Sense of Soul - Graffiti Artist and Hollistic Doctor

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Today we have with us Dr. Robert Ciprian, the author of Heal Profoundly: A Graffiti Thug's Transformation to Holistic Doctor, a memoir of Dr. Ciprian journey of healing and dedication to be of service, that tells the story of his spiritual journey from being a gang member to having a 20+ year successful career in medicine. Dr. Robert grew up on the rough streets of Queens, New York, where he dropped out of high school to become a graffiti artist and member of a violent street gang.  As a gang member, Dr. Robert was stabbed and shot at dozens of times, had his teeth knocked out, head split open, and is lucky to be alive today.  Up until his early twenties, Dr. Robert also suffered from poor health — allergies, asthma, bronchitis, digestive problems, and a weak immune system were normal for him, and there were times he spent weeks in bed because of illness. Due to his poor health and destructive behavior, Dr. Robert seemed destined to achieve little in life until he decided to seek more out of it. He joined medical school to learn better ways to treat his medical problems and has been studying various healing, energetic and spiritual modalities for 25+ years. https://healprofoundly.com Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna and Mande’s personal mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Try KACHAVA! Your Daily Superblend. For your gut, your brain, your muscles, your skin, your hair, your heart. Your whole health. Use this link below!

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Hey friends, if you are looking for ad-free Sense of Soul episodes, you can find them at Sense of Soul Patreon. Become a monthly member at any level. You will also have access to our monthly SOS Sacred Circles, our mini-series, merch, and

much more. And it's a great way to help support our podcast so that we can continue to bring you inspiring episodes twice a week with our enlightened guests from all around the world. Check out our Patreon. Today we have with us Dr. Robert Ciprian, a well-known graffiti artist who through many synchronicities was led to a greater understanding of health and healing. And he became a holistic doctor and teacher. And he's here to tell us all about his new book, Heal Profoundly, a graffiti thugs transformation to holistic doctor, a memoir of his journey of healing and dedication to being of service. And we're super honored to have him with us today.

Hi, how are you? Good, good. Super excited to have you on today. Oh, thanks for having me on. I was checking out what you guys have built. It's quite impressive. Yeah. Thank you.

Craziest part is we are just two suburban moms that started podcasting in our closet, literally no clue what the hell we were doing and how to edit or what platform to use and started sharing our story. And then the next thing we knew, we were just incredibly blessed with guests like you. It meant to happen. So I have a story for you guys. My son, Ethan, who is on the spectrum, he's 18 years old, comes down and he says, mom, I want to start a podcast. And I was like, really? And he wants to talk about Marvel and stuff like that. I said, well, I think it's a great idea. So we sat there and we joked around and his name is Ethan,

but we call him E and he wants to do it on Fridays. So he says it's going to be Freaky Fridays. Shanna, I think that that's a fabulous idea. He has no filter. He loves cuss words. Good for him. I think he should do it. I would listen. That would be amazing. That would be so cool. A couple of years ago, he wanted to be a bingo number caller. Yeah, like this boy won $3,000 this year in bingo number caller. Yeah. Like this boy won $3,000 this year. Wow. There we go. You know, the amazing thing is, okay.

He's looking at what genuinely gives him enthusiasm. And I always tell people like when I'm coaching people, working people, I'm like, you should be doing what gives you enthusiasm, what you really want to do. Like you should think back to when you were a kid, what you want to do because he has no filter. He's just like, boom, he wants to do this. And that's his energy. That's what it is.

Isn't that amazing? You're so right. He lives his life that way. You know, my older kids always admire it. God, I wish I didn't care. Like he doesn't. Such a teacher. I mean, yeah. I'm with you. I saw the passion in his eyes for it. Like, God, I wish I didn't care. Like he doesn't. Such a teacher. I mean, yeah.

I'm with you. I saw the passion in his eyes for it. That is so amazing. It's just, everybody has a gift. Everyone just has a calling, but you know, too many people like, well, let me get a job with good benefits. Let me go work my way up the corporate ladder. But no, just like to see other people do that. And that excites me. I'm going to do this. I mean, that is just amazing. And I think that's a good way to dive into our conversation with you. What was your passion when you were a kid?

Yeah, for me, like I hated school. I couldn't stand being in school. It was just like, why am I here? Why am I doing this? I'm just daydreaming. I had learning disabilities with math. I couldn't like work with numbers. I actually had to make numbers into shapes in my mind to be able to do math. But if I'm at home back in the day, like, you know, back then we had like PBS on TV, I would be watching PBS documentaries and just, I would absorb everything

from them, all these details, how things work in the world, how the body works, how science works. So I just started absorbing things on that level. And then I started going to the library when I was a kid. And I would just get out all these books on like whatever science or airplanes or jet engines or earth science, just whatever. And I remember my grandfather, like pick up one book I got on airplanes and he starts like quizzing me. So what, you know, what's this part of the jet engine? I'm like, Oh, turbine and this and that. Like I knew everything in there. He's like, wow, pretty impressive. And so I absorbed really what I was interested in, but you put me

in school. I'm like, I don't need this stuff. Why are you making me, you know, stuff this down and memorize this? I have no excitement about this at all. But there were so many things I was excited about. Yeah, you sound exactly like my daughter, Kinsley. She's 10. She's an artist. And she's like, can you please protesting in SMAP? I don't want it. Everyone's an individual in a standardized world. That is an issue. It doesn't include everyone. And so it's really hard to fit in that box for some people. It was for me too. Yeah. As an artist, I still have issues with my art. I've had a lot of trauma with my art starting from kindergarten and through elementary school,

