TrueLife - Calm Is Power: The Secret Science Founders Don’t Know

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Vladislav AndreevIn this conversation, you’ll discover:Why founders and high-performers fail when they chase constant action.How stillness can become your competitive advantage.The science behind rewiring your nervous system to boost clarity, resilience, and decision-making.Practical strategies to align biology and behavior so your leadership is not just effective — but alive.Why calm isn’t passive — it’s a currency of power in the modern world.Static. Breath. Pulse.In the noise of the modern mind,founders chase velocity —but Vladislav Andreev teaches stillness as strategy.He rebuilds leaders from the inside out —rewiring sleep, light, movement, and meaninguntil biology and behavior move as one.From UC Berkeley to the frontlines of human potential,he decodes the nervous system —our original operating system —and shows how calm becomes power,clarity becomes currency,and leadership becomes alive.This is TrueLife.http://entheogen.expert/http://osapiens.expert/https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreevvv One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. The Puris through ruins maze lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a Wednesday. Welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. in the noise of the modern mind founders chase velocity. But Vladislav Andrieve teaches stillness his strategy.

He rebuilds leaders from the inside out, rewiring sleep, light, movement, and meaning until biology and behavior move is one. From UC Berkeley to the front lines of human potential, he decodes the nervous system, our original operating system, and shows how calm becomes power. clarity becomes currency and leadership becomes alive. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Vlad. Vlad, how's it going, my friend? George, I'm excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for this conversation.

It's always pleasure to have chat with an old friend, man. And yeah, thanks for an introduction. I couldn't have said it better. Yeah, man, I'm stoked to be here. We were just saying it's been like a year since the last time we got on here and chopped it up. Yeah, my entire life changed since then. I mean, I went through some transformational periods, man.

There's like a lot, a lot of things changed. Time flies, though. Yeah. What kind of changes, man? Like, what's happened in the last year? So, let me try to recap. So last time we spoke, I was living in Lithuania. Since then, Lithuania imposed new limitations for the Russian passport holder,

and I was born in Russia, so, you know, hence the limitations. So I had to make a choice to, you know, relocate to a new place. And back in the day, me and my wife, we sat and considered, like, what are the options available for us? So we looked at the map of Europe and then decided on some and then agreed to move to Spain because of many reasons. One is there's a lot of sun and, you know, it's really important for health span and lifespan and I'll talk about that later. Food is great, you know, fruits, veggies, and third is the drug policy. So in Spain, yeah, even though it's not like complete decriminalization as it is in Portugal, which is a neighboring country, but still here, yeah, I mean, police doesn't really chase you for consumption or anything like that. And the community, the psychedelic community in Spain is quite big.

There's a lot of psychedelic research happening in universities of Spain, not only in Barcelona. So anyway, we picked that location and then, you know, decided to back our bags. but then during that period, we decided to part our ways. So I went through a divorce after a seven-half-year relationship. And then, you know, all that built a lot of pension, a lot of stress for me. So I went to violent for a month and a half, and then I went to Spain. And then my old autoimmune disease, which was still with me for like 19 years. And 19 years ago, it manifested and almost paralyzed me.

It couldn't walk. And it re-emerged and, you know, just said, you know, you need to recover. I'm like, okay, so what do I do? And, you know, usual direction would be to go to a doctor, get pills, and, you know, just to consume immunosuppressants. But I decided, no, no, no, no, no, no. Since I haven't been taking any pharmaceutical drugs for a year and a half, I'm not going to go that route again.

So I built my own recovery plan. And, well, I'm now in remission, no pharmaceuticals at all. So that's one. The second thing, which is really huge, is that during that period of time over the last year that we haven't spoken, I built a product that is designed to help people build a bulletproof system for their mental health. The beauty of the product is that it's science-based, evidence-based as latest World Health Organization's mental health guidelines, and it's purely behavioral. I call it the knowledge that you need on Monday once you have that

revelational transformational journey over the weekend when you decided to have to lead a healthier life but you don't have the tools. So now I'm working on that product which is called Ossapians. He delighted to go into that. So, yeah, a lot of changes. Now I'm in Barcelona and my plan is to build my life already enjoying it. Yeah, that is a lot of changes, man. It seems like everyone right now is going through this incredible transformation.

Maybe it's society. Maybe it's the world. Maybe it's just us. But I mean, you're not alone in these huge changes, man. And I'm excited to get into what you got working on. I'm working on over there. Like Osapians. You know what?

I recently came across this paper that you had sent to me and that you had posted on a bunch of different forums about what's the real cause of depression. other mental health problems, man. I thought we could start there and get into that, man. What do you think? Absolutely. I would love to. And I wanted to talk about it, actually. Even though I don't possess any, you know, degrees behind my back about my clinical

background or anything like that. But when I published that paper, I received a lot of good, positive feedback from doctors all over the world. And basically the idea behind that paper, it's currently self-published, but I plan to collaborate with other researchers and publish it in a journal at one point in time. But the idea there is that the issue behind the vast majority of issues with mental health and physical health, for that matter, is inflammation. And inflammation on itself is not the cause per se, because while inflammation is a reason

of an underlying process, and then once you start to look deeper and in a more holistic way around biology of human species of homocypians, we then realized that there are so many different aspects that create that type of inflammation that then leads to various issues with mental health. So I noticed that there's an emerging evidence that shows up that is clearly supporting that line of thinking. And when I have that epiphany, roughly in March, this year, I thought, oh, my, oh, wow, that's like really, that's brilliant idea. I mean, seriously, I should check it. And then I thought, you know, that was the one who came up with it, but apparently I wasn't the only one who came up with it. So there are other publications that pretty much

indicate the same idea. Although in my thinking, I tried to make it a more integrative approach and build a system around it so that it explains more nuances and details. So if I take a step back and talk about inflammation as a consequence, I then need to talk about the reasons. The reasons are mainly quite basic in terms of biology, and they are all connected with this disruption of our innate evolutionary mechanisms, neural circuits, and basic behavioral aspects that have been with us for millions of years. And over the past 150 years, in some cases, 30, 50 or a decade, a lot of things change like artificial lightning, like mass-produced food, like technology, social media, et cetera, et cetera.

