Do you think having more inner peace would give you more
fulfillment? How about letting go of control?
Do you think that'll add to it? And what about psychedelics?
What role, if any, do they have to play in this?
Join me, your host Pete Taylor, and my guest today, Ben Kumar,
as we explore all those avenues. Ben, my man, welcome into the
Awaken Man pod. Good to have you.
Mate, finally, we've been wanting to do this for a while,
so let's let's be thankful that the universe aligned us and May
let's do it. I'm excited.
Yeah, yeah. And let's just get straight into
that. So prior, prior to this pod, Ben
and I were just talking about the need to control the the one
for inner peace. The combination of being a
fucking warrior, being a savage, having drive direction, going at
life, but also all that. How the fuck does that interlink
with the spiritual realm and, and just being a little bit more
slower and being a little bit more calm and going with the
flow of life. And ironically, it sounds like
Ben and I've been on similar journeys over the last couple of
years in tapping into that space.
We have and it's beautiful. Do you know what I mean?
Let's let's talk about the path to getting kind of stuck in that
energy because that's what we're talking about now.
We're talking about the energetic human and what our
potential is and what energy really is like.
You and me have both been entrepreneurs for a long time.
We've both been A type personalities, very driven, over
ambitious and however that has manifested both with negative
and positive energies. You end up getting kind of stuck
because you read all this information and you also get
confirmation bias that, well, if I control more, I do more, I get
more output, I get more reward, I get more money, I get more
acclaim, I get more success. And then you get stuck in that
energy and that's that entrepreneurial go get a drive
where you're just your life's A to do list and you judge
yourself worth based on how much you've done and how much money
you've earned and stuff. And that's where I got stuck.
I got rewarded for doing more. And then there was a point where
I broke, I got ill, I got long COVID.
I had to take like 18 months to like recover and heal myself.
And as a result of that journey that led me in to start to
really question like every area of my life.
And that's where I think we've got to be really careful.
A lot of a lot of these kind of success messages and energies
that if you are not aware and you do not have good people
around you, you will get stuck. You will make yourself
frustrated. You'll make yourself I'll,
you'll make yourself angry. And then you'll sit there one
day and go. This hasn't led me to the point
that I thought I would get led to like I'm I'm not happy, I'm
not more fulfilled. So I think it's really good to
kind of just identify how we get to this problem state before we
kind of explore potentially a better way of looking at it and
behaving. Yeah, absolutely.
Recall probably four years ago on the outside.
Pete's got amazing business, loads of people working for him,
has nice, nice things, like externally nice things.
I remember lying on my bed in so much stress and so much internal
pain. I I thought it felt like there
was like cancer growing inside of me.
And it was absolutely down to I was just trying to control
everything that was going on in my life.
Absolutely freaking everything to the way that my team were
acting, to way my clients were behaving, to the all the
internal processes and systems that are going on in my bricks
and mortar business. I was buying a house and and
controlling the outcome of buying the house.
Everything right? It looked like I was mega
successful on the inside. I felt like I fucking had cancer
growing inside of me. And I like I remember my jaw
super tight, my neck super tight, everything around
everything in my body just felt tight and as though I was just
trying to squeeze and control fucking everything.
And that, I mean, that was like 4 years ago.
And I went through that. I continued that path was like,
well, this is surely this is the path, right?
It just, I'm just going to keep going at this, keep employing
more people, buying more things, getting the bigger houses, doing
the things that I thought were would lead me to more success
externally. But it actually led to such such
a dip in my mental state that I I was forced to look elsewhere.
I was like this fucking more To Do List and this like adding
more to my life isn't working. Yeah, fascinating, isn't it?
And I, I let me like share a little story about the power of
energy here. There's, there's lots of books
out there that have been written especially in more kind of
Eastern philosophies of of kind of health and energy and stuff.
And I think the book's called The Body Holds the score, but
there's lots of other, there's a documentary on Netflix, actually
on Amazon called Heal and it all talks about how trauma and
energy can be stored in the body physically and manifest in
different ways. When you think about it
energetically it, it kind of makes sense to a degree, but I
still think you have to experience it.
I don't think you can just believe something like that,
especially if you're just, you've just not been aware of
it. And because we're quite
functional people as humans, we've very much developed in the
21st century to be head and brain driven people.
OK, let's be logical about this. What's the best decision for me
in my work life, in my marriage, whatever.
And actually what we really want to get aligned with is what our
heart is saying, our gut is saying, our intuition is saying.
And I think we have an intuition pandemic, like so many people
are not in touch with their intuition.
Like, where do you want to go? Why do you want to do it?
That's what we need to be tapping into.
And the fight that so many people have is I kind of know in
my gut that I want this, but my dad's saying this, my mum's
saying this, my friend's saying this, culture's saying this,
society's saying this. And it's just this internal
conflict all the time. So in part of this like
spiritual journey that I've been on over kind of like the last
two to three years, I was experiencing a lot of back and
neck pain. And I'd get a migraine every
day, every day, neck pain every day, all through the eye up the
head couldn't concentrate. And I've been battling with it
for ages. And some stuff worked.
I removed foods I was sensitive to.
That helped a bit, lowered my stress even more.
That kind of helped a little bit improve sleep.
But the biggest thing aside from wearing wireless headphones that
had a significant effect on my migraines is the actual tension
that was originated from was linked to a story that I was
holding onto. So I went and saw this
practitioner that I've been seeing for quite a while and she
was doing some energy work on me and she said, your foot's really
blocked. Like it just doesn't move
properly. Like why is that?
And I said, I don't know if it's been like that for ages.
And she started to move my foot and show me how my body was
moving. And she goes, can you not just
see you've got massive friction for the whole of the right side
of your body? And I was like, I have, I have
done for a long time, I can't straighten my right arm, my
right hips worse, my right foot's worse, all throughout the
whole right side of my body. And she goes, OK, I want you to
go to your masseuse. And I have a masseuse that I go
to like now and again for a little kind of tune up and, and
whatever. And I said, Paul, you massage my
foot and all I'm going to do is go into a meditation and start
to internalise releasing that pain.
And I started to go through this internal narrative that you
might do with kind of like a guided meditation.
Like I'm ready to let go of the pain.
I'm ready to let go of the trauma, like whatever it is.
And anyone that's started to go very deep into meditation,
breath work, energy work, your body will have a physical
response when you're starting to tap into something and release
something. So I was going into this
meditation as this practitioner, Paul was massaging my foot and
nothing was really working. And then I said something and I
got this wave of pins and needles all over my body, like
this electrical charger just gone boom.
And I was like, interesting. And I spent the next half an
hour of this massage while Paul was working on my foot, going
through and deepening into this kind of train of thought that
I'd kind of stumbled on. I sort of thought about that
when I was dealing with my back pain.
I was like, what if my back pain is related to a mental and
emotional story that is hidden? And I'd been through probably 20
osteopath path appointments, 20 massages.
Like for years I've been trying to do this.