because it wasn't the way that, you know, the class lesson was so, oh, you know, Robert's not doing it right. He's doing it wrong. But these people are doing it right. So it gave me such low self esteem about my art. And even till this day, you know, you guys probably know that I've been in the graffiti movement, I've been internationally known for that, even to this day, I'll do a painting, you know, or artwork or whatever it is. And my good friends that know me, they'll laugh like, Oh, you hate this one,. And I'm like, well, actually I like this one a little bit. And they're like, wait, what'd you say you like this? So every time I do art, I feel it's inferior. It's not what everyone else expects. And I'm still trying to get over that from my programming from far back

as kindergarten. Wow. Yeah. You know, I saw the picture of you, you know, you had kind of like this vanilla ice vibe going, standing against your graffiti with your hat and you kind of look like Marky Mark. Do people tell you that? Yeah. Yeah. I will say I love it. I loved your graffiti. I think it's mesmerizing and it's really popular right now, too.

Like my teenagers will go drive all over the city to take pictures with their friends against the art and the graffiti on the walls in Denver. They're starting to really appreciate it. Like I went down to Denver on 16th street mall and was just riding around on scooters with my husband one night for date night. And we were going through this tunnel and I stopped and I never really appreciated graffiti before, but nowadays it's just like, they've taken it to another level. And I look at it different. I don't look at it as like vandalism. It's truly like this beautiful art. And a lot of it has a lot of meaning behind it now. So it's really cool. Talk about what graffiti art did for you. Graffiti art. I started off Queens, New York, just young kids were

right on the wall of a marker or something like that. And then we started doing bigger and bigger things. But I really wanted to get into the art aspect of it. I remember I was a little kid. My grandmother would take me into Manhattan to see the museums and stuff. I remember waiting for the train one day as a little kid. Maybe I was, I don't know, four or five years old. And the train just pulls in. It's a hot, summery day. I remember it's just kind of humid and hot and you know the subway doesn't smell that great this train just pulls in just colors colors colors and stopping right in front of me is this huge as tall as the train

eight foot tall Howard the Duck character Howard the Duck Howard the Duck and I'm just staring at this thing it just stopped right in front of me my grandma's trying to pull me in a train I'm like why is this here just like blown away it gave me such a visceral reaction to me later in life I just want to do the art even if people couldn't read it couldn't know what it it was. I want people to just look at it and have a visceral reaction. That was my only purpose for the art. But also back then, I had very bad low self-esteem. I was getting beat up by a lot of kids in the neighborhood, dating girls. I couldn't even make that happen. So I didn't have a lot of power in life. So I used the artwork and graffiti to actually make me someone that was known, someone that was looked up to, someone to give me power in life. That's why I use graffiti for,

to make me somebody. Because if you would do graffiti in the right way, you would be known all throughout the city, not only by the graffiti artists, but other people going to nightclubs, people who know who you are, just random, you know, people see your work and recognize it. Or also like me, I got into some international art magazines and also been in some videos about graffiti and stuff like that. I was even on the news a few times in New York about graffiti. Yeah. So it gave me a lot of power and self-esteem. And then later that's really originally why I went to become a doctor too, is because of the self-esteem and power aspect. Wow. Speaking of wanting to be

known. So my husband and his friend used to, you know, just pick up cans of paint and go basically vandalize. And they went and drew some graffiti on their school. What a great idea. And his best friend, Ben, who's still his best friend. I'm going to totally call him out Ben Jackson, but he wrote Ben Jackson was here on the school. So Kurt looked over and was like, what in the hell dude, you just freaking got us in so much trouble. So yeah, the following Monday, they tried to like black it out. They could still see it. They got in trouble. We still give them shit about it. You know what? We have the exhibit of Banksy. Is that how you pronounce it?

Banksy. Banksy. Yeah. And we do have also Meow Wolf right now. So we have got a lot of cool art going on in Colorado. And I talk to people who usually wouldn't be so into art. And people are now like vibing towards art. In Colorado, usually it's like the nature. And you know, every every Labor Day I think they

have an art festival in Denver called the Colorado Crush right no yeah so you gotta check that out Labor Day weekend they bring in all these artists they have sponsors they have live performances of music I went and painted it once I think back in 2013 or something like that it's a great thing to just see all the artists they're working it's a beautiful thing oh my gosh I can't wait yeah I'm from New Orleans so like people doing art on the streets there that's just like a part of it like the art is about the people there really connects you like whenever you see someone outside like drawing it's always like jazz or something, but then you have jazz actually live right there. So what were you drawing? Like, I'm curious to see like what your mind was putting together as graffiti. What kind of graffiti was it? Was it your name?

Yeah. So I took on the name in the late 1980s of greed. It's a weird thing. You have to have a name. Well, back in the day, it was a lot of honor. You have to have a name. Well, back in the day, it was a lot of honor. You have to have a name no one else has. And you want a name that people are going to remember very easily because as a graffiti artist, you're almost like an advertising exec. You want your name to be remembered. People got to see it. They have to recognize it quickly. You go through all these motions of like, how do I become famous quick? So really smart graffiti artists, they would go through all these steps. And like, till today,

I say they're some of the best ad execs ever for just getting their name up in the right places in the right way. So people just know it without even reading it. They just see the shape of it. They like, they know who it is. You brand yourself in a way. So no one else had the name Greed.

