Barbell Shrugged - Aligning Actions with a Purpose Driven Life w/ Chris Hoppe, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #799

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Chris Hoppe has spent nearly two decades immersed in the world of coaching — from CrossFit and personal training to recovery support, breathwork, and behavioral health. His approach blends performance and presence, helping clients not just optimize their bodies, but reconnect to their lives in a deeper, more meaningful way. Chris has guided people at every stage of transformation — from their first day sober to the CrossFit Games floor. Whether he's working with entrepreneurs, athletes, or those navigating major life transitions, his work centers on building nervous system resilience, emotional awareness, and personal agency. More than a coach, Chris lives his practice. He brings curiosity, groundedness, and heart into every conversation — and creates space for people to be fully human. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Work with Chris Hoppe Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug Family this week on Barbell Shrug. Chris Hoppe is coming into the podcast. For those of you guys in rapid health optimization, he is on our behavioral health side of things. So he works with Emily Hightower, who you've heard on Barbell Shrugged many, many times, and fantastic. Today on the show, we are digging into all things mindset,

behavioral health, and really aligning your life with the why and finding your own purpose. As always friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis, and you can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warned, or Doug Larson. Chris Hoppe.

Welcome to the show, man. I can't believe this is the first time we've had you on. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. It's been a long time, a long time coming. You work with us here at Rapid Health Optimization. And also, I don't get to talk to you that much. You're like at the other end of the business, working with the clients and like on all things,

kind of the behavioral health side of what we do. Did you go to the CrossFit Games back in the day? Were you one of those? I was close. I was videos and all the things. Right. I was in the Matt Chan, Chris Spielher. Yeah. That era, that was my group that that I hung with and I was in the same region as

those guys. So we threw down a lot. I was I think 2014 was probably the closest I got. And that was the year that a bunch of us got sick at regionals, like the second day and it knocked out most of the field. And I was like right there in the top two or three and then just fell off. So yeah, it's super funny. You, you came into the company and uh, like like my my frame of you was all things behavioral health and like this little piece in the back of my brain was like I think you watch that man exercise really fast before I don't know if I have there's another one of you, but Yeah, man, I'd love to dig in we're gonna be digging into all things kind of personal development and finding themselves, which actually I feel is when people come to us, there's like a pursuit of excellence. And many people like to think that that is like

hitting the gas pedal on their training or like getting abs. And it's always, or not always, but many times it's like an outside in pursuit, which is really why we have like the behavioral health side to the program that we're, that we dig into. I'd love to kind of understand a little bit of how you went from, now that I know that it was you, like the big badass athlete to getting into this line of work and a little bit of your story on why you were drawn to

this. Fantastic question. And it's, man, it is a direct line. I wouldn't say a direct line. The line is very skewed how I ended up here. Definitely. Yeah, couldn't applauded that course if I tried, but it has been very interesting and it actually starts with me with substance use.

That's really kind of where I would say my underground and background really started in self-development, if you will. I was a college athlete. I played a little bit of college football coming out of Texas. High school football was big down there. It was awesome. And then I wasn't quite big enough to make that leap into college. So I went to D2 and played there for a year and was just like beat up. But I always loved the training aspect of it. And I kind of fell in love with that piece, but also fell in love with booze a little bit more. You know, so that started to kind of sway and take over. Yeah.

And that really kind of, I don't know, that broke me. You know, football and athletics know, that broke me. Football and athletics was my identity growing up. And then went to college and alcohol took over and that became my identity. And it was, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know, like I had always worked on a team structure. I'd always had that brotherhood. I'd always had those things.

Then all of a sudden I was like flying solo with a substance use problem problem and I was like, oh no, like what do we do now? You know, so it was a long period of that. And then in there is when I found physical fitness. I went to rehab and treatment facility and things like that when I was very young, like 21 years old. Oh wow. And then from there, while I was at treatment, I found fitness again.

I was like, okay, cool, I like this. It was a way to direct things. And like, it was honestly looking in hindsight again, it was something I could control. Like I can control what I eat, I can control how I move, I can control what I do with my body, my mind. And I walked down that road and I walked down it hard. I immediately became like engulfed in a personal trainer right out of the gate and just loved

it. And then started kind of get bored is what I found. I was like, all right, like with the personal training piece and just training myself in like bodybuilding, I missed the athletic component from sports is really what I started missing. So I started pairing things together. I would do like jump rope and then box jumps and push press and things. And someone said, hey, you should try this CrossFit thing.

And I was like, all right. And that was 2007. I think end of 2006, sorry, 2007. You should check this out. I was there with you. I was there with you. Yeah, we were all. That's when we started, 2006.

There was like a thousand of us. Yeah, we were like cutting our teeth. And you kind of knew it too. You kind of like, there was like little pods of people all over that were like, oh, hey, this is like, we're missing something. This is it. And it was, it was very much that. And it checked that community box for me, but there was no affiliates.

I was in Colorado Springs at the time and there was no affiliate. There was one that had just affiliated and you know, it was very, as you know, ad hoc at the time. There was no playbook. It was just show up and this is our version of CrossFit, what we've learned from online. And it sucked. It was not the version that I thought it should be that was portrayed by Glassman and stuff. So I made my own. So I opened up an affiliate and tried to walk down that road and paired that with Recovery, which was pretty rad, and opened the affiliate with my mom. She's a CrossFit Games athlete, or we got her there, which was pretty amazing.

