The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Heal Your Trauma & Find The Track Of Your Life With Lion Tracker, Author, & Activist Boyd Varty

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

#413: On today's episode we are joined by wildlife and literacy activist Boyd Varty, author of the memoir Cathedral of the Wild, and recently The Lion Trackers Guide To Life. Boyd joins the show today to discuss how we can learn to connect with nature more to heal our trauma and find the track of our life.  To connect with Boyd Varty click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Rothy's Rothy's comfortable, washable and sustainable shoes and bags make getting dressed easy. Rothy's shoes are incredibly comfortable with zero break-in period thanks to their seamlessly knit-to-shape design. With many styles to choose from, Rothy's shoes are the perfect way to add some comfort and style to your closet. Check out all the amazing shoes, bags and masks available right now at www.rothys.com/skinny  This episode is brought to you by Framebridge Framebridge makes it easier and more affordable than ever to frame your favorite things-without ever leaving the house. Add a gallery wall to your home office or send the perfect gift. From art prints and diplomas to the photos sitting on your phone, you can Framebridge just about anything. Go to www.framebridge.com and use promo code SKINNY to save an additional 15% off your first order.  This episode is brought to you by Fight Camp FightCamp brings the best workout in the world into your home, and makes it fun. Learn to box and kick box from home, with access to world-class programming, elite trainers, premium equipment, and smart technology that turns your workout into an interactive experience. Now is the best time to get your FightCamp! Take advantage of their holiday deal going on now. If you purchase this November, you’ll get an additional pair of gloves for free. Just go to www.fightcamp.com/skinny  This episode is brought to you by Nutrafol Nutrafol’s goal is to empower women to embrace the beauty of their hair growth recovery with Nutrafol Postpartum by targeting the root causes of postpartum thinning hair-like the physical stress of childbirth and emotional stress of parenting, as well nutrient depletion. Visit www.nutrafol.com and use promo code SKINNY to save $15 off your first month's subscription and free shipping.  Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Constant creative response to what's occurring. Okay, we're going to do this. And it's this ability to be attuned to what you want to create, aware of like how it's guiding you, because you know that amazing thing in a creative process where you can actually feel like the creative process is almost speaking to you and you're just creatively reacting to it. Oh wait, that didn't work.

Let's iterate. Let's try this. Your track speaks to you and then suddenly, boom, you lose the track. Losing the track is a part of tracking. And it's important that we know that so that when we're in a deep process of transformation and suddenly we were doing so well, things were going well, it was all lining up and then suddenly the track is gone. You actually know losing the track is a part of this. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Boyd Vardy. He is a lion tracker. He grew up in the African bush, South African bush. He is an author, a speaker, a life coach, a lot of things.

You can't just throw in that he's a lion tracker. I surely can, Lauren. That is exactly what he is. You also didn't throw in his little rendezvous with an alligator. It was a crocodile. A crocodile. Pay attention, Lauren. Keep up. Excuse me.

Yeah, he is definitely one of the more unique and interesting guests we've had on the show. I also forgot to mention that he did live in a tree for 40 days and 40 nights in the middle of the bush, in the middle of the plains of Africa. That, you know, is also a story that we cover in here, which is pretty wild. We have to shout it out that we met him through Khalil. We met him through Khalil. Oh, God. Yeah. We got it. Khalil, here's your little shout out. We met him through you, Khalil. At Sun Life. At Sun Life, yes. Having an acai bowl with extra coconut. And you know what else is happening right now? Cyber Monday.

So we had a Black Friday sale on Shop Skinny Confidential on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now we are doing Cyber Monday. This is going to be the last sale for a while. We rarely do sales and this sale is major. This is the perfect sale to stock up on ice rollers for holiday gifts. You can grab the razor. I know your mom's going to want one, maybe your sister, a friend. You can also grab the oil, which is absolutely amazing post-shave or to even use while you shave. And then definitely stock up on the kits and bundles, which includes my book. It's 25% off site-wide. You can shop now. It's all day. I think you're going to love this. It's a very. I think you're going to love this.

It's a very pink sale. Go get the sale. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for the update. What are you going to buy? I'm going to buy everything if I haven't already. Okay. For sure.

All right, guys. This one, again, he is one of the more unique guests we've had on the show. Boyd Vardy. He is a wildlife and literacy activist. He's an author. He wrote a memoir called Cathedral of the Wild. He's got another book that just came out called The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. I'm telling you, this episode, we could have just kept going and going with this guy. Every time

we started going down a path, it just opened up another one. This episode has a lot to do with finding yourself, finding the track of your life, healing trauma, really getting to know who you are, connecting with nature. Basically, the differences between a society that's so hyper-connected with technology and infrastructure, and then some of the stuff that we've gotten away from, which is nature and how do we get back to that. So again, Boyd is an extremely interesting character, author, speaker, tracker, activist, and he's lived an incredible life so far. And not to mention, like I said, he did live in a tree for 40 days and 40 nights, which we get into. With that, Boyd,

welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. All right, there's a lot of different directions we could take this, Boyd. And I've been trying to figure out where to focus this. So I feel like we're just going to have kind of like a conversation that goes all over. But to start and to give some context, how do you introduce yourself at this point? Sure. That's a great intro. I mean, my life came together two unexpected kind of the confluence of two unexpected things. The one is I grew up in the wild eastern part of South Africa. I grew up on a property that my family restored from a bankrupt cattle farm into a thriving

wilderness. And from the time that I was very young, I was apprenticed to the master shungan trackers. And we ran a safari business, photographic safaris. And we would go out every day and I would go out from the time I was young and we would follow the tracks of animals so that we could find them. And then people who had come on safari could come and have an opportunity to see them. And so I learned tracking from the time that I was very, very young. And then through my late teens, I had a series of very traumatic encounters. I was involved in a violent robbery. I got bitten by a crocodile. So my leg got badly mauled. My family went through a very difficult time. And so by the time I was 23, I was working as a safari guide. I was taking people on safaris, but inside I was frozen and I was depressed and I was anxious. And then a woman came on safari

and meeting her absolutely changed my life. And the way that it worked is a buddy of mine had been her guide a year before. And he said to me, you know, you're really going to like this woman. She's an amazing martial artist. And her name was Martha Beck. And so I went into the guide room where there's, you know, everyone who's coming in on safari gets a guide's name put next to their name. And I rubbed some other guide's name off and I put my name on. And we met and she was, you know, this sort of ex-Harvard professor. She had taught at business school, like incredible intellectual. We went out for the first few days and then I was the guide, you know, rifle, safari truck, kind of trying to do the rugged thing. And then on the third day, she looked at me and she said, I can see what you, I can see what you're carrying. I can see what's in your heart and how stuck you are. And I was a little bit shocked, but I don't know if you've ever had one of those experiences when someone really sees you and sees you in pain.

