Undoctrinate Yourself - #10 - Greg Schmaus

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Greg Schmaus is the CEO of Healing 4D, a Holistic Health Practitioner, Shamanic Energy Healer, and Massage Therapist. He is the creator of “Healing the Mind,” a 21 day holistic mental health program, and "Healing Your Core Archetypes": a program that facilitates the reclamation of your personal power and sovereignty by leveraging a deep understanding of archetypes and how they play out in our lives. Greg is offering Undoctrinate Yourself listeners a 20% discount on his two incredible courses. Use the code podcast20 at checkout.⁠Greg's website⁠: www.healing4d.com⁠Follow Greg on instagram @4d_healing ⁠Support the podcast by becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/UndoctrinateYourselfPodcastFollow the podcast on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@undoctrinateyourselfpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Dr. Alexis on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@dralexisjazmyn⁠⁠

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. This week I have an amazing guest for you named Greg Schmouse. He's a Czech practitioner and we haven't really talked about Paul Check and his work on the podcast much yet, but it's something that's really impacted my life very deeply. And I'm so excited to have him on the show today to share about some things that he's learned working with Paul, but also in his own practice. So first of all, just welcome, Greg. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you. Me too. I heard all three of your episodes on Paul's podcast. and was really impressed and really enjoyed your perspective on things related to mental health and just overall, like, holistic health in general. So I'm excited to dive into that with you. Maybe we can just start by sharing a little bit about how you work with clients and what your work typically looks like. And then we can kind of go from there.

Yeah, so I work as a holistic health practitioner, which covers kind of like a wide range of areas. Initially, I started out as many Czech practitioners do, like in the personal training. training world. So I was an athlete growing up. So I was very into like exercise and fitness. So I started in the personal training world and then it got more into like orthopedic rehabilitation. So working with people with chronic pain. And then over time and as my experience and body of knowledge expanded, I realized that a lot of people's pain wasn't just a physical issue. It wasn't just like a movement issue or an orthopedic issue, I started to realize that a lot of people's pain was

either nutrition and lifestyle related or even mentally emotionally related. So that's where my work started to expand more into the holistic lifestyle coaching, the mental emotional healing, and then eventually more into the energy medicine side of things and also studying aspects of the psyche using archetypes. So it's just kind of started to evolve. quite organically, just given the cases that I was being presented with and really starting to almost like follow the breadcrum trail back to the root cause of illness, which is rarely just a physical manifestation. So that's where I've started to become like a very curious student of the mind and the psyche and all of the things happening behind the scenes that are really

kind of influencing or informing the physical body and how it presents itself. Oh, yeah, I love that so much. And it's so true about when you start working with people one-on-one or even in group settings, you can learn so much more than you could ever learn in like a classroom, just like learning the information intellectually. Like the real learning comes in when you're actually dealing with people's problems and like beginning to understand them on an individual level. And like you can get so many nuggets of wisdom just through that clinical practice by itself. And then it makes so much sense that that would cause your practice to evolve in general as you're going deeper and figuring out like some of the root issues under, relying what people are coming to you for. And absolutely, I mean, I definitely see that in my own practice, too. A lot of times, you know, we know that stress has a very big effect on the physical body. And that's, you know, a mental emotional phenomenon. And so, you know, dealing with these types of things is super important when we're thinking about actually helping people heal instead of like putting a band-aid on a problem. And so that's incredible that you went that direction. I think it would be really

great to kind of frame how you ended up here because you have a very interesting backstory about, you mentioned growing up as an athlete. And from my understanding, you ended up going into college as an athlete and going into like a D1 university and having some emergency surgery. So could you share about that with us? Yeah. So growing up, I was always into sports. I was a very quiet kid. So my sense of like self-expression was always my physical body. And that was playing soccer, ski racing, but eventually golf became my kind of like top, like area focus. And I got a scholarship to play Division I golf at the University of Houston. And halfway through my freshman year, I experienced a testicular torsion, which is a pretty painful experience. And I have to go in for

surgery. And as I was coming out of surgery and in my recovery, I started experiencing a lot of like anxiety, like panic attacks. I started experiencing a lot of obsessive compulsive disorder, like a lot of obsessive, like looping and intrusive thought patterns. And so my whole life kind of took like a 180. Like I was pursuing a career in professional golf. I wanted to play on the PGA tour. And then literally it felt like overnight my whole life kind of like,

my whole life path changed to like, all right, now you're just focused on your own healing, like trying to get your head above water. And so that's where it felt like my soul was redirecting me in a kind of in a different way and kind of telling me, yeah, like the golf stuff, like that's not really where your purpose is. Like your purpose is really on this path. And I didn't quite know what it was at the time. But on some level, there was a part of me that knew like this. This is happening for a reason.

Like I'm going through this like craziness for some sort of purpose. And I wasn't sure yet what it was. But I never, I never saw it as random. I never saw it as this just like happened by accident. I was like on this mission to understand what I was experiencing. And it was hard. It was painful. And I tried a lot of like the traditional conventional,

like medical approaches to like psychology and psychiatry and you know and none of it really worked none of it really helped and a lot of it actually kind of confused me even more and that's where I kind of took my healing into my own hands and kind of like sought out a lot of like the kind of great teachers in holistic health and in mindfulness and meditation and you know paul check was really the first teacher and mentor that I stumbled upon that was really someone who played a key role in my healing. And once I aligned with him and did work with him, I knew that like Paul said, this is not your therapy. This is your internship. And that wasn't, you know, that couldn't have been more true.

Because everything I learned on my own healing journey eventually set me up to help someone else with a similar challenge on their journey. So I do feel as though, you know, despite having so many challenges over the years, each challenge I used as an opportunity to not just heal that in myself, but then also use it as a foundation to help others. So my own personal journey has been the foundation for all of my professional work that I do,

which is what makes it more meaningful. Yes, absolutely. And honestly, my story is the same way. I just like briefly, I had a pretty tough childhood, like health-wise and also just very negative medical experiences and dental experiences that really made me distrust the standard system to a very deep level. And to always be curious about seeking out other alternatives and also just like being super aware of my body instead of outsourcing that to somebody else. And I can honestly say that without that journey, I wouldn't have been motivated to go in this direction. Of course not, because I would have just been, like, blissfully unaware of all the flaws in the, you know, the mainstream model and not even

begin to question, you know, what are we doing and could we do this better? And so I think, you know, the wounded healer as an archetype is super powerful and very common because it does give you that personal insight into what that experience is like and then allows you to be compassionate and empathic towards other people who are maybe going through something similar. And even, if it's not, you know, the exact same condition, it just gives you insights into like what it's actually like to feel like you're truly in survival mode and like having to fight for your your life, basically. And so it's absolutely one of the most powerful drivers I can imagine to actually like have a thriving clinical practice and be able to actually help people in a meaningful way.

Yeah, I think, you know, wisdom comes from experience and that's very different than knowledge. you know, you could study something in a course or a textbook somewhere, but if you haven't lived through it, then you don't really know what you're talking about. Yeah. You know, like I have a lot of like parents who come to me whose children are like struggling with anxiety, your obsessive compulsive disorder. And they'll ask me like, are you a psychiatrist or are you a clinical psychologist? I'm like, no, they ask me like, where did you get your education from? Obviously, I have form. education, like through the Czech Institute, through the Four Winds, through a lot of like different schooling systems and institutes. But I tell them like my, my life was my curriculum.