And she actually got sober too in that timeframe. So there was a lot of involved for me as far as how I got to where I'm at through athletics, through CrossFit, and then into the kind of behavioral health component is as I went through all that and kind of played with my identity through it, it kind of kept coming back to this thread of I'm always looking for something external to make things okay. And as soon as I lost that community of CrossFit, as soon as I lost that community of treatment, as soon as I lost that community of football, as soon as I lost that external stimulus, that family environment, I was a wreck.

I was like, I don't know what to do now. And so that's where I started to turn inward and started really seeing like, I want to be okay being me. And it was that idea of being a boxer versus a fencer, meaning I have what I need at all times to take care of me versus needing tools, tips, tricks, different little things and gadgets to make sure that I'm okay. And so that really was where I started the journey was in CrossFit, in recovery, realizing this and kind of having the ability to step back and say, like, wait a minute, I don't

want to be beholden to this one method as the way I want to be able to apply principles as I go and then use the methods that make sense to me. And that's really where the roots of my behavioral health journey really took. And then it was just kind of, you know, navigating that very broad landscape at the time and is becoming more prevalent now, but it was very much like just kind of feeling around in the dark and kind of like the early days of CrossFit. Like, yeah, is this right? I don't know. This feels right. Let's figure this out. Yeah, going from like the college football, like this is

like kind of like what happens to athletes. At some point, unless you're really, really good, like and special and genetics and all the things and you actually go and get to play until you don't want to play anymore. But most of us at some point they go, Hey, you're not a bad person. You just can't play anymore. And you go, but I wanted to play my whole life. And they go, yeah, but you're too small. You're too slow. And you're not good enough. You go, damn it. Now I got a job. This sucks. Um, the, uh, but there's always this period right after where you go, what do I do?

Was that when you started to find yourself kind of in that, in the trouble zone of looking for something? And that's when kind of the alcohol showed up? Yeah, for sure. It was the comfort. It was what I used to cope with that feeling that I was really just avoiding. I was avoiding what I needed.

In that time, I needed to feel that loneliness. I needed to feel that like, ooh, this is my identity, but that's not who I am. I needed to feel that in order to move through. That was the cocoon. I needed that pressure to make it through, but for me, I drifted into substance, and that was where I just picked it up. So rather than like walking through and facing those emotions at that time, and

or reaching out to a community and grabbing onto that, it was I reached out to a substance that was there and then like, move forward. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a combination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best.

Arate is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arate is something completely pictures. Arte is something completely different. Arte is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy and effectiveness of your analysis and

optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling and performing at your absolute best physically and mentally when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit highest. To learn more, visit aretelab.com. That's a-r-e-t-e lab.com. Now, back to the show. You might be already aware of this, but Johann Harri wrote a book called Chasing the Scream, where he basically proposes that addiction, whether it's addiction to gambling or addiction to substances or whatever, it's not specifically like a chemical hooks issue. It's not because you tasted the cocaine, so to speak, and it was so good that you could just now you just

have to have it. He makes the claim that a lack of connection and trauma and all the things like as you said, as you already stated, like it's, it's you, you know, covering up this, this thing that makes you uncomfortable with the substance that really is the problem, not necessarily the, the chemical hooks in the substances themselves, like a lot of people makes you uncomfortable with the substance, that really is the problem, not necessarily the chemical hooks in the substances themselves. Like a lot of people drink alcohol,

but it's only a subset of people that become alcoholics. And if it was chemical hooks, then presumably kind of everybody would be hooked, if that really was the case, but it's only some percentage of the population. And the lack of connection, lack of community that you mentioned is one of the things he cites in that book.

Could not agree more. And like I said, hindsight, 2020, looking back, that's exactly what it was. It was the community of CrossFit that, quote unquote, saved my life. And that was what I counted it to. I didn't realize that that's what it was. And that alcohol is just alcohol doing alcohol.

Every drug is doing its thing. Everything is just going to do its thing. And then it's just my relationship with it that is the issue. And that's really where the behavioral health component comes in for me and what I work with people on is just that, is that it's your relationship with what you're working with is all that matters.

Yeah, like as long as you understand the relationship with alcohol, your relationship with training, your relationship with breath work, your relationship with money, your relationship with food, it's a relationship. As long as you understand the relationship, there's no wrong. There's just, where do you want to go? Okay, well, the way you have this relationship set up probably isn't conducive to that.

Are you willing to change it? That's the question. That's what I love about behavioral health coaching, because it's up to the client. It's up to you. There's not like, you should do this. Here's your morning routine. Why? That's up to you. There's not like, you should do this. Here's your morning routine. No, why? That's my routine. It's how I work.