I went through a few other names before that, but I was like, well, this is great because it's a name everyone remember. I kind of liked the letters except for. I went through a few other names before that, but I was like, well, this is great because it's a name. Everyone remember, I kind of liked the letters except for two E's next to each other. That was a bit monotonous for me, but I made it all work. I always did two different E's. Yeah, very quickly after that, what I was doing became a lot more famous and I got a lot more recognition.

So I was always painting the name and within the name, I'd make different dimension and colors and stuff like that. But I had friends that were like real amazing artists that were trained in school and they did a lot of other work around us. Like I do work with them and they would do like all the caricatures and the backgrounds and stuff like that. I was a little bit more of the abstract artists and they were more more the real life artists. And I would help them with some of the things here and there, but we collaborated and did a lot of things together like that. That's awesome. Shanna, our logo would be really easy to put up on like a bridge or a wall, just spray those dots. Yeah. Or SOS. But you know, what did greed mean to you?

Why did you pick greed? It was just something that stood out that you could remember, you know, what did greed mean to you? Why did you pick greed? It was just something that stood out that you can remember, you know, and now later in life, after greed for like 30 years, I realized, you know, everything you say and think has an effect on you and the world. So now I started doing some other artwork of like, the name to kind the number two in front of it and then kind like kind or I started doing just you know do a painting that says love or things like that so I'm like I got to start putting more positive energy into my artwork instead of just the greed it's funny when I became a doctor all the graffiti guys have said oh now you're dr greed I'm like oh that's one of my instagrams is dr greedy oh my gosh that's one of my Instagrams is Dr. Greedy. Oh, my gosh, that's funny. So this

art, you know, made you famous, but it also took you into some dark places. You got involved in some other like gangs and stuff in New York, correct? Your title of your book does say thug. Yeah, so it's just where I grew up in New York. I mean, when we're kids, like elementary school, it's like, oh, riding bicycles in the street, playing ball, it's all good and innocent and fun. But as we got a bit older, you know, people start experimenting with drinking and drugs. And before you know it, some of my friends are dealing drugs. Before you know it, we're fighting some other neighborhood from, you know, a half a mile away, we're having fights with them, they were carrying weapons. And then, you know, it gets to the point where there's stabbings and shootouts and, you know, people getting beat up by other gangs and police and everything. And it just grew

into that out of nothing. It wasn't like something that was planned or gone after, but I got into the graffiti because of just hanging out with these people. So kind of the violence happened first. Right. The boys in the hood are always hard. And I grew up in a lot of that too. I grew it up in a lot of the music industry in New York also. It all goes together, you know, the graffiti and the hip hop music and the rap and everything. It all went together. Yeah. So how did you end up a doctor then? What was that transition period looking like? I always was very intuitive, very empathic. Like some things would happen.

I would just be up all night, just kind of replaying it in my head or just, you know, awful things that I experienced. And I was just pushed out. I was pushed out. I've had several spiritual experiences when I was a very young child. And then when I got in my teens and 20s, when I was hanging out with all this stuff, I had a few big, really spiritual experiences, like crazy stuff happened, like call them angels or people show up or whatever. Like I had this person show up one day, he was dressed as a

priest and the collar and everything kind of gray hair glasses. Me and all my friends are hanging out and everyone's high and we're play fighting and people are getting hurt. And this guy walks around the corner and walks in the middle about eight of us and just starts lecturing us all. And then he points right at me and I feel like his eyes just connect with me, like literally my soul. And it's like, you have to straighten your life out. You have to get on your path. There's important things you got to do. And I just looked at everyone again and he left. He walked around the corner and all my friends started laughing. Like, who the heck was that guy? What was that? Like, I was just in shock for some reason. Like he, you know, there was something inside of me he connected with. I got to look around the corner, see where he's going. And I turned the corner. There's nobody there.

It's just an empty sidewalk, empty street. There's nobody there. And I'm like, where did he go? So I've had experiences like that, unbelievable experiences, like physical and real world, intuitive, energetic. And it just, it pushed me out. And these ideas start coming up to become a doctor. So I'm like, all right, I'll be a chiropractor. I'll work on football players. That's like a really kind of something for my ego. That's great. And I moved to school in Los Angeles and immediately I got deathly ill, very sick. And looking into what could help me, the medical doctors didn't help. And they never helped through my whole childhood. I was sick my whole childhood, asthma, allergies, digestive issues, all that.

So I started searching out some more natural and holistic doctors. I started going to all these post-grad classes while I was still just in the beginnings of my education and learning all this amazing stuff. And it worked amazing on other people. I was working on other people for what I was learning and miracles were happening, but nothing helped me. Then one day, a couple of years later, I saw this doctor who was always at all these different seminars and post-grad classes.

And a lot of the doctors that were teaching talked about this one guy. And I'm watching him work on somebody. And he has them walk back and forth in the room. He'll do a few things here and there, like chiropractic or energy or emotions. He'll have them walk again. And this man is walking back and forth across the room. His body is changing as he's walking. His posture is changing.