And all that in a compound way disrupted the way we live, the way we interact with each other, the way we basically just live our life on the daily basis. So the system that I started to build that helps people regain their mental health is around that biology. But then once you start to dig and understand that sleep is disrupted and it leads to inflammation, it leads to issues with mental health because of artificial light, because of blue light in the evening, scrolling news, social media that doesn't let our brain to reduce miltonin and then relax properly. Then nutrition is messed up completely. I mean, the vast majority of people are eating ultra processed food, which is, well, linked to. mental health issues, physical health issues, cancer, and other variations of issues that you may experience. Then, a lack of movement. We're sitting at home. We're not doing much. It's office work, work from home, et cetera. We're not exercising. We need to do like 150 minutes of cardio,

to strength trainings per week, etc. And then we're not dealing with stress properly. Stress is a major factor that is causing inflammation and the previous ones as well. But, you know, there are more other layers that leads to inflammation. But there are, those are biological aspects, right? And then there's psychological aspect, like trauma, like adverse events in childhood, like some really severe events in life that led to this suffering that also causes inflammation. And then it becomes a vicious cycle pretty much causes inflammation inflammation leads to issues with mental health and then you know it's just connected to each other it's just spiraling but then once you

started to rebuild your biology and get rid of reasons for inflammation once you fix your sleep eat properly you know good food not ultra-processed type of move through regularly and then a lot of cardio, you manage your stress, you connect with others, you regulate circadian rhythms, you understand why are you doing this for, you gather agency around your choices, you rest properly, and then you're curious enough, and then your biology becomes your supporting system. So this is the biological aspect and the psychological, and then, of course, there's psychedelic aspect that can help here, but that's a slightly separate topic.

I'm not sure if I'm expressing clearly a non-native language or so, you know, I'm a Russian-ups. It's perfect, man. It's perfect. And I agree so much. It seems that there's so many contributing factors to living a life of stress and inflammation. And those two things definitely seem connected from where I sit in my lens of experience. And I guess I'm curious to. to see or to ask you,

is it possible to, like in the world we live in? Like, there's so many stressors, like financial stressors. There's all these sort of ideas about expectations in life or surrounded by the social media that has just this lens that's so, that's so odd to look through. And is it possible? Like, how do you, what are some strategies that you can do to sort of, get out of the system. You know what I mean by that? Like it seems like there's so many external stressors out there that are causing you to live a life of inflammation and stress.

We've talked about sleep. We've talked about eating right. But it seems like it's pretty hard for people to do that. Like what are some tricks that people can use in order to start getting into the right frame of living? Right. That's a great question. I actually reframe it a bit, if I may. Yeah.

Would initially steer people towards implementing. any change in life. Right. And to me, this is even more fundamental question because, you know, I mean, people usually know what they need to be doing, right? I mean, you need to be better, sleep better, you know, move more, but they don't do it. Yeah, right. Why don't they do it?

Yeah, exactly. There's no point, right? So the existing status quo is not that difficult enough or maybe there is no future scenario that's inspiring enough. There is nothing that is motivating enough to start implementing change. But I dig into this aspect at some point in time, and I, you know, tried to search for answers. And the answers were actually quite interesting. Typically, whenever people decide to implement positive change when it comes to their life,

it's happening in some key moments, such as they get diagnosed, you know, like diabetes or whatever. and then they're like, oh, okay, I guess I need to stop eating that sugary stuff that I've been eating every single day, you know? Or maybe they won't do it. They just keep on with their life. Second is when a friend, you know, family member, somebody, again, gets diagnosed. And then because it's their close circle, they're like, oh, okay, maybe I need to do something about my life, you know. Yeah. The third element would be probably something like near death type of experience. You know, oh, you know, I survive a car crash.

maybe I zero the drone and then I start to value life and I want to live long. The other element here is that, well, age, you know, people get to a certain age and body starts to feel different. They're like, oh, I don't remember having this ache in the back, you know, or maybe like, I used to wake up full of energy and now it's no longer the case. Or some other aspects that lead to them starting things. So I'd say it all starts with like in internal inquiry. Like, oh, okay, maybe it's some, maybe it's time to change. But then the next step is the hardest, right? So where do I begin?

Where do I start? Well, the answer here would be start with sleep. Because if you want to change anything in your life in terms of health, whether it's mental health or physical health, by far, sleep is the most important aspect. It's just, you know, not that important. People can live longer without food than without sleep. So, you know, if you go to the doctor and the doctor doesn't ask how's your sleep, I suggest you change the doctor because it is indeed fundamental.