You know, my own journey through a lot of these challenges and working through them within myself is where I learned a lot of what works and what doesn't work. So a lot of it is really kind of like the wounded healer who goes through their own initiation process and that becomes their education that becomes their schooling and that's really the best form of education which is actually going through it yourself like i was working with a client yesterday whose son is in college now and is struggling with addiction and um is in like rehab and things like that. And a lot of them have known, like, on some level, he was going to be like a therapist or like a social worker or some sort of like something in the healing kind of like world. And they're confused.

Like, why, why is he like drinking heavily doing drugs, like now needing to go to rehab? And I share with them like, this is, this is his initiation into that work. You know, he needs to go through this right now. So when he comes out the other side and is actually doing work as a therapist or a counselor or whatever it is, like he's coming from a place of authentic experience. And I know sometimes that's hard for maybe a parent to reconcile who's seeing their child struggling. But, you know, it's the classic situation where, you know, when you look at shaman's, shamans usually the earlier part of their lives are really like tumultuous and painful and they go through the dark night of the soul at a very early age and it's just what sets the it sets the potential for that amount of healing you know that amount of pain or darkness sets the potential for an equal amount of light and power and i think a lot of um individuals who are practitioners have to go through that initiation process. And you know,

Caroline Miss says a healer is someone who goes through their initiation into healing. Anyone that tries to go into healing without their initiation is not a healer. They're a rescuer. And I think that's darn true. That's powerful. And also reminds me of a quote that I heard from somebody recently that I also mentioned on the podcast before, but it's like people go to the doctor to be treated and to receive a treatment. And like if you go out to dinner with your friend and they say they're treating you, it's like they're paying. It's like they're doing the work. And so if you're going to a doctor for a treatment, it's like they're just going to take care of me. They're going to deal with my problem. I don't have to do anything. I'm just going to be sitting in the back seat here while,

you know, they do what they need to do. And I mean, that just couldn't be further from the truth when it comes to actually feeling an issue that you have, it requires personal responsibility and advocacy and personal initiation and initiative to actually get that to stick and to have meaningful long-term results. And so also something you said with like the whole reframe about, you know, this is happening for me, not to me because like the whole victim mentality of whenever you're encountering struggles in life, it's kind of robbing you of the ability to actually learn from that experience because you're no longer identity. with it as something that, you know, maybe you could have influence over or even just giving you

the mindset to study it more deeply. And instead, it's just like, why me, like poor me? And now, you know, you have no actual responsibility over that and no ability to avoid that in the future either. So if you're not learning from it, then it does just become this thing that is inflicted upon you that's completely out of your control, which, you know, isn't helpful when it comes to actually avoiding struggle in the future and also just learning from that experience. absolutely i mean it so much of our our models are built around the victim triangle which is the victim the villain and the rescuer and almost every industry is based on that model where you know if you take like the medical model like your illness or your pain is the

villain you're the victim of it or your body is the villain because of it's the body is the villain because of it's malfunctioning in some way, you're the victim of it and this solution, this injection, this medication, this is the rescuer, you know, or, you know, any other industry, any, any type of marketing is your, whatever issue you're struggling with, your depression, your lack of fulfillment, that's the villain, you're the victim of it, and this solution that I'm selling you is the rescuer. So pretty much every industry that's been like, institutionalized, even religion is kind of built upon that model. And that's a very disempowering model to live in.

You know, so a lot of the healing process is healing that victim triangle. And it's about taking your own empowerment back, where you're not a victim projecting someone or something else is the villain and then looking for someone or something else to rescue you. you know, and we also have to be careful as practitioners where we don't become the rescuers, where we see our client as the victim and their pain is the villain, and we try and rescue them from it. You know, so it's a very seductive model to fall into on any side. And we can even play those archetypes out all within ourselves. So it's just something that we have to be very careful with.

Yeah, that's powerful. I think we should explore the archetypes a little bit more because I think that's so interesting and not something that people typically think about when they're thinking about health and like the medical system. So I think it's a really great insight. I just, it resonates with me so much. And I absolutely can see like the seductiveness that that you mentioned, because especially because a lot of people will come to you as a practitioner, used to like the standard model. And like that's kind of just the paradigm. And so. they may like project that onto the conversation with you or onto the you know the interaction with you and it's it takes uh like a conscious effort to redirect and also like I think also this comes into play when you're like like marketing yourself quote unquote as like a practitioner that you're not operating in that paradigm that you're trying to give people insights into how they could be contributing to their illness or not and then support their own journey on um their own journey towards healing and so that's just like a completely different paradigm and a lot of people don't want to do the work that actually is required

to heal and like people can become addicted to their illnesses and it becomes a major problem when it when it comes down to it because they actually don't want to heal because maybe they're getting a lot of attention attention for their illness or um you know they have more family around them or friends that are caring for them and it's like without that illness maybe they aren't going to receive that love and affection which is terrible and sad but it's all too common Yeah, that's why I love the archetypal work is because it gives a language to all of that. It gives you a framework to understand all of those patterns. And, you know, Caroline Mist teaches the four survival archetypes of the child, victim,

saboteur, and prostitute. And those are really, you know, if you want to ask yourself the question why some people don't heal, that's the answer. And those archetypes are the parts of us on some level in the shadow expression, the parts of us that benefit from not healing, the parts of us that benefit from our pain. And that can be hard for some people to look at, which is what part of me is benefiting from this illness,

what part of me is benefiting from this pain. But once you can actually have the courage, to look at that honestly. Then you can see very clearly what need is getting met through the pain or the illness. And then you can ask yourself, how can I get that need met in a more conscious, empowered way? So I don't have to sabotage my body or my health or whatever it might be just to get those emotional needs met, for example. But, you know, this happens, you know, in so many different ways.

like, you know, I've had clients who come to me with like just chronic back pain. And they say, oh, you know, I really want to get out of pain. I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done. I've been to so many doctors and therapists and haven't gotten any solutions or any relief. And then you ask them a little bit more about their life. And you realize that they really don't enjoy their job. in fact they i had one client who was experiencing abuse some sort of like not physical abuse but like emotional mental emotional abuse like at her workplace and she was getting paid time off

medical leave to get therapy for her pain and you could tell that there was there was some part of her that really did not want to get out of pain because getting healthy meant going back to the job that she, one, didn't enjoy. And number two, was experiencing some sort of abuse in the workplace, but maybe didn't have the courage to speak up about it, set a boundary, or leave the job and find work elsewhere. So you see, there's so many, like, subtle ways in which we have what's called secondary gain in the pain that we experience. And that is more common than one would think. And a lot of it goes back to how we got our emotional needs met as a child. You know, like for me, like my dad was a physician. And there wasn't a lot of like deep like emotional

connection. But when I was in pain or I had an injury, I would feel more connected to him. because I'd go to my dad's office, I'd get like all the treatment from him and his nurses and his partners. And you're like the doctor's son. And it's like, oh, like when I'm in pain, I get all of these emotional needs met like with my father. So that's that gets stored in your psyche, which sets up a strong victim archetype, you know, which is where we're getting empathy and compassion by being the victim. And paradoxically, we gain a sense of power and control by playing this powerless role. Right. Like when I'm the powerless victim in pain or injured, I feel more of a sense of power and control because I can manipulate the emotional circumstances.

