Charles Morgan is a tech founder MIT graduate and now the author of the book don’t punk out after building his first startup in Silicon Valley and experiencing the Cutthroat and Psychopathic behavior of many in the startup world he is now focused on the study of business PTSD and how
Neuroscience is showing that the damage to your brain experienced through the Betrayal in business similar to personal relationships short circuits your amigdala and causes neurotic reactions that are not good for anyone in your life he is now on a mission through his work book and music to educate others of
The benefits of neuroplastic workouts particularly targeting Fortune 500 CEOs to create a new generation of compassionate leadership he is also collaborating with Snoop Dog on his Sonic acupuncture music this episode is anyone looking to understand how to get into a peak Flow State to achieve breakthroughs in your work and those
Wishing to understand how certain breath work techniques will literally rewire your mind enjoy this one guys do you want to do any sort of breath work first or anything actually yeah yeah we can do um well we can start with we with the very basic with the eight pillars of Joy
Breathing just to set the mood in you know like we we hit some rain on the way in you know might be feeling like oh my gosh I wish it wasn’t so wet right but there’s these eight pillars of Joy from Buddhism and the first one is the joy of
Changing your perspective okay right I find that this is uh I think of all the practices that I’ve done uh the training the muscle training the muscle memory so that as when I take a deep breath my brain thinks the joy of changing my perspective just because I’ve done this particular breathing
Pattern so often right and so what we’re going to do is long slow deep breath in so like sit up uh back straight chin slightly tucked right in through the nose long slow deep and as we’re breathing we’re going to put all of our mind’s attention just on the words the
Joy of changing my perspective right and so you breathing in long slow deep letting the words Rumble the joy of changing my how you feel good yeah thank you brother yeah always to my pleasure absolutely any physical Sensations like what is the what were you were you the the movement
Of the rib cage you know like how did that all feel felt unfamiliar felt unfamiliar opening up at the top and that little bit more it felt great and I could really feel the energy I could feel it moving up kind of up my spine mhm perfect yeah it’s perfect yeah
Good up the spine is a perfect observation that’s what the yogis call the the Kundalini Rising yeah you know people throw this word around a lot like Kundalini Awakening Kundalini this Kundalini that but the specific thing that uh the old yogis talk about is this uh the Creative Energy right this um you
Know Shiva right Lord Shiva according to the the the theology right the cosmology like Shiva taught the people yoga 60,000 years ago so that they just like would chill the [ __ ] out can I curse on the show yeah you say whatever the hell you like and um you know but it was Shiva
You know shiva’s the the God of destruction right so it’s like you know destroying destroying destroying and Shiva has the Super bang and wife her name is Shakti right Shakti is the creator right so after Shiva destroys Shakti creates and when Shiva comes to uh destroy things sort of uh without
Intention right it’s like mindlessly destroying things mindlessly destroying things they call him Shava is in the term shavasana right the yoga like the corpse pose right literally an unintentional destruction is the work of a corpse zombies right and that’s when Shakti takes the form of K Ki is very
Common especially on this island you got a lot of witches rolling around saying like oh I’ve got this kie energy right kie is always the P like this like she like got swords and she’s like black demon face and she’s always depicted stepping on the neck of Shiva right
Being like wake the [ __ ] up dude wake up stop destroying things unintentionally destroy things productively right destroy things that need to be destroyed such as this moment right the only way the next moment can arise if is if we destroy this moment right and that is
Sort of the sort of the nervous system training the philosophy underneath the breath right is that um we’re waking up we’re waking up and uh the the yogis believe that in terms of like the physiology that Kundalini Shakti lives at the base of the spine right that root
Lock that the muscle between where you pee and you poo the the the the G you know the perum right she lives just above the G right and so that those those three locks that we did by engaging the root lock squeezing the belly button right engaging the root
Lock is like wake up Shakti yeah wake up Shakti squeezing the belly button the udana banda right says like come up come up this Direction come up this direction and then uh putting the tip of the tongue to the top of the mouth tucking the chin that says come all the way up
And that shoots the shockd energy straight into the what they call called the 10th gate right so like through the brain and this is what the yogis believed as the physiological basis of creative inspiration H which is unique from a lot of the other religions and ancient mythologies and philosophies
Where they believe that you inspiration like in the Greeks they said that you know like the divine inspiration that was given to us from Prometheus right in the Christian and Jewish and most like the monotheistic religions they talk about like you know divine inspiration can come from God right um but the yogis
Believe that through this practice we can control and induce the release of creative inspiration and I think that this is you like this is a superpower yeah right is for anybody that’s in a creative field anybody that’s trying to do something meaningful with their lives anything do something big right anyone
That’s trying to express right like what is your satam show me show me does it slap so we said I love that we’re here this is absolutely where I want to be um amazing um thank you so much for guiding us through that um what did we say at
The end we said sat num num and we inhaled sat and then we said n exhale exhale so something I’ve come across recently um is this idea of Creative Energy the word Allah God Krishna Creator it all has this R in so as we just did then we also I noticed ah
Theed present um I know something I’ve started doing into my morning and evening practices is the r and the um there so much we could go into I love it we got time what what is that then so you said it’s that Creative Energy what what are we doing there what are we
Doing when we’re through the breath work and then we’re building this kind of Creative Energy and through the are the SAT what is that what is that well uh man if you if you ask a 100 people you’re going to get a hundred different answers uh but in terms of my research
My experience uh with this practice uh when I was completely not working on creative things you know like I was a you know like I was a scientist in University I studied electrical engineering and Material Science I was working on solar cells and batteries you know like yeah you could say that it’s
Creative but mostly it’s just like information and like you know like engineering right like there is creativity and Engineering no doubt but uh then you know when I was working on my career and I was getting into software and I was starting software companies and I was dealing with Venture
Capitalists and dealing with employees and just like just everyone always at you for something you know like show me the numbers like where’s my salary like uh negotiating this clause in the contract right it’s very not I guess you know like artistic right it’s not I’m not
Painting I’m not making music I’m not whatever but uh I I discovered this this yoga right and I discovered the yoga kind of I think the way that a lot of people discover yoga in the western world it’s like um I was an athlete in college I I played football and uh after
University I was trying to figure out what to do with my post aete body and looking at all the sports that old people play uh you tennis people always have injuries uh bodybuilders always have injuries like everybody every sport has injuries except these yogis seem to
Be living a very long time with a very high quality of life great Mobility I was like oh let me get into this and uh this breathing practice that we talk about uh stems from uh what they call Kundalini Yoga and Kundalini being the serpent energy uh what we talked about
Kundalini Shakti right so Kundalini is the serpent Shakti is the wife of Shiva she’s kind of like the same thing right um sha shaki right the a is there right and I think that now that I have reawakened the musical side of me and having done this practice so deeply like
Chased down some Old Masters that you know like you run into like fake Guru fake Guru fake Guru fake Guru like with like in this like I guess you could say universe of yogis um yeah the the the the guru that you I never met this guy
Because he was already dead by the time I discovered the practice but his like whole like organization right was alive and pumping and in 2020 the guy was massively disgraced you know there was this big like Memoir that was written by one of his secretaries you know like all
The bad stuff you know and I was just like oh no so is this thing real yeah and the particular me method of his disgrace was that he was like a baggage handler at LAX fresh off the boat from India but he noticed all these you know hippies were like willing to follow
Anybody with a beard and brown skin he and he had a yoga textbook from a super legit Yogi uh that he brought over with him and he went to the LA County Public Library photocopied the pictures and wrote his own text got himself a handful of students and that turned into one of
The biggest schools of yoga that’s still operational today oh W right and this guy he was like a religious studies PhD like tracked this all down you know like after he the the guru was like disgraced by this um uh this Memoir from one of his secretaries then this guy was like
Hold up hold up but this yoga actually changed my life and this yoga is actually changing other people’s lives so what is the real Source right and the real Source was this guy named Swami durra brahmachari who was like this big- time Yogi back in the day he’s long dead
I think he died in like the 90s or 80s but um he had this big school of uh big network of yoga schools in India he was the the prime minister’s Yogi he was the yogi of the Gandhi family he was like a big deal right and
You know that I just I I’m kind of getting off topic but I’m telling that story just to say that like you know everybody that knows anything about this spiritual practice is only learning someone else’s lie H right and so when you ask me like what is the a right I don’t