And she said, and I want you to know that I'm here and I'm ready to talk to you. And I was meant to be the professional guide, but I felt all this emotion running. And then I just started crying and she grabbed me and she hugged me and she became my mentor. And she started to teach me how a healing transformational process works. She started to show me how to move through trauma, how to get in touch with yourself, how to understand what's calling you forth. And as I started to be in that process guided by her, I started to understand that this idea of healing, finding your gifts and sharing them, finding your purpose, all the things that it takes to do that, I had seen that before. I had seen that as a young boy learning to track. And I started to realize that the ancient art of tracking is at its core about finding something, about discovery, about being attuned. And I started

to see that tracking and transformational processes, you could learn a lot from each other. And so that's kind of like how my weird Venn diagram started to come together, a tracker and a healer, my own healing. And it started to form into this kind of body of work that I call now, track your life, the discovery of your most essential expression into the world. I would love to go back. You mentioned three huge traumas. I mean, I don't even know where to start. I guess you said the robbery first. So we'll start there. What was that like? How old were you? What happened? When I was 18 years old, South Africa was going through a very difficult time.

There'd been the transition from the apartheid government, the regime of the apartheid government into freedom. And there'd just been tremendous instability around that time. And there was intense poverty. And what was happening at that time is that there was, you know, armed robbery was a very common thing. And so one night we had a house in Johannesburg that we would use as a base when we were moving around. On one Sunday night, I woke up with my sister sort of sitting on top of me.

And as I sat up, I saw a gun in my face. And then I looked across the room and I saw my mother and she'd been tied up. And I woke up into this absolute horror. And I just felt my nervous system go through the roof and just this incredible fear flood into me. And that went on for about three hours, being tied up, being beaten up and the fear of what is going to happen? And then, you know, seeing my sister and seeing my mother and, you know, being in this type of situation that can

end so badly. What did they want? Money, your mother? Money, guns, you know, any kind of possessions. And, you know, it's a strange thing because that's, you know, traumatized people are committing these acts on some level too. So it went on for three hours and then eventually they took me outside and they said to me, we're going to kill you. And then kneeled me down and the guy put a gun to my head and, and I looked up at him. And in a moment, there was this incredible connection that formed between us. I looked into his eyes. He looked into my eyes. And in that moment, I felt absolutely safe. I knew that even if they killed me, even if they shot me, there was something in me could not be killed. And it was incredibly strange. It was like a kind of Satori or some kind of moment of awakening. And then things just got really weird. Everyone just sort of got confused and stood around and I stood up

and I walked back into the house and I got the car keys and I walked over to one of these robbers and I put the keys in his hand and I said, go. And they just left. It was one of the most mystical experiences of my life. That was my first. And part of what I integrated in the years afterwards was, you know, how terrified I was and the fear and the, like the fear for my family. And then also trying to work out like, what the hell was that? That kind of what opened, what in me knew that it could never die. It was really the beginning of my spiritual journey.

And then after this, you get bit by a crocodile? And then a year later, I walked into the river on our property and the water was clear running over sand. I was sure that I could see. And I started walking upstream. And there was a place where a tree had fallen out of the bank. And it was shadowy. And just on the edge of those shadows, I sat down and I thought that I had good,

you know, visual, you know, I could see what was going on. But the crocodile was in those shadows and grabbed me by the right leg, tried to pull me in. And I threw my arm up and I caught a branch. And there was a guy with me called Solim Shongo. He was a Shungan tracker. And he saw that I was in trouble. He started coming to help me,

and the croc went to bite me a second time. My foot went down its throat, and it spat me out, and I pulled myself up into the branches of the tree, and then across, and I fell onto the edge of the riverbank, like right where the water met the bank. Solim was coming from the far side, and he actually had to go into the deep channel before he could get to me. And he saw me, he knew, he saw my leg and he knew that in the deep water

between him and I, there was a crocodile. And he just came straight into the water. He waded through to almost above his waist, got to me, grabbed me and he pulled me up onto the bank. Was he not worried about the crocodile himself? I said to him afterwards, I said to him, Sari, what made you come into that water? And he would look at me in Shangaan and he would say to me, He said, my friend, if you're in trouble, I'm in trouble. And at first when he said it to me, I thought it was, you know,

just kind of like a courageous, you know, bravado thing to say, but I asked him about it repeatedly. And I came to understand that to him, in the way that he had grown up in the wild, in the way that he had grown up with his tribe, we were deeply connected. My wellbeing was tied to his wellbeing. He actually lived, for him, everything was relational and connected. And that's how he experienced the world. And if I was in danger, he was in danger. And he felt that very deeply.

And it was a profound experience for me. It taught me about courage. It taught me about connection. Taught me, yeah, a lot of things. What was the recovery like? The recovery took a long time. And still to this day, my one foot, if you walk on the beach with me,

it looks like I'm walking in two directions because my right foot sticks out a little bit, like a little clubbed. But it was, you know, multiple stitches. I think in the end, they put about 140 stitches into my leg, a lot on the inside and just taking time to get mobile again. I think both of these stories that you just told, like a lot of of people at least that live, I think, in this country would have a very difficult time even contextualizing. And you have the experience now of kind of seeing both worlds. But from someone that sits in my seat, Laurence, this is a world apart.

I think a lot of people can't even begin to fathom, one, what it's like to get bit by a crocodile, and two, wake up with a gun to your head. It's a world apart. But what we need to pay attention to is that we traumatized in many different ways. And what happens when you become, when you have an encounter with trauma, and that can be abuse, that can be neglect, that can be just the feeling, this endless feeling of comparison that we live with in this culture. What happens when you've

been, when you experience trauma, cultural trauma or physical trauma or violent trauma is you become frozen and you start to become very limited in your options. It's like the world shrinks and it's harder to make choices. And so those encounters for me, although they're totally contextually different, what happened inside of me is the same thing that would happen inside anyone who's been abused, who's been afraid, who's been... And so as I healed from it, and I always say that trauma healed is medicine. As we heal our trauma, we start to develop maps out of it. And so now I've reached the point where I'm so integrated with those experiences that I'm actually grateful that they happened because I know what it's like to feel that disempowered. I know what it's like to be

that afraid. I know what it's like to have physical trauma. And that actually has served me as a healer now. You know what's a great gift to get someone this year? Rothy's. I have been talking about these shoes maybe like a hundred times over the last five years because I wear them all the time. I am obsessed with how comfortable they are. They're plain, they're chic. The ones I like are in white. I slip them on. They're selling time kind of. No one, well, at least I don't, want to run out the door when I'm already running late and lace up a shoe. With Rothy's, I just slip it on and I go. They have comfortable sneakers, loafers, ankle boots, Mary Janes, and more. But the best part about Rothy's, and I think this is so cool, is that they're really focused on making a better planet. They've repurposed millions of

