Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #270 Ryan Sprague

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, y'all, we got Ryan Sprague on the podcast for the first time. And Ryan, I first met, I know we talk about it on the podcast, but I did first meet him at Paul Cech's Mandala Workshop, painting for two days. Tons of cool people there. I met a bunch of the team from Organifi, hung and got to stay at my boy Chervene's house down in Southern California with him and Jamie and just had one of the best trips of my life. Been meaning to make it back out there just because I love hanging with Paul, but also because I meet incredible people at these events. And Ryan

Starting point is 00:00:38 was one of those incredible people. He was known as the cannabis guy. And I was laughing. I was like, he kind of looks the part. He definitely looks like the cannabis guy. But Ryan is also a checkie and he's built and he takes care of his body and he's not just high all day long like I used to be. He has worked out the kinks and figured out ways to optimize his cannabis use. And his website highlyoptimized.me is just that. It is a whole rundown of the best practices for using cannabis for any particular way. And it's awesome. We dive into his background. He's got a phenomenal story, why he got into the industry, what got him into some of the coolest regenerative agriculture practices as a farmer with cannabis and all sorts of cool ins and outs, do's and don'ts, and some of the best practices possible. And really, I was curious because I've had

Starting point is 00:01:31 a long road with cannabis. When I first got out of the house and I was 18 or 19, I smoked all day, every day. I was not in right relation with that plant. I was leaning on it heavily as a crutch in my late teens, early 20s, and then took a break when I got into fighting, and then CBD became popular. I got into that, and that really changed the game for me. That allowed me to come off of ibuprofen. I was taking four ibuprofen, 200 milligram ibuprofen before each session I trained in MMA.

Starting point is 00:02:00 That was two or three times a day, five days a week. I had no idea what that was doing to my gut. I was just trying to mask the pain so I could get through training camp. CBD allowed me to naturally come off of that. So many, many benefits here to cannabis. I have the ultimate respect for it. And as I've mentioned before, the last place I'd want to be is on high-dose THC. I'm more afraid of that than 30 grams of mushrooms.

Starting point is 00:02:24 But we dive into best practices here. We dive into Ryan's story and it was an excellent podcast. I definitely want to have him back on and really cool to hear it through the lens of a guy who's done so much of Chex training and is such a phenomenal human being. Ryan, I love you, buddy. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I'm going to link to all his stuff in the show notes as well as with the sponsors as we always do, but be sure to check out his website and his podcast. He's got a couple of them. And I was a guest on one of his, which I think is called this one time I did psychedelics and we dive deep onto that podcast. So once I get that up from him, our podcast right now with Ryan is going to release prior to my podcast with Ryan on his show. But once that is up, we'll go back in time or in current time, back in time, and we'll throw

Starting point is 00:03:11 that podcast that I did on his up on our show notes. So if you're first listening to this and you're right on time, probably not going to see it in there, but expect it to come back at some point so I can get people listening to that. And our wonderful conversation, we did these back-to-back out at the farm and I had a blast. I mean, three hours is grueling, but one of the things I told Ryan is like, it's a lot easier when you get to change position from who's in the driver's seat versus passenger.

Starting point is 00:03:37 And with a potty break in between, it made it smooth sailing. You know, we could have kept going. It was an awesome time. So thank you, Ryan, for being on the show. There are a number of ways you can support this podcast. First and foremost, leave us a five-star rating. Remember the deal. Organifi is going to hook up a single winner at the end of every single month until the end of 2022. If you leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways, the show has helped you out in life. That's it. That's all you need to do to

Starting point is 00:04:02 enter. And when you do that, that helps the show, but it also helps you because you're going to get my favorite Organifi products. It will be one of likely three, and I will, three of my favorites, and I will hook you up. If we can bundle it, we will. I'm not worried about that right now, though. We're working on it, but either way, you're going to get some free goodies from Organifi. And let's talk sponsors. We got a brand new one today, Cured Nutrition. Curednutrition.com slash KKP is the URL. They've got a number of products that are absolutely phenomenal, but I'm going to talk about the one that really was a game changer for me. Rise is a nootropic formulated by Cure's very own in-house clinical herbalist. It contains a blend

Starting point is 00:04:41 of lion's mane and cordyceps mushrooms, rhodiola, ginseng, and broad-spectrum CBD. Every single one of these things that I just mentioned has a standalone history with value. Every single one of them is a phenomenal supplement in and of themselves. The fact that they've combined all these into one easy-to-use and convenient place for capsules is phenomenal. I initially started taking Rise by Cured Nutrition because I wanted to reduce my caffeine intake. Just talked about that. We're on day three right now of me not having caffeine. And I said that on the last podcast intro, but I'm recording these intros back to back. So

Starting point is 00:05:16 still day three, I didn't fuck up and have to go back to it. But this has been an amazing thing that's helped me to reduce my caffeine intake and to have really good nutritional energy. I mean, nutritional energy, meaning the supplements that I take are going to help facilitate more energy cognitively through Lion's Mane. We're going to hit our mitochondria, also many of them located in the brain with the cordyceps mushrooms. Rhodiola helps with oxygen uptake, which again, more oxygen to the brain, better thinking power. Ginseng has long been known for our immune system and our energy production.

Starting point is 00:05:49 And then broad spectrum CBD, which is going to balance the nervous system. Many people would think, well, CBD is kind of a chill thing. It's not going to help me have more energy. Not true. If you're cracked out from caffeine overtaking or from just the world itself making you go mad, CBD is going to balance you. I was just thinking about this as I'm getting back into jujitsu and boxing, is that if you're relaxed, being relaxed is better than any form of cardio. It's better than any VO2 max test that you do. If you're great on the VO2 max machine and you test the best, but you get into the fucking ring and you start to panic, there goes your cardio. So relaxed is going to be far better for cardio than being in shape almost, right? Now that goes,

Starting point is 00:06:37 obviously you can do a little bit of both and hopefully you've optimized both. But my point is, it doesn't matter how in shape you are if you freak out, and CBD helps balance the nervous system so you're not freaked out. And in that, you have more energy. You have more energy cognitively, you have more energy physically when you want to hit the gym, or if it's late night and you've got to wait until 10 p.m. to have a little connection time with the missus because the kids are staying up a little later than they should or not falling asleep and you can't sneak out. Clearly, I'm speaking personally here. I want to be able to rock and roll at 10 p.m. This allows me to do that. So many great things here. I absolutely love this. Right now, Cured is extending an exclusive offer for you, my listeners. You can grab Rise for 20% off by visiting www.curednutrition.com

Starting point is 00:07:21 slash KKP. That is C-U-R-E-D nutrition.com slash KKP and use coupon code KKP at checkout to save 20% off. You get 20% off everything. It's a blend of functional mushrooms, adaptogens, cannabinoids that will leave your brain on fire in your to-do list asking for more. We're also brought to you today by Capex. There are so many research benefits to having good fat in your diet, but there's just one little problem with all this healthy fat.

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Starting point is 00:09:46 all one word, Kingsboo10, all one word. Check it out. We'll link to that in the show notes, and we'll also have these coupon codes underneath it so you don't have to remember all this stuff. This podcast is also brought to you today by Desnuda Organic Tequila, and it is the cleanest, best-tasting premium tequila on the market. These guys launched in January of 2022, and Indianapolis-based co-founders Nick Bloom and Brian Edding selfishly wanted a tequila that didn't leave them feeling terribly after a night of drinking and a spirit that fit into their health and wellness lifestyle. Out of necessity, they created Desnuda, which means naked.

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Starting point is 00:14:16 Ryan Sprague. We met, it's hard to say, it's weird to say it now, but it was years ago, a couple years back at least, for Paul's painting workshop. Yes in down in uh the rainbow house i always want to call it the heaven house like have it rainbow house and um that model workshop it's it's it's funny there's a lot of things that like change or shift people you know like oh this thing changed my life like for i never expected i knew it was gonna be profound because it's paul but i didn't expect it to have that big of a fucking impact like i and i also you know like having sat with paul and ceremonies and things like that understood

Starting point is 00:14:55 the power of painting beforehand but like how i view the art of my wall like what i'm grabbing from it now i can see exactly where i was on a soul level in my life. And that may sound like shit to some people, but even though I'm mental emotional, like what were the problems in my life? What was the stress in my life? What was the meaning behind it? And why did it fucking matter when I painted it?

Starting point is 00:15:18 Why did I have to have that come out? You know? And sometimes I painted shit where I'm like, even right now, I don't know why I'm drawing Metatron's cube. I've drawn it three times. I have it in a painting with the four seasons. It has to do with time and matter and energy and the world of 10,000 things.

Starting point is 00:15:34 I don't know yet, though. I drew a fractal square, which is a square made of triangles. You just make a square and divide it into fours and you got four and you keep doing that so from one square down and then if you paint with different colors that'll fibonacci out so it's pretty fucking cool yeah with eight different colors and i was doing that and like that was an experience of uh of feeling locked in hell on 30 grams of mushrooms i painted that fucking like a year before it happened and I was like, God, that's it. It was like a clockwork universe.

Starting point is 00:16:09 It's like we're just fucking expanding and knowing ourselves over and over again for eternity. And there's absolutely no meaning to it. It's just going to keep going and there's no stopping it. So it was funny. But yeah, the workshop was such a powerful one. And Paul's a powerful teacher talk a bit about i mean you know the arc of this show is i want to know who you are how you grew

Starting point is 00:16:33 up what got you to be who you are today and we have a lot to talk about obviously you know you went on aubrey's you deep dived cannabis we're going to talk cannabis today um but really you know what you're doing differently with that, right? Because it is such a big deal. You can get high-grade, high-grade, quotes, air quotes, cannabis. That's super potent stuff and I'll fucking floor you with one hit. That doesn't mean it's of the highest quality. Yes. And it's one of the reasons I use this organic snus too, is it's grown biodynamically. Not all of it, but this stuff is and so they're they're

Starting point is 00:17:05 paying attention to soil quality year after year you know it's a monocrop they're paying attention that kind of stuff it's it's an important thing um so i'm excited to deep dive you know for people that think it's just a cannabis episode it isn't for people that think it's just a farming episode this isn't uh you're a fucking fit dude you know i love that about paul's people it's like it's pretty rare that i'll come across somebody. We've come across weird people, weird checkies, and they're all great because everyone's their own unique flavor. But that's something that I always am pleasantly surprised with is like, you got a fucking great build. When I see someone's shirt come off, like, damn,

Starting point is 00:17:37 you got a nice ass. Damn, everyone's fucking getting after it. They're walking the walk. Dude, it's the best, man. And that workshop, bro, that changed my life. I mean, very similar to you. When I look at that painting I did, I can tell exactly where I was and I can tune into that feeling because in theory, I'm still that person living in a multiple different reality, right? Different parallel universe. And so we're a different dimension. And so when I look at that, like I had a lot of black around my outsides. And I remember what Paul said, because for everyone listening, Paul actually like allowed us to like

Starting point is 00:18:07 get an insight into his world by reading what our soul was telling us through our paintings. So he was like, yeah, there's a lot of unknown out there. And that's really what was going on at that point, right? I was starting this venture of like speaking about cannabis the way I was. I was getting onto some bigger platforms,

Starting point is 00:18:19 but I didn't know how it was gonna be received. I just knew it was coming from my heart. And so like where this all started was I was fortunate enough to have really good parents. My parents are amazing. My father passed some years ago. I'll tell you that story in here, but they've always been very supportive

Starting point is 00:18:34 of everything I've done. And so I grew up having like the picture perfect childhood. I grew up next to triplets who essentially were, they're still my best friends. And it was cool because it was like I had three brothers, but still got my own room and they got to go home at night. So it was like the coolest mix ever. And so I had a beautiful childhood. And at a certain point, when I got into high school, I started noticing some things going on and I didn't know exactly how to describe

Starting point is 00:18:56 them, but basically it was generalized anxiety disorder and like kind of more in the social situations. And it was funny because when I tell people that, they're like, you never had anxiety. Even people from that time, they're like, you talked all the time. I'm like, well, anxiety for me, for a lot of people makes them close off. For me, it made me talk more. So it was almost like a double-edged sword

Starting point is 00:19:15 because I would tell people I have anxiety and they're like, no, you don't. And they would just like laugh it off. So here I am like- Especially in Boston, they're probably like, fuck off. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Go fuck your mother, you know? It's just like, geez, guys, you know, yikes.