So I went to back to Paul and I said, Paul, we're going to do
the same again that we did on my foot.
And I'm just going to meditate the whole time you're going
through my back to my neck. And I spent a good 20 minutes
and I was saying stuff like, I'm ready to let go of trauma that
I've experienced and ready to let go of pain and ready to do
this. And nothing was working.
I was like, hmm. And then I sort of paused for a
minute and I said, I'm ready to let go of the stories that no
longer serve me. And again, I just got this
electric shock, this buzz all over my body and I went into
that and started to just explore and navigate what that meant to
me. And my whole back loosened off,
my neck loosened off. And I've not had any of that
pain ever since. Now, don't get me wrong, I've
been exploring a lot of different things around stories
that I've told myself, beliefs that I used to have, traumas
that I used to have through breath work, psychedelics,
energy healing, meditation, reading, increasing myself,
awareness. But that was really profound for
me on an energetic level, how you can start to really go into
the body and look at how the body is behaving as a result of
how our mind and our soul energetically integrate with it.
And I just think it's fascinating.
And so few people are even starting to tap into that stuff.
We talk about mindset. It's way beyond that.
Like, we are energetic human beings.
We are connected to, you know, Mother Nature animals, You know,
how good do you feel if you go to the beach or a forest?
It's an energy thing, oxygen like connection.
And it like, and I just, yeah, really want people to explore
this stuff because it's fucking powerful.
Well, we, we are, we're feeling beings, right?
We've, we've, we feel shit. We have emotions.
Emotions is energy in motion, right?
It's that, it's, it is that we are energetic beings.
But I think with us specifically with us guys, energy is more in
is more, is more in the feminine.
So us guys thinking more in our, in our, in our logic, in our, in
our analytical. It's like, well, let's be more
in the mind. Let's it's got this.
This has got to be a mindset thing.
I need the next mindset hack. I need the next business
strategy. I need the next tool or system
or structure to, to get to the next level.
But actually it's, it's essentially it's both, right?
It's, it's having the tools and the systems and the structures.
And it's also having, like you started, we said earlier, the
flow, the energy, the, the spirit having, having inner
peace. It's having both of those, the
yin and the Yang together, which makes us way more integrated.
Something that we were talking about recently on the awakened
man is archetypes. Carl Jung, the the psychologist
there who, who talked about archetypes many, many, many,
many years ago and the first like 4 archetypes he was talking
about that that most guys have, all guys have as a core is
number one is our, the persona, the ego and the, and the ego
being the essentially we build the ego from us placing masks on
ourselves. So when when we when we're young
children, we go to school, we place a mask on ourselves to
impress the teacher or to rebel against the teacher or to
impress our friends or to rebel against our friends.
We put masks on. We go home.
Our parents are saying something different.
So then we choose to agree with our parents or rebel against our
parents, but we're putting a mask on.
It's not, it's not always our true self.
We put these masks on to essentially help the world like
us, right? Society, teachers, parents and
so on and so on and so on. And we wear these masks for so
long. It then becomes our identity and
it's our and it's our ego. It is taking us further away
from our true self. And it's like the second-half of
life is where we, we know what it's like.
I've, I've seen this with like older people.
They just don't give much of A fuck.
They just like about who likes them or what they say.
They just don't. And it's because they just like
getting rid of the masks and and being way more aligned with
their true self. Yeah, and you hit the nail on
the head there with getting rid of the masks, because when
people bring awareness to this and identify it, I find what
happens, and I did this for a long time, is I, I was trying to
choose which mask was me and I kept getting lost in it and I
kept getting angry and frustrated until I realised
this. I don't, I don't need the masks.
None of them are real. And that's really the journey of
spirituality. It's leaving all of the masks,
letting go and finding inner truth.
And this is where I think mindset can be dangerous because
it's like a a plaster for a wound.
It's like, OK, I see I have this trauma.
I see I have this story. I see I have this belief.
I'm going to get some tactical mindset to plaster over it.
And it works for a bit, but then it all falls apart because
underneath there's a story which you've internalized as your
truth and you're going to always re navigate back to that
believed truth until you release yourself with that truth.
And that's why I feel energy work and getting really fucking
deep on this stuff is so important because you have to go
in and release trauma. You have to let it go.
You have to let go of stories like the path, the progress is
really trying to let go of every story that you tell yourself,
everyone. And if people want to tune into
this, your story starts at your reaction to something.
So if I said to you, I think you should get better sleep and
you're like, oh, I can't because of X.
That's the story you tell yourself.
And that story is currently holding you back.
So if you can find a way to start to become literally a
blank canvas, as a human, I'm open to everything.
I'm open to the power of people. And that's the unfortunate thing
about the ego. The ego gets in the way of help,
and help always comes from other humans.
Other humans are our path to greater progress, greater
success, greater enlightenment, greater fulfillment.
Every breakthrough happened somehow through a human.
Even through if a human wrote that book and you had an
epiphany reading that book, it was a human.
So we've got really got to open ourselves up because of
unfortunately, I'd like to think you agree with this.
The male energy, the go getter, the aggressor, the alpha.
We're very good at blocking ourselves off from help.
Sometimes we choose which bits of help we want to fit the kind
of story that we're currently telling ourselves we're
navigating. And unfortunately we really
hinder our ability. And I did that for a long time.
I was like, no, that that help doesn't fit my story at the
moment. I'm going off over here.
And since I've completely opened myself up to the power of other
humans and just listened to everyone and everything, it's
really, really helped me because I was just getting in the way of
myself all the time. Yeah, yeah.
And that's, that's just being a wounded guy, right, got got
wounds. But and actually what what you
said earlier about the mindset actually kind of just being a
plaster that you're just overlaying rather than going
deeper into it. It's like, I see this, I saw
this in myself. And when I made this switch and
made a fucking tremendous difference is that for so many
years, I would do the podcasts, watch your YouTube, I'd read all
the fucking books. I'd do the courses, talk to me
and I'll tell you exactly what's going on.
I'd be, I'd be able to intellectualize it very, very
well. And I see this, I see some of my
own guys. I'm like, guys, you're fucking
intellectualizing all this stuff, but you're not actually
doing it. You're not actually going deeper
into it and truly, truly understanding where it applies
to you and how you can work through that.
You're just intellectualizing it.
You're just listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books,
but it's not fucking making any difference.
You got to go and do the work and the work is chaotic.
The work is hard. It's painful because you'll
uncover shit the you might not know was there and it's
difficult, but that the path the path to do this is through, not
just on the outside. Yeah, and this journey is super
painful because when you break down the ego, you go through
huge bouts, or I have, and this is what I've been told from
other spiritual teachers, is you go through big bouts of
insecurity because you you lose masks.
So it's like, who am I now? I've lost that layer, that mask
that I had, and I kind of went too deep on this journey for
quite a while. I was doing too much deep work
and it was leaving me really kind of, I'd say
discombobulated. I was kind of struggling to
function. It was affecting my business, my
team, my family life because people were like, can you seem
really like unstable emotionally?
