Pedram Shojai and Dr. Hyman Discuss Life as an Urban Monk

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Fat Summit, where we separate fat from fiction. And I'm here with my good friend and the urban monk himself, Pedram Shojai, who is the creator of the urban monk concept, which I love because I need to be that guy because I'm always on the road traveling here, there, everywhere under tremendous amount of stress. So how do I stay grounded, centered, and focused in the middle of my life while I'm trying to do everything I'm trying to do. And the Urban Monk is an extraordinary book that maps that out. We're going to get into the details of that. He's also the founder of well.org, which is a great website on wellness, and he's created some extraordinary movies like Vitality that I've been a part of, and I just think he's an all-around amazing human being, and we're so glad to have him here. So welcome, and thanks for coming. Great to be here. Yeah, always nice to hang out. Yeah, so you know, I was recently at your book party for Urban Monk. It was awesome and we got to talk about what really matters and what our superpower tricks are. Now we're at a conference on superpowers. What are our secret superpowers? And I think yours is being an urban monk actually.

Yeah, yeah.

And how does that affect our brain? And a lot of the things we talk about are around diet and fat and food. But once you've sort of figured out the food part, then you've got to deal with your life part.

Right?

Because the food can help you clear the deck, right? If you're living in brain fog because you are eating the wrong foods, if you're eating too much sugar, not enough of the right fats, your brain's not going to work. And once you clear that up, then it's much easier to start to deal with the real issues of your life. And so it's sort of like, I think the food part is a basic foundation, but then how do you deal with the stress of life? How do you manage to navigate in a difficult world, right? And I just love you to share what spurred you to write the Urban Monk and how you have actually taken that on as not just a concept, but this is actually how you live your life.

It's a lifestyle.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I could make some decisions right now and say, you know what? That's it. I'm going to eat more fat and vegetables and lean protein if I so choose, and I'm going to be a really good boy and lose the weight in six months later. regress, right? And the question is why would I regress? And it has a lot to do with the why in the first place. Like who am I? Who is this person? Why am I doing this in the first place? And a lot of people, they get to this place where they feel well and our model of health, our model of happiness, our model of most things is from kind of, you know, disease state being the midline all the way down to like your deathbed. But from the midline all the way up to what, you know, we call vitality or super happiness and all that. I mean, that's what conference we're at now is talking about. But so long as I'm symptom free, I'm cool, and then if I have some symptoms, then I worry about my health and I just come up so I could just get some oxygen instead of being able to thrive. And so for me, it became a very big issue in looking at why behaviorally a lot of the patients in my clinics and a lot of students that I interacted with thousands over the years would do the right things and then fall back. A lot of it was just Our thinking. Thinking.

Our thinking minds, right?

Yeah.

So, it's the ideas and beliefs we have that actually drive some of our behavior.

Oh, yeah. And the belief about, really, what's this storefront? Who's this guy I'm pretending to be for the people out there who I need to like me? And how much energy do I have to put into kind of perpetuating this image that these people need? And it's just all of the things that we don't even have a time to think about when we're sick, when we're not well, if we're eating foods that don't power our brain, then once you get up there.

So you gotta start by kind of taking care of the house and then you can take care of the.

Yeah, well and you have enough energy going up to your brain where you can actually start thinking clearly and then you're like, wow, why do I do that? You know, why do I keep doing this thing? I don't even understand why it's so self-destructive. And then getting into understanding all these patterns and these behaviors then gives us an opportunity to really come from this midline to this enormous amazing world of self-cultivation, of peak performance, of optimal health and things, you know, it's like, so what? So you can run up and down, you know, the jogging track a little bit. Can you still play basketball? Can you do a standing backflip? Like what are the things that actually, you know, matter? Yeah, for you.

Yeah.

You know, I think, you know, we talk a lot about health and wellness and And, you know, people say, what matters to you? It's actually being able to get up in the morning and do the things that I want to do. And whether it's read a book, whether it's play basketball with my son, whether it's going on a vacation, or like hike up a mountain, whatever it is that I define as a quality of my life. Or maybe it's really just being able to enjoy the moment, like to be present in my experience. and be fully there so I can actually connect with what's happening. And, you know, I had a really profound experience I want to share with you because it sort of speaks to this is how do we get to this place where we're fully in our experience? Because at the end of the day, whether it's eating right, exercise, meditation, yoga, practices, therapy, it's all about getting this place where you're here and you're connected to your experience. You're able to be with what you're doing, be able to love the people in your life, to wake up and do the work that matters to you, to be connected to those that you care about, and to show up in life, right? To show up. That's the hardest part, because we're either in the past or in the future, or distracted by a thousand things. And I came back from a trip, and a friend of mine has horses, and we go riding. And I've been riding many times with him on the same horse, on the same trail. And for some reason, When I went last week, it was the most beautiful day, early summer day, and the grass was like knee-high. And it was this magical time of day at the end of the day, like five o'clock, sort of just the light was beautiful. And I felt, and I think it was because I had just spent a week sort of in Greece and I was giving a talk at a conference, but I had really let myself kind of get rid of a lot of distractions and just be in the experience I was having and eat well, sleep well, just having fun. And my nervous system was kind of reset a little bit. And on that foundation, I rode this horse. And normally, this is a powerful racehorse. It's like a retired racehorse. And normally, when I ride the horse, this is a big frickin' horse. And I could hurt myself. And yeah, I'm wearing a helmet, but people die on horses. and it's going fast and it's unpredictable. And there's always a level of vigilance and hyper attention. Like I'm a good rider, but I still, you know, when I'm galloping or going really fast, it's like I have this anxiety, right? This level of fear, which takes me out of the experience a little bit. And so I was literally, something switched and all of a sudden I dropped into the seat. I dropped into my breath. Everything slowed down. and this horse was going full speed, like this was a racehorse going full out on a straightaway. And I was in the most still, quiet, meditative place without any fear, anxiety, and everything was in slow motion. Like everything was in slow motion. And I got to fully experience that space. And then we went for a three-hour ride, and the whole ride was like that. We'd run through a field. run through the woods. And it was this meditative experience. And I was with the horse, and I just felt this total transformation. And I realized that, you know, a lot of the times my nervous system, because I travel so much and I do so much work, I'm not always grounded. Like, I'm not always inhabiting my system in the way that allows me to fully have that experience. And it was like. It was like getting an infusion of, like, energy that I can't even describe. And I can imagine if, like, if you. you walk through life like that and everything that you do is with that quality of energy and attention even in the midst of all the chaos, right? Going at a super fast speed, that's kind of what your Urban Monk concept is. It's like how do you be an urban, maybe it was an urban cowboy.

