Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #91 Luke Storey

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

Luke Storey, a former Hollywood Celebrity Fashion Stylist, has spent the past twenty-one years developing and refining the ultimate lifestyle, based on the most powerful principles of health and spirituality, while at the same time embracing the technology and modern conveniences of urban living. we get into entrepreneurship, relationships, travel biohacks, EMF’s and we discuss his recent plant medicine journey and he shares some very powerful takeaways from his experience.   Connect with Luke Storey: Website | https://www.lukestorey.com/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/MrLukeStorey/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/lukestorey/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/MRLUKESTOREY YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeStorey   Listen to the Life Stylist Podcast | https://www.lukestorey.com/lifestylistpodcast   Show Notes: Lou Holtz - https://bit.ly/2GEha1n Adm. William McRaven Commencement | https://bit.ly/1h6jCcd Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus |  https://amzn.to/2ajBpzH Edison Lightbulb  https://bit.ly/2GEPWaY Luke Storey & Brian Hoyer https://bit.ly/2P7Jywv   Farmers Juice Promo: Get $10 off your first box order by visiting  thefarmersjuice.com/king    Dry Farm Wines Promo: Get a penny bottle of wine on your order by visiting  dryfarmwines.com/kyle   Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/   Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk     Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY    

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probably only second to creatine, taking together their science that shows they work wonders and they're an excellent addition to any pre-workout that we have. Make sure you check out Beta-Alanine at onnit.com slash podcast for another 10% off. What's up, y'all? Welcome to the show.

We've got a very special guest making his way back onto the show, Luke Story. Luke has his own podcast, The Lifestylist Podcast, which is a phenomenal show. He's just an incredible human being. I highly encourage people to listen to this first episode we did with him about a year ago. And man, he just pulls no punches on this. It's a fucking raw show that's filled with emotion

and really powerful stuff here. So please listen to the podcast. Let us know what you think. Hit me up on Instagram and Twitter at Kingsboo. Don't DM me. I got to clarify. I never check my DMs, but if you hit me up on a post with a question or a comment about the podcast, I will be sure to write you back. Thanks for listening. Well, shit, man. We got, we got, first, let me just say this. And I don't mean to,

I don't know if you've, you obviously hear me on some of these podcasts. Yeah. I don't like to butter everyone's nuts. It's not some kind of Hollywood. I know that goes on in Hollywood. It's so great to have you here. I've really missed you.

But like when you showed up and I saw you yesterday for Avi's podcast, it just warmed me up inside i get a feeling when i'm around you brother and i mean that from the bottom of my heart i feel warm when i'm around you so it's i'm thrilled that you hit me up to come back on man thank you paleo i learned a lot we learned a lot from you last time got the whole background story but as you know when you're moving quickly a lot of cool stuff can happen in the whole background story, but as you know, when you're moving quickly, a lot of cool stuff can happen in a year. So I want to dive into what you've been up to this past year.

Well, thank you for the warm introduction and for not buttering my nuts. You buttered my heart, which is even better. Yeah, same here. You know, it's funny. You guys do your shows in close proximity and also time wise so i'm always conscious of not repeating the same shit because i'm sure there's an overlap with some of the listeners but i had a funny moment when i pulled up here yesterday it was just a little just one of those little ego identification things because i i rented a car at the austin airport and for whatever reason they gave me a red vw beetle that's not my steez dude i walked out to the car and i almost turned around i was like i can't do this like i don't have the humility

to just own this and i said that it'll be a good lesson but i pulled up here yesterday and i was like maybe i should park around the corner this is so embarrassing you know and then i saw my ego do that and then i saw you i was like did he see my red car? This is fucking funny. I mean, after all these years of being in observation of that type of psychic phenomenon called the ego, it was just hilarious. And I was like, that's a hilarious way to start the day. But same to you, dude. Great to see you.

And you're a cool guy. So did you ever hear of when Tim Ferriss was talking about how he would lay down in coffee shops after ordering a coffee? Just because there were I guess there was this guy. There was I think it was a samurai. And so a warrior in Japan, but also very much in his end. And he would wear a pink tunic so he could decipher what was real embarrassment and what was not. So he would look ridiculous and people would be, you know,

the people that would point and laugh and make fun of him. He realized like that didn't matter. But then something, you know, that was winning against his honor, that would be something to actually factor into what mattered. Things like that. I think it's funny where like you were forced to wear the pink tunic. Totally. Well, that's the thing. where like you were forced to wear the pink tunic. Totally. I guess like force fed.

Well, that's the thing. It's dumb, but those little moments in life do give me the opportunity to see, okay, cool, I'm still human. I still have a need to be liked. I'm still to some degree placing my own value and self-worth as an entity, as a person on something external. And that's fun to be able to observe

and not be under the crushing control of that because the moment you observe it, it evaporates and it's a phantom. But I mean, I'm talking, the red car thing was a millisecond. It was just like, oh, and then it was gone. Whereas earlier in life, like you and I have talked about,

I mean, I would have pulled around the corner and parked, you know what I mean? It would have been a whole thing and my whole life was like that. I was just so self-obsessed and self-conscious all the time. So, anyway, it's funny. What's been going on the past year? Oh, my God, dude, since we last talked. Did ayahuasca four times.

Yes, yes. I want to hear all about it. You were in Costa Rica? Yeah. Did you go to Sultara or Rhythmia? No, a place called Rhythmia, yeah. Okay, Rhythmia. I want to hear all about it. in costa rica yeah did you go to soltara i'm not a place called rhythmia okay rhythmia i want to hear all about it yeah and uh did that also a little over six months ago started dating a really uh lovely woman out in california after taking a really long break and so that's

been amazing and a learning experience of course too um in in all positive ways and so and moved you know i had a emf meltdown at the last place that i was living so i just moved into an area called laurel canyon which is a much more chilled place to live in l.a i mean how far is that from topanga topanga is a bit more far out that was where i was originally looking and just, there's a scarcity of housing in Topanga because it's not as densely populated, which is kind of the point, but you can wait around for quite a while to find a suitable place in Topanga. So I looked for maybe six months or so. Every day I'm on Zillow that I was like cracked on Zillow is like my Tinder, you know, every day I'm like refresh refresh refresh because the the housing market there is very competitive i mean i'm just leasing i'm not even looking to buy and um but

they'll go quick and sometimes even you'll apply for a place and there's 10 other people and they pick their favorite person and that favorite person might not be your ass so to bang i couldn't find but it's about depending it's about an hour away from where all the action is kind of in hollywood and laurel Canyon is more, my house is six minutes from the Sunset Strip, but I'm still up in the trees and less cell towers and all that kind of shit. So there's been a lot of changes. And yeah, and then also, I own another business, which is an online fashion school. Used to be live classes for nine years. And last year we moved that into a totally online

model, which has been amazing. And another learning experience of running a different type of company. You said live classes, that would be like somebody could go there to take a class on how to do runway? No. So it's a funny thing because it's a very niche industry. And so everyone's always like, what is that? But for 17 years, I was what's called a fashion stylist. So I dressed mainly musicians and celebrities and some models and stuff like that for photo shoots, magazines, red carpet, music videos, tours, album cover packaging, stuff like that. Like someone has to go out and get the clothes. So if you turn on your TV and you see a Toyota commercial with a mom and a dad and a little kid, a stylist probably made 1500 bucks a day to go to Target and buy them some clothes to wear in

that damn commercial. Or any music video, you see a celebrity on the red carpet, et cetera. So that was my gig. I fell into it when I was maybe 27 years old. I did it for 17 years and had a long run. 10 years into that, I had the idea to start a school or kind of a boot camp i guess at the time to teach people how to do that because it was such an obscure type of career in terms of like it being difficult to get into yeah and you're not going to learn it at college yeah i mean even the fashion schools exactly even the fashion schools didn't teach it so i saw that there was a demand for people that wanted to do that, but they're like, how do you even do that? And so, yeah, I started the school. So we did live classes in New York, LA and at 1.6 other US cities. And I did that for

10 years. And that was kind of my main jam as I retired from playing music and from being a stylist myself. But as I started my podcast and started working more in the health and wellness space, which is my true passion, there wasn't room to do these live classes. And me and my partner, Lauren, in LA were just kind of like burnt to flying around the country with all this gear and stuff like that. The classes were huge productions, more like kind of like a seminar, you know? And so, yeah, so we went online, which has been great. It's like a risky thing to do because you take a successful, profitable business model and just turn it on its head and be like, we just shut down our main offering. So people are emailing us, hey, I want to take a class. We're like, we don't do that anymore.