This is about learning how you work and engaging with that and being willing to engage with that edge. That's really what I've missed for decades. Yeah. Yeah. I hear behavioral health entering more and more conversations is getting much more popular over the last five or 10 years or so, but still not nearly as well known as like being a nutritionist or a personal trainer,

but it's certainly climbing the ranks and becoming more pop culture, more well known. But I also find that still people are like a little cloudy on exactly where the edges are with that category. Like what does it mean, both from like a technical standpoint and like a layman's terms standpoint. Can you just like define that whole field? Kind of. You know, it is a little bit gray. And you know, the one of the things with this

type of work that I think can get really blurred is the line between like what you would consider like therapy and coaching. And that's why I intentionally use the word coach in everything that I do. I feel like there's that line of neutrality where somebody's got some issues they need to work through before we can work on something with rapid where we're optimizing something.

We need to get something up to neutral to zero before the coaching can take over. And that may be some sort of limiting belief or some sort of trauma or whatever they're working with. And that is completely out of scope, at least for me in the way that I work with behavioral health. We can identify those things,

which can be part of the work. A lot of it is stepping into behavioral health with this neutral point of view of, we're here to coach you toward the best direction to getting to know you. That could mean going to see somebody else. That could mean working on some of these methods that we have found to be helpful in grounding, or what we're going to work on with habits, or what we're going to work on with mindset.

It could be any one of these tools, but being open to the fact that I may not be the tool. The goal is not to utilize me. The goal is to help you realize where you're actually at, get a base point for reality of like, here's where you're actually dealing with. Before we pull in a bunch of externals to try to fix the problems that you perceive, let's see where you're actually at, what you value and where you want to spend your time and do those align. From that point, learning to do that usually takes time. How do you know what you're feeling? Getting in touch with who you are and what that means, and then how that represents your reality in real time based on your behavior.

And then what we do, kind of like you talked about at the beginning, the inside out approach. So for behavioral health, it is looking at how you spend yourself or your time and why, and making sure that's aligned with who you are before we bring in external stuff. So I feel like it's a great place, especially in most coaching groups is to start with the behavioral health component or at least have a chunk of it. Otherwise, we are working at stuff that may be

the wrong thing. And that is when you're working on optimization specifically, you can't afford any undue energy put anywhere that doesn't make sense. And that's so kind of, I guess, to try to chop it down even smaller. Behavioral health would be coming in and having, helping people understand where they're at in reality and then where they want to go clearer. Yeah, it sounds weird to say that someone wouldn't quote unquote know who they are

or know what they want. But there's many, many reasons for this, but there's many outside circumstances or influences contributing to why we make the decisions that we do, whether it's because I want something or because somebody else wants something, or I think somebody else wants something. We tend to think we know what would make us happy,

even if that's not always the case. We're very complicated in many ways. Why would somebody not know who they are or not know what they want? As easy as it seems like that should be. Yeah, it's layered. I mean, it's layered in every relationship you've ever had with something. You know, we're based on survival. You know, our instincts and how we develop is based on survival largely from our childhood moving forward. And from that we develop our patterns. And they're patterns that have helped us get through

to where we are today. And usually where we find a misalignment is they don't know who they are. They're just a version of themselves that no longer works for their current life or where they want to go. It's kind of like the snake shedding its skin, you know, it's they don't know how to transition out of that they're moving into something new, or the chrysalis, or the butterfly, and the transformation that they're going through

is usually what it is. It's not necessarily people don't know who they are. They're starting to pull away the layers of who they thought they were, and they don't align with what society or their relationships or their previous life or their current life is stating that they are. And there's a misalignment there. So I think it's less of seeking.

We're not trying to find you like you're out there. You're in a process of discovery all the time. And when something misaligns, that means we're having kind of that piece of like where we're transforming something in our life. And that's really when I feel like behavioral health really steps in and understands like, hey, here's a pattern that you're running. And here's what your reality is stating about how you're behaving versus how you want to behave is which one do you want to do? It's a preference point. And that's really kind of understand like, oh, that's who I want to be. That's who I'm becoming. I'm already that person and I'm letting go of some of these things

that are holding me back. So it comes in like parsing some of that apart and helping that person shine the light on where they want to go and why they're letting go of some of the things they may not want. And that's really where the work kind of comes in and why they may not know quote unquote who they are at 40 years old or, or setting later in life. It's just that we're, we're terrible transitions as human beings. We're awful. We love stagnant straight across, like this is life, here's the line. And it's just not true. And when we get to a transition point, we like to hold on to who we thought we were. And a lot of times that may not align and it may cause

rifts in your life in ways that you don't like. So you don't know who you are. I'm going midlife crisis, you know, all the things, you can put a million names on it. We have a million names for it. We just know we can navigate it better now. It's not this abyss. You know who you can get in touch with yourself at any point, it's kind of cool.

I'd love to hear your thoughts after living in SoCal for a decade at the beach where everybody's on the journey. I've also seen many times where the personal development side of life becomes like this paralyzing thing where people are always questioning if they're on the right path, if they're like being overly true to themselves, and it leads to this place where they're just like not doing anything. And it's like, my true passion is to sit here on the beach and suntan and surf. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'd love to hear kind of, when do we get to the point where it's too much on this journey, where it starts to become something where people stop taking action and they're just trying to learn more and more and more about themselves, but they're just working themselves into circles over a period of time, where kind of the goal is like, get to work. about themselves, but they're just working themselves into circles over a period of time where they, kind of the goal is like, get to work.

