Overcoming Childhood Trauma

Full transcript

Hello and welcome to Health Defenders. I'm your host, Anthony Amen, and today we have another fabulous episode for all of you. So, without further ado, let's welcome to today's show our guest, Nate Zlensnik. I hope I got that right, Nate. It's a pleasure to have you on today.

Thank you very much, Anthony. It's a pleasure to be here. Hello to everybody out there watching and listening. Got something great for you today. Hope you like it.

Yeah, I'm excited to see kind of where this conversation goes. I think I should probably tell my audience 250 episodes later. I don't like we don't pre-ask each other questions and plan this whole thing out. I don't like we don't pre-ask each other questions and plan this whole thing out. We go with the flow, which is the best way to do it, because I know you all like that. So, Nate, before we really dive into today's topic, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health and fitness world.

Well, you know, it's not just health and fitness, it's also spirituality, and you know I was a very active kid living here in northern Utah. But you know, around the age of 12, I started having a spiritual adventure in life and this really came around. If you can imagine this, that there I am, I'm 12 years old and I'm sitting on the floor of my dad's den with a loaded rifle in my hands and I'm looking down the barrel of this gun and I'm really thinking hard about taking my hands and I'm looking down the barrel of this gun and I'm really thinking hard about taking my life. And the thing is that a lot of people and a lot of people out there on this that are listening to this or seeing this right now maybe you've been in that place or maybe you're in that place now and, as you can see, I did not go through with that and you know that really obviously that saved my life. But later on that night I had my that's when I started having these mystical experiences in the form of out-of-body experiences or astral projections, where I would leave my body spontaneously and I would see my body laying there and I would have full awareness outside of my body and this was something that was really. I mean, millions of people have reported this. Almost every child will report this, because they still are close enough to the brainwaves and the veil to be able to do this consciously and we dismiss it a lot as adults. But you know, this really is something that changed my life and being very active and outdoors well, outdoors kid not an outdoors man at that time I was a kid but growing up around with forests all around me and playing and wanting to be a ninja and a Jedi. And then later on in my exercise career, I guess when I got to high school, I started really hitting the gym a lot. I started exercising a lot because I was highly and severely bullied when I was growing up, not being of the predominant religion of the entire place where I lived and I was the only kid that wasn't. I was an easy target and I was the youngest kid that wasn't. I was an easy target and I was the youngest and I was an easy, just an. I was easy pickings for the bigger kids and they picked oh, they did pick and when I finally could get into a gym, I went after the weights with vengeance. I started martial arts training to help protect myself, make myself strong enough. Started martial arts training to help protect myself, make myself strong enough, big enough, badass enough that nobody was going to mess with me, right? This is after the rifle experience and the out-of-body experience started. So I'm having these spiritual experiences and I'm really enjoying using this avatar to push weights and to run and do all kinds of amazing things that I never really looked into before, and that's really where my journey started. Fast forward to where I am now, where I teach globally one of the most amazing and unique energy work energy development, breath work, meditation, energy healing for ourselves, because we are made of energy. We just have to focus the right way to do some great healing for ourselves and extrasensory perception systems in the world, which I've been blessed to be the first ever person outside of Indonesia, which is where this comes from to bring this to the rest of the world, and I was given that gift by a royal family in the central Java, indonesia. So this has been a wild ride, anthony, and it's one that just keeps getting better and better. So that's really where it started and cut to right where we are right now. I'm really poised to help millions of people.

I want to backtrack first. It always blows my mind that people like you and I, who had the same exact upbringing let's say just different times and places always end up being on paths to help others. And it's the same story you hear over and over and over. All impactful, but it's just. It's eye-opening to different people in different ways, and some people take it where their life just pushes them on a projection in a way they didn't think they were going to go. I mean, you went one way, I went another way, but like it's's still that stimulus is still what drove us to do something and be something different than we previously were before that experience, which is totally crazy in and of itself, and I wish there was a way to have people have that experience without directly having that experience. I think that's we could figure something out along that experience. I think that's if we could figure something out along that way, I think it would be eye-opening for a lot, because I feel like those that don't get lost in the shuffle end up being depressed by the time they're 50 years old, in a marriage they don't want to be in and their health is going in the toilet and they just can't wait to retire so they can sit around and do nothing. And then that's it so right, absolutely.