Know but but in my you know pursuit of uh the last living student of Swami durena pratar who I found and managed to study with uh he uh has a very sophisticated uh Western and Eastern understanding of this whole phenomenon and through following his uh prescription I have achieved
Some incredible I can only call The Meditation induced hallucinations yeah you know like you’ve Tak you people take acid people take mushrooms people take MDMA you know these kind of like psychedelic oh my God love blah blah blah but like nothing hit me harder than my first what
Called a Janna in the yoga literature right these heighten psychic States not Enlightenment it’s not Nirvana uh and we’ll get into like the the mistranslation of Enlightenment later but uh these these heightened psychic States when you move through level one there’s eight of them right and the
Eighth one being samadi which is known as sort of the deep yogic sleep it’s like you’re just completely in this like space there’s no time there’s no space there’s no there’s no you there’s complete nonseparation with the universe right and in these states you hear these sounds right and these State you know
That when when you come back down everybody that comes back down is like [ __ ] let me write a book about what I just what I just saw all right let me write a song about what I just saw because there like words can’t there’s like there’s the sound and then in the
Sound there is like this constellation of everything that ever was like all of your life all of your future all of your past lives all of your timelines and like if you’re meditating and you haven’t hit a Jan like it’s like it’s like having sex without an orgasm really it’s like it’s
It’s pleasurable sure you might relax you might level out your cortisol levels but the thing here is not like the goal here is not to chill out the goal here is that through a reproducible method and some very minimal training of your physical body you
Can be God you can see it you can see you can be it you could feel it you you are it and then you create and then you create from that space right and you know like like whenever I do you I guess not this um sort of single sequence but
When I when I do sit down for about an hour and I get myself into one of these Jas and and by now I’ve gotten to the point that if I actually do sit down and give myself an hour an hour and a half I
Can get to one of the lower level Jas I’m not in full somati like you know like oh my God like walking on clouds type thing well I guess in somat you wouldn’t be walking because you don’t have feet there wouldn’t be clouds because there’s no separation right but
You can get to these states where you have like you know in the Western World calls them flow States the West you know like runner’s high right runner’s high the description of the physical sensations of runnner high is pretty much what these yogis call a level one
Janna right and what people are talking about flow states in the business World in order to increase productivity increase neuroplasticity you know these these you the research is saying that you can increase your rate of learning by 5x like you’re 500% more smart or smarter uh not 50% smarter 500% smart
And that they’re just talking about level one yeah like the time dilation that you experience at level two at level three at level four at level five it’s exponentially more intense and so uh when you say like you know what is the ah right it’s like it is the sound
Of surprise right at the most basic level it’s like ah oh yeah what a great idea yeah let’s do that right but but really where it comes from is hitting these truly truly psychedelic meditative States and and we can talk about the neurochemistry what what creates that scenario for you
Um which is basically the the main content of my book was like piecing together like I experienced one of these Jas and it just it was November 2015 on a Wednesday completely sober I hadn’t even smoked a joint that day it was at the end of a day of work the
Class was like 7 to 8:30 p.m. what the like I just I was completely completely unaware of what was going to happen you know I was just like just going to a yoga class you know and I had I had gone to a couple of these Kundalini Yoga classes before and and I
Just like there was it was I don’t even know I mean objectively hour and a half long right but there was one of these Cannonball breaths where I just like literally blasted off out of my brain like just like off of the planet off of
The like in space just like out of this out of the three dimensions I was in fourth dimensional space like it was like whoo right and like I remembered my body over there but then like somehow I could like still hear what she was saying and like my I could see my body
Continuing to do the practice but like mentally I was just like like like exploring timelines like I met uh different versions of my wife in different time lines I met different versions of my children I experienced full day and night cycles like it was insane it was absolutely insane and then
You I remember I was like going jumping jumping jumping and just completely taken over by this experience and when the gongs start she started playing the gongs at the end of the class and I could I could hear her calling me back
To my body I was like no no no no no no no no no no there’s so much here there’s so much here I got to figure this out and then and then all of a sudden I was in my body and I just like woke up in
This class and I’m looking around at the other people there’s maybe like 10 people in this class and this Guru uh Guru Nishan in Chicago um and I just looking I was like did you guys what yeah did you guys just experience that because I I but I was still a rational
Participating member of society at that time yeah you my my first startup had just raised uh our first big round you know uh we just raised or we just hired a bunch of people people um and I had responsibilities you know so I just like I remember riding the subway home in
Chicago and I was just like whoa wow and I was like I remember like riding like ferociously into my Evernote at the time just like oh my God oh my God what is all this stuff you know and I just had no training I had no vocabulary I didn’t know this idea of
The janas I didn’t know this history of the cosmology of yoga like I was just like I had my only experience with such a thing was taking acid in MDMA at the same time at a music festival when I was you 22 right and responsibly respons responsible dosages responsible
Dosages but but ultimately like it was yeah and this this trip was harder just this oxygen induced meditate this trip was the hardest trip of my life and that’s when I got real serious I was like I need to dedicate my life to studying this and figuring this out and
Um unlocking it you know cuz cuz it wasn’t just fun like it was peace it was Joy it was so much Creative Energy packed into this hour and a half and it like yeah I paid 20 bucks to go to this yoga class but I figured if I learn how
To do this I can do this for free yeah like that’s Freedom yeah that’s freedom right Financial Freedom is a lie all right there there’s no there’s no it’s called golden handcuffs right it’s like we’ll make the we’ll make the jail really nice for you and give you little
Golden pillows give you a little golden Netflix account right it’s not free right freedom is just sitting on the floor of a shack with no windows no air conditioning and breathing yourself into the most joy that anyone has ever been able to describe ever and it’s still
Doesn’t hit the mark all the books that have been written about this stuff all the music that’s been made about it it still doesn’t compare to how it feels he that’s amazing um ah man it’s beautiful yeah I know you had two there’s a question I want to ask
You about when you experienced shooting off what that was we’ll come back to that like who was experiencing that you say I experienced that okay what was that i’ I’d like to come back there and really feel out around there I know that you had two experiences one with yoga
And one with psychedelics mhm where you saw a shadow you saw a shadow and for those watching um I’m using my phone today um not being rude I saw a shadow this shadow shadow was pulling me off a timeline the other people in my life were trying to save
Me but I dragged them all down the other experience where you saw the shadow again I saw my face melting from my skull as my eye socket came out I saw the shadow again I realized that the shadow was the hunger it was the ambition it was the endless loop that I
Would always be trapped in and there’s so much you learn about self-hatred and how that kind of manifests with relationships I’m very very curious what led up to these two experiences how did you get to these experiences and then from these pivotal moments how has life unfolded how has life changed and how
Have they informed decisions and everything moving forward straight to the straight to the most intense question yeah yeah so I think this Shadow is something that everyone on the spiritual path is contending with uh it’s not a unique um observation that I had and you know like
Everyone from from Carl Yung uh studying these and trying to put a science around it to uh the shamans that are working with your inner demons um everyone is dealing with this stuff and I guess my personal interpretation of my shadow was uh very much informed
By my upbringing by a Chinese tiger mom like I really really loved achieving I was rewarded for being a straight A student I was you know unlike most I think my mom really did it right like she didn’t punish me for not getting straight A’s but she would
Reward me extravagantly for Straight A’s right like it was like Christmas every time I got a report card right but no but I never got allowance okay right I never got paid for just being normal right but if I was extravagantly good if I was the best then I was extravagantly
Rewarded right and that was my my like internal thought Loop about approaching anything in life um whether it was to go to a party or attend a meeting or to pursue a particular romantic partner there was always this undercurrent of like extravagant achievement and um if that wasn’t there I was
Miserable I was miserable I was a slave to this hunger and you know a slave for that validation right and this is you know one of the the you know the good side of being raised by a tiger mom is that you try really hard to do your best
You know the bad side of the tiger mom is that being raised by this tiger mom is that there’s almost a neuroticism about it like and whenever you’re behaving in an neotic way you’re capable of doing inhuman things right inhuman productivity which is people talk about