Here's the website. Yeah, log into your online class. So that's been a great learning experience. And now we're sort of at another crossroads with that going, this isn't necessarily either one of our passions anymore, but it's a successful, profitable business. What do we do with it in a way that can still serve the customers and not kill something that we spent 10 years building? So it's a little bit of a conundrum actually, I'm in this week with that. So I don't know exactly how we're going to handle that, but it's like having a kid with someone, it's like both of our kids. And so we need to both agree on how we want to handle it, how much time and energy we want to put into it. Do we want to withdraw time and energy? Is it going to just, you know, crumble if we do that? So that's kind of a recent development, but the past year has been amazing, dude. I want to ask you, how do you sort through major life decisions like that? Now that you have had access to something as powerful as ayahuasca, I mean, do you go back to the jungle? Do you lean

on the plants? I know Aubrey and I often do. When we have some serious decisions to make, we take it to the plant consciousness. That that's it you know that's interesting i haven't actually thought about that method of arriving at a solution i think because i'm still i'm still integrating the experience i had i mean this is like two months ago i went and spent a week in costa rica and did four ceremonies and i mean there was so much backfill it was know, I had to deal with stuff from way. I mean, I'm talking from the moment of birth. That was the final night, which we can go into, which is great. Cause I haven't, I didn't talk about that with Aubrey at all.

As I said, I try not to overlap. I'm sure you guys have your own audiences, but I don't want someone to be like, I just heard this dude tell the same story. It was like when Jamie Foxx went on Tim Ferriss' podcast. It was like the top 10 podcast of the year one of the best ever and then when he went on rogan's it's like six months later unprompted he told the exact same stories he gave to tim right it was like bro bro yeah you gotta they have a different audience but there's a lot of crossover you gotta be aware of that stuff

so to answer your question you know how to how do i process and your plant medicine is part of that the ayahuasca experience was so mind-blowing and soul-expanding heart opening that it went back and did the backfill work and sort of i mean not sort of but quite literally healed a lot of the very early trauma. And I didn't have many clear resolutions in terms of issues that I face right now. Okay. The only thing I think that affected in the immediate was just feeling a more, a deeper compassion and empathy for the people that are in my life, my parents, family, friends, and seeing the depth of everyone's trauma.

Yeah. I'm just going like, holy holy fucking shit we've all been hurt so much from the human experience yeah and seeing that that was one of the the things that i that first registered one of the first big lessons for me in unpacking my own trauma was compassion for my parents knowing that they had everything they did they did to the best of their abilities oh my god you know we all We all do what we know. And that's it, right? So to see it from that lens was like, oh, fuck.

They lived in so much fear. They lived in so much fear. And they didn't know how to communicate. And it just came out that way. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, man. And so that was one of the real-time things. And then also, my girlfriend has a lot of experience with plant medicines. And so I was actually looking forward to going and doing that so I could share with her on a certain wavelength. You know, there's a

breadth of experience that she has that I don't have. I mean, I've done a lot of LSD and shrooms and stuff back in the day, but never intentionally or consciously at all. It was just, you know, to go watch the Grateful Dead or like go get lost trying to hike, you know, on LSD. I mean, just like a lot of tragic experiences on psychedelics, trying to party and also doing a lot of other drugs and alcohol with them. So there weren't really isolated experiences. But one of the things i think in in real time that helped me was a heart connection to my girlfriend and actually having an experience that she could relate to and i was in really close contact with her while i was away doing this yeah so it's cool so she she done ayahuasca before a lot yeah yeah tons and so um so i you know but i've had different

experiences that she hasn't i mean i've been meditating for 22 years and she does meditate and has for a while and dabbled. I don't think her practice has been as committed and as deep as mine. And so there's things that I have experience with that she's more curious about. And this is one that she had more experience with. But it was really cool having the awakenings that I was having on ayahuasca. And then I would FaceTime her the next day and kind of share what I'd been going through. And it really drew us together because she knew exactly what I was talking about. We were speaking the same language. And so I, you know,

I came back in there, my friends are like, what was it like? And I couldn't, I was like, I don't know. You just got to go yourself. If you're, you know, it's like, I can't really explain it. I just did actually this week, I just dropped about six and a half hours worth of podcast on the experience. Cause I took, I took a recorder with me and I documented the whole thing, like field reporter style and, um, you know, like a proper, um, journalism sort of way to approach it. And so there's a lot out there. So I just direct my friends to that.

But for people that haven't had the experience, it's very difficult to explain what it's like without trivializing it. To answer your question, how I deal with shit now, like what do I do with my business? So we're kind of in a, I wouldn't say a crisis, that's too heavy handed. But we are questioning like the future of how we want to handle something, which has been up until now our main bread and butter, me and my partner. So it's like, oh man, we need to come into agreement. I want to avoid conflict. I want to be sympathetic to her desires and goals in life because we're business partners. I want to serve my own career and my own life, keep the customers happy. So it is a bit of a dilemma how to handle something. And I think my go-tos are, of course, stepping away from the problem and using meditation and float tanks and anything I can do to get an objective, zoomed-out point of view and open my mind to different possibilities and let go of an attachment to a particular outcome or a selfish desire that doesn't include the benefit of the highest good for everyone involved. Customers, vendors, contractors, everyone that we work with. But more than anything, I'm really big on advisors. I have people in business that I go to,

I have spiritual advisors, I have various teachers that I go to when I'm stuck on something because there's only so much perspective that I can get that doesn't include my own fears or my own, you know, irrational point of view that's skewed because I'm afraid, or there's something that I want to get out of it. There's a desired outcome I'm attached to. So I'm about to go on kind of a tour of advisors. I actually made a list in Evernote a couple of days ago, like, hmm, who's good at business? Who knows how to rearrange partnerships? Who knows how to sell a business that they don't want anymore? Who knows how to take investors? Like, how does all that work? Cause I really don't know. I started a business with knowing nothing about business. I mean, my background in business is literally like selling

weed in high school. I mean, that's where I got my entrepreneur spirit, supply and demand. Yeah. I was really good at it too. I had a technique where I'd go to parties. I always have like four or five grades of weed, and then I also sold mushrooms. So I had like dirt cheap Mexican, we used to call it like gasoline weed. It had the full seeds. Yeah, seeds. And it would smell like gas because it was like smuggled from Mexico in a gas tank.

You know, like the shittiest, shittiest swag weed that was, I think at the time, this is going back in the nineties, I would think I sold it for like $20 an eighth. And then you had like, you know, good, good Mexican weed. It was still brick weed, but it was kind of green and it got you high as fuck. And then all the way up to the super chronic outdoor Humboldt Mendocino, like really good California weed. And that would be, I think at the time, like $80 and eighth or something. It's funny because I haven't smoked weed or bought weed in so long. I have no point of reference for what it costs now because it's all kind of legal. I don't know either. Yeah. It's all kind of legal now, but I used to go to parties and I would like bring the best shit and

I would just, I would roll a huge like Rasta spliff and I would just light up the middle of a party and just draw a crowd and then just hand out like handwritten business cards. And then my answering machine, which is what you had back in the day would be blown up and I was really good. And then they come over and- It's like half-baked. Yeah, yeah. And they- It smokes a lot. It was hitting up the smiley face.

Exactly. And then people come over and be like, cool, what's your flavor? It was like a mini Amsterdam hash shop or something. So anyway, that was my background in business. So when I don't know about something, I know there are people that know more than I do, and I really seek their counsel and I fish around for answers until I find an intuitive match with, with myself. And one of my favorite quotes is, um, I forget who it's by, but it goes, and I'm probably not even saying it verbatim, but something to the effect of show me a man who keeps his own counsel and I'll show you an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. I just heard that recently. Yeah. It's something like that. I mean, it's basically like, if you're trying to figure out your own problems without seeking the wisdom of others that, you know, have, um, have solved the

problems that you're facing to some degree, you're a dumb ass. And so I think for me, I always have to remember to keep the humility to know that thereass. And so I think for me, I always have to remember to keep the humility to know that there's only so much I can figure out on my own. And also that the things I figured out are going to be colored by my own attachments, as I was saying. Yeah, that reminds me of a quote that I heard

from Allen Stein Jr., who was on the podcast. He was a trainer for Kevin Durant, a lot of the prominent NBA guys. You that mic a little bit better. But he was talking to Frank Shamrock, who is one of the legends of the sport of mixed martial arts and incredibly wise dude. I'm not sure if this quote comes from him, but he attributes it to him. And that's not a knock against Frank. He is a very intelligent guy, very thoughtful. But he said that everyone to live properly needs a plus, an equal, and a minus in their lives. The plus is someone that you learn from. That's your mentor. And they may not know everything more than you, but at least in certain aspects of life,

whether that's business or relationships or spiritually, they can help you out and you're going to learn from them. And then an equal is somebody you see eye to eye with, you know, you feed off each other at different times, you're the plus at different times, you're the minus. And then the minus is somebody that you mentor, somebody that you can give wisdom to and help bring up the ladder. And that made a shit ton of sense to me. That's amazing. I've never heard that. Yeah. It really can be like, I mean, think of how important that is. You know, as I, as I first heard that, I was like, damn, who's a plus in my life? Who's an equal? Who's a minus?

