EFR 730: Float Tanks, Nasal Lasers, and the Strangest Biohacks You Have Ever Heard Of with Sean McCormick

0:00:45 - Speaker 1 My pleasure, man, my pleasure. And to kick things off, I was just telling you, as we're recording this here, kind of early mid-July, we just passed a cool benchmark for what you and I do and that's podcasting. Just turned 20 years old and for the listener right now, maybe you just found this show, maybe you've been listening for a year, a couple of years and you feel like an old timer, because back in my day, you know, I listened to episode two, you know, but it's just come a long way and it's been around for longer than even I realized. As a podcaster and someone who is very curious and adamant about hacking things in your life for optimization, for performance, for adherence, what is it? Maybe one thing you have done that you would consider a hack to keep you being the best podcaster you can be?

Maybe, it's not been for 20 years, but I know, for a few.

0:01:40 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Well, it's been six and a half for me. I've been podcasting for a while and you know this 441 episodes Now. I actually took over from the previous host of the optimal performance podcast, a guy named Ryan Muncie, who did 150. So technically, this was Ryan's old show.

0:02:05 - Speaker 1 I didn't know that. Yeah, oh, wow, no shit.

0:02:08 - Speaker 2 Do you know Ryan from his current show or just from?

0:02:10 - Speaker 1 I don't know him personally, but I'm very familiar with him and his content. You know what he does now, yeah.

0:02:14 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so Ryan did 150 episodes of the OPP and it was a content creation arm of a natural supplement company called Natural Stacks and those guys were based first in Austin and then in Seattle and I got to be friends with them here in Seattle and we carry their products at my flotation therapy centers that I started in 2012. And when Ryan sort of peeled off and said, hey, I want to go do something else, the guys from Natural Stacks Ben and Roy said hey, sean, you know you won't shut up. You want to host our podcast. You know you're loudmouth.

And I said I don't know how to do that and they're like you'll figure it out. And I said, well, I don't, I literally don't have any experience or technical ability, and they're like just do it, just say yes and figure it out. And so a lot of those same practices that I started with, like I still do all my, all my editing and garage band super, super simple processes. So to the answer the question what's the hack? I think for me the hack is I have to keep things simple for myself, I get I'm I'm sort of intuitive right Brain. I have to work really hard to stay organized. I'm not data driven, I'm very loosey, goosey, I guess, for lack of a better term.

0:03:36 - Speaker 1 Great technical term. Yeah, lucy goosey, lucy goosey, yeah yeah.

0:03:43 - Speaker 2 You know. So I've got to keep stuff really simple for my own brain. Plus, you know, I have you know several other businesses and I have two kids and you know I've got a attention whore for a golden doodle dog. Like you know, like I, I've got a lot of things that I love to do. So I have to keep things so simple If it's going to succeed.

And doing a weekly one hour interview podcast is a frickin marathon. I mean booking, recording, post production, I do all of it, and that's probably why my marketing sucks so bad is because I do all of it. You know, like my marketing sucks and I, you know, like I don't love. I don't love that aspect of it. The clips that I posted from this week's episode, you know, were from, you know, the MP4 file that I downloaded into Dropbox and then just recorded it on my phone like super low tech. But in order for me to now to be continued to put out content that I care about, that I give a shit about that I think other people will give a shit about. Like you know, this week's episode is about maybe viruses don't exist. Maybe viruses have never been proven to exist.

My guest is Alec Zeck. He's from the way forward and he helped establish this, this resource library called the end of COVID, which says, no, there was no bat or pangolin. No, there was no gain of function. This thing isn't real at all, and I'm interested in hearing about that. I want to learn what he knows, and so, in order to continue to pursue topics of conversation that are interesting to me, I have to keep things really simple, and that's what's allowed me to to keep it all in house, do everything myself, and you know, I have a top 1% podcast that nobody knows about, so I just keep, just keep jamming.

0:05:48 - Speaker 1 Top 1% podcast that nobody knows about. I love that. I love that. Some people might clearly definitely know about it, that's for damn sure, man, you know, I love that. I want to kind of hearing there. I think is a very tactical tool, tactical hack for the listener in any area of their life, when we're wanting to do something and we're wanting to do it for a long time. You know how do we stay adherent with the things in our life that matter to us. We need to know what is going to keep us adherent. We need to know what is going to keep us showing up, and for you, it sounds like knowing. I need simplicity, I want to do this, it's important to me and I need the most simple, most effective approach to it. So you know how you operate and you know how that's going to help keeping you showing up, absolutely right, yeah, I.

0:06:34 - Speaker 2 My superpower is enthusiasm. You know I'm an excitable guy. I get stoked easily. I'm, I'm. I have a lot of optimism, I have a lot of energy, I'm extroverted, and so if I'm going to be excited about publishing another podcast, in fact I'm going to launch another podcast with my kids this week oh cool.

This week I'm going to yeah, my kids, my kids and I do do voiceover work and basically retelling of, like Hans Christian Anderson. So my kids do the voice work and I do the narration. So we're going to launch that this week and in order to do it, I had to. I had to keep things simple, you know, like I had to, I had to bring the same level of enthusiasm, because if I'm not excited about the thing, I check out really easily the quality dives. I think everybody's this way, right, except for when it comes to their career. People can fake it in their jobs, in their careers, for decades and decades and sometimes you got to do that. But for me, like I have a really hard time of doing things I don't want to do. So if I keep things simple and I stay motivated and enthusiastic and optimistic and high energy about stuff, man, then then that's how I keep going.

0:07:55 - Speaker 1 Love it, man, love it. You know, we've already kind of said the word a couple of times hack, bio hack. Let's define our terms, because I know this is going to be a through line for the rest of our conversation here in a way that someone who has never hacked, never bio hacked themselves has never even maybe they're not even fully aware of that term, but just they've never even manipulated a single variable of their life that they would never even get close to thinking I've hacked anything. How would you define bio hacking?

0:08:27 - Speaker 2 I love the answer to this question because this hopefully gives people a really a really broad understanding of what bio hacking is. And so the way that I think about bio hacking is controlling what goes in you, on you and around you to optimize your performance goals. So think about the different categories of what goes in you, right, that's food, that's water, that's things that you absorb through your skin, that's the air that you breathe, that's the light that you're exposed to through your eyes. That's there's. That's obvious, right. What are you consuming? What are you? What's going into your body? What's are what's on you?

So this is the soaps that you use, the detergents that you use, makeup. You know hair product. You know the vibration of the different clothes that you wear, the bed sheets that you sleep on, the mattresses that maybe are still off gassing a year later. You know which is a formaldehyde through your nose every night you go to bed. So that's the on you, and then the around you is really the hardest part, because that dips into Wi-Fi exposure, right.