And it's because I was going too quickly and peeling back too
many of these layers. And you could argue that's a
good thing. But I still have to function.
I have to be a dad, I have to be a leader.
I have to innovate in my business.
But I want people to be aware of that because that's going to
happen. Like if you feel insecurity,
you're on the right path. You are now having to re
navigate your truth and that's a beautiful thing.
Lean into it. Unfortunately, most people lean
away because it's like whoa, this is uncomfortable.
I'm just going to read another book that's full of alpha energy
interest. Try go, go, go, go.
And I I bet you, I bet you it will not be the answer.
No, no, no. And it, and it, it is so like
just going, going into some of the work that that I've done
over the last few years, therapy being some of that, somatic
therapies being some of that breath work being some of that,
and also psychedelic experiences being some of that.
I can say that every one of those things is fucking hard.
Like I think about my next sort of experience doing that.
I get nervous. I'm like, Oh fucking hell,
what's what's going to come up? Like I get nervous doing it.
But like every time going through that, I learn something
new and I'm able to piece together something new.
Like my psychedelic experience that I did just over a year ago.
Fuck it. I I described that as like 400
years worth of therapy in four hours.
What did you do? I did psilocybin.
OK. So I did psilocybin.
I did a heroic dose of psilocybin.
So it's, it's 5 grams of it and it was a it was a ceremony.
I did it out in Ibiza that it was someone I, I, I trust is a
shaman is, is, is a client very, very trusting guy.
And I went there with intention. It wasn't I wasn't going to get
fucked up. I was going to to process and
and do some work and and see where that takes me.
And it was farking so difficult. It was, it was an incredibly
difficult those those four hours felt like 40 hours.
It was, it was incredibly difficult.
But afterwards. I mean, guys around me, like
guys at work with me, like fucking LP you'd like, there's a
noticeable difference in you. Real, real noticeable.
I'm like, yeah, I fucking shed some layers.
I've taken off some of the masks.
It's so beautiful, though. I love seeing that in other
people because I'm like, Canal, you're a growing dude.
I love it. I saw a friend, He's actually
been in your program. I don't know if he still is.
Sam Moynihan. Yeah, he still is.
Yeah, good guy. Yeah, so I saw Sam 3-4 weeks ago
chasing status live Milton Keynes Bowl.
He was there and I walked up to him and I was like, dude,
fucking love how you look. You look lighter, you look good,
like whatever you're doing, respect.
And he just sort of like, nodded and there's a knowing nod.
You don't have to say anything more Like it's like, yeah, I'm
doing the work. And it's so beautiful and it's
so amazing when you can be around more people.
They're constantly growing. Like, you know, you're seeing
their journey and you're like, oh, I'm, I'm going to kind of go
over there. And if you speak to anyone
that's been on any form of spiritual journey, not one
person ever go. Oh, I wish I could go back to
the start. Yeah.
I don't like what I've found, man.
It's not good. It's not because once you see,
you want to go, well, what else can I see?
I want to see through me fully. I want to see more.
I want to see wider. I want to see people.
I want to see energy. I want to see humanity for what
it really is. And we've become such a
dysfunctional species. When we think about how we live
our lives, like so many people, it's just like get up, go to
work over caffeinated, overstimulated, overworked, try
and train, try and look after ourselves, run around, go to
bed, do it all again and so much more to life on an experience
level, an energetic level. And then you look at the other
side of that and most people's kind of root away for that or
escapism is kind of alcohol, transient holidays that don't
serve them, you know, meeting up with friends that don't serve.
And I'm just like, there is so much more to life than that.
So much more in my opinion. In my humble opinion.
Yeah, yeah. Well, those, their vices, you
know, the, the, the drink, the drugs, the fancy holidays, it's,
it's essentially just hiding away from some deeper pain.
And, and it is advice, you know, feels fucking good in the
moment. You know, having a drink or, or
taking something or, you know, watching porn, whatever.
It feels good in the moment, but it takes away from the future,
right? That's and that, and that's
massively, massively common for so many guys.
And it's and it essentially is hiding deeper shit that's that's
going on within their bodies do. You want to navigate back to
control because when we open this podcast, you, you sort of
mentioned control. And I think what's really
important or maybe just a really simple starting point for anyone
listening to this is I think there's certain things that we
want to control. Definitely, like if you run a
business and you're going to go to work for seven hours a day,
you want to kind of control your To Do List to an extent.
You want to be focused, you want to work on the highest leverage
tasks, etcetera, etcetera. But within that, there also
needs to be a real letting go of what is within some of those
tasks. So you talked about working with
team members, working with other people.
The more that you try to control an outcome, the more that you
inhibit the beautiful flow of energy between people.
So if someone, let's say you're in a meeting, 6 people in a
meeting, you're talking about a project, whatever.
If you try to be too dominant and try to control too much
because your ego thinks that you have the best outcome, you are
not going to bring together the power of the collective.
And the more that you can just almost sit back and just listen
and let the, the energy in the room just flow, flow, flow,
you're going to create a more positive outcome.
It will take longer. And that's the problem with the,
the entrepreneur, the male energy.
It's kind of like, why are we talking so much here?
I can see a solution. Let's do the solution.
Let's go and let's move on. But then four weeks later,
you've broken it because you haven't thought about this and
that, because you restricted the flow of energy.
Then you think about outside of that, like if we try and control
too much in our family life, in our friendship group, like you
don't just allow everyone to kind of mould and flow together.
And what I've learned is the more that I used to control, the
less I saw, the less I saw of other people, the less
opportunity I saw because you're basically walking down a road
with a pair of blinkers on. But if you can move slower with
less control, more feeling of being aware of what's happening,
what people are saying, what opportunities are cropping up,
You're like, hang on, there's a little Rd. over here.
Why? Just that, that the, the energy
on that road. I'm, I like that I'm just going
to walk down there. It feels beautiful.
Hello. And then you meet someone and
then you have a conversation and then it opens up and you're
like, well, actually. And if we control that, we will
miss all of that. And now I've really tried to let
go a huge turning point for me in this.
There's a book called The Surrender Experiment by Michael
Seeger. And I read that.
Yeah, great book. I read that last year when I
went to holiday with the kids in Centre Park.
I'd get up, I usually get up about an hour before the family.
And I used that hour to read 45 minutes of that book and did 15
minutes meditation and raced through that book.
And at the end of it, I was just like, yeah, that was good.
I'm really going to tune into this.
And I just. And it, it wasn't easy.
Like I didn't click my fingers and just, you know, drop into
the flow of life. It took work and I had to unpack
some other stuff, but it was just so beautiful to just see
how really the world was working and unfolding for me if I
allowed it to, rather than just walking down the singular Rd.
where I was trying to control all the variables because my ego
thought, oh, you know what's best man, You've read the books.
Yeah, yeah, that that that book too, changed my life.
I actually took up Jager off the back of that book.