Starting point is 00:19:26 So it was funny because like, here I am going through this and no, I don't really have anyone to resonate with on that level. Of course, when I'm 16 too, right? Like how big of a conversation can you have around anxiety with any of your friends at that point? So I went to the doctor, tried every pharmaceutical under the sun and none of them actually- You were born in the 90s, right?

Starting point is 00:19:44 Yeah, 91. Yeah, 91. Yeah, so you're fucking just right, you just hit the ground running with pharmaceuticals. Yes, dude, yes, exactly. I was 82, so it wasn't quite as rampant. They didn't have Adderall and shit like that, but they must have had the fucking kitchen sink for you. Dude.

Starting point is 00:19:57 Just waiting, try this, try this, try this. It was like every appointment, there was just another pill. And I bought into it. I was like, okay, this is supposed to work. You know, the person in the white lab coat, you know, I bought into the whole archetype thing. So I'm there, I'm trying all these pharmaceuticals.

Starting point is 00:20:11 And the way that I would describe it now is I just felt more disconnected from myself. I felt like a blank slate. Like I could just control out the lead of my entire soul out of my life. And so I was like, well, this isn't fun. And then a friend had recommended cannabis. He was like, hey, I'm going through some And then a friend had recommended cannabis. He was like, hey, I'm going through some similar shit that you're going through. Cannabis helps me with it. Try it out. So I was like, okay, what's the worst that could happen? Now, at that point,

Starting point is 00:20:32 I was doing the Nancy Reagan approach, just saying no, right? Because I had seen a lot of people that did fit that classic archetype of the lazy stoner, but that wasn't cannabis doing that. And we can get into the whole archetypal aspects of cannabis know, I had had some really poor examples of what cannabis use looked like at that point in my life. I had poor examples of psychedelics. Yeah. A lot of these stoner skater kids that were just like, you know, tatted up at 14 years old

Starting point is 00:20:56 and like sprinkling mushrooms on oranges in fucking junior high. Oh my God. You want some mushrooms, man? I'm like, no, I don't want to turn into you. No. Yeah, exactly. We're doing algebra next. You really want to take mushrooms for that? It's like, yikes. And so here I am, I tried cannabis and the way I would describe it now, I don't know how I said it back then, but it made me feel connected to myself. For the first time, I had separation

Starting point is 00:21:19 from my thoughts. And as a 16 year old, I realized, oh my God, I'm not the thoughts in my head. So therefore I'm not anxious. I, I realized, oh my God, I'm not the thoughts in my head. So therefore, I'm not anxious. I'm experiencing anxiety. Totally different distinction, which was really important at that age, because that framed a lot of questioning for me moving forward. Cannabis was the thing that blew the lid off the bucket, per se, to be able to question everything, to realize, well, if this is not what I was told it was in DARE class, right? Which was always weird to me.

Starting point is 00:21:47 DARE's like, hey, don't do drugs, but we have some. And here, smell them so you know what they're like. And I'm like, wait, so they're bad, but you have them? It was the strangest thing. I don't know if you experienced that with DARE. Yeah, all sorts of dumb shit. What's funny is that they would loop them all together like cannabis. And then they tell you the story about the guy who took PCP

Starting point is 00:22:04 and ran through 14 fucking bullets and been a stop sign and half naked. You know, he's, he's butt naked. The cops can't stop him even with their nine millimeters. Fucking finally, the thing that takes him down as an AR. Meanwhile,

Starting point is 00:22:15 he's been a stop sign and half. Right. And I'm like, why are we having this conversation about a guy on PCP and cannabis in the same fucking conversation? Like what's happening here? It's like that escalated quickly. You know, it's like, wait, how do we go from cannabis to PCP or heroin in the same fucking conversation. Like what's happening here? It's like that escalated quickly. You know, it's like, wait,

Starting point is 00:22:27 how do we go from cannabis to PCP or heroin? It's like, how does this happen? And they would always say it's the gateway drug. Well, in reality, it can be a gateway, but you get to choose what it's a gateway to because it's a subjective experience for every person that interacts with any plant medicine. So trying to make an objective reality

Starting point is 00:22:42 out of anything is just silly, right? Quantum physics has proven there's no objectiveness to anything and one of the my favorite chapters in paul levy's quantum revelation book is so great dude it's so good we're linking in the show notes it's a fucking must read must listen it's fucking awesome and i actually it was when i was at paul's uh shamanic sound healing workshop he told me about it and i was like fuck yeah i'm gonna read that and one of the first chapters is the objective reality hangover. And that was like one of my favorite chapters because it was just when someone can add comedy into a subject like quantum physics, and I really feel quantum physics not to go on a side tangent, is like the psychedelic realm of science. Because it's kind of like,

Starting point is 00:23:16 we don't know. We don't know why any of this is happening. We're finding it. So it's really interesting. But when I got into cannabis, I felt this connection to myself and I was like, wow, this is amazing. But like I imagine many people listening, I didn't know how much to use, what kinds to use, how much is too much. I didn't understand that you can numb out your emotions

Starting point is 00:23:34 with things like cannabis, alcohol, exercise, sex, anything out there. Shopping, TV. Exactly. All of it. Yeah. So I didn't know any of that. So of course,

Starting point is 00:23:44 because there was no user manual out there for cannabis, I fell into daily use. I fell it. Yeah. So I didn't know any of that. So of course, because there was no user manual out there for cannabis, I fell into daily use. I fell into unconscious use. And what ended up happening was then I ended up feeling like I needed cannabis for everything. So we're going to eat. Well, I need to smoke first. We're going to go watch a movie. I need to smoke first. We're going to do X, Y, Z. I need to smoke first. Who's the guy in a half-baked John, John something. Oh, I forget his last name, but it is. So that guy, that guy, that guy, you ever, you ever looked at the back of a $20 bill on weed? Yeah. If it's good, sober, it's better. Exactly. And so I fell into that. Right. And so I ended up

Starting point is 00:24:19 when I was 18, I woke up one morning and started peeing blood. Had no idea why. And that was like my mortality crisis, as they say. And so I ended up going to the hospital with my dad, who at that point, my house was kind of a party house. Like my parents were always like, I'd rather you kids be here. I'd rather us know where you are. That was my mom's rule. No driving.

Starting point is 00:24:39 Exactly. And we had like a nice big yard and got into a bunch of shenanigans there that are hilarious stories. So he had always kind of said like, just don't do it. But he was never fully against it. He was kind of just like,

Starting point is 00:24:49 I could feel that he would probably have had the conversation with me later in my life about like, okay, there's times where maybe you can do it, like that kind of thing. But he was kind of just like, just don't do it. But he knew I was doing it. Like he was like, I'm not dumb, Ryan.

Starting point is 00:25:00 Like I knew what was going on when I finally told him. But we're on the way to the hospital and he's like, I just got to know, are you doing drugs? And I'm like, no, but I am smoking a shit ton of pot. And that's the way I said it then, of course. So I see him have a sigh of relief when I say that. And I'm like, interesting, because here's my dad who said no, and here's me admitting it. And he's like, okay, kind of like we can handle this. So I'm like, okay. So we go to the hospital and he stays with me for the five days I'm there.

Starting point is 00:25:26 Ended up being a benign cyst in my kidney that broke open and put blood in my urine. But that really started a lot of chain of events because I started realizing, why the hell do I have benign cysts growing on my kidney? I want to get my health in order. That started my entire highly optimized life, if you will. And so when I'm there, I start showing my dad, because we brought my computer in because I was bored. I had nothing else to do. Started showing him a lot of the science that I was researching with cannabis and a lot of

Starting point is 00:25:51 the videos that were out at that time, including Leaf from Dr. William Courtney. Super cool story about this guy who met a patient who had like 11 autoimmune disorders and through juicing raw cannabis leaves, aka no intoxication whatsoever, he put all 11 of them into remission and then they get married at the end. So super cool story, right? Yeah, it's from like 2011 if anyone wants to look it up on YouTube. But so he looks at me and he's like,

Starting point is 00:26:13 wow, I guess I didn't know what I didn't know. Had no cognitive dissonance and was like, well, hey, you're in school for psychology. You have a plan laid out. You're fulfilling your responsibilities. You're an adult. Who am I to tell you you can't do this, right? You're not drinking. I'd much rather you do this than drink.