Urban cowboy, right. Exactly. So there's a question that's begotten in there is could you have accessed that had you not had that week in Greece to slow down? I don't know. And that's where a lot of us get tripped up. It's like, oh man, I just got to bang through this quarter and then I'm gonna get trip at the end and then it's everything's gonna, you know, when I retire it's gonna be great. And so it's like kicking the can down the road. But what you experienced was a timeless state. And that timeless state- well, it was.

Like a flow state.

Yeah.

Complete flow state.

And you could get there right now. But the question is, and I look at time as, you know, so time is whatever it is and we have, you know, time's a very amazing topic and we could spend three days talking about time. But the way I look at the perception of time is one of almost like a frequency base. So there's the velocity of your perception of time. So it's like right now we're just, you and I are hanging out. We go downstairs, there's people, there's buzzing, it's like, it's time is moving faster and it's more compressed, right? If I had three other things I had to do right now while sitting here with you, I'd be a little more stressed out.

Right.

So you make space for something and then you could ease into it.

So you were on that horse and that's what you were doing.

That's it. Right. That's it, yeah. And that's, that's, the state, the flow state. That's the urban monk state that is our birthright, but because the world is so damn busy.

So what are the hacks or the ways that you help people access that, right? How do you get there?

So the easiest way to do it for most, and some people are very visual, some people are auditory, but for most the easiest way is through lower abdominal breathing. And the reason is because you trigger something in your nervous system to get out of that fight or flight sympathetic nervous system and into that rest and digest parasympathetic.

You just said that, and maybe you want to take a deep breath.

Yeah, yeah. Because intrinsically we know that's good for us, right? So like you see someone yawn, you yawn, you see someone take a deep breath, you're like, good idea, right? And so I can actually slow down the cadence of my mind by slowing down my breath, and then the world's fast. But you're slow and not like not able to cognitively function slow. You're able to perceive what's happening and make decisions out of duress. And I think most of us are making decisions in duress, right? I could have the best diet in the world but then I skipped a meal and it's been a really stressful day and there's some donuts out there and damn it, I just need to eat something.

That's true.

Off the wagon.

That's true. I was almost there last night because I flew in from East Coast to LA and you know, it was 7:30, 8 o'clock which is like 11 o'clock East Coast time and I kind of missed dinner.

Yeah.

And I was like really hungry and the waiter dropped a basket of bread right in front of me. And if I wasn't sitting at a table with a bunch of health Nazis.

I would have just downed it.

I would have like, I would have.

Gone for the bread.

Totally. So, you know, and I think, thank God for peer pressure, 'cause that's what keeps us in check is our social networks and our community. But, you know, if I'm sitting there with Dave Asprey, I'm not gonna be down on a loaf of bread.

Totally.

But I could feel that, I could feel that, you know, when I was something. She wasn't taking care of myself properly.

I wasn't in total control of making good decisions. That's it. And so you're panicking, your blood sugar's crashed already, I literally just had the same thing. We flew back from Panama and they brought this empanada. It's like, I don't eat bread or cheese. And I'm like, thank you. But thanks but no thanks. And the guys that are with me.

Are like, Hey, that's good on you.

And two hours later, I'm like, Where's that freaking empanada? Hungry. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, gluten, dairy, bad for me. I get a little inflamed versus blood sugar crashing. Die, gonna die. Yeah, brain just not being happy right now. And so I got in and got a bag of almonds and tragedy narrowly averted. When I'm in that state, my prefrontal cortex is no longer able to kick in.

And I'm pretty- Executive function is done.

You see more reasoning, all of it. You know, your negation of impulses, I mean, you're just like, give me some new, right? And so what was the better idea, the better decision? Sure, pack your food and all that. We just, you know, I'm on a film shoot, stuff happens. Stuff happens, right? And so, you know, these are the moments where you make bad decisions. And people make them in business, people make them in relationship, people obviously make them with food. And how easy is it after a long stressful day to justify to yourself to say, I just want to go home and fall on the sofa instead of go run a couple miles, lift some weights. You can't do it, you're under duress.

And so.

That state of psychological ease, you've got to carry with you. And so some people are like, okay, so do you just meditate all the time? I said, yeah. But I spent hundreds of hours on the cushion. building a relationship with that space so that I can access it under duress.

