Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #63 Daniele Bolelli

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

Danilel Bolleli is a writer, university professor, martial artist, and host of the Drunken Taoist podcast and the History On Fire podcast. He is the author of several books on philosophy, and martial arts, including On the Warrior's Path, Create Your Own Religion and his latest book Not Afraid. In the first HOH co-release, we dive into a bunch of topics including martial arts, tribe, mindset, sweat lodges and we talk about good and bad psilocybin experiences, and ways to navigate both. Connect with Daniele Bolelli: Website | http://www.danielebolelli.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/daniele_bolelli/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/dbolelli Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/daniele.bolelli.3 History on Fire podcast | http://historyonfirepodcast.com/ Drunken Taoist podcast | http://thedrunkentaoist.com/ Connect with Kyle Kingsbury: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit       Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY    

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Rogan experience he's a guy that I've listened to quite a few times he podcasts with some of my favorite people on earth like Duncan Trussell which I mentioned in this podcast and what's cool I guess what makes this different is that neither one of us is really steering the ship. Both of us have questions for one another. Both of us lead and steer the ship in a way at different times. And it's cool because we have a good back and forth. And a lot of cool ideas and topics get covered from a psilocybin mushroom experience that Daniele Bilelli just experienced. And martial arts and all sorts of other cool shit. I know you guys are going to dig this one. I had an absolute fucking blast that Daniele Bilelli just experienced and martial arts and all sorts of other cool shit.

I know you guys are going to dig this one. I had an absolute fucking blast with Daniele and I will for sure be running back more podcasts with him in the future. So I guess without further ado, let's just jump into the conversation. Let's get rolling. What's going on, Kyle? How are you, brother? Doing good. What's going on with you? Out in L.mind weekend and hitting some podcasts wait nice i heard that uh

you got flaked on by good old duncan trussell duncan flaky that never happens how is that possible you know what i was i was happy because leading up to you know we got to hang out last time i was in town. Right. And we had a fucking, like, one of the best bar conversations I've ever had in my life. Of course. It was the two of us sitting at a table, a few drinks, lasted probably three hours. And he's like, fuck, man, we should have recorded that. It was amazing.

You know, I was like, yeah. Of course. He's like, all right, I have one question. Will you come on my podcast? And I'm like, fuck yeah. Are you kidding me? Of course. Please, let's do it. And so I texted him a couple times leading up to coming out and of course no reply right so i was like look he lives in la he's busy just fucking call him so i called him he answered and uh you know we were cracking jokes back and forth and he's like yeah let's do it so we had the podcast

scheduled for later today after this one and uh yeah i just got the text in the parking lot when i pulled up that he's he's got some shit going on with netflix today so and that's the gig we will we will move it to another date that guy is one of those uh he's a he's a straight up genius right there's no argument when you listen to him speak when you listen to the way he puts sentences together it's just pure genius and like all geniuses you can expect a certain degree of madness there where it's like yeah if you want the guy who's there at 9 a.m every day probably you're not picking duncan you know that's not the you're leaving for the genius stuff i love the podcast you guys did on each other so yeah it's i always have a good time chatting with i mean it's like how can you

not he's like he's he's hilarious he's funny he's smart he probably murdered a drunken taoist right at birth because he was our very first episode and like on the very first episode yeah and of course he's got this for sure it's unbelievably like the most disgusting conversation ever recorded yeah it's like his ads no no yeah he started about some flashlight story about leaving a flashlight out for days and i was just like oh jesus okay okay 80 of our audience has just gone with a sign i think to need but it was hilarious it was just like you get that 20 was in hey get rid of yeah they're gonna stick around right weed it out you weeded out the non-believers and kept everyone else. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's jump into, oh, you know what I wanted to ask you?

So I was listening to some of your podcasts, and you can coach me through this now. So psychedelic experiences. Okay. My psychedelic experiences have been less than pleasant, to put it mildly, or rather, you know, I've had my good ones, where it's like you take a small amount of mushrooms like a microdose yeah or maybe a little more than a microdose but it's all fun and games it's pretty colors and cool stuff and you laugh and it's all good stuff it's

not deep life transforming stuff but it's awesome right and then i've tried the more therapeutic approach the okay i'm here to deal with some real stuff yeah do the work and go a little heavy and that was just i mean i'll just sum it up and that yeah you can help me figure out where did six go wrong it's like the first hour of that trip which was me crying into some poor therapist's lap for an hour that was was by far the best part of the whole thing. The next seven hours where I'm freaking out about, I am absolutely sure that I'm dead and I'll never see my daughter again and all of that,

that was a little less fun, right? And usually the way I hear it in all the cool psychedelic stories is that you go into the darkness, you get darker, and get uglier and then you start climbing through from the other side and you come out reborn and life is good right and uh the yeah it's like i turned that off it's like a mini hero's journey right and and in that one is like that's not exactly the way it panned out right what ended

up happening is i got darker and darker and darker and then stayed there for a while and then eventually it ended and i'm like what the fuck happened to the other swing of the arc you know i was supposed to come out reborn and life was good and all of that what's going on yeah well i definitely i have some thoughts for sure please share let's let's let's start with there's a quote i've heard from dennis mckenna or rick doblin that basically said like people there's no such thing as a bad trip there's only hard there's hard experiences okay difficult experiences right for someone to have a bad trip that means they think they're going to take something and feel a certain way right and it doesn't go down like yeah yeah you have an expectation that doesn't

get i will take this thing and it will make me laugh i'll see beautiful colors fill in the blank it's going to be beautiful and then some shit comes up like maybe i face my own death right or i relive being raped or molested right or fill in the blank negative thing. Sure. That whatever's, it's something that's still there. Right. Right. And it's how you face that. Right. So this in large part has to do with, with setting. Now I would ask you like, how did you go into this? What was your mindset going into this? Those kinds of things. Sure. That's important. Okay. Let's play with that. So that's exactly what pissed me off because the setting was designed to be, this wasn't a fun and game one. This was in a kind of therapeutic contest where it's like okay we know that there's some shit i need to deal with

um we know what that shit is it's all about essentially fear of death fear of loss fear of lack of control but really boils down to death primarily because you know my wife died and all that shit and stuff and so i know going in that that's the topic right i i have no illusion that is gonna be fun and games i get it that is gonna be it probably gonna be a little rough but in my imagination is i'll run into the dragon slay the dragon and then i come out a conquering hero or at least if i don't come out a conquering hero at least i feel i didn't get just chewed by the dragon, spent eight hours through his digestive track and shit out the other way, because that's not quite the way I envisioned it.

I think your exact quote was, I felt like a terrified animal drowning in an ocean of fear. Yeah, that's basically how it was for eight hours with no upswing, and I'm just like, okay. And granted, I'm sure that the the lady ran in the session sweet lady i'm sure there could have been some things done a little differently to help it out because i'm again so that's that was the next thing i'm getting to your mindset going into it seems spot on right and i've gone into ceremonies with i don't want to you know compare but like a deeper i wouldn't even say deeper i've gone into ceremonies with i don't want to you know compare but like a deeper

i wouldn't even say deeper i've gone into ceremonies sad i've gone into ceremonies depressed and like people would say like you know these things don't fix you you fix you right but if they can give you a new perspective and a new awareness then that makes it worth it right still up to you to do the work after that yeah um whatever container she's set therapeutic or not there are levels right guides there are levels to shaman of course and you've got fucking white belts that are teaching other people right in the amazon right you know that that's happening in peru so stateside or wherever it was like oh no it's damn sure it's gonna be it's it's there's gonna be that varying degree of skill set in their approach and there's's, there's going to be that varying degree of skillset

in their approach. And there's, you know, there's accompanying plants that can help that they would use tobacco with ayahuasca, things like that. Tobacco works very well with psilocybin mushrooms or any tryptamine for that matter, for something that can ground you like, like, all right, you're floating in another space and shit's going on. Let's pull you back to earth and settle you down for a second. Tobacco works very well for that. That's good on let's pull you back to earth and settle you down for a second tobacco works very well for that that's good to know because you know people were like oh maybe you could step away and what i'm like i couldn't move my feet it's like there was no speaking of grounding yeah i badly needed that because i was in a whole other dimension yeah and the other thing i would say too and i felt this i've experienced this on both sides, both as a participant and as a guide for others,

