Healing Our Nervous System With Somatic Breathwork

Nadeem and I dove deep into the inner workings of our mind, nervous system, anxiety, and trauma to bring you a comprehensive dialogue that I think will help shift major things for you!

Check it out and be sure to visit @nadeem.alhasan and @somaticrelease to see what they’re doing for the world!

Transcript

All right.

And we're live.

Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the happiness habit podcast.

I am here with an extremely special guest,

Nadim.

He is the creator of the build one thing online community where modern day creators who want to build and create,

Go to connect with each other and uplift.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah,

My pleasure.

I'm very happy to be here.

All right.

So I knew that when I found you with this very unconventional style and a little bit more in your face type messaging,

That's kind of falls into the same way.

I love to swim upstream and think challenging thoughts and get people to really kind of critically think against the norm and what we take for granted all the time when it comes to personal development and how,

When we go and explore inside of ourselves,

We have this,

You know,

This propensity to kind of overlook and brush things with a broad stroke to kind of avoid the real truth behind things.

And when I saw and connected,

When we connected on social media,

I thought this guy gets it.

He has very much a,

The same kind of,

But is that true?

So tell me where that kind of came about.

Did you go into personal development on your own and kind of just realized that there was just a lot of things that you're like,

No,

I have bigger questions.

How did that walk us through how that kind of came about with,

With your mentality of having a more unconventional approach?

Yeah,

Sure.

Great question.

So I ran a cannabis edible company for 12 years here in Arizona,

And it was,

It is the largest edible company in Arizona.

We scaled it to over a hundred retail locations.

We're a distributor manufacturer.

Cannabis was a big part of my lifestyle for about 16 years.

Still have a great relationship with it.

Love it.

But I've,

I'm 32 now I've evolved.

And that doesn't mean anything by age.

Cause I mean,

I work with patients and individuals that are,

You know,

In their seventies and eighties,

But as a college student,

I was not using it medically.

Let's just say that,

Right.

I was the,

I was the self-proclaimed pothead if you would.

But I had a wrestling coach,

So I've competed in wrestling for 25 years,

Jiu Jitsu wrestling.

And it's always been a part of martial arts,

Cannabis is,

You'll always find it there.

And so what had happened was I had a coach in college that cannabis ended up really helping.

And this was the first time I'd ever seen it used in a medical,

In a medicinal way.

And so that really caught my eye and I was like,

Where can I learn more about this?

And so now I was,

I was going to school in Oklahoma that drove me to Arizona.

And that was in 2008.

Well to like,

Just to condense that story,

That's when the edible company began.

We scaled it,

We ran it.

And I just made an exit about,

Well,

At the beginning of this year.

So March was my,

My last day there,

You know,

No longer involved in the day-to-day operations,

But there was a,

To circle back around your question that was like,

What started all this personal development?

Trauma is too much,

Too fast.

And being 19 going on 20 at that time,

When the edible company started,

I didn't know what I was doing.

Like I was in it for the love of cannabis,

Not to like build this business.

And you know,

Fast forward,

All of a sudden we had 55 employees and we're,

You know,

Statewide,

You know,

Distribution and manufacturing and politics and all the things,

You know,

Legalities and ever changing.

And,

You know,

We've got,

You know,

Marketing department,

We all the things.

And so it forced me to have to learn.

Right.

And,

And it's very good.

Like,

I'm very thankful for that because I've developed a very particular set of skills that,

You know,

Skills carry on with you and no matter where you go,

That's the great thing about skills.

And so I made a transition into another company that I am now part of called Somatic Breathwork and it's a trauma release therapy.

And we do this through a particular modality of breathing,

Probably get into that.

But there was this transition phase from Baked Bros,

The edible company into Somatic Breathwork.

And that transition phase was heavily influenced by philosophy and specifically the last day of Socrates.

So Socrates and Plato,

They're essentially the same person.

But I read that book,

The Last Day of Socrates,

And something just woke me up inside.

And it was like,

It,

They speak about the four cardinal virtues.

So courage,

Wisdom,

Justice,

Temperance,

And just the explanation of these cardinal virtues.

And if are we in alignment with these cardinal virtues,

It really was pulling on some strings.

And I felt very out of alignment with the previous business that I was in.

You know,

I wasn't happy with the way it was being ran.

I have business partners in it.

And it just wasn't,

My soul was saying,

No,

This is not it.

This is not it.

And you've known this for years.

And so that philosophy is really what propelled the personal development.

Prior to that,

I'd done the,

I'm doing personal development.

I just didn't know.

It's just like I was doing what was demanded by nature.

It's like,

You need to learn these things in order to scale these things.

Right?

And so it wasn't until philosophy was,

It was that pivotal moment.

That's awesome.

I love that you said that it was,

You know,

A process that was demanded of you,

As opposed to something that you chose to go into.

I feel like that has collectively been what we've all gone through.

You know,

Post 2020,

We were in such a,

We were all in such a strange place internally,

Externally,

And being forced to,

You know,

Come outside of our comfort zones in so many different ways.

And then we all kind of,

This whole mindset of us being alone and segregated from each other was so collectively almost a trauma in itself,

Because we're coming outside of ourselves with this idea behind playing in the background on loop that,

You know,

This is our survival and we need to stay in and stay.

There's this thing out there that's threatening to kill us.

And then we have,

You know,

Upending,

You know,

Almost this anarchy looking vision.

Every time we turn on the news,

We're thinking,

You know,

We have riots and protests and things like that.

And we're all,

We're seeing it being piped and fed is all of this trauma of all these scary things happening and all around us.

And,

You know,

Then we have the group think and the camps that we all divided into almost in this like Lord of the Flies survival mode,

Where it was like,

Do you belong to,

Do you believe,

What do you believe?

What do you believe?

You know?

And so we just kind of like came out of our skin and started to kind of fester and feed off of all of this very negative narrative.

And it kind of forced us all.

I feel like now when we're looking back,

You know,

Most of us are asking very large questions inside these large,

Where did I come from?

What was life before?

How do I want it to be?

There was a lot of status quo that I was operating in that I don't necessarily,

You know,

Subscribe to anymore,

But going forward,

What is alignment look like for me?

And I think that's where this whole personal development world exploded is because we all had to kind of,

We were forced by demand,

By necessity to figure out what is alignment?

Who the hell am I?

Where did I really even love my career?

Do I really even love myself?

Do I,

You know,

How do I operate now in this new modality?

And so I'm definitely going to,

I can honestly,

I can throw myself under the bus.

I have not read that book,

But something with four principles and you know,

That sounds that's right up my alley for reading material.

So I love it.

What was your,

So the four,

Talk about the four cardinal virtues,

Four cardinal virtues and tell me what was,

Where were your shifts when you were coming into alignment with all of these,

As far as how you measured yourself prior to.

Sure.

So this is a very passionate topic to me.

So at any point in time,

Just hold me.

And it's very loaded too,

Because philosophy can be fixed sometimes.

And like it's,

It's,

It's,

You know,

Plato's Republic,

Last day of Socrates,

You know,

The letters of Seneca,

These are books that you read and reread over and over and over because every time you read that sentence,

It just,

It's over your head,

It goes over,

Then it lands.

That's right.

You know,

I mean,

I'd find myself spending 10,

10 minutes on a page and I'm like,

What,

You know?

And it's just not like that with any other books.

I love and hate those books because I love books.

I love to be like,

Oh,

I read it.

I feel like my bookshelf is like this little trophy shelf where it's like,

Oh,

Look at the stuff I've read.

And then it drives me nuts,

Because it takes me 100 years to get through one book,

Because it's like,

This was so saturated,

This one paragraph was so saturated with things I can meditate on.

And even,

You know,

The Tao,

And it's like,

There's so many different books where it's like,

I will never finish this.

And that's okay.

And that's okay,

Too.

You know,

We've,

We've been,

We've kind of been instructed or taught that,

You know,

We ought to finish a book from start to finish.

And,

You know,

I have this awesome bookshelf over here that's loaded with books.

And then one day I was like,

Damn,

I think maybe I've read half of them.

Right?

And I'm like,

I'm never going to catch up to all that.

Right.

And I did have a mentor was like,

Why do you have to read all of them?

He's like,

Just read what you need to read from each book and then move on.

I was like,

Oh,

Yeah.

I mean,

Now I'm at any point in time going through two or three books,

You know,

Just because that's what we are as human,

Like a human is a human is a human or multifaceted,

Right?

And attention and time are our focus is a very,

Very that's a very developed skill.

Okay.

Cause our attention is being pulled,

Right?

They say time is money,

But it's rather attention.

Attention is money.

And so,

And,

And with the fight on our attention focus has become very difficult.

Right.

And so it's okay to jump,

You know,

From thing to thing,

But so long as you're very intentional about what you're doing.

So it's like right now I want to read about,

You know,

Writing stories cause I've been really into writing stories lately.

Right.