Like go do things that you enjoy. Maybe that's a little too much SoCal only, but I've seen so many times. I mean, that is. Dude, to interject and put one tangible thing on this, like as an example, I've heard like Alex and Layla or Hormozzi talk about this where there's so many people. So Cal's a great area for this, of course,

where you wake up and you have like your hour, two hour, three hour long morning routine where you're doing eight or 10 things before you actually start working. You got your ice bath and you got your meditation and you got your on and on and you're trying to make more money trying to be a successful as an entrepreneur, but you just spent three hours doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually move the needle and

Their their account to that is wake up one cup of coffee sit down start working and That that also works. You don't need to do all this mental masturbation so to speak You don't need to keep learning about yourself. Sometimes you just need to get to work. It's the only way is to get to work. Like the engagement with the relationship of life is the work. And I, you know, I, I love like Ram Dass and Alan Watts. And if I could have dinner with two dudes, like sitting down at the same time, it'd be pretty badass. But one thing I love about that is the conversation that Alan Watts has with Ram Dass regarding his need

to engage with the humanness of life. And I feel like there's so much truth in that and what you guys are explaining is that we're here having this human experience. But we're trying to escape it by finding ourselves. It's like the juice of it, all the work is in relationship to something else. You can't grow in a vacuum. You can't grow in a silo. Part of it is that, I think especially with behavioral health is a pendulum. You jump in and to your point, you do all the things and you're like six hours into your day and you're like, I feel fantastic,

but I also haven't engaged with life in any capacity. And it's like, all right, so you jump in and you just have the coffee and you go to work, but then you feel burnout. And then it's a willingness and my favorite word in the English dictionary is practice. The willingness to jump in and be like, okay, yeah, I feel a little disconnected for myself. I may need to jump in this morning. Maybe I need the ice bath. Maybe I want to do a little meditation. Okay, cool. I'm working on that. And then I'm pulling back and like, ah, so I'm feeling I want to do a little more work. All right, I'm pulling back here. Okay. And then it's like drifting back and forth and there's no, that's what people want is they, that's why people crave the morning

routine thing and they want like, or the hormones he piece works the other side of the pendulum. And it's like the one of the great things about hormones is he just fucking knows himself. He knows that that works for him based on his goal, based on his view of success in life, getting up and having a cup of coffee and smashing it because he's an entrepreneur and he wants more time doing what he loves. Let's go. You know, but how long, how many versions of that morning did he have to go through to get that right? Probably a lot. He messed up a lot along the way, but nobody really shares that it took them a while to get to that realization

that this is what works for me. And everybody's looking for something else. There's so much information. We've got infobesity out there on what can be done in the morning, afternoon, HRV, this, that. There's so many different things. And the only way through is to pick a thing and really engage in a relationship with it and understand why am I practicing this? It's just no different than any other type of training. Like we were talking about macros before going on call. How do you learn how to do that, Doug? Because you, a long time of practicing and figuring out what macros work for you and how to execute it and doing the things. But if you just randomly went

and somebody like, it took you a long time to practice to get that. The pendulum probably swung in a million different ways back and forth, but we don't know what we're swinging it toward. We don't know why we're swinging back toward. We don't know why we're swinging back the other way. So it's just blind. And we just slingshot from one thing to the next thing without actually engaging with something. But what it is, it takes that engagement, that willingness to go a little too far. And then the willingness to say like, okay, like, is this really what I want to do? Or am I just sitting on the beach sun tanning? And if's your thing boo, you do you man, how about it?

Yeah, right? Let's do it. Honestly, that's what I've fallen in love with is I just love asking people questions. Is that really what you want to do? Why is that alignment for you? Why are you practicing that thing? And just getting to the root of like, do you really know what you're doing or are you just really confused right now? Like, what's going on? You know, so like getting to the root of that is the point is the practice and like, understand and understanding that connection to it, I guess. So, so imagine a big part of what you do is just helping

people find the thing that they need in that moment that will work for them. Like a moment ago, I wasn't saying that everyone should just go straight to grabbing a cup of coffee and going straight to work. Like, maybe that is what you need to do. But maybe that everyone should just go straight to grabbing a cup of coffee and going straight to work. Maybe that is what you need to do, but maybe that's not what you need to do. Maybe you already do something like that and you're super burnt out and you do need to do some mindfulness, meditation, down regulation, and that's what would work for you in that moment.

But someone else, maybe they haven't worked out in 20 years and they just feel like, shit, they need to go train. Some people are overtrained and they need to cut back on training. We get a lot of those people. They need to cut back on training. We get a lot of those people, they need to cut back on training. It just depends on who you are, what you need, what your goals are. So I'd imagine a big part of what you do

is helping people figure out what they need in the moment. Exactly. And how to determine that. Like what's your body telling you right now? Like in understanding the cues that their body's given them. Because a lot of times like we've been doing it, especially with like high-performing people that train a lot,

is you just get used to pushing through. And there's a fine line. We're always taking in information. Our body is the sensitive organ if we're willing to listen to it. We just don't pay attention enough. We're always, especially right now, I was talking about infobesity,

we're taking in information at an unprecedented rate all the time. So if we're not careful, all we're doing is just continuing to take in more information. And that same scenario that you brought up, Anders, about being on the beach where you're just like taking in trying new things and doing all these really long, extensive things and always in that you're never taking action, it's kind of the same thing that can happen if we continue to just take in information, is we're always information. We never get the opportunity to actually process, to integrate, to work through things and to understand,

where do I really want to go? Is this really working for me? Or more importantly, when we have AirPods out, we're outside, we're actually just in control with our breath and giving ourselves a little bit of time. Most importantly, where there's nothing to fix and not a problem to solve, which most of us don't have that time,

then we get to actually hear, feel, sense what's really going on. Should I back off a little bit today? Should I dive in a little harder today? And having that be one piece of what I would consider triangulation. Like, what are your objectives for Q1? Huge piece, you know, like let's go.