Air quality, sun exposure, the people that you're surrounding your with and and how you respond to them. Or your hormones and pheromones. You know, in sync, you know, is the organization of the inside of your house, set up for optimal energy flow, you know, like feng shui. So if you can control, for those three area variables, what goes in you, what goes on you and what goes around you, to approach your optimization for the goal that you're after, that's biohacking. Now there are a thousand different branches that come off of that, from this biogeometry pendant that I'm wearing around my necklace to the Neutropic drink that I'm drinking right now, to the blue blocking glasses that I have right here. There are so many different things. You know the order ring that I'm wearing, but a lot of people kind of think about biohacking as like implantables. You know microchips in your arm, or you know longevity supplements that you know that Brian Johnson guy. I don't know if you've seen Brian Johnson, but the level of things that that guy is doing is unbelievable.

0:11:21 - Speaker 1 He's the guy literally trying to reverse aging. Right, he's becoming an 18 year old again, or something.

0:11:25 - Speaker 2 Right, right, yeah, exactly. He's taking his teenager's blood and injecting it into his body. You know, blood doping is not a new thing. You know PRP is not a new thing. But all of these, all of these ideas is like what do you want, you know? Do you want to anti-age? Do you want to build muscle? Do you want laser focus? Do you want to shift your consciousness through psychedelics? How do you want? What are the things that are the most important to you and how do you control for those variables? So that's like, that's like a high level of how I like to think about it.

0:11:59 - Speaker 1 Beautiful answer, really really good answer. I like that approach and it's definitely it sounds like one that you've definitely thought about and I think is very understandable, very digestible for the listener. So I was listening to that and going, yeah, if I've never heard of this before, I definitely have an understanding, because you made it very real. You know, we all, we all go through those things. We're all eating, drinking something, we're all wearing something, we're all surrounded by stuff. So if you're a human being, you can definitely relate to that, and so I love how you kind of set the groundwork for that definition and have helped me and the listener really kind of go along this journey with you. For the rest of the episode and I might be taking kind of a hard turn too soon, but I wonder if you can relate to this man. I feel like, where we are now, especially in the world, we'll say, of social media and content in general podcast, I feel like a lot of science, new and old, is being brought to the table and whether intentionally being presented as hey, here's a bio hack, or is just being inferred, as I learned, this crazy new hack that's going to revolutionize my life or my God, everybody needs to know about this and do this and I feel, some kind of way, part of me is very frustrated because I'm just like no shit. These are very obvious things or these are things that you know, I, we or the collective, you know human industry, health, wellness, industry have been talking about forever. But, for whatever reason, just somebody shares something and it just pops off and I want to share something with you right here and I would love to get your feedback as it relates to kind of that prompt and this is no knock against this guy.

But this is a post recently from Andrew Huberman. Love what he is doing in the world of content. Love what he was doing in the world, what he is doing in the world of podcasting just getting people curious about science and really cool ways but also I'm just like no shit, all right. So this is a post he put up June 9th and it's just like a little caption and it reads strong data indicate that kids and adults should get outside at least two hours per day. Why it can offset? No, be ready.

It becomes a big science word Myopia, which is just nearsightedness, and the development of myopia. Myopia excuse me, both the sunlight and far viewing that occurs outdoors are important for this effect. If you're on your screen and or inside too much, you're disregarding your vision. Get outside. Folks and kids especially. Nearly 108,000 likes and honestly, I my scroll won't go, won't scroll anymore. In terms of the comments of people are just like oh my God, this is so helpful. This is amazing, like I'm going to get outside. Take it as you will. Where we're at now, with just people sharing science as bio hacks Like why, what is going on there, man?

0:15:01 - Speaker 2 I think you've touched on something that also irritates me, which is, I think, people's lack of common sense. I think people forget how we are alive as a humanity today.

Right we evolved our you know, 10, 10 grandmas ago, which doesn't seem like that many, but 10 grandmas ago they were like, didn't have heat, they were living in huts and you know, walking around in animal skins and fasting for days at a time, and you know, feasting when meat was available and crossing rivers and getting cold exposure, waking up when the sun came up and going to sleep when the sun came down, grounding with bare feet on the earth, like we know.

We know. We know, are you Vita as a medicinal practice which looks at you know herbs and you know different compounds used as medicines, like it's super-duper obvious. And yet I think that people are lacking the common sense awareness that, yeah, being outside, not looking at a screen, is good for your eyes. Yeah, being outside and moving around and getting fresh air is, you know, it's good for your entire body and your brain and your soul and your eyeballs as well. You know, specifically to that point, and I don't know if you've been following Hubertman in his engagement with Dr Jack Cruz. Did you see any of that? He was on.

0:16:54 - Speaker 1 No, familiar with Cruz in his work a little bit, but no, I haven't seen that interaction.

0:16:58 - Speaker 2 So Rick Rubin, the famed music producer who's produced the Beatles and Jay-Z and the Beastie Boys, His book the Art of the Creative was incredible. I haven't read it or the creative act.

0:17:12 - Speaker 1 The creative act.

0:17:14 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so his podcast called Tetragrammaton. He had Jack Cruz and Andrew Hubertman on for I think it was five hours. It was broken up into a couple of different episodes. Wow. But Jack Cruz, who is? He's a Bitcoin maximalist, circadian optimization mitochondria, which is the, you know, the powerhouse of the cell mitochondrial activation optimization guy, and he took Andrew Hubertman to school for five hours straight, like you should.

You're missing the point on melatonin, hubertman. You're missing the point on, you know, getting the soles of your hands and the soles of your feet on the earth, sitting like the Sphinx, looking towards the East every single morning, and why that's important. Chakra, chakra points at the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet. So I think that Hubertman is probably, is probably now optimizing for primal sort of biohacking awareness. You know, just like the example of 10 grandmothers ago and their connection to the earth, their connection to their bodies. They were strong, resilient women who made us the men that we are today. We're here now because they were tough there.

I think that there is a kind of going back to this primal awareness, this primal knowledge, and you're seeing it everywhere, from Mark Sisson and Mark Staley, apple and his five finger shoes. You know the Palluvas that he's doing. You know it's getting away from highly processed foods and seed oils. You know the carnivore diet, I think, is another great example of, I think of a biohack. It's a nutritional approach but it works because it omits processed foods and seed oils and a bunch of other BF I can get on board with that yeah, yeah, right.

So I think that there is a movement back toward highlighting really basic biological tenants that help people perform at a higher level, so saying like hey, guess what? Hey, listen up here, gang, going outside's a good idea. It's like you know, you know.

0:19:32 - Speaker 1 It's just some of these things, maybe it's just, maybe it's a little bit of ego. You know, I just feel like certain things that just I see pop off so intensely, call it, you know, go viral. Whatever are things that I have been applying and using and practicing and sharing and talking about for years and years and years and years now and I'm just like come on, like really, like, really, this is the thing, this is the thing that's gonna finally get people to. Maybe I should go to bed at the same time, maybe I should, you know, get outdoors. Maybe I should limit screen time, maybe I should drink better quality, not so much more water. It's just, it's a frustration point, I guess. But ultimately I do have to get on board with the fact that what we're after is the same thing. We're after the betterment of the human species and the human experience. So if we're getting there, great, that's what matters.