Starting point is 00:26:27 It's like, why don't you do it at the house from now on? So I didn't have to hide it anymore. And it kind of bonded us. He wasn't a cannabis user, but he was always interested in what I was doing. He would bring me to metal shows when I was a kid. Some of the experiences he must have had watching me go to death metal shows, just in the back, like, what is all this? It must have been hilarious. And so I end up, I'm in school for psychology at that point, but I knew I didn't want to wear khakis the rest of my life. So I'm like, what the fuck am I going to do here? So I go to the Boston Freedom Rally, which is actually happening right around now in Boston, which is like a big public display

Starting point is 00:26:58 of disobedience where everyone comes out into the green. They just fire up and burn cannabis everywhere. And as long as you're not selling or anything crazy, the cops don't really bother you. So I'm there. I get off the train and I immediately hear someone yelling, who wants to make butter with me? So I'm like, I do. So I walk over to this guy's little booth

Starting point is 00:27:15 and he's passing out these pamphlets for a basic eight-week semester, opening up at a cannabis institute that he's starting like five minutes from my house. So I'm like, whoa, that was one of the first times I had that heart pull that told me like, go there, do this. So I go home. I tell my dad, broke college student. I'm like, can you help me with tuition? He's like, I'll do one better. I'll go with you because I'm interested. So we ended up going together. My dad was the charisma master. He's like, you're going to be the first one in,

Starting point is 00:27:41 last one out every time. This is what you want to do. I'm like, yeah. He's like, all right, you got to prove it to them. I'm like, okay. So I'm just like sucking up to them, learning everything I can. I end up interning through them. I end up working for them. I'm like being an advocate or an activist, passing out pamphlets, like vote yes on two for medical. So right before the school started, my dad and I purchased a grow kit. And so we start cultivating together and our first harvest was shit, right? And that's part of the reason that he was like, well, yeah, we invested in this kit. It's our hobby. Why don't you go learn how to do this? So I go to the school. We have a blast. I'm

Starting point is 00:28:13 doing all this cool stuff. My dad's coming to the different events and different classes. And I'm learning about organic regenerative agriculture. I met a guy there who was going to Korea to learn all about Korean natural farming, which we were talking about before we hit record. So there were all these things just spawning, right? And so I was like, I want to work in the medical industry because now there was going to be an industry on the East Coast. Boston was, I believe, the first on the East Coast to legalize medically. And so at that point, the only other option was go to California, go to Oaksterdam and work at a dispensary. So now there's an industry. I'm like, oh my God. So during this time, I ended

Starting point is 00:28:45 up going to EDC Las Vegas and I ended up interacting with MDMA for the first time because I had never interacted with anything else. What a great place to have your first experience. My God, man, it was wild. It was so much fun. And when I'm there, of course I did research before and I'm like, okay, it's a heart opener. Okay. This is what I'm going to experience. But when I'm there in the middle of the crowd, 50,000 people, I think it was at a base nectar set. And I just start feeling this really deep pull to my dad. And I didn't know why. And I figured my dad loved gambling. So I'm in Las Vegas. My dad and I love steakhouses. We're going to steakhouses, me and my two friends that went. So I'm like, oh, I'm probably just missing him because of that. So I kind of wrote it off. When I get home, nine days after I got home,

Starting point is 00:29:21 he told me that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And it was already completely throughout his body, stage four. And so when him and I had gone to the school together, we had seen people that were either terminal or stage three, stage four, that had gotten their lifestyle in check, stopped getting into stress and things like that, but also started supplementing with a cannabis extract called RSO, aka Rick Simpson oil, or another name, FICO, full extract cannabis oil. And they were coming in, aka Rick Simpson oil, or another name, FECO, full extract cannabis oil. And they were coming in, showing me their scans, and they would come in, like tumors everywhere, come in about three to six months later, sometimes a year, with no tumors. And in Boston, we have some of the best hospitals there. So Dana Farber was shocked at what's going on,

Starting point is 00:30:01 because this is still, I mean, this is like 2014. So this is like a long time ago, right? I mean, it doesn't seem it, but in terms of like research for cannabis, it was a long time ago. So for anyone listening who wants to look this up, there are PubMed studies of how THC kills cancer cells, CBD inhibits their growth. So for anyone who wants to fact check it,

Starting point is 00:30:17 you totally can, cause I know that's the age we're in right now. And so my dad decides not to treatment because when he found out, he had literally just finished up like two weeks before a three-year stint of bringing his brother to Dana-Farber every single week for chemo and radiation. And he had watched what it did to him.

Starting point is 00:30:34 And he was like, listen, I got a killer head of hair. I don't want to lose it. I'm going to live my life the way I want. My dad, I love him to death, but he drank Coca-Cola. He ate steak and cheese subs. He was just the way he was, right? And I had an opportunity in that moment to either love him for who he but he drank Coca-Cola. He ate steak and cheese subs. He was just the way he was, right? And I had an opportunity in that moment to either love him for who he was and where he was at

Starting point is 00:30:49 or choose to make him into the version of him that I thought he should be so I could have him around, which was a selfish way of doing it in my eyes. So I chose the first one. And, you know, we started to get his diet a little in order. He was still smoking cigarettes, you know, and I was fine with it. I was like, hey, this is what it is.

Starting point is 00:31:04 But at least let's see if cannabis can help slow down the tumor growth and allow me to have some more time with you. So after a couple of weeks, at first he was like, no, because he liked his control. You know, he didn't want to have any intoxicants. But after a couple of weeks,

Starting point is 00:31:16 he starts having some pain. So I starts feeding him some RSO and I would sit with him because here's this guy who hasn't interacted with cannabis since like the 80s. And the one experience he had, they smoked a joint, him and his first wife, and they heard a police siren like five blocks away.

Starting point is 00:31:30 And they hid under their dining room table and closed all the windows for like hours. So here's that experience. And now I'm giving him like the strongest form of cannabis out there. It also fucking lights out. Yeah. I mean, even for someone like me who's experienced with cannabis, like that will put me down very easily, you know? So here I am. And the idea is to get them up

Starting point is 00:31:46 to a gram a day as fast as possible. So that's a lot. I mean, a gram of regular cannabis every day is a lot, let alone a gram of hash oil, essentially, you know? So I'm feeding these bigger doses, I'm sitting with them. And during that time though, like I thought I had discovered everything I had to know about cannabis, right?

Starting point is 00:32:02 I knew the science, I knew how to cultivate it, and I knew what it did for me, being able to connect me deeper to myself. And I was like, wow, this plant's amazing. And so with my dad, I was like, well, you know, maybe it'll help him get out of pain, give me some more time with him. But what I didn't expect was that in that time that it gave me with him, that I would have such an ample opportunity to connect deeper with him. And not only that, but allow him to have closure with his grandchildren, with his other children, with my mother and his own mortality. And so like, we got to take the heaviness out of concepts like death and subjects like death, where instead of us talking about it,

Starting point is 00:32:35 you know, like this scary thing or me viewing him as a sick guy or him viewing himself as a sick guy, we got to just take the heaviness out of it and just talk about like, he'd be like, what do you think happens when you die? I'm like, I don't know. He's like, I don't know either. I'm like, are you excited? He's like, I'm kind of excited. And so it gave us this air of lightness where it wasn't the end anymore. And that really helped me get a lot of closure. And so in that time, not only did I get a year with my father that I don't know if I would have gotten without cannabis and being able to shrink his tumors, but in that time, it's like what we did in that time, which was like, I really realized the amazing power of cannabis to be a connection medicine. And in the world right now, I don't think we have any stronger issue than connection

Starting point is 00:33:14 because at the end of the day, the only reason why people fight each other, the only reason why people are at odds with each other, the only reason why the earth is getting pillaged is because of a lack of connection to ourselves, those around us in the world at large. And so I had this light bulb moment where I was like, whoa, I think this could really be one of the rivers that could lead to the same sea as many other rivers that could help humanity. And so at that point, I felt that deep purpose click in where I was like, this is what I'm going to do. So after he passed, I ended up getting hired at a dispensary after calling them every single day. I was like, I'm just going to be relentless. So finally they were like, okay, you know,

Starting point is 00:33:46 they weren't even fully built out yet. They're like, we're going to bring you over to the hiring office right now. I got in there, got hired on the spot, worked there for five years with over 5,000 medical patients. And at the same time, of course, I've gotten huge into holistic health. It all started from the cannabis school because it was a holistic health coach essentially there who I just nerded out with and learned about apple cider vinegar and organic and everything like that. So here I am at the dispensary where like, you know, most bud tenders

Starting point is 00:34:11 are just like, you know, talking about THC or things like that. And I'm asking people like, how much have you slept? Are you drinking water? What type of water? You know, are you drinking spring water? Are you eating organic food?

Starting point is 00:34:21 Have you done a metabolic typing diet? You know, like, you know? Survey, things like that. So I ended up having this kind of notoriety there where people start forming lines. And I started getting into coaching before I had actually become a coach. It was pretty much what was happening. And I was just loving it. It was so much fun. And we were owned by a guy who, he was in it for the right reasons. He was in New York when 9-11 happened. And he had to run through the streets, had crazy PTSD from it. And the only thing that got him back to being able to work was cannabis. And so he made a

Starting point is 00:34:50 commitment that when he retired, he was going to invest in a dispensary and do it for the right reasons. So the first three and a half years I was there, that was the energy there. We were a small dispensary, tight-knit family. Everyone there was probably from black market or this and that, whatever. So everyone there was there. We were waiting to be there for a long time. So then we got taken over by a corporation and it started smelling like khakis and office supplies in there real quick, right? Two bobs came in. Yeah. One of the first speeches that one of the guys from Home Depot that had moved in there, Gabe was like the classic, we love you guys. We think you're super valuable. We want to keep all you guys. We think you're super valuable.

Starting point is 00:35:25 We want to keep all you guys. We're not going to change anything. And all of us were just like, you realize we interact with plant medicines and smell your bullshit from a mile away, right? So they ended up firing pretty much everyone. I ended up staying there and helping them out a lot with cultivation

Starting point is 00:35:38 because they needed a lot of help at that point and doing a lot of other stuff there. But at the same time, I just kept feeling this is out of alignment for me. And so through another series of events in Vegas with MDMA again, I realized I had this huge revelation. I actually told this on Aubrey's show. It was actually at a strip club this happened. And I think on Aubrey's show, I mentioned it was an MDMA ceremony. And someone in the comments was like, this guy did an MDMA ceremony in a strip club. And I'm like, listen, man, when things happen, I think ceremony is where you take it. We did it very intentionally. And it was me and my

Starting point is 00:36:08 girlfriend. We went, we had never gone to a strip club, which probably makes me sound super innocent, but we just never done it before. So we go to- That really, even without MDMA, that can be a ceremony in and of itself because so much can come to a pressure cooker of being around other naked women that are beautiful, right? Yeah. What does that do? I mean, just think about this. If you're a dude right now and you're listening, we're 80% male listeners. We got a decent amount of female listeners too, but think about that. If you haven't done it, what is uncomfortable in you right now by just imagining yourself there, right? It's stirring up shit just thinking about it, right? And if you have done it, you're like, oh, I fucking do it all the time and it's great. My chick loves lap dances. It's like,

Starting point is 00:36:44 all right, cool. But the first time it might've stirred some shit up, right? And if you have done it, you're like, oh, I fucking do it all the time. And it's great. My chick loves lap dances. It's like, all right, cool. But the first time, it might have stirred some shit up, right? It might have brought some, might have had some really deep conversations that came from that, right? Like that's definitely been the case, you know, for me. 100%. And that's, I mean, it was very cool because we knew we wanted to experience it. So we go there, we end up just having a blast. Like we're like talking to the strippers. They're telling us all their life plans. It was just a frigging great experience. But I ended up being the one that was keeping track of time, which me and time were a little bit at odds with each other. So we ended up leaving at eight in the morning and my girlfriend was working on a 600 page

Starting point is 00:37:16 application for a Chicago dispensary. You want to talk office supplies, man, writing out 600 pages of like legality for a dispensary. Yikes. So yeah, no thanks. So she was planning on working on this on the plane ride the next day. We were leaving at one. So we were like, okay, we'll leave at four. We'll get like, you know, five hours of sleep, whatever. We'll thug it out and make it happen. So, so she ends up realizing in this moment, oh my God, because we were both just having a good time. Neither, it wasn't like something we planned to leave late, but it happened. And so I, I see her going through her own emotional rollercoaster of like, oh my God, I don't even want to do this project.

Starting point is 00:37:50 How am I going to do it? And in that moment, I empathized with her and felt her low. And then all of a sudden I realized, whoa, I don't know this feeling. Like what even is feeling? And I had this huge revelation that, holy shit, I haven't felt anything since my father passed away seven years before. And so here I am this huge revelation that, holy shit, I haven't felt anything since my father passed away seven years before.

