It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]
Bob: Welcome back to the Alive and Free Podcast. Today, we're going to take a journey through the body-based approach to health, happiness, and wellbeing. I'm going to jaunt you through some of the stuff that I've discovered over the years that can really help you shift your mindset into being able to really find freedom from all kinds of things. We're talking emotional struggles, whether it's just simple stress buildup, or if it's low self-worth, or if it's like depression or clinical depression or anxiety or panic attacks or any of the other numbers of things that people struggle with, including, and not limited to addiction, bipolar OCD and all of the other stuff. I want to lay open the history books a little bit for you. And no, I'm not like a scholar and I'm sure a lot of things are debatable just because people like to debate them, let alone if they're right. [01:24.0]
But I'm going to lay the basic foundation for you so you can get a sense of how to navigate your way through things. You know, a while ago I wrote a book. A number of years ago and published a book on energy healing that I published specifically to give people a roadmap through all of the different things people were claiming about energy healing, all the different methods associated with it, how they work their main approach and to give people a basic guide book so that they can navigate that world without being swept under the rug with all the different claims that are there. And I want to do the same thing here. Because it too often, there is no guidebook for not even just mental health issues or emotional struggles, but even for, for physical pains and physical struggles, we just go like, well, I don't know what's going on. And then we automatically just assume the doctor knows, or we got to go to a doctor. And while they do have training, and I don't have anything against doctors, who are doing the best that they know how and recognizing both the pros and cons and the limitations of their own knowledge, just like I recognize the limitations of my own expertise then like in, by the same token, like they're doing a good service, but they're not trying to everything. And sometimes it's helpful to have a guide book, right, so to speak. [02:36.2]
So, if we're to take back the, the 60,000-foot view, so to speak, which is, you know, some airplanes actually fly that high now and we're to look down at the planet and the history of psychology, psychological diseases, mental health, mental illnesses, and all the buzzwords that we think of today, we would find that these ideas are not really on one hand, they're old as can be. But on the other hand, they're actually quite new. They're not, they are not facts in the world. They haven't been around that long. There are theories and ideas that have been put forth and modified and changed over just the last couple of hundred years. And prior to that, not even a thing, not even a blip on the radar, in many instances, that doesn't mean that people didn't struggle with depression or anxiety or what we might call a mental illness today, they might've called them by other names, whether that's schizophrenia or bipolar or things like that, they might've called them different things. But the essential, basic approach to these where you go to a counselor and the counselors talking you through things that hasn't existed and hasn't been around very long at all. [03:43.1]
And so, I want to share with you kind of what's going on there. Cause I there's some great therapists out there. I've nothing against therapy either. If they're honest and true with what they're doing and they have the best interest of the client at heart, which is what their code of ethics is, and so there, there are some, either some therapists that I've trained and talked with that are great people and they do great things for people. So, what we're talking about here is the therapist is going to come and they're going to sit down. And even though a lot of the theories and things that they've studied in school are comprehensively talking about many of the things that I do in my practice, the way that their field is regulated and organized is such that they can't do a lot of the things that they've seen work in therapy. Number one, developing an intimate relationship, not an intimate relationship, but a close relationship with the therapist that's ongoing outside of the therapy room. That's something that has shown to be very, very useful, kind of like a mentor, if you had someone take you under your wing, that's something that's been shown to be exceptionally powerful in therapy. And it's something that they're the way that their system is set up, you can't really do that. [04:48.3]
Another thing has been experiential learning, meaning you're putting the body through certain things and you're putting the person through certain things and allowing them to process those experiences. Again, not something that they're really set up for, even though they're all the research is pointing to it being exceptionally effective. And so, what you're left with when you go to therapy is, is the opportunity to talk through and learn different coping skills and management skills for emotional stuff and everything else. And they're going to talk to you, which means we're going to be using the mind or the intellect, and they're going to take concepts and ideas about attachment or, or things around the mind. And they're going to talk to you about that and they're going to help you go into your memory, banks and process, maybe what's happened in the last week or earlier on in your life and reframe it mentally. And while that is exceptionally powerful, it is, I would estimate in my own experience, less than 10%, maybe even only 5% of the process. [05:44.4]
Some people respond really well to it, so there's always that. But it is such a tiny part of the process when we're talking about complete and total freedom. Now, how do I have experience with this? How could I say such a thing? One, obviously there are therapists that I've worked with pretty closely and trained, and they've mentioned these things to me. The second is I've done a lot of work on my own, going to people to help me process mentally, both I've talked to therapists and with other people who have are skilled in Adlerian psychology and other types of approaches and methods to help eliminate emotional baggage and mental weight from the system. And I've been through months and months and months of this. [06:25.6]