But you know, to bring it kind of literally full circle to our ancestors, we do kind of see a lot of biohacking, a lot of science being presented now as things that we're doing and seeing work, because so many generations ago did it and it worked. And it not only worked, it worked well, because without it we wouldn't be here and I've heard you talk about this on some other shows the power of genetics and biohacking. What really is the link, is the connection there? How closely are the two related? What I really mean by that is by better understanding our genetics first, our genealogy, our family history, even more in our unique genetics, so that we can better biohack. We can do things or not do certain things as it relates to us and our genetic history.

0:21:15 - Speaker 2 Yes, key point, key point. I think that a lot of it has to do. The main focus of letting our genetics do their thing is omitting the stuff that gets in the way. You know, omitting I'll say that again staying away from the things that are damaging our genetic expression. Again, seed oils, blue screens, Wi-Fi, you know those three examples are excellent.

You know I'm a white dude who lives in Seattle, from Irish descent. Right, I've got a high tolerance for alcohol, I have a short fuse temper and I tan easily. I get outside, I don't burn bad, but the more sun that I get, the more I build up my base, the more alive I feel. And I think that there is a key point of when you let your genes fully express themselves through connection to nature, through sun exposure, through fasting, through cleaning up dirty genes. There's a really great book called Dirty Genes by a Seattle-based naturopathic physician, Dr Ben. His last name is alluding me right now, but it talks a lot about how you can actually clean up your genes in through specific lifestyle factors, because they get dirty and bogged down from bad food and stress and all this stuff. So to me it's about simplifying and it's hard to do.

I live in the suburbs, right, and I have my neighbor's wifi going on both sides, right. I have, you know, break dust when I go, you know, when I go into town and stuff like that, I'm exposed to these environmental factors. So I've got to do all the things that I can inside my house. This goes back to the what's going on around you. You know I have a HEPA filter inside my house. That's on a lot I've got. In fact, I'll show you this picture. This is a plasma generator. It's going to fall. This is a plasma generator and what this thing does is this emits 6 million positive ions and 3 million negative ions and sends them up into the air through these little, these little electrodes. This is an example of the air that we breathe is gnarly, it just is, and it's from a lot of different things, and we can go into the conspiracy stuff maybe later, or we can stay away from it completely, but the air that we're breathing outside is messed up, it's gross. So, getting back to it, I'm in LA.

0:24:19 - Speaker 1 I know that's to be very true. Yeah, right, you can tell. The bigger the city, the bigger the problems with the air.

0:24:26 - Speaker 2 Right, smoggy days, you know you can tell when you walk out and you're like, uh, it's one of those days. All of this stuff is getting in the way of our genetics fully expressing themselves so that you can be more healthy and more vibrant. So, like you could, you know I don't need to. I don't eat very many tropical foods, cause guess what? My people didn't eat tropical foods. You know, like I'm 40, what am I? I'm like 45% Irish. I have no tropical blood in me, right, I have. I don't have any African blood in me and so you know I don't. I don't eat papayas and guavas, you know, weekly. So I think by simplifying our lifestyles and simplifying in omitting the things that we know are bad for us, allows your genetic expression to help you be the best person that you can be, and that's across the board, that's for everybody.

0:25:25 - Speaker 1 A lot of times, personally speaking and people that I've talked to that you know especially, maybe even try something. Try a hack of mine that yields me results doesn't quite give them the same results, or something that I try that I see somebody or a lot of people rave about. I'm like, okay, I think it moved the needle. I don't know if it's really. You know, the ROI is worth it in terms of taste, convenience, cost, whatever. Do you think that that primarily is because of certain genetic expressions in people, like we, genetically, are predisposed are gonna have a higher genetic inclination to respond or not respond to a particular hack? So if yes, then should we then first and foremost really kind of do the foundational research on who we are as an individual at the genetic level and then build the hacks from there?

0:26:25 - Speaker 2 Hmm, no, and again, going back to this theme of simplicity, I think that first things first. You shouldn't worry about your genetic makeup. You don't need to go get your genome done 23andMe and then go, you know, because now you can go work with a coach who will say hey, you've got the MTHFR gene, so you've got a methylation issue you've got to sort out, or you've got a 60% chance of Alzheimer's because you've got these genetic markers.

0:26:58 - Speaker 1 Really, you're not a big advocate of these.

0:27:03 - Speaker 2 Well, here's let me qualify that I think before you dig into any of that stuff like way before years, before you start to worry about your methylation or your propensity for Alzheimer's, you need to develop a skill for interoception, and interoception is one of those really cute words that people go. What's that? Yeah, interoception is our own innate ability to understand what's going on in our body. Right, so you could dive into the data. You could get coaching on your genetic markers, that'd be great.

But if you are so distracted that you can't really tell how your digestion is going without getting a test, if you can't sit still quietly for five or 10 minutes without your mind going bananas, that's a problem. If you have trouble sleeping, that's a problem. If you can't tell that you're getting sick until you wake up and cannot get out of bed, that's an indication that you don't have interoception. You don't have a very good ability to detect what's going on for you inside your own body and inside your own brain. We should be able to detect when we're getting sick days ahead of time, right, and not have to rely on the orering to do that, right.

0:28:39 - Speaker 1 How can we do that? The heart part. What would that look like?

0:28:41 - Speaker 2 The heart. Yeah. So Meditation, flotation therapy, not over-stimulating yourself, being able to go to bed at a regular time, being able to self-regulate your mood without taking a pill or zoning out watching television or turning to pornography because you kind of feel out of whack or you're too stressed out. Meditation is really the best thing that you can do to develop your sense of inter-eception, because what it is, it becomes a superpower. You can tell.

Before you start to get a little edgy or upset with your spouse or your kids, you realize that your heart rate is kind of increasing a little bit. You're like okay, something's going on. I need to box-breathe or I need to work out or do a cold plunge or just sit and breathe. That sort of stuff down the road leads to a heightened awareness of like, oh, that thing that I ate didn't agree with me. That's an inter it's inter-eception. When you develop that ability, then you have a greater awareness way before you worry about your methylation genes or anything like. That is like how can I understand what's going on in my body, in my brain, in my emotions? First, that's where I would start. That's way more important.

0:30:12 - Speaker 1 And you mentioned meditation and actually I was going to bring this up because I understand that to be really your origin with all this. I'll call it maybe you would agree your very first entry into the world of biohacking. Is meditation really a biohack and what's your origin story with it and how is it kind of the stepping stone for you?

0:30:34 - Speaker 2 It's such a boring thing to talk about because meditation sucks.

0:30:39 - Speaker 1 It's not sexy, it's not cool, it's not. Maybe it's trending now, I guess, a little bit more, but yeah, it's not sleek.

