, simply ask: “On a scale of 1-10, how much do you trust the answer you just gave me?” ChatGPT will often surprise you with its honesty, sometimes rating its own responses as low as 2 or 3 out of 10 when it’s uncertain about information. 

With GPT-5’s improved reasoning, these trust ratings tend to be higher on average, but uncertainty is still worth checking.

Course-Correct in Real Time

When responses go off track (and they will), don’t start over; simply redirect.

For example, if you’re discussing a marketing strategy for your SaaS product and ChatGPT starts delving into general software development practices, you might say: “Let’s focus specifically on customer acquisition strategies and ignore the technical development aspects for now.” This keeps your conversation focused while preserving the valuable context built up in your discussion.

Another effective redirection technique is to acknowledge the tangent but firmly guide the conversation back: “The point about software architecture is interesting, but let’s return to our core discussion about marketing tactics for reaching enterprise clients.” By maintaining this conversational flow while gently correcting course, you’ll get more focused, relevant responses without losing the benefits of the context you’ve built.

Use Strategic Follow-ups

Remember that GPT-5 excels at building upon previous responses. When you get a good answer, use follow-up prompts to expand or refine it. For example, if you get a solid marketing strategy, you might ask: “Can you now break this down into specific, actionable steps?” or “What potential challenges should I watch out for when implementing this strategy?”

Go Pro!

No, OpenAI is not cutting me in on their profits! But I have to say, the difference between the free version of ChatGPT and the pro version is night and day. You get faster responses, deeper reasoning, and access to GPT‑5’s most powerful features like larger context windows, multimodal inputs, and custom GPT creation.

How Custom GPTs Work 

A Custom GPT is simply a tailored version of ChatGPT, designed to handle specific tasks with precision. By training it on your own data and giving it clear instructions, you create an AI assistant that speaks your language, answers your customers’ questions, or generates content exactly the way you need. 

Unlike the base model, a Custom GPT keeps your context, adapts to your style, and can integrate with your workflows, making it far more powerful for business and personal use.

From Master Prompt to System Prompt

Here’s a powerful trick I picked up from Dan Martell: once you’ve refined ChatGPT’s output to exactly what you want, request it to: “Please write the system prompt that would have generated this output.”

This simple step saves you hours of trial and error by reverse‑engineering the perfect instructions. You can then reuse that system prompt in future sessions, or even embed it in a Custom GPT for consistent, high‑quality results every time.

Looking Ahead

The art of conversing with GPT-5 represents a significant shift in how we interact with AI. While earlier versions encouraged rapid-fire prompting, the current version rewards those who take the time to frame their queries thoughtfully and build context over time. 

Success comes not from treating ChatGPT as a magic answer machine, but from approaching it as a sophisticated collaboration tool that requires skill and understanding to use effectively.

GPT-5 isn’t just another iteration; it’s a fundamentally different way of interacting with AI. The principles we’ve discussed — thoughtful setup, clear context, and strategic verification — remain essential for getting the most out of these increasingly powerful conversations.

The post How to Have a Conversation with ChatGPT And Actually Get Results Worth Using appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

In 2024, Google fundamentally changed how we search. Their AI Overviews now sit at the top of search results, essentially taking the old featured snippets concept and supercharging it with AI – or as Google puts it, providing “helpful summaries” of web content. 

But here’s the thing: these aren’t just summaries. They’re AI-generated interpretations that digest and regurgitate content from multiple sources, serving up pre-packaged answers that users are expected to trust implicitly. This isn’t just another search feature – it’s a fundamental shift that opens up a concerning trust gap.

While Google touts this as a search enhancement, the reality is more troubling: it’s a feature that could gradually erode our ability to think critically about information. There’s no opt-out button – no simple way to return to the traditional search experience that encouraged us to evaluate and compare multiple sources. 

Instead, we’re being nudged toward accepting a single, AI-generated “truth” – one that, as we’ve already seen, can sometimes have AI recommend adding “moon dust” to your coffee for an energy boost and eating a rock a day to maintain good health. 

But don’t worry. If you’re skeptical about accepting their answers at face value, I’m going to show you exactly how to fact-check these AI Overviews. Let me break it down for you.

The 3 Main Problems with AI OverviewsThe Hallucination Problem 

When it comes to AI, hallucinations aren’t just some minor glitch – they’re built into the very nature of how these systems work. While Google claims they’re “doing their best” to minimize these errors, they can’t eliminate them entirely. In fact, just recently, Liz Reid, the head of Google’s search business, acknowledged in a blog post that “some odd, inaccurate or unhelpful AI Overviews certainly did show up.”

The core issue? These AI systems don’t actually know what’s true – they only know what’s popular online. When AI Overviews confidently declare that astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care, it’s not just making things up – it’s failing to distinguish between factual information and popular content like satire or fiction.

The Black Box Problem 

The second glaring issue is that Google’s AI Overviews are essentially a black box – we can’t see how they arrive at their conclusions or which parts of which sources they’re drawing from. While Google provides links to source material, there’s no transparency about how the AI synthesizes and interprets this information. 

This lack of transparency makes it impossible to fully trust the results, especially when the stakes are high. Companies like Google are incentivized to maintain this opacity to protect their competitive advantage and intellectual property, but this creates a fundamental trust problem: how can users verify information when they can’t understand how it was generated, or what biases might be embedded in the process?

The Critical Thinking Problem 

Perhaps most concerning is how AI Overviews fundamentally change the way we process information. 

Traditional search results present us with multiple viewpoints and sources, requiring us to evaluate, compare, and make informed decisions. This process of assessment and critical thinking is crucial to how we understand complex topics. But AI Overviews short-circuit this process by serving up a single, pre-digested answer that users are encouraged to accept without question.

This evolution in how we consume information brings new considerations: As we embrace AI-powered search, we must be mindful to maintain our ability to think critically and evaluate sources independently. The future of effective information gathering will depend on finding the right balance between AI’s convenience and human discernment.

How to Fact-Check AI Overviews

The good news is that while you can’t easily turn off AI Overviews, you can learn to fact-check them effectively. Here are the essential steps:

Cross-Reference Multiple Sources 

Don’t just trust the links Google provides below its AI Overview. Do your own independent search on key claims. Remember that, as I mentioned earlier,  AI systems don’t actually know what’s true – they only know what’s popular online. When AI Overviews make surprising claims, it’s crucial to verify them across multiple authoritative sources.

Watch for Implausible Claims 

As we’ve seen with examples like the widely shared AI overview in which it was suggested one use glue to get cheese to stick to pizza, AI can sometimes generate completely insane content, often drawing from satire or fictional sources without recognizing them as such. If something sounds unusual or surprising–or downright dangerous–that’s your cue to dig deeper.

Verify Numbers and Data 

When AI Overviews present statistics, dates, or quantitative claims, these need special scrutiny. Remember that AI can confidently present numbers that look plausible but are entirely fabricated. Always track down the original source of any statistical claims.

Use AI to Check AI 

Here’s an interesting approach: you can use ChatGPT to fact-check Google’s AI Overviews. Because these AI models are trained on different datasets and use different algorithms, they may catch errors that others miss. 

Try copying the AI Overview content into ChatGPT and asking it to verify specific claims or point out potential inaccuracies. Just remember that ChatGPT can also hallucinate, so use this as one of many verification tools, not your only source of truth.

Use Google’s Web-Only View 

Here’s a practical tip: After your search, click the “More” tab and select “Web” to see traditional search results without the AI Overview. This gives you access to the raw sources, allowing you to evaluate information the old-fashioned way – by comparing multiple viewpoints and sources.

The key is to treat AI Overviews as a starting point for research, not as the final word. By maintaining healthy skepticism and following these verification steps, you can benefit from the convenience of AI summaries while avoiding their potential pitfalls.

Looking Ahead

As AI Overviews roll out to over a billion users worldwide, we’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how people interact with information online. This isn’t just about convenience – it’s about the future of critical thinking and information literacy.

While AI technology continues to advance at an impressive pace, the relationship between human intelligence and artificial intelligence is evolving into a delicate balance. As we navigate this new era of search, maintaining healthy skepticism isn’t just good practice – it’s essential for preserving our ability to think independently and evaluate information critically. 

The future of search may be AI-powered, but it still needs human wisdom to be truly useful.

The post Is Google’s AI Telling the Truth? Here’s How to Fact-Check It appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

Israel, England, Denmark, Austria, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Egypt, Romania, the Philippines, and Pakistan. Those are the nations I’ve worked or managed a remote team from in recent years. 

No, I’m not some multinational executive. I’m an entrepreneur who had the right friends, at the right time, and a younger person’s zeal for adventure.

My wanderlust came calling in the mid-’90s, when most of my friends were headed in precisely the opposite direction. As they searched for Silicon Valley talent, I transplanted myself, my family, and my digital agency, Netconcepts, to Auckland, New Zealand for nearly a decade.

More than one friend predicted the move would destroy my company. Netconcepts lost more than a few of its clients, and the first few months were achingly uncertain. But the overhead savings added up, and by the time I moved back to the U.S. in 2007, Netconcepts had cracked $6 million in revenue and was expanding faster than ever.

Although I sold the company in 2010, I gained from it something more important than money: I found out that, with planning and self-care, the road is a fine place from which to run a business.

Question Connectivity

The road is a more connected place than it was in the ‘90s or even 2010. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll never find yourself scrounging for Wi-Fi in an unfamiliar city.

More than electricity, a computer, a hotel room, or anything else you might need to run your company from another country, internet access is the great unknown. Don’t book a flight without knowing its Wi-Fi availability, and don’t dream of showing up at the airport without understanding your destination country’s connectivity picture.

Remember, too, that the internet isn’t free and open in many parts of the world. China, for example, censors Google, Facebook, Instagram, and thousands more sites that host content the one-party state deems dangerous. Even in Europe, 31 countries restrict internet access to some degree. Although you can use a virtual private network to bypass certain content blocks, VPNs are restricted in many countries.

Ask for Help From Afar

No matter how well thought out your Wi-Fi plan is, the truth is that you’re sometimes going to have to do without. What’ll you do when a crucial email comes through and you’re miles from the nearest internet connection?

If you’ve thought ahead, you’ll have an assistant handling it. When I travel, I ask my virtual assistant to review my emails and place urgent ones in an “action” folder. That way, when I’m back online, I can tackle the important ones without worrying about “FYI” conversations.

If you’re an executive who can delegate those tasks to your team, do it. If you’re a solopreneur or consultant, trust me that an assistant is worth the money. Avoid major marketplaces like Upwork, where you can be dropped by a moment’s notice for a client who pays slightly more. Instead, advertise in places like onlinejobs.ph, which is based in the Philippines, or even Craigslist. Vetting candidates on smaller sites can take more time, but in my experience, you’re also more likely to find quality candidates.

Work When You Can

Your assistant may be able to water your plants and watch your inbox, but your job is still up to you. Getting it done while on the road is all about adapting to your situation.

Flight delayed? Load up your laptop and review a proposal. In-flight Wi-Fi is worthless? Dive into that 50-page report you’ve been putting off all week. Have a long train ride with a space to yourself? Squeeze in some “deep work,” which productivity expert Cal Newport says must be “performed in a state of distraction-free concentration.”

As long as you’re prepared, travel provides a surprising number of deep-work opportunities. I download my emails using the Mac Mail app and work through tough ones while offline, for instance. Chrome users will find a similar feature in Gmail. You might be surprised at how much you get done without the “candy shop” distractions of social media.

Eat Well and Hydrate

If you’re the type to grab a burger and a beer at the airport lounge while waiting for a flight, be warned that it will catch up to you. A study conducted by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that business travelers who spend 14 or more nights away from home each month are more likely to be obese, anxious, depressed, alcohol-dependent, physically inactive, and sleep-deprived. The more study participants traveled, the more likely they were to present those conditions. 

The devil-may-care diet is a recipe for irritability, lack of energy, and poor sleep — which, combined with jet lag and the stresses of a new place, can kill your productivity. The good news? A little planning is all it takes to beat bad habits.