You know, I can get my dad to be the dad that I want him to be when I'm in pain. right so I actually feel a sense of control and power there paradoxically by playing a powerless role by playing a victim role right so it's it's very interesting when you start to peel back the layers of it and you're like oh shit like there's a there's a strong part of me that's benefiting from this and I wonder I don't know the answer to this but I wonder if if there was no part of us that was that was benefiting, it wouldn't exist. Yeah, I mean, it might not exist. That's certainly possible. And that's actually something that I discussed with all my clients when they're coming in, like new clients, is that you have to kind of see, I mean, you don't have to,

but in order to actually benefit from our therapeutic relationship, you actually need to see your pain, your disease as like a sacred teacher that's trying to tell you information. It's not just this thing you want to numb and ignore because then it just pops up in other areas or it grows. And so we need to try to find the message behind the signals that are being sent. And that's really a frame shift that can be super empowering because again, you're like now honoring your body's wisdom and you're looking for those signs that, you know, maybe every time I feel a flare up in my pain, it's because I had a really tough day at work. And actually, overall, I really dislike my job and I don't feel fulfilled by it and I feel like I need to be doing this other thing,

but this other thing isn't lucrative right now. And so I'm, you know, scared to make that transition. And this is all too common. Like the vast majority of people don't don't feel like a soul calling to their profession. And meanwhile, you're spending like eight hours a day there five days a week for a lot of people and maybe even more than that doing this work. And it's like that's most of your life because the other time you're sleeping and maybe you have a small slice of time to spend with loved ones, but maybe you're even too burnt out. And you're even too burnt out. from your crappy job that you're not even like loving or fun to be around when you're not at work. And so it can really be all consuming and something that people don't want to look at because you

are getting that reward, like that financial reward from doing the thing that you don't like, not realizing that it's actually like sucking your soul out basically. Yeah, that's a lot of the saboteur and the prostitute archetype. The prostitute archetype is the one that sells themselves for, some sort of security, right? Whether it's working a job you don't enjoy or doing something that goes against your values. You know, the prostitute is the one that compromises our integrity and our values. And, you know, a lot of people live in that archetype, especially when it comes to career,

because that relates to their finances. And finances are very tied into survival. right so these are survival archetypes so these are the parts of you that are going to do whatever they have to do to ensure physical survival and sometimes that safety and security is really at the expense of your own fulfillment at the expense of your own freedom at the expense of your own empowerment or sovereignty and you know when you when you work so much of your life doing things that you don't enjoy. You're not working from your heart, right?

You're just working from your head. And, you know, you can override your heart all day. But come the evening time, when you retire from that work, that's a lot of times where people's addiction show up. That's actually kind of like the heart coming out. to play in the evening saying, all right, now it's my turn. Almost like you've ignored me all day. You've suppressed me all day, like doing this job that you hate, not doing what you

love to do. And now with the time we have left today, we need to make up for it. So you go to some extreme measure to feel some sense of fulfillment or to feel good in some way. and we have to sometimes take that to an extreme when we've ignored it for so long. So that's sometimes why people's addiction show up in the evening, whether it's drugs, alcohol, entertainment, you know, sex, pornography, whatever it is. It's because we've overridden the heart for so long that eventually when the head turns off,

that's when a lot of the addictive tendencies come out because we're not following our passion and there's a fine line between passion and addiction and if we're not following our passion that can lead to addiction right and that can show up in many ways exercise addiction for example a lot of people you know use exercise as a form of addiction so you know that's where, you know, doing things that you love to do and making sure that the way you're investing your time and energy is in alignment, not just with your head, but with your heart and your gut. And, you know, if there's any lack of alignment or integrity there, it's going to show up in some area of your life. And that's something that we all have to work through. And that's a, that's a

lifelong journey, you know, of really aligning that. And it takes a little while for us to come to know ourselves enough to realize that maybe I'm not living out my values. Maybe I'm still living my parents' values. Or maybe I'm not living my dream. Maybe I'm still living my family's dream or the dream that they created for me. You know, so it takes a little while to be able to discern whose dream you're living, whose values you're living, and if they're really yours. Absolutely. And it can be a whole like upheaval process if you realize, you know, all of these things you're engaging in, your activities, maybe even your hobbies to a certain extent, aren't actually things that you're passionate about, but were maybe like projected onto you

by somebody else and maybe even from a young age. And there's also, I mean, a level of programming that happens in our education model, at least here in the States, where it's like you're taught to be this mindless automaton that's kind of just memorizing and regurgitating things and you're not actually taught to find your passions and like and and really focus your energies into those directions. There's no sort of specialization process that happens. Like everybody just goes through this meat grinder of an education system where it's just cookie cutter and there's no level of personalization at all and it kind of can lead to you kind of being numbed out by the time you graduate high school and then you're just like kind of doing the thing everybody else is doing like going to college.

Maybe you don't really know what you want to study and maybe, you know, you're just interested in making money. And so you go down a route that you think is lucrative, not realizing at the time, because, you know, you're still young and developing that this could end up causing you a lot of issues down the line. So, yeah, I mean, it's so important to be able to be honest with yourself and identify the things that are happy making for you and aren't. and being brave enough to kind of pursue the things that you know are good for you. I mean, I think everybody can have a sense of when they're doing something that's soul-led versus not, like the level of just like feel-good chemicals that are released when you're doing the thing that you're meant to do is just unparalleled. And I think you're totally right about people chasing addiction as a replacement for that. Because it's basically hijacking, at least for drugs and alcohol, like these types of things,

are kind of hijacking those pathways to make you feel that like a small sense of fulfillment and joy, but it's very temporary and depleting. And it's obviously not a long-term solution because it's going to end up causing a lot of damage, even at just a biochemical level, but also within the psyche too. Though, I mean, it's also like a two-way street, like you said, because the psyche could be driving the addiction and then maybe the addiction can like push those patterns into the psyche even deeper. So it's kind of like a feed-forward loop. something that could be helpful just to circle back on briefly is could you share your definition of like what how you define archetype just so people are clear about what that actually means yeah so archetypes represent the language of the psyche and very simply they're they're kind of like the roles that we play the the patterns that we act out or you know even like the vehicles

that we use to express ourselves or to relate. So whenever we're engaging relationship, we're using archetypes as a vehicle to relate and to express. So, you know, there could be a relationship between a student and a teacher. Right. The student is an archetype and the teacher is an archetype. So those are two roles that are coming together and you could say a contract or a relationship. We talked about the victim and the rescuer.

So there are patterns that we act out, roles that we play, and vehicles that we use to really come to know ourselves, right, through relationship. And, you know, the four survival archetypes are the ones that are universal that we all have, because they're our survival mechanisms. So we all use those four archetypes as a way of ensuring our sense, of safety and security. But there's infinite archetypes, you know, the healer, the athlete, the mystic, the poet, the artists.

Like these are all archetypes that are, you know, ways in which we express ourselves and come to know ourselves. I love that. And it's also super interesting that archetypes are kind of cross-culture and like maybe they're just like a fundamental component of human psyche in general. like they're kind of just there and expressed through us. We're kind of almost like puppets for them in some way. Yeah, they're collective archetypes.

They're not personal. You know, so although we all have a victim archetype within us, there's only one victim. And we're all tapping into it and expressing it in our own unique individual way. So when you're working with an archetype, you're working with a collective pattern. right it's a it's a collective um there's really only one mind and the archetypes are the expressions of that one mind and we're all almost like antennas that are tuning into the one mind and expressing

the archetypes in our own way which creates individuality which creates your sense of uniqueness your own signature, but we're actually tuning into the same archetypes. You know, so that's where archetypes are also where we're all interconnected, where we're all connected like collectively. And it also gives us the ability to understand one another and relate to one another, to one another. You know, when you realize that I have an inner victim, just like you have an inner victim, It gives us an ability to understand the other.