It's sort of like if you practice weightlifting, if you need to pick something heavy up, you've prepared yourself. Or if you've been doing aerobic conditioning, if you have to run for the train, like I was going to Greece and there was so much traffic and I was trying to get a JFK, normally it takes me two and a half hours, it took four and a half hours, I got there at 5 o'clock, the plane was leaving at 5:40 for an international flight.

Ouch.

And I literally was, the thing was at the end of the terminal. So, I was a little stressed, but I basically sprinted down the entire terminal, but I was able to do that because I had trained for it.

Yesterday's sprinting helped today, right?

Right, and so what you're saying is if you train your mind, then when stuff happens, you have this capacity that you wouldn't otherwise have.

Yes. And I think there's a component to this that would be interesting to tease out is what's the point? What's the point if you are playing small ball? I think a lot of people get to the capacity that allows them to go to their nine to five and come back and watch their shows and okay. But because that's kind of the end of it and they haven't thought bigger for themselves, they don't backfill this huge differential in capacity. to be like, well, no, what's my superhero play? What do I actually need to be able to do to step out of this kind of humdrum and move on? So it's really easy to power a system up to four bars, but if your requirement is nine, then what do you got to do to do that? And so again, looking at purpose for yourself, I think, is something that needs to be plugged into this. Because what's the point of even being healthy?

Who cares? Right, who cares? Why not just enjoy your cheeseburgers and french fries?

Differences make, right? And people who are in that state of mind can easily rationalize those decisions because they don't really see an end in sight, right?

Yeah, it's true. It's really getting underneath the why. And I think when I see patients in my practice, I have them answer three key questions. like if you had a magic wand, what would you want?

You know?

And sometimes it's just to get rid of this or that, but sometimes people laugh and put in world peace, you know, to find happiness, whatever. Like they're, they want to play with their grandkids. They want to be, whatever the thing is that matters to you and it's different for everybody. You have to connect to that. 'Cause if you're not connected to the purpose of why, then it's hard to stay connected to whatever the behavior is that you want to do.

Yeah.

So how do you help people get connected to the why? Because a lot of people don't know. They're not in touch with it.

I think that's a very kind of important topic to start unpacking and to answer your question, like why did I write this book? It's because in this culture, at the ripe age of 17, I'm being told I need to make a decision about who I want to be for the rest of my life. Yeah, right.

The 17-year-old knows what a 40-year-old wants to do.

Right, right, you want girls, you want cars, I mean come on, what do you think about at 17? And they're like, well pick a major, and you're like, doctor, lawyer, engineer, what do I do? And so you then decide to be something, it's like a proclamation and say, okay, I proclaim that I'm gonna be this doctor person, which means then I'm gonna hang out with other doctor people, which means then other people that are called patients are in my world, and then I interface with the lawyer people this way, and the so-and-so people this way, but it's like this mask or this facade that we immediately kind of layer on that we then have to keep perpetuating and dealing with and that you are what you eat. So now you're hanging out with doctors all the time. And so you look at other cultures like Israel, for example, you go off in the military, then you go on a walkabout. Australians do the same thing. It's like, I don't know what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life. I don't even know who I am. Go, go figure out who you are and then figure out what you want.

To do to kind of live in a life that would support We don't need rituals of initiation or transformation.

Get into the workforce as fast as you can and if you get upset with yourself, we have drugs for that. If you get depressed, we got drugs for that. If you got fat, we got drugs for that. Sorry it didn't work. So it's just we're in this kind of fundamental rethinking of our society and I think the why was a casualty in that. Because the question really is who the hell am I? And what's this all about? And without asking those big questions, you just kind of plug into a nine to five and it's kind of miserable but your weekends are cool because your team is playing and yawn. It's a big issue that then I see the flip side of as well is all these people in the kind of new age spiritual world, like, I gotta find my purpose, I gotta find my purpose, right? And it gets to the point where it becomes a neurosis. And I think that as a Taoist, for me, I don't find my purpose. I step into the living moment and then I'll follow the breadcrumbs and just kind of go where it takes me next. I don't know what my purpose is. But I think a lot of people get hung up on that as well. So it's more of getting into a natural state where you are at peace and then from there just follow the movement of the universe. And that's, you know, might sound really esoteric and hippie dippy, but when I talk to some of the most successful people in the world, they're in that space, right? They're really this.

That's true. I think it's hard for people to understand even how to get there, what you're talking about. How do you what's he talking about? How do you get in a place where you're just following the breadcrumbs and in the flow of things? And how do you get into that experience? And I think, you know, most of us are in our own way. And the real question is, you know, I can tell you how to get healthy and lose weight by eating this way or doing this thing, but how do you get in the right state by doing this or that? And tell us some of the, like, really, you talk about abdominal breathing, but there's got to be more layered, textured things to how do you begin to work through this process so you can actually get in the place where you're in your experience, you're showing up, and then you can respond to what's actually happening and follow that magic that's going on in life.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm a big advocate of Qigong. I've been practicing Qigong my whole adult life, you know, since I was a young.

Which is define it.

It's Chinese energy work. So it's like all this stuff you see Bruce Lee doing all slowly. and it's just cultivating your energy and coordinating your eyes, your mind, your body, and your breath. And there's something very magical that happens when you do that. So there's practices, you know, there's also tai chi, there's yoga, there's a lot of ways to climb that mountain. But these practices require practice. And so someone's like, oh yeah, I can't wait to go to my yoga class. You know, it makes me feel so good. It's like you're using yoga as a quaalude, right? It's not the yoga class that you go to once a week. that builds that.