where when you're really tapped in and you're a clean instrument, there is a connection almost like wifi to everyone in the room. Right. And I've seen this at the head of the table when I'm helping people and I've, and I've participated in this and ayahuasca sessions where I was struggling and you know, for example, one of the hardest experiences I ever had i'm i'm feeling like this draw and i stopped breathing and i fucking just squeezed my entire body started to flex and right then i felt a hand on my foot which means before that happened the shaman sent his apprentice to come get me and bring me up ahead of time right right so deep connection like they talk about in books like the cosmic serpent by jeremy narvi like very real right and you know he brings me up he says what's going on

right now i tell him everything he blows a shit ton of smoke over me and sings to me a beautiful icarus and then i'm right as rain okay right so you can steer the ship and i think in moments like that and i've i certainly don't have the skill set to sing y cruz to people and things like that but you know knowing who needs what when they need it you know like um rather important john wolf john wolf's been on your show right there was a time where we were in ceremony together and i came and i just put my left hand over his heart for a 12 minute song and that's what he fucking needed right you know and he said he thanked me hours later he said man like you like i was calling to you yeah in my mind and you came

over and put your hand on my heart so there's things like that where if the level of god is there and they're present right they can fucking help you work through the tough spot right yeah and there's no doubt with the death of your wife and the ultimate fear of where your daughter ends up right without a father without with who, you know, right? That shit's going to come up. I mean, it's a common trip report for people in ayahuasca to experience the death of themselves. Aubrey, before he did ayahuasca, experienced that with mushrooms and MDMA. He said he was, he's a fear of bugs too.

He's kind of a germaphobe and he was riding this fucking giant cobra down through the amazon and every bug came out of the woodwork and just ate away his flesh his bones his muscle and everything until he realized holy shit i'm still here i'm still on the back of this serpent riding and he knew he wasn't his body then for the first time right right whatever consciousness is i'm that thing right so there is beauty in those things but again that's also perspective so sometimes you know like there's in a true ceremony it's often silent and you have this noble silence where i'm going to stay meditative i'm not going to look around the room and see what anybody's up to i'm just going to stay in my own space right but you're still allowed to talk to the shaman or whoever's

at the head of the table and say like hey this is some shit i'm working on and i can't get past it of course and um you know in in many ceremonies and nights with my wife oftentimes that'll be the case where she's like i'm really sorry but i need to talk to you and i'm like no it's our ceremony it's not my ceremony it's ours and i'll talk her through things but uh it's not about you know talking the whole, because even as you listen to me, that's the external coming in. The beauty is in being able to work through these things internally and finding yourself through the breath or some type of tool that you have that allows you to have peace and process and move. Right. And a lot of the things, a lot of the times where I struggle, it'll be returning to breath work or doing yoga and like physically releasing some shit in my body stress whatever i'm holding on to yeah

that i may have cognitively said like okay that no longer serves me i'm good it's gone but it's still stuck in me somewhere right so let me yeah let me fucking work this out a little bit breathe through it right that makes sense that actually make a lot of sense so makes me want to go visit that lady again say hey what the hell it's also it's time in too right yeah you know like like you think about we were just talking about uh what was her name the lady yeah oh no my uh my girlfriend yeah it's time in right so cage time ring time the difference between her in her next fight the opponent having a 10 and 3 record versus her at 2 and 0 that's a lot of difference in cage time but the more experience you have

even on microdosing and then working your way up baby step by baby step till you're in the deep water that time in gives you the ability to navigate the waters i think i don't know tell me if this sound just uh because you're giving me an excellent excuse for my wimpiness so i think that i like that already but let's see if that's true or not because i'm kind of a big believer in baby steps in everything where it's like look if it's more than you can true start really what you can handle what is mildly challenging and you can handle and then when you stretch enough okay then you can go an inch further. Like for example, when I was teaching my daughter how to ride a bike and like, man, I mean, some kids don't give a crap. They just hop on a bike and go. And if they crash,

they just get back up and they are fine. Right. She was clearly fearful about it. Right. She was a bit tense. She didn't want to try things. So I was like, look, I'm going to make sure that you do not fall, which is kind of almost impossible when you're teaching somebody how to ride a bike, because that's part of the game is you fall. That's normal. But I was like, hey, if you're not going to do it, if that's the alternative that you're just digging in your heel, okay, let's figure out where you're at. The baby step is, I'm going to run next to you and and i'm gonna hold the front of the bike so there's no way you fall i can lift it up with you on top that's not gonna be an issue it's not the most

fun for me because i have to run like a bastard for a mile but you know i can it's okay we can do that that way and then i did it and the next day and the day after and the day after and the day after and the day after after 10 days of course of course, she's relaxed. She's like, okay, we've done this 10 times. I know I'm not going to get hurt. Okay, now you can try to let go of your hand for three seconds at a time. Baby step, right? I'm still doing all the work,

but it's like now she's getting used to, okay, a tiny little less control and then more and then more and then more. Now, I'm not totally sold that that's the best way to go about it because maybe there is something to be learned by crashing and falling and learning how to deal with that experience.

But at the same time, I saw her just gaining confidence. And then eventually she got to the point where it's like, okay, I'm riding everywhere. I can do whatever. I have no fear of this thing, which again, maybe is wrong because you should have a healthy fear of a i did crash i did not feel good but i'm not sure that seems to be maybe because she picks it up from me but that seems to be my approach is like

why do i have to dive into the deep end right away can't we just go you know let's get a little water on my foot let's dance slowly a bit and what do you think because of course there are benefits to both approaches but again in my experience at least with the psychedelic part having done the deep dive and not exactly having felt like it served me very well do you think that like for maybe just not for everybody but for my psychological makeup the whole baby step would be a better setup or am i just here's what i think about that first like there many paths lead up the mountain there's no right or wrong when it comes to any of this shit my parents threw me in a pool without without anyone around me to teach me how to swim right

right and then dove in and got me and then just kept doing that till i was holding my breath fine and i was fine all right so i learned how to swim i've never done that with my son and i won't do that let's get you a teacher let's put you in some classes i'm not tossing you in the deep end right um both are fair approaches in my opinion i've gotten a ton of perspective change and you know i figured out and solved a lot of problems on a very low dose of LSD or psilocybin. Right. But nothing compares to the deep work with ayahuasca or, you know, what Terrence McKenna would call a heroic dose of mushrooms. Five grams.

Yeah. Round up with some green juice and some, something acidic like pineapple to help break it down. You know, that in darkness at night with just a guide or a loved one and some easy music yeah that's what i did and i was like and yank the wheels off you know and see where you're gonna go you know like you pull the curtain back whatever's there oh yeah all is revealed yeah so it is it is perspective and i think for you it's about reframing your perspective of what happened in that experience so that way you have the balls to go forward and try again right right and then also to know let's set a different container with someone else right somebody who may have more experience going around the rabbit hole or just as a different approach

right right somebody that can be more hands-on in in how they guide you and through that i mean shit i don't think there's anything wrong with taking the deep dive you're not gonna die physically that's fucking impossible at five grams right right unless you decide to run out and jump out of a window and five-story building like you're not gonna die from that even that like there was a moment there where i was like in the back of my mind i was like please make sure you don't murder this lady whatever you do do not kill not kill this woman. That's going to be so bad. It's like, but there was that thing in me when, you know, we are in rage, angry, sad, hurt,

where it's like, yeah, my control of my subconscious now is about 0.01 and my subconscious can get pretty dark. So I was like- But you're always in control though, you know? Yeah, I felt like the control was like this thing i was like oh shit i do not want to please whatever happens just do not kill this woman that would be bad karma there was a ceremony i did with um with aubrey and another person and it was the only ceremony i've ever gone into like really sad i was going through some stuff

with my wife and uh i was really sad entering into it and i knew like all right some some things will be revealed it was very painful because mushrooms accentuated the sadness and i fucking cried for hours and i was doing yoga trying to get rid of it and it just stuck with me and this message came in that was very clear you can be sad as long as you want to be you can be sad for as long as you need to be and that was it and then it just hit me like i'm in control of this i'm in control of this experience i'm in control of my experience in life on how i view it right the lens in which i look through the world that's up to me right and so like that gave me the permission to say okay it was okay to be said. I think I've processed that and I could move on, you know?