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gift game this season with Rothy's shoes and accessories. You get $20 off your first purchase at rothys.com slash skinny with extended returns and exchanges through the holidays. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S.com slash skinny. it's also very empowering and helps you sort of develop like scar tissue when you are able to build those maps from trauma I think that the process of building the map is so underrated you are right you you you build all these different directions and you end up just figuring something out because of what you've gone through I directions and you end up just figuring something out because of what you've gone through. I mean, and then it becomes amazing

because all of us are holding different maps and that's where community becomes such an amazing thing because as we learn to come together in community, there are different people who are really good at guiding you through different things because they've done it themselves. Let me ask you this. I think there's a lot of people that,

you know, I told you the first time we met, like my only real, and it's not a real experience, but my learning for, you know, the way that you grew up is, I used to read a lot of Wilbur Smith books, but I think he's a great writer. But I think a lot of people would envy the way that you grew up and some of the experiences that you got to have. And I wonder, you know, from your perspective,

you know, seeing both cultures, why come over here? Do you miss that culture more? Because Lauren and I were talking the other day, the reason I get to this question and I was saying, you know, you can get caught up in this culture of like, go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle, more, more, more. And a lot of me like feels sometimes being called to less, right? Like get to a place that's more grounded, get to a place that's immersed in nature, get to a place that's away from all the hustle and bustle. And I'm wondering in your experiences, like which, I don't want to say which you prefer, but why, you know, escape something like that and come here when, you know, a lot of what we, like a lot of people are coming to that

experience to get to that. Yeah, absolutely. So let me try and answer it in a simple way. What happens in nature is that, and when you grow up in nature, you grow up in a constant state of relation and actually the consciousness of Africa. And if you spend time with African people like Solly, who I was telling you about, everything is discovered in relation. So I get, and there's actually a word for it. They call it Ubuntu. Ubuntu says, I am because of you, or people are not people without other people. So I get to discover the deepest parts of my humanity in relation with you. You actually take me to more of myself, whether it's through struggle,

whether it's through love, whether it's through connection. And then I've expanded that to say, it's not only through people that we get to experience the deepest parts of ourselves, but in the natural world, you live in a continually relational environment. Everything helps you understand yourself and you feel a part of nature. And as you start to feel more a part of it, you feel this incredible intelligence that's guiding all of it.

And then you feel, I'm a part of that intelligence. So that's the dynamic in that world. In the society over here, where it's the hustle society, you could say that in a society where the individual self is always disconnected from the greater whole, the search for meaning is reduced to a constant state of comparison. So instead of being relational, we're in this constant state of comparison, and that's actually built into the way the society is structured. So those are the two kind of contexts. When people come from this culture into nature, they experience themselves in that relationality. It's very healing. When people come from that relational culture here, they can find it very disconnecting. It's hard for them to understand it.

But what happened for me is as I healed, as I started, the archetype of the healer started to come to me and I started to realize what made me feel good, what was the work that I knew I had to serve. I started coming more and more to America. I started traveling more. I started being on the road more because although I love being at home on the reserve amongst the animals, I know that the track of my life has led me to come into the world and do my work. And so that's what pulls me is knowing how to serve my work and showing up to speak, showing up to tell stories, showing up to do ceremony work with people, showing up to coach.

All of that stuff is what really pulls me in. And people are so hungry for it here. And there's an amazing awakening, I think that's happening and everyone's looking for it. And so I feel in service of that. You mentioned a third trauma. Can you speak on that? And maybe was that after these two horrific traumas, was that the last trauma to give the audience a timeline? Yeah, so the third thing that happened was my family went through a very difficult period where we had had this property

that my great-grandfather had bought it. And originally they had gone there to hunt. And then when my grandfather died, my father and mother and my uncle took to actually restoring the land. And they worked very deeply with it. They started to clear away the scrub and they started to see the animals return. And then they started seeing leopards there.

Leopards started to allow themselves to be seen. There was this deep healing that went on in the land. And then we were actually starting other reserves. So part of our mission as a family was to put more land back to nature. And we were starting this other reserve and these two investors came in and they said they wanted to invest in the project. And then they turned and they started suing us. And the actual move was, is they were trying to sue us at a separate project, but claim

the asset that we had built over years. So it was a kind of a raid, one of these like kind of classic corporate raid type things. And so we found ourselves in this devastating court case for about 10 years. And I don't know. I'm trying to take the land. Yeah. And I don't know if any of you have ever been in like a litigation or anything. It's miserable.

It's miserable. It's baffling. Distracting. You get different stories every day. And so we were in that for 10 years, just the severe stress. But as a result of being in that kind of stress, and when I met my mentor, we were in the teeth of that. But as a result of being in that, the whole family started to do the work of healing and awakening. And so really, and that's the other strange thing that may be

interesting to listeners, like the things that happened to you that were most terrifying, that were most traumatic. And this is not to say that they should have happened, but they are often also the thing that give us the impetus to start our healing journey. The thing that starts to wake us up, the worst thing can actually be the thing that in some ways starts to be a doorway into a deeper dimension of living. Before we get into all your healing journey experience and your tips and your tactics, I want to hear all about that. I just have a selfish question. Are you not scared to be around all these wild animals? And if you're not scared, how? Is there a certain energy that you have to have around

these animals so that they are calm around you? When I picture Africa, and tell me if I'm wrong, I picture a giraffe and a hippo and a lion and a leopard, all these crocodiles. I mean, it's kind of crazy to someone who is in Texas scared of a cockroach. Yeah. Well, it is like that. I mean, Literally, you can walk out of my house and there'll be an elephant feeding in the garden. There's a leopard that walks past the front of the house every day. Just wild. We're there in amongst it. But the answer to the question is, it's incredible because the natural world has a language and the animals have a way of communicating with you. And if you know that language as a tracker, if you're attuned to

bird language, if you're attuned to the alarm calls of animals, and if you can actually read an animal's body language, they're always talking to you. If you can pick up tracks as you're moving through the wilderness, and that actually makes it incredibly safe. And usually, you know, in the incidents that I've had in my life, it's because I wasn't paying attention. I got something wrong, but the animals are always communicating with you. And if you know how to read that and you respect it and you know where the boundaries are, it's actually an incredibly safe environment. So if there's a huge lion sitting right where I am, you're completely fine with it? Well, the first thing is, is that as I see the lion, I want to be attuned. So I want to see him early. And then as he looks at me and I look at him,

I want to read his body language. So has he put his head down? Are his ears flat? Have I felt his whole body tighten? Or is his head up? Is he relaxed? Is he flicking his tail? And all of that is telling me what his mood is, what his intentions are. If he's hungry. Now, if he becomes aggressive with me, he'll lower his head. He'll lock eyes with me. He'll start to growl. Now, at that moment, what I want to do is I become I'm communicating with him through a field of energy now through a field of presence so I will look at him and I'll stand and I'll drop my energy what I do if I'm in an encounter like that is I breathe out so that I can move my energy downward

now I'm very present with him and I make contact and he can feel I'm very aware I'm not afraid and I'm actually using my energy to say, you're giving me a warning, but you got to watch out for me too. And then I'll take a step back to show him, but I want to give you your space and then take another step back. And the key is to get the energy right in those interactions so that the animal can feel its message is being received. You are also quite dangerous and then give them the space that they deserve. But it's a beautiful, energetic conversation.

Can you pet the lion? Hold on. I have to understand. Can you pet the lion if you get in the right space with him? No, you're not going to pet the lion? So I thought I'm picturing I'm riding on the lion's back like me and the lion are hanging out. I'm not hanging out with the lion. No, if you're close enough to pet him,

that you're way too close. And that's part of it. It's just like respecting the boundaries and respecting the distance. I almost tried to pet a moose. So you never know. Mooses are fucking mean. Just a little side note question

and then Michael can get into his granular thing. So with the crocodile, the reason maybe the attack happened is because you weren't able to see the crocodile coming. So the exchange of energy wasn't available. Framebridge helped streamline my life recently so much. So we hosted Thanksgiving at our house recently with a bunch of our friends and I wanted a whole family tree situation. So people could come in and see their faces, our friends, but also see our family. I have pictures of Michael's grandma, his great grandma, my mom, my dad, my sister, everyone is on this wall. And I was in a pinch

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your photos or send someone the perfect gift. You're going to go to framebridge.com and use promo code skinny to save an additional 15% off your first order. Just go to framebridge.com promo code skinny. Framebridge.com promo code skinny. It is the perfect holiday gift. Enjoy. Exactly. And I was in the water. I was in the wrong place. And actually, kind of undoing my whole story, but a crocodile is the one thing that does regularly eat people because they eat anything that's swimming in the river, right? They just swallow them whole. Well, they'll just get you. You're in their world there. And they drag you in.