That's a quaint little thing I like.

Right? It's oh, I gotta go to this class, it makes me feel... It's what we've done with everything is we've turned it into a replacement for a drug. And so the yoga isn't... the classes where you learn to like get your posture better and figure out your positioning, the yoga is what you do in your personal practice every day, right? And so the translation of kung fu is hard work. And so what is your discipline? and what are you doing to do that? So for me, that vehicle is Qigong. I'll do Tai Chi. I'll do Kung Fu. I mean, I have a lot of things that I teach and do, and I'm happy to unpack that to help me stay in that state and also help me come from that state. But I'll tell you one of the other things that has nothing to do with any of that is put me in nature for four days.

Right?

Like the horseman, if Mark Hyman, 2,000 years ago, jumping on that horse, would have been able to do it anyways, because he could hear the river a mile away. And so our natural state is that. Our separation from that natural state, that's what's gotten really confusing. And you talk about this in your books. It's like, what is food? This packaged stuff, this isn't food. So let's go back to food. So I have a garden that my kids pull food out of every morning. Accessing nature and being in harmony with nature helps that. The mind-body practices, like meditation. You know, people say to me all the time, oh, I tried meditation. It was hard. I couldn't do it.

My mind was too busy. I'm like, who the hell's isn't? You know, meditations where you have no thoughts.

Yeah.

Which is a complete falsity.

Good luck with that. Yeah. Decapitation is when you have no thoughts. Maybe here, like there, I mean, I went on a 10-day meditation retreat and maybe for like a minute or two, I had a moment of like, You know, maybe if you're like a master meditator who's been in a cave for nine years, they probably can kind of get to that point.

Even those guys, and I've talked to those and I've walked with those, they always have thoughts. It's your ability to not react to the thoughts as they emerge that creates that peace. Listen, I just wiggled my toe. That sent that sent information up to my brain and like posture and positioning. There's just stuff happening, right? That's part of life. But that noise, if it distracts you, if it knocks you off your perch, that creates suffering. But the noise itself, and this is a big thing for the audience as well, is meditation has been taught wrong in the West. A lot of people think this Zen satori moment of like, oh my God, I'm gonna do this, and all of a sudden there's gonna be this bliss. this orgasmic moment where I have no thoughts and I'm at one with God and then I walk away and I'm better than you, right? And it's just like what the hell kind of... you know, it's always, always work. It's always work. Every moment, I'm just basically dealing with thoughts coming up and I realize that I'm starting to attach to this thought and I go, okay, let that go, right? And so it's part of my operating system and constantly in the background, training.

The mind in a way. Yeah.

And that's the awareness. And when you build that awareness, that awareness basically juices up this thing called consciousness and you become more and more conscious and then the awareness becomes easier to do.

Conscious meaning you're actually aware of the sequence of things that happen from thought to impulse to action.

Yes. Even to like word or behavior, all of it, yes.

So I think often we have this merged phenomena of thought, action, thought, word. They're not two separate events. And I think what meditation can do is sort of create a little bit of space so that you realize you're not every stupid thought that you have and you don't have to act on every stupid thought that you have.

Yeah.

And that you're not your thoughts and that they're just these sort of forms, like waves that kind of pass by and then you don't have to like surf every wave that comes along, right?

That's it. And that gives you agency.

Right.

Because then you can say no.

In power is what you mean by agency.

Yeah, yeah, it gives you the personal power to then understand that you needn't react and then the question really is who's even watching all this? Mm-.

Right?

And then-- It's like the Dr. Seuss book, the Watcher Watcher Watching the Watcher Watch Watching the Watcher.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is actually a really interesting play on Ramana Maharshi, who is one of the preeminent Indian saints who was basically like, who's the I? Well, who asked that question? And you keep digging and unpacking and trying to discover who actually the observer is. And really there's no answer, it's just bigger and bigger questions, which then when the little stuff, the small stuff comes up, you're like, that's cute.

Right?

Oh, so there's traffic.

Right.

So it's interesting when you're talking about, because when people are talking about like yoga, they talk about meditation, they're talking about it's a stress reduction technique, or qigong is a stress reduction technique. And yes, it is, it's a side effect, right? It's a sort of an unexpected nice side effect, because guess what? Those monks and Tai Chi masters and qigong masters, they never heard of stress. They didn't know about cortisol and the stress response and adrenaline. They didn't know anything about any of that. Totally. Right? It's kind of a side effect, but what you're saying is that actually, The purpose of it isn't to reduce stress like a Quaalude, right? Yoga is a Quaalude. That it's actually to create the awareness that allows you to be an actor in your life where you're the author of your life instead of being authored by your life.

Bingo.

Right?

So there's actually a historical point where the Chinese had a cultural revolution. And so there's all of these really rich traditions of Taoism, of Buddhism, of--.

Be careful when you say cultural revolution because that was Mao. and people get confused.

