Who Are The RawBrahs?

Hey, what's up, you guys? It's Ben Greenfield, and I was at Dave Asprey's bulletproof biohacking conference a couple months ago, and I met this guy who calls himself Danimal. I learned later that his real name is Daniel, but he calls himself Danimal. And he's part of this group of guys called Raw Bras. You can check him out at R A W B r a h s.com ra bras. And these are guys who describe themselves as three life hacking brothers who host holistic health retreats around the world. And they say they tell you how to lose your mind and come to your senses. Well, Dan was describing to me some of the crazy adventures and retreats that he's done around the world, like doing these crazy workouts with Laird Hamilton and, like, Polar plunging with Paul. Check. And doing things that seem kind of crazy, but also.

Healthy and fun and potentially things that you could add to your bucket list. So I thought it would be cool to get one of these brothers on a call for you guys and talk about not only what they do with these retreats around the world, but also hear some of the crazier adventures that they've been on and maybe get your wheels turning about things that you could go do and experience. Because I'm all about living life to the fullest, and it seems like these guys are, too, so. So my guest on today's call, who, if you're watching the video version of this, is not the guy that I met at the Bulletproof biohacking conference because he's off at some Tony Robbins conference or something like that, but is instead one of his brothers, Daniel or Timothy, who goes by the name T. Mango. These guys have the craziest names, Danimal and T. Mango. So T. Mango is here on the call with me. If you're listening to the audio version of this, you can go see T. Mango's ripped body if you just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com bucketlist. These guys like to pose, showing off their abs a lot, I noticed on their website. But if you go to BenGreenFitness.com bucket list, you'll be able to see a photo of T. Mango and also get links to all the cool videos and content that we're about to talk about. So, T. Mango, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's funny, oftentimes people make that comment about us showing off our bodies and whatnot. Personally, I think I have one of the best four packs that the Internet has ever seen. But it's funny. I am self conscious about my body. I'm self conscious about what I call a little fat pack that I have, you know, at the very bottom. I'm sure that some of you listeners can relate that little package of fat that's just from, you know, loving sugar.

Yep, yep, I hear you. I hear you. Well, I catch a lot of flack myself for not wearing a shirt very often. I usually work at home in my underwear. And so when I want to shoot a cool video, you know, I'll call my wife over and she'll whip out the iPhone and we'll shoot the video. And then, you know, afterwards, we'll get all the flack about me not having any clothes on. But I did actually put my. I put my Ben Greenfield fitness shirt on for today's show, so. Shameless advertising. So before we jump into some of these amazing adventures, one of the things that Daniel told me when we were at that conference prior to us scheduling this interview, was that one of his brothers is a swimmer. Is that you?

That is my younger brother. So there's three of us total, and that's Nathaniel, who's 22 years old.

Okay. He said this guy swam for a short time and became one of the fastest, fastest sprinters in the nation. I'm just curious, how'd this happen? What's the story behind that?

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. So Nathaniel, as a freshman in high school, started swimming, and it was.

So he hadn't swam, he hadn't, like, started swimming. He was like 3 years old.

Like, yeah, just like summer swimming in the pool and whatnot. And he did, like, I think the summer previous to becoming a freshman, he, like, swim for, like, the neighborhood team. And that was like his. His debut in actual, like, like what you would call competitive swimming.

But yeah, he started off as a freshman in high school and just quickly, really quickly excelled. It's pretty amazing.

Wow. Amazing. And. And so did he, like, win any national meets or anything like that or, like, what exactly happened?

Yeah, he actually did end up winning the state championship as I think he was a junior in high school and held the fastest 50 yard sprint time as a high school student in Georgia for a long time.

Wow. Amazing. So you guys are three brothers and your actual brothers, like, with the same parents, everything?

Yeah, we like to make the joke, like when we're together that his mom had sex with our dad.

It gets people laughing.

So how did this all happen? How were you guys kind of, like, raised and how did you come to form this, this raw bras website and start doing retreats around the world.

