August 19, 2021

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/aubrey-marcus-2/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:25] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:13] Ben's Imposter Syndrome In Writing the Boundless Cookbook

[00:10:08] Ben On His Twin Sons' Recent Rites of Passage

[00:14:40] How Building a Community Changed the Dynamics of Living

[00:25:12] Breathwork as One of the Giveaways When Meeting New People

[00:27:00] Core Practices Aside from Exercise and Biohacking that are Built into Ben's Routine

[00:30:23] Podcast Sponsors

[00:32:36] cont. Core practices aside from exercise and biohacking that are built into Ben's routine

[00:41:32] The Challenge of Managing and Going Through all the Interesting Activities

[00:44:12] Ben's Belief in Living Forever in a New Heaven and a New Earth

[00:49:06] Ben as a Post-Millennial Christian

[00:53:17] Plant Medicine in the Bible

[01:05:00] Fears, Stress, and Shame and Encountering Christ and the Cross

[01:11:20] Living in Your Beliefs and Living a Rich Life

[01:18:34] Different Longevity Practices and How to Extend Human Life

[01:24:41] Does Ejaculation Frequency Deplete Magnesium and Zinc and Drain Energy?

[01:26:55] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Aubrey:  I love cultivating community. I have a deep, deep network and many different communities. Some of that community over for dinner right after this podcast, right?

Ben:  A lot of guys are all thinking that every other guy is busy with their family. A lot of times, you send texts and would be like, “Yes! Let's do it. Thank you.” Enjoy life. You can save your family and build community and not be grasping, grasping, grasping, and rushing, and stressing.

Ben:  Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. What you are about to hear is actually a podcast I recorded with my buddy, Aubrey Marcus, when I was in Austin, Texas. We sat down at his house and had a great and meaningful chat. I think you're going to dig it. Aubrey's a cool guy and always, always, we have interesting discussions. So, the shownotes for everything Aubrey and I talk about you can find at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/benandaubrey.

So, anyways, before we dive in, I think my guest on today's show, Aubrey, also does this. One tactic that fellas like to do is to pull down their pants in front of a red light panel and shine it on their gonads for an increase in testosterone. And that's really honestly how I first started to look into red light. What can I say? That was my entry. But now, I have discovered that this red light is good for sleep optimization, for simulating sunrise or sunset, for collagen, for elastin, for thyroid, for a host of physiological functions that are beneficial and that don't involve you either, A, having balls, or B, shining the lights right on your balls.

The company that I use for this is called Joovv. They make these huge panels that you can do a full-body treatment on. They have little ones that you can take with you on the go. I just got their new unit, which has pulsing technology, which pulses the near infrared to enhance recovery. This stuff is just a bee's knees when it comes to what I say when I want to sound smart, photobiomodulation. Anyways, if you want an exclusive discount on your first order from Joovv, go to J-O-O-V-V.com/ben. That's J-O-O-V-V.com/ben.

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Alright, let's go talk to Aubrey Marcus.

That's the way you do it from the get-go because I record at my kitchen table sometimes and just from the get-go, from the start of the podcast, I'll just say, hey, you're going to hear FedEx. You're going to hear UPS. You're going to hear my dogs. You're going to hear my wife and sons coming home from yoga and jiu-jitsu. Just roll with it folks. You're at my house. So, if you hear the cats–

Aubrey:  Well, here we are.

Ben:  Cats copulating whatever they're doing back there by the window shade.

Aubrey:  Ben Greenfield and our cat children. Well, not our cat children, not me and you, but me and my wife's, and they're going [BLEEP] wild.

Ben:  This is purposeful. Do you do this with podcast guests just to get on their nerves, let the cats unleash in the room?

Aubrey:  Yeah, totally. Just let them run wild.

Ben:  Right, exactly. And you practice for years like meditating with your cats.

Aubrey:  Well, you rub yourself with salmon jerky regularly as an emulsifier.

Ben:  I rub myself with salmon jerky as an emulsifier. I haven't tried salmon jerky yet. Tried coffee. Ground coffee works pretty well.

Aubrey:  Yeah.

Ben:  Ground coffee has a lot of uses.

Aubrey:  Unless you're trying to attract bears or cats.

Ben:  Yeah. Have you ever used ground coffee as a meat rub?

Aubrey:  I have. It's pretty good, yeah.

Ben:  Ground coffee and ground cacao nibs, like if you do the cacao tasting, it's pretty good, a little paprika.

Aubrey:  Well, you are now the author of a cookbook, so you're an authority on this [BLEEP].

Ben:  Well, no, I wasn't. When I decided that I wanted to write a cookbook, I had total imposter syndrome. Then I wrote the cookbook because my wife's a really good cook. She's a rancher girl, make everything from scratch. She taught my sons from the age of four to make souffles, and homemade ravioli, and risotto, and they do meat cooks and roast chicken, everything. And I started to do a little bit of cooking.

Aubrey:  I don't know, man. We were in Hawaii. We speared a bunch of fish, and we could cook the little ones. We know how to cook the big ones.

Ben:  Yeah. I did cook the [BLEEP] out of that parrot fish stuff with the avocado and the mango and the–what we do like the mashed taro with coconut oil, macadamia.

Aubrey:  And then you would eat those little tiny ones. We caught whole.

Ben:  Those are good like the one of the few times I'll have fried food is a whole fried fish where you can eat the tail and you can eat the head, and the whole thing's crunchy and fried, kind of like an underground pig roast where the whole thing becomes edible, the ears, the cheeks. Then I just did 150-pound underground pig roast for my wife's 40^th birthday, and oh my goodness, it was absolutely amazing. Not only the meat, the flavor that the meat gets after it steams and cooks for 12 hours under the ground, but just the entire process of digging the pit and making the fire at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and burning it down to coals, and then getting all these rocks. You don't get rocks from the river because they explode. So, we use all these rocks from around the house.

Aubrey:  Yeah, [00:07:01] _____.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so, you stuff the pig with these rocks after they've heated on the fire for a couple of hours. And then, you stuff the pig with banana leaves and you cut little slits all over in it and stuff all that with salt. You rub salt into it. And then, it took five of us guys to carry it over into this giant pit that I had dug. We buried the pig. But before you bury it, you cover it with burlap sacks and a canopy, and put about 3 gallons of water in there over the fire, and this steam just comes pouring up through the canopy. And then, you cover that with dirt and you watch it for like an hour and continue to cover up the steam holes and get it all settled in bed, then you walk away. And I had a temperature probe in the ass and a temperature probe in the shoulder. And once it hits about 145, that's past raw pork temperature, but you want to get up to like 185 so you got nice crunchy skin and everything's just super cooked.

And so, we dug up the pig. I had all the dinner guests arriving at 4:00. We were going to have dinner at 6:00. And I go out there at like 5:30 and it's about like 1:39, 1:40. And so, I had 75 people at the party, so I called a bunch of the guys out. We dug up the pig and we just started cutting slabs off it and we finished it on the Traeger, which was actually pretty good with a bunch of Hawaiian barbecue sauce. Anyways, back to the cookbook–

Aubrey:  When you ate those fish, that was one of those moments where–it's one of those times where I do a lot of things that are manly. And then, there's sometimes I meet somebody and like, “Oh, well, that's where this person is more manly than meat.”

Ben:  Or a raw fish. We cook them up.

Aubrey:  I know, but you ate the whole face. I don't eat face.

Ben:  That's where the DHA is.

Aubrey:  And the face, I just don't eat face.

Ben:  That entire pig's head is in my freezer. And when I get home, I'm going to bake it with barbecue sauce.

Aubrey:  I bet you are. You're a face-eating son of a gun.

Ben:  The cheeks, the eyes, the nose, the ears. The cats are breaking stuff over here.

Aubrey:  Yeah, playing chess.

Ben:  They're playing chess now. So, the cookbook thing though I wanted to go ape nuts on molecular gastronomy, and biohacking food, and smoothies, and cocktails with ketones, and sous vide wands, and pressure cookers, and smoking, and combining different cooking methods. So, that was why I wanted to do the cookbook was just put all that together. And what happened was I learned so much along the way that I freaking love to cook now. It's up there probably with my top few things to do. I play tennis, not baby tennis like you, but real grown man tennis.

Aubrey:  I would play you some grown man tennis, you face-eating [BLEEP]. Let's go.

Ben:  Tickle tennis, tickle. Maybe tickle, tickle, tickle. And then, hanging out with my sons, playing guitar, sex, and cooking. I just absolutely–

Aubrey:  It's coming from the man who more often than not plays a baby guitar called a ukulele all the time. Not that I'm [BLEEP] on ukulele. I like myself ukuleles.

Ben:  You're guilty as charged. Ukeleles are up there with pickle for a baby word. And so, I put all this together. I did the cookbook. And at the end of the day, I just love to cook. I mean, every day at our house at the end of the day is a party. What I mean by that is we don't necessarily have people over, but we gather the–I can't say the boys anymore, we were talking about this before the podcast, gathered my son. Yeah, they've been through the rite of passage in the adolescence and I'm still working the boys word out of my vernacular, especially when I'm around them.

Aubrey:  I think that's really rad. By the way, it's just a side note to stay on that tangent is to make it real. Like if you go through a rite of passage, everything shouldn't be the same afterwards that your tribe, your family, your everybody should respond differently.

