The Health Curve

Ancient Wisdom For Modern Wellness: Rediscovering The Foundations Of Health - with Paul Vincent, Human Performance Expert

• Dr. Jason Arora • Season 1 • Episode 8

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We often talk about health as something to manage or fix—but what if we’ve misunderstood it altogether? In this episode, we explore what it really means to be well through the lenses of ancient wisdom, tribal culture, and Taoist philosophy. 

Host Dr. Jason Arora is joined by human performance expert Paul Vincent, who spent decades training top performers before spending the last 10 years immersed in Indigenous tribal communities, Taoist teachings, and the study of psychedelic therapy. Together, they explore what these very different systems can teach us about the mind-body connection, the role of community, our relationship to nature, and the importance of ritual and purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the HealthCurve podcast. I'm your host, Jason Arora. Today, we're exploring a very different lens on health, one that doesn't come from a lab, a hospital, or a biohacking protocol. Instead, we're looking at how indigenous cultures, ancient philosophies, and emerging Western science might all be pointing toward the same fundamental truth, that the maintenance of good health is all about balance, connection, and integration. not just fixing what's broken. We talk a lot about innovation in health, but what if some of the most powerful practices for wellbeing aren't new at all? What if they've been around for thousands of years and we're only just now beginning to rediscover them? To help us explore this, I'm joined by Paul Vincent. Paul is an expert in human performance, with over 20 years training top performers around the world, including athletes, actors, and executives. But in the past decade, he's shifted his focus, immersing himself in the study of indigenous health systems, Taoist philosophy, and psychedelic therapy. His journey spans jungles, deserts, and deep internal landscapes, and what he's uncovered challenges a lot of what we think we know about wellness. This episode is really about rethinking what it means to really be healthy, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and communally. Let's get into it. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. It's a real pleasure to have you here. Let's dive straight in. Can you tell us a bit about your background?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, it started, I was an expedition athlete and I would race in very remote places. They're like long races in like jungles and deserts. And I remember when I was racing, coming across these cultures, some of them had never seen white people. And at the time, I was blown away that that existed. I was into health and fitness. I was starting to get my master's degree in human performance. And I was very curious about their lifestyle. these indigenous lifestyle compared to our modern Western lifestyle and their health benefits or detriments to it. So that's sort of what really piqued my interest. But then I went firmly down the route of Western science training, fitness. That was my world for a long time. And in very mysterious ways, I kept getting brought back into these cultures. And it's like I would be on holiday somewhere and someone would introduced me randomly to this shaman, like by phone. And I spoke to him and like two days later, I'm in their village, the only white guy there and sitting with them for a few days. And so things like that were happening. And so it was like pulling me in to it. And then I dove in deep with this PhD that I

SPEAKER_00:

just am wrapping up here. And like, what was your first reaction when you started to get into these discussions about indigenous approaches to health? Were you skeptical at first? Were you able to see how your journey would relate to some of these things? Yes and no. So I

SPEAKER_01:

grew up with kind of, there was some alternative sort of ideas and health and wellness practices that my family used. And I sort of went to science away from that. So coming back, there was a little bit of like, okay, I'm looking at it through this one lens, but I also understand that there is a different way of looking at things.

SPEAKER_00:

And were there specific examples that showed up and you thought, ooh, okay, I need to double click on that and explore that a little bit more because I wasn't able to solve that myself?

SPEAKER_01:

For sure. A lot of what really interested me was things like, I remember working on someone's health and they're like, okay, these are my goals. I want to achieve this. I'm like, okay, great. So I wrote a program for it. I'm like, okay, you follow this and you'll get to those goals. And it was verified. I'd used similar programs on people who have got great results. But so many people had such resistance and they struggled with it. And if I wasn't there telling them, pushing them, they wouldn't do it. So I started to question, I'm like, okay, there's a desire, right? They want these goals, but there's something else dictating their behavior. There's something else driving them. That's where I really got curious because in our culture, so much is like you do X, you get Y, and you got to work. And even in business, what is it? The grind, and you get success. And I... Became curious about it. I'm like, there's something missing here because it's not quite working. That's sort of what led me to really dig a little deeper to

SPEAKER_00:

what else was out there. So this was more through your clients than your health journey? Or was it a bit of both? It was originally through my

SPEAKER_01:

clients that I was curious. But for me, it was a little different. It wasn't so much on the health and wellness. It was more on the sort of mental health. I struggled a lot from anxiety and depression and those things. And so originally it wasn't for that. But once I got there, I started to see that they deal with that in these cultures and it's not separate. After that, I really understood that we can't compartmentalize health. We're all different systems that integrate together. So we got to treat it like that. We're so much in the West, we have an expert in one area and an expert in another area, and they don't usually cross over so well. And I had to really start to understand how this system, my body, works and what else is there. What else is a component to my well-being, mental,

SPEAKER_00:

physical, emotional? And the best thing we've had in our healthcare systems, especially in more socialized systems, is like the general practitioner, right? Primary care physician who is supposed to be looking at your whole health in that sort of way, your mental, your physical, your emotional, et cetera. But I know that there were lots of these things that I didn't learn about in medical school. And I personally came across them in my own health journey. I would see it in my patients, but I came across it myself. And then I would start to connect the dots. What I feel might be happening at the moment, given increasing consumer power in wellbeing, healthcare, those sorts of things, is that people are asking for something a bit different. People are speaking about their health in a different way, rather than just not speaking about it, than saying, okay, I have these symptoms, I have a disease, treat me, doctor. So why do you think this topic is becoming more relevant now? What's happening out there that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01:

I think there's a lot more information. You know, when we got internet and, you know, there's connectedness with the phones and the social medias and stuff, there's a lot more information. Some is great. Some is not so good because there's a lot of people out there that like to talk about things in order to get an audience. And, you know, it's not always the best advice. So I think that was a big component. There's another component, which, you know, if you ask from these cultures, these indigenous cultures, sort of their perspective, they talk about these bridges being built. Everyone knows the awful history, the colonization and that stuff. And they talk about this period of repair, of coming back. And all the ones that I've been lucky enough to be with have such care and love for us, not animosity, that they want us to heal. I started to connect dots between them. I'd go to different cultures and start to see things that were similar between each of these cultures. Things like they look at... aggression and this consumerism and this dominance as a sort of sickness that needs healing. So they're like, okay, we need to heal. So they're sort of coming out too, and we're getting, you know, with this able to disperse information, it's sort of like a unison of those two things, I feel. You know, looking at the whole system, the whole body, the whole mind and spirit for them is very important. And seeing that there is this deeper part, and I start to see these tie-ins between the different cultures that I got to be with. A lot of it was, we need to deal with these other parts of us that we don't really have a setup for in our modern civilization, whereas the way they live integrates a lot of this well-being into it, whereas ours is a separate thing. You know, I live my life and then I go and get healthy or I live my life and get sick and therefore have to get healthy. And there it's integrated. And part of what I became very interested in, first of all, this Western science and then these indigenous cultures and their practices. But I also got very much into Taoism because once you start to push the boundaries and to look underneath the surface, you sort of end in the Tao. There's nowhere else to go but to arrive there. And so I became very curious of the intersection of these three worlds, right? These three cosmologies, you know, the Western science, the indigenous and the Taoism, the Eastern

SPEAKER_00:

philosophies. So let's go into a bit more detail. What kind of indigenous communities are you referring to, the experiences you've had? And what are some of the Western practices that you're referring to? I

SPEAKER_01:

mostly work with these tribes in South America, a lot in Brazil, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and also in Africa. I just got back from Gabon a month ago with the Pygmy tribe there. Some Asia and a little bit in North America, but not so much direct experience, but a lot of intersections there, a lot of connections. But my deep side was mostly Central South America.

SPEAKER_00:

And how did you find these communities? How was that introduction made? And Can you provide more specifics relating to the indigenous communities you've had experiences with? And what exactly were the disconnects that you saw between their practices and our Western practices?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, like I said, it was like done in very mysterious ways. I had this connection because of my adventure racing. Some people knew about that and knew my interest in it. And so I got introductions, but they would come about in very odd ways. It was never really planned. Actually, a lot of them were kind of disruptive to what I was doing. One time I was with my girlfriend on holiday in Colombia and we booked this like eco resort and we went there to lay by the pool and to relax. And next thing I'm taking her up a mountain, a two-day hike up a mountain to be with this culture. And luckily she was a good sport, but it was, I couldn't really tell you because it wasn't a plan. So I can't really say, hey, I did it this way or that way. But I remember being sort of awestruck by the welcome and by the way they interact with people and the way they live life and the way they care. And so that deepened my curiosity a

SPEAKER_00:

lot. So let's take that one as an example. So that community that you were introduced to, that you met, what was their approach to health and well-being? Can you break it down for us?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's tricky because... You have to look from it from a completely different perspective. They have a lot of practices for the physical body. A lot of these plants that they use, most of these cultures, the most sacred plant is tobacco. That's the guardian of all the other plants. So they use it a lot. I've had tobacco, you know, obviously smoked tobacco, but the liquid form up my nose and my ears, paste around my gums, you know, all kinds of stuff they use it for. And that's what they do is if you have an ailment, they want to cleanse you of it. Very different than in the West where we might have a period of time where we're getting rid of it. There they'll go in and it'll be immediately. And most cultures, what they do is through purging, through vomiting. There's so many mornings I was woken up and given this substance and purged for 45 minutes or whatever it is. So they cleanse the body a lot. That's big for them. They do other things like dietas, these diets where you work with a specific herb and that affects the body. But they're not just working on that level. And this is where it's different from us. They believe there's a spirit in these plants and they're using that spirit to do the healing. That's a big distinction from us. There's a sacredness that they have that we don't really have. We look at it through sort of one lens of the matter and how affecting matter and that they have a lot more depth, I would say, a lot more levels.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it sounds like there's this appreciation that every dimension of health is connected, as you said, right? And you have to address imbalance in the body in some way and purging is historically was used as a mechanism for, okay, there's something imbalanced in the body. You need to get rid of something. So let's purge that. What sort of ailments are addressed in that way and how are they detected? I'm trying to link it back to like the medical process in a way. I know it's very hard, but for most people to grasp, I guess it's okay. I need to know something's wrong with my health and wellbeing first to address it. Or I need to have a routine practice that just takes care of this imbalance as part of my routine. How do people approach that paradigm in this community at least? And then I'd love for you to share more experiences that you've come across. If you think of the way

SPEAKER_01:

we live in the West, there's a lot of amazing things. I mean, when I was in Gabon, I was dying to get back to my bed and my shower and my toilet. So we have a lot of things. And even in the medical world, we have amazing progress. We've done amazing things. So it's not like one's better than the other. They're very different and there's appropriate times for each one. Whereas our lifestyle, the foods we eat maybe aren't the healthiest right now. The way we work, the stress, our separation from nature, our need to belong, those things are embedded in their culture. There's not a lot of like us where suddenly something's happened, but it's probably from a cause from lifestyle or some ailment that built up over time. With there, they're constantly doing this cleansing and this way of living that integrates what's needed for a human. The body, these things are needed. We need to challenge our bodies physically. The way they live, just not having all the conveniences does that. In Gabon, to cook dinner, you had to go get water from the river, carry it up the hill, and there was constantly squatting down to wash up in this bucket. You're physically moving a lot more than we do. We make everything very convenient here, which is, I love it, but It doesn't make us stronger. And the body thrives under these challenges. And so things like that are integrated into their well-being. And they're doing what they call rituals and ceremonies, which go through a lot of this preventative care, I would say. If we look at it through our lens, I would say it's preventative. When they diagnose us, you'll have an ailment, right? I feel sick. I feel stressed. I feel something. And then they'll bring their practices together to work on that for you. But what we have, our experience of these cultures, is us dropping in. We go visit them and we do their healing or whatever they're generous enough to share with us. And then we come back to our culture. And I think there's a little bit disconnect because now there is popularity in going on these ayahuasca trips or whatever it is to do the healing. But I think there's a massive component missing, which is a lot of their, what we would call integration or processing is ingrained into their culture because they're a tribe. You know, they do it, they're a tribe, they do these rituals and they're still a tribe. And we don't have that. And it's the same with our health. So we in our lifestyle often get sick and then drop in to them or in our culture to our doctor to try and get healed. Whereas theirs is more preventative, but it's