In a positive way but inhuman um things to your friends to your your employees to you know like um you one of the main thesis of my book is about business PTSD right how how that uh the Neuroscience shows uh the the damage to your brain that you
Experience under an acute moment of backstabbing or betrayal in a business setting right the brain actually doesn’t and specifically this part of the brain called the amydala it’s the source of your fight ORF flight response um is the part of your brain that when you sense fear it’s it begins the
Hormonal release of cortisol right so the source of cortisol is your glands but what activates the glands is your amydala right and so when you’re experiencing one of these acute events in a business setting in a personal setting uh you know divorce breakup whatever the amydala just like there’s
So much activity in the amca that is like short circuits right and this um um uh fight ORF flight response can just like you know what do you do in a fight or flight like you kill or abandon and these are not behaviors that um are good for anybody else in your
Life right and so if you’re in if you’re habitually putting yourself in this environment of having your amydala short circuited then you will habitually do you you have these erotic Reactions where you are destroying people well you maybe you’re not murdering someone maybe you’re not you know beating someone
Physically with your fists but you’re verbally abusive yeah spiritually abusive and sometimes the person that you’re abusing loves you and remembers when you were better and stays and suffers the abuse and you’re just in your [ __ ] just like oh my God like God this thing is
Happening at work and [ __ ] you you know your partner doesn’t deserve that your kids don’t deserve that right but we have this kind of uh false mentality around it’s not personal it’s just business and because of this phrase because of this incorrect understanding of the human biosystem right we have inadvertently
Created a world uh where Psychopathic behavior is commonplace where this these neurotic responses are excusable as long as you don’t physically kill someone or physically assault someone right and uh this has led to you know just I from my point of view uh in my short career I had um a
Couple of traumatic business episodes you know like this this company that I was working on this company that I mentioned uh from this story November 2015 my first jna right like in that trip you know I explained kind of like the fun side of it um I didn’t think you
Were going to ask about the shadow side but yeah the the end of that Tri the reason why I was so upset that the gongs were hitting and I was being forced back into my body is because I had just started exploring the timeline that had
The Shadow and I was like what is this thing what is this thing oh no you know and uh that Acid Trip where I saw my face melting off my face and the mirror was uh my birthday was March March 2016 and what was happening between
November 15 and March 2016 uh was my first co-founder separation um we just raised some money we had just hired these like really big shot people you know this guy that was a former private Equity guy so he was much older than us my co-founder and I were
Both 25 we hired this 30-year-old private Equity guy and this 34 year-old Chief Architect director of engineering and basically uh aoup was architect Ed and I was suddenly uh betrayed by one of my best friends uh presumably due to my ineptitude as a CEO which is you know probably true I
Was 25 I didn’t have any like you know proper business experience I was an engineer I didn’t study sales marketing management any of these things and um given my natural inclination towards introversion I probably did did say some things that were mean or rude or uh you know stepping over people’s emotions
Just CU I didn’t have that sensitivity I hadn’t cultivated that skill and I I after my you know after all this work and after all this research after all this knowledge now I know I I I actually had a a small amydala I actually did I actually did and I know
That because I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and a typical issue with ADHD Asbergers autism spect disorder is like there is a dysfunction of the amydala region and the lyic system at large the lyic system is sort of like uh there’s a lot of modules in the brain that kind of
Like all come up to uh your ability to predict Pleasure and Pain your ability to uh predict fear your ability to like handle these things it’s like the deepest part of your brain that all of your sensory inputs go straight into right like visual information from your eyes audible information from your ears
Um Al Factory information from your smell right taste like all these things go straight into the lyic system the lyic system processes it and then sends instructions to the rest of the brain move you know activate prefrontal cortex think about this rationally right and so by the time you’re actually
Aware that you’re upset but the the part of your brain that thinks is the prefrontal cortex this this fat part in the front and by the time the part of you that is you uh is aw where that you’re angry it’s like you like the prefrontal cortex is sensing the
Cortisol the cortisol that was created by another part of the brain and these two parts of the brain they don’t talk to each other there’s no hookup right there’s no communication right and so this uh when it comes to you I I feel like I’m going on these
Like big tangents but back back to the back to the hunger I saw it after I won that co-founder battle the the papers were uh the signed separation documents were delivered at 5:30 p.m. on March 18th 20 16 I think yeah this was a Friday I had planned a
Big birthday party at my apartment in Boston and um the Chief Architect uh he and I like when when the private Equity guy and my co-founder kind of like wanted to do this thing the Chief Architect and I were kind of on the other side of it and he came over over
To my apartment and was like you know like yeah let’s celebrate like we got the company woo and I was just like I remember making drinks for us and I was like yeah we got the company but what cost cuz we were you know this
This guy that was my coat I mean we really like we met the week before freshman year of University you know we were friends all through college we were friends for year you know like we’re at this point we had been friends for seven years and you we spoke every day about
The company about life about each other’s families about each other’s girlfriends about what we wanted to do in life and what how we wanted to grow together and how you know and I was just like like after the things that we said to each other in this past month I mean
I still haven’t spoken to him and I I often uh miss him uh and you after all this training with compassion and forgiveness I totally and humility right we talked about the joy of humility uh I see uh the bad things that I did to threaten our relationship that prompted
His you know I don’t think he would use the word betrayal but in my from my point of view at that time it was an absolute betrayal of our relationship of our the thing that we built together um but you know I was partially the bad guy
And and then and then I won the battle and all the investors were super happy they were like we wanted you to win that’s we backed you you know and all the customers were like oh well I guess the customers didn’t really know but like um yeah people don’t talk about
That people don’t talk about uh even when it comes to Soldier PTSD nobody you know I mean maybe they talk about it in in PTSD like groups you know but on in terms of like the cultural Zeitgeist around PTSD we don’t talk about winers PTSD enough like how bad it feels to
Hurt another person and then be congratulated for it man so you see that and you notice that in yourself you know that so then so then the party starts so so I’m having this really intense thought as we’re making the drinks and then more people start showing up more people start showing up
It’s it’s a proper Banger you know we’re having a good time you know we’re like you know I don’t know we’re like 26 years old right with like a you know Bank full of cash and a bunch of you know cool smart friends in a metropolitan City and uh so I went to
University in Boston as well and uh uh one of my um uh underlings well not underling but like we went to undergrad together he was a few years younger than me uh we played uh football together um they came over and they were like we brought you a birthday present and I was
Like great what is it thank you you know they’re like it’s acid and I was like what we can’t do acid right now there’s a big party happening like we’re going to go crazy and he was like oh but we’ve never done it before and we we want to
Do it with you yeah want to do with you and I was like huh well maybe another time but like hold on to it and then the party gets to a certain point where it just got a little bit you know Rowdy and I was like yo man I don’t want like this
Is a nice apartment like I don’t want these like you know college age and slightly above to just be like you know throwing down in my on my nice furniture so I decided you know what yeah let’s get let’s end the party and let’s have ourselves a little
Acid night right and so like we kicked everyone out except the three of us and then we just had a grand old time you know and I like explained to them what they were going to experience and how long the experience was going to be the
Same way that I was instructed by an older guy from our Fraternity in college is like you know like how to be safe yeah like I actually didn’t know that the general population was so unsafe with drugs because my on-ramp was so like like the guy that was our you know
Shaman he never called himself a shaman but he was uh a double degree in um uh what was it nuclear engineering and biomedical engineering at MIT not a double major double degree like this guy was like you know they talk about like wizards they about like [ __ ] like
Magicians that go to MIT like I’m just like a normal like averagely smart guy that like barely made it in but this guy magician magician yeah right like he and and his his his main asset of course was his brain yeah and he knew that his main
Asset was his brain and he knew enough about the brain from doing you know biomedical engineering to do Premed like he knew and cared about his brain and he’s the one that taught us freshman sophomores you know whatever how to think about your relationship with psychedelics how to think about your
Relationship with these different types of drugs which drugs you can safely mix and what dosage is and like it’s a very personalized experience like you figure out what works for you right don’t do things that don’t work for you if you’re especially if you’re in a party setting