But going back to your question, like, how do you do that? So the change process takes time, right? There are many mistakes people make on that journey, but there are typical ones, right? So the first mistake would be to change it all. in one goal. It's just not going to happen. It's like trying to climb Everest. I mean, you're not doing it in one go. There are base camps that are built specifically for that purpose so that you get to the first one, you establish it, you know, yourself, you get adjusted to the altitude, et cetera, then you move to the next one. It's the same. It's a step-by-step process. So when people try to,

you know, start a new life on Monday or on January 1st, and yeah, it's doing. for failure. It's just not going to happen and people are just going to fall apart and crumble. And it's not going to work for me. I'm not that person, et cetera. So the second most common mistake would be to expect progress too early. Any change requires time. And then you cannot just, you know, become a healthier person, get rid of your habits or build new ones. It takes time. But then the other element that is absolutely critical and fundamental here for any change to stick or lost is the attitude. I don't know, the mental framing, the self-perception, the identity of, you know, old person, old me who was, you know, living my life, you know, getting used to the discomfort of whatever is happening, versus new me. a person who is, I don't know, leading a healthier lifestyle, a person who wants to see their

grandchildren go to, I don't know, prom, whatever, you know, once you start cultivating the identity, the rest is just basically details. How do you, if inflammation is the problem, like, how do you measure it? You know, I know that so many of my friends in the science back community, like, they want to see something that they can measure. And inflammation seems like a quiet killer. You know, obviously you could see it when you start living a better life. That could be anecdotal. Like, listen, why, I feel like I'm crushing. I'm up earlier. I'm working out more. I got my microdosing program. Like, I'm in this relationship now. There's all these things that

you could sort of measure on the outside. But is there a way to measure inflammation on the inside? Yeah, great question. So there are certain biomarkers that give you a clear indication. quite objective one. So the most common one is called CRP-C reactive protein, which is, yeah, it's quite basic and it's typically tested in the vast majority of cases, regardless of the type of issue that you have with your health, but not in many cases it is seen as, you know, a source. They say, oh, you know, you have high inflammation markers or means something going on in your body. And just one important thing here. Inflammation on itself is not bad. It is good.

And when it comes to, you know, repairing tissue, when we got a cut, I got it cut here. I was cutting tomatoes with a nice and sharp knives. And, you know, inflammation is nice so that I can get that fixed by my body. But then if it's low-grade systemic inflammation, that means, you know, it's no good on all levels. So CRP, the second would be interleukin 6, I-L-6. And the third one would be T and F alpha. tumor and necrosis factor alpha. So those give you an indication that there is something happening in the body,

but then you need to understand what exactly. Because inflammation markers on themselves, they don't give you clear picture of the exact reason behind the problem. They give you a signal that, you know, something is going on, your body is fighting, and in people who have autoimmune disease, that could mean that, you know, that immunity is fighting, yourself and this is a problem as well because it's like permanent inflammation in some cases not

at all but then once you see that those factors biomarkers are quite high you then start to dig you dig until you find the reason because there is a reason they don't just go up it doesn't happen like this and speaking on the topic of microdosing by the way there is plenty of research that clearly indicates that entheogens are anti-inflammatory which is beautiful beautiful, especially with psilocybin. It's really, well, I don't know if I can't say it out loud, but for me, for instance, it's my case, and now it's end of one, but there's research, of course, that you can check.

But for me, it works better than anti-steroid, anti-steroid, anti-inflammatory drugs. Because those are prescribed whenever you have the pain, whenever you have, you know, some chronic pain or whatever. And with my illness, which is on chelosing spondylitis, I had episodes when I had this pain for quite constant in a long period of times. And I remember waking up in the morning, doing all my stretch routines as I do every morning. Then before going into meditation, taking a microdose. And while I meditate, I realized that pain just dissipates.

I was like, what? And then I started to dig and understood that, yeah, indeed. Indeogens are anti-inflammatory, which is a great. Yeah, that blows my mind to think about it. I feel like so many in the community, we're all, especially in the Entheogen and psychedelic community, you know, we're really focused on like the neuroplasticity and the changes happening inside the brain. But a lot's going on inside the body, too, that we don't really talk about, like the gut brain connection and the inflammatory response. What are your thoughts? What are some other things in there that we might be mislooking or not seen?

Yeah, well, once you start to understand a bigger picture, you start to realize that it's not that straightforward. There is no silver bullets. There's no single solution. You cannot just do that and that's it. I mean, you take and theogen and that's it. I mean, no, it's not a magic deal, absolutely. So when you start to treat the body as a whole structure without this. strange division between the mind and body that was imposed at some point in the past.

And then you approach to it in a holistic manner. You then realize that it's basically like a walking nervous system in a sense, right? So you got aspects that are affecting judgment, the way you feel, you know, how you behave, whether or not you're full of energy or, you know, you're surviving or a full of anxiety, whatever. And then you have traumatic events that also. are stored in the nervous system and in the body. So it's not like you identify, you know, one reason and that's it.

You need to fix the whole system. And the problem with modern approaches that exist in the world and the medical system as it is, is that they try to give you pills for symptoms rather than the cause without understanding that the lifestyle interventions need to be made in order for a person, to well truly thrive rather than survive because again sleep is critical food is critical 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut so depending on what you eat you either support your brain and immunity or nervous system or you suppress it and destroy it by indulging in alcohol you're destroying microbiome by you know consuming ultra-processed food or sugar is in the food you are destroying

microbiome. And the funny thing about microbiome is that if you take the number of cells of human body and you equate it to one, the amount of cells of microbiome that sits within us and on top us on our skin, et cetera, would be 1.3. So the proportion of cells between human body and microbiome is 1 to 1.3. So technically speaking, we're just vessels for the microbiome. And then when we take antibiotics, we destroy it all. And yeah, this is where it becomes like really tough to rebuild. It's so interesting to get to first off, I love the systemic approach to mental health that you're taking. This idea that we can find the trauma in the body, like whether it's inflammation or whether it's a different part of our body that's acting up, that's causing us to be mentally, you know, ill in some way.