SPEAKER_00:

ingrained preventative medicine. It feels like in these modern urbanized societies, somewhere along the way, we forgot to translate or at least codify before translating what we got from all these routine practices back in the day and that we needed to take forward in practice. You know, the way we design life around technology, around urban design, all these sorts of things. And to your point, this whole concept of dropping in to be healed versus you have a daily practice or a weekly practice, you have a culture that you dip into constantly to keep yourself in balance. Can you tell us a bit more about some of the practices? It could be in this community in Colombia or in another one. And I would love to talk more about your recent experience in Gabon, which sounds amazing, by the way. But what sort of practices do these communities with some specific examples, what do they do, even if it's not necessarily relatable or translatable to, you know, how most urbanized Western societies, if we want to call them that, live today?

SPEAKER_01:

I think, you know, a very simple one, but a big one is the community. It's like, if you look at the fundamental fear of humans is to be kicked out the tribe, to isolation. That's why in our system, when we don't follow the laws of the land, we get isolated, right? We get put in prison. And so we experience a lot of isolation, even though Our tribes are thousands of people, right? The cities we live in. But we're coded with a loneliness, right? That's in our DNA, a biogenic trait that we have. But then the way we live creates more of that, right? We're always trying to compete or to try and prove ourselves in order to be included, to be accepted. Whereas they don't have that. Even like this very respected shaman, I think it was like in his 80s, we're there and everyone honors him. And the next day he's sweeping up in the village like everyone else. There's no hierarchy. When I was in Gabon, there was a guy came and introduced me as the chief. He wasn't any more superior than anyone else. It was just his role was being the chief. And it was cyclical. I stayed next door to the lady who was the chief before him. And I think this inclusion... is very important. We have subtle things in our culture that affect us in a deep way that we don't really realize because we're into this belief of achieving and success brings happiness and those things. Not that they're bad, there's nothing wrong with it, but there's other elements to it that we have to look at as well.

SPEAKER_00:

That we can't do without, it seems. I kind of look at the banishment from a tribe or a community as like one of the most ultimate punishments. But today we don't live in tribes in the same way in most urbanized Western societies. But instead, there is this over-reliance on digital technologies, such as social media for connection. The resulting shift in our culture is believed to fuel the mental health crisis caused by isolation and loneliness. And we're seeing this even more in the elderly who aren't really given an appropriate role in society when they reach what we call retirement. Can you tell us a bit more about the elderly members of these tribes and what kind of capital they're given the opportunity to give back?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're regarded with that respect. They have a place in community that if there's a problem to solve, they're very much involved in that. They've had the lived experience. It's really just that acknowledgement. If you look at also blue zones, where we see that, you know, where people are living to centennial years, that a lot of it is they have a purpose, right? They belong, which You know, if you look at the ones in Japan where the elderly, their role is to look after the younger children so the middle group can go off and work. And so they have a very strong purpose in that. And they feel they have a purpose. You know, I think most dangerous things for our health and our longevity is retirement. Not that we should work all the time, but we shouldn't think of it as like, oh, I've used up my energy. I got to this place now. I need to rest. You know, I think the adventure should begin, at least continue. So... We do have a way of looking at aging in our culture as a negative thing. And I think in these other cultures,

SPEAKER_00:

it's not. We talk about physical movement and we talk about community and belonging. We talk about aging as a positive thing where you can give. There's always an opportunity to give back to society. What are some of the other things that you've seen that we might be able to translate into something understandable for the listeners? I would describe us as

SPEAKER_01:

intra-beings. Intra, meaning we're part of nature. We think of ourselves as completely separate, whereas these cultures know completely they're integrated. Like if I inhale now, right? I'm getting that from plants. That's oxygen being released from plants. I exhale and the carbon dioxide goes back to the plants. I'm breathing, it's giving me oxygen. Exactly. I can't see it, right? I can't see the oxygen because it doesn't reflect light. And so I don't regard it as, wow, that's incredible that this is happening. So we go along separating ourselves from nature. You know, I was speaking to this philosopher one time that talked about different cultures. Like a lot of these indigenous cultures are close to the equator and they have a very interesting relationship with nature, which is nature and their gods as well are animists. So their gods are the nature and they give them, they're very loving and very providing. Whereas, you know, a lot of our cultures come from Northern ideologies where we're further from the equator, where we had to battle with nature and it was man battling against nature. So God resembled humans. It was a struggle and we had to survive it and they weren't forgiving. They were very demanding and aggressive and hateful. It was very interesting to listen to that philosophy and to see it. It's obvious, but their connection with nature. I remember talking to one of the pages from the Huniquin in Brazil. And I'm like, oh, do you love visiting these cultures in the West? And they're like, he's like, no, I miss my trees. I miss the forest. They have a deep relationship. They, you know, even North American tribes and Scandinavian tribes, they call the trees, our brothers and sisters, our families, our relatives, because they're connected to us. And I think we have a tendency in the West to only measure things I'm experiencing the world through my senses, which are limited. We can only see light, a certain spectrum of light, and things have to reflect the light. I can only touch particles of a certain size. A wavelength has to be a certain volume for me to pick it up. And we don't really operate outside of that. And they do. they're like, oh, there's energy, there's connection, which is also similar in the East. There's this chi energy, prana energy. We're separate from that. The culture we come from is sort of separate from that. It's like, what can we tangibly measure with our senses? And yeah, in science, we invented tools and we can go a little bit deeper. Now we understand the quantum field. And so I had a big realization at one point when I was watching one of these shaman work and What I realized is they're working in the quantum field. That's the only way we could explain it through our language. But they've been interacting with the quantum field for millennia. We're new because we come along and start to understand this philosophy and put our labels on it, calling it the quantum physics. But they are working it. And that's part of their culture, of their practice. So I think there's a connection to nature and a depth that's beyond the limitation of our senses, of what we