Before you leave, research local food options, particularly supermarkets and street markets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Pack snacks for flights and be sure to fill up your water bottle before hopping on the plane. Avoid alcohol and caffeine, which may feel good at the time but will come back to haunt you.

Splurge a Little

If you’ve sworn off coffee and beer, it goes without saying that you’ll need other ways to treat yourself. Why not pick up some helpful gadgets to make your trip less taxing? A neck pillow and set of noise-cancelling headphones do wonders on long flights.

Other tricks, like vacuum bags, may not make you feel better in the moment, but they can prevent stress all the same. Buying a vacuum sealer is cheaper than unexpectedly having to check a bag on an international flight. 

Don’t forget about productivity tools, either, such as battery packs that can help you cross outlet deserts with your smartphone still alive and the Focus@Will music service or the Noizio white noise app that will keep you in a flow state rather than knock you out of one, like most music does.

Can traveling for work be stressful? Of course. Does it have to be a miserable, unproductive, deep-fried slog? Not even. In fact, with planning and a positive outlook, it can bring the adventure back to business.

The post Productivity On the Go: How to Stay Productive and Keep Your Business Running While Traveling appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

In this Episode[01:18]Stephan introduces Kyle Peche, sharing his struggle with chronic fatigue, brain fog, and panic attacks.[07:29]Kyle explains mineral balancing as a foundational healing method for optimizing the body’s biochemistry and energy production.[12:57]Kyle highlights the widespread presence of glyphosate and aluminum toxicity, emphasizing the need for targeted detoxification.[19:54]Kyle explores the impact of environmental toxins on the body’s detoxification pathways and overall health.[22:38]Kyle suggests using both infrared and traditional saunas to support detoxification.[25:15]Kyle identifies common symptoms of leaky gut, such as bloating, food sensitivities, brain fog, joint pain, and inflammation.[29:07]Kyle shares his personal experience with leaky gut, including constipation and limited food tolerance.[33:39]Kyle reflects on the role of spiritual practices in his healing journey.[43:24]Kyle outlines his healing program incorporating mineral balancing, detoxification phases, and education.[47:02]Kyle details how to work with him and the steps to begin his healing program.

Jump to Links and Resources
[su_divider top=”no”]

Kyle, it’s so great to have you on the show.

It’s a great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Let’s start with your story. How did you hit rock bottom in terms of your health, and how did you climb out of it?

As far as I could remember, I had always had a low-level brain fog kind of disassociation. I always felt like I was floating above my body. It’s difficult to describe that just with words, but it’s a very bizarre feeling. Nothing was really real, and yet I was still able to function relatively well. From the outside, I looked completely normal. Everyone thought I was totally fine. I was even an athlete in high school, playing soccer. 

I still always felt like I was not able to hit that next gear in my performance, and I couldn’t really figure out why. Around 18, some emotional trauma really just broke me down. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. My body collapsed seemingly overnight. I fell into really deep chronic fatigue, sleeping 14 hours a day and having the absolute worst panic attacks, anxiety, and brain fog. 

My brain fog was so bad I could not hold a normal conversation with people. I could not recall the last sentence that was just said. They say, “Oh, I lose my train of thought.” But I didn’t have any rails for my train of thought to even go on. It was a really screwed-up situation. I was supposed to be in my prime. I also could only tolerate four foods, and I was sensitive to absolutely everything. 

It sent me down a really obsessive path to figure out why I was feeling this way and what to do to get better. I started where everyone does conventional medicine. I went to loads of specialists. Most of them just gaslit me and told me it was in my own head. Some listened but offered no real remedies, and most just gave me medications to try. Then, I went down the alternative medicine route and found many of the same tendencies and similarities. 

[bctt tweet=”You don’t need an extreme detox protocol to transform your health; it’s about changing your daily habits. ” username=”GetOptimized”]

I’m just trying to blanket it with symptomatic remedies and focusing on the test, not the person. I went in circles with many functional medicine practitioners and naturopaths and then went to Chinese medicine. I tried every kind of diet you could imagine—vegan, carnivore, keto, etc. I was fasting for days at a time. I did one meal a day. I did a full elimination diet. Then, I stopped caring. Then I went back to it. 

It was a real roller coaster. Not to mention, I spent hundreds of thousands on practitioner supplements. I had more supplements than I had freaking food items in my kitchen. It was pretty crazy.

Wow. How many supplements? Over a hundred?

Yeah, easily over a hundred. There was this constant tendency to try something. I think it would help. I’d tell everyone about it, so stoked about it, and then I would just go back to where I was. Then, I tried to address all these things at the same time, but I never really got to the core of my issue. My symptoms just kept getting worse. But eventually, by the grace of God, I hit rock bottom, and my own will kind of ran its course. 

I really just prayed for a solution. I didn’t know what else to do. I was just like, “Hey, send me the right thing. I’m willing to let go of everything I know.” One coincidence led to another. I was on a Zoom call with a couple of healers, and one told me about mineral balancing and detoxification. I’m like, “Wow, I’ve never explored this.” So, I let go of everything I was doing before and fully committed to that. And essentially, within six months, I had my life back.

When you’re fighting to live everyday life, you feel like you’re carrying a huge boulder of toxins. However, it will develop a lot of willpower as well.

Within a year and a half, I was healthier than I was ever in my life, just leaps and bounds. Not just that. I was getting to that point of health where I didn’t feel like I needed to take anything. I felt that natural resilience, not to mention the effect that it has to get all the toxins out of my nervous system. It really just kind of awakened me. I didn’t realize how much depth of feeling there was available to me in my everyday life, communication, music, artistic endeavors, and life itself. I had never really realized how much I could never really feel. That’s the short of it. Several years later, I kind of naturally just started sharing what I was shared with, things that were shared with people who needed it. I eventually became a coach. This is what I do now.

How many years ago was it that you got your life back?

I’d say about three and a half years now.

Pretty fresh.

I’m still diving into everything life has to offer. It feels like I’m making up for lost time, which is great, actually.

So, what exactly is mineral balancing? I’m not familiar with this concept. I know about fulvic and humic minerals. I know they are important. I take a supplement, but other than that, I’m clueless.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Metals like to try to insert themselves in the same places that minerals are, as well as other toxins. [/su_pullquote]

The best way to describe it is you’re essentially trying to optimize the body’s biochemistry and its energy production and giving it what it needs, such that it has all the energy it needs to heal itself. It is not just to heal itself but also to allow you to use that energy as you will in your life. It’s a foundational style of healing where you are rebuilding the body from the ground up. It’s important because of how common mineral deficiencies are. 

It’s a generational issue now. Generations of depleted soil, processed foods, and stressful, unnatural lifestyles activate our stress responses and cause us to use the same minerals already low in people, not to mention the competition in our enzyme binding sites for metals. Metals like to try to insert themselves in the same places that minerals are, as well as other toxins. 

It’s a very compounded issue. It’s one of the core reasons people feel weak, fatigued, and tired—mineral imbalances and deficiencies. Mineral balancing is a really precise way of restoring a person’s mineral levels and bringing minerals that are out of balance into balance. For example, manganese. It could be in the wrong forms and cause toxicity instead of in the right forms, giving the benefits it does to the nervous system and glucose regulation. 

Hair mineral analysis guides this process. It involves examining the minerals in the hair as they deposit over three to four months. Dr. Paul Eck and several other doctors developed this science within their think tank, guided by about five to sixty years of research and millions of hair tests. They generally found that as people became healthier and healthier, they came closer and closer to certain ideal levels and ratios. The whole goal is to push the minerals into those ideal ratios and levels, and people heal themselves. That’s one aspect. That’s one tool in the toolbox that’s very useful.

Who is that doctor that you mentioned?

Dr. Paul Eck is a biochemist by training. He was a great researcher. He loved reading scientific research in all fields, so I would say it’s an expansive field.

Okay, and he’s passed, or is he still around?

He’s passed.

Weren’t you guided at some point earlier when you’re doing all these tests—blood tests, maybe stool tests, gut health, and various types of tests and all this sort of stuff—by a practitioner to do a hair test?

I eventually was. That was my first experience with it.

Okay, so it took you months of trying all those other things before that mineral expert finally told you to do thfat hair test.

[bctt tweet=”When you reduce toxic burden – especially aluminum and mercury – your whole system reboots. You’ll experience deeper emotions, sharper cognition, and a level of energy and aliveness you didn’t even know was possible.” username=”GetOptimized”]

Essentially. After a long journey with many other practitioners, I found the missing piece. The missing piece taught me and tied everything I had learned together. Although I had been exploring detoxification a bit before that, this foundation gave my body the energy and resilience it needed to handle deep detoxification.

You did heavy metal testing before, and you did a chelation protocol. Is that right?

I did try a chelation before that, and it was not fun. It was very bad. It was a nightmare. My interpretation of it is that it redistributes heavy metals into more sensitive areas. I had a worsening of my symptoms that didn’t go away. Little did I know that the way that I was approaching it and being told to approach it was unwise. Medical chelators and even natural chelators should be used instead of focusing on binding and drainage and supporting the body to handle detoxification. 

I really cannot skip steps, and I made those mistakes. I skipped steps in the chelation. I skipped steps trying parasite cleansing right away. These were all things that made me a lot worse. I’ve also seen them make people a lot worse because they skipped steps.

Yeah, I know. There’s a Binder from CellCore . There’s CytoDetox from Dr. Pompa . Dr. Pompa, by the way, was a guest on this podcast a few years ago. It’s crazy how much heavy metals, glyphosate, microplastics, and all this junk is in our tissues. That’s shocking.

There are 87,000 new chemicals in our environment this year, many untested. And yet, people should not get into the thought loop that “everything is toxic; therefore, I shouldn’t care.” There are things to focus on, such as a certain hierarchy of toxins that do the most damage because they actually will shut down our detox pathways, like glyphosate. It’ll shut down cytochrome P450, phase one liver detoxification and block everything. 

It’ll also create a leaky gut, which blocks everything. Mercury is just unbelievably toxic, clogging the kidneys and damaging the enzymes that we need for detoxification. So, take that approach of focusing on the most common ones. Everyone has glyphosate. You can find it in pretty much everyone’s urine. Or aluminum—I’ve found it in every hair test I’ve ever done. Aluminum is high, and literally everyone can see it high in the rain and the snow. It’s a huge issue. 

But when you focus on these instead of getting lost in the details, the flame retardants, or the PCBs and all that, and you’re just trying to live life in a little bubble, I think it’s a lot better to be focused that way because then you give your body the resilience to handle everything.

What do you do to ameliorate the massive amount of glyphosate and aluminum our listener, hopefully not, but probably has in their body?

[su_pullquote]Mercury is just unbelievably toxic, clogging the kidneys and damaging the enzymes that we need for detoxification. [/su_pullquote]

I follow a pretty simple order of operations for people. It changes from person to person, but I generally start by reducing both glyphosate and aluminum and binding and supporting drainage. I do that with different fulvic products. There’s definitely a variance in quality between good and bad fulvic products, like Shilajit, which you may find on Amazon, versus things like CellCore, which has really good carbon technology—really good fulvic products. 

I also like ION Gut Support by Zach Bush. It’s absolutely phenomenal and great for reducing a person’s glyphosate load. I like Matrix Minerals by BioPure. Dr. Klinghardt, an absolute genius in this field, advised and formulated it. I find it really helpful for reducing a glyphosate load.

By the way, what about beam minerals?

I haven’t explored BEAM minerals, but heard good things about it.

Okay. I had Caroline Alan on this podcast , which was a great episode. She co-founded BEAM . The supplement I take daily is their fulvic and humic minerals.

I’ve heard really good things about it. It’s not something I’ve explored personally yet. I’m sure you’ve experienced this. When you reduce your glyphosate load, there is general healing of the microbiome, but also a reduction of the leaky gut and proof of sensitivities, especially towards gluten. Since there is a tight correlation between a person’s glyphosate load and gluten sensitivity, there is actually also an improvement in mental health. 