I love the systemic approach. This is a little bit deeper question, but do you think that the way we treat ourselves in our own body is the way we treat other people? You know what I mean by that? Like the relationship we have to ourselves. Is that sort of mirror our other relationships in life? Well, that's a deep question, man. I say yes in a nutshell, but then again, you know, you want to go deeper on that, right? So for sure, for sure.

I mean, if we're talking about treating ourselves, I'd say the vast majority of people, I don't know, roughly maybe 85 to 90 percent, they don't even take care of themselves. And I'm working with interpreters, you know, high performing individuals. And those are people that are, you know, doing a lot of work. And then what they're doing, they're sacrificing their own biology, relationships, et cetera. And then, of course, it leads to all sorts of issues. And then once you start to take care of yourself, once you become more self-loving and supporting and maybe even, you know, embracing your own vulnerabilities rather than fight them, embrace all your shadow, all your parts, all the trauma that sits in there.

And once you harmonize your internal world, then you harmonize it with biology as well, then the external world is not a threat. It's more of a loving universe, so to speak. But then again, if you have a lot of issues, you have a lot of stress, if you have a lot of trauma, your body full more reactive, you're more aggressive even at times. You know, you're not in line with just general common sense. at times because you react because of all patterns but then again once you're whole and healed you recognize that yes there are patterns that are manifesting and these or that conversation on the

core interaction but i will not go there and will not react out of you know pain out of suffering out of whatever there is so yeah going back to your question i'd say it all starts with the way i'll we treat ourselves and we don't take care of our body of our own biology. How can we even, you know, take care of the entire world or even be a better human? Yeah. It's interesting. Like I bring it up because for me, sometimes the people I love the most stress me out the most.

You know what I mean? Like if you want to take care of the people you love and, you know, the relationships that we find ourselves and that are very meaningful to. to us can also be not only a great sense of joy, but also a great sense of stress. And when I see that in a relationship that I have with someone, sometimes I see it in myself, like, oh, maybe this is me. You know, maybe this is me that's these. Maybe it's me coming up with this.

And then that makes me think of my body. It makes me think of the stressors in my body. And I'll probably create some inflammation. And next thing you know, I'm like, I need to take some LSD. Interesting how that's going to quickly. It's interesting. Maybe you could tell me a real life story about how you have incorporated psychedelics in your life and you've seen the way in which it has changed inflammation or it has changed the struggle

or how have you found your relationship with psychedelics to change your mental health? Right. Yeah. That's probably like a couple of hours of speech. Yeah. I'd be sure to. So even though I have long-lossing relationships with entheogens for roughly 23 years of my life, I quite early discovered their healing properties.

But in a more conscious approach, I started to apply them only several years ago, mainly because of the stigma in the society that I was living in, and I was born in Russia and Russia, you know, or even talking about this right now, I'd be probably put in jail. And for all the type of work that I do in terms of sharing the scientific knowledge with Russian-speaking audience, well, you know, if I go home, probably that's it. You're never going to see me here in that podcast. But anyway, so I left the country, you know, the worst thought is like, no, no, no, no.

It's like, against everything I stand for. So, no, I cannot be part of the society. And then, you know, when I left the country, I was so stressful event. you know, relocating to the place, not knowing what's going to happen next, etc. So I drank, like I was drinking like a lot. Well, not like a lot, a lot like from the very morning, you know, but then, you know, in the evening I could have a couple of beers or a bottle or another bottle of wine with my ex-wife. And then at some point I realized that, no, it's like completely a self-destructive behavior. I need to do something about it. And then I started to, I found the medicine and I started to

microdose. And then when I started to microdose, because I'm a coach, I started to implement basically the approach to updating my software, like my mental neural networks in a way that I rewired it to a like new me that is a healthier person that doesn't need alcohol at all. So it's been, well, two years now, yeah, since I haven't had a single drug. alcohol. It's not that I like, oh, you know, I probably don't have any chips. I never been to 12 steps or whatever. I just did it by myself. And, you know, only now I recognize that it's been two years now, or three. Shit. Anyway, two is enough. Anyway, and then, then with the pain also, because, well, I have chronic pains. Microdosing helps me to do with pain better than any

non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. But then I also go from time to time to have a more macroeuro experience in a safe environment, you know, with cedar so that I don't do myself. And recently I had really two nice, profound, deep ceremonies, basically nearby downtown. Yeah, there's a wonderful place where you can just, you know, go for a journey within a day, you know, 10 or 11 p.m. you walk out of the place and you're in downtown Barcelona. You're like, yeah, wow. Anyway, so the first journey, was really deep in terms of helping me understand a bit more about the traumatic events that were stored in my body.

And the second journey was like physiologically releasing in a sense. So I felt as if the pain, you know, the trauma that's been with me for many, many, many years was just releasing, like, you know, that pressure that's been sitting there. And when they talk about trauma, the level of understanding is probably something around, you know, whenever you get out of the house being child, there is like a chance 50, 50 that you can either get bullied or, you know, be whatever, depending on your looks. And then around 11 years or so, there was a nice ice cream joint nearby that was basically blown to pieces in the turf ward. So, you know, that's not a safe environment to be living in. So I recognized that that was stored along with some other issues and sitting in my body and not letting me go. And I realized that, you know, I've been surviving throughout my life.