What's my data saying? Like, what's my wearable let's go. What are, what's my data saying? Like, what's my wearable saying? Where am I at? What's my CO2 exhale test? And then how am I feeling? Like, okay, cool. Like I'm feeling good, feeling this, but it comes from a triangulation of things,

not just from one thing like, I don't feel like doing that today, so it's probably off. I should probably just go meditate and lay down. That may feel like the case, but according to a couple other things, like what you really wanna do with Q1 and what your data is saying,

you're revved up, you're going, you should probably try to, let's move today. We're gonna go train hard and see what happens. I think it's a mixture of all of it together, which actually gets us the ability to sit and feel and understand that a little bit. So it's not just sitting in that, it's understanding that it's a part of the story

that we're not letting be heard. Yeah. I have a, it's like a working theory of parts of life. And you were talking about kind of the transition phase and like figuring out where you want to be knowing kind of the past or what you have been doing isn't serving you anymore. And, you know, it's like a universal thing that everybody goes through in many macro and micro phases of life. At some point, whether it was like selling gyms or breaking up with girlfriends or like all of these things that we're always committed to and then the next day they don't exist. And I kind of started to develop this theory that like we develop over time whether it's like a neurological or a chemical or some sort of like attachment to whatever that thing

is like probably when it's a person there's some sort of like it's like the feeling of missing Somebody or the feeling of like loneliness that comes along with those um Like missing that relationship or missing the people that you're around in those places if you leave your gym or sell a business or whatever whatever that is um is there a part of the practice of like uh call it like, just naming the emotions that go along with those things or being okay with feeling them?

I found that or I have found in in those transitions for me that it's actually like a really helpful thing to just go, oh, I'm just lonely. That's cool. That's like part of life. I don't need to go back to that person or that thing. Or it's like, that's just the easy way where I won't have to deal with this unfortunate thing of feeling like nobody likes me right now. I'm just lonely. How do you kind of get people, call it comfortable with just loneliness

or that like, that dull point between yesterday wasn't good, I don't know where I'm at today, but tomorrow is going to be better. And not knowing when that like tomorrow part actually becomes better. There's always this like down part. And that's what I've, you know, kind of found that like, actually leads to the bad, the bad decision where you don't want to deal with the loneliness or you're not okay with the loneliness. So you end up going back to the bar where you know everybody's happy or you end up going back to the girl because you know that we could be happy for the next short amount of time. Like there's, there's, short amount of time. Like there's, there's, if, if, if you're comfortable in that, like

awkward loneliness, you know, you're at least in the right direction. It's just more painful. Accurate. I think what you're describing is in the state and stress resilience, I think,, beautifully, beautifully articulated, emotional stress resilience. And I think that's the one that tags us more often than not that we don't realize is that we're pretty good at external stress. We're pretty good at pushing through the hard thing in business at work and things. But when we get an emotional state where we're dysregulated and what you're describing is making a choice from a dysregulated state and the dysregulated state is misaligned with your values.

You may value connection and this, and you may not even see what you are really looking for, which is the connection, which you know is not at the bar. It's not going to be there. It's going to be disappointing. You're going to be in the same place. But you can't see that because you're just trying to change the way you feel immediately. You're trying to change your state in the moment. And that is really where the work and the power comes in of the work is understanding how to read your state,

to take a breath, take a second and see what's actually happening here. Meaning I'm in what we would call a dysregulated state, whether that's more of like a fight or flight or a slow sludgy rest and digest, which would be more of like that parasympathetic depressed state. You're at either one of those places, then you're making a choice that nine times out of 10, you're going to regret. It's understanding how to read like, oh, wait a minute, I'm a little bit flipped right now. I'm a little bit hot, I'm a little bit cold. If I make a decision from this, it's going to perpetuate the cycle in the same way

that I'm going right now. And that's really the power and what we refer to it as read, regulate, and redirect. We teach people how to read that state of, wait a minute, I am feeling that depressive state. I am feeling this. And then utilizing a tool similar, we'll just use breathwork because it's low-hanging fruit the breath work to

Regulate your system. That's really the idea or I think a term that's thrown out there a lot is grounding Where it's just like grounding is just bringing yourself back into your body into your space Because that's where the wisdom lives and it's that idea that if you're thinking about, you know Ruminating on the past or thinking about the future, then you are dysregulated. We are no longer in our present moment and the breath brings you back to center so that you can then observe like you said, and it's like, man, this is a great opportunity for me to kind of just sit. This is what's really happening.