SPEAKER_00:

can tangibly interact with. I don't want to get too philosophical, though it's hard not to on this topic, and it's very fun to do so. We talk about being able to translate concepts between different human languages. You know, today I just got back from Japan and there were many things that were hard to communicate just because there isn't a word for it in the English language or vice versa. And there's a version of that going on here, right? Where we have these practices and these things that are felt and done, but there isn't a way to translate it into the modern way in which we perhaps view the world and measure the world. And we're on a race almost to measure better so we can meet these things that we've been doing for thousands of years, right? Absolutely. You

SPEAKER_01:

know, it's that concept of when you label something, it loses the mystery. Like I walk around and I pass trees all the time. I don't think about my relationship with them, that I'm having a relationship with them as I'm walking through them. Also, I don't know if you heard in Japan about the shinrin-yoku, right? The forest bathing. We know it balances our ions. When people get upset or angry, they say they're boiling up, they're heating up. They're losing in negative ions, the stress of our day. And we can go into nature and we get negative ions from the trees or from the ocean or waterfalls. There's a balance that we gain from it. When we label it with language, we lose that mystery. And mystery only means something that we can't tangibly interact with, with our senses, or we don't have a scientific tool to explain. So that's what mystery is. But they work in the mystery a lot, but it's mystery to us. It's not mystery to

SPEAKER_00:

them. Tell us a little bit more about the impact of nature on health, because I don't think anyone will argue, we know this both anecdotally and scientifically, as you've said, that spending time in nature is It makes you feel happier. It relaxes you. It relieves stress. How does that work?

SPEAKER_01:

On a cellular level, if you go down into the atoms, the electrons and the neutrons, that's what we're losing, these electrons. It's actually balancing the neutrons and our atoms. And so that's why we get more relaxed. So we now are able to know that scientifically, whereas before we were just like, oh, I feel good in nature. They don't need these ways of validating it. They trust a lot of their experience and has been validated because of the trust. But there's another aspect of nature that I think is really important that I think people don't talk about a lot. It's the awesomeness of nature. You go to a mountain, this massive mountain, and either standing at the bottom of it looking up or on top looking down, and you feel your place in it. Or being in the ocean, if you're sailing in the ocean, and I used to do open water swimming, and you feel very small in the ocean. Nature can be humbling. And I think that's an important aspect because when we think we're this dominant species that it's a dead world to be extracted, that creates an imbalance and a separation. And I think we're deeply connected with it. Understanding my humility around it is very important. So I think even if it's a jungle or a forest or something, you're like, wow, it's spectacular. The sunsets are spectacular. There's an awesomeness to it. I think it's very important to get us to become present to our place in nature. I think we would interact with it very differently. Going back to that philosophy about being from the north and having to battle with nature, it affected, if you think of our architecture, it affected our architecture. A lot of the old architects had very few windows. It was to protect us from nature. And as we become more secure, we got bigger windows now in even indoor-outdoor living. So, we're becoming more comfortable with nature in our culture. There's change, but I think we're starting to measure the tangible effect of nature, but there's an intangible effect. And I think it's equally valid. You can go and just feel good and be okay with it. And we've got such a culture of work and efficiency and progress that we miss giving ourselves permission to go, to be in nature, but also to move at the pace of nature. We're not at the pace of nature at all. You know, if nature moved at our place, it would scare the hell out of us. Like if a tree grew up in a few seconds, we'd definitely go to battle with it. But it doesn't. It exists at a very different pace. And I think it's more natural to our pace That's another thing with these cultures. They understand that. Not that they don't work hard. They work very hard. But they're at a pace with nature, which is, oh, they have permission to be at that. And we don't really have permission to be at that pace. We're driven by something and escaping or trying to achieve something. And so much of this that I feel we're trying to achieve or escape from is our endocrine system, our emotional bodies. We don't feel good. So we're trying to do something to make ourselves feel better. But the feelings on the inside, it's not on the outside. You can do as much as you want on the outside. You might get hits of feeling good. I achieved this level in my work and now I feel good. But it's Our hormones are not designed to be fixed. They're designed to fluctuate. If they were fixed, we would have died out as a species by now. But we're trying to grasp these fixed moments. And I think they understand that too. And we understand that in psychology. We're starting to understand that in Western medicine, even the mental health aspect of it. But I think we've got to keep going and keep going deeper and really understanding it from a new paradigm. And that's when you get into the Taoist or the Eastern philosophies. They've sat very quietly and gone into these paradigms and start to understand who they are, what they are. And you push the boundaries and some interesting things start

SPEAKER_00:

to unfold. Here's a quick ask. Take a second to follow or subscribe to the Health Curve podcast wherever you're listening. And if someone in your life would benefit from this episode or any of the others you've heard, please send it their way. All right, let's get back to it. So we kind of rushed along to solve a bunch of problems and we have created a bunch of others by forgetting to take these things with us, right? And it seems like the tools that we need for a lot of these problems Health imbalances, not necessarily diseases, but the day-to-day and ongoing health imbalances are out there for us already. We don't necessarily need to build a new technology for everything. This is something that I've learned working in sort of the health tech space as well, is that I came to this realization several times where I was like, do we really need to build a technology to solve this? Probably not. But we've built an incentive environment and race to the top that looks very sexy, where it's like, oh, we should build a new technology for everything. Let's talk about the Taoism. You mentioned it a couple of times, and I know you've got some deep experience in this. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean and what's been deconstructed there. If you