Like, you know, I got to the age of 39 years. And I was like, yeah, how did it? How did I make it this far? You know, I was just lying there with eight grams of mushrooms in my sister. It was like, how did I make it this far? know, and that realization on itself helped me to, of course, come down and, you know, understand that I'm finally, finally landing. It's final to save.

You know, I'm starting a real community. I'm connecting with people. I don't need all those protective things that I've been carrying around. And I felt as if I was just shedding some armor from, you know, my right part. And it felt so liberating. It was just like purifying on many levels. But then again, the most important thing about the type of experience is that you don't just go through it and, yeah, yeah, that's it, you're healed. No, no, no.

I took that material and brought to therapy, of course, where then I worked with trauma and then, you know, processed it so that I can then integrate it all on a daily basis and get rid of it because that's the thing about endiogenic experience. People miss out many times is that they go on those retreats. they have revelations and then they come on Monday to their work or life or whatever and you know it's good old whatever circumstances that basically just take them back to what they were before and they don't change at all so yeah that was a lot of transformation recently and i also had really interesting journey with ayahuasca in april where it was a a beginning of my transformational period that lost it for several months during summer. It was when we invite X, Y, decided to part our ways. And then it was a deep submergence into the layers of psyche that I haven't been in contact with.

I was able to connect with some elements of my identity, unearthed it. I have this interesting metaphor that that type of experience on itself is like going deep into the Marion Trench. And the Marion Trench is the deepest part in the ocean. It's like a kilometers deep or something like Everest backwards, right? And then when you go there, it's so scary. It's so painful at times, you know? But the beauty of it is that I found that that the infiogenic experience on itself, well, it is healing, of course, but the healing aspect of it

is that when you, first of all, surrender to the pain, you don't find it, you don't just embrace it, you know, and then you go into, you don't try to put any walls, you get to experience pain, and then you just, okay, let's do it, you know, come on, show me, teach me, guide me, what do I need to heal? like, well, let's, you know, experience all the pain there is so that, you know, there's no longer anything stored or suppressed. Just that on itself is healing because pain, as I learned over the course of the past months, is like frequency. It's like a language of our body.

Our body communicates with our consciousness in pain. And pain is a signal that we usually tend to ignore or dumb or, or numb with, you know, like alcohol, tobacco or like Netflix or, you know, destruct, self-destructive behavior just to, you know, get distracted or pills, pharmaceutical pills to numb the pain. And our body keeps on telling us, you know, there's something wrong. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everything's all right.

Or fine. No, I don't need that. And then, you know, it continues that way. And then it just gets to a point where you can. no longer ignore it and you get diagnosed with something really severe. But by that time, it's usually too late. So when pain manifests instead of numbing, listen, like ask it. Like, okay, what are you doing here? Tell me. I mean, what am I missing, you know? And then in the eugenic experience, usually you can get to the bottom of the reason because, well, your body knows

it all. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of dysregulation. It's going to tell you you just need to listen and then well ideally take notes so that you can then bring it to the therapist or coach or whoever we can help you support man it's so true i kind of feel like it's all necessary at least for me like the first 40 years like it was all learning and there was a lot of pain there was a lot of mistakes a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and i didn't even know how to face it I didn't even know how to address it. And for me, it was psychedelics that allowed me to see it as like a third, as like a third party. You know what I mean?

When you talk about going into the Mariana trench and just seeing all the strange creatures and the darkness and the pressure and the weight, like, it's hard to even go in that place unless you have an ally like psychedelics to go in there with, man. For me, like, but the older I get flat, the more I realize, like, that's necessary. Like the holding everything back and then the breaking and then the realization. Like that's all necessary, man. Do you get the same vibe? Like all of whether it's seeing the turf war or it's going out as a young kid and not knowing what the hell is going to happen or living in a place that's unstable and then having different relationships. In your mind, was that all necessary for you to be who you are today? Well, sure.

if it didn't happen, I wouldn't have been myself sitting here right now with all that, you know, survival baggage behind my bag. But yeah, of course. Of course it was necessary to a certain degree. I mean, I'm still alive and kicking. And, you know, it's amazing.

I mean, seriously, there's this beautiful phrase that doesn't kill us, makes it stronger, right? Right. Yeah. But then, of course, it solely depends on how you look at things because some people, you know, face circumstances and they

they just fall apart, they crumble, they're like, oh, no, I can't handle this. Some people decide to, you know, end it all because pain is too much. But how? I mean, the life is so beautiful. And even though you can and it will be hard at times, it's just, it's a miracle. I mean, wow. Yeah, that pain, pain is the teacher in a sense. But then, of course, there are circumstances where it can be like really tough. And this is where the nervous system regulation comes into place.