If it’s it’s owns safe you know and it wasn’t until I got into the real world and started partying with people from other PE places I was like oh my you guys like you guys are sending yourself into psychosis you know um but you know night
Was very safe it was very cool it was very um but yeah I just you know I got up after like laughing for like an hour stream like my face was hurting you know I was like I got to go to the bathroom guys Jesus like chill you know chill
With the jokes you know cuz cuz they’re they’re just like you know like Rosen cranon Gilden ster in here just like freaking hilarious guys and I go to the bathroom and you know they always say when you’re on psychedelic don’t look in the mirror right it’s like a well-known
Thing so don’t look in the mirror and I’m washing my hands I looked in the mirror just for a second and I just like saw I was like you know and and be yeah it was definitely because I had just experienced this whole you know relationship trauma let’s call it what
It is I lost my best friend it’s relationship trauma um in business they talk about when you get into uh a partnership with someone it’s like a marriage yes right we just got divorced yeah and I lost a best friend right so I’m dealing and but but you know like
Everyone’s tell my lawyer is telling me my investors are telling me everyone it’s not personal it’s just business get back to work yeah it’s fine it’s fine shrug it off you’re fine you’re fine and I’m looking at myself and I see how far I went to protect what I thought was
Mine uh how mean I was it was the meanest I’d ever been in my life yeah and that’s when it all kind of like the constellation came to me as like this Shadow my personal Shadow was this hunger this hunger that was fueled by achievement this hunger that was uh you
Know causing me to do things that I I knew were wrong but I did them and I Justified them and I got a pass from the people that were around me and uh this is the seed kernel of what I talk about as business PTSD in the book right I’m
I’m 26 at this point my first little hit right but when you think about the guys that have been in the game for a long time like the the S&P 500 CEOs think about how much backstabbing and betrayal they had to go through to get into that
Chair or they had to do it themselves right there’s a big difference between wealth creation and wealth consolidation right you can create a billion dollars of value for the company for the shareholders it’s a collective right there’s by the time of a company becomes a unicorn there’s at least 200
300 people involved right very rarely do you have like a less than 100 person unicorn right when you count the investors the employees the founders the customers everybody like all these people they make it like a billion dollar of value but in order for one person to end up with a billion
Dollars somebody in that group of 200 people has to take it from everyone else whether it’s on legal letterhead firing the co-founders whether it’s activist investing by private Equity groups whether it’s you know like you know every industry you can say it’s like oh it’s a necessary part of the
Economy every industry has a few Psychopaths right and they got that way by doing these little actions that they knew were wrong on a human level but it’s not illegal I have a fiduciary responsibility to do this and they hide behind these justifications and what happens uh you
Know I believed at the time was was a was a spiritual death uh but after looking at all the research and working with the neuroscientists that I’ve worked with and experiencing sort of in deep meditation States like the actual kind of like the the physiological nature of these these emotions and how manifest
And how they feel when you activate them uh yeah no it’s just like every time you do one of these actions you shortcircuit the amydala and over time that part of the brain becomes small or dysfunctional and atrophies the same way that if you
Break your arm you put it in a cast you get off the cast in a few months this arm’s perfectly fine this arm is skinny as a stick it’s atrophy right and this is the the foundational uh truth truth that has been uh discovered with neuroplasticity is that through
Repetition you can increase neural density of certain regions of the brain through the lack of repetition through the stopping of doing certain things you decrease blood flow to those regions of the brain to the point that they just don’t even get blood flow anymore right
And um the basically a plus b equals c it’s like oh my gosh like these guys that are sitting in these chairs the S&P 500 CEOs the uh the the the the the heads of Industries the you know I don’t want to name any particular names but you know like everyone that’s listening
To this will understand whatever industry they’re in they can think of like somebody that’s at the top that behaves in a tyrannical uh awful way and it’s not because they’re a bad person or well they are a bad person now but but they didn’t start that way yeah they
Didn’t start that way they just got betrayed and backstabbed and exiled by so many people on the way to where they are that they don’t feel it’s not that they don’t feel it’s that they don’t have the the the physical Hardware in the brain anymore to have the
Capacity to comprehend you know like people often in U romantic arguments they’ll say like just see it from my side just see it from my side you know we here on the ground floor in normal people land we’re looking at these Fortune 500 CEOs and we’re saying how
Could you implement such policies that destroy the environment so egregiously and then when some activist group figures it out they spend billions of dollars on a cover up how could you do these things they don’t [ __ ] care because they’re so atrophied in the amydala region the temporo parietal Junction the anterior singulate cortex
There’s about seven major regions of the brain that I describe in my book in detail um that conveniently can be modulated by specific meditation practices we call them neuroplastic workouts you know just to to make it separation cuz most meditation doesn’t do this most forms of meditation that people practice have
Zero neuroplastic Effect they will reduce your cortisol levels they will you know chill you out but in terms of targeting specific regions of the brain for growth these specific regions that when small or dysfunctional give you anxiety depression PTSD addiction right it’s it’s just like it’s it’s it’s
It’s clear it’s like these guys have been and and women have these Executives have been so traumatized over the course of their business life and then told it wasn’t personal it’s just business telling them themselves this false narrative even though they know that something is wrong and it’s just undiagnosed untreated
PTSD it’s as simple as that and well I mean maybe it’s a little more complicated but uh my hypothesis is that if we were to uh introduce this narrative into the cultural Zeitgeist and these 500 people pursued neuroplastic training to grow these regions of the brain then they would
Make completely different choices in their companies and you know I’m not going to save the world because I’m just a guy that you know did some research and like does his little breathing thing and like I’m not I don’t control a billion dollar budget I don’t employ millions of people
But they do m you change one brain of one of these 500 companies big Domino big dominoes big Dominos and that’s that I think is is how we begin the new era of compassionate leadership we all know that Instagram is the new business card it is your portal to the world and is
The world’s portal to you the way things are going if you’re not online you’re going to be left behind over the next few years so whether it’s for networking your business or even relationships your Instagram says everything about how seriously you’re taking yourself and your work it’s where you invite people
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Of one and a key person of influence in your specific Niche we optimize your socials to gain attention and then convert that attention into paying clients and we focus on creating a value driven brand that doesn’t rely on pushy sales techniques so it’s for long-term creators playing long-term games you
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People are tired of Psychopathic leadership there’s too much information uh and the information War itself right fake news all right um you know intelligence agencies like nobody knows what’s real anymore but we have so much information we have so much information and nobody knows what’s real in the past we had less information
And we knew that some things were real yeah right people were more peaceful yeah now we’re just so stressed out because we have so much information we have to sift through all of it and the reason part of the reason why there’s so much information is because these people with
Atrophied amigdalas are trying to convince us of believing that they’re not you know doing the wrong thing when they themselves know that they’re doing the wrong thing it’s just been been been years of being stuck in this spot so a huge thing from listening to that amazing you know the story and your
Hypothesis separation it seems that the running theme between all of this even like the areas of the brain and the behaviors how they’re manifesting is separation what is the opposite of that non-separation naration and the the the Buddhists and yogis in the in the ancient scriptures they talk about this
Nonseparation ation uh the yin and yang symbol in fact is the the symbol of non-separation M uh but even itself it has a boundary around the edge has a line down the middle the dark spot has a white hole right the white spot has a dark hole right there it’s there’s
Seemingly separation within the space but what the symbol the reason why that line in the middle is curved is because it can be you know the yin part can be completely dominating the the line can go all the way to that side the young part can be completely dominated and go
To that spot right the line is constantly in motion that’s what’s meant by the curve right um H and we want to see that separation because we have these dualistic Minds uh when you can through this experi I mean it’s it’s impos like there’s there there’s clearly
A separation between this glass and this water clearly what are you talking about nonpar there’s clearly a separation between you and I this air in between us the skin that’s holding our our bag of bones together there’s clearly said what are you talking about you crazy person
But if you breathe in this way for this amount of time you’re going to feel it and that infiniteness that infinite joy that infinite compassion that infinite like feeling where you are everything I am all all is I like all these things that these crazy hippies are talking about