But the idea that you're just walking across a clearing and lions start hunting you, they're not going to do that. For thousands of years, people have been a danger to them on the plains. And so they're aware of them. And if you get your awareness right, you're fine. Okay. Speaking of thousands of years and peoples of the plain, it sounds like many of your experiences and teachings are from some of these people of the tribes. Maybe you can talk about some of these people a little bit, because I think like, this is again, a world apart from what people see out here and probably so many profound learnings you've experienced from these people. I mean, I've learned so much from the trackers and just the way that they go about the process.

And, you know, maybe it's worth just diving into that, but there were- I think so. We've never touched on it here. Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about tracking and we can start to work out how that applies to people out there who are looking for something, on the trail of something,

want to find the track of their life, want to find... And I define the track of your life as the place where you feel most authentically expressed, the place where you feel like your gifts are coming into the world, the place where you feel like your uniqueness is flowing out of you and being expressed. And it's very nourishing when you find that place. So what happened for me is as I started to watch the trackers, I started to watch the

process that they would go into. For example, if you were tracking a lion, you wake up early in the morning and maybe you hear that lion roaring out there somewhere. Now, you don't know exactly where it is. You have a vague idea. But the first movement of all tracking is to begin the process without knowing, without being certain where it's going. And I've talked to hundreds of people in coaching context now, and they've said to me, when I know exactly what my next move is, then I'll go on my journey, then I'll make my next move. But actually, that's not how it works. When you go on a journey of discovery to a part of yourself that is as yet undiscovered, the first thing that you. When you go on a journey of discovery to a part of yourself that is as yet

undiscovered, the first thing that you do is you go without knowing. And then the other thing that the trackers do is they have this thing that they call developing track awareness. So like, for example, Michael, if you and I walk down a path together, I'm going to see like 80% more tracks than you. And that's just because you haven't yet attuned yourself to all of those tracks. Yeah. I was going to ask you, like, sometimes you watch these old movies with trackers and they see things that's like how the hell. Totally. And you, and the idea is, is that you teach your, you're teaching yourself to see certain things. And so that idea to me, when I started coaching people became incredibly exciting. The idea that there is information

for you, but you have to teach yourself to see it. And so the trackers teach you attunement. I can see why this has to do with trauma. Right? Can you see how it starts to fit together? A lot of parallels. So attunement, like, so how do I know what my tracks are? Well, I would pay attention to things that make you feel expansive. I mean, energetically expanded, not rationally what I should do, just feelings of expansion, people who energize you, activities that make you forget about time. As you start to attune to those things, you actually get better at seeing them. So that's developing your track awareness and great trackers are really good at that.

The other thing that a tracker will do is you can imagine you find the track of a single male lion walking through a wilderness of like 10 million acres, the size of Switzerland. And they'll find what they call the first track. And then they find the next first track. And then they find the next first track and the next first track. And they dial down the infinite possibilities of where that animal could have gone in a vast wilderness to one moment of presence and then another moment of presence. And in fact, my teacher used to say to me, I don't know where I'm going, but I know exactly how to get there. The first track and then the next first track. And so we can ask ourselves in our journey, if we start this

process, if we've become comfortable with the unknown, and if we start to attune our track awareness, then like, what is the first track? Because people want to say like, I want to be, this is where I want to be. But actually, usually you have to find the smallest thing you can attend to today that just feels a little better, a little more aligned. I could not agree with you more on this. And actually people who make huge changes in their lives are people who, they're not people who make radical changes. It's people who make daily consistent changes. I mean, I hate to reference him, but our friend Khalil from Sun Life Organics. Who? Who? One percent better. Khalil Rafi.

Who's that guy? But one percent better is his motto. And to me, that's working with the first track. Just what do I know to do today? Because, you know, and the other thing is like, if you think of Joseph Campbell, he said, if you can see your whole life laid out before you, it's not your life. Remind me, Joseph Campbell's man with a thousand faces. Man with a thousand faces, the mythologist. That's an amazing idea because we want to set out,

we want to know where we're going. But if you're on a journey towards a more essential life, a life that is more of an expression of who you are, it's not given to you all at once. You might have a vision of it out there, but actually, you've got to attend to something today that doesn't look anything like that. When you guys were starting this,

you didn't know where it was going to go. You had to get some microphones and write a book and start it. And then it's become what it is now. Yeah, we talk about this all the time, but you're doing a much better job of explaining this. It's like so many people overwhelm themselves with this giant, huge,

like big vision, right? And they have to do all of these things or all these things have to align and everything has to be mapped out. Like all we knew, and this is a good example, when we started this was, okay, our voices need to get online. What was the first thing? And the very first thing was,

what equipment could we buy to actually do this? And then we didn't even know how to load it after that. It was like, we did it, then we figured out how to load it. And obviously it's evolved. And now we've got millions of listeners. And there was a day in which to create millions of listeners, it was like, which microphone should we buy? And when people look at wanting to express themselves in the world, they go straight to the millions of listeners. And actually, you've got to give yourself the space to let it evolve and just do what you know to do today. So that's working with the first track. You're so right, though.

I mean, in the seat that I sit in now running a company like Dear Media, where we produce a lot of podcasts, I can't tell you how many pitches people come and say, I'm going to be the next Joe Rogan. I'm going to be the next Call Her Daddy. I'm going to be the next so-and-so. And I'm like, guys, let's figure out how to get to like 100 listeners.

I also think too, like you said something so smart, focus what's in front of you. So my advice would be, if you're trying to build any kind of platform, focus on the follower that you have, not the millions that you want. Absolutely. It's a complete mind shift. And I think that is one of the best advice, what you just said that anyone has given on this podcast. And actually, if you're living as a tracker, the reason you're doing it is not because I want to be a big famous person talking to a lot of people. It's because it makes me feel good. I feel expanded when I'm doing this. I feel connected

to my work when I'm doing this. And that's the developing of the track awareness. Now, like I would be doing this anyway. And that's always where the real success is like authentically connected with your work in the world. I want to take a plot twist. Oh, nice. Let's twist. You lived in a tree for 40 days. Yes. I mean, that's how I was introduced to you at Sun Life. Khalil said, hi, this is Boyd. He lived in a tree for 40 days.

Which when you first hear that story from Khalil and you're like, here's my friend who lived in a tree for 40 days without the context of all of the other things about you, you huh this will be but you told such an interesting story to me at sun life and you were telling me about how you would meditate in the morning and eat your breakfast and then you had like 22 hours i just didn't know if this is one of kareel's old la friends that lived in a tree in la and i was like what kind of tree is this a tree in LA. And I was like, well, that would be- Yeah, what kind of tree? Is this a tree house? Like explain this whole, why you did this, what the epiphany was to do this and then what the tree looked like. Yeah.

So, you know, I had had this thing where if you read, if you're interested in the mystery at all that we live in, the mystic practices, in all of them, there is a phase where mystics go alone into nature. It's as old as time. Jesus went to the desert 40 days and 40 nights. Buddha went to the grove. You know, it happens. And so for a long time, I had had this idea.