Because, again, if you are stable in terms of basic behaviors, again, sleep nutrition movements, stress management, social connections, you can weather any type of storm. There's this interesting example that the Dutch, they build the dam so that they can withstand a storm that can happen once in 100,000 years. whereas in New Orleans, they didn't think of it that way, right? So, you know, when you invest in, you know, protocols and daily routines that support you, you're building that Dutch down that, you know, is going to hold you. Even if, you know, you get your country starts a war, and you need to relocate to a new place, and then you need to relocate to a new place without understanding how you're going to live your life with all the sanctions in places and divorce at the same time and you need to remove the dog

and things. You know, like, yeah, well, at least, you know, my sleep nutrition movement supports me and I can handle it. And that's the beauty of like self-managing, you know, the tough periods of life like it. Yeah, I think so too. I feel like you have to go through all those in order to teach. someone else what's right or what's wrong. Like that's the real education is going through it yourself,

all the tough stuff and all the ups and all the downs. But eventually you find yourself on the other side with some tools to help other people that might be going through it. Sounds to me, maybe that's where some of this paper came from is you going through the tough times, you figuring out about sleep and about the body keeps the score and about all these ways in which you've developed these tools. What if you put on your forecasting glasses, what is the future of mental health care look like for you?

Well, for me, it's a major shift from this reliance on pharmaceuticals and the doctors that are considered as gods, right? And then if you look at that seriously, I mean, if you look at the U.S. and the oxycontin, the opioid epidemic, what happened there is that you go to the doctor, the doctor gives you prescription that is paid by the pharmaceutical company, and then you don't even question the doctor because he or she got a degree, and you're like, oh, who am I to question the doctor? So that lack or even absence of agency whatsoever is, well, in my view, is the reason why people struggle with health, because, well, they go to the doctor. They don't even, like, go into details.

You know, for them, it's easier to prescribe your pills and off you go, because again, you know, you got like 40 in line and waiting for you. And so my thinking is that the shift that needs to happen is from that current motto and I don't really know how to like explain it in a nutshell, probably, yeah, relying on the existing medical framework or the pharmaceutical companies or the doctors that tell you what you need to be doing with your life towards a totally different approach, which is pretty pretty different approach, which is preemptive, like, self-control of life. And, you know, like controlling your own biomarkers,

going and doing the plot work on, like, quarterly or at least, you know, six-month bases, managing your level of, I don't know, glucose in the body, managing your sleeve, et cetera. You don't need a professional to tell you what to do. You need to understand, you know, your own biology, your own peculiarities, whether or not you have like rare autoimmune disease that I have or you don't have it, but there is still some nuances to your biology, basically, and you need to take those into account.

So for me, future is in the hands of people, of each and every one of us. Because if we don't do that, well, we'll face another epidemic, like an academic epidemic or some other epidemic, right? Because, again, the more we rely on somebody to, you know, tell, us what to do and where's it going to take us? And I've come to learn that, you know, over the years, it's so strange that people rely on the power of a diploma so much that they think, oh, you know, the person is a clinical psychiatrist, oh, you know, that person knows better.

And then I have so many cases of people in the Russian-speaking community that went to the therapist and they told them that they're consuming entheogens. therapists were shaming them for this. I was like, what? I mean, seriously, you're supposed to be supporting person. But I mean, like, come up. How can you? And then, of course, it's an example, right? And then there are doctors who are prescribing opioids here and there because they got paid by a pharmacy company. So the presence of a diploma behind someone's back doesn't guarantee shit. And this is where people need to open. their eyes because, you know, ah, that's a doctor. Oh, that's a specialist. They know better than me.

No, your body knows better than they need than they. I mean, seriously, your body been with you for your entire life. They've seen you, what, like 15 minutes? Yeah. There's something about the ultimate authority and who you give it to and what your future can look like or what your body can look like if you're willing to take your health into your own hands. Like, clearly there's lots of people out there that really want the best for you in the medical field. But no one knows your body like you. No one knows the connection between your mental wellness and your body the way you as an individual do.

And for me, that's where psychedelics come in. Like there's a lot of times in a deep psychedelic journey where you figure it out. Like, you know what? You know why I think I've been super stressed out lately is because I'm fucking unhappy with who I am. You know, I think that's why I have this pain in my knee all the time. That's why I have this pain in my ass all the time. It's because I am unhappy. What the hell am I unhappy about?

You know, but it's that, it's that combination of understanding what's happening inside your body and understanding your thought patterns because those two things are directly linked. And no doctor is going to know that. No psychiatrist that has been given a book full of DSM labels is going to know that. Like, no one knows it but you. And you're the ultimate, you're the ultimate doctor of yourself. Not saying that we don't need help from time to times, but yeah, the individual. I really like that.

I like the idea of us in the future being more focused on our own health and taking that into our own hands, especially with new tools like all these biomarkers, like you can go get all these blood tests done and you can see where you're at. And you can put it into maybe a chat GPT model and understand inflammation. What do you think? Yeah, well, I got something to say of that. Okay, let's hear. First point is that there has to be like common sense and everything, you know, even what I'm saying here, you know, it's not like I'm telling, oh, go abandon doctors.

No. Right. But there has to be a balance, right? You just need to be quite critical about it. But the second thing that actually helped me specifically to go into remission over the past few months is not only understanding of my biology and the protocols that I have and the system that they build, etc, et cetera, et cetera. But the tools that I've created myself. So what I did is that I created a custom made chat GPT that I basically trained on my condition. I trained on a nice set of knowledge about

biology, well, physiology, and then other aspects that are related specifically with my condition, as well as, you know, all the blood tests and the blood work and other tests that I did. And then what I've been doing with it is that I told it, look, I have this issue. What do I need to be doing? And then, you know, the recipe here was, okay, go with anti-inflammatory diet, stick to intermittent fasting, limit your ratio to, you know, two meals per day at certain points, you know, at these supplements, etc. So like, okay, I'm going to do it. So I went with it and I had really tough moments. You know, sometimes it was hard. I just arrived in Spain and I had to eat like two supplements. times day very specific food nothing else like for for a duration of like one month just to

lower the inflammation just to quiet it down and then i was passing by a person who was apparently without a home eating like bread with hamone and i was like that was tough but anyway i followed that direction and uh every single day i was uploading photos of both the food that i've taken and well photos of my stool as well, you know, so that he could analyze my digestion. But jokes aside, it was really insightful, man, because it can really nicely analyze photos and pictures. I mean, that technology out there is just amazing. And then you couple that with the latest information that clearly indicates that about 50 or 60 percent of use cases of a, AI bots is around like self-therapy. I was like, oh, okay. So I built myself a therapist,