Ben:  Oh, everything changes. Not only do you have a ceremony, not just a cutting of the cord ceremony, but they have a giveaway feast where they invite all the family, grandpa and grandma, and uncles, and aunts, and make a giant meal, and giveaway gifts. And there was a ceremonial kind of fire afterwards–actually up at Tim Corcoran‘s place, a previous podcast guest of yours, is he's a great wilderness survival instructor and also facilitates rites of passage up there in Idaho. And when they come home, just the vibe is different in terms of the chores that they're expected to do and the amount to which they're expected to pitch in to help with the house. Or even something like the family dinners I was talking about where they're preparing a lot more and expected to do more prep, and cooking, and cleanup, and chopping, and blending, and helping dad and mom in the kitchen. Just everything is different in terms of what I expect of them and what they expect of themselves. There's more responsibility.

But at the end of the day, we all gather and it's like 7:00 p.m., work's done, and we make a glorious meal together. We sit and play games for like hour, hour and a half at dinner. We drink wine. We taste olive oil. We try different spices. It's just like this giant feast. And then, we play music. We go up to the bedroom or up to the living room and play music, and they bust out the drums and the rattles. And then, we go up and we read stories for like a half-hour, just everybody laying in bed reading stories. And then, we go to bed. And every single night's like that and it's like my carrot on the end of a stick. When you're working during the day, you know every night, you get this grand party with your family. It's so fun.

Aubrey:  That's epic. I mean, I remember we didn't have that much ritual and intention to it with my family, but family dinners, I had three older brothers, three younger sisters, and family dinners were a thing. My mom always would cook and then I would be there. I learned a bit how to cook just because I was always hungry and I was just hanging out watching her. And I still like to cook, but it's different when now it's just me and Vy. And I'll cook for her sometimes. And I usually cook most of the meals, but it's a different type of thing. It's like cooking for two is different than cooking for a family or cooking for a dinner party or something like that.

Ben:  Yeah. It's a lot more chill because sometimes the boys, my sons, there I go again, have a youth group or have something going on in the evening. Like every Monday night, my wife Jessa and I have Scrabble night. And typically, it's like sushi and sashimi because I get this sashimi-grade fish and I make little poke bowls, and sushi rolls, and little sushi bites, and stuff like that. And we eat sushi and play scrabble every Monday night for a couple hours, we'll play sometimes, and then just go head-to-head on scrabble. River and Terran get home and they always want to know who won and how the game went. And sometimes they want us to leave the game board out so they can see what kind of words we made and how well we played.

But it is a different vibe and there's always that temptation, just let's go out to eat, let's order in from the restaurant. But yeah, with the whole family around, it's amazing. And then typically, every Saturday or Sunday night, we just have a whole bunch of people over and do the same thing with the exception being that we do all the sauna and ice beforehand. So, I'll pile like six to eight guys in the sauna and we sit in there while the girls are all upstairs drinking cocktails or wine and hanging out in the living room. Typically, I've got some kind of meat on the smoker, and then all this guy shuffle out to the cold pool and do the cold soak, and then we all come inside famished and have this grand feast. And then, same thing, we play music afterwards. Sometimes everybody squeezes into the bedroom for story time. It's what we do every night, but we just have a bunch of people over.

Aubrey:  Listening to that, people probably know you as fitness, biohacking, human health expert. I mean, you go real, real deep with all that, but there's no greater thing that you can do for the entirety of yourself holistically than the [BLEEP] you're describing. Of course, you mentioned a few things, hot, cold, blah, blah, blah, but that type of community, that type of family time, that type of fun, the joy, it supersedes some kind of extreme tweak on the diet where you're cutting all of this out, and eliminating this, and doing all this. When you have love and that kind of connection, take that a thousand times over anything else. That's the thing.

Ben:  We know, for example, one of the longest-lived humans on record of late, Jeanne, I think her last name is Calment from France, she lived a very long and happy life. She smoked a cigarette every day. She had a glass or a serving I think of scotch or whiskey or something like that. She's getting a little bit of hormesis from her alcohol and her carcinogens, and she was always with people, lots of glorious family hangouts, and people always in the living room. And that was one thing she was known for was relationships, and love, and family. And I really did not have a lot of that prior to COVID because I was traveling. I was on an airplane every week. I was still racing, doing Spartans and triathlons. I'd have a race once or twice a month and I was rarely home to the extent where I felt any urge at all to build community. When I get home, I just want to be by myself or with my family. I just wanted to check out and take a breath before the next big trip.

I mean, there was a period of time I had nine solid months at home without going anywhere. The incentive to go get to know the neighbors, and to build a community, and to start throwing dinner parties, and to have people over, and to get to know my own hometown with all these restaurants, and museums, and parks, and hikes that I've been neglecting for two decades. I mean, it's completely changed the dynamic of living in my city in my community. I know my neighbor's names and rode my bike through the neighborhood several months ago and just dropped off invitations in everybody's mailbox like a paperboy, and threw this huge neighborhood party, and realized I didn't even know three-quarters of the people who lived within a mile of me. It turns out they're all 70 years old.

It was funny because we threw this huge neighborhood party and my sons were the only kids there, or the only young people there. But still, the idea of community building and actually taking the reins because you assume that everybody else is–like they know it and they prioritize it and everybody else is out getting to know their neighbors. A lot of people aren't. They just don't do that. And so, if everybody were to go out and get to know their neighbors, and throw a neighborhood party, and have community dinners, whatever, every Saturday night, every Sunday night, and not only build the family community but build a local community, I think that's one of the blessings of COVID actually is people actually developing this amazing neighborhood and community. It's been really special for me, and transformative in terms of the joy that you have after four hours of hanging out with your neighbors, and eating food, and making music, and chatting. It's far more fulfilling than, whatever, meditation, breathwork in the sauna by yourself, or any of the workouts, or anything like that. It's just so meaningful.

Aubrey:  It's interesting to talk about neighbors because I love cultivating communities. I have a deep, deep network and many different communities. We're having some of that community over for dinner right after this podcast. But the idea of the neighborhood, it's always been like a fantasy, but not a reality that I believe in, because I remember in college, you'd go to a dorm room and then all of a sudden, all of the people–and I lived in dorms for three years in little cinder blocks. But you get to know everybody and it was amazing.

I mean, it's like the least luxurious place I've ever lived in my life, but it was probably the most fun because it was a community like when people were ready to hang, you just leave the door open and you just cruise down and be like, “Yow, you want to play NHL 99?” Yes, we're in. You want to do this? You want to go beer keg jousting or what do you want to do? Let's do something and throw the football, or chip a golf goal, or go hoop, or whatever else, and you just walk and you're just always around each other. And if you're eating, you don't eat alone, you just cruise around and see who else is in there, cruise in, eat food. And I think so many people are drawn to that again. The idea that you're already there I think is a cool idea to explore. And then, the other cool idea to explore is curating that intentionally as well.

Ben:  It's hard for men. At least I think the majority of men, it becomes harder to make friends. It becomes harder to set your ego, and your habits, and your safety aside to actually have other guys over and have them into your domain and begin to branch out. Now, I'm playing Frisbee golf, and paddle boarding, and playing tennis, and shooting hoops in the driveway, and having guys over in the sauna, and having these dinners where they're coming over with their families. And it's really cool because up until that point, I thought I had a lot of guy friends because I'm part of all these mastermind groups whenever I travel.

There's all these folks I'm hanging out with, but it's different when it's at home and these are all people who just live a couple miles from you. My neighborhood's different. We're out in the middle of the forest. Really, a neighbor is somebody who's like a mile, a mile and a half away minimum. I didn't really realize the absence of strong, close geographically meaning, male friends in my life until I really started branching out like that. And now, it's just cool at the end of the day to know that you can pick up the phone or text somebody and have somebody meeting you at the river with the paddle board like an hour later. And a lot of times, you think, “Oh, they're busy. They're with their family. They're doing their own thing.” But a lot of guys are all thinking that that every other guy is busy with their family. A lot of times you send a text and be like, “Yes! Let's do it. Thank you.” And then, afterwards, everybody, they'll text you and say, “Oh, thank you for doing that. I needed to get away.” It's really cool.

Aubrey:  For me, one of the things that's really necessary for me to bond with men is doing something that allows that initial bridge to be made. So, that can be pickleball. That could be basketball. I made a really good new friend recently and it's just like–met him. “Oh, yeah. You play pickleball? I play pickleball.” And then, I always look at him like, “Do you really play pickleball or whatever?” I was like, “Alright, we'll give it a go.”

Ben:  Visiting Instagram, looking through the story and his videos. Where's the shot of this guy I played–I got to stalk him for a little while.

Aubrey:  But he comes over and he plays a good game and then we start talking in between games as other people are playing. But that thing of competing together is a real key part of branching out. So, there's the basketball squad now, the pickleball squad, and then there's a shooting squad and the tactical shooting squad. And then, there's the on it squad, on it workout squad. There's all of these different groups and we have a men's group and it's pretty [BLEEP] cool to feel that starting to come together in all those ways. But for those people listening, and just from my own advice, and maybe you're like me if you're a guy who like an activity, building in around that activity has been the thing that makes it so much easier.

Ben:  For men especially. And I read this in a book recently. I don't recall the name of the book, but men form friendships around activities. And women often form friendships in just like a social gathering setting, not necessarily playing pickup basketball, or pickleball, or Frisbee, or whatever, but just sitting around at a restaurant or in a living room or whatever the case may be. Men tend to form close friendships and bonding friendships around either doing hard things or doing adventures or just going out and playing together.