And me too. Yeah, and, and now what I love
is the polarity that I have between getting on the mats and
having a fight in jiu jitsu or getting up the gym and really
hitting it hard in the gym and then going into doing some yoga
or doing some meditation. It's the the the complete
opposite. But those those two things
together, it gives me, it's me that masculine side.
And then it also, and it also again, gives me that real nice
slow, easy flow side. And I, I feel fucking loads
better for it. Like things in life, life's
fucking chaotic. Life's always challenging.
There's always, there's always things going on.
But the more at ease you are internally just like, and the,
and to not control the things that are going on in life, it
does give you that sense of inner peace.
And it's way easier just to go, OK, here's an example, right?
A couple of months ago I was running an event.
This is the first event that I'm running on my own.
Normally I have other facilitators.
I'm running it on my own in the UK and London and loads of guys
turning up and I've mapped out a schedule on a fucking post it
note, schedule on a post it note in the back, in my back pocket.
And in the morning I've just gone to drop off my son to my
ex-wife. And then I'd walk him back and I
was like, oh, let me just grab the schedule and just read it
before I go into this two day session with loads of guys And
I'd drop. I'd lost it.
It must have just come out. When I take my phone out
somewhere in London, it's gone. And honestly, fucking a couple
of months before that, my brain would have gone wild.
Shit, shit. I've got no plan.
I don't know the schedule. What the fuck am I going to talk
about? And I'm like, dude, take this as
a gift. Surrender to now you don't have
the schedule anymore. Now you can't be so controlling.
You're free. Just go with the flow.
Go with the energy. Yeah, dude, I went with the flow
the entire weekend. Didn't plan it just because I'm
just going to go with the flow. Whatever I feel, I'm going to
teach, I'm going to teach now. I've got to do another event
this weekend. I have tripled the amount of
guys that are coming to this event.
And I know it's because the, the the first one was so successful
because it's just all about, hey, just trust your intuition
there, Pete. Trust my intuition that I know
I'm talking about Jam with the guys.
Don't be so structured. And it worked.
Love that. And you can only really start to
do that when you are tapped in to a certain extent to your
intuition and your abilities. The universe is hauntingly
sending us messages like that was a message from the universe
to say, hey bro, you're you're ready.
You don't need to control this environment anymore.
You need to listen to the energy.
And I had that similar journey with public speaking where I
used to have quite a lot of slides and, you know, points and
stuff. And then I just, I, there was a
moment where I just tuned into the audience in front of me and
I was just like, I had this real internal friction that I was
like, the people that are here today do not want to hear what
you're about to teach. They don't.
And I just looked at the faces in the room and I just said, you
know, I had a presentation planned today, but I'm, I'm not
going to do it. And I had a couple of things I
got off my chest. And then people started to share
in the room and I started to really just pick up on the
energy because the energy just didn't fit what I was about to
teach. And it was the most beautiful
presentation I've ever done. Like it just fit.
It worked. And again, that was a sign for
me from the universe that you're ready to tune into what people
need. And part of my journey in being
able to help other people is surrendering to any judgement I
have about a situation or a person or whatever.
Like if someone sits in front of me and I look at them and
they're overweight, they look tired or whatever, the
controlling brain based mind will be like, oh, this person
needs to get a freaking bed on time, needs a calorie deficit,
all this kind of stuff and say, oh, tune into their energy, tune
into their words. What are they saying?
Oh, actually they've got this big thing that they don't know
how to verbalise and get off their chest.
Let's get into that. And that probably solves all the
other stuff, but you've really just taken time to listen and
kind of TuneIn and stuff. I love that story, by the way,
to go back and be a little bit practical and just to match the
ego, to control and to situations.
Something that anyone listening to this might be able to do is I
read a book years ago and it kind of talked about this
principle where when you change environment, so let's say you go
from work to home, you walk through a door frame and that
door frame is a signal for you to be a different person as you
walk into that room. And I did that for a long time
and it kind of worked a bit, but again, it was a controlling
brain based thing. So it's like right, I'm now
going from work to home, I need to be this person in the house.
And it was a conscious behaviour.
It's like right, I need to be like fun or happy or whatever,
leave the day behind. And what I've now evolved that
into is what energy do I want to share and experience in this
moment? And what I've learned to do is
almost be a blank canvas in any situation.
So after this podcast, this podcast will finish.
And an old me might be like, right, I've got to get into that
task that I said I'd do and I'd jump on my e-mail and do
whatever. Now I always take two or three
minutes and I just go, let's just have some silence.
Where's my energy? Where do I need to move next?
And just taking that one to two minutes as a person before you
go into the next environment just allows you to just where am
I at? Where do I want to be?
Where's my energy? Where's my thought process?
Where's my emotions? Do I want to heighten that
emotion? Do I want to leave it?
And that just allows you the space to make a different
decision, because in that space is your ability to change how
you're going to behave in the next moment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.
What am I actually your door frame analogy that something
slightly different that can be very practical for anyone
listening. One of my clients is a, is a
Sergeant in the police force and he is like a, so he's an armed
Sergeant. So him and him and his force,
they, they, they literally deal with the most traumatic events
that the police do in the UK. And he said he was like, dude,
like when I'm at work, I have to be a savage.
Like it's like literally my, my role is I fucking have to be a
fucking warrior. I'm going into these like
dangerous, dangerous zones. And then I get home and with my
family and I've still got that savage mode on.
And, and I was like, OK, well, how about this?
How about like when you pull up to your house in the car to
getting out your police car, whatever car you're driving, and
just before you get out, your trigger is that when you open a
door, you just flick this, you flick your switch from this
savage policeman that you have to be during the day, because
that is your role to, you know, flick the switch into the family
man. And then and just literally just
take a moment before you get out the car when you pull the
handle, that's that's the that's the switch flicking.
It's like your your door, the door frame analogy, that's the
switch flicking go into the family man and step into your
home as a family man. Not, not the not the savage.
It's important fucking so many guys just to have that break
point between work and family or whatever that looks like.
Otherwise you don't turn that off and that and it and it's
detriment. Can I try and improve that just
through my experience? I think there is an improvement
and I've only really tuned into this over the last six weeks.
So I was listening to a podcast about Mike Chang.
Do you remember him? He used to be the OG 6 pack
shortcut guy in America, right? Yeah, I do.
So anyway, he had an ayahuasca experience?
No, not ayahuasca. He went on a hippie trip.
He did MDMA and mushrooms together, literally woke him up.
He said, right, I'm selling my business and I'm fucking going
off to live in Bali. And he went on this spirit long
spiritual journey for seven years in Bali.
Amazing story. It was really cool.
And he's come back and he's he's trying to teach all about the
brain and body connection and how we flow and how we kind of
cultivate and use our energy. And he was talking about in a
lot of yogic philosophies, they'll talk a lot about
movement releasing energy. And I then sort of got on to
read in a couple of books around that and start the teachings
were observing animals. So when an animal has an
encounter that is basically raising adrenaline, like there
there's a confrontation, it won't just walk away and like
hide, it will shake it off. It will like the the cat will,
you know, you know, have a rustle, the dog will stretch.