And it just kind of, it showed how that panned out and who I had surrounded myself with, especially here and now. I'm around some pretty great people in this company, but also in Austin in general. And it makes so much sense. We can't figure all this shit out on our own. It's pointless to try. I think the best wisdom comes from our intuition, but that's also coming from when we've been gifted

some very wise information from other people that have been down that road and been down that path and kind of ironed things out and made their own mistakes and learned from them. And we can take all those things into consideration, get still, and see what comes all those things into consideration, get still, and see what comes up for us. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. When I seek the counsel of others, I don't just take that to be the gospel truth. Oh, what's your opinion on this thing? Here, I have a problem. Kyle, give me your take on it. Well, here's what I see. This is what

I would do. This is what you should do, blah, blah. Okay, I'll do it. Yeah. I mean, it's never like that. It's like, okay, cool. I'm going to, to a degree, I'm going to buffet-style shop around a bit and get different takes on it. But ultimately, I know that every single person's going to have some added value and a perspective that I don't have, even though I'm still going to have to arrive at my own decision. And I think a really wise advisor also typically will not say, okay, here's what I think you should do.

They would be like, first question from a good advisor is, well, what do you want to do? What do you think about it? And then I give my solution. They're like, cool, that might work. Here's what I see. And usually when I'm getting advice from others, it's like, I'm caught up in such a close-up view of a particular dilemma that I'm having that I can't see the bigger picture. And I'm caught up on the nuances and the details of some particular conflict. And they're able to zoom way, way out and give me a perspective that I wasn't even thinking of at all. You know what I mean? It's just like, say, I was actually talking to someone last night and I was just saying, oh, there's, you know, in a relationship I have, there's, you know, sometimes there's a little bit of conflict and tension and this person will just

seemingly suddenly just be having a hard time with me and finding that I'm difficult or something, you know what I mean? And I was, I'm wanting to know, well, how do I change so I don't trigger this person? And so we just never have conflict and everything's copacetic. And his perspective was amazing. He said, dude, other people are allowed to have their feelings.

You don't have to make that dictate your feelings. You can have autonomy and not be codependent and weird about it. And just like, cool, someone's having a process. let them have their process and be comfortable in the discomfort of that, that everything is not always completely smooth. There are things in every relationship you have to work through. So my, the answer I wanted was like, how do I fix the details of this problem? And he was just like, there actually is no problem. You just have to let it be as it is. And I don't know if I would have arrived at that.

I want to know like, yeah, but I'm uncomfortable. How do I fix this thing? And he's like, there is no fixing it. That's the answer. You just roll with it and you learn how to keep your own energy stable and you learn how to breathe through things and not have to fix them. Yeah. Learning to sit in the discomfort. Or as we were saying we i don't know if aubrey mentioned we were just out in sedona doing some pretty serious medicine work and um sit in the question was something that kept coming up you know like this idea that you don't have to figure everything out i don't need to know what all the possible outcomes are that i can if i can become comfortable in the uncertainty of life then everything is easier because i can be that much more present i don't have to live in the future of life, then everything is easier because I can be that much more present. I don't have to live in the future, figuring out every fucking possible outcome. I can just sit in the question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another way I'm trying to find a place.

I'm so distracted. I don't know what to do with my hands. You guys listening. I'm trying to, yeah. Like I'm trying to find a place where the mic stand is not blocking Kyle's face. So I probably just moved out of your line of sight in the camera ryan giles gonna rework these cameras non-stop i love it there i think i think i think i'm stable now thank you um yeah i think what you're describing is surrender and surrender is i mean that's my key word if there's one spiritual principle that I think is just the umbrella principle that makes life enjoyable, makes the lessons in life valuable and tolerable, at the same time, it's just surrender. And that is being okay with the unknown and sitting with the question and knowing that there might not even be an answer to the question. And maybe the question in and of itself doesn't even need to be asked.

It's just a matter of surrender because the intellect is always trying to grab something and make it make sense on a linear level and there's just so many things in the human experience that are non-linear that can't be explained they just don't make sense why do people die why is there war why is there famine why is there disease why do people hurt other people i mean you'll never be able to sort that out you just where will we be in 50 years if we continue on this path? Yeah, all of that. You know, I mean, sometimes it's more personal. Sometimes it's global and existential,

but the answer is always surrender. But the key there, I think, and why certain personality types have a hard time with surrender is the really proactive people that like want to run shit and control shit and change shit is their surrendered action. And so I might be in a situation in which I'm experiencing dissatisfaction and I want to affect

positive change. Surrender doesn't mean that I don't do anything to change the situation. It just means that I relinquish the negative energy that I'm having around that situation. And I use positive energy to affect the change. You see what I mean? Yeah. So it's like that, those, and these are all lessons of the plant medicine of every teacher. It's like, cool. Surrender means stopping inner resistance, but it doesn't mean you don't do anything to get out of the situation you're in. And that's tricky. So, you know, I think Eckhart Tolle has an example he gives of a similar kind of thing where if you're driving and you run off the road and your car gets stuck in the mud, surrender doesn't mean you're just like, oh, I'll just leave my car there and wander off into a field. No, you just don't get pissed off and fight the fact that you're stuck in a mud.

You use your intellect and you use those resources instead of harvesting them into useless negative information. You use positive energy and surrendered action to find a solution to get yourself out of the mud. Yeah, that makes total sense. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's like a call in every situation to be present. Just think of what do I need to do now? And there's this, I read kind of this rah-rah book back in the day when I first got out of college from Lou Holtz. He's the old Notre Dame coach. He talks with a lisp, but super old dude, very, very cool and inspirational.

And he has an acronym for WIN. It's what's important now. That's it. So anytime guys would be thinking about shit like, fuck, we're down 21 points or anything, it's just what's important now. What do we have to do right now? We need to stop and we need to get the ball back and then we need to score. Whatever it is, we just think right now, right? So your car goes off in a ditch. What's important now? It's not about saying, fuck, how much is this going to cost me? And I don't have cell phone service here.

I have to hike somewhere where I can get cell phone. It's none of that stuff. It's just like seeing like, okay, am I safe? All right, I'm good. All right, where can I make a phone call? Okay, let's get the tow truck. Okay, and then just fucking piecing it together like that that and in that you kind of not kind of but you can for sure take off a lot of the weight of the any situation because so much of the weight that lives on us is this stress and fear that gets built

around something that we're compiling from our own monkey mind just adding layers on that don't need to be there yeah you. You know? Yeah. It's trying to get to the how too fast. You know, I'm facing this constantly because I have big ideas. You know, there's an online course that I want to do, or I want to rearrange my business model. It's usually around like a big project. Like for the past year, I've been wanting to redo my website.

I still have my original Squarespace website that I built like two years ago. It has these old ass pictures of me, the copy's outdated. I mean, I guess it doesn't look horrendous. It's, you know, like decent looking, but it doesn't serve the purpose of what I'm doing as a business and as a brand. And so I've had that project

literally on my to-do list for a year. And I just never started because I'm looking at the whole thing. Like, oh my God, there's so much copy. I have to do photo shoots. I got to rebrand and come up with my company colors and fonts. And I just look at this whole giant pizza and I'm like, I'm fucking full already. I can't imagine eating that whole pizza when really it's like, I just need to peel off one little piece imagine eating that whole pizza when really it's like, I just need to peel off one little piece of pepperoni and eat that, you know?