0:30:48 - Speaker 2 Exactly. It's not an exciting topic. Everybody knows you should meditate and nobody does, because it's hard. It's hard to develop that skill and it is a major part of my origin story.

When I was 12 years old, I couldn't sit, still bouncing off the walls like every other 12-year-old healthy boy, and my parents took me and got me diagnosed, like so many other kids, for ADD and ADHD, which I think is tremendously overdiagnosed right now. I think that just a quick sidebar soapbox. You don't have ADD, you don't have ADHD. You just need to go move your body more. You need to do things that are interesting to you and that feed your soul. You may have been diagnosed, like I was, as a kid. You may be diagnosed as an adult because you can't focus, of course, and that's fine. But that can be resolved in other ways outside of legal meth putting your kids on legal meth soapbox over.

I got diagnosed at 12 for ADHD and my parents my dad's a behaviorist, so classically trained like skinner, operant conditioning sort of behaviorism, and my dad's like we're not going to put Sean on meds they even considered giving high-dose caffeine, which has actually an inverse effect on kids that have ADD. If you give them a bunch of caffeine. It actually calms them down. Interesting. Instead, my folks taught me transcendental meditation, and transcendental meditation is abbreviated TM. That's what Russell Brand does, david Lynch actually, rick Rubin, seinfeld, russell Bunch of people do transcendental meditation. That was brought to the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the guy that influenced the Beatles back in the 70s. I guess my folks taught me TM when I was 12 and I hated it, and it was the last thing that on earth I wanted to do was to sit quietly for 20 minutes twice a day and recite a mantra you can imagine, right.

0:33:08 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think most adults still would agree with that.

0:33:12 - Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly, it was about six months of not daily meditation, but fairly frequent, I would say, four or five days a week of daily meditation. When I finally had that moment, that breakthrough, light bulb moment, where I felt interconnectedness with the world, I felt a sense of calm that I had never felt before. I felt like I was tapping into some primordial awareness that changed me forever. I remember that at 12.

I remember that moment like it was yesterday, because it was such a profound like oh, I get it, I get it. So that's when I became really diligent, really consistent with meditation, not twice a day, but every day. For years and years I'd oscillate from time to time through my teens and 20s and 30s, getting away from it and then going back to it, experimenting with different types of meditation practices. Tm is a mantra based meditation. You can go get your. You can actually look up what your mantra is. It's based on your gender and your birth year.

0:34:35 - Speaker 1 Oh, is it kind of like not co-star but a human design kind of stuff?

0:34:40 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very similar. So technically you're supposed to go like take the course and then eventually like pay a practitioner, a teacher which funds things. I get why they charge. It's very expensive, but you can find out what yours is. Mine is shurim S-H-I-R-I-M.

0:34:58 - Speaker 1 That's my mantra for my birth year. Repeat this throughout your meditation practice.

0:35:05 - Speaker 2 Shurim shurim, thinking about other things. Back to shurim, having a sensation in my body. Back to shurim shurim shurim. There's some other things that you do with where your eyes are, where your eyes go behind closed eyelids, there's breath involved. There's a lot of other components to it, but that was the beginning of my ability to have interoception. What's going on? For me, it was the origin story of my fascination with altered states of consciousness and psychedelics and meditation and tripping out and breath work and things that I love as an adult. Now, if everyone could have a meditation practice, their life would be better. They would be better people. I mean flat out. It is as effective as people think it is.

0:35:55 - Speaker 1 It's a powerful statement.

0:35:56 - Speaker 2 But it just takes a while, takes a while to get there.

0:36:01 - Speaker 1 I'm not there yet. Meditation is definitely one of those things. I feel like it's one of the most obvious hacks, if you will, but just obvious tools for someone like myself. That is so in it, personally and professionally, that even I tell myself sometimes I'm like Chase bro, like frickin, get on board, man. You talk to all these people, you read all these things. It's probably literally the only thing that you don't do. Well, that and coffee enemas I haven't gotten there yet.

But it's one of those things that it's just anecdotal and clinical evidence is so irrefutable as to specific reasons why you want to use it to work through something or just overall quality of life. But where I'm at right now is, I tell myself, I have forms of meditation and I do believe this. I say I'm a walking meditator, meditation just for me. I would love to get into kind of this, more of a practice of what it typically looks like, or what we think it typically looks like, of making time sitting down, being still sitting cross-legged and just being still and meditating for a few minutes. But I walk and I meditate, I forest bathe, if you will, and I get out there and I just eliminate as many modern world distractions. Of course I'm walking out in the streets of LA but I go find a quiet neighborhood, a path in the woods or something, and for me that I do get a lot of the benefits that I hear meditation having.

0:37:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Well, here's a way to hack that too, Because All right, lay it on me.

So here it is. So I was working with a CEO client of mine who said the same thing. Like I know I should do it. I know people who do it. I've read the books, I've tried it off and on for a decade. I hate it, sean, it's never going to be my thing.

And so I did a little bit of research and experimented with some breathwork practices in lieu of meditation. And so I said to my client I said, ok, if you can't commit to 20 minutes a day of meditation, can you commit to five minutes of breathwork? And he's like five minutes of breathwork, I can do that. And I said OK, for the next two weeks you and me have an agreement that you're going to do five minutes of breathwork in the morning after you wake up, before you start your day, and I'm going to check in, I'm going to text you. I'm going to text you and say how was your breathwork session? And you better reply. And he's like OK.

He got into a breathwork practice in the morning that was five minutes long, and over the two weeks he totally changed his perspective, like he was clearer, he was happier, he was more focused throughout the day. He was then doing on his own. He added breathwork in the evening time, a different sort of down-regulating breathwork in the evening time to come back down, and that built into a road, on rope, on ramp, for a meditation practice. Wow, because here's the thing, sitting and meditating quietly, reciting a mantra or doing vipassana, visualizations of water sprinkling over your head and shoulders and filling your up, your auric field with bright white light, like that's tough for people.

0:39:23 - Speaker 1 That's a big jump to go from nothing to that. I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up, because we think that's where we have to go in order to do this modality.

0:39:32 - Speaker 2 Exactly. That's a big stretch, but if I say OK, I want you to download this app and I want you to do this breathwork for five minutes every morning. It's active, you're being guided and the effect is noticeable. Within like 30 seconds you feel as you're doing. In three breaths the hair on the back of my neck is standing up.

Like I feel tingly in my chest and that's quantifiable. You can feel that. So for anybody who's interested in beginning to dip their toe into meditation because it's going to make them more calm, easier to sleep it's just going to improve your life I would start with meditation and just commit to doing five minutes. He eventually my client was doing breathwork and then meditation every single morning and every single evening because he got so much from it. So that's how you hack meditation is. Once you can get into a habit sitting quietly following a breathwork session for five minutes, then you're like oh, I can do this, I can sit and do a thing for 20. So that's what I would suggest. My favorite app for that is an app called Other Ship.