You know, I can understand your inner victim only because I'm tuned into my inner victim. Or I can understand your saboteur because I'm tapped into my saboteur. Now, the saboteur archetype is one and the same, but you and I embody it in slightly different ways, which creates that sense of unique individuality. Yeah, that's beautiful. and also ties back to what you were talking about earlier, about having the lived experience and what that can allow you to offer when you're working in like a therapeutic relationship, you basically know what it feels like in your body if you're acting out this archetype

and therefore you can better help the person that's sitting in front of you who may be going through something very similar. So I think in that way, studying the archetypes and understanding, you know, kind of what they look like and how they manifest can be super helpful for identifying them in your own. life and then being able to consciously choose which you would prefer to embody, I guess, instead of just having it happen unconsciously. Yeah, and sometimes we play things out unconsciously enough until it creates enough pain for us to become aware of what we're creating.

And that's where pain becomes a great teacher. Pain pain becomes a great feedback mechanism. and pain becomes the vehicle that you use to bring the unconscious up into the conscious. You know, the patterns that we were playing out unconsciously, whether it was me getting my emotional needs met by being the victim, once I create enough pain in my life, I realize, okay, that's no longer serving me. Because although that helped me get my needs met back in childhood, it's really holding me back from experiencing health, freedom, and empowerment.

So that's where, you know, in Caroline's teaching, she talks about contracts. And the old contracts were the ways in which we use the archetypes to get emotional needs met and bring safety and security. And pain usually arises when that old contract is expired. And maybe we haven't fully let go of it. And the new contract is how we're in relationship with those aspects of us in a way that bring us more freedom and empowerment, less just ensuring our own survival needs. And that's kind of the, that's a lot of the healing process. Totally. And it's amazing how many people really are living in survival mode and maybe not even realizing it, but there's so much more to life than just getting by.

like, and I talk about this on my website and in general, but like there's a big difference between like not having a disease or not being in pain and being healthy. Like you have to actually actively strive to be healthy. It's not just like necessarily our baseline state. There's some like neutral ground between disease and health that, you know, would require active striving in either direction to, you know, if your goal is to be in disease, then that you can choose that if you want. But it should be like a conscious choice in order for you to actually lead, you know, a sovereign life. And there's also so many different stimuli in our environments, especially today, that are just driving us into that survival mode even more, whether it's like all the circadian disruption with, you know, artificial

lights on all the time, everybody's stuck on screens. And like, there's this whole, like, weird social media paradigm going on where, like, comparison is so high between individuals, especially like young kids where it's kind of setting them up to be in this like constant low grade fight or flight state all the time and then also that's a whole can of worms but like the whole issue with debt in this country and like financial issues in general that people are really struggling to get by and you mentioned earlier that finances are really tied into our survival mechanisms and like root chakra and so yeah if you're in massive debt and you're just you know trying to get by at a job you hate you kind of feel like you can't leave the

that job because your survival depends on it. And so, I mean, there you require some sort of exit strategy to really, like, move on. But I think the first point where you start is basically just acknowledging what's happening and then you can create a plan from there versus just ignoring that it's happening and have it, like, drain your life force slowly over time. There was another thing you mentioned, too, about, like, pain being a great teacher. And I think we've all experienced that pain really sharpens and hones consciousness, like if you touch a hot stove, like all of your consciousness is on that hand that just got burned. And so similarly, you know, whenever we're experiencing pain, it, its purpose is really to like help sharpen our consciousness into the area

that's causing the pain and to be able to acknowledge what that is so that we can avoid it in the future. And then, you know, you see like the opioid epidemic and like all the people dying from fentanyl overdoses and heroin, laced with fentanyl, and all the opioid drugs that are really numbing out these signals that are telling us to basically do something different, that something isn't right. Yeah, there's a couple of things that'll add there. The autonomic nervous system is really the foundation that dictates whether we're moving into a state of healing and regeneration or staying in that state of fight or flight. And what a lot of people don't realize is

your autonomic nervous system doesn't differentiate where stress is coming from, whether it's relationship stress, financial stress, stress from like poor blood sugar management, you know, like you said, circadian stress. Like your nervous system doesn't differentiate where the stress is coming from. It just creates an overall stress load that gets expressed as some sort of. of illness, pain, or disease. And, you know, anytime we create a stress response, we move into survival mode, which then shifts us into those survival archetypes.

So you could literally move into your survival archetypes just by mismanaging your blood sugar. It doesn't actually have to be like some sort of major crisis. Because anytime you're in survival mode, you're in crisis mode. and that can literally just be from too many carbohydrates, you know, or a couple poor nights of sleep, right? It doesn't have to be anything catastrophic. It just summates in the body. The other thing that I was going to mention, I totally forgot. There was something else that was there, and I'm just like, it totally slipped my mind.

It'll come back to me. Oh, yeah, totally. Was it about pain? Okay, yeah, okay, it's back. The other piece is a lot of times we create chronic pain out of the avoidance of acute pain. Or we create chronic stress out of the avoidance of acute stress. Maybe it's we're creating chronic physical pain out of the avoidance of feeling some sort of acute emotional discomfort. Right?

or we're creating chronic relationship stress out of the avoidance of having a hard conversation. You know, so a lot of times our chronic stress or chronic pain is often out of the avoidance of some acute stressor, which I think that's also where practicing the exposure to acute stress or acute discomfort is so important. That's why I think like things like saunas and cold plunges and hard exercise or breath work, you know, those things can be so powerful because they train your system to be able to move into acute discomfort and actually move through it, which a lot of times people's chronic pain is really out of the avoidance of stepping into that. Wow, I love that insight so much. And actually, the first thing I thought of when you were bringing this up was like doing cold exposure and like cold is something that so many people avoid. And we're taught like in our culture that, you know, stay warm. Like you'll get sick if you get cold. And it's like it couldn't be further from the truth. You can actually really enhance your immune function by, you know, deliberate cold exposure for short periods of time. And it's just a testament, I think, to how avoidant our culture is for experiencing

comfort. But it's also really empowering what you just shared too because there are low-hanging fruits that you can incorporate into your routine that can help bolster your overall stress tolerance. And then over time, will allow you to make the big, difficult decisions and changes more easily because you have fortified your system with more energy that it can use to, you know, change the job or get out of the relationship or whatever it is. So, yeah, just as an example, like you can incorporate some, like, cold or heat therapy into your routine or heart exercise, like you mentioned. You know, you can just practice being in that state. And you'll not only help to bolster your own confidence because I think when you do hard things, it also really boosts your how you feel about yourself.

Like, you know that you can do hard things. And that just translates to so many different aspects of life that you. can benefit from. So I absolutely love that insight. Yeah. I think it's it's probably one of the most important things, which is I think is why it's becoming more trendy, is because people realize that stepping into acute discomfort is so empowering and create so much more resilience. So it's it's nice to witness that becoming more mainstream. Yeah, I feel like it's, I mean, kind of an inevitable reaction to the direction that we were headed. And I am also pretty hopeful that there are changes and shifts happening in a positive

direction. And medicine, I think COVID was a big wake-up call for a lot of people that, like, it's kind of a house of cards, the current system, and like the people don't actually know what they're talking about, the so-called authorities, and that we need to actually look out for ourselves and make our own decisions because they don't necessarily have our best interest in mind. and, you know, shit really hit the fan to be blunt about it during that time. And it woke a lot of people up. And I think in that way it was a huge gift. Yeah, I think sometimes we need chaos to create new order.