Starting point is 00:38:05 And so here I am having this revelation. I sleep like two hours, get on the plane. I have a pounding migraine and I'm going home and I'm in the best mood of my life because I'm in a low and I'm feeling again. And I'm like, oh my goodness. So then I started asking my soul, higher self, cannabis, whoever it was.

Starting point is 00:38:21 I'm like, why is this happening? Why have I not been able to feel feelings for so long? And basically the voice goes, well, you've been using cannabis to numb your feelings every night. And I'm like, oh my goodness. Now here I am following all the right rules that I obey myself, only interacting with cannabis once a night, one bowl, vaporizing, all the things, organic cannabis, the whole thing. So obviously it was a big identity crisis for me because here I am thinking I have it all figured out. And now I'm realizing, oh, I'm just even starting to figure it out. So at first I go, oh my God, it must be cannabis. So I take a break as soon as I get home. And after about a month, I realized I start taking a lot of accountability. I just start waking up and it's

Starting point is 00:38:58 such a cliche thing and such a woo-woo type thing to say, but it really started happening. I started waking up and just taking ownership and realizing that wherever I was in my life was because I put myself there. And that was the only person I had to blame. And if I was the only one to blame, then I was the only one that could fix it. And so it stung at first, but it was a world of power and freedom on the other side. And so I realized this has nothing to do with cannabis. Cannabis did not hold a gun to my head and tell me to interact with it, tell me to become dependent on it. It was me that did that because I was trying to escape trauma that I had experienced. And so after about a three-month break, I got back into cannabis, started doing my weekly dietas

Starting point is 00:39:33 that really started the foundation for what the Connect with Cannabis program is. And then through a series of other fortunate events, while I was during that break, I just started pouring out from the heart and I just had to start speaking it because I had been thinking about starting a podcast, all these things. That's where I met Shlomo actually. So I had been thinking about all this stuff, but no, everyone's got a podcast. It's coming from a very logical point of view. So as soon as I quit cannabis, I end up leaving my job because now I'm not numbing out the feelings of how frustrating this job is to me. So I leave that. I'm burning to do a podcast. So I start one. And then about a month after that, I'm just making all these I leave that. I'm burning to do a podcast. So I start one. And then about a month

Starting point is 00:40:05 after that, I'm just making all these posts on Facebook. I wasn't even on Instagram about perspective and just what was flowing through me. I tagged Mark England in one of them, who I heard on the podcast three years before in the cultivation room. Me and Rachel would sync up our podcast. We'd meet in the cultivation room. Okay, we're going to start this one now. And then we'd walk around and we'd meet and be like, oh my God, did you hear this thing? So we listened to him on Positive Head, which is a podcast run by Brandon Beecham. And so I talked about language in there. Someone asked, oh, where'd you learn that?

Starting point is 00:40:33 I go, oh, check out this guy. He messages me an hour later, voice note, first time getting a voice note. He's like, hey man. He's big on the voice notes. He got me onto it. I only send voice notes now. People are like, sorry, I can't hear your message.

Starting point is 00:40:43 I'm like, I'm just going to send you another voice note. Hope it works, you know. And so I ended up chatting with him on the phone. He's like, hey man, I really like what you're saying. You ever thought about being a coach? Now I have no fucking clue what he's talking about. I trained to be a therapist. I had never heard about this kind of coach thing before. So I was like, does he mean soccer, football? I'm like, I don't know. But I just had this feeling of like, just say yes. So I'm like, yeah. So he's like, you should take my program. So at that point I had about $2,700 in the bank. The program is 25. And I call Rachel. I'm like, what do I do? She's like, what do you think you should do? I'm like, I know I should do it. She's

Starting point is 00:41:12 like, then why the fuck are you calling me? So I signed up for the program. I ended up doing it, having an amazing time, ended up signing up for level two. And this is when the pandemic happens. Two months after I quit my job, boom, pandemic happens. Now I got all the time in the world to think about what I want to do. So I'm taking these courses, having these beautiful awakening moments, starting to coach people. Then Mark invites me down to his lake house. And so I go there. He's like, the way Mark works, as you know, is he's like, hey, a bunch of guys coming down to the lake house. Let me know when you're coming in. I'm not taking no for an answer. I'm like, okay, cool. So I fly down to Virginia. I meet all these guys and people that

Starting point is 00:41:45 were just on Zoom screens before. And then that started my journey of saying yes for the next two years, just traveling and experiencing and learning, coaching, and all this different stuff. So when I went there, buddy Chris Marhefka was like, hey, I'm hosting a retreat in Colorado in a couple of weeks. You should come. I'm like, cool. I go there, meet my buddy Danny Rios. He's like, I'm going to Mexico in a couple of weeks. I'm like, cool. Call Rachel. You want to go to Mexico? Sure. So we go to Mexico. So we just keep saying yes for two years. And in that time, I end up hosting a lot of retreats, meeting a lot of people. And of course, I'm talking about cannabis, but here I am thinking cannabis is like kind of my old life, my hobby, and now I'm getting into coaching.

Starting point is 00:42:19 So I think they're different at this point. They're independent of one another. So then what happens is, you know, people are talking to me about coaching when we're talking to them like, yeah, yeah, that's cool. But like, hey, what about this cannabis stuff? How do I know if I'm using too much? And so I end up starting to coach these people on cannabis before I really know that I'm calling it cannabis coaching. I host a retreat on Martha's Vineyard last year. And a lot of the times where I do these retreats, I do cannabis ceremonies. But a lot of the people coming had already experienced the classic ceremony I do. So I was like, I'm going to figure out something new, but I just wasn't worried about it. I was like, I'll come up with it on the point, on the spot. So I go outside. I literally remember

Starting point is 00:42:55 exactly where I am doing a 90-90 hip stretch. And boom, the conversation with cannabis pops into my head, which is the idea of writing a letter in a sober state to cannabis, like a love letter, owning up to all the things you love, all the things that maybe you've overused her, things like this, maybe you've taken her for granted. Then you interact with cannabis and have cannabis write a letter back to you. So I try this out on the guys there. They all have some crazy breakthroughs and they're all asking me like, hey, are you going to do this in a program? This is really valuable. So then I start talking to Cech around that same time too. And he starts trying my cannabis.

Starting point is 00:43:26 He's like, oh my God, what are you doing with this? And he's like, dude, are you going to make a program of this? So I start thinking about it. I start asking Alex, my business partner. I'm like, you know, maybe we're meant to make a cannabis program. Two days later, I'm on my deck drinking cacao out of that mug right there. And the whole program just starts coming clear to me through a clairvoyant image. And I start just, I'm like, write this down. And we just start building the program.

Starting point is 00:43:48 And so from there, we built Connect with Cannabis. We've had 10 groups go through now. Grow with Cannabis is almost ready, which is going to teach people how to cultivate it sacredly with all my little tips and tricks that I've learned over the past 12 years. And it's just been fucking awesome. So that's really how I got here today, man. That is so fucking cool, brother. That is so cool. Yeah. There's a million ways I want to take this. But it's funny because you brought up Mark. I think about the smallness of the world and just the interconnectivity of it. I had four journeys in 2021, which is not a lot.

Starting point is 00:44:21 2020 was a hard year in the 3D realm 3d realm, just as much as it was for me in the astral, you know, a couple of big ass hell experience that really sat me back and made me think like, Hmm, let me rethink this. And Paul fucking got me out of hell and back to 3d land and back to, with some perspective. And, you know, that was a painting i drew i drew a fucking compass like with a north star on it you know it's it's february 2020 i draw this right fucking right before the shit hits the fan and i was like wow i painted that um but uh mark mark you know he's he's uh become a buddy over the years and um long time i mean we have so many mutual friends try to get us on the podcast forever and then finally did, had Adam on the podcast. I'm sitting with him and Bledsoe

Starting point is 00:45:10 and Adam on Friday to do a conspiracy podcast. Dude, I heard. Mark was telling me, dude. I'm like, let's fucking go. Dude. I'm so pumped about that. And I went out to Virginia recently. Many of my listeners have just listened

Starting point is 00:45:23 to the podcast I did with Daniel Griffith. If you haven't, it's amazing. Check it out. Daniel's just, he's in a league of his own. We went there because they're a Savory Hub and we wanted Alan Savory's holistic management principles to be taught to us face-to-face along with a crash course on everything else regenerative. And I was wondering this because Mark's told me he's got a farm in Virginia and I'm like, that's fucking cool. I got buddies with Dr. David E. Martin he's out there somewhere that was my first time in Virginia and it's a two and a half hour drive west into central Virginia into a town called Wingina and so I asked Mark the other day I was like I was like hey man I want you to introduce

Starting point is 00:45:59 you to my buddy Daniel because you got a you know 400 acre farm his is 400 acres as well like you should be doing what he's doing. You should know each other. I was like, have you ever heard of a town called Wingina? And of course, voice note comes back, sends me a screenshot. He's like, 21-minute drive from him or 26 minutes. I was like, get the fuck out, dude. So these guys live right next, in a state like that, when you're in the middle of nowhere,

Starting point is 00:46:21 they're right next to each other. They're fucking neighbors practically, right right it's under 30 minutes i used to spend twice that driving a jiu-jitsu practice in the bay area each direction you know so it's so cool but yeah it's it's um it's got my mind racing all over the place uh not just in the mark england piece but so much to discuss i let's let's stay on topic here with the cannabis course. Talk about what you're doing, because I imagine, personally, I'll say this. When I grew up, DARE program, all that bullshit, my dad really kept a lid on, which is hilarious, because they did fucking all the drugs. I didn't find that out until I was much older. I was like, my mom was smoking free-based cocaine.

Starting point is 00:47:04 Oh my God. You guys have no right to tell me not to do drugs. Do as I say, not. I was like, my mom was smoking free-based cocaine. Oh, my God. You guys have no right to tell me not to do drugs. Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah. And if all the drugs you used, cannabis was the fucking, you should have known that wasn't doing shit to you. Cannabis is how you cure your hangover. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:47:19 What are you talking about? Anywho, but yeah, my dad would tell me that cannabis lowers your testosterone. You don't want to take it if you're playing football and all this kind of shit. And I was like, all right. You know, of course now they've got all the retroactive studies on NFL players who were heavy users, fucking made it back to the field faster than like six X faster for any type of traumatic brain injury. They got back on the field six X faster.

Starting point is 00:47:38 That's fucking remarkable. Right? It's amazing. So I get out of the house at 19, and I had experimented a little bit with it here and there. But once I got out of the house, it was game on. And I had all my class scheduled to Tuesday, Thursday. I was taking the minimum 12 units, two days, no school back-to-back.

Starting point is 00:47:58 And I made a commitment that I wouldn't be high in class. But the second class was over on Tuesday, Thursday, I was high. Every other day of the week, I mean, I was also redshirt year. I'd wake my roommate up at noon and he'd light my four-foot bong because I couldn't reach it with my six-foot three frame. I still couldn't reach it to light it. He'd light the bong for me and I'd start mad. Sometimes I'd finish a season in two days.