And then I may shift to a product development book,

Like the one thing by Gary Keller,

Because that one thing helps me strengthen the,

The,

The,

The characteristic that I'm focusing on a lot the last year is essentialism.

Like just like what's essential.

I went from this,

You know,

I went from this way more than I needed.

And this is all again ties back to philosophy because like,

You know,

People are living in,

People have way more than they need for the essentials.

Right.

And it's like,

Oh wow.

So I went from this four bedroom house to this,

You know,

Studio apartment essentially.

And I'm like,

I'm way happier.

Like this is way better.

Like this is way better,

You know?

And it's,

And it's that pendulum swing too.

It's like when the Buddha says pick the middle path,

The Buddha would have never found the middle path if he wasn't a Prince and he wouldn't have surely wouldn't have ever discovered it.

If he was a homeless person sitting under the Bodhisattva tree,

Right.

He discovered like,

Oh,

Extremely wealthy.

Isn't it?

And extremely poor.

Isn't it right?

But it's that middle path.

That's it.

And that's like what I've been experiencing the last couple of years.

But when it comes to the cardinal virtues,

This is,

These are thrown around a lot within philosophy and throw and stoicism.

And there's a difference between specific philosophy and stoicism.

Stoicism is when the Romans came into the,

Into Greek and,

But they,

They,

They certainly hold hands.

And so when it comes to wisdom,

Wisdom is acquiring knowledge and then how we utilize that knowledge that we've acquired.

There are different forms of acquiring knowledge based on these teachers.

And I'll give an example.

So Socrates believed that the way we acquire information,

The way that we acquire knowledge,

He was known as the wisest man in all the lands.

He went to so many different countries,

Had all the conversations,

All the debates,

Healthy debates,

Not fighting very,

Very specific on that.

And he believed that the way we acquired information is by asking questions.

You know,

We see this with like attorneys,

They,

They study the Socratic method or the dialectic method is what it's called.

The Socratic method is it's,

It's the entire conversation is predicated on asking questions.

That's it.

Right.

And,

And,

And that's how you acquire knowledge.

And he believed that is the way,

Whereas Plato,

His greatest student and we wouldn't know about Socrates if it weren't for Plato,

Because Plato documented everything about Socrates.

So Plato believed he adopted that philosophy,

But he also believed the way that we acquired knowledge or wisdom is by shutting out the bodily senses.

We have been robbed of our senses and mind you,

This is 2000 years ago,

Right?

And they were 2000 years from the Egyptian era,

Which is wild to think about,

But he's talking about this 2000 years ago that we are robbed of our senses and our senses are our birthright to feel,

To see,

To touch,

To smell,

To taste all of these things.

And there's much more than these senses than just these five senses.

There's much,

Much more.

And it's that when we are able to sit in silence,

It's like Rumi says,

Silence is the language of God.

All else is false translation.

That's when that voice starts to bubble up.

That's when we hear what the daemon call or the Greek call the daemon.

It's our soul speaking to us.

Right?

So when I'm reading this book,

The Last Day of Socrates,

And I'm hearing this voice as I'm sitting in silence,

It's like,

Dude,

You know,

You're not happy here.

You know,

The environment's toxic.

You know,

There's so much more,

You know,

But I just,

I just shove it out,

Shove it out,

Suppress it,

Suppress it until finally that manifests into some form of disease.

Right?

If we don't address it,

That's,

I'll use a lot of examples because I read a lot,

But it's Joseph Campbell's,

You know,

You have to enter the cave in order to bear the treasure you seek.

Right?

And so it's,

And it was exactly that.

And so Plato believed that the way we acquired knowledge is by sitting in silence and really getting in connection with that inner voice and hearing it,

Like truly hearing it.

So that's an example of wisdom or acquiring knowledge is from the two.

Courage could be,

The courage would be defined as the ability to take action on those words,

On what you're hearing.

We all have the voice inside of us,

Every single one of us.

And it doesn't matter how drunk you are,

How high you are,

Whatever.

We all know when you're doing something wrong,

You know,

You know,

It's black and white.

Right?

And so regardless of your state of mind and regardless of the situation you're in,

We all have the voice that is guiding us.

Call it your soul,

Call it your daemon,

Call it the Holy Spirit,

Whichever you subscribe is fine,

But we all have it.

And what courage,

Courage is the ability to take action on that voice and what it's saying to you.

Courage is being able to say to your partner,

Hey,

I love you,

But I'm not going to tolerate that type of conversation.

Right?

And if you need a few minutes,

I'll come back or we can come back to this.

Most people blow through that and they don't even,

They don't even hold space for that.

Right?

And it just,

It's an all out.

Or become someone else to relate to them in the way that they are.

Right.

And they're sacrificing their true self for this other person.

We're not to be a mesh with one another.

We are unique imprints of our own.

And so then you have temperance or modesty,

Humility.

Okay.

It depends on which book you're reading,

But these three are all the same and it's,

You know,

Modesty or humility is in the name.

Like to be humble,

Humility is the skeleton key to all doors.

It opens every door.

For me personally,

Like I really value that characteristics in myself and in others.

Right.

Like when somebody isn't rather arrogant,

It's just,

It's a complete turnoff.

Like just from a friendship perspective and all the above.

It's just like,

Ah,

You know,

It's just stop,

You know?

And I can sit there and probably break down where it comes from and all the things,

But that's not where I'm going to invest my energy,

You know?

And so essentially what these great teachers are saying is just,

Just don't really engage with people who aren't humility,

Like who aren't humble because people who aren't modest,

It's a losing battle.

Like you can't argue with stupid,

You know,

It's just,

You're going to lose.

You know?

So you've got knowledge,

I'm sorry,

You have wisdom,

Humility or modesty,

Courage,

And then you have justice.

And this one gets confused with people.

I'm so sorry.

This one gets confused with people.

People confuse justice as like,

I have to seek vengeance.

That's not what justice is.

Justice is doing the right thing when no one is looking.

Justice is acting in accordance with your higher self.

And so the question is,

How do I know when I'm in accordance with any of these virtues?

It goes back to that inner voice,

You know,

If there's any,

If there's the smallest hint of negotiation,

You're out of alignment.

I call it negotiating with God.

When I'm making big decisions and I'll do my,

I'll pray often.

And usually at night it's,

I'll pray,

I'll get these insights.

I don't know if it's just because I'm more opened up or just,

You know,

The analytic side is just going down.

So open ups at night.

And then in the morning I'm like,

Wait,

What was I thinking?

No,

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to do what I wanted to do.

And then it's like,

Oh,

I'm negotiating with God.

I'll ask God or source for an answer and I'll get this immediate download or this immediate response.

No,

Not that.

The next thing.

Exactly.

I'm like,

Are you sure?

Are you sure God?

You know,

And it's,

We're negotiating.

And so that is in a nutshell,

These four cardinal virtues and they've paid dividends to me in my relationships and in ways that,

You know,

Are,

It would take a lot longer to really explain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It sounds like,

You know,

Almost that justice even translates into just integrity in general,

Just that operating with these three other cardinal in a way that's okay.

These are the three now operate that way,

Have integrity with those three.

And it's fascinating to me that all core principles,

All books,

All ancient readings,

It doesn't even matter how long ago it exists.

They still all touch on these same tools.

It doesn't matter if it was somebody 2000 years after Jesus died.

If it doesn't,

It doesn't matter if it was,

You know,

Jesus himself,

The Buddha,

Eastern religion,

Western religion,

It all seems to have these same notes of,

You know,

Our human condition is,

Can be a mess.

It can come unglued and we know,

You know,

Here's our weak spots,

Here's our blind spots,

Here's our,

You know,

The,

The things that were kind of predetermined will come if we just scramble from these core values and these things that if we do not operate here,

This is the fate.

And we've seen that time after time,

After time in humanity,

We've seen these,

You know,

Amazing empires rise and fall because we've strewn away from these core values.

It's,

It's fantastic and predictable.

And we can look at humanity.

I don't know how many times I've read a book and I've just gone,

I'm reading a book that was a hundred years ago that is applying to today.

And it's almost a cautionary tale.

And you can see it,

The writings on the wall all of the time with all of these books that are just very,

To the,

The uptenth exact degree telling us what we are going to experience and see if we continue to go down this road.

And it's like,

We watched the state of the America today and it just,

You know,

It's almost like I can imagine just God sitting up there going,

Guys.

So that's,

That's beautiful.

And so in your journey of leaving that career,

Walk me through,

You know,

You've read this book,

You've come into a new modality in existence.

Did you,

In your life prior,

Was there some,

I assume getting ground and getting foundation in your feet with this new way of,

Of thinking,

Of believing,

Of feeling,

Of operating,

Of relating to others.

I have to assume the ground was not just this smooth pavement where you stepped into this new identity.

Oh my God,

No.

And it certainly starts earlier than that too.

So I,

When I do my,

You know,

Personality test,

Myers-Briggs,

All the things,

All these different ones that we do,

Oh my God.