Okay. So, you know, we've always been just radical. Like even as kids growing up, like running around the neighborhood, just, we were the, we were the troublemakers. I mean, everyone knew us and it wasn't always for the best reputation.

I remember even when I was in middle school, Daniel was in high school, we had the thing called White boy TV where we would basically just carry a camera around and videotape ourselves doing the craziest things that we could think of. And I think we were highly influenced by the TV show Jackass that was on MTV a while ago, a few years back probably, I guess that's about 10 years ago now.

So I think that's initially we've been behind the camera for a while. And then I guess when it was when I graduated high school and then Daniel was graduating college at the same time, we started to experiment with like a raw vegan diet, meaning eating only fruits and vegetables.

I was curious if that's where the raw and raw bras came from.

Yeah, initially. Initially it did. I remember we were working in New York City actually for two weeks and my younger brother called me up and this is when we were all eating raw. He's like, what's up? Raw bra? And we were like, rah Bra. That's a pretty cool name.

So that's, that's where the name came.

From for both women's apparel and also for a website dedicated to Brothers Globetrotting.

Yeah, yeah. We were thinking about, you know, making starting a company about the women's apparel, but I don't know if there's much money in promoting women not wearing bras.

And just for those of you who are interested in going to this website, it is B r a h s rabraz.com. so you guys started this website?

Mm, yeah, it was more. The first thing was a YouTube channel. We had the YouTube channel going way, way before the website and where we were just literally documenting our day to day experiences with eating a raw vegan diet and being just super goofy. I mean, I look back on our YouTube channel, like the first videos that we made and I. It's really hard for me to watch some of the videos of just how the things that I said and how goofy I looked as a raw vegan and like what I. What I would perceive today as not being a picture of health but being a little bit malnourished.

Yeah. Now are you still raw vegan?

No. No, I'm not.

What happened Yeah.

I would say about six months into eating completely raw, we just started to realize that we were getting skinny, we were getting small, and we were, like, losing our drive to not only, like, work out and to stay in shape, but also our drive to be in touch with the female. The female race.

Right, right.

I heard.

Now, there are some people that would argue that you guys didn't do it. Right. Right. Like, maybe you didn't get enough fatty acids, or maybe you didn't add enough avocados, or maybe you didn't, like, soak and sprout a bunch of seeds and nuts and stuff like that. Like, were you guys kind of, like, doing, like, looking back, were you guys doing it the wrong way or was it just one of those things where your bodies did not like it?

That's a good question. Yeah. Some people will say that we did it the wrong way. And I would say that eating exclusively raw fruits and vegetables is. It's the wrong way to begin with. And we are no longer proponents of eating completely raw. Vegan diet. I would say it's a good for maybe a cleanse, but not as a lifestyle diet.

Yeah, I mean, my take on it personally is I think, you know, and I know that you guys at RA Bras, you. One of the things that you do is you. I think I read on your website somewhere that the three of you are Christian, so I'd imagine that you're probably creationists. And, you know, that's one of the things that I am as well. And I think that maybe way back in the day, like in the pristine Garden of Eden, like, it was somehow possible to not kill any animals. And maybe people did know how to survive on seeds and nuts and fruits and vegetables because they lived on a more pristine planet, which. With really, really high quality stuff. But, yeah, I think that it's tough to pull off these days, especially once you add in, like, airline travel and crazy workouts and everything else that just taxes your body way more than what produce might be able to give you. That's my personal take on it, though.

Yeah. And we were and still are fans of that, like, system of belief. However, I do believe that animals were created for us to be nurtured from and to eat.

So, yeah, I don't know. I totally didn't imagine the podcast going this way, but there you go, folks. You can add your thoughts in the comments. Okay, so let's jump into this stuff that I was interested in talking to you about, and that's all these crazy adventures and retreats that you Guys do. So when did that start up? When did you start doing like retreats for people?