Starting point is 00:48:21 I'd play video games. We'd have a one-hour rule. We'd have to get out of the house for an hour and go to the pool and just stare at Chick Stone in our apartment complex as a 19-year-old. And I was like, I'm such an extrovert, but on cannabis, I'm a completely introverted. If somebody says anything to me, I'm like, it's like my first time talking to a woman. You could be a dude too. He's talking to me. She's talking to me. Does she like me? I don't know what to say. What do I do with my hands? Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:48:46 Exactly. So that was it for like a year and a half. And then football, I'd enter into periods of moderate sobriety because of football. And so that kept me on track. And then being at the number one part of school in the nation at ASU, that got me into all the other shit that was fucking far worse for me than cannabis. But cannabis was something that, you know, it really was something like, all right, I was out all night on MDMA the last night, or we were doing coke. Like, I'm going to smoke a bowl and just chill, or pass around a little joint, just hang out and relax. And during the season,

Starting point is 00:49:20 that was the one thing I could get high with. And a lot of it was masking. You know, I hadn't done any work. I hadn't done any work. I hadn't had any psychedelics at that point. And in May, I got into psychedelics through my boxing coach. And really didn't, at that point, the second, not the second, but somewhere around my second or third ayahuasca ceremony, when I went back to trying cannabis, pure anxiety. It was night and day. I'd never experienced that on cannabis before.

Starting point is 00:49:43 And then, you know, the tale of ayahuasca is a jealous plant and all this bullshit human fucking thinking around it. And I was like, I don't know, maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. Maybe my relationships changed. Maybe it's stirring up the shit that was always there and I can finally look at it and I'm still refusing to look at it. I don't know. But, um, we had a couple of guys out here to the farm who have their own CBD company, and it has a decent amount of THC in it. And I took two full droppers thinking it was just CBD. And the guy kind of, he was like, whoa, you took two droppers, man?

Starting point is 00:50:15 And I was like, don't tell me that. That's when you know you fucked up, you know? I mean, I have, thanks to plant medicine, I mean, my tolerance is like, when I was smoking pot at 19, I could hang with anybody. I could fucking hang with Willie Nelson. Now, one or two milligrams, and I'm not on Queer Street, but I'm a little uncomfortable. Give me five mgs, five mg edible, and I'm struggling. It's like, buckle up, dude.

Starting point is 00:50:43 Ten mgs, I'm in it. I'm in it. Yeah, it's an ordeal now. It's not an experience. No kids around. I'm I'm in it. I'm in it. Yeah, it's an ordeal now. It's not an experience. No kids around. I'm in the fucking room. Like nobody, I don't want to see anybody. I need to put on a ceremony playlist just to fucking guide me through it.

Starting point is 00:50:53 That's a 10 mg edible. So I got a question for you around that. Because Aubrey has been experimenting a little bit more with it in conjunction with other things. You know, we've got ketamine prescriptions and all that. And he calls it the God bomb where you have a certain stack. And that's been pretty profound with a good group. And in a legal setting, we've been able to participate in that once. And it still got a little hairy. But I think with the other things on deck and some heart openers, it was a net positive experience. But just this last week on just a couple milligrams, and it was impromptu.

Starting point is 00:51:30 It's kind of like, all right, let me walk the land. Let me fucking move this out. Let me get cold tub. Let me pay attention to my breath here. Okay, I'm okay. But the amount of effort it requires from me to walk a straight line on a very small dose is just curious to me because it always was such a great ally to me. CBD is why I came off of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. Thankfully, it was right around the time I got into Paul's work. Right when I got into MMA, my strength coach was like, he was from Boston.

Starting point is 00:52:04 He's like you got an intolerance what the fuck are you talking about and he's like you fought a lot and i was like what man says that to another man all dudes fart yeah it's like his fucking protein powder he's like no no no you got an intolerance and so he asked me to read the book i know people i've told this story a lot but he asked me to read how me even be healthy and i was like like many of my friends i was like i'm not'm not fucking reading again. College is done, son. I'm not fucking going to ever pick up another fucking book. And he's like, well, you watch this video. So I watched Flatten Your Abs Forever, video thinking I wanted to be ripped,

Starting point is 00:52:35 totally hook, line, and sinker into gut health, soil health, all the shit Paul's into. And I was like, all right, now I want to read this book. And that fundamentally changed my life because it showed me how big of an impact food and the other doctors were, right? Sleep, all these things, how big of an impact that had. Because in football, I could get away with eating like shit. And I did because I was trying to gain weight. I get away with smoking pot every day, get away with staying up late. It wasn't a quarter as demanding as MMA. And when you're fighting, it's one thing to go to MMA class. Another thing like in eight weeks, somebody is going to fucking knock my head off. And even though it's not at Madison square garden, I'm still the main event in Phoenix with all my friends coming to this show

Starting point is 00:53:12 and my family, right? Like that's still, the pressure was still there to perform. So that really was the first time in my life where I got to be clear with it. And CBD was such an amazing thing because as I dove into Paul's work, I was like, fuck, man, I'm eating 800 milligrams of ibuprofen two or three times a day to get every practice out. If I train three times, I'd have fucking three rounds of four pills of ibuprofen. Wow. Not having any idea that was due to my gut. Yeah. And CBD allowed me to come off of that.

Starting point is 00:53:41 And I do know the value of THC and clearing amyloid beta plaque and tau proteins. And I was hit a lot. I want to have that as a useful tool in the medicine cabinet. Talk a bit about how you would restore someone's relationship. And I know everyone's different, the game with coaching, but general tips and practices of how you approach that. Because I imagine as people get into plant medicines, that there is a similar thread there. People are like, hey, I used to love this. I leaned on it heavily. And now when I go back to it, it's fucking hit the panic button. Yes. Yeah. That's a great question, man. So what I say a lot is that cannabis, other plant medicines, they can give you the what, but it's still up to you to figure out the how.

Starting point is 00:54:20 Now, the funny thing about that is when I originally said that, I had no idea that the how would be the acronym for our proprietary process, which is the highly optimized way. So you can imagine the psychedelic experience I had when those two things clicked and I was like, what? So what the highly optimized way is, is essentially the foundation, right? If anyone's listening and is like, yeah, I'd like to take a ride into this world and see if it works for me, this is exactly how to do it. So say you've been interacting with cannabis daily. You're curious about this realm. The first thing to do is take a minimum of three days off per week in a row. Because like Paul says, anything you can't take three days off of owns you. And if you're looking to communicate with the plant in terms of a teacher relationship,

Starting point is 00:54:57 well, the plant doesn't work that well when you're codependent on it. Because cannabis is a feminine spirit, kind of the belief that I have around it is that it's kind of shy, right? The same way that, you know, if you're meeting a woman and you're very clingy right off the bat, she's like, I don't know about you yet. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or if you're coaching somebody and your client hits you up fucking 60 times a day, like, am I wiping my ass with the right technique? What type of lotion do you use? Is there anything bad in a dude's wife that I shouldn't be putting on my junk? You're like, yeah, this is getting crazy quick. So take a three-day minimum break per week. I do five. This is not like a right or wrong thing. I'm not here to tell anyone what's right or wrong. I'm here to simply say what's worked for me and what's worked for over a hundred

Starting point is 00:55:40 different clients that I've brought through this system. So take a minimum three-day break per week. After those three days are up, your day coming back to cannabis is going to be your ceremony. So then for your ceremony, you follow this three-step process. So the first step is called taking your power back, which is the concepts of intention and ceremony. So intention is giving the plant a direction from which to work with him. So it's not cannabis or other plant medicines job to know why we're sitting with them, right? That's our end of the bargain. Like when you play Texas Hold'em, you have to have a buy-in or you can't sit at the table. That's our buy-in, right? So if you want to sit at the table of being able to interact with cannabis as a medicine and a teacher, not a

Starting point is 00:56:14 substance, because again, if you want to interact with cannabis all day, every day and do that, cool, but you're interacting with a substance. Not here to judge it, but here to make a distinction because it's important. Some people go, I've interacted with cannabis my whole life and I have no idea what you're talking about. It's like, yeah, because you've been interacting with it as a substance. So if you want to interact with it in this way, the way to do it is after you've taken your three-day break, you do this three-step process. You set your intention, give the plan a direction. This is what I'm coming to you for. Then you create a ceremonial space from which your intention can play out within. This could be as simple as just like having a room

Starting point is 00:56:46 that maybe you sage Palo Santo, you can do a seven directional prayer, you can do a lot of different stuff, right? But it's essentially giving yourself a space from which you can actually surrender a little bit, which is the second step. So once you've got that set, you move into the second step,

Starting point is 00:56:59 which is unlocking creative potential, which is all around the concept of surrender. Now, a lot of people know that they've heard cannabis can unlock creativity, but as anyone who's interacting with cannabis knows, it's not a given. It's not like if I interact with cannabis, creativity comes forth. So what's the missing component? Well, a lot of people, because they haven't set an intention, they're white knuckling the experience. So a way to describe that in an analogy is that there's no space from which cannabis can actually enter and communicate with you because you're controlling the entire thing. So when you actually are able to surrender, and the reason you're able to surrender, because I know it's a trigger term for a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:57:32 is because you have an anchor, which is your intention. So why a lot of people white knuckle is they go, well, I don't know. Am I going to have anxiety? Am I going to have paranoia? Am I going to have euphoria? I don't know what I'm going to experience. But if you state an intention, like I'm looking to overcome a creative block, and then something like anxiety comes forth, well, you have a context from which to place that anxiety. It's not just happening to you. It's now like, oh, maybe this anxiety relates to my intention, right? So you're able to surrender into the experience more and let go. And when you're able to do that, cannabis is able to actually move you from the ego and default mode network into the body and unlock stored up creativity. And then from there, what that creativity does is it opens you up to the experience. Now, what that is,

Starting point is 00:58:14 maybe you get some ideas, some downloads, some insights, some aha moments, right? You have these awareness gaining moments, right? And then the final step is called becoming unstoppable. Because if you do all that and you come back and you don't actually do anything in your day-to-day life to actually captivate that experience into your day-to-day life, well then what are you even doing, right? Like it's just going to be a dream that fades. So the third step, becoming unstoppable is all about integration. Because if you can find a method or methodology to be able to integrate your experiences, you do become unstoppable in the plant medicine space because now you're not just having PEAK peak experiences

Starting point is 00:58:51 where you're having these beautiful things then going back to your mundane reality. What integration is to me is taking that PEAK experience and going, what thread can I follow from that to start making my life captivate the magic and include the magic that I feel in that experience? And so this is something I'm gonna talk to start making my life captivate the magic and include the magic that I feel in that experience? And so this is something I'm going to talk to you in your episode about is the idea of life itself being a psychedelic. If you look at a kid, you have kids,

Starting point is 00:59:14 right? When they're born and they're growing up, it's almost like watching someone coming out of a very slow 5-MeO DMT experience where they're talking to walls, they're learning to crawl, they're learning to walk, they're staring at the stars, right? They're doing all these things. So I think that like the Bible states, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must first enter the mind of a child. So the more that you can integrate and essentially subtract from the equation of yourself, the more you're able to infuse that mind of a child back into your reality and have life be a psychedelic in and of itself. So if you follow that step, taking a weekly break, having your ceremony of the day, you come back from break, and following that three-step process, you're going to be able