He's walking differently. You could see he's changing and healing as this doctor's working on him. And I was blown away. I was like, what is this? And he was my first big mentor to help me to learn this stuff, which I consider as profound medicine, profound healing stuff. Things are just like, you go there, there's a pretty good chance of your problem is it's going to get fixed so I started having all these mentors a series of mentors through my life after that spirit just kind of guided me like this person that person this person and still to this day I'm still learning unbelievable things and being introduced to amazing concepts and people like whenever I felt enthusiasm about something I just went that way. Like, you know, talking about your son,

feeling this enthusiasm, I want to do this, you know, that's what I felt. And I just kept following enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm. And I had many big roadblocks, many big problems in life. And I always learned also, when you have this big roadblock and problem, that's a choice to stay there, to stay in your problem, to stay the victim, or get yourself above it with some hard work. And I've always learned when something bad happens, this is good. I have a choice. Something good could come out of this. I've always taken it that way too. Once I get past the first emotional issue that's going on with it, but like, all right, here we go. Let's make this happen. So when you were younger, you didn't have dreams to be the doctor then?

Oh, I came from a family of no professionals. My father was an electrical engineer. He worked in also machine shops and stuff like that. My grandfather on one side of the family drove a cement truck that poured cement for buildings in New York City. My other grandfather worked as a postal worker. So I grew up like lower middle class. I had no guidance for this. I had to

figure it out on my own. It's such a great story. I mean, going from a high school dropout, you were involved with some pretty serious stuff. You were stabbed, you had your head split open. And then so I'm assuming you had to go back and get what like your GED and then start basically from scratch to become a doctor. Yeah, I took my GED I scored so high. They asked, why didn't you just stay in high school? I'm asked, why didn't you just stay in high school? I'm like, I didn't want to stay in high school. Yeah. Yeah.

Shanna just sent me a podcast recently about how there's going to be more children like you that with all of this stimulation between phones and life in general, the speed that we're going, these kids, their brains have become rewired to that stimulation. And so if they go into these classrooms that aren't evolving the education, these children are going to be bored. And the younger generations, they don't fuck around. They're just going to be like, screw this and walk out. You know what?

It really was about the visual stimulation of the video games unless these schools start to figure out how to create something as good as nintendo has to keep their attention and get them to thrive like they do with that yeah or real life hands-on education taking on the real world and actually doing things instead of sitting in a room somewhere and a chair eight hours for the day no like you know bring them out to really learn in the real world that's where the real learning happens for me as a doctor and I was a post-grad teacher for almost 15 years I would always tell all the students you're not learning a lot in school in school you're getting your degree your your diploma, your doctorate, whatever. But the real learning happens once you get out of school in real life.

And I would tell people in school, find mentors now who are doing what you want to do when you get out and start hanging out with them now, because that's who you really learn from is the real world life, not from, you know, be closed up in a box somewhere and just information thrown at you. Yeah. There's a lot of kids right now that are really struggling that are younger, especially that it's amazing because they have an opinion. And it's like, I feel like we didn't have an opinion because it wasn't an option or a choice or our right as a child to go against a system.

And I mean, my mom even just told me the other day, she goes, I don't know what's wrong with your generation. We just believe what the government tells us. And I was like, oh, my God, that was the problem. But I mean, my daughter, she absolutely has voiced to me that she doesn't see the need for a lot of the things that she's learning. And she's 10. Good. School gives her such a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that she yesterday broke out with a full-on hive reaction. She turns red from her torso all the way to her neck. Yeah. We've been trying to chase, you know, what is the cause? And it hasn't happened since school end.

And it happened yesterday. I called Mandy. I said, I figured out what's wrong. She had to go to meet her teacher for this next school year. I said, she's allergic to school. I mean, what is your thought on that? I mean, is that just an immune response to stress? It's a very complex question. And let me just run through it. Okay. Now, when you're working holistically with people, you have to consider everything in the person's world. You got to consider maybe there's something the child's breathing in, being exposed to that's actually causing that reaction in the building. Maybe it's the carpet, maybe it's painted, something like that. So you got to consider that too. You got to consider, yes, mental, emotional.

There's a lot of health issues, many, many, many that are triggered by the mind. We create an anchor in our mind and that could set off an allergy, even a migraine headache, you know, pain in the neck or back that could set off digestive issues. Anything possible can be set off from an emotional anchor that's stored somewhere in the subconscious. So it could just be school in general. It could also just be that there's so many stresses coming up that your child's building up that, hey, you're just putting another one on top. And now that's kind of too much for them to handle. It's kind of like, all right, if you have that much stress, you just add a little bit

more, that cup's going to overflow. And then boom, a health problem shows up. That's not going away just out of nowhere. And it could be accumulation of several different things. So there's so much to look at with that. Definitely. Does a holistic doctor add on these other modalities, healing modalities to a regular education as a doctor? The way it really works, you have to become a doctor first. You got to pick what

profession you want to be in. You know, it could be medical, it could be chiropractic like me, it could be naturopathic, it could be Chinese medicine, it could be whatever, just being a doctor. And a lot of people do holistic work and they're not doctors. But for me and the organization I worked with, you need a license to diagnose before they take you steps further. And I went way outside this organization I used to teach for also, I got into the really woo-woo crazy stuff way beyond what they actually teach. So yeah, first just becoming a doctor and then you start learning other modalities too. Just depends what you gravitate toward, what you want to focus on, but you got to kind of have a

good awareness of everything to really truly be holistic. So what are some of the other modalities that you use? Yeah, well, I don't know if you saw my website, but I have that little pyramid of wellbeing. So to me, that's the basics. So I have this image of a four-sided pyramid, and each one of those sides of the pyramid, the base, are a different aspect of our health. One's the structural health, like our muscles and bones and joints and even our physical organs in our body, like anything that's kind of a physical structure in our body, that's one big aspect of health. If the physical structure is damaged or misaligned or not formed properly, you have a health