That's why I use the term reality. This is what's really happening. I'm lonely. Okay. And do I wanna, like, is there anything that needs to change? Is there an action that I need to redirect? Nothing wrong with how I feel. There's no, I'm not trying to change this.

That's where I think people get really, like, kind of caught up is I need to change this. Do you? Like, maybe just experience the loneliness. I know that's sure shit, what I needed more of, which is why I drifted into this work when I was going through the stuff back in the day.

I didn't have those tools. I didn't know that, hey, you have the capacity to sit in this. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing to fix. There's nothing to change. And the feeling that you're feeling right now is actually the growth you're looking for.

If you can sit in it long enough. And that's where stress resilience comes in. That's where the stress resilience training comes in. It's like, I'm looking for that gap between stimulus and response. That's the magic. And that's really where behavioral health can come in and be really cool.

It's like, well, how do we increase your gap? Yeah. When, you know, the trauma side of things, and we probably have many people that we work with here that are driven to be extremely high achievers from some sort of trauma, feelings of needing, needing that external stimulus, and they're gonna fill that hole with money and big companies and

getting to this place, this mountaintop and kind of realizing at some point, and many times it's talking to you and Emily going, I can't fill this pain with all of the outside things. I can't fill this pain with all of the outside things. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the balance between unraveling the trauma and also maybe the, kind of maybe it's like going back to the hormonesy thing of saying just be accepting it and that you have to move forward without paying a ton of attention to it.

I sometimes wonder if people just get hung up in the trauma and why it happened to them, which kind of leads them in a almost in like a backwards path versus just going, yeah, that happened to me. It wasn't my fault. But how do they like, where's kind of the balance of those two, like, column frameworks? It's a great question. And you know, it's different for everybody. I think it depends on the time of life that depends on what they have as far as responsibilities, you know, and whether where they're what they're going through, do they have the capacity to unpack it in a way like What is at stake if they don't? I think that's a big piece too, because some of it is like, hey man, I'm just feeling a little bit burnt out. All right, we need to take the pressure off a little bit. Let's

understand what we're really dealing with. But to your point, like we talked about earlier, let's name it a little bit to give you a little bit of something to work around so it becomes less of a moral fallibility of, I can't do this because I'm not enough, I'm not a good enough person. Or, hey, I stepped into this. This is probably why I stepped into this. It may not have been the most healthy reason, especially now, but I'm here and here's why I'm doing this. How can I realign what I'm doing? And I love reframing. How can I reframe what I'm doing to come from a place of for love or sorry, from love versus for love. And that's what I've used with a lot of people

that are in this space where we don't necessarily wanna throw a grenade in your life and blow it up. You have a lot of really fantastic things. You may have come to it from a place that doesn't necessarily work for you anymore, which is fine, cool, great awareness. We can work with that. However, let's just reframe where you're coming at it from

and see if we can find a little bit more of an alignment within that through some awareness practices where you understand what you're doing versus just grit and burying it. Because a lot of people just trying to grit it and get through it. In reality, the lessons are there as long as we're looking and paying attention to them. That may mean like, I'm okay with where I'm at with this and this. Let's focus on this and let's move through it in that way. So, I think it's more of just the awareness of it. And then where you're at in that life sequence and then what your consequences are if you don't shift those things. Because some people, it is dire. For some people, it is like, whoa, man, you are in a space and they know it and they're like, I got to change everything. It's like,

okay, let's walk through that. And it's, you know, for some people, it's like, let's, let's shift this one thing. Let's see if we can slowly work toward a manageable alignment that allows you fulfillment, what you're doing and knowing that you're going to finish out the way you started and you're going to get to retirement X, whatever it is. And it's like, let's celebrate that, you know, so it's, it's really just connecting back to their why and helping them align their day to day stuff with that, I think. To be able to reframe something is a powerful tactic, if you can pull it off, it helps to have somebody along for the journey

that understands how to do it if you have your own behavioral health coach, etc. But if you, if you don't have somebody, do you have any any advice or suggestions, suggestions, tactics, etc. for someone who they know that they're they're looking at their situation in an unhealthy way and they want to reframe it and potentially then exit the rumination or whatever is causing them some level of distress? Yeah, first thing that pops into my mind is community. Sure. I get it. I mean, reach out to somebody that's around you, like hands down.

That's all a coach is, is a more directed guide. I'm professional in this field, but for most people, if you don't have that resource directly, just reach out because I guarantee you somebody else is walking through something just as much as you are in a way and the power of sharing it in that vulnerability aspect gives you that connection. And when you get that connection, it allows you to kind of step out of it and see, like just get away from the forest a little bit towards you can see the trees just a bit. And it allows you to step back in, you know.

So I think that's one major tool is just utilizing your community around you. If you don't have one, finding one is like one of the best things. I think our disconnection from community as a whole is a huge chunk of what we go through, is that we perceive that nobody else is walking through the same things that I am. And nobody else is experiencing this kind of unraveling that I am. And nobody else is experiencing this and it's just not true. I'm willing, I'm willing to bet within, and you know, a mile radius is about 10 people that can understand what you're doing and step into that. And there's, you know, a group, a community,

something to connect with. Call a friend, call your mom, call somebody. Just talk about it, it really helps. You know, I think that's the lowest hanging fruit that we avoided all costs because we're looking for something professional. Like reach out to your neighbor, man. Like we're more community we create around sharing who we actually are.