AI therapist, of course, right? And it doesn't mean that I just abandoned my regular therapist, but, you know, it's nice to have support whenever you need it, right? So that, you know, I was walking in the evening. I was feeling like really blue. And I was like, oh, shit, you know, I'm not getting better. It's been three weeks. Why is not helping me? And then I go, to my AI therapist and again trained on really nice set of knowledge, some books, etc. And then I speak with it and tells me, no, no, you're doing good. You're going through face. It's hard. It's stop, but you're in the right direction, etc., etc. I was like, okay, you know, and just continued doing what I was doing. Well, eventually it worked.

But again, going back to your comment on the AI tools, once you understand how to use them, they can be your ally. then again, you need to remember that there are limitations and they elicinate, right? And then they can give you some made-up shit. So you need to be able to understand what type of advice is plain harmful for you or, you know, really good. So with me, I know how they work and I trained it on, you know, a very certain set of instructions and books, et cetera. So I know that, and of course, I know a lot of biology, neurophysics, et cetera. So for me, it made complete sense. That was the way to indeed address inflammation.

And, well, it worked. So, yeah, hail to, you know, wonderful tools that we have. Yeah. I think it's just getting warmed up, too. I think we're going to see all kinds of new technology come in. It's going to be helpful for our mental health, for our relationship to ourselves. You know, it's interesting. What role do you think isolation plays in the world of mental health?

or in inflammation or in that relationship. Yeah, great point. So isolation is an, well, for me, it's the pillar number five in my system, which is social connections, and it is incredibly critical. It is one of key factors of what's like early more like death in all their citizens. And when we're living in just regular life,

isolation on itself is plain harmful for mental health and physical health. No wonder in, you know, what's the penetration? What's the incarceration system, right? So when you go to jail, the worst punishment is the isolation, right? So, including in the chamber, you're by yourself. And historically, evolutionary speaking, is the worst punishment ever. For primates to be isolated, that means like certain death pretty much, because you're on your own and that's it you're not going to survive but we are pretty much

voluntarily heading towards self-isolation on many levels and i i felt how hard it can be on my mental help when i used to live in niquania i work from home because well my business is in russia it's a strategic marketing consultancy i'm a managing partner i operate remotely and you know hire people fire people and grow, but anyways, I'm working from home. So because of, again, the trauma that sits in the society and the pain from the ex-Soviet times, the local people are not that friendly towards people who were born in Russia. I was born in Russia, so I guess I was the one experiencing that on the other receiving end, not, you know, being able to connect with locals, et cetera, et cetera.

And then that lasted for quite some time. And then I felt that isolation on itself really was hardened. But then when I realized that, I was like, shit, I need to do something about it. So I reached out to a friend and I said, oh, first of all, I need to, you know, reboot. I need to go to a ceremony to retreat with Aya or something else. And then she said, oh, you know, I know this in Peru. I was like, yeah, okay, okay. So I spoke with the guy.

and we almost agreed. It was supposed to be like two-week trip there, many ceremonies, et cetera. And then I speak with her again and say, you know, I have this thing. I feel like isolated. I crave human connection, like, big a lot. And then she tells me, you know what?

You better go to fly island to Phamangam. It's an island and been there before. It's next to some wee. And she says, you know, every single day, I mean, networking with events, you know, all types of activities. people are you know all the time connecting with each other I'm like yeah that's actually better decision never regretted it and went to file but even now here in

Barcelona where they just landed and started to build my network I see the difference it's it's like completely changing like the way I feel and how I can tell whether or not human connection is working how positively for me or not is by logging information. So I have at least two diaries. Those are apps. One is the sleep app that I use to log whatever information that happened throughout the day or the substances that have consumed, et cetera,

so that it then analyzes my sleep and shows, you know, these or that was either contributing positive negative sleep, et cetera. And the other app is called How We Feel, which is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant app. It's free of charge and it's like an emotional diary that helps you understand on a very granular level, the type of the feeling that you're experiencing in the moment. So when I log consistently information that, oh, you know, I was socializing. I was with friends. I was with, I don't know, girlfriend.

We were, you know, very tactile, et cetera, et cetera. I noticed that indeed, that is now improving my mood, improving my sleep. So the data clearly demonstrates that. But again, going back to the isolation on itself, we evolutionary have been living in tribes. In tribes, we, well, back in older days, you know, we've even been sleeping altogether. I'm not saying that we should be sleeping altogether all the time. No, no, no. Nothing like that. But we lose the tactility, like, you know, the COVID hit. That changed. It was a big game changer. And now wherever you go, people are on their smartphones.

I mean, even couples or, you know, friends, you look at the cafes and restaurants. People were sitting in their smartphones where they could, I don't know, how. sing, you know, dance, whatever. But good thing about Spain, though, is that the culture here is still highly social. So you can walk on the street and, you know, just see two random people bumping into each other and starting to the conversation. You're like, oh, wow, that's unusual, you know, or at the gym or at the grocery store. Like, I was buying your groceries. And then some guy counts to me and says, oh, you know, you don't take that chip, take that jam.