No, no, this is what I'm talking about. So I'm actually talking about that. So Mao comes in and says, okay, enough of this old bullshit, right? Like, I don't, this isn't interesting so long as it helps our productive capacity. And so the only stuff, so all these rich traditions that have gone back since time immemorial, going into the consciousness and studying the anatomy of our consciousness and who we are and all this really juicy, delicious stuff became relegated to saying, okay, let's do some exercises so we have less stressed so it can be on the factory floor because I'm only as good as my productive capacity in this communist machine. And so they stripped the spirit out of all of it. And so then like Tai Chi is just cute. Like, you know, Shaolin Temple is actually Chinese Disneyland. It's controlled by the government, right? And so as it came over to the West, it's the same thing. It's like, what's the best stress reduction technique? Do I tap? Do I breathe? Do I do this? Do I do that? So I could get back on the crazy train of my life. and ride this thing out so I get that watch for retirement, right? It's still like we're not questioning who we are, what we're doing. We're just using these as Quaaludes.

You gotta be careful when you get into this stuff because it might disrupt your life.

Yeah, it might make you ask big questions and think. And so really then the question is what am I doing in life? What if there's no afterlife? What if I don't know what's happening? So I've only got X amount of heartbeats left. Where am I gonna spend them?

How many summers do you have left?

Yeah. And those are the questions that get us to make real decisions about our direction in life.

Well, it's even deeper than that. It's like, what is the quality of your life? What is the quality of your experience? And many of us can go through days being completely oblivious to actually what's happening into the quality of our relationships, the quality of our experience with other people, with ourselves, with our own work. and the flow state is actually where time sort of stops, where your quality of experience magnifies, where you reach a state of being just in this experience called human life instead of in some distraction around it. And what you're talking about with this concept of urban monk is how do you build the structures in your life to actually cultivate that peace, right? Cultivate that peace. of life so that you actually can be engaged with what you're doing in a way that creates a quality that allows you to actually be fully connected, happy, human, and all those things that matter, whether it's grief or sorrow or happiness or joy, like all those things. How do you be with all those things in a way that actually is fully engaged with them? And that's really, it seems like what you're talking about.

And so, just to bring it down from the esoteric, I come home and I have a two-year-old and a six-month-old. Yeah, that's kind of real. It's very real. And they know when you're not paying attention to them. So, I come home and my ritual is to just put my phone where I can't look at it anymore because Lord knows if I look at it, my two-year-old wants it. Because he's like, well, that's more interesting. I want daddy's attention but daddy's attention is caught in this little thing. that must be important. So I'm already training him to want devices and distractions instead of being present by being distracted myself. And so then it's like, okay, I see this happening. I see this already infiltrating the lives of my pure child. Put it away. And so then it's like, I'm here with you and let's play.

Right?

And so kids and dogs and, like, pure, pure family time. And then you have it all the time. I mean, I run a big business, right? I make movies. I got a lot of stuff going on. And so, like, oh, I forgot to so-and-so and this, that and the other. And so that's where the discipline comes in is like, okay, I owe it to my son, I owe it to my daughter, I owe it to my wife, I owe it to the dogs and I owe it to myself to just be here with them now. And so as those things come up, you just compartmentalize and be like, okay, that's not for now. So it makes you become much more efficient when you're at work. It makes you become much more clear with what you're doing. Don't say yes to things you don't have time to say yes to. And so a lot of the stress we layer on is just our our inability to manage events in time and say no to things and take on more than we need to or just not be clear about what we're doing. And so to be present in one thing means you start to become present in everything. So for me, people say, okay, well if I do meditation for 20 minutes, will that help my stress levels? They say, well, no, it'll help you.

It might change your life.

It'll help you stay present so that you don't make stupid decisions that increase your stress levels. Let's start with that, right? Because that's the biggest issue. We make dumb decisions because we're not aware.

So in people responding to your book and this concept of Urban Monk, what feedback have you got about what people are connected to, what works, what can people take home with them that actually creates the shift?

Yeah.

One of the things that I do personally, and I put in the book that I get a lot of feedback on, is kind of the Pomodoro method of keeping moving all day. Because I personally, like, I work at a standing desk, and if I need to sit, I sit on the floor cross-legged, so I just, you know, my back can't take it. I've got hip injuries from the martial arts and all of it. So, you know, I don't sit unless I'm on an airplane, and then I'm like, ah, right? And Lord knows we sit there for hours. You don't like the aisle seat? Yeah, get the aisle seat and get up, and I'm that guy, right? Exactly. So you make do, you wear compression clothing and all that. So what I do is every 25 minutes, I have a little thing that dings and I get up for five minutes and I'll do 10 upper body, 10 middle body, whether it's a plank or crunch or something, and 10 lower body exercises. So just quick, like 10 lunges, 10 squats, 10 something, 10 push-ups, and then just do 10 crunches in the middle.

Right?

And usually I'll do more, I do 25 instead of 25.

Right?

Every 25 minutes, get up, stretch a little bit, drink some water, get back in it. And what that does is, you know, by the end of the day, I've got like 200 something push-ups in. I've got, you know, I don't have time as a dad, right? To go to the gym. I don't, right? I just, I want to go home and see my kids.

Right.

By the end of the morning, it's like it's all crazy as soon as they wake up, but in the evening, like you want to see them before they go to sleep. so I have to factor it in to the middle of the day. And so I just kind of mentioned.

Some of this stuff and people- Those.

Are like little tricks that you can do. Yeah, little tricks. But it's like what it does is it brings up your resting metabolic rate, your active metabolic rate, so you're burning more calories. And because what you're doing is, okay, if I'm sitting at an office desk and I'm just like, you know, mousing away and da-da-da, hello, hello, right? Within an hour, hour and a half, all of a sudden I start to get Foggy, I start to just kind of like my light starts to flicker and I think to myself, ah, I'm low on caffeine.