So it is in like that, what's important now is taking things in bite-sized pieces instead of looking at something as this insurmountable whole issue. And that's something I really struggle with. And that's something that the advisors help with because they'll be like, dude, your website doesn't appear in one day. What's the first thing you need to do? That would probably be a wise advisor. And I'd say, well, first thing is I need to put together some bookmarks of websites that I like something about. Screen grab, different layouts, things like that so that I have those prepared for my graphic designer who's going to design the site. Okay, cool. Then we have the first step. And I might even do that, but then I'm like, oh yeah, but how am I going to pay for this

or that? And when, where am I going to do the photo shoot? What should I wear? You know, there's all these other, right. All these other things that aren't important yet that come in and make it so like, eh, I'm just going to go on Instagram for a couple hours and zone out and like avoid the whole thing. So anyway, yeah. But productivity and things like that are challenging for me. You know, I don't feel like I get very much done. People tell me, wow, oh my God, I see your stuff everywhere. You're doing all this work, but I don't feel like I'm ever getting anything done. It's weird. Well, shit, man, because there's those big, there's those big projects like that, that I, that i really want to do and then well maybe i

could do it this weekend oh no i got to go to paleo fx and record like 50 podcasts in one weekend yep which is productive but it's not like necessarily the needle moving project that i really really want to accomplish that sometimes i find myself not that recording podcasts is busy work has made a bad example because it is the heart of what i do. But let's say, you know, answering old emails and just, oh, I want to zero inbox and all this. It's like, well, I could spend five hours doing old emails today that now are so old they probably don't matter. Or I could just shut my computer off and really start building a new website. You know, and sometimes I'll pacify myself doing things that aren't really important in the big picture just to feel like I'm being productive. But really what I'm doing

is picking the low-hanging fruit just to feel like I'm getting something done in an effort to avoid the big scary projects that require more effort, thoughtfulness, and strategy. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But there is something to be said that that's not to knock like actually doing the low-hanging fruit you know like uh whoever that that admiral was that that did the commencement speech i think it was at stanford we started on make your bed every day because when you get home that's something you've already accomplished that if you do nothing else you've at least made your bed right so if you think about something so simple as that and you know my wife's amazing. She handles pretty

much 99.9% of all the stuff around the house, the yard work, everything. But I always make our bed now because that's something where I can at least make one contribution to the household stuff that takes a little bit off her plate, but also it helps me feel like, all right, I got that done, you know, and then I can get onto this other stuff. I think it starts to fester and build if we know we have this thing that's really important to us and we avoid it at all costs because it seems too daunting. That's where it starts to weigh on us and become heavy. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there is the other side of it and it's interesting. I've interviewed John Gray. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Wrote a book called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Big relationship expert. Brilliant guy. Super cool guy.

But his expertise really lies in hormones and how hormones affect your behavior and how behavior affects your hormones. And so he talks a lot about, obviously, like men and testosterone, right? And every time you accomplish something, even the smallest win boosts your testosterone. And so I kind of use that as a hack and on the more positive side of doing just the minutia, making the bed, doing the thing, every little win, at least for male chemistry, boosts your testosterone and actually makes it more possible for you to tackle the big things, a scary phone call, a business contract, pitching yourself for something where you could face rejection, et cetera. The big risks actually become more tolerable when your testosterone's higher.

And so he recommends doing all the little shit to just feel like, damn, I got a lot done. And I make my bed, I would say, like 99% of the time. And I don't know where I got that. I started doing it and I just thought, God, I just feel better when I do that. I like walking back in the room after I take a shower and the bed's made. I don't know why. I'm kind of a neat, tidy person. But then I heard that quote that you talked about, or one of those guys that's like, yeah, you start off the day doing something right. You win, you've accomplished something. So I do stack those little baby wins also, but there's sort of a razor's edge, fine line between avoiding something that's really important by just keeping myself busy with little shit. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. I don't know that I've figured it out,

but it's good stuff to be aware of. I think times I'm a little overcritical of myself and have higher expectations that are necessary. Like the fact that I don't have a new website after wanting one for a year, it bothers me. I'm like, why? And it's because I, I have a hard time saying no to stuff too.

Yeah. That's the thing. Any shiny thing flies by. I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. And there's a lot going on, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You start getting plugged in and you meet a lot of cool, interesting people. Just more becomes available. You know, totally there's just fuck dude like we have i've been gone more this month in april than i've been home which is really hard because i have you know my son's about to turn four um in the month of may we're going to cabo with aubrey and whitney for her birthday we are going to soltara and costa rica for ayahuasca We are going to Sultara in Costa Rica for ayahuasca. We are going

to Mexico to Puerto Vallarta with my mom and my sister and my nephews. We're going on a Cali road trip from San Jose down to San Diego where I'm going to interview a shit ton of people and just get as probably like paleo effects style, maybe 15 interviews done in a week. So it's just one thing after the next and all of them individually are amazing. They're just amazing. But like how I find time for myself in the in-between to calm down, to reset, to feel stable and home and grounded, that's been the real work for me this entire month. And it's not going to change anytime soon, at least for the next six weeks. That's heavy.

Yeah. I find one of the most disrupting things in life is travel. It's a love-hate thing. I love to be different places, but I fucking hate traveling. It's like, I'm here in Austin. This is amazing. This is great.

I'm going to this pool and rivers and it's beautiful and there's great people. Once I'm here, I'm like, I'm stoked. This is great. But the whole trip out here and the rental car, especially the red one, getting to the airport, just all of that is so exhausting and distracting. Do you fly out of LAX? Actually, I want to give up this secret because I selfishly want this airport to stay chill.

But oftentimes I fly out of Long Beach. Same. Same. It's the best. I've already exposed it on this podcast aubrey and i do it every time i want i think you know where i discovered is coming out here last year and i was like oh what what the hell you can't take a jet because i always have miles on jet blue and jet blue flies direct yeah dude long beach yeah and then getting a rental car there is so fucking easy you just walk right over dude i drive to it's a little further a little bit further than lax but not much but drive up pull up to valet 20 bucks a day to park

your car there it's like 10 feet from the valet to the gate walk in no one in line uh jet blue mosaic boom first in line two seconds to check in take my shit security no line walk right through and then when you get inside the terminal it's outdoors there's like a huge area in there i mean i'm the nut that takes my shirt off and does breath work in the airport before i get on and then security comes and says sir what are you doing we're getting complaints about your behavior yeah i explained to them dude i'm it's just yoga man but yeah i i do and actually it's funny speaking of big projects I am in the process of making a whole online course about hacking travel

because it is my nemesis it's called biohack my travel the jet lag solution and it's about halfway done right now so I don't know when this will come out but I have a waiting list for it because everyone knows I'm so psycho about biohacking and specifically making travel suck less

so after 22 years of doing all this crazy shit to make travel knows I'm so psycho about biohacking and specifically making travel suck less. So after 22 years of doing all this crazy shit to make travel more tolerable, I decided like, there's just too much here to keep to myself. And it's one of the main questions people have. So yeah, I'm working on that, but when that's done, let me know, because we've got a ton of podcasts in the can right now. So this might come out in we think june july something like that so i mean if it's done by yeah it might be in the show notes for for folks to check out sounds good i mean i'm not you know i'm not here to slang my online course but i'm just saying like the travel is tough because as you know as you're discovering as you grow as a

personality and a brand and more people want you to go do different things and you have these these opportunities all over. I mean, my travel schedule this year is insane and it's like exciting, but at the same time I dread it. Cause I know there's, there's a biological price to pay every time I move my body around in such unnatural ways, like 35,000 feet, a couple hundred miles an hour. That shit is not good for you. And i'm flying in a metal tube yeah to the sun yeah it's just it's crazy and i'm also unfortunately just more sensitive than your average person physically you know i'm i get affected by stuff that other people don't even notice so yeah so i have to kind of go extra hard into the biohacking stuff just to be at base level feeling energetic and sane and happy

and all that you know unpack some of that stuff if you don't mind giving away a few of your tips and tricks because when you got here you talked about the right after you got off the plane you got into the float tank and we're able to unwind and ground a bit there with the super high dose of magnesium and yeah getting into some of the natural springs here and things like that. Talk a bit about that. The first thing I do when I travel, well, actually before and after is get my bare feet on the ground, get sun on as much of my body as possible, do breath work. I do my best. It doesn't always work out just because you have to kind of weigh the cost to benefit ratio of losing sleep. But if I can, I try to watch the sunset and the sunrise,

especially when I land to acclimate myself to the new place on earth I am. I didn't do that here in Austin because it's like a two hour time difference. It's not that extreme. But if I was flying to New York or Europe or something like that, or South America, I would definitely make an effort,

even if I went back to bed afterward to get up and see the sunrise to tell my biology, this is where you are now. Cause that's the main thing with jet lag is that your circadian rhythm gets trashed and you get out of alignment with the solar system, basically, you know? And so all of my biohacks are really kind of based first in nature and then technology comes in to fill in the gaps. And so, yeah, getting in a float tank is an obvious one because the nervous system gets really stressed from flying and from the EMFs and all this. So the float tank is amazing for that.