And with various different people, you know, maybe even years of going through these things over the, over, over the years. And what I found was I would get these incredible gains. Like I would, I wouldn't be able to see through something and it wouldn't affect me anymore, but then something similar to it would affect me later. And so, like bit by bit, it would take a long time and I'd have to piecemeal my way through it. And then certain thought processes wouldn't really affect me anymore. But I noticed that I would still have the habit of going through certain behaviors with it, or sometimes it would come back months later, maybe not to the same extent, but to a certain limited extent, at least when life got a little bit stressful or other things happened. And that was because I hadn't dealt with the bulk of what made that situation show up in the first place. So that's what we want to do here. [07:14.3]
I want you to ask yourself this question, what part of the body is missing neurons? By neurons, I mean nerve cells. These are the most advanced cells in the human system. They have the capacity to create movement and perception and intelligence and whatnot. If a rock had nerve cells, then it wouldn't, it would see be function as a rock in some ways. Maybe the rock would start to flex and bend and whatnot. So, nerve cells are in a sense, the most advanced sales in the body. And they're the things that enable humans to have as much consciousness as we have. Now, it just in terms of physical specifications, modern physics will tell you that based on the way the universe or the solar system is set up and gravitation and all of the other kind of natural laws that are governing how biological bodies exist on this planet. In order to increase human intelligence, we would either have to increase the number of neurons that we have going on, especially in the brain or increase the size. [08:14.2]
Now, if we increase the number, there would be so many packed in such a space that we would get more static between them of all that activity and clarity of thinking would go down. So, if we increase the size of the neurons, what happens then is they're sucking too much energy in the body wouldn't be able to sustain it. So, in terms of evolutionary biology, humans, as we are right now are at the apex or the peak of what this planet can sustain in terms of consciousness, in terms of intelligence, in terms of intellect. But there is the capacity to use that in more efficient ways, right? But where in the body are all these neurons located? And I'll have you just take a second and pinch your finger and ask you if you felt anything. Because if you felt anything by pinching your finger, that means that there are neurons and a chain of neurons from your finger, all the way up to your brain as a communication network that is letting you know what's going on. [09:08.7]
In other words, there are neurons, AKA nerve cells or brain cells all over your body. Your entire body is a brain. The gut itself has enough nerve cells to have the intelligence, something of like a dog, basically. So, you have the equivalent intelligence of a dog. A dog knows how to survive. It knows how to feed itself. It knows how to play and knows how it can make certain associations and memories around certain things that produce certain emotional support. So, your gut has that level of intelligence, just your belly. Your heart, the atrial ventricular node, and the neurons in the heart are sending more information to the brain than the brain is sending to them. And in many cases, especially if they're not synced up, well, it can cause physiological problems. But in many cases, it's a very, very intelligent system on its own. The electromagnetic field of the heart extends some 16 feet outside the body in every direction, which means like when you're in a room, the energy field of the heart and all the activity that's going in there encompasses almost the entire room that you're in. [10:13.8]
That's I think that's a really important thing to notice. So, this is one reason why you can tell what other people are feeling and thinking is because the field of energy that's moving in and around your body. And I'm just talking specifically around electromagnetic energy and things like that is bumping into other people's stuff. And so, there's a level of perception there just because you're linked to it and able to perceive it just with the heart. Then the brain of course, is its own beast in terms of intellect. And obviously there's a high density of neurons there. But I want you to, what I want you to get is that the entire body is packed with brain cells. When you move your finger, that is the equivalent of a thought. It's just not a thought in concept. It's not a thought in words, but when, when you're trying to figure out how to open a bag of chips and your fingers are moving one way or another only when it's not working well enough. And you've tried a few times, does your brain get involved and look at it and go, Hmm, maybe if I tried it this way, and then the analytical capacity of your brain gets involved, but your brain is still working. You are still thinking just with fingers. [11:17.8]
And you also think with emotions and you'll have emotional reactions and responses to what's happening in your body and your surroundings as a way of helping you understand and navigate your environment. This is how kids operate for the first several years of their life. They're dealing with movement and sensation and they're dealing with emotion. Long before their intellect has words to be able to enable them to put it into concepts and ideas. Each one of these is powerful in enabling you to finally be free of processes that are holding you in place. But what I want you to note is the bulk of your activities, think about how many cells are dividing. Think about how many times you breathe. Think about all the movements of muscles in your body throughout the day, when you're uncomfortable and you shift your body and when things happen and how you eat and think about all that stuff. And when you look at all the activity that is going on through inside of you throughout the day, most of which you and I are unconscious of what percentage of that is conscious thinking? Tiny, right? [12:25.1]