Let me ask you then about this, because I completely get it. And it makes sense what you're saying. I think what I find myself in is kind of a catch-22 type of thing, where it's like, I go in because I understand that there's a substratum of fear in me that I don't like to have and that I do carry on. It influences my decision. It influences my thinking. it influences how I am. Inevitably in getting there, that fear is going to blow up Schwarzenegger style and it's going to be huge and powerful and right in your face.

But then it crashes me and then it reinforces even more fear because it's kind of like, yeah, that's why I told you that you should be afraid, you know, that it's like, oh, I just made it stronger now. And so it's like i get the idea is like in reality you are controlling it there's no need for you to feel it but it's kind of like you know that insomniac trouble is like you know anybody will tell you yeah you need sleep and he's like yeah i got that part we agree there but how because i'm i go there and my eyes are what you know it's like i don't have insomnia but you know to give something that's tangible for a lot of people who may not be super into psychedelics is how do you deal with something that rationally

you know that is the wrong thing rationally you know that you should handle it a different way rationally you know that you have control and it's just a way of reframing your mind but you can't find the switch so then then it's about you know like and think about this in jiu-jitsu who are the best jiu-jitsu players in the world the masters of the basics right they might know some cool shit and have a flashy move once or twice but they're so good at the basics right so why do we do jiu-jitsu in the first place why do we compete why do we put ourselves in harm's way or make ourselves uncomfortable why do we do the colditsu in the first place why do we compete yeah why do we put ourselves in harm's way or make ourselves uncomfortable why do we do the cold bath all these things train that like a

muscle like duncan talking about meditation right can i find space can i create space to quiet that fucking chatter right so if we can strengthen those skill sets going into it and we know very basic things like how to return to parasympathetic breathing okay where i might inhale through the nose for four seconds pause and exhale for eight seconds out of the nose tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth there that shit works anywhere right that works if you get cut off in traffic and you're driving that works if your boss or your wife are yelling at you like that always fucking works because it's a way we hack our own neuro chemistry right that

shit still applies in psychedelic ceremonies right very much so in fact i think it's magnified to a degree because whatever you're expressing through intention you steer the ship and if the intention is fuck i'm feeling all this fear i'm feeling all this sadness and pain and i don't want to feel it anymore i acknowledge it it's not enough to acknowledge and pain and I don't want to feel it anymore, I acknowledge it. It's not enough to acknowledge it and say, I don't want that. You have to work through that. And what are the ways we work through that? Through various forms of release.

That might be crying. That might be shaking. That might be puking or shitting or purging. And it might be, let me breathe this out and just release it through the breath. And as you release it through the breath, then it becomes more palpable and then you get a hold on it.

And then, okay, all right, things are more manageable now. And you refer to breath work already a couple of times. And I know that that's something that you're very into. And that seems something that, yeah, that makes perfect sense. You know, we all breathe and the quality of our breathing makes a huge difference in your state of consciousness. I think everybody can, as a, I mean, that's why even like on a superficial level, people take, take a deep breath, which, you know, we use it even metaphorically when in reality is yet take a deep breath has a big impact on your physiology. There's no argument, right? So in that sense is, uh, how did you get into, like, can you tell me

a little bit more about your breath work experience, what you have done, how you use it? Yeah. I think I first learned some forms of breathwork in fighting. I had two sports psychologists. One helped me with visualization and really being comfortable in all the days leading up to the fight. You know, things I was working on with, I would panic at the weigh-ins, you know, I would fucking panic the entire time I was standing in line to go on stage, even though i was on weight just being next to my opponent would freak me the fuck out yeah panic on my way to the cage all those things so we worked through that and then my other sports psychologist worked with me on breath work and how to quiet my mind in the storm right and i think some very

basic things like four seconds in seven seconds hold hold eight seconds out or 10, 10, 10, you know, 10, 10 in 10, hold 10 out box breathing, even five, five, five, five, five, where you've got a hold after the inhale and a hold after the exhale, all that stuff works. But, and it showed me like, okay, this is a way that I can kind of hack control over my nervous system and how I feel. And then I heard Wim Hof on Joe Rogan's, pushed pause, immediately hit 50 deep breaths, hit a breath hold, and I fucking felt high. Right. Like I felt high on my own supply, like he says.

And I was like, fuck, man. And it's true. Feeling is believing, right? If you can feel different, you know it works. It doesn't matter what someone tells you on paper or what study there is, right? I had the exact same experience, but I had a bad idea that I leased it

when I was at the wheel. In the car. So I was like, oh, shit, I'm about to crash about to crash i was driving too i didn't hold that long yeah that wasn't going for a record hold time yeah because but i'm oh i'm seeing that yeah hands start getting charged while you're holding the steering wheel but um i don't recommend that to people no point is Point is, it showed me like, oh, there's this whole other avenue here. And then I got to Dr. Kelly Sturette, who does Becoming a Supple Leopard and Mobility WOD, and he's authored a few books now. But he got me in with the folks at XPT up in Malibu.

So Gabby Riesler at Hamilton. And when I got there, Brianckenzie was kind of their head of breath and he had basically taken all these different modalities of breath work from bachenko method in russia to wim hof to just you know nasal breathing to how we prime for training how we open up physically through the psoas and hip flexors and diaphragm so we can actually take a deep breath all of that shit it was the most comprehensive look at breathing that i had ever seen like this is how we're going to warm up the body to start breathing first thing in the morning contrast therapy between hot and

cold sauna you know 220 degrees hot sauna for 15 minutes three minutes in 32 degree ice water you know and we got three rounds of that right that's how you wake up that's your fucking morning coffee you know what i'm saying i would wake you up in breath work right yeah so it was it was fully immersive and from there it was like oh shit like wim hof's amazing i just met him for the first time uh two days ago and we got to do breath work and and he's been an absolute game changer in my life but to see like that's just one component you know like wim hof is mushrooms and the intranasal breath work is ayahuasca and you got all these different tools in the toolbox that come with that and there's really no limit to this because we're

just now piecing this together from a performance standpoint from a meditation standpoint and i think um there are people that that that's their focus just like a black belt in jujitsu you know we had rob wilson on the show from art of breath who's you know co-founded the breathing with brian mckenzie and they they do they offer stuff online but having them out on it where they could put us through like a full day seminar again that just reinstilled like this is how i'll do this and um oftentimes you know i find where when life gets stressful, like I have to lean on the tools, whether that's psychedelics or breathing, but I also need my daily. You can't do psychedelics every day.