It was probably a year after we got started with the Rob Ross where we started hosting official Rob Roz retreats. However, even before the Rob Ross started as probably one of our first entrepreneurial ideas, we started running trips to Costa Rica, like adventure travel trips, budget trips that care to high school and college students. So we had to gain some experience doing that. But it wasn't really working out for us because instead of people wanting to gain consciousness with traveling, we seem to be attracting a group of guys or girls that wanted to lose consciousness. They want to come down and party, find drugs and just get themselves into trouble. And that was definitely not what we were all about. So.

Fortunate enough to this day, somehow we have transitioned into attracting a group of like minded people who are looking to become more whole as individuals. And that's what our Rob Rob's retreats are all about. It's a holistic approach to health.

Especially. And our main takeaway message from the retreats is like health through honesty. And how by being honest and transparent and letting whatever come up come out. Is a huge proponent to our physical health.

Gotcha. Interesting. Well, I want to ask you about some of the more crazy adventures and retreats that you guys have run. But before I do, I want to specifically dive into some of the actual videos that we're going to have in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com bucketlist. So the first video I'm curious about is this underwater torture. Were you part of this underwater torture with Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese?

Yeah, I sure was. And that's something I'll.

And by the way, for people who aren't familiar with Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese, tell us who they are and then fill us in on this underwater torture.

Well, I'll tell you who they are from my eyes. Laird Hamilton was someone that I had a poster of on my wall growing up as a kid. Kid, I always had an infatuation for surfing. My dad was a surfer and you know, Larry Hamilton was the guy who was chasing the biggest waves. And I had this picture of him.

Surfing a huge left in Chapu. And those of you who surf know where Chapu is. And it was such a mind blowing experience to have him go from being on my wall all these years kind of just fantasizing about maybe riding waves as big as him to actually meeting him in person at his house with his wife, Gabby Reese, who I didn't know much about until we Actually met her. But she is a phenomenal person herself. Just as much of a star as Laird is. She was now an ex professional volleyball player, and she's just a mom, I think, of three kids. Phenomenal person.

Yeah. Yeah. So what's this underwater torture stuff that you guys did with them? How'd that happen?

Yeah, I'll never forget it. He showed up. At first of all, we, you know, were invited to his house to work out with him, which I was already like, ecstatic about.

He lives in Malibu, right?

Yeah, yeah. Where we went that day. He was in Malibu and pulled up to his house, and I remember just being real nervous, like, I can't believe this is back about to happen, actually. And a guy walked out of his property that I thought it was Laird Hamilton. It looked just like him. I was like. I was like, yo, Laird. And it turned out to be, like one of his best friend workout partners, Darren Olien. I think he was the founder of Shakeology and he's a star himself. So I got right off the bat, I was confused who Laird Hamilton was.

But yeah, we went to his house and we got to train with him for two consecutive days. One day was an underwater workout, which was total, like, revolutionary, and I've never done anything like it. And the next day was a dry land workout, which took place in the basement, his personal gym.

Nice, Nice. So how the workouts go like you described as underwater swim torture? I'm curious if you could explain exactly how that shook out or went down.

Yeah. So he has this pool, this customized pool that I think it was about 15ft deep in the end, and it had steps that were embedded into the bottom of the surface where. Which it was intentionally designed to run up with with weights underwater. Um, so between him and his wife, you know, we had probably about six sets of dumbbells. Any ranging for anywhere from 10 pounds to. I think that it was like 35 pounds.

Right.

And essentially what we would do is take the dumbbells, one in each hand.

Jump down to the bottom, which is a 15 foot deep pool, and then jump. And then like, literally, like, we're jumping as high as we can with weights in our hands to the surface just to grab a moment of air, just to sink right back down to the bottom with the weights in our hands. And we would do that consecutive. We did this for about an hour straight. And it was crazy. Wow.