Right?

Yeah, of course you are.

And so then I go hit the caffeine and then the caffeine jacks me up and then my blood sugar starts to get weird and then I need more sugar and then I need more caffeine. This is a roller coaster which screws your sleep. If you get up and you move your blood and you use the big muscles, it powers the blood flow, it sends, it sends energy to your brain and so that you just have a lot more clarity so that when you are feeling tired and down, again, you don't make those bad food decisions, right? Because they're so easy to make. They're so easy to make when you're under duress. So that's one of the big things.

Those are little powerful tricks so you can just in the structure of your day take little mini breaks.

Yeah. And so I work with 2200 corporations right now and little things like this, they're like, we're making millions of dollars. It's like their productivity is going up. their absenteeism is going down. Like all this wonderful stuff is happening all from these little things because guess what? We don't sit at desks well. That's not our design. This 90 degree thing, this is new. We used to all be like squatting, right? We had no chairs.

They're like, this is how it's all. I lived in China. Everywhere you go in the world, that's how they have babies. That's how they go to the bathroom. That's how they eat dinner.

There were no chairs. Yeah, and you sit on a rock, fine. But it's like you're, so you're using your body, you're using your core, to hold yourself up, you're engaged. And so it's very easy with furniture to fall asleep. And when you fall asleep physiologically, the energy system of the body, just the ability for the body to drive ions through your blood flow starts to come down. Your brain starts to get less blood. You're just not as with it. So then again, it's like, well, obviously I need more coffee. Jack me in. And so then we start We start doing the blood sugar roller coaster, we start doing the adrenal roller coaster, and all of this can get fixed by obviously eating right and then just staying active all day. And this had nothing to do with meditation. But what it did is it kept the body alive and awake so that you can not just get through your day, but you thrive. So I've actually monitored thousands of people over this, and they're doing better in their careers, they're making more money. It's just all of these things start lining up because you don't lull. And when you're at work, you are working and when you're home, you're playing. It's like you don't bring work home.

And your efficiency gets better because if you're focused in those 25 minutes in between, you're working better, faster, smarter.

Totally. And you give your brain a little bit of rest time, right? You can't stay focused for hours on end. Like I don't know anyone who can, right? You can kind of cram through and pull an all-nighter and all that stuff. That's not a sustainable play, right? You need the brain to just kind of have that inhale and that exhale so that you can kind of, you know, clear out at night and all these things. But you have these micro cycles where you just allow yourself some psychological space.

So that's one thing. What else? What else did you find?

I'm a big fan of tonic herbs. I think that we live in a culture where there are obesogens and endocrine disruptors. There's all sorts of things that are kind of hitting the city walls and invading, right? We have a lot of things that are challenging our immune system at the gut level and whether it's scents and odors and diesel fumes and all that. So, adaptogenic herbs like ginseng and reishi and things of the sort really help the system modulate the immunity.

Build resilience. These are herbs that help build resilience. They're not like drugs that treat a specific pathway. They're actually build your overall resilience.

Yeah, and we need resilience, right? Whether it's in stressors in life, whether it's in, you know, just our blood sugar management, like we've become so challenged that we're not resilient on many fronts. And so to build resilience means to build it psychologically, it means to build it physiologically, right? And then functionally, right? So one of the big things is, you know, in clinic I saw thousands of patients. Because you're an acupuncturist. I'm an acupuncturist by trade, and so I did a lot So I got into the business. I realized that it was just so limited. Then I started a medical group and I had all these offices. And so I've been on the business side of it. I've been on the barefoot medicine side of it. I've been around a lot of medicine. And we have had lots and lots of patients come in with orthopedic injuries. And you start to unpack what it's about. It's like people sitting in desks and office chairs all day. then all of a sudden it's time to go to the gym and I'm gonna go play five on five basketball and it's like, ugh. And it's like, well of course you've been shortening your muscles all day. So functional fitness is just, you have to be able to move in three dimensions. And so the bench press is one dimension. And so what are you doing on uneven surfaces? What are you doing to build your foot arches? What are you doing to build flexibility and strength and all these things? They're missing for most people's regimens. and those are the people that tear their labrum and then they're like, if I tear my labrum and now I can't exercise, that means I'm just gonna sit around and eat and I'm going to get heavier. And you have this kind of downward spiral of injuries and weight gain and self-sabotage that starts happening because people aren't functionally fit. So that's a big part of my gosh darn it. Functional fitness. Oh yeah, functional fitness is huge. If you can't touch your toes, you have no business playing basketball, that kind of thing. You have to be able to be adaptive.

Right?

So again, physiological adaptivity. And then one of the big ones for me is sleep. And you know, I'm a new dad, so you know, I'm- How's that going? It's better. You know, every six months they're good. So like my youngest is almost seven months old now. And you know, you just get woken up a lot. And so I'm a pretty high functioning dude, and then all of a sudden you take away sleep on my first kid, and I was like the guy sitting on his roof calling FEMA after Category 5 hurricane. I'm just like, what happened? It just, it like swept my feet out from under me. So I started paying attention to like how the rest cycles were, you know, when they're gone, you really are in trouble, right? So it's like from the glymphatic system of detoxing your brain to just getting the psychological bounce that you need to clear your head and understand like what happened today so you could kind of close that and take on tomorrow with fresh energy. that's sleep. And so where do we have trouble with sleep?