issue. Another one is the biochemistry of the body. Let's say like your hormones, your digestion, your neurotransmitters, your immune system, your blood, your lymphatic system. These are all biochemistry aspects of your body. And that can become imbalanced with too little of something like a deficiency or too much of something, a toxicity. Number three, you have the mental emotional. Emotions are like something that happens that kind of gives you a feeling and mental is how your mind operates

in the present time for making choices and doing things. So if there's an imbalance in that too, you got some sort of major health issue. And number four is the electromagnetic and the energy. So energy naturally of our body, like our aura, our chakras, our acupuncture meridians, but also the electromagnetics in our life that also can affect those and other spiritual influences on the energies of our body. So those four things make up kind of all of our health issues. Like if there's a health issue, it's got to be in one of those four categories. Now, what holds all these together at the top of the pyramid, the peak is our willpower because without our willpower, nothing's going to happen in life. Without our willpower, we're not

going to exercise. Without our willpower, we're not going to eat right. Without our willpower, nothing's going to happen in life. Without our willpower, we're not going to exercise. Without our willpower, we're not going to eat right. Without our willpower, we're not going to focus on how we want our brain to work or to work on our emotions. Without our willpower, our energy won't bloom and be this beautiful, healthy structure that's kind of multi-dimensional around us that actually feeds and creates what our physical body is. So our willpower holds all that stuff together. The hardest people to heal are the ones without the willpower to heal. The easiest people to heal are the ones like, oh, tell me what to do. I'm doing it. Like, boom, they go ahead and do it. Just everything happens, you know? So that's the big deciding factor in health is the willpower. You know, years ago, when we first started our podcast,

it was actually on an episode that we did going back to school. So it was probably like right now, but we talked about how our brains don't even develop into like self-regulation. And some of these things don't develop even fully until we're like mid twenties or for some. And so how can we teach this, right? These younger generations who are so open for it too. It's just with the right role models because children are going to just replicate what they see. So that is why if you don't have the proper role models growing up it's harder for you you have to get your role models more from like tv or movies or books or now internet and all this stuff so

that could be you know a lot of issues we see we are such learning machines and from one to six years old the child's literally like in a hypnotic state and they're in a super learning phase like one to six so whatever happens to 106 that is getting hardwired in, you know, it could still be changed and work with, but that's hardwired in. That's what they're, they're seeing everything in their life. They're like, this is the way to be. And they're going to mimic that. And there's also an intuitive part to learning too. So kids pick up on vibes.

If you say one thing, but you're feeling another, they're going to go with the feeling. They're going to see right behind what's going on and go with the feeling so that's the whole thing is just the right role models they can stimulate they can we can get to that will power a lot quicker i mean i see them willpower and like self-control like together because you have to have that willpower is like being able to say no to a temptation right or make a choice it is to say okay i'm only gonna have ice cream once or twice a week not every night you know what i mean so yeah that's that's willpower you know several months ago i

had people that came to town and this guy he's like a nightclub owner in dc and he comes to my i'm like yeah it'd be great to see you come on here well after the first night of hanging out with him i'm like I can't hang out this guy all week. He's going to kill me. So I hung out from two times. He was here. I'm like, oh, I'm busy.

Oh, I got to work. No, I can't stay out till four in the morning again. Like that's his normal life. And I'm like, I'd love to see you, but I can't do that. Sorry. Yeah. I'd like to jump back to, you said you were really sick. Now, clearly you had to heal yourself before you could start healing others. What were you going up against? Like what was eating at your immune system? What was

happening with you? And what did you do holistically to heal yourself? So growing up as a child, like I mentioned, a lot of lung issues like asthma, bronchitis, had a lot of allergies, had a lot of digestive issues. Those were all brought upon by emotional stresses. A lot of things just kind of built up and compounded from there. Because when I got in my teens and 20s, I did a lot of things I thought were kind of fun, but also very unhealthy for my body. So I had to get a lot of detoxification done too. Plus the constant spray painting and breathing in the aerosol. Like now I wear a big respirator mask that like does like 10 micron filters or something like that. But back then I just spray painted and

literally it's a joke from graffiti artists. We go blow our nose and colors would come out later, you know, like, so I had to get the mental emotional fixed up, but, and this started with that doctor that I started working with. He started mentoring me at one of these conferences. I asked him, Hey, you know, can I come in your office and see what you're doing? He's like, no, I don't let students in my office. He was very like, you know, like, no, very businesslike. And I'm like, okay. Like, cause a lot of doctors like, sure, come in, I'll show you stuff, you know? And he's like, no. So then I'm like, okay, well, I have all these digestive issues going on, breathing stuff. I can't focus.