That’s significant because glyphosate damages the microbes in our gut that help produce the neurotransmitters we need from our gut. So are the aromatic amino acids that are the building blocks for those neurotransmitters. This is Dr. Stephanie Seneff’s research. It’s absolutely fascinating to dive into, but it’s just something I’ve noticed. It’s a great starting point. Now, for aluminum, the remedy really is silica because, in nature, you only really find aluminum in conjunction with silica. 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Glyphosate damages the microbes in our gut that help produce the neurotransmitters we need from our gut. [/su_pullquote]

You don’t really find aluminum by itself. It’s a more modern manufactured thing that we see all this nanonized isolated aluminum, and it’s pretty nefarious. But it’s also a pretty simple remedy, thank God. Different Zeolite products can do a good job, though it really depends on the zeolite. There are a lot of really bad zeolites again. But CytoDetox, I know, is good. It’s definitely not something to start with for people. That’s more of an advanced kind of product I’ve found. 

But things like ZeoBind by BioPure were found to be really helpful. ZeoCharge is another good zeolite product. I also like other forms of silica. Even something like horsetail tincture can be really helpful. BioSil and choline-stabilized silica are like liposomal silica, which reduces aluminum in the brain. People have their brains light up from that product. Also, when you reduce aluminum, I mean it’s tightly correlated to Alzheimer’s and autism, so on both ends, it creates brain fog and foggy-mindedness in between. When you reduce that, you have that massive improvement in cognition. But it is also a very potent mitochondrial poison. It has a pretty big impact in terms of your overall energy levels. Once you get it down, people come back online in many different ways. So it’s great.

Awesome. What is a typical person’s exposure and toxicity level in terms of aluminum versus, let’s say, mercury? Are they more mercury or aluminum toxic, or what are you finding?

It depends on several factors. Has the person had amalgam fillings? Did their mothers actually have amalgam fillings? Because it is a generational thing. Mercury doesn’t really just go away like that. Do they live on the west coast? Do they live in California? California tends to have high mercury just floating in the air, coming from overseas due to the wildfires. So, different factors are at play. 

But generally, most people show high levels of aluminum right away. They may not show mercury right away, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have mercury in their tissues. It may not be actively excreted. So, most commonly, if you put them on a good detox program, eventually on their hair test, you will see the mercury rise. It may take time, but getting that out is really phenomenal. It also reboots the immune system. So, it can be profound, too. I do find, though, that it is still an extremely common issue.

[bctt tweet=”When you support the mitochondria, you’ll generally support detoxification as well. ” username=”GetOptimized”]

A listener might be afraid to go outside or even eat food because of what they’ll be exposed to. It’s crazy.

Well, that’s not the intention either. I do think that in order to thrive in these times, and of course, there are people who, for some reason, are completely unaffected by the toxins in our environment—or at least they seem to be—it has a lot to do with having a good mineral base, good functioning detox pathways and drainage pathways. But most people are affected in one way or another. 

It’s just about changing your habits. You don’t necessarily have to go on a full intensive detox program, but at least have simple habits like using the sauna regularly. It’s one of the best longevity hacks you can do. One of the main reasons for this is probably because of how much you actually sweat out your toxins. And then at least having some sort of binder. They saved my life personally, and they are today’s multivitamins. I don’t necessarily mean charcoal or bentonite, which can deplete you long term. 

But things like Modified Citrus Pectin or ZeoBind or the CellCore binders are great over a longer term basis, even if at a lower dose, just because they help give your body a chance to deal with everything that’s going on. They’ll make you feel amazing as well.

So, a binder picks up on the toxins and escorts them out of your system.

Binders are today’s multivitamin.

Essentially, it’s really simple. It forms a really strong bond with various toxins. Different toxins or binders have different affinities. Zeolite is better for mycotoxins in a moldy situation or ammonia if you have a lot of parasites. For example, modified citrus pectin is better for lead, mercury, and aluminum heavy metals. CellCore has binders for all kinds of purposes, from radiation to chemicals to biotoxins. 

But still, a binder can really make the difference in terms of supporting your detox pathways and giving you a chance to thrive and not feel weighed down by something you can’t quite put a finger on.

You cannot buy CellCore directly from the company; you have to go through a practitioner.

Yeah, it’s generally good to work under the direction of a practitioner. Although CellCore has created protocols that are kind of do-it-yourself in some ways, you do need a practitioner.

I’ve tried to buy from their website before, but I can’t make a purchase unless I enter a practitioner code. Can you tell me more about the sauna? Is it an infrared sauna? What’s your protocol? How often do you use it? What do you recommend our listeners do?

[su_pullquote]A binder can make the difference in supporting your detox pathways and allowing you to thrive and not feel weighed down by something you can’t pinpoint. [/su_pullquote]

So, my personal protocol will always be different from someone else’s. Someone who’s more chronically ill will not tolerate saunas very well just because of its mobilizing effect. I try to get in there as much as I can three to four times a week, 15 to 20 minutes. I believe Dr. Klinghardt mentioned that you eliminate most of the toxins you’re gonna excrete through the skin in the first about 10 to 15 minutes of sweating. 

I keep it to that and then do it several times a week. Of course, there was that Finnish study, I believe, with men using the sauna, and they generally found that the more they used the sauna, the longer they lived. They had a decrease in all causes of mortality, directly proportional to how much they used the sauna. It was a really fascinating study. But if one is more sensitive and dealing with a lot of chronic symptoms, it’s good to be just once a week. 

Then, make sure again that you take toxin binders with it, making sure you’re also replenishing electrolytes. Something as simple as sea salt, lemon juice, and water can do the trick for some people.

What about infrared saunas? Because a sauna isn’t necessarily infrared, right? 

That’s true. Infrared saunas are fantastic. That’s what I do personally. They heat you more from the inside out and can sweat more quickly. You can also be in there without it being again, such as at such a high temperature. I haven’t seen much of the research on detoxification being improved with infrared saunas. However, the aspect of infrared light supporting the mitochondria is worth paying attention to. 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]If you support the mitochondria, you’ll generally support detoxification as well. [/su_pullquote]

If you support the mitochondria, you’ll generally support detoxification as well. That’s why CellCore is so hyper-focused on the mitochondria. However, most direct studies on toxins from the sauna are just measuring sweat. They don’t discriminate between infrared and dry saunas. So, not everyone has access to an infrared sauna. It’s ideal to have an infrared sauna at home. Again, you have the benefits of both sweating and infrared light. But even if it’s just a dry sauna from a gym, it can do the trick for people.

That’s cool. Awesome. Let’s discuss leaky gut a bit. What symptoms would appear if someone has it but doesn’t realize it?

That’s a great question. People may have no obvious symptoms. It’s a more subclinical thing. There is no obvious, real presentation. However, some warning signs that are a little more common are bloating, sensitivities to certain foods, brain fog, joint pain, inflammation, adverse reactions to supplements, and any kind of digestive diagnosis. So if you’re talking about IBS or Crohn’s or that kind of thing, it generally has that kind of leaky gut component into it. 

Of course, it’s not an official medical diagnosis. But it’s important to acknowledge it as an issue because of the clinical results it produces when you address it, just focusing on sealing the tight junctions. But even if you don’t show any obvious symptoms and think you’re perfectly fine, it’s still really helpful as a first step for people to work on the gut. Even if it’s as something as simple as ION Gut Support and then doing something like cleansing your colon gently with a colonic or oxy-powder from Global Healing can be very, very helpful as a first step because that is the place that our body wants to eliminate most of the toxins. 

[su_pullquote]The gut lining renews itself every week or every several days. It has a lot more resilience in handling toxin onslaught. [/su_pullquote]

It wants to go from the cells into the extracellular matrix, lymphatics, and liver; then, the colon is generally the final place it wants to go to. The main reason is that the kidneys are a secondary route. Once you damage your nephrons and your kidneys, you don’t get them back. But the gut lining renews itself every week or every several days. It has a lot more resilience in handling toxin onslaught.

When did you get that diagnosis of having a leaky gut?

I never received a formal diagnosis of leaky gut. I just found that working on my gut health as a first step improved everything else.

You were also pretty constipated and could only tolerate four foods. Can you elaborate on that?

Sure, yeah. Everything I ate gave me brain fog. It took my brain fog from an 8 out of 10 to a 20 out of 10. I was limited to just garbanzo beans and white rice, which was all I could tolerate for whatever reason. Vegetables and meat and everything was screwing me up. I just couldn’t tolerate it. Within that as well, I was also unbelievably constipated. I’m talking about going to the bathroom once a week. That was one of my first symptoms. 

It was nightmarish because I felt like everything I ate was sitting in my stomach and rotting. It’s like that toxicity in my colon just spread to the rest of my body. It’s pretty brutal. It’s so funny how life-changing it can be to go to the bathroom twice to thrice daily as a first step. You feel like a completely different person.

Mineral balancing is optimizing your body’s biochemistry and energy production, giving the body what it needs.

Wow. And you had these symptoms for what, seven years?

Yeah, six, seven years.

Did you ever feel like you were gonna take yourself out? Did you feel suicidal?

Yeah, I had a lot of thoughts like that. It’s hard to have anything to look forward to, or any goals to aspire to, ambitions, excitement for life, or passion when even doing the most basic tasks at home is a complete struggle. 

The most basic tasks were summoning all my might to get up, and the simplest thing was to put my clothes away. The absolute most basic stuff was just too much. When one feels disempowered, that’s sick. How do you even see a brighter day ahead? I’m grateful I was introduced to a belief in a higher power because that pulled me through it.

Tell me more about that.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]I never received a formal diagnosis of leaky gut. I just found that working on my gut health as a first step improved everything else. [/su_pullquote]

I had grown up originally in more of an atheistic household. But my father introduced me to several sacred texts from the East, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. I also explored biblical literature. These kinds of texts really spoke to me. These symbolic stories about what it is to be moral and good and follow your purpose in the face of immense trials spoke to me, especially the Ramayana story—I say one of the avatars back in the day. 

He had his wife kidnapped by a demon king. Even though he was an avatar, he also had to suffer the most and was put through these unbelievable trials. He was supposed to be a prince of a kingdom and was sent into the jungle to rescue his wife. It led to a great war and a great battle. But these stories spoke to me. They were not about creating rigid beliefs but just reminded me of greater forces in our lives. 

Because of that, because of being able to keep that perspective alive within me, maybe there is a greater order that I can’t comprehend now. That’s what got me through. And that journey, that absolute struggle and that level of suffering was exactly what I needed. One to purify myself of the ways I used to be. But it also led to some of the greatest blessings and a really fulfilling line of work.

What was your darkest moment through all that?

I remember one time, right after doing some metal chelation, when I was meeting up with my father to have lunch. I needed to try to get out of the house. I mustered myself up and tried to drive over there. I remember as I was driving, I was absolutely terrified, having essentially a panic attack because it felt like I had no actual control. My mind was in a completely different dimension.

[su_pullquote]It’s hard to have anything to look forward to, or any goals to aspire to, ambitions, excitement for life, or passion when even doing the most basic tasks at home is a complete struggle. [/su_pullquote]

I was driving super slow on the side of the highway, just in a very suspect manner, but I somehow made it over there. I’m just completely dazed and out of it. I sit down at the table with my dad, and I can barely even get a word out before I just start bawling my eyes out in the middle of a public place. I have no idea. I’ve been doing all this stuff. I’m getting nowhere. 

I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I don’t know what to do anymore. He just sat there and was silent. He just gave me a hug. What do you even say in a situation like that?

Did you get some sign from the universe, from God, that this was temporary and you would get through this?

At that moment, no. But that was the moment that broke my will. Shortly after that, I resorted to praying my way out of it.

When you pray, do you feel a response from the Creator? Or do you just feel like it’s going into the ether somewhere these prayers?

The form of prayer that my father introduced me to is called Japa, which is a chanting Sanskrit mantra. I don’t often share this, but it is really close to my heart because I have had such unbelievable experiences with it. It’s an energetic language that is said to be “the language of the gods.” It is at least what I think it is. My limited understanding is that it is a language that creates different states of being. 