And it's funny because that happens to me sometimes, like I'll invite somebody out for Frisbee golf. And the nature of Frisbee golf is such that you don't do a lot of talking, like you're off in two different directions throwing your Frisbee. You meet up at the hole and [00:23:28] _____, and then you throw again and off you go. But there's this invisible bond that gets formed is you're just doing that same thing together that I think men especially tend to develop good friendships around.

Aubrey:  And for women, I think that that is something that–it's not like it's not available there, but maybe the inclination isn't–I don't know. I feel like it's almost like a technology for community building that is underutilized by women because it's not that it doesn't work because it absolutely does, but I think it's using the same kind of ideas to get around that. Because what I've seen a lot of times is women will hang on to friends a lot like friends that–because it's not activity-based, it's like, “Oh, I'm going to go see so-and-so.” But they're not really excited to see so-and-so. It's just like they've seen so-and-so for 20 years. They're totally different people now, but this is like a habitual thing. But because there's no activity that keeps it fresh and makes it like, alright, this is something interesting that we're doing. And if you can't keep up, well, you might not get invited to that activity. We'll find something else, but it keeps this thing for like a river that's just the water is circulating or a healthy pond where there's always fresh water going in.

Ben:  And let's face it, women, in general, are just naturally, for the most part, stronger social creatures. I don't think they need as much built-in technology and trickery as us guys do to make friends. My wife is just walking to a party and have six friends, and I'll be standing there in the corner waiting for somebody to throw me a football or something so I can make a friend.

Aubrey:  Yeah. That's very fair. Community being probably the most important thing that we have. And we've talked about a lot of the other simple stuff. When you start to analyze someone, like let's say you go in blank slate, you're looking at somebody, and you start addressing some of the other big things that you see people missing that you find really valuable, things that aren't inherently obvious. But where do you start looking?

Ben:  I think that one thing that you and I both know a lot about that you can identify pretty quickly in someone is their connectivity to breath. Like just the way that someone is breathing, watching everything from nasal breathing to how they breathe in response to stress, to how they carry their breath when they're exercising, or when they're speaking with you. That's one thing that I think should be built into the core educational curriculum of every young human on the face of the planet is the ability to be able to have an intimate understanding of the best dial that we have built into our physiology for amping up or amping down our nervous system. And so, I think that breath and relationship with one's own breath is one thing that I think–I think it's something that says a lot about a person, just how they breathe. So that'd be one that I think a lot of people are missing out on.

Aubrey:  Everybody listening is just breathing way better right now after–

Ben:  Yeah. They're like, “Uh-oh, people are now judging me based on how I'm breathing. I got to make sure my belly button is visibly moving through my shirt now.” I think that there are certain core practices, again apart from exercise, or biohacking, or eating healthy that are just built into my core now. For example, our morning and evening meditations that we do as a family, they're something that we now all do when we're traveling and we're apart. We hold each other accountable. We gather every single morning on the porch.

And typically, these days, I get about 3:45 or 4:00 a.m. and I work for like three or four hours. Not just work, but I do all my stretching, and having my coffee, and doing my red light, and sometimes hitting the sauna or doing the cold pool. I like to have a lot of my day done now by about 8:00 a.m. But around 7:30–and in terms of having like eaten the frog and got my body ready and feel like–if nothing else happens that's productive the whole rest of the day, I've actually made a really good dent in things. And I always just thought it was absolutely crazy when I would see guys like Jocko or whatever show their 4:00 a.m. clock.

And I had lots of fears about that like I'm going to be tired in the afternoon. I'm not going to be able to make love with my wife because we're on different schedules now and she likes to sleep till 7:00. And I'm in bed now at like 9:00 and we're like ships passing the night. That didn't happen. The afternoon tiredness I found is easily solved. Even if you're sleeping six hours with 10 to 30 minutes of a really good nap, it seems to replace good 90-minute sleep cycle. And once I found that out, it was like one to two extra hours every single day.

Aubrey:  That's the biggest thing for me. You might have turned me on to his book, Nick Littlehales' book, which guided a lot of those principles.

Ben:  And a lot of people know about Nick. They talk more about Matthew Walker or Michael Bruce.

Aubrey:  I love Nick's philosophy. I really feel it, like somatically feel it to be true that that 30-minute, 20 to 30-minute nap is just as good as an extra hour and a half.

Ben:  Yeah. And it can be something like Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about a yoga nidra cycle. I like to use the non-sleep deep rest protocol. I like to use the NuCalm. That's typically what I'll do. And yeah, I'll put on some kind of device to shift me into that state even more quickly like an Apollo for the vibration therapy. The Hapbee is another one I really like. It'll simulate–

Aubrey:  I just got that one. Haven't tried it yet.

Ben:  Theobromine, or caffeine, or MDMA, or CBD, or melatonin, or adenosine. It'll just simulate any of those and I like the CBD–

Aubrey:  No way. I got to put that Hapbee–

Ben:  Yeah, that's what they do and they just added theobromine. I didn't even try it yet.

Aubrey:  So, you plug in MDMA protocol, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. That'd be like the–I forget which one. I think that might be the social one. There's another one that's alcohol. I put it on my son Terran one night at dinner just to see and he got all loopy and goofy. And when I put the alcohol one on, the best way I can describe it is that I feel like I've had like three cocktails when I've had like half a glass of wine.

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Aubrey:  So, wait, how does this thing work? It's like a halo that goes around your head.

Ben:  Exactly. It goes around your head or around your neck. It's a magnetic signal that's imprinted with the same frequency as whatever molecule that they're trying to simulate, and it causes the same electrical reaction within the cell. But the cool thing is as soon as you flip it off, that molecule is no longer hanging around in your bloodstream. So, I can have it on caffeine. As soon as I turn it off, it's not as though I'm up for four hours with disrupted sleep. It's like as soon as you turn it off, the alertness goes away.

Aubrey:  So, how do you measure the frequency of a chemical like MDMA or alcohol?

Ben:  Giant underground silo built deep within the ground, protected from all other frequencies that you then isolate that molecule in and measure the magnetic frequency.

Aubrey:  Wait, you're not kidding?

Ben:  The reason this sounds silly is because it sounds like I'm kidding and then I talk to their scientists who does all this and that's basically what they have.

Aubrey:  Whoa, actually like talking about–

Ben:  No. They've licensed this technology from some FDA medically cleared wearable that was originally designed for something like epileptic seizures or something like that. I forget, but they've done that same thing. And I didn't really believe it until I started to use it and it actually works remarkably well. Yeah. But anyways, I put the CBD on for the nap. And back to the reason that I do that is because about 7:30, after I've done all my morning stuff, I gathered the family on the porch and we all sit cross-legged in the sunshine.

If it's the winter, we're in the living room by the fireplace and we basically all have a journal, and we close our eyes for one minute and just connect to our body. Just breathe and connect to our body. And then, I have this little ding that goes on on the inside timer app on my phone. I just have a program for seven minutes. After the first minute, then it dings. And for the next two minutes, all we do is gratitude. And we have our journal there that we can stop to write what it is we're grateful for about. But those two minutes is just all gratitude, breathing, gratitude in your heart center and writing down what is it you're grateful for.

And then, the next two minutes are dwelling upon who it is you want to send positive emotions to that day, who you want to pray for, who you want to serve, who you want to help. And you write down that one person and you're just on them with laser focus the entire day, whether it'd be just positive emotions you send their way, whether it's prayers or this phone call, text. If they're someone local doing something nice for them, whether it's delivering dinner or just going up and knocking on their doors when you need help with anything.

And then, the final two minutes are just reconnecting to self. And then, we finish with tapping. So, when we're in that state at the very end of the seven minutes, we'll tap over our heart center, over our wrist to create an anchor for that same feeling of peace that we developed after those seven minutes that we can return to during times of stress the rest of the day with that anchor that we set just by tapping in that same location. And so, we then all get up and we do a giant family hug together and just hold each other for like a minute after we've done that meditation.

Aubrey:  So, the whole thing is eight minutes long?

Ben:  Well, with the hug and everything, yes, about eight minutes. And then, I'll just ask about everybody's day. That takes like two minutes. Okay, what's everybody doing today? Where are you going to be here? And that way we can plan like when's dinner going to start and when are we going to meet. And then, everybody's just like off to the races the rest of the day. And I work from home so we see each other and we cross paths throughout the day. And then, at the end of the evening like right before we go to bed, we return back to those journals. We all close our eyes.

In the morning, it's like a six-count in, six-count out breathwork. In the evening, we go with a longer exhale. We'll do like a 4, 8 breathwork. You close your eyes and you watch yourself like a movie character through the whole day. Like, how did I wake up? What did I do? What did I read in the morning? How did I spend my morning? What did I have for breakfast? What did I do between breakfast and lunch? What did I eat for lunch? How did I spend my afternoon? How did I spend my evening? And the entire time, you're watching yourself like a movie character in your mind in the third person.

You're asking yourself, what good did I do this day? Meaning, what was I proud of that character about? Where was I rooting for them? Where did I know that they were making the right decision? What could I have done better this day? I mean, where'd that character fail? Where do I feel like they were more the villain than the hero? Where was I not rooting for them? Where do I wish I could have left through that screen and told them to make a different decision that's not the right decision? And as we're visualizing that, you have permission to take pauses and write down in your journal what you're discovering.

And then, finally, the last question we write down in the journals is where was I most connected to my life's purpose? Where is I'm most purpose-filled today? Because what happens is sequentially, as you go through that every single day, you not only identify–even if you don't have a purpose statement even though we all do and I think it's important, you can almost reverse engineer your purpose statement when you're doing this practice by identifying as you go through, okay, this is where I was in the zone, smile on my face. Time was flying by as though I had no awareness of time. I felt as though this was coming easy to me. I felt like I was using the unique skill set I was born with or doing something I was really good at when I was a kid, something that makes me happy and fills me with joy now. But you write down what it was. That was the most purpose-filled activity of your day.