Right. You know, if you do is that your body will downregulate it quickly and you won't have the same experience, right? But breathing and meditation and walking meditation and all these different forms, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, that can be a daily practice and i can just have a rotation of whatever it is i'm not going to sit quietly in a room every fucking day if i'm antsy and charged i need to move yeah but i can get outside and walk a mile doing nose breathing i can come back in and do some wim hof and i can change my neurochemistry by paying

attention and being mindful of my body and mind i I dig that. So do you have a bunch of tools that are also the anchors for the other stuff, the stuff that kind of bring you back to base where it's like, okay, I'm in a good place. I'm back where I need to be. Now I can go out and challenge the dragon again because I go back to center first. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty damn important

because if you're out uh dragon fighting which no center that gets a little sketchy definitely bruce lee don't fight angry right like you got to be calm and centered and just take things as they come so that way you can react quickly which again is the the theory make perfect sense but even more important than the theory what you're saying is it is how you do it because it's like yeah of course you should be able to stay focused and center but when you're not and suddenly it's like oh man i should be doing this and i'm not doing it and you know it makes it even worse because you're telling yourself how much you suck how you're not doing the right thing plenty of fights like that like i'm getting hit too much but if i get taken down again i'm gonna lose you know rather than

this is how i get back to my feet, which is what I should be thinking about. Right, to have that thing of like, okay, plan A. This is what we do in this situation. This is the safety stuff. This is the stuff that works high percentage of the time. And so I guess what you're saying is that you have developed over time this set of tools that are from the more challenging ones,

that are good once in a while, and they are good when you're ready for them, to the more mellow stuff, that's more daily stuff that changes you already and get you ready for further challenges. It makes a lot of sense, because then you know what your way back to center is, rather than kind of hoping that you hit it

because you listen to the right music or you are in the right frame of mind that you're just praying that you land in the right spot you know how to take yourself back to the right spot that's uh it interests me too what you are saying about the sports psychologist because i mean the experience you described now most people listening right now are not gonna get in the cage i would dare to say most people listening maybe are not gonna go for a heroic dose of psychedelics maybe maybe not but in either case there would be a lot of people for whom these are foreign experiences who are never gonna try this thing so it's kind of like well what do i have to do what do do I learn from it? You know, what's the,

well, to me, what's interesting is that you put yourself in situations that are really sort of pushing the limit of a lot of emotions. You know, it's like, it's easy to hide a certain emotion. It's easy to pretend that fear is not a big deal

if you're hanging out in your garden and there are no problems, right? It's like, it may still be there. It may still be working on you from the inside, but it's not right in your garden and there are no problems right it's like it may still be there it may still be working on you from the inside but it's not right in your face screaming at you where you can't ignore it you know the experiences you have gone for is when fear shows up or when from your nose screaming in your face and you cannot ignore it and you know no matter how much you tell yourself i shouldn't be afraid. He's like, yeah, thanks. That's nice.

But, you know, it's like, this is the reality. It interests me, this idea. Like, tell me a little bit more, if you don't mind, about the sports psychology experience. Like, how these guys through visualization. I mean, I understood the bread work part. That sounds awesome. Absolutely. How about the switching frame of mind because again it's hard to

it's easy if we're all relaxed and happy to somebody can tell you something that is like oh that's a good idea that's great that's purely on a rational level but when emotionally you are in an emotional space where it's like yeah i've read every damn book on the topic there is i don't give a crap right now i'm scared shitless and I feel like my heart is just jumping out of my chest. You can't convince just the mind. You have to convince everything else that go with it in order for you to be able to make that switch. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, how would these guys walk you through it? And not just walk you, then you would test it. Then you would see it under extreme pressure how those ideas work. Yeah, I think with the visualization, it actually came pretty easy to me. And one of the things we would do, the concept was, there's a couple of concepts. One, it's time in, right? Like how many times I visualize, if I do it every morning when I wake up and every evening before I go to bed, every day leading up to the fight for eight weeks,

that's a lot of time where I've already done the walk out to the cage i've already done right uh standing next to the guy in my fucking chonies as we're about to get on stage and weigh in with one another right so you frame that of what you're the things you know you're gonna have to do i know i'm gonna have to sign 150 posters right and that's a nerve-wracking thing too right when you get in off the plane all those experiences spend time there spend enough time there to where it's not like fuck i'm here again that means i fight in three days yeah right but then also you know we had this guy on the podcast and i didn't realize it at the time but there's been a lot in my life that i do that flows with what this guy is about dr isaiah hankle he has a ted talk called start with

the end in mind so that's what you fucking do you start with the end in mind of how you want it to look right and then you basically frame that what are the ways to get to that so if if my goal is to be loose and relaxed and calm and maybe even excited and happy and joyful at the weigh-ins which is a good fucking place to be in right how do i how do i what do i feel well let's feel that let's feel giddy and excited let's fucking dance and move and be loose and shadow box and slap my coach on the ass and fucking crack jokes with my opponent and just let's break the ice a little right and whether their response is standoffish or whether they that loosens them up and they laugh with me all that's okay too right but experience those things in the visualization actually feel it yeah feel what that feels like and then when i go through it

it was it was unbelievable how easy that became now there was still fights where i might have been calm walking in the cage but the the second I get hit, I'm like, oh, fuck, here we go. Of course. Welcome back, reality. As far as keeping those base layers of stress down and all the days that lead up to the fight, I got really good at that. Okay. Wow, that's huge. And it does come down to start with the end in mind.

And then once you frame that, it becomes easier. But visualization isn't just seeing myself walk to the cage. It's feeling all the feels. It's slapping fives with people. It's looking out and seeing my dad with a thumb up. It's all that shit. It's hearing the music, the 1980s pop that's fucking making me laugh and skip on my way to the cage.

It's all those things. So in that sense, the more real you make your visualization, the more real it becomes in the effect it has on your mind, your body, and everything else. It's time in, right? Speaking of the 80s, obviously, since you experienced them, the Nancy Reagan just say no, combined with the incredible amount of propaganda

that went with LSD and psychedelics in general, were you fearful at first? Were you wary? And what was kind of your first experience? Where did you put your toe in the water first? I sure it wasn't a heroic dose or maybe accidentally it was there there's a couple things i didn't do any drugs in high school and then i i was gonna get i would say you know my parents my my dad used athletics and it's funny because both my parents did a shit ton of drugs but they used athletics like you know if you smoke weed it'll make your balls smaller and

your testosterone will go down you won't recover and you won't play football you know and all this shit so he had a good angle and then i think um i think i tried pot when i was 16 so that would have been high school but it wasn't like i really got into it it was like no this is kind of fucking weird and i'm i'm naturally extroverted and i always become an introvert on cannabis so like maybe that maybe it's not for me but I'd see kids eating mushrooms and shit. And they're like, you want some mushrooms, man? I'd be like, no, that'll fry your fucking brain. Like I bought into all the propaganda, right?

And then somewhere in college, when I became a fan of cannabis, I realized probably the rest of this stuff is bullshit too. Probably is, right? And there wasn't a ton of science out yet. It's not like kind of now we're we're back in this psychedelic renaissance it certainly wasn't there at that point but uh i had spoken to enough people that were into cannabis that also were like dude you should try mushrooms it's beautiful and um you know i can backtrack to my first big mushroom

experience in high school which was the wrong way to do it and then i'll fast forward to the first time i really felt something special so high school we go to a house party and my buddy's supposed to bring mushrooms and he calls me and he's like i'm not going to be able to get them and i'm like all right whatever so i start pounding 40s i have two 40s of beer and i'm and i hot box a blunt with one other guy and i would was so fucked up. I would have projectile vomited from that alone. Of course. He shows up to the party 30 minutes later and says, yo, I was able to get the mushrooms. So these are wet, full mushrooms, not yet dried, fresh picked, hydroponically grown. I cut them up.

And this is the wrong way to do it. Also, I cut them up and I throw them on a pizza and I eat the whole fucking pizza them up, and I throw them on a pizza, and I eat the whole fucking pizza. Oh, my God. At the same time, we have a stripper coming for our buddy who's a birthday. And the stripper shows up, and she does a little dance. She moves around the room. She's like, all right, who's the birthday boy? And all my buddies know what's up, so they're like, Kingsbury.