And sometimes the chaos is just the breaking down of the old models that are, or the old, like we were saying, the old contracts that are expired. and the chaos is more just to restructuring, reorganizing, so we can kind of step into a new paradigm that is more aligned and more empowered to the individual. And it seems as though we're slowly moving in that direction. And yes, I agree that the last couple of years have probably helped facilitate that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it seemed like it was a bit of a tipping point. And it's also interesting to witness how like the old paradigms and systems like hang on for dear life and they just do anything to maintain their power. And it's kind of wild to see. But I mean, distrust is definitely, I would say, at an all time high and for good reason. And like we deserve to have a better system. Like there's no reason that we should be the least healthy country or among the least healthy countries in the world with the amount that. we spend on health care, but it just goes to show you that like our quote unquote health care system isn't actually a health care system. It's like a disease. It's like propping up disease, basically. It's just like a disease numbing system that begets more illness. So we need to do something different for sure. Something I wanted to loop back on because you mentioned a couple different modalities that you will use in your practice to help people, but things like meditation, breath work, maybe hot and cold exposure. There was something else that you mentioned.

on another podcast, which was like working with power animals. And I thought that was super interesting because I'm not too familiar with that work. And I would love if you could share a little bit about what that looks like. Yeah. So power animals, you know, it's a foundational practice in shamanism. And what I love about power animals and using them working with people is number one, you realize there's tremendous wisdom in the animal kingdom. And when we're working with power animals,

we're also working with archetypes. And we're working with the energy of what an animal represents. And working with power animals with clients is also a great way to bring someone back into their child self. their imaginative qualities, right, their capacity to tune into their imagination and intuition. And you realize that, you know, there's a very deep intelligence there. And when you open yourself to it and you can kind of quiet the mind a little bit, the rational or logical mind, you can receive the wisdom that it's here to teach you.

a couple examples, you know, one thing I'll do is I'll take someone through a meditation where they discover a power animal for each of their seven major chakras. And for example, if I take someone into their root chakra and they see, let's say, some type of bird, a bird is an animal that's up in the sky. That's not very grass. grounding. So you might realize that, wow, okay, like this person really needs a lot more grounding because even down in their root shocker, they have an animal that's kind of more of the air elements. Right. So you might give them more grounding practices because they might be too elevated and not rooted enough. Right. Or, you know, I was working with a client the other week.

And she's going through a divorce, and it's been really challenging with navigating her ex-husband and the two kids. And she felt like there was just a lot of stuff that was really hard for her to navigate and see clearly. And I could see just clairvoyantly in her energy field, there was an eagle sitting right above her head. and I asked her, I said, do you know there's a power animal here for you? And she said, no, I didn't. I said, it's an eagle. And she said, oh my gosh, I was just at this wellness retreat, like literally last week, and they had me draw a card, like an oracle card, and it was the eagle.

Wow. And so I asked her, what do you think the eagle has as a message for you? While what was coming through for her was everything going on with the kids and some of the drama with the ex-husband and to always look at it from a higher vantage point. So always seek a higher vantage point and not react to exactly what's being presented in front of you, whether it's the stuff your kids are saying to you or the ways in which your ex-husbands is navigating this. that's creating stress for you, to try and climb up to a higher vantage point and be able to see it from that lens, from a different perceptual state. And that was really helpful for her. And she also had some sort of validation that that wasn't random, that I wasn't just making that up because it had shown, it had revealed itself once before as well. like within the context of like just a few days.

So just a few examples of like how some of that work can be really helpful. And the only prerequisite to that work is openness, to be open to the possibility that it holds value and it's not just someone making something up. Because I've had enough experience with these things that they're not random occurrences. you know, whether it's power animals or psychic phenomenon, like, you know, I've had enough exposure just with myself and also individuals I've worked with that, you know, there's tremendous wisdom in it. And you realize that essentially each animal holds a certain energy, right? the energy of the eagle is very different than the energy of a snake. If a snake shows up, a lot of times the snake is about shedding old skin,

shedding layers, right, shedding old identities, right, releasing a lot of old things and kind of returning back to your true nature. Or maybe it's like a rhinoceros or. a lion or a tiger, that's a very strong grounded animal. You know, that's very different than a bird that flies in the sky. Right. So when animals show up, they're essentially showing you an energy that either you need more of, need less of, or need to balance within yourself.

And you can use that animal as a way of tapping into that energy. you know it could be acting out that animal like how many children pretend like they're you know a rhinoceros or a tiger or a lion they just like they're like in the living room just kind of like becoming that animal you know you could also do a piece of artwork you know painting that animal but anything that kind of taps you into that energy is something that can bring a lot of healing and can help rebalance someone where there might be some form of imbalance. And, you know, if anything, it reconnects you to your child self, which is also something that many of us need more of as well. I love that. And as you're speaking for people who are only listening, you have this beautiful elephant painting behind you. And did you do that? Or was it purchased? That's not something I painted. But yeah. I love that. I love that. And yeah, I think it's something I'm definitely going to look more into because animals are such an important part in my life. Like I literally am in a terrible mental state without having at least in it like one animal around me.

And like my friends will always call me like snow white because I'm always finding the animals outside and they just, they kind of feel like drawn to me. And I also have a lot of earth in my my astrology chart. So it all makes sense. But yeah, I would love to dive into that more. I think there seems to be a lot of power there. I was also thinking about when you were talking about, you know, as child, we can act out these different animals. I was thinking like from an evolutionary perspective, we kind of have the genetic material of every other organism that ever was within us. And so I think

we can access the energy of each of them as well, even if we're thinking about it from like a genetic memory perspective, which I think is so powerful. Yeah. I mean, we're, you know, I like to also look at it through not just the animal kingdom, but just the elements. you know, which a lot of Chinese medicine is based on the elements, but even just like the elements of earth, air, water, and fire, you know, which is also the building blocks of what we're made out of. You know, bodies being like 70% water, the air elements being your breath,

you know, the earth elements being your tissues and the fire elements being, you know, the light from the sun that, you know, operates and runs a lot of your metabolic machinery. But even the energy of those elements, you know, the earth element being your sense of being grounded, rooted, the air elements being your sense of feeling elevated, right? The earth elements would be your body. The air elements would be your mind. The fire elements would be all of your doing, all of your accomplishments, your passion,

you know, you're achieving the expenditure of energy and water would be more the restoration, the cooling nature, kind of like the yin versus the yang. So if you even just like look at it through the lens of the elements, you can see like where people get out of balance. Like I was working with a client yesterday who has a lot of like anxiety and OCD and I was asking him like where do you think your imbalances are? Well, anxiety would be too much air, not enough earth. Someone who's very anxious, they're kind of like a kite with no tail being blown around where they need to be grounded.