0:40:55 - Speaker 1 I've tried. Yeah, you're familiar. Robbie's been on the show I think like a year or two ago. But yeah, I love what they're doing. Yeah, I like that show. That's where everybody Robbie Bent of Other Ship.

0:41:07 - Speaker 2 They nailed it. They nailed it. That app is phenomenal and if you want to, you want to breathwork.

0:41:13 - Speaker 1 And they do great live events too, yeah.

0:41:16 - Speaker 2 Have you been to one?

0:41:18 - Speaker 1 No, but I know the events are top notch. I haven't been able to make one, but a lot of my friends have and I've talked with Robbie and the other guys, kind of putting them on and just to see what is going into it. I know it's powerful. I've heard yeah, yeah.

0:41:33 - Speaker 2 Well, if you're going to go, let me know, because I want to go, do one too.

0:41:37 - Speaker 1 Well, they're based in Canada but I know they do events in New York and LA. I was out of town when they're doing the one here in LA and I believe last time I talked to them they were trying to get one of their new flagship locations their recovery wellness center thing here in LA. I don't think it's happened yet, but, yeah, definitely That'd be good.

0:41:57 - Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I don't get to Toronto very frequently either, but yeah they nailed it, if you're looking for something if you're looking for a breathwork app that works, that's fun and interesting and effective. Other ship is it for sure?

0:42:11 - Speaker 1 One thing that comes to mind as we're kind of describing that meditation example is that I think for a lot of people myself included when there's a new habit we want in our life or there's this new hack we're after, if we struggle making it happen on our own, going to a place where that's just what is allocated for, we tend to kind of stack those wins. We tend to OK, let me lay this brick, lay this brick, lay this brick. If we're struggling to work out four or five times a week, we can't get to the gym. What's a great compromise to start, walk twice a week, show yourself that you can do it, carve out the time and then you get closer to the thing. If you're not going to work out, going to the gym, putting yourself in the environment, basically that is conducive towards that goal can make or break it.

For me. I'm getting closer to this devoted air court here, typical meditation practice by. I have this wellness center that I go to here in Los Angeles and one of the things they offer there is float tank and for me I know you're big in float tank, you said earlier you run a float tank center I have found that when I go there I put myself in the environment of things that are conducive towards the life that I want, taking care of my body. I also have options. I lean into float tank. I also find myself meditating. Is meditation in the float tank? Is this kind of same same but different, I guess, really crack open for us this world of float tank. What is it and why are we getting naked in a room full of saltwater and floating around for an hour?

0:43:51 - Speaker 2 I could go. I mean, this was my life for eight and a half years solid, wow, wow, really, really. I mean I opened two and then sold those two, and then the guys that I sold it to my general managers opened up two more here in Seattle. So we opened our float center in 2012. And at that time there was like 35 float centers in the country.

0:44:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah, 2012. Wow, I didn't even know about this until maybe five years ago.

0:44:22 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

0:44:22 - Speaker 1 If that yeah.

0:44:24 - Speaker 2 And now there's like 600 float centers around the country, as there should be. So here's like the cliff's notes on it. You don't have to do anything Like show up, shut up, shower and then go and lay back in the water and breathe and that's it. There are so many different things that you can do inside the float tank, from breath work to visualization practices. I've written e-books on what to do in the float tank during your float session, from chakra activation to astral projection to creating mind maps, enhancing your memory, language acquisition, guided visualization. There's just so many cool things that you can do.

Because when you are in an environment with reduced external stimuli sound light, I mean you can't feel anything because you're floating in water. Gravity alone makes your central. The fact that you're floating in anti-gravity essentially makes your central nervous system go. Oh, it's just like everything relaxes, your digestion improves, so you don't only have to do anything. But I do kind of think of floating if I was thinking about it like as a college course, if the 200 level floating course. I think of it in two different ways. There's active and passive. So in an active float you can be doing goal setting and affirmation. You can be doing again chakra activation hum, vum, lum, rum, yum, hum, ohm. You can be doing that in there if you want, or you can just be focusing on your breath and spacing out and just letting your brain go. Your eyes open or your eyes closed is a much different experience as well. I always suggest that people keep their eyes open when they're floating, because then it's not the same response to your body that thinks that it's time to go to sleep.

0:46:33 - Speaker 1 Oh, interesting OK yeah.

0:46:35 - Speaker 2 So keeping your peepers open while you're floating is going to be a much different and a way more psychedelic experience. It's a lot stranger. It's a lot more, I think, revealing for how your brain works when you keep your eyes open. But if you are looking for a way to kickstart a meditation practice or a stress reduction practice, if you can't sleep, if you're having a really hard time sleeping, go and float at like 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night and then go home and go to bed. You're going to sleep way better. It is, for me, akin to psychedelics. Flotation therapy is like the most powerful personal development tool because it's so different from our normal every single day.

0:47:26 - Speaker 1 Oh, it's the opposite of everything in our day. Exactly right, it's nothingness. It's nothingness. It's the removal of every other form of sense and stimuli that we're receiving or putting out.

0:47:41 - Speaker 2 You can't. You can't run away from yourself in there, you can't distract yourself with your phone, you can't. You really have to just kind of face how you are, who you are in in a, in a millisecond, turn the lights off, lay back and breathe and You're gonna be. You're gonna be faced with with a lot of different stuff. It, you know, I think there's, there's, there's physiological benefits from stress reduction and pain relief. You know, when we were in, you know I had Russell Wilson I can say it now because he's not in Seattle anymore like Russell would come in like four nights a week when I was running the, the location in Bellevue which is just east of Seattle, he was coming in. He'd come in like four nights a week.

0:48:28 - Speaker 1 Him and Ciara would come in he's the Seahawks guy right, didn't he play yeah?

0:48:32 - Speaker 2 yeah, quarterback the Seahawks.

0:48:34 - Speaker 1 I know this. I'm not a sports guy at all. I know this because, if memory serves, he's actually from Richmond, my hometown.

0:48:40 - Speaker 2 Yes, richmond Virginia. Yeah, yeah.

0:48:42 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

0:48:43 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so he's a quarterback for the Seahawks. One super bowls went to two. He now plays in in for the Broncos, but he was in there Four nights a week some, you know, oftentimes he brings Ciara with him and they would like come and hang out for a couple of hours and float a little bit and then just kind of come out and hang out in the lobby and space out. So for athletic recovery, it's phenomenal for bad backs, it's phenomenal for stress reduction, phenomenal sleep meditation, it really is a cure-all. If you're, if you're looking to just have a cool date night, you know, with your, with your lover, and you want to go do something different and unusual, go float and then go out to dinner together and you'll have a very memorable night.