And it's like,

I use these,

I enjoy these for the context and I enjoy these for the consideration of the information.

Right.

And if that really aligns with how I feel and I'm like,

Oh yeah,

That definitely is the way I operate,

But I don't become rigid on these things.

I've always been a very open person.

I've always been so open to change.

I lean far more on the optimistic side of things.

I have a lot of faith,

Have a lot of hope,

Right?

And faith is hope and hope is the,

Or faith synonymous is the belief that things will get better over time.

Not that things will be good all the time.

Very different.

That's complacency.

Right.

Everything's fine.

Right.

It's like the meme and everything's on fire.

Everything's fine.

No,

There are times where everything's not fine.

Right.

But I have deep faith.

Like,

Like one of the things I share with Somatic Breathworks all the time,

Cause we do these in-person trainings,

Is that I have a deep faith for humanity.

Like people are amazing.

We are so,

Like being human is dope.

Like it is so cool.

It just is.

And I have a strong belief,

A deep faith that things will get better over time when they seem not great.

Right.

But I think that the offload into that is that when things are going poor,

That is my own personal judgment on the situation.

That is my,

The moment that I,

That I label something as this is bad.

I remember feeling so stuck and I would almost compound it and make it worse.

That my statement and buying into this is a bad scenario,

This is a bad event,

This is a bad circumstance.

I almost felt helpless.

I kind of gated it and cemented it in that it couldn't be anything else.

And I really started to watch myself grow when I was like,

This is bad right now.

This seems bad.

This appears bad.

And kind of jostling loose from this like cement concrete definition of,

Oh my gosh,

This is so bad.

It's like,

Well,

Where's the gift in it?

What else could you be seeing?

Where's the other dimension?

Where's the other side?

Where it's like,

I always got to the other side of whatever circumstances I was in and looked back and gone.

It could not have gone any other way.

There's so many things where I took so many,

Like 10 steps around it.

Like it was walking the edges of a map instead of going the straight and easy path.

And most of the time,

The reason why I walked the outside edge of this map is because I had come out of alignment.

I had done something a different way than I normally would have.

I negotiated my values,

Something along the lines of ignoring my inner voice,

Ignoring that calling,

Ignoring God's word on something and going around the outside edge of the map purely by my own hand.

And when I had gotten to the place of coming out of alignment,

This was now the new path.

There was no other way to go around it.

Yeah.

Wow.

I completely,

Very well said.

Yes.

So the Stoics,

And I will circle back around to answer your question as well,

Because it wasn't a smooth transition.

It often isn't,

But it's the internal perspective,

The perspection on the situation that's making it smooth or not smooth.

There are uncontrollable variables.

Let's just get these out of the way.

And like the Stoics speak about this,

Like,

Listen,

There are things that will happen that are completely out of your control.

Death,

Right?

It's going to happen.

Why worry about it?

It's going to happen.

Much more simple said than done.

I've also have like,

Philosophy is literally preparing yourself for death.

That's the way they teach it.

So I say that lightly and there are things it's like,

Hey,

That's not a good thing to waste my cognitive capacity on.

There are much other things to focus on right now.

Because as far as I know,

We get one life,

As far as I know right here.

So there are other things that I want to focus on right now.

And it's like,

Or it's like,

So I'm very influenced by Eastern philosophies as well.

My family's Muslim,

My father's Muslim,

My mother's Christian.

So I grew up going to mosques and churches.

So I went to both and I was introduced at a very early age to religion and these philosophies.

And I'm like,

Man,

There's a lot going on here.

Like,

It's the same.

Like I went to mosques on Saturdays,

Churches on Sundays.

And I'm like,

You know,

You guys are like teaching this almost the same thing.

And then I got into Eastern philosophies in college.

And that's when like,

Everything just exploded.

Like got introduced to like Hinduism,

Native American wisdom,

Which is more West,

But Buddhism.

And the Buddha said,

Or the first principle of Buddhism is dukkha.

Dukkha is suffering.

Life is suffering.

Funny.

The first thing they teach you is that life is suffering.

The first thing the Stoics teach you is that there are things that you cannot control.

So let's get past it.

It's like,

And I like,

I really enjoyed the Buddha because he taught in humor,

And I really resonate with humor.

Like it's just,

It's such a language of mine.

And so,

You know,

When you read some of his teachings or teachers that teach his work,

You can hear that come through.

It's like,

Alright guys,

So do we all agree that life is suffering?

Alright,

Let's move on.

Okay.

And because there's other things to focus on.

And so it absolutely is our,

Our perspective.

And the Stoics have many tools,

Like anybody who's interested in learning how to be happy,

Study Stoicism.

Like a beginner's guide to Stoicism,

Just start there.

That's a fantastic book.

Or there's another one,

A guide to the good life by William Irving.

Fantastic.

Beginner read and is phenomenal loaded with these,

These philosophies,

These teachings,

You know,

And so it's in the always use examples like frameworks.

Okay,

So here's a frame,

Right?

It's a picture frame,

However you look at it.

Right?

And I'm,

I'm,

I'm viewing the situation through this frame.

But what happens if I just turn it this way?

Right?

All I did was just shift my perspective,

And I'm seeing a different view through this frame,

Right?

And,

And that is applicable to all situations.

Stuck in traffic,

I could be angry about it,

Or I could be like,

Hmm,

Great,

Maybe it'll actually make me late to that meeting that I don't want to be in.

And they'll get halfway through it.

And then I'm not there.

Right?

Right.

Great.

I get to call my mom.

Great.

I get to listen to another song.

Great.

I get to sit in silence.

Like there's always the opportunity to find that moment of happiness.

It's just,

How do you want to relate to it in that moment?

And that is a skill.

That is something I'm very passionate about is that happiness is a skill.

And there,

There is,

There is evidence that,

You know,

There are,

There is a pre genetic disposition to about 40% of people.

But it doesn't mean they're,

They're outcasted,

Right?

Unless you're sociopath,

And it's like,

Very difficult to be happy.

But we can develop the skill.

And,

And there's a very,

There's a very small but powerful difference between talents and skill.

And a talent is innate.

You're,

You're,

It's a God given gift,

Right?

You're born with talent.

I'm never going to beat Michael Phelps in swimming.

Let's just face it,

Right?

It's not going to happen.

But I can become a very good swimmer.

I can develop a skill of swimming and become very good swimmer.

Right?

I'm not going to be a savant on the piano.

People just born with that.

Like they're just born with it.

Right?

Skill or skills can be developed.

Yeah.

And this is,

You know,

Going back to the beginning of the conversation,

Like,

These are the things that I learned from too much too fast,

Right?

I've learned what's a system called law minger.

And these law minger competencies,

They studied over 60,

000 businesses,

All the people involved,

And they narrowed it down to 32 competencies that any business needs.

And this is a way for life too.

It's not just business.

It's just in that arena that,

Hey,

If you manage people or yourself,

All behaviors and actions in the business fall within one of these 32 competencies.

And the great thing about competencies is that they can be developed and then they provide frameworks for developing them.

Example,

Action oriented.

Okay.

I have a team member on my team right now who is very action oriented.

Okay.

And that's a good and a bad skill.

And so with any skill,

There is overused,

There is underused,

Or so over skilled,

Under skilled and skilled.

Skilled is where you want to be,

Right?

It's the middle path.

Overskilled of action oriented would be like,

It's in the name,

Taking action on something and what happens is it's sloppy.

You get the job done sloppy,

You miss things,

Right?

You didn't take in consideration other departments of the business.

Underskilled would be you're just lazy,

Right?

You're like,

You're missing deadlines.

You're waiting to the last minute,

Right?

And there are examples and frameworks for every single one of these.

So as an individual responsible for 55 employees,

How do you talk to that many people in one on one meetings or in department meetings and help develop them so that that doesn't keep happening,

Right?

And that's where mental models or frameworks come into play.

And stoicism is just frameworks.

They're mental models.

Charlie Munger is huge on mental models.

Okay.

And so that's what these are.

It is a model that you can use to develop an individual.

And there are dozens of these for happiness.

And that's where this is going full circle is that there are dozens for developing the ability to be happy.

And I truly,

And it's a bio-psycho-social model.

Okay.

This is the model or the mental model.

And it starts from the bottom,

The biology of us.

Okay.

Because if our biology is not right,

Everything else is going to be out of whack.

Right.

And the West usually treats everything as top down.

We start with the mind and work our way down,

Often never even getting to the feelings or the instincts.

Right.

We're neglecting this body intelligence that we have that is hyper intelligent.

Like our body is wild.

It's wild how quickly we adapt.

And just things,

And this is what Plato means by like,

We're robbed of our senses.

Like we are not,

Many of us have forgot what it feels like to feel good.

Right.

And if we just allow and create our space for our body to heal,

It will do the healing on its own.

We don't need to,

We don't always have to go seek someone else.

So whereas the West treats it as top down,

We take this bio-psycho or bio-social psycho model and we focus on the biology.