These mantric formulations heard by sages create certain states that, if a chance, embody those states. Again, this is my limited understanding of it. However, some Vedic scholars have made this information more available to the West, like Thomas Ashley-Farrand, Namdev, and Pandit. There are a lot of these different kinds of people who I’ve shared more simple mantra formulations with the West that are good for everyday use.

That’s what my father introduced me to. His own dark night of the soul led him to search every religion, which led him to find that. My best childhood friend essentially shared it with me. At a dire time, I picked a mantra about finding the right healing system for me. It’s known as the Dhanvantari Mantra. The exact intention is, “Please direct me to the right healing system or healing or healer.” 

Traditionally, you work with 21-day or 40-day disciplines. I took the last bit of energy I had and I just chanted every day for 40 days. At the end of the 40 days, I ended up on that Zoom call with the healers who introduced me to the right healing system. As crazy as that is, it’s esoteric and seems really out there. I have just repeatedly had situations like that unfold after a discipline that shifts in bizarre ways. 

What’s crazy about it is that there’s always this step-by-step physical explanation of, “Oh, well, I know this person. He invited me to do this through this mutual group. And so, I ended up at the Zoom call.” But yet, there are also these spiritual undertones, like the Creator orchestrating things. So that’s what’s so crazy to me about it. There’s always this logical productionist way of looking at it and the more unified, greater plan of looking at these things.

A materialist will always find a way to explain it away with science. And a spiritual person will always credit God for everything because it’s all miraculous. Tell us more about how you see all of this, the craziness you went through, as a series of blessings. Not everybody can see it that way when they’re going through that dark night of the soul or even afterward. Many can’t see the blessing in it. It’s really important to see it, but connecting all those dots is not easy.

It’s just being in that haze and that fog for my entire life and then becoming so sick led to a lot of things. One, it eventually led to a real compassion for my own suffering, which allowed me to understand the sufferings of others a lot better. That’s huge—being able to relate to where people are in really dark, twisted spaces. But also, I think it developed a lot of will because when you’re fighting just to live everyday life, you feel like you’re carrying this huge boulder of toxins. 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Becoming so sick led to a real compassion for my suffering, which allowed me to understand the sufferings of others a lot better. [/su_pullquote]

It’s just like a constant battle to perform well, live a normal life, or be like everyone else. That developed a lot of willpower as well, and once I had a healthy body, it made it a lot easier to persist through challenges in other ways. But I think one of the main things about the medical system is money first and health second. There are a lot of really well-intentioned, beautiful-hearted doctors out there. I know some of them, and they are actually amazing people. 

However, the system in place that they function within is not geared towards creating lasting healing. Once you get stuck in that cycle, it’s really hard to leave it. Once you start getting on one medication, that leads to side effects, that leads to another, and next thing you know you’re on 10 medications and having regular surgeries and a cash cow for the medical system. 

For me to go through what I went through early with the support that I had from my family, to be able to make it through and just fully focus on researching and trying and exploring until I found a solution, made me just immensely grateful that I didn’t get caught in the medical system at a later time when I wouldn’t have had that support, when I would have had all this responsibility on me. It would have made it a lot more difficult to make the necessary changes or to never really experience what it’s like to have a healthy, toxin-free body.

I could have easily just never broken down, but I’d lived in that constant haze for my entire life and passed away and have just been sleepwalking through life. But this whole experience again made me have a full-blown awakening to wanting to contemplate life, understand God, understand myself, and have such a contrast of experiences from so dark to so absolutely beautiful and profound. I’m just super grateful for it, and I’m super grateful that I figured it out to a good degree. 

Now, of course, I’m still learning. This is still a never-ending learning process, but it’s great. I love performing at a higher level now athletically than I did in high school when I was supposed to be on a competitive team. Or having all the energy to follow artistic pursuits, be married, live in a new state, and have adventures makes life a big adventure.

Do you have the sense that you agreed to some sort of soul contract that you would have these seven years of hell that you had to go through and come through on the other side and then help all these people with their toxicity and detoxing and improving their lives?

[su_pullquote]My biggest struggle was feeling like I was already out of my body. So, a lot of my spiritual practice for a long time was about embodiment. [/su_pullquote]

It’s certainly possible. I don’t know if it’s a contract I wrote or if it was just God’s plan for me. I don’t really know.

It’s the same thing either way. If you make an agreement with God to do this mission of getting through this and then helping others through it, whether it’s a contract, a soul contract, or just here’s God’s plan that he hands to you. I was just wondering if you had the sense that this was planned prior to your incarnating—if you felt that.

Absolutely, it feels faded. I was always doing the best I could, and it seemed like greater forces were at play.

When you are chanting, do you get into transcendental states? Do you have out-of-body experiences? What happens when you feel a greater sense or connection to the divine?

For me, my biggest struggle was again feeling like I was already out of my body. A lot of my spiritual practice for a long time was about embodiment. How much could I feel within my body and bring my spirit into my body? I think detox plays a big role in allowing people to land within their bodies. But chanting for me is a mixture of experiences. It’s a visceral experience, energy flowing through my meridians, which varies from mantra to mantra. 

But with a lot of practice, it’s just extremely noticeable. It feels great. When I’m done with my practice and sitting in a more receptive, empty posture, there is this emptying process and this kind of revealing process; I guess I’m just trying to see more of God and less of my own mind. That’s one way to describe it.

To switch back to the hair mineral analysis and all that, what would be the protocol for somebody intrigued by this conversation to get tested and see what toxicity levels they’re dealing with? What’s their next step? How do they know what test to sign up for, and how do they work with you to see if that fits them?

I use Analytical Research Labs for hair testing. It’s the one I’ve found to be most accurate. Many of us in the community have done some testing in terms of repeat samples from the same person at the same time and just found more consistent results with Analytical Research Labs. Trace Elements is a close second. Trace elements have other benefits. You see more minerals and such. 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Once a person works with me, it’s as simple as filling out in-depth assessment forms. I try to get a good picture of a person’s history and possible toxin exposures. [/su_pullquote]

But I don’t recommend doctor’s data and other laboratories. They don’t have good standardized procedures or like the body of research that these hair testing labs do. Now, if people want to work with me, they can go through my website and schedule a strategy session with me to explore their case and see if it’s a right fit for my healing programs, have a good discussion, and see what the right direction might be. 

But once a person works with me, it’s as simple as filling out in-depth assessment forms. I try to get a good picture of a person’s history and possible toxin exposures. I have these really in-depth symptom assessment forms that help me identify how likely drainage dysfunction is, how likely leaky gut is, and how likely stomach issues are versus mold exposure versus a parasite issue. It helped me chart a good course. 

Then, they also will send a really simple envelope with a small amount of hair to a laboratory, and within a week, I have the results, and we’re getting the ball rolling. Typically, I break my programs down into three basic pillars. I have the mineral balancing component, which I’ve explained and elaborated on. That’s about rebuilding the body from the ground up for the most energy over an extended period. 

Then, I layer different detox phases on top of that. It’s the second pillar. This way, you’re not taking everything at once and trying to do everything at once, but instead just going more a step-by-step order of operations fashion, which may be healing leaky gut, cleansing the colon, rejuvenating the liver, supporting bile flow, supporting the actual processing of the toxins, supporting the lymphatics, etc. 

Some people need some immune support. I won’t get too much into the topic, but Dr. Judy Mikovits’ research on human endogenous retroviruses is a very fascinating rabbit hole. But, some of the most chronically ill people benefit from some immune modulation. Then, typically, I’ll do some level of parasite cleansing as well. Of course, again, it has to be step by step and in the right way with the right tools. 

Beyond that, we may use some really deeper intracellular detoxification tools, which may be Dr. Pompa’s stuff—CytoDetox or high-dose melatonin, Nrf2 upregulators, which are things like broccoli sprouts. The entire time, the foundation is mineral balancing to keep rebuilding the body while you go through different phases. 

[su_pullquote]I’m a big believer in teaching people how these things work. I don’t like giving people programs and not explaining anything and letting them figure it out. [/su_pullquote]

The third and final pillar: I’m a big believer in teaching people how these things work. I don’t like giving people programs and not explaining anything and letting them figure it out. What I wish I had was that really deep mentorship that helped me understand what I was doing, such that I could take the tools, work with them over a long period, and continue to make progress. That’s what I try to share with people.

Awesome. How long does your program usually go for?

I have different lengths. I have between three and nine months. The real transformative stuff is the nine months; I take them through all the phases.

Cool. Alright, so your website is?

Jyoti Mineral Balancing. You’ll also get there with just jyotimb.com.

Is there a social platform you’re most active on?

Instagram. My Instagram is @kyle_peche. I’m always sharing updates and whatever podcasts I do, like this and other kinds of content.

Awesome. Kyle, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing, bearing your soul to my listener and sharing with candor and vulnerability. Thank you for all the great work you do in the world to help people heal.

Thank you so much for having me on. Great questions. It was a pleasure.

And thank you, listener. Thank you for being a light in the world as well. We’ll catch you in the next episode. In the meantime, have a fantastic week. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

[su_divider top=”no”]

Important LinksConnect with Kyle PecheWebsite
Instagram
TikTokYouTube
Free 1-on-1 Strategy Session

 

Businesses/OrganizationsAnalytical Research Labs
BEAM Minerals
BioPure
CellCoreCytoDetox
Global Healing
Trace Elements
Zeolite

 

PeopleCaroline Alan
Dr. Daniel Pompa
Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt
Dr. Judy MikovitsDr. Paul Eck
Dr. Stephanie Seneff
Zach Bush

 

Previous Get Yourself Optimized EpisodesDetox at the Cellular Level with Dr. Dan PompaThe Missing Link Is Minerals with Caroline Alan

 

YouTube VideosBioToxin Binder: Starter Binder for Gut Health Support | CellCore Biosciences
Dhanvantri Mantra Chants 
HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) Testing 

The post Reset & Heal with Kyle Peche appeared first on Stephan Spencer.



In this Episode[02:34]Jillian Acosta delves into her personal journey with emotional eating and eating disorders, sparking curiosity about the unspoken links between childhood trauma and chronic health issues.[09:02]Jillian unveils the profound revelation of hidden childhood trauma through her first experience with ayahuasca, setting the stage for a monumental personal transformation.[13:23]Explore Jillian’s struggle with self-identity and discover how peeling away the layers of past trauma led her to a more authentic and empowered self.[18:19]Stephan and Jillian discuss the concept of ego death experienced through psychedelics.[22:12]Jillian shares insights into past life connections and the profound re-evaluation of her former marriage, offering a new lens on karmic relationships.[27:53]Stephan and Jillian engage with the transformative power of forgiveness and understanding, reflecting on lessons of love and spiritual growth from Neale Donald Walsch’s work.[31:31]Uncover Jillian’s innovative Root Cause Method, blending functional medicine with emotional healing to address the true sources of chronic illness.[34:10]Jillian shares a compelling client story that illustrates the palpable shifts possible when emotional undercurrents are addressed alongside physiological needs.[40:15]Jillian reveals the surprisingly gentle yet potent nature of ketamine as a tool for healing complex trauma.[43:29]Discover the empowering potential of sacred rage, as Jillian guides women through responsible expressions of this potent emotion, unlocking deeper truths.[47:33]Explore further resources with Jillian through her frameworks and programs designed to lead one to profound self-revelation and healing.

Jump to Links and Resources
[su_divider top=”no”]

Jillian, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I’d love for our listeners to get to know you better through your health journey and learn how your struggle inspired you to create this movement. Why don’t we start there?

It’s so interesting to look back on your life and see that all the pieces led you to what you’re blossoming into now.

All the dots connect, but only if you’re looking backward.

Exactly. I had no idea that I was on the journey, but I very much was. It really started with a distorted relationship with food. I began using food emotionally at the age of three years old, before I had any concept, of course, of what emotional eating was. I was obsessed with candy and sweets and treats. I would write about it in my little projects in kindergarten, and it was my focal point. It spun into or developed into a pretty gnarly and very consuming eating disorder in my teens and early twenties. 