0:49:27 - Speaker 1 You know, I I want to highlight a couple things just to share with you and the listener the relatability to this. And then I got a couple unique questions around floating. Still, if nothing else, what we are doing by Choosing us and carving out time for something such as a float tank is we're doing that we are finally choosing us and we're carving out time for ourselves. That, I think, regardless of what we're doing, can go miles for happiness, for stress reduction, for sleep, for quality of our relationships, a lot of things. But stepping into a float tank, we're taking an hour of allowing our minds and our bodies, our souls, dare I say, to just completely chill and do nothing.

And then, qualitatively, when I have stepped out of a float tank by really doing nothing, there's there's no denying how I feel I'm more or less kind of useless the rest of the day but, like in a good way, I'm so relaxed and I'm so happy and I'm so chill. But also even quantitatively, you know I'm somebody who likes to track a lot of things. I, you know, wear my whoop into the float tank and I track it as a meditation and I, every single time the next day, have an increased recovery score, increased in terms of the numbers, the colors. My sleep is improved, so I step out and I feel better and more relaxed. But I also know that my body is actually getting a lot of this extra Rest and digest time that it needs and is supporting things like recovery, because the rest of my day is the other 23 hours More or less is go, go, go, go go.

0:51:07 - Speaker 2 So I'm doing myself a great service, yeah that everything that you said is true and it's a form of self-love, I mean, oh yeah, it's. It's a profound gesture to take care of yourself. And it's not, you know, it's not a retreat to Jamaica for a week. That's gonna cost you ten grand. It's, like you know, usually most places like 50 bucks for an hour to go have a totally unique experience. That if it were a pill that were prescribed to people, it would be the most profound pill ever. Oh, so I'm gonna turn on the hose. It would be the. It would. It would be the best-selling Medicine on the planet, bar none, because of how effectively it works for people, how good people feel. Yeah, I mean, I can't advocate for it enough. I still get in, you know, probably three or four times a month, you know, and combining that with with cold therapy and sauna beforehand is also sweet. But I know you have more, more.

0:52:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm gonna be combining things with float tank. I want to talk to you about for lack of better term here, or maybe even very Pertinent sober versus non sober. I, for the very first time, my first time ever, in a float tank. I wanted to just experience it fully, just sober, and by sober I mean, you know, not using cannabis or, for me, you know, cannabis or psilocybin or anything like that. I went in and I walked out and I was kind of like I Guess it was cool, I definitely feel more relaxed, so it was nice, that's. That's a thing.

The second time I went back, I did you wouldn't say, micro dose, maybe like a shm, medium dose, about Maybe a gram of psilocybin, ish, yeah, and I tried to time it.

You know, I took it about 45 minutes or so before I went into the float tank and my experience, while mildly tripping, was radically different. I would definitely say, in my opinion, enhanced because and I would try both things, this float tank that I go to they you have the option to be completely void of sound, of light, just no noise, no music, no light. Or you can turn on kind of like this, like ambient mood lighting in there. It has kind of twinkly lights on the ceiling and also you can opt to have this like, oh, like, a therial, angelic, just background, relaxing noise, and I, with the psilocybin Session, I played around with just no noise and darkness and then also a little bit of light, a little bit of this relaxing Noise, and I had radically different experiences.

I've never gone in with cannabis, but I do know people like you know. Joe Rogan talks a lot about, you know, using cannabis in a float tank and I guess my question here is what is the value, what is the power? What is the difference with Going into a float tank sober versus being an altered state of consciousness in your experience?

0:54:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's a good question to ask. I I'm sort of a purist where I would instruct people To go do three floats, totally sober, before they start tinkering around with with psilocybin or cannabis or other things. And the reason is because you want to be able to establish, because you can't go back, you know after you've after you've done a gram, then it's like whoa, that was killer, that felt really cool.

I feel great. You come out, you're like got all these great ideas you feel created, you feel in touch, you know it's like well, maybe.

I'll do grab and a half next time, maybe. Maybe the time real to, you know, like yeah and and. So you know, chasing the dragon in the float tank is a very real thing, you know, be it's that, it's that powerful. So what I suggest people do is they do that, you do three. It's a, it's a bigger commitment. But you know, if you're serious about personal development and pain relief and stress relief and sleep, you know I would commit to three sessions, as Terrence McKenna would say on the natch, naturally, right, hmm.

Okay after that, after that Then I say, tinker around a little bit. I I my best floats that I've ever had and I've, you know, I've got I mean 300 plus float sessions in my life. I've spent nine and a half hours in the tank and tried.

0:55:40 - Speaker 1 At one time.

0:55:42 - Speaker 2 I did yeah, I did an overnight float once with mushrooms and whistles.

0:55:48 - Speaker 1 I did.

0:55:49 - Speaker 2 And I was dorked for like two weeks after that.

0:55:54 - Speaker 1 That would dig me a lot of integration time yeah.

0:55:57 - Speaker 2 I was pretty useless for like a full week afterward, like our Sean. Are you back yet, like you know? But the, the, the potential is so great that you really do want to get a baseline for how you feel. Naturally, but my best floats that I've ever had have been fasted after a really grueling workout with with specific like spiritual preparations and affirmations and mantras going into it.

0:56:32 - Speaker 1 So I would you know, I kind of you know, prepping the mind, the body, the soul.

0:56:37 - Speaker 2 Right, right, setting intentions, connecting with you know whatever your divinity is, you know your higher power. You know going in with that intention to connect and expand. You know I've had profound experiences. You know seeing gray aliens and you know talk connecting with spirit guides. You know astral projection like well, for months and months and months at a time.

It was a practice that I committed myself to for about 18 months and got really good at having out of body experiences in the float tank. I would go in at night. So, that said, that's that's way out there, obviously. But but I would suggest that you do three, naturally, and then begin to tinker around and smart, start with small doses. But edibles are also really good. If you smoke stuff, if you smoke cannabis or even vape before you go in, you're going to get a little bit of dry throat. You know you're going to, it's, it's. It could be a little bit distracting for for your experience, but you know it's your consciousness and I think that we all, we all should be able to go, you know, expand it and explore it however we want.

0:57:45 - Speaker 1 Here here, absolutely, man. You know I love that as a great through line for everything we've been talking about with biohacking. Um, you know, before we jump the gun and try all of the things and, you know, introduce all the variables and all the hacks and all the supplements and all the this and all of that, we need to get better. Or, for some of us, we need to start being able to understand who we are at base level. Uh, it's the same thing.

In my health coaching practice, I would never introduce a new variable to someone's workout or something in their nutrition if they had no idea what their normal daily physical activity looked like, or if they had no idea how many general calories they were consuming or how many grams of protein they were eating, or when's the last time you had an apple or a salad. You know we would want to just come home first. We need to understand you. You need to know you and your baseline, or else how are you ever really genuinely going to be able to say this worked for me, this didn't, this move the needle or this maybe even set me back Absolutely?