And and to that point I I agree, and anthony, to that point that's one of the things that I love most about my. My business is called the integrated ascension method, or the. I am because those are the two most powerful words you can say before anything, because they are what you then manifest. But with what I do, it addresses every single thing you just talked about. So many people have a struggle to find purpose in their life. I mean, if you're a nihilist and you just look at the thing like, okay, you're born, you have experience, then you die in your warm food and nothing happens after that, well, okay, that's one way of looking at it. Other people go based upon a faith that they can't prove, but it's something that gives them comfort. Maybe we go to heaven or we go to hell, or we go to varying levels of the afterlife. But myself, having had an out-of-body sorry out-of-body experiences numerous, thousands of them, but also a near-death experience in Indonesia during 2007. My own personal path has shown me that it's a continuum where we come here for a reason. We come here to learn, we come here to do certain things and we're all on our path. No matter what somebody is doing. They are still on their path for their growth as a consciousness that happens to have a body at this time, and that's a big concept and maybe people don't. Some people may not resonate with that, but that's the thing is the truth is the truth, false is false, and it doesn't matter if somebody believes it. It is what it is and I'm not the one to say this is what it is. But we all do have this opportunity to go and find out for ourselves and that's what I really help people do is to expand their mind but also be embodied and really enjoy this vehicle of consciousness that we have to have the best experiences they can have, because I don't know anything other than three things for sure that can't really be argued with. We're all here having an experience. We're all having an experience. You can't shut it, argued with. We're all here having an experience. We're all having an experience. You can't shut it off and it's ongoing, no matter what. If you drug yourself out, you're still having the experience of being drugged out. Even if you're under anesthesia, if you take the early exit, well, you still have that experience. You can't shut these off. Right, they are going to be happening, but we get the opportunity to ask ourselves what do I prefer to experience now? Because, as creators, as powerful beings, where we get to choose our paths in life, we also get to choose our actions and reactions to what is happening in our life, and where we want to take our ship or we want to sail it. We have the opportunity. I mean, nobody went to Dartmouth or Brown or Yale on accident, doesn't happen. You get to do these things on purpose, and the same thing goes with our health, the same thing goes with our fitness, but we also have energetic and we have mental and we have emotional health. We have emotional fitness. That's not just in our bodies. There are plenty of people who are physically healthy, who are mentally very unwell, and a lot of people who have a great outlook on life, whose bodies break down on them much earlier than they need to, or maybe they have a disease, and so finding this holistic mind-body-spirit balance is something that I just absolutely love. That is my passion, and I agree with you, anthony, that a lot of us who have gone through big trials and tribulations, a lot of doubts in our lives, we then turn to the path of helping other people rise because and there's many reasons why, because? And that there's many reasons why, but I think the overarching reason why is because when you've walked through the valley of the shadow of death in your mind and in your heart, you understand the pain of that and you also understand that maybe not for everybody, but maybe for you out there, maybe there was someone, maybe there was some ones, that showed you a lighter path and helped motivate you and to help you be where you're at right now. And you feel that desire, that empathy, that spiritual calling to pass it along and do that for other people to help them find their way out of the darkness, the way somebody helped you.

Yeah, I mean you're definitely right like otherwise you would have gone through with those acts, right, if there wasn't an outside calling because internally there was nothing helping you out. There had to be an external fact and we all had that at that moment, so why we didn't go through it? So, yeah, you kind of feel like I need to show others and help others with that. I really I'm just kind of sitting on an idea, though, where you mentioned earlier. I really just want to talk about it because I think it's so intriguing, because you talk about things happen for a reason. Right, I am very much with you because it always happens Like I'm having a conversation with someone off the cusp and it the next podcast episode I ended up doing is on that exact conversation I had two days ago with somebody so pretty mind-blowing, beautiful. I want to talk about that conversation and bring it to light, and you mentioned it, but I want to expand on it. You talked about how we have connections beyond what we have in the physical world, outside of us, in a more of a spiritual world, right, and you said something very peculiar, which was kids have it more than adults. And that was the exact conversation I was having with somebody and I want to give a little story. I have a niece, she's four. And I want to give a little story. I have a niece, she's four. About a month ago and this was a conversation spurred from my sister said that she was in the backseat of the car and she goes. Thank you so much, grandma, I appreciate you. I love you, nana, I miss you. My grandma's been dead for two years and she's just talking to her like she's there in front of her. And there's so many stories of this where we see kids just talking to walls quote unquote or having imaginary friends quote, unquote. Yeah, which I think we have this connection beyond ourselves and we do lose it and I think most of us end up shutting it off because we're creating neural pathways elsewhere. Right, we're creating neural pathways to school, we're creating neural pathways to fitness or whatever, and a few of us are able to hold on to that and create that neural pathway and keep it on, which you don't. Really we sometimes don't take these people seriously, but I really have seen so many cases and to the point where I was once like, yeah, okay, bullshit. But I've seen so many times and so many times again where you just see things happening. It's like okay, there has to be something there, or I'm just totally naive, like at one point you have to look at yourself and be like, well, I'm wrong. So definitely. I definitely love that. You said that and I guess my question would be how does, how, do we teach kids how to keep that on? Is it a way to be taught or is it a way that it's just innate? Our brain's going to make the decision about what senses it wants to keep on our own?