All animals have this release of energy.
So what I've tried to do, and this is coming back to
controlling like again, if we go into our head and be like, I'm
going to try and control my emotions and say I'm now this
person, you probably pair that with a movement to make it even
more powerful. So when you go through some
ceremonies, like energetically, they'll get you to like close
your eyes, you'll start to go into an intention and they'll
get you to just they'll just ask you to shake your body, like
shake your body and release that energy.
So that man walking into the door who's got a lot of stored,
like I'm the alpha, I've been at work.
It might be quite hard for him to just drop all of that through
a mental process. So he might literally stand
outside his front door, close his eyes and just like shake for
15 to 20 seconds really aggressively, arms, legs,
everything, be like, I am free, I am flowing, I am loving, I am
energetic, I am fun, I am happy. And then he just walked through
the front door. And I wouldn't be surprised if
that really gives him this surge of like free flowing energy
because you're physically releasing and letting that
energy go. And I've started to do that in
the morning. That's really cool.
Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this, so this, this guy and this that, we'll just talk about
this, this, this guy as my client is very, very typical of
a lot of guys that do come into my world.
It's kind of like they're they've maybe they've
experienced self development before or they haven't, but
they're like, fucking hell, this is this shit that you're talking
about. I'm not comfortable with that,
mate. That's like I said to him, I was
like, dude, I can't believe I'm going to fucking say this to you
because someone said it to me a couple of years ago.
And I was like, fuck off. I was like, dude, you need to
soften, right? You actually got, you got to
soften up a little bit. And I remember when someone said
to me, I'm like, oh, fucking don't.
My chest pops up. And this this weekend at the
event, him and I got, there's 43 guys coming and I'm going to
take them through that sort of thing.
There's going to be a process that we're going to do.
It's going to be quite somatic. It's going to be very fucking
primal and it's going to be around movement and I know
probably 80% of the room will have not experienced it before.
And I, I don't know, it's going to make them feel pretty fucking
uncomfortable for the 1st 5 minutes until they until they
experience what they will experience afterwards
energetically, emotionally, their feelings, how they feel in
their body. And then they go, hey now I
understand it might look a bit fucking weird.
And probably when Pete suggested it, they're going to think what
the fuck. But then they'll experience the
state change, which will then hopefully they're going to take
it home to their, to their, to their day-to-day lives and be
able to do things like that to state change.
And it'll be amazing because hopefully once that happens,
people will start to soften their ego, they'll start to
almost let it disappear, and the energy in the room will start to
flow way more organically. Guys will start to just connect
more easily because they're out of their heads and they're in
their bodies. They're tuned in.
Yeah. And it's such a powerful,
powerful thing to do. And.
One of the best examples of this is like, say me and you didn't
really know each other and we went to the gym, right?
And we just did it. We just did a session at the
gym. But I, I guarantee by the end of
the fucking gym session, we'd be brothers.
And it's, it's like when you get 2 guys to go a group of guys
together and you're doing like energetic, you're doing some
form of movement where you're exerting energy together.
Like you've the masculine so good at giving love and
performing those really, really tight bonds super, super quick.
But guys, most guys think it's like, no, masculine doesn't give
love and masculine will just judge and and so on.
And so, but it's not. It's the fucking.
It is the opposite. Yeah, I love it.
And hopefully people listening to this are open to it and
they'll they'll start to really think about it because only all
we can do is look at the results we're currently experiencing in
our life. So if you have a lot of control,
you are trying to operate with a lot of alpha energy.
Is it serving you? Is it making you happy?
Does your energy flow freely? Do you feel free as a human
operating from your truth? And if the answer's no, then
it's time to explore a bit more of the feminine.
Opening yourself up to other people to help, to love, getting
rid of the stories that you're telling yourself, rewriting the
beliefs that you hold true to yourself.
And just know. It is uncomfortable work, but
it's really rewarding. Yes, it's it's incredibly
rewarding and here, like I'll give you I'll give you a live
example. Actually this, this is something
that happened to me recently and I felt a lot of shame around it
and unknowingly within that shame I was then trying to
control. So someone mugged me off online
and they, they didn't, they didn't go out and like vocalize
or anything. They actually took, paid them.
They actually took my money and then disappeared, right?
This is thousands, right? I paid them thousands for
service and they fucking disappeared.
And I felt I was fucking fuming. I was fuming for for a while
around there. I also felt fucking I had a bit,
I'd like actual shame around this, that I'd allowed myself to
pay this guy. And even though my intuition was
telling me not to and, and and so on and so on, right,
unknowingly, the, the shame inside of me and the way I was,
I was trying to control the situation again.
I was like, what can I do to get this guy back?
And what do I need to do to make sure this doesn't happen again?
Which is the right thing to do to get the, to get the guy back?
Probably not the right thing to do.
I was so fucking tight in my body for a good couple of weeks.
I hadn't really seen it. I was extremely snappy with,
with Leo, my son. I was snappy with the people
around me. And then the the way that I was
showing that shame without knowing, like I was trying to do
things to sabotage my business, to sabotage my my personal
relationships without fucking knowing.
Whereas if I'd got control, if I got control, if I'd actually
just cotton on to hey, Pete, I'm trying to control the situation.
This has happened. Absolutely.
Yeah. Do you know what be be angry
about that, but just allow yourself a day to be angry about
that. And then just fucking let go of
it, right? I wouldn't have spent weeks
sabotaging and doing these like very sabotaging behaviours that
aren't me because I was trying to control the situation, right?
And this is like, and this is what I love about this work.
I'm fucking in the weeds. Like I'm well in the trenches.
I'm not on on a high horse gun. I completed the matrix here.
I'm well within this. But the more that you can be
attuned with where you're trying to control things in your life,
the quicker you can get hold of it.
And then fucking let go of it. And now I've let go of it.
I'm just like, yeah, do you know what piss me off?
But I've moved on. Yeah, the reason I think we hold
on to stuff like that is it almost gives us meaning and it
gives us something to do and it gives us a sense of importance.
It's like I know a lot of people that I've tried to help that
have been quite I'll and there's someone that really sticks out
at the moment. I'm trying to help her recover
from a very long standing condition, helping her for free
because I can just see that I can help and and she won't let
go of her identity of being an I'll person because it's giving
her meaning. And there's such a lack of
meaning in so many areas of their life.
But so many people attach themselves to situations like
this because it makes them feel significant, you know, bowling
around, sharing your story down the pub with your mates, like,
oh, this guy, that guy, this happened, this happened.
Like it makes you feel important.
It brings energy to you because you've got something to talk
about and get the pitchfork out. And but the problem is you then
internalize that energy and that energy becomes part of your
being. And you start to stay angry,
stay frustrated, stay tight. And like you said, which I think
is beautiful, you have to observe the effect of that on
your life. When I've got stuck in my head
and I'm controlling too much, I'm holding on to something.
How do you think I am with my wife?
How do you think I am with my two kids?
What's their experience of me like?