SPEAKER_01:

start looking at the nature of things, there's always another level. We're in the West, we're down to the quantum field, to quark. And if you look at things like the double slit experiment, where the effect, the result is affected by whether it's observed or not. So it's the potential of anything, and then it's affected. The Tao is sort of getting into that nature. There's a lot of depth and a lot of wisdom teachings out there where you can go and get interested, but there's different levels. And looking at it through the lens of my physical body, my physical world, I would say it was like oxygen. I can't see oxygen, but I know it's there. I know it's vital for my life. That's how the Tao is. That's how they talk about it. It's this untangible part of you You actually have a connection to all things that is not tangible looking at it through the lens of the physical body. And that's why it's so hard. There's such a disconnect. But anyone at any time can tap into it, can feel it, can experience it directly. For me, that's what was very profound is that it wasn't a philosophy. I started to experience these things in Taoism, and it's really the connection to all things and what's our true nature. It's going deeper into the quantum field. That's, I think, the best way for people to become introduced to it. For example, I know I'm aware that I have a physical body, right? If I start to focus, if I meditate or something, I become aware of These attitudes, these thoughts, these emotions, these things, but I have an awareness of them, which means there's an object, a subject separation. So I'm not them because I have the awareness of them. And I think just understanding that, just having that direct experience. If I right now said, hello, hello, in my head, right? I can shout it. I'm aware that I'm shouting it. Whatever that voice is, I'm not that. I'm the awareness of it. And that's sort of the pathway that they follow. They have a very interesting outlook on life, of the interactiveness of life. Not only that, but the way life is unfolding. And it's more similar, resembled to the double slit experiment. The expectation causes the result. I mean, obviously I'm scratching the surface here, but just to touch on it and sort of give an idea of how I relate with it and interact with it in

SPEAKER_00:

my ideas and philosophies. So to make it something that people can maybe touch and feel a little bit more. So us recording this podcast right now, we're doing it remotely. I'm in one place, you're in another. We're doing it over video. How would you describe this interaction in those terms?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, maybe some connection here is that that voice in the head, that what we call the mind, it's sort of like a computer screen. Like I'm looking at you now on a screen. The way it's described in this wisdom philosophy is that my awareness is actually looking at the screen of the mind. I'm not the mind and I'm also not the body. I'm more than that. And so it could be, you know, if we're looking in these terms, this computer that I'm looking at that we're recording on, I have an awareness of it. And we can look inside ourselves and see that we're actually programming. It's like in psychology, they say you're the sum total of your lived experiences, which is true looking at it from one angle, from neurology. But then the next question is, okay, who's aware of that? I'm aware of my thoughts. I'm aware of these. When I sit in meditation, I can see these things coming up and I can even trace to their origin. I can see the neural pathway where it was formed. Not that that's necessary to trace them all, but just to become aware, oh, wait, I conditioned my belief system and I have an awareness

SPEAKER_00:

of it. Again, not to get too philosophical, but everyone has their own lived experience and their own lens of their journey through life. And it sometimes amazes me that we are able to perhaps often very dysfunctionally, but still all coexist and interact with each other in this thing we call life because everyone's goldfish bowl looks different or the view from the goldfish bowl. And it traverses our senses and beyond things we cannot measure. And one can drive themselves crazy trying to deconstruct this, right? So how can we provide our listeners with some sort of framework to think about this so they can go away and maybe navigate their own health better? Because one of the aims of this podcast is we cannot get everything we need from healthcare and public health systems as we have traditionally relied upon them. That's clear. People need to be able to take better control, better charge of their own health, but maybe lack the perspectives, the tools, the frameworks to do that. So we'll come back to that. I want to ask a few more questions about the experiences you've had with these indigenous communities. And I guess we've talked about, again, the physical activities, the role of community. We've talked about a few other things, the role of elders. aging, the interaction with nature. How about some of the more sort of direct physical things like medicinal plants, remedies? Let's talk about that for a second.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they have such a deep relationship with nature. It's unbelievable. I met one elder who was responsible for, I think, 180 plants, because that's how many, you know, they believe that she could have a very deep relationship with. And what they know about them is mind-blowing. It's sort of like they know the personality of the plant. And if you look at our Western medicine, I don't remember the percentage, but it's a high percentage that we get from the Amazon. We take the plants and we convert the properties into medicine. they think that's missing a massive component of it, missing what they would call the spirit of the plant. And that's the intelligence of the plant. They have these plants that they use for everything. I had these, when I was in the Amazon jungle, these little bugs that bury their eggs in your skin. And so I had all these like little, welts on my body and they had a potion for it you know it was like 10 or 12 different herbs they made just like black liquid and they rubbed it on my back and cured it but they have this knowledge that's it's hard for us to conceive sort of how they have this knowledge you know it's like ayahuasca it's two different plants made into a tea that's boiled for 72 hours like did they just experiment with every single plant until they got the combination right I don't think so. And they said it was devineated. They have a relationship with the plant, which us standing in the West have a very difficult time understanding that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're thinking about what machine learning model can I use on what data set to be able to deduce what to put into this potion, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Totally, totally. And yeah, exactly. And I got to experiment with all these things until I see the combination work. Whereas there, they interact in a very different, from a very different place. Part of their medicines, like they have a lot of cleansing ones, ones to become embodied. One of the rituals we did, we sat in our shorts and they got these massive stinging nettles and these little old ladies whacked us with these stinging nettles and we got welts all over us, but it was to embody, you know, to become, I'm physically here. So they, they move between these realms of physical and energetic seamlessly. And part of what their medicine is, is psychedelic medicine. Initially, when I was working with these tribes and first getting introduced to them, I was very against what I called drugs. I was an athlete, and I was very clear about it, that that was bad, and it can scramble my brain, and it was awful. But I got introduced to a very different aspect of it. And now in the West, I'm doing my PhD in it, we're seeing it very differently. We're understanding it from the neuroscience of it, and it has tremendous effects. It's really incredible what we're learning from it. Not that it's a panacea that everyone should do it. I think I take it very seriously. And actually, I think there's a lot of people who shouldn't interact with these types of medicines of these alkaloids. But for them, it's a part of their wellness. It's a direct connection with the divine, with this energetic field that is, the Tao would say, was part of you. They also believe it's part of you, but it's a bigger part. part of you. It's this other part, and that's part of their health. So it was very interesting to shift my relationship with