It is an infinite testable amount. One time somebody told me that the brain or the nervous system itself is dealing with around 4 billion bits of information per second. I don't know how they measured this. That would be interesting to note, but 4 billion bits of information per second out of which about 2000 of those become, come up to the conscious level. And of those, I would highly doubt that 2000 bits per second are forming into thoughts per se. I would suggest that some of those become thoughts, but 2000 bits come up to the conscious level. That's less than one half of 1000000th of 1% of everything that's going out there. One half of a millionth of a percent is how much is coming to your conscious awareness, which suggests that there's a whole vast storehouse of habitual actions that are going on that are then driving the train and then you're sitting there with the wheel going, why isn't the train turning? Why isn't the train turning? Cause somebody else laid the tracks. [13:29.8]
And until you get in and change the direction of the tracks, you're at best, you can speed up and slow down, go forward and backward, but along the same track. And this is why so many people get stuck in depression and addiction and anxiety and all these other things is because all of this stuff that is laying down the tracks of the train in their life is stuff that they're not consciously aware of. And they have given, given no tools on how to like take up the track, that's there and chart a new course and lay down different track or upgrade and get into a different vehicle for crying out loud. [14:02.7]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [14:30.5]
So, this is a really, really stark difference from what's going on with therapy and counseling. Therapy and counseling, they're going to sit there in that little 2000 bits of information or less when we're talking about thoughts. And they're going to have you talking about that, hoping that we can start to steer the train. Now that can create communication, like if you're driving a train and you're like, Hey, this track isn't going where I wanted to go. And you might be able to communicate with headquarters and eventually it will come down the chain of command. And eventually the train tracks might be, might be able to be shifted at some point in time, but that's a long process. It takes a lot of red tape. You know, you're going to go through a lot of different channels. And so rather than doing that, we want to just bypass that as much as we can and go straight to the body. [15:20.0]
Now, in traditional healing, I want you to note this in a lot of different cultures, and I'm going to talk about two specifically, but there's more like there's a Chinese approach and Ayurveda in India, there's native American stuff that's going on. There's also Russian systema and they're kind of Christian oriented approaches. There's stuff that comes on from the yogic side of things. There's a lot of different natural systems that have been around a long time and they don't have psychology. Even in the west, in the history of psychology, psychology as a science, as an empirical sciences study of what's going on and psychosis in the mind and all of these other functions of the mind, it doesn't show up as a branch on its own, really until like the 1800’s, which is where a lot of these things picked up around the time that humans in enlightenment and industrial revolution, we start to think of everything like a machine and that we understand everything. And then we just assume that we're right and then a lot of our current science is kind of built on that. [16:17.7]
But psychology meaning studying just the mind and all that stuff at first was just a branch of philosophy. And it used to be a study of the soul, like of what really made a person tick for happiness, health and wellbeing. And now nowadays it's become a study of the mind and mental processes and theories around how the mind works and all that other stuff. And while that's been talked about in other cultures, it's always been within the greater context of the soul and on top of that, it's recognized that all of that talking is worthless except to be able to create an opening for something deeper to happen. So, in yoga, for instance, there is no psychology. If you have issues going on mental issues or anything else, you would go to somebody and they would prescribe physical exercises, perhaps some herbal supplements or remedies or things to help kind of tonify the system or shift the system around. And, or they would have you doing certain chants or mantras or make certain sounds or vocalizations with your body to create a different kind of reverberation. [17:20.0]
Every sound has a form attached to it and so certain sounds on repeat can actually shift your biological function. They would do this with people, with depression and anxiety and schizophrenia and whatnot. They'd have them go chant, you know, 20 minutes at a time, three times a day or something like that. And then all of these mental health issues would subside rather than having them sit down and tell them the content of their thoughts. They're bypassing everything and realigning the whole mind, which is the entire body. They're working with all the rest of the billions of bits of information. And they're working to align that so that it's in harmony with the planet they're living on and with the other people that they're interacting with and with the way the human body is designed to function. And in, so doing all of these ailments disappear. You see every ailment, mental, physical, or otherwise is just an indicator that we're not operating the machinery, AKA the mind and body the right way. [18:20.8]