It sounds like the old school water polo workouts I used to do at University of Idaho, where we did all sorts of things in the water, like they'd fill up water jugs and you'd have to hold them above your head while you tread water with your legs. Eggbeater kick, one of the toughest things we did. And if you're watching this video, try this sometime. If you're at a pool with one of your friends or workout partner, one person stands at the edge with a medicine ball, like a 20 pound medicine ball, right. And the other person is treading water and the person who's on the edge of the pool drops the medicine ball. The person in the water has to catch it and throw it back up. And you do like 30, 40, 50 reps. But because you're catching and throwing, you have that, that danger component that if you do put your hands in the water to start treading, you're going to get a medicine ball smashing your face. So you got to use your legs while at the same time using your upper body to throw. It's one of the most, you know, try 50 burpees and then try 50 of those and those will just destroy burpees. So you got this underwater torture from Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese. That's a pretty. And we'll put a video of that. You guys also did polar plunging with Paul Check, who's like an icon in health and you know, holistic medicine and fitness and stuff like that. How'd you meet up with Paul Check. And what was the Polar Plunge all about?

Actually, you know, both Laird Hamilton and Paul Check were. We were connected through Troy Casey, the certified health nut. Hoops.

Okay. Yeah, he's been on the show.

Oh, yes. Okay.

Yeah, we talked about poop.

Yeah. So thanks to Troy Casey for both those connections. And yeah, Paul Chek, he's really something else. If you've never seen his videos or gotten the chance to meet him in person, he is quite a radical human.

And so when you talk about polar plunging with Paul Check, it wasn't like a one time event that we went polar plunging. We consider polar plunging. We try to do it on a daily basis which is just submerging yourself in cold water. And if you can't submerge yourself in, you know that we're taking cold showers.

But you guys, you guys all personally do that.

Yeah.

I don't know if the fans, by the way, if you're listening in like Timothy, I didn't talk before this show. He doesn't know that I also do this every day.

Okay.

Yeah, I have, I have a cold pool in my backyard.

Oh really? How cold is it?

Yeah, 60.

I mean, and you know, that's not freezing cold, but it's cold enough to get you, get you chilled out if you hang out in there for 10, 15, 20 minutes. So.

So you guys do this polar plunging every day, like this cold thermogenesis thing?

Yeah, I mean, it's just something that I've learned to love and I think it's something that I will practice for the rest of my life.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how you run into people who are pursuing health and holistic living and a lot of them seem to have somehow tapped into the cold shower, polar plunge thing. So with Paul, check. Was this a one time thing or is it something you guys did a bunch of. A bunch of times?

Well, we never actually jumped in the water with Paul Chek. He, he was just, you know, we spent some time with him at his, like, training grounds and he was just telling us the benefits of it, which, you know, after hearing him talk about polar plunging, it's something that you're convinced that is essential for health or for optimal health, especially for a man.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting because like for me, polar plunging is like on New Year's Day when you go to the lake that's literally frozen over and you gotta like break through the ice and get in through the ice and then crawl out of the ice. Like that's a polar plunge, which is like a once in a year type of thing because it's so unpleasant, versus the cold showers and the cold baths, which I consider to be like a little bit more like cold thermogenesis or CT is what a lot of people call it now. But that's, that's interesting that you guys tapped into that with Polishatic. So what are some of the crazier adventures that you've been on? Like some of the things that really come to mind for you as really good examples of the type of things that you guys do on your retreats or some of the more memorable experiences.

Well, we've traveled all across the United States.

I recently went to Africa, to Kenya, and that was pretty crazy, especially considering that there was that whole Ebola scare. I mean, you know, Kenya is on the opposite side of Africa, where that's happening.

But, you know, Hawaii is beautiful. But one of the adventures that we seek off seek most often is surfing and just being in the ocean. I think that the ocean is extremely humbling and it can really get someone out of a place of. I don't know if you're like in a place of stagnant, stagnant City in your life? I don't know if that's a word. Stagnant. City. What word?

We'll go with it. Like yes, city. I think people know what you mean.

Yeah, it's just the ocean is just, it's scary, it's humbling. And so we, you know, we've taken up surfing. So just traveling around the world going to surf spots is extremely adventurous. I think if you ever get home, base for you guys is in Athens, Georgia.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So as far as surfing, what would be one of the more beautiful places that you've been to that you think people, people maybe don't know about or should visit?