SPEAKER_00:

these types of plants. Taking part in an ayahuasca ceremony or using psychedelics for healing, there's a big part of this that is the preparation and then the time afterwards, which maybe gets at what you're talking about. It's not just the way we see taking an agent today like a drug. I'm talking about medicines where you take something and it's supposed to fix the problem in the background, even if you have to take it every day or take three pills every day, whatever it is. This is different. This is experiential where the agent itself plays a role in the whole experience. So can you tell us a bit more about that, maybe through the lens of a couple of different substances, one maybe ayahuasca and the other maybe psychedelics? And then I really want to get to your trip to Gabon and hear more about that.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. We come from a culture where you take a pill and the pill fixes us. And I see a lot of people who get introduced to these psychedelics and they're treating it the same way. Like, I take the psychedelic, I lay down, put my blindfold on and it fixes me. You can have amazing results like that. But what's missing are the effort. We need to participate in our healing. These plants and these psychedelics can help us become aware of things we weren't aware of. We can relate to things differently. We understand that the prefrontal cortex gets access to deep memory in a way that it doesn't usually. Things can be revealed that were hidden, that were driving our behavior, causing us anxiety or whatever it was, but we didn't know. We couldn't see it. So there's amazing things like that that are part of this, but you have to do the work. I was with one tribe in Ecuador where there's a pilgrimage as part of it. And then the more you sweat and the more effort you put in, the more gains you have. And it's true. It's like it needs to be a significant thing. If we look back at sacred sites around the world, a lot of them were on top of mountains or upstairs or you had to put effort in to go there. And that effort was the cleansing, the introspection. What am I doing to myself? What do I have to let go of? And it's so often that it's what's in my blind spot. That's really important. Specifically with ayahuasca, and there's many different cultures that do it, and they're all very, very powerful and very, very different. If you spend enough time with the culture, you see that these things, the preparation and the integration are embedded into their culture. They're not just taking a substance. Although, you know, in Gabon, I was blown away with the, they were giving it to children and babies and chickens and everyone got iboga there. And this is a very potent... Yeah, I would say this is the strongest. Iboga is one dose is 36 to 48 hours. Wow. It has amazing effect on addictions and even depression, but a lot of addictions because it resets serotonin and dopamine levels almost to baseline. And I had that very strong experience when I came out of it. It lasted a while, but definitely a few days afterwards, I was like, My emotions were totally calm. They were almost separate from me. And I felt like I had been unplugged and plugged back in because I didn't realize until after this how much distortion there is in my mind, this constant thoughts and energy and stuff, which had totally calmed. And so I was like in this silent head for a while, which was unique

SPEAKER_00:

to it. Tell us more about the experience in Gabon. I know we talked about this a bit before the podcast. What was that like? What happened? As much as you can share, of course.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

The Gabon is very difficult. The jungle there is a harsh jungle. And I've been to many jungles. And this one, I struggled with a lot. The first thing is that I was just bitten by it. Every bug there. So I looked like I had chickenpox because there wasn't one inch of skin that wasn't bitten. So you're just uncomfortable. And it's harsh living there. That was tough for me. And then their rituals, I got initiated in one of their pathways, which is called Misoko. It was three days we were in the temple. Whereas I do an ayahuasca, I go in in the evening, we stay overnight, and the daytime I go out and I rest. And then if it's a second night, I'll go back in the evening and have the second day. You're in it for three days. And there were definitely rest periods in the day, but there was no really quiet. I'm amazed by how the pygmies... can sleep through anything. There's noise, whatever it is, they're lying on the floor, upside down, they're fine, they can sleep. Just for me, it was a challenge because I'm used to my comfy bed. There was just this level of discomfort in this, which brings an effort to it. But what was really interesting is we were in one village, a hundred or so people, and there was five villages around that one. They all showed up to our initiation. I was with a group of 10 of us, and five of us were getting this one initiation. And the five usually just showed up. They gave so much energy the whole time. Everyone there had these two sticks, which they banged and created rhythm. And it wasn't like they were just there making noise. They were putting an effort to you going through this initiation. And I learned afterwards that Their understanding of initiation, one of the most important aspects is the witnessing of it. I saw you being initiated, therefore you're going to embody it even more. So they all show up and they show up with importance for what this ritual is and what you're going through. And we don't really have that. Yeah, our friends show up for each other, but it's not like I'm doing something and everyone in my neighborhood is going to show up for me and stay there all night and for days. contributing by bringing their energy and making noise and whatever's needed in it. So there's those things that's ingrained in their culture that we're lacking. But yeah, Gabon, it was a very, very, very powerful one and a very interesting psychedelic compared to other ones. To me, it was a very, very different.

SPEAKER_00:

This is all fascinating. How does this all link to human performance? Because I know you have a deep background in that. You've trained lots of people around the world in performance and their fields. I think through social media and other things, people are becoming more and more obsessed with performance and habits, again, for better and for worse. How do these practices relate to that within the scope of what people might understand today?

SPEAKER_01:

I think we look at performance through a limited lens. And I did too. You know, I work with a lot of professional athletes. I work with people who are like at the top of their field, a lot of actors and celebrities, you know, executives. And it was about achieving, improving on their skill, becoming really good at what they do. And I think that creates an imbalance if we just look through it, that one lens. I think the missing component of optimization is what you might say is a fulfillment, maybe. I think it's this other quality that I think is lacking with us. We almost have the full mixture, but we're missing one element, and which is to think about this other side of it. And I think we can actually achieve more and become more successful if that's what your drive is, or perform better if we have this other component. You know, if we have this fulfillment side of it, and I think it's very important to look at. I've actually worked with a lot of people in these transition periods, athletes retiring, post-exit founders, and they're in this state where they've known who they were being when they were achieving success. But now they're ended that role and they start to break down who they are. It's like they don't know. And you'll see so many times these post-exit founders, what do they do? They just go and start another company, you know, and