So let's say you have an individual who's like,

Well,

Nadim,

I really want to start focusing on increasing my happiness.

Wonderful.

How are you sleeping?

Like,

Let's start there.

Which sometimes just rubs everyone backwards because they're not,

They're not really like,

I sleep fine.

What are you talking about?

And they live with a certain amount of pain without even understanding that they lived with it.

They don't know what it feels like to be out of pain.

So they don't know what it feels like to move forward towards something else.

When you're,

You're sitting there giving them that,

How are you sleeping?

I want to be happy.

Don't ask me about my body.

That's unrelated.

And so we separate our body from our mind.

We're like,

I'm not happy here.

I'm eating like hell.

I'm sleeping like hell.

I'm not doing anything.

My body has stored so much trauma and suppressed emotion.

I don't know how to deal with all of this.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

And,

And that,

And these are the conversations I've had,

You know,

And so we'll start even in within build one thing,

The community that me and my friend have,

It's like,

We start with that.

This may be a community for digital creators,

But we start with your health.

Like,

Where are you?

Okay.

Let's,

Let's get that right.

Because if you're up until 3am jamming on the computer,

That's not sustainable and it won't last long.

Right.

And you're probably in your early twenties,

But let me tell you,

It's going to change,

Right?

It will change.

And so starting from that bottom up,

You know,

How are you sleeping?

And then that there's a total assessment with there.

It tells you a lot,

Right?

How many hours are you sleeping?

All the things.

Okay.

And then let's work backwards.

So this is a mental model.

First principle thinking.

I like to apply this with almost everything is fine.

So if I asked you,

How are you sleeping?

You say,

Well,

Not great.

Let's work backwards.

How many hours are you getting?

Well,

I'm getting five hours.

All right.

Well,

Why do you think you're getting,

Or why are you getting five hours?

Well,

It's really difficult me for me to fall asleep and then stay asleep.

Okay.

Are you watching,

You know,

Any TV or anything like that?

You know,

Before you go to bed?

Yeah.

Usually I'm scrolling on my phone until like,

You know,

Until I fall asleep.

Usually I fall asleep with it on my chest.

So by asking these questions,

Using the Socratic method,

Using first principle thinking,

You know,

Working backwards,

We can start getting really clear on the things that are preventing you from the,

The first fundamental of your biology,

Which is sleep.

Right?

Then we can get into what your mornings look like,

Right?

Are we getting outside?

Right?

I walk my dog every single day.

I have a window right here in front of me with it open.

So I'm getting sunlight,

Right?

We probably have heard enough of it on social media.

Get outside,

Get sunlight.

You know,

And then from there it goes to,

Are we moving right?

Let's get some movement.

So these three things right there alone will radically shift your mental state,

Your mental health radically shift your mental health.

And we're talking again,

Focusing on sleep,

Waking up in the morning and,

Or not,

Not watching like a TV and everything,

You know,

A couple hours before bed and then getting outside in the morning.

We're not even into food yet.

Yeah.

We're not even into food yet.

And like Hippocrates says,

Let food be that medicine.

Right?

That's a whole nother ball game,

But let's not overwhelm people.

Let's get these three things right.

And then we can start working on food because people think like we have to throw the kitchen sink at everything like the morning routines and all the stuff.

And I had someone messaged me last night about a post I did about routines.

Cause I,

I,

I was the guy who did that like 30 minute minute or 10 minute meditation,

30 minute workout,

You know,

The cold shower,

Hot sauna,

All the things.

And I'm just like,

It's fucking 11 o'clock.

Like my day,

I woke up at like 6 30.

It's time to go.

And somebody just messaged me yesterday.

They're like,

I've been literally been thinking about that post every single day.

And I'm like,

What do you think about the,

Like,

I wake up at seven and it's like 10 30,

11 o'clock.

And then she's like the last couple of days I woke up and within 20 minutes I read.

And then I start,

And I was so motivated to just started writing.

I started writing and it just propelled my entire day.

And I was like,

Exactly.

The best motivation is progress towards any goal.

Even if it's just 1%.

That's it.

That's it.

Like we don't have to do all these things all the time.

Yeah.

When you do,

When you need the reset,

When you need to get back into a methodology,

Like there's so many times where I've kind of,

I've strayed or I stopped the meditation and I'm like,

Oh my gosh,

I,

I can't believe I didn't meditate this morning.

I'm like,

I broke the streak.

Or I,

You know,

And it's like,

If you needed that,

If that was part of your day,

You may be in a cycle where,

You know,

You get outside and go into the brisk winter air for 10 minutes and go for a jog.

If you don't do that every single day,

If you're not propelled or compelled to do it,

It may just be that because you now need to do something else.

I need to,

I need to have a quiet,

That's why we have seasons.

That's why we have moon cycles.

We are meant to follow along with this and not some rigid regimented thing.

That's like,

Do this,

Do this,

Do this three hours of get it done.

These are your,

You know,

Journal gratitude.

It's like,

I did this just to myself,

Uh,

Two weeks ago where I was like,

I'm going to read 10 minutes of the Bible every single night or every single morning or something and do that.

It's like,

Okay,

I did it for probably a week and then I started to taper off because I felt like I needed more sleep and then I needed to meditate and then I,

It's like,

Cause I had taken so much in that it was now time to,

To really embody and process and think about what you've read,

Reading it for the sake of reading it.

My God,

I'd rather you spend 10 minutes of intentional focus than blaze over a paragraph every single day to get it done,

To check it off the list.

I have a,

It's my hallucination that source or God or the universe would actually align with that and encourage it as opposed to,

Wow,

You have now checked these off and you're taking the pleasure motivator out of all of these things.

If you don't find yourself motivated,

If you don't find yourself drawn to or compelled to do something,

But you just do it,

You're now implementing almost this kind of like tiny little pain point in doing that.

It becomes a chore and not something that's like,

Right.

This serves the spirit and serves our wholeness.

Yeah.

It becomes a chore,

Not a tool,

You know,

And like a toolbox,

You can't,

You can't hammer in a screw.

You just can't do that.

Right.

It'll,

It'll,

It'll,

You'll break the screw or it just won't work.

And so it's like,

We,

We,

We have all these tools and there are a lot of people out there who are like,

You got to have this routine,

You got to meditate,

You got to,

You know,

Do this red light,

You got to do,

You got to sign your butt,

You got to do all these things.

And,

And people are like,

Oh my God,

Like,

I,

It's just not me or like they get overwhelmed and they get stuck.

Right.

But what I've learned over the last decade is that,

You know,

I did a lot of meditation in the beginning,

A lot.

Right.

And I did it for my health.

I did it for the streaks.

I did it for,

Cause it's the thing to do.

I did it for all the reasons.

And now like where I'm at today is that is now a tool that serves me.

Right.

I don't do it every day because I don't need to do it every day.

Like I'm,

I'm now in a state,

Well,

Right now I'm in a season where I'm very aware of my state of being very mindful.

I'm,

I'm,

You know,

Here's a great example is I'm pulling out in my car from the garage last night and I'm going to watch a movie.

I'm going by myself.

I'm like,

I just want to go like,

Get away.

Right.

And so I'm pulling out of the car,

But we as humans can do many things at once.

Right.

So I've got the garage door open.

I'm backing out of the car.

I'm getting the phone set up to the,

To the thing.

I'm rolling down the window.

I'm pressing the garage button.

I'm backing out.

And I'm like,

Stop,

Slow down.

You know,

All,

And this all happened within 45 seconds.

Right.

But there's like seven things going on.

Right.

And it's like,

I have this,

I've developed,

I've strengthened the tool of mindfulness.

I'm like,

Slow down.

All right.

One thing at a time,

Close the garage.

Let's back out.

We probably don't even need music.

Let's just drive.

Right.

And so Become familiar with yourself.

That's what meditation is,

Is to become familiar with anything.

So if you're meditating by yourself,

You're becoming familiar with yourself.

If you've become familiar with yourself or reached a place where that you're already there,

It's like an overskill.

You're,

You're,

You're there.

You're,

You're aligned.

You're,

You're in check.

You're in present with yourself in that moment to do it more like,

Okay,

Sure.

But the habit is there and it's strong.

Yeah.

I would say that it would be not necessarily useless,

But just what else could you do from a state of alignment if you're already become familiar,

If you've in the state where you can correct and you can,

I've done,

I find myself there too.

If there's so many times where I'll find myself,

You know,

Aware that I feel confused,

Angry,

Frustrated,

Overwhelmed,

Et cetera.

And I can identify where it is in my body.

And because I can identify the last thought that I had prior to that feeling in my body,

It's like,

Okay,

What is that?

That's unresolved.

Or am I,

What have I made it mean?

And can I check that meaning and ask the four,

You know,

Byron Katie's four questions.

Is it true?

Can I know what to be true?

Who do I become when I believe the thought and who would I be without it?

And kind of recheck and that perspective thing where the framework just shifts and it's like,

Okay.

And you can do that in a moment.