Oh man.

I would say Blacks beach in Cal. In San Diego, California.

Blacks Beach?

Yeah, it's, it's in La Jolla and not many people know about. I mean if you're gonna go to San Diego, you have to go to Black Speech.

Really do you know? So Black's beach in La Jolla. I'm asking this question because I did the seal fit training and one of the evenings, the more tortuous evenings that they brought us on was they, they brought us down the beach. We parked at some beach in La Jolla and we marched back up the beach to Encinitas, stopping about every half hour for what they call surf swim torture where they throw you in the ocean and you're doing like sit ups and burpees and you know, like submersion and just, you know, basically having the surf wash over your face and stuff and getting back out and doing burpees and getting abused by their seal fit guys. But I'm guessing we may have actually, we may have been by this Black beach or this Black Speech place that you talk about. Do people there play volleyball without their clothes on?

They do, because we marched past a bunch of people playing volleyball nude.

I would be impressed though if you ran or walked from Blacks beach to Encinitas. That's quite a ways. Maybe it was really a torture.

Well, this was, I think this was like a 19 mile hike or so.

Oh.

Which is kind of short compared to some of the other stuff they had us do.

Okay, that, that's, that sounds about right then.

Yeah.

You're probably at the very north end of Black Beach. It's up. Yeah, it's actually somewhat known for to being a nude beach that's on the very north end. It's a clothing optional section. But the beach is just so beautiful and the water is extremely clear because right off the shore there's a deep water canyon and it's very unique to San Diego. Like literally just several hundred yards offshore, it just drops to really, really deep. And that's a very unique thing for San Diego.

Interesting. So you guys have done some of this surfing. What about some of the retreats that you've done that you've actually brought in people that people have signed up to come on you with? What are some of the cooler retreats that you guys have done?

We probably one of the most unique retreats that we did was we rented an island off of Panama.

And we had the island completely to ourselves. And that was very unique. Just because, you know.

The real takeaway message from our retreats is not necessarily like the adventures that we go on or the activities that we do while we're on the retreat. It's more so the raw honesty we, we call it Play Shop that we take everyone through. And it can get extremely uncomfortable or what we like to call fun comfortable because we're talking about things that people usually are very uncomfortable or shameful to talk about. So what was really fun about the island retreat was you couldn't really leave.

And so we had to stick with one.

Screw this, I'm not going to talk about this. I'm going home.

Yeah, some people get so uncomfortable on our retreats that they do choose to go home. Usually. Usually it's about one person leaves per retreat. We actually had someone leave on our last retreat in the Virgin Islands, which was just a week ago.

What kind of things would make people uncomfortable? Give me specifics.

Well, just talking about, let's see, what are some taboo topics to talk about? Sexual history.

And financial history, talking about body image issues.

And actually what I find to be most fun comfortable to talk about are my judgments that I'm having about the people that are on the retreat with me. These are like what I would call present thoughts as opposed to like shameful thoughts. Shameful things that we've dealt with in the past.

Right, Interesting. So is this like something that you guys do like in the evenings as a group interspersed with activities throughout the day or what. What does somebody experience when they show up at one of these retreats?

Yeah, we usually have about two sessions a day and it's like in the morning and in the evening. And it's the correlation between like doing all the, you see, like us in the videos, maybe going jumping off waterfalls or doing deep water diving or surfing, is that you can get just as much of a thrill in an honest conversation with a group of people as you can doing these activities. And Physiologically, I mean, the same things are happening in your body that you would do. Like if you were going bungee jumping. We call it social bungee jumping.