And they all point at me, and I'm like, fuck, man. So she pulls me out in the center of the room. She throws mask on like an old president's mask like like point break he's getting better by the second pulls my pants down and shaves one ass cheek in front of everybody and is spinning me around so i'm completely disoriented of course and everything's kicking in now like it wasn't that bad up until that point then she's beating me in the face with a dildo then she pulls the mask off and everyone's laughing and it looked like demons mixed with alligators like the most giant fucking teeth like and i start crying and i sprint out of the house i a projectile vomiting into a bush they lay me in a bed that i think is trying

to swallow me for four to six hours until i finally it passes and i fall asleep i thought i was gonna suffocate in the bed can't wait to do that again so to to your experience there was an experience that i had that there was no upside yeah there was no specialness to it there was no huge realization. The only benefit was that I didn't actually die. Yeah, that seems like a blast. It was horrific on every level. And fast forward to me being in college, have a different framework,

a little bit more respect for the plants, still hadn't learned what I've learned today, but enough to where maybe we can have a better experience. And I went up to Sedona, which is an incredible place in its own right, with a few we were camping we did mushrooms out in nature yeah you know with like a good group of people and it was fucking spectacular and that was the first time where i felt any sense of like spiritual connection you know there's something deeper than what i've experienced in everyday life and it reframed a lot of things that I had going on at that time,

because it was a pretty difficult time in my life. And to reframe those things in a way that was just positive and uplifting, that made me a fan going forward. And then I had everyone who's listening to my podcast, obviously is going to air on both shows. They've heard me talk a lot about my coach, Weetzie, who was really my first entry point into Native American wisdom and traditional plant medicine ceremonies.

Like how you would do these with respect and reverence and setting intention and meditating and prayer and all those things. And that dude, he showed me a different way. Of course. So like all my experiences with him, you know, with mushrooms in the sweat lodge and then with ayahuasca later, it's changed my life completely. Well, speaking of which, actually, that interests me a lot. But earlier you were mentioning saunas and, you know, I've heard Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of saunas and all of that. Singing the praises. And then, you know, now we are talking about sweat lodges. So, I mean, of course, sweat lodge is different than a sauna, but it's still the principle from a purely physical standpoint.

Forget all the other side, the spiritual side that goes with it. But from a purely physical standpoint, you're dealing with heat. You're dealing with sweating. You're dealing that physiologically are going through that process, right? Sweat lodge are the whole other layer that is you're not just going in in your towel talking about bullshit with a guy next to you in the sauna you're actually going in with a focus and there's a whole it's a ceremony you know it's a it's a whole other thing how do you i'm sure you know both are great in their own way how like in your own experience for example like do you do you still

like i'm sure you do both but it's like do you have a favorite in that sense do you feel that like what you gain from one is very different from what you gain from the other or yeah it's it's um the sauna is a practice that i can use meditatively you know i can throw on headphones so i don't hear the bullshit chitter chatter around the gym we have an infrared it's a dual hot rock and infrared sonnet on it and i'm in that probably four or five days a week so yeah it's a it's a it's a practice i like to have and that might range from 15 minutes post-workout to two 15 minute rounds with a five minute break if i'm not working out that day if i'm just doing mobility um how high do you go in uh it's about 180 to 200 even if the red goes yeah well the infrared i think it's not it would only

get to 165 without the hot rocks but both are on oh by you put yeah i got you yeah the hot rocks will get it up but it's still not like like gabby and lairs will go to 220 it's just a different animal right um you know that those things build like i want to get out yeah even 10 minutes in i want to get out right so that builds that that strengthens that muscle of resistance and and knowing there's a benefit here and having my water you know not trying to be dehydrated or take myself down it's a good experience and i know what it does for me physiologically right the the the sweat lodge the whether it's the anipi or the temez call that is spiritual it is a ceremony in its own right you

know we would do seven rocks each round for four rounds 28 rocks by the end and each round is a different prayer round some may be for the earth itself some may be for our loved ones and our ancestors some may be for i mean there's songs and drumming and all sorts of shit going on, but it's guided in a very specific way. And in a lot of those experiences, what I feel is that it's similar to ayahuasca. It's not my experience. It's our experience. I'm not the only person in there, right?

Of course. But even in the direction of my mind, there will be times and periods where I'm asked to look at myself and what do I need to work on? What i want to pray for for me but the vast majority is about other people it's about all the plants and the animals it's about everything we're connected to it's about gaia it's about fucking the whole unit of our environment and everything that goes with that and that that really pulls back a layer of like it ain't all all about me. It is bigger than that, you know? And that's from a very practical standpoint, something I think people can wrap their heads around, whether they're spiritual or not. Like we're in a system that's fucking far greater than

ourselves. We can appreciate that, you know? Yeah. I think that was always one of the things that I found brilliant about Lakota concepts, this idea that is, yeah, it's for all my relations. It's not just about your own individual life. It it's for all my relations. It's, uh, it's not just about your own individual life. It's not even about your tribe. It's not even about humans. It's like, you're really talking about the universe as a whole. Well, it is about humans in a way. I mean, that's a species saving concept right there. If we could return to that mindset, imagine what an incredible world we would have. Yeah. And that just comes to like a deeper connection you know i mean everyone has

friends that are a little bit more self-centered a little bit more egocentric probably not to the point where you wouldn't be friends with them but but like yeah i still like the guy he's got good qualities but he thinks about himself a lot and then you have others that they're very giving they're very conscientious of what everyone else's experience is. And they want to cultivate great experiences for everyone. Right? That's Don Howard Lawler out in Peru. We were with him for his second to last ceremony. He's retired now.

But he always says, para el bien de todos, for the good of all. That's why you're doing the fucking work. Of course. You know? Like, I've got some shit I want to work on in a mushroom ceremony, in an ayahuasca, or fill in the blank. It's not just for me. It's how I parent.

Of course. It's how I husband. Of course. It's how I teach on the podcast. It's how I give back. Right? And I think that attitude is great to have in anything you do. Because ultimately, if it's not serving that purpose, then why are you doing it?

You know, it's like, and that goes from working out. Yeah. It's nice to have the, Hey, I have biceps. I like to take pictures of my, you know, it's like, but that's, that's sweet. I'm not above that at all, you know, but on the other end, it's like, okay, but beside that good about the biceps, we like that. But beside that, why else are you doing it for? And that idea that you are turning yourself into the human that you want to be, into the human that, as you put, is a better parent, is a better friend, is a better neighbor, is a better all of that, because that's not going to just affect it. It is definitely going to affect the quality of your life, but it's also going to affect the quality of everyone, of the life of everyone you run into. They are going to be affected by the way you

carry yourself. And so you're working on yourself. You're using all the tools to make yourself the best version of the human being you can be. We'll have an impact on everyone else too, to some degree. You know, it may be a small degree. If I have a five minute interaction with somebody, it's not going to be probably life changing, but maybe makes you smile on a day when you wouldn't have, you know, maybe does that one little thing that changes the quality of the day. Hell, that's good. I take that, you know? Yeah. And so I dig that that's probably a good concept to have in the back of your mind as it applies to

anything, right? Whether it's applied to ceremony, whether it's applied to training, whether it applies to your job. And granted, you know, we all have to do shit that sometimes we don't want to do and they may not be, they may not look like the most conducive to growth ever. But it's like, hey, these are the cards you're given. How are you going to play them? You know, yes, some of it is bullshit, but can you find a way to turn it around so that this also serves you becoming a better human being? Maybe just by dealing with bullshit and making you more resilient and making you tougher.