Meditation is that key to be able to make that happen.

But if you're there and you can do that,

I would say that it's practiced,

You know,

Of course,

Don't let it fall off where you're like,

Oh,

I'm there.

And a week,

Two weeks goes by.

But with this and this core connection,

If you have that in place,

That alignment,

And you don't,

You feed it when it needs to be fed,

You run it when it needs to be run,

You have just,

This is it.

This is the core.

This is where all the principles are aligned.

This is where you don't crack.

You have to just,

That's it.

It's just alignment with self.

You just are.

That's it.

You just are.

And it's,

We're in a hurry to truly go nowhere.

We're in a hurry to truly go nowhere.

And you know,

A lot of stoicism,

Another really good book if anybody wants to pick up is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

And it has nothing to do with meditating at all.

It was actually his personal journal.

And so what it is,

Is it's just,

You know,

200 pages of reflections,

Right?

It's one of those books where you can just read it,

You can pick it up and like read two excerpts that take a minute and you're like,

Oh,

That'll make me think,

Right?

And so it's not necessarily a chronological reading book.

You can pick it up anywhere.

But there's a lot of reflections in there.

And the word death is mentioned over like 200 times,

Right?

And this sounds very morbid,

But again,

It's not meant to be.

It's to be a reminder that you're of this earth and you'll return to this earth and that you're in a hurry to go nowhere.

So like,

Just chill out.

Just chill out.

Like,

Because if you're dwelling on the past,

You're certainly living in a state of anxiety,

Right?

If you're,

If you're focused on the future,

Well,

Then,

I'm sorry,

If you're focused on the future,

You're living in a state of anxiety.

And if you're dwelling on the past,

You're not going anywhere.

You're likely stuck in some form of state of trauma and trauma.

Like what does trauma look like?

Right?

We all have it,

But we're not here in the game of comparing trauma as a losing battle.

So we're not trying to compare it.

But if you're in one of those two states,

Then you're certainly not right here in the middle,

Right?

In this present moment.

And in this present moment is where this mindfulness happens.

Mindfulness and meditation being very different.

Mindfulness is again,

What we just discussed,

The ability to be mindful of my state of being in this moment.

And there are four states that I believe that there are.

You are either inactive,

You are proactive,

You are reactive,

Or you are magnetic,

Right?

And if you are,

If you are in a present state,

You are being either proactive on what to do next.

It's lines with that courage,

Taking courage on what to do next,

Or you are magnetic.

And I'm just being right here.

It's like when we get out of the past and out of the future,

And we're just right here,

Things just start appearing.

Answers to flow.

It's flow.

It's flow state.

It's like answers to questions that I didn't even have.

And I don't know if you have experience or your listeners have experience with plant medicines or psychedelics,

But it's like that without having taken any substances,

Right?

Or any of these plant medicines is that answers just start coming,

Right?

And there are people out there,

John Verveke,

He's a professor out of Stanford,

He'll call it psychotechnology.

There's all kinds of things we can call it.

Again,

The Greeks called it your daemon.

Christianity calls it God.

Answers just start happening.

It's flow state,

Right?

And it only happens when you're not in the past and you're not in the future.

And so I love those four questions that you just had,

That framework right there.

That is a mental model.

That is a framework,

Right?

And it's like,

I'm able to check and do a self-inquiry practice.

And that's,

I'll segue into somatic breath work.

So one of my best friends,

Steven Jagger started this company almost two years ago.

And then another brother came into it,

Andrew Fisher and us three run this company now.

We've grown it and scaled it to it's a global company.

We've certified over 500 practitioners.

We've serviced over 5,

000 sessions and it is called somatic breath work.

And it's diaphragmatic breathing like that repetitive into the belly.

And there's a whole structure behind it.

Closest to holotropic breathing,

But it's not the same.

And what happens when you experience this type of work is,

It's wild.

It's wild.

It is wild.

And what we do is we take people through a 45 minute session.

And there's a few breaks in between and essentially,

And we have this theme.

Okay.

So we're using the breath.

Let me say it this way.

What we teach is that we are not healers.

I am not a healer.

Okay.

I help create a space for the individual to heal themselves.

And I do that by making the other person feel safe and by building rapport with them.

And that first happens with the unspoken language of the nervous system.

Right?

You know,

When somebody walks into the room and they're just tight,

Like,

Dude,

Loosen your finkster,

Like chill out.

Come on,

Man.

Just chill out.

You know,

You know,

And that was like my old relationship or my old business partnership was like,

It's just like walking on eggshells.

Everything was tight.

It was the classic narcissist and empath relationship.

And so it's just like,

It's so it doesn't have to be this way.

Right.

And it's just like the nervous system of that individual always feels threatened.

Always,

You know,

Always in a competing state of mind,

Always in a threatened state of mind.

And it's like,

Man,

That's definitely some internal stuff,

Not external.

And so when we do this type of breath work and we walk somebody through it,

I am not telling somebody what to experience,

What's happening is that the individual is having an internal experience.

Trauma is what happens to inside of a person to that person,

Not to that person.

Right.

You and I could be in a car.

We could get in a car wreck.

God forbid.

We could both walk out without a single scratch.

You could be like,

Thank God I'm alive.

And I'd be like,

I'm never getting a car again.

Right.

Same external.

Very different internal experience.

There's a lot more there,

But I want to be respectful of the time.

I don't know if it's an hour or what.

Yeah,

We've got the day.

But yeah,

I've I with trauma,

The way that I've experienced and defined it is I spent a lot of years knowing that there was a lot of things that happened to me that I was either.

I kind of felt that I expected to be traumatized by it,

But I wasn't or things that I was kind of surprised.

It's like,

Why is this still?

Why do I remember this every single moment?

What shirt was being worn?

What was being said?

What the room smelled like the lighting in it?

Why do I remember this?

And why did I log this?

But so many other things like,

Yeah,

That'd be you went through that.

It's like,

Yeah,

It's not a big deal.

Even repressed memories that have come up in my early thirties.

I have,

You know,

Been able to absorb the memory and remember fully like what happened to me.

But because I'd gone,

I'm 36 years old and I lived my whole life without that conscious knowledge that I have been,

I didn't have the opportunity or the time to define it.

And it really turned on access how I defined trauma.

And when I started going to therapy and regurgitating some of these old things,

What I realized is after the hour,

I had spent the hour talking with someone detailing,

You know,

Making the bigness and emphasizing and enunciating all of these corners of this memory.

And I realized I'm leaving this therapist's office more traumatized.

It's bigger now.

I have re-traumatized and I found that the trauma occurs and reoccurs when we can re-injure ourselves in the telling of what happened,

When we can actually nail it down and experience it in our body,

Because the trauma,

It occurs here.

It's not,

As far as we're concerned,

Our limbic system doesn't know whether or not it's happening now or not.

And so telling the story alone,

You notice you tell like a bad breakup story or something about seeing somebody else again,

What happens,

You just saw a human being.

You didn't see the memory,

The old,

The cheating moment or the profound leaving abandonment moment.

What you saw was the human being.

What happened here was completely different.

It registered,

It went fire.

This person,

I'm firing this and it goes all through our whole entire bodies and it stores.

And what breath work to tell this background is how valuable breath work was,

Is something that I,

You know,

At first I went to a chiropractor's office.

My wonderful friend,

Justin Grabowski,

Helped me work through so many different things about how to release that trauma in your nervous system that I didn't even know.

I was constantly charged,

Had this 24 seven activated state that was going on in my gut that I didn't even realize was,

Was there.

It was like static.

You know,

You don't necessarily realize statics happening in a room until it turns off and you realize how quiet the room actually is.

When my body was finally made quiet,

I was able to,

To do breath work on myself and I didn't even know how much further,

How much deeper that was even going to go.

I noticed myself getting terrified about taking a breath.

I would be,

I take,

You know,

The breath,

Cause I was doing hypno breath where you take a breath in the belly,

Take a breath in the heart space and then you release.

And I did it over and over until there was almost this,

Like this,

I became almost childlike where I was,

I'm scared,

I'm scared.

Stop,

Stop,

Stop,

Stop.

I don't want to,

I don't want,

I don't want to feel,

I don't want to,

I don't want to go there.

And I remember just,

Okay,

Calm,

Be,

You know,

Take,

Pause the breath for new strokes and then go back into it and you're releasing.

And afterwards you just,

You've processed this unprocessed emotion and whatever was there,

You don't even need to know why it was there or how it got there.

There's no need to dig into it.

You just need to process and release.

And so if you're talking about breath work for the first time for a lot of people talk about that.

I would love to hear you talk about it at length because it's,

I still am so brand new in it that I can't learn enough.

It's fascinating.

Yeah,

I would love to.

And you said some,

Thank you for sharing that.

And it was very well said truly from,

From a self,

Experience from what you just shared,

Like your self experience,

It's very accurate.

And you'd said one thing,

When you were working with the therapist and you're defining this,

You're defining what happened,

Right?