Because that pattern started so young, I lacked a reference point in my life, of my operating system prior to the development of that pattern, and of my relationship with food. It was kind of just what I knew, but I didn’t understand why I would do those things. I was deeply unhappy, to tell you the truth. I was suffering. I was very isolated. I carried a lot of self-hatred and shame and this inability to connect with other people and feel comfortable or safe in relationships of any kind, platonic or otherwise. 

So, I went to treatment. I was already pursuing the field of nutrition, even though I was deeply struggling with my relationship with food. I kind of felt drawn to that path academically because I wanted to learn how to hack the system and be thin and happy as we are fed in today’s society. I ended up falling in love with the field of nutrition and biochemistry and all of that. But I was still deeply struggling, even during my academic career. 

[bctt tweet=”The path of self-knowing and self-discovery is the most deliciously fruitful, magical path one could ever walk. ” username=”GetOptimized”]

I was also seeking relief. I didn’t understand why. I had tried therapy. I had tried the treatment. I relapsed. I tried treatment again. It was one of those things where I was on the path of discovering a way out of this, even though it didn’t seem promising at the time. Then I heard a podcast back in, like, 2014 talking about the potential of psychedelics to create remission of eating disorders. 

Everything in my body was like, “Oh, my God, this is my way out. This is me.” I don’t even know what that is. I didn’t have cool friends who would take mushrooms on the weekends. It wasn’t my life. So, I became obsessed with consuming the literature. I would read scientific articles, I would read interviews, listen to whatever I could find, or any podcast that was talking about psychedelics back then, which wasn’t much. 

A couple of years later, I finally found an underground woman’s circle and sat in the medicine for the first time. As profound as that was, it was also very gentle. What it really did was solidify that this path has something for me. It will illuminate things. I remember it was a beautiful, profound experience, but it didn’t fix me because, at the time, I believed I needed to be fixed. I was looking for that thing that would really move the dial and change how I saw life. And it didn’t do that. It was gentle. 

It was sassafras, which was what I sat with. I was in a marriage at the time and really felt the way I was creating dysfunction in the relationship. I needed to fix myself. I needed to heal. That path led me to sit with ayahuasca for the first time in 2020.

What was revealed to me in that experience was sexual abuse between the ages of 3 and 5 years old that I had zero recollection of for 30 years. That experience, learning my story, was so monumental, it was so profound for me because every way of being, every behavior, and every action made so much sense to me. Finally, I understood why I had been behaving that way and seeing myself that way. 

It launched me on this deep, sacred, and incredibly magical journey of healing, transformation, and self-discovery. My work is really a byproduct of my journey, which is a deep reconnection to self. It is a deep reclamation of power, deep self-knowing, and separation from the versions of us we thought we were as a result of what we went through and discovering who we actually are. So, yeah, that’s what I’m doing.

Wow. What is it like to do a psychedelic? I’ve not done any. I’ve had episodes on the show where I’ve spoken to people who have done plant medicine and LSD and DMT or whatever. It’s hard to imagine what that experience is like for somebody who’s never done it. Maybe you could try to walk us through it. What were you experiencing? Also, how did those experiences differ from each other?

[su_pullquote align=”right”]My work is a byproduct of my journey, a deep reconnection to self. [/su_pullquote]

No psychedelic experience is ever the same, in my perspective. Each medicine has its own flavor of experience. They’re all different. Even after several ayahuasca experiences, each ceremony is going to be profoundly different. If you feel supported in the safety of whoever is facilitating, if you feel trust and comfort with that person or those people, then your ability to kind of relax into the experience and sort of float downstream, as they say, and allow the experience to illuminate whatever you’re ready to receive. 

It is typically profoundly life-changing. When you don’t feel safe and when you’re afraid or when you’re not trusting, it can be very, very uncomfortable. It can be very challenging and physically, emotionally, and psychologically uncomfortable, borderline disturbing. It’s so important that the container is set, the trust is established, the safety is there, and all the things you can’t convince yourself you’re safe. You have to feel safe.

Did you have an experience where you didn’t feel safe, or did you feel traumatized afterward?

Fortunately, no. I have had experiences where it was me and a friend who I didn’t really feel could hold me and hold that level of safety and trust that I needed in that moment. But my experience wasn’t traumatizing. It was just that I didn’t have much access. I didn’t go deep because, on a subconscious level, it was like, “No, this person can’t hold.” I just kind of stayed at a very superficial level. 

Psychedelics, in a very gentle and loving way, allow us to access the subconscious mind and bring things from the shadow to the light.

Fortunately, I have never encountered anything dangerous, risky, or threatening. Thank God. Many, many people have. That’s why referrals are really important. People who have sat with somebody who knows they’re safe and had a great experience are really important. But even when I was learning my story in this initial ayahuasca experience, I wasn’t being re-traumatized. 

It wasn’t like I was reliving the events in a petrified state or the abuse. It wasn’t that I was being shown, and it was uncomfortable, bizarre, and undeniable, but I was not being retraumatized. There was a gentleness to the experience for me from the medicine that allowed me to really explore this truth and allow it to crack me open in the most profound way.

Did you confront the person who had molested you, or have you spoken to them about it two years later?

[su_pullquote]Learning how to hold myself through challenges, how to be the one I turn to, how to rock myself, how to soothe myself, how to wet my tears—it was so profound in that state. [/su_pullquote]

I went into solitude for two years after that experience. Shortly after that experience, I worked with a very trusted, incredible soul devotedly for four months after that. The rest of it was pretty solo. I had my business already. I would serve clients virtually. I was in a very devoted chrysalis space where I was just decomposing into goo, as caterpillars do, letting go of many of the constructs, identity structures, and lies I had subscribed to and allowing us to fall away. 

Learning how to hold myself through challenges, how to be the one I turn to, how to rock myself, how to soothe myself, how to wet my own tears—it was so profound in that state. I knew a conversation needed to be had because I had kept it a secret for 30 years. I needed to speak it, and I didn’t want to. I was petrified. It wasn’t received well at all, understandably. 

It wasn’t for them; it was for me. I also knew how I delivered that conversation would either perpetuate or break the cycle of shame. I needed to get myself to a place of compassion and love for this person, not bypassing a single thing. It took years to really flip every stone and get to the place where I could see their hurt also and the fact that they had been violated. That’s just how the cycle goes. So, it was delivered in love as an opportunity to heal together. 

For many reasons, it was not received in that way, and that’s okay. It was for me. I still got that level of liberation that I needed and have since continued to unpack and go through the layers. What’s so cool, though, is the deeper I go into my process, where I harvest the gems, where the wisdom comes from, my teachings, and my ability to meet myself deeper and unpack these teachings. This wisdom is what I then get to synthesize and share with my clients, with my people, and with the world. And it’s so rewarding.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]My path is only just opening and blossoming, and it’s becoming so undeniably magical that if I had not been through that experience, I would not be here with you right now. [/su_pullquote]

Honestly, this experience has become my greatest gift. I now get so much fulfillment from supporting other people in their process of creating safety for themselves, feeling in their process of coming back home to their bodies, reconnecting with themselves and their truth, finding their truth, finding the power that they are, the essence that they truly are, and letting go of all the lies they thought about themselves and carried.

If you could change the past, would you take away this trauma?

Man, it’s such a simple yet gut-wrenching question. Because it’s like, “How could I hope that anything would be other than it is?” My path is only just opening and blossoming, and it’s becoming so undeniably magical that if I had not been through that experience, I would not have anything to say. I would not be here with you right now. I would not receive the joy of witnessing a woman step so deeply into her power and knowing, and it just makes it worth it. So, no. 

Could I have been better supported during that time to buffer a little bit of the impact? Yeah, it could have been a little easier. But then, who’s to say that whatever that taught me, I wouldn’t have gained? So it’s like, “Here we are in acceptance.”

What wisdom gems did you gain from this experience, from processing and looking back on it?

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

I carried the story that people try to hurt me for trying to hurt me because it felt like, as a child, I didn’t understand why I was going through that and how that could happen, to really embody the knowing that no one is trying to inflict pain. Their actions are a manifestation of their pain. It’s not actually personal. That teaching started cerebrally and really trickled down into my body, and I’m still working through it.

I’m in a partnership right now. It’s very tempting and seductive to take a way that he may be acting personally. It’s very easy. It’s very natural to take it personally. It’s never personal. It’s a representation of the pain they’re in, and they carry. And to be able to see that the person that I love is in pain and not be dragged down by the pain is Jedi sh*t. It’s like mastery level, and I’m not there yet. I’m being invited to that level. I know that. I’m working on that actively.

Are you familiar with the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz ? Second agreement: don’t take anything personally. It’s a tall order.

Yeah, it’s a beautiful concept, but when it is embodied, practiced, and applied regularly, it can be life-changing.

You said this revealed a truer version of yourself through this process. So, who are you really?

Wow, cool questions. I’m playing a lot with duality. I’m playing a lot with the concept of contrast. What came through when you asked me that is like, first to explain who I thought I was, who I now know I’m not, which was this powerless, shameful, compliant, complacent version of me who placed my worth in the hands of others, especially the masculine, who would perform on a dime to get a hit of what I thought was love but was actually just attention. 

This version of me who settled for the scraps of love because that’s what I felt I deserved and who I now know I am is not any of that—this being who has always been so deeply worthy of love, despite how I was actually treated, this being who is in many ways undefinable and untamed and relentlessly loving. I never knew the capacity I have to love and forgive. 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]I want to access such depth of compassion for everyone in pain and understand that we are all in some way experiencing pain and suffering. [/su_pullquote]

This experience has broken my heart and opened my eyes to myself and humanity. I want to be able to access such depth of compassion for everyone in pain and understand that we are all in some way experiencing pain and suffering. Sometimes, that pain and suffering have us act in ways that create pain and inflict pain on others. Just deeply loving and wild in many ways, just like nature, just doesn’t want to stay in lines. I want to do my own thing, my own way, in the most true way that lights me up, inspires, and fills me.

That’s awesome. Do you feel like you’ve distanced yourself from or shed an identity, and now you’re more of just a pure, beautiful soul and not a personality? I know that some people go through psychedelic experiences and feel the oneness or feel that sense of awe or ego death many times.

That one that I shared about was probably one of the most significant. I was married, and three months after I sat with ayahuasca, I got divorced. I didn’t really know it at the time, but what was happening was that that experience made it challenging for me to lie to myself. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I had lost myself so entirely that I did not know who I was and did not recognize myself. I had become what I thought this person wanted me to be like. 

It was scary but also a really powerful place because I could start to break away from that identity structure. All of a sudden, it was like I was in this inquiry about who I was actually. I’ve gone through many iterations of shedding. There have been big purges that I let go of. I went into solitude. I didn’t have much of a social life, but everyone that I did that I was related to at that time was basically removed from my life. I was in deep isolation. 

We all experience pain and suffering in some way. Sometimes, it causes us to act in ways that inflict pain on others.

I still had contact with family members and things, but it was a huge purge, and I’ve gone through several of those since then. It’s less like groundbreaking, less intense. But there’s this coming into alignment that has been happening. I can feel when something resonates with me, and I can very much feel when something doesn’t. That could be an opportunity. It could be a collaboration possibility or a partnership. It could be romantic, platonic, whatever it is. 

There is either a resonance or there’s not. I trust that so much. I trust my knowing more than I ever have my intuition. I don’t always need to know why. I just passed up on an opportunity and didn’t know why, but I just could not bring myself there to complete these forms. It was just, “Okay, this is the stuff I get to trust. I don’t need to know why.” It’s just resonance. It’s alignment. And what’s not in alignment gets to fall away. 

Sometimes that’s really painful. It could be people that you love. What I’ve known and continue to be reminded of is to let go of the good so that you can welcome the great. Let go of what’s the 80% or the 90% so that you can have the whole damn thing. It’s there; it’s possible if you believe you’re worthy of it. I now know I am.

Sounds like your intuition has been supercharged.

[su_pullquote]I trust my knowing more than I ever have my intuition. [/su_pullquote]

Supercharged to the point where it was like, I lived in south Florida for 20 years and went nomadic for six months. And after that, I was totally fried. My nervous system was like, “We’re done with this.” And I’m like, “I don’t know where I want to be.” And my intuition was like, “Move to Austin.” And less than a week later, I was here with my dog. And I’ve been here for over a year, and it’s been magical since I got here.