It's less sugar. Oh, thanks, man. And then we have a conversation for another seven minutes about various types of products. Amazing. Ah, love it. So, yeah, social connections help us, again, balance our nervous system. And then if we are dysregulated, it can help us restore, well, our health or our emotional stability. If we have a partner, we can just sit, hold our hands, look into our eyes, breathe together, synchronize for, I don't know, just five breaths.

just wait there with no gadgets, no notifications, no nothing. Just be present in the moment. That on itself is the medicine. Community is the medicine, especially in the context of infeogenic experiences where it can be really isolating in some places and countries where there's a lot of stigma prohibition. You cannot even talk about it. So, yeah, social connections are highly, highly critical for our mental health

and physical health. Yeah, it's really well said, man. The community is the medicine. It should be a bumper sticker. We should write that down. I like it. Yeah, for you. The community builder.

Yeah. I love talking to people. I think there's so much medicine in conversation. There's so much medicine and connection. And the things that I see in other people are things I recognize in myself. And so I'm always grateful to get to hang out with people. And I feel like an eternal student getting to listen to people all day and ask, some cool questions.

What about, let's say there's some people listening right now, Vlad, and they're like, man, what's this O-Sapiens? Like, maybe you could tell people a little bit about what's going on at the site. I know you've got a couple different sites over there, but what can people expect if they come and check these sites out? Sure. Yeah, thanks for the question. So O'Sapiens is the model framework for resilient mental health designed initially for

high performers like myself, but then it is the knowledge that should probably be taught. at schools as one of these people that went through the course said so basically what it is it's a system that i build after listening to 800 hours of lectures in science and latest scientific evidence reading books reading world health organization mental health guidelines that were issued in march 20 and 25 and then i compiled the system that consists of the 10 pillars of mental health and those are 15. Everyone through the day night? No.

Sleep, nutrition, movement, stress management, social connections, right? Then it's light and dark, sense of agency, purpose,

rest, and curiosity. So the brand is called O Sapiens for a particular reason. The awe stands for that moment when it clicks, when you realize and recognize it, ah,

it's the biology. It makes sense. And the Sapiens is basically We link to our evolutionary, well, innate biology because we're all one species, regardless of what people say, regardless of all the xenophobia and racism, we all came from Africa. So the biology is the same. The foundation is the same. There are slight differences, but 99.7% were same in terms of genetics.

Epigenetics, though, differs significantly in some cases. but nevertheless, the mechanisms are there and that they govern whatever we're doing on the daily basis. So what Ossapians is right now, it represents a micro-learning course that is structured around three programs, and actually there is going to be fourth and 50 should soon, but the three programs are called Sapiens OS as an operating system, basically. Sapiens OS 101, Sapiens OS core, and Sapiens OS deep. And they are dividing the 10 pillars into basically three courses. Each course has 12 videos, five to seven minute each. And each video is filled with protocols, actionable tools.

There is no, like, massive hours of theory. It's all condensed. It's all boiled down. It's distilled. And you have practical knowledge that you can implement today. So the first course covers the first three pillars, the second course. The second course covers the fourth up to the seventh, and the third one, eighth, ninth, and tenth. So then there's another course, which is Sapiens West habits that I'm releasing right now,

and it's basically knowledge that helps people build habits, because people know that they need to be sleeping better, but how do you implement it, right? You need to build habits. It takes time, but you need to know how to build it on a daily basis. So I'm releasing that. And the fifth one is designed for entrepreneurs and managers that are either going to burnout or creative people or having issues with like mental fog and then they are able to concentrate, rotting on caffeine and just surviving. So it's a group coaching format for six weeks that is designed to basically help people rebuild their biology in a safe coaching container

where you can get a personalized approach to your specific needs. But at the very core of it sits the same foundation. Habits and the first four pillars, which is sleep, nutrition, movement, and stress management. Those four, actually, five, taking social connections, they come in the order of importance. So, again, sleep is by far the most important, et cetera, et cetera. So any person can go to the website and go through the course.

There's a sample that you can look and give it a try. If you feel like it's helping you, well, you can go and buy for it, buy it and ingrain this information in your life. But generally speaking, the idea behind Osopians is to provide people with specific actionable tools that can help extend health span and lifespan. And the gap between health span and lifespan, on average in world, if you were taking like all the UN countries, is roughly 10 years. Meaning, last 10 years, people get to survive with chronic conditions, illnesses, et cetera. It's not fun. So the idea here is to extend health span so that the later years of your life are full of mobility, ability to connect with others. enjoy life, basically, right?

And, of course, extend the lifespan on itself because people who get to live 250 years are already born. But, yeah, well, it's up to you and up to our daily decisions of whether or not we're going to be there. Oh, and by the way, the gap between lifespan and health span in the United States is 15 years. I love it. Yeah, yeah. I'm hopeful that in the future we'll see that gap, sort of.

shorten up because I think that people are starting to make better decisions. And I think if people tune in into this podcast right, I think go to Osapians. They can check out Vlad and try to close that gap themselves out there. So, Vlad, hang on briefly afterwards. But to everybody within the sound of my voice, I hope you're having a beautiful day.

Go down to the show notes. Check out Vlad. Check out Osapians. Check out some of these courses. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha. Thank you very much.

Stay held.