They’re just trying to put words to this crazy thing that they felt M and and if people could feel this uh they would know it they would know what non-separation is I know I’m not enlightened I have not hit Nirvana I’m still very much like got a long way to
Go on my path but I have felt non-separation and If Ever I go too many days without feeling that non-separation I sit myself down time block two hours mhm yeah no coffee no drinks no um anything no noises right no music no no no no no high hats no kick
Drums and I experience that non-separation and you know the side benefit is I come out of it with Incredible Creative Energy and I make something that manages to sustain my life but uh the you know that’s just even that and we talk about Creative Energy we talk about intellectual
Powerhouse we talk about five times more productivity like even that is like whatever side benefits yeah right because the re this benefit uh this amazing feeling of non-separation makes you capable of superhuman compassion it makes you capable of superhuman peace of mind and you and that was Buddha’s game right
It’s like you know money sex power you can have all that have it I got peace of mind I’m chilling bro I’m chilling it’s fine it’s fine yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but now we’ve gotten to a point where the people that are governed
By what what Buddha said with the three fundamental sufferings greed anger and ignorance uh we’ve gotten to the point where the technology is so great that a single greedy person can mess up my life experience yeah a single angry person can mess up my life experience a single ignorant experience can actually intrude
On my day-to-day experience of life even hiding out here on this beautiful Island right the the the the plastic trash mountain right the gasoline that’s just like floating on the water between all the Indonesian Islands right like it’s just like come on leave me alone leave me alone I figured out how
To be happy leave me alone right it doesn’t work anymore it doesn’t work anymore and so now the Buddhists and the yogis that uh you know their Pursuit is ultimately selfish M I would say that my Pursuit was my selfish desire for Peace of Mind MH but now we have to activate
Yeah now we have to activate because the world run by greed anger and ignorance has just become too powerful and unless we treat this mental illness uh we’re all lost and you know it’s it’s it’s thankfully there’s a convenient solution it’s not Xanax not it’s not Xanax it’s not iasco
Yeah right it’s not uh mushrooms it’s not acid it’s not you know uh you know these I don’t know like week-long transformational Retreats no it’s it’s you repeat this habit you you develop this habit by repeating this particular exercise every day for a certain number of days for a certain
Amount of minutes right and what the science has shown and what this uh you know my my my the the sort of the design how how we’ve engineered this this Sonic acupuncture program is Sonic acupuncture Sonic acupuncture because the book is called don’t punk out acupuncture um
Nice uh yeah we’re inducing flow States using sound waves right like a musical key every musical key has a particular emotional quality to it yes right and so the tracks that we’ve engineered for this guided meditation album uh each song so like the the eight pillars of track is
In a joyful determined key G major right and the track that’s dealing with the six anxieties is a minor loneliness morose right sadness right and it’s just just on that the just emotional key structure like the pattern of chord progressions will get you to feel a certain emotion yes and then layered on
Top of that are you know what they call the Solio frequencies these these uh uh Solio is the term that they used with these these Christian Gnostic monks you know when they were constructing the first big organs right people would go to Sunday school and you would sit there
And you’d be listening to the music specific chord progressions yeah we’re not just we’re not just hanging out right these ancient Mystics figured out that when you get the vibrations big enough and you’re going into this room and you’re sitting there having the assault of these vibrations and these
Specific patterns it induces a flow State yes all right so we induce the flow state with these frequencies underneath the song right the song is written in this musical key that let that pushes you into this emotional state the drums come in to guide the specific yoga pranayama right so this
Breathing pattern that we did at the beginning all right exhale squeeze squeeze squeeze inhale right and then over the top of that there’s the lyrics which are simply the Mantra the joy of changing my perspective the joy of changing my perspective the joy of changing my perspective the joy of humility the joy
Of humility the joy of humility right and uh you know all these things taken together all you have to do is listen to this track and breathe along to it I we we really try to remove all the friction possible you don’t have to you know be
In a a yoga asham in Bali right you can be sitting on an airplane listening to the track and breathing along with the drums and you’ll get the neuroplastic benefit right all it takes right 10 minutes a day for 40 days and you can the with Professor uh Richard
Davidson from the University of Madison Wisconsin right like the hero of don’t punk out right he’s the like it was his Le watching his lecture is the one that set me on this path I saw his uh lecture on YouTube in 2013 and I was like no way no no [ __ ]
Really right they used uh basically fmri scat and like all this technology that they were using to study traumatic brain injuries and he had the idea like yeah let’s let’s study rather than just extremely negative uh behavioral qualities that might be governed by uh neurological dysfunction let’s study extremely
Positive human qualities and if there’s any neurological basis for these extremely positive qualities right so he scanned the brains of these yogis and Buddhists and found that they have five times larger amygdalas than normal people not larger but like denser same size but more neurons so like much
Denser they had uh much denser temporal parietal Junctions temporal parietal Junction is uh implicated in the mind’s ability to to visualize what the physical body looks like outside of itself right and when you hyperd develop the temporal parietal Junction the metaphysical body can see what it looks
Like outside of itself you never see things from my perspective it’s it’s because they have an atrophy temporal parietal Junction uh the main uh atrophy point in uh ADHD kids in neurod Divergence is the anterior singular cortex this is the part of the brain that uh is responsible for delayed
Gratification it’s like if I do this thing that I don’t like I’m going to get this you positive benefit down the road people that work out have larger anterior singular cortices than people that don’t work out this is just like Neuroscience I’m not talking about like
Life pH opy I’m not talking about diet I’m just talking about people that do things that they don’t want to do in the interest of having a better life because they’ve been convinced that that is true they have larger anterior singular cortices right and and and these
Uh yeah and so so I I kind of feel like I’m going going going on a tangent yeah like bring us bring us back to bring us back somewhere this is a this is like EX well it is exercise exercise it’s exercise just as you can train your muscles you
Can train you can grow certain parts of your mind through this exercise and and for a vocabulary point I make it a big point about this is the brain yes the brain is the hardware okay your beliefs are the software the mind is the firmware okay right the mind is like the connection
Between the brain and your beliefs yes right and so like I feel like so much of psychology work is about belief systems you know so much of religion is like I believe in this thing and you believe in that thing that’s why we’re different right the quality of our beliefs changes
You know we have we have we’re not like-minded people right but by bringing it down to the brain level we’re all humans we all have a brain all of our brains have the same parts and this is a hardware upgrade this is a hardware upgrade that changes your mind which
Then manifests in different beliefs I’m not convincing you to believe anything different yeah in fact every single spiritual practice around the world through thousands of years of experimentation has come to some sort of solo contemplative practice the yogis have their meditation the the Chinese daoists have their form of chigong in
Meditation um the Sufi the Sufi Brotherhood and the mystics in the Islamic religion have their form of solo contemplation uh the Christians have prayer the Jew the Jewish religion has you know prayer as well and it’s like every the voodo right the the shaman right everybody has figured
Out if I sit by myself and I think about this thing long enough I’ll be a better person I’ll be a holy person right now what you know David Professor Davidson and his team have figured out is that okay here’s the the parts list yeah right that supports this thing that
Everyone has been talking about yeah these extremely positive human qualities compassion peace of mind you know like what’s the opposite of greed anger and ignorance is generosity compassion wisdom amazing man right so two points and then I want to ask about music and I want to ask about the
Role that that you said you’ve come back to music you come back to your Artistry first off with the separation um one of my favorite ideas to think about if you are feeling separate try and go for a walk without the path you start to realize that you’re connected to everything around
You go can’t go for a walk without the path the path can’t be there without the forest you know and you start to realize that your concept of oh I’m going for a walk can’t exist without all of the things that are part of you secondly have you read the Moses
Code I haven’t I haven’t but it sounds like something I would like you would absolutely dive head first into this so basically what they’ve um done I’m not going to remember the names but they’ve taken um ancient Hebrew mhm and the word God in Hebrew they’ve managed to
Translate that to kind of the musical frequencies of the sound of God so they’ve managed to recreate the sound of God from um ancient Hebrew which I think is very much in line absolutely with um what you’re doing so so yeah something that I’m still diving into and even
Trying to wrap my head around but there’s meditations so they’ve measured the hurts measured the hurts and go producing the frequency of God based on you go yeah that’s Pro that’s probably it’s it is probably that work that led to what they’re calling the salval frequencies ah yeah that’s the ancestor
Yeah but but I mean it no no no this the the the the musical frequencies of the word God yes I think led to the the chord progression in the orans right let like the the sound bows everyone in B loves a good sound healing right the the