And it stacks because if there's something you failed at–like for me, I was writing down for like a week. Didn't play my guitar today. Didn't play my manly guitar, not my pickle ukulele, but the full-on big boy guitar.

Aubrey:  You caught me right–

Ben:  Yeah. I got through like a week of that. For a while, we would share. We would actually say, “What good did I do?” But we decided to start keeping it private. And if you want to share, you can, but it actually not only kind of–

Aubrey:  Well, it might make it performative almost to a certain–because when you think about sharing it–

Ben:  You think about it. You think about when we get–and sometimes it'll be something super embarrassing. You just don't want to share it. You just want to keep it to yourself and dwell with that and work on it yourself. But what one night, this was like three months ago, we finished it all up. And then, afterwards, we'll say a prayer and then we all just go to bed. That's after story time, this after dinner, after everything. I finished where I am like, “I am never going to write this down again. For the past week, I've written that I wanted.” So, now, even if it's just two minutes, even if it's one song, even it's like the G, D, C easiest song on the face of the planet, I'd take out my guitar and I at least strum it. So, I never have to be watching that movie character in my mind wondering why they're not doing that one thing they know brings them joy, they know they love, they know just connects them to the frequency of music and the joy that they get from it, but they're skipping it every day. So, these things stack. I was most purpose-filled when I was writing today. I was most purpose-filled when I was writing today. I was most purpose-filled when I was writing today. Oh, hell, maybe God made me to be an author. Maybe that's actually something that I'm going to be happy doing till I'm 90.

Aubrey:  Or at least for now.

Ben:  Right, exactly. This is the chapter in my life where that's what I need to be doing because that's what was most purpose-filled. So, back to your question, I think that that's another thing in addition to community building and breathwork, this idea of beginning your day and ending your day, bookending the day with a practice like that that is palatable in terms of time investments where you're going to keep doing it every day. Because I tried like TM, the 2 times, 20 minutes a day. I can't do it, but seven minutes in the morning, four to five minutes in the evening with the family, and having that accountability with the family, and knowing that even the young men in our house, they can handle that and they can sit with that amount of time. It's pretty meaningful. So, that's another big win for us.

Aubrey:  Yeah. Really listening to you say that, I mean, there's truly no reason–the cost benefit of what you just described is so wildly in favor of doing it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Aubrey:  Like there's very few things that I've ever heard that have a more favorable cost benefit than what you just described, right?

Ben:  And you know it's a win too because there's a lot of stuff that–noodles I've thrown at the wall to see if they stick for home practices, like whether or not we would share what we'd written in our journals, or the amount of–because we all read scripture every morning. Like, how much are you going to read? Is it a section? Is it a chapter? Is it a verse? What I've discovered is that, for example, with the journaling practice, I do it when I travel, whether or not any family's around or not because it's something that just freaking works. So, that's one metric for me is if I keep doing it even when nobody's around and nobody's watching, it's something that I know is really valuable.

Aubrey:  Yeah. When you have a lot of these possibilities, a lot of these interests, a lot of these different things, and giving yourself permission and actually structuring how you allot time to all of these various things, this is something that I personally find challenging because I have so many things that I love to do and I have so many things that I can be productive in. And so many things like if I have an extra hour, how I spend that hour could be so many different options that I could offer. I could create some piece of content. I could write. I could mastermind this new product that we're coming out with, or I could practice pool, or I could play music, or I could learn how to DJ, which I'm endeavoring to do. There's so many [BLEEP] things that it's like I'll do something but everything feels like it's on such a long loop that sometimes it'll be like, “[BLEEP], it's been 25 days since I brought my flute but I have been doing other stuff. But I feel like it's preventing me from real progress and anything.”

Ben:  It feels like horizontal shallow living because of the number of opportunities that are presented as a result of, A, the connectivity that we have that enables us to dip our toes into just about any hobby, or interest, or book, or food, or skill on the face of the planet that for thousands of years, we just never would have known about. Like we wouldn't have known that the sport of underwater torpedo existed.

Aubrey:  Underwater Torpedo League. Are you in one? I want to get in.

Ben:  No, I don't play a jet. I've been watching the state. It's not California, but yeah, it's on my radar. Or the 10 packages that show up at lunchtime every day at my house right before I'm about to take my relaxing lunch. And it's like three devices that I have to plug in and figure out and download the app for. And I feel guilty if it sits in the corner neglected because I know I have to get to it someday because it's part of my “job” to test these things out and let the world know about whether the magnetic device that they hide underneath the silo deep in the underground works or not.

And then, there's the two different musical instruments, the banjo and the little miniature hammer dulcimer and the tiny didgeridoo box so you can learn circular breathing. But really, you'd be happy with just the guitar. And so, it's hard also when you are in the position of being an influencer who's highly accessible by all these companies who are exposing you to lots of things.

Aubrey:  Companies and people.

Ben:  Plus, yeah, all the things that everybody else gets exposed to just on social media and the Internet in terms of cool new things to learn and to do, and the FOMO that you get with that. And so, what's really helped me out with that in addition to just knowing what really satisfies your purpose in life and actually analyzing that at the end of the day and playing your day like a movie in your mind to see what minutes and what hours are wasted on things that maybe weren't that fulfilling is the idea which I suppose I would say is more of a belief that I am going to live forever. I'm going to live forever.

And I believe that there will be a new heaven and a new Earth, and that heaven is not going to be a bunch of us sitting on a cloud, on a fluffy white cloud with angel wings like bored out of our minds playing a harp or some [BLEEP]. And neither do I think that heaven is going to be some amazing blissed out DMT infused journey where you're just floating and you have that sensation. If you don't have a care in the world and your body is just laid out on one giant blanket with colors going through your head and you feel as though you could just lay there forever as anybody who's gone through any type of significant journey has experienced that one spot during a journey where you're just like, “I could be here forever. This is amazing. I could just live with this forever, just pure peace. Just leave me here. Just leave all these molecules in my bloodstream. I'm good. I'm not guilty about not accomplishing anything in life. This is just a perfect place.”

I don't think heaven will be like that either. I think that heaven will just be exactly Earth as it is now, but perfect where we can still create, and we can still build, and we can still draw, and color, and take baths, and play music, and make love, and be with our pets, and do everything that I really think that we are intended to do in the first place, but in a pure, and clean, and in toxin-free and sin-free environment where everything is just perfect. And so, because of that, when an opportunity gets presented to me, or a new skill, or a new instrument, or watercolor versus oil, versus scratch board, versus sculpting, versus glass blowing, I think to myself, you know what, I have infinity to be able to do any of this stuff because I think that that's what heaven's going to be like. And I realize not everybody believes that, but dude, once that lightbulb went on in my head, that whole idea of just being guilty about not doing all the things just banished.

Aubrey:  That's huge. I mean, obviously, I have a different religious ideology and cosmology than you do, but–

Ben:  Which is why I'm going to behead you after this podcast, to keep bones from my family.

Aubrey:  Well, that's cool.

Ben:  I'm going to paint the wall, mark on my chest if another one–

Aubrey:  Let's go. We'll play big tennis and then highlander. There can be only one afterwards. But first, we play big tennis. But ultimately, the idea that–because there is some value to the stoic belief, Memento Mori. Remember you're going to die because it gives prescience to the preciousness of the moments we have. But it can also, if you twist it just slightly off and miss the point, it can put you in a rush. And I feel that myself, like I'm in a hurry way too much. But when you were talking, the idea of live like you're going to live forever, there's something like my whole body just went, “Ah, yeah, that feels good. That feels really good.”

Ben:  Let's say you're not going to live forever, or let's say it's mental trickery. It's pretty damn good mental trickery and it works. You do have to, as you've just alluded to, strike a balance. That doesn't mean you're laying in a hammock all day because you're going to live forever so it doesn't matter. I mean, there's a great book called “Don't Waste Your Life” by an author I really like named John Piper. And he gets into this idea like he never wants to be like 70 years old with his wife driving golf carts around the beach and fishing for hours on. He wants to help people and love others. I think about it this way. If you were going to–let's just play the game. If you were going to live forever and if you knew that you were going to experience immense joy and the ability to do anything and everything pleasurable on a perfect Earth for the rest of all time–

Aubrey:  I don't even need a [BLEEP] perfect Earth. I'll take this Earth. This Earth is pretty rad.

Ben:  Yeah, this Earth is amazing.

Aubrey:  And I think almost this is a choice to make it at least close to heaven. We have that choice available.

Ben:  Yeah. And my belief is that the world's getting better. Like I don't believe in the coming apocalypse. I think the world is getting better and better. We've got speed bumps along the way, but I'm actually what–technically you'd call me a post-millennial Christian. And what that means is that I believe that all the talk in the Bible about–in Revelations about dragons and apocalypse and people think this is the Chinese black helicopters and the beast is Bill Gates and whatever. I believe all that was just prophesying the destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem, and that everything you read about that took place like between about 60 and 80 AD. And that from that point on, the world gets better and better and better, and we're not going to hell in a handbasket. And yeah, we have little things that happen along the way, but my belief is this Earth is just gradually becoming more and more perfect.