SPEAKER_00:

they lose their identity. And then they try and go back to that identity again, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Totally. Exactly. It's an identity crisis. So they've known who they were by operating that way. And now they go through a period where they don't. So usually they go back to it and they're struggling. They're not happy, but they're still doing it because that's all they know how to do. And so this understanding what drives us. When I work with my clients, I look at, okay, let's write out your goals. And then we start to break down, why do you want that goal? It's, oh, I want more money. I'll feel more secure. I'll feel more powerful. I want more fame. I'll feel X or Y. And if you break it down, it's what do you actually want? You want to feel secure. You want to feel like you belong, like you're important. Why don't we go directly to these things and achieve them directly? Then you're free to creatively live life in any way you want. You can achieve all these successes and all these amazing things, but with this other component that I think we have

SPEAKER_00:

left out until now. Really fascinating. Now, I know we're running out of time. A couple of last things for today, and we're going to have lots more episodes on different aspects of what we've discussed today. But one of the aims, I think, with any body of knowledge or wisdom is, first, how do we retain it? Maybe second, how do we not abuse it? And third, how do we translate this so that it can benefit humankind at large? So let me tell you what I mean by this. How do we translate some of these things into things we can understand better that would benefit humankind at large? Because right now it feels like these things can only exist in certain communities under certain conditions. We built a whole other set of conditions for most human beings today where the environment does not facilitate some of these things. So how can we take these things and produce them for the benefit of humankind? And I don't mean that we have to build something, but how do we take that knowledge and do something with it so it can benefit all humans?

SPEAKER_01:

I think the first, the initial aspect of that is to be open. We come with a of the world, of life, of health, of wellness, of this stuff. And it took me a while to untangle that was one perspective. I remember when I arrived in the territory of this tribe in Ecuador, one of the first things they said was, if you wanna learn what we have to teach, you have to suspend your belief on logic and science. And I'm like, what else is there? That's all there is. You know, it took me a while to understand that I would miss a lot if I was putting that filter in front of everything they're doing. And that's a massive part of this. It's like we come with these ideas that this is the only way. And so I think that's an initial part. I had to at least learn that idea. I wouldn't have got nearly what I got from these cultures if I hadn't gone in with a not knowing, a novice sort of attitude. But I think we can slowly introduce a lot of these. It's not that we have to throw the Western culture out. It's amazing progress. And a lot of these tribes want a lot of things that we've produced, a lot of these comforts. And so it's not one or the other, but it's a blending to understand, always to sit back and to understand its effect. One of the things we didn't do in the West was to look at the long-term effect of things. Like industrialization, it was amazing, right? We got to improve the manpower a thousand fold. So it's like, wow, that's so exciting. We went along with it. We were like, well, what if we keep going like that? What will then happen when we've extracted this amount? And so I think sitting with a greater awareness of the interconnectedness and the effect of everything will really help in us move forward in a different way that will help us live a lot healthier, with a lot more happiness, with a lot more joy. Going back to Taoism, that's their goal is to arrive in joy, which they say you can arrive in any second. You don't have to achieve it. But I think understanding this and integrating them is an important component of it.

SPEAKER_00:

And how do we protect communities that are still doing all these things? Because again, having just come back from Japan, travel has changed over the years. And I feel like Instagram has ruined travel because the traveler behavior and why people go to see things has changed. What happens, I feel, is something or someplace becomes popular and it needs to be protected because then it's abused. in a sense. I know I'm generalizing here, but how can we protect these communities whilst also respectfully learning from their own wisdom?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I want to answer it two ways. One way I think is more specific to what you're answering, which I'll get to, but I think there's something we've got to be responsible for, the knowledge that we're dispersing. Like, just because I went to one ayahuasca ceremony doesn't mean I should be an expert on it. And I think we lose the mystery of things. It's like that example I gave is like, oh, that's just a tree, you know, an interconnectedness with my lungs. Like it's not, it doesn't have that anymore. And I think we could very easily lose the mystery of it. I'll talk to people about things and then they'll, you know, it'll be on their Instagram post the next day. And they're doing it maybe partly to this interesting information that I think will help you. But a lot of it is for I have something interesting and you think I'm interesting now. And I think that takes away the mystery. It's an ego thing, right? It's an ego thing. And that's what they say our sickness is a lot. It's the ego sort of taking over our culture. Not ego like egocentric, but ego construct, the psyche. And we've got to be responsible for that. It's okay to have some mystery. It's okay to not tell everyone all this information I have. I know it's tricky now because that's our culture is that you know, a lot of people are like, hey, I have information, let me disperse it. So I think just that, I think maintaining the mystery of it and the humility around it's like, wow, you can say I went to an ayahuasca and this was amazing, but now don't be an expert on it. Leave that to the shamans who have come from a culture of 30,000 years and, you know, from a lineage, you know, that they're embedded in and they've studied it. There's a lot I think we don't understand about these things. But more specifically about protecting these cultures, I think that openness that we don't know everything, or at least we don't know this aspect of it, we can enter it in a more humble way so we're not treading on it. It's a fragile thing. We have a lot of awesomeness, a lot of power in our cultures. We've learned how to replicate things and expand things and have progress. And I think that energy, we've got to be careful. There's a fragility to these cultures. And we have to be responsible. It's not them being responsible. One of my teachers told me about when he first met this tribe and he got introduced to it. And they were so generous with him. He wanted to give him a gift. And so he brought them a freezer. He's like, they go hunting and they don't have anywhere to put their meat. So he brought them a freezer. And then when he went back, he realized that that totally disrupted the sharing community. They would hunt and this food would go bad. So they would share it. And now they didn't need to. So they stopped the sharing, just a simple thing like that. So I think we have to really think it's like, hey, we want to help them. We want to contribute. And it's great. It's not that we shouldn't, but think about the consequence. I feel there needs to be a barrier of protection that it's when I went to one of these tribes, They invited me up and it was, you know, at the top of this mountain, it was multi-day to get there. But I went to the outskirts, you know, there was there where they lived in their little huts and things and they were there and I got to be with them. But that was a barrier for the deeper part where they lived in there, you know, the way they've lived for thousands of years. And so we need to sort of have that buffer where we can come to this point where we can connect, but not disrupt people. Both ways to have respect for each culture. So I think it's an attitude is the main thing. It's like, hey, I'm going in gently and I got to be careful of everything I do and say and the way I act will have an effect. And I got to be responsible for that effect and responsible when I

SPEAKER_00:

come away

SPEAKER_01:

with it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And it feels like, you know, as we've discussed, we've made so much progress in how to feed people and in building shelter and addressing sanitation and all these things. But we've lost that. Or we are losing a bunch of other things that we're learning now. It feels, you know, are essential to our existence and well-being. And you're saying finding ways to blend the two is to the benefit of humankind at large, right? For our advancement.