I wanted to write a book about it, but I wanted to go into nature alone for a long period of time to sort of do a kind of spiritual journalism, like to experience what it would be like to be alone in the wilderness. Why did they do that? Why did they go?

And of course, there's never any time. And then COVID happened. Everyone went into lockdown. And I was like, it's now or never. Where were you when the lockdown happened? I just made it back into South Africa. I'd been in San Francisco, flew back to South Africa. Lockdown came in.

And suddenly it was like, okay, it's here. And there's always like this period of resistance. Like I'm going to go and be alone for six weeks. No one else in the wild, living in a tree. But when a guy like you hears something like a lockdown, I imagine because of the tools you've developed over your life, it's not as concerning to most people. Like you would be comfortable in a lot of circumstances

that many people would be like, holy shit, this is extremely uncomfortable. Well, being locked in a New York apartment, I think would have been really hard for me. But being on the land, I knew I was good. So I ended up going to live in this beautiful ebony tree on the banks of the river on our property. And what there was is there was just a wooden platform up in the tree and that was it. And there was this amazing moment, a buddy of mine drove me out there. He dropped me off for these two food trunks. And how far, just for context, how far are you away from civilization or resources or people? I was like kilometers away,

but, and that wasn't really, it wasn't like remoteness. It was more the solitude that I was interested in. I could have walked back to the camp if need be, but I knew that I wanted to be alone. That was more what it was about for me. But there was this amazing moment where he just drove off and then it was like, okay, so it's me for the next six weeks. And that was a big psychological barrier. I was like, wow, this is a long time. And what I was saying to you, Lauren, at Sun Life is that, you know, like you wake up at 4.30 in the morning when the sun comes up, you do yoga, you meditate, you breathe, you go walking, maybe you go track an animal for a couple of hours, you get back to the camp, you make your breakfast, it's like 10 a.m. and you have six weeks to go. And it's just like, it's a big encounter with time. And at first it's like,

what am I going to do? And then slowly you start dropping into this different rhythm. And the Aboriginal people have this great saying, they say, modern culture is three days deep. All of the resistance, all of the anxiety, all the stories of, you know, I'm going to be disconnected. I'm going to get behind. It takes three days and then it drops away. And then you start entering into this different state of consciousness. And very quickly, I started to feel myself dropping into that. And then you start noticing the patterns around you. And it becomes very personal. It's not a bird.

It's that bird that I see every morning that flies down the river. And then he flies up the other side of the bank. And it's not those antelope. It's those antelope who come and feed here under this tree where the monkeys are feeding and the leaves are dropping down. And then they move out to the clearing to sleep. And you start to see there's a pattern of movement to it and there's an intelligence to it. And then you start to experience yourself

as a part of that intelligence. And I think that's the answer that came to me is that's why the mystics went to nature. Because when you start to not rationally know, oh, I'm a part of something, but actually feel yourself as a part of the intelligent rhythms of nature, you start to feel a deep feeling of belonging. You start to feel a deep feeling of connection. You start to feel there is majestic intelligence and I am a part

of that. I am also of nature. And that's a very deeply healing experience. There's no menu or postmates. What are you eating? What are you drinking? Like, walk us through like regular things. Are you wiping with a leaf? Like I need specifics here. My hair was like a piece of hay after I gave birth. So much needed to happen to get it back to what it was. Like I wanted like my lus luscious, thick ponytail hair back. You know what I mean? So I really started to take my hair care seriously. And what I did is I started using all silk ponytail holders. So nothing but silk, no more of those crappy drugstore ponytail holders. And then I started microneedling my scalp and doing tons of scalp massage. And then I started on Nutrafol. I'm sure you've heard about this everywhere. It's all over the internet. People

are saying it's like really one of the only formulas that works. And what I like about them is their formula is a hundred percent drug-free and it's also clinically shown to improve hair growth and thickness. But most importantly, I don't know what it is. It gives you less shedding. I was shedding so much postpartum and that's what I noticed the most. It's just less shedding. So if you're a shedder, then I would definitely recommend checking it out. And you're just going to experience this more thick, luscious hair that's not falling everywhere in the shower. You should know that 30 million women are impacted by weakened or thinning hair. So if you're among them, you're not alone. There's a solution that

you can trust to deliver results. How I like to take it is I have a little bowl in my kitchen with my Nutrafol. It just reminds me every single day. And I just really can notice a huge difference. You can grow thicker, healthier hair and support the Skinny Confidential, him and her show by going to Nutraful.com slash skinny, and you save $15 off your first month's subscription. This is their best offer anywhere, and it's only available to US customers for a limited time. Plus you get free shipping on every order, which is so generous. You get $15 off at Nutraful.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com slash skinny. So wake up early, go out tracking. I would fast a lot. So I would usually eat one meal a day. And so by about two o'clock in the afternoon, I would start cooking

and I had dry goods with me. So I had like in Africa, the staple food is like cornmeal. We call it pup. So I would make just like porridge, this kind of like cornmeal porridge, fruit. And then occasionally they would drop like some fresh goods for me, like fruit, vegetables, that type of thing. Sweet potatoes. I was the king of the sweet potato. I mean, I cook sweet potatoes in more different ways than you can ever imagine. And then I would go and swim in the river. Occasionally I would make myself like a luxury shower, which is I would just boil the kettle and I would stand in this little basin, pour this hot, like hot boiled kettle over me. Very, very luxurious by my standards. Yeah. I'd go dig a hole when you need to

go to the bathroom. Try not to get run over by an elephant while you're doing it. No meat. No meat. No meat. No meat. I lost what, like seven kilos. So like 14 pounds, just fasting and moving and being out there. And I remember when I got out of the tree eventually and went back to the gym after just the natural movement, it was like, it felt weird. It felt so weird to me to be like, okay, now I'm going to do like, you know, like a, like back raises or something like weird machine. You know, it's like, what are we doing? Did you miss sex? Did you miss food? Did you miss connection with a partner? Like, what did you really miss when you were out there? You know, I, I loved it. I loved being away from my phone.

I felt myself absolutely detoxing from all of that stuff. I loved being celibate while I was out there and not even having any relational stuff in mind and just being in my own energy for six weeks. And are you in a relationship at this moment that you're... No, I'm not in a relationship. So you were single when you went away? Yeah. Okay. Because I'm just wondering if your wife's like...

If Michael's living out there, I'm going to be peeking over the... Where's this tree at? I'm going to be riding on the elephant. I was totally single and no kids. So I mean, I guess you get to do these sorts of things when you're still in that phase. Did you develop a pet, like a friend? You know, not really.

Everyone had said to me, you know, the Tom Hanks movie with the dude and he makes friends with a soccer ball. Everyone's like, are you going to come out crazy? And then there was this one log that looked like a baboon that was down the river. And I would kind of like wave to it and talk to it. There were monkeys that would sleep in the top of the tree.

And I had this one evening where in the middle of the night, the monkeys all peed on me. And so I was like, and I was reading, I had been reading Anthony Bourdain's first book. And so I had this image of like, I'm lying in bed with Bourdain getting pissed on by a monkey. Am I in the weirdest sexual fantasy ever now? Like, what the hell is this?