There's several days a month. I can't even get out of bed and function. I can't even eat because I'll come to my office. I'll fix you like just that nonchalantly. And I'm like, wow, like something was like on one end, either he's a jerk and he's like, just come to my office or the other. And he's so confident that, oh yeah, I'll fix you. Just come over. So I went to his office. I was in school at the time in LA and his office was in Las Vegas. I drove up there, got worked on by him for about two hours, worked on this emotional stuff, spiritual stuff, checked out what was going on with my intestines, looked at toxicity issues. He did all this different stuff to me, chiropractic, energy work, naturopathic work, work with colors and lights and all sorts of everything, everything. I left that office, I felt my body was like 30 pounds

lighter, I felt like I was walking on air. Everything around me was so vivid, the colors of the sky and the grass and the trees. And I was in Las Vegas, I didn't even notice there was grass and trees there when I got there. Yeah, I'm like piece of natural nature just glowing at me and such a vibrancy. And I got home, my ex-girlfriend at the time, I walked in the house and she was doing dishes. She nearly dropped the dishes looking at me and I go, what's wrong? She goes, what do you do to you? And I'm like, well, he worked on me. She goes, you're different. Your face is different. You scared me. You walked in the house. I didn't know who it was at first. So my whole body shifted and changed from the work that he did on me. So that started me realizing, number one, I need more work like this from him. And number two taught me

how to eat right drink water and take a few different supplements to help support what he just did to keep it going that way. Sounds like it was almost like the catapult of like a spiritual awakening. Yeah, that wasn't that I had that later. He took a lot of energies off me to like demonic energies and stuff like that, too. When you pull these things off, it just allows the energy in your body to flow again naturally because they lock those things. It allows your mind to work again naturally. And now the muscles of your body, they relate to every different organ and acupuncture and all that. So all the muscles of your body are going to change. It's going to change your posture and your face and everything because they're all related to what's inside.

So yeah, so that's what gets the outer looking different almost instantly too. And we'll also solve all those aches and pains and, you know, posture issues. All that could change almost instantly if you do the right things. Well, so just a little bit about Shannon and I, you know, we started this journey because we were calling each other with all these crazy symptoms, joint pain. They were telling us we both had fibromyalgia. She had lost her father. I was in a coma from an asthma attack and had respiratory failure. So it was like, was it trauma? Was it stress? Was it, you know, but we didn't want to accept fibromyalgia as a diagnosis. And we had ringing in the ears. We had all of these crazy symptoms, like zapping on my skin, like just weird things. I remember I was smelling something. I had cat scans.

Yeah. We, you know, it was just like, we only felt like we could call each other because everyone else, like my husband and my children were like, you're a hypochondriac. Like what the hell's wrong with you? So her and I started talking and then we started researching and it was like, you know what? We're not going to accept this. We are going to do something different. And it really catapulted us into awakening truly. And when you described like the grass and the colors, that's really how I felt after my near-death experience.

And then through our journey of awakening, it was like, just everything became more alive and more vibrant. Every obstacle that you encounter in life, my belief is that it's a gift. It's an opportunity. If you take it as an opportunity, even ill health, it was an opportunity to me to learn these things because whatever worked for me, I mastered it and I've used it to help others. And I used to teach a lot of these things too. And for you, you guys, you took your issues and you created this, what you're doing here, you know? So yeah, it's all these problems in life are always a gift if you treat it that way. Yeah, for sure. Anytime I have pain, I'm like, what's going on? What do I need

to give attention to? What needs healing? You know, what may be locked in my muscles that I had no idea was there. And same thing with some of the emotions come up and I'm triggered, you know, Oh, okay. What is this? Need to deal with it. And, you know, just shifting that perception on that duality. It's the same with everything. It's like, there's going to be a lot of good that's going to come out of that pain. There's coming out of it, you know? So, yeah. You know, I was sitting here thinking about how it's so hard, you know, in life, you're constantly getting hit with challenges. Like I always tell people, I feel like God is always throwing curve balls at me. I had almost 12 years of sobriety and I relapsed like a couple months ago. And when you were talking about your pyramid, I started thinking about how mentally

and emotionally I was just completely overwhelmed. That was the part of the pyramid that was just crumbling. And what was interesting for me, it wasn't crumbling because of bad things that were happening in my life. It was crumbling because of all of these amazing things that were happening in my life, but that were very stressful, like graduations, my daughter leaving for college, my son moving back in, moving houses.

So, but it's hard. It is really hard to keep all sides in that foundation. What do people do when they're hit with these roadblocks? You just got to figure out in life for you, because again, everyone's individual, like kids in school, everyone's individual of how their life operates. You got to figure out what you need personally

and what you are gravitating to, to get past those roadblocks. Yeah, when you become overwhelmed, you want to disassociate from life and your body. So that's when you get into addictions and it could be alcohol. It could be drugs. It could be working out. People have workout addictions. I've seen it. You know, people work out 10 times a week. You have shopping addictions. You have, you know, internet, social media addictions. People use that to escape when things get to be too much.

Number one, the most important thing is meditation. And if you don't have time to meditate, you have to meditate twice as much because you need it even more. But when you can meditate, that's what it's about is just allowing your nervous system and the spiritual aspects to meditation, but also physiological. And if you just look at the physiology, if someone's an atheist, like, oh, there's no God, there's no nothing. If you just look at the physiology, it just relaxes your nervous system. It puts you into a rest and digest pattern. Heart rate is lower. Everything works more efficiently. Your brain could think a lot easier. You burn fat. That's a good plus. So just meditation could be a huge step. Now,

if you're on the spiritual side of things, yeah, you can get a lot of information, a lot of ideas, a lot of solutions that way manifest new things in your world. So you think when this is in your world, you might not have seen before that could help too. I'm constantly being pulled to new ways even to help me because I still have a lot of stuff going on, you know, and every, you know, once in a while, I'm just sitting there so grateful of, wow, I just got to this kind of new spot where I could deal with these new things I have going on. It's just beautiful. It's amazing. And that's just it. Everyone's individual. Oh my gosh. I need a doctor like you. Can we clone you and put you in Colorado?