So Gabbermonte will teach that trauma is a question that happens to the body that goes unanswered.

So our body will seek this answer.

And it's,

It's more so our mind,

Our psyche will seek this answer,

Right?

The prefrontal cortex specifically,

This big,

Beautiful thing that's allowed us to have cameras and phones and airplanes.

And it's,

It's,

It's a blessing truly.

And,

And the mind,

The prefrontal cortex,

The psyche is an artist.

Okay.

And it will paint beautiful,

Majestic pictures and it will create stories.

It will create answers to answer those questions.

And you know,

You tell a story long enough,

You'll,

You'll begin believing it.

Right.

And so then that becomes a driving force of our behavior of our actions.

And so the body on the other hand,

Stores this,

This memory,

This primordial memory,

It stores it in our body and our intelligence.

It stores it in our fascial tissue,

Stores it in our muscles and our DNA.

We can see this now.

This is no longer woo woo.

That's what's so beautiful about this.

What these teachers were teaching 2000 years ago was spot on.

They just couldn't see it as from what we know,

But now we can see it.

Neuroscience,

Ophthalmology,

Like we're able to see the,

The,

The,

The actual storage of this.

It's amazing.

And so what happens when we,

And last thing you had said that stuck out was that you felt almost re-traumatized after relieving it because your brain doesn't know the difference,

Right?

And your body's going into this defensive state,

Right?

And that's because your body going back to the bottom up,

It's a bottom up modality.

It's instinctual.

Example if,

If this window,

If this window over to the left of me broke,

I don't need to be like,

Hey Nadim,

Look left.

The window broke.

Like I'm,

I'm going to like look over to it.

My eyes are going to get really big.

I'm going to take in all this information.

I'm going to assess if I'm in danger and then I'm either going to fight,

Flight or freeze.

That's what's going to happen.

Like I'm gonna be courageous.

I'm gonna fight or I'm going to run or I'm just going to freeze like deer in headlights.

Right.

And there are a lot of good examples of videos of animals that do this.

Um,

You know,

Uh,

Like deer or gazelle,

There's a lot of good videos online of them.

Like they shake,

They shake it out,

Right?

And they're like polar bear that shake it out and then they go back to being a polar bear.

Go back to being a deer.

That's it.

They're not stuck in the past of like,

Oh God,

I hope that cheetah doesn't come again.

It just,

They process it.

But what you notice with the shaking is before the shaking is a very deep belly breathing,

Very big belly breathing.

Anybody who wants to see a good example,

Um,

Look at like gazelle attacked by cheetah or bear,

Um,

Tranquilized by,

You know,

Helicopter,

It'll pop up.

Um,

And so with breath work,

A little backstory.

So five years ago,

Um,

My,

So my mom growing up was addicted to heavy drugs,

Street drugs.

And so when all the kids grew up,

Which was the last one was 18,

Five years ago,

Uh,

She relapsed,

She lost motherly duties.

And so,

Uh,

You know,

Rehab after rehab,

Rehabs are worked well,

But the outpatients really suck.

And so because you're back in a room with a bunch of people,

You know,

Who are like,

Hey,

You want to come to my place?

It's like,

Great.

Um,

And so I remember being at this,

Uh,

Rehab facility in San Antonio and I'd mentioned this,

Uh,

Plant medicine retreat in Costa Rica,

And this is when it was still rather taboo.

Um,

But it was a first of its kind.

It was called arrhythmia.

Um,

And it was more of a higher end,

If you will,

Uh,

Plant medicine retreat.

And when I say higher end,

It means you're not in the jungle.

Um,

And,

And so,

Uh,

We went together and,

Uh,

She'd experienced this breath work before we ever even got into ceremony.

So we did breath work two days prior to the ceremony and beginning,

This is 2018.

And so the amount of healing that she experienced in that moment and that 50 minutes blew my mind.

Okay.

I am a proponent of altered States.

I do well with altered States.

And so I'm just blown away by the altered state that I'm having.

I'm like,

Oh my gosh,

The colors and the information and like the sounds and the sensations.

I'm like,

This is incredible.

And I'm hearing like the symphony of people.

There's like 80 people in this Maloka.

They're crying,

They're laughing,

They're yelling,

They're screaming,

They're doing all the things.

And I'm just like,

Wow,

It's a symphony up in here.

And me and my mom are separated.

Okay.

So we're across like that way.

I'm in my own experience.

She's in her own experience.

And plus my mom's a trooper.

I'm like,

She's got this.

And so,

Um,

The amount of healing she had in that one hour though,

Was,

Was,

It was,

I can't even put it into words more so than the,

Her words more so than the medicine itself.

Right.

And now is it because she did breath work first?

I don't know,

But regardless,

They have a system and they knew that,

Hey,

The reason,

And the reason that we did breath work first,

Cause I had asked the,

The,

The shaman,

If you will,

I was like,

What the fuck has happened?

Who spiked the air?

You know?

And,

And he said,

You don't need this medicine.

And he wasn't talking to me.

He's talking to everybody.

He's saying you have it like you have it all the time,

Regardless of what you came for.

If you came here to experience altered state,

You can do that with the breath.

If you came here to heal,

You can do that with the breath.

Right.

And it's not a one and done.

Nothing's a one and done.

Right.

It's an,

It's an iterative process.

Okay.

Integration is after the session.

That's when integration begins.

And so that really caught my interest.

I can't became very passionate about it.

I'd already been in cannabis for 10 years.

And I was like,

I had these similar sensations and feelings coming up.

I'm like,

Why isn't everybody talking about this?

Not why isn't everybody doing this,

But why isn't it?

But why,

Why is this not a conversation that's happening?

And so then I started diving down the deep end and really didn't find a lot of this until you get into more of like holistic medicines,

You know,

And,

And having somewhat of a background because cannabis is I had a good network for it.

And so I came across Stanislav Grav,

His book,

Holotropic breath work.

And that's,

He's really the godfather of breath work for the West.

He's a Czech psychiatrist,

Him and his wife.

They're still around today.

I highly recommend checking them out.

And so fast forward,

Three years later,

I'm in Sedona.

I live in Arizona.

Now I'm in Austin,

Texas,

But I meet my friend Steven in Arizona and yeah,

He's like living out of his car at the time.

And he's just,

You know,

Live in nomadic lifestyle and just wanted to get away.

He taught kinesiology and energetic anatomy at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.

He was just taking a break and we just became really good friends.

You know,

We both swing kettlebells,

We both steal mace,

We both do all the things and develop the relationship.

Well,

About six months into that,

He was like,

He,

He was doing a lot of breath work.

He studied with a lot of teachers and I'm like,

Man,

I've never met anybody who's as passionate about breath work as I am.

And some,

One of his clients said,

When are you going to turn this into like a,

Like a business?

He's like,

I really thought of that.

And Jaggers isn't a businessman.

He's a creator.

He's an artist and he's a deliverer.

Like he delivers.

He's a very,

Very incredible teacher.

And so he's asked me,

He's like,

Can we make this a business?

And I was like,

I can't.

I was like,

I'm very involved in my current business.

I was like,

But I will give you all the advice that I could possibly give,

You know,

And that's how it started.

And then he had met Fisher,

Him and Fisher developed essentially the system and the product.

Fisher's a neuromuscular therapist as well,

Active release therapist.

So they're both body workers.

Um,

So they have a lot of background of hands-on body working with the nervous system.

This is not a woo-woo practice.

We are very heavily focused on,

This is nervous system.

You will learn nervous system sovereignty by the end of this training.

That's what you will learn how to have a self governing nervous system so that again,

You can co-regulate or regulate yourself.

Right?

And so what happens with breath work is we are hyper focusing and we don't ever do this.

Going back to the beginning of this conversation,

Attention,

Time and focus.

When we breathe like this,

It is called breath work.

It takes work to focus to do those muscular activities,

Right?

Many people breathe into their chest.

So we're breathing into our belly.

Put a hand on your belly,

Take a big breath in.

We want your belly to expand.

That's the sensation.

That's the feeling.

We want your,

Your,

Your back to expand all of it.

And so we are hyper focusing and we hyper focus like this.

We're getting out of our mind.

We're getting out of our mind and into our feeling body.

So out of the thinking mind into the feeling body.

Which is probably why it's so terrifying.

Because it's in a very unfamiliar state.

It's a very unfamiliar feeling.

It's as you stated when you were sharing,

I don't want to feel this.

Right?

And our whole tagline is it's okay to feel.

You know,

When,

When somebody starts to cry,

When somebody starts to cry and you grab a tissue box,

You're like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

What you're telling them,

Stop crying.

I'm not prepared to hear you cry.

Right?

Versus it's okay to feel that.

It's okay to cry.

Move that through you.

Right?

Like giving them permission,

Letting them have permission because they've been conditioned that it's not okay to cry.

It's not okay to do that.

Most of most people.

And so we are expressive beings.

We are meant to express ourselves through music,

Through dance,

Through play,

Through art,

Through,

You know,

Some people channel expression into business.