okay. So that's a very good question. Wow, okay, anthony, big, big rabbit hole you just opened up right there. So the ancient egyptians they said that we have 360 senses, not just five 360. So we forgot everything about their writing, we forgot how their language sounded. We don't even know how the pyramids were made. I mean, there's a lot that they knew 5,000 plus years ago that we've forgotten. And then there's Atlantis, lemuria, these other things as well, that, whether they existed or not, that's up for debate, depends on who you ask. But when you think about it this way that, like I said, we're all having experience, it's ongoing, you can't shut it off. If you think about it this way, in the Hindu texts they talk about a fly that if the fly is flying and you kill the fly, the fly just keeps on flying. It doesn't know what happened, it just keeps on existing as consciousness. So now that in the realm of neuroscience and also quantum physics, we're starting to understand a lot more that A consciousness is non-local, meaning it's not housed in your body, we know this for a fact that I've talked to neuroscientists and I'm like where is consciousness? We have no idea. But we can't deny that consciousness is real because we are having this interaction right now as conscious beings. So, with that in mind, and we understand that everything in the universe is energy, it is vibration, it's light, it's information, no matter what, this is just slowed down light, according to Einstein. That's why we can slow down, so we can perceive it slowed down, so we can perceive it. That, if you take it from that perspective and this is a really mind-bending thing that if everything is consciousness, that has no beginning, has no end, always, is always, was and is everywhere in the entire universe, and we can have immediate interactions, across the void of any distance, between two things that have quantum entanglement, between two things that have quantum entanglement, right. So this is people, go look up and quantum entangle it, enjoy that. That'll be about 20 lifetimes worth of research if you get deep into it. But if we take a look at this scientifically, well, it would make sense that if everything does have some kind of a quantum entanglement or it has the potentiality for it, well, that means that we can have that quantum entanglement with this consciousness in this body. But while we're here, but is the body us? All of the avatars and the great saints say absolutely not, that we're not the body, we're not the mind, we are beyond anything that we can possibly actually conceptualize. And Gary Zukav, who's one of oprah's favorite, favorite authors he's been on her show something like 38 times I'm paraphrasing, it's 38 or 39, something like that he likens the human experience to water and containers. So, like your body and your brain and your mind is like a cup. Like a cup of water, your higher self would be like a five gallon bucket, but your soul, the actual, real, full, grandiose, unfathomable you, is a water tower and it's so far beyond our ability to conceptualize. But that's okay, we're not supposed to. While we're having this experience, if you can imagine this, I've talked to a lot of kids as well and I've done a lot of research into this near-death phenomenon in non-local functions of consciousness, out-of-body experiences. I've even done research the research that's been done by the CIA and the US Army Corps of Intelligence for spy operations. Actually that when we think about this and we think about our ability to perceive, and what a miracle that is. Well, there are certain people with certain gifts, and that's why I brought this art called Merpati Puti, which that'll mean nothing in English, but in Indonesian it means white dove, and now that's part of my integrated ascension method, where I add in biohacking, all kinds of 21st century tech. But this system I originally brought it to america in order to help blind people see, because we have a lot more senses than just our sight hearing. Hearing, smell, taste and touch right.