And was the book a good enough book? Should we read the book? Was it a good enough book to be out in the middle of nowhere? Oh my God. I read, I rediscovered reading in such a deep way. Yeah. Like I was going to ask you, like, what, what did you bring out there with you? Like, what were the items for protection, for food, for.

Yeah. So I had a, I had a rifle. I had my radio. I have a tracking stick that I walk around with, which is a kind of like a club. I let myself take books and that was super luxurious. And then I had recording equipment and I would do like a daily journal entry to myself

and just record it. And people can listen to that now. And it's a fun journey to go on. I actually had a bed up in the tree. So I put a mattress up in the tree and I had a really comfortable chair. And other than that, it was pretty stark. What's the most dangerous animal

that you saw while you were out there? I'd say the baboon's pretty dangerous if you're not careful. The baboon was a log. It wasn't a baboon. No, but the ones that are pissing all over you. Yeah, well, no, those are vervet monkeys. They're okay.

I mean, if baboons get into your camp, so I was on constant alert. Mostly when I went away, you've got to make sure you lock up stuff because they'll still get on your bed. They'll crap all over it. They'll mess your stuff up. If you leave a trunk open that has

food in it, that's tickets. So I was always worrying, like, oh, the baboon's going to come and raid the camp. But I mean, in terms of like dangerous animals, I tracked lions a lot by myself. I had one evening, I had three lionesses walk through the camp while I was sitting around the fire. And it was just, I mean, it was like magical and archetypal. You're sitting by the fire and you hear a sound and you shine your torch and there's a single lioness standing 20 yards away from you. And then you shine your torch to the left and there's a second lioness. And you're not scared. I'm alert. I'm not scared. It's kind of like this primal alertness wakes up in you and And it's a deep awareness. And there's definitely a bit of adrenaline with it. But you just move closer to that fire and

you just sit. And what the fire means changes too, because you just know for thousands of years, humans sat around fires. And animals knew that the fire means there are people there. And people knew the fire is like my anchor and safety in the night. The animals are scared of the fire. Yeah, they're aware of it and they don't want to come too close to it. Any bugs that you're eating? On like the third, no, I wasn't eating bugs, but I had a, on the third day, I put my shirt on and there had been a caterpillar, hairy caterpillar in the shirt. And so I got this like hairy caterpillar rash all over me.

And so, you know, it's a weird thing is when things go wrong, when you buy yourself. So like, it's just this tremendous pain. So like I run off and I end up like diving in the river and I'm like scrubbing myself with sand, just trying to get the, like, it burns and it's itchy off you. And then when there's no one around, there's no sulking. And there's no like, my husband, he wouldn't know what to do. There's no sulking. There's no like, there's no being mad. And you realize like so much of what we do, like, like so much of mood is to convey to someone else around us. Like there's something going on when you just buy yourself and there's no one to do that with. It just passes so much. Hold on. Your back hurts. I'm going to drop you off in the African jungle

and have you sulk out there. That is such a good idea. Listen, a little more out of you, I'm going to drop myself off. He's told me 400 times how bad his back hurts today. I looked at him today. I go, we got to find a new topic. No, but you're so right.

I think about that stuff a lot. Like when you're around people, however, I think even like mental issues, right? Like when you're around people and you're in pain, you need to bring people in to convey that pain but if you have to sit with it like you kind of have to you're forced to deal with it I mean deal with it or let it go and and it's weird because story is we I just really noticed that like you know if I have if I'm sulking it part of sulking is wanting someone else to realize there's something going on with

you, you know, or even like anger, you know, and then holding onto it. It just passes so quickly when you're by yourself. And solitude is a real teacher like that. It helps you drop the story you're carrying really, really quickly. Well, we've lost the ability to sit still. I mean, it's really, really crazy. I noticed it even with my two-year-old. Everyone has lost the ability to do nothing. It's so crazy. It really is a practice. And I felt that intensity. Beginning of it, I was like, well, what am I going to do out here? What am I going to do? And I had this whole idea of the way I was going to structure my day. And after about a week, that gave way. And what would happen is I would just be really relaxed. My nervous system was dropped.

My circadian rhythm was in tune. I would wake up with the dawn and I would go to sleep and it was dark. All through the day I could feel movements of energy in my body and I would just be absolutely relaxed and then like a curious interest would arise. And then I would follow that for a while. And then I would be like, oh, I want to go out. I want to go tracking. I want to go walking.

But it wasn't like I was planning it. It was just this being in tune with the sun folding through the day. And it was like, I'm hungry. And I would only eat when I was hungry. Oh, I actually feel a little tired now. I'm going to rest. And it was a totally different way to live. And it was like coming out of an inner knowing rather than like the things I have to do through the day.

Was there any plant medicine involved? You know, I took psilocybin mushrooms with me and I thought, and I have a practice with the plants and I thought that I was going to use them much more, but I was getting so much out of it. I was in like a constant... So it's almost out of it. I was in like a constant. So it's almost like you're, you're. I was in a constant journey.

You don't need the mushrooms because that's what the mushrooms do. Dropping into presence. I was in touch with my inner teacher. I knew when, I knew when it was time for action. I knew when it was time to rest. I gave myself like a lot of time to rest. And I found myself like, you know, lying naked in the river with an eagle flying over, and then a herd of elephants coming down to the riverbank and just feeling the sun on me, feeling the water on me, feeling the presence of wild animals. And it's just like being in Eden. It was so wild. And I felt that wild part of myself coming back to life.

Boyd, for you to be floating in the water at night after you or your leg got bit by... No, during the day. Okay, during the day. During the day, during the night, after your leg got bit by a crocodile is crazy and gnarly. And I have massive respect for that. I would love to talk about, and I'm just going to guess how difficult the transition was back into the real world. Even when I'm in Austin and I'm in my sanctuary and I have my red lights at night and my weighted blanket and it's very relaxed here and I go to LA, it's jarring. It is like, oh my God, there's ambulance, there's traffic lights, there's all these different stimulus. When you got back into the real world, did you do it slow? Did you do it

fast? What was that experience? One thing that Michael and I have done together that I think has deepened our relationship is boxing. We have been doing a lot of activities together for fitness. But yeah, boxing is one of them. Boxing is one of our activities that we've been sweating with. I don't want you to learn too much just in case I piss you off too much. I'm pretty good.

You're pretty good. You got a mean right hook. I got a mean right hook. So here's what we did. We started working out with a boxing coach. He taught us the basics. And then obviously the pandemic hit and we were like, what are we going to do? We still want to box at home. And so we were introduced to this brand called Fight Camp. And what they do is they bring the best workouts in the world into your home and they make it fun. I should also add too, they make it chic because the boxing situation setup that I have in my garage is white. It is so pretty. I think it's the prettiest boxing setup I've ever seen. Also, my gloves match it. It's like a punching bag, right, Michael? Is that what you call it? It is a punching bag,

Lauren, yes. When Michael pisses me off, I go downstairs, I put my white sheet gloves on, and I punch my white punching bag in the comfort of my own home. So here's the deal with Fight Camp. What they do is you can learn to box and kickbox from home with access to world-class programming, elite trainers, premium equipment, like I said, and smart technology. They have thousands of classes. So I get to pick which class I want. I'm never bored. They have quick workouts. So sometimes you don't want to do an hour. You know what I mean? Sometimes you just got 10 minutes and also they have the full package. So Fight Camp comes with all the gear that you need to start boxing from home.