And also just to totally relax the nervous system. And as you said, get that massive dose of magnesium. And then I slept like a baby. So that's one of the main things that I do. But then there are also, like if I had the opportunity to do an ice bath, I'm in an Airbnb here, so I don't. But when I stay in hotels, I take my carry-on suitcase and go to the ice machine and fill that up and come make an ice bath. It's amazing. I figured that out one day in New York. I was like, God, I'm so inflamed

from the flight. And I can just feel when I have inflammation. I was like, God, I'm so inflamed from the flight. And I can just feel when I have inflammation. I was like, God, I want an ice bath. Where's a cryo place? I'm like, cryo is not as good as an ice bath. I don't really get, I mean, cryo is cool, but. I'm in the same boat. An ice bath, there's just nothing like that. And also when you're in a body of water, it's also a Faraday cage too. That's the thing about a float tank and an ice bath. You're completely shielded from EMF, at least the part of your body that's in there. So it's a great way to just get a little reprieve from the onslaught of mostly the radiation that's in our environment now and in cities especially. But yeah, in New

York, I was like, holy shit. Okay. How can I get ice here? And I'm like, there's an ice machine, which I never use because I don't drink. I don't have the champagne bucket in my room. I'm not P. Diddy. You know what I'm saying? I was like, oh damn, how can I get the ice here? I'm like fucking carry on suitcase. Even your whole suitcase, you could just take all the ice out of the ice machine and make an ice bath. So, you know, and also another thing I'll do recently,

which is really helpful, is I bring a little box of amber light bulbs and I just switch out all the lighting in the room that I move into. Yeah. Cause I really don't like wearing like blocking glasses indoors. It just hurts my face. It's uncomfortable and awkward. And that's one thing you can do. It's pretty annoying to my girlfriend still that I change all the light bulbs, especially when I try to do it in her house without her asking me to do so. Y'all need some changes.

Yeah, yeah, it's tough, man. You know, there's, I found finally some really good Edison bulbs on Amazon that are super cheap. I think I actually, I don't make any money. I mean, maybe I make five cents as an Amazon affiliate, but on my site, lukestory.com forward slash store, I think it's under the sleep section.

I link to the best incandescent bulbs that I found and dude, they're like 12 bucks, I think for six of them. They're super cheap and they're just 60 watt Edison bulbs. They maybe have a little bit of green. They're not like super red or amber, but they're good enough where they don't produce that gnarly blue light. It's also the thing with lighting that a lot of people don't realize, I think, is not only the blue light, the spectrum of light that's so unnatural, but that LED and fluorescent lights flicker like crazy. And you can't see it flicker what's happening is your um your retina is opening and closing non-stop because it's adjusting to light dark light dark light dark light dark light dark light dark and this is what gives you headaches and just makes

you feel fucking crazy i don't know if you ever noticed that like if you walk into a target or a best buy that's all led lighting when you walk in mean, for me, I feel like dizzy in 15 minutes. So I'm just like all disoriented. Again, I'm super sensitive canary in the coal mine, but it's not only the blue light, but also the flicker. So that's why I love those nice, warm, old school light bulbs. So that's, that's a huge travel hack. And it just, once you get used to that type of lighting, and this is what I've been doing in my home too for years. Also, I have kind of two sets of light. Like I have incandescent full spectrum lights that have all the colors of the sun. So it's like a facsimile of sunlight and that would be blue light, but not,

you don't want those on at night, but I have the amber at night. But what happens is you just get used to that. And then when you walk in a room at night, that's really brightly lit with like blue LEDs. It's just, it's so obnoxious because it's so unnatural, but we just acclimate to it. And then when you walk in a room at night, that's really brightly lit with like blue LEDs. It's just, it's so obnoxious because it's so unnatural, but we just acclimate to it. And we start to think that that's normal. So another huge travel hack is just really mastering the lighting issue, which is a little bit of work in the beginning, but then it just becomes automatic. When I pack my suitcase at home, sometimes I'll print out a list, and then it gets outdated because shit changes. But on my list is like the amber bulbs, just like my laptop charger

and other shit you don't want to forget. And it takes five minutes to walk in a hotel room or an Airbnb and just swap out six of the light bulbs. So you have at least one set of lighting at night that's super chill, and you don't have to walk around in some weird glasses. Yeah, yeah. And that helps a lot

with just relaxing your nervous system getting rid of that flicker getting rid of that gross spectrum of blue light that literally doesn't exist on planet earth you know naturally i think that's the thing people don't get they're like well the sun's super bright i'm like yeah but the sun has all the colors of the rainbow in it at different times of the day people you know because you only see the sort of yellow sun and you don't know that there's violet red amber there's light we can't see yeah exactly exactly so um yeah so the lighting and then also the emf stuff another thing i do when i travel because i'm just that guy is um unplug the wi-fi router at night you know which last night I forgot to do.

You were joking with, how did you sleep? I'm like, actually, I slept fine, even with it on. But it's like one of those things, I've been red pilled on EMFs. And now that I know what I know, it's impossible to unknow it. I recently had a guy named Brian Hoyer. If you ever want to do a show on EMFs, by the way,

he's a great expert on it, really cool guy. But he came in and did a two and a half hour home assessment on the EMFs, by the way. He's a great expert on it. Really cool guy. But he came in and did a two and a half hour home assessment on the EMFs in my house. And I actually made a, it's a two hour documentary essentially that I'm making. I mean, I'm just going to give it away because it's, you know, it's not well produced enough to be a real documentary, but he goes through the whole house and it's like, he has 10, no $20,000 worth of meters. I mean, this is like super, super sensitive meters that test everything from dirty electricity, magnetic fields, geopathic stress,

radio frequencies, which is radiation. He just goes around the house and tests everything. And you're just like, oh my God, I live in a cesspool of dirty electricity and all this stuff. And so once you see that, and then you read the studies on what it does to your biology,

it's really hard to ignore that because, you know, well, one school of thought is that mind over matter. I interviewed Bruce Lipton recently. He's like, yeah, but if you have a strong enough belief that you're impervious

to these frequencies and stuff and you don't think they can hurt you and you build your auric field to be powerful enough, you can repel them. And I'm like, I get that. Like I get the yogi who can levitate and defy physics, Newtonian physics. And I know that quantum physics is real, but I also know that I can't levitate yet. So I'm not going to live next to a cell

tower and believe that it's healthy. So it's a fine line there between awareness and paranoia. But I do, when I travel, do my best to not stay next to a giant cell tower, turn the wifi off. I obviously sleep with my phone on airplane and I have some little EMF protection devices by a company called Blue Shield. I always travel with those. I turn them on on the airplane and zap the whole plane with my positive vibrations. So yeah, so the travel stuff for me is aligning myself with nature, including making as natural lighting as I can, breath work, sun, getting in bodies of water,

saunas, infrared saunas, float tanks, ice baths, all that stuff. And then beyond that is all the supplements, which is like a four-hour conversation. But basically all the supplements that are really antioxidant, molecular, hydrogen, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's such a good one. We had Jeff Faraday on from Trucy yesterday.

Oh, yeah. I saw him yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Cool guy. Yeah, I'm going to have him on too. Yeah, great dude. But the hydrogen is legit. I did an hour-long show last year with Tyler LeBaron, who's not associated with any company,

but just an independent hydrogen researcher. And after that, I was like, oh my God, speaking of EMF, that's one of the best ways you can protect yourself from EMF is taking that hydrogen. Yeah, because the radiation is ionizing radiation. And so basically it oxidizes you and hydrogen is the most powerful antioxidant and scavenger of free radicals. so it has some weird synergistic effect with um ems which is cool mercola's done some content on that that's awesome i'm gonna try to get mercola this weekend oh great yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he's i mean you know what that guy is like i've met him a few times and um we haven't had you know exchanges. They've been brief. But I have to say, the balls on that guy and the fact that he's still above ground with the stuff he puts out.