Maybe by, you know, that concept to me is people get, they fall in love with some activities and then they fall so in love with that activity that it becomes just self-referential. You know, I love jujitsu because I get better at jujitsu. It's like, yeah, I like jujitsuitsu too but that's not the point who cares i mean if he's really just about doing the greatest armbar clap clap clap good job but yeah i'm i'm the best in the world yeah like that was a goal for a long time in the ufc for me and then it was like i just want to be the best version of myself yeah exactly because he's like that's I get it, but there's more to it. You know, if all we are doing these four is for that same activity, it's about life. You know,

the goal is life. This is an instrument. This is a tool, as you put it, you know, to, to make life better. This is not life itself. This is not, it doesn't tend here. It doesn't tend on the mat. It doesn't tend in the context of a ceremony. It doesn't tend in a sweat lodge. It doesn't tend in anything. You know, these are just things that you do so that the way you carry yourself when you walk out on the street is different when you talk to human beings is different when and of course it's a lot easier said than done because it's like you know it's the classic thing you can have your perfect moment where you feel like you got it. Everything is clicking. You are in the right space. Everything is flowing. Crystal clear. And then the first person cut you

off in traffic and you're like, motherfucker. I'm like, yeah, that's not what I was going with this far, you know? It's like, but still, so it's not that the work is ever done that way. It just gets easier. It's like muscle memory. You know, you have done it enough times you you become better at it but yeah of course it's like you can have peaks and valleys you know you have your moments when you really hit it and you know it and it's in you and then when you lose it again and but i dig what you're saying about always having a set of a set of tools there that you can rely on to take you back to that place. Because I think every single person on earth, maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I do bet that every single person on earth experienced that one moment once in a while where everything

clicks and they feel amazing and life is perfect. And maybe once in their life, maybe for, they can have the shittiest life ever, but maybe they just had the best sex ever one time. And for those 30 seconds at the end, they are like, everything is as it's supposed to be. Everything is amazing. Then boom,

that comes down and the rest of their life come back in and it sucks. And it's horrible. And all of that stuff, right? The lights go off because the bill's not paid and you're back to where you're. Totally. But everybody has those experiences at least once in a while, right? The lights go off because the bill's not paid and you're back to where you're... Totally. But everybody has those experiences at least once in a while, right?

The key is, how do I get back there? Yeah, cultivation. Exactly. What takes me back? And maybe not exactly back there because then you become the addict of, I just need to have amazing orgasm

every second. It's like chasing happiness. Right. That's not the goal either. Exactly. But to go back to center center to go back to a place where you are in maybe control is the wrong word but where you have a say so over how you carry yourself in life and and i dig this that like in my mind what based on listening to you talk like

what everyone should do is really just jot down notes of, okay, what are my tools? What are the things that, for me, are working that take me back there? And if I don't have any, which one of the ones that other people are talking about seem more promising? Which ones, at least hearing about it, clicks with me? We're like, hey, I like to try that. I need to.

Because I think if you have those things written out if you have them there for you then it becomes so much easier not to fall off the wagon so to speak not to just suddenly be completely off track and not find your way along the ride of your own emotional state yeah big time you talked with duncan about some of the difference between taoism and Buddhism. And I've gathered a lot from both of those, you know, uh, practices or ideas and concepts. What do you, I mean, and it's in my mind right now, I'm thinking about like cultivation of tools and how we, how we take mindset into things. What are some of the things that you've taken from Taoism and Buddhism that have really stuck with you i think i tend to be i'm ultra

sensitive and tend to be emotionally intense which has its benefits but also you burn out that way and so the ability to take a deep breath and let things go the ability not to take things personally the ability to flow ultimately because is is the classic thing that the way we are built you know if somebody pushes we push back and i use push on a physical level but of course in 99.9 percent of cases we're talking about life pushes you in some way and the instinct is you need to defend yourself and push back and instead learning that more sort of the willow versus the oak type of approach, right? To be able to sort of bend with it and flow with it and let things go and not take everything personal and not let everything get to the core of your emotions. Which doesn't mean you are becoming cold, but you are able to observe life pushing you and have a second there where you have a pose where you have a choice so

now you're gonna react you're not just reacting on instinct where it's like i gotta push i need to push back it's almost that you know red flag being waved in front of me i'm a bull i'm gonna charge forward you know it's like hey i have a choice this is a dumb guy with a red flag do i really want to just chase it what or how do i want to respond to this how do i i think that thing for me is key and i have to remind myself of that all the time because of course you know i'll say it it will make perfect sense i'll do it and then i'll forget and then i need to be reminded of it and i need to be able to apply it when the time comes you know but that's the very concept,

which ultimately what Taoism is based on, that idea of who, where, you know, which people translate it as known action. It's not known action. It's not being passive. It's about effortless action. It's about using less intensity to get everything done, and yet everything gets done, you know.

That to me is such a obvious and yet it takes a lifetime to master kind of course it's never done no yeah the work is never done and so that's why i can read uh i mean the dao de ching for example is 81 short poems you can read the whole thing in an hour and enough probably maybe even less but to really get like i've read it i don't know i don't even want to venture i guess like zillions of times because it's like every time maybe i don't get anything new but just to be reminded just to maybe that one word this time clicks on a different level i find that extremely useful that's uh i mean on a different level. I find that extremely useful. I mean, on a different day,

maybe something else comes up, but that's what right now to me is like the very idea to me is key when it comes. And I don't really differentiate too much between Buddhism and Taoism in that sense because to me at the highest level, the insights are very similar. Yeah, and truth is truth.

It rings true no matter what. You familiar with Paul Selig? He's been on Duncan Trusussell i've heard a name i don't think i heard about so he's probably the only um channeler that i've ever experienced in person that i knew was fucking dialed in and he's tapped into me on questions and answered shit about people he had never met before 100 and he did for everyone in the room there's 12 people that i all knew all of us blown away um but what he says rings true to me and that's something that he says the guides speak is that what is true now is always true right was always true and it will always be true so those universal truths are what we try to extract from the ancient wisdom right in the ancient text right right? And those are the things, like I've read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle 12 times.

It's for the fucking reminder. Yeah, of course. There is no level of mastery where I read the book and I'm like, I got it. Yeah, now I can never read it again. Yeah, of course, totally. And I think in fact, it's funny because with books too, sometimes,

not even the 12th time, even the first time you read it, you probably have heard those things a million times anyway. You probably know those things already. That's why they click with you because maybe they weren't putting those exact words, but you know that already. But the master is

using the sentences the right way, in a way that click with the greatest amount of people where I'm not telling you anything new. I'm telling you what you already know, but I'm saying it with words that help you remember in an easier way. That to me is where it's at. It's like people are like, oh, that's not the most original concept. Who cares? Probably original concept ended with the fourth generation of cavemen. It it's like all the basic stuff was there right it's like it's just how you repackage it in a way that is alive today so that it doesn't feel like

some dusty old thing it's in a way that clicks and uh yeah man to me is like as long as you get the job done that's all i care about you know yes it needs to it needs to work that's what it boils down to but um yeah i find that a lot in uh taoism for sure buddhism as well i you were mentioning native american things that's has been a huge influence in my life from early on um so yeah man those things are and i dig when when applied to native american things it's not just a book or a philosophy it's also a practice you know a lot of like one thing that i dug always about native things was that you don't get too many people who talk to you forever about the ideas the ideas that are applied like when you look at most of the ceremonies, they involve the body in a big way. A sweat lodge, it involves the body in a big way.

When you sand dance, it involves the body in a big way. When you do, there are a bunch of these things where it's before it convinces your mind, it convinces your body, and then it convinces your whole being that way. So you get these ideas not in a nerdy or philosophical way you get them in a very practical kind of way and that's part of what attracts me to them is the experience driven aspect of it all yeah yeah i think so many things whether they're in physical practices like yoga or the sweat lodge or sun dance which is brutal for anybody that doesn't know what actually goes on there. Yeah. That's takes it to a whole other level. But even for the, for, for the people who aren't dancing, the drummers that drum from sunup to sundown, like everyone who plays a part

in that experience, it's 100% maximum effort. Yep. Right. But those experiences, I think there is a layer of commonality between that and the psychedelic experience in that let go and surrender are very necessary at times if not the whole time sure the sooner you can i mean it doesn't mean you just give up like in the sweat lodge i'm not just gonna collapse onto the fucking rocks in the middle of the thing that would be bad but there will be times where you know if i if i feel panicked i might just go in a child's pose and put my face on the earth you know and take a few deep breaths till i can sit back up you know and experience the heat again but in that like you you have a degree of control

in the non-control and letting go of the need to control right and i have a degree of i have a degree of being right or correct when i let go of the need to be right when if i'm in talking to somebody and i want to prove that i'm right and they're wrong and that they fucked me up and they did this thing whatever trigger i have right is their fault a it's not but b we can accomplish much more when i relax a bit and i don't, I no longer need to be right. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, uh, that's a tough one right there. Right. Cause in conversation, everybody wants to be right. Everybody wants to be a knowledge as, Oh, good job you had. And you know, that's the thing that it's easy to say it's harder to put in practice, but it's so dumb because it's like that desire