This includes the freestanding punching bag that I got in white, my white boxing gloves. You can get hand wraps and even smart punch trackers. It's a family workout. Now is the best time to get your fight camp. Take advantage of their holiday deal going on now. This is such a cute gift. If you purchase this December, you'll get an additional pair of gloves for free. Just go to joinfightcamp.com slash skinny to get an additional pair of gloves for free during December. Just go to joinfightcamp.com slash skinny. That's joinfightcamp.com slash skinny. well I did it very slowly and part of that was because when I came out South Africa was still in lockdown and so I just stayed on the property so you know I just moved back into my house and so I was in I continued to be in nature but the thing that I noticed the most was how much other people's energy affects me. I had set a new bar to contrast against.

And the experience of being totally in your own energy for six weeks and then interacting with other people and noticing how much of an effect it has on you, that was really big for me. And I've gotten much better at interacting now and then knowing that I need to go and restore myself. So I take time all the time night. I need to be alone and I mean no other energy around me. And I have to work out how to do that so that I can recharge and be back in the world. If you could give our audience three things that you learned from that incredible six-week experience? What would those things be? Wow, that's good. I mean, one is... The digital thing is a real thing, right?

The phone and all of that. But more importantly, here's the challenge. When you are consuming content all the time, it's like the content takes up the place where there would have been imagination. It takes up the place where there would have been curiosity. It takes up the place where there would have been nothingness into which something could have flowed. And so if you're in a phase of your life where you're asking yourself, like, what do I, what's my creativity? What do I want to put in the world? You can't just be consuming. You actually need a period of time where you sit in nothingness.

You need a period of time where your mind just rambles through weird stuff because that's kind of where it happens. We're losing the capacity to imagine. So I would say, pay attention to creating things versus consuming things. That's a big one. You have to develop a stillness practice. One way or another, you need to find time to just be. And I really mean be, not taking anything in, not doing anything, just being in your own energy. That's doing nothing. You know, being, and because sometimes, you know, you may be, that may be gardening,

but you know, when you're in being, because it's not like you got to get it done, you got to get it done. It's like, it's actually nourishing you. It's a state of an energetic state in which you are in the presence of your own presence and it's extremely nourishing. So be present to your own presence would be another thing. And then what would a third thing be? I would also say like where your attention goes, your life goes. That's really the motto of the tracker.

I love that. If you put your attention on living things, you become more alive. If you put your attention on technological digital things, you become more digital. If you put your attention on loving, nourishing relationships, you become more loving and nourishing. So just notice what's getting the majority of your attention because where your attention goes, your life goes. I could not agree more with that.

Tell us about your book. It's called The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. You also wrote another book when you were very young. Tell us about both your books, but especially the one that just launched. Yeah, I'm really excited about Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. And we were touching on some of it earlier. It's what the psyche and the approach of the trackers can teach us about our own transformational process. So being comfortable with the unknown, developing your track awareness, attunement, dropping into your body and like really using

your body as an instrument. So if you watch a great tracker following, what they'll do is they'll start to move at the same speed of the animal. And what they're doing is they're almost feeling the animal in their own body. And so they're attuned to their body's sensitivity and information. And as you go through your day, just notice what expands your body. Notice what energizes you. Notice when you get a full body yes and what that actually feels like. And if you just follow that, it's going to start... If you just work out how your body says yes to you and you start following that, it's going to start taking you into really beautiful places. So the book is these lessons that we can learn from the trackers. How to go into what I call the following state.

You know, the way you guys have created this came out of the following state. It's like constant creative response to what's occurring. Okay, we're going to do this. And it's this ability to be attuned to what you want to create, aware of like how it's guiding you. Because you know that amazing thing in a creative process where you can actually feel like the creative process is almost speaking to you and you're just creatively reacting to it. Oh wait, that didn't work. Let's iterate. Let's try this. So a tracker is very good at going into the following state. And then, you know, you will lose the track. If you set out to go on a journey where

you let go of an old identity, you step out of a relationship, you let go of a career, you step into that unknown, you start attuning, you start listening to your body, you start identifying how your track speaks to you, and then suddenly, boom, you lose the track. And I talk about it in the book, losing the track is a part of tracking. And it's important that we know that, so that when we're in a deep process of transformation, and suddenly we were doing so well, things were going well, it was all lining up, and then suddenly the track is gone. You actually know losing the track is a part of this. And then you can do what the trackers do

when they lose the track. You can ask yourself, when was the last time I felt clearly on track? So you can start to go back. What was I doing? Who was I with? If a tracker loses the track, they just start moving forward and they start walking these big half circles to try and cut back onto the track. And what they're doing is anywhere where they don't find the track, they call it the path of not here. Anywhere where you're not finding the track, you're actually eliminating. It's not that. It's not that. And the path of not here is actually part of finding the track. And so all these little side roads we go on and we thought it was going to be this. Oh, it's not this. Oh, we thought it was going to be this. No, it's not this. It's actually helping us attune to what is

really calling us forward. And then the final lesson is, and there is never track alone. You know, one of the things is, is make sure that we start to develop community around us that actually supports us. Because if you have people around you who are stuck, who are afraid, and you start wanting to change, they're going to sell you their fears and give you their limits as to why it's not possible. And so to build community around us of people who are living that way, who are working towards their own expansion, becomes a very important part of what we're doing. You mentioned, and before you go, I would love for you to speak on this. You have a practice with plant medicine.

We've been talking to a lot of different people about this, and I would love for you to share your experience. Sure. So where to start? You start from the beginning. When I was 25, I was introduced to my first teacher who was a master at using different substances to create healing experiences. This was actually, I'd started coming to America and I met him here. And for the first three years of that, I was still very deep in my own healing process.

But because I had grown up around animals, I was able to read energy and body language and I could see where people were holding trauma. And I had had enough trauma and was starting to get the map out of it that I was starting to understand how you move through it. And so very, very quickly, I was interested in facilitating those spaces and understanding those spaces. And I said to him, you know, I really want to do this work. And he says to me, you can't do it yet. You have something, but you still have too much self-doubt. And, you know, I was young, I was trying to do it yet. You have something, but you still have too much self-doubt. And I was young, I was trying to work it out. But I moved through that over three years. And then I started working with some of these different medicines. Now around the shamanic wheel, you have different plants and different plants hit different things. So you get body, heart,

mind, spirit. And so like a mushroom experience is a very spirit experience. It takes you into everything. It connects you with everything. There are other substances that are like a very heart experience. They open you. They allow you to be more connected with yourself, more present with yourself.

And so the art form, and I think that there's, you know, this has to be done so responsibly, it has to be done in the right context. There's so many ways of doing it that are not right, and it's certainly not for everyone. But in certain contexts, and particularly in this culture, the capacity to use a substance that helps people open their heart and feel connected, experience themselves as safe and relational, can be extremely healing and very, very powerful.