And every time I've gone through like a layer of this journey, I
can see myself getting closer to my kids, for example, because
they're such kids are such a great reflection of where you're
at. Their energy exactly bounces off
yours. Like if your kids are combative,
naughty, frustrated, emotional, like what's your energy?
Why might they be feeling like that?
Because really a kid is a blank canvas.
They are just responding to their environment.
Don't get me wrong, there's DNA based, you know, reactions that
they will have to certain things and they will kind of learn.
But they are so sensitive to energy and like my my home, my
household, my life is so much happier now.
I've got out of my own way, opened myself up, opened my
heart up and not held onto things because it's a free
flowing energy. Yeah, yeah.
And it's likely that you're you're way more loving.
Yeah, totally. You're giving way more love into
the family. Yeah.
And the important thing in that is also love to yourself, like
compassion and kindness. Like we're all on a journey.
We're all figuring this stuff out.
You and me haven't completed it. We're just a bit further down
the road than other people, and we can probably help bring
awareness and tell people where to go and what to try.
And like that's OK. And as long as we operate from a
place of compassion for ourselves and where we're at and
what we're trying to do, like you can move with grace and just
enjoy the journey and flow through it.
Let's talk about some of the things to be aware of if you're
thinking about dipping your toes into the the more like energetic
breath work psychoelics and think things to be aware of
before you get into it. I think psychedelics is
potentially becoming dangerously trendy in that a lot of people
are potentially not ready for it because it can be incredibly
destabilized. And if you, you know, I've heard
of horror stories where people have gone in and have had a very
bad experience. And that's because of their
readiness, the level of trauma that they've got to release, how
much stored energy is in their body.
And it's just really, really discombobulated their whole life
as a result of it. And I see a lot of influencers,
like I literally, I've been sort of chatting to someone recently
and trying to help them. And this individual has done
several ayahuasca retreats, like lots of different stuff.
And I took a call with him and I said, dude, your ego is fucking
massive. Like you've papered over
everything and you're wearing ayahuasca.
All of this stuff is a badge of honour.
Like I've done all this stuff and I was like you, you cannot
see what you're doing. Like you have restricted
everything. You're over controlling
everything. You're getting in the way.
You're obsessed with success. Like you'll do or die on this
stuff. I mean, we just went back into
kind of like all of the past trauma because a lot of this
stuff comes from your childhood. Let's be honest.
And I was like, you have not dealt with that.
Like the way that you're even talking about it now, you've not
dealt with that. You've not really come to accept
that and let go of it and all the rest of it.
And I suppose my point here is, is that you're not going to
you're not not going to benefit just going slowly with this kind
of stuff because you can just start to see.
So someone messaged me the other day because I posted about
spirituality on my Instagram stories.
And someone said, dude, I feel like I'm ready for this.
I don't know where to start. And I said, look, probably start
with the book awareness that I think that's stuck at, just a
good little introduction that starts to prod and probe.
I'd then go to a breath work workshop.
I'm a big fan of the Wim Hof half day fundamental courses
that are run all over the UK. And I said that will start to
get you to realise what your mind and body is capable of and
what can happen in an altered state.
Because if you get breath work right, you can really peel back
and go on a massive incredible journey reading, you know,
that's, that's great. It's brain LED.
And then breath work is kind of heart LED.
If you can kind of really get to grips with it.
And then get in some coaching, like energetic coaching, start
to tune into like your energy bit of meditation.
And then you can start to take bigger leaps, like bigger
journeys where you might go to a cacao and meditation guided
session or you might consider psychedelics or whatever.
But you've got to be at a certain level of openness and
readiness, in my opinion, to do that safely.
Because, yeah, a lot of people are just dancing around the
Internet. When I went off to fucking the,
the South African, South American jungle and did this.
And you know, this happened. And I'm like, Jesus, I can see
right into your soul there. And you're just wearing that.
You, you haven't, you haven't been ready for that.
So yeah, that would, I don't know, you might have a slightly
different opinion. I'm trying to navigate this
myself because I'm being asked about it even more at the
moment. And I I almost want to share
notes from other people to allow other people to kind of walk
this road in the right way. Yeah, I think where I've
navigated this and I've done well is the the people that I've
done this with, both in breath work, facilitation and somatic
work and therapeutic work. And with psychedelics is that
everyone that I've had involved with doing that with me, I've
trusted them and they've been some form of professional.
But the shaman that I used in Ibiza, he's been doing it for 17
years. I met him before we did that.
And I immediately deeply had trust in him.
Like he's done this with thousands of people and I had a
lot of trust in like he hasn't just started this a couple of
weeks ago or, or you know, he's just done some Internet course
and like he's, he's very, very experienced with it.
And I trusted and I just there was a connection with me and
him, which is very, very important because ultimately
it's going to be extremely vulnerable and kind of giving
myself, OK, you're going to look after me now for the next like
6/6. It was actually a 24 hour
experience. So it's a whole day.
So that absolutely look out for that.
Find people that are trusting the the come recommended.
If you want recommendations for me, come talk to me.
Sure, Ben would be the same, right?
That's number one. The second thing I'd I'd say is
be super careful if you're already in this world or you're
thinking about getting into this world and you're using it as a
crux. It's like, I still haven't got
the answers. So I'm going to go and do the
next trip. I still haven't got the answers.
I know there's more. So I'm going to go and do the
next batch of psychedelics or ayahuasca or take the next trip
to Costa Rica. And if you, if you, if you found
yourself done like 5101530 trips.
And this is where awareness really, really plays such a
fucking important role in where you're at, right?
Because you will absolutely take steps back before you take
steps, loads of steps forward. But if you're just going down
deeper and deeper into trauma, that's not necessarily helping
your growth. I think just take a break,
right? And and and and look at this
because I see so many using this as cracks for the answers and
it's not necessarily going to give you the answers.
When we search for people, I agree.
People have been absolutely instrumental on my journey.
Like you want to be guided by amazing people.
So my energy healer, like probably the most powerful,
amazing human I've met in terms of a guide, and she's been doing
this like 30 years. Absolutely incredible.
Very close friend has also been going on a very similar journey
with me and we've kind of been helping each other.
We've gone on holiday with each other as shared notes and we've
done all sorts together because there's amazing people out there
with wisdom. I'm 38, it would be a good idea
if I found this 50 year old dude or lady that's been doing this
for 30 years that can really kind of bring you on and guide
you. And a mistake I think we can
probably make in this process is we're so used to finding this
information or people online now.
Or let me try and find a popular voice in this space online and
go through that. And you, you find this person on
Instagram, they've got 100 followers.
They've got this program that's doing this thing.
Most of these amazing people do not have 100,000 followers on
Instagram because they're so focused on doing the work with
real people in person. And now I've opened myself up on
a local level where I live to amazing people and energies
where I live. Like I've met so many incredible
humans. Like I went to a ceremony two
nights ago. It's the second one I've done
with this lady. She's got like 700 followers on
Instagram posts a little bit. But the work that she does in
the rooms that she facilitates is unbelievable.