And so, I have a very positive mindset when it comes to that. But back to that mind game, if you did believe that you're going to live forever, and it was going to be that good, and you did have all this time on your hands, what would be the number one thing that you would do? And the conclusion that I've come to is the number one thing that you would do is you would go tell everybody, “Hey, look, you're going to live forever. You guys slow down. You can enjoy life. You can save your family and build community and not be grasping, grasping, grasping, and rushing, and stressing. And so, basically, that comes down to some semblance of the golden rule. If you were going to live forever, what's the number one thing you would do? You would love others because by loving others, you're spreading that wealth, you're spreading that message. And so, I think that–

Aubrey:  I love the Earth too because obviously, if we might make a hell out of our environment–

Ben:  By loving the Earth, you are loving others, and that's definitely not–I mean, that's another thing that I'm not ashamed of when it comes to being a Christian, but it's certainly something that I think is sad, this idea of what is called in Christianity the dominion mandate. God made the planet and handed over to human beings and told them, “Take dominion over this Erarth. It is yours.” And so, we build factories, and we strip oil from the ground, and we overfish, and we in some cases overhunt, and we eat Doritos, and Cheetos, and monocrop soy, and weed at the church potlucks.

The dominion mandate was a call to be a gardener to care tenderly for this planet that we've been placed upon, and to foster animal husbandry, and taking care of the soil, and learning all the plants, and knowing the sacred intelligence of all the herbs, and growing things that were placed around us. And instead, this post-reformation, scientism, logic rationalism-based Christianity has resulted in the complete loss of a connection to the sacred intelligence of the planet and caring for it because, God forbid, we'd be all woo-woo like the pagan, shamans and be, whatever, talking to vines. And so, yeah, there's this total disconnect that I think is sad to a certain extent because we live in a magical world and–

Aubrey:  And a conversation like this is probably helping push that evolution. The thing is that people think, because the Bible is fixed and no new passages are there, that a religion like Christianity isn't evolving. Well, [BLEEP]. I mean, look at the Christianity of the 1700s, 1600s, or 1400s inquisition. Look at it now. Look at it from the '80s when people were still promoting hellfire and brimstone, and gays were all going to hell. And now, you look at that and the whole thing is evolving. It is far more living than people realize, and that gives me actually a lot of–I like that. I like when things are flexible and things can be replenished, and refreshed, and re-evaluated.

Ben:  Even something as simple as plant medicines, which are often vilified especially in Christianity because they are considered to be the equivalent of a lack of sobriety, of drunkenness, which is warned against in the Bible for what I think would be sound societal reasons. You don't want a bunch of drunk people walking the streets, throwing bottles at windows and getting in fights, whatever. That makes sense. It's just built-in societal stability. But when you go back and you look at even something like the Bible, and you look at two different forms of cinnamon, Ceylon and Cassia, Asian cinnamon that technically are acting as cytochrome, enzyme inhibitors, and allowing for other molecules to stay active in the bloodstream for longer periods of time. And those are combined with, for example, myrrh and frankincense, and even some forms of cannabis. And there's actually a tree that's very much like ayahuasca, and I'm blanking on the title.

Aubrey:  Acacia?

Ben:  Yes, the acacia tree. There's lots of examples, especially among early Jewish practices of these type of things being used. We read about in the song of Solomon these crazy mixes that when you look at them and you analyze them chemically or technically, very strong aphrodisiacs, or you look at–

Aubrey:  Have you ever tried to make one?

Ben:  No, I haven't. It's actually on my list of things to do. I'm going to live forever. I vaporize sometimes organic tobacco with a little bit of cannabis with essential oils like blue lotus, or nutmeg, or myrrh, or frankincense. I haven't done the exact recipes that are in the Bible yet because there's two different things that are used amongst–

Aubrey:  You got put on the Bible bag recipe.

Ben:  I'm going to live forever, and trust me–

Aubrey:  We got a Bible bag volcano–

Ben:  I have an Evernote document that's full of things to make, things to do, and that's–both of these are on the anointing oil and the incense used in early tabernacle worship. If you look at the ingredient list of those, you're looking at a bunch of cytochrome enzyme inhibitors and topical ingredients that when applied–

Aubrey:  What is the transdermal inhibitor?

Ben:  It basically allows any molecule that is co-ingested or co-applied along with it to stay active in the bloodstream for a longer period of time.

Aubrey:  So, almost like [00:55:43] _____?

Ben:  Similar concept as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, very similar concept, same enzyme pathways, everything. But when you look at, for example, the anointing oil of myrrh, and frankincense, and cinnamon, and cannabis, and these different extracts that were applied as an ointment, and then you look at what was burnt as an incense, again frankincense, myrrh, cannabis, things that would arguably be considered psychoactive substances that were burned in essentially like a four-layer thick small room, this tiny called the holy of holies inside the tabernacle, which not to blaspheme or make this sound the wrong way, but essentially almost like a tiny hot box to a certain extent.

And the priest literally had a chain around his ankles people could track whether or not he passed out in there from this heavy incense in the air that was a highly psychedelic substance. And to be able to intentionally interact with the divine in that environment and for the exact instructions and recipes for those to be given out in the Bible. And then, for guys like Brian Muraresku, who wrote “The Immortality Key” recently showed that very similar entheogens may have been used in things like the Eucharist in terms of the spices that were mixed with the wines. He has a massive book about that.

When you put all this together, what you come down to is the fact that to disconnect ourselves, especially in Christianity from that sacred intelligence and from those type of blends that were used to enhance a spiritual experience or to connect more deeply with the divine, I think it's a little bit sad. I in no way would argue that, therefore, these type of things should be unleashed upon the planet and everybody at church on Sunday morning should be drinking a Eucharist-based wine spiced with frankincense, and myrrh, and cannabis because I also believe that certain people are called and certain people are not. The role of a priest, or a shaman, or anyone in that position traditionally has typically been to go to that place on behalf of the people and to come back like an oracle.

Aubrey:  It depends on the culture. One of the cultures that I'm very familiar with, which was Don Howard‘s lineage was Chavin. And so, the priests in Chavin would offer wachuma, which eventually the church renamed San Pedro because it was the gateway to heaven. So, that's why they call it San Pedro Cactus. It's an incredibly hard open masculine-derived experience. But in Chavin, which flourished for about 800 years, and during that 800 years is marked by the fact that there was no sign of warfare amongst neighboring tribes and communities, one of the reasons why is they would offer wachuma to all pilgrims who came through. Didn't have to pay for it, whatever. They often brought gifts, but they would just offer wachuma to anyone who wanted to come. Big, massive ceremonies of wachuma.

And that medicine in particular I think is well-suited for that. And obviously, I'm sure they had a great technology about how to manage such a situation. But then they also had Vilca, which is a combination of 5-MeO-DMT, N, N-DMT, and bufotenine, and they didn't give that to everybody. That was just for the priests down in the catacombs in the black. And they would snort that and that was their medicine, and then they offered it for everybody. So, there's so many different ways to look at this. And I'm not saying that [00:59:10] _____.

Ben:  I think it depends on the substance. Like henbane, for example, which is very similar like what the Viking berserkers would use. That's another molecule you can find in ayahuasca. I mean, if you look at the flower on a Levite priest's headdress, it's the henbane flower. It's not [00:59:28] _____, but that molecule is found in ayahuasca. I don't know if it's found in [00:59:33] _____. I don't know if there's henbane in [00:59:34] _____ or not. But is that nicotine, by the way, that you just popped?

Aubrey:  It is. You want some?

Ben:  I have a piece of nicotine gum in my pocket and I'm just going to pop that right now.

Aubrey:  Yeah, let's go.

Ben:  I mean, if we're both going to be on the same substance here. But an example of what you've just alluded to would be like manna that came down from heaven, which most likely was an ergo-based fungus, very similar to a lysergamide. Technically, more like an LSA than an LSD, but a fungus-like substance that falls from heaven that spoils overnight that must be, therefore, baked and cooked and prepared properly. But it's very, very likely that's what manna was. And so, technically, you would have all the Israelites wandering around the desert who actually had this total feel-good chemical from ergo, from manna in their bloodstream, and then that would be an example.

At the risk of 8,000 pastors calling down hellfire and brimstone on me for blaspheming right now, I'm not saying that there is concrete evidence that the Israelites will wander around the desert on LSD. But what I am saying is that there is a great deal of evidence that plant medicines in many different formats were an enormous part of the entire Judeo-Christian religion that I think that post-reformation, scientism, and logical thought, and this idea of pure sobriety has beaten out of us. And I think that there are more cons to that than pros.

Aubrey:  A lot of people who've had issues with addiction in their family or something, they will equate doing plant medicine with drunkenness or addiction. And I think in my conversations with Luke Storey, who came from that–and when I met him, he was in his sobriety for 15 years or something like that and classic sobriety, a sobriety, nothing on nothing. The conversations that we've had–and in my own experience even though I've never had addiction issues, but a lot of times, these medicines are what Don Howard would call Clarigence(ph). And it almost creates a hypersobriety in which on them, you're more sober than you are in your daily life when you're addicted to your drama, you're addicted to your own thought patterns, you're addicted to the conditioning of the world around you, and all of these other endogenous chemicals that are keeping you locked in a certain prison of perception. And all of a sudden, you break through and you're like, “Oh, [BLEEP], I'm awake and aware for the first time.”

Ben:  It's not an escape. It's an altered, elevated state of consciousness, which many people who've not been in that state simply do not understand and they say, “Well, that's just like you had two bottles of wine and it's nothing at all like that.” It's like your brain has become a 20x supercomputer with merging of the left and right hemispheric activity and the ability to be able to creatively solve problems or to have an enhanced spiritual experience. And so, yeah, it's entirely different. But back to the Bible, there's firm instructions in that book that say, “If this is causing your brother or sister to stumble, just leave it at the door when you're hanging out with them.”