Yeah, what are the sleep packs that you found?

Yeah, so light is a big one, right? So blue shifted light, what we do is we dim all the lights right around say 7 o'clock, 6 o'clock, you know, it's right now it's summer so it's light out anyways. So we start dimming the lights in the house. We don't have blue shifted light. We have, you know, kind of red shifted special light bulbs. Yeah, red shifted. light bulbs for the kids rooms, and then we just put everything on a dimmer, and then we'd like to go by candlelight. Think about it. I mean, we, for hundreds of thousands of years, it gets dark, you have a fire, and you know, people sing and dance and do whatever, and then hopefully you have some sex and you go to sleep. That's it. There's nothing else to do. You go out there, I've been in the African wild making our last movie. There's no TV, and frankly, you go out there, most of the animals have seven times better eyesight than and you, you are creamed. You don't stand a chance. You huddle up and you sleep. And it's cold and so, you know, cold, dark, you know, lack of light, lack of stimulation. So, you know, one of my big things is don't do bills in your bedroom. Don't watch TV in your bedroom. Don't look at your iPad in your bedroom.

Don't look at Facebook on your phone on your bed. Like all of that.

Just-- Keep electrical devices out of your bedroom. Get it up. Have a battery-powered clock. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, what I'll do is I'll have my phone on airplane mode, set my alarm, and put it over there, right? But just away, right? I don't look at it. And so the bedroom is for sleeping and making love. That's it. That's it. And so keeping it cool, keeping it dark, and one of the big things--.

Eye shades people can use, earplugs they can use.

Sure. I mean, yeah, if you have noise pollution, forget about it, right? So it's like I do a lot to kind of control my environment because sleep is so important to me. But there's a piece to sleep that I think most people don't get. And this is kind of a big part of the book is most people will drive at 100 miles an hour and then be like, oh, oh shit, it's 10 o'clock and slam on the brakes and be like, I don't understand, I don't understand. I can't sleep, I can't sleep. And so it's like, well, you know, why don't you pop in the clutch and downshift and downshift again and decelerate, right? And so for me, I always plan on my days kind of ending. Like I don't do anything kind of aggressive after like say 3:00, 4:00 p.m. And then I start to really get into more creative work. I start to get into more just kind of like family time. And in the evening, unless there's some sort of emergency, it's about kind of winding down and giving you that kind of psychological space to kind of close all the windows from the day. And without that deceleration, you're toast. And by the way, the half-life of caffeine is like, I don't know, eight hours or something. So like if you are drinking caffeine after noon, you still got it in your system. So, you know, I don't drink caffeine past noon or 2 o'clock if it's really, you know, whatever. So, you can slow down and then it might take a month or two, but then once you're getting quality sleep, all the other categories start going up, right?

So, sleep, movement, functional fitness, adaptogens.

Mindset, obviously, we talked about, which is a big one. And then, you know, a big piece of this thing, we talked about finding meaning and purpose, and how finding it is kind of a challenge. So you're better off just kind of good luck with that. Yeah, it's just I think a lot of people are hung up on finding meaning. It doesn't mean being.

No, I don't mean meaning and purpose. I'm not talking about, you know, what's the meaning of life or, you know, should I go save starving children in Africa. What I'm talking about is what matters to you.

Right. You know?

Right.

And that's where people. So I just talked to a guy who's like a good friend of mine. He's very wealthy. He doesn't need money, anything. and he's tripping on all this stuff and he's like, yeah, I'm just trying to, you know, I do this but then I think, you know, what should I really be doing? I'm like, well, do you enjoy what you're doing? He's like, yeah, I love it. I'm like, do that. Like, there's this duress that people are under trying to figure out what else to do when what they're doing is perfectly cool. So if you're happy doing what you're doing, keep doing that. And if you are not happy doing what you're doing, go back to what made you happy as a child and find what you're happy doing and just do that, right? It doesn't need to be that complicated. It just needs to be plugged in with your internal state because you know what you enjoy doing, right? And so that to me is kind of where a lot of people get tripped up in our culture.

And so the last thing I want to ask you is how do you sort of help people get to that last step, which I think is in the Urban Monk, which is actually building that mental resilience through some practice. You talked about meditation, you talked about yoga, Chi Gong. Where do people start? You talk about the breath, how do you Where do people go to figure this out?

The first step. Thousand Mile Journey is the first step. And so what I do is a practice called a gong, which is a hundred day practice of a given discipline, whatever it is to you. So you look at your deficits in life. And so, you know, my first gong was a particular Qigong set that I had to do every single day for a hundred days. And if I failed, I had to start over. So it built this micro habit of just doing this one dedicated act of self-love in my own language. -Gong in Chinese for work. -Work. Yeah, work. So, it's your work. So, my gong right now, I have an eight-part gong and I've done, I don't know, five of them already today and so by the time I go to bed, I got to finish this or I lose. I start over and so and I have. I mean, I've lost it on day 46, right? And I had to start over. -So, set back to day one. -Set back to day one and then every day from day one back to 46, you're like, damn, that sucked, right? Because you're like, okay, I get it. I'll pay attention. And so, It builds this because what most of us do will assemble our days around other people's wants and desires for us. And so, what are things that we need for us? For our own health, for our own sanity, for our own everything. And so, how do we make sure that those are built into our day so every day you move forward? So, I've had people on gongs for 20 years and I have them always start small. Don't bite off more than you could chew. Get a win under your belt. Prove to yourself that you can do it because most people are coming off of New Year's resolutions that are a joke. Keep failing, keep failing, keep failing.