So with that in mind, there's no way, there's just five senses.

No, well, if you think about it this way, we'll go through a couple. So we have everybody's favorite, which is nociception, aka pain, the one that trumps everything. But we have heat receptors, cold receptors, balance receptors, pressure receptors, probe receptors that tell us where we are in space and time. We have electromagnetoreceptors. We have all kinds of receptors in our body, but they are governed and really take shape and are used by the subconscious mind, which is doing 10 billion times the, or at least a billion times the, computations as our conscious mind. And with all of that said, with kids. Kids have not been trained that these things don't exist nearly as much as adults do. And it's not just society, although that has a big part to play in it. It also has to do with our own observations. So here's the thing is, if you were around as a child, you are around people who could see with other eyes, or you are around people who did superhuman feats, or you were always watching movies and videos that showed supernatural, amazing things being done and you were told this is possible. You were enrolled in schools that opened up your mind instead of closed them down, to make you a better factory worker, which is what our traditional education really is designed to do. It's there to teach us what to think, not how to think. Who's to say that people would not keep the neural pathways open? But I think it's beyond neural pathways. I think there also has a lot to do with beliefs and values, and also our reason for being and also our reason for being. Why would a soul come into a body in order to die from leukemia at age two? This is far beyond my pay grade, beyond your pay grade. This is not a goal line, this is the soul line, and we can't understand what the water tower is doing when we're simply a cup of water and most people are asleep, they're simply a cup of water and most people are in a sleep, they're a sleeping cup of water. They're not even awake in a cup of water. But who knows what the water tower wants? That's something that's bigger than us and if we understand that, okay, I'm a human being. At this time, I'm having a human experience, as an energetic being of consciousness, that I'm a lot more than just this, that I can perceive this way in the mirror. Okay, then we get to ask ourselves some cool and amazing questions that a lot of people have asked throughout the ages. But most people in our society are too busy watching cat videos and swiping right to do uh, why am I here? Or who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? Where am I going? What's after this and what is my real purpose?

crazy like those are questions. I've always just like sat back and thought about me too, and I know a lot of people have it, and it's just like you get lost and I I miss that. As a kid and as a teenager and a young adult, I did it way more and then life got in the way and every excuse I could think of, like people say, for working out, but it's just you kind of see that change. But I've always asked those questions and I I came to many different conclusions than the majority of people have, but it's very, it's intriguing. So, but I didn't mean to cut you off, but I just thought that was intriguing.

Yeah, and that's the thing is where we get into a dangerous place, I think, is when we have this big cognitive bias, that because we grew up, say, in in the Catholic church or a Hindu church, or we grew up in a Republican household, aka whatever meaning that we're in a box, that we don't ever get the chance to really do this and open the box and actually see what's above us, or go like this and see what's down below us, either because we're told that you are in a three-dimensional world, gravity is real, you can't. If you go outside, uh, you are in a three-dimensional world, gravity is real, you can't. Um, if you go outside and you're in the cold, you'll, you'll die, although many people love their cold immersions and surviving the cold just as just one. But that's been done for millennia because that's a part of our ability to adapt. And so when we take ourselves beyond our body and beyond our limitations and we start to ask these questions what can I really do? What is the limit? Doesn't mean you go run five ultra marathons in a row just to make sure that your body can do it, not necessarily, but just to ponder these questions. When we talk about health, we talk about fitness. I think it's also important to be thinking about two other things. Number one potential and fun span. Not just health span, not just lifespan, but but fun span. How much fun can we freaking have in his lifetime? How much can we experience and how much could we truly appreciate and not just have gratitude for, but a word that for most people have no idea what it really means, and that's reverence, see I don't.

I'm not a fan of the. The life is here to have fun. I I agree that we need to make light of things and I agree that you know it's have fun, but I really think it's about more about having an impact on society as a whole and really showing others and helping others get to places they need to get. Like I'm going to give a wild example, just because it's just left field example. Right, you take people who think like, okay, I'm going to have fun. Therefore, I'm not going to be committed to a spouse, I'm going to go sleep with 14, 15, 16 different people just because it's fun and that's what life's about. I couldn't disagree more than that. I believe we're meant maybe not the first time we find somebody that we love and that we care for, and it's way more rewarding. And to show that listen, I'm going to sacrifice my fun quote unquote and take this other human being and we're going to leave such an impact on the world together with each other. And that truly describes people as a whole is having the capability to think outside of themselves and do things for others.