Diameter of those bowls was experimented with over thousands of years yes if the bowl is too big it doesn’t quite feel that good if the Bowl’s too small it doesn’t feel like but the Bowl’s just right ah same thing with the Chinese ah same thing with the Chinese gongs yes
Right the gongs like you can’t have just like a randomly sized gong it has to be a spefic specific diameter so that when you hit it and then you have another one that’s specifically sized right so I really believe that um what they’re talking about in the
Moses code and granted I’m I’m going to read this book because this is exactly the the line that I’m working in now uh you know what started out as just you me doing a bunch of breathing exercises has actually turned into uh the recognition the Insight that the best medit ations I
Had we were you by myself while listening to a guided meditation song not a spoken word guided meditation but there were some Kundalini yogis uh that made some beautiful beautiful song like one of them is satatam Kar she’s like she’s still alive she’s still touring um
Hope to meet her one day um but she like her voice like carried me through some of the darkest times of my life right just because I was able to like let go of the the rot like like like it’s it’s tough like to sit there for 11 minutes in a room by
Yourself just like in perfect meditation pose you know it’s tough right but you you throw this song on the speaker and the frequencies and like the voice and like the it’s just like it just carries you into such a magical place and uh uh you know there like I I do believe that
Music today uh pop music rap music EDM uh whatever it’s been reduced to entertainment yes we hear it and it still feels good right it feels good but I really the thing that music is medicinal the original design uh or rather like the original like intention
Of music was to be medicinal right and now we just you know do it while we popping mollies you know ah well this is why people so yeah there’s a few memes that float around and there’s truth in them but maybe they’re not always pieced together but I think what the work
You’re doing really pieces a lot of these things together so I’ll throw out a couple of things and um ask you about um yeah your relationship with music moving forward so one meme music is the answer you hear this all at the time music is the answer there’s always a
Ringing truth to that now we’ll dive into maybe why frequencies and all of this whether that maybe proves that true yeah John Lennon said that you know everyone is a musician but it’s only those who are brave enough to kind of pursue it who you know it’s something
Along those lines I believe that one for sure it’s so it’s this idea of music kind of aligning us with something special our truist nature perhaps tolkin and CS Lewis um both ended up Christians um but also deep study of the ult and you can
See that in their work like you look at their work like right yeah yeah yeah absolutely token’s Middle Earth that he created MH was created his whole you theology behind it the Angels or whatever they were called Vala I think he called them they sung Middle Earth into
Creation they sung it into creation it was a Harmony it was a song evil came into that world because it was Discord so there was a Valor or an angel or whatever who in disharmony with the song of the rest of the Angels whatever you want to call it that’s what
Brought the disharmony the disease into that world okay and hardened it so we started with our vibrations that we were putting out the create sound of creation okay for me that kind of all fits in this music is the answer that we’re all musicians at heart we’re all aligning
You know with with vibrations we kind of inherently know that we’re vibrations we say you’ve got a good vibe you’ve got a bad Vibe yeah so how has your you you’ve gone from kind of this hardened world this traumatic world of startups um Silicon Valley all of
This now you’re kind of returning to sort of artistry to expression through music how has that been what’s that looking like how do you feel I feel great I feel amazing uh um and If Ever I don’t feel great now I pump out of track you know and
It’s like you know there was a when I started learning music production I mean like literally like you know like learning the tool of the doll right the digital audio workstation well you want Ableton or logic I have Ableton but I have actually done a lot of work to have
My workflow completely on the phone H cool yeah and so everything except the most intense final stages of mixing and mastering I can do on my phone that’s awesome yeah and that means I can do it anywhere I can do it in the taxi on the
Way from you know ubu to changu I can do it while sitting in a doctor’s office I can do it anywhere um and I think a lot of that work and that research was fueled by my computer PTSD the fact that I spent you know the
First 10 years of my career just like you know software you know emails productivity keyboard shortcuts you and so I just I just didn’t want to be on my computer you know um but yeah it’s amazing what uh these uh these app developers have done is that they and of course the hardware
The hardware of these phones is so powerful that um you know the plugins that you can get on your computer for Ableton that cost $100 $200 some cases you know they’re so expensive that people just pirate them right like you can get on the app store for 10 bucks
Same studio quality professional Q same studio quality compressor $8.99 instead of you know 100 bucks right so uh for me it was like partially a uh an engineering challenge to be on the phone workflow but um we’re getting off topic you’re saying the move from
Tech uh into music yeah I I feel great and like in my you know like as I was watching YouTube videos and looking for like producer mentors um one of the big big I think I guess like producers that has a lot of educational content out there is
Timberland and timen says this phrase pretty often in his interviews where he talks about like he had this dip in his career uh where he believed at some point like he had all the hits he had Justin Timberlake he had Missy Elliott he had all the stuff going on and he
Just got to this point where he believed that he was bigger than the music that it was timbo’s beat like timbo’s beat would drive music and then some younger producers came up and just like took his throne and he was like oh F what yeah what right and and and somewhere in that
Interview he always talks about how like when he was just starting out he you know was broke you know this like you know kid from black kid from Virginia you know like nothing didn’t have anything going on but because he had this music he felt
Rich like he could throw down a beat get a room dancing and that’s wealth right there’s there’s a there’s um you know earlier we were talking about kind of Financial Freedom is a is a lie because golden handcuffs right but like if you can just like from your voice make someone
Feel uh you there’s this poet annias nin uh she says that um there are there are few things that can f the ineffable like the H uh the human Spirit lifted in song uh the first Cry of a child and there’s a kind of a list I can’t remember all of
Them but like that the human Spirit lifted in song and effing the ineffable it’s like something that I always come down to with respect to my relationship with music is that um I used to when I was in that excuse me in that hunger phase in that achievement Tech money VCS raise
Raise raise big big dollar amount dollar amount dollar amount uh there were times when you feel inadequate when you feel like my friend is like raising more money than me my friend has a better operating company than me like this thing and that thing and it’s just like
Very difficult to find solace in any aspect of that work but in music yeah just 1561 simple chord progression you’re just like oh you know 1356 you’re like a you know is like the the patterns are there you know and you just play them and you feel
Great and so I think that the the Avenue toward um self sothing is a lot easier with a little bit of basic uh music theory knowledge um yeah that’s really interesting yeah right like self soothing you know that’s fundamentally that’s it right and I think the reason
Why music is the answer is so uh resonates so strongly I mean even it’s even in the language yeah resonates it resonates right is that when people are sad they listen to sad songs and if the song is well constructed then the feeling is like I’m not
Alone I like I had this thought while on a mushroom trip in college I was listening to music with some friends that and at this point I I I had not studied music production whatsoever uh when I was a child I uh like a good son of a Chinese tiger mom played the
Violin and I was shredding on the violin like I was in the Youth philarmonic Orchestra you know first stand uh just like you know doing the whole thing and practicing you know enjoying it but um that I I stopped playing the violin when I was 15 you know I had I haven’t I
Still haven’t touched my violin even in my music days it’s like kind of I’m kind of scared you know cuz it’s like there is so much manual dexterity that is required you know like the calluses in the fingers like the the the positioning of the wrist you know um that I’m just
Like kind of intimidated about getting back into it but uh in college listening to some music while uh in one of the and and that’s what mushrooms and assid do is they put you into these highly malleable neuroplastic States they open the mind’s channels you know I I I like
To talk about the analogy like the mind is an ocean of activity and in the ocean there are discrete currents grooves that where the where the water moves faster than in other places of the water uh you know you see this in the movie Finding Nemo right when they’re like surfing
With the turtles you know in the currents right what uh psychedelics do in proper dosages is it makes everything in your brain a current so you can take a highway from like all these different ideas that were never connected did but you can see all the ideas connecting and
I was listening to music and I was like wow what must have been like for this musician to make this song in order to induce this feeling in me and then I just you very naively started thinking about the musical process and I was like
You know I bet you you know artists are kind of like perfectionistic people you know and they probably had this idea they probably had this emotion and they wanted to communicate this idea mhm and being a perfectionist they wouldn’t release it until the idea was properly communicated until when they listen it