Just yesterday, I was having a conversation about vaccines with someone, and I'm very skeptical of their safety because they're not tested for safety. And there's a whole heated debate right now. But I was like, oh, I wonder if Mercola's touched on that. And he has like a whole website dedicated to just vaccine safety. And I was like, wow, that's ballsy, man. I mean, a lot of naturopath doctors and stuff,

they commit suicide with four bullets in their back and stuff like that. There's a lot of that going on in the past couple of years. And I'm like, ah, this guy, man, he's really doing mankind a service. Fall asleep at the wheel and drive off a cliff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure, you know, obviously he's making a lot of money. He sells supplements, like cool. He's a business person, but he also puts himself out there in ways that is not

necessary for him to sell shit. You see what I mean? Like he goes into a little bit of the conspiratorial, you know, medical stuff that... He's not having the easy conversations. Yeah, not at all. Yeah, I mean, he could, there's a lot of topics he could leave alone and he chooses not to because it's the right thing to do. So I have a lot of respect for people

that have the courage to be ostracized and made fun of or condemned or even in some cases killed because they're sharing information that certain entities in power don't want shared. So yeah, he's badass. Well, let's bad-ass. Well, let's, let's get positive here. So we're going on the rabbit hole about EMFs and all this nasty shit. I would just say in closing, yeah, in closing for my own like sanity and just to put it

out there, I want to reiterate, you know, the fine line between awareness and fear. And that's something I really struggle with myself. You know, when I walked up to this building, I was like, wow, there's a cell tower pretty close to here. I can't unknow the fact that I know if you got out an EMF meter, that there's a really high degree of radiation coming off that. But I also realized that I'm in a building full of really positive people that are super healthy and working out and doing the supplements and living the life and are taking plant medicines and being awesome and the energy field in this building is so much more powerful than some on a pole down the street you see what i mean yeah so it's like there's the awareness okay cool check that's there is what it is now how can i protect myself internally by using

the biology of belief and knowing i'm safe i protected, and this isn't even my body to protect anyway. It's a loner and it's going to be gone a little while. Let's not take all this shit too seriously, Luke. That's the message to myself. So it's mitigation when possible, and then just live your life and have fun. And sometimes I do shit like pull over to the gas station and just pound some M&Ms just to be a real person. I do. Say fuck it. Yeah. I'm just like, you know what? Something sweet would be nice. I'm like, I'm just like, you know what? Something sweet would be nice. I'm like, I'm just going to eat some toxic ass shit right now just so I'm not so obsessive about health.

It's GMO. There's corn syrup. There's all the things, you know, who knows what's in there. Mold in the peanuts. I mean, I could go on, you know, I mean, it's just- Mycotoxins. Yeah, mycotoxins. I mean, I know what I know, but it's fucking delicious sometimes to eat.

That was my next question. You went with the peanut M&Ms, not the original. Yeah, peanut M&Ms and Snickers. Those are two of my favorites. And I mean, I read the ingredient deck and I'm just like, God, I shouldn't do this. But I just, I have to do it because the controlling mindset of a health nut like me, I think can be potentially more toxic than a toxic lifestyle because you're living in so much tension and fear.

And it all, you know, speaking of plant medicines, what I've discovered for me is that there is a certain degree of self-care and self-love in living a healthy lifestyle and mitigating these things and making your environment as healthy as possible. But at the root of it, I truly believe is childhood trauma and being out of control and being unsafe and being obsessed with, as an adult,

being safe and protecting myself and having the one thing that I can control, I think, is how healthy my environment is or the food that I eat. So there is like a neurotic, mentally, psychologically unhealthy side to being really into health and biohacking. I think that's something that really needs to be addressed. And it's not going to be addressed by the people that are selling you the shit to make you healthy. Yeah. Because they're the ones, in some cases, not all that are going to use the problem reaction

solution method. Let's get you super scared about X health problem and then sell you the solution to it. Right. I mean, that's like a great marketing ploy. So I just, I think in closing, I'd like to say on all the biohacking for anyone listening that's into this stuff, like we have to be aware, but also have a balanced life. And remember that our heart and our mindset is more powerful than anything in our environment,

anything we eat. That said, don't eat aspartame, MSGs, GMOs, and rancid oils. I mean, those are like, those are the main, the main culprits that I don't think even if you think positive, they're eventually going to take a toll on your body. No question. And if you live next to a saltar, fucking move. That's all I'm going to say. I like that.

All right, I'm done. To that note, on rancid oils, we found out, and maybe we'll go out to eat here if you have time, but Hop Dottie is a burger bar that they have here in Austin and they have them all over. I think they're in LA too.

But I know the guy who is one of the meat suppliers for their whole corporate chain, Matt Schweitzer. Awesome dude. Did carnivore for a while. He's into CrossFit and huge fan of the podcast. He started to source grass-fed, grass-finished beef for them, bison burgers, and they also switched over their oils to fucking avocado oil for their french fries oh nice fries and they're the only chain that i know of that uses to cook and avocado oil which is high heat resistant obviously a very good healthy fat man polar opposite of this shit so i was like dude that's amazing i'll let my son eat french fries every time we go there because i don't have to worry about these shitty rancid oils that are so inflammatory but yeah that's one little little plug from my boy at hop.e you know and giving people like that plugs that are doing it right is really important there's a i'll do one

myself there's a place where i eat well i buy most of my meat and eat most of my meals it's called bel campo meat company in la and i've been to their farm in shasta i went to the slaughterhouse did the whole tour to really get you you know, as much as I could, a relationship with the food source supply chain. And they do their fries in tallow. Oh, that's amazing. In beef tallow. Yeah, I mean, you know,

you're still eating a lot of carbs, whatever, you know. But if you really want a burger and fries, it's good to know that there is a way to do it that's not completely gnarly. And, you know, hopefully the potatoes are organic because they're one of the biggest absorbers of pesticides, you know. Yeah. So yeah, anyway anyway so kudos to people out there that are doing it right fuck yeah well let's i mean before before we switch gears and jump on your podcast i do want

to ask you a little bit about uh your ayahuasca ceremony because i know you talked a little bit about it with uh with aubrey you know so we don't maybe maybe whatever stories were left off yeah there's something to me there's so much that that actually wasn't covered you know, so we don't, maybe whatever stories were left off. Yeah. There's so much that actually wasn't covered. You know, I think one of the coolest things, I mean, there were in this particular situation, there were four ceremonies, four in a row, which is funny. Cause I landed at coast in Costa Rica and went to Rismia, the place, the retreat center. Did they go every other day? No dude, you land and the next night you're doing it. I thought, Oh, I'm going to chill for a for a couple days do some mud baths go to the beach hang out and then we'll get to the plant medicine the first day they're like cool tonight's your first ceremony i was like

shit so dude i hadn't i mean i hadn't done any mind-altering substances in 22 years at that wow you know i mean i i mean accidentally maybe on a plane my back hurts and i took half a viking and i was like oh i feel a little fuzzy but i mean, I'm not a drug user at all. Don't drink, any of that. So it was a little bit nerve wracking, but I can summarize in that, again, going back to that surrender, I've been practicing surrender for so long in my day-to-day life, just momentarily throughout the day. There's just so many micro moments in which I surrender to something that's challenging or uncomfortable, not going my way. And so I went into it just like, okay, I've made a decision to do this. No matter what happens, I'm not going to fight it. This shit's going to hit me and I'm just going to let go. And you know, you can only will

a surrender to a certain degree. I mean, surrender is more of a gift in my experience than it is like, okay, I'm going to force a surrender. Surrender so hard. Yeah. You can't like yang into a surrender because surrender is inherently yin, right? But I know what it feels like to be in a yin position and just allow something to happen. And so the first night as I, you know, did the first shot and I was like, hmm, interesting, sort of tastes like Jägermeister and prune juice. Not terribly unpleasant. I've never heard it described that way. Never. You know, cause Aubrey's like, hmm, interesting. Sort of tastes like Jägermeister and prune juice. Not terribly unpleasant. I've never heard it described that way. Never. You know, because Aubrey's like, oh, it's disgusting. Just the, you know, thinking of the taste of it makes me want to puke. And I was like, actually, I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, I wouldn't drink it as a recreational beverage, like, you know, ayahuasca kombucha or something, but it was okay. Took the thing, went and met it. Well, first we did the hoppe, you know, and I was like, whoa. You had the activator. I love bay yeah and serious tobacco i have yeah i used to be a heavy

smoker i haven't used nicotine like that in a while i know it's a different form of it and all that but anyway that was kind of heavy a little nauseous cool meditated through that did my first cup nothing really happened lay down had a nice little nap went up for the second one went back and tried to sit up and meditate and so because I really wanted to feel when it started to come on. And what's funny about it is versus other psychedelics I've had where it seems, I mean, I haven't done acid in a long time, but I remember it being more gradual. You're like, hmm, feeling a little something. And then, you know, a couple hours into it, then you're peaking.

And what was really fun actually about the ayahuasca is I'm sitting there and it's like within five minutes, I'm just balls out tripping, you know, just like, boom, once it finally hit, it hit so hard and it was really beautiful. You know, it was really fun and beautiful. And the first two nights were just absolute bliss the whole time. I mean, I was just, I don't think I cried. I didn't throw up. Not that I would have been opposed to crying, but anytime I felt resistance or discomfort in my body, mind, spirit, I kept just saying, I trust you, I trust you, I trust you. And I just kept letting go and letting go.