We are meant to express ourselves.

And when that expression is suppressed,

Social conditions,

Family conditions,

Whatever,

You will become depressed eventually,

Either of the mind or body and eventually that will turn and manifest into some form of disease or dis-ease of the mind or body.

Right?

And so what happens in this container,

In this breath work session,

If you will,

Whether it's a one-on-one or group or online,

You can do it in all formats is again,

We create this,

We help facilitate this container for this person to use the breath.

They start to experience these emotions,

These repressed memories,

These stuck emotions,

If you will.

And then we,

All we do is elevate that emotion 10%.

We don't tell them what to do,

But the body,

As we've said many times on here is very intelligent and it has language of its own.

And so there are indicators that you can look for,

Right?

There are signs of anger.

There are signs of sadness,

Complacency,

Sexual trauma,

Various physical traumas,

Emotional trauma,

And the body will show that,

You know,

In our sessions,

You know,

People who oftentimes don't feel safe around others will cross their arms and they'll cross their legs.

Right?

And that's an indication that they don't feel safe.

And their intention,

Like I had an individual,

Her intention was freedom.

And then she's like this,

Right?

And in her mind,

She wants freedom,

But her body is saying,

I don't feel safe.

Right?

And so then as a practitioner,

I'm encouraging her to open up,

Open yourself up.

That's it.

Use the breath,

Open yourself up.

And she opens up.

Right?

And then she has this cathartic release,

Or we'll see like clenching of the fist,

Clenching of the eyes,

You know,

This thing,

It's like,

That's a sign of anger.

Right?

And so a lot of women have been told like,

Hey,

It's not nice to get angry.

Right?

I have four sisters.

Like you're not supposed to get angry.

Little girls don't get angry.

Right?

And so when we see this,

And then we're able to go over to them and we use,

There's a whole methodology of like entering their space.

Right?

We use our sound first.

We let them know we're there.

We encourage the breath,

Breathe deep into the belly.

And then we're like,

It's okay to use your voice,

Use your voice.

That's it.

We just elevate it 10%.

And then they,

They might yell a little bit.

So if they yell,

Ah,

Right,

We might elevate that.

Ha,

We'll match them,

But 10%.

And so then it,

Then they just bellow,

They scream,

They let it all out.

And oftentimes these emotions are interconnected.

Right?

So behind anger is sometimes sadness.

Oftentimes what I see with women is there's anger and then there's laughter,

But with men there's anger and then there's sadness.

Right?

And,

And,

And it's because a lot of the women I speak to,

They're like,

Yeah,

I just,

It just felt so good to like,

Just rage,

Just let that out.

They feel,

And the,

And laughter is the most contagious medicine.

It'll,

It'll change the entire state of the room.

So it's,

It's beautiful.

But again,

With men it's sadness because we're told not to be sad.

Little boys don't cry.

Little boys don't cry.

Right?

And so we'll get,

We'll move through this,

This fit of anger,

This rage.

Right?

And then they'll,

They'll have this emotional release of crying.

Right?

And then they're just usually at peace.

They just feel so good.

And they're like,

Oh man.

And so,

You know,

We enter the session with addressing fears,

Addressing limitations,

Addressing purpose,

And then addressing gratitude and love.

So we leave,

So we may release a lot of this stuff,

But we don't want to leave somebody empty.

Okay.

We want to replace that with something.

Right.

And that's often with love and gratitude.

And so while we may have this physical structure of walking somebody through this session,

There's a very particular set of language,

Right?

It's often called an LP,

Neuro-linguistic programming.

Right?

And we have a,

A structure for it.

And then our,

Like a theme,

And then our practitioners are able to stay within that,

That confine of the,

That theme.

Because we know that,

Hey,

If you use this style of language,

Again,

The theme really is fears,

Limitations,

Purpose,

Love and gratitude,

That you will take this person from here to here.

And I cannot tell you,

Again,

We've done over 5,

000 sessions and certified a lot of people,

But I cannot tell you how many times people have said,

It's like five years of therapy in 45 minutes.

I'm like,

I know it's crazy.

It's truly wild.

And it reminds me of like how cannabis has worked for people.

It's not for everybody.

I'll be the first person to say cannabis is not a cure.

Very tread,

Tread very lightly on that,

But it's a tool that can help,

Help you sleep.

When you sleep better,

You feel better.

When you feel better,

You make better decisions,

The whole thing.

And so people leave these sessions with immense clarity,

More than anything,

Immense clarity,

And they feel much lighter,

Right?

The number one killer,

Stress.

So they are,

They are alleviating,

They're releasing the stress that their body is carrying,

Right?

We have people who have suffered from PTSD,

Military people,

People from car wrecks,

Bad breakups that they're like,

You know,

Three weeks later,

They're like,

I haven't had one nightmare.

And it's like,

Wow,

Like not one Prozac.

Amazing.

You know,

Like not one sleeping pill,

You know,

They're like,

I'm sleeping just fine.

And it's like,

It's incredible.

It's incredible.

And it's all body intelligence.

It's all body intelligence.

Which is why I think people don't,

That this isn't a conversation.

This breath work isn't a conversation because it isn't,

You know,

Somebody that's going and taking a medication,

Somebody that is going,

It's,

We,

We like to see what's happening.

We like to see that we are tangibly taking something,

Ingesting it and it's like,

It's like coffee to feel energy as opposed to,

You know,

Becoming in an altered state and getting your body elevated.

It's like taking the Prozac and telling like,

I'm going to feel less sad or I'm going to feel more happy in the taking of this.

It's,

We're telling our minds to do it anyway.

We're telling our minds,

This equals my solution.

And so act as if the solution has been implemented and breath work doesn't feel like anything's going to happen.

Anything's going to be solved in the doing of it.

And nobody understands because we've cut it off here.

It's like this,

I have gotten so good at not relating to this,

Not listening to this,

Not addressing this,

That you wanted me to do something with this.

I'm not interested.

Give me something that I can tell myself that it's,

That it's working.

And so the breath work sessions that it's so interesting to hear you walk through what is,

What is common with women,

Because I've done multiple exercises where it was very hard for me to go into anger and I don't quite know why in my childhood,

What was not appropriate about it,

But to scream,

Especially with anybody around me,

I could not get myself.

There was,

There was a queen and warrior and there was different art types that I was fully able to the lover and the,

And the magician and all I could do that.

And I could just walk in and step in and talk it,

Talk a good game about it.

But when it came to the warrior,

I was on stage frozen and I could not,

My entire body,

Even just listening to you say it,

There was that,

That kind of that kickup of anxiety coming into my stomach and it was causing me to do that nervous system thing where you yawn a lot and it was like,

Hold on.

I'm like,

Okay,

This is so weird that our,

Our nervous system,

All we're doing is having a conversation about it and my body is going into these different archetypes and warrior,

It was so,

She finally got mad with me and she,

You know,

Probably like you were saying,

Taking it up 10% and she encouraged me and almost pushed me to that edge where I was finally able to express that anger.

And then in the breath work sessions,

It's,

It's,

It's fairly similar.

It was like,

I am terrified.

I move through,

I push through it and it comes out of me.

And then all of a sudden it was just,

It was release.

And there was,

There was laughter,

There was crying,

There was anger.

And it's like,

How is this,

This thing seem,

It seems like sorcery.

It's magic.

I love it.

And I wish that more people knew how to do it or,

Or believed and have the curiosity to believe that maybe it's not,

It's not another,

It's not another book.

That's right.

It's not another practice.

It's not another pill.

It's not another relationship.

It's not a new diet that they need.

It's working with this other part of you that is the fullest part of you and acknowledging what that needs because it's giving us signals all the time.

It's communicating all the time.

And from this,

It's,

It's so interesting because it upturns,

It overturns everything.

What we eat becomes important.

What in,

Like you're saying,

It's like,

That's a whole other,

That's a whole other realm of transitioning from eating,

Eating food instead of eating a food like substance.

And what it causes,

It's still just like everything that happens on from here down almost seems incredibly neglected.

And this is where all of our,

This separation is,

Is the problem.

That's right.

I,

I,

I often reflect on think less and feel more.

We've neglected the,

Our feeling sensation.

Right.

And now we see that the heart has like what 40,

000 neurons.

The gut has,

Yeah,

The gut has a brain,

The heart has a brain and it's like every,

And it starts,

I mean,

We see that it starts with the gut and then it runs up this highway of communication to our brain.

Right.

So it starts in the gut.

That's the first feeling.

And then it passes through our heart and then our psyche takes over and we're like,

Well,

Really,

You know,

And so it's,

I'm a big proponent of think less and feel more.

And,

And,

And I encourage that for people.

I really do.

But it's,

It's also when I say that it can get,

People can take it out of context and they could come in from a,

Coming from like a C-suite background in corporate and everything and business,

Feeling is not accepted.

Right.

We don't operate out of emotions,

You know,

And that's what has led me my whole life.