Like if wine is something that you know someone has a previous history of abuse with or addiction to or their parents were alcoholics, there's some sort of negative association for them with it that would make it very uncomfortable for them, or tempting for them, or problematic for them if you were to consume that in your presence. And that could be meat, it could be vegetables, it could be plant medicines, it could be wine. Best to just leave it alone, which I think is sound advice. So, yeah, you do need to be careful about someone's previous history and their association.

Aubrey:  And people can abuse plant medicines. I've even seen one example at least of someone who is using ayahuasca as an escape. And then, ultimately, that's not the use for it and that takes the roots that come from the feet of being on the earth and sweating and living normal life. You just went off into the air for quite a while and that's the risk of using these things as an escapism. So, a lot of it is intention, absolutely for sure.

Ben:  It's the fruits too. The fruits that it produces are pretty self-explanatory. And if someone has massively transformed their relationships in a very positive way, and their life, and their productivity, and their clarity, and their vision, and their purpose, those are pretty darn good fruits, in my opinion.

Aubrey:  Isn't there a saying like you will know them by their fruits?

Ben:  You will know them by their fruits. In many cases, Jesus in the Bible, he would actually curse a tree that had bad fruits, that had bad vine, that didn't produce. There's even a book, and I think it's called “The Vine” that gets into this, just this idea of stepping back and analyzing. And this is another reason I like that evening process of self-examination, analyzing which activities are producing which fruits so that you're aware. And yeah, you can certainly tell back to the abuse of plant medicines when they're producing good fruits in someone and when they're not. I think that's something else to pay a lot of attention to for anything in life.

Aubrey:  I just had a really powerful sober encounter with–at least it was perhaps my own imagination of Christ, perhaps it was Christ. I always say if I encounter an entity of being, it might be my own projection of them or whatever. But I was going through and I was tapping into a lot of my own fear about certain things in life and my stress. The fear is always behind the stress and where that was coming from and what I'm afraid of. There was also shame associated with that fear and fear of fully stepping into my purpose in life, fully accepting what I believe I'm here to do. And there is the shame about stepping into it, and there's a fear of what might happen.

I was being facilitated by a great body worker who guides you through this meditation. And I think she helped open that conduit, but Jesus came through, and I was in this, and she really encouraged me to go into that fear, and go into that shame, and really feel it, and then get help. And Jesus is who I called and who came to help. And Jesus came in the most loving way, and He saw me in my fear, and He saw me in my shame, and He just looked at me and He says, “Me too.” That was one of the most profound moments that I've had. And again, this was sober, but it was this beautiful thing of I think we sometimes think of Jesus as only the perfect being not ever having had these doubts, these fears, this not feeling pain, just being unbelievably courageous throughout the–but when He looked and said, “Yeah, me too,” I was like, “Oh, man, thank God. Oh, wow, you two? Alright, I guess I'm doing okay.”

Ben:  Me too like a freaking deity who had to take on a broken human fleshly body and have to be born and [BLEEP] his diaper, and get zits, and get cuts and scars, and have to work all day in the hot weather as a carpenter. And then, eventually, got the worst curse ever imagined like nailed to a tree, tortured, beaten. And then, at that point, basically, none of the pain or the shame had even started because then he had to take on all the shame, and sin, and suffering that anybody ever had experienced for the holocaust, and Genghis Khan, and World War I, World War II, and every rape, and every murder. He had to live through all of that in order to actually take on the sin of the world.

So, when you saw Jesus and Jesus said “me too,” I mean, he really, really meant it. There was nothing shameful, or horrific, or painful that has happened to anyone like the deepest, most shameful thing that he did not experience himself. And that's why you can actually leave all that shame behind. It's because he took on all of that. So, yeah, the “me too” isn't just like, yeah, whatever. I got cut up too and fell and bruised my knee when I was a kid and I had to deal with peer pressure. No. It's like every last torture that you can ever imagine, every last piece of flesh being ripped off your body, like all of that.

Aubrey:  Yeah. And I had also in the meditation, he gave me a cross, and on the cross was inscribed “me too” as like a reminder. It was like something because there was a message like I need to remember this. So, when I get lost in my own self-reproach, my own self-judgment to remember as all of us–because if you embrace the totality of everything like Christ-consciousness, it's the all, it's the divine. And of course I'm putting in some of my own beliefs in here. We'd have slightly different beliefs but–

Ben:  That's why we're going to battle after this.

Aubrey:  Yeah, that's why we highlighted and we're done. And that was like a beautiful reminder to me like, alright, me too. And so, it removed all that judgment. But then the cross itself was a really powerful symbol that I haven't really connected with because I've almost taken it as just a signifier of your belief in Christianity. I understood that there was that moment before when he knew he was going to be crucified and he still said yes, but he was going through it that night. You read about it, “God, why have you forsaken me?” There was this feeling of abandonment like why is this my path?

Ben:  Crying bloody tears.

Aubrey:  Right. But he still said yes and there was this amazing courage. And so, to me, that cross was reframed in my own mind at least as like, holy [BLEEP], that is a [BLEEP] symbol of ultimate courage to say yes to no matter what life throws at you and just be like, “Okay.”

Ben:  It is a symbol of courage. And up to a certain point was it would basically be if you were to get a cross tattooed on you, the equivalent of getting like an electric chair or a noose tattooed on you, it's like, why the hell would you do that? It's a freaking curse. It's a sign of murder. It's a sign of death. And not only that, it's a sign of the worst death that the worst criminal would be given. I believe it was Cicero who wrote how it was the most horrific death imaginable like a crucifixion. Why would anybody want to get something like that tattooed or put on the door of a church or something like that?

But now, it no longer means that. Now, it means victory. Now, it means courage. Now, it means complete setting aside of shame. Now, it means a new heaven and a new Earth. And it's like this symbol that went from being a curse to being a blessing, that went from being the most horrific thing imaginable to being the most glorious promise available. And so, yeah, the cross is something different now than I think it was before Jesus. And yeah, I think it's a super powerful symbol now.

Aubrey:  Yeah. As we go through this conversation though, we're starting to make a lot of different categories of things that once they're fulfilled, you'd live this rich, rich life. I mean, we've talked about community and we've talked about these meditative practices and connection to nature, and then the rituals, the rites of passage that your children run through, then everything that you're about, but then also this kind of belief and this deep belief that you have. And everybody's belief doesn't have to be the same, but really walking the walk of that belief, not just intellectually believing it, but really living in your belief, and that's deeply fulfilling. And then, having your belief, and then your purpose, and then everything woven together and guiding principles like live like you're going to live forever.

You've painted this beautiful picture in this show of really a formula for living a life that's as rich as can possibly be lived and giving the opportunity to turn this life into heaven. I was on Tim Ferriss' show and he said, “If you were going to make a billboard, put one thing onto the billboard, what would it be?” And I was like, “Well, it'd be welcome to heaven population, everyone.” Like, “Here we are everybody. Here we got it. Are we going to make it that or are we not? This is a choice we have.”

Ben:  Right. And it does really come back down to that foundational principle that was pretty much the essence of Jesus, and that was love other people, just love other people. And it sounds so simple, but once you start to frame everything that you do in the day including the way that you build your business, how many lives you're going to touch, how many people are you going to love. At the end of the day, the budget does have to be attended to but will take care of itself if the bottom line is how many people can we reach, how many people can we help, how many people can we love. And it's the same with our personal lives too. Just this idea of not living selfishly, not grasping at straws because you have that confidence that you're going to live forever, and then knowing that with that life, the very best thing you can do is just go out and love other people. And loving other people means loving the planet. It means loving God. It means loving yourself. But it's all framed–

Aubrey:  Like the lines are a lot more blurry between all those things when we try to pretend. We think, “Oh, this is me and this is my house, and then there's my neighbors.” It's like we make separations between this, or my mind, and my body, and my spirit. Everything is so much more blurry than we realize, like we're interacting with each other's field constantly. And that which we cast aside and cast judgment on, it cannot escape from casting judgment upon ourselves because we're connected. That thing that we do that's bad to somebody else, that hurts somebody else, hurts us even if we pretend that it doesn't, this is the unblinding when we really start to see that.

Ben:  Right. And one thing, I guess this would be my last comment on the living forever part, is many people will say, well, Jesus was like Mother Teresa to a certain extent. You just live in poverty. Like he said to the rich young ruler in the Bible, just leave everything and follow me. So, are we supposed to just forsake our houses, forsake our wealth, forsake our families, forsake our nice clothes and just waltz off into the sunset in the desert in our sandals to go out and just serve other people the rest of our lives? But that is I think almost like a guilt-producing version of Christianity. And in some cases, other religions, this idea that therefore our best calling is to forsake everything including ourselves, our wealth, our success to serve and love other people.

I think there's certain people that are certainly called to that. But when I ask myself like, dude, so if there's a divine being and a God, and I believe that there is, and he made us, and I believe that he did, why did he make us? Why did he just throw this rock down here with a bunch of greenery, and an ocean, and the moon, and the sun, and some stars, and then throw a bunch of people on it? It's because if I'm at home and I have this home that I've built, and this property that I've created, and this life that I've given to my sons and my wife, and I look out my office window and I see them playing cornhole in the backyard and eating a popsicle, and my wife's sitting there in the hammock and drinking a glass of wine, and maybe scrolling through some cool stuff on this magical little box that's got an Instagram on it, it's actually kind of a cool creation. And then, the sun's shining and the grass is green.