That’s awesome.

If it tells me to jump, I jump.

Does it also give you insight into relationships and past-life connections? Maybe you have a new perspective on your previous marriage and your former husband. You can see that he was a soulmate destined to be in your life for a time, but not for very long.

Precisely. That relationship lasted seven years, which is like a seven-year cycle. It was deeply karmic. I have seen in past life regressions and psychedelic states that he was my mother in two previous lives and abandoned me in those lives. And then, in this life, he came to nullify that karma. He came to rescue me in many ways. He did. I met him running on the street in Miami when I was floundering. I had no idea what I was doing.

[bctt tweet=”Transformation comes from feeling safe enough within yourself to feel whatever is alive. ” username=”GetOptimized”]

I had just relapsed again with bulimia. I had just moved to Miami from Fort Lauderdale. I knew no one, and I was struggling really hard. We met, and he was 10 years older than me. He taught me how to build a business and get organized, and he encouraged me to pursue what I was great at, which was nutrition. He helped me get on my feet. And then it was so crazy because we were together for five years and then got married and were married for two. 

Right after we got married, things went south, and all these kinds of things started to happen, and there was just rupture, friction, and disharmony. What I now know is the contract was over. We had a contract. We had an agreement in some way, and it was done.

I remember telling him way before my channel was open, way before I really had access to what I have access to now, like, “It feels like it’s out of my hands. It feels bigger than me. I tried to fight it. I started to have feelings of separation 10 months before we actually decided to get divorced. Then, when ayahuasca came into the picture, it was like, “Okay, this is undeniable.” But it was before ayahuasca that I started to feel this offness. It felt bigger than me. It felt bigger than us.” 

[su_pullquote align=”right”]I realized how supported and protected I am by the unseen and that I’ve strengthened over time. [/su_pullquote]

I launched my business and got divorced in the same month. I had no money, friends, or support. I jumped off a cliff because I just had to. I felt like I had to. I think it was me honoring my intuition before I had any evidence to prove it reliable. This really solidified my trust in it. I realized how supported and protected I am by the unseen, and I’ve just strengthened over time. 

I have a lot of gratitude for that person. Maybe this is not so nice, but it’s in reverence—I described that relationship as a pressure cooker. I was cooking. It was everything I needed to catapult me onto this path in the most divine way. And so, I do really wish him well. It’s so wild because yesterday would have been our wedding anniversary, and here we are talking about him.

There are no coincidences, right?

I do wish him well, and I’m grateful for that catalyst.

Yeah, it takes a lot of courage to do what you did, to leap when there’s no net. Leap and the net will appear is the old adage. It sounds like it did.

It did. And it just does every time.

It’s a rigged game, rigged in our favor.

Exactly.

[su_pullquote]“A soulmate is an ongoing connection with another individual that the soul picks up again in various times and places over lifetimes. We are attracted to another person at a soul level, not because that person is our unique complement, but because by being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves.” – Edgar Cayce. [/su_pullquote]

When we were talking about your ex-husband, one quote came to mind. It’s from Edgar Cayce , a famous psychic from the previous century. I’d say he’s up there in terms of his connection and the quality of what he connected to right up there with Nostradamus. He said this about soulmates. “A soulmate is an ongoing connection with another individual that the soul picks up again in various times and places over lifetimes. We are attracted to another person at a soul level not because that person is our unique complement, but because by being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves.” There’s a corollary to that about being in a pressure cooker.

I’m in a partnership now where we’ve been together for a year. It has been really challenging in the most sacred way. We are cosmic mirrors. We are divine mirrors. This relationship has been a different flavor of pressure cooker—one where there is far more alignment. I speak a lot about relationships because it’s like, “What are you going to do with the opportunity of receiving this reflection? How are you going to take what this person is reflecting to you about yourself, to go in and excavate the distortions that prevent you from seeing and loving clearly and freely?” 

The triggers that this person illuminates in me are mine, based on my life experiences. If I can learn to use what comes alive because of this person, I will upward spiral instead of a downward spiral. I will create my own liberation and transformation, regardless of how I met in the partnership. And then, obviously, if that person is also willing to dance that dance and do their own work, it can become a relationship beyond my wildest dreams. I do believe not all pressure cookers are. Well, they’re all great. It depends on how they’re used.

One thing you were talking about earlier that I wanted to circle back on is who you are at your core: relentlessly loving and forgiving and this idea of forgiveness. I just want to explore that a bit further because there’s a book by Neale Donald Walsch that’s a children’s book. He’s famous for Conversations with God , a huge best-selling book. But this children’s book he wrote, called The Little Soul and the Sun , is a great little synopsis of the core concepts from Conversations with God.

Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch

  One of the core ideas in that children’s book is that there’s no one to forgive and that God has only sent us angels. These people who look like villains volunteered to do that for us, not to us, but for us to give us somebody to forgive so that we could have the experience of being forgiven.

That’s so it. It’s so profound. I see things on different planes sometimes. There’s my little girl mind who experienced what she experienced and has a lot of feelings about it, has a lot of rage, betrayal, injustice, and venom that if I only anchor into this elevated perspective of no one comes here to da, da, da, da da. I bypass the energy and the rawness in my body that my body has stored, and I miss out on the opportunity of actually transmuting it. 

I miss out on the opportunity to feel it fully, fully releasing it and transmuting it from pain into forgiveness and love. There’s the human realm, but I don’t believe any of it should be bypassed. Even if you’re able to access that elevated perspective and in the processing of that, in the somatic experiencing of that and on the human level, we can also hold this knowing of like, “Yeah, this person who did this took on this massive karmic burden so that I could experience liberation, so that I could experience forgiveness, acceptance, fulfillment, and purpose in my life.” That was a gift. 

And aside from that person, there’s also me, who I only recently got to this place in a beautiful and powerful, not overwhelming, but very intense grief space I was in of coming to terms with, like, “Oh, I forgive myself.” Then, the immediate knowing was that there was nothing to forgive. I did nothing wrong. None of it is actually wrong. I had to go through every single step to get here in an embodied way because—we could talk about the concepts all day—it’s a disservice to people that they try to anchor their consciousness to that, “Oh, it’s okay.”

They were doing the best they could. There’s nothing to forgive. It’s a gift. But then their nervous systems are so dysregulated that they don’t feel safe around men. They don’t have this sense of self-acceptance and worthiness. It’s like, “We can’t skip that part. We have to go through every segment of this, look everything directly in the eye for our liberation, and then land in this place of absolute awe.”

The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch

How do you marry this psychic, spiritual connection with functional medicine and the sciencey biochemistry you also weave into your program?

Yeah, I named my business The Root Cause Method because I believe the root cause of chronic illness is trauma. I believe that anyone carrying excess weight has a chronic health diagnosis. I believe that on a foundational level, there’s a disturbance in their nervous system, in their psyche, as a result of trauma. I think one of the most abused substances on the planet is food. It serves as a dissociative mechanism. 

It serves as a distraction, a mechanism of disconnection from our internal experience, whether sensations, emotions, or memories. Anything unpleasant or uncomfortable is just kind of like this lever pushing it down, quite frankly. In that state, we are disconnected from our truth. We’re disconnected from our stories. We’re disconnected from our intuition, our bodies, our knowing, our magic, our creativity, and all these things. I think that is a tragedy. 

My kind of angle in this deeper work with people is in the realms of health. Because that was my story, and I know it very well. I am absolutely equipped to support the physiology. But then we talk about why the body got to that status and why there has been this perpetual state of disconnection and dissociation.

The fact that they’ve used food over and over, bypassing their physiological hunger and fullness cues, indicates a strong emotional component involved in their relationship with food. That’s what we’re going after.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]I named my business The Root Cause Method because I believe the root cause of chronic illness is trauma. [/su_pullquote]

In my program, it’s like, “Let’s support the physiology. Here’s a structure based on data I found in a stool sample, blood chemistry analysis, or whatever. Here’s what your body is saying it needs. Here’s what’s imbalanced. And then let’s dive into the why and how it got that way. What are you using food for? What are your actual needs that are not being met?” The nugget of my work is supporting people in cultivating a sense of safety within themselves to feel whatever they want. 

Because when we’re willing and safe enough to feel something challenging, we no longer need food, drugs, alcohol, whatever, to push down that discomfort. We are now coming into wholeness. We are able to hold ourselves. It is transformational.

What would be an example of a transformative client/patient success story that you want to share?

I love this human. He comes to mind. This person was, unbeknownst to him, sexually violated as a child and carried a lot of shame. He began emotionally eating as a young child and became so overweight that he was clinically obese and underwent gastric bypass surgery, lost a bunch of weight, and then regained a bunch of weight and found me in this upward climb on the scale again and was ready to look. 

In the process of this, he and his late wife had two children, and she passed away from cancer. Here he was, mothering and fathering to the best of his ability, not only these two children but eventually himself. He learned to nurture himself in a way he was never nurtured, which allowed him to begin nurturing his children. But in his own nurturing, he stopped using food to numb. We worked together. 

Let go of the good so that you can welcome the great.

He went through two rounds of The Garden, which was my first client who renewed The Garden, a three-month program that I have. He went through two rounds, but he’s lost upwards of 50 pounds. Not because of a rigid diet but because he’s now safe enough to feel whatever is alive and knows how to use something that comes up as an invitation to meet himself more deeply. 

And because he is feeling his feelings and holding himself while he feels them, he’s no longer consuming copious amounts of food, so he’s no longer numb. He’s showing up to his children much more nurturing and present. His entire life has changed. He actually just proposed to his now fiance, his wife passed years ago, and he’s thriving, and it’s freaking amazing.

That’s awesome. Did the program include some shadow work?

Very much. This program is a three-month container where I analyze physiology, such as blood chemistry. I then create a protocol based on each individual’s unique physiology using a functional medicine modal-like framework. Later in the program, they sit with medicine and psychedelics three times over the course of those three months. 

[su_pullquote]Shadows represent the subconscious mind because these parts of us don’t feel worthy of the light. [/su_pullquote]

They’re sitting with ketamine, which is an FDA-approved, totally legal psychedelic, where they’re being prescribed, and all of it is like above ground and kosher, if you will. It’s deep shadow work because shadows really represent the subconscious mind. It’s the things that we have kind of put in the subconscious mind because these parts of us don’t feel worthy of the light, quite frankly. 

Psychedelics, in a very gentle and loving way, especially ketamine, allow us to access the subconscious mind and bring these things from the shadow to the light. Because they are the most starved of love, they are the most starved of acceptance, love, holding, compassion, and all these things.

In our time, we’re literally doing this module where they’re doing the psychedelic experiences, which is called uprooting the weeds. We are pulling the weeds of the psyche out by the root and creating space to plant new seeds of self-compassion, acceptance, love, and all of these things. Then, we nurture them in the post-integration stage very devotedly. What I witnessed is just wow.

It sounds like a different approach from what I’ve learned about shadow work from Debbie Ford in her book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers . It’s like a definitive book on shadow work from 1998. She’s now passed. But yeah, her work is really well respected in that area of shadow work. Instead of pulling out the weeds, she teaches us how to love and unconditionally accept the parts of us that we are disassociated from or rejected. So give them a name. Say all the things that we’re grateful for, that aspect of ourselves, and make that person, that part of us, feel safe and appreciated and not have to hide anymore and to be looked after and considered, and then all the acting out goes away.

The Dark Side of The Light Chasers by Debbie Ford

It is very much the same. I do not like ostracizing or guiding people to ostracize parts, pulling out the weeds. This program is called The Garden. All of my modules are on brand, but we’re really pulling out the stories. It’s like we’re bringing the part into the light and loving it. What gets transmuted and released are the stories we’ve held in response to what we’ve gone through.

We’re incredible meaning-makers. Much of that meaning is usually really off.