Back into their headphones or play it back to themselves on the monitors that it makes them feel externally the thing that they felt before they even sat down to play it right and and you don’t release the song until it has until it hits that that’s what we call making it
Slap yes making it slap is the technical term yeah you know if it doesn’t slat like you know like I I I made a song and I uh showed it I played it for my wife like a couple weeks ago and I like I put the headphones on I was like really excited
About it and like I just arranged it and I put the headphones on her and I’m watching the the track play and I’m watching her like physical body um and the drop comes and there’s no movement and I’m just like [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] you know and uh I was like
Give me the headphones and she’s like no no I’m listening I’m listening I was like give me the headphones and she’s like why why’d you take the headphones it doesn’t slap it doesn’t slap and she’s like no I think it’s got a lot of potential you know is being a
Lovely supportive lovely supportive partner and I’m just like baby like when the song slaps you can’t help but Bob you know you can’t help but Bob your head you can’t help but move your shoulders you can’t help but get in the groove right and you know that only just
Confirmed the thing that I naively thought in this uh in this uh University Time Mushroom trip was like man the thing that they’re imagining this this this this emotion that they’re trying to manifest through the software into a a you know a processing chain that then comes out of my
Speakers I through this MP3 file and makes me feel this way right like there’s got to be some part of the brain and at the time I was helping my my my ex-girlfriend uh study for the mcats right and so I I had some like very basic you know brain function structure
Knowledge just by like you know doing flashcards with her that you know the auditory information or audio information goes in the ear you know we have these like three little bones that vibrate it goes into the ear canal straight into the temporal lobe the temporal Lo that’s like the kind of the
Part of the brain that’s the lowest part that uh kind of holds the like the lizard brain and like people kind of colloquially refer to as like the oldest part of the brain but um you know that that and I I I didn’t know enough but I I hypothesized at that
Moment I was like there must be a part of the brain that gets stimulated when the ear bones vibrate and the ear canal and sound waves travel into the ear canal it hits this part of the brain to create satisfaction and this musician that made this song
That wanted it to sound like this and me hearing that song and it sounding like this and feeling that satisfaction like that part of our brains must be the same shape so this is must be the same size and that is on like a neurological level why you don’t feel alone yes why
When you’re feeling brokenhearted when you’re feeling triumphant when you’re feeling like you got to get ready for the big game when you’re feeling like you know like like like I I don’t believe in life after love share make it slap and uh you know like there there
Are just songs that like that that that like levels like what is that even what is that song even about but every time you play that song slaps SL the whole room multi-generationally like the kids are bumping the old people are bumping right and it’s just like this part of
The brain is stimulated in this particular way that’s yeah this is idea of naration nonseparation non separation sometimes you have an idea sometimes an idea gets a hold of you I believe that and what you very much described there was an artist gets a feeling they get
That idea then they need to realize that into their music and there’s that Gap in between until like you said they know when they hit it and they’ve captured that feeling that idea whatever it was they’ve now hardened it into a bit of kind of data I guess if it’s like a
Digital file that you can access at any time and you can experience that emotion that feeling the magic with music I believe so Albert Einstein says imagination is the preview of life’s Coming Attractions now if I watch it’s a good one um you talk about manifestation whatever you talk about creation you
Talk about vibrations you talk about ah music is a medium in which yes it stimulates your brain through through um through vibrations you can close your eyes when you listen to music and you can see things that you’ve never seen before Oh yes yes you can see things
That you’ve never seen before yes so you want to talk about manifestation you want to talk about creation you want to talk about change in the world music is the Answer Man music is the answer music is the answer literally you know I yeah just just to Riff on that I mean
The so I wrote this book uh I start I sat down and started writing it in July 22 and I was done with the first manuscript end of September 2022 just like literally like shut myself off from the internet went to my mom’s house like stayed in my high school bedroom and just
Like granted it was too long and like we’re editing it and it’s like like dealing with the publisher so it’s like great to work with a publisher it’s great to have an editor but um uh ultimately you know if I self published this like 486 page like scientific literature review you know
Maybe people wouldn’t enjoy it right cuz it’s just a little nerdy but ultimately uh when I so like I I emerged from my shell in October and I was in Miami and I had a meeting with one of my mentors this guy uh jay van sharp he runs this
Basically a like a culture consultancy uh there was an article like a full page like like full magazine long for like like he was on the cover and like and they call his uh consulting firm the the McKenzie of cool right and it’s just like he is just
The coolest guy right it’s like you know like heterosexual black guy that wears black nail polish and just like has read all the mythologies and knows all the philosophies and just like no matter who you are and where you from like what socioeconomic level what country like he
Can converse right and not just like small talk like he I have seen this man get people into the most sensitive conversations in just like 10 seconds and like people that would normally not right people that would normally you in environments that you would normally not
Right and so like he just has this ability to and one of his uh mantras is culture is data culture is data it’s not just it’s not just a thing we do it’s a thing we have done and we have done it for so long for so many reasons right
And so I showed him like very very proudly you know like like Jay I wrote a book you know and he’s like all right yeah that makes sense for you I just like this is the cover he’s just like it’s a good looking cover it’s a good looking cover and you
Wrote it yourself and I was like yeah yeah I mean I referenced a lot of science but I wrote it and he was like it’s cool what’s it about and I’m telling him this whole thing about like business PTSD and like it’s not personal it’s just business and
The world’s run by Psychopaths and we got to save the world man he he’s like just you’re hitting me with too much information huh I’m bored and I was like Jay this is the most like I think I’ve stumbled upon like the most important glitch in societal construct and he’s
Like you always had the energy kid yeah but let me tell you something you might have the most important message in the universe but if it doesn’t slap nobody’s listening and I was just like what he’s like so does it slap I was like I was like Jay it’s a
Book book’s don’t slap and he’s like he like took off his sunglasses he’s like the Bible slaps you’re telling you you’re going to you read any page in the Bible every page in the Bible slaps all right it is the best seller of all because it slaps right the Quran
Slaps the Dao Jing slaps yeah yeah right does your book slap and I’m just sitting there we’re like in Winwood you know just like sitting outside Panther Coffee shop and I’m just like [ __ ] man I don’t I don’t think it does and then he’s just like all right figure out
How to make it slap we’ll talk again we’ll talk again and then we just spent the rest of the day talk you know doing other stuff you know hanging out but that really bothered me and so from October you know November went by and I was like editing the book and then
December went by and I was like editing the book and I was just like it was Christmas Eve uh 2022 that I was like I connected the dots between what he said about making it slap what my experience was in terms of my meditation with those guided meditation songs and
How they I mean they didn’t slap they weren’t hard-hitting bangers but the the the human Spirit lifted in song right like the fact that that that uh satam’s voice was able to get me into the place where I was able to actually do these 22-minute meditations every day uh
Without getting bored without getting distracted without getting like the sound waves just like were a container for me to get in into it to stay focused in it and that’s when I realized that like you know all this Neuroscience all this convincing all this you connect all the
Dots nobody cares nobody cares about the dots right because you can connect all the dots but still no one’s going to sit down for 10 minutes a day for 40 days and do this thing right people know that smoking gives you cancer they don’t stop smoking people know that drinking will
Shorten your nervous system to the point that you have shakes but they still don’t stop drinking because smoking slaps yeah people like to smoke it’s a social thing people friendship slaps right and and like reducing everything down to you know this this this this attention like how do you grab
Someone’s attention and make it worthwhile uh as it’s like it all came together on Christmas Eve and I opened up Garage Band on my phone and I was like what do I do you know and I started watching some YouTube tutorials and yeah I just like every day I just
Decided I was like you know I there’s this beautiful interview of uh Ira Glass uh the guy the creator of This American Life the most uh biggest podcast you know d da he’s won a bunch of Emmys uh and he has this interview that I watch completely unrelated to this endeavor with music
But he talks about uh creative work and the reason why people get into creative work is because uh you have taste right like you hear music you read poetry you read a novel you hear a radio show you hear a podcast right you’re like you know I could do this I could do
This and I think I could do it a little better you maybe not better but I could do it with my flavor I could express myself through this medium right and that taste which is killer right is not matched by your your current skill set because you don’t know