And I look out at all that and I'm super proud and really happy about what I made for my family. This is really cool. I could just stand here and take immense joy out of just seeing them savor this tiny creation that I've helped to build. And when I think about God, He makes this magical planet that we [BLEEP] up a little bit, but hopefully, we're going to get on track, and I think that we are on track. It's this amazing creation that he made just because it's pleasurable to watch all these human beings, and these people, and life, and the breath of life, and now they've been enjoying all this stuff, and the amazing steaks, and food, and wine, and pickleball, and ukulele, and sitting around, and talking, and hearing the sound frequency of each other's voices. And after this, our taste buds will be entertained with some amazing food. And then, we'll sleep and bliss and have crazy dreams, and visions, and wake up, and have an adventure. That brings a lot of joy to the creator.

And so, I also describe myself as basically like a hedonistic Christian in the fact that I believe that one of the things that we can do that makes God the happiest is to savor His creation, and actually own nice things, and drive a cool car fast in the highway, and have a comfortable house. And yes, don't live so far beyond your means that you aren't able to love others and still have that philosophy and that approach to spreading the wealth and loving other people, but don't forget to like savor God's creation too. We do live in a fun little–our big circle. And it's nice to also be able to savor that. So, I think that you need some amount of balance between loving others, loving yourself, savoring God's creation, but also sacrificing yourself to others. And I think it's a balancing act but–

Aubrey:  Yeah, it's a balance between working to save the world and savor the world.

Ben:  Exactly, and I like that.

Aubrey:  [01:18:28] _____ on either side.

Ben:  Save the world and savor the world.

Aubrey:  Yeah.

Ben:  That's a perfect way to put it.

Aubrey:  We've been talking about living forever and you actually probably know a lot about the different longevity practices technology, and you've probably talked to a lot more people than I have. And I know there's some people who make their life work to figure out how to extend human life. If you were going to actually–from put on your scientific hat, not your religious hat, and say like, “Alright, how long?”

Ben:  There it is.

Aubrey:  How long is a human being going to live? At what point do we have to get to arrive healthy to this start point to where we get to be 150 or we get to be 200?

Ben:  Right. Well, we know based on current epidemiological data and the extent to which people have lengthened their lifespans in the past two to three decades, we've gone from 115 to 117, 121 tops, and we've leveled out. We're not going much longer than about 115 to 121 right now. Now, there are a lot of people walking the face of the planet right now and many people have predicted that the first person who was ever going to live to 150 in a long time is already alive. And that's based on medical care, that's based on technology, everything from hyperbaric oxygen therapy to NAD, to stem cell therapy, to all of these things that are the longevity hacks that people are doing now.

So, theoretically, we could be extending lifespan, but from yeast to rodents to fruit flies. There's not a lot of evidence that we can appreciably increase far past like about 121 where we're at right now. I would be pleased if I lived to 120 plus, but realistically, it would be pretty shocking if people started living much longer than 115 to 121 years old. But there's a capability built into mammals and even humans. If you look at the bowhead whale or the naked mole-rat, everything from carbon dioxide tolerance to the ability to be able to repair damaged proteins and DNA, that there are built-in repair mechanisms that could technically allow us to go for a longer period of time.

And when you look at, whatever, Methuselah in the Bible, or some of these genealogies that go way back, people live in 800, 900 years old, you also have to take into account–and there's a wonderful book I'm reading right now just about this tale of a massive flood where all the waters fell from heaven, and nearly every culture on the face of the planet has this story of some massive flood that occurs that wipes out everything and changes the Earth's atmosphere. Well, if there was a covering of water above the planet that had changed the gases, and the atmospheric pressure, and a lot of things that can influence longevity and carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, and the nutrient density of plants, and many other factors, and that all fell from the sky and flooded the planet and completely changed some of those gases and the atmospheric pressure and just the way that the Earth operates, that the lifespan that people were able to have prior to that event is probably no longer realistic. I don't know if that's the case, but I really would be surprised if in the next few years, we're seeing anything much longer than about 121 or so, just based on everything else.

Aubrey:  There are those people out there that are like, “Look, if you can make it relatively healthy another 10, 15 years, you got a good shot at 150.” What is the argument that they're trying to make that makes that make sense?

Ben:  That when you stack a lot of these hacks that theoretically you could repair DNA at a fast enough rate, you could stave off immune system degradation at a fast enough rate. You could stave off the natural mutations that are built into us again from a DNA repair standpoint in a fast enough rate. And you can build up carbon dioxide tolerance, and you can repair tissue more quickly and things like hyperbaric chambers, and use red light therapy, and all these things that when you stack all of that, that theoretically, you could increase lifespan, but it's all just on paper right now. I haven't seen any hard evidence that that's actually possible. Yeah. I mean, some rodents, for example, they're showing a 20% to 30% increase in lifespan, but these are highly controlled laboratory environments with specially bred rats and mice. There's a lot of confounding variables when it comes to humans, but does it matter? I don't think-

Aubrey:  Ultimately, it hasn't, and that's why I haven't invited these particular guys on my show who I'm really proposing that because I get in there in the '90s. [BLEEP], I'm stoked. That's a long ass life.

Ben:  If you're making maximum–for me, it's about impact. It's not about if I can increase my health span to the point where the impact I'm making with whatever lifespan that I'm genetically programmed to have approximately, I'm super happy with that. So, it's just about taking care of your body so that you can make the biggest impact that you can with the life that you're enjoying.

Aubrey:  And enjoy if for the longest.

Ben:  Right, exactly. So, I think we've even had this discussion before. I don't want to be one of those guys who's cold, and hungry, and libido-less, and lives an extra–let's say I live an extra 30 years, but I'm spending 20 of those extra 30 years in a hyperbaric chamber, or a cold tank, or fasting, or reducing my ejaculation frequency, or anything else that we know could potentially help out a little bit with longevity, like you got to draw the line at some point. And so, yeah, I think that especially in the health world, there are people who are returning back to your idea a little while ago like how do I choose between all these activities. They're flirting away a lot of times just trying to live a long time when they could just be out enjoying life and loving other people.

Aubrey:  You talk about ejaculation frequency. I heard something from Kyle that was talking about how every time you ejaculate, you're depleting magnesium and zinc through your ejaculate.

Ben:  Not very much. I don't know if you've seen the size of a Jack. I just did my daddy kit recently to store my sperm and just check up on what the count is and everything. So, I've of course got to witness that. And the amount of minerals I'm depleting I would imagine that by me putting some sea salt on my steak tonight and taking a little zinc tomorrow morning, that's easily like one load right there. So, yeah, that whole concept is more about your jing, your chi, your life. It's more about that than nutrients or minerals because, yeah, your body does not grow through I would say anything more than like a very, very small meal in terms of the amount of nutrients and minerals necessary to make semen or sperm, so yeah.

Aubrey:  Coming every day then. That's fine. I'm back to it.

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, there's this whole idea of giving your energy away. I get the whole concept, but the concept is not one of nutrient or mineral depletion.

Aubrey:  Yeah, that makes sense. Ben, this is a beautiful conversation, man.

Ben:  That was a great thing to end on too, like how much sea salt do you need to make enough sperm? At what point do your adrenal glands just not have enough to go around? And you're going to be out playing pickleball out there, and you're going to cramp, and you'll be like, “Oh, [BLEEP], I came last night. I didn't take my sea salt this morning. I'm sorry guys, I got to go in the house.”

Aubrey:  That's right. I mean, we got to keep it real for people.

Ben:  That's right.

Aubrey:  Talk about all different things for your health, for your heart.

Ben:  Save the world, savor the world, and feed your semen.

Aubrey:  Hashtag, feed your semen.

Ben:  That's right.

Aubrey:  Tadpoles need to eat.

Ben:  That's right, baby. Tadpoles got to eat, that's right.

Aubrey:  Anything you got going on you want to tell people about?

Ben:  You know what, we did when we were talking about the cookbook because like–I don't know. I think it hits Amazon like this week, and yeah. It's got some tasty [BLEEP] in there.

Aubrey:  It's dope. Yeah, I've enjoyed cruising through it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Aubrey:  Beautiful, man. Great to have you, brother. Thanks everybody for tuning in.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

The biggest blessing in my life that has resulted from the pandemic has been a greater appreciation for community.

The sheer joy of getting to know your neighbors, hosting community dinners, and gathering in song and prayer is unparalleled.

This sense of community is far more fulfilling than any meditation or breathwork in the sauna (not that I don’t love practicing those regularly). Before the madness of 2020, I was constantly on and off an airplane…traveling from one speaking event to another with *some* time in between for my family. I was also still racing in Spartans and triathlons between all of the speaking events, which kept me even busier.

When I’d return home, I rarely had the mental or physical capacity to participate in local social interactions since I was so depleted from constantly being on the go. Staying home during the pandemic (whether I liked it or not at the time) offered me a rare chance to foster connections in my community—and it's completely changed my life.

But things have changed, not only with travel, but also with all of my approach to spirituality, purpose, family, and life in general. So recently, I sat down with Aubrey Marcus to discuss how community fostering has changed the way I live, and we also talk about how to discover your purpose, ancient psychedelic recipes, pickleball (yes, pickleball), and much more.

Aubrey Marcus and I have connected in the past on the podcasts:

• The Zen Of Being A Warrior Poet – How To Dominate Your Physical And Mental Performance
• Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex.