First of all, I love your willpower that you drove from LA to Vegas. I don't know if I have the willpower to drive to, are you in New York still? No, I'm in Miami now. Oh, I'll come to Miami for sure. I dropped my daughter off at Boca Raton. Oh, cool. Yeah. I'll be coming out a lot. You know, I admire your work. I think there needs to be a million more of you. Just everything you just said aligns so much with Shannon and I,

the synchronicity piece, the spiritual piece. I just love that there's doctors like you out there. I feel like the shift is happening in the world. And especially as younger generations are going to be reaching out to doctors like you. I love that you have the experience behind it too. You have the story behind it. I'm excited to read your book, Heal Profoundly, A Graffiti Thug's Transformation to a Holistic Doctor. I loved the cover.

How'd you pick that cover? I made it. You did? Yeah, I made it. You know what else I loved about your website that I really kind of just wanted you to go over is how you broke down the word holistic. Mandy and I are always breaking down words and talking about language and all these things. She does it a lot. So I would love to know, you know, what got you to the place to look at that word and

break it down the way you did? I studied a lot of neuro-linguistic programming. I studied a lot of hypnosis. I look at everything. I look at everything. And I realized, why do people say some things? Why are we told some things? Every word has specific meanings to our subconscious. So I really try to watch what I say, what I listen to, what I look at, because it all has an influence. And people say, oh, yeah, I'm holistic. I'm taking echinacea for my cold. And I'm like, well, that's not holistic. That's just a natural remedy. It could be green allopathy. It's just like going to a medical doctor instead of saying, take this drug, take this herb. I mean, it's the same thing. It's not looking at all the other reasons why you might have a cold.

So people never understood really, or very few understand what actually holistic really means. So I wanted to like literally spell it out. And I used to have a brochure in my office when I was in DC, when I was, before I moved here to Miami. And now I'm just working virtually with people over the internet. I'm going back into physical practice though. But in DC, I had a brochure that had that holistic, like spelt out on it and people would just take it and look at it, like put it in their bag and

leave with it. And because they were just like, wow. Okay. Like it was a different concept for them. So break it down. Yeah. I was going to say, what is wholism? Well, it's looking at the whole. Now, when you're trying to help an individual with something, and it could be health, it could be career-wise, it could be financial, it could be relationship-wise, it could be anything. And I deal with all those things because, again, that is holistic. You know, someone might have migraines because of their job or their partner or something they're eating or whatever. So you got to look at everything. You got to look at the whole world for that person. I got to sit down and have a conversation with them and find out from their

childhood and even what was going on with their parents before them and what kind of world they grew up in and what are their dreams and aspirations and are they on track for that or no and even though everything looks good with their partner are they really doing good are they really fulfilled I got to look at all these things and it gets to the point where I do a lot of coaching with people too and sometimes I just do that I get on zoom or phone with people and I'm just coaching them helping them figure out for themselves, what do they need? Where are they, you know, not fulfilling that? We got to do that too. But also, all right, maybe there's a disruption in someone's diet. Maybe they're not getting something they need or doing too much of something. Maybe they're doing too much of something good. People are like, oh, I eat kale

every day for the past five, 10 years. And I'm like, first thing we're going to do is take you off a kale. What do you mean? It's the best thing ever. I'm like, if you've been eating every day for five or 10 years, you have a major sensitivity to it. We're gonna get it out of your system for a while, at least a couple months. And our whole life can change

just because they over-kaled. You know what I mean? Everything should be in moderation. Nothing should be overdone. Everything should be in balance, especially in the world we're in, because we have so many more stresses now than we had 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, even 20 years ago. We have so many more stresses today.

So we get a lot more reactive to things where we didn't used to do that in the past. Holistic is also looking at anthropologically, who are we? You know, 100,000 years ago, what would we be eating? How would we be sleeping? How would we be exercising? What would our relationships and social structures look like? This is all part of it too. Because if we go back to those natural ways that we're literally hardwired to be, it takes a huge amount of stress off of our life and what's going on too. So it's just some aspects of being holistic. Also being holistic is if I'm working with someone and I see something I really don't like that's dangerous and I've done this before, I want you

to go to the emergency room and get checked out. Or I want you to go for a psych eval and get checked out because being a doctor is part of being holistic too. Just the standard regular medical stuff too. You got to look at that also because that's part of being holistic. To know how to look at blood work, to know how to do a diagnosis on someone, to know how to look at someone's vital science. That's all important too. Start student holistic, then start with the W. I thought about that. Yeah, I could use you. I feel like with my asthma, there's definitely underlying issues. I was at Olive Garden with my dad last night,

and he was talking about when I was like two years old, what a mess I was. And I was always crying, and I'd hide under the tables. And I've always heard about like, what a whiny, horrible child I was. You know, I suffered from asthma from age two. No one even taught me how to breathe. I didn't even discover the vagus nerve until like two years ago. Like why didn't no one ever explain to me like what chanting and stuff would do for me as an asthmatic? Why is it that no doctor ever taught me how to just breathe? Because I am very sick of taking so many asthma medications. But I also am scared to not take them because I live on like acreage with animals and with, you know, everything I'm allergic to. Yeah, well, you have to take care of those issues before you