You've proved to yourself you're a failure. You are. I'm in the middle of one now. I didn't realize that was called the Gong, but I'm like in a daily practice of writing and on a personal stuff of being accountable for things that are traits of mine that I noticed that I want to fix. But I have to report it and I'm every day. And if I don't, I go back to day one. So if I forget, like if I'm wanting to get to 90 days, if I on day 86 forget one day.

I go back to day one. That's it. Yeah, and the good news is, look, 90 days from now, you're going to be either, you're going to be 90 days older either way. But what have you done in those 90 days? And so, and you do 90 days? Yep. I do 100, and the reason I do 100 is because every day is a percentage point. So it's just, you know, you just get a very good understanding of what percent of the way there you are, and you know, I found that it's helped us track that.

That's good, yeah.

Right?

And so, and I got to say, I have thousands of people that have done these over the years and the best part about it is I don't really want thanks for it because I didn't do the work. It's like you pick what you need to do. It's a deal between you and yourself. Right. Do it.

It's like 90 days of what? No sugar or 90 days of I'm going to do 10 push-ups a day or 90 days of I'm going to meditate for five minutes a day or 90 days of whatever. I'm going to say three nice things to my wife.

That's it. That's it. And whatever your thing is, you're going to build that habit over 90 days or 100 days. And then from there, you say, okay, great. It's like if you've ever kind of done back country backpacking, you plot your navigation lines. You say, okay, so I'm going to go up to that mountain over there and then from there, I'm going to go to Vista and then I'm going to go to the next. So I'll do 100 days at a time. and really move my life forward and really reach out. It's profound.

I did one once, it was a sort of a gratitude, forgiveness meditation, which was asking for forgiveness anybody I might have hurt and forgiving anybody who might have hurt me. And just doing that every day, saying it every day when I woke up, and then having a short meditation around it, it was like it really changed my relationship to people in my life, to my experience, to myself.

Yeah, it makes you a nicer person. It makes you a happier person. How much of the energy that you expend every day is in stuff like resentment? And you know, it's just, it's just.

It'S just, resentment is swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.

Yeah.

So, those are all wonderful practices and the question is what's the right practice for you? Like if you're listening to this, watching this, what's the right practice for you? What do you need to do to move yourself forward and what micro habit again, like and I like putting an end on it because you know when someone says I'm never drinking again unless you're an AA, it's hard because you know forever is a long time. Do it for 100 days, see how you're doing, right? And so for me like even though I seldom eat this stuff right now, I'm on no wheat, no dairy, right? And no sugar and no coffee and that's my that's part of my dietary part and I have things that I do But I say, look, in 100 days, we'll figure it out and chances are, I'll probably go back on that.

But if I say forever, that's a very long time.

That can be discouraging, right? Yeah, it's too psychologically, I need to define. That's why I do the 10-day detox. People do 10 days. You can do anything for 10 days.

Except hold your breath. Yeah, but that's it. I've had couples that have said, We agreed to make love every day for 30 days and see what happens to our relationship.

Wow.

We're changing everything. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not easy. Sometimes it's really hard to get it in. It is really a big challenge in life when you kind of also put your kind of success metrics on other people. So as a couple, that's a powerful, powerful play. But for me, it's like, oh, I need to do this with my wife every day. And it's like, well, I travel a lot. And so it's like, I always kind of talk about like, don't set yourself up for failure. If I say, you know, I'm gonna swim every day for 100 days and I'm in a Radisson somewhere in, like, Bangkok or something, all I got is push-ups. It's cool. Right, right. But then we might have a pool. You know what I'm saying? So it's like all I can do.

Is what I can do. So I plan for that. And then if I could get more than gravy.

Right. Yeah.

Go get it. So any last thoughts about how we get connected to a life that actually works for us, that kind of takes some of the things you learned and sort of summarizes them for people to get inspired to take the next step.

-I like the metaphor of a life garden. If you had a garden and you had room for five flowers or plants, what would they be? And then how much energy or water is it going to take to sustain these and keep these going? And so, what I use this as is a filter. So, when someone comes to me with a new opportunity, new this, new that. There's a lot of new coming at me. You know, we're busy people. I always kind of put up the filter of my life garden and be like, okay, well this falls under my career plant, but it's going to require X much more time which pulls me away from my family and my health and these types of things. So, can I do it? Is the trade-off worth it? Do I, can I do it now? Can I say not yes, but in two quarters? And really just kind of think through my balance because, you know, there's hell to pay if if I'm not around and my kids don't see me, and it's something that I can't undo. And so these are the regrets I don't want to have in life. So, you know, I don't know what your flowers are, right?

But always change your different stages of your life. Yeah, absolutely.

But don't water the weeds and don't overwater one at the expense of the others, because what you're going to have is an imbalanced garden. You're going to have challenges. I love that.

Life garden. Thank you. That's great. That's a great little image of how to measure what you want to do. Yeah, and it's just a good filter.

Because there's just, you know, we live in an age of information overload. You know, there's just too much, always too much. So if you don't have something kind of guarding at the gates, you're going to take on too much, you're going to experience stress, you're going to make bad decisions, and you're going to get sick. This is so good.

I learned a lot. Take some of this advice. So thanks, Peter.

Hey, great to see you, man.

Nice.

Yeah.