SPEAKER_01:

Totally. Totally. I think now we're in that period where we're starting to gain the awareness of coming together. Not that, hey... Because it's our way, it's the right way, and that's the only way we're going to force it on everybody else to go, okay, wait a minute. Let's listen. Let's do this together as one species. You know, they call us our relatives, you know, our brothers and sisters. And there's one tribe, the Adewaku tribe, who call us the little brother. You're right. They're the older brother who's responsible for the mother earth. And so we've been playing around and experimenting. but they want to participate with us. They want to be with us. And I think that attitude will make a difference that we're in an amazing place right now. And we have this ability and this very bright future of the coming together of these different worlds.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed. So last thing, Paul, this has been fascinating to give people some sort of framework, some sort of way of thinking about this so they can, you know, our listeners can take this away and navigate their own health journeys better, but both as individuals, but also in their communities, because it's clearly a key component of what we're talking about. What would you advise our listeners who are listening to this and thinking this is really interesting, but how do I do something with this?

SPEAKER_01:

It's actually, there's so much you can do and it's so much simpler than we're usually taught. It's reattuning with your body, with the planet we're on, right? We're on a planet traveling through space at thousands of kilometers per hour, right? That's a reality. And there's other humans around and it's how we interact with those. So it's simple things like setting the circadian rhythm. Like I can get in the morning and if I'm somewhere where there's sunlight, I know there's countries where it's very overcast. But if somewhere I can get sunlight in the morning, that sets my circadian rhythm, which affects all my physiological interactions in my body. It's the start point. And so even sleep is affected by that. So I think getting in tune with this stuff, nutrition, the way we eat, whole foods. Right now, I'm 92 hours into fasting. I haven't eaten for 92 hours. I'm going for 100 hours. And just things like that. Not that it's for everyone. And of course, there's the disclaimer of check with your medical professional before you do that. But by taking this time and this quietness. When I do the fasting, I also do a lot of time where I'm quiet, which you could call meditation. In my quiet time, when I first started, you can see how noisy the mind is. All these things come up and the mind is not still at all. That's affecting my emotions. I'm in this stress state. There's so much we can do to calm ourselves. to not need, like, when I'm in a stress state, then I need to do all these things to overcome that. I need to go and get some pleasure from something, you know, from food or whatever it is. And I need to do that to keep hiding this emotional state that's being generated by myself, right? So I think understand just seeing ourselves from the different components. So I think, you know, getting in tune with our circadian rhythm, looking at nature, even in the aspect of we're eating it, taking the time, being okay, going and being still in nature. Practice being still. A lot of us are so used to distraction. Being still is hard. Start slow. Go for a jog in the forest or something until you can sit under the tree. Those things are massively important. Then community, but not community from the aspect of like, what do I need from community? If you flip that and go, where can I contribute to community? That contribution is actually a massive component of fulfillment. Even a neurological aspect, right? It's the oxytocins that are released when we do things for other people. You feel good, right? to assess my life. I do an audit of my life very often, and I do with all my clients, is to do a life audit and see what they're doing, their lifestyle, and what's driving that behavior. What are they trying to achieve from it? What's their end results? What are they trying to get? And I think just reflecting on that and doing simple things. Exercise. You've got to challenge the systems in the body. There's many ways to challenge them. Cardiorespiratory, power, strength, endurance, agility. Become playful with it. You don't have to overcomplicate it. There's all these ways online for people to follow and to do it, and it's complicated. They own the information. They're giving the information. And some of them are brilliant. They're great. And some of the plans are fantastic. But you can just move the body. Just start moving the body. It thrives when you move it. Looking at how much I'm eating and why I'm eating. You know, funny things happen during this fasting is that my brain starts giving me suggestions of restaurants I should go to or, you know, meals I can cook. And it comes from this like a loneliness and it's like a way to compensate for that. So I sat there with the loneliness and I let it come up and pass through me. And I think another aspect is being okay with our endocrine system. They're our emotions, you know, sit there and let them pass. Don't block them. Don't try and get away from them. Don't try and suppress them. Let them come up, let them pass through. And I think that's where community comes in too, to be able to have support when you need it. This epidemic of mental health that we're going through, it's this isolation component to it that I think we need to share. Say to someone, I'm not feeling great. You know, hey, if they can't handle it, that's okay. But if they can, they'll be there for you. It's amazing. I remember when I had my company and I was like, oh yeah, everyone asked me how the company's doing. Oh, it's doing great. You know, it's, we're thriving. But there were struggles. And as soon as I opened up to another CEO about, hey, I'm struggling with this, they're like, oh, I'm struggling with all these things too. And we bonded, right? And we got on the same page and we could support each other without pretending. So I don't know if it's too random or everything I spoke about, but I think those aspects of returning to a way of being that's always been there. We never lost it. And we have the intelligence for it. You know, you don't need to go to some expert, but there's so many simple things we can do to adapt our lifestyle. and get these health aspects

SPEAKER_00:

very, very simply. Amazing. Paul, it's been a real pleasure. Very refreshing conversation. And I'm sure our listeners will get a ton of value out of this. So thank you so much for joining us. We would absolutely love to have you back. This has been excellent. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, appreciate it, man. Great chatting.