They need to be rooted. You know, someone with chronic inflammation or adrenal exhaustion, like, that could be too much fire. You know, burnout would be too much fire. inflammation is characterized by heat, redness, you know, that's all fire. So someone with maybe depression could be too much water, right, where they create stagnation. Right. So they actually need more fire to kind of create more movement. So if you look at just even just the elements, you can see a lot of illness or dishease.

as an imbalance in the elements, which was why I love Chinese medicine. I mean, they use a different system of elements using like the wood elements, the metal element, things like that. But I think they're phenomenal ways to use nature as a reference point to see where you're out of balance. I love that. And I actually am recently, I've been taking herbalism courses that kind of tie in from TCM, like traditional Chinese medicine and Iervate.

and like Western herbalism too, but we got really into like constitutions and like how the elements can manifest in an imbalanced way within the system. So what you're saying is totally resonating with that. And it's so true. And these systems have been around for thousands of years. And I always think it's funny how here in the West we're so quick to kind of a shoe or or just look down on these ancient practices. Meanwhile, they, you know, spent a long time developing these models. And honestly like we I think we kind of look at our modern technology as like the pinnacle but the technology that's like within our body just through our senses is like the most advanced technology we can't even recapitulate that we're not even close within like AI or you know

robotics these types of things so like for us to discount ancient peoples who were using like the highest form of technology on the planet is wild because there's a lot of wisdom to be had there And I think we could be so much farther as a society in medicine, but in general, if we were to incorporate those wisdom nuggets within our own practice. I think it was it Rudolph Steiner that said, humanity will continue to invent technologies outside of himself until he realizes that everything he's created externally is a replication of some technology that already exists internally.

And the question is, will mankind destroy itself before it comes to that realization? And I think that's very true. You know, I'm not against, like, innovation and new technology. I think it's great, but I don't think it's in replacement to the wisdom of the ancestors. and I think we have to honor, you know, there's one of my teachers once said to me, she said, Greg, there's teachers of the past, teachers of the present, and teachers of the future. And she asked me to determine which one I am. And we all kind of carry some level of each of those, but maybe predominantly one more than the other.

like I see Paul Chek as a teacher of the past who carries literally thousands of years of ancient wisdom inside of him and he's like a reminder to humanity of what we've lost what we've lost connection to. You know, to me that's a teacher of the past. And there's not one that's better or worse than the other. A teacher of the present would be like a Ram Dass, you know, be here now, or an Eckhart Tolle, the power of now.

That's literally a teacher of the present. And then the teachers of the future are more the innovators or the visionaries that either technologically or intuitively just kind of holds a vision for what's to come. and I think our culture gets addicted to the future and is disconnected from the present and also discards the past. So I think it's interesting using that framework to look at a lot of this.

Yeah, that is really interesting. And do you have anything in mind about, do you know when the turning point for that was? Would you say like around the Industrial Revolution where we really started focusing more on the future? Or, yeah, do you have any thoughts on that? I like the premise from the book, The Fourth Turning, which essentially talks about how a lot of this happened when our relationship with time changed. And our relationship with time went from a cyclical nature to a linear nature.

right so indigenously or ancestrally you know our sense of time was more cyclical than it was linear we were so tuned into the cycles you know the lunar cycles the circadian cycles just a lot of the the patterns of nature that are always cyclical, the seasonality of things. And once we lost connection to that and everything became so linear, that's when everything became so progress oriented, so result oriented. And, you know, they say that's where a lot of actual, like, Western, disease started was when we lost connection to the cyclical nature of things in replacement for kind of approaching life in much more of a linear fashion. So I think that's an interesting

phenomenon to consider. I'm not exactly sure when that transition really happened, but I could totally see how, you know, how much of our disease is a dishonoring of our disease. of the cycles, dishonoring of the rhythms. And a lot of that is because we became so linearized, where everything is so progress oriented, always trying to move in one direction. And that could just show up simply as like people working late into the night because they have to finish a project

or they have to get something done by a certain deadline and dishonoring their certain. circadian rhythms, you know, or, you know, it can show up in so many different ways, but I think, I think that premise is a really interesting way to look at it. That is extremely interesting. And can you remind me the name of the book? Because I definitely want to check that out. The fourth turning. Okay. Yeah, something that came to my mind while you were talking about that was kind of, I mean, the Old Testament of the Bible, I think, talks a little bit about work. Like, in some way, I also have heard Jordan Peterson talk about this, and it's like, mankind of invented work, because once we became aware of our own mortality, it's like we always had to, you know, keep focusing on our own survival and at the expense of basically being a part of nature.

And so I think it's a really interesting conundrum or like special circumstance that like man finds himself in is that like we always do have this like looming notion that we're going to die one day and it affects basically everything that we do in our lives. Yeah. And that's where also our myth around death is so important to explore and get curious about and not shy. away from because whatever your myth around death is or whatever your beliefs around death are that has the biggest impact on how you navigate life and also has the biggest impact on your survival archetypes you know if you believe that death is just lights out versus believing in say reincarnation that's definitely going to impact your survival archetypes and what you do to try and ensure your own survival, you know, and how you navigate money, how you navigate work, how you navigate, maybe even like relationships,

you know, so that's why, you know, I love, like, studying NDE's near-death experiences. I love kind of like researching into those types of things because, when you get more intimate with death and what you perceive to be on the other side and also things like meditation or plant medicine work can be very helpful, then it makes it a lot more clear as to when your fear of death is causing you to step out of alignment with life and how you're navigating it, the choices that you're making when you're operating out of fear, which we all do we all fall into those traps

we're human beings but I do think the conscious exploration which I think that's one thing that people shy away from you know because the fear of death is you know the one of the biggest fears for people I think fear of public speaking is first but yeah

it's so funny but I think if people actually open themselves up to exploring that honestly and not just accepting what your parents told you or what your religion told you, but actually doing your own investigation. I think that could actually be very liberating in how you choose to navigate life. You know, if you see this one lifetime as a continuation of your soul's journey,

you're going to approach it very differently than seeing it as like a one and done. and that's also very connected to how we are in relationship with nature. If it's a one and done, people are just going to use up as many resources as they can possible. But if you knew that you were coming back here next lifetime, potentially, you might want to leave the garden a little bit different than how you found it. Maybe a little bit better. You might want to put back in just as much as you've taken out, which I'm guilty of this too. I mean, I can do a lot more in terms of regeneration and mindful consumption, whether it's, I don't know, things I'm ordering on Amazon or like buying at the grocery store versus growing myself.

I'm definitely guilty of it. but I do think these things are important to explore and consider to help you navigate life more mindfully. Absolutely. And actually the fear of public speaking point is a really interesting one because it actually just goes to show you that being ostracized by your tribe would be basically equal to death in the evolutionary environment. So it's essentially a proxy for death as well, which is super interesting. And also just thinking about the function of religion, I mean, I think it's really short-sighted that here in the West we've kind of discarded with religion without realizing that it's actually served a really important role over, you know, our species evolution. And like, I mean, we could only speculate about how far, like, the back, the initial myths or, like, religious stories go. But they're very old at the very least. and they served a really important structural role for basically just helping people live a meaningful life

and setting you up for, I would say also like psychological and physical health as well, because like you said, if you just think it's lights out one and done, then you're going to be less inclined to take care of yourself and others on the planet and you're probably going to be acting out of more selfishness. And I think ultimately, if we look at like the role of religion in that way, like you can see also that I think people that have religious beliefs tend to all score like happier. If you look at like their psychological well-being, they all tend to be happier. And I think the most recent data out of like some polling liberals against conservatives here in the states, like the liberals are much less happy than the conservatives. And part of that is certainly due to like religious beliefs. And the real problem is that like here in the West we've discarded with religion without replacing it with anything. And I think consumerism is kind of replaced religion in our culture, which is just leading to a whole host of problems that we can kind of see developing. Yeah, I think there's there's like a wide spectrum of obviously there's those that get stuck and indoctrinated into a religious institution, which does create.

a lot of pain. You know, I've worked with a lot of clients who's physical or emotional or mental pain was really a reflection of religious belief systems. But then there's also, you know, the other side of the spectrum of completely discarding it, whether it's, like you said, a political thing or even those that have become spiritual, not religious, which I think is, a stepping stone, but it's not the ideal end point because a lot of those individuals are not anchored in anything. They're not really rooted in something in a tradition or so I think there's some form of integration that needs to happen where we can just like with medicine, we can be in relationship with that establishment in a way that serves us,

not in a way that indoctrines us. And there's the one side of the spectrum of people that are indoctrinated, but then there's the other side of the spectrum that people that are overly rebellious and are constantly pushing back against things, but not really grounded and rooted in anything. So I do think we need to find our place between those two extremes, And it does seem as though those that are anchored and rooted in a religion in a healthy way, that they're the best, they're better off and in the best position to navigate life with greater ease and greater faith.