to, it's like, do we want to make sure that things work or do I want to insist that I'm right? Because it's like, who cares? Yeah, okay, you can be the one who sit on the throne and you pissed off everybody around you in the process of doing that. And everybody, oh yeah, you have a sharp intellect and you may be right, but you went about it in a way

that you just pissed off everyone. It's like, that's to me me that's example of a way right that idea of like that insistence on being right is like push push push push push whereas instead is like how can i reframe the conversation so that i don't have to pummel this person into submission like we can just find a way that we can both walk away from this happy. That to me is 10 times more interesting than arguing your point so well that you're right. And once in a while, very rarely, I must say, I see people on social media do it where they get into those inevitable social media discussion. I'm right. No, fuck you. I'm right. Look at my point. Here are my statistics. Here is my ideas. And know these people were going

going going going going and it get you know each message get progressively more aggressive and more tense and weirder and one dude at one point was like kind of like he didn't say it that way because otherwise it sound too obvious but he basically went okay let's reframe here you know it's like i see on your stuff the music you like jesus i love that stuff i've been to the concert did you oh and you play guitar too what do you like and they start talking about stuff that has nothing to do with it and suddenly they are best friends and you're like you are just about to kill each other over abortion and now you're like you are just inviting each other over wow that was well played because Because I mean, the thing is, you clearly were never going

to agree. And you are clearly, this was going to get nastier every minute and nobody was going to walk away happy, right? And it didn't matter about evidence. None of that stuff mattered because nobody was ever going to concede. Nevermind the fact that a topic like most topics is poorly complicated and is not necessarily 110% right one side. But nothing good was going to come out of it. And the guy recognized it and just felt like, okay, let's reframe. And so that same exact interaction where we're just going to leave both people pissed off

for the rest of the day, leave both people feel like, hey, you know what? I can disagree deeply about something I care about with a human being. And it doesn't mean we have to kill each other. It's actually a nice person and we can have dinner together yeah and you you see the connection through your humanness together right i think uh rick dobbins one of the first interviews i had and he was talking about how the psychedelic renaissance is it parallels in a lot of ways

the gay rights movement and how demonized yeah just i mean i was here in california when prop 8 was going through and there was ads on tv where it was like a gay math teacher that was you know teaching your kids to be gay at the same time it's the fucking most absurd what ad i had ever seen in my fucking life on television right of course two and two equals gay that's what it is how will they ever divide um and so you know and this wasn't long ago this is fucking five years ago probably or something like that and it was absolutely absurd but what rick was saying was that it didn't matter if you were a diehard christian and thought they were going to burn in hell it didn't matter what your belief was or that just that's fucking weird that's weird i don't want to see it if you knew someone that was gay as people started to come out you might have been friends with that guy at your

office you might have played basketball with you had a connection on some level and they became human you saw fuck all right i still think you're gonna burn in hell but i like you yeah you know and maybe i'm wrong right and then there is a some level of acceptance of like okay maybe it is okay for you to live your life and that doesn't affect me and and that pulls back another layer of connection where it's like fuck you know we are all in this together and it's very easy for me to be like that's absurd i mean i grew up in the fucking bay area like it's fucking absurd to have an opinion about who fucks who yeah absolutely absurd but for a lot of people who didn't grow up that way and grew up with that embedded in them like you know that's faggot stuff

and you got some diehard dad and coach and everyone you know who's a male role model telling you don't act like that don't do this you, and there's guilt around it. That's a different experience too, you know? And I think is, well, that's Taoism right there, right? In order to create any kind of, in order to have an impact, you need to have a point of contact. If you don't have a point of contact, you're not going to impact anybody. You're not going to have, and so have that entry. And the entry is not, you know, a strategy like, oh, I'm going to become friend with this person. So then I'm going to come. It's not if you do it that way, you're just an asshole and it probably doesn't work anyway. But to do it as a, okay, what do we have in common here?

What is that we can, what is that we can find a way to be human with each other? Because from there, any discussion we're going to have from that point forward gets easier. Because now we have something where I'm not going to talk to you like I just want to prove that I'm right and beat you into submission. I'm going to talk to you like somebody that I like and I happen to disagree with. That's a very different conversation. My tone will be different. My willingness to listen to you will be different and vice versa. Your willingness to listen to me will be different because it's like, hey, this is a person I like. It's not my enemy. It's my friend who happened to have different ideas because it's like, hey, this is a person I like. He's not my enemy. He's my friend who happened to have different ideas. Let's talk this out, which I think is what one of the huge problems with social media communication that is not happening face to

face. And it's not just that people are scared that if you insult them, they're going to be sure. It's not just that, right? But that communication is so much more than the words we use. So that the body language, the smile that somebody has in saying something, all the 10,000 other things that allow you to click with somebody. Maybe you still disagree with their words, but there's something where it's easier to create that contact with somebody from which then you can build from. Whereas when you're just typing on the net, it gets really easy to be nasty without feeling that there's really another human there. This

is not a human. This is somebody is a representative of ideology X. And it can be you, it can be a different guy. It doesn't matter. I hate ideology X. So I'm just going to pummel you. If I'm dealing with a human being who says, please and thank you and open the door, I'm not going to communicate the same way. You may have the same ideas, but I'm going to approach it differently. And I think it's

so important to remember as we move in a direction that's more where communication is more physically removed, where you're not sitting with somebody in the same room. It's hard because nobody does it, but it's so key. Like I'm making, I've been like, you know, I think because we all like all social media stuff is also new.

All the fact communicating at high speed across the world via computer is such a new thing. They were still figuring out how to do it. And so I've made every possible mistake in the book in that regard, like we all have, right? Because it's like, we don't know what the hell, of course, right? But like, to me, a lot of my attitude on that is becoming, look, if we are going to try to have a conversation

that's pleasant with one another, great, let's do that. If you decide that you want to take the conversation in a way where clearly there's not going to be a positive outcome and we want to keep it that way, well, then suddenly, I actually have the, like, I always wanted to talk to everybody. Now I'm just like, I have zero problem now pushing the block button. Not because, because this is not, you're not entering that discussion with an attitude that's going to allow us to do it. And one of

us can do it is not enough. First of all, I have to be willing to do it, but also you have to too, because if it's not happening, it's not happening. And then it becomes just a waste of time. To me, it's like I'll talk to anybody if it's just about having different opinions.

It doesn't bother me a bit. The second you take the wrong tone, we're done. I don't want to be part of that conversation no more. That just comes down to don't waste my time. Yeah, exactly. What we invest ourselves in, that really paints the picture of our experience. What am I devoting myself to learning? What am I devoting myself to my time?

I like that the new iPhones have like, this is how long you're on social media. This is how long you're on text. Right. It's like right in your face. I can just swipe the home screen and then, Oh shit. I've been on Instagram for an hour today.