Starting point is 00:59:48 to start getting different results with the plant. What those results are, I have no idea because they're subjective to everyone. But some examples are maybe, because what we say about the program is that it's teaching you how to use cannabis and connect with it as a tool to optimize your life. Because again, there's so many different things subjectively cannabis can help with that, whether it's a relationship issue, whether it's a mission issue, right? Maybe you're like, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Maybe it's a money issue. Now, cannabis is not going to directly make you more money, but it could tap you into what your power zone is that could lead you to making more money. So you're being able to use it as a tool to optimize your life. And throughout the program, we take you through 10 different modalities in which to use cannabis to be able to foster these optimizations

Starting point is 01:00:29 in your life. So anything from story work, flipping limiting beliefs, musical therapy, connection exercises, better sex, all of these kinds of things, right? Because that's what cannabis does. What I really feel that's the sleeper with cannabis is that a lot of these stronger medicines, they send you so far out that first of all, if you don't have someone to guide you, like you were talking, right, it can be really hard to integrate back in. But also they're teaching you a lot about the other side, right? Source, especially like 5-MeO, DMT, or Bufo, right? Like you're meeting source. But if you don't actually know how to captivate that and bring it back in and

Starting point is 01:01:01 contextualize it into your day-to-day life, you kind of lose a little bit. So what I say about cannabis is that cannabis enhances the human experience. Because what I believe is that if we're there for infinity and we're down here for, let's say, 150 years, fingers crossed, right? If we're really crushing it, then why don't we try to be here as much as possible? Because we have affinity to be there. But the more you can connect to this experience, the more you're going to be able to remember that you are God while still being a human. And I think I was talking to Drew Banky the other day, who's an ayahuasquero. And he was saying that his first time meeting Source, basically Source told him like, yeah, what I'm really interested in now

Starting point is 01:01:34 is life forms remembering their God, but still playing the game of a human. And so that's what I really think the sleeper is with cannabis. And that's some of the things that can come out when you interact with cannabis in this way. I love that. One of the analogies coming through right now is the last journey I did. I won't say his name, Dr. Someone made a little dual brew. One was a drink without psychedelics, but had psychoactive properties. And the other was a chocolate that had psychedelics in it, but a few different combined in a blend of enigma and penis envy mushrooms, I believe. So it was really cool, but it was subtle. And he's like, I'm like, you know, in this group, y'all are used to going into deep space.

Starting point is 01:02:20 He's like, I want to keep, I want to put, I want to take us to Venus. And I was like, oh, okay. All right. We'll go to Venus. Venus is supposed to be awesome. Right. And you know's like, I want to take us to Venus. And I was like, oh, okay. All right, we'll go to Venus instead of deep space, right? Venus is supposed to be awesome. And then we're going to leave the planet, but we're not going into deep space. And that was the goal. And everyone had a beautiful, harmonious experience that was powerful and transformative, but it wasn't so far out there that you couldn't bring it back home with you. I think that's one of the things that's drawn me so much to the farm, aside from my views of the world at large and economic collapse that's looming and all the other things. Aside from all that. Whatever the World Economic Forum is doing

Starting point is 01:02:53 to destroy meat manufacturing and shit like that. All that aside, when nature becomes your canvas, and I don't mean that in harmony with, in right relation with, but when that becomes your canvas and i don't mean that in harmony with in right relation with but when that becomes your canvas you have something that you can actually see you know it's here it's in the 3d and you can watch it grow too like you paint something that's dope that's always there your energetic signature is always there i mean you look at paintings on medicine they're fucking alive like let's put there's some soul in that, you know? It's animated. But with, you know, like starting this first phase of the farm,

Starting point is 01:03:31 we did a 400-tree fruit and nut tree food forest. And, like, we're watching this in its infancy right now. You know, like we were saying before the podcast, it's going to be 10 years before that thing's fully producing. And even then, it's still got another 10 years before the canopies peak and they're full size, right? Like that's a fucking cool thing to see. And it's been less than six months

Starting point is 01:03:50 since we started this project, you know? So much of that is, it becomes tangible, you know? And a lot of the conversations that Godsey and I have with people, like integration really is about habit change. So how did this experience change your life? Otherwise, it's just that dope vision you had about something else, right? People claim to be healed because X, Y, and Z. And if you claim you're healed from your parental trauma, and yet you have no relationship with them, I don't buy it. And from a parent's standpoint,

Starting point is 01:04:25 for a lot of people that are listening that want their parents to do plant medicines with them, they first have to see it. How did it change your life? And words or actions speak louder than words. Who are you as a person is a bigger selling point. Like if you're always happy now, not that that's the goal,

Starting point is 01:04:40 but if you're a brighter, happier person that's more level-headed and can deal with stress better and has a positive outlook on things, that's a bigger draw than, hey, there's all this science and this is what it did for me and you need to do it now. You know what I'm getting at? Yes, 100%. Yeah, that's the true, the real integration. So I really appreciate that. least one go around or two i should i should commit to more than once but um coming in with an intention and treating in a ceremony and really exploring what is there and not trying to fight it

Starting point is 01:05:12 away through breath work or fucking you know change the song you know like actually just fucking sit with it and feel into that at a at a at a moderate dose that's still going to take me there but also not blow me off the first time i I had a, blow me off, blow me away. The first time I had a, if it blows me off, I'll take that dose. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. That might be worth it. I'm like, all right, it's going to be a rough ride,

Starting point is 01:05:33 but I know how it ends. It's a good side effect. The first time I, what's that called when you hit a nail? Oh, dab. Dab, first time I dabbed. Dude. It wasn't Rick Simpson oil, but it was something pretty fucking close to it, right?

Starting point is 01:05:49 It was a concentrated oil and I just put a drop on that fucking thing and hit it. And immediately I was like, whoa, I remember exhaling like, oh no. You know, like almost like 5-MeO where it's like that fucking fast. It's like, oh damn, I need to lay down. And it fried my nervous system.

Starting point is 01:06:06 And maybe it was trauma release, that kind of thing. But I shook for two hours. I fucked my whole body. I couldn't stop it. I remember Tosh, my wife, looking at me like, are you okay? And I was like, I'm not cold. And I'm not in fear, but I can't stop shaking. And I was like, maybe it's just something moving from me.

Starting point is 01:06:22 That is a release. I was like, try breath work. And I start doing breath work. And I was like, no, it just keeps sneezing and coming That is a release. I was like, try breath work. And I start doing breath work. And I was like, no, it just keeps needing to come. It fucking lasted two hours, dude. Yeah. It's no joke. Daniel McQueen calls that dross.

Starting point is 01:06:31 And I usually call it just the shakes, right? Like tremors. And I'm sure you know about TRE, tension and trauma release therapy. So like, or exercise rather. And so like when I learned about that, I was all of a sudden like, oh, that now gives context to all of those experiences where I'd interact with cannabis. And all of a sudden I'm just, that now gives context to all of those experiences where I'd interact with cannabis. And all of a sudden I'm just shivering constantly. I'm like, what the hell is happening here? And it would make me feel kind of upregulated, right? Almost like I'd lose

Starting point is 01:06:54 my speech sometimes and things like that without realizing that was actually the medicine working as a medicine. And I'd be like, what is this shivering shit going on, right? Yeah, think it stopped. Yeah, exactly. I'm working just fine. Yeah. And what I've realized is that there's certain breathwork I do with cannabis that I can definitely show you. We call it the Cannabless Breathing Exercise. Cannabless. Yeah, Cannabless. I love all these non-brand names. Dude, it's so funny. The idea, the cannabless, you know, like me and

Starting point is 01:07:17 Alex were really good with like those play on words. And so like we nerd out on that and we're like, oh my God, like again, psychedelic experiences, but no medicines needed, you know, when you come up with things like that. And so like we do a lot of that throughout the program is teaching people about what essentially dross is and like, hey, this is pretty natural, but that's why you also want to make sure you have that ceremonial space

Starting point is 01:07:36 to be able to lay down and do it. And with integration, you know, I'm a firm believer that the work actually begins when the plant medicine experience ends. You know, like that's where the real work begins. And I'm not giving, I'm not discrediting the work that is done in that space because I know when I've been there white knuckling and being like, oh my God, what's happening in very deep experiences. But that's like 12 to 24 hours max, depending on what medicine you take, maybe a bogus 24 hours. But then you have a lifetime to do the work. So that's what I mean

Starting point is 01:08:02 when I say like the real work begins trying to integrate that and be like, what does this mean for me? Who am I now that I have this experience? Like you were saying. And I think that's one of the common challenges that people have with cannabis because they overlook it. You know, they're like,

Starting point is 01:08:13 oh, cannabis is just the dirty thing I used back in high school, whatever. It's the thing I used to get high. And they just don't really know this power. But if you look into indigenous cultures, they're all speaking about this. Like I got really close recently with Hamilton Souther. What an amazing dude, man. Me and that guy clicked. We got like bunk bed status right off the bat. We were like, dude, we got to do something together.

Starting point is 01:08:32 So he's been chatting me a lot about, he took over my Facebook group recently, the Ceremony Circle that I do every week. It's like a free live I do. And so he was talking about when he went down to the Amazon, he had done like something like a couple of hundred ayahuasca sessions at that point. And he had had nerve pain. So someone mentioned cannabis and he's like, what, cannabis? So he started interacting with it and realized real quick,

Starting point is 01:08:52 oh, this is much different for me now. And for anyone listening, like I imagine you experienced this too. If you've interacted with cannabis way in the past, and now you've done a lot of work and you've done other plant medicines and things like that, and you interact with cannabis now, you'll probably feel a much different thing

Starting point is 01:09:06 right off the bat because you'll have so much more awareness, right? You'll have much more intellect around how to capture what you're experiencing. So what he was saying was that, he's like, you know, in the jungle, we have lethal plants and non-lethal plants. So you got to imagine for the lethal ones,

Starting point is 01:09:19 there's all these rules that we have to follow to make sure someone doesn't die during the ceremony. For these non-lethal ones, they're really good at being able to be like, okay, how deep can I go here? So he's like, when I found cannabis again, and I realized, holy shit, this can give me a very similar experience to ayahuasca

Starting point is 01:09:33 if I'm doing it in an intentional way. He was like, I want to see how deep I can go. So the first time he went back, he said he went through like 20 bowls of cannabis. Damn. And just like- Parents of a candidate. Yeah, and he ate edibles too.