The tools M right and he talks about in this interview he says yeah quote he’s like a thing that creative that successful creatives don’t often talk about that we need to talk about more is this Valley right where you have this like incredible inspiration at the beginning of your journey to like learn
The tool and learn the craft and do this thing and do this thing but you’re just continuously disappointed because the things that you’re producing are not matching the thing that you’re feeling you’re not communicating well and and what happens to a kid when they are continuously met by this inability to
Communicate they become a quiet kid like what’s the point of me talking the adults don’t understand right thus the root cause of all teenage angst right you just don’t know how to communicate so nobody wants to listen to you right and and artists deal with this
On a much more extreme level because you have gone through school you do know how to read and write you have some level of emotional maturity H maybe you are successful like you know like I you know am a highly trained you know XYZ right like material scientist electrical
Engineer you cyber security consultant whatever you know and like here I am like just like making garbage like I don’t even want to show anybody because it sounds so bad but I know that this is how I I accomplished this Mission and um but anyway he said
That the only way to get through this period where your skill level with the tool doesn’t match your taste is repetition is put yourself on a schedule whatever the medium will allow whether it’s you know one short story a day uh one uh short like uh news article a week you in
My case I decided I would make one song a day and I wouldn’t you know go to like full mastering and production but I would just lay some lay some tracks down like I would make a loop make some Loop variations arrange it into uh you know introverse pre chorus chorus post Chorus
Verse pre chorus cor you know like just just like understanding the structure right of a song understanding the structure of a loop understanding what makes a loop satisfying how to create variation you all these things that I didn’t know the first time that I opened
Garage Band on my phone but I set myself on this schedule it’s like every day I’m going to sit down for as long as it takes I’m going to make a song and it’s going to be [ __ ] and it took me like I think a week before I made something
That I thought like oh I can show somebody this I showed it to them and they were like maybe you need to put an 808 in there and I was like there is an 808 in there like you didn’t put it in right right I was like no no no change
The hat right but then but you know but but having an accountability system right putting yourself on a schedule and having an accountability system it doesn’t mean like you know go bother all your friends and family like for me as a musician right like I just made a
Soundcloud account yeah and just like you know not every day I would post a track but like every day I would make a song and then of that week I would pick like which one I thought was the least crappy and I put it on Soundcloud and I
Just kept doing that doing that doing that doing that we’re at uh the beginning of 2024 now so basically I am 14 months into my music production career I have 5,000 plays on Soundcloud amazing they were all [ __ ] yeah right compared to the things that I’m making
Now all those tracks are [ __ ] right in terms of the quality in terms of the the my knowledge of how to use the plugins to achieve certain sounds in terms of my knowledge of musical arrangements and like which ones actually work and which ones don’t but uh by forcing myself by
Believe first of all I had to believe I believed Ira Glass I believed that he was correct that I just needed to like with no ego show people my music in a public forum and just keep going and whenever someone says like ah this isn’t good it’s like cool get back in the
Studio uh there’s this interview of the rapper 21 Savage it’s like a little like you know viral mey thing and he’s like he’s like man why are you so upset that people don’t like your music get back in the studio and make some [ __ ] people want to listen
To I think he might have said don’t be a [ __ ] too the point is is that people get so wrapped up in like this thing that I’m making has to be great this thing that I’m making is my heart and soul and how dare you not like it you don’t love me
You know it’s not about that yeah it’s not about that and say you don’t know how to use the software yet so just keep putting out keep finishing keep finishing keep finishing keep finishing even if it’s not finished you know art is never finished it’s only published
Yes right like these tracks that I made for um the don’t punk like the book official soundtrack uh you know I made them all in March March April and I’m still playing I’m playing them at every music festival that I perform at uh while I’m like live leading the the breathing
Sessions and those are not the tracks that are going to go on the official album release I have the I have the stems I have the raw mides and I will make them I will remake them for the album now that I have so much more knowledge under my belt but you know
Like March 2023 from December 24th 2022 to March 2023 is what January February so three months in I made these tracks that have now you know been performed for total over like all the workshops all the music festivals you know teaching every day at Burning Man over a thousand
People have experienced this set and 32% of them cried like deep emotional traumatic releases not because the music was dope but because you know the music was just the most Elementary container to keep them focused for the breathing and after my workshops every single time someone
Comes up and they’re just like yo man I’ve been doing breath work for years I never had an experience like this I’ve been meditating for years never had an experience like this I love going to sound healings why was this different and it was because all the elements arranged according to what the
Neuroscience prescribed and you know I’m not Reinventing the wheel at all but I do believe that I am uh scratching the surface on the history of using music as medicine and I’m really excited to to join all the other musicians that are in this wavelength because there are some
There are some uh tonight for example uh in Bali or in ubu in yoga Barn aare this this band this is Two Guys extremely skilled in using music as medicine yeah and you know I’m going to the concert and like I’m really looking to experience their art but it’s like you
Know it’s just like seeing other people that have been on this tip for a while and me that kind of came into it from the science element and from just like yeah I just got to get it out there it’s like it’s it’s it’s wonderful to find a
Community that is really pushing this and you know I think I I think there’s going to be I think we’re at the beginning of a wave the beginning of a wave where music is elevated out of trashy entertainment and into like rigorous healing modalities Charles um this is
Slapped this is absolutely slapped I’m devastated that we’re going to have to leave it here I’m devastated but I’m also excited because I know that the conversation continues indeed and know that all of this you’ve put out is going to have ignited so many Sparks of thoughts of curiosity I love
How you approach all of these topics and the dots that you have joined I think is completely unique um I think it’s fascinating um thank you for asking the right questions you this the most be beautiful interviewing amazingly generative you know like directional but expansive just want to hear your Genius
Man honestly like you’re it’s fantastic and I’m so excited to you know stay in your world as well and kind of absorb um all of these vibrations how can people get into your world how can people start thinking like you’re thinking how can they start experiencing what you’re experiencing um what can you
Um Point them towards yeah well uh so the book is not available on Amazon yet uh but the website the pre-order website is up it’s a don’t punk out book book.com and uh I guess you we’ll have the link in the description but uh the organization that is formed around this
Training uh is called the baywa which stands for the big amydala energy World Alliance nice big amydala energ big amydala energy because you don’t want to have a tiny amydala disorder it’s just a problem you know and nobody likes you you know if you have a tiny amydala it’s
Like the shirts that we made for the for the the book like the merch it says show me your amydala size Matters right it’s we’re really going for it you know just like the the comedic element but but also the rigorous serious element and so uh the the organization baywa is
Offering trainings uh we have uh the first live online training that we’re launching on on January 8th and uh we will continue to do trainings over the course of the year um thematic you know to specific uh things right because we have an anxiety Vector we have a depression Vector PTSD Vector addiction
Um and these you know different audiences I’m continuously surprised about the types of people that are coming to us uh asking for you know the same thing that we’re offering generically at the music festival but like specific towards like uh corporate uh HR teams right where like you know
You have these like all hands meetings and you want to have uh a one-day Workshop where you get the employees all in a flow state so that they can do something like that or or the neurod Divergent Community which you know I am a part of as an ADHD kid that has
Managed to heal or reduce a lot of my symptoms um the addiction Community which you know I was you I don’t like to say it but I was very heavily into drugs for for many years because I was sad you know I was just escaping into alcohol escaping into
Parties you know going into the bathroom at Soo house you know it’s just a degenerative life but but through this practice I’ve been able to completely re balance right and so uh yes don’t punk out book.com bay.org it’s B AWA um uh we got a YouTube channel we’re
On Soundcloud beautiful and yeah the album will be released on Spotify um yeah so we’re just going to be out there multimedia situation but all of it in the interest of growing the neurons in your brain so that you can be a happier healthier person thank you so much thank you for
Having me it was a beautiful conversation appreciate it man it was awesome s now quick one for me guys if you are a modern Creator looking to grow and scale your personal brand you like the way I think and solve problems you’re looking to dial in your brand positioning and leverage authentic nobs
Marketing that is aligned with your Brand’s vision and Mission and you’re interested in working together more closely please feel free to reach out on IG and we can discuss just that back to the episode
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