And I think faith is obviously the antidote to fear. So if you take something like COVID where a pandemic hits and everyone moves into fear, I think those that were anchored in some sort of religious faith actually gave them enough bandwidth to not fall into or react to as much fear. But that's different than the indoctrination, which is fear-driven. And that's not just in religion. That's in medicine and politics. know, our education system. So it's not just religion. It's any institution. I mean, science has

become religion. Yes. So as long as you can have beliefs, but hold your beliefs lightly and be open to questioning your beliefs and updating your beliefs when you have information that maybe proves otherwise, I think that's really something that's something that's, missing right now is the ability to be in relationship with beliefs with a little bit less of a tight grip on it and not not seeing your sense of self and self-worth tied into your belief systems and having some level of self-respect regardless of your beliefs you know there's there's a saying that I heard once it takes self-respect self-correct. And if you don't have self-respect outside of your belief systems, you're not

going to be able to correct your belief systems once you've realized that it's not all that accurate. And that takes courage. That's a, that's a death threat to the ego, which is a collection of belief systems. So changing a belief system is like taking a dose of psilocybin. you know, you have to surrender and let go of your old models, which can be hard to do. And I think that's what's happening at a very rapid pace right now. You know, humanity was given a nice dose of ayahuasca and shit's kind of hitting the fan until we surrender into it. Absolutely. And I mean, we see the research with psychedelics now and like how it affects the default mode network,

which is basically like the patterns that have been ingrained into our brains or minds. depending on you want to think about it, that are just kind of our defaults and what we go to unconsciously and just they kind of act to allow those things to come to the forefront for us to observe them kind of objectively and see what we're creating and what we're engaging and be able to choose something different. And I mean, obviously there's pros and cons to psychedelics. I know you feel the same way based on some other conversations you had. Like some people need to be careful, especially if they have like, you know, any sort of family history of like things like schizophrenia or other issues with mental health. There can be a time in place, but it needs to be

done safely. And there's probably specific preparations that need to be done to incorporate them. But with regards to not holding too tightly to your belief systems, I think it's so true. And I also think that's one of the major reasons why Joe Rogan's podcast has gotten such traction is because he's willing to have conversations with people all across different walks of life and across different beliefs and just have open, authentic, honest conversations and long forum and none of this like sound bite clickbait stuff that's that's just kind of like a bastardization of what real like human connection looks like and I think it's just a testament to the the thirst and hunger for that in our society because it's so missing in like the mainstream media and so I think that's

also a good sign that we're going in a good direction as a society like people are starting to realize that these institutions that maybe once served a function are really not giving us truth and we need to seek it out in other ways. So yeah, I think that's extremely important. Do you have any thing you want to follow up? Otherwise, I was going to ask one other question is kind of a tangent. Just the only thing I'll add is it's the power of curiosity and the danger of certainty. you know curiosity is a powerful state and certainty is a dangerous state because curiosity keeps you open to possibility and certainty closes you off from possibility so I think the more we can stay in a state of curiosity

and be mindful of any certainties I think that's a very that's a good good place to be in. Absolutely, especially because our, we know very well that our beliefs about what's certain and what's, you know, uncertain is directly going to affect your perception of reality. So like what you expect to see is basically what you're going to see. You're going to find whatever you're looking for, essentially. And this is also a big problem in science, too, because a lot of the research that's conducted is basically kind of funneling into the like pharmaceutical model, but basically it's like look

for these effects, like you want to prove that this drug is effective. And then so you decide what kind of test that you're going to run to kind of confirm that bias instead of just kind of broadly looking to see what effects might be had. And then when inconvenient side effects crop up, for example, we can kind of just like brush them under the carpet or, you know, list them as a rare side effect. Meanwhile, you can have, you know, widespread harm being caused if we're not even conducting the research experiments right to begin with. And that's something that I'm super passionate. about because obviously I have training from like the standard model with regards to like my doctoral research and it was a great learning experience about just like how flawed the approach used in like quote unquote scientism today is because it's not really engaging in science in its purest form which is really just the curious exploration of the nature of reality we've completely lost that real science that that our kind of forefathers were engaging in it and that can be so powerful.

Yeah, I think that, like you said, we're going to find anything that we're looking for. And there's a huge, obviously, like, confirmation bias when it comes to what we're searching for. I think we're all guilty of it, too. And our technology also feeds into that. you know, it's like we're having a conversation about saunas and all of a sudden I go on my phone and I'm getting like ads for saunas. So we're kind of like we're like in the soup of it. Like where you know, it's it takes a high level of consciousness to stay awake in our culture with all of the information and stimulation. And I think that actually that's one reason that consciousness has the potential to awaken.

at a much faster rate is because it takes a much higher level of awareness to stay awake and conscious now than maybe it did 100 years ago. You know, with all of the distractions and stimulations and information coming in, like our ancestors didn't really have to deal with that much. So for them to stay conscious or aware, it probably, and to stay healthy, it didn't require as much fortitude, you know, as much awareness, as much resilience. Like, but with the, you know, the clickbates and the highly palatable foods and the dopamine hits that we have, you know, at our disposal any given second, like, it's so much easier for us

to go unconscious nowadays. So for you to stay conscious today versus 100 years ago probably takes a lot more. mastery, which might be for a purpose. It might be for a reason to quicken the awakening of consciousness. So I do think the things that maybe we project as evil are probably also our greatest teachers. Sure. I mean, without them, we wouldn't have the, we wouldn't be catalyzed to actually make changes or do anything about it. So they're absolutely serving in a functional role in that capacity. I wanted to circle back to something earlier. You mentioned that like you had a clairvoyance of the of the eagle above your client's head. And I wanted to talk a little

bit about like voyances in general and like when that awoke for you, but then also in the context of schizophrenia and maybe other mental health issues where this could actually be a sign of like an underlying psychic ability that's kind of latent. Yeah. I, I, I think our culture has a tendency to pathologize anything that's different or anything that it can't understand with its own tools. You know, like science maybe has a hard time understanding some of these phenomenon or understanding, you know, what the shamans are really able to do. so it's easy to pathologize those things, just like we would burn the witches at the stake because they were a threat to our model,

to our infrastructure of our own belief systems and our own culture. So I think that's just like that's human nature to pathologize or demonize anything that it can't understand or can't control. right and if you can't prove it with science then it feels like you can't control it or if you can't understand it you feel like you can't control it and the ego loves control so i think that's the issue that we run into and yeah i mean there's been you know over the course of history so many

traditions that talk about things like schizophrenia as being a very fine line between a pathology and a gift. And a lot of times it just takes the right amount of training. And so many shamans will say, like, when you're doing your training and shamanism, like, you're right on the border of psychosis. But within that is a lot of power if you can harness it and be in relationship with it in a conscious way. and for me the the voyances i wouldn't consider myself to be like psychic or anything like um extraordinary i just find that i can use my intuition and when i need to see something see something when i need to hear something here something but it's not something that i you know like pride myself in being like a psychic or a medium or it's just when things need to come through they'll come through

and when things need to show up they'll show up and the only prerequisite is to stay open to it and for me the biggest challenge is trusting it you know like when which i'm being able to trust it more and more and for me a lot of you know my greatest intuitions are um My body is for me, like, one of my greatest sources of intuition. And I think if people, instead of trying to like develop their, you know, clairvoyance or their clear audience, just use their body more and use that as a source of inner guidance. I think that's a great starting point because your feeling nature is always speaking to you. Now, sometimes we do need to do some healing work because if we have unresolved trauma, that can distort. things.