get the medications because the medications are keeping you stable. And a lot of times we need a medication, but you want to do something else to get off of it and then have the person that prescribed it say, oh, okay, we can bring it down, down, down. You'll be doing better. But talking about your emotions as a child, famous doctor, Dr. Donnie Epstein, he had this saying about having an emergency. He says, what's an emerging? What it is, is I'm emerging. See, you're trying to get this stuff out. You're trying to show people I have a problem. Someone help me. You're trying to get this going. And if you don't have a solution for it, you're just going to bottle it up and have physical symptoms. You're treating the physical, but

you know, it's the mind, body and soul. We're multidimensional. So it can never just be one. Very rarely. I mean, all right. If you get hit by a car outside, okay. It could just be physical. But then again, why'd you get hit by the car? So you got to dig deeper. Well, how long are you going to heal? If you know, whatever was attached to that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about your book. What was the passion behind this book? What is your hopes for people that put it, you know, in their hand and read it? Yeah, well, what inspired me to do it was another dark night of the soul I had. I was in a very dark place a while back several years ago. I needed to process a lot of stuff. So I was working in this huge office I did not like working in. I was stuck

there for a year contract. And my girlfriend at the time, we split up and I was living in a new city. I was just like in such a dark place. And I would just come home from work, get out my computer, pour a little bourbon, sip on that and just write about maybe about an hour every night. Because through my years, people are just transfixed by some of my stories and some of my people that I go to, because I have a team of people I work with for my wellbeing. Some of them would say, you need to start writing so many stories down. So I'd start like jotting down stories here and there. Then it wasn't this really dark night. I said, let me just start at the beginning. Let me just start writing out my timeline, all the big events I remember. And it was very cathartic for me. It helped me with a

lot of healing. I remember New Year's Eve that year, just sitting there home alone in my apartment and just writing. And at the part in there where my father died and I intuitively knew the moment he died when he was killed and everything. And it was just like this huge emotional release, New Year's Eve, boom, 12 midnight that year, just like it's some of the strangest circumstances. So it was very healing for me. And I just hope that some people could look at that and realize that, hey, even though I have a lot of tough things in my life, I realized I always get through it or my life isn't that bad or wow, I want to really follow what inspires me like he did. And that could be anything that could be fashion or art

or social work or yeah, being a doctor or, you know, doing podcasts, whatever really inspires you just make it work. Because when you're living your life purpose, everything's easier. Everything just works. It's like you remove all the blockages in life and things just start happening. And it's all right, move this blockage, that blockage. Just getting the details more of really your life purpose. Everything just starts working beautifully. And I really, even though I've been through some rough things, I wouldn't change any of it at all because it helped me be who I am today. So, yeah, I just needed to put that out

there because so many people were interested in my life. And I'm like, just always thinking I should do something with that. So many people have an interest. Like I was always like, why are people interested in me? What the heck? My stories just really drew people in and helped them apply their issues in life too. Well, thank you for sharing that. I, you know, sometimes I regret that we don't put the video up. We just released the audio because when you were speaking, you could just see it in your eyes. You could see it in your facial expressions, like just your passion and your true intent and your love for not just sharing because people like your story, but hoping that it helps someone else. You could see that

on your face. So thank you for coming on Since the Soul today. I would highly recommend to our listeners to pick up this book. The cover is beautiful. Good on you for that beautiful cover. It was mesmerizing to me. It brought like peace to me just looking at it. Tell people where they can find you, the name of the book. Sure. The name of the book is Heal Profoundly. You can find it on Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all those different places. I have a link for my website to healprofoundly.com.

And yeah, on Instagram, I'm pretty active on there. We're Heal Profoundly. And I got some other things going on. You can find it all through my website and stuff like that. And it was a pleasure talking with you today. I love what you two are doing here. Just such a great focus that you have and the other podcasts you guys have are just amazing. I was so honored to be on here with you guys today. You had me at Howard the Duck though I absolutely enjoyed you and now it's time for break that shit down

in life like I said so many times before what gives you joy what gives me you enthusiasm what have you always wanted to do as a child I I mean, now is such an opportunity for people to transition. Realize you're doing something you're good at, something you're talented at, and that helps others. Because if we all did that, it doesn't have to be a doctor or a healer or something like that. But if you all do what you love and what you really have a good talent for, that's what the whole world needs. This whole world would literally just start changing overnight if we were all in that space. Yeah, we should all be like my son, Ethan. Yes, exactly. He's a teacher for us.

Right. Can I ask from a just a personal curiosity, how's your health and asthma and allergies today? Oh, I haven't had really asthma, bronchitis, lung issues in the longest time. A few times with this whole COVID thing going around, like I would stop it upper respiratory and, you know, cause I, I can feel my energy just get heavy and I'm like, Oh, something's coming in. I start checking what I need. Okay. Herb, nutrition, homeopathy. Like I just get on it. And I've always stopped it right about here a couple times I got down in the lungs a little bit, but not much. So in this time, I'm like, I'm doing pretty good. Like, you know, despite all the past lung issues I had, I'm doing pretty good during this whole time now, too. But it's just getting that stuff out. Like now I work a little bit more

on my digestion. That's what I work on now a little out. Like now I work a little bit more on my digestion. That's what I work on now a little bit more, my liver issues and a little bit of that. So, you know, it shifts as you heal one thing. Okay. Now something else is here for you to work on. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you too. So fun. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week if you like what you hear don't forget to rate like and subscribe thank you we rise to lift you up thanks for listening