I understand why I made those stories. Based on what I was experiencing, I would carry the belief that people were trying to hurt me. Of course, at three years old, when I was experiencing what I did, like, “How could I land on anything else?” That was what I could access at that point. Unfortunately, once that imprint is there, we collect evidence to strengthen that perspective, and none of it is actually true. None of it’s ever been true. And so, it’s releasing the lies, releasing those mistruths, bringing that part into us, and integrating it into the available wholeness.

How is ketamine different from ayahuasca and the sassafras and perhaps other modalities, other psychedelics that you’ve tried throughout your exploratory journey?

Profoundly different in many, many ways. Ketamine is a synthetic medicine, so it’s not a plant medicine like ayahuasca or even sassafra mushrooms. But in my perspective, it still connects us to divine intelligence. It still connects us to the sacred very much. I have a lot of reverence and appreciation for this substance. So that’s the first, most obvious. But ayahuasca and mushrooms are incredibly beautiful, absolute, just allies in this world. 

Their approach can often feel more intense and abstract and more readily bring us into the subconscious, like the shadow realms of the things that are lurking and waiting for us to explore. Like my story, ayahuasca was what showed me that. I don’t know if ketamine would have, I’m not sure. But ketamine, especially for people who are relatively new to the psychedelic space, is a beautiful entry point because it is so gentle. 

[su_pullquote]Ketamine is a synthetic medicine, so it’s not a plant medicine like ayahuasca or sassafra mushrooms. But in my perspective, it still connects us to divine intelligence. [/su_pullquote]

It’s definitely potent, and it’s gentle, and it’s heart-opening. It gives people the opportunity to navigate and feel what it’s like to navigate in an altered state of consciousness without feeling overwhelmed by it. Also, it has the property of being a sub-anesthetic dissociative. What I really love about this substance, especially for people who are dealing with complex trauma and new to the psychedelic path, is that it gives you a slightly removed perspective on whatever is coming through in the experience. 

For example, if fear is present for whatever reason, ketamine will allow you to be like, “Oh, wow, this is what fear feels like in my body. What do you want to tell me fear? What do you have to say to me? How can I learn from you?” The fear does not take you. You’re not going into a contracted space where you’re not able to access the healing because you’re in a fear state, and you’re pretty much closed off. 

Ketamine is so gentle, open, and slightly removed that you don’t feel overwhelmed when navigating something potentially challenging. It feels safer, and it’s legal, and these other substances are not yet. It’s profound. Ketamine helped heal my brain very much.

Did you have PTSD that you’re referring to, and that’s what got healed?

Yeah, I had complex PTSD. I did not know how to regulate my nervous system. I did not know how to feel safe in my body around people, in public places, and around men. I didn’t even know I was experiencing those things because I was so dissociated. But, like, being in my body felt unsafe for my whole life until a few years ago.

Wow, that’s quite a breakthrough.

I think ketamine was instrumental in that.

[bctt tweet=”No psychedelic experience is ever the same; each has its own flavor of experience. ” username=”GetOptimized”]

Now, you mentioned on your website that part of The Garden includes sacred rage experiences. What is that?

I had a relationship with my anger and rage that consisted of a lot of shame because I would push things down. Like a pressure cooker, eventually, I would get really reactive and explode. Those events always left me feeling ashamed and embarrassed. More often than not, being abandoned, I remember boyfriends would just leave me there crying after I would explode in rage. My relationship with my own anger was really distorted. 

I did everything I could to push it down and hide it in partnerships and things like that. And only recently have I come to understand the absolute sacredness of our rage because it shows us where we’ve been dishonored. It shows us where we’ve been violated, where we have dishonored ourselves, where we have condoned certain treatment that is so painful because it is not true. We don’t actually deserve that. That’s why it feels so bad and so shifting and healing. 

My relationship with rage has allowed me to tap into this sense of raw worth, like, “I did not actually deserve that, and I will not condone that anymore.” Think about the energy of rage. It is so powerful; it is so intense energetically that when you can harness that energy, you have access to a tremendous amount of power. Now you have access to a tremendous amount of shakti, life force, energy, rawness, and power, and you are released in a responsible way where you are inviting that to come forth and let that fill your body and express through you.

It is enlivening and almost always leads to whatever emotion the rage is concealing, typically grief or fear. It’s just cathartic, and it’s sacred. Many women, especially, are taught not to be angry because it’s not pretty, it’s not cute, it’s not ladylike, not polite, and all that crap. It’s like, “No, let’s growl like an actual lioness. Let’s get primal. Let’s permit ourselves to express ourselves this way because this is deeply connected to our truth.” I help guide women into those spaces. It’s unbelievable how uncomfortable it is for them initially and how relieved they feel and empowered they feel after giving themselves the opportunity.

Wow. I know we’re getting close to time here. What wisdom nugget do you most want to leave our listener or viewer with before we close out this episode?

I think one of the greatest tragedies is when we have subscribed to a way of viewing ourselves. We have subscribed to an identity that is nothing more than a result of the traumatic things we went through in childhood, and so many of us are walking around with no freaking idea who we actually are. It’s such a distorted view of who we think we are. It’s tragic. Consider whoever is listening; you don’t know who you are, yet you think you are. This version of you in response to the horrible things you went through that’s not who you are. From my perspective, the path of self-knowing and self-discovery is the most deliciously fruitful, magical path one could ever walk.

Awesome. So, if our listener wants to learn more, work with you, follow you, get all your materials, etc., where should we send them?

My website is therootcausemethod.com, and I’m also quite active on social media, such as Instagram, which is @jillianacosta_rd. On my website, I list all of the various offerings. The Garden is probably my signature program, but what is becoming my signature program is Wildflower, which is so powerful and potent. It’s a women’s group. The next one launched on January 14th. It is a place where women come together in support of one another to liberate themselves from everything that is disempowering, especially emotional eating. It’s really born out of what I wish I had when I was struggling. It’s so potent.

Thank you for all the amazing work you do in the world and for all the light you reveal. Thank you, listener, for being part of the light and awakening humanity. Have a fantastic week. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

[su_divider top=”no”]

Important LinksConnect with Jillian AcostaWebsite
Facebook
LinkedInThe Garden
Wildflower

 

BooksConversations with God
The Dark Side of the Light ChasersThe Four Agreements
The Little Soul and the Sun

 

PeopleDebbie Ford 
Don Miguel RuizEdgar Cayce
Neale Donald Walsch

 

Previous Get Yourself Optimized EpisodeSelf-Mastery, Unlocked with Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

 

YouTube VideosThis Is What Ayahuasca Does To Your Brain 

The post Getting to The Root Cause with Jillian Acosta appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

This article was originally published under Multi-Channel Merchant.

With over a billion search queries run online every day—each of which must be matched against hundreds of millions websites to find the best results to display—it’s clear that Google and the other search engines face a Herculean task when it comes to organizing the world’s information.

Somehow, inside the black box that is Google’s algorithm, the websites that provide the most relevant and authoritative results are promoted to the top. And the ones that aren’t at the top are largely ignored by searchers. To increase your chances of being favored in this process, you must apply the latest and best practices in search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO tutorials abound, both online and offline (including my book The Art of SEO, now in its second edition), but figuring out how to apply their instructions to your own site can seem daunting, to say the least. A more workable approach may be the simple “best practices” outlined below. Just these seven steps will, I’m confident, “move the needle” for you.

Make the most of your homepage.
Of all your web pages, your homepage is typically given the most weight by the search engines—so don’t waste it! Here’s what you need to do to make the most of this opportunity:

Include text: It’s critical that you have indexable text on the homepage—it gives the search engines something to sink their teeth into! Fossil isn’t doing itself any favors by using a homepage composed almost entirely of image files. Avoid “SEO copy”: I define “SEO copy” as text that’s written primarily for the search engines rather than for humans. Usually it’s tucked away below the fold, sometimes even below the copyright statement (how obvious is that?). It’s useless text full of “keyword stuffing” and, not surprisingly, Google is on to this trick. An egregious example can be found hiding at the bottom of the RedEnvelope.com homepage. Ask yourself: “Does this content add value to the user experience?” If the answer is no, don’t use it. It’s not that hard to make keyword-rich content that is actually valuable to the reader. Bed Bath & Beyond does it with its “quick tips” (http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/nodePage.asp?RN=14&). Avoid country selectors: As much as I hate country selectors, I recognize that sometimes you may have no choice but to use one. If that’s your situation, please at least configure your website so that the search engines don’t interpret the country selector as your homepage. Automatically redirect search engine spiders to the homepage of your primary country’s website. Otherwise, you’re presenting a country list as your homepage (like AirCanada.com). View Google’s cached version of your homepage URL (e.g., search for “cache:www.aircanada.com”) to ensure you are redirecting properly.

Create content with “viral” potential.
Inbound links are critical to your rankings. To increase the likelihood that people will link to you, make your content truly compelling, even “remarkable” (I’m thinking of Seth Godin’s definition here, i.e. “worth remarking about”). Viral content can take many forms—top-10 lists, quizzes, articles, infographics, comics, videos and so on. It’s usually humorous or super-useful, and thus irresistible to share—for example, the 5 lb. Gummy Bear on Vat19.com or the “Redneck Home Remodels” featured on b-to-b and b-to-c flooring merchant BuildDirect.com.

Clean up your URLs.
It’s not unusual for an ecommerce site to have spider-unfriendly URLs—a mile long with numerous parameters, and sometimes even (Heaven forbid) session IDs. Contrast the following bad example with the good example that follows it:

“Bad” URL 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstempla...

“Good” URL
http://www.shoebuy.com/high-heel-womens-shoes.htm

Make your URLs more palatable to the search engines by making them short; include keywords, separate the words with hyphens (not underscores), and avoid parameters in the “query string” (after the question mark) whenever possible.

Additionally, short, clean URLs get clicked on more often in the search results—twice as often as long URLs, in fact (source: MarketingSherpa). You can fix your ugly URLs with a server module/plug-in like mod_rewrite or ISAPI_rewrite, or with a proxy server like Organic Search Optimizer from Covario.

HTML-ify your customer reviews.
User reviews are being integrated into ecommerce sites more and more frequently, and with good reason! Not only do these personal testimonials build trust with customers, they also provide additional text, often with relevant keywords.That latter benefit will be lost, however, if the reviews are incorporated into the product page via JavaScript. The user-generated content should be in the HTML so it can be visible to the spiders. If JavaScript must be used, provide an alternate HTML version too.

As an example, consider the product reviews found on REI.com. Although JavaScript is utilized for display purposes, the review copy is present in the HTML, and is thus visible to the spiders. This allows REI to provide a rich user experience and draw SEO benefits from the keywords present in these reviews.

Avoid Google’s duplicate content filter.
If Google were to show substantively the same results on the first page, it would be a poor user experience. Search engine users want diversity in the search results. So, no wonder, Google works hard to filter out duplicate content. Duplicate content can be content that also appears on other sites besides your own, or it can be repeated content on multiple URLs within your own site. Pages that are deemed “duplicate content” by Google may not be shown in the results—meaning you could be missing out on valuable Google-referred traffic. Take these steps:

Avoid using the same manufacturer-supplied product descriptions that everyone else uses (see examples in the Google screenshot below). Rewrite them or at least augment them with additional unique copy. Check your site in Google Webmaster Tools. Pay particular attention to the duplicate title tags and duplicate meta-descriptions reports. Check your site in Blekko using its “duptext” slashtag (you’ll need an account). If you have separate websites for different countries, and some of those country sites repeat the same content, properly “label” it using the preferred geographic region tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Deploy SEO microdata.
“Microdata” refers to additional modifiers you can add to your website’s code in order to provide the search engines with more information about the content contained on your web pages. By adding extra meaning to your data in this way, you’ll be eligible to have “rich snippets” in your Google listings, which allow more information about your site to be displayed in the search results.

Complete details about the specific types of microdata that are available, as well as how to integrate them into your website, can be found on Schema.org.

Learn from the competition.
Instead of getting upset about other companies ranking higher than you in the organic search results (consider this fun definition: SPAM = Sites Positioned Above Me), study them so that you can beat them at their own game.

You can obtain a fairly extensive list of keywords that your competitors (and anyone else who is outranking you) are obtaining search traffic from with tools like SEMRush.com and Searchmetrics.com.