0:58:48 - Speaker 2 Totally true. That goes back to that buzzword interoception Like how am I doing today Right? Am I bloated? Am I gassy? Am I tired? Am I angry? I don't know. Like I got to check in with that. Yes, setting those baselines so that, just to exactly to your point, knowing where you're at, that, that's then you. Then you can tell what works on what doesn't, for sure.

0:59:09 - Speaker 1 Sean, what would you say? Maybe outside looking in, or maybe you've been directly told this before what is the weirdest, wildest bio hack? You have for one, your physical body. So what is one thing you do that's just out there that you deem as a value add, for maybe it's your body composition, maybe it's your strength, just your physical self. And then what's maybe another weird, wild hack you have that you deem as more for your emotional or even spiritual health.

0:59:41 - Speaker 2 Dude, it's so hard to pick one. So many weird things, so most outlandish.

0:59:45 - Speaker 1 Like, just if somebody heard it, they're like, bro, what the fuck is this guy smoking?

0:59:48 - Speaker 2 I mean, nasal, nasal lasers Is that weird enough?

0:59:52 - Speaker 1 nasal lasers nasal lasers.

0:59:55 - Speaker 2 I will demonstrate. So you're familiar with red light therapy, right? Benefits of photo bio modulation. It's no secret that doing red lights is good. Well, this is a nasal laser. It's the same idea, but it goes up your nose, so you grab this.

1:00:14 - Speaker 1 You guys have got to check out the video for this one, yep.

1:00:17 - Speaker 2 I'm demonstrating right now.

1:00:19 - Speaker 1 He's lit up like Rudolph.

1:00:21 - Speaker 2 I've got a bright red nose. Come on, I'm going to turn this light off. So what this is, what this is doing is this is sending red lights up in up my nose and and again, like you should watch this. If you're not watching, you should. You should watch because this looks ridiculous. So the mucosal lining, the layer up in the nose that basically keeps the sinuses protected from the blood brain barrier this is a very thin layer of skin back behind your nasals, right, and so what this red light is doing by going up your nose is going directly into your brain through that mucosal layer. So I'm essentially radiating my brain with these red lights going up and through here, but it gets better, check this out.

1:01:11 - Speaker 1 So this one wait, there's more.

1:01:15 - Speaker 2 But wait, there's more. If you're not watching this, you should watch this.

1:01:20 - Speaker 1 This is also. I was not expecting this.

1:01:24 - Speaker 2 Not only through the ears, but also are through the nose, but also through the ears.

1:01:29 - Speaker 1 He's got a matching ear blood for it too, guys.

1:01:32 - Speaker 2 So I have red lights now going up my nose and also into my ears, and so the person who's unaware why red light?

1:01:39 - Speaker 1 What is this doing? What are the benefits of this?

1:01:42 - Speaker 2 There's so many things, man. So, in a nutshell, what red light does is it increases, it increases mitochondrial production. So it's basically, it's basically amplifying your, your ability, your mitochondrial ability to like, create ATP right, increases blood flow, reduces swelling. It's antimicrobial, antibacterial. That red light is actually killing, killing cooties to a certain extent it's increasing blood flow. It's, it is. If you could shine a light, if you could get the sunlight up your nose, it would be a really good idea. You know, I'm sure you've heard of the butthole sunners. You know the people.

1:02:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that one's pretty far out there for me.

1:02:32 - Speaker 2 Same idea right. Like your, your, your. Beehol has very thin skin and when you put sun on that really thin skin layer, it's getting into your body and into your systems more effectively. Same thing is like the mucosal linings, so you're exposing your body to sun rays or red light. This is, this is a cup. This is a red light cup for your testicles, so this is called the Optimus Red. This is like a cup, like baseball players wear.

1:03:03 - Speaker 1 Putting anything on my boys, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta really do my homework on.

1:03:08 - Speaker 2 This will help the boys. This will increase all of the things that you're looking to increase. It's called Optimus, red, tons and tons of research Great name, great name.

Right, that guy, joel from Optimus Red, also makes an ice pack for your nuts. There's tons. It's again this actually kind of full circle. So red light, when our you know 10 grandmas ago, 10 grandpas ago, they had better testosterone, like your grandpa had triple the testosterone that you had Minded to right. Well, imagine 10 grandpas ago, walking around in loincloths, walking through rivers, being you having your you know testicles exposed to the elements. Yeah Right, interesting, yeah Right.

1:03:54 - Speaker 1 We're. You know, look, a nice pair of boxer briefs is really comfortable and keeps things in place, but we're not getting this kind of elemental exposure. We're not getting these forms of use stress to these different parts of our bodies.

1:04:08 - Speaker 2 You've got it Totally right. So the red light and the ice pack to your boys are mimicking that sort of natural exposure to the elements that 10 grandpas ago they got when they were hanging around a fire and walking through rivers and, you know, running around in loincloths like that's the same idea. So hopefully that was weird enough for for for that's pretty wild for the physical self.

1:04:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah yeah, I was expecting some wild stuff, but not. I didn't know. We're going to go there like, quite literally go below the belt.

1:04:43 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and then the what was the other one?

1:04:45 - Speaker 1 The second part about something for you do that you would consider a weird wild hack for your emotional slash, spiritual health.

1:04:52 - Speaker 2 So well, I mean psychedelics. I could go, we could do a whole 10 hours on that, but I'll.

1:04:58 - Speaker 1 We should take some and then we would literally go 10 hours, yeah, whoa. Maybe, part two we go.

1:05:06 - Speaker 2 Oh, maybe we should have you ever?

1:05:07 - Speaker 1 Have you ever tried to podcast it?

1:05:09 - Speaker 2 You know, I've, I've, I've done micro doses before, but not yeah, I definitely podcasted micro dosing but yeah, never.

1:05:18 - Speaker 1 I actually did one time at home about two grams and I wound up doing an IG live. Just wasn't planning on it but just I felt kind of you know, I'm sure you can relate in certain psychedelic experiences you just feel so pulled and called to this is the thing that I have to do and I was like, yeah, I'm just I IG live it for I think like 20 minutes part of it, yeah.

1:05:43 - Speaker 2 Um, I just saw this article of this video in the UK where they had two people there was like a climate denier and like a client active climate activist. They had them argue. They were, they were, they were debating essentially, and then they went and had a mushroom ceremony and, while they were still high, came back and talked again and they videotaped all of it and the results are pretty astounding Like they still felt the same way, they still saw things differently, but they were much more civil about the way that they oh, that's beautiful.

1:06:15 - Speaker 1 Like way more healthy debate and actually just sharing opinions instead of probably pushing each other down.

1:06:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, which I think is a phenomenal, phenomenal idea, but maybe you and I should, you know, take three and a half and do another podcast and have no agenda and just go. That's interesting.

1:06:33 - Speaker 1 I'm not against that. Yeah, maybe kind of describe for us, you know, using psychedelics, for you know, I would agree you could definitely quantify this as a hack for our mental, emotional, spiritual well being. What is it for you that is unique about this stuff that you feel hacks and optimizes these components of your life?