I think the more health and the more vitality and the more connection is bred through that. So I think, I think that would be one, one component that I would say would be huge for somebody walking through that. Yeah. And I also feel like that through to play off of that, that's the only sustainable way to do it. You're not going to have a behavioral health coach for 70 years. You know what I mean? It's good.

I hope not. It's very necessary in many situations. But also, just like I don't want to have a nutrition coach the rest of my life, eventually I want to just learn how to eat for myself. I want to learn how to cook. I want to understand macronutrients and micronutrients and fiber and all the things that way I can just take care of myself. Having a therapist for a period of time is great.

If you're kind of a rock bottom or you just need the extra support, maybe just move to a new area and you don't have any friends around, which it's easy to connect to people online, but it's also not the same thing as connecting with somebody in person. Having a community and having close friends that you can actually have a It's easy to connect people online, but it's also not the same thing as connecting with somebody in person. Having a community and having close friends you can actually have a real conversation with is really the only sustainable path forward as far as a decade's long time horizon. I completely agree.

It is. I mean, and that's what we're looking at. We're looking at just like you talked about, like sustainability. You know, is a coach great? Yes. Is it something you want to rely on? No. Like to your point, like I want to learn. That's what I enjoy teaching. Teach it something you want to rely on? No. To your point, I want to learn. That's what I enjoy teaching. Teach me how to get to know yourself. How are you

going to do this? What does this look like? That's the engagement with you, which I think is just so awesome. And then from there, I think outside of community, it brings in... That's when we can bring in the litany of tools. But I think people go to the tools like, there doesn't necessarily need to be any order. If people rely on them, which pulls them back into isolation and back into rumination, we're back into the same place that we started where you can't fix the problem with the entity that created it. We got to get out of ourselves. And that's where a lot of the things pop in as far as like So I journaling so powerful is just it's it's one of those I think the lowest hanging fruit along with community

Like just writing and these crushing yourselves through words is Extremely valuable because you can then read it and then read it back and see what's actually going on. It's like, oh wow No, I had no idea. You know you see yourself for the first time and it's like, oh crap, that's insane. I should probably talk to somebody about that. Or I'm proud of you. That's really cool. You get to see it, which is great. Maybe that gives you the courage to step out and connect in some way to somebody or seek

a coach or something going on in that way. But I think those are some of the ways we can reach out to some of those tools to get to know ourselves a little better. Yeah. Go ahead, Doug. It's all you, man. Good effort. The I want to say that there was probably like a five, six year long stretch recently

where I felt like the whole world was meditating like significantly more like it there was it actually felt like all of the apps were coming out at the same time there was like this like wave of um what is what is the one with the british? I did it. He was great. Oh, Headspace? Yeah, that guy. And then along with that, Sam Harris had one. There was like many, many, there was like a wave of meditation apps. And fortunate or unfortunate, I feel like so much of that has now turned into better help counseling online. Like, that's what I hear so much more than like, here's a very natural way to like get your foot in the door. And now all of a sudden we're just like going to therapy. When do you think is like an actual time that somebody would

need a therapist versus kind of going at this by themselves and just saying, versus kind of going at this by themselves and just saying, hey, I just need some downtime. It's almost like a question of like, when do I need a doctor versus I need a nutritionist or a strength coach or like, why would somebody need the medical community versus a more holistic approach to potentially solving the problems?

Yeah, great call out one with the app shift. holistic approach to potentially solving the problems. Yeah, great call out one with the app shift. So true. But I think to your point, I think it's so, we kind of talked about this earlier, like behavioral health in general, like the idea of meditation, especially in our culture is new comparatively to everything else, especially comparatively to strength training, nutrition. That aspect of holistic wellness in any sense has been very far one side for so long and it's just now becoming mainstream.

I think what we're seeing is the similar idea that we ran into with lifting in the 80s and the 90s and where we are now. It's like it was all bodybuilding. That's all we knew. you know, and then it starts to drift. And I think now, as we're starting to get into it with the behavioral health aspect or mental health or wellness movement, whatever you want to call it, I think the shift has come, the shift happens essentially. And when you're practicing with something and you're just getting the same result, you know, it's the same thing. Like if I go to the gym, and I'm doing the same strength routine that I got offline over

and over again, I'm like, like, I'm not, I'm not seeing what I want to see. Okay, all right, maybe I need a coach. Maybe I should reach out to somebody be like, okay, cool. Like, I'm not understanding this. And that would be, I think, the similarity and something with meditation is like, all right, I'm sitting down, I'm listening to Andy on Headspace and I'm like, I'm doing the deal and my life's not getting better. Okay, maybe you need to talk to somebody about something to understand why you're meditating. I think it's a disconnection between why we're doing the meditation and it becomes just another silver bullet is what a lot of those apps become of like, I'm doing my meditation in the morning, I should, I'm good. Like I'm checking the box. Like everything is checking

the box. Like I did my fitness, I went to the gym and I walked on the treadmill for an hour while I watched a soap opera on my phone. And then I did my meditation in the car while I, you know, waited for my next meeting and we're checking these boxes off with all these things, but we're not actually engaging with the practice. I feel like that's the miss is like an app becomes just another thing to distract us, another thing to take up our time because we're just so focused on getting to the next thing and doing more that we ironically throw meditation and breath work and cold plunging and all these things into those practices.