Oh, agreed. And so let me go ahead and make a little bit more specific. When I say fun, as long as it's legal, moral, ethical, it's not at the sacrifice of anybody else or taking away their free agency or freedom. When you say cheat on a spouse, you are harming another being. I'm not talking about that. But what I mean is enjoyment.

I only wanted to clarify because literally you get people all the time. It's like oh it's a place to have fun. Like no, that's literally goes against everything.

Exactly, exactly so I should say enjoyment, as long as it's, like I said, moral, legal, ethical. You're not taking away anybody's free agency. But for me that's the thing is. For me it is fun to help people rise above their limitations. It is enjoyable when I have somebody say holy shit, I had no idea about that in my life and I'm a different person now. It's for me that's enjoyable to take someone when they say I't, it's not possible, no way, and they're a naysayer on their whole existence and their potential, and I give them exercises that even in five minutes they can do, that help to open up a new world, a possibility for them, and then they step into a new paradigm for themselves and create a life they never thought that they would be able to do before.

For me and great, that's maybe just me that is fun and so that's great on the head with people putting you down, so like it's just to kind of throw an example of myself in there when I was six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old, the kind of pre-suicide pre-all that I used to always have this thought that you know, I'm here for a reason. I'm not supposed to be one of those people following the crowd. I'm not supposed to be like just lost. Like I'm meant to leave an impact on this world more than most people ever will. I'm meant to leave some kind of legacy and people are going to remember my name. And this is coming from a kid who was in school the shyest kid ever, got bullied all the time, and this thought just wouldn't leave me and I'd be laying in bed by myself and it sounded like someone was speaking to me and that sounds crazy to say out loud, but like kind of going to your point, like it really felt like someone was saying what the fuck are you doing? Like stop blowing your life doing X, y, z, like go, keep going. And it took until a near-death experience not once but twice to be like okay, fuck everyone else's opinions, because I got told all the time yeah, okay, ha-ha, funny, funny, go do something, and I just ignored everybody else and then went my own path. So I think that's kind of crazy.

Yeah, well, and it's a very common that's a common theme, honestly, for a lot of people out there, anthony that we walk through, like I said, this valley of the shadow of death. We have these trying experiences that show us why not to have all those affairs, why not to find this upper limit where we achieve success and then we crash. We find a reason to mess everything up, and you see that all the time in the, whether it's hollywood, or in music or management business. Bernie madoff is a great example. Right, he could have been a great guy who took care of everybody else, but no, he just had to bilk people out of hundreds of millions of dollars. And you know, that's the thing is, we all make these interesting choices, but a lot of people don't make them out of being consciously aware. They don't think of these things a lot of the time. As far as actions and reactions or consequences, they just say me, me, me, reactions or consequences. They just say me, me, me. And when we start to step beyond that and start to think of the we and how, the interrelationship between, let's say, you and your wife, well, the thing is, it can be about fun and it can be about enjoyment. It depends on how you define that. As long as you're not taking away anybody's free agency, you're not harming them in any way, you're not stunting their growth. But think if you and your wife are both lifting each other up and pushing each other to be better and you're supporting each other and everything is that, or is that not enjoyable? Totally is enjoyable right, and that's the thing is. If you decide that you want to spice up your love life, well, there's nothing wrong with that. That's an amazing thing. Go, have fun. I mean, we all got here through the same process. There's not a single human in the rest of the planet that did not get here through that process. Some had more fun than others, I guess, to get here. But the thing is about this is that every single one of us yes, we are here for a purpose, but, like I said, some of us the purpose would be to die from leukemia at age three and who knows what that soul A is learning and B also teaching the family members and the friends and the support network in the hospital about their grace, about their compassion, about their forgiveness for the things that are not fair happening. There's a lot more at work that's much larger than our personal wants and feelings. And it's an okay thing to just go ask a question. What is the purpose of this experience and being quiet? That's something that a lot of people they allow their mind to think, oh, this is what it's for, instead of actually asking a question and then sitting in the silence until the knowledge comes to them. You know a priest that I trained in my martial art. If you will, you can imagine that. You know. He said to me once he says Nate, a lot of people think that prayer and meditation are the same, but they're not. Prayer is asking God for something, but meditation is listening for that answer. And if all you're doing is barking commands out into the universe, but you never have a chance, doing is barking commands out into the universe, but you never have a chance, you never take the opportunity to just breathe deep, quiet yourself, close your eyes and listen for that answer. You're going to miss every answer that comes to you because you're too busy talking and you can't talk and listen at the same time. One's an outflow, one's an inflow. There has to be one or the other, but rarely do people allow that inflow without spewing more stuff out with the form of thought, and so that's one of the biggest things that I recommend for every single person out there. We all have stress, and stress is the number one cause of disease by far. How often do you breathe? How often do you fully breathe in, fully breathe out? How often do you appreciate and have reverence for this body that you get to experience the world with? Every single day, you're breathing 29,000 times. How many of those do you pay attention to? Very rarely do people pay attention to any of them, but once they do, once they do. Anthony, this is something that if people want to move into a state of quiet and calm and ease and flow, it all starts with the breath. Always, 100% of the time, it starts with the breath, with the breath. If people can just do that and remember to take that nice, calm, deep breath any of you out there, if you're going through a tough time, if you're grieving, maybe you're depressed, when you're crying, try something Slowly, breathe in all the way out and breathe, and do that maybe 10 times very slowly, you're going to understand and realize that your body cannot cry and sob if you are focused on your deep breathing. One of the reasons why is that breath brings us into presence. And when we are being present, we're not concerned with the past, which we can't change, we're not concerned with the future. We're not concerned with the past, which we can't change. We're not concerned with the future, which has not happened yet. We are only focusing on the here and now.