You can also get a sense for which keywords your competitors are targeting by examining their sites’ title tags and meta-tags. Don’t copy them verbatim, but do evaluate the search query volume for each keyword to see which keywords are viable targets.

Of course, watch what the “big boys” in your industry are doing.(For example, if you’re a niche shoe retailer like BirkenstockCentral.com, keep an eye on what Zappos is up to.) Industry leaders may have marketing budgets that exceed your total revenue, so there’s a good chance they’ve hired the best and brightest SEO minds to improve their websites. Watching the changes they implement could give you this same insider advice, but at a much lower price! Caution: Just because they are big doesn’t mean they are skilled at SEO. Use your best judgment when deciding who to emulate and who not to.

As you incorporate these techniques into your ecommerce site, keep in mind that they are merely a starting point. They are, by no means, sufficient. Happy optimizing!

The post SEO: Best Practices, Bad Practices appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

This article was originally published under Marketing Profs.

Marketers, by the very nature of their job function, must juggle numerous campaigns, a range of portfolios, multiple channels, and various corporate, political, and personnel issues—all simultaneously.

Do you have multiple action lists running concurrently in your brain? Or great ideas buried within files, folders, emails, Post-It notes, and to-do lists? If that sounds like you, join the club! But I have to warn you: This is one club I’ll be resigning from soon.

Like so many folks, I made a New Year’s resolution—to get organized, to get the clutter out of my head and into a system where I don’t have worry about it on a daily basis, but where it will pop up when the time is right for action. And I have discovered how to do it.

Perhaps you saw my post on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog on January 1, when I resolved to transform the way I work and live, to get everything out of my head and into a system. That system, if you read my post, is Getting Things Done, or—as it’s known among practicing aficionados—GTD.

Getting Things Done is a best-selling book by productivity guru David Allen. It is also a process and a philosophy. Once you stop using your brain as the holding tank for all the important things that you need to do today, tomorrow, next week, or even further into the future, the sooner you become clear and your mind will be open to wander, unfettered. Only then can your creativity truly be unleashed, and you reach a state of flow that David Allen refers to as “Mind like water.”

I am a creative person, so reaching that state of flow is very important to me. I get bogged down in details, my head cluttered with to-do’s. If this sounds at all familiar to you, then you may be an excellent candidate for a Getting Things Done overhaul.

The first step in the process is to get everything out of your head and into one place. You may have to set aside several days for this step. It involves culling through all the Post-It notes, backs of envelopes, lists, active files, mail, and so forth that have not been fully processed and organized. I, for one, had a number of Word documents full of a mish-mash of ideas, to-do’s, and reminders.

Once you have aggregated it all into one place, you can begin to process it. A simple but critical trick here is to act on anything that can be dealt with in two minutes or less—right then and there. Don’t move it around on to other lists. Just get it done. That approach alone has been hugely valuable to me because I tended to touch the same email over and over again even though it would have been a less-than-two-minute task to reply to it, forward it, delegate it, or do whatever needed to happen to get it out of my face and acted upon.

Each of your to-do’s requires a decision. Do it, defer it, delegate it, or delete it. If it must be done on a particular date, then it goes into Calendar, otherwise it goes on your Next Actions list, but only if it truly is the next action. If it is an amorphous project with multiple actions required (in fact, the definition of a project according to David Allen is anything requiring more than one action), then it does not go on your Next Actions list but on your Projects list. But you still have to ascertain what the next action is to move that project that next small step forward, and so you place that on your Next Actions list.

Each of your Next Actions also needs to have a context assigned to it (e.g., “at the office” “at home,” “errands,” “phone,” “email,” “read/review,” etc.). That way, you can group to-do’s by context and do them in batches, thus gaining efficiencies.

For example, if you are in a phone mood, you can easily view all your to-do’s that are to be done over the phone. Say you have some dead time while you are waiting at the dentist’s office and you have your cell phone with you, your PDA (or “hipsterPDA” if you aren’t into handheld gadgets) can reveal some of the phone calls that you can make while you are waiting.

When you are in a holding pattern, waiting for a response from another party, then you track that “open loop” by putting it on to your Waiting For list. Then, in your Weekly Review, your Waiting For list can serve to remind you of who owes you what and then you can ping them if they are tardy.

During that Weekly Review you can also review your Someday/Maybe list and see if there is anything that you want to move off that list and on to your Next Actions list.

This is just a taste of the GTD process. I certainly don’t do it justice compared with David Allen, so I encourage you to read his book and listen to his podcasts.

As I mentioned in my post on the Daily Fix, choosing the right electronic or paper system is a crucial step in implementing GTD. A Mac user, I chose a Mac program called Journler after much research. I quite like Journler because, even though it is not designed specifically for GTD, it can be easily customized to meet your GTD needs.

Furthermore, if you are an avid blogger like me, you can even send posts directly to your blog from within Journler. Just log in the category and publish it without having to log into your WordPress admin.

Other Mac options I seriously considered were kGTD and DevonThink Pro.

For those of you on Windows, you may want to look at the GTD Outlook Add-in, ClearContext for Outlook, MyLifeOrganized, TimeTo, Easy Task Manager or ThinkingRock (note that those two run on the Mac, too), or a web-based system like Tracks, GTD V2, Backpack, MonkeyGTD or ActiveCollab. Or, better yet, just switch to a Mac…

A system such as any of these will help you be more organized, more efficient, and focused on what is really important, while setting aside but not necessarily completely losing track of potential ideas for the future that may not make sense or not have value right now.

As for me, I’m making great progress on my New Year’s Resolution. How about you?

The post Clearing the Clutter—How Busy People Can Get Things Done appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

This article was originally published under Huff Post.

In 2009 I had “tinnitus,” i.e. ringing in my ear. I went through a battery of tests — hearing tests, even an MRI scan. The doctors couldn’t help me. Thank God it eventually went away on its own, but it took months. It scared the hell out of me in the meantime.

That same year I took a class in mindfulness-based stress reduction. I learned how to focus on my breath and slow my heart rate. I learned to do walking meditation. I bought and listened to Guided Mindfulness Meditation series 1 of mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn. But the most profound thing that came out of that class was a skill that I’ll refer to as peeling away the layers of an onion. It was on one particular occasion: at four in the morning, when I was really sick, my mind was racing, and I couldn’t sleep even though I desperately wanted to. First I slowed my heart rate. Then I was able to distinguish that I had 7 distinct thoughts simultaneously and quiet them one by one — like the thoughts were strands of a rope I was unraveling one at a time. It was quite a surreal experience; actually it really scared me.

I didn’t see the connection between the mindfulness and the tinnitus until today, seven years later. I was watching a talk by Jonathan Fields, of the super-popular Good Life Project podcast. In the video, Jonathan describes his experience with tinnitus, which unfortunately never went away for him like it did for me. He tried so many things, and none of them worked. Then he tried mindfulness. He ran headlong into acceptance of the ceaseless sounds in his head by focusing on the sounds themselves instead of his breath. The very thing he was running away from he eventually embraced. Tinnitus became his gateway into mindfulness, and it changed his life fundamentally. Jonathan shared this quote from Joseph Campbell, which touches my soul:

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center. You find the jewel, and it draws you off.”

This reminds me of something I learned from the monks in India on a trip to Oneness University. The Oneness monk said, “Let the tiger devour you.” Whether you’re feeling fear, anxiety, pain, or some other uncomfortable feeling — instead of running from it, trying to dissipate it or repress it, let the tiger devour you. Just let the feeling engulf you. That’s where the freedom lies.

The post The very thing that terrifies you is where your treasure lies appeared first on Stephan Spencer.

This article was originally published in the Harvard Business Review.

London. Barcelona. Beijing. The world’s business hubs are also desirable travel destinations. And yet, when we’re sent there for a conference or client meeting, many of us act like it’s a slog.
Unfortunately, most business travel advice goes something like this: Hunt for Wi-Fi like it’s water, stick to your itinerary, stay in a safe (read: sterile) hotel, and take care of yourself as best you can until it’s over. As someone who’s worked on or managed a remote team from 11 countries in the past year, I can think of no worse way to spend a trip.

Adventure isn’t simply a seed; it’s the sunlight that keeps the tree growing.

Too many of us treat work travel as a curse. When I told some of my fellow start-up founders in the mid-’90s that I’d be taking an extended business trip to New Zealand, more than one predicted the death of my company. It was bad enough, they told me, that they’d had to relocate to Silicon Valley to find talent for their tech companies.

I admit, I struggled some days to sustain my sense of adventure. But I’d rented a beautiful home in Auckland with chickens in the backyard, and I’d brought my family with me, so I was committed. By the time I moved back to the U.S. in 2007, I’d realized that, in fact, it was the adventure itself that had sustained me. Although I sold my company, Netconcepts, in 2010, I kept the lesson my time in New Zealand had taught me: Adventure isn’t simply a seed; it’s the sunlight that keeps the tree growing.

I understand, of course, that most executives can’t just pick up stakes and move around the world like I did; what I don’t understand is why so many of them treat work travel as a chore. I don’t dispute that jet lag, time away from family, and lost luggage are a drag. But traveling is, or should be, one of the best parts of doing business.

The next time you travel for work, I want you to try something: Treat every moment as an adventure. Interact with the locals, avoid getting online, and take at least a day to do nothing but explore. While that might sound like a good way to lose your job, it’s possible to do it all while actually increasing your productivity.

Think of exploratory time as practice in spotting and seizing new opportunities.

Take connectivity. I invariably skip the in-flight Wi-Fi, not because it’s expensive or slow (which it usually is), but because I can use the time for “deep work.” I download my emails using the Mac Mail app and work through the tough ones while offline. It’s incredible how much I can accomplish without the distractions of social media.

Some savvy travelers take this even further. Productivity expert Tiago Forte, whom I recently hosted on my podcast, has spent months working in Mexico City without a local SIM card. Not only has he managed to get by without mobile internet, but it’s made him so productive that he’s actually planning to keep this arrangement after he moves there permanently next year. By cutting out distracting calls and texts, Forte provides himself with something most business travelers don’t: predictable time off. Those built-in breaks, according to research conducted by Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow and women’s leadership expert Jessica Porter, promote professional development, open communication, and quality of work. When Forte needs to plug back in, he simply stops by one of Mexico City’s thousands of cafés.

What if something urgent comes up while you’re traveling? Have a virtual assistant (VA) handle it. I ask mine to review my messages and place urgent ones in an “action” folder. I also, however, lean on my VAs as guides: Rather than, say, hiring college students from a freelance platform like Upwork, I instead look for assistants who live where I’ll be traveling, for example via local online job markets like onlinejobs.ph, a Filipino jobs site. Yes, my assistant-as-guide method does mean that I need to hire different VAs for different trips. But frankly, VA work like sorting emails and making reservations takes little training. To me, spending an extra couple of hours to show a VA the ropes is a small price to pay for a de facto travel advisor.

If you can’t afford to hire a VA, consider whether the person you’re traveling to see can help. When I was last in Romania visiting a client, I asked about his favorite restaurants and things to do. Not only was it a great ice breaker, but it led me to local-favorite places I never would’ve experienced otherwise.

True, it can be tough to squeeze in time for tourism between conferences and client meetings. But if you’re traveling for work, chances are that you’re someone who takes team members (or at least yourself) into uncharted territory. Think of exploratory time as practice in spotting and seizing new opportunities. For example, I recently took a five-month trip to Israel. I could’ve kept my head down like most business travelers — but if I had, I’d have missed out on much of what made it a productive trip. In Tel Aviv, I met an author and entrepreneur who introduced me to his network. And because it’s a short hop from Israel compared to the United States, I took on a speaking gig in Vienna that I typically wouldn’t have, where I learned so much that I wound up staying for the entire training intensive.

Even on a short business trip, there are more accessible ways to bring the adventure back to business travel. Stay in an Airbnb instead of a hotel. Stop into a museum after a meeting. Eat food that you can’t get at home. The point is: try something new.

The post How to Make Any Business Trip Less Boring appeared first on Stephan Spencer.