And just, I surrender. And I just, I was talking to the medicine saying, just do what you need to do. Like, you're not going to get any fight from me. And the infinite wisdom of the medicine or wherever that wisdom is coming from was like, watch this motherfucker. Boom. You know? And it was like, it got my attention the first two nights. I was like, oh, okay. Wow. There's a lot more going on to reality than I ever knew because that veil between the

dimensions is lifted. And all of a sudden you're kind of like, it's like you pop your head up into another grid or something you know you're in a submarine and what's that little telescope thing you know where you can see above the surface and you're like well i didn't even know there was a surface to go above you know it's just it was so expansive and um but completely just heart healing experience and everything was very mechanistic. None of my visions ever throughout the whole four ceremonies ever involved plants, animals, land, nothing earthly at all. It was complete ET shit the whole time. Cosmos stuff. Yeah.

It was like light grids. Everything was right angles. It was very mechanical, all the visuals and stuff. And it was like the stuff that was happening to my body. Although there was a benevolent, loving energy and a familiar energy to it. It wasn't like I wasn't seeing faces. I wasn't seeing a puma, a snake, like none of the stuff that I've heard people describe. It was like light spaceships hovering above me or I'm in some kind of a spaceship grid type thing with no aliens, just otherworldly, like extraterrestrial in the sense that it's not of this material plane that we're used to

experiencing. So when I say ET, I don't mean like phone home. Yeah, not the grays. No, not at all like that. There was no specific localized entities or anything at all. It was just like an energy field. But what I was seeing in the experience was very mechanical and robotic almost, not in a cold, unfeeling way, but just the visual of it. And so it was like, there was this light machinery

that was scanning my body and just fixing shit. I could feel like my hip go straight and then something in my brain like turned on. I'll talk about that the doctor sitos no no little doctors there's a term for it in the amazon oh really they call the doctor sitos and they're the little doctors that come in and it can feel like a vibration or a buzzing right they just go to fucking work on different parts of the body and it might be energetically

it might be very viscerally but they're're actually, I mean, from my understanding, fixing stuff that has long-term trauma and needs healing. And they just go through. That's so fucking rad. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really know anything about any of that. So it was cool. I had no expectations. I was just thinking, God, I have to brace myself because I've not experienced such an altered state of consciousness in a long time.

And it was a little daunting, but as I started to surrender into it, I was sort of surprised and relieved that it was so ecstatic and that I was just experiencing the presence of God and consciousness. And I was really able to, I don't know, disassociate is the right word because it kind of has a negative connotation, but I lost the attachment to my body, my personality to thought and my consciousness or higher self was observing the whole phenomenon take place. And I'm just sitting there going, this is amazing. I mean, I was just, the thing I kept saying to myself was, you've got to be fucking kidding me. You've got to be fucking kidding me. I mean, I was just like, I was in awe at the sheer power of this shit in my fucking brain and bloodstream. I mean, it was just overwhelmingly

beautiful. And I had no thoughts or realizations or anything really the first two nights. It was just that. It was just like being in heaven the whole time. And it was just amazing. And then the third night I had some deep work take place where I didn't direct it again. I was completely surrendered and passive and just like, cool, do whatever you need to do. If I'm supposed to think some thoughts or see some words or hear words or have anything said or done, like I'm open to doing that.

And then I was led into these experiences where it's a too long of a story, but essentially really building a relationship with my thoughts and with my mind and making peace with the mind and actually getting to know it as a friend and not a fucking enemy, which has been my whole life. So I was like, that's basically, hey, mind, nice to meet you. Thank you so much. And I'm so sorry for the harm I've done you through negative thinking and through abuse and all the things

that I've done to my physical brain and just my mindset, you know, my psyche. And so there was a peaceful union and relationship with the mind. And then that went into my heart and I went through this whole other experience. And then that led into all the childhood trauma and all of that, but it wasn't scary or bad. I mean, I was crying and I was feeling the depth of pain that I thought. And I did talk about this with Aubrey to some degree for people that wanted another take on it. But basically I was shown through a lens that I've never seen through before

the depth of trauma that I had experienced. Like I've known it in a cognitive way, like, oh yeah, I've been to therapy. I've looked at the thing, I've journaled, I've read the books, I've done all the things. I've journaled. I've read the books. I've done all the things. Yeah, I had a rough childhood and it hurt me. Okay, cool.

And that's kind of shaped who I am for better and for worse. But I really got to feel what had happened to me, you know? I mean, it was so, so profoundly deep and it was just like, holy shit. I had no idea how badly I was hurt by a lot of different scenarios as a kid, you know? And then there went into some anger, you know, at some of the perpetrators and some forgiveness and, and all of that. But it was a really, a really healing experience. And that particular night was led by all women shaman. Oh, wow. And so there was this incredible, overwhelming feminine energy in that space,

in the grid. It was so beautiful. maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed or experienced. And so I think in that there was an immense amount of healing around the feminine and my relationship to that. And also an appreciation of where I stand in that equation in terms of a relationship to the feminine you know women that I'm in relationship with friends family lovers etc and just seeing the dynamic there and seeing how it's possible to work in harmony and in union and to appreciate those aspects of myself and in other and also seeing how important it is for me to uphold the masculine energy that I possess being in a male body and how that that's a real responsibility and not something to be discounted or shunned or shamed at all and that it's a beautiful thing to possess but you have

to have the integrity to be a steward of those energies because it can also be very destructive so i'm having this whole experience there's dancing there's music all the you know the women shaman are dancing there's rattles they're stomping feet there's the whole thing and i'm just like and it's just rapture i'm just going oh my god i've never experienced anything like this and i step outside so i started started to subside a little bit and i just want to get grounded i go outside it's beautiful you know setting and everything like that. And I'm watching the fire and it was such a cool,

it's really like, I finally, I think, I mean, I'm sure there'll be more realizations, but I think I finally grasped the feminine and what it is by watching the fire. Cause I was watching the fire and there's raging fire and it was encased in this stone or like brick box, right? And just the way they built the fire just rages all night long. And I'm looking at that fire and I don't have, it's not like, oh, I? And just the way they built the fire just rages all night long.

And I'm looking at that fire and I don't have, it's not like, oh, I want to figure out the fire. It just came to me. I was looking at the fire. I was like, that's feminine energy. It's constantly taking and absorbing from its environment, right? It's constantly receiving and just sucking up the air. And it is never the same for a millisecond. It's just always changing. It's so fiery. And if you think about, I mean, a male or female, but I'm thinking of females that are really in their feminine, I mean, they're a fucking firestorm, you know? And that can be challenging if you fight it and you don't see that that's how it's inherently designed by nature, is to be constantly in flux and in movement and to be moody and all of that stuff, which I've

always been like, say, if I'm in a relationship with a woman and they're moody, I'm like, oh, that woman's a bitch. I mean, that's the way I would think about it. It's like, oh, they have issues or something. It's like, no, they're expressing their nature. And then as I saw the beauty in the fire and that what makes it beautiful is that it is constantly moving and that that's a good metaphor for feminine energy is then I saw the container that the fire was in and that the fire was only allowed to flourish because the container was there and the container wasn't afraid of the fire and the container was strong enough to hold that fire and I thought fuck especially in relationship I need to be that container how do you do that you do that by

being still and being steady and so there's that whole thing was you know an hour of just tripping on that and then i looked at the moon and i just i had this realization oh my god the moon is feminine energy and the reason that it's illuminated is because the masculine giving energy of the sun is illuminating it. And that the moon in essence, almost doesn't exist to us from our perspective without the masculine. In other words, it goes cold and dies. And then I had all this sort of compassion

for women that have been harmed by the masculine that have shut it off and won't allow that into their life because it doesn't feel safe to them. And then again, it was like, wow, I need to be a safe light that allows the feminine to flourish and to feel safe. And that requires of me a lot of strength and to be unmovable in those situations. So there were so many lessons in that night of healing and then just really into that dynamic of the polarities

and at least getting a snapshot in those natural metaphoric sort of phenomenon that there's a template within nature that we can observe and follow now i'm not the moon i'm not the sun i'm not the fire i'm not the bricks around the fire but i get a sense of what it's like on an energetic level to be able to work within those parameters. So that was just insanely powerful. And then to summarize, the fourth and final night was, I think they call it a nada. It was just like, took two huge cups. And each night at Rhythmia, they give you different medicine

from different regions of South America. Oh, very cool. Yeah, so one night the medicine's from Peru, one night it's from Brazil, et cetera. There's one batch they cook there that they get the plants from different regions and actually brew it on premises in Costa Rica. And the last night it was some other medicine. It was like the special drink. I forget where it was from or whatever, but that was supposed to be the, like the dopest night. It's the longest, you get the biggest dose. I mean, it's the grand finale. And I had my two cups and I just laid there, dude, with just explosive diarrhea for like eight hours. And I

never got like high at all. There was no psychoactive effect. I couldn't even throw up to like get un-nauseous. I just laid there and was just nauseous and just having to surrender that this must be the experience I'm meant to have. And even I had no realizations. I wasn't crying. I wasn't laughing. I had no emotions. It was just like, oh man, wow. I got to just hang in there. This is just a different experience. And I got these three just amazingly transformative, beautiful, fun experiences the first three nights with a lot of healing and this is the fourth night then at the very end i had one quick glimpse and i saw myself in a hallway and then it appeared to be a hospital and then there was a door and i got the sense that behind that door i was being born and so naturally i ran out to the parking lot no No, I got in my car and got the fuck out of there. No, I was like, oh shit, that's me.