That's not a good look. Yeah. Whatever the case is. But you know, if, and I, I certainly coming to on it where, you know,

I'm on their social media, which is fucking magnified compared to my own personal accounts. You know, like that's a big difference. Right. And there are a lot of Rogan fans and there's a lot of, I'm a Rogan fans. So don't get pissed if I say that,

but I'm just saying like, there's a lot of people who are looking to jump the gun. Like, Oh, that's fucking snake oil. You're a quack, you know? And if that's,

that's the tone, I don't need to try to convince you otherwise i'm not going to waste my time with that right it's it's more valuable for me if someone disagrees with me and says like hey i think stress is a different thing than you think it is like okay well look i'm not making this up this is where i get my opinion from check out these two books you know usually that's, that's enough for people to be like, well, I'm not going to read those,

but thank you. You know, or, or thanks dude. I'm going to check it out. I'm buying this one today. Right. You know,

like whatever that is, it's the layer of how we speak to one another. And that's to Rogan's credit, something he talks about. Like we should be teaching the need for kindness. We should know we do it with our children, but like really hammer that right if we you and duncan talk about this uh peaceful utopia and when i think about that it's not a

matter of is this possible or not it's a matter of how do we how do we construct that well then well what does it look like right sure you got maslow's hierarchy everyone's fed everyone has clean water everyone has shelter outside of that people are kind to one another. They're compassionate. They give a fuck. They communicate well. There are certain things, right, that are staples in living a good life. And I think if we understand those and we try to cultivate those practices, that's where we see the magic. I 100% agree. And I think to throw a curve on that, but completely agree, right? But just how do you deal, like, let's say you decide to be the kind, you decide to be kind in your interaction because it makes you happy,

makes you feel better about yourself. It makes you feel better about how other people, it works better, right? You get it. You want your tone, you want your tone you want your attitude you want your vibe to be that way as you put it you run into the one that just a brick wall right where it's just there's not going to be now is there a way for you to get through maybe i'm not gonna say no maybe there is but it's gonna take so much time and energy right for one person that is like that need to be right or exactly need to convince that person, right? I don't need to convince you kindness and compassion are the way and unconditional love. I don't need to convince you of that.

It's similar to psychedelics. I'm not trying to tell the whole world to do psychedelics, but if those that are ready, let me tell you there's a right way and a wrong way to do anything. Here's how we cultivate better experiences where we can actually learn and grow. Right. So if somebody disagrees with me in face to face or online and they're an asshole about it, the way I'm kind of there is by not engaging. Right. Right.

Like it's, it's a dick move of me to, you know, result to name calling and talking shit online before i eventually block instead of just blocking them right from the jump right right if i can leave the conversation block yeah yeah i mean i mean it's it's but that is my act of kindness yeah in just letting it go i don't need to be right let me block you and we'll stop the bleeding right there. Right. For both of us. And I can move on. And the sooner I let go of that, the better I am. If I'm, you know, if I take that to the shitter and I'm sitting on the toilet thinking about that guy 30 minutes later, like that's, that's also an issue too, that I need to work on. Like how

quick can I release this and move on? Yep. But I don't need to convince that person that's, that's needing to be right. You know. No matter how much I believe in kindness or compassion and love, it doesn't matter, right? Those that are ready will listen. And that's the same thing, going back to the beginning of your podcast with Duncan, where you lost 80% of your listeners while Grossy was going down, right?

The ones who stick, that's great. If I talk about being gay is not a fucking problem it's really not love is love it shouldn't fucking offend you and it does offend you that i'm saying this right now have a good one pal yeah it's cool man it's been great i hope you've gotten some hopefully even if it does rub you the wrong way you you can say, you know what? I disagree. I disagree with you. But everything else you say, I like a certain amount of it. So I'm still going to listen.

That takes a special person, right? But that's funny that that takes, because you're right, but it's funny that it does take a special person because it's not exactly a genius level concept. It's like, okay, I like a lot of what you put forward. I happen to really disagree on this opinion now if the opinion happens to be should we murder children or not then yes okay maybe that one opinion is important enough that that's uh it's a deal breaker but if it's most other opinions and nerd who cares yeah okay we disagree so what what's the big deal is like i still and i find it funny when

people don't have that ability to separate where it's like in that case if you believe that gays are okay then i cannot listen to another word you ever say about anything and it's like wow okay on that note that's a little weird the the fact that the ability to disagree and yet be willing to take the good that you find in somebody else's message is a special thing that's a bit of a weird commentary of where we're at you know where the average is because it's like that's unfortunate for sure that should be a baseline you know and the fact that it's not that fact that it actually is kind of special it's like wow okay that's the those are the cards we're playing with yeah well i think you know the more podcasts like yours and mine and rogan's and aubrey's and all these people

that are putting out good information you know it's like they're people are listening you know that's growing too right and as parents what do we cultivate in the generations to come right or is it so many i mean being in the bay area i had so many friends that had kids before me that fucking loved their jobs and they hired an au pair or a fucking nanny and just outsource the fucking raising of their children so they could both work and have the expensive home and it's like what are you doing i know don't have the fucking kids you know i'm saying the most important years of their life the most transformative the most impressionable piece of that you're not going to be a part of that i know right so think about those things it fucking

matters yeah you know it really matters because they are i think um what's the guy's name neil cabran plays a poem um fuck i can't believe he has a he has a series of poems maybe it'll come to me by the end of this cabran he talks about um parents are the archers who hold the bow and our children are the arrows and the aim we take takes them into the projection we won't see the future they're the future but we shoot them in the direction that they'll go how far they go into the future right right so we set that path for them right that's far different than my child is a prop for my instagram right or these trophy kids like oh my son's gonna play in the nfl he's running out patterns from five years old right no dude does he like it yeah no uh that's an hour 15

already amazingly flying past so we get close to to wrapping it up i was wondering we have a friend that's been on a couple times that's a veteran that's getting a lot of success helping guys dig their way out of ptsd with psilocybin have you had any experience with uh sessions like that yet with uh i've worked with veterans that were just friends or friends of friends you know but not like on a large scale uh i think what rick doblin's doing with ptsd and psychoassisted therapy with mdma that's for sure going through they're in phase three trials right now nice 2022 is is the estimated year where they think they'll have clinics available for that so that's very promising uh psilocybin will be looked at for that too if i think they're already looking at it now at johns hopkins but um you know in

terms of like my approach, working with people, like, yeah, I've, I've seen huge benefit there, but it also comes down to who's ready. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of people on pay, I'll just, my buddy that I can talk about here, he doesn't mind me talking about it. Um, Israeli army guy, you know, from the jump, you know, you're going to go into that. It's into that it's guaranteed and he did ayahuasca with me and he relived watching his friend die right in front of him and so and he had you know the guy was telling him before they went out on the mission i don't want to go out i'm going to die i'm going to die and he said no i'm going first the sniper will shoot me you're two guys

behind me if he misses me he's going to hit the second in line you're not going me you're two guys behind me if he misses me he's gonna hit the second in line you're not gonna you're not gonna die and of course his buddy dies so he relives that experience and that's just one thing right if you've been in combat for many years there's fucking countless things that can come up for you it really takes uh it's not just i'm willing to face this and like this kind of male young fucking i'm gonna just go through it and dig this shit out with a knife it's like no there there is that mr bolelli knows really well that approach and it works so well for me it takes it takes that it takes wu-wei it takes the dance of some stuff may come up and i'm gonna move with it and i'm not gonna hold on to it and i'll see what it's telling me right and then the right person there to say like oh you're seeing this because you

still need to release it you know and you acknowledge that it's there but that's not the same as letting go of it that's not the same as surrendering to it you know and really just being at peace with it which is ultimately what we all fucking we're centering with it or repackaging or all those things it's just we've created this massive amount of folks that are stuck with this and it's just nice and it looks like we will have some sort of tools we're gonna have tools for sure to help them out because we saw what happened to the vietnam guys they're still on the street corner yeah left their own devices and we can't possibly do that with this new crop yeah because it's our duty to take care of one another. Yeah. I hope. But the good of all, brother.

Exactly. Fuck yeah. Cool, man. Anything else you want to jump in? No, nothing. Nothing. Well, you can follow me at Kingsboo from your listeners. Where can people follow you?

I think Twitter is my initial, the letter D, and then the last name, B-O-L-E-L-L-I. I just created an Instagram. I don't even remember what it is, so I'll have to look. But you know, the gods of Google are usually good. You know, you type somebody's name, everything pops up. So it's- I'll have all that shit linked to the show notes

on my end for you, so people can find you. And obviously, your podcast is amazing. So this is cool my first first double release that i've ever done i've heard this on another show so this will be dope man that's gonna be fun awesome thank you brother thanks so much thank you guys for tuning in make sure you follow us online that you hit us up and let us know what you think of the podcast and go over to the drunken daist. If you're not there already, subscribe to that shit.

It's phenomenal. Check out history on fire. Also make sure you go to on a.com slash podcast for 10% off all supplements and food products. Thanks for tuning in.