But a lot of it is just what you allow yourself to stay open to, even, you know, things in the environment are speaking to you. You know, so just paying attention to your environments, whether it's things that are shared with you by other people or even numbers that show up in your, in your awareness. So just, it's really just paying attention and trusting. And, you know, like Caroline Miss, who does. does a lot of the archetype work says, you know, everyone is psychic and intuitive. They just don't have the self-worth and self-esteem to trust it.

And the other piece of it is intuition and psychic phenomenon are really your ability to tap into truth. But the question is, are you ready for truth? Because sometimes truth goes against what your ego wants or what your ego thinks is right. or the things that you're overly attached to. So, you know, this is where, and I've experienced this in myself and have to work on it on a daily basis, is how much we try and negotiate with truth. And the question is, if we stopped negotiating with truth, we'd probably all be psychic because we wouldn't need as much lag or delay in the delivery of truth. you know we might get an intuitive hit and act on it today or it might take us 10 years to accept it totally and I think the more you lean into that and trust that that information is valid and

and there for you that the more it will like reveal itself because you're not going to be like unconsciously shutting it off or tuning it down because now you've kind of opened the lines of communication and that's definitely something that I it resonates a lot because like for example in the past, I will get flashes of like seeing somebody in their, like, as an adult, but like in their child form, like, I'll see adults as the child version of themselves, like, kind of out of the side of my eye and then like it's gone on a flash. And like I could easily and definitely did initially just say, like, oh, you know, I'm just seeing things or whatever. It doesn't mean anything. But like, if you actually, all those little flashes that reveal themselves to you, if you actually take them seriously and

consider that there might be some information there, then I think we could all be. surprised about the abilities that we all can access if we just kind of have that level of trust. Yeah, and we unfortunately worship intellect over, you know, intuition. And we look at, you know, whether it's mental illness or even, even like, like individuals that we consider to be like special needs or autistic or, you know, like my partner's daughter is classified special needs. She has a lot of speech and developmental delays and she has a lot of like seizure activity. So developmentally, you might see her as like four years old, but biologically right now, she's 17.

and by our culture's model we might see her as like behind or deficient or whatever it might be but if you look at her like intuitively on a soul level or spiritually she's way more tapped in than most people you know like there was a morning a couple years ago where like that night I remember, speaking of like, clairvoyance, I saw, like, the spirit of a young girl in our bedroom. And I just, like, I connected with her during the night. And in the morning, I was telling my partner, like, oh, I sometimes, like, give her the report in the morning of all the activity that was, like, going on in the room. And I was like, oh, like, there was this, like, the spirit of, like, this young girl, like, in our room last night. I'm not really, I didn't really get much information, but she was very present during the night.

And then a few minutes later her daughter comes in from her bedroom and she has limited speech. And she just starts saying like this name. And we're like, who are you talking about? And she says, girl last night, your brain. Like that's kind of like how she puts together like sentences. And I was like, are you talking about the girl I saw last night? And she's like, yeah. that was her name.

So like, she wasn't even in the room, but she was aware psychically of a lot of that activity. And just an example of how our culture looks at someone like that and sees them as like less than. But if you look at it from a different vantage point, you could see someone like that is way ahead and way more tapped in, even though it's not within the criteria of our culture

and how we measure things. So, yes, it's interesting how we pathologize things, but have a hard time seeing the gift in all of it because, you know, maybe it's we don't understand it or we can't control it or, you know, we don't have science to prove it or whatever it is, which is once again, just another religion. Yeah, I think that's another way

that we kind of replace religion in our culture is looking to the science, quote unquote, which is completely antithetical to what real science is. Like there is no the science. Science is always changing as we're learning new things and maintaining that open curiosity. And without that, we're falling into something else. It's no longer science.

And I think that's a concept that people need to understand because there is this like law, like a nature of like almost like this is the law, this is the authority, we're following this, but not realizing what science actually is. And I think it's, I mean, again, I also think that that was made abundantly clear during the lockdowns and the pandemic and everything.

So people are getting there slowly. But thank you so much for sharing about your partner's daughter. This is, like, incredible. And I think it's so important, too, to just to question and, like, really observe the biases and, like, the opinions we have on people who, just operate a little bit differently than the average person and really like just see what's actually going on instead of trying to put them in a box of some sort or even worse, like medicate them

or like drug them until they're a zombie and like, you know, that's no way for anybody to live. So yeah, we absolutely need to be changing the way that we view people with gifts like this. Absolutely. Totally agree. Is there any last things that you would like to share? So I mean, please share with us how people can. work with you and how people can find you because I'm sure by the end of this episode, people want to know more and want to be able to like be in your world a little bit. Yeah. So best place to find me is my website, which is healing 4D.com. So it's healing and the number 4D.com. And then I have, you know, one-on-one coaching available in my client practice. I have two

online programs that I've created for people. The first is healing the mind, a journey to home, which is kind of like my flagship mental health program. And it's a 21 day program that just takes you through like a fully like holistic and kind of integrative approach to mental health, whether it's anxiety, depression, OCD, like, but you can really apply that program to anything just because a lot of the work we have to do in the healing process is the same, whether it's like anxiety or gut issues or back pain. Sometimes the work we have to do is the same. So that you can find at Healing40.com forward slash Htm.

And then the other course is the archetype course that I just released a few months back, which is healing your core archetypes a journey of empowerment. And this is, I'm so excited to like share this program. Just because it's so near and dear to my heart. And in this program, we go through the seven key archetypes or core archetypes that I find are at the root of the healing journey, which are the four survival archetypes and then three others. And in that program, I guide you through a lot of inner work, meditations, energetic clearings, and a lot of integration work to really heal a lot of what we talked

about today with the archetypes, which is really about kind of clearing that path to healing and really overcoming the ways in which we're benefiting from pain, you know, secondary gain, things like that, self-sabotage. So for that purpose, they can go to healing 4D.com forward slash HCA, Healing Core archetypes, HCA. And other than that, I'm on Instagram, 4D Healing. And that's really where I'm most active on social media. I didn't really do other social media platforms other than Instagram. And for the two online programs, I would love to offer your listeners a 20% discount.

They just use the code podcast 20. They can get 20% off on either one of those programs. So those are the best places to either find me or gain access to some of my programs. Amazing. And I'll include links to your website, the courses, and I'll include the code also in the show notes so that people can find it easily. And Greg, I just want to thank you so much. This was an incredible conversation. You're just a wealth of knowledge and insight.

And I really love your energy and really appreciate you spending time with us today. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you. Thank you.