I've also been on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast in the episodes:

• Creating Your Own Heaven with Ben Greenfield
• Dick Optimization with The Cock Warlock Ben Greenfield

Today, we're back recording straight from Aubrey Marcus's home in Austin, Texas with a wide-ranging discussion of everything from Christianity to plant medicines to managing time and FOMO, family, and, of course, the age-old question of whether men should avoid sex or ejaculation if they don't want to strip nutrients and energy from their body. 

Aubrey Marcus is the founder of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Onnit is an Inc. 500 company and an industry leader with products optimizing millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world.

Aubrey also currently hosts the Aubrey Marcus Podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, mindset, and spirituality with over 35 million downloads on iTunes. He regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Tim Ferriss Show, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health, is the host of the Fit For Service Fellowship, and is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Own The Day, Own Your Life from HarperCollins.

If you ask Aubrey the cause he is most passionate about, it is raising awareness for psychedelic medicine, through organizations like MAPS.org and Heffter Institute. He is a 20 year native of Austin, Texas where he currently resides.

In this conversation with Aubrey Marcus, you'll discover:

-Why Ben had imposter syndrome while writing the Boundless Cookbook…05:33

• Jessa is a really good cook; taught the twins how to cook at the age of four
• Made soufflés, ravioli, risotto…
• How Ben did a 150 lb pig roast for Jessa's 40th birthday; had 75 guests
• Explore molecular gastronomy, biohacking food with the Boundless Cookbook
• Ben now loves to cook; there is some kind of a party every day with the family

-Ben on his twin sons' recent rites of passage…10:37 

• The twins had their rite of passage at Tim Corcoran's place, Twin Eagles Wilderness School
• Sabbath Ramblings: Analog
• How To Go On A Vision Quest & Embark Upon A Rite Of Passage, with Tim Corcoran
• Family activities after every dinner

-How building a community changed the dynamics of living…14:40

• Jeanne Calment, supercentenarian, was known for her relationships, love, and family
• Getting to know neighbors changed the dynamics of living in the community
• Hanging out with neighbors more fulfilling than sauna, meditation…
• Men form friendships around activities; women from social gatherings
• Community is one of the most important things people have

-Breathwork as one of the giveaways when meeting new people…25:17

• Breath and how a person breathes says a lot about a person
• The Renegade Breathing Mastermind Behind The Crazy Holotropic Breathing Protocol I Do In My Sauna (& Biohacking Breathwork, Best Foods For Breathhold Time & Much More!), with Niraj Naik.

-Core practices aside from exercise and biohacking that are built into Ben's routine…27:12

• Morning and evening meditation is done as a family
• Afternoon tiredness is remedied by a really good 10-30 minute nap
• Sleep by Nick Littlehales
• The Man Behind The Advanced Sleep Hacking Tactics Used By The World’s Most Elite Athletes, with Nick Littlehales
• Dr. Andrew Huberman and the Yoga Nidra cycle
• Apollo for the vibration therapy
• Hapbee magnetic signals:
  • Theobromine
  • CBD
  • Caffeine
  • MDMA
• A New, Drug-Free Biohack To Finely Tune Your Emotions, Sleep, Relaxation, Energy, Focus, Calm & More: The Hapbee With Scott Donnell.
• Bookending the day with morning (7 minutes) and evening (4-5 minutes) journaling with the family
  • Spiritual Disciplines Journal 
  • A Day In The Life Of Ben Greenfield: Ben’s Exact Morning, Afternoon & Evening Routines, with Will Ahmed
• Revisiting your life's purpose statement
  • Sabbath Ramblings: How To Find Your Purpose In Life.

-The challenge of managing and going through all the interesting activities…41:34

• Being happy just playing the guitar or banjo
• Didgediroo box and circular breathing with the didgeridoo
• FOMO on things and activities found on the internet that actually are not that fulfilling and is just a waste of time

-Ben's belief in living forever in a new heaven and a new earth…44:28

• It is the earth as it is now but perfect, where we can create, build, and do everything we were intended to do
• A pure and clean and a toxin-free environment
• Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

-Ben as a post-millennial Christian…49:05

• The belief that the world is getting better and better
• Tell everybody to slow down, enjoy life, build community, love others, and love the earth
• Dominion mandate is a call to be a gardener, to care for this planet
  • Are Christians Destroying The Environment? A Biblical Approach to Environmentalism and the “Dominion Mandate.”, with Dr. Gordon Wilson.

-Plant medicine in the Bible…53:17

• Ben sometimes vaporizes tobacco with a little bit of cannabis with essential oils like blue lotus, nutmeg, myrrh, or frankincense
• The anointing oil and incense used in early tabernacle worship have ingredients that are cytochrome enzyme inhibitors
• Sabbath Ramblings: Sober
• Cytochrome Enzyme Inhibitors allows any co-ingested molecules to be active for a longer period of time in the bloodstream
• Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku
• Chavin culture; discussed by Don Howard on the Aubrey Marcus podcast
• Henbane
• Plant medicines create an altered, elevated state of consciousness
• There is the risk of abuse; used as escape mechanism
• Secrets Of The Vine by Bruce Wilkinson

-Fears, stress, and shame and encountering Christ and the cross…1:05:00

• Jesus sees us as who we are, with all our fears and shame
• All the deepest pains and shame anyone has experienced Jesus experienced
• The cross is a symbol of ultimate courage
• Cicero: Crucifixion is the cruelest and disgusting punishment
• The cross has become a symbol of the most glorious promise possible

-Living in your beliefs and living a rich life…1:11:21

• Living in your beliefs is deeply fulfilling
• Opportunity to turn this life into a heaven
• As Tim Ferris asked Aubrey on the Tim Ferriss show: “If you were to make a billboard, what would it say?”
• “Welcome to heaven, population: everyone”
• Take immense joy at the tiny creation made for the family
• Do not forget to savor God's creation
• Balance between working to save the world and savor the world

-Different longevity practices and how to extend human life…1:18:45

• How long is a human being going to live?
• The human who will live to a 150 is already alive

-Does ejaculation frequency deplete magnesium and zinc and drain energy?…1:24:41

• Dadi Kit (use code BEN20 to save $20)
• Mineral depleted is maybe equivalent to minerals taken in a meal

-And much more!…

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Aubrey Marcus:

• Onnit
• Aubrey Marcus Podcast
• Own The Day, Own Your Life
• Fit For Service Fellowship
• Aubrey Marcus on the BGF podcast:
  • The Zen Of Being A Warrior Poet – How To Dominate Your Physical And Mental Performance
  • Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex.
• Ben Greenfield on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast:
  • Creating Your Own Heaven with Ben Greenfield
  • Dick Optimization with The Cock Warlock Ben Greenfield

– Podcasts And Articles:

• How To Go On A Vision Quest & Embark Upon A Rite Of Passage, with Tim Corcoran
• The Man Behind The Advanced Sleep Hacking Tactics Used By The World’s Most Elite Athletes, with Nick Littlehales
• A New, Drug-Free Biohack To Finely Tune Your Emotions, Sleep, Relaxation, Energy, Focus, Calm & More: The Hapbee With Scott Donnell.
• A Day In The Life Of Ben Greenfield: Ben’s Exact Morning, Afternoon & Evening Routines, with Will Ahmed.
• Are Christians Destroying The Environment? A Biblical Approach to Environmentalism and the “Dominion Mandate.”, with Dr. Gordon Wilson.
• The Renegade Breathing Mastermind Behind The Crazy Holotropic Breathing Protocol I Do In My Sauna (& Biohacking Breathwork, Best Foods For Breathhold Time & Much More!), with Niraj Naik.
• Sabbath Ramblings: Analog
• Sabbath Ramblings: How To Find Your Purpose In Life.
• Sabbath Ramblings: Sober

– Books:

• Boundless Cookbook
• Sleep by Nick Littlehales
• Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
• Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku
• Secrets Of The Vine by Bruce Wilkinson

– Gear:

• Apollo
• Hapbee
• Didgediroo box

– Other Resources:

• Blue Lotus Essential Oil (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Nutmeg (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Myrrh And Frankincense (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Dadi Kit (use code BEN20 to save $20)
• Spiritual Disciplines Journal
• Molecular Gastronomy
• Twin Eagles Wilderness School
• Yoga Nidra Cycle
• Circular Breathing With The Didgeridoo
• Don Howard On The Aubrey Marcus Podcast
• Henbane
• Jeanne Calment
• Chavin Culture
• Evidence for a limit to human lifespan
• Scientists up stakes in bet on whether humans will live to 150

Upcoming Events:

• Las Vegas Keto Expo (October 15-16, 2021). Ben will be speaking at the Las Vegas Keto Expo along with 13 other keto experts. The first 300 guests to register here will get a free drink chip for the poolside party and a free t-shirt.
• Keep up on Ben's LIVE appearances by following bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar

Episode sponsors:

–JOOVV: After using the Joovv for close to 2 years, it's the only light therapy device I'd ever recommend. Give it a try: you won't be disappointed. For a limited time, Joovv wants to hook you up with an exclusive discount on your first order. Just apply code BEN to your qualifying order.

–Kion Aminos: Building blocks for muscle recovery, reduced cravings, better cognition, immunity, and more. BGF listeners save 10% off your order at Kion with code BEN10.

–Thrive Market: Organic brands you love, for less. Your favorite organic food and products. Fast and free shipping to your doorstep. Receive a gift card worth up to $20 when you begin a new membership.

–Butcher Box: Delicious 100% grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, heritage-breed pork, and wild-caught seafood, all sourced from partners who believe in doing things the right way.