And I think all you've got to do is just start to ask around,
like if you know a friend who's like a bit hippie, a bit
spiritual, bit open minded bit whatever, maybe pick up the
phone and be like, bro, I can see you're like into yoga.
You do a bit of meditation and stuff.
I want to kind of touch that, but I want to explore it.
Can you, is there a class? Is there a person that you can
recommend? And you start to go because what
you can't do on this journey is work in isolation.
If you start to just in your bedroom at home, start to do a
bit of meditation, do a bit of it, you're not going to get very
far. That's why I recommended going
to 1/2 day Wim Hof workshop. I want you to be in the room
with other amazing people. As to why your events are
transformative. That's why I love going to
events. I go to events all the time.
I get coaching because I want to experience.
Like you said earlier, we are energetic, feeling based people
and you are going to leapfrog your journey.
If you can go and work with a coach 1 to one, go to a
workshop, go to event, go to a retreat, you will leapfrog your
journey because you feel it, you get in it, you experience it.
Yeah, here's this is a big one. I'm about to say it.
And I got, I got to admit I fucking didn't understand this a
couple of years ago. I didn't understand safety
within a circle. I didn't get it.
I was like, what the fuck safety within a circle mean?
And then I saw I was in a broken room, a broken circle, and I was
like, oh, now I fucking get it. So this is what this is what I
mean by this is that if you go to an event or you you go to one
of these workshops where they're doing breath work, maybe it's
like deep somatic breath work so that they're actually trying to
evoke trauma, right? Or it's a psychedelic arena and
the the facilitators haven't built safety within a circle and
they haven't got the resources there that if someone does have
a traumatic breakdown that they can then deal with it.
That that that can be a bad place to be.
Now, I've been in plenty of circles that that we host and
that we build that are I know that are safe and we have the
right people there. I've also been in one way it
wasn't safe and I remember go I still, I still persisted in
going through what they were hosting.
And at the end of it, there was like four or five people who had
big traumatic breakdowns and there was no one there to help
with help process what they were going to.
And this this was like the, I'll call this like capital T trauma.
Some of the biggest traumas that you can ever go through were
being evoked in within that arena.
It was shocking for many, many people that are in the room,
particularly some of the real like newbies, that I've never
experienced this before. I've experienced a lot of it.
So it didn't shock me. But I was like, fucking hell,
there's no one here to facilitate this.
There's no one here to like actually help this person
process now what they're going through.
And because there wasn't, there was a broken circle.
There was no safety within it. So it's mega, mega, mega
important. So if you ever go to one of
these events and workshops and you and they're about to go
through some form of like somatic chore based breath work
or psychedelics and you don't feel safe, you're like, do you
know what? I actually don't feel safe being
here. And you you'll know that you'll
know it internally. My advice is actually just to
leave is is to go general. I'm not not quite ready for
this. Now I'm going to sit out for
this, right? That's that's you've got to find
a place where good facilitation and you feel fucking good within
the room. That's an incredible point and
it honours your intuition and where you at are at on your
journey because you know, you could say to someone, this is a
great workshop, great person. And they turn up and it's like,
Pete told me to be here. He told me it would be good.
And if you just get in the room and you're like, I'm not ready
for this, I need to give it a bit more time, that's OK.
Like, honour your truth, Pete, no one is going to judge you for
you honouring your truth and where you're at.
But it could be incredibly powerful for your journey and
navigating it safely. Because as I said earlier, I've
been guilty of going on this journey like too hard.
And it made me incredibly tired, highly volatile emotionally,
wasn't great to be around, just a lot of fatigue.
And now that I've kind of backed off and really just tried to
really feel my way through it, it's been far more enjoyable and
I feel more connected to my truth within all of this, Yeah.
The the other thing is, is that if you go into a room like that,
that isn't particularly safe, The you, you, you won't get the
same effect. You won't get the outcome and
the the true experience. One of my clients said this to
me actually at my last event because we did breath work and I
had a facilitator come in and do that, But I'm, I would say I'm
OK facilitating it. I had a fucking world class
facilitate come in. She's phenomenal.
And he said to me afterwards, he's like never experienced that
before. And he said, I went to a
breathwork like workshop before and there was like nearly 100
people there. And he said, he said the lady at
the front who was facilitating it was like, guys, it's in safe
space. No one's here to judge you, you
know, really feel that you can go truly be very, very open
here, be very, very vulnerable. And he said, he goes in my head,
I was thinking, I didn't know you 30 minutes ago.
I've just fucking turned up to this workshop that was put on
locally. How is how is this a safe space?
There's like a nearly 100 people here and I don't know, I don't
know them. I don't, I don't.
And I'm like, well, now you know the difference between going to
that and then coming to this where you know me deeply.
We spent a lot of time with each other before we even went into
the realm of doing breath work. So I, I could actually spend
probably 4 hours building a safe space, like building that
connection with the guys before we even went into, let's now do
breath work. And it takes you, you have to,
you can't just go right, guys. Jump in an hour's breath work
and we're going to fucking release some trauma because it
won't. It won't feel right.
And that's where you have to be so tuned into the energy because
you're only feel safe if you know that the people around you
are coming at everything they do from a place of love and
compassion and respect. As soon as you've got a
facilitator that has any ounce of ego in the process, they will
be blind to what you're seeing, you're experiencing.
They have to be so open. And that's why we have to tune
into our energy because you, you have to be able to kind of see
that for your own safety. I think that's a really powerful
point, man, I'm glad you brought that up.
Yeah, yeah. And and any, any others, any,
any awarenesses that people got to be aware of when they're
going into the space? He always spend a little bit of
time before I go into any experience.
Like even if I drive up to the place or sit in the car, I'll
have 5 minutes to myself before I get out of the car.
And I just feel like I'm here as an open book.
I walk into this experience with no expectation, no ego here from
a place of love for myself, love for humanity.
I want to connect with other amazing people.
I want my energy to be open, aware, connected.
And again, you're setting an intention for how you want your
to turn up and I think that's really important.
Just the same as you would go into the gym going, I'm going to
lift some heavy stuff and I want to raise the stakes here.
It's it's a similar kind of process.
So I think that's kind of important also in the build up
to it. Make sure you surrender to what
you think is going to happen. Let's say what's today, Today's
Thursday, Let's say I was going to go to your event at the
weekend and I'm sitting here thinking, oh, I'm going to go to
Pete's event and I'm going to kind of transform.
I'm going to feel alpha is going to do this.
You're going to limit your ability to grow because you have
expectations from the experience.
So truly surrender. Know that this is a path that
you want to go on, but know that you need to surrender to your
energy to start to find where your energy needs to go.
If I start to go in pointing my energy in a direction, I will
only be able to attach that to things that are energetically
aligned. But if I go in completely open
and aware, I can really start to tune into your energy, what
you're saying, what you, what experience you have and go, oh,
OK, now I can start to really navigate this in a free flowing,
loving, truthful way. That's a fucking great point.