And rarely, not always, but rarely is what you're crying over present in the absolute, here and now. You know what is something crazy going into that. You said it without setting it, but I want to say it. Breathing is the only thing compared to the eyesight, is the only thing in the present right. When you breathe, you get that immediate, but you're always seeing in the past because it takes time for light to reflect back to your brain, to you. Know the process it so everything you see already happened, but your breath is in the moment. Yep, how's that?

absolutely, absolutely and, like ram das back in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s, be here now. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to wrap their head around, but when it comes down to, let's say, health and fitness, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to work out, or you're going there just to pump the weights, just to build the muscles, to then impress other people or impress yourself. Those are things in the future. Or are you going there to escape some demons, to blow off stress of what that asshole at work said to you or what that person when you were, you know, like myself younger beat the shit out of you all the time and told you you were worthless and you're making yourself stronger and more powerful so that'll never happen to me again and you're living in the past. Or do you go in and do you purposefully push those weights, thanking your muscles and this amazing miracle of body that you have to help you move through space? Are you doing this with clear intention? Are you savoring every breath and all that oxygen that is powering these muscles? I hope you can understand what I'm talking about, that if you go in and you do your workouts, if you eat every bite of food, understanding that your saliva is breaking down that food. Your body is producing thousands of chemicals every second so that you can take these nutrients in and you can actually utilize this beautiful fuel that your mind is having all kinds of nostalgic ruminations about when you ate this food before, and it's bringing back memories. There's so much going on that if you pay attention to one billionth of what's going on, you will be just completely gobsmacked in awe of the miracle of life, and that's one of the things I really love to help people with. And I catch myself too. I'm by no means saying, oh, I walk around in a state of awe all the time. No, I go unconscious just like everybody else does. And then our breathing brings me back and I ask two important questions, anthony. These are my two questions that help me and hopefully they'll help everybody out there. I asked the first one Nate, where are you? No matter where I am on the planet, the answer is always here. And when I ask me, where are you here, okay, now I'm present to this time. But then I ask what time is it? No matter what my watch says, the answer is always now. So if I ask myself where are you? What time is it? I immediately am here and now again, and I do that a lot and I know, like the Dalai Lama Buddhist monks, they do this as well. For mindfulness, it's important that we check in with ourselves because we can be having an out-of-body experience, not an astral projection, but the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh he called it an out-of-body experience. When your body is here but your mind is thinking of something in the past or the future, or it's off somewhere, daydreaming. You're having an experience outside of your body, meaning outside of your now. And when we bring ourselves back, it's amazing how that reverence creeps in, for the miracle of everything that we do. And it doesn't happen on accident, it has to happen on purpose. But there's not a human being alive that does not have the ability to come into this presence and it's our birthright and it's one of the most glorious things that we can do. So when you are, let's say, going to the gym, pay attention to tying your shoes, all those muscles in coordination with each other to create this perfect bow. When you go out there and you're wiping down the machine and somebody else's sweat just running down it, think about how amazing it is that gravity is drawing that down and how gross it is that somebody didn't clean up after themselves. But then also what a cool, amazing person you are for cleaning up after them and for you, right. And then, as you interact with your friends and give them a high five and you help push them and you spot them, what an amazing gift it is that you can then help someone else excel and they're doing the same thing for you. When you approach your life this way, everything becomes a miracle because it is. And if you say it's not well, then it's not, but if you say it is, then it is. And my question for everybody out there is you're the one in control of your perceptions. So how do you want to perceive? What do you want? Do you want everything to be a miracle, or do you want to be one of those people that thinks they lived 80 years, but what they did is they lived 80 damn years of the same day over and over and over again, and they never lived a life. It's up to you. That's the cool thing about free will. We get a choice to squander this thing or we get a chance to enjoy every second that we get on the planet. There's no right. There's no wrong, there's no judgment, it's just your choice. I know what I choose. I choose to breathe, bring myself back to presence, ask where am I, what time is it, and to uplift other people. That's just my path and that's one thing I love to help people do and I've got all kinds of. Even if you're on the other side of the world, you can now learn my stuff online, and if you want me in person, I'll come to you, and if you want weekly, like online classes, I'll do that as well. The one thing that I won't do and it's just after being a hard-ass martial arts instructor for so long is I won't listen to people tell me it's not possible and that they can't do it and that life is too tough, and blah, blah, blah. Excuses up the wazoo that I don't tolerate because I know too much and, sorry, I've rung the bell enough, I can't unring that one my friend can't tolerate when people tell me they can't work out because they have a herniated disc.