Reality, based on the nature of those practices in and of themselves, they are geared toward not doing anything else and sitting and being still and being back in your body. And so I think people are just still just looking for the silver bullet, which is where the shift is coming. They're like, oh therapy, that'll be the thing. And then whatever the next app series that's gonna be able that somebody will be able to monetize and make money off of that'll be the next app. And it'll be in good faith.

Like people are trying to do the quote unquote right thing. Like this is awesome. I want to share it. It is fantastic. I used Headspace for decades. It's brilliant. But if you don't understand why you're using it. He was a monk. Andy, he was, he was, yeah, right?

He was legit. He's good. He brought me down many times. Me and Andy are bros. That was the intro. That was like my intro to meditation. I went down the rainbow for a little while. It was great. I loved it. And then what happened? Teacher, I had like an actual coach I felt like. Her name was Christy Kutner. She was the best. She ran a yoga class called Yenki, which was reiki and yin yoga in Lafayette, California at the swankiest little sanctuary you've ever been to in your life. And I never missed.

And even when I moved, when we were in COVID times, she was running online classes and my wife and I would buzz into her. When we were having, when Ashton and my wife was pregnant with our first one, we would go to the classes and she would come over and do her little yinky and then she would massage with like her Reiki style thing over the baby and we were like,

we're gonna have this Zen doubt, wrong, wrong, little crazy redhead ginger girl showed up in just madness. You need more yin yoga in your life. I loved it though. Andy, that specific one, the Headspace app was like a very good introduction to just learning how to sit still. Right. And like, how did you take that? Like when you took it from that, like how did that transform for you? Because it feels like that's a practice for you that you still incorporate, maybe not with a formal seated practice, but what did that develop for you?

Most of this came at the transition of realizing I needed to get out of my gyms, like bad. Like the idea of CrossFit gave me like anger. The idea of all the things that I showed up to and built at some point turned into like a place that I did not want to be. It was like, I'm going to go build my dream life and then I'm going to be X amount of years old and it's going to feel like a jail cell and I don't know how to get out of here. So I should probably just burn it all to the

ground and maybe I'll survive the other side. That was when I was like, maybe there's a better way. Maybe I can do this in a little bit calmer of a pace. And that was that was like when I started to like buy into it. I also had a physical therapist, Teresa Larson. She was very big into it. She would just like be like, yo, just go to the beach and just like sit there. Like close your eyes, lay down. You don't even have to sit. Just like try and watch your breath. And then I found an app and then I found Trilogy Sanctuary,

which was a really like cool spot. And I actually like kind of like found my people there. It was like, it was very cool. And it was like the first time I had gone and. You know, built a business and needed to exit it and get the hell out of it. And you don't know how to do all these things because you're just a first timer in all of it. So you're you're operating at a deficit in skill set. And it helped a lot when it came to that.

And I think in And it helped a lot when it came to that. And I think in, if you were to like go and commit to breath work for like a year, two years, I think I was like very, very good for like two years. There is a training of the nervous system where like that lasts longer than like strength training. And I don't know why, but that one that one lasts like if you just like only lifted weights for two years of your life, you wouldn't be that strong of a person.

But if you like really dedicated to daily meditation for two years and like took it seriously, that skill will last because you can just kind of like do it in bed before you go to sleep. We have a little time by yourself. Like you can you can dip into that and you get call it 80 percent of the benefits, which is a massive amount without going full monk and having to like do it every single day of your life, but you've developed a lever that you can pull to help, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And I think that's a beautiful arc of practice of like what it took to kind of repattern your central nervous system. Like you got to know yourself through that stressful environment of what you went through in that transitional phase. And it took you inward, but you were willing to continue to engage with it and then learn what you needed and be able to take care of yourself.

And then over time, you leveled out in meditation for you. It looks like dipping into it when you need it to level out your system. And that's a tool that you pull from the shelf and you work with it. And I think that's where most people lose it is like they just, they grab on to meditation like it's going to fix them in 10 minutes or It's like I'm gonna be fit in 30 days. I'm gonna do a 30 day shred challenge You know whatever it is then they end the 30 days and they're the same person You know, it's about changing like who you are and how you engage with the environment

That's the beauty of a lot of these practices and why I think that shift from the breath or whatever the headspace and meditation into therapy is gonna be the next jump. It's gonna be the next thing that people think is gonna be the thing. Yeah, so this has been fantastic, man. Work with people, learn more and follow you. Let's see, shift. I primarily work with shiftadapt.com.

Do all of my work through those guys. I love it. You can just reach out to us there through the website and we will guide you and stand with you in the storm while you figure out who you are, man. I love it. Doug Larson. You bet.

Follow me on Instagram, Doug C. Larson. Chris, appreciate you coming on the show. Again, for those that aren't aware, Chris is one of the many specialists that you work with inside of our RTA program here at Rapid Health optimization. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing what you do with us. Always guys appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, man. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrug to barbell underscore

shrug. Make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report at rapid healthreport.com friends. We'll see you guys next week.