In Russian systema, they, these warriors, you know, this is a thousand-year-old tradition, right? These warriors would go to war. They battle like in all kinds of different terrains, all kinds of people, they would see people die and all this other stuff. And instead of just sending them home after that, like we do nowadays, they would gather and camp after battle many times. And they would sit around the campfire and they would talk and process things. But more often they would be interacting with just sitting around the campfire. They'd be out in the natural world. They would be doing physical training. They would be doing physical, like deep tissue release. A lot of these things that I've learned and that we work with in our retreats, deep tissue release, breath work, and breathing, movement, recalibrating the nervous system's response to stresses helping emotional and somatic releases from traumas that have been experienced in the past and overall, just hitting the system reset. So that person is happy and whole and well, before they go home to their family. This is a deeply Orthodox Christian kind of approach. And so it's not that it's the religion that's governing this because they all have understood that as a piece of life on this planet, you have a body. And that, it's the one thing that qualifies you to be on this planet and to be alive. And if you don't operate the body as designed, then some something's going to happen either death or disorder or disrepair or disease is going to happen. [19:43.9]
And so, as a result, all of these deep traditions have understood the wisdom of a body-based approach to health and wellbeing and even to spirituality. Recognizing that the human mind and less it is a servant to something bigger can take off and create all kinds of psychosis and problems inside the human system. This is why we're so stuck is because in the modern society, we are so hung up on what people think and what they, how they interpret life and how they feel and how they react, that we have completely shifted and we've put the cart before the horse. And we care more about the content of their thought than the quality of their life. When the quality of their life is the only thing that's allowing them to have thoughts in the first-place. Case in point. Have you ever been sick? Have you ever been stressed? Have you ever been ill? How easy is it for you to think? Do you get it? It is not. It's not easy for you to think when you're asleep in bed unconscious, it's not easier for you to think when you're sick or ill or being punched or your body is being attacked in some way, shape or form or another. It's not easy for you to think when you're tired or you ate something that doesn't agree with you, and you have a tummy ache, your thought processes are subservient too. They are, they are like the cherry on the cake. They're a privilege. And what comes into your thoughts is not relevant. [21:12.5]
So, in yoga, there's no psychology. In Systema, there's no psychology. You're literally just breathing and moving and doing all of the things that I've taken an adapted and pulled together from these different systems, from the Chinese system, from yoga, from Christian systems and pulled them together as a body-based approach to creating the foundation of health and wellbeing and happiness without having to go through the mind. This means we address the respiratory system, the musculoskeletal system, the nervous system, and their response to your environment. Because ultimately it is, and we talked about this a few weeks ago, but it is in your body's response to the environment that the magic happens. When your body ceases to automatically treat the environment as an attack, as an enemy, as a danger and starts to interact with it in a more intelligent way than all of the feelings of stress and anxiety and overwhelm and fear. Yes, even fear, fear itself is not existentially helpful. [22:14.9]
An awareness of danger is helpful, but fear actually causes problems in the body. It's like revving the engine on your car. You might get a little bit of power out of it, but at the result that the expense of a lot of gas mileage and probably wear and tear on the engine. Fear is not helpful and awareness of danger is helpful, but most of us have substituted wanting to be people, to be afraid of things rather than aware of things. And that includes pornography. That includes drugs. That includes all the other stuff. We've built up our education system on fear and worry instead of on awareness and understanding so often, especially for young kids. And while that may motivate them to do what the parents want them to do, it doesn't actually empower them in their life. It just makes them afraid. And so now we have to go back and recalibrate the system and give them a reset. And so, a lot of the things we do at these retreats are helping them reset and recalibrate their systems so that they get a choice in how their body starts to respond to things, whether or not they were trained to respond that way, growing up, you know, how to respond to things in a way that's healthier and happier. [23:22.3]
So, to be able to go into a body-based approach, what this means is we're working with movement, very specific movements. It's not exercise in the sense of go for a run. That's very good for you in many times. Other times, it's not, it can be detrimental, it just depends on how you do it. But it's not the same thing as just go exercise that can help you feel exceptional. It's a very good thing to do to have your body physically engaged in the world. I actually wish I were a little bit more physically involved. And then on the days when I do get physically involved, I'm like, wow, maybe not so much. But I enjoy physical movement a lot. It's a part of how I live my life, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about specific body movements and positions and tension patterns and whatnot that help your body start to release deeply held muscle memory around how it's supposed to be in the world. And this muscle memory has come from a memorized feeling of who you are. [24:20.8]