I just look at them and I'm like I'll trade. We could trade spines, I got 15. So let's go, you can do anything you set your mind. I'm going to talk about the gym example. We'll wrap this up, which is don't experiment if you don't do this, if you're not driving, if you're driving, don't do this. But let's take a bicep curl, right. So we're going to put our arms straight out and you're going to curl your hand into your ear. How easy is that? Right, you feel no tension in your bicep whatsoever. Now put an incredible amount of thought into your hand and that curl. And imagine you have the world's heaviest dumbbell and you're trying to curl it in, yeah, and you're just pulling. And what's happening? Your muscles are responding to that. They're rapid firing, they're tearing. That's what you do in the gym you tear your muscles and harder and harder. This is, oh wow, I'm like sore from that. Right, that's in thought intention and that's actually something we do as trainers is to teach you to slow down the movements. Yes, you do quick to get your cardio up. If you want to build muscle, go slower time under tension. So, that being said, just putting being able to physically think about it makes a huge improvement in itself, and that's just a quick little example to what you're explaining. It's put thought into things that will improve your day-to-day life.

Well, and to that point that's interesting. Maybe you're aware, maybe you've seen this and everybody out there. If you've never seen this, go look up Hope Molecules. If you've never heard of Hope Molecules, it's an amazing thing that happens when we put our body under tension and we just flex our muscles, we release a cornucopia of antidepressant and feel-good chemicals in our body just by in any way, shape or form using them. So in my integrated ascension method with the breath work, I've got a certain program called the LEAP, which is the Life Force Energy Ascension Protocol. It's the breath work from the Javanese royal family that is used by every branch of the military for the past 50 years because it just does amazing things in the body quickly. But tension and it's not just tension, it's counter tension so your biceps, brachialis and triceps all firing, instead of just the biceps or trying to isolate that, but using the entire structure of the architecture of the body under tension, with a certain breath hold, with different breath locks and moving exercises that move energy throughout our body and open up different fascia, really different fascial stretches. I'll tell you what you come out of that feeling like really high, it feels so good, you're like whoa, and it's from a lot of the molecules and carbon dioxide being raised to allow oxygen transfer. There's all kinds of physiological reasons, and then there's the metaphysical energetic reasons that you've then starts to unlock the ability to sense without your eyes and with other senses that we don't normally have access to. And what's great about that, though, when you mentioned the tension, is that a lot of people don't know how to contract and co-contract at the same time. So, if you like, push like this and I've got isometric for the bicep, isometric for the tris but if you just grab and then flex your arm all the way up through your deltoids, all of them, that's something that a lot of people very rarely or never do it's mind to muscle connection that a lot of people do not have, and I I'm case in point, let me be clear.