Starting point is 01:09:45 And he just like straight up had a control off the lead ordeal experience where he had to go lay down and he was like, holy shit, he got humbled real quick. And that's when he started really getting back into cannabis because let's face it, right? Like all these other plant medicines,

Starting point is 01:09:58 they do take a little bit of work to be able to understand them and also to be able to make sure you're safe. Like the average person probably wouldn't fare that well going out and doing a five-gram mushroom dose, but they might do well on a five-gram edible. It's kind of like that starting thing. It's microdosing. Not even in the context that microdosing is of a small dose of something, but it's microdosing the grandiose experience you can experience with these other medicines. And of course, you can have a grandiose experience with cannabis too, but it's much easier to take a couple hits,

Starting point is 01:10:27 test the waters out, and see if you like that before you go deeper. And if you learn how to use it in the way that we teach in the program, you're able to actually then go, oh, okay, cool. I can still get a lot of these downloads without necessarily having to go

Starting point is 01:10:38 in that grandiose experience. So it meets a lot of people where they're at. And if the doomsday calculators are right, if we have 10 years to figure this shit out, this is why Stephen Gray talks about this a lot of people where they're at and if the doomsday calculators are right if we have 10 years to figure this shit out this is why you know stephen gray talks about this a lot too is another cannabis expert he talks about that psychedelics can help save the world because we don't have a lot of time and psychedelics can hack the time sequence it's not a given right that's why he says they can help save the world or could help but i think that one of the things with cannabis is that people are aware of it. It's pretty destigmatized. When I was working in the dispensary, there were police officers, lawyers,

Starting point is 01:11:09 librarians, every archetype, young, old, any archetype is interacting with cannabis. And it's legal in most places. So if we can teach everyone just different ways to get better results with cannabis, to feel more euphoria, to be able to allow it to lead over into their daily life, to have their lives bloom as a result, well, now all those people, first of all, they're in a higher vibrational state. They're going to start making wiser choices with the food they eat and everything like that. But also they might start going, you know, why are mushrooms illegal? Why is ayahuasca illegal? Why are all these things illegal? I get why cocaine and heroin are illegal. That makes sense. Those ruin people's lives.

Starting point is 01:11:42 Yeah, meth, that's the problem. But why are these other things illegal? And so I think that where cannabis is not the only thing, it can be a river that meets certain people where they're at to be able to give them this bigger picture of life and allow them to microdose that bigger picture and do it a little more frequently because that's how I interact with it. What I'll do is I'll have like my Monday through Friday is when I'm working and it's the time I'm most prone to stress. So I do that sober to make sure I'm not numbing anything out. And then I'm taking notes of like where I got stuck, where I got triggered, et cetera. Then that weekend, those are my intentions to go into cannabis. Cannabis, show me why I got triggered with this. Show me this,

Starting point is 01:12:15 show me that. Then I have, oh my God, I know the answer. So then I start integrating that in the next week and maybe I got stuck on something else. So then the next weekend I go, okay, cannabis, I did this and that worked pretty good, but now I'm stuck with this. And so it's like this cyclical evolution of being a teacher. It's almost like a coach. And that's kind of what we call it. It's like, when we teach you how to do this, you can have a pocket coach in your pocket, right? We're essentially like, it's always great to have other coaches, but let's face it, you're a coach, I'm a coach, like we're not available all the time, right? If someone has a catastrophe, we want to be

Starting point is 01:12:44 available, but sometimes we're not. So if they understand how to interact with something like cannabis in a very intentional, conscious way, they have an ability to get at least a little bit of clarity. So then they can show up to the call with you next with a little bit more info.

Starting point is 01:12:56 And the call doesn't go down like the minute stuff right off the bat. It can go a little deeper right from the onset. And so it's really cool, man. You know, it's been so fascinating unraveling this and realizing that it's not a discovery, it's a remembering. This is how people have been interacting with Santa Maria for thousands of years. It's just now starting to be remembered by society. Yeah. Graham Hancock's culture where that suffers from amnesia has never been out more apropos than right now.

Starting point is 01:13:22 There is no doubt. We are approaching the hour mark, but I'm definitely feeling called to fucking extend this for another 30 if you've got it. Let's go. And we're going to do back-to-back podcasts in a little three-hour. Three, it's nice. Even I remember doing,

Starting point is 01:13:36 two times I was on Rogan, we got approached this three-hour mark. It's still hard, even though he talks a lot, to be on one side of the coin for that long. But I feel like I can do three hours pretty easy if I'm sitting in the question seat versus the answer seat for the most part. I think I feel like that's a good flip-flop. I want to spend some time talking about on what you've learned from the agricultural side and in growing space with cannabis and everything that we're getting into. We had a conversation before talking about a recent phone call I had

Starting point is 01:14:05 with Doria Kareem, Dr. Ibrahim Kareem's daughter, who was on Paul Cech's Living 4D podcast. I'll link to that in the show notes. If nobody's listening to that, please listen to that because I'm going to have them on this podcast shortly and we're going to deep dive biogeometry. And one of the things that I had spoken to her about

Starting point is 01:14:23 that really was like the hook, line, and sinker for me is that they had studied, I think, six different ways, and many more than this. But there were six landmark studies that they had done in a variety of fields that were backed, not only scientifically, but by whatever authoritative thing that could give a stamp of approval, right? So Switzerland was putting in the 5G towers and Dr. Ebert, they called him up and they said, hey, can you help us? The problem they were having is that their cows started miscarrying and the grass wasn't growing well, right? And they knew it must've been somewhat associated. And he said, can you take down the 5G towers? And they said, absolutely not. We've invested fucking billions. It's a part of our infrastructure now. And we don't want to turn into a third world country.

Starting point is 01:15:08 We're not taking them down. So then he asked, can I climb these towers? Can I add some things that'll allow BG3, the signature of harmonizing energy, to go with the 5G? And they said, sure. As long as it doesn't impact 5G. And it didn't. But he did that.

Starting point is 01:15:22 His team did it. And immediately, the grass started growing taller again and the animals started having healthy births. And what they showed, and this is on like Switzerland letterhead, government letterhead. They showed that the animal's health and the health of the land improved to a point that was beyond, it surpassed what it was prior to that. And that's likely because 4G and 3G had impacted it to a lesser degree, right? And I'm not, you know,

Starting point is 01:15:50 I don't think 5G is the curse of all and the fucking, you know, the rise of the devil and all that shit. Like, I love it on my phone. I love it. I can do that. I love increased communication and connectivity. I don't love it used for surveillance state,

Starting point is 01:16:03 but that's a totally different topic, right? Yes. So, and we know that the technological march is going to keep going on. How can we come into harmony with that? And I think what he's doing is phenomenal. You're well aware of BG3 and biogeometry. I think every fucking check he is wearing the necklace. I got mine on. I left mine on the charger, but at least I got a cue here. Let's talk about agriculture, biogeometry and all the cool shit that you're doing because you really are creating something that is one of a kind and Steiner's work as well. Deep dive that, we got 30 minutes.

Starting point is 01:16:32 Thank you, man. Yeah, so dude, this is my, I would say, I would argue, cannabis, spirituality and sacred agriculture and sacred agricultural practices are like vying for my top interest in life right now. So I'm so excited I get to talk about this too. So when I was in the Biogeometry Foundations course,

Starting point is 01:16:52 first of all, even before that, I had had Cech try some of my cannabis. And he was like, dude, what are you doing? And I was like, I don't know. I had a cube in my house. I didn't know like the whole connection there. So he was like, it feels like I'm smoking biogeometry. Do you have biogeometry in the house? I'm like, yes. So we had come up with a theory that that was doing something. So then I had another one of those moments where I'm like,

Starting point is 01:17:12 I feel like this instructor is talking directly to me. I took the biogeometry foundations course because I wanted to do my whole house and everything. And in there, there was a quick segment of farming and not only farming, but this guy, Chris Attard, my teacher, says, yeah, you know, there's this guy in Sweden who experimented with putting certain shapes around his hemp plants and his yields doubled.

Starting point is 01:17:34 And all the farmers next door were like, what are you doing? So I was like, wait, back up real quick. Did you say hemp plants? He's like, yes. No one knows why I'm asking that. I'm like, okay, I'm taking that note down. So now I'm like, what's that shape?

Starting point is 01:17:44 I take a picture of it. I have my friends start making them out of wood for me, out of pine, putting the magic carpet design on them, everything. And now I end up doing my entire cultivation space with biogeometry, right? So I'm putting the stickers on everything. I'm doing the rotation techniques. I'm doing the color balance. I'm doing everything. I just want full bore in there. And I'm putting these wooden shapes that are on the charging plate. I forget Angie explained what it was to me, but it's a certain shape. It's like I'm doing everything. I just want full bore in there. And I'm putting these wooden shapes that are on the charging plate. I forget Angie explained what it was to me, but it's a certain shape.

Starting point is 01:18:08 It's kind of like a half of a hexagram in a way. And I'm putting them around the stalks of my plants. So no shit. It's like the... Yeah, yeah. It's like that one. Yeah. So first harvest, my yields doubled.

Starting point is 01:18:18 Now, I'm not someone who cares about yield. That's not my purpose, but it was a clear indication that something had changed because I was working with these same strands. I didn't change anything else. I'm a small grower. I got a couple of plants, right? So I've been doing this for years. And so what happened was when I realized that I went, oh shit. So then I started talking to Paul about it and he was like, dude, this makes a lot of sense. So him and I have been talking about this and every grow, I add more and more bio geometry in there, trying to find like, is there a point at which it becomes too much? So far, no.

Starting point is 01:18:45 I can put my pendulum in there, dude, and it just fucking spins, dude. It's crazy, right? So then what I've been doing also is things like putting love and gratitude in my water, which is also charged BG3. So I'm doing a lot of different like Masaru Emoto stuff. So I'm also doing a lot of Korean natural farming,

Starting point is 01:19:00 which is a whole rabbit hole in itself. But essentially, the analogy I give for the backbone of KNF, which is I whole rabbit hole in itself. But essentially, the analogy I give for the backbone of KNF, which is IMO, indigenous microorganisms, it's all about cultivating the indigenous microorganisms from your land, getting them together, cultivating them, and then spreading them out over your land. So the way that I think about them is that they are the stem cells of the earth. So the same way that if you have a tendon issue, they can take them out of your hip and put them into your knee. What you're doing through this five-stage process of IMO is that you're starting with a little bit of these microbes. The first stage I'll explain, you take this wooden box or a woven basket or something. You cook rice until it's al dente. You put the rice into this

Starting point is 01:19:39 box or woven basket. You then put some metal screen over the top so no critters or anything can get in there. And you go out into nature and you look for places where there's active fungal hyphae, which are essentially these little white strands. Up in Boston, it's easy to find them because we got that kind of climate up there. Down here, you'd look for dead wood and things like that. And you'd peel back this dead wood and look for these little strands. And then you'd set your box right in there, put some leaf litter over the top. And if you can, take a couple of these white high-faced strands that are almost microscopic, they're like strands of hair,

Starting point is 01:20:09 and put them into there, right? So now, usually when you do this, you put out three to five boxes at a time because not everyone is a success. And then you come back a week later and if everything went right, your rice should now be colonized with white, fluffy, like mycelium in a way, right?

Starting point is 01:20:22 And so then from there, you would take that, that's IMO then from there, you would take that, that's IMO1, and then you would take that, bring it home, and you would weigh out, okay, how much rice and fuzzy matter do I have? And then you would weigh that out one-to-one with brown sugar to suspend the microbes, and then you have IMO2.