I'm like,

You're definitely wrong.

You're definitely wrong on that.

And I'm sorry,

Whatever happened to you,

But I can help you work through it if you want.

Because again,

Thinking is King,

Right?

We're,

We're,

We're ranked based off our IQ and that is very,

Very unfortunate.

Right.

And it's only the last maybe 15 years that EQ emotional intelligence has really come into play.

And now,

You know,

They're using EQ tests for,

You know,

Military leadership and they're using EQ,

EQ tests for a high ranking positions in companies and organizations that it shows that it makes a much better leader.

And so it's,

It's,

It's coming full circle into that.

Oh yeah,

That's right.

We,

We can't neglect all this.

And there is a lot of intelligence in that emotional feeling and it's use feeling,

But also ground yourself in logic,

Right?

Don't neglect.

It's not this or that.

It's this and that,

Right?

It's not science or religion.

It's this and that it's not think or feel it's think and feel right.

And so we use the two,

But the way we can use logic is again,

By developing the necessary characteristic,

Developing the necessary tools of how to ask the proper questions,

Like the four framework question you just used,

Right.

Or the four I use for myself,

Am I being inactive,

Proactive,

Reactive,

Or magnetic right now?

You know,

It's again,

Developing those tools that will then allow us to really ground ourself in reason,

But also not neglect feeling.

Yeah.

I've noticed that that seems to be the,

And I'm hoping this doesn't become the pendulum swing where we were,

We were overthinking and then we move so quickly to kind of almost vilify using the mind and vilify logic and grounding and kind of the pendulum swings all the way to an over feeling where the feeling becomes the over still.

And,

You know,

I'm noticing that where we're kind of,

We almost use the way we feel and noticing almost even using vulnerability as like a moral vanity card or some sort of virtue signal.

And we kind of,

We have our trauma as this advertisement.

I was traumatized.

Here's what I did.

And they almost kind of like,

It's become a product.

It's become profitable where we're now taking all of this feeling modalities.

It's like,

Okay,

Can we get that pendulum right in the middle where we are allowing our bodies to feel and then we're still using this to govern and connect and organize and make logic and,

And ground ourselves in the truth of what,

Okay,

Here's what I felt.

How did I define it?

Was that accurate?

Am I served that way?

And becoming that it's just,

Again,

That fully integrated being where we're not,

I'm seeing it and I'm like,

Okay,

I hope I'm not going to become one of them,

But I really hope that that corrects the middle.

From a B2C perspective,

Our,

Our,

Our standpoint,

Our goal of somatic breathwork is to help people reconnect with themselves so they can connect with others,

Right.

To help people remember what it feels like to feel good,

That you don't have to carry all that weight,

You don't have to carry other people's emotions.

Other people's emotions are not your responsibility.

And so that you can then there let down your armor and you can go connect with other people.

And that is that from,

Again,

From a B2C perspective,

That's our goal.

Whereas on the practitioner side it's like,

Yeah,

If you want to learn and add this into your existing repertoire or your existing program,

Or you want to make this your business,

Like you can help you do that.

But it's,

It's tremendous.

You know,

It's,

It's absolutely tremendous.

Everyone can do it.

I'm very passionate about it as I am with cannabis,

But I like this even more because you know,

People will find dependency with cannabis and they'll be like,

I need to smoke.

Like,

Do you need to,

Right?

Or do you just not want to deal with what's coming up?

We want to neglect the feeling,

Right?

Whereas like breathwork,

You shouldn't do it every day.

Like it's,

You don't want to ramp your nervous system up like that every day.

We're taking our nervous system to an activated state and then we're bringing it back down to baseline.

And we do that by manipulating the way we breathe.

You know,

Sympathetic versus parasympathetic breathing.

And so,

You know,

This is something,

And it's,

It's per per individual,

Like,

You know,

I would never do multiple sessions with somebody like back to back.

I would do like one session per week over like a six week protocol.

And I'm talking like,

That's the most severe case.

I'm one to two times a month though.

It's totally fine.

We actually have,

And if you want,

I'll send you a link if you,

For your audience and they can,

They can try a session.

It'll be half off.

I think it's like 20 bucks.

But we have a whole membership.

We have a huge community.

We have hundreds of people in this community on the somatic breathwork side.

We do two sessions per month.

We also do,

Here's the really exciting part is that we don't just do the sessions and then we're like,

All right,

See you later.

Like the following day we give 24 hours.

We do like a community call and so we,

Yeah,

So we do breakout groups,

We do activities.

We allow people to share their insights and their pro it's literally a group share.

And it's because people need the ability to voice themselves and to articulate with others.

Right.

And so every first and third Sunday we do the session.

Every first and third Monday we do the group call.

And like that'll grow as our capacity grows.

Eventually,

You know,

We'll do it weekly or whatever,

But it's,

It's a beautiful thing.

And again,

Hundreds of people and from all over the world.

It's so cool.

It's so cool.

Is,

Is there anything that you would say to anybody who hasn't tried it as kind of a caution or a prerequisite,

You know,

Measurement to see if they're ready for something like this?

Is there any reason why some should not just jump into breathwork?

Yeah.

Prereqs if you're stressed and you have lungs,

You're qualified.

No,

But really there are some contraindications and they're very,

They're not,

They're not very big.

So if you're pregnant recommend not doing it.

Right.

Don't want to go into labor early.

And plus,

You know,

Your child feels everything.

So we don't need,

We don't need to pass that through.

Number two would be if you have like any heart conditions or like a pacemaker.

And then number three,

If you have histories of like seizures,

Specifically grandma seizures.

And so Stanislav Grob in his book,

Holotropic breathwork,

He speaks about a white paper,

A study that he had done and it included over 50,

000 participants at a psychiatric ward.

And I think it was upward of like 67 or upward of 70% of the individuals that partook in the in the holotropic breathwork stated that they,

It was better than any of the psych meds that they had taken.

And of those participants,

One person out of 50,

000 had a grandma seizure and they had a history of grandma seizures.

So when you look at that in terms of ratio of one to 50,

It's a very small number,

You know,

And that applies to all things.

It's like,

Right.

It can be dangerous.

Right.

But in our experience again,

Of over 5,

000 sessions,

Over 500 practitioners,

We have not experienced that yet in one of our sessions and God forbid,

But we also,

It's no different than,

You know,

You go see a massage therapist or a chiropractor,

You know,

There's,

Hey,

Do you have any of these conditions?

No.

All right.

You're good.

You can't even go to a virtual reality at Dave and Buster's.

If you're pregnant or prone to seizures,

You're out.

Yeah.

Can't do that.

Exactly.

And so on the scale of,

Is it,

Is it safe?

It's very safe.

It's very safe.

You know we see more we see more,

And this is,

These are just been the signals that we've received from having done so many sessions.

We see more after the session is where people need more support.

Right.

Not like people may be concerned going into it,

But it's afterwards that they need the support.

What did you do to me?

That's what I wanted to ask my breast work therapist.

I was like,

What is this alchemy?

You know,

It's,

It's,

It's,

It's tremendous.

It really is.

So where can people find you?

I'm going to ask,

Just so you guys know,

I'm going to ask Nadim to send me a list of the books and the references and anything that he has shared in here.

So you guys can dive into some of these practices and tools that he has shared,

But where can people find you specifically?

Yeah,

I appreciate that.

And I would love to share all those.

So Instagram is,

Is really the main point is Nadim.

Alhassan.

I'm sure that'll be linked.

You know,

From there you can find all else.

The link is the bio,

You'll find somatic release from my profile.

You'll find the build one thing community.

So those are the two engagements that I have.

I I'm the operating officer for somatic release breath work,

And I'm a co-founder for build one thing.

Again,

Build one thing as a community.

It's a modern day community for creators.

We do four coaching calls per per month,

Two on mindset,

One on content creation and strategy,

And then one on sales and acquisition.

You know,

And it's just for any consider us business doulas,

Anybody who has started a baby business and wants to get started.

Me and my friend Matt,

We've literally,

He's got 20 years in the digital space.

I've got 15 years and it's like we do all the things,

Right?

I've got a camera here,

I've got a microphone,

I've got a camera here,

I've got a microphone,

I've got light.

People want to know how to do these things.

We're already doing these things.

So we show you,

We just show you exactly what we're doing.

Like here it is.

And last piece is also in the link in my bio.

I have a newsletter.

So if you want to jump on,

I've got like 2,

500 people every single week.

I send out a newsletter on mental models,

Tools for happiness,

Tools for productivity,

Literally everything we just spoke about every single week I put out a newsletter.

So it's free.

You can jump on it anytime and I would love to have you guys.

Beautiful.

All right.

Well,

We could talk endlessly about this type of thing.

I know that there's probably going to be requests for another conversation,

Especially as it pertains to the untapped thing that we talked about with sympathetic and parasympathetic.

We could dive into that all day,

But for now we're going to pause and I hope that everyone finds this valuable and thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure.

Thank you so much,

Kara.