So it took a long time to be able to learn. Like a funny example is, people always talk about uh, duane johnson, where he does his titty dance, and that's. That's a funny example. But that's mind to muscle connection, yes, I don't able to make your tits dance because you're just contracting the pectoralis majoris. Like so many people don't ever practice, and when you start learning that, life just becomes easier, like in general True, true, yeah.

And I've never been able to get that dance down myself either. I've never actually tried, tried a couple of times and be like, well, they're talented, that's all good. I'm not really. It's not really the area of my main focus. It's a fun one.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely amusing, I'm going to put it that way. But yeah, and if there's something that you know when people go through, and once again, the contraction, co-contraction, the full contraction of an entire muscle group or a limb in general, that requires your presence and focus. You won't do that on accident. It requires you to be here and now in there, or else you're going to be doing 80% biceps, 20% triceps, but if you are going for like 100% activation of the entire humeral architecture, architecture and the musculature, you've got to be there. And so that's a really valuable thing as well, because you know, if you're going to do um, sports, specific preparation, spp, and let's say you're doing, uh, say, golf well golf. Or cycling, well, cyclists. They try not to work their upper body because it's too much weight, it requires too many kilowatts or too much horsepower to propel a big upper body, so they have these massive legs and really skinny upper body. Then you've got people who are, say, power lifters in the bench press and they don't ever work legs. We've seen them. We've seen them Little chicken legs. It've seen them. We've seen them, little chicken legs. But then you've got people who are like CrossFitters and they're just like everything and same with martial artists. You're moving every single range of motion, flexibility. I mean. You never know where an attack is going to come from, so you have to move your body in every single way it possibly can if you're a well-rounded martial artist. But the thing that's neat is that I guess you'd call that gpp or general physical preparedness, that, no matter what, it's all about being healthy, it's about being strong, it's about having that experience, it's about enjoyment of our body while we're here, and that's why I've always been a big proponent of health and fitness and love being in a space where I can help people. Just personal records. That's what's so cool about personal records is you're not in competition with anybody but your own potential, and I like that, because I'm not you, you're not me. I don't really thrive in the team and the competitive things. I like to see how good I can be and that's just my way.

I love it, Nate. This was such a great conversation but unfortunately, we do have to wrap it up. I'm going to ask you the final questions I asked everybody. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode. I know it's going to be hard, but in one or two sentences what would be your take-home message?

okay, uh, let's see very quickly. I would say expansive spiritual, physical fitness would be the way that I would summarize this, that that we've covered a very wide breadth. Every single thing has been relevant to our existence as human. Any part that has left out and you're not experiencing everything fully, and there's a lot that we didn't cover. That goes into being a full human and having a great experience, but that's what I would. Yeah, that works for me.

I love it. And then the second question, easy one how can people find you, get ahold of you and learn more?

Well, my website is pretty unique and it's very fitting for what I do my website. If you're driving, don't write this down, but anywhere else, write this down, type this, put it in your browser right now. I am pure dot energy. I am pure energy and I have a free class that people can go on and grab that right now. I also teach free training webinars every single month, which you can find out more about once you get on my mailing list. I'll let you know once a month when those come in and stuff for everybody. I actually interview people for those, but it might be for you. And then I have online programs where, if you really want to maximize the electrical potential in every one of your cells, that we can actually measure this now. You want to have more stamina, more vitality, more virility. That's not a male thing, that's a male and female thing. Yes, you want to enjoy that part of your life too. This kind of breath work is not like any in the world. So I am pureenergy is going to open up a portal to understanding more of your human potential and give you very actionable tools you can use quickly to really optimize your experience on a planet. So, yeah, that's the best way is IamPure Energy and enjoy. Let me know how I can help you. I am here for you. That's why I came back to life in 2007. I came back to help others and I'd love the opportunity to do that.

I love it. Thank you, nate, for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and enjoy us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is medicine Until next time. So so Outro Music.