1:06:53 - Speaker 2 You have to, you have to perturb your consciousness.

1:06:56 - Speaker 1 You know you get stuck in a rut.

1:06:59 - Speaker 2 You have to perturb it, you have to, you have to poke it and prod it and test it and challenge it, shake it up.

You know there's the, you know the metaphor of like laying down new, new ski tracks or shaking up a snow globe there.

A float tank, I think, is the most, is the closest natural way to do that. The fact that psychedelics are, are, are such a powerful tool to expand our brain in ways that we forgot were possible. You know, we forgot we could change our mind about this thing, or we could let go of this narrative that we were clinging to, or that we actually love playing guitar and I'm, you know, or the this, this animosity that you're walking around with about your, your mother or your spouse, you can just let go of. You can choose to let go of. You can step more into your life purpose with varying compounds. You know, part of the work that I do as a coach is as a trip sitter, and people come out from all over the country to work with me, usually in the woods, with different compounds, and the results are incredible. Everybody changes, everybody goes home A different person, an improved person. Now the integration is a really, really important part.

So, what you tripped out. You had a light show, you saw cool stuff, you talked to some trees. You know you connected with your inner child.

Yeah far out. Well, what does that mean when you go home? Does that make you a better employee? Does it make you a better human? Does it make you a better spouse or father or sister? So the potential is huge in these different compounds, from MDMA to two CB to LSD, to five MEO, dmt. They all have different roles that they play in different experiences, but that that they are. They are profound, and we are still years and years and years ahead of where I think we are going. We are going, which is psychedelics as a way to, to, to help with mental health, to help with relationships and trauma and PTSD, but also they're fun and interesting and can help you in your personal development.

That said, I want to give another hack for relationships, because not everybody's going to go run out and, you know, go do mushrooms tomorrow. This one thing again, this one as a, as a coach who's worked with a lot of different people and relationships, this one thing could save your marriage Five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact every day. If one person, if one listener, decides to try this, I would love for you to either reach out to me or chase and tell me how it went. Here's what you do you set a timer, you set it off to the side on your phone, you click go and all you do is gaze into your partner's eyes. That's it.

No talking, no funny faces. You know this isn't performative. This is actually just sitting and looking into the eyes of the person that you're choosing to be with. You will be amazed how incredibly awkward it is, how you are able to see your partner in a way that you haven't seen them in a really long time. You will be able to see glimmers in their eyes that you haven't seen and the vulnerability that comes from just sitting there and just looking at your partner and making eye contact. You don't have to do it every day. I mean, maybe that's a little overkill, but if you try it once, if you feel out of sync with your, with your your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, try this. As far as a relationship relationship hack, the level of intimacy, if you go in at a two or three out of 10, is going to be a seven or an eight or more, just after that one five minute session.

1:11:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, you know I can get on board with that. My wife and I have done that a couple of times as part of we were at like a dinner event. That was like an intentional dinner, you know, meant to kind of spark curiosity and intimacy. But also I've done that with a complete stranger. I've been. It was years ago at this, this conference I went to and the speaker had us just turned to the person to our left and we just did that with a total stranger. And there's even some next level stuff that comes up when you're that intimate, that up close and personal with someone you've never met before.

I remember both her and I just wound up crying, for we had no reason why. We just put it was just. I remember Viscerally it was just this like I feel like your sadness and we both just kind of slowly just began to kind of a few tears drop and then it kept coming and then afterwards can't make the shit up. Oddly enough, we both realized that we had lost a father. Our dads both had died kind of under weird or just wild health circumstances and it was just this. I don't know if that's exactly what we were feeling or if you just look anybody in the eye for five minutes. You're going to start crying, but it was just like I feel your sadness and like I'm sad with you but also I can. I can let this emotion show because I feel safe, because you also have been through it and this is like a healthy container kind of thing.

1:12:43 - Speaker 2 Yeah it was wild, oh my gosh.

1:12:44 - Speaker 1 Really wild stuff.

1:12:49 - Speaker 2 You know little things like that that aren't part of your normal day, that you don't do very frequently.

I mean the fact that you remember that so specifically so vividly right, like tells you that there was something very special there. There was some alchemical or transformational effect of doing that. To me that's that's a hack. You know that's a. That's a bio hack. You're maybe hacking your oxytocin or serotonin, you know you're you're tapping into a part of you that maybe you've closed off for a little while. So, dude, I love hearing that. Awesome, yeah, it's wild, I mean, and that's that's really it.

1:13:30 - Speaker 1 I think the best way I can kind of summarize our conversation here when we're talking about hacking, it's really just, ultimately, starting from a baseline, so figuring out who you are and what that feels like, what that looks like, and then just doing something different, but intentionally, and taking a moment long enough to reflect on it, to figure out what meaning does this have for me in my life and how do I therefore want to apply it or not, you know, just doing something different, ultimately to help keep us moving forward in life. Which brings me to my final question.

1:14:03 - Speaker 2 Sean living a life ever forward.

1:14:06 - Speaker 1 This show is here to help highlight different walks of life and different stories of people and what propels them forward. But how would you define that, describe that? How do you live a life ever forward? What does that look like for you?

1:14:21 - Speaker 2 Well, I came to an understanding a long time ago in a meditation session that there is no finish line. Like there is no. Oh, I'll get to that when I get a job, or I'll get to that when I quit my job, or I'll get to that when I have kids, or I'll be better, I'll be happier once I get to this number of dollars in my bank account. I'll be happy once I retire. There is no finish line, and I come from a spiritual perspective that even when you die, there is no finish line. There is more, there's more, there's something right, there's something after that and something after that. Energy just doesn't end, it just changes, it goes into something else. So my belief is that there is no finish line, and so when you live your life with more flow and more potential and optimism and understanding that we are all working constantly toward the next thing, towards the change that is coming for all of us, it kind of relaxes you a little bit.

It's like well, I don't need to be so tense about things, it's just going to keep going. So I'll just hang on for the ride and do my best.

1:15:50 - Speaker 1 Never a wrong or right answer, man. So I appreciate your interpretation, Sean. I'm going to have all your information down in the video notes and show notes for everybody. But if they want to go somewhere right now, where can they connect with you? Where can they learn more about you and what you got going on?

1:16:04 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so the podcast is optimal performance. You can go to www.SeanMcCormick.com M-C-C-O-R-M-I-C-K. That's all the archives and shop and coaching and everything is all there at wwwSeanMcCormick,com. Chase, this was so fun, dude. I wish that we had another couple of hours because there's so many more questions I want to ask you.

1:16:24 - Speaker 1 I feel you, man, I feel you, but this has been a great run, a solid conversation, and definitely one's got me leaving more educated, more curious, which is exactly what I love about this platform, and no doubt we'll come back for another one Right on.