Yeah. That's interesting. It's a good point. I actually had a group of about 24 guys at my house a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things that we did was this. It was a mastermind, right? So we have this football. Everybody throws the football around. When you catch the football, you present one thing that you're struggling with, right? Like one thing that you're dealing with and you're incredibly open. And then the timer gets set for 10 minutes and everybody just roundtables for 10 minutes and gives you all their advice. And you can only talk if you're holding the football, right? So as soon as you finish giving your piece of advice, throw the football, next person holds it and you know, four hours go by, like it's five minutes and you have like this, this rush the entire time. And it's really interesting how opening up to other people in that group environment is, is like you say similar like bungee jumping or some other experience that you'd normally have to go get an adrenaline rush for. So that's interesting. So you guys do that. But then do you also like have, what kind of activities do you do? I guess like in addition to the roundtables.

So on our last retreat, we actually, just to give you an example, we did a stand up paddleboard session that went, we started about an hour before sunset and it went to about two hours after the sunset into the full moon. So we call it sunset full moon paddle. And that was just incredible. We paddled from one bay, Cinnamon Bay on the island of St. John to. It was two bays down. I can't remember what it was called. It was a real, real, like not well known bay at all. But it was just Beautiful to have 21 of us from all over the world stand up paddle boarding under the full moon. That was one activity.

What's the demographic? Are these like a bunch of like. Is it mostly like college kids? You get like older people there, single people, married people.

How's it work, man? It's, it's all over the board. Of course, I think we generally attract people in their 20s that, that are in good shape. I sometimes feel like pressure from your website.

When I visit your website, I was looking at some of the photos. I'm like, wow, everybody in these photos is ripped. It almost looks like a fitness retreat.

Yeah. And I'm assuming it's because, you know we're in good shape and maybe the people who are not in such good shape are a little timid to inquire about coming on a retreat. But you know that we've had, we've definitely had the outliers come on a retreat which, you know, they like. Let's say someone comes on our tree that's overweight, they have thoroughly enjoyed themselves just as much as the fit people. Because our retreats are not fitness retreats. It's more about just having a willingness to be open and to communicate transparently. But to answer your question, like last retreat, again, for an example, we had a, we had a first year old or first grade school teacher that was in her, I think she was just about turning 50 and all the way to an 18 year old girl from Canada who, who had just recently lost her father. So it's all over the place.

Interesting. So where do you think that, that you guys will go with this next? Do you see yourself just like continuing to do retreats around the world as your guys's main gig? Do you want to kind of like build up your, your YouTube channel or are you guys just kind of feeling it out as you go?

Yeah, that's a common question, like, what's our plan? And our common answer is usually like we're just, you know, letting it organically unfold and express itself because that's how, how we've done it from day one four years ago when we got started. And to this day I'm just extremely grateful to where, where it is. And we are, we are extremely passionate about this process of authentic communication. I feel like as you know, as our world, this, where our world is at today with social media and I feel like a lack of good communication in our world, this process that we're bringing people to is extremely needed.

Yeah, cool. Well, I'm sure, I mean, we have a lot of people kind of following that demographic who listen in, who are probably interested in checking out some of these retreats and maybe going on one themselves. I may join up with one in the future, so you may see me at one of these things. But if you're interested in checking out some of these videos, some of the things that Team Mango and I talked about, or if you have questions, I'm going to put the video and some of the notes up for you. If you just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com bucketlist, maybe one of these Rob Ross retreats is something that you should add to your bucket list. So, TeamMago, I feel funny calling you that.

I'll roll with your guys. Nickname game. Anything else that you want to bring up or tell our viewers or listeners?

Yeah, this is kind of something. I was thinking about that with these retreats or whether it's working out or whatever you're doing.

The things that we deal with, the things that we think that are most personal and the things that maybe we're most ashamed of is actually a very universal topic. And I know it's not every day you get to sit down with a group of people to discuss these things, but what people may be dealing with out there and they think they're alone dealing with it, they're not alone at all. Maybe people are lonely. Well, you're not alone in your loneliness. Everyone in the world has the same struggles from what I've seen, and it's important to know that.

Cool. Good advice, man. I like it. Well.

Folks, if you're watching again, hit BenGruthful Fitness.com bucket list. Check out some of the stuff we talked about. And Team Mango, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

All right, folks, thanks for watching.