There's my mom's in there. And I opened the door and I watched myself being born and I'm the bloody little ball of flesh. And then I have the umbilical cord and then I'm all bloody and they put me on my mom's chest and she holds me for a minute, like literally a fucking minute. And then, oh man, it's so weird to talk about this stuff on a podcast, but

every time I do some shit like this and really open up, I get so many messages from people that find it valuable. It's important, brother. And so, and that's what I love about, you know, you and what you guys do here. Like you guys are super badass guys. It's like, you're a fucking warrior, dude. And you go there in these places, you know, which is just beautiful.

And I think when we all, not just men, but men and women, when we have the ability to go deep and do it in a hopefully tactful way publicly like this, that we give other people the permission to explore the deeper experiences of life. So anyway, so I'm on my mom's chest for a minute. And then the nurses whisk me away and take me in another room and take me away. And they put me in an incubator and just leave me alone in this room. And then that's just the end of it. And I'm fucking alone. There's no parents. there's no love I'm just like fully abandoned and it was not a good experience you know just like oh shit that was

the first thing in this incarnation that was the first thing I was abandoned and then I thought well I don't I don't know if that's what happened I mean in the vision it is what happened but I don't know the reality of it. So anyway, the next morning, or maybe even when I got out that night, I think I texted, yeah, that night I was like, hey, mom, heads up, I'm on ayahuasca. And I just had this vision. Could you validate any of the facts that have been presented? She texted me the next day and she said, that's exactly what happened, with the exception

that they wrapped you in a blanket first, and then they put you on my chest. Then they took you in the hall and your dad got to see you. Then they took you into an incubator and you were there for three days and no one could touch you. Damn. Yeah. And I'm not, you know, I'm not being melodramatic or feeling sorry for myself, but in natural human birth from an evolutionary point of view,

it's very uncommon that a mammal, a human mammal ape is born and not held by not only their mother, but other members of the tribe and the father and everyone around. I mean, that baby's going to be coddled and it's going to be feeling safe and feeling connected and have human touch and all of that, right? Yeah.

And so- All that stuff. Yeah. So, you know, here I am in some fluorescent fucking lights in an EMF hospital or whatever. I mean, I don't know what they had back then, but a very unnatural environment. But more than anything, I'm cut off from the love and nurturing that you need in those first few days. And so the good news is, is that in recognizing what happened and having my mom affirm that,

that there was, you know, a forgiveness to the medical system. There was a forgiveness of my mom, of my dad, an understanding of, you know, gee, maybe I have some abandonment issues. You think like I was born abandoned basically, you know, like a stork left me in another room without human contact. Not a big deal. Like I'm, I move on. I'm feel very connected to people. I have great intimacy in all my relationships and all that, but it was so beautiful to be shown that. And that little moment that was a 10 second vision or something, that moment probably shaped the rest of my life. And so that final ceremony that was a nada to me,

meaning nothing happened, this was a waste of time. It was all just for that. And I just had to keep surrendering and surrendering so the medicine could be like, I know this has been boring and all you do is shit all night long or rather urinate out of your butt, but here's something for you to see. Boom. And there's a little movie and you get to see the beginning of this lifetime began with being left alone.

And maybe that's something that you can embrace and work with and give yourself some compassion for when you feel alone as an adult 48 year old man that's supposed to be tough and be able to handle shit here's why it's hard to handle yeah at times but you can heal and you can recover from it so in a nutshell you know there's my there's my experience and i also want to say and i when i did my six hours of content where i i mean literally i'm walking around with a recorder in costa rica documenting the whole thing so if anyone wants to hear more it's there on the lifestylist podcast, shameless plug. But it is there. But one thing I'd like to say is that I'm having been someone who has been in

addiction recovery for a long, long time. And this was not something I took lightly. This was not an opportunity to go party. I would definitely not recommend someone who is trying to get sober and is new in that experience think that this is going to be the thing that keeps you sober. Although I know it does that for a lot of people. I would really be cautious about the people that you do it with, the setting, the shaman. This is not like a party drug. It's serious shit.

And to be able to be in the position where I can face those traumas and to be able to surrender into that medicine and not have it be a the position where I can face those traumas and to be able to surrender into that medicine and not have it be a negative experience, I think is largely due to a lot of the work that I have done in recovery, you know, and the therapy and all the things that I've done, the meditation, the neurofeedback, all that sitting in float tanks going like, is this boring? Oh, I'm boring. Wow. I need to learn how to be with myself, you know? So it's, I think the way I would frame it as like, oh, I had a successful ayahuasca because I think it's probably all successful. But I do

like to just give the disclaimer that I don't think it's necessarily for everyone at every time in life. Although when I was on the medicine, I was like, I got to call all my friends, my mom and dad, everyone needs to do this. So I will also say, I truly believe everyone on the planet would benefit from having a psychedelic experience like that because it was so profound. And there's just, it's such a shortcuts, maybe not a good euphemism for it, but it's a, it is a certain type of fast track that helps you to see stuff. But I think you really have to have the psychological framework in order to handle what you see, or maybe not because maybe the medicine's only going to show you what you can handle. But I would like to say, this is not something you

want to take lightly. You don't want to buy some ayahuasca off eBay and go sit in a bathtub and try to do this shit. This is serious stuff. And I think the set and setting and the intentions of the people serving the medicine and the energy level, the consciousness of the environment, of the retreat center, of wherever, is really, really important. Where I was, I mean, there was a lot of people. I've come back and told some of my cosmonauts, and they're like, how many people were in the ceremony? I'm like, I think like 70 people.

They're like, oh yeah, I would never do it like that. I'm like, I didn't give a fuck how many people were there. There could have been a thousand people in the room or one other person or no other people. I was in my own experience with the medicine. But what I did know is that the intentions of the people in the room and the shaman in the room was definitely positive and that there was a loving energy that pervaded that space and the whole experience. And I think it could be very negative if that was not the case. Yeah. You know, if you're a single woman and you think you're going to go to Peru and take a canoe out into the jungle

with a bunch of dudes with feathers on their head, I would be weary. You got to know. Aubrey talks about that too. It's perhaps the most important thing you could ever do in your life is to go to a place that's been vetted

by other people you trust. Yeah, for sure. That's the thing that I arrived at. And I remember Aubrey and I think even you talking about that. You know, like, yeah, I only go to certain people and it's a whole thing. That said, I mean, I think that it's just a really positive thing for mankind that the use of psychedelics in an intentional way like that is becoming kind of trendy and widespread. Of course, there's always a double-edged sword with things like that, because

then there are negative energies that can take advantage of gullible, naive spiritual seekers and exploit them in different ways. And there's always that tendency and possibility. But overall, I mean, can you imagine if more of our world leaders were able to see their trauma? No question. And to heal from that, the kind of world that we could live in. I mean, it's just incredible to get that sort of insight into the human experience and to really access those other dimensions where you realize that this table right here is not what we think it is, you know, that none of this is real. It's all just held together

by some vibrational force. And when you leave this vibrational force of the physicality that we think is real, quote, end quote, and you hang out for a while in another dimension that's non-linear, that's non-physical, it changes your orientation to life forever, period. We could stop right there, brother. That's fucking, that's beautiful, man. I love it.

And then so true. But shit, I think we've gone, what, an hour and a half? I'm going to take a quick potty break and then we'll jump on your podcast for more. Sounds good, dude. Awesome, brother. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing the tough stuff. It really is important for people to hear. And I got, man, I got choked up myself. So I have some more to talk about on your podcast. Mission accomplished. Thank you, brother. Thanks, Kyle. Thank you guys for tuning in to the Kyle Kingsbury podcast with my man, Luke Story. I had an absolute blast with him and got welled up,

got choked up because that's what it's all about. I mean, sitting across from somebody, you really can get a little deeper than through Skype. I mean, I've got nothing against the guys that are doing Skype interviews, but that's something that I'm quite passionate about is sitting face-to-face with people, and it's for this very reason.

Luke is so raw, open, and honest, and just an incredible person, and I'm glad you all tuned in.