Starting point is 01:20:37 Then you start adding it to grain, and then compost, and then your native soil. So by the end, you have this huge area of just like these teeming with microbes. Then you can take it to the place like this and take a tractor and lay it all out. And it's just, it's insane for your land, right? So there's a lot of different stuff like that going on that I'm doing too. And there's a lot of different constituents in K&F. There's like fermented plant juice, aka FPJ, fermented fruit juice, FFJ, O ohn oriental herbal nutrient lab lactic acid bacteria um there's faa fish amino acids um there's water soluble potassium water soluble calcium water soluble

Starting point is 01:21:12 calcium phosphate all these different things so it's like the amount of like the biodynamic bd whatever biodynamic amendments yeah it's not 800 509 yeah the silver crystals and all that stuff and so like so i love this because with biodynamic, it's hard to do inside. And living in Boston, right? Like it's hard to grow outdoor unless you have a greenhouse. So for me, this is kind of like a system

Starting point is 01:21:34 you can use inside very easily. And so what you can do is when you're dosing your plants with this, not only is it good for your plants, you can drink and eat any of this stuff for you as well. And when you make LAB, you can actually like, it's like separating separating milk so you can eat the curd off the top. It's really cool. And it's a fun thing to do with kids. For anyone listening, look it up. Super fun projects to do. And all of it's very cheap too, right? I know you're big on separating from the system. This is all stuff you can do with rice, brown sugar, water, milk,

Starting point is 01:22:03 pretty easy things to get. And so this system has been really powerful for me because when I've tested my cannabis at labs, I've seen my cannabinoid content and my terpene content go through the roof. So I was getting around three and a half percent total terpene volume before I did KNF. Now I'm pulling around six on average, which is crazy. Like for an organic system, yeah, it's wild.

Starting point is 01:22:27 And there's a whole realm called aquaponics that I haven't got into super heavy, but I know a guy, Steven Reisner is big. He's pulling like 14 to 15% total terpenes with that because you have the terrestrial layer and you have the aquatic layer. And so like terpenes, for instance, are released as an immune response

Starting point is 01:22:41 to the plant's roots getting essentially attacked by microbes, quote unquote. And so the more diversity of microbes, the more diversity of terpenes. And so that's another side tangent we can go on if you want to. But yeah, doing all these things and of course doing no-till setup

Starting point is 01:22:54 where I'm building my own soil. I'm also charging all of my amendments on the charging plates and things like that from biogeometry before I build them. I'm letting it break down and cook, quote unquote, for a month. And then I'm putting my plants in there and I'm running it very similar to the forest floor. I'm putting mulch layers on there, living in dead mulch layers. And I'm using genetics that were

Starting point is 01:23:14 bred also in an organic system because otherwise it takes you a very long time to reach full genetic potential. So this is a lot of stuff that's going to be in the Grow With Cannabis program. And the reason why this is so cool, because for me, what I realized is that a lot of stuff that's going to be in the Grow With Cannabis program. And the reason why this is so cool, because for me, what I realized is that a lot of men specifically, but women too, we need a good bonsai practice, right? I love Cobra Kai, Mr. Miyagi, right? So like, what did Mr. Miyagi teach Daniel-san, right? He taught him to like do this manicuring to these bonsai trees to be able to find a center. And so I think for a lot of people, you were mentioning the fruit trees you planted, right? What's really cool about that is think about how similar it is when something's growing, you're starting a new hobby, you're starting a new field, you're just young, and the similarity to watching nature grow.

Starting point is 01:23:55 And so the whole idea of grow with cannabis is that you're not only growing cannabis, you're growing alongside it. So what does a plant take to be able to be a beautiful plant? It takes love, it takes compassion, it takes patience, it takes awareness, it takes all the things that are also necessary for a high quality experience of life for a human being. And so this is how we can learn from nature. And so every week in the program, I'm putting in these weekly wisdom and contemplation practices, these energy practices, because here's one of the secrets of the cannabis world that a lot of people might not be aware of, is that on a more qualitative side, when you're buying cannabis, you're interacting with the level of consciousness of the person who cultivated that cannabis. So a lot of people are now

Starting point is 01:24:35 experiencing anxiety and paranoia. So there's a multifaceted approach here. It could be that you're experiencing what was already in there and cannabis working like a mirror is revealing that to you in the hopes that you actually own it and move through it and feel it. On the other hand, though, it could be someone else's energy that you're feeling. And so the main reason why I'm so passionate about cultivating cannabis is for two reasons. One, separate people from traumatized cannabis because the same way that traumatized meat is stressing people out, same shit's happened with cannabis, just not talked about yet. We know about it with animals, but we've yet to say it with plants. It's like the same fucking thing. They're all sentient beings, different consciousness, but very similar thing.

Starting point is 01:25:10 So that's the first thing. The second thing though, is that when you're actually interacting with cannabis that you've grown, you know that whatever results you're getting from it, you're the only one to look at. So if you experience anxiety, it's like control delete. You know that's your anxiety you're feeling. But when you're buying it from a chain dispensary, it was probably grown under lights. It's riddled with EMFs. I mean, think about the energy of plants that were grown with the cheapest possible means possible.

Starting point is 01:25:34 There's 10,000 plants in a monocrop setup indoors. The growers are probably showing up drunk, getting paid minimum wage. They don't give a shit. They haven't been growers because most head growers want people that they hire to have no experience because it's easier to shape them into whatever system they grow with. They're being grown with chemical salt. I mean, the list goes on and on. So that's how I'm growing cannabis and what the program is as well and really why I'm

Starting point is 01:25:59 so passionate about giving this to people because it's not only teaching them to grow cannabis, I'm also teaching them how to work with the land, how to build soil, how to cultivate microbes, how to do all these things that allow them to be separate from the system, to grow their own food, to be more connected to nature. Because I do believe that in the 3D dimension, right in the third dimension, nature is our God, right? The planet Earth, Gaia, that is our God here. And so the more that we can commune with that, the more we start to understand and self-actualize and realize ourselves. And so it's really cool, man. And it's such a rabbit hole.

Starting point is 01:26:32 And I think that with biodynamics, that's been really fun too, because just doing things like planting seeds in the lunar cycle and doing things like that, I believe I feel a difference. Now, for a lot of people that are stuck in scientific materialism, they'll be like, where's the data, right? But we know that even science says we can only see 4% of visible reality. So I won't get super into that tangent, but- Well, biodynamics has also had 100 years, a track record. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:26:51 We're at that extent of well beyond Steiner's life. It has a fucking very, very good track record. Yeah, yeah. And so it's just, it's fascinating because every time I cultivate cannabis, I'm learning more about myself. I'm learning more about the plant and I'm getting humbled because I'm realizing that there's so much about the soil food web and also the aquatic food

Starting point is 01:27:08 web that I might never understand. But even though I don't understand it, I can make it work by bringing the right things together. And so it's another great lesson for life. It's like, hey, I don't need to know everything. I just need to understand what feels right to me and bring it together and allow it to do its work. And so one of the funny things we say in the program a lot is that we're not actually cultivating cannabis. We're cultivating soil, and the soil is doing its work to cultivate the cannabis. So that distinction is really important too, because then if you can make sure you're just tending to your soil, the plant grows as a side effect of having really good soil. And so we're doing a lot of things in the program too,

Starting point is 01:27:40 like placing the seed into your mouth before you plant it so it gets inoculated with your microbiome. Just like when a mother is pregnant, the baby gets to know her from her voice first. That's kind of like the simile or the metaphor we use for being able to put seeds in your mouth and have the cannabis plant know you beforehand. So there's just so much in there, man. That's so fun.

Starting point is 01:27:59 And I love diving into these realms because it just, it reminds me of how mysterious and just captivating nature is. You know, when I see these things work, when I learn these things and I try them and they work this good, it's just, it's the best high ever, man. So cool. Hell yeah. Absolutely, brother. I was mentioning that I just started the book, The One Straw Revolution, and I don't want to butcher the guy's name, but you talk a bit about how that has correlation with KNF. Would that be a good book for people to read

Starting point is 01:28:25 if they wanted to dive deeper and learn more about that? Yeah, 100%. One Star Revolution. It's like same, same, but different to KNF. He's doing very similar things. But if people want to dive directly into KNF, I recommend going on YouTube and looking up Chris Trump. He is like the leading expert of KNF.

Starting point is 01:28:40 There's also a guy named KNF Drake who's pretty good too. But I've done Chris's five-day intensive and it's amazing. I was telling you, you got to get him here to just do the full consultation for the farm. But he has tons of videos out there and they're fun. He's a funny guy. He's cool. He's very personable. Go on there, dive into that world. And the guy who kind of invented this is named Master Cho. So Chris learned directly from Master Cho. Chris doesn't interact with cannabis really at all. He grows macadamia nuts on a farm in Hawaii. And so you can actually see the progress of what he's done. It's fucking incredible. So when he first got into this, not to go into a deep rabbit hole, but when he first got into this, all the other macadamia nut farmers laughed at him. They're all using pesticides, fungicides, all this stuff. So now

Starting point is 01:29:22 he's on the board of the Mac End DeviantArt Society from China. And so like now they went from like, this is bullshit to like, this is so important. You need to be on our board of like the top people in the world. So to show people how fast that happened, I mean, that was like, I think a 10 year venture for him. And so it's like wild how big of an impact this has made.

Starting point is 01:29:41 And so that's a good place people can go check that stuff out. Yeah, just go on YouTube and you can look it up and find a bunch of cool videos. We'll link to that in the show notes. I'll get one of your favorite videos and throw that in. Hell yeah. Awesome, brother. Where can people find you? Where can they find you on social? And where can people find you if they want to jump in and learn more from you? Yeah. So dude, first of all, thank you for this. This has been an amazing flow, dude. It's just such an epic hard flow and so grateful that I got to do it with you and share this stuff because I

Starting point is 01:30:04 love talking about it. So for people that are looking to find me, Instagram at therealryansprague, S-P-R-A-G-U-E. Funny thing about that, I made that name jokingly. There's another Ryan Sprague out there who's a regular on ancient aliens.

Starting point is 01:30:17 I'm like, how the fuck did I not know that, right? So I have a- He's like, I'm the real Ryan Sprague. Yeah, exactly. So I was going to talk to him and be like, sorry, dude, I didn't know you were out there yeah that's just a weird another psychedelic astronaut theorist contends yeah exactly dude it's like hit a bag for every time you hear that you know you'll be high two minutes and

Starting point is 01:30:35 watching that show so you can find me there the business profiles at highly optimized so if you're really interested in diving into a lot of tips and tricks keeping on both the podcast that I have, which I'll mention in a second, that's a great place to find me there. I have two podcasts, the highly optimized podcast, which is essentially a hero's journey podcast of how people like persevered and became highly optimized.

Starting point is 01:30:56 And then we have this one time on psychedelics, which you're going to be a guest on right after this. Dope. I was curious. I was like, I did the hero's journey with Paul, but I'm done. I was like, Oh, all right. Psychedelics. Yeah. We can to write all that again. I was like, oh, all right, psychedelics.

Starting point is 01:31:06 Yeah. We can fucking for sure deep dive that. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome, brother. We'll definitely do it again. I'm so happy that you're here and we're face to face for it. I thought it was going to be online. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Starting point is 01:31:15 The day has been great, brother. Absolutely. Beautiful, my man. Thank you. Thank you.

Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #270 Ryan Sprague

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