That's a that's that, that dude that's high level that because
to to to have that level of awareness.
Many, many, many guys don't have that.
That's that's super. Hey, one of the guys is coming
to my event. It's the first time he's been to
any of my event. He knows me, but he's never been
to any of my things. He's here's RP.
I've been to a bunch of these workshops thing thingies before.
I hope it meets my expectations. Like it, like I hope it's going
to be good. I I'm thinking I can't wait to
see you in person because I'm going to because I'll call it up
straight away. Like, well, I'm going to talk to
everyone about what he said in the room because there's a bunch
of guys and I'm and I'm very, very comfortable with calling
standards up and calling calling people up rather than out and
explain exactly what you've just said there because he is, is
just having this expectation or better be fucking good.
One of these workshop thingies, but there's an expectation there
from him and he's and he's placing that with whatever he's
looking to achieve and and he won't.
Because of that, we will not then be open to everything else
that will come from that workshop.
Because expectations are controlling energy and we will
not fully go, we will not fully get the true benefit of any
experience or wisdom if we try and control it.
Because let's say you've got 100% of wisdom to give on the
day and I have an expectation I will only potentially get 20% of
your wisdom because it will fit where I'm currently at because
I'm not open enough to experience the other wisdom.
This is a little tip that you can transcend into other bits of
self development like breath work for example.
I talk to a lot of people that really struggle with breath work
and I said I, I usually ask how they're navigating breath work.
And most people are trying to do breath work with their mind.
Like they'll lie down, they're counting the breath, they're
counting the whole, they're counting all of this stuff.
And I'm like, it won't fucking work.
You'll only get so far because you're not going into your
intuition. So what I do when I do my breath
work is I have this 25 minute playlist.
It has five rounds of the breath work that I'm doing.
It's a Wim Hof playlist and every round is exactly the same.
And for me, that's really powerful because it allows me to
tune out and all I need to tune into is the pattern, the rough
pattern. So I get to surrender to the
experience because I know the rough pattern and I need to, I'm
able to go inside. And when I share this with
people, their breath work just goes so much better because
they're able to surrender. And also going into that breath
work, if you can really tune into what you're discovering at
any point in time. So when I do my breath work, I
go in with an intention. So the the last breath work
session that I did, I've I've been experiencing friction in my
life with friends. And because I think I got
bullied a lot as a kid, I've been showing up in a slightly
inauthentic way in friendships. And I've almost been like over
connecting to the other person because I'm afraid of not being
loved because I got bullied all throughout my childhood.
So I went into this breath work session.
So I know how powerful breath work is in in releasing and
delayering self. I went into the breath work with
the intention of I am loved. That was it.
I'm loved. And during that session, the
intention started to evolve as I tapped into my intuition and
these other things started to come up.
And I navigated this breath session.
And at the end of it, I felt so much lighter, so much better
because I tuned into something that was really causing me
friction. And what I knew is that if the
intention was simple and quite wide, my energy would navigate
it in the way that it needed to rather than going into the
intention. Sorry, the breathwork session
thinking could be loved. It was nothing to do with my
bullying when I was a kid, blah, blah blah blah.
I'd create this kind of story if you just make it really broad
about actually I am a person that can be loved because I'm a
beautiful human just like all of us are.
My body was then able to kind of really experience that.
And that's where I want people to get with breath work.
And I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago on it where I think
there's a couple of layers to breath work.
You know, a lot of people are using breath work to kind of de
stress and get some kind of control and all of that has
massive value. But there's a layer way, way
deeper where you're using it to physically transform self
through delayering all the stories and clutter and bits of
ego that aren't serving you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's incredibly powerful tool. And it's free.
Fucking free Pete. Lie down in my bedroom YouTube
playlist free. Sometimes I take some cacao
because I find that really adds to the experience.
It's free. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you fucking do it wherever you want.
I did it. I was in this, I was went to the
sauna yesterday. I, I didn't go, I didn't train
because I'm in fucking rib, not complaining about the rib, but
it didn't train. So I went to went to the sauna
and I just sat there and fucking just went deep, deep with it.
And it's incredibly powerful. And you can do it wherever you
do it in a car, you do it sat on a tube.
It's like you can or you can always slow down to that.
That's incredibly powerful. Question, what's the rib issue
trying to show you? Yes, I dude, so this is
interesting. So I took I took jiu jitsu up
nearly a year ago. I've been on on a journey there
to improve and recently they had grading.
So they had actually, I actually had grading to go go up a stripe
or belt, whatever last week. And then so the, the week of
grading, I did my rib. My I did the rib issue and I
haven't done any injuries in jiu jitsu in the last year.
I did it the week of grading. And at the end of this month,
I'm going to Turkey for a jiu jitsu camp.
So 7 days in Turkey to just to train jiu jitsu every day with a
bunch of the guys. And I'm like, how fucking
interesting. Like just as I am like getting
better at this sport and grading is coming up and I've committed
to go to a camp. I actually, I get an injury,
quite a serious one. And is, is this just very, very
coincidental? Is this, there's an upper limit
issue? Like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
approaching upper limits of where I've been in this journey
and I'm about to breakthrough that upper limit.
And here's my body going, ah, fucking slow down a minute,
mate. You know, or am I looking too
much into it? It's like, so it's, yeah, it's,
it's, it's something I'm thinking about, actually.
But as an interesting reflection, I would do the same
quite often, like thinking about the meaning, but I think we can
also just surrender to the meaning and say there's
something here and right now I don't know what it is and I
could think about what it is. I know that if I wait, the
universe will show me. And this is where patients, like
next level patients, I think is very powerful because we can get
caught in this cycle of thinking thing.
What does it mean? What does it mean?
It's like I've learnt to be
like, there's a thing here. I bet if I just wait it all
click into place, give it seven days, two weeks, whatever, it
all click into place. And if you can surrender to
that, I think it's incredibly powerful in my experience.
But the problem is, is we attach so much meaning to it.
We can't let go of it. And then we're overthinking,
overthinking, over controlling. Then we try and go back to the
gym or whatever it is too quickly and then we're getting
another injury and stuff. And I see this all the time with
the physical body, especially with people that do a lot of
fitness. They're like, oh, I got this
injury again. A lot got this injury again.
And I'm like, when are you going to fucking listen?
Yeah, to your body. It's trying to tell you
something. Have be humble, stand back, let
go and pay attention. Listen, because the universe and
your body is trying to tell you something and you're not
listening. Yeah, I understand.
And and honestly, me. Me a year ago.
I live in fucking I live in the gym today.
Nah, powerful, powerful. The pain keep going.
Nah, just just let let it recover.
Give us give us some time. Be patient.
I can you know the gym is always going to be there for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben. Good to have you on my man.
Mate, I've really enjoyed this, thank you very much, been an
honour. Yeah, great, great chat on on on
energetics and and control and team.
I'll see you on the next episode.
Ciao. Guys, before you go, firstly
I'll link Ben's details below in the description.
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