So, let's talk about moving homes. I may have mentioned this recently, but I want to mention it again if I haven't, because I think it's really important. If you're going to go buy a new home, you spend a lot of time researching things, looking up where you want to live and what are the features of the home and price and everything else. And you go to a lot of effort to buy this new home, to improve your life. You're changing your circumstances. And then the first thing you do when you get there in order to make it feel like home, is that you go grab all of your old stuff and you bring it in and you move it in. So now it feels like it's part of you. There are, I don't know anybody who has just moved to a new place, gotten rid of everything. And they just got on different clothes, different furniture, everything, and just started from scratch. We have a hard time doing that because as humans, we don't like to feel homeless. And we feel out of water, so, if we, if I don't feel like myself, I don't know, things are different. We've memorized a feeling state in our body. And because we've memorized a feeling state, we don't feel like things are right, or we don't feel like we are ourselves, unless we feel that way, which is why we moved to a new home. And then pretty soon we're having the same problems in the new environment, because we brought the feeling with us and we weren't satisfied to change. [25:37.8]
But I want you to recognize that that feeling is just a memorized way of being, it has nothing to do with who you are. It's just a memorized way of being that's it. And it allows you to be a little bit unconscious in your life because you're so familiar with it that you don't have to pay attention. So that memorized way of being means that we have to memorize a new way of being. We have to get rid of the old one and memorize a new one, which means your body has to learn it, not your mind. This is why so many times you've been able to think your way out of a problem. And yet you keep going back to it because your body hasn't learned a new way of operating a new way of seeing and interacting with the environment and a new way of feeling. That takes a different type of approach. [26:20.6]
So, we use movement, we use breath, we use sound, we use physical stressors and other types of intense physical experiences to kind of reboot the system. We use water. We use the natural world. We use nutrition and we use all of these different systems together in a concerted effort to help you memorize freedom and happiness and health as a way of being. Even chronic pain is a memorized way of being, yes, it is in response to perhaps physical stimulus, but that response can be shifted. And I've seen this happen with clients of ours, where people dealing with even chronic pain and autoimmune diseases can now shift their body system. And even if the blood work doesn't change a hundred percent, all of the stuff that the blood work says, they shouldn't be experiencing, they're not experiencing because they've changed their body's interaction with the natural world inside of themselves, with their blood markers. And they've been able to rapidly improve and radically improve their quality of life to the point where chronic pain goes away and all the things that should be there with auto-immune diseases aren't. [27:30.5]
This has been just because the auto-immune diseases, your response to an environment, it's not a disease necessarily doing it. And even if it is a bacteria or a disease or some kind of molecule that's inside of you, how you respond to that molecule is incredibly important. You can burn fat in a stressed state and you'll get energy from it, for sure, but in a stress state, it also produces toxins in your body. You can also burn fat in a joyful state, and then it doesn't produce those toxins. You're getting energy from it either way, but one way produces toxins that break down the body. Another way produces no toxins and your body just improves over time. Same here, the way that you interact with your environment is important that requires retraining the basic systems of the body. So, if you are struggling with emotional struggles of any kind self-worth issues, mental issues of any kind, I highly, highly recommend not sitting there and like looking for medications. Those those may help and they may be needed as an intervention from time to time, but not being satisfied with talking through your problems because the content of your mind is such a tiny piece of what makes a joyful experience of life. [28:44.4]
And if you really want a permanent shift, one, you're going to have to get used to the idea that things are going to feel different. But two, I highly suggest you find a body-based approach that is going to help you finally retrain your system so, you don't have to fight it all the time, you don't have to talk your way through it all the time. And your body starts to produce happiness, health and wellbeing on autopilot, because it's finally been trained to do that, or I should say untrained to create illness, which is basically how we trained it in the first place. [29:16.0]
Now, if you want help with that, you can go to thefreedomspecialist.com and you can sign up for one of our retreats if you want. Or you can talk to us on the phone and look at your situation, whether it's physical health, chronic pain, like auto-immune disease stuff, or whether you're dealing with mental health issues and whatnot. But I highly, highly recommend not settling for just going to a therapist for months at a time, as good as they are, they are not trained in this stuff. They're not even aware of this stuff many, many times. And they themselves still struggle with many of the things that they're helping their clients with, just because not because they're bad people, they really are helping people, but they don't know, and they aren't trained in it. And as a result, they're missing parts of the puzzle. Eventually this will become wide knowledge as some of it's starting to shift in the, in the, in the therapy world, but it's slow going because it's a regulated industry. [30:05.9]
So, if you're loving your therapy, great, make sure you're also addressing all the other bits. Remember 2000 versus 4 billion don't strain in a gnat and swallow a camel, as Jesus said. Make sure that you're paying attention to the whole of who you are, because the greatest gains in quality of life, they're not going to happen by what you say or what you think you're going to happen by what happens inside of your biology as you're interacting with the glorious miracle of life. [30:35.2]
And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [30:53.5]
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