The opportunity to take a plant that connects you with a huge mystery, and in some ways you're having a very deep encounter with yourself, and through the use of these tools you are sensitizing your capacity to feel, you're tapping into deeper intuitions, you're making peace. You know, a lot of it has to do with how we make meaning with what's happened in our life, how we make meaning with what didn't happen in our life. And the substances and the ceremony provides a context for us to experience ourselves, to learn about ourselves, to discover ourselves, to make sense of what

happened and to start to imagine who we could be and how we want to create that. So that's kind of like the context of it. My own journey was, part of my discovery was that I was, what I discovered was that part of what I wanted to do is help people heal, you know, and being in those spaces brought me into my, you know, my healing gifts. And what that was, was just being really present with people and realizing that so much of what heals us is when someone is actually able just to sit with us and be present and witness us and hear us and see us and hold a space for what we've been through and see the best in us. Is there like a thing that you do? Do you do mushrooms like every two weeks?

Do you do Iowa? Like what's, is there any like actual pattern or is it just kind of when you feel the need to do it? So what you want to do is you want to develop your own relationship with the plants. And that relationship becomes extremely personal over time. And so for me, what the message that I was getting from the plants was to explore with them very deeply. And so I was doing, you know, a couple of times a month, I was in different types of ceremonies. The other thing that psychedelic plants will do is they sensitize you. So they sensitize your body to energy. And so you can start to feel other people.

You can start to feel what other people are holding. And because I was moving into the healing work, I was sensitizing myself to that. Now, it'll be maybe once or twice a year. Because the idea is, and this is where it becomes really important. The idea is you're getting to know yourself and you want to move through stuff and you want to be integrating these experiences so that you can be more peaceful, more open, more calm. Where things can take a side turn is where people start using these experiences themselves as a crutch. And they start thinking that the plant is the answer.

No, the plant is a tool. It's a teacher that takes you to an answer that's already inside of you. And you want to get to a place where you feel really good. You feel really healed. You're not just endlessly in a process. And so for me, that was about a six-year journey. And now once or twice a year, or if I really want to ask a question. I think that is great information. You're absolutely amazing. Where can everyone find your book, your Instagram? I have one more question before you go. Yeah, hit me. You may have already kind of answered this, but I think because you've lived in two different kinds of worlds, two different kinds of cultures,

had two vast experiences that are completely different. Is there something that you think Westerners or people in this culture would get a benefit from? Maybe it's a practice, an idea, a concept, a mindset from like Bush culture that you think could be vastly applied to the majority of people here to their benefit. Yeah, I mean, it's- You kind of maybe have already answered this in a broad way. It's a great question. And I think some of what,

how would I, I want to answer this really well. I think that here's the thing that happens when you, when you really start to heal a person who heals. And the reason that I consider finding the track of your life, finding your unique gifts, the reason that I consider it as a kind of activism, because a person who gets in touch with that place inside of themselves, a few things happen. One is there's a return to simplicity, a deep desire to make it more simple and to simplify

your life. There's a natural return to nature. There's a desire to be involved in creative practices. There's a natural desire to serve that starts to emerge out of that. So anyone who gets into a healing process, that's what starts to happen. And I think that right now there's a tremendous awakening happening as a result of this crazy time we're in. But a lot of people are waking up. And what are they waking up to?

They're waking up to, I want to do work that is meaningful. So I want to go on this journey to find out what I have to offer and share. They're waking up to, I want to be connected with nature. And so wherever you are, start the process of getting connected with nature again. Start to work out what nature has for you. And then the third thing is, and I've been feeling it just being in Austin, I don't know if you guys have felt it, but we need community that knows how, we need to be in the practice of learning how to be in community that knows how to be with each other without pretense. And that's a big one because what is most lost now, and you guys, I'm sure you know

this, you go to an LA gathering and there's so much posturing, there's so much show that sometimes it can be hard to actually work out how to be there for each other. So what we need to learn is how to go under all of that comparative dynamic and actually be there for each other and hold space for each other. And that is an art form. And I feel like there are pockets of it starting to remember, but the plants can really help you

remember how to be with each other. And so using some of these plant medicines together is a way to learn how to really like be in community with each other. And I think that's something we've got to learn how to do together. One of my hobbies includes making Michael do mushrooms with me

and then locking him in a room in the dark to talk. Yeah, you wonder why I'm so fucked up. What could go wrong? He would rather go live in a tree for 42 days. No, but don't you find like, it's like you get in there in a dark room and sometimes it's a bit disorientating what's going on but then as you start to come out of it you start to just be able to reflect on life

and discuss again and just be at a different level with each other and that is I think what we need to try and teach people does that make sense I spend the majority of my time now until I've been trying not to corner myself in a dark room. I'm actually not kidding. We, we've had some, you know, we've been together a long time and there was a period of time when like there was a rough patch that we needed to work through. And we did take psilocybin together and had a conversation that I don't think we could have had without it. Right. It was both ego dropped, both willing to listen. And I think after that conversation, remember like it solved almost every issue that we were going through

and the relationship immediately improved, like overnight. Totally. And a lot of what my work is now, and I've done this all over, is I go to a place and, you know, from a living room in the Hollywood Hills to Portland, Maine,

to, you know, out on a piece of land and we bring people together and we make a fire and we create a context for us to make meaning with each other. And sometimes that context is ceremony. Sometimes that context is storytelling. Sometimes that context is medicine. But if you hold it, if someone holds it, who knows how to be in deeper connection, knows how to be in relation, suddenly people learn. And being connected like that, it's actually an energetic language. And it's like, I can feel you. I know you can feel me. And that's what we're actually longing for. And

that's what we all need to work out how to create together. Amen. Where can everyone find you on Instagram and your book, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life? Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. I'm at boydvati.com. And you can find podcasts from the tree there. You can find our online Track Your Life course. So if you're at a time in your life where you're looking for what the track of your life might be, it's a really great course that'll guide you through that. It doesn't include mushrooms. No mushrooms in that one. The book on Amazon, Instagram at Boyd Vati. And yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Please come back on again. Maybe Khalil will be allowed in.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. Will any of us get a word in? When we go to South Africa, we're going to hit you up because it sounds like you know the land pretty well. I'm really expecting you to let me ride a lion. I would love to have you guys out there. And I mean, it's a really beautiful property. The lodge is beautiful and we're going to connect you with nature in a really deep way. I can't wait.

And in a way that, you know, is not scary at all. Really well guided. As long as there's not any dark rooms. No, no dark rooms. No dark rooms.

Would you rather go with the crocodile or the dark room? I think maybe the crocodile, honestly. And you know, we'll get out there and we'll do a little tracking together too because it's a really,

it's a beautiful ancient process. I would love, yeah. I mean, personally, I would love to, I mean, I'm obviously not going to become an expert, but learn even just like what that begins to look like. Oh yeah. You'd be good. You're so observant.

Me on the other hand, oh my God, I don't know about that. No, it is like, you know, you get on the track, you start a tuning, it's just magical. You'll love it., you start a tuning, it's just magical. You'll love it. And it's ancient. And it's ancient.

Literally, we did this from the first origins of humankind. Amazing. Come back when you're here. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming. Cheers. Don't forget to go to shopskinnyconfidential.com and shop 25% off, including kits.

This is a good sale. I think you're going to love it. Make sure you stock up on ice rollers, razors, and oils for the holiday season. Wait, don't go. Do you want to win a copy of Boyd's book? It's called The Lion Tamer. I'm reading it right now.

It's absolutely amazing. I think you'll love it. All you have to do is tag a friend to listen to The Skinny Confidential, him and her podcast on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostic to win. We want to spread the word and grow the community. And we love when you guys tell your friends. Cheers. And I hope you loved

this episode with Boyd.